The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3593 - Trump's Iran War Flip Flops; Section 230 30 Years Later w/ Brian Reed, Mike Masnick

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

It's Hump Day on The Majority Report   On today's program:   The Trump administration still cannot explain the reasoning for this war in Iran or if it's a war at all. This confusion comes after Marco Rubio and House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that the timing of U.S. strikes was driven by Israel's planned attack on Iran, arguing that a preemptive strike was necessary to protect American forces, installations, and assets in the region. Trump has since contradicted Rubio and Johnson after his ego was hurt by the suggestion that he is controlled by Israel which forced Rubio to walk back his statements from Monday.   Mike Masnick, editor of Tech Dirt and Brian Reed, host of Question Everything on KCRW join the program to discuss their opposing views on Section 230 of Communications Decency Act of 1996.   Chuck Schumer, Markwayne Mulling and John Fetterman all stumble over their words as they address the media on Iran.   MS NOW contributor David Rohde debunks Witkoff's claims that Iran had enough enriched uranium to make 11 nuclear weapons.   James Talarico wins the democrat primary for the Senate.   Frederick Haynes wins the dem primary in TX-30, the seat that will replace Jasmine Crockett.   all that and more   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: RITUAL: Get 25% off during your first month. Visit ritual.com/MAJORITY. BLUELAND: Get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/MAJORITY SUNSET LAKE:  Head on over to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use the code Daylight26 to save 35% on all of their CBD Sleep Products. Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show at join the Majority Report.com and get an extra hour of content daily. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, March 4th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live. Steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA.

On the program today, Brian Reed, investigative journalist, host of Question Everything on KCRW, and Mike Maznick, editor of TechDirt and on the board of directors for Blue Sky to discuss Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act from 1996. on in about its 30th anniversary. But of course, meanwhile, Trump widens the illegal war with Iran, asks defense contractors to make more bombs because we're running out of them. Death toll in Iran now over a thousand at least. CIA planning to arm or is arming or has a lot. armed Kurds. The plan to

Balkanize Iran, Israel invades southern Lebanon, and the U.S. Senate set to vote on the War Powers Act today. This, as Chuck Schumer sets a table

to give Donald Trump more money for this war against Iran. Fascist collaborators, say it with me. Meanwhile, primaries yesterday, James Talaerica wins Texas, driven by Latino voters, and highlighting a massive Democratic turnout, outvoting the Republicans in their primary for the first time in 24 years. Someone should write a book

about how Texas is not as red as we think. Shout out, David. Meanwhile, Justice Democratic back, Justice Democrats backed candidate to take Crockett's old house seat. Good stance on Gaza. Yeah. Republicans headed for a runoff in their Senate primary between Paxton and Cornyn. Sadly, Nita Alam comes up just short in North Carolina's fourth district. Roy Cooper to run against Michael Watley in the. North Carolina Senate general election.

Democrats pick up a rare state Senate seat in Arkansas, flipping a Republican seat there. Meanwhile, south of Arkansas, U.S. Special Forces involved with Ecuadorians on a narco-traffic raid in Ecuador. Trump DOJ reverses again, will resume its fight against law firms. and support for abolishing ice reaches 50%.

Populists everywhere now getting, gearing up for their anti-ice campaigns. All this and more on today's majority report. It is. Humpty. Yeah. That's good news, Emma Vigland, because I feel like I'm exhausted just from reading the headlines. There was a lot today. There is a lot.

We didn't even get to everything that was in the news from yesterday. We'll talk, I'm sure, more about the results of these primaries. I mean, Dan Crenshaw losing his seat because he dared to say Biden won the 2020 election. He was. Rino. Rino. The only House GOP incumbent Trump didn't endorse. And it made a difference.

And that's in Texas, too. So you got to keep that in mind. Of all places, Donald Trump is going to have most influence. I think in places like Texas. Probably, well, you know, look, editorially speaking, I just want to say this up front, you know, it is very difficult to sort of deal with what this show does and with the war in Iran. there is not as much news resources as there has been in the past for these things. We obviously don't report on stuff.

We're going to be covering, obviously, this war for as long as it lasts. But it's also important to keep an eye on the future. And so things like Section 230 is a big issue that I think is going to be dealt with in one form or another over the next. a year or so, and important for people to have an awareness about these things. So I just want you to, you know, I say that only because I feel self-conscious on some level. We should be covering every single aspect of this bombing and war that Donald Trump is getting in.

On the other hand, you know, it's different from Iraq in the sense to me, because we do advocacy journalism here. We have a pretty clear opinion on this. And during the Iraq war, part of it was fighting disinformation and people's perspective in favor of the Iraq war. And the fact of the matter is, is that anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of Americans are against this war in Iran. Yeah. We've known that foreign policy is completely untethered from public opinion for quite a while, and we knew that under Biden, this is just another example of it. This is the runaway train of militarism. The perspective on Israel and Palestinian conflict changed over time. And so there was, you know, there was advocacy and stories to tell people that they didn't know.

In this instance, we don't even have to push back against the reasons that the administration is offering to attack and perhaps invade Iran because they're not offering any. And so, like, you know, it is, it's like almost like pushing against a rope on some level. You know, we will cover this stuff, obviously. And in particular, what Democrats are doing, because frankly, to the extent that there is, stories that are not getting out, it is the reality of the way that a significant portion of the Democratic Party, particularly the leadership, is dealing with this because they are trying to obscure what they're doing. But this should come as a warning. And this is obviously the idea of escalation. This is clip number six. They, um, there was. There was.

There was a briefing yesterday, a classified briefing with the senators, and the Democrats that came out of it were immensely alarmed. Most Democrats that came out of it. We'll talk about Chuck Schumer later in the program. But this clip from Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut is immensely concerning if what he's saying here is accurate. I just want to say I am more fearful than ever. after this briefing that we may be putting boots on the ground and that troops from the United States may be necessary to accomplish objectives that the administration seems to have, but I also am no more clear on what the priorities are going to be of the administration going forward, whether it is destroying the nuclear capacity of Iran or simply the missiles. or regime change or stopping terrorist activities. And I think the administration owes it to the American people

to have briefings not just for members of Congress, but for the American public. Nothing here should have been classified. It should be available to the American people. I mean, what that sounds like to me is that the lack of clarity that we are seeing for, from the administration in terms of like what the agenda is here and why now and what are we doing um is exactly what they're providing for uh the senators short of like a a notion that they

believe they they can foster and and if you pair what bloom mithal said in this reporting about the CIA um uh arming uh kurds along the ira oran border the um the um The idea is, of course, that they want to have an armed uprising, and Blumenthal takes from that, like, they're going to need to put boots on the ground to facilitate this. Now, look, the most savvy commentators will say we probably already do have boots on the ground. It's just a question of how many and will we own it is really in many instances. And so that is, that's where we're at here. I mean, this is just the tried and true playbook of arming an ethnic minority within the context of trying to overthrow a regime that has burned the United States so many times,

whether it's the mujahideen in Afghanistan that turned into the Taliban, whether it's literally the Kurds in Iraq. This, whatever objective they're talking about here is undercut by the fact that now it's being reported immediately that the Kurd, that this Kurdish militia is being. sponsored by the CIA. This arrogant administration waging this illegal criminal war in Iran thinks that there's not going to be cultural memory in Iran of, of course, the Shah and other U.S. influences in trying to overthrow their government, that they're not going to have some skepticism about the Kurdish militia in this four to five week time frame that Trump is setting for

regime change. It's absolutely absurd. And it puts Iranian dissidents in grave danger as the U.S. plays it so heavy-handed in showing how it's influencing the opposition here. There does not seem, I mean, and on day two, when you have to call in defense contractors and ask them to start producing more weapons, it has a sense that there's been not a lot of planning for this. Let's just go to clip number four. This is Marco Rubio. Yesterday, I guess it was Monday, Rubio came out and said, we had to attack Iran because we knew that Israel was going to attack Iran.

And if they attacked Iran, then Iran would strike us. And so we had to strike first to prevent Iran from striking us after Israel. Israel struck them. Game theory. And Mike Johnson repeated the same thing. And then people said, hey, wait a second. So are you saying that Israel dragged us into this war and the only reason why you bombed was because Israel made us do it?

And this upset Donald Trump. So the next day, Donald Trump said, no, no, I probably made them do it. I made Israel do it and instructed Netanyahu to go. on Sean Hannity. And Sean Hannity asked the question, I've known this guy for 30 years. I don't think people make him do stuff. And of course, Netanyahu, you're right. Nobody can make Donald Trump do anything. I mean, I'm a mere servant to Donald Trump. Exactly. Exactly. I don't. I don't. I mean. Now, do my laundry, U.S. as I bring into the United States for my seventh meeting in two months or whatever. It's more like, oh, did I just encourage you to do my laundry?

I had no idea. And so... He loves doing laundry. Day three is Marco Rubio now doing a little bit of this. Good. All right. Yesterday, yesterday you said... Yesterday you talked about Israel.

Mr. Secretary. Please, guys, I can't hear him all. Yes. Yesterday, you told us that Israel was going to strike Iran and that that's why we needed to get involved. Today, the president said that... No. Iran was going to get... Yeah, your statement is false.

So that's not what you? I was asked very specific. Were you there yesterday? Yes, I asked a question. Okay. No, were you the one that... Because somebody asked me a question and said, did we go in because of Israel?

And I said, you were asking me, are you that follow-up? And I said, no. I told you this had to happen anyway. The president made a decision, and the decision he made was that Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ballistic missile program.

That Iran was not going to be allowed to hide behind its ability to conduct these attacks. That decision had been made. The president made a decision to systematically destroy. this terrorist capability that they had, and we carried that out. I was very clear in that answer. This was a question of timing of why this had to happen as a joint operation, not the question

of the intent. Once the president made a decision that negotiations were not going to work, that they were playing us on the negotiations and that this was a threat that was untenable. The decision was made to strike them. I am sorry that that answer is equally as incoherent. I don't even know what it means that we're not going to let Iran hide behind their missiles. But he's now arguing that, no, we always were going to do this once we determined that negotiations weren't going to happen.

And he's suggesting it was just a coincidence that Israel determined that exactly at the same time, but maybe like 15 minutes earlier than we did. Great minds think alike. So they were going to attack. And so the timing was just a function of we needed to get in there. before Israel attacked, but the intent we were always going to attack since we determined that the negotiations, which had happened two days earlier, weren't going anywhere. Crystal clear.

So there you go. I mean, these guys are. It's on camera. It is literally on camera, him saying this. Were you there, Emma? Were you actually there when the question was asked in the same? The best part is the person, I asked the question. That's what she said. Perhaps CNN and Fox News and the Associated Press and the other outlets that were there on their live feed, we're using that Tim Pool filter that we use to make his music sound so bad. And that's why we misunderstood Marco Rubio explicitly saying that we're going to war. Do we have Mike Johnson from yesterday? Did we play that yesterday?

Because Israel was going to strike. Yeah. Mike Johnson said the exact same thing. Yes, he did. Okay. Let's pull up Mike Johnson because he said the exact same thing right after Rubio said it. So they clearly were told at least at one point yesterday or the day before. I think we did play this, but let's just play it again. Yeah.

This is quite a coincidence. To me, the most critical point is that this was a defensive measure, a defensive operation. And why is it? Pause it for a second. Now, he just said it was a defensive measure, whereas Rubio said, no, we had intended to do this because we weren't going to let them have all this capacity. And now he's saying it's a defense of measure because... ...notes, and this is not classified, so I'll tell you what I think is important.

Israel was determined to act in their own defense here, with or without American support. Why? Because Israel faced what they deemed to be an existential threat. Iran was building missiles at a radical... ...a rapid clip to the point where our allies in the region could not keep up. As you know, Iran has long vowed to take out Israel, wipe it off the map, and they have long seen that as a critical threat to their very existence. Because Israel was determined to act with or without the U.S., our commander-in-chief and the administration and the officials I just named had a very difficult decision to make. They had to evaluate the threats to the U.S., to our troops, to our installations, to our soldiers.

are assets in the region and beyond. And they determined because of the exquisite intelligence that we had that if Israel fired upon Iran and took action against Iran to take out the missiles, then they would have immediately retaliated against U.S. personnel and assets. That doesn't sound remotely like what Rubio said hours after that, having said what Johnson said hours before Johnson said it. And then going back and saying, no, no, we were always going to attack. It was just a question of timing. That's not at all what Mike Johnson is saying.

No. I mean, this is, and then you watch the news, and there's some news outlets that are more skeptical than others. But I mean, honestly, this is like for years and years and years, Republicans were the responsible people. people when it comes to waging war and no Democratic president could hire a secretary of defense that was anything but a Republican. This is ridiculous. It is also, I mean, the crime of this also, I feel like in the Western press is completely being papered over. Tehran is like the equivalent

of New York City for Iran. It is massive. It is sprawling. And we are. bombing over and over again, this major urban center in a country with tens of millions of people, we killed over 160 little girls with a bomb that was dropped on a school there. Can you imagine what the United States response would be to that? Can you imagine what the press would be saying if 160 Israeli girls were killed by a bomb from Hamas, from a bomb? They would nuke the country of Iran tomorrow. And like, I mean, as we're talking about nuclear weapons,

and the possibility of Iran building a nuclear weapon, which the U.S.'s own intelligence says they have not been pursuing since, I think, 2003, 2002, in part because the Ayatollah Khomeini, who they just killed, was more conservative. And the more hawkish Iranians were critical of him saying that he should take a more aggressive posture towards the United States. Now, apparently, his son is going to be taking over in the interim. what do you think his stance is going to be after they just killed his mother and father? I'm not sure if it's the same mother, but at the very least his father. Like there's no strategy. Trump even said it himself that they killed some of their other options to take over this country. I mean, we are committing an horrific crime against humanity and we have some Democrats who are on board with it in a way that doesn't just on its morally.

scream how horrible this is. But the destabilization effects are going to actually really harm United States interests. And it's because the Zionist lobby has completely, and the weapons manufacturers and all of it completely taken over, frankly, U.S. policy beyond what actually is going to advance U.S. interests. All right. And we're going to cover the primaries that took place yesterday. The big news, of course, is that James Talleyko is going to be the Texas nominee for Democratic nominee for the Senate, and we don't know who the Republican nominee is going to be. It's going to be a runoff between Paxton and Cornyn. And in some respects, that may be more relevant than who actually won the Democratic primary in Texas, because Paxton is a lot more of a

polarizing figure than is Cornyn. I think probably Crockett was probably more of a polarizing figure on the Democratic side. But again, I don't know that if Crockett or Tala Rico were to win the Texas Senate seat that they would be our favorite senators based upon the politics coming out of Texas. But at the end of the day... Be my favorite one out of Texas. But Talarico... But just a quick note on it.

But Talarico's theory of politics is actually a lot more productive than Crockets. And that's what I like coming out of it. I'm a little bit more bullish on this being a significant improvement than if Crockett won that primary. He goes to all the counties and campaigns everywhere. The coalition that he's accrued of Latino voters. voters could actually break the Trump 2024 coalition. So just from a pure electability standpoint, this is a success. I think the electability question was answered with the Democratic primary.

I mean, definitely. If you can't win the Democratic primary, you're probably not that electable. It's not like Tala Rica was running to the left, dramatically to the left of Crockett. I don't think is from an issue standpoint anyways. All right. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Brian Reed and Michael Maznik on the question of Section 230 is not quite a debate, but they have different opinions on it. And I'm sort of somewhere maybe in the middle. I'm not sure, but we'll talk about that in a moment. First, a couple of words from our sponsors. You cannot out exercise a bad diet.

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Also, the co-host, The Trojan Horse, one of my favorite podcasts. of a couple years ago. Mike Maznik, editor of TechDirt, and on the board of directors for Blue Sky. I should say, I'm on Blue Sky, and I also read TechDirt. So this is fun for me.

Guys, about 30 years ago, almost, I guess, a month, 30 years ago and a month ago, the Telecommunications Act, I should not say the Telecommunications Act, but the Communications Decease,

Act was passed containing Section 230, which is really now the most famous part of it, and in many respects, largely the only remaining part after the Supreme Court dealt with this. My understanding, and Mike, why don't we start with you on this, this came out of a court case, or a series of court cases, Cubby v. CompuServe. And then subsequent to that, Stratt and Oakmont versus Prodigy. And this comes out of, there is a concept in tort law, which hopefully my audience knows what tort law is. I go to the conference every year. That being like when a harm is done, it is a civil proceeding against the corporation.

And there's this concept of Good Samaritan. If you start to help somebody in some way, you gain more liability than if you just sort of walked on and didn't try and interfere. And this case, Prodigy versus Oakmont, Prodigy was moderating. I can't remember what Oakmont was. They were some company. They were getting, I guess, besmirched.

Because Prodigy moderated, it actually increased their liability. And Ron Wyden and I can't remember who the Republic was. Chris Cox. Chris Cox decided to really encourage moderation, right? And pick it up from there and tell us what the idea behind 230 was. Yeah. And just so you're familiar with it, if you've seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, that was Stratton Oakmont. Yeah, I was just thinking that. Yeah. It was a boiler room operation

and somebody went onto Prodigy's forums and basically said, these guys are scammers, which, you know, hey, in retrospect, probably. But they didn't like that and they were aggressive. And so they sued Prodigy and the argument that the judge in the case bought was that because Prodigy set itself up as we want to be family friendly, which means we moderate, we will take down anything that we think is inappropriate. That meant that anything that they left up, then they were liable for in any kind of tort lawsuit, which was what happened with Stratton-Okmont. And so Chris Cox and Ron Wyden said that is going to lead to very bad results. If companies that feel the they want to create a family-friendly environment

are suddenly facing massive, you know, potentially ruinous liability, they're not going to do that. They're going to just allow all of the worst stuff and not do any of the moderation that we want. So can we create a tool within the framework of the First Amendment that creates incentives for companies to moderate? And the way that they do that,

the structure of Section 230, which you were correct in the beginning, by the way, when you said the Communications Act, because the Communications Decency Act was tucked into the communications. Act, was to basically say, if you're an interactive computer service, if you're a website or a app or whatever, or a user of one of those apps, we don't hold you liable as if you were the publisher of someone else's content that you do publishing related activities to, whether

that is hosting, promoting, sharing, anything like that. We're not going to hold you liable, which means you can begin to do the kinds of moderation because you have the incentive structure that if you make a mistake, you're not going to be punished. You're not going to be sued out of business is really what it is. And so we should say there are two subsections that are the most important, I think, of section 230. One is C, one, which has the famous 26 words, no provider or user of interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided

by another information content provider. And the second subsection C2 says, no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action, voluntary taken in good faith to restrict access. That's the moderation. Or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene,

lewd lascivice, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected. Okay, all well and good, but Brian, from your perspective, where are we 30 years later with Section 230? Yeah, I mean, I think there's an argument for why Section 230 was passed at the time, and there's an argument for it now, still, I think my perspective on it and others, and I would say like an increasing number of Americans who say they're unhappy with the way that the Internet is and how it's affecting our society. is that a lot of companies haven't lived up to that Good Samaritan and to the bargain. And the bargain didn't require them to. It's not, you know, the law had no requirement that they be Good Samaritans.

It was just a hope that they would be in exchange for this immunity. And I just think the evidence, the changing nature of the Internet, the growing power of a lot of Internet companies, even though this law does protect companies and non-companies big and small, It does confer protection onto some of the most powerful companies in our society. And I think the evidence has increasingly shown they haven't lived up to that end of the bargain. And I think it's worth reconsidering it while really keeping in mind the effects it could have on free speech, which is very important on the internet. But I'm increasingly uncomfortable with the tradeoffs that are involved in, you know, one of the state of purposes of Section 230, which is to protect free speech on the internet.

It's also, I believe, allowed a lot of bad behavior. And I got to say, like, broadly speaking, that is sort of my perspective, too. So, Michael, from your perspective, is 2.30, like, is it sacrosanct? Should we not be reforming it? I mean, in 1996, I'm old enough to remember dial up. And I was there. And I remember getting my first computer in the late 80s, I guess. But there was like 2% of people were online, and it was a huge pain in the ass.

And it wasn't, I mean, do you think that Section 230 needs to be updated? And if so, how, and if not, why? Sure. So I would argue, I mean, there's a few different things. One is, what is it that you're actually trying to accomplish? And Brian laid out a few different things that he's concerned about. And we can go through them one by one. I don't think Section 230 either repealing or reforming it actually helps with any of the things that were laid out.

So I think that Section 230, you know, I would keep it. I would, in fact, if I had a magic wand, this is never going to happen. I would expand its coverage. It's actually a lot more limited than people make it out to be. People think that it's the sort of wide blanket immunity. That's not actually the case. I would actually make it wider. But it is enabling a lot of really important, valuable things.

online that we would absolutely miss if it were changed. And the idea that changing it suddenly makes these companies act better is, I don't think, borne out by the realities of the legal structure and what would happen. We can go into the specifics of why. But the thing that I always try and get at is the key point of Section 230 is that it's just about placing the liability on those responsible for, you know, violating the law, for creating the violative content. So if it's defamation, which is sort of the classic case, who actually said the thing that is defamatory?

If it's something else, who actually is creating that content that creates the problem that violates the law, all the law is doing is saying, we put the liability on that person, not this other tool that they use. We don't blame the telephone. If somebody calls in a bomb three, We don't blame Ford if somebody gets into a car accident of their, you know, because of their own driving activity.

That is all that Section 230 is doing is saying put the liability on the person who's actually responsible. Well, let me just ask you about this. And Brian, if you want to jump in too, my understanding, like when you talk about, I mean, the, and we can get to the sort of the, the, the analogy of the car. But if I'm walking down the street and I say, You know, Jim Stevenson, who's not a public figure, that guy stole money. He is a thief. I'm not going to get sued by, you know, for defamation or liable in any way because there's no damages. Because I'm just saying it on the street.

I mean, maybe if I had said it to, you know, like his boss or something like that and he got fired. maybe there's an argument there, but there's no damages. The reason why there's damages in these instances, because I did it on YouTube and YouTube has an algorithm that may reward controversy and promote something and then has the ability to project that to a million people. I mean, so how are they not in your, in the way that you have structured that, you've said like it's got to be, you know, hold people responsible for the crime. But what YouTube did there also actually creates the tortious, you know, one important element of a torrent, which is the damages.

Yeah. So it's, it is a different situation. There's no sort of perfect analogy. But the simple fact is that what role in that case YouTube plays is just the sort of distribution of content. or the recommendation of content, neither of which, if you separate it out from the content itself,

violates the law. So even in those scenarios, if you were able to sue YouTube, they would still be protected by the First Amendment, which would say that they are just sharing, or they're hosting the content, they're sharing the content, they're recommending the content,

stripped of the specific content, which is what the law would do. What if they're told, what if they're told, hey, what if I write in, hey, I am not a criminal. Or Jim Stevens is not a criminal. Here's proof of it. He was acquitted.

And they're informed of it. Do they have liability then? So that scenario, so there's a case, it depends on where you are. There are a bunch of very specifics, you know, within the scenario. So in most cases, what happens is if someone says, you know, people will always say like, oh, I didn't do it. if a company like YouTube is not in a position to know, they're not a court. If I was acquitted.

So in that case, I mean, these things are provable. Sure. So if you've gone through an entire court case and you have that ruling and you send it to YouTube, they will take that content down. That is actually something that all of the big companies will do. If there is a court case and there is a ruling. But they're not obligated to. They are not obligated to.

but in almost every case because they know it reflects very poorly on them, they will. And in fact, that has led to people going around faking lawsuits, faking rulings. There's like, there was a few years ago, there was this whole story of this reputation management company that was doing that. So, Brian, let's ask about that. So, you know, this is, we're at that point where I think you might take issue because it's really up to a reputation. for YouTube here, but there's no legal. They are actually immune in that instance. I mean, if...

Yeah, I mean, Mike, I agree with you. Like, I agree with, like, very strong protections for all First Amendment protected speech. I just see more and more things coming out of these companies that does not appear to me to be First Amendment protected speech, but that has been protected and shielded from being litigated in court by Section 230. So, for instance, even just in the last week or so, there's this big case moving forward in New Mexico against Mexico.

that the Attorney General is bringing for their negligence in protecting minors from being contacted by suspected groomers online, the Attorney General held a sting operation where he found that meta wasn't doing a lot to stop this. One internal document that came out shows that the algorithm, and Meta knew this, was recommending the accounts of minors at a rate of four times to... accounts that they had flagged as suspected groomers than to regular adults. So the algorithm was seeing that these suspected groomer accounts liked the accounts of minors more and recommended it four times as much.

I'm just not sure that that is First Amendment protected speech that we need to have a shield around. And there's like a bunch of examples like that, you know, that have been traditionally protected by Section 230. Can I ask, though, is that, but the behavior that you're describing there is criminal and involves... Facebook's is not. Sorry?

Facebook's I'm not sure it is. It's a civil suit in New Mexico. And it is true that criminal behavior is not protected by Section 230 or shielded by Section 230. But those civil courts have a really important role. Like most criminal behavior is a really high bar. And First Amendment protected speech is also a really high bar in the criminal courts, which should apply. But that is not a criminal case against... Facebook.

And traditionally until this case moved forward on a product design case, you know, there was no recourse for, you know, and that is, I know, it's different than something we arranged on a phone. I know, I'm curious what you think about that. Mike, does that prove to you that Section 230 is working or that something has gone wrong that it's moving forward? I'm very, I'm genuinely curious. Yeah, I mean, there are a bunch of these cases and each one has different specifics.

And I think that, you know, we could get into the deep weeds, but I don't think we want to. broadly skirting section 230 by arguing product liability, right? That's generally the legal theory. Basically where the fight is right now is that a lot of people are trying to get around 230 by arguing products liability. There may be some cases where I think that could be an interesting area to explore, but I think a lot of the cases are really, you know, they're just trying to get around 230 and they don't have a real case underlying it. They're just arguing that it's product's liability when you look at what is the product liability really for and it gets back to the underlying content specifically and then you get into a First Amendment case.

You know, in certain situations, it's not always true and each case is different. So it's, I don't know if we want to get specifically in there. But it is important that like for all the talk of, oh, 230 is giving these companies this blanket liability. We're seeing all of those product liability cases not get dismissed on 230 grounds and move forward. So I, you know, whether or not. Yeah, but it's taken a long time. And we've talked to a bunch of the lawyers and they say they expect these companies to keep bringing up 230. It's a constant hurdle that they're able to throw, you know, even once there's been a ruling that a case can move forward to a certain extent.

And I would argue it, you know, it's taken this long to get these cases because of 230. I think it's hard to deny that. So then could, I mean, is there a possibility of 230 being amended to say include some of what you're talking about there, Brian, which is facilitating. something related to child abuse. I'm sorry, you can expand on an example again. But is it possible that you can amend it while still having the speech protections in place for, say, creators on these sites?

I mean, there's been a case study here that didn't go great, which maybe Mike we were about to bring up. Yeah, that's exactly where it's going. You can take it. But yeah, there was one amending, basically, to Section 230 that carved out liability when knowingly facilitating sex trafficking, basically. And there were a bunch of unintended consequences, essentially,

and it didn't really do a lot, arguably, to help sex traffickers or sex trafficking victims. What were those unintended consequences? Just Sesta Fasta? Yeah. So Sesta Fasta was the bill. And again, it's one of those things that sounds good in theory, which is obviously sex trafficking is bad. So we're going to carve out part of Section 230 doesn't apply to anything that is facilitating sex trafficking.

But what that did in practice was it forced sex workers offline. There were various communities that they had or various services that they used, that companies were saying, oh, we're going to get sued for this. And therefore, we can't have you on these platforms. You had things like Craigslist shutting down their entire dating platform because they were afraid that if anyone used it for sex trafficking, that they would get held liable for it. You had eBay that was removing LGBTQ content because there was fear that they would be accused of sex trafficking. Even the very few lawsuits that have showed up under Sesta Fasta were sort of ridiculous. Salesforce.com got sued because they were providing the CRM for that backpage used to manage their advertisers.

And so they got accused of sort of very, very indirectly enabling sex trafficking. So there were a whole bunch of things and even worse was that you actually had law enforcement. You had police come out and say that back when there were services like Backpage around, they actually cooperated with the police. And so if they were trying to track down actual sex traffickers, those tools were really useful. With Sestafossa sort of shutting down all those internet services, it became actually harder to track down those who were actually engaging in sex trafficking. So you have to be very, very careful about how you calibrate these things and sort of the consequences that come out of them can often be the opposite of what you actually want. And we've touched on those failures of Sista Fasta, I mean, I think concurrently, too, you know, when that was up.

But I want to get back to the part about it is in the best interests of these corporations, particularly the ones that have monopolies in many respects. but regardless, to respond if they're told, even though they have no liability associated with it, because I'm thinking about, I think it was Xeron versus AOL. This is a case where somebody, basically the scenario I had laid out. There was a, a Xeron, some guy was associated. What? Guy living in his parents' house in Seattle. Real citizen.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who was, who was, uh, Zeron, who was somehow associated with, uh, the, um, attack in Oklahoma. No, he wasn't associated with it. No, no. But he was associated on these. He was random.

And he wasn't involved whatsoever. But he was associated, uh, by, uh, like some advertiser. I can't remember the exact details. But it had to do with like, his number. on some like uh it was like merch like come to oklahoma city have a blast like a month after the city um bombing and then it had his number on it his so i mean from your perspective brian i mean make the case as to why a well should have had some liability there once they were told this was happening and they and they didn't uh make that case that they should have if you if that's your

I mean I'd rather make the case with like a current like honestly like I think like I don't know I think about this story that Reuters just broke in the fall where a reporter there, Jeff Horowitz, got a hold of, and this has to do with the same idea of like if a company knows something's happening and they're still not liable. Like I think it gives you a picture of what it looks like inside a lot of these companies behind the shield of Section 230, which we're starting to get more of a picture of only because of whistleblowers and a few lawsuits moving forward. Otherwise, it's really hard to get that picture. And, you know, in the fall, Reuters broke this story where they got leaked a bunch of documents from inside meta, showing. that meta estimated that last year they were going to make something like 10% of their overall revenue was going to be

from scam ads, ads for scams and banned goods that they knew were scammy and banned goods. I think like $16 billion, their own internal like judgments made it, like they're like a pillar of the scam fraud economy in America. Like a third of all fraud happens

on meta platforms. And some of the most shocking like data to me had to do with they have, you know, algorithms and ways of judging the likelihood that an ad or a account that's providing an ad is scammy. And it had to be over 95% sure in order for them to consider taking it down. So if it was 90% sure that this was a scam and was going to steal their users money, they left it up. And they took money from the advertiser. And then something like, I have the number here, it's like they were getting hundreds,

they get 100,000 complaints from users about scam ads in a typical week, and they'd only look into 4,000 of them. And they know that they're making, you know, 10% of their revenue on this. So to me, that's a picture of what it's like when you don't have liability for your behavior. Right. I want to you just hear Michael. How does that justify? Yeah. So there are a bunch of specific things there, too.

So say you were to change the law so that say, okay, if you believe that there are, if you, you know, run this test to determine if there are scam ads on your platform, you will be liable. What is the first thing that lawyers, the, you know, thousands of lawyers that Mark Zuckerberg implies will talk to you. Well, I wouldn't, I wouldn't write the law that way. I would say we're going to have a reasonable standard. We, you know, this is not a, the concept of a reasonable standard in all aspects of the law is, is ones that we have. that would be developed through case law. There could be maybe some statutory implications. But, you know, I think if you have, you know, I think we can all agree looking into 4% of scam complaints is probably lower than we think is reasonable.

Maybe looking into 99.9%. Maybe that's a little bit much to ask. But if you have a 95% assuredness, and we now know. We could also obligate companies like, you've got to run a reasonable assuranceness of scams. If you are. One expert who I really respect, like her proposal, is that you lose the immunity of Section 230 if you show a deliberate indifference to this type of content. I mean, to me, that's what those numbers show. So, so again, so let's let's take an example like that.

So if you do that, suddenly you're making it so that basically the only company that will will host those kinds of ads. at all are the largest companies in the world. And I actually think part of the problem is that these companies are way too powerful and we need, you know, more smaller companies and smaller communities out there. But doing it this way. Let's put a requirement on it. I mean, we do this in OSHA and other things. If you have a certain amount of employees, if you have a certain amount of revenue, if you have a certain amount of users, we could, we could easily do that, right? Sure. But again, like immediately, then you begin to bring up all sorts of issues with with that, where, you know, we see that in other instances where then companies start to game that and you have

subsidiaries and all these things. Everyone starts to game it, but it just creates more, you know, more compliance costs, more legal issues that generally the larger companies are able to handle and the smaller ones aren't even if it's just like, you know, okay, well, if you're smaller, we let you out, but you still have to be then monitoring how close you're getting. There's all sorts of things that get into it. I'm not saying it's the worst solution in the world. It's better than certainly some that people are talking about.

about. But it creates all of these compliance costs that historically we see that tends to lead to more consolidation and more power of the biggest guys who are able to have the building full of lawyers who can handle. How can we have more consolidation? You absolutely could. There are more internet companies out there than Facebook and Google, right? Yeah, I mean, and I am, I'm compelled by this a little bit because I think what we're talking about here is there's a major issue of scale and the amount of content that is constantly posted on these platforms. And my deep concern here, as we're talking this through, is how this incentivizes broader censorship, in my view, maybe, because these corporations are going to take the

stance, it would seem to me, of more censorship because they don't have the capacity to monitor all of the posting on their platform. And so it means that broader rules are going to be what protects them from more liability, which is more censorship and stricter rules in terms of what content can be published. Like, why are we even go? My question is, why can't we go about regulating these companies outside of the auspices of Section 230 that doesn't give this incentive to these corporations? Yeah.

I would say it's in some ways it's even worse than that because it's not just that the companies will put in place more rules and be more aggressive about it. But it gives effectively a heckler's veto for any particular content because if there's any content that someone doesn't want out there and let me tell you, there are tons of people who don't want certain content out there, they just send a legal threat. And the threat alone is often enough for the company to say, man, you know, the risk of having to fight this or argue back on it, if that is a $5, $10 million, let's just take down the content. And so you do get, a vast censorship regime.

And I think you're exactly right. There are other levers out there that aren't 230. I don't know why everyone has zoomed in on this one law as if changing it somehow fixes the problems that we see because there are problems. I think all of us agree that we don't like this world in which a company like Facebook or Google have as much power as they have. And I think that the focus on 230 is misguided because there are things out there. There are privacy laws we could have that I think would be really helpful.

there's antitrust enforcement, obviously, that I think would be helpful if done well. I think a lot of it has been done in a very messy way. There's a whole other law that I think is actually more important in all this, and I'm going to bring it up, even though we could go down a whole other rabbit hole. But the computer fraud and abuse act, I think is the worst law that has really led to most of these problems. Brian, if you want to do a whole podcast on why we should fix the computer fraud and abuse act, I would do that. There was a whole situation where someone built a company to try and

help people get their data out of Facebook, and Facebook sued them saying they violated the computer fraud and abuse act and won and killed that company. But getting your date, your own data out of Facebook seems like a good thing that would enable more competition to exist. And they were able to shut it down. So I think there are other laws that we should focus on. Messing with 230 is just a recipe for for I mean, I would love for regulation to work. It's just it's hard to, first of all, like when you think about what the FCC is up to right now or do we really want to be empowering them to have more of a, you know, of a lever over these companies that are already doing bidding without it, you know.

But that's what changing 230 would would do that, right? I mean, that would give the FCC more power right now. Like the first sort of review of 230 in 2020 was by the FCC. Would the FCC, would it give the FCC more power? Or would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would give the FCC more power to regulate or would it simply allow for more civil action? It depends. I mean, because technically, as we said at the beginning, the 230 is in the Communications Act, which is, you know, the FCC's authority. You know, there is an argument, but in 2020, the FCC in the first Trump

regime made the argument that they had the authority to interpret Section 230 and determine how different websites should or should not be using 230 as a tool. And so any messing with 230 in some sense can go back to the FCC to determine to interpret how that law should be enacted. And right now we have someone in Brendan Carr who will absolutely use that. And he made it clear in 2020. You can look back at what Brendan Carr said about 230 in 2020 and see what he would do if we were to amend 230 now.

But Brian, can I just ask you. That is like, you know, yeah. Yeah, no, you can respond. I just wanted to ask you a more direct question about this, but keep going. I was going to say, like, it is true that that is in, for instance, Project 2025, you know, you know, empowering the FCC to interpret Section 230. To me, I gravitate more towards reforms that give agency to more Americans to bring suits and make a case in court. I'm worried about the consolidation of rules and regulations in authorities like the FCC in this area that does involve a lot of speech.

That concerns me, frankly. So my question there is how, if we're looking at the perspective of like, say, a Facebook or a publisher or YouTube, right, Google, whatever. They're not a publisher. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. They are. They are. But they can't be held liable.

They can't be held liable. All right. So everyone gets into this thing where they think like, oh, you know, 230 means you're not a publisher. No, it means you are. They're encouraging you to do publishing activities, to edit, to recommend, to take down. Those are all publishing activities.

The whole idea is that you get to do publishing activities. You get to be a publisher without being held liable as a publisher. Exactly, exactly. So my, then, then, but the amount of content that is being produced on these platforms on a daily basis is, it's so, so, so, so much, right?

It's impossible to tally. Is it not the most obvious incentive for these tech companies to create as many restrictions to have a large umbrella that restricts the content that is published on their site if Section 230 is repealed to avoid the constant litigation that is going to be involved here, which has the effect of. of severely limiting speech. Like where is, is it not in, if section 230 is repealed, is it not their direct financial, in their direct financial incentives or best interest to do what I'm describing here? Um, I mean, repeal and reform could be different things, but let's, let's take the, the drastic like repeal version. I'm not convinced of that.

None of us know what a, what a world, uh, without section 230 in the internet. would be like. We haven't had it in any sense of the modern internet. I think it's very possible that the profit motive with some of these companies is so strong that it wouldn't change drastically. It might change some. And also, like, I think there's a conflation sometimes with Section 230 in the First Amendment, which I love and, like, desperately want to protect. The First Amendment doesn't protect tech companies and social media companies and the scale of speech that we have. necessarily. But I'm talking about the profit motive too. But my point is, is that if they're tied up in litigation constantly, does that not affect their bottom line in the same way that you're

talking about? If not more than... Yeah, no, I think there'd be changes, but I don't know that it be as draconian, a censorship regime, as you're imagining. We don't know. That's what's concerning, because you're also talking about a time period before there was this amount of consolidation amongst tech companies where like there it worked for a little while until there was right now i mean take the flip side i'm like like like you have ticot is now owned by larry ellison and river merta murdock and whoever else so they can do whatever censorship regime i was just going to argue completely opaque we have no very little recourse to sue and get discovery and see what's happening so i just think i think there's two ways to think about it like

right now yeah i i i i just to reiterate Bryant's point to add to this. From my perspective, like, every, every sort of apocalyptic vision we have of them being overly, overly concerned because they're going to get sued, it's already existing now. But that's ideological. With people who, no, not just ideological. With TikTok. No, but in YouTube. I mean, I can tell you.

Yeah, they reinstated Donald Trump's account and gave him money rather than exercising their Section 230 prerogative to keep them off the platform. But I will also just say, like, as a commercial thing, like, you know, having gone through the ad apocalypse, having gone through all of, all of this stuff, I know that YouTube has different rules for different content creators. I mean, it is completely like, there is the idea that it's just like, we let everything go out. No, they have their own set of rules in which they do this stuff. There is no recourse whatsoever. And so the idea that somehow specific types of, like, we're talking about a fear that it's going to chill. They're going to like take a hatchet and be censorious in that way because they want to be afraid. They're afraid of being sued. I'm not, A, convinced that they would do that and that they're not doing that now. I mean, the reason why they don't, why they don't want the obligation of having to moderate on this level and why the idea was this is going to make it safe for these companies to moderate is because they don't want to expend the manpower that it would require because it cuts into their bottom line. And what I'm suggesting would, I think, undermine a lot of businesses.

in various ways. I don't necessarily have a problem with that. In the same way that like, when I was on radio, I'm like, let's put the fairness doctrine back in. Yes, it creates a burden. But so. Like I'd be interested to see these business models if they have to take into account some liability

the way that I do and you guys do on your show. Yes, exactly. But I think, I think, I think your, Brian is, is overstatingly, case that we don't know what happens if we change it because we do have examples of other regimes. And in particular, in the U.S., we have the DMCA in the copyright world because copyright is exempted from Section 230 and we see what happens with copyright. There's all sorts of things where content gets taken down based on focus DMCA claims all the time.

And in fact, the fact that you're on YouTube, that YouTube is basically the only platform for video that is big enough to be out there that everyone uses is the direct result of a DMCA. DMCA regime that is problematic because there was a really big competitor called Veo, which was backed by Michael Eisner and was supposed to be the big winner because it had the Hollywood backing. And they got sued under the DMCA and the case went on for many, many years and they won. But by the time they won, they were dead. They had spent all this money fighting the case and YouTube was the only one left standing because of that. So we have that example.

We have in Europe, they have under the GDPR. They have this thing called the right to be forgotten. And there have been studies on how many people have used. the right to be forgotten to try and get content taken down. And the study showed that over 50% of the requests are illegitimate, but the companies feel obligated because they don't want to go through the process of having to litigate every one of these things. Same thing with the DMCA. There was a study, it's a little bit old now, but there was a study of DMCA requests and that showed that over 50% I think was like over 60% of them were false DMCA requests. They were not

legitimate copyright takedowns, but companies still take it down because they don't want to face the liability issue. When you change that regime, you're giving people a tool to take down content or you're creating this, this massive amount of compliance work that is going on. We're waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on a DMCA case right now. That also is representatives. If you increase the liability, you create real difficulties for companies that want to host content to the point that only the biggest companies will be able to do it. I am very sympathetic as an entity that has been sued for the most ridiculous of things from a copyright standpoint and had to settle because

it's like I don't have the resources to go up against it. I'm very sympathetic to that. However, and frankly, just more coincidentally than anything else, I'd like to loosen copyright laws, not because of the lawsuits, but because I think I would like to see this information be free. But it seems to me that, you know, with any compliance, like building codes, it's a pain in the ass. But then again, the building stays up or is more likely to. Honestly, like there's tradeoffs. There's no doubt about it. The question is, like, what are we trading off?

And, you know, from a, I'm not just concerned about, like, sort of the health of a business, per se. I'm concerned more about the health of a society. And you have to make a determination that our structure that exists now is creating a overwhelming benefit to society that we can't tweak in some way. And I find that hard to believe in this era that, I mean, there's one vision of the Internet in 1996, and then it's what it looks like today. and it's pretty hard to argue that because in the absence of the civil system for enforcing moderation of some form, right? We're getting other entities that are in many ways worse. You follow me?

Like, you know, it would be nice. Just a heady thought that has affected my thinking because, you know, this has been an evolution for me too. Like I have the generally had very absolutist view of like more speech is better. The more, you know, you answer speech that you don't like with more speech. But I heard in an interview with a reporter named Natalia Antelava who makes the case that the noise is the new censorship. That like the volume of content and the overwhelm of content is actually a new form of censorship. And it helps me to think about that and to not just think as, you know, of like kind of an overly traditionally censorious company as the only way that we're being that that the ability to speak and to have speech, you know, speech register, you know, is being overwhelmed and that the tools of the internet are being co-opted by authoritarian or authoritarian want to be authoritarian regimes.

And it's been helpful to keep in mind and like has played a role in my thinking as well. But even if that's true, even if we accept that, and I think there is some truth to that, to some extent, the way to deal with that has been historically algorithmic recommendations, which is one of the things that many people are now pushing to exempt from 230, which will create all, you know, won't help that situation, will actually make it worse. The ability to have the good stuff rise to the top and get rid of the, you know, to find the signal and the noise is the, you know, the way it's often phrased is you need the tools to do that. If you don't have a 230 protecting that, then there's a liability risk, right? There are a whole bunch of people who say, oh, accountability mechanisms you can imagine, Mike, that would give us more accountability over the algorithms and not just like hoping that there's like kind of like more user control but actual, I don't know, regulation or legislation.

How is the algorithmic conventions that we're living under now helping in that way as opposed to her? Right. I mean, it depends. So, one, it can always be worse. So be careful about what you wish for. This is what we found. If you get rid of algorithms, the algorithm's not going to be worse.

No, but it is true. Like, you could use an algorithm to, you know, screen out deep fake, you know, intimate images, for instance. Right. That's a use of an algorithm, which is a good use. Yeah. Right. I mean, like every, it's not a profitable one.

No, but no, I mean, to some extent it is, right? I mean, like every trust and safety team right now uses algorithmic tools to handle things, including searching for and getting rid of CSAM and reporting it to NICMIC. And like, these things matter. But there are, in fact, there are studies. There was a study done by NYU a few years ago that looked at, they sort of forced people into not using algorithmic feeds, and they found that they saw more disinformation because the tools actually tend to filter out some of the disinformation.

But the real thing to me is sort of who controls these things, right? The, you know, what, what I want is for more users to have control over the algorithm and what it is that they want to see that they can indicate to the algorithms or they can design the algorithms themselves or have options over what algorithms. The problem comes when the only person who has control over the algorithm is Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. But that's not a 230 issue. Well, it could be. You could leverage 230 to do that. That's something people talk about. I don't see how. I mean, again, like you begin to get back to a First Amendment question in terms of, you know, it is an editorial decision-making thing of, you know, what?

content we recommend. Yeah, but you're just saying you don't get immunity. It's not a First Amendment issue if you're just saying you don't get through the immunity. But then you get back to the same thing, which is what we started this out with is, okay, so you take away that. You still have the First Amendment to rely on. People are going to sue. There's going to be all of these lawsuits.

And the only companies that can afford those lawsuits are the big ones. Well, you, first of all, you can put. How do you get companies to do what you're saying to give users more control rather than kind of like shout out. I mean, there are other mechanisms beyond just the law, right? Beyond just the regulation. So in my case, like I'm working with Blue Sky. to encourage them to do it. They have algorithms that you can choose, you can make your own, you can do

what you want with it. And if we see more people saying like, oh, that is a better solution, one that I will adopt, then that puts pressure on other companies to follow. Well, that's where we, that's where we'll have that. That's the rub is, but, Mike, I mean, I was so with you until the like, basically, we can't

no, we have to compel corporations to do that. I mean, there's. Yeah, it can't be a hope in a way. But if you want to do that, how do you do that with the First Amendment in place? Right. But do it without, I mean, And guys, it seems like the solution, guys, it seems like the solution is doing this outside of Section 230. And like I'm just a little bit more skeptical about the idea that civil liability in and of itself is going to be the thing that that is a solution here. It seems like it's anti-monopoly and congressional regulation. That's the solution.

Well, Section 230 is congressional regulation. It is, it is one that says they're not subject. Okay. additional. Right. But I think like you, I can give an example, I can give an example on how you leverage Section 230. Is that to the, to get the Section 230 protection, you need to do X, Y, and Z. You need to provide this amount of transparency in the algorithm.

Like, if Twitter wants Section 230 protection, they need to provide the same amount. of transparency as blue sky does in terms of the algorithm. That's one way to leverage it. Another way to leverage it is to say, like, you know, I mean, those to me, you could say there's a strict level of liability where there's an opportunity where things can be dismissed in easily in a summary judgment if these basic requirements haven't been fit. I mean, I think like the chastity around Section 230 is where I have a difference is, is I am willing to pay the price for some regulation and constraint on these things. Because in my mind, it evens the playing field for corporations. Right now, what you're talking about in my estimation happens already with corporations.

It just happens based upon where you're situated. No, I will reinforce this over and there again. It changing 230 in the way that you're talking about gives way more power to the big companies because the changes that you're talking about, things around like transparency and stuff, you still run into the First Amendment problem. And Facebook will walk in. What is the First Amendment problem? The transparency in terms of what you recommend, the First Amendment issue is could

could the government go to Fox News and say, we need transparency into how you choose which stories you lead with. Fox News doesn't have immunity in that respect. I'm just talking about the first amendment, though. Because I'm sorry, this is different. Because section 230 is a carve out in liability, in tort liability law. And the government can put a requirement as to what makes you eligible for that carve out. This is not a restriction on free speech. You will have exactly the same rights that Fox News and obligations. Okay. So, but we already have a case like this, which is in California, they passed this age-appropriate

design code, which tried to do something like that, which was trying to require transparency and algorithms. And it was thrown out on First Amendment grounds because they said the real reason behind it was an attempt to interfere in the editorial decision making of the company. That's why you need to leverage 230 because 230 does not exist in nature. 230 is not in the Constitution. So if you want 230 protections, you must meet. Certain standards.

But the standards that you're setting there involve speech and the First Amendment is going to apply. So what if, what, okay, so let's use that mechanism that you want, but why do you have to focus it on 230? What if you change the mechanism? What if you say that it's antitrust law? What if you get, you know, a freedom from antitrust law if you make the algorithms transparent? There are other tools out there. Again, like the focus on 230. I want them subject to antitrust law.

I don't want them. I know, but I'm saying, I'm, I live in the world. It's not happening. But there's also, it's different than Fox News being a publisher than the amount of millions and millions of billions of people who are publishing on these sites, Sam. So that's the difference here is that like. That's just like a too big to fail argument. No, it's not too big to fail because we're not talking about journalism and journalistic standards. We're talking about billions and billions of people posting all the time and creating an incentive for a mega corporation to create to broadly set.

answer because they want to avoid liability. This is why I don't understand why this conversation is purely within the context of civil liability. It feels like the wrong area. What other area? What's the other area? The other area is is congressional regulation, additional congressional regulation about what terms of about what. Congressional regulation makes the basis for the civil liability. I understand that that's the basis for section 230. But I'm saying that basically, you. You can have it in terms of like both regulating the algorithms to a degree. You can go around it and I mean, what I listed before now I'm completely blanking on. But I'm I'm confused a little bit as to why this is the basis for.

Here's why. I think of it that way. One of the ways I think about it. And listen, I'm open to other ideas of just don't see, you know, like I haven't seen like really compelling paths there. section 230 is this extra thing that Congress gave to this class of internet service providers. And once you, so it is, it is this stick that you can use. There's, once you start having Congress make laws about what, like they can't make laws about what content is harmful or not.

Like to me, that that is where I get tripped up. Like, what is Congress going to do? They're going to say this type of content, we have to be able to see the algorithm. Like, I don't want them doing that, you know? I would much rather like take the framework that we've had for a long time in other scenarios and kind of import more of that. We have this relatively new framework that's 30 years old for the internet that goes beyond in a lot of cases.

Very strong First Amendment protections. And yes, it might mean a less volume of speech. The First Amendment doesn't protect that volume of speech necessarily. Like it doesn't mean that you have a right to get algorithmically boosted to millions of people. that is not protected by the First Amendment. Michael, let me ask you this. As an analogy. We provide gun manufacturers immunity from torts that involve the design of their product

that if used correctly in a way that we don't for car manufacturers in a way that we don't for other machines, whatever. I mean, I think it's rather unique. Do you think that's a fair analogy? No. guns aren't speech. I mean, that's what it comes down to, right? We're talking about regulating speech. That's what this is. Everything on the internet in some form or another is speech. Then why do we need, why do we need 230? Even like, even an algorithm that's recommending

minors? First Amendment. I mean, if, if 230... No, that is a good question. It's a question that comes up. A lot of people will say, well, if all you're saying is true, this all goes back to the First Amendment, why do you need 230 in the first place? And the simple fact is, is that 230 is that 230 is that 230 is, is it's a procedural benefit to the First Amendment. What it does is it gets the cases that would lose on First Amendment grounds tossed out at the earliest stage when it is less expensive. If you want to do a First Amendment case, that you have to go through summary judgment.

You might have to go through trial. Someone figured this out recently in terms of like the difference of cost. If you're using 230 to get out of these cases, it's in the range of $50,000 to $100,000, which is expensive for me. at least, but like, for a larger company, that's doable. If you want to win the exact same case, which you will win on First Amendment grounds, you're talking $5 to $10 million. So at that range, it becomes existential for smaller companies. And so you make it impossible for smaller companies to exist,

and you put more power in the hands. If you're just relying on the First Amendment, you are giving much more power to the biggest companies. If you have 230 is this procedural benefit that allows you to get out of these cases at the earliest stage very quickly and say, you can't bring this case because 230 protects it. You can have smaller companies. You can have competitors. You can have new entrance into the marketplace

and you can take away from the dominance of the Googles and Facebooks of the world. And 230 is written perfectly in that respect. I mean, I think any messing with it will almost certainly make it worse. Every attempt I've seen at reforming it will make it worse. If you can show me a reform that, makes it better. I am open to it. I'm happy to talk about it. I have not seen one yet. Mike, do you think there's any way you like, and I'm genuinely curious, I'm like,

if you replace 230 with a national anti-slapp? That is that is about the closest. I've, I've thought about that. I've talked about that a lot. I think one, that would help. One, I think we should have a national anti-slaplot. We should have a anti-slapla in every, every state. I think that they should be stronger and do more. Anti-slaught. laws just for people who are laws about bringing frivolous lawsuits and ones that are meant to intimidate. It's a similar procedural

tool that's state by state where if you get sued for speech that's clearly like the lawsuit is vexatious you can get it thrown out. Right. And make the other side pay your pay your legal fees in some cases which I think is really important as well. Do you think like that as a replacement would

would solve some problems? I think that that would that would solve some problems. I don't think it would solve all of the problems. I still think you would want something 230 like to handle a class of problems that 230 has protected, that an anti-slap law would be more difficult to, in terms of how they protect. Also, to get an anti-SLAP successfully has proven to be fairly difficult. The procedural benefits of 230 still stick in place. If you look at how anti-SLAPP laws have developed and how they're being used and where they're being used,

it's been harder to actually enforce the end or make the anti-slapp laws useful and so like maybe there's a world in which you could build out the anti-SLAPP regime but I think what you would end up doing is effectively getting back to 230 to make it that effective in the first place but yeah like that would be closer. The thing I'm trying to solve for is like I feel uncomfortable saying we have to accept an algorithm that feeds minors at a higher rate to groomers in order to pervert preserve free speech online or we have to. to accept like a website that is facilitating illegal gun sales that are then used to kill people as speech in order to protect speech online. Like there has to be a way to thread this needle. That's specifically referring to arms list, which we should just talk about. And we're running out of time here. We've got a little bit long.

But I find this personally, I find it fascinating. And so what are you going to do sometimes? It's wonky, but good. I appreciate it. Yeah. But the algorithm part. If algorithms were not given 230 grease or protection, however you want to refer to that,

your problem with that is just that the absence of algorithms aren't going to help, or is there some other problem with it, Mike? There's a few things. One, the absence of algorithms won't help in the way that people think they will help. There's lots of people who insist that algorithms are just inherently bad. They don't realize how much they actually do rely on algorithms, and algorithms are, in fact, very useful. you know, search itself is an algorithm.

Finding the stuff that you want is important. So broadly speaking, it won't be, you think it's, but do you think it's problematic in some other way? So, yeah, I mean, again, it gets back to, if you were to exempt them, who is actually going to be willing to still go through the process of using algorithms that will be useful for people and is the big companies because they can afford the legal liability?

And again, so therefore you're putting more power in the hands of a Facebook and a Google and less in the hands of smaller upstart competitors. And I think the world needs more upstart competitors that can chip away at Google and Facebook dominance. Can we agree on antitrust? How about antitrust? So I'm all for antitrust, but antitrust is slow and messy

and has been wielded by, you know, not well by our government. I think there are ways to reform that and change that and make that better. But 230 isn't necessarily leading to more we've lived under a 230 regime and let's be clear on what's happened with the internet it's gone like this it's not gone like that

I mean it's gone in one direction and it can be worse it can be worse is what I'm saying there are competitors there are new companies that show up all the time that are trying to chip away at these companies you don't see that as much in the copyright

space YouTube is the really the dominant and only player you don't really see competitors showing up for YouTube because you have this worst liability regime in copyright under the DMCA that nobody else can really handle other than YouTube. Yeah. Okay. And the arms list, just address the arms list case. This is a story where someone was able to use arms list, which was like a basically like a,

you know, almost like a Craigslist, I guess, right? But for. It was a marketplace for guns online. For guns. Yeah. And there was no sort of moderation as to whether this is an illegal sale or non-illegal sale. And somebody got bought a gun at like a McDonald's from somebody and then went out and shot somebody. Shot his wife or his ex-wife and multiple of the people.

And then they tried to sue armsless for liability in Section 230 protected. And I just, you know, I just wonder if you, you know, if somebody was putting up posters on. Like, what is that a, is that a, is that, is that a, is that a, is that a, is that a good thing about two-th Well, I mean, I don't think the scenario is good. Of course, of course. I do think 2.30 was used properly in that case. And I actually filed an amicus brief in that case. I do think that that was, that did come back to a 230 issue because if you were to set it up where anyone who was a marketplace was potentially liable for the sales that were made for what is then done off platform and outside of that, you create a world in which no one will offer you any marketplace service at all.

Or it will only be Facebook again. You will only have a Facebook marketplace. So I think you need to sort of recognize what is the, and again, we can look at what happened with Foster Sesta. As soon as there was liability, we lost all of these other services that we actually, I think a lot of us thought were very valuable and important services that got taken away. And so you can say like, yes, here's this one bad use, really problematic use. But like we have criminal law to deal with the fact that someone went and shot someone.

And like that's where that should apply rather than trying to throw in this other thing like, oh, we also get to sue the marketplace. I mean, gun control largely is built upon the idea that we're not just going to wait till someone shoots somebody. It is that we're going to inhibit the sales of guns outside of specific channels. Right. And then, but, you know, then you have the whole second amendment issue. We're already spending so much time talking on the person. I don't want to. What do you think about this idea?

Like I'm sure you know her, but you know, this professor, Marianne Franks, like her proposal is, and I believe she worked in the arms list case, is to change the word information in the first part of Section 230 to speech. That she argues that the word information is as what you don't get liability for is too wide and actually goes beyond First Amendment protected speech and is what allows like an arms list scenario to happen. Like would we really consider someone putting up posters on like telephone polls in your neighborhood saying come get a gun, I won't check you. You know, is that first amendment protected speech. And then number two, you know, putting this basically saying like you don't get the immunity if you can demonstrate that there was deliberate indifference to harmful content. And again, harmful will not be defined by Congress. It would be litigated in court. Yeah.

I think that that there would be, it would be very difficult to have that. actually work. I think the distinction between information and speech that Marianne makes is one that I've never seen a court agree with. I mean, if she can get a court to agree with it, that'd be interesting, but I've never seen that. The courts look at is this expressive in some form or another. And whether that is information or directly speech, I haven't seen them make that distinction. I think it's interesting that she's suggested that, but I don't quite understand why she thinks, especially this particular Supreme Court would ever buy into that. And so it's interesting.

I appreciate that Marianne is out there trying different ideas. But that one. What about the second part, which I think is the more important part? Sorry, explain the second one again. You lose immunity if it can show, if it's shown that you had a delivery. Indifference. So to me, to me, that's Facebook essentially getting 100,000 complaints about scam ads and essentially taking action on none of them.

That would be delivered indifference, you know? Again, like, I think that becomes really tricky in practice because as soon as you enter this possibility of saying, well, oh, okay, you were indifferent to the potential harm. You have now taken away the procedural benefit of Section 2-3 that we talked about because everyone will sue and say, no matter what your decision was, you were procedurally indifferent. And if you can get past that motion to dismiss stage,

which was the inexpensive out, and then you have to go through to summary judgment, you make it really expensive and therefore you again create that sort of censorship regime where you just send the threat and the fact that we can take you to court and we're going to cost you a million dollars it's easier to just remove the contract i don't know how's it different i would just say we have to wrap this up some actual malice we've got to wrap this up but i would deal with that by saying uh this applies to companies that have 100 million dollars a year revenue i mean that you know like and yes you always have that problem but we're going to pretend like we're 99 million dollars and we're going to be six different companies but we deal with that

the law all the time. But we're going to have to say this for another day, not 30 years from now, but maybe on the next anniversary. This has been very helpful for me, although I haven't changed my mind. I'll keep working on it. Yes. I'm not a free speech absolutist, A, and B, the expansion of free speech and to protect corporate rights, I think, is actually has its own dangers when it comes to all sorts of things like OSHA and in labor laws, but that's for another day. Brian Reed, Michael Maznick, will put links to both of your shows and TechDirt and KCRW. And obviously, we'll give your blue sky handles as well. Thanks so much, guys.

really, really appreciate it. Thanks for everybody. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right, folks. It reminded me a little bit of when I first started here. I think I had some skepticism about like the, that you got, we had a small debate about, which I think was like if a bar owner should be able to be sued if somebody gets really drunk

at the bar and then drives drunk and kills somebody. It is similar. Yeah. It is a, and there's something similar. And I said yes. And you said, no. I didn't say no. I just, I don't necessarily, like, I understood Bernie Sanders for not basically supporting

the fact that gun manufacturers be able to be sued based on how people use their weaponry. Oh, I definitely think you should be able to be sued because it's a carve out from every other, from every other utility that we have. Supposedly on Second Amendment grounds, I don't buy that. I'm more like ambivalent about that. I guess I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm curious. I'm a little more skeptical of like the civil litigation being able to solve some of these problems like this. But I know you go to the tour conference twice a year.

I go to the tour conference. I'm hard for me to make this case to you. I fundamentally don't believe that. I know. I know. I go on to playgrounds and I see that those rubber mats in New York City. That is a function of tort law. are everything we know about cigarettes,

a function of tort law. I'm not saying it doesn't have a very important place. But with some of these trickier questions where, like, it's legal to buy a gun, does it make sense that the gun manufacturer should be held liable for how the person uses it? I'm not sure that that's something that I believe. If you can design a gun so that a five-year-old can't get it and accidentally shoot themselves, I think there's an obligation to do so. Agree.

Agree. But I mean, then that comes like, but that you can go at that through regulation or you can go out through that through civil liability, but we have a corrupted Congress that isn't going to do that. Well, the, the, the distinction you're making is, is not as cut and dry. Like, the civil liability would exist, but, and in fact, we do have that regulation. You do, there is a, there is laws that basically say you can't manufacture a product that's going to be harmful in and of its nature if it's used properly. Yeah. And the gun immunity is actually another law that exempts the guns from that obligation. Same with 230.

It's a more extreme example, but I just, I think 230 presents, repealing it presents way more problems than even that scenario that we're talking. about here which is like what it what it incentivizes these mega corporations that have such monopoly power over our platforms to regulate in terms of what's posted on their platforms I mean that that's that's my fear that's my fear well that's uh I mean that was Maznick's point I I I I want me over yeah all right I guess uh it's weird seen a debate on the show that doesn't evolve into like a libertarian screaming at Sam I mean I'm being I'm being slightly libertarian about some of this stuff It was a little bit libertarian-ish to me.

That is like when we're waiting on corporations to do the right thing, I get a little bit. Well, I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about Mazik, but you're like second order. Sure. Second order stuff. Sure. I'm fencing, but I'll go, I'm basically authoritarian against the copyright claims person.

So whoever can get those out of my hair, I will be behind. I'm also, I'm open for loosening that. But I think, like, property's being protected, I think, with the 230 and with the copyright laws, frankly. Like, I think there's a reason why, you know, but, all right, should we, what should we do? It's 140, so we're probably doing a freebie Wednesday. Wow. Yes, a freebie Wednesday. Can I quickly take a break then for just a second?

Sure. Go ahead. I'll read some I&Ms, triple-flops. mom and dad are fighting. David, Daveo down, Dunder. Lawyer, I don't even know her.

Tomo Flink. Happy Friends Day Wednesday, folks. The U.S. doesn't have a government. It has a bunch of call-of-duty adult 12-year-olds pretending to be a government. To make matters worse, Chuck Schumer's attitude is effectively, mind furor, the power to increase the use of gas chambers' lives with the Reichstag.

while Starrmer appears to be determined to remember it as Tony Blair without the charisma. Colonel Burner, we get it, Sam. You hate freedom and you hate America. Sickle up economy. That was a great chat with a lot of compassion. Good on you for having it. Definitely think the algorithms need oversight, especially in social media. Me too.

Me too. Cole from Litterwark. Don't know if you saw this, but in Arkansas County elected the sheriff last night, who is awaiting trial for murder. Most folks down here praise the man without stopping to think what they're asking for the Wild West when you're free to use violence, whether or not it's lawful. Well, the thing that people forget about the Wild West is that often, including figures like Wyatt Earp, would impose a strict gun control regiment on new entrance to the town where you'd have to check in with the actual sheriff.

And actually, that's my position on the Second Amendment. I think people should have a right to guns, but I think you should have to deal with the game and fish departments. and we shouldn't even have private gun sales. Culliflower. Bradlander is called out for reforming the Supreme Court in order, no, and adding additional seats. Let's see more of this from politicians. Okay, Brad. Cadju Beetle says, wow, Sam, take it back. Sorry, we, you believe we should have IDs in order to operate a toaster.

I remember that, the 2016 Libertarian Convention? Yes. Um, uh, Vermin Supreme. That was my guy. I remember him as much. I remember the,

the freaking toaster guy, the seat belts. We should just, I remember. Herman Supreme was the guy who wore the boot on his head. That's all I remember. Um, so,

uh, Molly Grie Greci, gray jet, gray jet, Jedi. Jedi. Jedi. We want to hear alpha males are back.

Oh, well. Sorry, we're not going to the fun half today. Henry, another daily reminder to clip the soundboard saying nasty, very nasty. Sam saying nasty, very nasty. Ad hominy, since when is attacking someone first defense? Marco the Brazilian, good news. That's the way.

You tell me. Yes, Sam, it is the rule. You're sure you don't mean rule of jail. of county jail that's just boot camp for prison Marco the Brazilian good news Nashville City Council blocked Elon Musk from building a stupid boring company tunnel sweet

I mean it's crazy I just saw a groundbreaking for a Australian subway tunnel that looks so much more impressive than anything Elon Musk has done and we Do they have multiple cars going through it at the same time? Or is it just one? It's actually going to be a giant train carrying multiple.

Multiple of people that could fit in a car. But wouldn't it be much easier if you had just like 12 cars, right? Each holding one person? We live in a cargo cult. Let's get to our friend Chuck Schumer. Here is... I sent this clip in our Slack last night with some expletives. That gives you an indication of what we're about to watch.

Chuck Schumer is reportedly now trying to prep the Senate. Now, understanding, if you're going to have more funding coming from the Senate, obviously also from the House, for, let's say, a supplement to fund all of the new bombs that we need to buy to drop on Iranians for their, free and pience, you're going to need a veto-proof majority in the Senate to pass this. In the House, theoretically,

there's still enough Republicans to pass it without any Democratic votes, although I'm sure there'll be a couple. In the Senate, Fetterman, it sounds like, is willing to vote for as many new weapons as possible,

and this is based upon what is anticipated for the War Powers Act. All the Republicans will vote for it except for Rand Paul. Maybe Mike Lee. That dude. Forget that dude. He's not even pretending anymore. Are scheduled to vote against the War Powers resolution. But it gives you a little bit of a preview of money that is going to be given. Now, why would you, if you were voting to War Powers Act that Congress needs to sign off on this, why would you then support more

money for the war that you said is illicit because you haven't gotten congressional approval? Well, if you were really confused and had only one agenda and your name was Chuck Schumer, that's the answer to that question. Here he is talking about preventing a nuclear, what is that country that starts with an eye? Do you think Israel forced the U.S.'s hand here, boxed the U.S. in on this? Look, no one wants a nuclear war. No one wants a nuclear Israel, but we certainly don't want an endless war, plain and simple. What did I say?

Nuclear Israel is. Oh, no, got it. Let me say that again. No one wants an endless war, but we certainly don't want a nuclear Iran. That's for sure. Okay. Okay. Now, you know what's interesting about, I mean, aside from the fact that he made a little Freudian slip there. Yeah, there's only one country in the Middle East that has nukes, and that is Israel.

What's interesting is in the second formulation sounds a lot worse to me than the first formulation. Right? I mean, in the first formulation, he's saying, we don't want any meant to say an Iran with nuclear weapons. Now, of course, he's the guy who voted against the Iran nuke deal, which inhibited them from getting nuclear weapons. But let's just take him, you know, he made a little mistake. He's getting older. I go through this myself, and I'm not quite as old as Chuck Schumer. But in the second, in the second construction, we don't want a forever war, but that's a limiting principle on how much we don't want a forever war. But we don't want Iran to have nukes.

So in other words, we don't want a forever war. However, it's okay to have one if it prevents Iran from having nukes. Well, I mean, at least it's not just an argument right now on the basis of procedure, whether or not Trump has come to Congress to ask for authorization for this war. It has slightly more political salience when he's speaking about what another endless war, another forever war that seems to be the line. But then when you look into how many exit ramps there are for Chuck Schumer and his Zionist ideology and his deep desire to collaborate with the fascist administration, you can see. where the issue is there. Okay, no endless war. So do you support what Trump's proposed timeline is? And he said to the New York Times of four to five weeks as we arm the Kurds and say, here's your, here's your time to seize the government and we're going to make it really clear that the CIA is funding you.

Will that go over well domestically in Iran that hates U.S. intervention and our support for the brutal Shah and all of that cultural memory there? And then the first part is even more egregious, conceding that this action was or backing the idea that this action, this war crime, was about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Iran has not been like seriously developing a nuclear weapon for decades. That's what U.S. intelligence says. That's what U.S. intelligence has said since the beginning of the 2000s. But the Zionist lobby wants this as a pretext to de-S. stabilize Iran because it's the greatest threat to Israel in the region. And the greater Israel

project means that we have to take over more and more land, including in Lebanon, and Iran supports Hezbollah, and they fight back against us in Lebanon. So, I mean, it's just, it's really, it's really disgusting. And the Politico has this article where they're talking about this supplemental funding for Iran. And it seems like there's this emergency funding package that's coming up. Chuck Schumer's quote is, before you can feel satisfied about a supplemental, and I haven't seen it, you have to know what the real goals are and what the endgame is. Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from from Delaware, Biden's, I would say, protege, says he expects the Pentagon will send Congress a supplemental funding request and vowed to, quote, make sure we are making all the

investments we can to keep U.S. troops safe. So when you look, read between the lines, there, what does that mean? They are trying to prime the public and their base to say, we're going to support the supplemental funding package for Trump's illegal criminal war in Iran. Fascist collaborator, resign. Let's go to the idea of that Chuck Schumer is so concerned about a nuclear armed Iran. Now, we have had report after report, after report, after report, after report, after report, I mean, I'm being literal now from the CIA, that Iran is not near, and in many, it's not pursuing the building of a nuclear weapon. And we've had counterreport from Israelis, counter report from people who want to go to war. We heard from the foreign minister of

Oman, that the Iranians had agreed to no stockpile of uranium-enriched material, which meant that it was impossible for them to build a bomb under those auspices. And the next thing we heard from the White House and the Israelis is we need to bomb them then in that instance. Here is a report from David Rode on MS. Now. Whitkoff apparently was on Hannity last night saying that the Iranians had enough enriched uranium material to build 11 nuclear bombs. And it turns out, this is going to be shocking, that was a lie. I had the same questions about no real explanation about why this had to happen now is you.

He brought up something that we've actually done some reporting on. It's basically claims that Iran was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon, and this is something Steve Whitkoff talked about in a Fox News interview a couple nights ago. And we contacted people with knowledge of the negotiations. Whitkoff claimed that the Iranians bragged that they had enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs. It was a Sean Hannity interview. People who were present during the negotiations said that never happened, that the Iranians never made that statement. And in fact, they said we have enriched uranium because we started. enriching uranium again after President Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal with President Obama negotiated.

So it's a continuation of the administration struggling to explain why they had to do this now. And in terms of the objectives, you know, I was struck like you. It's just very unusual we talked about exquisite, you know, standoff munitions. At one point, he compared it to a football game. And at the end, he was sort of talking about, you know, pushing the throttle up. Waging war is one of the most serious things the American government can do. Six Americans have lost their lives already. And so he seems enamored with the ability of air power alone and these bombs to break the will of Iranian forces.

And maybe they will, and this is a terrible regime, and maybe they will be toppled. But I'm still concerned about the strategy the administration has here. and I still think that the objective is unclear. We're going to have a guest tomorrow, Professor Robert Payne, who's going to talk about how it's a complete lie when you look at the historical examinations of using air power to try to topple regimes, that there's a 100% fail rate. Never, never happened. Never happened. You need ground troops.

It necessitates ground troops. And that is what we're hearing in terms of what some of the options are that we're hearing coming out of that classified briefing that the Democratic senators spoke about yesterday. And I also want to be clear, because if we're moving into this posture again, being at war, six American servicemen have died. When I listened to my, you know, morning AP feed, there was an extended story about one of them. It's heartbreaking, you know, a father talking about talking to his son on Saturday and then he's gone and they can't believe it. and the sister. I mean, it's horrible. There's been at least a thousand Iranians killed.

And we know that at least 100 plus were children. And even when this guy talks about why this is not a good idea, we're bombing Iranian forces to topple the regime. No, we're not. Nope. We're bombing Iranians. Some are Iranian forces. but others are in summer but others are infrastructure to make iranians suffer or it's just

we're bombing iranians just civilians to make them suffer people who according to the own premise of this conflict have less of a say over their government than we do and so you know as we move forward in this uh and i went through this with iraq You know, it is inevitable. We're going to have U.S. service men and women killed, and it's horrible. They don't deserve to die. Neither do Iranian civilians deserve to die. And frankly, you know, I don't know if Iranian soldier, I mean, we can't go into each individual person.

but it is just be conscious as we get the news reports of how, and we saw this obviously with Israel and Palestine, but it's going to be sort of a little bit closer to home where the loss of a U.S. service person is going to be considered a horrible, horrible tragedy. the deaths of 100 children in a school in Iran is going to be, you know, a mistake. If it's mentioned at all. I've not even hearing it at all on. It was mentioned to Heggseth yesterday and he said they're investigating. Oh, I'm sure.

It's going to be it's a mistake that we're investigating. Clay Travis said it might have been the Iranians themselves. But the point being, the point being is that, you know, human beings are human beings. And it is one thing to be able to justify this, at least in your own mind, when this is a killer-be-killed situation. If we don't, if we don't fight back against that. But no one has been able to even make a remote, like the remotest argument that Iran was a threat to anyone they know. Our intelligence services have undercut that claim. Yes.

Yes. We should just keep that in mind. I mean, the one funny clip on this is the Mark Wayne Mullen one. Oh, yeah. Let's go to Mark Wayne Wallen. I mean, let's just go through the people who are defending this action. Some of them can't even explain what it is. Mark Wayne Mullen is the guy who got the short straw, I think.

in the Senate and they're like you gotta do this dude and he's like really uh okay so wait can somebody just give me some talking points no get out there get out there you can do this try not to say anything yeah you can see this is war you can see this is war we haven't declared war on us but we haven't called war and secretary hexath we haven't declared just now you said this is war they've called it war what i was saying okay well that was it misspoke what i was saying that they've declared war on us, but war is ugly. It always has been ugly. But we're

taking out a regime that's been trying to attack us for quite some time. He doesn't want to say it's a war. Apparently when he came up, there's a longer clip. Yeah, there's a longer one where he walks out and he goes, look, this is war. Yes. And then they go, so I'll find that. Yeah, this is war. And

they say, oh, so you concede this is a war? No. No. That was a mispub. They're doing it. war. We're not doing war. They're doing war by being bombed by us. Exactly. The classic, they

say it's war, but only because we bombed them. And killed their leader and are bombing the capital of their country and the biggest city in the country. They didn't bomb us, so we're not at war. You understand the way that works, right? Yeah. You're only a war if you're getting bombed. And never

mind those soldiers dying. I do love this new, that was friendly fire, so that could have happened anywhere. That could have happened over North Carolina. Well, the, we had, you know, the friendly fire one. The friendly fire one. Those people survived, I believe. But no, it was the bombs in Kuwait, I guess, the six that were killed. But that wasn't in America. So right. And I just, the new rules of engagement in the Trump, Trump, Trump 2.0 world is if Washington, D.C. were to be repeatedly be harmed and a school of over 100 girls were to be bombed. And a school of over 100 girls were to be bombed. by the Iranians and Trump and Melania were to be killed by the Iranians, plus a bunch of other cabinet officials. It's not a war. Well, it would be for us if we struck back. That's true. We would if we start, then nobody's waging war on us. Exactly. Our response would be us being just absolutely bloodthirsty, horrible people and responding in that way would be war mongering.

This is complicated. So let's go to someone who we can appreciate a little more, the one Democrat who seems to be in favor of this, at least vocally, and he will explain this to you. Here is, what's that? Okay, here is Fetterman. We only have a brief clip of this. He is speaking after the intelligence briefing on the U.S. attacks. Go back just a little bit there.

Matt's got it at 43 times speed. You know, we can't even maintain. our core responsibilities to keep our government open, you know, so right now. Senator, would you change your position on the war powers in terms of a ground invasion into Iran?

What? No, I'm saying it's like, this is Should the U.S. have done to protect Americans who are not stranded of law? And Israel received a morning on Friday for this many Americans and other countries now and anything else? Senator,

I'm concerned about with regards to retaliation here domestically, any cells that we need to worry about anything? I don't have any specific kinds of intelligence on that, of course. But, you know, our DHS system is shut down, so that's probably not great timing for that. And again, the only Democrat that votes that's wrong to do that. Yeah, we all want to make some changes on ICE,

but we all know that won't have any impact what they've done and now it shut down. Oh, okay. I feel like we're in good hands. This is irrelevant, but how much help do you think it is to bend your ear when you're trying to hear? Listen, I get when you can't hear things. But one of the ways that I respond when I can't hear things is I'll do this because my hearing's not great, you know, particularly after like 25 years of, you know, headsets. One of the things I'll do is, what's that?

Could you say that again? I couldn't hear you. Not. I know, I know you asked me. I have it. That's like what a hundred-year-old man. The first question, incidentally, the first question was, will you revisit your perspective on the War Powers Act if we put boots on the ground? I can't stand that phrase, boots on the ground, because it's actually human beings in the boots.

I have no problem. If we want to draw boots on Iran, I'm open to that. It would be good for the boot industry in this country, and it would be maybe helpful for people if we just did it. it in the right way. But it's humans on the ground, shooting at other humans and killing other humans. And he was asked, would you reconsider or revisit your perspective on the War Powers Act? And I think his answer was, I don't know, turn away. Why are you bothering me with this? Can I go to bed, please? God, it's like a, you see how it's a struggle for him just to even be standing there. Why not resign? Honestly. What's the point?

Yeah. It's undignified. Apparently, though, his dad is a big Republican, and he's in this, like, completely almost like childlike mental state, and his dad is giving him all the praise. And so it's good to know that... You're doing good. You're doing good. You're doing good, buddy. It's good to know that we have a senator whose mental and emotional capacity is so diminished

that he's basically becoming a Republican because he's trying to make his daddy proud. There was the thing with Nixon's vice... someone's vice president candidate in the Democratic Party. I forget what election it was. But it turned out that he was getting therapy. Eagleton. Eagleton. And there was a huge scandal.

He had to drop out of the race. Federman's whole thing has set that back about to exactly the 1970s with his sort of acting like he's a good example for it. And then coming out and being this sort of atrocious. Like it's done harm, I think. Well, yes, I would imagine. But, I mean, to be fair, you know, I would like to, it's obviously not possible to traverse time in this way, but it would be fun to see like a mental competition between him and Diane Feinstein.

I was like a Mitch McConnell now. Mitch McConnell just has large periods of time where he doesn't speak. This would be a great TV show. Yeah. It's like, are you smarter than a senator? But maybe Joe Biden can sub in for, for. He moderates it. For five seconds.

The AI Diane Feinstein at 92. We only use the data from the hearings on the Supreme Court picks. And then current John Federman, moderated by Joe Biden. Yeah. Boom. And that's what I want instead of the UFC fights on Milan for 250. That's the real display of American competition. Yes.

I want. Yes. Yes. That's. That's my suggestion. And maybe the Republicans can get on board because it's all Democrats. That's my blood sport. I want to talk about the primaries.

But before we do, I think this is important because, you know, we will give grief to politicians when they support things that we don't like, right? But we never ever, well, not ever, ever. But I think we should also acknowledge when they do say things that we do like. And it is a rare opportunity that you get to have those two different dynamics with the same person within like just a matter of weeks of each other. And so congratulations to Gavin Newsom. There's a saying, and I'm sure Brian knows this, in New England, if you don't like the weather, then just wait. And that's the same thing with Gavin Newsom. They say that everywhere.

I know they do say that. I found that out like the other day. But you'll recall when Gavin Newsom in play, was it with like, Van Lathen? Van Lathen, yeah, yeah. Van Lathen asked them a question, not a particular, but was it about A-PAC? It was about if you were going to take A-PAC money. And we should give credit to a friend of the show,

Jasper and Nathaniel, who quote tweeted this clip and, was referencing that. He said, it's interesting that Newsom is suddenly changing his tune on Israel. It's Medicare. Oh. Maybe Jasper to the same. Well, I'm reading from Jasper Street. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody was doing that. I just find it interesting because this quote, that's the clip that happened with Van, was when Van

was asking him about Apex support, his response just a few months ago was, it's interesting you'd ask me that, implying that Van was anti-Semitic for asking that question. So fixated, Van Lathan on A-PAC. So fix it on the whole Israel thing. What a weird thing to do. I just think it's weird. And you recall, like, when he was on with Shapiro, Gavin Newsom was also sort of like, I'm not into this whole Israel bashing thing.

Well, folks, seasons change. And Gavin Newsom does too. And he got some poll numbers back. Here we go. And a lot of Democrats have looked at the Netanyahu, regime and felt like, you know what, we don't like the trajectory he's on. It's time to rethink the U.S. relationship with Israel, especially military support. Where do you think? He's making that easy right now. Let's talk about that. But the issue of B.B. is interesting because he's got his own

domestic issues. He's trying to stay out of jail. He's got an election coming up. He's potentially on the ropes. He's got folks the hard line that want to annex the West Bank. I mean, Freeman and others are talking about it appropriately, sort of an apartheid state. They couldn't even, I mean, we're talking about regime change. For two years, they haven't even been able to solve the Hamas question in Israel. So this is, I mean, you know, I want to be careful here, but, you know, in so many ways that influence in the context of the conversation of where Trump ultimately landed on this is pretty damn self-evident.

And so Rubio may have been saying something else. in the context of what he ultimately said, in terms of being sort of pulled into some of these things. But I will say this, didn't surprise me in this context. I don't know if it was Napoleon or whoever said about a sword. The only thing you can't use a sword for is sitting on it. And when you bring two aircraft carriers out there and you assemble the kind of military force that Trump did over the last few weeks,

it didn't surprise me ultimately that they moved that direction. Okay, all right. So I just, one second, just quick. pause to take it point by point. So this is going to be the line from Democrats who don't actually want to fundamentally change our relationship with the genocidal colonial state of Israel. They are going to say it's Netanyahu and put it all on him. We played this clip last week. The leader of the opposition to Netanyahu, which includes kind of liberal slash centrist groups within the context of Israeli society, endorsed after Mike Huckabee came out on with Tucker Carlson and said,

want to support the greater Israel theory, which is the expansion of the Israeli state into conquering land in Lebanon, in Syria, in other countries around the Middle East. He said that he was basically all for that. So on the fundamental issues of Israeli society and the expansion of the state and the seizure of land, there is absolutely zero meaningful political opposition within Israel that's going to oppose that. So everybody that hears Netanyahu come out of the mouths and they're not being any sort of systemic critique about Israel from Democratic politicians should know that that is a signal that they are not going to be good on this issue. That's just that's just the case. But Emma, yes. Can you make an assessment of the politics of a country

just because over the past 30 years more than half of that Netanyahu's been prime minister? Can you really just say, oh, um, they have. have put a literal terrorist in charge of the West Bank and the finances of the entire government he's in charge of that. Can you really just say that

it's not like the government there? Like what other functions does a government have besides spending money? Right, right. That's just the fundamental point there. Well, we got more. He might turn it around

in the second half. All right. Do you think looking down the road that the United States should consider maybe, you know, rethinking our military support for Israel? It breaks my heart because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don't think you have a choice but that consideration. I mean, to say this is an America's interest at a time when affordability is at crisis levels where you had administration who literally got elected saying this is exactly the opposite of what they would ever consideration. that are doing. The fact that we are in this now regional war, all these proxies, the fact that we, you know, and all the grift and the corruption that's also marks a huge part of this. And that's a real conversation we need to have, this board of peace, and the peace that the Whitkoff family's getting, and the peace that Kushner is getting, and the piece that Trump Jr. is getting.

That's the same joke that Elon did, too. that was also taken from somebody else, wasn't it? Also, we're not going to allow you guys to pivot into just throwing chum to the audience about hating Trump and his cronies. The issue right now is genocide. The issue is a fundamental reorientation of our relationship with this failed colonial state in the Middle East that is like that is dragging us into like, and of course, the Trump administration is complicit in this, as was Biden, but into horrific, horrific conflicts that have knock-on effects for Americans, which I know they're supposed to care about. Well, it's funny going on to the affordability crisis.

Like, I'll be honest. Like, we just heck rich people. We can afford stuff in this country. Wait a second. Our obligations to this part of the world and our foreign policy have nothing to do with the fact that we can't pay rent. We should not be supporting Israel, even if I could afford, if we could all afford to go to a new apartment right now. The other, I mean, sort of broader point about this clip, too, is that

the idea that Gavin Newsom can go through a primary without having to deal with his twist and turns, like he is going to fight to stop this billionaire, billionaire tax in California. billionaire tax in California. And then watch him, if, you know, if, you know, he's, the wealth tax that Bernie Sanders is going to introduce and start to talk up. If that gains any type of traction, watch him months from now. Well, actually, I can see, you know, it's interesting. I'm heartbroken by this, but I'm starting to realize, like, maybe there's too much wealth concentration.

And we need to figure out some mechanism to deal with this. And, but I don't know, you know, taxing seems like a blunt instrument. This is, maybe we should do. His record, if once people get past the fact that they're tickled by the fact that he has somebody who runs his social media who is online enough to understand memes, perhaps we can get into the substance of what Gavin Newsom actually represents, which is somebody who is fighting right now, as Sam says, to combat this billionaire tax, somebody who is more comfortable with Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and then throwing Trent and Ben Shapir. throwing trans people under the bus than standing up for them as he likes to look at his past support for gay marriage once it had the it was a majorly popular position in the state of california as an example of his political uh bravery but throws trans kids under the bus that's easy for him just in at the end of 2024 he uh uh vetoed or killed a bill that would have required hedge funds and private equity um to

have more rules and regulations on jacking up prices for prescription drugs. This cannot be somebody who represents the Democratic Party, billionaire, a coward, who goes where the political wins tell him to go. Some free advice, and I will not vote for him. But if he wants to make, if I was his advisor, you can't, saying this stuff with Pod Save is one thing. You want to do Ben Shapiro show, you want to do Dave Rubin, whoever. You say this to them, and then you see what happens.

and dig in there. And then we'll be interested. But this sort of thing of belatedly acknowledging what the people, but I mean, he just basically camellions whoever is showing. Totally. Yeah. And, well, this, as a contrast, like, James Tala Rico's politics are not where we've talked about this.

It's not great on Israel. Not all of our politics. Not great on Israel. It's also not running in the bluest state in the country. But it's a contrast as to say, like, you know, Tala Rico, he's supposed. supports the pro act. Our friend David Griscombe has a really good piece in Jacovin speaking about this, and how also he identifies a villain, the billionaires.

Talarico will unequivocally talk about how the billionaires are the problem and that we need to be standing up to them with his message in Texas. You can still be sort of moderate on issues like that and identify the, the villains in a way that like actually builds political power and builds a constituency that can be lasting. What I also like about Talariko and how he was able to win yesterday is, uh, the one, the constituency that he cultivated being a salient way to defeat Trumpism in 2026. Uh, he just was absolutely dominant in this primary with Latino voters, uh, particularly in the south and western parts of the state. Um, he ran up the numbers with

Latino voters around Houston, Latino voters are key here to, because Trump made such historic gains with them in 2024, he also was pretty dominant in the white suburbs. But like,

this is, his appeal to those groups is, like, a path to victory potentially in Texas. But it's not just the groups that he appeals to. Really, the fact that he identifies billionaires as the villain,

and he speaks about, like, Christianity in this humane manner, I think is like a potent antidote to the sadism of Trump in this era. So we'll see. But I was encouraged that he won fairly decisively in Texas last night. We're going to play that. Oh, and here's a clip of him and his victory speech.

We are not just trying to win an election. We are trying to fundamentally change our politics. and it's working. The number of young people who showed up to vote in this election is unprecedented. The number of Texans who have never voted before

but showed up in this election is unprecedented. The number of independents and Republicans who voted in this Democratic primary is unprecedented. This is proof that there is something happening

in Texas. tonight tonight the people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope and a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing I want to thank you

for being here thank you for being in this fight God bless you all thank you so and I think all of Crockett's comments about saying Latinos slave mentality also were

circulated a lot and had an impact on this race. But I mean, you know, she has strengths too and we'll see where her career takes her at this point. Where is it going to take her? I'm more encouraged that the candidate that's replacing her is more progressive and is actually a Justice Democrat. But I am just happy that her style of really individualized, factionalized politics that puts forward like this kind of clapback, I don't know, rot within the Democratic Party that's less focused on like collectivism and more on individual achievements and literally, I mean, there's like a good amount of narcissism in how she campaigned that that was Delta Decisive Blow because that has had success in in factionalizing

Democratic voters and diluting the power of say like the kind of insurgent populace parts of the party. It was shameful of Allred and Crockett jumped in with both feet on it, of the smearing of Talarico down the stretch, which was to paint him as like anti-black, I think was disgusting and typical of certain parts of the Democratic Party. And it is very good that it lost. And hopefully we can turn the page on that sort of cynical, cynical type of campaign. That's the thing.

It was just so cynical. And people saw through it. And there's maybe some people that don't yet, but everyone else is moving on. Meanwhile, here is the guy, Frederick Haynes, who is going to be, it's a blue district in Texas, all but assured to be the next congressperson from what Texas, what number is it? I'm not sure, but it's around Dallas. And this clip is from October 8th, 2023. Nice. That we've got to be for Israel.

Yeah, we got to do that. Or we get in trouble. Well, I'm coming to get in trouble. Israel, and I'm going to quote Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter says that Israel is engaging in apartheid with Palestinians. And so the Palestinians who don't have the weaponry of Israel, the Palestinians don't have the financial backing from the United States that Israel has. And so they throw their rocks and shoot their arrows.

and Israel is able to bomb them and kill them. Watch in the news a disparity between Palestinians being killed and Israelis being killed. It is totally unfair, but this country is going to stand on the side of apartheid because that's its track record. It stood by apartheid in South Africa because it created apartheid in this country. I would say it's a bit of an upgrade from Jasmine Crockett. It's so odd to hear a Christian rhythm say something I believe in. It just, it's unsettling in some ways. And to draw back to the Jim Crow apartheid regime in America, I think is extremely important.

Yeah. Provides some context for all of this and understanding that this is not a, something that's just cropped up. Yeah. So that's a, that's good. That's good. Pretty good. I mean, there's going to be, this is going to be. this is going to be the most successful year ever for Justice Democrats.

And we don't really have the concept of the squad anymore, right? I mean, but what we are going to have is maybe a platoon. It's a larger, more diffuse, you know, for better and worse. Right, because, like, you know, is Delia Ramirez considered a part of the squad? She's one of the best members of Congress that we have. It's not exactly clear. Half of the people we think of as a squad aren't even in Congress anymore. Right. Well, that's true. But still, and Corey Bush running again.

Yeah, people, yeah, St. Louis tap into Cory Bush. We need to take out Wesley Bell, which I think should be doable. This is the year. The Nita Olam race is a big bummer. Just to give people a little more context on that one. Valerie Foucher looks like she's probably going to win that primary. by less than a point or around one point. Bernie and Doris Nita Alam, notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did not. And I think that was probably one of the major factors in this race, because Fouchet is actually technically a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And, oh, my God.

I mean, so I, for AOC's purposes, I get not, you know, the Congressional Progressive. Congress of caucus trying to have some discipline around endorsements and stuff like that. It's not my favorite thing. But the overall point that we've tried to make on this show many times is that perhaps the CPC should have stricter standards and be a smaller block rather than have people like Foucher included. Because she'd sprinted to the left a little bit. And even her rejection of APEC money, but then secretly taking it via Hakeem Jeffries was a recognition of that. But, I mean, perhaps people in the Congressional Progressive Caucus shouldn't be, you know, should only be taking small dollar contributions or something like that. Shantel Brown, who's in Congress over Nina Turner in part because of a record spending by the Israel lobby, has taken more from the Israel lobby than every other member of Congress from Ohio combined, including Republicans.

But she's in the Progressive Caucus. Somebody on the I am is saying that, uh, They sent an email regarding NETA alum. I don't know if we can find that because we're not taking a – I can't find it at the moment. But the IM was saying – let me get back to that if I can. No, I won't be able to. I sent you an email this morning providing a little local insight into why Nita Alam lost. I encourage you to check – you found it out?

Oh, wait, there it is. Yeah, I think I got it too. Todd from Raleigh here. I wanted to pass on a little insight from the ground and why Nita likely lost her race. I live in NC4 and I wanted her to win very badly. And I'm grateful you had her on the show. However, it's worth saying that she did not have a good campaign strategy at all.

It's just somebody's opinion. But they're in Raleigh and they're obviously a fan. Her team did not deploy canvassers effectively across areas. She needed to do damage control, and namely Chapel Hill and Chatham County. The Fauci name is a local political legacy family, and people are primed to vote for Fauci by default in Chapel Hill. She did not make a sufficient effort to make inroads with them in Chapel Hill or find new voters in Carborough. When you lose by one percentage point, there's probably a wide array of things that could have been done better to have you win. Her team did not properly equip volunteers with training.

Most volunteers only got literature in a minivan code, no training. A minivan code is fill into the app, the app that gives you information as to who you're talking to. I can't help but think that that has to do with her burning local bridges. Nita has a history of siding with the party over grassroots organizers, and she endorsed against the DSA slate for Dunham County City Council. She voted against Durham County holding a county pride parade, but then hosted a private pride event that was a fundraiser for her and falsely accused the DSA aligned Durham City Councilwoman of assault. She also never applied for a DSA endorsement and only started her campaign less than three months ago, but did show up to an electoral DSA event and took a picture with our local electors. Okay. Well, no, I mean, these are all notable. Perhaps DSA could have been more helpful for her. in that regard. I also just think like

we can also take away from this campaign something more broad, which is that with all of those pitfalls that you're speaking about, she became within one percentage points, also with a massive fundraising disadvantage against an incumbent, and it was basically

because the incumbent had past associations with APEC. So it's about Nita and more about what the people wanted, which was almost to put her over the top despite all of that, over her a known name. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, build those relationships

from the ground up. Yep. Don't skip over because it can be a thousand votes make a difference. Yeah. I remember I lost by 14 for student government. Class president?

No, a class president I'd ever lost. Student government. But I was running as a sophomore, which is pretty rare. So John Benjamin. John Benjamin didn't vote. I didn't know we were in the presence. It was such political royalty. He was on the couch.

Were you running against a legacy family? No. He was a J-Bored guy. I mean, I liked him, and we were friends. But I don't want to get into it. I'm not hanging on to that like I did my SAT score. How long goes that? I get my SAT score. I'm a regular guy.

I lost my first campaign. Well, actually, it was my second. I mean, I won my first. I'm an idiot. I got a 12. Yeah, what are you talking about? I lost my government job. I'm an idiot.

All right, let's read five IMs, and then we're going to get out of here. WTF Cody. James was the first politician I've donated to since. I fell out of the coconut tree. I don't know what the sense is. Shout out Kamala Harris for getting in there with the late endorsement of Jasmine Crockett. You know, she just keeps showing how greater instincts are. Bonk

Maybe she's got like a humiliation thing That is really impressive though right Like People don't listen Those are they think about this stuff Like her team sat down It was like we got to do this I took it as a very bad sign

Yeah Crocett's like No The point is Is that it probably had Absolutely no impact except to reflect poorly on on comel house right right like even from a self-preservation standpoint lady you're saying you want to run for president 2028 i mean i don't like making predictions and i want

to talarico to win but like i would not have done like a well robocall what she was doing calling within the final two weeks like like was it in the last two weeks it was recent shorter than that it was late i mean later in two weeks i mean i list the thing is i think like if you're going to jump in and do something, you know, and it's not like maybe, maybe there was, you know, maybe the only thing that we can't see is that there could have been like internal dynamics. There were friends on either campaign or there was a relationship there that like, somebody was like, please, we need you to do this. And she did it as a favor.

Honestly, I mean, that's the most likely. Of course. Otherwise, like, what, like, there wasn't like, you didn't read stories in Politico, like, we don't know why Kamala Harris hasn't endorsed anybody in this race. Nobody was asking that question. The Dallas Dems are pretty powerful. And I think, like, that's where a lot of the Crockett support came from. And that's, to me, it was always, is the party going to be more powerful or is it going to be this grassroots energy that looks like Tala Rico has? And Tala RICO's grassroots energy won out.

Well, that's the sort of the theme for this entire cycle, isn't it? like the the party is not carrying the day in the vast majority of these um really contested primaries right i mean we didn't even touch on the al green piece that was another justice democrat right who uh took that district al green has been a a good good progressive but he that was more like he's just older and um yeah who was it they were crammed in into one district due to redistricting. The guy's last name starts with the C. I'm blanking on it.

Looks like there's a runoff, maybe. Christian, yeah, there's going to be a, yeah, exactly, a runoff. But maybe I'm wrong that he was a Justice Democrat. Bob Brooks for Congress has now been endorsed by the Working Families Party as well. He's in a crowd of primary and the only Medicare for all. Bernie endorsed candidate in Pennsylvania 7. Okay, I'm sorry. I don't think he is a Justice Democrat, my bad.

tack thumb the ponytail though no no green green's good yeah yeah tack thumb i know there's a lot going on but with kansas's attack on transgender people that is sure to be followed by more states i would love you guys to have someone like erin reed on yes yes i know we need to talk more about that story

uh the good news is uh in new york tish james has uh forced um i can't remember what has I think it was Mount Sinai, had cut back on its trans care for people under the age of 18, for minors under the age of 18. And because they were threatened by the federal government. And Tish James says, you cannot do that. Ad hominy, since when is attacking someone first defense? in Orwellian America.

Twollett. How many seconds did it take this war to exceed the amount of the supposed Minnesota fraud scandal? 10, 20 seconds, just the planes we've lost a friendly fire at least alone is at least $300 million. Getting the ships over there. Yeah, the images out of Tehran right now are apocalyptic, just so people are aware over the past few hours, Israel. The U.S. have been bombing the hell. harping the hell out of a major city in Iran. Dan from Columbus, I love when politicians explain the question instead of answering it. That's a conversation we need to have.

Yes, that's why I'm asking your opinion, you greasy hair. That's my favorite thing. You know, we did a real conversation about that. I like, I'm going to have to take a big look at that. That's what I like. What's a big look when you widen your eyes? Niles, I got laid off last year as an indirect result of the Trump administration halting wind farm development.

I've since found employment with local engineering firm, but just got a call from ex-colleague whose current firm is looking for skilled geologists to work on the pre-investment phase of the Big Bend section of the border wall. I've taken money from clients I have ethical problems with, but this is something entirely more evil, really torn, but someone is going to take that money, indeed. With their naming sections of the wall? Naming?

Big Ben section? I have a feeling that's probably a geographic, yeah. But it may be like a place. I don't think they're saying like... I know they were doing like Ben Franklin. This is the Ben Franklin section of the wall. All right. Two more.

Elvis Presley Wall. Pope packs categorize and standardized internet algorithms to create handles for regulating them, especially in regards to transparency and safety. Indeed, I think there's ways of doing this. But I know the libertarians in the office disagree. Damn it. Tim fools, Veeney. This is why you guys all get invited places.

Schumer has got everything he wanted from Trump, war with Iran, and ICE deporting Palestinian protesters, indeed. And he can sit back and passively benefit from it, or he thinks he can. Aaron is not cool. Enough with this tort maxing. Sam's retirement is just him in a room with unplugged microphone, arguing with AI video chatbot.

That's probably not too far off. And the final, I am of the day, Serena. Sam is Charlie Day in a Sam suit. Matt, Brian, Emma. By the way, I'm going to be on the Vanguard in about an hour. Oh, nice. Matt, Brian, Emma. Catch Matt on the Vanguard in an hour.

See you tomorrow. To get to where I want But I know I'm going to just got caught