The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3602 - Will Gaza Cease Fire Hold? The Making of Musk w/ Mouin Rabbani, Jacob Silverman
Episode Date: October 14, 2025It's News Day Tuesday on the Majority Report On today's show: ABC's George Stephanopoulos asks JD Vance about the $50k bribe taken by Border Czar Tom Homan and Vance refuses to answer forcing Stephano...poulos to cut him off for lying and evading. Non-resident fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, Mouin Rabbani joins the program to discuss the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestine. Check out Mouin's writing on his Substack. Journalist and author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, Jacob Silverman joins the program to discuss his new book and the companion podcast, Making of Musk: Understood produced by the CBC. In the Fun Half: While Trump paying tribute to Miriam Adelson at his Knesset speech, Trump openly confesses to giving the Adelsons access to the White House in exchange for money. Mike Huckabee busts out his Rickenbacker bass to jam with comedian Elon Gold at a Sukkot event in Jerusalem. They play "Sweet Home Jerusalem" to the tune of "Sweet Home Alabama". Former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd reflects on the Democratic party's failings of late and holds himself accountable for his role in poor messaging. Andrew Cuomo still cannot clarify how he will challenge Donald Trump as mayor or explain why they share so many donors. Leticia James gives a fiery speech at a Zohran Mamdani campaign rally in upper Manhattan Zohran is fine with being called an existential threat to the status quo. All that and more The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. 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: BLUELAND: get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/majority ZOCDOC: Go to Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY and download the Zocdoc app to sign-up for FREE and book a top-rated doctor SUNSET LAKE: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code “Left Is Best” (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech 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.co
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The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
It is Tuesday.
October 14th, 2025.
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, Mouan Rabini, non-resident fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies,
on the ongoing ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas,
Then Jacob Silverman, journalist, author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk, and The Radicalization of Silicon Valley,
and a host of the podcast companion, The Making of Must, as part of the CBC's Understood series.
Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas exchange hostages.
As Palestinian survey, Israel's collars.
fossil destruction in the Gaza Strip.
State 14 of the government shutdown.
Trump will not let Mike Johnson negotiate anything,
at least in part,
he's afraid of that 218th vote
and releasing the Epstein files.
Trump's latest tariffs on lumber and furniture kick in.
Oh, just the last.
time for me to move apartments.
And just, meanwhile, he also ramps up a trade war with China, and it looks like the U.S.
is going to lose.
New York Times AP, even newsmax, say they will not capitulate to the Pentagon's approved
news oath.
Black residents in Louisiana and North Carolina targeted for loss of voting power in
Republican redistricting plans new study private equity takeover in hospitals causes an increase
in deaths no way also an increase in private equity profits sounds efficient layoffs and
layback ons at the CDC as COVID quiet lines quietly encourage pregnant women to get
vaccines or vaccinated and thousands of Kaiser health workers on strike in northern
California, all this and much, much more on today's majority report.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.
It is Tuesday, Tuesday.
Newsday Tuesday.
We've got a couple of interviews.
Yes, it's a little bit weird because we weren't here yesterday.
Although the crack, do we have a photo?
We're going to show the photo of you guys.
Matt and Brian.
Yes.
We're basically in the control center of the United Palace.
Hamas's command and control center?
No, wow.
Deep in a bunker at the Hamas rally.
Excuse me.
I have it here.
They were in the command and control bunker of the United Palace up in Washington.
Washington Heights, around 175th in Broadway, and we're running the streaming for everybody
who got live streamed. Yeah, here's a picture of these two guys. I sent it to Emma last night.
I was unsure. I can't believe I missed this, to be honest with you, but I took my third.
There they are. I saw this and I was like so sad. I missed it. But I took my third COVID
test this morning and I'm negative, but I didn't want to be a super spreader.
Either way, it looked, it looked amazing.
And you can see, Brian has that look on his face of, like, an old hat who's been there for so long.
He's just like, whatever.
Another rally.
I was dressed so much like a union guy.
Nobody asked me for my credentials anywhere in that building.
Really, that equipment is nice.
We should have asked them, do they have any stuff to spare for us?
Matt tried to stick it in his backpack as we left.
So we'll talk a little bit more about this.
that rally. But Zoramam Dani is gaining steam. Kathy Hokel, the New York State Governor, who was at first
hesitant to endorse his candidacy after he won the Democratic nomination. He's, incidentally,
the Democratic nominee for mayor. There is no other. Andrew Cuomo continues in the race in a
very lackluster fashion. And of course, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, the nominally most
powerful Democrats elected to office in the country have neglected to endorse the Democratic nominee
for the mayor of New York City.
I imagine at one point they'll come with their tails between their legs and endorse
Mamdani.
But, you know, and I think Mamdani, one of the things that I think we've come to understand
about him as a politician is he's extremely pragmatic.
He is not a vindictive person.
He's looking to actually help people in a material fashion, and that is going to, his ability to do that is only going to be increased by having good relations with a lot of these politicians.
But I am not like that as a person.
And if Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer came around now to endorse me, and it was clear that their endorsement would mean little at this point, I would tell them to suck.
an egg, frankly, and probably in a lot less polite terms.
And that's not Kentucky fried French fries.
That's, I really, I like, I hope they don't endorse at all.
It makes them more obsolete by the second.
So keep digging your own graves, Democratic leadership.
Ironically, the, or not ironically, the evening was entitled, Our Time Has Come, and it really became clear.
that for someone like Jeffries and Schumer, their time has passed, and that's becoming clear
day by day. We'll also talk about Janet Mills, who is Chuck Schumer and Christian Gillbrand's
favorite pick to run in the main Senate Democratic primary, and new polling out shows Graham
Platner beating her amongst Democrats. And then every other
constituency possible in Maine,
short of
people who work in the governor's
office. Right. And that
is it. I think literally, that's
the only one
of the sort of
the cross tabs, as it were.
But have you considered that
she, quote,
or she didn't think she could quote, live
with herself, myself, she said,
if she did not run, because it's
all about Janet Mills. And how she
feels about her own self. We want her.
It's 77.
Yeah.
What do you mean live with yourself?
We don't have no idea.
You can probably live with yourself a few more years before you end up dying.
Yeah, go on vacation.
She has, however, agreed that she and insisted that she will only serve one term if elected.
Inspiring.
Aside from the fact that, like, I'd like to see you not do just one term.
See how that goes.
You know who also said that?
You know who also said that?
Exactly.
We saw how well that worked out.
All right. But let's move on with this. J.D. Vance, who is ostensibly going to be Donald Trump's replacement. God forbid anything happened to Donald Trump over the next couple of years. But ostensibly, Donald Trump will not run again. And then J.D. Vance would be considered probably to be the frontrunner on day one anyways. But who knows how much.
long that would last. Because when you see him actually perform in these moments, there's something
very off about this guy. He doesn't have the charm. He's whiny. And this sort of backfired for him
because in his attempt to cow George Stephanopoulos into not asking this question, it has
raised the profile again of something that is just astonishing. A story that I tell you right now,
If it happened during the Biden administration, would have been a six-week story.
If it happened, you know, 15 years ago would have been a dramatic story.
And it is the story of the head of ice, you know, known in sort of like in terms of vernacular as the Gestapo.
They are massed soldiers who are going around with barely any training other than an intense disdain of,
for immigrants and people of color.
Salads.
And, oh, he's the border sars, too.
He's, I don't think he's technically the head of ICE,
but he's the spokesperson for their most horrific of these.
I don't think he's been able to be appointed,
but we know that he's running things.
And he has had to lay low because a story broke that in the run-up to the election,
he was fingered by people that the FBI,
was investigating as somebody you could go and bribe.
And so the FBI delivered to him undercover $50,000 in cash in a fast food bag.
And here is, and of course, then the Trump administration, DOJ, dropped the case.
Here is J.D. Vance being asked about it.
George, I saw media reports that Tom Homan accepted a bribe.
there's no evidence of that and here's george why fewer and fewer people watch your program and why
you're losing credibility because you're talking for now five minutes with the vice president of
united states about this story regarding tom home in a story that i've read about but i don't even
know the video that you're talking about meanwhile low-income women pause for a second what does that
mean i've read about but i don't know the video you're talking about there's video and it's
unclear to me whether there's video or audio, but there is definitely a recording of Tom
homin accepting $50,000 in cash. Now, it is, there's questions as to whether it was illegal
because he didn't have an official position. He just promised that if he was in an official
position in the Trump administration, he would shove deals towards this probably private
prison or fake private prison executive that was actually an FBI.
agent. And he's not even denying the video part. He's saying he hasn't seen it, and it's the same
thing that Holman is doing publicly with his defense, where he's claiming it wasn't illegal for those
reasons, but no one is denying that the video exists because it exists.
Tom, Holman, a story that I've read about, but I don't even know the video that you're talking
about. Meanwhile, low-income women can't get food because the Democrats and Chuck Schumer have
shut down the government. Right now, we're trying to figure out how to pay our troops because
Chuck Schumer has shut down the government. You are focused on a bogus story. You're insinuating
criminal wrongdoing against a guy who has done nothing wrong instead of focusing on the fact
that our country is struggling because our government shut down. I don't like your TV program. Let's talk
about the real issues, George. I think the American people would benefit much more from that
than from you going down some weird left-wing rabbit hole where the facts clearly show that Tom
Holman didn't engage in any criminal wrongdoing.
It's not a weird left-wing rabbit hole.
I didn't insinuate anything.
I asked you whether Tom Homan accepted $50,000, as was heard on an audio tape recorded
by the FBI in September 2024, and you did not answer the question.
Thank you for your time this morning.
Oh, we can't.
No, George, I said that I don't.
Next, we'll be right back.
We came into that late.
I mean, he had asked him the question twice.
We got into that clip late.
But he asked the question twice.
He refused to answer it.
and um it is it is stunning the guy took fifty thousand dollars now i don't know why george
stephenopoulos like i say he had asked the question prior to that didn't say he just got
fifty thousand dollars there's a bigger clip too where we're advanced at the beginning of that
the first answer where he says tom homan's been paid for a lot of businesses um yeah you know
it was it was but he at least cut him off there and was like i'm not we're cutting
you off. I'm not letting you filibuster. Because that was after the second go-round. Right.
But the bottom line is like, I'm sorry. Tom Holman, I'm sure, has received checks for $50,000 or
wire trans of $50,000. But how do you invoice a bag of $50,000 cash coming from an entity that is
fake, incidentally, because they're actually FBI agents? Yeah. And this is after, ProPublica has reported on
this before, that prior to, in 2017, when he was in the private sector, he had assets that he
declared of a maximum of $250,000. But in 2025, his net worth has grown to between $3 million
and $9 million. And there's not a lot of paper trail evidence to support how that came to
be. Sounds like there were some cobb bags elsewhere. All right. In a moment, we're going to be
talking to Mouin Rabini, new resident fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
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I'll be right back after this.
Thank you.
We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on The Majority Report.
It's a pleasure to welcome to the program, Juan Robani.
He's a non-resident fellow with the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies.
Juan, thank you so much for joining us.
It's very good to be with you. Thank you.
Let's start with, if you could, characterize the nature of, or I guess maybe even the specifics of this ceasefire.
to the extent we know all of them, which for the most part we do,
but also relative to what had been agreed to
and then unilaterally subsequently broken in January of this year.
Well, let's start with January.
In January, the incoming Trump administration
essentially compelled Israel to accept an agreement
that had been on the table.
at least since May, according to the Qatari mediators, for a year.
But it later emerged that Trump's main priority was to have a diplomatic achievement
and not a foreign policy crisis on the day of his inauguration on the 20th of January.
That was a three-stage agreement, and at the end of the first stage,
the United States basically authorized Israel to unilaterally renege on it.
to resume its genocidal military campaign in the Gaza Strip
and to continue until last week.
I think the key turning point was the U.S. bombing,
rather the Israeli bombing of Qatar several weeks ago,
or several months ago,
in which it sought to assassinate the Hamas negotiating team,
which was meeting to consider a proposal
that had been forwarded to them by the United States.
That attack failed, but it also made clear to Washington's closest era of allies in the Gulf
that they were not safe from Israel, that their national security, their sovereignty,
also hung in the balance, and that the U.S. was prepared to support bombings of their capitals by Israel.
And in that context, a number of Arab leaders and leaders of Muslim states met with Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month and impressed upon him the need to bring this crisis to an end because it was now affecting them directly.
They worked out a 21-point proposal. Netanyahu showed up in Washington, managed to introduce substantial revisions into that proposal, and it was unveiled on the 29th of September at a joint press conference at the White House between Trump and Netanyahu.
That proposal deals with three sets of issues. The first is the immediate crisis, if you will, an exchange of captives, a cessation of hostilities, in Israeli.
beginnings of an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip,
where famine conditions have taken root.
On the 8th of October, Hamas and Israel reached agreement on that, on those immediate issues,
and that is what is now being implemented, at least insignificant part.
The second part of that proposal deals with what are known as post-war arrangements.
governance and administration of the Gaza Strip, the issues of Palestinian weapons, and so on.
Hamas has not accepted those elements of the Trump proposal, and those still remain to be negotiated.
In particular sticking point is going to be this idea of turning Gaza into a kind of foreign protectorate,
which will be presided over by a colonial viceroy, none other than Tony Blair,
and this is something that the Palestinians have categorically rejected.
It has been reluctantly accepted by the Palestinian Authority.
But I think that proposal is essentially dead in the water.
What hasn't been addressed, except in the most tangential manner,
are the political issues that have produced the crisis that we're now discussing.
And unless those are addressed, we're essentially going back to the situation that existed
on October 6, 2023, in which the countdown to the next catastrophic eruption has already begun.
What was the third point in those things?
Post-war arrangements, weapons, and then is the third point, is the long-term?
Yeah, the third one, let's say the broader political issues,
were essentially the proposal said nothing.
It merely noted for the record that Palestinians have an aspiration, an aspiration, not a right to national self-determination and statehood.
But beyond that, it said nothing.
And that was confirmed yesterday at this summit in Sharmishik, where the leaders of the United States, Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar signed this document.
And if you read it, it basically does little more than, you know, hail Trump as the great.
greatest peacemaker in history and says that everyone wants peace.
But what exactly that peace is supposed to be, what it looks like, what are the rights of
the Palestinians, and so on, none of that is dealt with an even cursory fashion in this
document that was signed yesterday.
You mentioned that at the UN leaders from Qatar and perhaps other Arab nations
impressed upon Trump their need to reign in Israel.
What was the nature of, what did they say, what did they say to impress upon Trump?
I mean, it was right around that time there was a $1 billion deal.
Another one announced, I believe it was in Jeddah for Trump, Inc.
in Saudi Arabia is in the past, at least, you know, it has seemed to me that there have
been times where you have the leadership of some of these countries responding to the so-called
Arab Street. That dynamic seems to have been completely absent as far as, you know, most of the
reporting to the extent that, you know, get a sense of it. But the
and somewhat replaced by a, perhaps that is sort of like the incentive structure for these countries to also sort of offer Donald Trump, like, we can have a deal here in terms of like putting money in your pocket, more or less.
Is that the dynamic that's happening here?
Well, I don't think Arab public opinion played a direct role in producing.
the proposal that we're now discussing, what I do think is fair to say is that, as you'll recall,
when Trump had his victory tour in the Gulf earlier this year, he got commitments of massive investments
from Qatar, from Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates in the United States.
And in U.S. politics, of course, money not only talks, it screams, and it screams very loudly.
But I think what was important in this meeting was, you know, all these states and a number of leaders of Muslim states, Turkey, Pakistan, and Indonesia, they all made clear to Trump that this crisis needs to be bought to an end for a number of reasons.
And given that this meeting included leaders of the countries that have pledged these massive investments in the U.S.
I think Trump was genuinely attentive to their concerns.
Let's put it that way.
You mentioned some of these Arab countries.
There was reporting in the Washington Post over the weekend about the extent of the kind of behind-the-scenes security collaboration with the United States, with Israel,
and some of these other countries that hadn't previously been reported.
And what seems to be the connecting kind of motivation is a shared hawkishness towards Iran.
Can you talk a little bit about that reporting and how it fits into the abdication of responsibility
towards the Palestinian neighbors by many of these leaders?
Well, as we've seen the past two years, Arab leaders as a whole,
have been quite content to play the role of inert spectators while Israel slaughters Palestinians
in their own homeland. I think that's an attitude that's very sharply at variance with
public opinion in the region. But where they draw the line is when Israel's plans for the Palestinians
begins to impact directly on their territory, on their national security, on their domestics
to believe in legitimacy. That's why we saw them push back very hard against this so-called
Trump-Riviera plan in which Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and potentially from the West Bank
were basically going to be exported to Egypt, to Jordan, and further afield. In terms of
the specific issue you're raising, this Washington Post report showed that a number of Arab
states have actually strengthened security relations and military relations with Israel during
the past two years, quite contrary to their statements of condemnation of the genocide and so on.
And the article identifies Iran as the main target of this military cooperation. I think we're now
dealing with a rather different situation. First of all, Iran has, of course, been weakened. And
many of these leaders now see Iran as essentially constrained, while Israel, which they have
for years viewed as a valuable security and strategic partner, is now seen as kind of the
regional arsonist, a regional pyromaniac that is being given an endless supply of fuel and
matches by the United States, whether under Biden or now under Trump.
and I think this explains their changed attitude that we saw so clearly in their meeting with Trump
on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last month.
Is there any mechanism to even force Israel to adhere, or both the parties for that matter,
to even just the first phase of this?
I mean, seeing reports that Israel plans to –
diminish aid in Gaza because there have been, the remains of two hostages have not been returned.
They bombed a sanitation center in the north in retaliation for supposed celebration for prisoners being released to add to what you're saying.
Yeah.
Is there any mechanism like automated mechanisms or is it going to require, because, you know, following something like this, the sort of the media attention, the U.S. attention, particularly, you know, with everything else that's going on with Trump.
seems to diminish, and it's one of those things, okay, we can check this off. Genocide ended.
Is there any mechanism to hold the parties to account here?
Well, if your question is about a specific mechanism incorporated into the terms of the agreement,
I think the answer is no. I think there's a committee that's supposed to meet or whatever,
but the answer is essentially no. Israel's interpretation of a ceasefire is in Gaza.
is going to be very similar to what exists in Lebanon,
whereas ceasefire means that, you know, the Palestinian cease,
but Israel continues to fire,
and that's what we're already seeing in the Gaza Strip.
There's ultimately really only one mechanism,
and that is the United States.
If the United States wants the ceasefire to be strictly upheld,
it will make that clear to Israel,
and Israel will have no choice what to obey.
If Israel continues these kinds of attacks that you're asking me about, that means at the very least that it is doing so with the acquiescence and consent of the United States.
Because I think as you suggested, now that the Gaza genocide is no longer dominating the headlines, there's a feeling that less needs to be done and we can all move on to other things.
And that ultimately, I think, is what will cause either the collapse of this agreement.
or if it doesn't produces the countdown to the next eruption of crisis.
It feels like, though, for the United States to do that, based upon our recent history, regardless of Biden or Trump, whoever was in office, that that pressure, the only pressure that they seem to respond to is the pressure from, you know, Qatar or from Saudi Arabia.
and that's just a function of some hotel deals at this point.
I mean, has that line been drawn, like, directly enough?
Because it feels like that seems to be the limiting principle here.
I don't quite agree.
I think we have seen these states using their leverage with Washington.
And, of course, they've always had this leverage with Washington,
whether it's with Trump or Biden going back all the way to any of their predecessors.
What I think is different this time is that there are also other elements of pressure.
In addition to the leverage that can be bought to bear by states within the region,
and it's not just the oil-rich Gulf states.
You also have, for example, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, and others.
But you have two other factors.
First of all, you have the growing divisions,
within the Maga base, where on the one hand, you have, let's say, the Israel first constituency,
the Christian Zionists, the neocons, the Iran Hawks, and so on. But on the other, we've also seen
the emergence of the non-interventionist faction, people who felt that it was not so much the Gaza
genocide, but rather Israel's attack on Iran, and specifically U.S. participation in that attack,
that for them was the final strong.
That's why you're seeing increasing criticism of Israel now
from within that constituency.
In addition, you have unprecedented popular mobilization in the West,
particularly in Europe, but also in the United States.
And I wouldn't simply dismiss the pressure of public opinion
simply because it's primarily coming from the left
and Trump feels he can ignore it.
you know, these, we already saw with the previous, with the recent presidential election
in the U.S., that you ignore these constituencies at their peril.
And I think that message is increasingly getting through to the political class in many
Western states.
Well, to buttress your point, I mean, Trump was incredibly transactional about it, but he
was meeting with certain Muslim representatives prior to the election as well, in order.
order to kind of shore some of that up, however paper thin it is. I want to just turn to Hamas
for a second because, you know, it feels like Trump kind of yanked Israel by the collar a little bit
here. That's what it looks like, showing that Biden always had the ability to do this
throughout the first part of the genocide. But there was this incredible clip, I mean,
incredible in the sense that you couldn't believe the words were coming out of his mouth of Trump
on, I believe, Air Force One the other day, speaking about how they should leave some of the police
work in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire to Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
And can you lay out what that actually means?
I mean, for me, this is Trump.
Trump goes to the, Trump likes if you're the most powerful group, if you're the biggest
group, and Hamas still is that in the Gaza Strip, which is a failure of Netanyahu's stated
objectives, even though we know that those were false, but two, a failure of some of what Israel
was trying to do in funding gangs that were fighting against Hamas internally in the Gaza Strip
over the past two years of genocide. So if you could just give us a sense of where Hamas stands
also in relation to this agreement. Well, we have this unprecedented situation where on the 29th of
of September, standing on a podium alongside Netanyahu at the White House, Trump unveiled
this proposal, basically said Hamas has several days to unconditionally accept this without any
ifs and or buts, and if they don't, they will face total obliteration. A few days later, Hamas responded
to that proposal by accepting only elements of it, playing to Trump's.
narcissistic vanity by actually thanking him for putting out this proposal that essentially calls
on Hamas to commit political suicide and ignoring those aspects of the proposal that they didn't
like. And then you had this absolutely unprecedented situation where Trump reposted Hamas' response
on his social media and proclaimed that they had accepted his proposal and therefore
negotiations on its implementation could begin. In other words, the United States has now accepted
that its proposal and the terms of its implementation are subject to negotiation and mutual
agreement, because of course, Palestinians were not even consulted on the formulation
of this proposal, whereas Israel was very deeply involved. Now you have a situation where
the future governance of the Gaza Strip remains to be negotiated and agreed, and
the meantime, there's an urgent need for the reestablishment of law and order within the Gaza
strip, within those areas from which Israel has withdrawn. And Hamas, as you mentioned, has reemerged
in public with its arms, imposing law and order, taking on collaborationist militias that are
being dispatched by Israel to foment chaos and disorder. And when Trump was actually,
asked about this on Air Force One on his way to the Middle East, his response was, well,
we are aware of this. And in fact, we recognize the need for the imposition of law and order
and the chaos that is a Gaza Strip until arrangements are concluded about the future governance
of the Gaza Strip. And essentially was saying, I know about this. It has my consent and
authorization. You know, whether he's simply taking credit for something he's unable to stop,
or whether perhaps the Egyptian and Qatari or perhaps others mediators communicated this to
Trump and sought his approval for it is less clear. Well, is it also a convenient pretext for
future bombings for Netanyahu? Because when we're talking about his domestic political situation,
Hamas re-emerging immediately in the aftermath of
this ceasefire is going to piss off everybody in his coalition, let alone even some of the so-called
liberal Israelis who want the hostages back, but are okay with resuming the genocide once that
occurs? That's a very good question. It certainly could serve as a pretext. And I mean,
you know, Israel will always find a pretext to conduct additional bombings and so on. But I think
The key point to understand here now is that decisions about the future of this agreement,
decisions about a partial or full-scale resumption of hostilities are decisions that are not going to be made by Israel.
They are decisions that are going to be made by the United States.
If you see Israel bombing Palestinians, it killed six today.
If you see it gradually once again escalating its aggression against,
the Gaza Strip. That means it has at least the passive acquiescence of Washington, if not
its open support. If Washington, for any reason, feels the guns need to entirely fall silent,
they will, regardless of what the Israeli government or its coalition partners think about the
matter. Can you tell us anything about the hostage exchange, prisoner exchange,
The hundreds have been released from Israeli prisons, people who were detained without
conviction, without any real charges, the hostages, essentially.
But some remain in Israeli prisons, the most prominent of whom Marwan Barthuthi.
Is there anything you can tell us about Hamas's efforts to
secure the release of specific
Palestinians in
Israeli jails? Well,
I think the captive exchange
is quite clearly a
failure for Hamas.
If you recall, in October
2023, and for a long period
after that, Hamas made
clear that the only exchange of captives
it would accept was a release
of all those that it held
in exchange for all those in
Israeli prisons.
2,000 have been released.
released. So the vast majority of Palestinians that are held captive by Israel remain in its prison
system. So we have to be clear about that. Do we know how large that? It's about 8,000 to 10,000,
if I'm not mistaken. And about 2,000 have now been released. 1,700 of those are Palestinians
who were kidnapped from the Gaza Strip after October 23 and who were being held.
without charge or trial and were being held specifically in order to increase Israel's
leverage in a captive exchange. So these were also hostages. They included a young boy with
autism, you know, many women and children and so on. And then 250 of those were supposed to be
Palestinians who were serving life sentences. Now, my understanding is only 190.
have been released, but I don't have specific numbers.
That a number of them are Palestinians who were released in previous captive exchanges, but then re-arrested.
So those don't really belong in that category either.
And the number of them were supposed to be released back to their homes in the West Bank,
and at the last minute, Israel deported them to Egypt.
There were two key figures that I think Hamas was very high.
keen to include in this exchange.
At first is a Fetach leader, Marwan Barhouti, who's been in prison since 2002, and he was
crucial because he's not Hamas.
He's a Fetach leader, and that way Hamas would be able to demonstrate that it was acting
in the national interest, if you will, rather than in its narrow factional interest.
More importantly, he's seen as potentially the most effective challenger to the continued
rule of Mahmoud Abbas and is considered as national.
natural successor, and he's also someone who was keen to see Hamas integrated into the
Palestinian national movement. And it's precisely for these reasons that Israel was determined
to keep him in prison, preferably, until he dies in prison. And that's also the reason,
I think, that the Palestinian leadership, Ramallah Mahmoud Abbas, which has in the past been
incredibly accused of lobbying the Israelis and the Americans not to release Barabuti,
where at this time probably also sending secret messages to Washington and to Israel not to accept his release.
The other is Ahmed Saadat, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
And in his case, it's a question of pure revenge because a PFLP, and I believe it was in 2002,
has carried out the only successful assassination of an Israeli.
cabinet minister, Rehavam Zevi,
far right minister of tourism at the time.
And that was a reprisal for Israel's assassination of Saadat's predecessor
as head of the PFLP.
The threat of a unified Palestinian national movement is every present for Israel.
And Barcluti in particular is a figure that could be that unifying force.
I mean, they do it by land,
fragmented the West Bank in Gaza and of course
fragmentation. This is
a colonial power
101. Should just add
that he polls as the most
popular figure amongst
Palestinians. Right.
And one more question
on my end, Mouin.
This yellow line
piece of
what I'm seeing in terms of
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip basically saying
that half of their land, they are
unable to return to because
is the territory is basically blocked off by Israel, despite them saying they're, you know,
removing the IDF from the Gaza Strip.
There have already been reports that people who have crossed the yellow line have been killed by Israel.
I haven't confirmed that yet.
But this could be another way to cram Palestinians into a smaller territory within the Gaza Strip itself.
What are you hearing about those actions on the ground?
Correct.
And that was, in fact, a major concession that Hamas made in the context of this agreement,
that it did not insist on a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip within a defined timetable.
So we had the first withdrawal to this yellow line.
Then I believe after the remains of the last remaining Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip are returned to Israel,
then they will conduct a second and further withdrawal.
But that, I think, is going to take a very long time
because also today the Red Cross is saying
it's going to be extremely difficult to locate, identify,
and retrieve those remains from what is essentially a pulverized rubble
that Gaza has been transformed into
during Israel's genocidal military campaign of the past two years.
Before we let you go, I know, and out here, is there anything else you think that is important for us to note at this juncture?
Yes, I think it's crucial to understand that, you know, this cessation of hostilities is, of course, extraordinarily welcome, even if it turns out to be just temporary, at least, you know, people who were facing constant bombing, genocide, famine, and so on, have at least got.
in the stay of execution, and we should do everything within our power during this pause
to ensure that it's prolonged and not just to pause. But the second point is what we have
been discussing today is a ceasefire proposal, not a peace plan. And unless there is a concerted
effort to address and resolve the underlying root causes of this crisis, first and foremost,
the Palestinian right to self-determination, then we are counting down to the eruption of the
next catastrophic crisis.
It will be inevitable, whether it comes tomorrow, next year, or in a decade or two.
It will be inevitable.
Juan Robani, thank you so much for your time today.
Much appreciated and hope to speak to you again relatively soon, and hopefully things
will have progressed and stayed on track on some level.
I hope so. It was a pleasure being with you, and thank you for the invitation.
Thanks so much.
All right, folks. We're going to have a quick break, and when we come back, we're going to be talking to Jacob Silverman, journalist, author of Gilded Rage, Elon Musk and the radicalization of Silicon Valley, and also now host of his own podcast companion, The Making of Musk, on the CBC series Understood.
Good. And, of course, a, um, a, uh, a, uh, a former, uh, writer of the A.M. Quickey.
Um, we don't get only the best.
Only the best. We'll be right back.
Thank you.
We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland.
On the majority report, it is always a pleasure to welcome back to the program,
Jacob Silverman, journalist, author of his latest gilded rage, Elon Musk and the radicalization
of Silicon Valley, and now also a podcast host of The Making of Musk, which is part of the
Understood series, the CBC.
Jacob, welcome back to the program.
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Listen to the quality of that audio.
I know.
You can tell you doing a podcast for the Canadians, because they even gave me
one of those pop shields that you might see a little bit in the frame here.
I know.
It's very fancy.
It's very fancy, and it sounds great.
All right, well, let's, I mean, let's start in,
with Elon Musk.
He's been quite a figure.
I don't even know if he was like,
how much has happened to Musk
as you started to write this book?
Yeah.
I was also keeping on sort of a list of things that might happen
between the submitting of the book and the publication.
Unfortunately,
we haven't had too much there.
But, you know,
I started writing the,
right in the book when Musk was having his public breakdown
over the woke mind virus, you might say,
and was, you know.
Which one?
was of the public breakdowns over the woke mind virus was this before after he called the guy
with the submarine uh sus this was after i believe after that but you know he was becoming is airing
these cultural grievances and uh and but wasn't quite yet really devoting himself to politics
in a public way i mean he had he had said up until trump's the attempt to assassination
in butler that he wasn't going to endorse anybody but you could kind of see where things
going and that this was someone who was, you know, cooking his own brain on Twitter along with a lot
of other Silicon Valley elites. And so that's when I really started following it and working on
in book form. And also writing about David Sacks, too, was another way in there for me.
I want to ask you about that. He came out and endorsed Trump after that assassination attempt.
But it was also, if I remember correctly, either days before he...
he uh, Trump had announced, uh, Vance or just days after. And, and I wonder my theory at that time,
and I wonder what you think about this because it ties in with the community that Musk is coming from
is that really Musk was intending to endorse Trump because it was clear Vance was going to be
the VP. And the in Vance was the pick of Peter Thiel. And I wonder also Musk, like if that, if that community
got the message.
Vance indicates that the door's going to open for Sacks,
the door's going to open for crypto,
the door's going to open for all of our tech,
you know, Curtis Jarvinism.
Yeah, I think it would have come at any point that summer,
but, you know, the attempted assassination
was this big theatrical, highly chronicled moment
that, I don't know,
appeal to the sense of drama,
in some of these guys in the sense that also that they were somehow under siege alongside
of Trump.
I mean, I quote in the book, Sean McGuire, this very right-wing VC and very public about
his right-wing conversion, who works at Sequoia, very important firm in the Valley.
And he tweet at least 50 times that day and was very excited and galvanized by this
assassination attempt.
So the groundwork was being laid before with dinners.
were being hosted by Sacks and other people
were Musk, I believe, attended
some of them. And Vance
was the guy they wanted, which at one
of these dinners that Trump was at
at Sacks's mansion in San Francisco.
Basically, everyone
assembled there said, you should
pick Vance. Unfortunately, Doug
Bergam was also in attendance, but no one
really mentioned his name.
Did people even recognize that he was
there? I wouldn't
say so, but who knows?
The Bergamentum must have not
been as strong that day. Let's talk about how that cadre of people shifted in terms of their
politics. I know that's like, you know, the beginning of your book, essentially, is that shift.
What, what was that shift a function of? And was it actually real or was it just sort of more like
we feel more comfortable, you know, loosening our ties, essentially?
Well, that's a good way to put it.
I mean, there are a few categories, I'd say,
and some of that we see playing out right now with,
you know, there are people who seem more opportunistic,
like Tim Cook at Apple, perhaps,
or leaders of Alphabet or Microsoft
who worry about antitrust issues
or Zuckerberg himself, I mean, is in his sort of like mini-manosphere phase,
but I think also someone like him,
like Trump has threatened to put him in jail, which is ridiculous, but also not because this is
Trump. So, you know, there is the crew that was sort of operating, I think I was self-preservation,
opportunism, the lure of government contracts, which is so huge and actually really fundamental,
I think, towards this reorientation that, you know, government is no longer something to be
suspicious of or much less to see as an adversary in any way. But this is where you're going to
make a lot of money. But there were, especially during 2020, and during that summer that so many
people went mad, the beginnings, I think, of a lot of cultural shifts in politics and social life that
affected people, affected billionaires just as much as they affected everyday people, but sometimes
in different ways. So there was anger about COVID shutdowns and quarantine measures and inability
to run, say, the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. There was,
Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements, and then more recently, the social justice, excuse me,
more recently the Gaza Solidarity movements and protests over these companies work with Israeli government.
And all of these kinds of social and political movements really struck these people as intolerable,
as things that they would not accept. And I think for different people, those were important
kind of catalysts or mile markers on the road to radicalization.
how much for for for for for musk when he bought like what was his agenda when he bought a Twitter was it just simply a function that he was you know upset about the woke mind virus and upset about his trans daughter and um how how much of that or was it did he actually think that he was going to because it feels like he's not talking about this anymore but
He was going to make a sort of one-stop, you know, pay service and social media and, you know, whatever X was going to be because it covers everything.
There was video streaming.
They were trying with Tucker.
Oh, go on, Jacob.
Okay, we lost your audio.
Hold on.
Let's see.
If we need to, we can cut to a break.
That fancy mic setup.
up. We'll be right back. We'll cut to a break. We're going to cut to a break and we'll get
Jacob right back. Sorry, we are back now. And we were just talking about what was Elon Musk's
actual agenda when he purchased Twitter? Because for me, it felt like he was actually had these
aspirations and thought that he could sort of create a all-in-one destination for payments and social
media and video. And when that became apparent that he couldn't do that, he sort of pivoted to
like, well, I really just did it because I wanted to make sure that, well, Donald Trump won the
election or the woke mind virus was snuffed out and comedy was going to be legal again or something
like that. Well, I think he did have some of those everything app aspirations. And, you know,
people have talked about how he wanted to make sort of like one of these China.
I need super apps like WeChat or one of these other ones where you can conduct your whole life through it.
But it's kind of hard to do that when you take over a company and then gut 70% of the workforce.
How do you build it into something bigger?
They've still, I believe, applied for or received some money transmitter licenses.
So especially with the stable coin bill passing, I think you could see X integrating more payments in some form or another because every app is going to want to become like a stable coin payments app.
But, yeah, and I think also the factor that it was a website or a platform that he was personally obsessed with.
I think that matter a lot.
It's been very important for cultivating, well, his cult of personality, the Tesla kind of shareholder phenomenon of this incredibly overvalued stock.
And then it does seem like the politics kind of came later or an add-on.
I mean, but ultimately, I also think that as we ramped up towards the election,
And you could see this in some of the studies that came out about what was going on, perhaps, with the X algorithm.
And they were certainly promoting conservative accounts in addition to Musk himself.
So, you know, it became that tool towards promoting Trump maybe a little bit later or that was kind of bolted on as a sense of purpose.
But it did end up getting there.
Well, since you brought up the algorithms and the promoting of these right wing accounts, I'm curious about your take on Silicon Valley and these apps promoting very inflamed.
racialized and urban crime content in particular because when you look at Peter Thiel and you see what you read Gil Duran as well like what these guys think about when they think about urban spaces they want them to be privatized and they want them to be clean and safe according to them and they achieve that through mass surveillance which is obviously the business of many of the Silicon Valley billionaires so it it was a
interesting that Instagram also deprioritized political content during the election or made it more
difficult to access and then brought it back afterwards. Like, it felt like more than ever these guys
were putting their thumbs on the scales in ways that further a right-wing project.
Yeah, I would say so. I mean, these are polarizing platforms and we know that their
their fingers are on the dials. And in the case of Musk, you know, sometimes he's very close to the
the coders who are tinkering with this stuff and you know almost literally yelling at them to
adjust the dial so that more of his content is shown and in that way also musk became one of
like the tastemakers of the 2024 media cycle where these out of context or misleadingly edited
or just overwrought videos of someone having a psychotic break or someone being homeless and doing
drugs in public became viral fodder for conservative media everywhere. I mean, this was like a
daily or constant thing that came to represent the failures of San Francisco, of Democratic
governance, of liberals. And Musk was a big part of that through the website he bought and
through his own kind of consumption. I think in the last couple of years, you know, he, at least
before the last election, he replaced for a little while Trump as kind of the, the, the
setter of the news cycle in a lot of ways when every tweet of his you know became a thousand
articles immediately um let's uh i want to get to sort of the where we are in crypto because it is
seems highly problematic uh where we are in terms of crypto uh but before we get there what was doge about
i mean was this like we we don't really know what elan
Musk walked away with in terms of our data, right?
That seems to be an open question.
But what was Doge about?
Because he was sort of like, I'm trying to use a phraseology that's not obscene.
He was blocking Russell vote in terms of like Russell votes attempt to cut government down and debilitate the government.
And it was almost like Russell vote had to put his.
uh his plan into effect like six months later than he had planned uh because doge was getting in
the way and doing it in a very um ham fisted or uh inefficient way they were tried to impose supposedly
efficient like what was doge actually supposed to be i mean that may also be a reflection of the
fact that these tech guys think that one they know everything and they are first to every idea
and that they are not really fit to cooperate with others or be dictated to by someone like
Russell Vote who comes from a different world.
But I think the data grab is actually hugely important.
You know, I think there needs to be more reporting on this, but I've spoken to some
Capitol Hill staffers who think that, you know, the amount of data of very sensitive personal
data on Americans, of course, like the entire Social Security system pretty much, and market
data and anything else has flowed out of U.S. government systems and into X-A-I. And I didn't
really mention this before, but that is also something that X or Twitter became important for
for must is just a feeder of real-time data into X-AI. And this is an enormous competitive
advantage. I think Musk himself did have these aspirations of, you know, taking a
or taking a hatchet to the government and hollowing it out. And so,
somehow efficiencies would bloom, but also enormous opportunities for automation AI systems that
he can sell to the government. He already does have some contracts that he's managed to seal in the
last few months through XAI and undercutting the prices of some of these other AI companies. But
ideologically or actually programmatically, like how he thought he was going to get this done,
It was clearly not well-planned.
But if you look at it kind of as a smash-and-grab,
for this data, it certainly worked that way.
And the last thing I would say is that over the summer,
Joe Lonsdale, very prominent venture capitalists
and part of this network that we're talking about,
said most of our Doge people are still in place.
Like a lot of these people who are allied with the right-wing tech elites
we're talking about or are direct kind of must disciples
are still in various positions across the federal government
not doing we don't always know what oh well that's not that comforting it's not that comforting
i mean it's sort of i sometimes it's like too hard to wrap one's head around that so much of
the complete chaos and destruction uh that our government was thrown into that are the chaos
the destruction that's taken place is just a function of a dude with just like way too
much self-esteem.
Yeah, a very thin layer of it in a way, because we can see how insecure he is at times.
But, I mean, he said, and this is something we mentioned the podcast that I did,
which is that basically any organization he enters, he has to be in charge of,
which is not a surprising characteristic.
But this also shows why he's just kind of, in his brief time, as a special government
employee, came in, like, with this whirlwind and wreaked all this destruction, a lot of
which had to be immediately undone by bringing people back just for practical reasons.
But it is remarkable how much of this is because one person wanted it that way.
Let's talk about where he had a brief falling out with Trump, claimed he was going to get out of politics.
That seemed to be a function of real discontent at Tesla with both shareholders and the board of
directors that he was splitting his focus, you know, doing too much pretending on behalf of the
government and not enough pretending on behalf of Tesla. And, but subsequent to that, there seemed to
have been, it seems like he patched things up and that I've seen conflicting reports as to how much
money he's going to spend in the midterm elections. Do you have a sense of like where he is in
terms of his resources because when he failed in Wisconsin, it seems to me, it was written on the wall.
I mean, there were two things that are happening. He failed on a political matter for the
administration. And so all of a sudden they realized, like, he's toxic if he actually shows up.
His money's okay. But if he shows up and people are labeled as taking Musk money, he's toxic
politically. And then the Tesla sort of like uprising was happening at that time. They were,
you know, supposedly shopping around for a new CEO. And so he has to leave. But where is he now
in terms of what he's intending to do in the midterms? Well, I don't think we're going to see
the America party that he was time out a few months ago. I mean, he has obviously very little
follow through when it comes to politics. But that's almost why the midterm cycle might suit him to
just parachute in, you know, drop a hundred or two hundred million dollars on some candidates he
likes, and then hopefully for everyone's sake, leave. But the problem becomes if he wants to
actually, like, show up on stage with Thomas Massey or something like that, or maybe not
a problem for the rest of us. But I think he'll still be involved and still be throwing around
money, but in the way that he chooses, which is not necessarily, you know, always in line with
the Republican Party's priorities.
And, I mean, one other thing I think is worth noting, the Tesla board is, like, one of the
most pliant, sycophantic boards around, I would guess.
And the fact that, like, they actually made him nervous and kind of had to reel him in
is very significant.
And I think where a lot of must attentions should probably lie in the next couple of years,
I mean, Tesla sales are plummeting worldwide.
China is making better cars that are cheaper and everyone hates him.
So, you know, he did this one, they gave him this another offer of, oh, if you reach these insane milestones, he'll get a trillion dollars.
He did this $1 billion share buyback, which juice the stock price.
That makes shareholders in the board a little happier.
And it kind of shows that he's willing to be more involved with the company.
So I think, you know, he's not always someone who operates logically or towards his own best interest.
But if he were in this case, I think he would just put some money into the middle.
terms and then try to keep his head down and work on Tesla.
But, you know, he probably won't follow that path.
Let's talk a little bit about crypto.
How past the Rubicon are we?
I mean, and I don't, I haven't followed up on, but at one point,
there was talk of allowing crypto to be collateral for mortgages,
which seems really, really dangerous based upon the volatility of crypto.
Like I, you know, I always like see crypto valuations out of the periphery and read like,
oh, somebody showed up today and shorted several billion dollars worth of crypto for like a three weeks out.
And it sort of feels like there's just constant manipulation in the,
the most stable of crypto markets.
And that's the most stable.
Yeah.
Like, where are we at right now?
Like how can we ever go?
Can we have an address whether we can ever actually go back?
I mean, I have no problem with people, you know, trading crypto in the same way.
I have no problem with people trading tulips.
But I don't want something that is so volatile to be so close.
associated and integral to our regular financial system.
And that's really the problem, which is that the consumer interests or retail interests, as they
call it, in crypto, is not really there anymore. It's not what it was in summer of 2022 when
things were kind of peaking, but also falling apart. Sam Bankman-Fried got arrested in December
of 2022, and FTX fell apart in November. And since then, there was this brief
or crypto winter, then a lot of money started coming back into the system, somewhat surprisingly.
And now they look towards government and institutional money the industry does for their sources
of cash and to pump the values of their tokens. And the problem now is with all the legislation
that's been passed, thank you, Kirsten-Jillibrand, and all these various regulations that have
been dismantled. And investigatory units at the SEC, FBI, DOJ, elsewhere relate to
crypto crime that have been dismantled.
We are just being forced to play by crypto's rules, and they are being given more and more
access to mainstream financial system and to mainstream financial products.
So you have all these what are called Bitcoin treasury companies.
This is like micro strategy, but there are a bunch of others now that are just buying
Bitcoin or some of them are buying other crypto, like some are buying millions of dollars
worth of Trump coin.
And then they're doing the SPAC thing and merging, so there's suddenly a publicly trading
company that only holds Bitcoin or only holds Solana or something like that. And then, you know,
then your retirement account decides, okay, we're going to invest in micro strategy. And suddenly
you're exposed to all this stuff. And I mean, it's sort of being daisy chain throughout the financial
system where there are all these ways in which people are going to be exposed to crypto into a potential
crash in crypto, which we know is coming, whether they like it or not. And there's no underlying
productive economic activity here. And then the second part is, I mean, this is the most
financially corrupt presidency we've ever seen and crypto is the vehicle and the mechanism
and what makes it all possible. And we're so far beyond any accountability for that. And that
is so tied in with that new sort of regulatory landscape I was just talking about that we're in
big trouble. Well, the one like bit of hope, I guess, that maybe I can provide the conversation is
that Dave Weigel and Semaphore had an article that came out this, or yesterday, I believe,
speaking about how data centers raising people's electricity prices so intensely is becoming a bit of a political kind of issue in some of these races,
including in Virginia, and the energy intensiveness of it and say the federal government's complete lack of desire and inability to rein it in at this point,
given the Genius Act and given who we've staffed and who's in the administration,
there's a potential here that didn't exist before, I would say, to make this a populist
issue on the ballot.
And you can even tie in climate into that in ways that we hadn't previously.
Yeah, I think that's a very good point in that, you know, with something like crypto or
AI, people may not understand it for, for, you know, understandable reasons or they might
may find the subject kind of mystifying, but when you talk about electricity bills going up 200
percent, and it's because they're building this data center near you that doesn't really
provide any tangible benefits to anyone's life, which is also a good way to talk about this stuff,
I think.
Then it's more meaningful, I think, yeah, it can be politically galvanizing.
And you hear some senators starting to talk about that now, too, that, you know, people aren't
happy at the resource consumption and the people pushing it, like Sam.
Malman because like what what are we really getting back in return um jacob silverman the book is
gilded rage Elon Musk and the radicalization of Silicon Valley uh and the companion podcast
the making of must a musk part of the cbc understood uh series uh we will put links to both
those um happily for you sadly for the rest of us uh this stuff is going to be uh
very, very relevant in terms of defining the near and midterm and perhaps long-term future of
this country, our economy. And so really an exceptional favor to us all for the work you've done
on this. Really appreciate it. I appreciate you all. Thank you.
Thanks, Jacob. All right, folks. We're going to take a break, head into the fun half of the program.
Uh, just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible.
You become a member at join the majority report.com.
When you do, you're not only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half.
And you allow this show to survive and thrive and train, uh, you know, Matt on a 16 camera, multi-channel, uh, telestream.
Well, I got trained on that last night.
Yeah.
Uh, that's, uh, that's.
It was like a grand piano's length of a soundboard.
It was crazy.
When I walked into that room and saw you guys in there, I was like, oh, shit.
There was joysticks.
Yeah.
It looked kind of like a church organ, to your point.
Yeah, it was like an old count playing a giant organ.
Also, don't forget, just coffee.
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Use the coupon code majority.
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Majority Discord.com.
Matt, Left Reckoning.
Speaking of future Senate, speaking of Senate candidates.
Yeah, tonight, Left Reckoning, we have a candidate for Congress, Hartsler Gray in Missouri,
who is running against Alford, I believe, in a.
a district out there.
Also Alex Scopic of
current affairs talking about his piece
about Javier Malay and
the rush to crown him
a genius policy guy
that lasted about
four months. Yeah. The picture they chose for that
current affairs chose for that article is so
funny. Very funny. So yeah
that's all tonight at a 7 o'clock
Eastern time. Thank you to the
50,000 strong subscribers
on YouTube and growing
Twitchbase.
Charge.
Yes, and as always, you can watch us on Twitch as well, Poggers.
And Rumble.
And Rumble?
What does the Rumble, does Rumble have any?
Get, let's get ready.
Is there any?
Yeah, they just rip off.
We've got 10 live at Rumble right now.
I know we have 10, 10 viewers, which is probably like a 25% increase in where we generally are, 30%.
Maxing out.
But is there like, you know.
It's all the most ironic people.
Twitch has hype trains and poggers, but Rumble, what do they have?
Just, they just sell, say, like, racial epithets?
There's a, there's a small sect of, like, ironic posters on Rumble with names like
pandemic anxiety.
And I feel like the person chatting now is, what is it?
Pandemic anxiety is a, is a, is an I-MER who I think does us a solid by watching us on Rumble.
Yeah, exactly.
them and the other 12 people.
So appreciate your...
Oh, 12.
We just added another 20%.
That's about, yeah, 50% higher than we usually are.
I'll say the ad right now that's being shown and says,
Liberals laughed at RFK Jr's COVID warning, dot, dot, dot, until this happened.
Can you click on it?
Okay.
It's a guarantee to virus.
Let's give the main broadcast computer of a rumble virus.
Curiosity killed the computer.
Dark Soul says you guys can go on.
kick and be one of the streams that aren't snuff. Okay.
Yeah, kick seems even worse than Rumble, which is insane. Like,
it's, you just like have to be a rancid Nazi to be on that side.
All right, folks, uh, see you in the fun half.
Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's
going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's
necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now.
But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow.
What?
What is that going on?
It's nuts.
Wait a second.
Hold on for, hold on for a second.
The majority report.
Emma, welcome to the program.
Hey.
Fun pack.
Matt.
What is up, everyone?
Fun pack.
No, me.
You did it.
Fun pack.
Let's go.
Let's go Brandon.
Let's go Brandon.
On the crap.
Bradley, you want to say hello?
Sorry to disappointment.
Everyone, I'm just a random guy.
It's all the boys today.
Fundamentally false.
No, I'm sorry.
Women's...
Stop talking for a second.
Let me finish.
Where is this coming from, dude?
But, dude, you want to smoke this?
7.8.
Yes.
Hi, me.
Is this name?
Yes.
It's me
It is you
It is you
Is it's me
I think it is you
Who is you
No sound
Every single
Fricking day
What's on your mind
We can discuss free markets
And we can discuss capitalism
I'm gonna go to life
Libertarians
They're so stupid though
Common sense says of course
Gobbled e-gook
We fucking nailed them
So what's 79 plus 21
Challenge met.
I'm positively clovering.
I believe 96, I want to say.
857.
210.
35.
501.
One half.
3-8s.
9-11 for instance.
$3,400.
$1,900.
$6.5,4, $3 trillion sold.
It's a zero-sum game.
Actually, you're making me think less.
But let me say this.
Poop.
You can call it satire.
Sam goes satire.
On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day.
everything you do it without a doubt hey buddy we see you
all right folks folks folks
it's just the week being weeded out obviously yeah
suns out guns out I don't know but you should know
people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore I have a question
who cares
Our chat is enabled, folks.
Wow. I love it.
I do love that.
Look, got to jump.
I got to be quick.
I get a jump.
I'm losing it, bro.
Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick.
So screw him.
Sent to a gulaw?
Outrage.
Like, what is wrong with you?
Love you, bye.
Love you.
Bye-bye.
