The Young Turks - Foiled Fani
Episode Date: June 6, 2024Georgia court of appeals indefinitely pauses the election subversion conspiracy case against Donald Trump. ICC sanctioned by the U.S. House on behalf of war criminals in Israel, which has a history of... spying on and intimidating the court. ""The marginalized should just be allowed to break the rules"" is bigoted and unworkable. Feds raid a corporate landlord and the escalating nationwide criminal probe of rent increases." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show.
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Gettysburg, wow.
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The guy!
Live from the Polymarket Studio in L.A.
It's the Young Turks.
Hello, hello, and welcome to TYT. I'm your host, Anna Kasparian.
And I gotta be honest, I'm super excited for today's show.
We're gonna have a wonderful guest on, he's a writer, you should be subscribed to his substack,
and if you haven't heard of him before, well, find him and subscribe to him.
His name is Freddie DeBore, he's an incredible writer.
And he's gonna come on to talk about honestly what I think is a controversial issue for many
on the left. But he's been incredibly brave in broaching the topic. And yes, it has to do with
some of the failures with criminal justice reform. So we're gonna get to that later in the first
hour. We're also going to discuss what's really behind inflation. The lever did an incredible
investigative report on this. And so I'll be touching on that topic in the first hour today.
Also, one of the biggest corporate landlords just got rated by the FBI, and so we're gonna cover that because we gotta cover some good news, no.
And in the second hour, one of my favorite stories, it's the Chipotle story, but there's some lighter content in the second hour that I think you guys will all enjoy.
But what I wanted to start the show off with today is some news that broke later in the day, and it has to do with the Georgia election interference
case. Before we get to that, though, just want to encourage you all to like and share the
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All right, well let's get to the Fulton County prosecution of Donald Trump and how it's headed
possibly nowhere. Fulton County DA Fawnee Willis's election interference case on Donald Trump
will I guess be indefinitely postponed. This is not good news. It seems like it
will not be adjudicated before the 2024 election.
And that's based on something that broke in the news today.
So the Georgia Court of Appeals has essentially paused the case thanks to Trump's insistence
that Willis prosecute herself over her appointing Nathan Wade, someone she previously had a romantic
relationship with as the lead prosecutor.
Now as many of you probably already know, Nathan Wade is no longer on the case.
After multiple hearings, the judge decided to pressure Fannie Willis to do away with him.
She did do away with him, and you would assume that the case would move forward.
But of course, the Trump legal team is going to deploy all sorts of delay tactics, and
that's exactly what's happening here.
So here's how the legal back and forth has gone down.
Trump and eight of his co-defendants in the sprawling racketeering case brought by Willis's office had pushed for her to be disqualified,
because of a personal relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
But Judge Scott McAfee denied the bid and said Willis and her office could continue
their work on the case if Wade withdrew, which he did.
Trump and a group of his co-defendants then appealed the decision.
And so the appeal is part of the delay tactics, right?
The problem is the delay tactics work and prosecutors know,
that prosecutors should be aware of that, which is why I wish Fannie Willis, who brought this case
and was elected as district attorney of Fulton County, made the decision to maybe prosecute Trump
a little earlier in the game, expecting that there would be delayed tactics deployed.
Now, three judges were selected to hear the appeal. While this is, again, likely a delay tactic,
it's clear that it's working. Oral arguments are tentatively expected to be.
begin in early October, the judges have until mid March of 2025 to make their ruling on
this appeal.
And so obviously there is a timing issue there.
And as a result of this delay, it is unlikely that Trump will be tried on this case before
the election takes place.
Now I wanna be clear about something.
This is different from the federal prosecution on election interference, that's
That's the case that's being prosecuted by special counsel Jack Smith.
And that is the case that Trump, should he be elected as president, could potentially just
dismiss and pardon himself on.
That's not the case with the Georgia election interference case.
So I'm unclear as to what would happen should Trump get elected.
He would not be able to pardon himself, but there is some possibility that we would have
to wait for his term to end in order for the prosecution to continue.
Now, should the appeals court rule in favor of Trump and remove Fawney Willis from the case,
a new prosecutor or office would have to be assigned by a state panel.
And that process could give Trump even more time, right?
That's gonna lead to more delays.
But whoever loses the appeal can themselves appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court, and the
legal back and forth would continue.
So Fannie Willis decided to announce that she was inditing Trump for the fake elector's scheme
three years after it happened.
And look, that might be totally fine if the person that we're talking about here, the prosecutor
we're talking about here, district attorney Fannie Willis, what were elected in 2022 during
the midterms, but she was elected in 2020.
And I get that it takes a little bit of time to gather the evidence to see if you have a case
to begin with. I just feel like she could have announced that she's prosecuting Trump a little
earlier in the game. She made the announcement in August of last year. So look, I've said before,
her decision to, you know, appoint Nathan Wade as the lead prosecutor in this case was an
irresponsible move because it led to a lot of these delays. You might disagree entirely. You might
think, no, Fannie Willis, no wrongdoing there. But in prosecuting a former president,
you got to cross your T's and dot your eyes and you have to be super careful because you know
that his legal team is looking for any potential issue. They're going to make a big deal about
it and they're going to do it specifically to delay the trial. And that is what we're seeing
here right now.
It's crazy.
It's crazy that in my opinion, out of all the indictments, the weakest one, which was the
hush money case, it was the only one that ended up happening before the election.
And it's the only one where Trump has been found guilty.
And again, it's just weird to me that that was the first case that had any progress.
Because the actual important cases, in my opinion, are the classified documents case.
is the classified documents case and the election interference cases, both the federal one
and the one in Fulton County, Georgia. So we'll see how this all plays out. But right now,
things are looking real good for Donald Trump.
Buy your tickets now and get a free chili dog.
Chili dog, not included.
The naked God.
Tickets on sale now.
August 1st.
Let's get to the details.
In a show of support for Israel, the Republican-led House approved a bill to punish the ICC
for its decision to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli leaders over the war in Gaza.
House lawmakers, whose only real accomplishment is taking part in the least productive Congress
in American history, have demonstrated that there is one issue that they care about deeply
enough to roll up their sleeves and get to work on. Now, it has nothing to do with the American
people or the constituents who place them in their position of power that they enjoy today.
The drinking water in their districts might be contaminated with lead or the homeless population
could be exploding due to the lack of affordable housing in their districts. I'm looking at you,
Congressman Brad Sherman. We hear that there's just too much gridlock to do a damn thing about the
horrific conditions and increasing percentage of Americans are living in. But when it's
When it comes to providing cover for the crimes committed by the Israeli government against
the Palestinian people, well suddenly gridlock isn't much of an issue.
Which is why the House of Representatives has passed a bill imposing sanctions against the
international criminal court or ICC.
The House passed the bill in a 247 to 155 vote with 42 Democrats joining Republicans
in support.
Two GOP members voted present.
Wow, look at that beautiful.
full bipartisanship. Wow. In reality, this decision marks a dark new development in the
ongoing tensions between the United States and the ICC over its investigations into
Israel's war crimes. Now let's back up a little and figure out how we got here in the first place.
Last month, ICC prosecutor Kareem Khan announced on CNN that the ICC was seeking
arrest warrants for Hamas leadership.
A Christian, we've applied for warrants to the pre-trial chamber of the International Criminal Court
in relation to three individuals that are Hamas members, Sinwa, who's in charge on the ground.
That's Yahya Sinwa.
Absolutely.
Dave, who's in charge of the Al-Karsen Brigade, and Hanya, who's one of their political bureau based in Doha.
The chief prosecutor's decision absolutely makes sense, considering the disgusting atrocities
that were committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians on October 7th.
Around 1,200 people were killed, hostages were taken, and even children were slaughtered.
No one has a problem with the ICC targeting Hamas.
Well, I mean other than Hamas, of course.
But Karim Khan announced something else that enraged US lawmakers and the Israel lobby.
which, of course, sustains the political careers of said politicians.
You have also issued warrants against the top political and military leadership of the government of the state of Israel.
We've applied for warrants. Of course, the judges must determine whether or not to issue them,
but we've applied today. We'll apply for warrants for Prime Minister Netanyahu
and also Minister of Defense, Gallant, for the crimes of...
causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war,
including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies,
deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.
And the sad thing really is in relation to both categories.
Many believe that genocide is being committed, but you do not.
You're not using that word.
Well, this is an active investigation, and we have criminal charges that we can use.
use, genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
In relation to this current stage of investigations, the charges that we've put forward
to the judges do not include genocide.
The fact that the ICC would even consider arrest warrants for Israeli leadership, not only
enraged Israel, but it also infuriated American lawmakers, even though the ICC does not
have its own enforcement mechanism and has relied on country's support.
for arrests. A decision to seek arrest warrants doesn't immediately mean an individual is guilty,
but is the first stage in a process that could lead to a lengthy trial. But even though Israel
and the United States have not ratified the ICC treaty, all of Europe has joined the international
court. So if someone accused of war crimes visits any of the ICC countries, they could be
arrested and tried at the Hague. If convicted, they could be sent to prison. And while ICC
Chief Prosecutor Khan doesn't want to accuse Israel of committing genocide yet, some Holocaust survivors
certainly do. Ari and Nair, he's a giant in the world of human rights and a survivor of
genocide himself. He was born a Jew in Nazi Germany. You, I think, only one time accused a country
of genocide.
Yes.
Saddam Hussein attempt to eliminate the Kurds.
The Kurds.
You have concluded that Israel is guilty of attempting genocide.
Yes.
That's a very heavy charge.
Yes.
Two thousand pound bombs which are utterly inappropriate in a crowded urban area.
A bomb like that can kill somebody two football fields away.
But our lawmakers have dismissed arguments like the one you just heard.
and have opted to punish the international criminal court instead.
Here's Republican Congressman Chip Roy,
fillating Israel on the House floor just yesterday
while promoting the sanctions legislation he himself introduced.
We're here because the international criminal court
is seeking to issue warrants
on the prime minister of Israel.
It merits letting that just sit out here
and marinate for a second, that that's what we're dealing with.
Cool, I'm sitting, it's marinating, and yep, I think it's a good idea. Continue.
This is Israel. This is not some random entity. This is Israel, our close ally.
Is it? How? Was Israel our ally when Netanyahu fought real hard to persuade the United
States to carry out a preemptive war in Iraq in 2000?
I know I'm not supposed to be talking about this.
A country, by the way, that had nothing to do with 9-11.
Take out Saddam, Saddam's regime.
I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.
And I think that people sitting right next door in Iran, young people,
and many others will say the time of such regimes, of such jestbots, is gone.
The application of power is the most important thing in winning the war.
thing in winning the war on terrorism. If I had to say, what are the three principles
of winning the war on terror? It's like what are the three principles of real estate,
the three L's, location, location, location. The three principles of winning the war on terror
are the three W's, winning, winning, and winning.
Yeah, there was no winning. Remember when our government exploited the tragic terror attack
on 9-11 to lie to the American people about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction? So we'd all
be okay with invading them? Turns out that part of the reason why we invaded Iraq was because
Israel was perceiving Iraq as a security threat. So the Bush administration sacrificed the men and
women in our military to fight Israel's war. It all makes sense now, doesn't it? And it came at a
tremendous cost to the American people. The Defense Department estimates the United States spent
$728 billion directly on the war in Iraq from the 2003 through 2012 fiscal years.
The official withdrawal happened a few months into the 2012 fiscal year. 4,492 U.S. service
members were killed in Iraq. 32,292 service members were wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilians were also killed.
If you think what I'm saying is outrageous, that's totally fine.
This is forbidden information among the American media, I get it.
But I'm not afraid, and there's a super thick book about it with lots of receipts called
the Israel Lobby, which was written by political scientist John Mearsheimer and Stephen
Walt.
I highly, highly recommend the read.
So what do sanctions against the ICC mean?
Well, right now it's unclear whether the Senate will take this.
legislation on, meaning that the House bill might just go nowhere.
Biden shockingly says he's against ICC sanctions to his credit.
So even if the Senate does pass the bill, there's a chance that Biden won't sign it.
But look, I wouldn't gamble on that since Biden tends to reverse course anytime he lightly
jabs Israel.
But if the sanctions become law, it is important to know what the bill includes.
According to the legislative text, the bill would impose sanctions on individuals engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.
The sanctions include prohibiting U.S. property transactions and blocking and revoking visas.
Just pathetic.
And it's not the first time the United States has sanctioned the ICC.
In fact, I remember when Democrats made a huge deal over this.
The U.S. has brought sanctions against the International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor
and one of her top aides of investigations into war crimes allegations against U.S. forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The penalties which include a freeze on asset subject to U.S. law, subject to U.S. law,
target prosecutor Fatu Ben Suda, and the ICC's head of jurisdiction for Kisu Mucucuccian.
The U.S. has never been a member of the ICC, which was created to pursue crimes against
humanity cases where other judicial recourse isn't available.
Trump's administration has called the court corrupt.
Rights groups have condemned the move against the ICC accusing the U.S. of bullying.
Well, speaking of bullying, an explosive report by The Guardian and Israeli magazine's 972 and
local call highlights the insane threats and intimidation tactics Israel has been to
deploying against the ICC for nearly a decade.
Obviously, this occurred even before this ongoing war in Gaza.
The pieces titled, Spying, Hacking, and Intimidation, Israel's nine-year war on the ICC
exposed.
Here's what the investigation found.
Israel deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear, and allegedly
threatened senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiry.
This was overseen by Netanyahu's national security advisors and involved Israel spy agency,
the Shinbet, as well as the military's intelligence directorate, Amman, and Cyber Intelligence
Division Unit 8200. Then the intelligence gleaned from the spying and hacking was disseminated
to government ministries of justice, foreign affairs, and strategic affairs. Israeli intelligence
captured the communications of numerous ICC officials, including Kareem Khan and his predecessor
as prosecutor Fatu Ben Suda, intercepting phone calls, messages, emails, and documents.
Bensuta was the chief prosecutor who opened the ICC's investigation on Israel, and in 2019
announced that she intended to investigate Israel's alleged atrocities during its 2014 war in Gaza.
I am satisfied, one, that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.
Two, that potential cases arising from the situation would be admissible.
And three, that there are no substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interest of justice.
That right there is a badass woman, and her bravery knows no bounds as you're about to find.
Especially when you find out what Israel did to her, you're about to hear the details from Kenneth Roth,
who is an international affairs scholar and former head of human rights watch.
The Israelis clearly misjudged Fatu Ben Suda.
One person is quoted as saying they thought of her as basically merely black and African.
cares, as they put it. But she's a tough woman. And she resisted, you know, these threats to
her family, a sting operation against her husband. And she didn't have to act at that point
because the court authorized the investigation to go forward in February 2021, near the end
of Ben Suda's term in June 2021. So she could have just sat on it and let Kareem Khan, her successor,
take over. She didn't. I met with her numerous times. She is super professional. She is
dedicated to justice, she knew she was facing threats and she just persisted. And that's
really to her credit. I think the Israelis totally underestimated her. They thought that she could
be pushed over with these threats and it totally didn't happen. Right? I mean, come on, how
brave is this woman? And according to The Guardian, on January 16th, 2015, within weeks of Palestine
joining the ICC as a member, Ben Suda opened a preliminary examination into what in the
legalese of the court was called the situation in Palestine.
The following month, two men who had managed to obtain the prosecutor's private address turned
up at her home in the Hague.
Sources familiar with that incident said the men refused to identify themselves.
They then said that they wanted to hand deliver a message to Ben Suda.
The envelope contained hundreds of dollars in cash and a note with an Israeli phone number.
Sources with knowledge of an ICC review into the incident said that while it was not possible
to identify the men or fully establish their motives, it was concluded that Israel was likely
trying to signal to the prosecutor that it knew where she lived.
The ICC reported the incident to Dutch authorities and put in place additional security, installing
CCTV cameras at her home. And thanks to Israel's access to Palestinian communications infrastructure,
they were able to listen in on Bensuta and her staff as they spoke to Palestinians without
even having to install spyware on the ICC's devices. If Fatu Bensuta spoke to any person in the
West Bank or Gaza, then that phone call would enter intercept systems, one source said. Another
said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the prosecutor, adding with
Bensuda, she's black and African, so who cares? And this effort was still
ongoing during the current war in Gaza, clearly. I mean, it's been going on for nine
years. The surveillance, the surveillance was ongoing in recent months, providing
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with advanced knowledge of the
prosecutor's intentions. A recent
Intercepted Communication suggested that Khan wanted to issue arrest warrants against Israelis,
but was under tremendous pressure from the United States, according to a source familiar
with its contents. As for the Israeli government, well, I mean, they deny all of this, like
they deny every awful thing they do. Israel, like the United States, also says that the ICC has
no jurisdiction over their country, since they are not a member state of the international
court. The U.S. has made that argument, except they abandoned that argument when it was
inconvenient, as you're about to hear. The U.S. was concerned with what's known as territorial
jurisdiction. The fact that the court has the power to prosecute somebody for crimes committed
on the territory of a court member, even if the person's own country has never ratified
the court's treaty. Now, the U.S. hated that because it could mean Americans are vulnerable.
there was an investigation that Fatuban Suta opened in Afghanistan that threatened Bush
error torturers. But the U.S. gave up on that objection because it was territorial jurisdiction
that the court used to prosecute Putin in Ukraine. Putin, war criminal for sure. Netanyahu,
now wait a minute. APEC pays our lawmakers handsomely to pretend as though BB isn't the monster
that he is. Nonetheless, the ICC persists. Contacted by the Guardian,
A spokesperson for the ICC said it was aware of proactive intelligence gathering activities
being undertaken by a number of national agencies hostile towards the court.
They said the ICC was continually implementing countermeasures against such activity, and
that none of the recent attacks against it by national intelligence agencies had penetrated
the court's core evidence holdings, which had remained secure.
It gets harder and harder for the U.S. government to provide cover for war crimes committed by Israel,
especially when there's another war happening simultaneously and the U.S. condemns the actions of someone
like Putin. How do you condemn the actions of Putin while not condemning the overwhelming
response by the IDF in Gaza? And that's not to say that Israel didn't have the right to engage in a
defensive war. They absolutely did. But can anyone with a straight face argue that Israel hasn't
gone too far in the way they have prosecuted this war? For the people out there who say,
no, Israel didn't have a right to defend themselves. I'm not even, I don't even take those
people seriously. I'm not interested in that conversation. Atrocities were committed on October
7th. So this isn't a debate in my mind about whether or not Hamas should be taken out. It is a debate
about why it is that other countries who prosecute wars the same way that Israel is doing
right now, they get criticized by the United States.
They might get prosecuted in the Hague for war crimes.
And the U.S. might totally co-sign on that.
But when it comes to Israel, there's no such thing as war crimes.
There's no such thing as Israel going too far.
And I totally disagree with that.
We got to take a break when we come back.
Freddie DeBoer, a wonderful writer over at Substack, will join us to talk about some of the
failings of criminal justice reform. And also what he feels is the best path forward in getting
people who need mental health care, the care that they need. That and more coming up,
don't miss it.
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Welcome back to TYT.
I'm your host, Anna Kasparian, and you're about to hear an awesome interview.
So recently, left-wing writer Freddie DeBoer pushed back on a piece that was written by
Mark Healy over at New York's Curbed.
The piece is titled, How the Mayor's Crackdown on Illegal Mopeds has beaten down food
delivery workers. They're mostly cracking down on people doing deliveries. In it, Healy seeks to
provide cover for those engaging in illegal actions due to their marginalized status. DeBoer
is not fond of that kind of thinking. In fact, if you follow his work, this is a common theme
that I actually appreciate, and you'll see why in just a moment. So he wrote his response
on his substack, which is one of my favorite substacks. I am a paid subscriber and I want to disclose
that to the audience. I think it's important for you to know that. DeBoer's response is titled,
the marginalized should just be allowed to break the rules is bigoted and unworkable. And we will
include a link to that piece in the description box if you'd like to check it out.
DeBoer highlights the severe consequences of just allowing people to use illegal mopeds
in densely populated parts of the country with impunity, like New York. Now a teenager was just
killed after the scooter she was riding on got into a crash with an SUV. Last year, a six-year-old
was struck by a scooter driving illegally in Harlem, causing near fatal injuries, including
multiple skull fractures. But NYC transplant culture dictates brushing off each and every threat
to basic order as a tedious concern of the squares, inspiring the LOL crime school of politics
that such people endorse when on their web browsers.
I'm willing to guess that they embody a different philosophy
when waiting at a low traffic subway station late at night.
100%.
Now, DeBoer does not mince words either, writing,
are you telling me that a poor brown immigrant from Ecuador
can't be expected to meet the standard of not driving their scooter?
At top speed, the wrong way down a one-way street that's thick with
pedestrians. I'm sorry, but I don't see any non-racist way to believe that.
Finally, what I appreciate about DeBoer's work, including this very piece, is that even as
someone firmly on the left, he's not afraid to critique the strategies of criminal justice reformers.
Most of the people who had recently advocated for defunding the police stopped doing so.
But antipathy towards the police remained and powered many lefty debates, understand
understandably, given how much there is to criticize in American policing.
No particular vision of responsible and achievable criminal justice reform coalesce, though,
because that's hard and everybody mostly wanted to move on.
As I said recently, in an incredibly short time frame, most people in media went from
cosplaying as Black Panthers on Twitter to a stance of, look, this is all very embarrassing,
I'm tired, can we not talk about this?
And this has been a pretty big disaster in many large liberal cities, including my own place of residence, Los Angeles.
We're left in this space where there's a reflexive anti-authority instinct,
endless amounts of LOL crime, LOL, LOL, LOL, LOL, and no actual tangible adult position
on how to deal with law and order issues in a free society,
all coming from people who self-identify as left of center,
which means they should be inherently aligned with the concept of good government.
it. Joining us now to talk about this piece and more is the man himself, Freddie DeBoer.
Freddie, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
I, again, just want to tell you that I appreciate your work and you're one of the individuals
who basically forced me to think about these types of issues a lot more critically.
I'm going to raise my hand and say that I was part of the media that was super gung-ho with
the defund the police crowd because you look at the
disparity in policing, you look at the way that people of color are treated in this country.
And yeah, it discusses you and you want to support any effort to change that.
But as you point out, there are some issues that could actually lead the pendulum to swing
back to a tough on crime direction. And in fact, we are seeing that in some liberal cities
that had loosened up some laws. And in states like Oregon. So the first question I want
ask you is, why did you decide to focus on the moped issue for your argument in this piece?
Because I think a lot of people would look at that and be like, ah, it's not a big deal.
Well, I think that first of all, it's a big deal in the sense that these are many thousands
of interactions that are happening all over the city.
Every time someone on an e-bike or a moped or a scooter is on the sidewalk and very nearly
comes close to hitting someone. And that's a real quality of life issue that affects a lot of
people all the time. I also think that with this particular sort of framing of it in the New
York Magazine piece, you really have a sort of classic example of what contemporary liberalism
just kind of can't wrap its hands around, which is you have a genuinely unsafe set of behaviors
that are being committed by people who genuinely are marginal, who are linguistically marginal
economically, and many of them are undocumented immigrants.
And the fundamental point that I have to make is the answer cannot be that we're just going to
let people do whatever they want if we think that they're marginalized.
Of course, these delivery guys are highly sympathetic, and I think a lot of the blame lies
on the feet of the delivery companies that don't pay them by the hour, but pay
them by the delivery, which necessitates them driving like madmen all over the sitting.
But fundamentally just the idea that, okay, these people cannot be expected to follow basic
rules and laws that keep the rest of us safe depends on the notion that they're incapable
of doing so, which as I say in the piece is a deeply racist notion.
You know, it reminds me of what happened in the Culver City School District in,
you know, L.A., where they decided, okay, look, there's a lot of
a lack of Latino students in our advanced placement classes or honors classes.
And because of that, we're just gonna scrap the honors classes altogether.
Which to me is an incredibly racist way of handling it because it's just this assumption
that the students can't rise to the occasion.
How about approach it from a mindset of what can we do to lift these students up, right?
And so when it comes to that type of thinking,
in the, you know, law and order sense, it's the same feel.
Like we're expected marginalized people to behave a certain way.
And I just have higher expectations for people.
And I think that we can reform our criminal justice system in a way that's actually beneficial for everyone.
It includes the individuals who could be reformed, it could, or rehabilitated.
It includes justice for the victims.
But you know, I'm curious, have you seen any examples of efforts,
efforts to reform policing that's been effective or maybe reforms to the prison system?
Well, I think that we have the framework for that, which is the George Floyd justice and policing
bill. It was a big omnibus police reform bill. The fact that it was happening at the federal
level kind of limited what it could do given how local policing is, but it contained lots of
great provisions related to body cameras and to banning chokeholds and to just many
many different things small bore but if you add them all together they become a big deal of these reforms
unfortunately the george floyd justice and policing uh bill got got middleed because the republicans
are always going to hate it because they're going to be pro cop no matter what and at the time a
lot of the activist class sort of dismissed it as a uh watered down compromise uh this was at the time
when everyone was talking about a reckoning and how small measures weren't
going to work. And so it didn't have the left wing champions that it needed and it died twice in
Congress. But that's what it's going to take. Unfortunately, there's no one magic policy change
that we can enact to fix American policing. It's going to take a lot of small changes over time
in many places, which means that we have to be, number one, committed to actually
looking at what the data and the evidence tells us. We have to be committed to not thinking that we're
going to solve all of these problems immediately. But at the moment that all of that stuff was
happening, when Nancy Pelosi is wearing tinty cloth and kneeling in the halls of Congress,
that nobody wanted to hear about reform. Yeah, I mean, you make a great point there
because I think a lot of those reforms were good ideas, but I feel like the criminal justice
reform movement was to some extent, kind of co-opted with like this anarchist flavor, and
by individuals who suddenly were promoting, you know, maximalist solutions in their minds,
like prison abolition. And so am I kind of exaggerating that? Or did you notice that as well?
Well, I think there's two things to say immediately. The first is
that like don't underestimate the fact that like defund the police was something, right?
In other words, people were casting around for something, for anything. And again, you know,
criminal justice reform isn't like reforming the American medical system where you can say
Medicare for all will utterly change the system and they'll be going to fix a ton of problems.
Criminal justice reform is there just isn't that one thing. And so, you know, anti, you know,
you know, is this sort of police abolition or prison abolition stuff that goes back a very long way.
And so there was this pre-existing sort of set of attitudes about it that people could grab onto.
I think a lot of people grabbed onto it because they didn't know what else to do.
I do want to say like you mentioned anarchism, right?
This is one of the things that really drives me crazy, which is that if you talk to most of
the sort of young lefties who have been minted, let's say since 2016, right?
If you talk to people who became socialist or came out as socialist or developed socialist
identity, you know, that's what they'll say. They'll say that they tend to identify as
socialists. But there's there's no engagement with the fact that socialism and anarchism are
two different things. Like there's this constant tendency to see, well, okay, reform of policing
is a sort of liberal or, you know, not as far left sort of idea. Whereas just getting rid of it
all, that's the left idea. But that's not the left idea, all right? You can go back through
hundreds of years of left theory of what the proper role of the police are in the state.
Many very far left society has also been quite authoritarian when it comes to law and order.
And it just it just speaks to the sense in which, you know, we recruited a lot of soldiers in the last eight or so years and I'm happy for that.
But many of them just don't have the backing in the theory that underlies these positions.
And so you get these sort of this constant slippages like anarchism and socialism are the same thing when in fact that's been the biggest division
within the far left for hundreds of years.
Yeah, and you know, you make a really great point in your piece about how it's important for the left to pursue policies that show how government works, how government can be helpful and beneficial to your life.
I'm not talking about, you know, overreaching actions by the government, but I'm talking about funding things like, let's say, public parks or public transportation.
Actually, public transportation is a good topic to just touch on right now because,
Because, you know, there is a problem in places like LA with people who typically would use public transportation, no longer wanting to, because there's been this permissive attitude toward drug use.
And I'm talking about hard drugs, like people literally smoking methamphetamine on the train, which bothers people.
You don't want to inhale that. You don't want to see that.
And so when the government just allows that to happen with impunity, well, then it kind of signals to the population that government's ineffective and they don't really know how to do their jobs.
I think that's pretty damaging, no?
Totally. And I mean, I think like, you know, public transportation in New York is a very good example, which is just that it costs money.
In order for that money to be secured, you need to have riders who are paying the fare and you need to have tax dollars.
In order to have tax dollars, you have to have people who are enthusiastic about taking the train.
And to have people who are enthusiastic about taking the train, the trains have to be safe.
And it is so mind-boggling to me.
The notion that talking about train safety is somehow some sort of like liberal-squished position,
everyone should have the right to travel in clean, effective, safe public transportation.
I was horrified by the killing of Jordan Neely, and I've written a bunch about it.
I have been incredibly frustrated by the way that his death has been discussed in much of these discussions,
because the presumption from so many people writing into media is that the two choices were,
either Jordan nearly got choked to death on the floor of a train, or he should just be free to wander around psychotic, emaciated, smoking synthetic marijuana, committing at random acts of violence.
Those are not the choices, right?
But the only way to be able to save someone like Jordan Neely and a lot of other people is if you have a government that is willing to use force in order to help them.
And again, I just, I don't know where the notion that to be on the left means that you think the government should never use force in any capacity, I don't know where that came from.
And you can contrast it with all kinds of regulation, right?
We stand for good government.
We stand for regulatory systems that ensure that things happen in a way that is beneficial to society.
And regulation always comes at the barrel of a gun.
Yes, I what happened to Jordan Neely was a disgrace and a complete failure by local government.
And, you know, the argument that you'll typically hear from lefties is, well, it's because
government failed to get him the mental health care he needed. But that's not actually correct
because due to other crimes he had committed previously, which could be tied to his mental health
condition, he was given the option to either go to prison or go to inpatient mental health
care. So he obviously chose the latter. That's a way better option. But unfortunately, he was just
able to walk out. And that's not mandatory inpatient mental health treatment. That's the opposite
of that. And so you yourself have openly spoken about and written about your own mental health
you know, condition and how that experience has led you to your opinion that there should
be forced inpatient treatment for people. Can you elaborate on that a little more?
Yeah, sure. So forced treatment, right, involuntary treatment saved my life. I would not be here
without it. Just literally would not be here. I, you know, when I have been psychotic, I have been
forced into treatment in a way that has saved my life and potentially the lives of others.
You know, I wrote a piece for The Daily Beast about Jordan Neely.
And I said, you know, involuntary commitment could have saved Jordan Neely's life.
And after it came out, I stuck it into the search bar on Twitter to see what people were saying.
And person after person after person said, well, actually, maybe that guy could just not kill him.
To which the answer is, okay, maybe if he didn't kill him, Jordan Neely would still be rotting to death on that train, right?
Like he was in a state that was, where he was going to die of something sooner or later, because he was so unhealthy.
These activists, disability activists who I fight with all the time, they love to talk about autonomy and freedom and independence, but there is no autonomy or freedom or independence when your brain is being hijacked by a defect.
of neurochemistry. I am not free when I am psychotic. I am quite the opposite of free.
I think it's really important that people at home know if they don't. We have been making it
harder to involuntarily treat people for 60 plus years. There has been a whole string of policy
choices, of laws passed, of court decisions that have made it harder and harder and harder
to compel someone to get care when they really need it. And part of the wreckage of all this,
or families who desperately want their loved ones to take their medications and stay in treatment.
And we have not created the policy atmosphere where it's possible to force them to when they
really need to be forced. What would you say to those who push back against your argument here
and say, well, we've already had experiences with the asylums of yesteryear and they were awful,
the conditions were terrible, people were mistreated, and we don't want to go back to that.
Because that is a common argument or counterpoint that people make.
Sure. Some of the asylums certainly were awful.
It's not the case that all of them were.
Unfortunately, when you talk to people about this, their reference point is almost always a handful of movies.
There is no attempt to sort of access actual historical data on this question.
You know, if I ever hear someone refer to one flew over the coupons nest one more time,
I'm going to lose it.
The reality is that, yes, there's a
Yes, there were absolutely many things about the asylums that were ugly and undesirable.
But again, we started the deinstitutionalized process and a ton of people were not shepherded
out of the asylums into autonomous and successful lives.
They just ended up on the streets.
It is incredible to me that people think that sleeping under a bridge is somehow better than being an inpatient in an asylum.
Of course, we need to always put patient safety and patient rights as a paramount part of all of this, but the reality is these people cannot define another possible way in which we might save these people than through compelling treatment.
The fundamental issue, you said it yourself about Jordan Neely, he was diverted out after randomly assaulting a 60 plus year old person for no reason.
He was diverted out of jail through a mental health treatment program, which is exactly what we want and what what liberals want.
But as you said, he just walked out the door.
And if we're actually, if we actually want to be humane, we have to come up with a systemic solution to a systemic problem, which everybody talks about all the time now is systemic solutions.
But you can't just say the word programs, right?
I mean, so often when I get into these debates with people who are opposed to involuntary commitment, I say,
What should happen? What could we have done to save Jordan Needly?
What could we do to save the people who are currently dying of gangrenous limbs under park benches somewhere?
And they say, oh, just we need more programs. There needs to be government funding.
There needs to be programs.
The problem is, is none of that stuff matters if these people are treatment resistant because of their mental illness.
It is a very common feature of psychotic disorders that they prevent people from being able to
understand that they are sick. And if your solution is just give them voluntary programs,
the problem is that's tried many places that's been tried for many years. And if you can't
compel people to stay in their treatment, they're just going to end up on the streets again.
Freddie, I could talk to you all day. There's so much work that you've put out there that I'm
appreciative of, appreciative of and I'm very appreciative that you came on the show today
and discuss these controversial topics with us. Everyone, please go check out.
Freddie DeBoer's substack, I promise you will not be disappointed.
And Freddie, thank you again for coming on to speak with us.
I hope you'll come back soon.
Thanks for having me.
All right, everyone.
We're going to take a brief break.
And when we come back, I'm going to share a story, a good story about a corporate landlord that got rated by the FBI.
This is a corporate landlord that's involved in price fixing.
So stick around.
You're not going to want to miss that story.
We've got limited time. Let's get to our next story.
It's late 2023, the Phoenix area. Investigators of the state attorney general's
office are looking at apartment rents. They're up 76 percent since
2016, something is off.
These four building rents are 12% higher than others, but they offer similar amenities.
They have different landlords, so you'd think they should be competing with one another.
But they weren't.
The prices were allegedly being set by one entity, an algorithm owned by a company called
Real Page.
And it's not just Phoenix.
There are other parts of this country that unfortunately have been caught up in the tentacles
of Real Page. Now we've just learned last month, the Department of Justice ended up raiding
a corporate landlord in Atlanta. For now, we don't exactly know what that surprise raid
was really about, but odds are it is connected to the DOJ's ongoing investigation into rental
price fixing, which all ties back to Real Page. So let's get into the nitty gritty,
Let's talk about the details.
Now fortunately for us, we don't have to do a ton of digging to explain why RealPage is unfairly inflating rent prices.
That's because Real Page has repeatedly admitted the kind of scheme that they're pulling on the American people and essentially allowing for landlords to charge exorbitant rent prices and do away with competition that would actually lower the price of rent.
An ebook produced by Real Page even says that the company allows corporate landlords who are technically competitors to work together to make us all more successful in our pricing.
Real Page brag that landlords that use its software continually outpace the market in good times and bad.
That's because if you have a bunch of landlords colluding on price fixing in a particular area, well then yeah, they're all going to ensure that they're charge.
exorbitant rents and if everyone plays ball, if all the landlords play ball, well
then the renters really have no option, they have no choice. Either they pay the insanely
high rent or they end up on the streets. So landlords who sign up for real page must
agree to share the following information about their properties. Occupancy rates, rents
charged for each unit and each floor plan, lease terms, amenities,
move in dates and move out dates.
Now, Real Page then uses that information to recommend pricing for the units.
As popular information writer Jud Legum states, Real Page even has a feature called
Autopilot that lets the software set rent prices without any human approval or intervention.
But this argument is especially beneficial, or this arrangement I should say, is especially
beneficial for landlords when Real Page has a large number of landlords concentrated in a specific
area. That means that they all get to raise their prices without fear of competition, right?
Because they're all in it together. It kind of reminds me of Joe Manson's daughter when she was
the executive, the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that had the patent for EpiPens.
The patent was about to run out. So what she did was she reached out to the CEO,
the CEO of Pfizer that was working on a generic version of the EpiPen and essentially worked
out this deal where Pfizer would avoid putting out a less expensive generic version of the
EpiPen. That would allow for Joe Manchin's daughter's company, I believe it was Mylan
pharmaceuticals, if I'm not mistaken, it would allow for her to continue to raise the price of
the EpiPen. And there'd be no competition in the market. But what's in it for Pfizer? Well,
Pfizer would get a cut of the profits.
That's what, that's literally what happened.
She should have been prosecuted for that, but wasn't, because of course, she's the daughter
of one of the elites.
But that story reminds me of what's happening here with Real Page.
Let's continue, Real Page executive Andrew Bowen stated the following.
As a property manager, very few of, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents
double digits within a single month by doing it manually.
But when multiple property managers all work together,
it's a lot easier to inflate those prices.
Real Page is actually so strict about enforcing its price fixing scheme,
that it even deploys pricing advisors to ensure that landlords are complying with
their pricing recommendations.
You don't believe me?
That sounds crazy, right?
We'll get a load of this.
Jeffrey Roper, who created the Real Page algorithm,
explained that if you have idiots undervaluing, it costs the
the whole system because guess what? It creates competition. People are going to flock to the
building or to the landlord who's charging lower rent prices. That's going to force the other
landlords to lower their rent prices. Real Page, no like that. Some landlords got kicked
off of Real Page for that exact reason, by the way. So this is a massive scandal and it's
already causing irreversible damage to Americans. An executive for Camden Property Trust,
a corporate landlord based in Houston said deploying Real Pages software resulted in pushing
people out with higher rents, but ultimately increased revenue by $10 million.
Over the last four years, rents have skyrocketed by an average of over 30% nationwide.
Thankfully, there are a number of entities that are taking legal action against RealPage,
and as we've mentioned, the DOJ is even investigating this case, and the attorney
General of Arizona and Washington, D.C. have filed actions against the company. North Carolina's
Attorney General is investigating the company as well. So I'm shocked to say that there are some
political figures in this country who are taking action against, you know, this company that
deploys this algorithm to screw American renters over. But it is happening. And hopefully there will be some
positive results from these investigations and from these suits.
We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, John Iderola joins us for the second
hour. Don't miss it.