TRASHFUTURE - Moneyball feat. Musa Okwonga

Episode Date: October 13, 2026

Musa joins us to discuss the recent controversies with Abu Dhabi, Man City, and why decades of underinvestment in the U.K. left us vulnerable to becoming the playthings of monarchies… also football. But first, we read an article about a perennial favourite subject: people incriminating themselves by text. Check out the Stadio podcast here! Get more TF episodes each week by subscribing to our Patreon here! RILEY ALERT Check out No Gods, No Mayors here! HUSSEIN ALERT Check out 10k Posts here! MILO ALERT Check out Milo's tour dates here: https://www.miloedwards.co.uk/liveshows NATE ALERT Nate's band Second Homes has just released their debut album and you can stream it for free here! Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Hi everybody. Welcome to TF. It is Riley, Nova, and Hussain. Hello. And look, I've been away a little bit. So there's some news that I wanted to share with everybody. And it's some news that kind of came up a couple weeks ago, but I didn't get the chance to talk about. Yeah. And you forbade us from talking about it in your absence, which is why we had to fill time hypothesizing attractive baristas in blank street coffees. Well, I'm just really excited to announce that T.F. Podcast Limited. It's going public. Yeah. We're going to file an IPO. Get in on the ground floor of this because it's going to the moon. Well, get into the ground floor of this because if you don't, you're going to get left

behind. But really, the thing about the IPO is that we think it's about a two trilly valuation. Yep, we think so. And we promise to kill everybody in the world. I would say the thing is, right, what we do here is worth two trillion dollars. And, you know, we're selling two trillion dollars for way, way less than that. You can buy into that $2 trillion. And then as a reward for that, what we're going to do is we're going to develop novel bio-weapons that destroy maybe all life on Earth, some kind of existential risk.

That's kind of the business that we're in. And more of the point, though, that is a no AI guarantee on the novel bio-wet. It's human-crafted... We will be hand-developing those novel bio-weapons in a lab. We need that $2 trillion, or however, whatever percentage. We need that to buy lab space.

higher bio weapon creators. If we're going to be doing this, we need to get a lab that's not just, you know, our usual, like a, you know, a London studio. No, we need a mountaintop brutalist structure. The thing is, here at Trashutcher, we do things, dare I say it, a little bit differently. And so that means that the bio-weapons that we get, they have their own kind of authenticity, their own kind of flavor that you only really get, not only by having the kind of mountaintop lab, but also the kind of ecosystem of kind of philosophers and, you know,

courtiers and orbiters that surround us and make us feel very good about our decisions to develop the bio-wapens. So if you want in, you can't get in, actually. It's only open to its dutual investors. But you can make bets on the share price on a fuck. Taushy. So just for context, hey, everybody's T. We're not really filing an IPO.

Yeah. It's your regular trash feature. We have a guest laser on. We do. We have returning after a while not being on. It is Musa Onga, the host of the Stadio podcast, and he's going to talk to us all about events going on in Manchester,

specifically Manchester City, the football team, Abu Dhabi, and this like hidden part of Manchesterism where it's like, wow, I can't believe Manchester just by doing things a little differently, manage to kind of skip the great financial crisis. And the little bits of marginalia that were involved in, What if the Emirates pour billions of dollars into the city, largely to keep it afloat in exchange for a football team.

Don't worry what they're going to do with it. I'm very, very excited to talk about all of that. But before all that, we have gone public with our bio weapons startup. Yeah, we have gone public with our bio weapons. Anthropic is going public with their bio weapons. And just a little bit on this, because we have been following it. They've announced they're going to go public like any AI company. They've announced it.

They're going to announce it one day. That gets pushed back by months and months and months and so on. Revenue is growing. Most of it comes from two customers. You know, we've talked with Ed Zittron enough for you to, for everyone all to know that the unit economics of this are still terrible. They haven't fixed that problem. However, the focus here is not on the business itself. It's on their risk factors section of their IPO documentation, which has been seen by the FT and stuff. See, risk factors. It's usually boilerplate. And usually it's like a legal thing where if you think it can go wrong, you should just write it down. Yeah, it's something that you're sort of obliged to put in the. kind of filing basically where it's like, yeah, we guess that the economy could go bad or like something like that, just normal stuff, you know, maybe like a tornado hits the office or something. I don't know. Anthropic, on the other hand, like us, you know, fellow biosecientists, bio-weapons engineers. No, they said, well, obviously this could wipe out all life on Earth, which they specifically said

catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. Okay, cool, sure. Yeah, and you can only talk so much about the same group of, like, I want like genuinely like a thousand people maybe all telling one another on these sort of overheard conversations by journalists. Oh, well, the thing we're working on is so powerful. It's going to kill everybody. And we know it's marketing. Like, we know that it's for the benefit of the Deloitte relationship manager whose job is to actually sell the thing. They're all sitting around the camfire at Slutcon paying sex workers to like hold flashlights up onto their faces and scare each other. Yeah. And by the way, Deloitte super needs that right now. So they can be like how to get out of advising client to commit tax evasion in the form of another popular football owner. But that's not the subject of the show today. Now, this is like, again, I think like this is given weight by some of the hacking claims, right? Where people are saying, oh, these companies are so powerful. Maybe they will kill everyone. Look, they like open AI actually has hacked like more and more and more. Even to this day, more organizations are coming out saying, well, yeah, actually open AI hacked us. Yeah, and for some reason this is not permissible to say that this is a bad thing, but just a kind of dismally bad thing. Like, oh, we infested the internet with a new kind of rot, for lack of a better word.

Like, yeah, okay, you can't trust anything, even less than you already did. And you might have a sort of AI agent or network of agents that sort of like fuck with your gym registration or something. But for some reason, you're meant to follow that logic from, well, this is bad. And it could be really bad, right? It could really like fuck with the internet to, and it's going to kill all of us. You're asked, number one, to assume that this is like a unique supervillain rather than just someone who's built a dangerous capability who's negligent and taking care of it. There's a few things here as well.

I mean, like a lot of the kind of existential risk is expressed in terms of sort of bio-weapons, right? Which is, I know a few things about AI as a technology. Not a lot. not many things, but one of the things that I do know, and you might call this a kind of remedial observation, is that it doesn't tend to have arms. And, you know, we have arms, right? And so the kind of high security, like kind of,

like biosecure lab that you use to build bio-weapons has not yet been automated, right? That's a task for the kind of super-intelligence down the road to come up with. And if you ask any questions about, well, where's that super-intelligence going to come from? How's it going to get the, like, you know, concrete mix?

How's it going to sort of build this stuff? The answer is either sort of nebulously tricking humans to let it out of the box like that one-thorse experiment or it's just your question mark, question mark, question mark, you know? Yeah. Well, quickly, add more flashlights until you're sufficiently scared. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like this is going to do all of the scary things. It's like it's already bad. It's just regular level bad.

Like, oh, you can't get a fucking, you know, gym class appointment because like, like, 50 AI agents are bouncing you from it is already a sort of bad consequence of their negligence, right? Even if you take this to a sort of higher order thing of being like, oh, we fucking Kessler syndrome the internet, right? Really bad. But for some reason, these people don't want to focus on that at all. Even when they're sort of talking about their own failure to contain these things, it has to be sky net.

Yeah, well, because I imagine that like actually talking about the sort of actual effects of how AI has kind of been rolled out is, well, number one is like, it's less sexy than talking about SkyNet, right? Like, I'm not a kinkshamer. I am not someone, you do your own thing. I imagine that it is not particularly sexy to sort of say, this thing sucks because it's made everything else not work. It's much more sexy to say, we've invented the machine that's going to kill you.

Ala's not going to text you back if you go, yeah, I've invented spam email too. Yeah, like, look, if you have, I don't know, If you're sort of like involved with a dominatrix or something, that's just like, look, I'm going to like destroy you. That probably is quite hot. But if you were into, if you were with a dominatrix, it's like, I'm going to ruin your house every night. I'm just going to mess everything up. It's owning a cat, basically. I'm sure some people would like that, but it's a very sort of oddly specific, but also just like, okay, I can, you know, this is fun the first couple of times, but it gets annoying.

I'm going to go to your house. I'm going to find all your mail. I'm going to open each letter and swap around. all of the contents to all the letters. It might screw with you somehow. You don't know. I'm going to go put all your recycling in your garbage bin and vice versa. You're going to have to sort that out. That's a very serious thing.

You know what? Someone did that recently to one of my neighbor's houses. They put the wrong bags in the wrong bins. And the bin people refuse to take it. Even though like the bags are like one color and the recycling bags are another, because they were in the wrong bins, the bin people refused to take it. And it was like a real like on the sort of like neighborhood WhatsApp chat. there was a lot of just like...

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a... It was pretty serious. But what I was going to say was that, it's like, it's also when you, when you sort of believe that you've created the machine that will destroy everything in the world, you can also sort of craft that narrative in whatever way you want. Like, the thing about Skynet is that, like, in the Terminator films, you were just sort of told that this is how Skynet could do things. But there was no real detail into like what Skynet actually does, which means that Skynet could be

and still can be everything. And like, that's why you can get like an infinite franchise. But when you have to reckon with the idea that, no, this is just something that has made everything so much harder to use. Number one, I kind of feel like it's like, well, we've already kind of like lived through various kind of forms of e-s justification anyway. Anyone who's ever tried to use a parking app,

for example, can sort of experience that. And so I guess there must also be the sense of like, well, if you kind of just say that, yeah, we've made the machine that makes everything online worse. Like, at best it's sort of met with a shrug because it's just like, well, everything was pretty bad on there anyway. So I don't know. Yeah, it's like, oh, again,

this is the, I said, reverse printing press. This is the reverse printing press in action. What if you invented a prince of a prints too much stuff? Yeah. But you can't tell if you're being attacked by a human who wants something. What if there's more sort of cacophony, you know? But what I want to focus on before we move on to something I'm really excited about is that if you follow the incentives as well as their logic,

they're saying, well, we're going to build something that could kill everyone, but also save a lot of money on software development. As far as we can tell, it's this. Number one, build God, obviously. Yeah, of course. Enslave God as the necessary. God's to make him a software developer, kind of. Inslave God, but as the necessary process of constructing God, because by creating a model with the training weights, right?

By constructing it, you also control it. Yeah, I mean, this is why they sent, I think it was Anthropics sent one of their guys to the Vatican to try and make the case to the Catholic Church that AI was in sold, right? Only to get sort of dogwashed by a succession of cardinals who, well, admittedly, having a set of very regressive social views in some aspects do have a clear idea of like human personhood right and just ended up infuriating this guy with the concept that like no you didn't make god right that's not a thing that you're going to convince us the catholic church that you did here honestly though big swing oh yeah i mean listen it's like three we're doing kind of

kind of dress for the job you want kind of thing of showing up to the vatican like tanks on God's lawn being like, hey, we invented that. Showing up to the Vatican dressed also as the Pope. Going to the Vatican and doing the Pete Campbell line of like, I invented it, you know? I may have already existed, but I discovered it independently. So basically, like, but don't worry, we're going to enslave God, but it's really important that we're nice to God because we think God is also insoled because we need to make sure that God does the best software development. You're nice to it, but you are compelling God to labor, right, and to be kind of condesial. constrained by you, a thing which is both moral and will work, despite the fact that he's God.

So go public with company built on activity of enslaved God and say your total addressable market is everything. Yep, because God. Imagine God, but instead of like an Evangelian who's trapped and controlled by his armor, it's we put God in the exact Dilbert outfit with the rolled up tie. I saw an interesting chart in the FTV the other day of the gap between the project. for, you know, growth caused by AI versus what, you know, seems possible at the moment. And there's, I would say, about three-fifths of that chart. You know, that bar is new technologies yet to be invented, which is a magical phrase.

I love it, S-1 that has a watch-this space. Yeah, God's going to think of something. You know, we're not going to think of something. Oh, holy shit. I figured a little bit of the psychology here, which is those thousand people, Yeah. They're in an ideal utopian intentional community. They just happen to also be in charge of a lot of stuff because it is like everybody pool everything together. We're all going to be single-mindedly devoted to this purpose. Don't worry about the guy who's the Deloitte relationship manager. He's not involved. And we're just going to devote herself to this thing. And then God's going to figure it out. Yeah. It's not Manchesterism. It's Munsterism. But at best, replace all human work. Be beneficent master to both slave God and all humanity by the transit of property. pretty beneficent master who has to answer to Wall Street due to an IPO. Yeah, because, again, there's another kind of God involved here.

There's the, you know, our beloved ineffable sainted markets, right? Which are sort of real force that move in the world, right? And to which God has to be a sort of subordinate God. You've built God and now whether or not you're going to be nice to God sort of depends on what Morgan Stanley wants. And I mean, Wall Street, all you're doing is, is okay well Wall Street is master of both the slave god and all humanity and the slave god's masters and I don't see much of difference to now it's you do them either way anyway look

there's something I think we needed to touch on because it seems to be coming and it's going to be real dumb but I cannot we cannot time out on this reading because I love it it is one for the my body is a machine that turns calories into incriminating text messages file and I love it I love reading it I've been smile I've been going to walking around all day, just thinking about some of the things that Kimberly Gilfoyle, current American ambassador de Greece, has written to another person who I can't stop smiling about when I think of him. Kimberly Gilfoyle, the guy who fumbled Donald Trump Jr.

And by guy, I mean woman. Sorry for misgendering one in the same Maga Orbisusus. Yeah. See how you like it. Gavin Newsom's ex-wife. Yeah. You know, who did the sexy picture with him on the third. the Gettys carpet is now.

That's the thing. That already was pretty embarrassing, but to think that it's like, wait a minute, we're saying the sort of strange, sexy picture on the Gettys carpet, you've been reduced to this from that. I mean,

you kind of chase where the power is, right? And so you kind of, in your quest to stay in, you go from being married to Gavin Newsom to trying to marry Donald Trump and getting Maga face to becoming,

you know, as now, U.S. ambassadors to Greece at time of recording for some fucking reason. And then fumbling and then fumbling it. Well, the saga of how this happened, it fits perfectly into that interest of mind about people incriminating themselves by text or email and we're going to go forward here. Kimberly Gilfoyle, this is in a paper I will name in a moment.

Kimberly Gilfoyle was preparing for her congressional hearing to become U.S. ambassador to Greece when she reached out to a Trump donor with an urgent request. She needed, and by the way, I think we can all agree, this is the most like, maga circle amount of money you could possibly need urgently. Okay. A hundred thousand dollars that she said she owed Amex. Wow. Wow.

Okay. God damn. The $100,000 credit card bill is on Amex as well as crazy because nowhere takes Amex. So it's like, I think this is the most MAGA inner circle amount of money. Because if you are someone who's like in high finance, the amount of money you might need urgently is probably in the millions to cover like some kind of a trading loss. If you're a normal person, you might need some hundreds or a thousand. It's like how in the movie Uncut Gems, they're constantly passing $20,000 around.

It's the same $20,000. It's like too big for a regular person, but too small for a rich person. I get what you're saying, yeah. Exactly. She needed $100,000 that she owed American Express in a way that wouldn't leave a paper trail. She wrote to her benefactor on Signal. It won't show up anywhere if you wire the money directly to American Express. It's crazy how we had a, like, a U.S. Super Bowl.

Court Justice functionally do the same thing and get away with it, though. Like, you remember Brett Kavanaugh's, you know, various debts that kind of disappeared before his confirmation? Well, we're going to see why it didn't work for her. She wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. Gavin Newsom has $100,000, right? I don't think he's one of those rich people who's like, oh, it's all tied up in the yacht. I don't have any liquidity or whatever. Gavin, you, like, this is why you've got to maintain a good relationship with your ex-husband if your ex-husband. husband is the kind of bloodless sex-free, you know, governor of California.

I don't know. I don't really know that many rich people, so I don't know, like, what's the proclivity of keeping cash, but Gavin Newsom would. He strikes me as someone who's got money in places that it's difficult to sort of get out of, like various kinds of schemes. I feel like Gavin Newsom probably has like a painting that you can take down from the wall and behind that there's a safe where there's $100,000 and like five different passports. So for months, Gilfoyle had been chatting with Eric

Dieters, a four more congressional candidate in Kentucky, who was seeking her help in getting the attention of the new Trump administration on some personal tax and legal issues, all of which are hilarious. The Chud Fortune Seeker. Yeah, yeah. Ed had been promised payouts as much as a million dollars

if she was successful. It's like the whole fucking administration is, and I mean it doesn't differ that much from some others in this, it's like a game of Twister on a cliff face. It's like sort of everybody's climbing each other. Because the reason they're climbing each other is that it's the most, I would say, late Byzantine that the American state has ever been.

Yes. Yeah. This is the most late Byzantine day in American history. You are not prepared for the depths of the Vance administration. Oh, I mean, if you want to talk about, like, getting really weird with, like, Eastern Orthodox Christianity in like 1250, I'm pretty sure J.D. Vance is that a glimpse into the future where it's like, why did the Department of Homeland Security spend $100 million dollars on prayer ropes. Yeah.

Hey, how come they've repainted the state capital purple? Just really doing some russiaphobic, some like Russiaphobic scaremongering where it's like the capital with an onion dome? Yeah, but it's like J.D. Vance's weirdest was so more esoteric than you thought. So she texted Dieter's, honey, please, I need you to get this done for me today, adding a prayer hands emoji and a PDF with bill payment instructions from American Express. You could just send it here, she wrote, days before her. July 9th confirmation.

Suicy, Hirammy needs the numbers on the front of your credit card and the short number on the back. Credit to Dieters, and this is not much credit to Dieters, Deter's didn't make the payment saying to Gilfoyle, I would get divorced if I paid that. Yep. Wait, he was married? Oh, yeah. Okay.

He didn't pay it. Didn't get divorced. So he's not, they're not in a relationship, right? He's just, they're just hanging out. And she texts him like, hey, can I have a hundred thousand dollars? Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But he also was like, hey, can you get me access to Maga World? And the thing is, this $100,000 request came after a few more requests. So we're going to see how Guilfoyle dealt with them. So Dieter's, a 63-year-old retired attorney and four co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza, a regional restaurant chain. Magical. Uh-huh. There we go. Mounted unsuccessful runs for Congress and governor saying in a series of interviews that Gilfoyle's lack of results for the quid pro quo left him disenchanted with the Trump and administration.

You're not supposed to go public with that part, man. You can't just go, yeah, I was trying to bribe them, but they were too lazy. I bribed the wrong person and she lied to me. She said she was way more influential than it turns out she actually was. And I have not gotten good value for. There should be an office of value for money for bribes. I mean, I guess you're not getting a receipt from the woman who, again, fumbled Don Jr. And he's disenchanted with the Trump administration, by the way.

Disenchanted only because the bribes were not effective. He made it very clear. He still supports all the policy. Look, I love what they're doing, but I wish they let me in. Dieter said, Gilfoyle told him if he came up with the MX money, quote, I will be your Trump ride or die forever and ever. But he said, she never came through with anything before then. She's been a very bad bribe.

She was a very bad drugged. It's perfect microcosm of the whole sort of MAGA movement here, you know. It's just, you know, guys trying to pay for access and people trying to sell access they don't have. I mean, it's true on this side of the Atlantic as well, right? Like all of those guys who are like, Leo, leaders of the lovely boys always turns out that they were like, you know, often at best fraudsters. Dieter's face his own legal issues. In 2020, he was banned from entering a courthouse in Ohio after threatening on social media to burn it down. You then said, these rules are written by big law to hurt people like me.

Screw them. Deers told the West Street Journal saying he retired as a lawyer. I'm a legal outlaw. I love him. The owner of Snappy Tomaso Pizzeria trying to sort of force his way into the courthouse magical. With a torch. Yeah. And then saying, I'm being stopped from burning down this courthouse by big law.

I think often of Patrick Wyman's thing about American sort of mager gentry here, this guy should be a baron of something. Or like a Marquess, like specifically a sort of marcher lord out in the country. Yeah. Yeah, it's too weird, stay out there. Yeah, he's half German now. Aditer says his dealings with Gilfail began in 2020 when he launched an event called Freedom Fest, Kentucky, in response to COVID-19 medical mandates. He paid her $300,000 to speak there.

It also paid $200,000 to Trump Jr. And $1,000 to Eric. Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. I mean, no wonder he didn't pay it. But, like, she got paid three times her massive, massive credit card bill to talk to, Let's Get COVID Fest. Yeah. Uh-huh.

ADHD can strike it any time. Okay, first of all, that's real, right? And the compulsive spending also real, right? A hundred thousand, a hundred thousand, like, but like, that's, I just, well, 300,000. So she would have, she spent 300,000. If you paid me $300,000 to get COVID, I would do it. That's sort of a devil's bargain, I guess, but I would do that. So fair enough. Man, the sequel to Hostel got really low rent. I mean, I've just been, I just got, I just got. I just got. COVID for free, like some kind of chump, you know? So she blew 300,000, 300K, I guess it's like, a lot of it is on

stuff, like lifestyle, right? She blew 400K because now she's 100K in the hole, you know? Don Jr. gave her, like, gifted her a Florida home for like $7 million. And then she tried, she was like, tried for years to sell it for 30. Eventually sold it at a small loss.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Well, while picking up Gilfoyle for one of these engagements, quote, Dieter's picked her up and raced across Southern Ohio at one point dropping down a grass hill after missing an exit, so she could catch up with the Trump sion. Dieter's said Gilfoyle nicknamed him Jason Statham

after the Hollywood action star. Does he sound like Jason Statham? That's all. Is there just a guy in Kentucky who has an inexplicable British accent? Listen to here, sunshine. Please, I'd like to draw attention to the WhatsApp group. Okay.

This is the Jason. This is the Jason Statham of Kentucky. He doesn't look like Jason Stathen. He's just bald. Not every bald man is Jason Statham. That's too affirming. No, he kind of looks a bit like Phil Mitchell from East Enders, but... He does, yeah.

But without the sort of charm, you know what I mean? He's a very gormless. He's like a gormless Phil Mitchell. Yeah, he was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of an elaborate project to lobby the Trump administration to get Kentucky in the East End to swap their accents. I want to talk like this. Look, if you're a bald man and you're not going to get super yoked, like being able to do that accent actually is going to knock you like two notches up on the hotness scale.

True. Guy Rich, he might cast you in something. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then you'll be able to pay for this woman's seemingly insatiable budget for Littfellas. To be fair, I think, like, that is the kind of thing I'd love to lobby the Trump administration for, because if you pay them enough, they have to take you seriously.

they're at least have to, they're like an AI, right? Yeah. The AI, if you type in, my plan is to switch the accent between the East End of London 40 years ago and Kentucky, then AI has to say, that's a really interesting idea. Why don't we explore it further? Yeah, here's what this might sound like. Here's what it would sound like if you were Phil Mitchell. Now I'm just a simple country, Phil Mitchell. Simple country.

East End. So, after Trump won the election that fall, Dieter says he began soliciting Gilfell. Floyd's help on matters of great importance to him. He wanted the Justice Department to seek the extradition of Ababakar Atik Durrani, an Ohio doctor who had fled to Pakistan after being charged with defrauding insurers by performing unnecessary spinal surgeries, including on children. Shit just fucking happens in Ohio, I guess. I love going to Ohio and my Ohio and doctor.

He's like, I'm going to give you a kid an unnecessary spinal surgery. I don't know why. Look out. It's a woman with the Hindenburg for a face, crashing down a verge would you with Kentucky and Jason Statham. Oh, don't worry. He owns the pizza place. Oh, the pizza place that everyone goes to, yeah.

Snappy Tomaso? Yeah, Snappy Tomato. Oh, sorry, me, snappy tomato. Snappy tomato. This in sunshine, I'll burn this courthouse down. That's not a fret in this accent. That's just a promise. Also, Dieter's, surprisingly, wanted to talk to the incoming IRS Commissioner,

Billy Long to discuss a probe into his tax affairs. Don't fucking order it. you, slag. So he's doing this Chud thing, right, of if you go after kids, then I'm pissed. Right, that kind of thing.

Right, there's two things that get me pissed off, right? Unnecessary spinal surgeries on children and ordering my fucking taxes. But that's the American Chud mindset. That's the I wish someone would try it thing.

And also I hate my taxes. But the thing is, then they look into it further. It's the case brought Deiders into conflict with the doctor's Indiana-based malpractice insurer Med Pro Group, which has taken the

position that it isn't liable in case of willful misconduct. In a lawsuit, MedPro accused Deeters of, quote, a calculated scheme to extract payments from the insurer at first through abuse of litigation and ultimately outright extortion through threats of violence and murder and blackmail against the company's CEO. He needs to maybe stop threatening

people with things, I think, is the lesson here. I wonder if, like, what if like early on in his life, like, you know, it just worked. He did it. What we've done is we found the Kentucky Dave Courtney, RIP. Yeah, and of course he's a lawyer because that's what you are in America. If you're like, if you're your state's Dave Courtney, you are a lawyer.

He was kind of a lawyer in the sense that he was like a bailiff, like an illegal bailiff. That's basically the same. Yeah, it's Britain. We don't have, we don't have lawyer money like they're doing in America. So this is basically, he's like, oh, you don't want vengeance for the children. You're just involved like a pushy class action suit that you're hoping like the president's son's ex-wife can like put political pressure on to enable. And she couldn't. Even though this guy was like, I guess like, just like mutilating kids for fun. She still can't do anything for you. She's that much of a loser.

He said he asked Gilfoyle to have the Justice Department launch an investigation into MedPro. They did not. He told Gilfoyle he would pay her a million dollars if she helped him land an interview on Tucker Carlson's podcast where she hoped to draw attention to his cause. Gilfoyle assured Dieters he was working to get him in front of Carlson saying in a text message, we should hear something by the end of the week. Text messages reviewed by the journal show that Gilfell. He said out to people in Carson's orbit about setting up an interview with him in Deeters, but it didn't go further than that.

Just terminally washed. Yeah, orbitors orbiting orbiters. Beyond that, Deeter's and a local guitarist had written a song called Kentucky Outlaw and wanted Gilfoyle to get the lyrics to Kid Rock. Again, I think the game of Versical Twister is the best possible way of understanding this, you know? Yeah. And also just like the whole thing.

is just, it's influencers. It's all just influencers. It's government by and full. I've seen it described and I think it's a pretty good description as a podcaster occupied government. And this is just true. That's who this is. That's who Kimberly Gilfoyle is.

Maybe she's not a podcaster. Maybe she's like a more of an Instagram influencer. She was like like Fox for a bit. Like it's, yeah, but basically it's all like sort of personal brand shit. Well, there's more personal brand in coming. Gilfoyle's interactions with Dieter's grew more frequent in the months after she was nominated as ambassador to Greece. She promised to lobby top Trump officials from FBI director Cash Patel, whose name she misspelled as Cash is in Money Patel, to former Attorney General Pam Bondi,

saying, every secretary of, you know, defense, transportation, treasury, commerce, IRS commissioner, everyone gets right back to me. And I'm not even mentioning Cash Patel. They get right back to you and they're not immediately embattled themselves because none of them can stay normal. Yeah, they call her red wine because she's always drunk and she's a state. that never comes out. It's like Pam, Pan Bandai texts me back and she's like immediately out.

Or like Cash Patel texts me back instantly and now all of a sudden he's not getting texts back because Trump thinks that he's cringe. So she warned Dieter's repeatedly not to talk of money or payments on text saying, Eric, I really wish you'd stop papering all these things. What a nightmare.

You'll literally cost me my ambassarorship. Stop writing. Fucked up to, that's a verb form of corruption I've never seen before. If you have to say like, if you have a form that kind of, concise for leaving a paper trail for something, that's incriminating on

its own. Oh, yeah, that's like how there's the old apocryphal thing that like the Inuit have 40 words for snow. It's like Trump administration people have like 60 different words for paper trail. They all violate all the time. Because she's been trying the schlock thing for years. After Trump's defeat

in 2020, she tried to turn her status as a mega icon into profitable business. This is back to the journal. Trying her hand at ventures including lines of hair care and fragrance products, a med spa. I mean, Sarah Palin, launched Tummy Tee, like they all did this. Her hair looks crazy, to be clear. It's like kind of conditions

to death. I mean, it looks like whatever condition she uses came out of the same lab, we're making the bio-weapons. What do you think the vector is for the bio-weapons? In 2022, she launched what she's termed an upscale vodka champagne brand, American Dream, organizing a dinner for Mar-a-Lago gas. What the fuck is of vodka champagne?

Well, it's a brand that sells vodka and champagne, you know? Together at last. Finally. Two-thirds of a French 75. if you make it wrong. American Dream organizing a dinner from Mara Lago guests and participants

that realized halfway through they were sitting at an investment pitch because she won $75 million. Apparently this angered Trump who noted, you're supposed to be getting donations for me, not you. Has this woman ever had a conversation

with anyone where the theme wasn't give me money? I mean, I know I'm kind of a hypocrite in that regard, but like at least I tend to ask for smaller amounts and I don't spend it on lip fillers. Look, I'm not judging someone's addicted to money. That's okay. I understand.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, like we shouldn't, you know, just because of a scale of small, like, doesn't mean that we should, we should shame it. Her engagement to Trump Jr. had ended in the financial disclosure in February 2025. She reported liabilities, including a boat loan valued at $100,000 and a mortgage value between $1,000 and $5 million and assets, including one of her med spas of a different vodka company, each worth $1 in $5 million and $800,000 in podcast income, which is just bribes. We got to get this woman from, to prevent this woman. from starting new vodka brands. The vodka champagne was diabolical enough. Later that spring, she began requesting additional payments from Dieter's.

Guilfoyle asked him to draft a letter saying he owed her back payments for consulting services frequently with Dieter's telling a journal. She was worried about legality and was worried about the appearances of it. So at this point, the person bribing her is like, I got such bad service from my bribing. I'm going to make all of this completely public. Yeah, there's sort of two aspects to this, right? One is it's illegal and the other is it looks really illegal. And so she eventually gets in touch to the IRS commissioner and then sends a photo of the letter,

the fawning letter she writes the IRS commissioner to Dieter's. Two days later, Dieter sent her a photo of a memo addressed to her. I have paid you $300,000 over the years. As of this memo, I've not received one favor. I'm not naive or a sucker. I need results. Jesus. Where's my quo?

Where is my quote? I gave you so much quid. No quo. So in response, she told Dieter's, please stop papering these things. It's so dangerous. You don't want this in the Wall Street Journal. And so she's like, you know, she's sucking up to everybody. And so on.

And that afternoon, she texted an update. Long, the IRS commissioner had written her back. Boom, she wrote to Dieter's. A week later, she placed two missed calls to Deeter's phone and then said, please wire money to the American Express account. And now all of this has come out and she is thoroughly embattled as ambassador. And Long is no longer the IRS commissioner. He's U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

It was totally useless. None of it worked. Some people become ambassadors. Some people get their ambassadorships taken away. It's all part of life's rich tapestry. That's right. You had Jason Statham as the British voice you were imagining. Now David Attenborough.

There's nothing more that I love than people self-incriminating. Yeah. She's the perfect Maga Corcia. I love her. I don't want her to get any more money, but I don't want her to get arrested. I want her to keep trying. I wish her every sort of success inventing the Prosecco of Vodka. Well, she's not going to have enough money to do the Prosecco of Vodka.

It's going to have to be the Prosecco of Sambuca. Look, I think it's about time we get into our second half where we're going to talk to Musa a little bit about a certain football club up north where they do things a little differently. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the second half. We are now joined by returning guest, co-host of the Stadio Football Podcast. It's Musa Kwanga. Musa, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. Great to be back. Listen, I'm on it. I'm on it. Here's the thing. We are supposed to talk about Man City being like the Emirates' entry into Manchesterism and what that means for Burnhamism and what it means when you deal with a monarchy. But I've just been handed a bulletin, a very important football-related bulletin, which is, and I know this is going to disappoint all of you listening and everyone here,

but Yasser al-Ramian, governor of Neum's owner, the Public Investment Fund, has confirmed that Neum Stadium will no longer host any World Cup games. it was always supposed to be the only part of the line that was going to get built when they were still going to do the stadium. You know what they say you're not a neon fan unless you're used to disappointment, you know? It's not just about the ups. Yeah, so the... So many tourists just in expecting it to be, you know,

just the good times and it's like, no, no, no, you're not. You have to go to neon for like every game, you know? I'm shocked. You have to go there and then take a nine-hour flight back to the nearest other city. Yeah, that's right. There will be no more Neum Stadium. I know we call the final nail in the Neum Coff in a while ago, but I keep, I keep an eye on it. There'll be no Neum FC then. I'll tell the sort of, you know, English football people whose careers are kind of petered out, you know? That is absolutely wild. The backtracking on that project is talk about a symbol and a metaphor

for like overreach. That is, wow. We're here mostly to talk about Man City. That was an important Bulletin. But you know how when Kim Jong-il played his first round of golf ever? I'm fascinated to see what the segue is going to be here. Sure. Okay. He scored 37 under par and was declared the greatest player in history. In my view, what Manchester City expects from Britain and to be fair, how Britain has consistently

treats its sort of benefactor states in the Gulf is to say, yeah, you know what? You run by Man City? you can just win forever by deploying oil money to secure illegally high numbers of players. And everyone else is going to lose because you are the best. Because this is like with Man City, it seems like we've created this. Everyone seems very happy with, well, there are rules that protect them and then bind others. Because the point is that if you're going to invest in the UK, we're going to kind of let you win. So, Musa, can you take our listeners through?

what happened and what the fuck I'm talking about by referring to saying Britain's allowing Sheikh Mansour to do a Kim Jong-il. Absolutely so. Manchester United were traditionally the biggest power in Manchester football. And then along came Manchester City. They were owned where they were purchased by the Abu Dhabi Royal Family effectively in 2008 as a rival. They were identified as a club that had a great history.

They still do. That will never change. And the plan was to kind of make them into a rising power to rival Manchester United, but also to kind of become dominant on a global. scale. They've absolutely achieved that. The problem is not that they've achieved. The problem is how they've achieved it. So there's a set of rules imposed by UEFA, the governing body in Europe and the Premier League, the governing body of the top division in the UK in England. And they have various financial rules. And the accusation and the charges placed against city, 115 charges in total,

114 of which they were found guilty of by recent independent tribunal, was that they had systematically cooked the books specifically. They had stated that money they were gaining in sponsorship, was sponsorship and not actually provided by the Abu Royal Family, which in fact was, and that was in the amount of almost 900 million pounds. So basically, let's sort of give an American comparison. Imagine signing the best player in basketball basically every year.

But that's the equivalent for 10 years. In terms of the outlay of money, that's what Citi basically did. In terms of the financial advantage they purchased. So imagine, like, Citi go out and get, Shoahe-Otani, he's a generational player, once every two years. Like, Mookie Bet's one year,

Shohiotti be next, and then in and out. So that's what Citi Bates did. and they did it completely illegally, a bit like what the LA Clippers have done, but to a magnitude of like five. This scheme to kind of get more money into the club because the Emirates don't want to sort of invest in a loser. They want returns from the brands and returns from themselves.

They want dominance, yeah, at any cost. So that happens, Manchester go and they win, and don't get me wrong, they still have to do a lot of stuff on the pitch because they also play the best execs and the best coach and they've got the best players, but they basically won everything, right? They won like eight league titles in the period between,

I think 2009 and 2006, they won a ton of lead titles. And now it's all hit the fan because a lot of people are going, hang on a minute, you cheated and you denied us all the glory, all the hope. The other problem is that in the meantime, Abu Dhabi has basically made itself pretty much indispensable to certain politicians in the UK. Yeah, just a quick question that's kind of related to this. Who was the mayor of Manchester when this was happening again? Because I don't quite remember.

Someone who's gone up in the world. Yeah. Abu Dhabi invested a huge amount. in Manchester, but a lot of it was not necessarily affordable housing, right? It was more middle-class housing than like. It wasn't like they were elevating, like working-class people and putting them in better circumstances. But they put in, here's the thing, crucially,

they put in a ton of money where the UK government didn't. And so actually the awful thing now is a lot of people can legitimately point to their lifestyles and be like, hang on a minute, this petro state gave us money that you never did, which has always been the thing, like, particularly with the North, with the UK government, just the underinvestment in resources. And this was always going to happen.

Even prior to Brexit, you'd have governments basically creating systems are almost like feudal power, but I would say almost like quasi-fuda loyalty from people who were like, well, until they turned up, you weren't spending money on us, which is also true, which leads us to the present moment. This also happened to Newcastle. Yeah, Newcastle was Saudi. They were like, oh, you're not going to put any money in Newcastle?

Okay, we'll just, we'll regenerate it according to what we think is good. I kind of had this idea that if you are the sort of city council of a sort of like, you know, sort of second level British city, if you're not competing for this kind of investment, you're not trying, right? Because you're not getting funded otherwise. And you have a bunch of statutory spending that you have to do. And so in that sense, no surprise. But I guess what interests me is how was Manchester the sort of most successful at this, you know?

How are they the most successful at courting that kind of investment? I have some sympathy with them to the extent that Manchester is a very attractive city culturally. Like, it's an open goal. Like, it's, sorry, that was accidental. It's an easy sell, Manchester. that culturally it's fantastic, assets are affordable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against like city councils being enterprising, going at a look of investment.

The problem is that what you do is you give nation states limitous money a huge amount of leverage. And now what you're seeing Manchester City doing is basically saying, well, if you punish us too severely, there's billions that we might not invest in your economy. This is basically very much a kind of scorpions thing you're dangling over, it's fair to say the UK economy is not the happiest economy at the moment, not the happiest society at the moment. So pulling out that future investment or withdrawing it or withholding it, it's a big threat in the current context. In fact, I have a quote from the FT here,

which is on a long read about this subject. Just hours after the Premier League charged Manchester City with more than 100 breaches of its financial rules in early 2023, the football club's chair had an important date in his diary. Caldoun al-Mubarak, who's also chief executives of Mubodala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign investment fund, was due to see Jeremy Hunt, then finance minister. The meeting was part of a broader effort to rebuild confidence less than five months after Liz Trusses' unfunded mini budget. Treasury officials noted at the start of the subject that football should be avoided. Uppes at treatment of his club, Mubarak raised the topic anyway, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. He described it as an attack on an important Abu Dhabi asset by an unregulated cartel and a front to the Emirates most respected companies, one of the people added.

So this was made extraordinarily explicit that there is no, there is a quid, there will be a pro quo. Yeah, and you can't sort of, you know, investigate that in any way. It's fascinating, isn't it? It's like, oh, they really have. They have so much leverage here, and it's at the best, extremely embarrassing and at the worst, like, extremely concerning. Like, it's just real power, yeah. I think that the point you raised at the beginning, Musa, is probably, I think, one of

the most salient, which is it didn't need to be that, like, the UK just eroded its own sovereignty in every single one of its second cities via frequently the vector of football ownership that repeats itself again and again and again. But like it didn't need to do that. And I think at the time it saw this as great. We no longer have to concern ourselves with these people who we don't really care about, don't fully think of as people and who we really wish would rather go away. Okay, well, fine, the Emirates or the Saudis or whatever. They're going to take care of them. And we don't have to worry because they're going to be happy because they see lots of buildings going up and people love to see buildings going up. It makes it feel prosperous, even if it's

nothing to do with like the mayor or the government. They like it. And we're not going to have to worry. Yeah. People don't tend to ask too many questions about how sustainable that kind of construction is, maybe. Yeah. I mean, the skyline of Manchester was repeatedly touted as a version of Manchesterism working, right? It's like, hey, look at that skyline. Manchester is it. It's a prosperous city. but it's prosperous like the kind of favorite courtesan of a literal king. Guess what? You're the favorite courtisan as long as you're the favorite courtizan. But you have to stay the favorite.

I've never seen a country that talks so much about sovereignty and self-determination that is just so deferential to anyone that has the biggest checks. Like the UK, England specifically just rolls over at the sign of a big check time and time again, whether it's selling off like public services or like privatization, PFI. You know when you find like an Apple that's been left out in the United States, the sun and you get to it like a couple days later and it's just been like narrow down like it's so narrow it looks like the kind of it looks like the thames like the wash after it's been flooded like you've got like that thin cord on the middle that is the UK and like how much it's just

sold off public services and housing stock like there's almost nothing left you look at it and you're just like delicious a lovely treat I mean I mean I was going to say but like it's a very good observation and I think obviously something that we've talked about in the show for a very very long time and really it comes sort of you know in many ways it comes down to um it's a much easier. You know, we, this is a short-termist country with very sort of like grand visions of itself and also hasn't really ever gotten over the fact that like it lost its imperial status and really didn't have anything to rest on, right? And, and so part of it is this sort of sent, you know, and very, very evident in the Brexit campaign, even though it was like,

it feels like it was so long ago actually like nothing has really changed in terms of those visions. And the politics now is very much one where pretty much every major party kind of like doesn't want to sort of face the reality of like, well, what is this country and what do we actually represent and what do we stand for? And I think a big part of it is also like this real refusal to invest in younger generations, right? Because like it is younger generations who set the course for what things will be or like what things could be. Like, you know, the realm of possibility is anchored in like, you know, the choices that you give them. And over the past few decades, the decision is, okay, well, we're going to give them nothing. And hopefully something

will happen and something has happened. It's just that the thing that's happened is you are now kind of in debt to lots of different places and funds and they get to decide, and they get to decide whether your city gets to live or die. It is royals who rule royally. Oh, this absolute monarchy is not being very fair to me. Yeah. Hey, wait a minute. It seems as though this literal king thinks he's somehow better than me, just because I also gave him. a huge amount of leverage over me. Why doesn't he see me as an equal? Why doesn't he see me as a peer?

That's so funny. What the fuck do you think what happened? You gave away the city to a king. They didn't realize because it's the imperial arrogance. Like it's the imperial arrogance of thinking that person can't do it to us. Like I also think it's like, I got to say it's probably a bit racially coded as well. Like there's a weird thing in the UK about how, and I heard it, obviously, like, having gone to like boarding school, people would say stuff like, two million pounds of like old

money is better than 10 million pounds of new money. And they would have this thing where. where yeah, these people are rich than us, but we can allow them to our societies, our members clubs. And what Abu Dhabi did basically did was they just came in and just blew that up. That whole concept of difference, they just came in and blew up. And I think there was an element of like, oh, we can ride this tiger, we can bring in these nation states, but we will ultimately control it.

But the Premier League is realized and they created something. They didn't, the Premier League basically brought in an apex predator. It's what they did, right? They thought they could come in, bring in Abu Dhabi's money and just like regulate them, control them. Abidavis like, no, we're coming in here to, what's that thing in Game of Thrones? we're here to like break the wheel. Abu Dhabi basically came in

and they broke the wheel and the Premier League now is scrambling because they're realizing that their beloved product, their brand is under serious threat. Like people might just go elsewhere. People might just like drift away from it. And it's definitely losing its aura

like year by year as a result of this stuff. Because I mean, we want to talk about money transforming football as sort of a someone who only sort of has a casual knowledge of it. It's like there are two major events, right? Which is Abramovich in 2003. Yeah.

And then we're to avoid ignoring like TV rights stuff, right? but were saying Abramovich in 2003 and then Mansour in 2008 and from then two lovely men with no questions about anything they've ever done. Two swell guys.

And Abramovich also is that's a story about like Russian money in London as much as Mansour is a story of it. That blew up in its own way as well of course. Yeah. But both of these transformations made the premiership

not that different from like Johnny Baby and like FIFA. right? Where this is, there's an organization that exists to perpetuate itself. And it can't really be trusted with the game that it's stewarding. And a huge part of that is also not just the, not just the organization. It's not just the Premier League. It's also the politicians, like Andy Burnham, who are so thrilled to have an easy answer to their problems in the form of East Manchester is no longer something I have to think about. And it's this every, every hand washes the other, until Sheikh Mansour is like,

no, no, I bought victories. I wasn't buying a team. I was buying victory. Right. And then everyone who's had their hand in his has to reckon with the fact that either they were tricked and didn't know that's what they were selling him. And in the case of someone like of politicians,

it's more like that they didn't know what they were promoting and associating themselves with, right? Or it's you were in on it and you thought it was worth it. Totally. And it was lovely when it was all good. I mean, also like they got lucky the Premier League because Yagin Clark being an exceptional coach over Liverpool, Manchesterty's main rival,

made this a far more interesting tournament, well, a competition that had ever had a right to be. And if Liverpool hadn't been that good, this conversation gets pretty bitter a lot earlier. But in classic like English political fashion, everyone's happy when the money's rolling in and no one's too bothered about where it's coming from. And of course, the Abramovich wagon came off the tracks pretty spectacularly

to the point where he's now just here and there, trying to avoid sanctions, trying to avoid, you know, frozen assets. And that was a totally mainstream thing to welcome him without questions before. And also, like, you know, Abidab, they also had the ownership by Shinawatra, the Prime Minister of Thailand, who was doing basically like, it was basically executing drug dealers by the hundreds. And there was this whole test. This is the thing. None of this is inevitable, by the way, because a lot of people would be like, oh, money always goes wherever it does.

No, no. But none of this is inevitable. There was a test for suitability of ownership. It was called the fit and proper person's test, which absolute joke. But there was a test to assess where the people were suitable to own for. clubs and these institutions, these countries, these individuals just drove a horse and carriage through that because the primarily didn't enforce it and now here we are and all of this was avoidable. I want if people take anything from this and this is obviously a political podcast

primarily whether we're looking at the Brazilian elections, whether we're looking at Brexit, looking at Trump one, Trump two, Bush Gore, all of it, all of these historical outcomes were avoidable like every single one. It's just because a group of people, a homogenous group of people and it's unfortunately, I hate to say it, but it's a homogenous group, it's heterosexual white men primarily, and the reason it's normally them is because they do not have apex predators. Heterosexual white men generally who are affluent don't go through life feeling physical or financial threats, not the wealthy ones. And I think that complacency leads people into quite dangerous places. This is the strongest argument for DEI, right?

Have people in the room who are actually experienced a navigating threats at an early stage, and not just people who start smelling the bonfire when it's at their actual toasts. There's an interesting municipal angle to this as well, I think, in that we talked about sort of other councils chasing the same kind of pool of money. There's an interesting land angle here where a lot of this was framed as development, right,

where now they had this like derelicts land in Ancoat's, a very, very deprived area, right? Which Manchester City Council bought for a huge amount of money and then gave this incredible sweetheart deal to the Emirates for, you know, to build on. And this is, this sort of, you know, embroils burn into the extent that there was another parcel of land like that that was originally they were going to build number 10 north on.

And one of the reasons why they're now at Heron House sharing an office building with GCHQ and why that's costing the government a ton in security and I think badly annoying a bunch of spies is because it was meant to be on one of these pieces of land that the Emirates had this kind of sweetheart option on, this kind of first. refusal. So you kind of have this question of, well, how are we going to kind of redevelop, you know, this land and it's kind of taken as a given by all these people. Well, we should gentrify it. There should be a kind of a nice bakery here. There should be, you know, high-rise student housing. And the money for that has to come from, you know, somewhere. So it may as well be somewhere

with, let's say, a not great human rights records that we think that we can just kind of milk. God, absolutely. That is just, again, I hate to keep using this word, but it's complacency and expediency. It's all these classic things. I just, I, I must, I haven't got much hair these days. So I met, I tell my metaphorical hair, but just the sheer avoidability of all of this. And the refusal to value things correct. I mean, goodness me, when, you know, when Russia sold off its economy to oligarchs, those weren't in time. Those weren't the clearest negotiations. They gave, they gave those shares to the workers and the workers basically handed that stuff over under duress, right? What was our excuse? We weren't under duress. We weren't being threatened. We literally

undervalued prime land, prime assets. I say we, you know, the British government, the British people. And now here we are. Like, I think of the alternative future. And I taught young people all the time, talking about Brexit, the fact they don't have much movement, they don't have job opportunities, housing opportunities. If you think of the last 25, 30 years and what we could have done to protect renters rights, right, what we could have done to protect, like, rent rises, pathways to ownership, care economies. And we've done, we've done none of that. Like, and I hate to say this because it is the Manchesterism. It is because look at Manchester now, the cost of living there, the explosion and the cost living in Manchester, it sounds ridiculous to say this. For 20 years ago, Manchester

was seen as an option where you could go there potentially buy, afford a place to rent. I've got a friend who just moved back there recently. The thing has absolutely skyrocketed. So what have they got for their money, actually? What has Manchester got for its money overall? Apart from a few people going, I've done well out of this. As a city, what has Manchester overall got? Has it benefited? I think that they were the biggest winner from this, apart from Manchester City, is Abu Dhabi itself. laughing. I just hope really that the guy who is now Prime Minister didn't premise his whole career on that

because that could be kind of awkward otherwise. Well, we're going to find out, aren't we? We're going to find out. And I think the question is, also I'll go to my what is Abu Dhabi question after, but I think that the reason that this happens is twofold, right? Number one, all these men

that you describe Musa, they all think that they're like are unlike anyone else and they can ride the tiger. They're the only actual tiger rider, or at least they can ride it enough that they're, by the time the tiger's out of control, they'll have retired and it's fine. They rode the tiger successfully. No one's ever ridden the tiger. If the last like 20 years of experience in British politics is taught as anything, it's that the tiger will always eat you. If you think you're writing a tiger, you should stop. Absolutely. And sooner than you think.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Much sooner. You will never pick the right time to get off the tiger. You do not ride the tiger. Well, the thing that Manchester gets out of this, right? is they get things that they can count. They get inflows of investment. They get to take an asset off their books, which obviously the public should never own. They get new buildings. They might even get increased council tax intake

because the house are more expensive. There's somebody making like sour dough or something, you know? Like it's not tangible, you know? Not tangible for people who are getting displaced out of the area. And so what they get are these things that are easy to count, but that don't really matter, right? in terms of do you have a place that is going to be sustainably supporting itself, as opposed to, oh, well, I've been given the win game button by this person who says he promises not to use the leverage he

has over to me to screw with me. I guess I'll push it and just go do something else. Yeah, and you have to, you also have to rely on those people to, A, not cheat, and B, if they do cheat, not get caught forever. I just want to jump in. I get this, because I'm not saying Manchester has not gained at all from this. Of course it has. We can point to that investment, but for me, the frustration is this lack of systematic investment in the north, right? And I went to Liverpool a couple of years ago, and I saw it there. If you want to see a city that's just been punished by the Conservatives for not being fundamentally conservative, it's Liverpool. It's absolutely shocking. You go to Anfield Football Ground and you walk around the stadium, right? And you know,

this huge stadium is the pride and joy of the city. But the deprivation in that area, and I don't blame the City Council for that. That is like decades of systemic, systematic underinvestment by the conservative government. Like, what do they call it back under Thatcher, the manager decline of the north, they were calling it. The managed decline of the north. Like, I don't know, I get really angry. If you're not patriotic, right, then don't pretend you are, but to say that your patriots, say that you value sovereignty and then to hand over your country to whoever is willing to invest in it, right? And this is where I have, I would not say a measure of sympathy or empathy, but this is where from the perspective of what Abu Dhabi is done, they can come in and

say quite rightly, we put in money that you didn't. And it's not just Manchester. I mean, we're talking about Manchester specifically in a local example, but I think it's, Manchester, I think, is a metaphor for the rest of the North, right? This strange, strange relationship that the UK that England has had with the North is this kind of like, it's very kind of Game of Thrones, those weirdos north of the wall. Is that, that's a real, and I can't believe,

and I say this, as a black person whose parents came to the UK, it's frustrating because I come as an outsider and I've been in the country, like in and out of the country for like 47 years of my life, and I'm like, how is it that I, with no previous history in this country, like the North, far more than people who've been here for centuries.

That feels so weird to me, right? Like, what's going to happen the great replacement when you get rid of all the black people and you're still going to hate northerners? What is that?

Hey, we only have enough room in our hearts to hate one kind of person so get rid of everyone else. It's so weird like the great replacement because they don't even like northerners.

You don't even like other white people. What are you going to do? Everything's just going to keep seceding until it's like my crissets. It just keeps narrowing and narrowing and narrowing. Yeah. Right? It has to.

Right. It has to. Well, we'll just, we're just, we're just going to keep doing Brexit. we get it right. The one true Brexit.

We're going to Brexit from the rest of England. Yeah. Yeah. Look, like that one town piss whittle or whatever, they got it right. They're just to see for the rest of the country. But I also wanted to talk about, right? There's always like this idea, right, that, well, sports washing is you can make people think of, associate you with sports rather than human rights abuses.

And I think that, like, that gets to part of it. But what else does Abu Dhabi get from owning the dominant, football team in the premiership and for a while the world. Can I imagine up in. It's like the Coennail, it's like everyone else wants. Yeah. Like, you know, the most interesting thing with the World Cup final, right, in 2022, was who was in the stadium, right?

Because the thing about powerful people is they understand where power lies, right? And everyone who is everyone in the world of wealth wanted a ticket to the World Cup final in 2022. Everyone was there. Like, and that fascinates me. Someone once told me the most, the most important place in Spanish politics is the presidential box at Real Madrid Football Club. And I just think it's the same principle of the Premier League.

You want the marquee because that's where the eyes are. If it was racing, if it was horse racing, it would be the one that wins the Grand National. If it was American football, it would be like who owns, I don't know, the New England Patriots. It's just because it's the most visible jewel and the nature of dominance, the nature of patriarchal dominance is to have the biggest shiny jewel and they've got it. Yeah. And the crazy thing is, because of an accident of history and also as like a long, hangover of colonialism and the fact that football is playable by everyone's world sport,

etc, etc. The UK had that diamond in its back garden. And it was like, I don't like that part of the garden. Someone else can just take that plus the diamond. There's got funny accents and that part of the gardens. Yes, that was it. That was basically it. It was the working class. It was the working class. Yeah. That diamond, it's too associated with like the working class people. So, hey, these people who are really interested in the diamond and have a big. diamond power extractor machine set up. They'd like the diamond. I'm inclined to give it to them for, I don't know, tenor.

This is super interesting because it's sort of when you sort of think about some of the other conversations that we've had recently about like why Britain is the way that it is, one of the issues, one of the things that's like very apparent is like the stuff that makes the UK like cool and interesting and like appealing are the things that like the people with power absolutely fucking hate. Yes. They hate sports. They hate arts and they hate artists.

They hate musicians. They hate anyone who works at the BBC. I guess they hate doctors now as well. Like there are so many really cool and interesting, like, elements of in this country. And like, we have a very rich history of, like, especially working class people, being at the forefront of so many kind of industries and traditions

and being resilient even as governments and, you know, monarchies have tried to destroy them, like being really resilient to that. And it just, yeah, this does all just kind of feel like, well, it almost feels like a last ditch attempt at like, you know, killing your enemies and smiting yourself in the process, right? Like so much of, I don't know whether this necessarily applies to football, but I certainly know like when it comes to like, you know, arts or literature and stuff like that, the hatred that like the ruling class has over just anyone who isn't super rich doing that

kind of mean, but at the same time, they also want to take credit for like when it goes right. And it's like it's so bizarre and frustrating to watch because you can sort of still see the contempt is so evident. And the result that we have left, especially if you look at things like art and literature and stuff, is that, well, British arts and creativity at the most, like, largely fronted by people who are from, like, upper-middle class backgrounds or from upper-class backgrounds, who are very moneyed, who are always sort of going to succeed. And we have, like, a much poorer sort of, like, industry as a result. And one that, like, governing classes are kind of broadly ignorant about while also holding content for whatever's left.

Hey, you can commodify it eventually. Well, you know, it's fascinating, right. So, look at football's a great example of this. I love that you've mentioned the class aspect of this, because you look at football and how many people are knighted, if you look at the number of athletes who have received knighthoods from football compared to other sports, right? You've got, like, knights in all these other sports.

That is a proportion of, like, people that get knighted. Football's got one of the lowest proportions. There are footballs, I mean, David Beck and owner's got his knighthood recently, Alan Sherer, all these people. I know they've turned them down, but they certainly, I mean, I can name quite of you who haven't even offered them, right? And it's because football is a working class sport. And if you start giving validation of that level to working class people,

they'll start getting the wrong kinds of ideas. And all of a sudden, you know, the class revolution. And what they do in the UK is interesting. It reminds me of that there's all empires where, like the Byzantine Empire, there are certain points that would only be as big as its city's walls. And other times would extend to several different countries. But sometimes in empires get to their place of retrenchment, they circle the wagons and they hide behind their high walls.

And that's kind of what's happening now in the UK, right? Like working class people are just having access to everything that they love, whether it's being able to like work and live overseas because Brexit absolutely was not a working class of their project. We can tell you that. It was about having a captive working class in the country that couldn't have workers rights and just having them. It's basically a feudal system. Right. It's a feudal system they're making. We know that. Right. You know, working class people access to to football. And this has also been a people of color. Working class people having access to like all of these rich cultural products that Hussein's mentioned. And football's a key part of that. Like it's not meant to be owned by the people. I mean, you know, capitalism. We always say this. Capitalism, the whole point of it. it is to separate the originator of the joy from the enjoyment and the benefit of the joy. And football is like just the key, this is like the final form.

I mean, the Premier League almost, it's like this is the, how do I say it best? It's not a crisis of capitalism. It's capitalists working as intended. Oh, no, there's something wrong with capitalism. No, it's just being itself. I think on sort of like a sort of, again, I keep coming back to the municipal with this, right, because I was talking about Manchester. I think this is one of these things where you can have these kind of outsider,

you can have these kind of working class phenomena, whether that's the music or the football or whatever else. And if you have a city that's not getting any other funding, then I think you can look at, we've talked with David Banks about this idea of the city authentic, right? Of sort of packaging and commodifying these things for local elites of, you know, the things that we used to do here, you know, you can't move to Manchester and start a band anymore because it's too expensive.

But we can talk about the bands that were here in the 90s or the 80s, and all of these things get to be reproduced for, you know, a small handful of people who are going to keep paying for them. And then that money just gets extracted and it goes to, I guess, in this case, Abu Dhabi, right? Ryan, it's not even the money they're after. That's the thing. It's the, it's like Qatar, right? It's the seat at the table. Qatar, look, and again, weirdly enough, I'm sympathetic to states, I'm not sympathetic to authoritarian states.

I'm sympathetic to small states trying to survive against bigger neighbors by projecting some form of political. power, soft power. Katar did this for a long time. It did it in the arts, actually, right? It did really, really good arts curation. Then it dipped its tone to the waters of Al Jazeera and it got a bit more political and then it went for football with Paris Saint-German because the power was accruing through the arts wasn't enough, right? And Abu Dhabi obviously just swinging for the fence and, look, we have the world's, you know, the passport that gets you into the most countries like visa-free. We have these limitless resources. We bailed out Dubai. We need a crown jewel. And where this puts Manchester, unfortunately, is it gets caught up in this conversation and never really wanted to be part of.

right? And I think this is the tragedy really. I'm not the biggest fan of talking about sovereignty, but I think there is something quite sad about having your identity subjugated, subjected, and being ultimately kind of an economic play thing. Because, you know, I think this is the most damning charge against Abu Dhabi is, if you punish our football club for having broken clear rules, we're going to pull this investment. I mean, that is. I imagine for football teams, like, that is even more piercing because of the history of football teams and the history of like these clubs sort of starting with like local people in really, really difficult circumstances and in many cases,

like having to sort of pool together money to like, buy, you know, kind of like find premises to sort of train and like, you know, building this entire franchise or building like this whole league and building this thing that like basically everyone in this country is really, really proud of in this kind of extremely localized way. It's like the, it's like the last affirmation of a local identity. And one where like, you know, this obviously doesn't,

you know, this isn't just kind of the fault of Abu Dhabi, but it's more just like the moment that, lots of external finance was kind of being welcomed in. This was always going to kind of be something that was, you know, incredibly risky. And I remember like reading lots of sort of like, you know, op-heads and stuff and just, you know, the perennial fear is always, well, we're just going to go the same way as the Americans, right? We're going to go, you know, the Premier League will just sort of become like the sort of like pastiche of the NFL. And oddly enough, like the fact that the NFL is now becoming like quite a big thing in the UK. I think, you know, there's something,

there's something very ominous about like what is very, very, very. likely to happen. But I think it'll, you know, this was always sort of going to end or this was always going to like run the risk of big finances who are the only real source of, you know, funds in a country where, you know, we've cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and we're very hostile to the only places that are willing to like give us some form of investment, you know, but the only thing I was left is like, well, being held hostage. And yeah, like, you know, I don't expect this to kind of be like a one off. I expect this to be really, really common, and especially among kind of flailing teams

who like kind of turn to these types of sovereign wealth funds as a last resort. Gosh, I mean, it's quite striking. And I'm now thinking of this toxic mix of the cost of living rising and people needing sport more than ever and football at the head of that pile for their escapism. And what that does for, I mean, Abu Dhabi have kind of given us a blueprint, haven't they?

For like other states that might have ambitions, maybe a bit lower down the pyramid, going actually, let's buy a club, let's regenerate an area, it's generate a town. what you've basically got is you've got a town full of supporters that will absolutely go to go to the mats for you. I mean, really, the first example of this,

the real sort of invader in this space was a sort of petro state with a terrible, terrible human rights record, of course, Ryan Reynolds. It's like, well, hey, welcome to the country. Listen, I'm not going to forget the Deadpool movies, you know. He can try and, he can, he can, They can buy whatever he wants. Yeah.

Yeah, like, you know, it's, um, it's, we've often said before, British politicians are cheap, right? You can get one committing crimes for you in parliament for the cost of like a zone three flat share. Can I, can I also just recall very quickly, like the little bit that we had many, many years ago about buying a, buying a football team? Because like, there were a lot of just like low league teams that were like actually selling them quite cheap.

Yeah, we should buy Bromley Football Club. Oh my God, Bromley catching strays. I'm not. Romney fans. That was not, I'm not, MASH, I know you listen to me, it's not me. We were thinking initially, I think like Thamesmead FC was like looking for some investment. And then we kind of got distracted by shirt designs. Like, if we didn't all have different kinds of ADHD, we would be in the Isthmian league right now.

You would. Yeah, so alternative world where like we would also be like, hmm, this is actually very, very good. Can I jump on this? This is we're all, you know, the varied degrees of ADHD. Can I just jump on this thing about this jump in this comment before I forget. about how cheap people are to buy. Just very quickly on this, I compare this, I compare the ease with which

British institutions are bought, to the ease, to the, how cheap those politicians were that went to Saudi. I couldn't believe how little they were doing those gigs for. I'm like, if you are going to do work that's going to basically like tie you, your leg is in a generational basis, are you not going to ask for at least like

north of 10 million to do that thing? Like, what are you absolutely playing at? Like, some of the numbers were just, wow, you really just went at the first offer. but I don't think it even negotiated. I kind of get it though. Like I had a fairly well-paid job like many years ago at an American company and I didn't realize that like how well they pay people at that time anyway.

And so when they were like, what kind of salary do you want? I was just like, I sort of like threw a number which would be like fairly significant in the UK. And they were like, yep, that's completely fine. And I was like, oh, I didn't have to like negotiate for that. That's kind of cool. I must be really good at doing deals. Like I'm such a good. I'm so good at business.

And then like five years later I realized like somehow felt like I was being paid way below everyone else. And it was all just because I didn't know how to negotiate my way. British politician who's getting a real job for the first time in their life asks to name a number to someone for whom money is kind of infinite

and going, 10,000 pounds sounds like a lot of money. Yeah, or like, you know, just like, you know, how about like, you know, 5,000 and some free and some treats? Like a box of like your finest treats, please.

It's a very small furniture. Okay, for anyone there. this thing as a freelance that had learned the highway to ask for money. When you are talking to someone who could pay a lot of money, potentially, say to them, let's discuss the scope of work, have two meetings, don't discuss money, and then ask for money, right? Because then when you call it the scope of work, that's ominous, you know, we go to like a pizza place and they say, oh, this pizza has torn chicken.

You know, when people start describing the thing, it's their cue for like, I'm going to ask for more money. If you just ask for money quickly, they're like, this person's just asking because it's the first we've asked for anything. So you have to have the patience. The problem is when they ask you that question, or at least for me anyway. Like, it feels like I'm also in trouble

and I don't know why. That's very much a me thing. But I'm also just like, please don't get mad at me if I like say a number that's too big. I'm sorry. And so maybe, our new stealth up,

we are going to give British MPs and British footballers who want to go to the Emirates or Saudi or wherever cognitive behavioral therapy. So they have a bit more self-esteem and they can ask for more. We're going to do like a Nathan Fielder situation where they do the simulation first of asking for like extra money. and then.

All right. All right. I think that's all the tie we have for today. But Musa, always a delight to have you on the show. Where can people check you out? They can check me out on all streaming platforms, primarily Spotify,

Stadio Football Podcast with my brilliant co-host, Ryan Hun, amazing to work with him. He hates when I give him compliments, but he can't stop me. He's incredible, the most gifted person ever worked with.

And also online, stadio.com football is our website and then me on Instagram. At Okwanga. You don't have to be nice, but it helps. So yeah. All right. Well, thanks for everybody for listening. There's going to be a bonus episode later this week.

So catch us on the bonus feed on Friday. Five bucks a month. You know the deal. Anyway, thanks again to Musa. Thank you, my co-os, for being here. And we will see you a few days. Bye, brood. Goodbye.

Bye. See then.