What Now? with Trevor Noah - UnitedHealthcare Assassin: Italians Are Black Again?
Episode Date: December 12, 2024In the wake of the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, the internet is awash with hot takes on health insurance and hot memes of everyone’s favorite assassin-bae. The facts may still be developing,... but that’s not stopping Trevor, Christiana, and Josh from sharing their “sweeping judgements” on the matter. Is Luigi Mangione guilty? Not guilty? Hot guilty? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Okay, I'm going to start this episode of the podcast with a disclaimer.
There's a thing I do with my friends and I have called it sweeping judgments.
All of these opinions are our opinions.
Everything we say is ridiculous.
None of it needs to make sense.
If you've come here for facts, this is not the podcast for you.
This is not the episode for you.
They might also be jokes.
If you don't like jokes, I'm warning you now.
Get your kid to take you out of the room
because shit might go down.
["What Now?" by Trevor Noah plays.]
This is What Now with Trevor Noah.
Welcome to Sweeping Judgments.
Josh, I'm just going to jump straight into it.
Okay.
As a fellow fellow gray hoodie wearer.
Yeah.
You knew this guy was going to shoot the guy, didn't you?
It's something-
Why are you still wearing the hoodie, by the way?
I- okay, look, this is how I actually dress.
So when he,
when he popped up, can I tell you one thing real quick about the whole thing
before we knew who he was or anything?
When I saw that dude stand up
and then like get the gun ready, everything,
I was so thankful to see white hands.
Oh yeah, it was over for you. Oh, dude Oh yeah, it was over for you.
Oh, dude.
It was over for you.
Then CBS.
Do you know how many videos have you wearing
that exact outfit with that exact backpack?
Talking about CEOs.
And so then,
then CBS had the unmitigated nerve
to say a light-skinned man.
Did you, yeah, I noticed that shit.
I thought I was the only one.
Yeah, but you know what?
Do you wanna know my conspiracy?
What's your conspiracy?
Italians are black again.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Yes, because that woman from,
that Trumpy woman said Ariana Grande
is taking white people's roles.
No, no, no.
She's Italian, I'm telling you,
Italians must be black again.
Let me tell you something, Josh.
I've noticed that.
I've never light-skinned.
I thought I was the only one.
Yeah, I know.
I genuinely thought that...
But now my theory, because it's come out as Italian, I'm like, maybe, you know...
Yeah, but they didn't know when they made that statement.
But now I'm saying, they're calling Italians light skinned?
No, no, no, no.
Let me tell you something, when that exact thing...
Because we all looked at the hand.
And you look and you're like, oh, okay, we know who this isn't.
Yeah, no, no, no, no.
And then they were like a light skinned man.
I was like, ah, ah, guys, ah, guys, let's not.
No, also, I don't want to cast this pleasure on my people, but the time of day I knew they
weren't black.
It's like too early to be doing hits.
Like no, no.
Damn.
Because you know what,
at the beginning we thought it was like-
Shots fired in the studio.
No, no, we thought it was like some elaborate,
like they hired an assassin.
Yes, yes, yes.
And I feel like any black assassins out there
probably work between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m.
and not gonna be-
I do not stand by any of these statements.
I do not.
I'm just saying.
I won't let a black comedian woman
make jokes about black people.
I didn't say we'd be late. I'm just saying that our working hours would be slightly different.
You know what? I'm not happy that anything happened the way it did. However, I do think, you know, because we grew up very religious, all three of us, that sometimes we are blessed in certain ways. I was chatting to Christiana
about this, Josh, and I was like, Oh man, I wonder if we're going to talk about it on
the podcast. And Christiana was like, but we can't. She was like, we cannot, because
he hasn't been caught and there is no third act to the story.
We know that the side teasing me. No, I was like, we know that an assassin shot the CEO.
We know that he's on the run, but we don't know how it concludes.
We haven't found him.
We haven't found him.
And now we have found the suspect.
I will say this, the suspect, because maybe he's not,
and maybe he will be found innocent.
Can I interject with one other thing
that is about this media frenzy that is a joy to watch.
It starts out with something bad, but just maybe we'll get there.
Maybe you'll cut this whole thing.
It's up to you.
We're not cutting anything from this episode.
Everything we use is staying in this episode, everything.
And if you are listening to this episode,
you know terms and conditions.
Anything you listen to beyond this point,
terms and conditions apply.
You have agreed, Josh, go for it.
So basically there's a thing, and it's talked about in media,
but it's almost only talked about by people of color,
because it's usually when it happens to us or we watch it happen,
whenever someone who is usually white, almost always white, but affluent,
gets in trouble for anything, they use the best pictures of them,
they show them in the best light.
And finally, there are people who are disgusted by this act, who are from that normally protected group,
that have to watch the best pictures of this guy get circulated.
He hasn't taken a bad picture. His driver's license looks good.
I call him Assassin Bay.
He has a fan club amongst the ladies.
Yeah.
Is that surprising?
Is this hot privilege?
Is that what it's called?
Yeah.
I mean, if you thought Ted Bundy got male.
Oh, man.
It's also who he took out, right?
Yes.
So if he had shot a worker in McDonald's, for instance.
The person who snitched on him.
Right.
We'd be like, that's not cool.
But he literally shot up to you.
Oh, yeah.
To use comedy terms, yeah.
He punched up and knocked down.
RIP to that man, by the way.
Father, family man.
We should, we're dehumanizing CEOs
right now, but people don't care about CEOs. Yeah, well, I would never dehumanize a CEO.
No. But. Bad for business.
But, we'll get into this later, but I think part of the conversation is going to be us discussing
who gets to be the killer. Do you know what I mean? But let's first start with like the most recent news.
He gets caught at a McDonald's. I don't know about you, but everywhere I went, people seem
to be on this guy's side. I'm shocked that somebody snitched on him. So I'll throw this,
I'll throw two things out there, right? First one is, this is not in defense of this person
who did the telling, I'm just telling you what happened,
right?
In my experience, when you work at a job like that
and somebody crazy come in, you just want them out
by any means necessary.
And so I think there is a part of you working there
being like, look, I don't know, he might think I'm the CEO.
I don't know what he might think I'm the CEO. I don't know what he's going to do next.
I will say though, there's a, there's some, there's some crazy irony in that.
And I don't know if y'all have heard it yet, but, um, I know all these things are
happening in real time every minute.
There's like a new update and stuff.
As we said, there are no facts in this podcast.
These are all sweeping judgments.
Keep going Josh.
Apparently, apparently they they are not gonna give
that McDonald's worker the reward that they were advertising.
Which is low key hilarious,
because if I lost out on $60,000,
I would be mad enough to shoot somebody.
I don't understand what the logic is behind that,
by the way.
The reward or not giving it to them?
No, the not giving the reward.
I don't understand why, like apparently you've got to like claim it ahead of time type thing,
but I don't know what you've heard.
This is, yeah, so what I've heard is that it's quote unquote complicated, which is a
hilarious statement because it was complicated when that man was right there.
But apparently it's complicated because it has the actual reward to go out has to be approved by like two different bodies and the first reward of $10,000 because remember first it was 10,000.
And then they were like, oh, we're upping it. Apparently, only one authorized person said that not the other one. So then they're like, oh, we're not going to give you the money and we got
the guy. And what are you going to do? Sue us? We're the FBI?
The system doesn't care about you. I think this story, I mean, it's, you know, look,
I'll echo what you said, Christiana. I am not happy for anybody to be shot. I do not wish for any CEO to be shot, et cetera. But, but, but.
I found it interesting that companies and CEOs
saw this moment first and foremost through the lens
of them and their safety and their ideas,
then seeing it through like how people were responding to it.
Do you know what I'm saying?
Like if, think about it this way,
when Donald Trump, someone tried to shoot Donald Trump,
I don't know what the exact number was,
but it felt like half the country was like, oh no.
And then maybe like 30%, even 20% was like, yeah, maybe, maybe.
But it didn't feel like a unanimous thing, right?
This is Donald Trump, someone who people would argue
the most polarizing figure in American politics.
Yo, when the CEO guy got shot, Twitter had some
of the meanest and funniest memes produced
in one 24 hour cycle.
There wasn't even a single person who was like,
guys, guys, guys, it's too soon.
I've never seen jokes never be too soon.
And I don't understand why they didn't think of that first.
Why was their first thought, oh, this shows you how dangerous it is to do our jobs, and
not, oh, this shows you how the things we're doing in our jobs are so shitty that the whole
country is full of assassins.
Think that in order to effectively do the job of a CEO, especially when it comes to
something that deals with human life, you have to be nearly sociopathic in nature.
And so then your personal well-being is still like enough of a hierarchy in your mind that
you don't think about things in the way that it would almost make sense to think about
them, if that makes sense.
It does. So for me, like a good example,
I know a lot of dudes who used to be a bouncer,
and all those dudes that used to be a bouncer,
the same thing happens.
Somebody finally pulled a gun on them,
and they were like, you know what?
I don't need this job, right?
But it was a thing of like,
oh, I'm gonna do something different because I don't I don't like what's happening right now
So them taking down all their info and not just being like, you know
What everybody gives free anesthesia for the next six months like like they didn't try to like buy some goodwill
They didn't try like changing thing about the practices and I think that speaks to like a deeper issue in the psyche.
They don't think like us because they don't have to,
if that makes sense.
Also, I feel like, I don't know,
maybe because I'm a foreigner here,
violence seems so ambient in America.
Like, there's always shootings, right?
And for the first time, I think for like regular people,
it finally happened to a person that is normally like immune
to that type of violence.
Like how often do you, like you hear about kids getting
shot in school all the time, like to the point
we've kind of been desensitized to school shootings.
How many times do you hear about a CEO getting shot?
And to a lot of people CEOs are the enemy.
So it was like, now's the time to get the jokes off,
honestly, because like these are people that don't ever to a lot of people CEOs are the enemy. So it was like, now's the time to get the jokes off. Honestly.
Because these are people that don't ever experience violence in the way that
a regular people do.
You know what I think it also was?
It's also the fact that it felt like it was
targeted in a clean and specific way.
Do you know what I mean?
Like every time we read a story in the news about a shooter,
a public event, they might leave a manifesto,
but it feels like such an attack on everybody that the people, everyone in the community,
even whether or not you're directly in that community or not, you feel terrorized by the
act. This guy was so precise and so clean with it. And again, just in case you're listening,
I do not approve any of these things. I'm just pointing out how it was perceived by myself and many other people. It was so
clean and precise that nobody else felt like it could have happened to them. And nobody
else felt like it was meant to happen to them. It's almost like, yeah, this was between you
and him, man. Yes.
Yeah, it felt like you should only be scared if you're the CEO of a health company.
That's what I mean.
That's what I mean.
Everyone else, it was like Wednesday.
Whereas when you read all these other stories
where they'll say, oh, this person had an issue,
they were bullied at school,
you're like, yeah, but they shot all the kids.
They didn't just shoot the kid who was the main bully,
they shot all the kids.
And this guy, or whoever actually did it,
this person went, shot the person,
and then, do you see in the video,
there's the lady drinking her coffee, or she's drinking something in the video,
and the shooting happens, and then she just like runs off.
She's also like, oh, this has nothing to do with me.
You know what I mean?
She doesn't, she puts her hands up,
she doesn't start screaming, she just like goes like,
ah, well clearly, these two people have some sort
of disagreement, and it is not about me. I'm gonna move
I thought it was like a lover, you know where my mind goes what I thought it was like a like a
Jilted lover and he was coming back to get his revenge
What a CEO of a health care company getting shot was about what books are you reading?
You don't want to know a lot of people thought that a lot of people were like
You don't want to know. No, no, a lot of people thought that.
A lot of people were like.
A lost spot.
You don't want to know.
Yeah, a lot of people were like, oh, him and his wife
have been separated.
He probably cheated.
She went ahead.
And so I think that the difference with this one
as well is that there's nothing that reminds you of the circles and the class affairs,
like healthcare does and access to it,
because even with tech,
because remember when that tech CEO got stabbed
in San Francisco, nobody was like,
oh, they're after us as CEOs,
because startups and all that stuff
is still in the culture as like a way to
lift yourself up and we don't see tech and tech bros in that even though we
make fun of them we don't see them as the enemy as much right whereas
healthcare if you've ever had somebody sick in your life if you've ever been
sick and you were like I followed all rules, I gave you money every month for seven years
and now you're playing me because you can,
because you're in that like higher echelon
of this like unspoken caste system,
then yeah, like you now are a representative
of the most evil thing.
Also, the thing with healthcare is that like,
it doesn't matter how much money you have, you
have a complaint about the American healthcare system.
Because I speak to my super wealthy friends and their doctors no longer take insurance
because the doctors are being screwed by the insurance payments.
So they're like, yeah, if I want to give birth, I pay $20,000.
That's ridiculous.
I shouldn't.
I have health insurance.
So whether you're the poorest of the poor or the super wealthy, you feel screwed by the system.
So you're like, all right.
And look, I know we're going back and forth.
You know, everyone colloquially would say
health insurance company, health care company, health care.
But it's important to remember that this company
didn't provide health care, okay?
This is just an insurance company for people's health. So what
you do is you pay them to ensure that you have care when something goes wrong. And yeah, it turns
out a lot of the time, I think it's like 30% or somewhere up there. They're one of the highest
in the country. They do not give you that insure. But it is rare that an issue affects as many people
across different race, gender, class lines
as the healthcare industry in America.
You know what I mean?
And actually, I want to do this.
I know there's a bunch of manifestos that have come up,
but apparently, this is like the most recent
slash most confirmed one by the most news agencies. Again, if it's not the one, it's not, but they're all similar, but this one is like the most recent slash most confirmed one by the most news agencies.
Again, if it's not the one, it's not, but they're all similar. But this one is like, apparently.
The one they said he did.
Yeah, this is apparently it says, to the feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what
you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't
working with anyone. This was fairly trivial, some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patients.
The Spiral Notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate
the gist of it.
My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info
there.
I do apologize for any strife of traumas, but it had to be done.
Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.
A reminder, the US has the number one most expensive
healthcare system in the world,
yet we rank roughly 42 in life expectancy.
United is the, and this is an indecipherable thing,
largest company in the US by market cap,
behind only Apple, Google, Walmart.
It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy?
Question mark.
No, the reality is these indecipherables
have simply gotten too powerful and they continue
to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get
away with it.
Obviously the problem is more complex but I do not have space and frankly I do not pretend
to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.
That's a pretty gangster line by the way.
I like how...
He has humility.
He really does.
This guy is going to go take out a CEO and he's like, look, hey man, I also admit,
I don't know everything,
but I'm gonna act on what I know.
Hashtag humble.
I will say that's powerful for all of us to follow in life.
The humility.
And then the last part is he says,
but many have illuminated the corruption and greed,
e.g. Rosenthal Moore decades ago
and the problems simply remain.
It's not an issue of awareness at this point,
but clearly power games at play.
Evidently, I'm the first to face it
with such brutal honesty."
I'll pitch you this.
Reading that from him was a reminder
that when you read a history book,
like, Che Guevara and them really were just
making it up as they went.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
When you look at, like, any sort of movement or any sort of revolutionary something, because
they're gone and because they're an idea, we think of them as people who had the whole
plan from the beginning.
And this to me is the most perfect example of why, for everyone's sake, for the people with and for the haves and have nots, for
everyone's sake, our institutions genuinely need to start working the way they're supposed
to work.
Like no more free passes for like politicians, no more free passes for anyone because this
person has basically said in no uncertain terms, right?
Y'all, I'm only a little bit crazy.
Like, I'm literally just crazy enough to do this, but I'm not insane.
Like, either this is going to happen or you're going to take care of the issue.
Because we act as if we act, like you see Josh Shapiro and them get up there
and scold the American public, this person is not a hero and it's like all
right that's all well and good and I actually I agree with your sentiment but
you of all people should be working as hard as you can to save those CEO lives
by passing laws that rein them in you cannot tell people listen this is the
way it's gonna be and you're're going to have to like it.
And those people have guns in America.
I also think this.
This is what I mean by who is allowed to kill.
So we forget that laws were made by people and laws were made by people for people.
We forget this, right?
Oftentimes people think about laws as if these were things that were passed down from the heavens, but laws were actually created by people for people, okay?
One of those laws in most countries in the world is that your fate and how guilty you are is decided
by people. So in America you have a jury system, but in other places they go to judge. A person
will say, yeah, you should go to jail for what you did, and I'm basing this on the law
that was created by the people.
What I think a lot of people don't realize in this,
by the way, is in a strange way,
if the majority, like the vast majority of the country
is for this guy, in the strangest way,
like in a warped way, you then sort of have to question
the whole system to go, oh, wait,
is the system the thing that is right as it stands?
Or is this expression of what this guy did exposing that the system is wrong and it's
not with the people?
Does this make sense?
Yeah, it's kind of like that.
No, it makes sense.
Like if all the people are against the system, then who is the system for?
You know that saying that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter?
Yes.
I think to like people who are like very pro-law enforcement, they're like,
you know, you can't just have people going around shooting someone
because they don't like the way they're doing their job, which is like to me very reasonable.
And then you go on Twitter and like, because you know in the bullet casings, I don't know, I don't speak...
Oh yeah, they're all like...
They said like, deny, depose...
Deny, depose and delay. Delay. speak. Oh yeah, they wrote like, Denied, deposed, and delay.
Delay.
And that became a hashtag on TikTok and Twitter.
And people are telling these horrific stories
about their experience with the American healthcare system
and watching their loved one die.
And they're like, this guy did something
that I would have loved to do,
but I was on the phone to customer service for hours.
Crying because of my family.
Crying because of claims and people talking about, you know, when you max out
a half a million for intensive care with your baby, you have to pay out whatever comes after that.
So like, you know, people see him as a freedom fighter and then other people are like, well,
if we allow this to happen, it's like America's eventual decay.
Yes, but I think the people who are saying that, first of all, you must look at who they
are.
Yeah.
You know?
Again, it's such a hard conversation to have because everyone will try and paint you as
if you are pro just killing a person, which I'm not.
You know those natural experiments that you never expect in the world but then are forced
to live through?
They happen to you and they force you to think about what's happening in society.
Right?
If I think of the Sackler family, right?
The Sackler family is responsible for killing millions of people in America,
or whatever number, right?
Hundreds of thousands at least.
They are partly responsible for doing this in many ways actively, right?
They're not in jail.
They're not going to be, you to be put on trial and that,
all of this stuff, all of this.
They're not gonna be treated the way he was.
And so in a strange way to your point, I go,
corporations and giant groups of powerful people
is the domain of the powerful.
Like this is the land of the kings, right?
They get to do a thing to a group of people,
and we don't call that quote unquote murder
or an assassination.
They just go like, no, they were irresponsible,
and they put profits over people's health and safety.
And I'm like, okay, but then what happened
to the people that they did it to?
Well, many people died.
So they weren't killed, they just happened to die, right?
And so in a weird way, if this guy had started a company somehow,
made it about healthcare, created a drug that this guy needed,
gave him too much of the drug or too little of the drug,
and then this guy died, then Luigi wouldn't be going to jail.
Absolutely not.
It's just about how instantly he did it and how much he did out of the system,
that he gets treated differently. And again, I'm going to say this a thousand times,'s just about how instantly he did it and how much he did out of the system that he
gets treated differently.
And again, I'm going to say it a thousand times because you know how the world is.
I'm not for what he did, but it just throws up an interesting, do you know what I mean,
Josh?
It throws up an interesting conundrum.
Yeah.
Also, the same people who are pro the system apply it differently depending on who is doing
the killing. They turn a blind on who is doing the killing.
They turn around, turn a blind eye to like corporate greed.
Yes.
I would call it, some people call it corporate manslaughter.
I call it like corporate freaking murder, right?
Yeah, I think that also if you are able to spread as much of the culpability as possible,
we have a hard time imagining 1000 people in a company
being liable for one murder, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely.
So that also takes away some of it,
even in the person's mind who does it.
Because I think the thing that,
I won't say no one wants to say,
because I'm not acting like I'm some complete outlier
in my rhetoric over it. but I think the thing I
have not heard anyone say is that this man, Luigi, committed murder, but he did not commit
the murder of an innocent man.
And I think that's where everyone's struggling.
I think that is where a lot of people are struggling.
Yeah I mean because it's like, I understand what the Josh Shapiros and even what the news
to a certain degree is doing,
where they're like, no, we can't just have murder,
blah, blah, blah, and I get that, but he killed a killer.
So like when it's on Dexter, we love it.
Yeah, that's true.
So how are we now so shocked that people mostly,
and people who have been killed by the way,
because that's the other thing that I think a lot of,
I won't put it on all of like white America or anything, because they obviously have their own
factions and their own sections and stuff like that. But that's what a lot of people don't even
understand about like gang culture, is that it's like, someone eventually gets got. You stay in the
street long enough, you get your people, and then you get got. And then there are people that were that were never gonna come for you
But they're waiting for the day that you get got because you killed their cousin
Mm-hmm, and I and so you were responsible
They don't necessarily you were responsible for the yeah, and they weren't involved in gang anything
But they are happy the day you get that's that's a great analogy actually yes
and so so I think that's what a lot of the, I
guess you could say upper echelon or the well-off parts of America do not understand because
they are so used to having like swift and definitive justice for themselves that they
cannot put themselves in the shoes of someone who did something to you and that's just how
it is and that's just gonna that's just what happens
and so then I move on and you have to live with it.
We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.
Josh I was wondering something because I think on here we speak a lot about young men being radicalized. That was my Trump assassination take. I was like, these white boys are going
crazy guys, we need to get them jobs.
But this guy had all the jobs.
And right. There are some people saying on the more right-wing media that this is a clear
case of left-wing indoctrination.
You send your kid to these prep schools, then they go to the IVs, they come across
these crazy ideas and then look what we have here. We have someone that, you know,
a boy that had his whole future ahead of him decided to shoot CEO. And that's
some of the rhetoric we're seeing out there. Do you feel he fits under the
young man radicalization, whether it's to the left or the right?
Because we're seeing this happen on both sides of the spectrum.
There was a kid that set himself on fire for Palestine last year, if you remember.
And so it's just like, do you think he fits that category or he's just like something
else entirely?
Yeah, personally, I don't because I don't see any of the...
I think the blinders that we have as Americans are like almost like when you go into the 3D theater
and they give you the glasses and one side is red and one side is blue and it's about to shape how you see everything.
So you're going to see this 3D world because you have the red on and the blue on together.
And I think that if you go to one of those 3D movies
without the glasses on and you're just like, this is bad.
This doesn't make any sense.
That is who I think he is.
I don't think there was a Republican or a Democratic agenda
because if you pay attention to Republicans and Democrats,
they're both for the health insurance companies.
And there's nothing to me that screams politics with it
as far as the online radicalization, because everyone,
there are people, so even people who are pro cop are like,
hey, sometimes dudes gotta get got.
He, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
And so I don't think he got radicalized
in a normal workout Jordan Peterson pipeline, if that makes sense.
Well, my take is because... That sounded like my favorite.
Workout Jordan Peterson pipeline. Because he is very... I mean, we haven't spoken
about his appearance. No, I just think that's a funny workout Jordan Peterson pipeline.
He's very ripped, very handsome. I won't dwell on that too much, but that is informing
why some people are treating him this way.
But I think they spoke about him having these back issues.
I actually argue, before you move on,
I actually think it's the other way around.
I think, you know, sort of in the same world that Josh is in,
I think we might be looking at a lot of this backward, right?
We're going, oh, because he's hot, people are treating him differently. Because he's
good looking, people are treating him. Because he's white, people are treating him. Because
he's this, because he's... I think it's literally the other way around. I think because he went
after somebody who represented something,
that everyone considers a deep enemy.
And I mean a deep enemy because in the most extreme cases,
they've lost family members because of this.
Yeah.
Or they themselves are in like chronic pain and cannot get help because of this system.
And this is a company that denies one in five claims.
I think because of that, people are able to see things.
So like, if, yes, obviously, there were people
who would always think he's good looking,
because he's good looking maybe.
But I think more people can see his good lookingness
because he did a thing that they approve of.
Trevor, I'm telling you as a woman,
he is stadiums above the average man.
No, Christiana, I'm not just...
He's a beautiful man.
You said you don't want to dwell,
but I feel like you want to dwell on his looks.
No, when you saw the first image where the mask was down, I was like, you cannot send
this man to prison.
He needs to be in a Calvin Klein ad.
And then you're seeing more pictures, even the mugshot, he's serving.
Yes, yes, yes.
Trevor, that is shaping how women feel,
and gay men feel about this.
I'm just gonna speak on all about her.
I'm not taking that away.
What I'm saying is this, okay, to Josh's point.
Like, if somebody, you know,
the enemy of my enemy in a way, right?
There are people, as you say, Josh,
who are pro-law enforcement, who are like,
yeah, but in this instance, I'm with him. There are people who are anti-gun, who are like, yeah, but in this instance, I'm with him. There are people who are anti-gun,
who are like, yeah, but in this instance,
sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
But because this guy has done something
that most people would argue is almost like morally correct.
They understand it.
Which is weird, by the way,
because it's morally accepted or morally correct.
They then are able to put aside the thing
that butts heads with what they normally agree
or disagree with in this instance.
You know what I mean?
Yes, exactly.
That's why I don't think his radicalization
was like of the norm,
because he somehow by just,
I'll pitch you this and now please don't put me on a list
because this is gonna make me sound radicalized.
But like I cannot get over what I was saying before off of what he wrote.
I don't think he's someone that was radicalized.
I think he was someone who like in H.G.
Wells Time Machine, the the the perspective of the author is someone
who's not of that time in the future, where people are just like kind of willy-nilly and like they're willing to let someone drown
and not do anything or whatever.
He's like the only one that's like, hey, hey, everybody, everybody, something has to be done.
I'm saying that like from what he wrote, if you take him at his word,
he's like the first domino had to drop and it was, it just was me because it just was.
And that's actually someone who the thing that they do
may be crazy, but that's not a crazy thing to think, right?
If you've ever been out with your friends
and you're the only sober one and everybody's drunk,
there's one of the hardest things to do
is move a party of drunk people out of somewhere.
And so, so now you're the one that's like kind of being
the jerk in a way that's yelling like, okay, okay, okay
Okay, we gotta go away. And I think that that is more what he thinks he did than any form of like
He's he himself said he's like I'm not even the most qualified to have this discussion
I'm just telling you you're not invincible the way you treat people matters like whatever people are gonna insert into this and maybe put
In the the zeitgeist is like that was his intention and that doesn't feel as crazy to me as like
Someone who is like Unabomber right because this dude managed to Venn diagram
Kyle written house and seal team six everyone
Venn diagram, Kyle Rittenhouse and SEAL Team Six. Everyone. This dude, this dude managed to get the people who are super super left, the people who are super super right, and like even the cops,
you could see the cops weren't looking hard. The cops got family in hospital. Oh man that's true
actually. That's why they were brushing those leaves, he ain't over here. I cut you off the way,
so you were going, you were going down a rabbit hole.
What I was going to say, I think the back thing,
that's something I've been thinking about since yesterday.
The fact that he lives with chronic pain and had this surgery that made it worse.
So like, he's technically in a way disabled or has this disabling event.
Any type of chronic issue, especially in American healthcare system,
can make you crazy.
And I'm not saying what he did was in the moment of craziness,
but being in constant pain,
and the people that are supposed to take care of you do not,
will take you to a place where most people are just like,
I'm just going to stuff myself with opiates.
Do you know what I mean?
And he's like, we have to do something about it.
But you see, to Josh's point though,
and I think this is where we...
You know, Josh, this is where I think you and I
are literally on the exact same side of seeing this,
is the word crazy here is for me the key.
Because I agree with you.
Somebody in chronic pain can do something crazy.
But oftentimes those people, the crazy goes everywhere.
Whether it's a guy in Japan who goes to a preschool and stabs a bunch of kids, whether
it's like somebody in Australia who walks into a crowd and shoots a bunch.
And then they all leave some sort of manifesto and they go like, the world is this or my
company did this.
And people are like, wait, you stabbed preschoolers because your company fired?
Wait, what is happening?
And then here, to what Josh is saying,
and I think what a lot of people are feeling is,
the guy's like, yes, I'm chronically in pain,
but I'm not gonna shoot a nurse,
I'm not gonna shoot a doctor,
I'm not gonna shoot an ambulance driver,
I'm not going to shoot anyone who works in a hospital,
I'm not gonna shoot my doctor, I'm not gonna, no, no, no.
I am going to go to the person who I think
has the most impact on this system,
and I'm basically going to take like an assassin's Reaganomics approach
and say this thing will trickle down.
And that to me seems like the opposite of crazy.
Again, not for or against.
I think he's got, but you know, Mitra, I think everybody's got a little bit of crazy in them.
Yeah, then to me I go like...
To live in this simulation, you cannot be sane, right?
But I think it was a very lucid thing.
Guys do you know how... have you ever engraved a bullet case?
Have you ever held a bullet?
Have you ever held a bullet?
Let me tell you something, bullets are tiny especially in that type of gun, right?
Engraving that thing takes a lot of dexterity and precision.
I mean, he's got an engineering degree from Penn.
Yes, but my point is, this is not a like, man, I'm going to do something about it and
then go outside.
No, you're sitting there, you've got your bullet.
You're like working away.
You can't make any spelling errors, right?
Because that's not going to get, Delay doesn't get the same effect when people find the stuff.
Do you know what I mean?
Do you think he whistled while he made that?
I'm just saying most people who are working creating things,
especially tiny things, whether it's trains or planes,
will generally, you know, they'll work on it.
And I, yeah, I think, I don't know. Look, again, and I'm going to throw this
disclaimer in one more time. We do not know everything. This is sweeping judgments from
everything we do know, from everything we do know, or what we think we know right now
could all be wrong, might be wrong. Let's work on what we have. We look at like even
like the books and stuff that he was reading and then like the reviews that he apparently
left on some of them.
By the way, he also followed Trevor on Twitter. So he's a man of taste, we must say.
Can I give him props?
He followed a broad range of people.
AOC, Joe Rogan, me, Steve-O.
Like, this is like a broad...
I think he followed Elon on Twitter as well.
Like, it's a broad range of people.
And if anything, he made me think,
huh, should I not be broadening my...
Well, you know you're safe if he gets off non-guilty.
No, no, no, no, no.
I think of it more like this.
I thought to myself, if this young man could...
Because someone said to me, they're like, why would he follow you and Joe Rogan?
And I was like, actually, you know what?
If this young man could see any similarities in something between me and Joe Rogan, then
maybe I could do a better job of that as well.
That's what I thought to myself.
And so I think when I look at this person,
I will say this, good luck to them finding a jury
that is gonna find him guilty,
or even a jury who won't pull that, you know that law,
it's like a, what is it called?
It's like some weird, there's like this weird law in America,
jury nullification, I think it's called or something.
Where jury can be like, yeah, the person did it,
but you know what, man, it's all right.
The jury is gonna be tainted just because
who hasn't had a terrible experience
with healthcare companies in this country.
But this is exactly my point.
I'll pitch you.
This is exactly my point.
I'll pitch you this.
All that dude gotta do is roll up in there and be like,
y'all, I am so sorry
I've been crazy and I was on the phone with United Health Care and nobody would take my call
And so I was trying not to do this for six months because remember y'all I went missing
I went missing and so then I was I was on the phone with him that whole time
I was missing and then they didn't pick up so I was like, let me go see him. Damn
All everything you're saying
everything you're saying
Also, if you want to talk about safe CEOs
I know that the CEO of Starbucks must decide a brother relief that man hit a Starbucks right before he did it
And then CEO of McDonald's too, McDonald's probably like, thank goodness.
There's an interesting, I'm not sure if it was a study or if it was just a piece of work
that was done on how collective groups can shift individual morals. And it literally spoke to this idea of
everything that people will do as part of a company,
they would never do as a person.
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, for sure.
And I think what this kid allegedly did
is he sort of poked a hole in the idea
that a corporation isn't people.
Do you know what I mean? Because the idea that a corporation isn't people.
Do you know what I mean? Because like we often act like corporations are not people.
We go like, well the company, the company, the company, the company.
And then it's like the company and you cannot send a company to jail.
That's literally the law.
So they go like, you can't. What are you going to do about it?
And so the company's fine and the company. And then he came along and he was like,
oh no, no, no.
Guys, it's not the company.
In the same way, when you go on a safari, they say the reason animals don't jump in
and eat you is because the lions see you as one unit with the vehicle.
So they don't see people inside the car.
They go, this thing rumbles past us,
and it doesn't eat us, and it doesn't fight with us, so we don't care about it, and it's not our prey.
Whatever. And they leave it alone. And in a weird way, it feels like what He did here for many people was,
He went, yes, I know that this behemoth is unstoppable, it is un-sewable, it is unbeatable,
it is unquestionable, it's everything.
But you know what it has?
People who run it.
And by piercing that veil, I think a lot of the people who run it now go like, eugh.
Think twice.
Yeah, because, let me put it this way.
The fact that, this is what I also realized from this whole incident,
is like companies don't give a shit.
They truly don't.
Now, there are companies who are selling benign products and it's like, whatever, a drink you like, a vacation or whatever.
Yeah, I don't hate companies, right?
But there's an element of that company, they don't give a shit.
And you see the levels of don't give a shit even in the story.
This guy gets shot, the CEO.
He was going for an investor meeting.
You know they still held a meeting.
Yeah, like some gang.
They still had that meeting.
The mob doesn't do that.
The mob, if somebody, in no Godfather movie did somebody get pop pop and they were like,
so you were saying?
That's never happened in a mob movie held the meeting RIP moment of silence
Yo, but they react meeting going ahead is the most chilling thing and then how did they and then how did all these health
Care companies react they pulled down their leadership from every website
Yeah, but here's my thing if they believe that this thing was so dangerous that they need to pull down their faces,
why would they not like get protection for everyone?
Why would they, do you get what I'm saying?
It's such a like nefarious, it's all about us,
it's the top and it's the CEOs.
I'm like, you guys, you can't even act like good guys
in this moment.
You can't even come out and go, man, you know,
we don't like what happened,
but we need to have conversations
about what the healthcare industry, how we are perceived.
Because if one of us is shot and everyone's happy,
maybe it's time for us to look inward and be like,
damn, maybe there's something we are doing or aren't doing.
And I go back to, by the way, the Trump assassination thing.
I said this, people disagreed with me, whatever.
But I said like, afterwards,
you look at those few weeks after Trump was shot at,
he was a little calmer.
He was just a little bit like, hey man, you know,
come on guys, like, hey man.
And I think there's like a humanist
that companies just don't encourage in people
and this got exposed by even for the,
like if you work for this company,
why would you even like,
why would you help them
make themselves worse when they've shown you
that if the worst that they do comes back on you,
they don't give a shit about you?
Well, if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance.
The grand irony, right?
It's probably right.
The grand, yeah, the grand irony.
Don't go anywhere, because we got more What Now after this.
This is once again gonna make me sound like I've been radicalized or something
and I genuinely have not, right? Disclaimer, disclaimer. But another thing
that I think was on people's minds and was a thing to root for with
this guy is we are in the year of what feels like open murders by corporations.
That Boeing guy, that second Boeing guy, the whistleblower deaths that have been
happening in American companies are like so under tone scary
That I think people were like yeah that like you cannot separate that in my mind
It felt it really felt like David and Goliath
Yes, because because like when you look at Boeing all that dude said was what we already knew by the way
The dude the dude that got like mysteriously murdered in the parking lot of his hotel room right before he was supposed to
testify in court all that stuff. That dude all he did was he had worked at
Boeing for like I think 19 years or something like that but he was like the
plane door gonna fly off. We already saw the plane door fly off so he didn't even
have any secrets. He was just about to say it in court.
And he mysteriously dies.
A dude who no one actually knows where that dude is.
I think that that's a big part of it.
You think it'll change anything?
I think if there's copycats, I think it could.
Huh, that's interesting.
I think if there's copycats, and I do think there's a high chance there could be,
because there's a lot of people out there that feel they have nothing to lose, you know?
So you think the one, no?
No, I don't think one's enough, because I don't think that health insurance companies are scared enough,
and there's like trillions on the line, like it's a lot of money, right?
And they can hire security and do all these things.
But if it becomes a thing of like, you know how Robin Hood would like steal from the rich
and get to the poor.
And it's like there's people out there who are disgruntled and they shoot people high
up at health insurance companies, it completely change how they operate.
But I don't think one's enough.
Not that I'm trying to say people should do more, please.
I don't want that smoke.
Everything disclaimer, disclaimer.
I don't want that smoke.
But I just don't think one's enough.
But I think if there's copycats, it's game over.
Yeah, I also think more would be bad because a lot of people don't have aim.
Yeah.
That's why people thought he wasn't a professional assassin.
No, but he got up really close.
I mean, people forget that.
He got up really, really close.
Yeah.
You like, like there are people who, who say the whole sniping from far away thing is like a thing
in the movies that's like not going to work.
No, this is more real, like up close, that's, you know, this is what's happening in like
developing countries all around the world, people who are like running to clean up government.
You don't get God from far.
Oh my God.
For the most part, yeah, just someone comes up, even think of like actual- But MLK, wasn't it like a balcony?
No, I think they're a lot closer- He was on a balcony, right?
I think they're a lot closer than you think, is what's always the case.
I think he got caught because yeah, MLK was on a balcony, but he shot him, I think in the picture
they're pointing at- Yes, they are.
Where the shot came from. They're pointing, they're like,
there he is. Yeah.
It's one of those things. Maybe're like, there he is. Yeah.
It's one of those things.
Maybe I've watched too many movies.
I always thought it was just like that sniper thing
and people super far.
Can I say, talking about movies, I, again, I don't,
disclaimer, disclaimer, I don't condone anything,
blah, blah, blah.
I was disappointed at how he got caught.
In a McDonald's? No.
No, like what I mean is like,
you know, it seemed so like, you know,
bit it, bit it, bit it, bit it, bit it,
like it was just like, wow.
Well, that's why black people don't believe it's him.
You know that, right?
No, I know, I know the conspiracy.
Yeah. Because it was, it was just like,
the guy seemed to do everything like really well and then all
of a sudden it was like, oh.
So do you want to know my theory?
Found with a bag with everything in it, Anna McDonald's just chilling.
I think he didn't mind getting caught.
He did what he wanted to do.
He wanted to kill the CEO.
And everything after that was a bonus.
I think he probably thought he'd be caught sooner.
Oh, interesting.
Yeah, because there's like, there's no...
He had the weapon on it, allegedly, because some people say they planted stuff, but he
had a weapon on him, he had a manifesto on him, like, he's telling the cops how he did
it in his note.
I feel like he was just like, I want to kill that guy, that's what I want to do, and we'll
see what happens next.
I don't think he was like on the run and trying to like go into the shadows, but maybe, Josh,
you disagree.
I will. I only slightly disagree.
I first I thought what exactly what Christian thought.
So so when I heard that they even had a suspect or that like he took his mask down or something,
I was like, I this person's either like really dumb or they don't mind getting caught.
But I personally, this is just me,
I think he was on the way to do it again. I think that, I think where they caught him,
what they caught him with, it screams someone who's not done to me. Like that, like, like I think
you see, I can take that. I think he was in, in in I'm surprised the news hasn't like said that or knowing that I saw
On the news has theorized that because to me to have everything with you
like
Crackheads don't do that like like to have everything on you from the crime you committed days ago
By the way, this stuff is heavy after a while
You're not gonna lighten your load throw it in a trash can two states away or something
So I mean my thing is if this kid is trying to get away his family owns two country clubs, right?
When you fly private, they don't check you for weapons. They don't check. So all he has to do is fly private
on to the other side of the country and then take a bus into Mexico
On to the other side of the country and then take a bus into Mexico
He already had the head start of Central Park, which I don't think people realize how much he was not gonna get caught Also, also like the Central Park of it. This is the one thing that's confused me
The police said that he went into Central Park and then appeared on the other side without the backpack
That's what they said. That was the original
Statement, right? So I don't know
if you know anything about the theory. The theory that I've seen, right, is that a lot
of what people are saying, because the police and I don't just mean NYPD. I mean any police
department is never going to go out of their way, even if it means telling the truth to
make themselves look incompetent, stupid, corrupt, whatever.
And so there were some people that were saying this thing, like the thing that you just read
was when they were looking at a different person and they were wrong.
And now this-
That would make sense.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
So they were wrong about that thing, which I think is why they haven't said it again.
And now that he's got the backpack, they were like, yeah, he had the backpack the whole
time.
By the way, can I just say one of the funniest moments? I think it was Eric Adams who came out
and he was like, we solved this case using good old fashioned police work. It's like no, someone
snitched. It's just another example of like where it's like, yeah.
This showed me how incompetent the police were.
It was, there's nothing.
Because like even now I'm like, you guys got outsmarted by a kid and you only got caught
because someone in McDonald's
was like, oh, he's a weirdo.
Yeah, someone snitched, and that was it.
Like, that was literally it.
I mean, the fact that they are not giving
that worker the money, that's enough to work out.
I'm just going to put it out there, Josh.
I mean, the worker should have been radicalized
working in McDonald's,
because I'm sure they don't have health insurance,
and I'm just like shocked at the lack of class solidarity. Shocks me. I'm just saying like you
you robbed me of 60k I'm not saying I would. I'm just saying people have done
it for less. You're not saying you would. I just think it's wild. You might
buy a backpack. Yeah but maybe we're underestimating how much like regular
Americans do hate crime.
Because if it's just a regular person working in McDonald's who's like,
hey, police, I think I found him,
then maybe there could be a jury in New York.
Like, if they get people from, like, Officer Queens and Staten Island,
who'd be, like, guilty.
I hear you, but I think Josh's theory is the best I've heard,
and it's that because you don't know what you're dealing with,
because think again, let's look at America
through a larger lens.
Any shooter that people talk about is shooting everyone.
So we have had very few, if any instances
of like a targeted single shooter
that doesn't endanger another person type.
Even the person, people always forget,
at Trump's assassination, somebody else died.
Like, no one talks about that, right?
It's not like the bullet didn't kill another human being.
People are just like, whew, thank God nothing happened.
I'm like, no, no, no, there's a man who lost his life.
He was just standing at the rally.
So, you get what I'm saying.
So, it's very rare that anyone who's shooting
doesn't involve other people who they either
didn't want to or didn't care to involve.
Same with gang violence.
How many times are little kids shot in the midst of gang?
And then the gangsters will be like, we didn't want to do it.
And communities are like, we don't care.
You did it.
So I can see somebody seeing that guy in the McDonald's and like, ah man, that's why Josh's theory
is completely, I can see, because you don't know what's about to happen, but I think when
it comes to jury time, it's going to be a very different story because now people are
like, if his lawyer is in any way, shape or form allowed to bring up anything that United Health Care does,
I think it'll be tough for a jury to give this kid everything.
I mean, he's a rich kid, so he's not going to have a public defender.
Yeah.
His family's going to...
This is going to be an interesting case.
No, his family's going to hire the best possible, as any parent should.
This is going to be the biggest case ever.
And...
Christiana's going to be at the courthouse, by the way,
with a giant sign that says, take
it off.
I do think one last thing about the McDonald's worker that turned that dude in.
This is probably way off base, but I think in their mind, they're like, okay, people
miss all the time.
And Trump did just work at McDonald's for 15 minutes somewhere else.
What if that man,
what if this dude knows something I don't know? I don't want to catch anything of the crosshairs at the fryer station.
You know what? I'm curious about the McDonald's employee. I would love to hear from them.
I think everybody's worth- I think that's the real third act in this story. Oh, you think that's the real third act? Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I'm just because
they're a polarizing person. I feel think that's the real third act? Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I'm just because they're a polarizing person.
I feel like that's the epilogue.
Yeah, people say if it was Popeyes,
they would have been like giving him more chicken
and sent him on his way.
I think, you know, one of the great,
I mean, irony might be the wrong word about this,
but I was thinking to myself, it's
so amazing how almost unanimous all the CEOs of these companies,
literally, they pulled down their photos.
They sent, do you see the emails they sent to employees?
No, I didn't.
Healthcare companies have been sending, not manifest, what do you call them,
like pledges to their employees to sign.
And the pledge is like, I stand with my fellow healthcare community.
And I believe that no violence should ever be committed against them.
I pledge my allegiance to the healthcare company that I work for.
Insert name here.
Like, literally, that's what they're going with.
And then, like, none of them went to work and it was a whole thing.
And I was like, it's funny how now CEOs are like,
yeah, yeah, work from home, work from home.
Yeah, they were fully like, no, no, no, everyone's got to be back in the office. And then very quickly they're like, no, no, no, no, no, yeah, work from home, work from home. Yeah, they were fully like, no, no, no, everyone's got to be back in the office. And then very quickly, they're like, no,
no, no, no, no, sometimes, sometimes you got to work from home, man, you know,
sometimes things happen in your life. And yeah, you just got to chill. Josh, I, I
have a question for you that's a little controversial. If you are on the jury,
what are you, what's your verdict?
jury. Oh, what are you? What's your verdict? Oh, okay. Um, do we know what he's been charged with besides murder? No, let's just say he's charged with murder. That's all I know. Okay.
Um, here's my thing. I was already. I would find him. Yes. I would probably end up finding him not guilty by reason of insanity.
Oh, okay. Okay.
Christiana?
So...
She's going to find him heart guilty.
No.
Oh, he did it.
My husband was like yesterday, he's like, you're talking about this guy.
Do you think he's better looking than me?
I was absolutely not, babe.
What are you talking about? That. Do you think he's better looking than me? I was like, absolutely nothing.
What are you talking about?
That's what Luke said to me.
I was like, but he doesn't have a beard.
I wonder how he'd look with a beard.
But back to the matter at hand,
can jury make sentencing recommendations?
Remember, you know I'm an abolitionist.
I think they can in certain cases,
depending on where and how.
So I would find him guilty,
but I'd give him probation.
Oh, damn. That came out of nowhere.
I would give him five years probation.
Because you would argue that he's not a risk?
Um, because I actually don't think, prison doesn't work.
All the research shows, prison doesn't work.
And I don't feel like he's a danger to other people.
Like, you know, I believe in like...
Which other people?
You know, people like myself.
Oh my goodness.
Listen.
Okay, okay.
He was reading books by black authors, going through his good reads, you know?
Okay, okay.
He's okay with my-
I would, no, but like, I say this about like, murder's a horrible thing.
Like, I experienced it in my family earlier this year, and it's been the first time I actually really had to think about like being an abolitionist and how I
feel. So when it came to my family, you know, everyone feels differently about it. Like
some people are like, they need to spend forever in prison. I do think if prison does what
it's supposed to do for people, you should go there and be restored and hopefully be
left back into society.
So that's why I would find him guilty
because he did take a life, right?
He did commit that murder.
Maybe serve some time and then the rest probation.
Because honestly, to the kids of the man,
he's not the CEO of a health insurance company.
He's your dad.
Yes.
And they have to live without their dad.
This is true.
And so it's just like, I think there should be something in place because we have to have
some value for life.
Even lives I despise.
I'm like, your life has value, right?
So I'm like, I'd find him guilty, maybe serve some time, but I don't think he should spend
the rest of his life in prison, which I think a lot of murderers shouldn't spend the rest
of their lives in prison.
Wow, damn, okay.
But you know, a long time, like 20 years, 30 years. Wow, that's your life.
No, it's not. He is like a hot 22.
That's your life.
He's going to come out of it in his 40s.
I'm just going to put it out there.
Probably in his George Clooney era by the time he comes out.
That's your life.
No, I'm just saying.
No way in Sweden don't even do a life sentence as 20.
I can't say the sentence because I don't, you know, I can't say the sentence.
I think he should, because also he should like kind of sit down and think about what
he wants to do next.
I think he did when he was carving the bullets.
No, but you know, and then probation and not like punitive probation, probation with a
view of like, you can now contribute something to society apart from like-
And people would argue he already did.
He did, but like in the positive way.
Not like- People would argue he already did.
No addition by subtraction, but like some addition.
You know what I mean?
But that's my view on people who kill.
Okay.
And also I feel like if he was a black guy, we'd probably be having a different conversation right now.
So, you know.
Okay.
Okay.
Trevor, I'm so sorry.
That's my view on it.
Do you mind, based off of Christian's brilliant answer, I think I need to change my answer. What are you talking about?
Yeah, yeah, I would I would probably find him guilty. Wow, I would sentence him to be the CEO of a health
That's so easy what you got to do it bro, what about you Trevor?
So if So, if the back pain thing is real, and if some of the stories are true, and if his lawyer
very creatively argued self-defense, I would have a difficult time sending him to prison.
Because I think one of the hardest things we grapple with in society is, again,
I come back to how we started. I myself wish to live by the rules and the laws that everyone
else does, but I do believe we live in a society where that isn't true. And I believe the more
power you amass, the more pain you can inflict on other people. And you're not held to the same laws and the same punishments as everybody else.
And so it is difficult because we ourselves
are in the thing that we are trying to,
in many ways, reshape and dismantle.
So it's like, it's confusing because you're in it, right?
But if somebody is unable or is, if their life is being threatened by this nebulous entity,
and they're like, this is the only way I can protect myself and others,
I would struggle to find them guilty based on the evidence. And a lot of that evidence for me would be based on like,
this company, have we shown that they actively try to not pay
for people's health care?
How many people have died because of their practices?
Are they actively doing this?
For instance, like they had that AI software a while ago
where they had AI that was basically approving
or denying claims.
And the numbers I say might be off,
but I think I remember them correctly.
This thing was denying like 90% of the claims
that were coming through.
And then they found that it was making a mistake,
and they kept it.
They kept it because they were just like, well, we're
just printing money here.
And that's just one example of what this company has been accused of or found guilty
of, or do you know what I mean?
$400 billion in profit or whatever, or revenue.
They've been crushing it.
So I do not wish for the death of anyone, but I'm like you, the thing has happened now.
But it's a difficult one for me to wrestle with because I do think we live in a world where
some people with the right tools and everything can take anyone out.
And if they are blanketed by enough corporations and ideas, then they are seen as a, you know?
Maybe I just see it from his family side, like his parents, his siblings and his children.
Completely.
And his life had some value to them.
Completely. Because for me, me, my kids, your parents
aren't their jobs. Like even Saddam Hussein's kids, they're like, I love my dad, you know,
like these like very horrific people. Yes.
And if we believe like all life has inherent value.
Yes, but I'm arguing that the value of his life is now not going to be because remember,
I'm also an abolitionist. Remember, for me, it's based on this.
Does he have a direct connection with this company?
And were they doing something to him directly?
That for me has a big effect on it,
because I then go, hmm, it is difficult for me
to then go, because someone would be like,
yes, but if you have a problem with the company,
take them to court.
Good luck, go try that.
You get what I'm saying?
I'm trying to figure out the ways we hold this young man
who's done this thing, which is like kind of...
He'll go to therapy and we shut him down and...
Make him accountable,
because I just don't think you should be able to kill people.
No, no, I don't think so either.
I don't think so either.
But I think he's already going to be held more accountable
than every CEO of...
And remember, this is a clear thing I wanna add
in this conversation is, I think all three of us agree here.
This is not about being a CEO, by the way.
CEO is like a loose title.
People have it on their dating profiles.
So CEO is the thing that I think can sometimes muddy it.
I think people should just ask themselves,
from a corporation standpoint,
from an organizational standpoint, like, why is it okay, let's say, for the U.S. government
to go in and kill, like, Al Chapo or Osama bin Laden?
Why do they do that?
Yeah.
Why do they do that?
Right?
They do it because they go, look, we know that many people are involved in this organization,
that is taking people's lives,
but we figure if we can get to this person,
who's the head of the organization,
we're making the biggest difference,
and that is what we're doing.
And then we, and I say we as the collective,
most people do not go,
oh, the American government murdered Osama bin Laden.
I say that.
Okay, you say that, but most people do not.
They'll be like, no, no, no.
They went after the guy and they got him, okay?
Or they, and El Chapo's alive, but do you get what I'm saying?
They'll go like, oh yeah, they shot Pablo Escobar.
People won't be like, oh, they murdered him.
They're like, no, no, no, it was a chase.
They got him on the roof.
They shot the dude, okay?
And so I'm saying in a weird way here,
I'm saying on a jury, by the way.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not condoning.
I'm not agreeing with,
because everyone has a different way to solve their issues.
I would probably just tweet a lot.
I'm just going to put it out there.
I would send very scathing tweets
and see if I can get a response.
He chose a different method.
We can't go back on that method.
And so I would probably vote that the case is either thrown out
or it would just be a not guilty or like a...
Yeah, there's probably other ones they give you on that piece of paper.
I forget what all of them are from Law and Order,
but I'll just be like, yeah, Judge, you know,
we find the defendant, man, pretty messed up.
This was all messed up, so...
That's how I see it.
It's going to be the trial of the century.
It really will.
Let's be honest.
Yeah. I mean, can you imagine
if that kid had Blue Cross Blue Shield?
Oh, wait, that CEO would be like, oh, oh, oh, oh, man.
It is, it is. You're right. United is terrible.
Yeah, no. Sign up with Blue Cross Blue Shield this month.
Yeah. Well, you know what, my friends, these are some of my favorite conversations to have with you because we have no facts.
Just feelings.
Just feelings. All speculation. And if you have listened to this entire conversation,
remember what I told you at the beginning. None of this is true. None of this is confirmed.
None of this is factual. And Josh, Christiana and Trevor do not stand behind anything that Josh, Christiana and Trevor have said. This is our disclaimer. But yeah, thanks for listening.
What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with DayZero Productions.
The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin and Jodie Avigan.
Our senior producer is Jess Hackl. Claire Slaughter is our producer.
Music, mixing and mastering by Hannes Brown.
Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now?