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have your support. But enough with that, let's
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get to the show. Good
1:55
morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for
1:57
everybody today. What do we have for us, Stahl? Indeed
1:59
we do. Many things percolating here
2:01
in Washington DC. We're going to start off by
2:03
taking a look at this gigantic foreign
2:05
aid package They are trying to
2:08
shove down all of our throats the
2:10
very latest and what its prospects are
2:12
for passage or failure Just really great
2:14
stuff there We also have new developments
2:17
in terms of the political fallout in
2:19
Arizona specifically over that 1800s
2:21
era abortion ban how Republicans are reacting to
2:24
it the chances that that changes the Senate
2:26
prospects a lot going on there We've
2:28
got a new report that details
2:30
torture of Palestinian detainees and how
2:32
the US is responding to that
2:35
We also have some blockbuster testimony
2:38
Yesterday in two separate hearings
2:40
from Boeing whistleblowers who are
2:42
making some stunning and frankly
2:44
Purifying allegations against that company
2:46
so a break back down
2:48
for you've also have some
2:50
big news at Volkswagen Once
2:53
again workers are voting on whether or not they
2:55
want to join the UAW This
2:57
could be a huge deal in terms
2:59
of unionizing foreign automakers in the United
3:02
States and UAW seems to feel pretty
3:04
good About how it's gonna go
3:06
this time around so break that down for you Stunning
3:09
developments also with Bob Menendez you remember
3:11
he's been indicted for some pretty wild
3:13
corruption allegations involving gold bars And many
3:15
other things or getting a sneak peek
3:18
at what his plan defense
3:20
is and basically he's gonna throw his
3:22
own wife under the best Really
3:25
just dumb. We're in the
3:27
crime guy. They're really really great
3:29
guy. They're unbelievable And
3:32
we've got a first look at some of
3:34
the jurors who have been selected in that
3:36
hush money trial up in New York City
3:38
And yeah, I mean it's just interesting to
3:40
think about how anyone in this country at
3:42
this point Could be unbiased
3:45
about Donald Trump. I don't envy them
3:47
this task that is set before them But you know,
3:49
we'll take a look at who they are and what
3:52
that may indicate about how this trial is gonna
3:54
go for them Yes, that's right. We will get into
3:56
all of that before we get to that though Thank
3:58
you to everybody who's been subscribing to the show. We
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thanks to everybody who checked out Sagar's moderation.
4:30
I was in the big debate last night, I was, it was fun. Tried
4:32
my best. You did a great job. It's not an
4:34
easy task with so many people. That's
4:37
a lot of people. It's a lot of people.
4:39
And all of them, the personalities and all of
4:41
that. You did an excellent job, being neutral and
4:44
controlling things and keeping it more or less.
4:46
We streamed it on our channel. It was
4:48
a zero hedge debate on Israel. It was
4:50
Dave Smith, Cenk Uygur versus Dennis Prager and
4:52
Bacha, or I can never say her phone.
4:54
On Gar-Sargan. I'm gonna go with Bacha. All
4:56
right, Bacha. Anyway, so you can watch it.
4:58
We have it streamed on our channel. I
5:00
think we may release it as a podcast,
5:03
maybe. Any reflections? Well,
5:05
I'll tell you what. It was interesting.
5:07
I thought that the exchanges were, the
5:09
real thing that I took away from
5:11
it is that sometimes, even when
5:13
we're quote unquote debating, is that even
5:15
trying to define the clarity of the
5:17
terms was very, very difficult because the
5:19
resolution was about how Israel should respond
5:22
after October 7th. And I actually
5:24
thought one of the key differences was that Dave
5:26
and Cenk, I mean, they're not defined just by
5:28
October 7th. They were trying to go to the
5:30
bigger picture. Bigger contact. Where they were talking about
5:33
occupation. They were talking about Gaza. They were talking
5:35
about the formation of Israel, about what the future
5:37
needs to look like, peace deal. Whereas the other
5:39
two were not as engaged on that question necessarily.
5:42
And so that is part of the problem
5:44
with quote unquote debating this and how much context
5:46
you're even allowed to bring in. But it was
5:48
two hours, which I still, I honestly didn't even
5:50
think was long enough. It probably needed to go
5:52
two and three. It flew by. I mean, especially
5:54
with that number of people
5:56
and all of them having a lot to
5:59
say. I thought everybody behaved themselves
6:01
well. I mean, listen, obviously I thought
6:03
David and Frank did fantastic. You're not
6:05
gonna be surprised to learn. But I
6:07
enjoyed the exchanges and it's just interesting
6:09
to see at this point,
6:12
I think it's difficult to defend the things that people
6:14
are seeing on the ground. So
6:17
how are some of the
6:19
more equipped Israel supporters going
6:22
about mounting that defense at
6:24
this point is always interesting. Take a look.
6:26
Yeah, watch it for yourself. You can hear it. I
6:28
tried my best, let them all speak. So take a
6:30
look, it's on our channel or at least sometime later.
6:32
All right, let's go ahead and talk about foreign
6:34
aid, which is very germane to the topic. Now
6:36
I get to actually voice my opinion. That
6:39
for me would have been hard. There's no way I have kept
6:42
my mouth shut the way you did. I had to
6:44
bite my tongue a couple of times, make sure that
6:46
the camera wasn't on me. And I was like, wow,
6:48
that's a wild thing to say. It's
6:51
not me saying it. Let's go ahead
6:53
and begin with speaker Mike Johnson, who
6:55
in my opinion is currently undertaking one
6:58
of the greatest betrayals of his own
7:00
caucus in quite a long time. And
7:02
I will get into some of the
7:05
historical context. This is a man who
7:07
came into his job after the whole
7:09
speaker fracas when Kevin McCarthy is
7:11
kicked out. The right flank says that they're
7:14
okay with him. He starts getting wishy washy
7:16
on Ukraine aid. He's like, yeah, maybe. And
7:18
then the start of the hawk start to
7:20
go after him. And then we start to
7:22
see some signs, Crystal. We start to see
7:24
a little bit of rhetoric about, oh, we
7:26
got to stand up to Russia. Okay, well,
7:28
what does that mean? And then we see
7:30
him flip flop on FISA. And when he
7:32
flip flops, he says, well, if you hadn't
7:34
gotten the classified briefing I'd gotten, then you
7:36
would flip flop too. That's how you always
7:38
know. That's how you know that the IC,
7:40
the intelligence community, got the little knife in
7:43
you and they're starting to twist. And the
7:45
money starts coming in. Now you're responsible for
7:47
fundraising. And now all of a sudden, this
7:49
man who had a very different record on
7:51
Ukraine whenever he was a normal congressman, is
7:53
starting to talk like he's Ronald Reagan in
7:56
1982. Perfect
7:58
example, actually, honestly worse. than
8:00
1982, the level of grandeur you have to
8:02
have to say what he said, which we're
8:05
about to play for you, is insane, let's
8:07
take a listen. We're an unprecedented times, okay?
8:10
We're in dangerous times. This has been articulated here, around
8:12
the world and here at home. We
8:15
need steady leadership, we need steady hands at
8:17
the wheel. Look, I regard myself as a
8:19
wartime speaker. I mean, in a literal sense,
8:21
we are. I knew that when I took
8:24
the gavel. I didn't anticipate that
8:26
this would be an easy path. Former
8:28
speaker, Newt Gingrich posted a couple of days ago on
8:30
his social media that this is the
8:32
hardest challenge that's faced a speaker probably in the history of
8:34
the country, in the moment we're in right now. He
8:37
said arguably, maybe
8:39
comparable to the Civil War, but maybe worse.
8:41
Right, maybe comparable to the Civil
8:43
War. Yeah. Or maybe
8:45
worse. You're just like Skyler Kofax, my
8:48
dude. That's exactly right. I mean, practically
8:50
Abraham Lincoln for being honest. Yeah, definitely
8:52
Sam Rayburn and all those other guys
8:54
during the Great Depression and during the
8:57
World War II. They never faced anything
8:59
like, who do you think you are? War
9:02
time speaker, America is not at war.
9:04
Except if you were one of these
9:06
people, now apparently we are. Now, oh,
9:08
we're fighting in Ukraine. We're the ones
9:10
who are fighting in Israel. That is
9:12
one of the best views into the
9:15
minds of these ghouls that I've ever
9:17
seen. America, which is not at war,
9:19
shouldn't be either involved in either of
9:21
these conflicts. And look at the level
9:23
of passion, the way that this man
9:25
talks to Crystal, about two foreign nations,
9:28
and the way that he sees his role in
9:30
propping this up. And some of the
9:32
details here on this package are, I
9:36
mean, just outrageous. Let's go and put this up
9:38
there, please, on the screen. And I'm just gonna
9:40
read you guys the top line numbers. The legislation
9:42
that Speaker Johnson is pushing, $60
9:45
billion for Ukraine. We've gotten
9:47
through this. This completely depletes US
9:50
military assets, US military stockpiles. It
9:52
is a gift to the military
9:54
industrial complex. It will not change
9:56
a single iota on the... in
9:59
Ukraine except allowing the government to
10:01
kidnap more people who are mentally
10:03
disabled and physically disabled and throw
10:05
them at a Russian bullet. Even
10:07
with this, the Russians will still
10:09
outproduce and outmatch the Ukrainians whenever
10:11
it comes to ammunition. Two, $26
10:13
billion for Israel
10:16
and humanitarian aid for civilians in
10:19
Gaza. Now, who wants to guess
10:21
the ratio of military to civilian
10:23
aid there, Crystal? Right? Okay. And
10:25
then finally, quote unquote, eight billion
10:28
for the Indo-Pacific. As a realist,
10:30
I'm so insulted by this because it's actually
10:32
a stack of the least, the least priority
10:34
for American interest gets the most money. The
10:37
middle priority for American interest gets the second
10:39
most amount of money. And the region of
10:41
the world, which matters the single most of
10:43
the US economy, gets the least amount of
10:46
money. And then that doesn't even belie the
10:48
question of what the hell is all this
10:50
money going to do anyway? I mean, this
10:52
is strategic in Sam. Yeah. I
10:55
mean, with the Israel piece, it's once
10:57
again, you guys have probably seen these
10:59
photos where there's literal bombs dropping on
11:01
Gaza as these little piddly food packages
11:03
are dropping as well. You know,
11:05
it just makes me sick. And it
11:08
is so tired and cliche at
11:10
this point, but I cannot help
11:12
but note, they move heaven
11:14
and frickin earth. Yes. When
11:16
it comes to making sure
11:19
the military industrial complex is
11:21
fed, making sure APAC is
11:24
fed, making sure we keep
11:26
these conflicts going endlessly because
11:28
there is so much money
11:31
at stake. They will
11:33
come together in a bipartisan
11:35
way. Joe Biden writing an
11:38
op-ed backing the Republican speaker
11:40
Mike Johnson. They will do
11:42
whatever they need to do
11:44
from a legislative perspective using
11:46
all these procedural tricks of the
11:48
trade to try to steamroll this
11:50
thing through when it comes to
11:53
forever war. When it comes
11:55
to healthcare, lifting the
11:57
minimum wage, dealing with the American
11:59
people, with homelessness, any
12:02
other domestic priority, ah, we can't,
12:04
sorry, it's not our priority, we
12:07
tried, it's too hard, we're divided,
12:09
et cetera, et cetera. It
12:12
is disgusting, it's such an emblem
12:15
of just how rotten and
12:17
corrupt and out of touch and
12:19
what a bubble these people are in and
12:21
how misplaced their
12:23
priorities are in the most corrupt way
12:25
imaginable. That is very well said, and look, this
12:28
is sometimes a trite thing, but it's April 18th.
12:30
How many of us are self-employed and just had
12:32
to pay our taxes on April 15th, had
12:34
to wire the IRS, had money taken
12:36
out of our bank accounts, for what?
12:39
And this is what it's going to.
12:41
This is what we are paying for,
12:43
billions and billions of dollars, not a
12:45
single change, iota of change on the
12:47
ground in Ukraine, doing nothing. We are
12:49
funding the deaths of, at not even
12:52
young Ukrainian men at this point, middle-aged
12:54
Ukrainians. I hope we will
12:56
enjoy the pictures of Ukrainian grandfathers who are
12:58
missing their limbs and that the young men
13:00
who are partying in Vienna and in Budapest
13:03
and all across of Central Europe, while we're
13:05
the ones who are paying for the ammunition
13:07
so that the people who are too poor
13:09
or too dumb to stay in the country
13:12
and who don't even wanna fight are the
13:14
ones who are thrown into this. On the
13:16
Israel packages, so what are we paying for
13:18
exactly? So we are assuming all of the
13:20
cost of Israel's military actions abroad, and now
13:23
they're about to go and strike Iran.
13:25
Whose military do you think is
13:27
going to be funding that bill?
13:29
And like I said too, Taiwan,
13:31
Indo-Pacific, these are regions of the
13:33
country, Japan and others, they actually,
13:35
or of the world, they matter.
13:37
They actually matter. They're actually being
13:39
shortchanged in terms of what would
13:41
genuinely be militarily useful to them
13:44
for these conflicts which mean nothing
13:46
to all of us. And the
13:48
craziest part is this is a
13:50
total uni-party takeover. Let's put this
13:52
up there on the screen. Speaker
13:54
Mike Johnson's plan relies entirely on Democrats.
13:57
Let me be very clear here. This is a...
14:00
GOP and Democratic plan to let
14:03
this go through. It's a little
14:05
bit convoluted, so please stick with
14:07
me. Basically, what Speaker Johnson has
14:09
done is he's taking these four
14:12
packages. It's gonna be Ukraine, it's gonna
14:14
be Israel, Indo-Pacific, and there's a fourth
14:16
bill, which is not yet out, which
14:19
is some pay for, TikTok, and sometimes
14:21
other stuff. Okay, so let's just be
14:23
very clear here. They're not together. They're
14:25
gonna pass them each individually. What he
14:28
is doing is sending
14:30
them to the House Rules Committee. The
14:32
House Rules Committee, by tradition, decades of
14:34
procedure, basically says that the ruling party
14:36
is the one who is supposed to
14:39
pass the rule to allow the advance
14:41
of the vote, okay? Well, currently, the
14:43
Rules Committee, one of the deals that
14:45
was struck within the Republican Party was
14:48
that the Rules Committee would have powerful
14:50
members of the Freedom Caucus and others
14:52
who would nix the Ukraine aid, even
14:54
the Israel aid in some cases here,
14:57
that would be of their makeup. What
14:59
Johnson is doing is explicitly screwing over
15:02
his own party members, working with Democrats
15:04
and Hakeem Jeffries to advance this foreign
15:06
aid to the floor and then allow
15:09
votes where both parties, and this is
15:11
another very key thing I wanna make
15:13
clear, what with Ukraine, for example, a
15:15
sizable part of the GOP caucus is
15:18
going to vote against Ukraine aid. A
15:20
sizable part of the Democratic caucus is
15:22
going to vote against Israel aid. What
15:24
they're doing is a corrupt bargain where
15:27
they both work for each other and
15:29
then they allow majority votes to come
15:32
together and then they throw the little
15:34
Taiwan piddly thing on the third. There
15:36
was an excellent scholar of congressional procedure,
15:38
Josh Huter, and he wrote this this
15:40
morning, I'm gonna read it to you,
15:42
quote. He says, rather
15:44
than simply allow members to
15:46
sign a discharge petition or
15:48
vote for a parliamentary question
15:50
or other maneuver, Johnson has
15:52
raised the specter of forming
15:54
a procedural coalition with Democrats
15:56
to overrun GOP opposition, potentially
15:58
the most grievous... betrayal of
16:00
partisan politics in the modern era. This
16:03
is a step further than the sins
16:05
of John Boehner and Paul Ryan who
16:07
were run out of office just for
16:10
using Democrats to pass spending bills. Johnson
16:12
will now work with Democrats to snuff
16:14
out opposition from his GOP colleagues. Reverse
16:17
that as well. Democrats do not bail
16:19
out Republicans when they don't have votes
16:21
on the rule. They are doing it
16:24
for this one instance crystal so they
16:26
can fund Ukraine and so they can
16:28
fund Israel. We are basically this
16:30
is a color revolution. This is
16:33
a uniparty war exception takeover of
16:35
all of our governmental procedure so
16:37
we can send 80 billion
16:40
dollars to foreign countries. That's right. Yeah.
16:42
Your tax dollars going to
16:45
put a gun in the hand of
16:47
a mentally disabled Ukrainian who doesn't want
16:49
to fight. Thank you. And to bomb
16:51
babies. It really does make
16:53
me very sympathetic to our libertarian brothers and sisters.
16:55
So Dave. I've never felt this way about
16:58
taxes before when I sent in my tax
17:00
check where you know normally I don't mind
17:02
paying my taxes. I don't mind paying my
17:04
fair share whatsoever. But when it's
17:06
so naked this is
17:08
going to fund more bombs to
17:10
be dropped on a refugee camp
17:12
or more bullets to massacre Gazans
17:14
who are seeking aid desperately trying
17:16
to get flour. No it's
17:19
it's disgusting. And if
17:21
the American people had a say in this
17:23
they would say no. But
17:25
you have so much corrupting
17:28
influence of money. You have
17:30
the yes the deep state using all
17:32
of their scare tactics to try to
17:34
you know force some sort of unanimity
17:37
whatever that they did to Mike Johnson
17:39
got him to flip on a dime.
17:41
And I really think with him part
17:43
of it too is
17:46
he is so fervently ideologically
17:49
committed to Israel that
17:51
in order to get the Israel aid
17:53
through which is so important to him
17:56
he was basically willing to do whatever
17:58
else he needed to do. And
18:00
this is what the whatever else looks like.
18:03
So since you had him on Israel, it
18:05
only took a little turn of the screw to
18:08
get him on FISA apparently, and to get him
18:10
on Ukraine as well. And now,
18:12
you know, this is where we
18:14
are. Yeah, I mean, Dave
18:16
Smith and Cenk both yesterday, Cenk in particular,
18:19
he's like, if a single American goes to
18:21
fight in this war, I'm gonna stop paying
18:23
taxes and I'm gonna rally the people. By
18:25
the way Cenk, I will be in the
18:27
streets with you. Dave made a joke as
18:29
a libertarian. He's like, hey, why don't we
18:31
all just start now? I agree with you.
18:34
I am very rarely the online libertarian poster.
18:36
I am so hopping mad about this one.
18:38
Because once again, if we were sticking with
18:40
the way that our government functions, anytime, let's
18:42
say, what are our services, Crystal, that
18:44
you or I or any others, let's
18:46
everybody just take a moment and think
18:49
about a service in your life, let's
18:51
say healthcare, maybe something like that, where
18:53
you would like the federal government to
18:55
move heaven and earth to make it
18:57
easier for you. Maybe buying a house,
18:59
your wage, how do we work in
19:01
conditions, getting married, tax credits, that
19:04
could go on forever. They are not doing
19:06
any of that. For you. They're
19:08
doing it for a foreign country and they're
19:10
using our money to do it. And they
19:12
won't even use our money to actually pay
19:15
for anything inside of this country. It genuinely
19:17
makes me sick. Israel is
19:19
a wealthy, advanced nation. They brag about
19:21
it all the time. They have universal
19:23
healthcare. We don't, they do. And we're sending
19:25
billions to them. It's just,
19:27
it's, so it's preposterous on
19:29
that level. And then it's so
19:31
outrageously immoral on the
19:34
level of what we've seen unfold.
19:36
And you hear the Biden administration, worried
19:39
about civilian life, et cetera, et cetera,
19:41
you can't take them seriously when this
19:44
is their number one priority. We
19:46
can actually put up there. The other thing that's astonishing is
19:48
some of the arguments that they're making in front of this.
19:51
Put A5, this Wall Street Journal tear sheet
19:53
up on the screen. This is the Biden
19:56
op-ed that he published here. Moment of truth
19:58
on Ukraine and Israel. both countries
20:01
urgently need U.S. aid to
20:03
defend themselves against brazen adversaries
20:05
that seek their annihilation. One
20:08
of the arguments that he makes here
20:11
is directly about how this
20:13
will help to fund and
20:15
finance the American war machine,
20:17
military industrial complex. He
20:19
says, if Congress passes military aid for Ukraine
20:22
and Israel, we won't write blank checks. We'd
20:24
send military equipment from our own
20:27
stockpiles, then use the money authorized
20:29
by Congress to replenish those stockpiles
20:31
by buying from American suppliers. Oh,
20:33
Boeing, Raytheon, they'll be so happy.
20:35
It includes Patriot missiles made in
20:37
Arizona, Javelin missiles made in Alabama,
20:39
and artillery shells made in Pennsylvania,
20:41
Ohio, and Texas. It's just astonishing
20:44
to me that they are affirmatively
20:46
leaning into the pitch that, guess
20:48
what, guys? This is going to
20:50
go to our great military industrial
20:52
complex suppliers. So it's not like the money
20:54
even leaves within like 50 miles
20:56
of where we sit right now. It's
20:59
so naked and it's so incredibly manipulative
21:01
and disgusting. Yeah. By
21:03
the way, a quote just came across my dad. I love this
21:06
from Mike Johnson. Here's why he decided to flip
21:08
flop. Listen to this quote. Quote, I
21:10
really believe the intel and the
21:13
briefings that we've gotten, I
21:15
believe she, Vladimir Putin
21:17
and Iran are the axis of
21:19
evil. They are in court. Jesus
21:21
Christ. What year are we
21:24
in? What year? I feel the Jumanji
21:26
meme. What year is it? What year is it?
21:28
It's in 1972. This is madness. It's
21:32
complete madness. We have a video
21:34
here of some of the
21:36
House Republicans who rightfully are furious
21:39
about this. They were interviewed
21:41
by CNN's Manu Raju. Let's take a listen.
21:43
For hours last night and proposed a
21:45
different path to the session speaker that
21:48
would have avoided the abject surrender represented
21:50
by his strategic choice here. There's no
21:52
other way to describe it. Surrender. It's
21:55
disappointing. I won't support it. It's
21:58
disappointing. It's completely disappointing. detached
22:00
from what our base wants, what our voters
22:02
want. This strategy is
22:04
not to try. I think the
22:06
strategy is to fall on his sword.
22:09
So when I asked the Congressman Chip Roy about whether
22:11
or not it was time for him to oust Mike
22:13
Johnson from the speakership, he said that he
22:16
went right up to the line, Dana, and
22:18
didn't go across that line, perhaps because he
22:21
needs to talk with the speaker, which is
22:23
happening right now. Now, the question is, will
22:25
the numbers add up to oust him from
22:27
the speakership? Because Democrats, as you mentioned, could
22:30
step in to save him because of what
22:32
he's doing here on Ukraine. So this is
22:34
a different situation than the fall when Martin
22:37
McCarthy was ousted from the speakership, but no
22:39
doubt about it. Mike Johnson opening up a
22:41
revolt on the far right with his conference,
22:43
with his move here. So yeah, I mean,
22:45
screwing over your own party. It's just incredible.
22:48
And finally, we have the word from Speaker
22:50
Johnson himself went on CNN's Jake Tapper show
22:52
of all places to make the case for
22:54
this. Just listen to his own words. Look
22:57
at the way that this man talks right
22:59
now. And let's also not leave Trump out
23:01
of this because as Ryan and I covered, he
23:03
was singularly important in making sure that this happened.
23:05
Let's take a listen. Look, we know what the
23:07
timetable is. We know the urgency in Ukraine and
23:09
in Israel. And we are going to stand by
23:12
Israel, our close ally and dear friend. And we
23:14
were going to stand for freedom and make sure
23:16
that Vladimir Putin doesn't march through Europe. These
23:18
are important responsibilities. A strong America
23:21
is good for the entire world
23:23
since World War Two. Really, really.
23:25
The responsibility for the free
23:27
world has been shifted onto our shoulders. And
23:29
we accept that role. We're an exceptional nation.
23:31
We're the greatest nation on the planet. We
23:33
have to act like it. And we have
23:35
to project to Putin and Xi and
23:38
Iran and North Korea and anybody else that we
23:40
will defend freedom. It doesn't mean boots on the
23:42
ground. We're not the world's policemen. But
23:44
we're going to do the right thing. And I did tell
23:47
the president of the plan on all of this. And I
23:49
think he clearly understands why we're running
23:51
this play and why we need to do this. I
23:53
think this sets up the next election,
23:55
the next administration, the next president. And I believe
23:57
he's going to win in a better
23:59
position. So Trump endorsed the
24:01
plan, spoke with Mike Johnson.
24:04
He's an idiot. So when he hears from Lindsey Graham,
24:06
or he hears from Lindsey Graham, it's a loan. Trump
24:08
is like, I love loans. Let's do it. And
24:12
so now we're doing a fake loan to the
24:14
most corrupt government on the planet. The aid actually
24:16
allows you to cancel the aid or to cancel
24:18
the loan. If you're the president, what do you
24:20
think Biden is going to do on day one
24:23
after this thing passes? We're never going to pay
24:25
back. Not that it matters. We're never going to pay back,
24:27
whether it's technically a debt or a loan or whatever. It's
24:29
fake loan, of course. It's not going to happen. Yeah.
24:31
I mean, listen, I never want to hear
24:33
from a single soul ever again that Trump
24:36
is some anti-war president. It's
24:38
always been preposterous. If you looked at his
24:40
record last time around, I mean, he was
24:42
actually very hawkish towards Russia
24:44
in spite of the rhetoric and
24:47
the Russiagate, you know, phenomenon and
24:49
obsession and derangement and whatever. It
24:51
was actually in his policy quite
24:53
hawkish towards Russia. He was
24:55
consistently rolled by the deep state, by
24:58
the intel community in the same way
25:00
that Mike Johnson is here and, you
25:02
know, standing right beside Mike Johnson on
25:04
the same thing. The last thing
25:06
I want to make clear to people is there
25:08
are really two reasons why this is happening
25:11
right now, as far as I can see. Number
25:14
one is Israel's provocation
25:17
vis-a-vis Iran bombing
25:19
their embassy and then the inevitable
25:22
recession. That is part of
25:24
what gave this thing momentum right now.
25:26
So once again, B.B. playing
25:28
us like a fiddle, getting
25:31
his way, getting the A that has been
25:33
hung up until now. So that's
25:35
number one. And number two is what you
25:37
just heard there, Donald Trump giving it the
25:39
go-ahead and, you know, putting his hands
25:42
on this and saying basically, yes, this
25:44
has my blessing. He's incredibly influential with
25:46
the Republican caucus. He basically followed his
25:48
lead on many things. And so I
25:50
think the fact that it had his
25:52
buy-in was essential to creating this
25:55
moment. Sagar, I have a question for you, which
25:57
is, you know, is this a fait
25:59
accompli? Or is there any chance
26:01
that Democrats don't want to go along, that
26:03
they're nervous? Because I know there's some nervousness
26:05
from some Democrats about, all right, we passed
26:07
the rule that puts us in their hands.
26:09
We don't know if we're going to get
26:11
the humanitarian aid that we need to pretend
26:13
like we care about civilians being massacred in
26:15
Gaza. Do you think there's any chance that
26:17
this gets blocked? There is. So there's
26:19
several things. The vote is going to
26:21
happen on Saturday night. It's a long
26:23
time from now till Saturday. It's somehow
26:25
shenanigans. It's possible that the motion to
26:27
vacate comes up. That would require the
26:30
whole speakership thing. However, there's been some
26:32
indications currently that the Democrats, at least
26:34
some Democrats, would save Mike Johnson's speakership
26:36
just to make sure that there is
26:38
no more chaos in the House. Josh
26:40
Gottheimer in particular wants to fund Israel.
26:42
That's right. You guessed it. And that's
26:44
one of the reasons why he's decided
26:46
to do so. That guy, Moskowitz, too,
26:48
Jared Moskowitz, is the name. So these individuals,
26:50
look, I mean, there is enough room here
26:52
to work with where I would say it
26:54
is likelier than not. This is based upon
26:56
the sources that I've spoken to.
26:58
Keep in mind, my sources, at least the people who
27:01
talk to me, these are the people who don't want
27:03
this stuff to pass. So when they tell me, I
27:05
know it's actually likely on this one, I
27:08
believe them because their analysis of the situation
27:10
and the coalitions and all that involved are
27:12
that because you've got the Dems willing to
27:14
work on Ukraine and the Republicans willing to
27:16
work so hard on Israel, that
27:19
it is allowing the corrupt bargain
27:21
to go through without enough objection.
27:23
You've also basically bought off the
27:26
progressives with this piddly humanitarian aid
27:28
and giving them enough, let's
27:30
say the Congressional Progressive Caucus and others, a
27:33
decent portion of them are going to vote
27:35
for it because it does include humanitarian aid
27:37
for Gaza. And also, that
27:39
gives an out to the Senate Democrats
27:41
should whenever this moves over to the
27:43
Senate, even the people like Chris
27:45
Van Hollen and all others, they've indicated they would
27:48
vote for Israel aid. One of the ways they
27:50
can do it is, yeah, it sends weapons, but
27:52
it sends humanitarian aid, too, which is there is
27:54
something sick, right, about paying for the
27:57
wounds of the people who are people who are
27:59
wounded by bombs. Yeah, you bomb
28:01
them and you send them a loaf of bread. The other thing is,
28:04
the problem in Gaza in terms
28:06
of the humanitarian situation isn't a
28:08
lack of availability of aid. There's
28:12
hundreds of trucks that are
28:14
still backed up at the
28:16
borders. The problem is our
28:18
great ally Israel blocking food and
28:21
fuel and water from being able
28:23
to come in. And there
28:25
are a lot of indications that in spite of
28:27
their claims that they're improving the humanitarian situation, that
28:29
they're certainly not living up to the pledges that
28:32
they made. And what's getting in is still wildly
28:35
insufficient. So the
28:38
humanitarian aid is
28:40
ass-covering so that people like
28:42
Chris Van Hollen, who has made a big
28:44
show of saying some really important things with
28:47
regard to Gaza, can point
28:49
to that to justify shipping
28:51
more bombs to massacre women,
28:53
children. I mean, some of the
28:55
reports coming out about this is
28:57
the largest cohort of children who've
28:59
had amputations that we've ever seen.
29:01
They're going to be maimed for
29:04
life, the trauma that they're going
29:06
to experience. And you're going to
29:08
you're going to get more more bombs to create
29:10
more death, destruction, annihilation, trauma, et cetera. But don't
29:12
worry, we'll send you a loaf of bread as
29:14
well. That'll make it better. Yeah, look,
29:17
it's total chaos. And it is it is
29:19
certainly possible that this may not pass. But
29:21
right now I would bet on it passing.
29:23
And honestly, I should never have gotten my
29:26
hopes up. We only got a three month
29:28
reprieve. I should have known that they will
29:30
net they always win in the end. How
29:32
they figure it out every time the military
29:34
industrial complex, the neocons, no matter what you
29:37
or I think, no matter the fact that
29:39
the vast majority of the American people are
29:41
not for any of this aid to Ukraine
29:43
and to Israel. It doesn't matter. And
29:46
it's just days after tax day, just
29:48
a little bit too on the nose. Hey,
29:52
it's me, Blippi, and this is
29:54
my best friend, Mika. Hi,
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I'm Mika. This
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is our brand new plaid-a-cad!
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aaa.com/join! Let's
31:38
move on. Let's talk a little bit about
31:40
Israel as we just talked about and where some
31:42
of this money may be going and who is
31:44
going to be funding and what exactly they're going
31:46
to do about it. So here we have Benjamin
31:48
Netanyahu who is speaking about the striking
31:50
Iran in retaliation. We can go ahead and
31:52
play it and I'm going to read. They
31:54
say they also have some objections. I appreciate
31:57
it, but I want to clarify. He
31:59
says that we will... make our own decision.
32:01
He's talking here about the United States.
32:03
He says the state of Israel will
32:05
do everything necessary to defend
32:07
itself today. The cabinet
32:09
will approve a plan to rebuild the
32:11
settlements of the Gaza Strip. We will
32:14
invest a very large sum of shekels
32:16
to make the settlements of Gaza available
32:18
to generations. We will invest in housing,
32:20
infrastructure, education, and employment. So he's talking
32:23
there about two things. He's talking about
32:25
striking Iran, the state of Israel, we
32:27
will do whatever we want to do.
32:29
And he's also talking about using money,
32:33
U.S. money, presumably, right? Some of these shekels,
32:35
where do you think exactly they're coming from?
32:37
Shekel, by the way, is the currency of
32:39
the state of Israel, in case people didn't
32:41
know that. Using
32:44
that to build settlements in the Gaza Strip
32:46
and complete contravention of U.S. policy. And
32:48
we will get to some of the changes
32:50
in U.S. policy and all of that
32:52
in a little bit. But this comes
32:54
as the entire world, the Western world,
32:56
is trying to descend upon Israel, begging
32:59
them, please, please don't get us into
33:01
a war with Iran. And yet they
33:03
continue to walk away being told
33:05
by their, being told straight to the
33:08
face of their own benefactors that they are going to
33:10
do it anyway. Let's put this up there on the
33:12
screen. This is from the Times of Israel. You can
33:14
take it. You've got after
33:16
meeting with President Herzog of
33:18
Israel, David Cameron, the U.K.
33:20
foreign minister, says, quote, it is now
33:23
clear that Israel will respond to the
33:25
Iran attack. The British foreign minister, quote,
33:27
hopes retaliation will not further escalating tensions.
33:30
Calls for the G7 to sanction Iran
33:32
and the visiting German foreign minister also
33:34
says all parties must act prudently and
33:37
responsibility. So you have Tony Blinken, who
33:39
is pressuring them, President Biden. Here you've
33:41
got the freaking British foreign
33:43
minister, a huge supporter of the state of
33:46
Israel. You've got the German foreign minister, all
33:48
of these people descending there. Apparently, Prime Minister
33:50
Netanyahu even put a call off for several hours with
33:52
the prime minister of the U.K., where the prime minister
33:54
was like, hey, man, like maybe just keep us out
33:56
of this one because it would it would just be
33:58
easier for all of us. if we didn't
34:00
have to shoot down missiles for you. And yet,
34:02
that's not what, this is a government acting in
34:05
complete impunity. We've seen this many, many times. But
34:07
again, let's just play it for the whole world,
34:09
for all of us since we're the ones who
34:11
are funding this. And here's the
34:13
thing. Things were getting a
34:15
little tougher than Yahoo. There was
34:18
a little bit of scrutiny about
34:20
what was going on in Gaza.
34:22
The Americans were getting increasingly uncomfortable,
34:24
it was becoming increasingly untenable. How
34:26
much has the horrific annihilation and
34:28
humanitarian disaster, the famine in Northern
34:31
Gaza, how much has that fallen out
34:33
of the news as everybody
34:36
starts beating the war drums and
34:38
getting all hyped up about this
34:40
conflict with Iran? There were
34:42
these reports, Sagar, I don't know if you buy these or not, because
34:44
it was from a like, not
34:46
totally certain news source, that
34:49
the US back channeled Iran and was like, how
34:51
much you let Israel do a little bit of
34:53
a retaliatory attack and just let it be? Can
34:56
you imagine if we were
34:58
directly attacked, can you imagine if
35:01
our embassy was attacked, how
35:03
we would respond? Yesterday, Emily and I played
35:05
this exchange with Matt Miller, I don't know
35:07
if you saw him, Matt Lee pressing him
35:09
on. All right, because
35:12
their dodge is, well, we don't
35:14
know if it was really a
35:16
consulate building that Israel hit, we're
35:19
investigating, we haven't really figured that
35:21
out yet. That's their dodge to
35:23
avoid condemning Israel for starting this
35:26
whole terrifying chain of escalation that
35:28
risks dragging us directly into conflict
35:30
with Iran, even though I genuinely
35:33
think that the Biden administration actually
35:35
wants to avoid this direct conflict,
35:37
but they haven't done a single
35:40
thing to try to forestall
35:42
that eventuality. So
35:44
yeah, Bibi and Israel,
35:46
they act like toddlers who
35:48
haven't been disciplined, who know they can get
35:51
away with whatever the hell they wanna get
35:53
away with because they always do, because we'll
35:55
do things like, pretend we're having
35:57
an investigation into whether or not they really hit
35:59
an embassy. Trust me, if they
36:01
didn't hit an embassy or consulate building,
36:04
we would have said it right away. The
36:06
fact that we're out here pretending like we've
36:08
got to do some months-long investigation to figure
36:10
that out tells you everything you need to
36:13
know about what actually unfolded here. But
36:15
we will deny reality. We will lie. We will cover
36:17
up. And we will continue moving heaven and earth to
36:20
ship them their bombs to continue doing
36:22
whatever the hell they want to do.
36:25
Our interest and the safety
36:27
of our service members and our people be
36:29
damned. Yeah, this is America last. It's
36:31
fine. Let's put this up there on
36:34
the screen. Just like I want to
36:36
reiterate again how many world leaders are,
36:38
quote, urging restraint. You again have the
36:40
war cabinet and the far right who
36:42
are all saying that we need to
36:44
have swift action. But then you have
36:46
basically every leader of a G7 nation
36:48
who is urging restraint, who is even
36:50
rhetorically backing up Israel, but is reaching
36:52
out and urging caution and not to
36:54
have retaliation. It is just virtual certainty.
36:57
This is going to lead for some
36:59
sort of tit-for-tat escalation. The United States
37:01
will be involved. We already know that because
37:03
we already were involved. We shot down the
37:05
majority of the missiles. If there is more
37:07
of an escalation, then we'll be even more
37:09
involved in shooting that down. And Bibi has
37:11
been in the split for so long. Bibi
37:13
has wanted this and urged us to do
37:15
this for years. Yesterday on the zero-hedge debate,
37:18
we played a clip of him advocating
37:20
for the overthrow of the Iranian regime in
37:22
2002. We're Congress.
37:25
This is on tape. It's literally right there, out
37:27
in the open. He has urged
37:30
every president from George
37:32
W. Bush onward to overthrow the Iranian regime
37:34
and to bomb Iran. He tried to get
37:36
Trump to do it. He tried to get
37:38
Obama to do it. There's a whole interesting
37:41
Atlantic series. You guys can go read it
37:43
if you want. Jeffrey Goldberg sat there and
37:45
let Bibi spout his BS about why America
37:47
should go to war. He came to our
37:49
soil against our own
37:51
president of the United States and spoke against the
37:54
Iran deal. He tried to get George W. Bush,
37:56
as I said, multiple times. after
38:00
Iraq and he had many supporters in the cabinet.
38:02
The only thing that saved us from going to
38:05
war with Iran is that the Iraq war was
38:07
such a disaster. Because if it had gone even
38:09
remotely well, then he could have convinced Condoleezza Rice
38:11
and all these other idiots to
38:13
do that as well. So just keep in
38:15
mind exactly who we're dealing with. He says
38:18
all these things out in the open. He
38:20
feels totally comfortable. Any last things for a
38:22
moment? Yeah, I mean, even though it's
38:24
utterly psychotic, like I genuinely can't wrap
38:26
my head around the psychopathy that it
38:28
requires to just like casually flirt with
38:31
this gigantic war. You
38:33
can see why he did it, because now
38:36
the frame of conversation isn't,
38:38
oh my God, here's a baby who
38:41
you're starving to death in Gaza. Now
38:43
the frame of conversation is freaking Mike Johnson out
38:46
there talking about the axis of evil. That's
38:49
much stronger ground for
38:51
BB Netanyahu with the political
38:53
class here, certainly with the Democrats.
38:55
So we're in power here. Frankly,
38:59
it's just a much better conversation
39:01
for him to take the focus
39:03
off the suffering of Palestinians their
39:05
hands and at our hands that
39:07
completely shifts the frame in a
39:09
way that is much more favorable for him. And
39:11
also by the way, it's not an accident
39:13
that this is right at the moment when
39:16
there was a harass op-ed saying, listen, we
39:18
gotta face it. This has been a disaster.
39:20
We have lost on every reasonable metric of
39:22
success in Gaza. So he also has to
39:25
shift the frame domestically to some
39:27
other victory that he can chase
39:29
after. So the logic of it
39:31
is sick, but you
39:33
can see exactly how he made this
39:35
calculation and decided to thrust all of
39:37
us into this incredible chaos. All
39:41
right, let's move on to Arizona. This is
39:44
very, very impactful in terms of
39:46
the electoral news. So just yesterday, there
39:48
was major breaking in terms of after
39:51
the Arizona Supreme Court upheld
39:53
a Civil War era law,
39:55
which banned abortion across the
39:57
board in the entire state.
40:00
been now an intra GOP fight
40:02
on whether to try and repeal
40:04
that law or not. Well, let's
40:06
put this up there on the
40:08
screen. Just yesterday, the state Senate
40:10
introduced a bill to repeal that
40:12
abortion ban. And by the way,
40:14
by repeal, I just mean adding
40:17
exceptions for rape incest and the
40:19
life of the mother. But the
40:21
House actually blocked the effort to
40:23
do so, showing that the House
40:25
Republican leadership, quote, shows no signs
40:27
of relenting despite pressure from prominent
40:29
Republicans, including Trump, to toss the
40:32
ban that many voters, quote, view as
40:34
extreme and archaic. I think that that's
40:36
a reasonable way to put it. Well,
40:39
the House Republican leader, the House
40:41
Speaker, the House legislature was controlled
40:43
by the Republicans in Arizona. They
40:45
just seemed content on throwing this
40:47
entire election. And it is astounding
40:50
because this is a position that
40:52
is not held by even like
40:54
a majority of the minority, I guess,
40:57
of the people who are pro life.
40:59
And yet that's the current law on
41:01
the books in a critical battleground state.
41:03
What's even more astounding to me is
41:05
how the politicians there are navigating it.
41:07
So Kerry Lake, somebody who is the
41:10
Arizona Senate candidate, previously on tape saying she
41:12
was completely fine with the ban. Then after
41:14
the ban came out, she said, well, yeah,
41:16
we should have some sort of repeal. We
41:19
need to come sort of a consensus, but
41:21
I support exceptions for the life and the
41:23
mother. Well, here she is just yesterday in
41:26
an interview in local Arizona media where now
41:29
she's changing her tune a little bit. She
41:31
does support the ban. She says something else,
41:33
which you listen out for him. We'll
41:35
flag it after we listen. Let's take a listen. Can
41:37
you explain your shift on abortion
41:39
from civil war, civil
41:41
war law to now, uh,
41:44
no federal ban on abortion? Cause I
41:46
believe that truly that's something that people do
41:48
want to hear, uh, from what we've heard. Well,
41:51
first of all, I've never shifted from the
41:53
no federal ban. You know, if you're my
41:55
age or older, you've been on this planet
41:57
for more than 50 years. Groovy Wade. It's
42:00
the law of the land, even though both sides
42:03
knew it was unconstitutional. And the
42:05
Supreme Court struck that down and brought the decision
42:07
back to the state. So we're going to have
42:09
50 different state laws. So we need to
42:11
find some common sense approach. I'm never going to
42:13
apologize for wanting to save babies and bring being
42:16
pro-life. But I also realized
42:18
the world that we're living in, even if
42:20
we have a restrictive law here, you can go three
42:22
hours that way, three hours that way. And
42:24
you're going to be able to have an abortion. We have to start working the
42:27
minds and hearts of women. Yeah, one of
42:29
the ways to win over the minds and hearts of women,
42:32
Crystal, is to say, yeah, I know in our
42:34
state, the state that you live in and that
42:36
you pay taxes, I know that's really tough. And
42:38
that's why it's OK that you have to get
42:40
into a car and you can drive three hours
42:43
that way or three hours that way. Also, depending
42:45
on where you live in Arizona, it may be
42:47
several hours. And also, you may have to get
42:49
on a plane. So it's actually going to cost
42:52
you some money as opposed to being able to
42:54
pursue what you want to do in your own
42:56
home state. That sounds really comforting to
42:58
a lot of voters who are concerned about this.
43:00
What are these people? Are they living in an
43:02
alternative reality? Right. What is happening here? They are.
43:05
Am I losing my mind here? Yeah. Yeah.
43:07
So the line is basically, oh, it's no
43:09
big deal. You can just like go over
43:11
state lines and still do the same thing.
43:14
She's framing it in terms of like, that's
43:16
a bad thing. But the subtext here is
43:18
like, yeah, don't freak out because, you know,
43:20
there are other states around that aren't using
43:23
1864 laws passed by settler pedophiles. You can
43:25
avail yourself of the rights
43:27
that you previously enjoyed in our
43:29
state. You know, just to help
43:31
people understand why the Republicans
43:33
in the House and Arizona may have
43:36
made way in terms of the American
43:38
people, that can end up being a
43:40
real political threat to you. And,
43:42
you know, the other thing is you have
43:44
to deal with the situation that Kerry Lake
43:46
is dealing with of, wait a second, voters
43:48
looking at you and going, wait a second.
43:51
Previously, you said you love the span.
43:53
Previously, you said you believed in, you know,
43:55
heartbeat bills and fetal personhood and all this
43:57
stuff. So why the change?
44:00
Why suddenly is there this incredible moral
44:02
flip-flop? And listen, to be fair to
44:05
that position, if you
44:07
are a person who genuinely believes
44:09
that abortion is murder, if
44:11
that's your principled position, then this like, leave it
44:13
up to the states and it's cool if they
44:15
have murder in California and actually I want to
44:18
allow a little bit more murder here in Arizona
44:20
because I'm doing this political calculus and it doesn't
44:22
look good to me. Like, I think it's fair
44:24
for people who hold that moral position and believe
44:26
you when you were all in with them when
44:29
there were no consequences are disgusted with the flip-flop.
44:31
No, you should be. Yeah, if you're very pro-life,
44:33
you should be repulsed also by people who are
44:35
basically willing to use you as a pawn. And
44:37
if you're pro-choice, you should just look at this
44:39
and be like, wow, this is freaking crazy. Yeah.
44:43
Electorially, we already know what's going to happen here. Lo
44:45
and behold, let's put this up there on the screen.
44:47
What do we got? A key
44:49
change in the way that the
44:51
Arizona Senate race is being rated
44:54
in terms of which way it's going to
44:56
go. Kerry has now gone from toss-up to
44:58
lean Democratic. And in terms of
45:00
the House rating, same thing. In the Arizona
45:02
6th District, leans Republican to toss-up. So
45:04
he's safe seat, easy seat, one that
45:07
you're supposed to be a checkbox, leans
45:09
Republican. It's Arizona for God's sake, right?
45:11
Nope, not anymore. And
45:13
now Kerry had all kinds of problems
45:15
already with stop the steal, with abortion,
45:18
health care, we can all go on
45:20
forever. So her highlight reel was going
45:22
to be a problem for her no
45:24
matter what, especially in a state where
45:27
we've had multiple races now, both presidential
45:29
and statewide, where Democrats did better than
45:32
expected. But this is just the gift to Democrats.
45:34
This is the greatest gift you could ever get.
45:36
You have one of the most extreme abortion laws
45:38
in the whole country. And now you got a
45:40
lady who's used to support it, is on tape,
45:43
and now is like kind of wishy washy on
45:45
where things could go. Good luck. You
45:47
know, Republicans, you know, you're taking some of the
45:49
best headwinds in a presidential election, and you're just
45:52
throwing it away on an issue where you're not
45:54
even going to win in the first place. I've
45:56
seen somebody actually, I think it was Mike
45:58
Cernovich who said this, he was like, Hey, pro-life. I'm not
46:00
sure if you know this, but there's actually
46:02
been a net increase in abortion in the
46:04
United States since Roe vs. Wade. So you
46:06
guys are drawing your red lines and saying
46:08
you won't vote for Trump and causing all
46:10
these problems electorally and not only are
46:12
you gonna cause future electoral losses, you didn't even win
46:14
the fight, you know, that you allegedly set out to
46:17
do. So it's just been it's just ridiculous all the
46:19
way around. Yeah, and just so you know, it's not
46:21
an accident that these ratings changes come right now. The
46:25
political actually pointed specifically to
46:28
this 1864 abortion ban
46:30
and also the fact by the way, remember
46:32
there's likely to be ballot initiatives on the
46:35
ballot in November that will allow voters to
46:37
repeal that ban, which is very motivating obviously
46:40
for people who are even remotely on
46:42
the pro-choice side of the ledger. And
46:45
also the fact, and this is something we'll have to cover another
46:47
time, that Republican fundraising
46:50
is dramatically lagging
46:52
behind Democratic fundraising
46:54
and that's actually not just an Arizona
46:56
phenomenon. That's almost across the board and
46:59
you know, there could be a lot of reasons
47:01
for that. I think Donald Trump is a big
47:03
reason for it. He is like just sucked dry
47:06
to be Republican donor-based. There's also a report that
47:08
he's now demanding any Republican
47:10
candidate that uses his name in
47:12
a fundraising pitch. He's demanding that they give
47:14
him a 5% kickback of
47:18
whatever they raise off of it. So
47:20
I mean he's sort of single-handedly undermining
47:23
Republicans ability to fundraise and I
47:25
also think that abortion plays into
47:27
the fundraising piece too here because
47:29
it's very motivating issue for Democratic-aligned
47:32
individuals and specifically donors
47:34
and Republicans are kind
47:36
of like demoralized around the way that all
47:38
of this has unfolded. Just
47:41
to show you to this Data for
47:43
Progress poll demonstrating just how
47:45
unpopular the Arizona
47:48
abortion ban actually is. They asked the question.
47:50
Let's put this up on the screen. So 66%
47:54
of voters, two-thirds of the country,
47:57
disapprove of the Arizona
47:59
Supreme Court's near total ban on abortion.
48:01
That includes 82 percent of
48:03
Democrats, 66 percent of independents, and
48:06
Republicans even. Basically
48:08
split 50-50, 49 percent
48:10
of Republicans even disapprove
48:13
of that ban. So just to give you
48:15
a sense of just how toxic this
48:18
particular iteration of
48:20
abortion bans really is,
48:22
and Republicans can't really
48:24
run away from it at this point
48:26
because they spent so many years establishing
48:29
themselves in this very hardline position that you
48:31
can't try to pull a Kerry Lake and
48:34
just do a 180 and pretend like you
48:36
didn't say the things that you said in
48:38
the past because we can all roll the
48:40
tape. You're exactly right, Crystal. And just by the way,
48:43
in terms of more messaging
48:45
from Republicans, which is not
48:47
exactly helpful, here we have
48:50
Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee,
48:52
where she says that Griswold
48:54
versus Connecticut is
48:56
constitutionally unsound. Griswold, for those of you
48:59
who don't know, is the one that
49:01
legalized birth control less take a listen.
49:04
Constitutionally unsound rulings like
49:07
Griswold versus Connecticut, Kelo
49:09
versus City of New
49:11
London and NFIB versus
49:13
Sebelius confused Tennesseans and
49:15
left Congress wondering who
49:18
gave the court permission to
49:20
bypass our system of checks
49:22
and balances. Okay, good luck.
49:24
Now we're against the case that legalized
49:26
birth control. All right. Unless
49:29
you guys are literally going to pass a
49:32
law almost immediately after said gets
49:34
repealed. I don't even know. Yeah. How's
49:36
that gone with IVF? I know. You know,
49:39
I mean, Republicans are blocking at the federal level. Yeah.
49:42
There's at least a pro-life case for
49:44
IVF, right? Absolutely. More babies. If
49:46
your family values, you want more babies.
49:48
Like IVF is an important part of
49:50
that. So yeah, you can see, you
49:52
know, even when they recognize this is
49:54
politically disastrous, like in Arizona, Kerry Lake
49:56
trying to backtrack, Donald Trump's like, Oh,
49:58
of course we support IBS, etc,
50:01
etc. When it comes down
50:03
to how they actually vote, they
50:05
just can't do it because there's
50:07
still so much influence from the
50:10
very organized pro-life crowd, which has been able
50:12
over decades. I mean, listen, you have to
50:14
give it to them in terms of their
50:17
stick to it. In terms of
50:19
their determination, in terms of like the savvy
50:21
tactics that they used, but to
50:23
basically force a minority fringe position on
50:25
the entire country. And the part that
50:28
they failed on though, was having any
50:30
sort of plan for what happens next.
50:32
So in that way, they really are the
50:35
dog that caught the car with regards to
50:37
Roe being overturned and the Dobbs decision and
50:39
it's a wild, wild west out there. That's
50:41
all I'll say. Exactly right.
50:45
So we don't want to lose sight of some of the updates
50:47
that are coming out of Israel, including
50:49
a bombshell new report from
50:51
UNRWA. Now, as we head into the segment, I
50:54
just want you to keep in mind as a
50:56
context that our government
50:58
just officially certified that
51:01
they have no evidence Israel is
51:03
violating international humanitarian law. Okay. Keep
51:05
that in mind as we move
51:07
forward. Let's put this latest report
51:09
from UNRWA on detainees,
51:12
Palestinian detainees being held by Israel being
51:14
tortured. This matches up by the way
51:17
with a number of prior media accounts,
51:19
but I want to give you some
51:21
of the specifics here because they really
51:24
matter. So first of all, let me
51:26
read a little bit from this report.
51:28
They say ill treatment of detainees was
51:30
reported to have occurred primarily while
51:33
in the barracks and to have
51:35
intensified in advance of interrogation sessions.
51:37
This included being subjected to beatings
51:39
while meaning to lie on a
51:41
thin mattress on top of rubble
51:43
for hours without food, water or
51:46
access to a toilet with their
51:48
legs and hands bound with plastic
51:50
ties. As a side note, there
51:52
are doctors who came out and
51:54
said that amputations of limbs because
51:56
of handcuffing procedures was commonplace in
51:59
these facilities. The report goes on
52:01
to say several detainees reported being forced into
52:03
cages and attacked by dogs. Some
52:06
released detainees, including a child, had dog
52:08
bite wounds on their body. Detainees
52:11
were threatened with prolonged detention, injury
52:13
or the killing of family members
52:15
if they did not provide requested
52:18
information. One detainee said,
52:20
and this is difficult to hear,
52:23
so warning there, but this is their
52:25
quote, They made me sit
52:27
on something like a hot metal stick, and
52:29
it felt like I have
52:31
burns in the anus. The
52:33
soldiers hit me with their shoes on my chest
52:35
and used something like a metal stick that had
52:38
a small nail on the side. They asked us
52:40
to drink from the toilet and made the dogs
52:42
attack us. There were people who
52:44
were detained and killed, maybe nine of
52:46
them. One of them died
52:48
after they put the electric stick up his
52:51
anus. He got so sick, we
52:53
saw worms coming out of his body.
52:55
And then he died. That
52:57
was an adult male detainee who was aged 41
52:59
years. There have
53:01
been thousands of Palestinians that we know
53:03
who have been detained by the Israelis
53:05
since October 7th. In
53:07
addition, in cyber, this is very significant to
53:09
the US and our policy because you'll recall.
53:13
We led the charge in terms
53:15
of defunding UNRWA, UNRWA being the
53:18
number one aid organization on the
53:20
ground in Gaza. That is part
53:22
of what has contributed to these
53:24
disastrous humanitarian conditions, including mass
53:27
epidemic of starvation in children, literally starving to
53:30
death. So we led the charge on that.
53:33
Our Congress has now passed legislation
53:35
that requires we continue the
53:37
defunding of UNRWA through at least
53:39
2025. Well,
53:41
and this was all based on these
53:44
allegations that some UNRWA staff members participated
53:46
in some way, some small number of
53:48
UNRWA staff members. This was the allegation,
53:51
participated in some way alongside Hamas on
53:53
October 7th. Well, in
53:55
addition, what this report says is that
53:57
UNRWA staff members reported being in terror.
53:59
about the work performed by UNRWA and
54:02
the specific functions they perform on behalf
54:04
of UNRWA. They also reported
54:06
being subjected to threats and coercion while
54:08
in detention and being pressured to
54:10
make forced concessions against
54:13
the agency, including that the
54:15
agency has affiliations with Hamas and
54:17
the UNRWA staff took part in
54:19
the October 7 attacks against Israel.
54:22
So what this report indicates is
54:24
that those supposed confessions were
54:27
obtained under torture. This
54:29
again, Sagar, is something that had
54:31
been previously reported in the press,
54:33
but confirmation here coming from a
54:36
UN body of the outright torture
54:38
being committed routinely against Palestinian detainees
54:40
being held by Israel. We got
54:42
some statement from the State Department of
54:44
like, you know, we want answers from Israel.
54:46
I'm sure we'll never get those. Yeah, that's
54:48
the it's ironic, right? And it's also one
54:50
of those interesting point that Dave brought up
54:52
last night at the zero hedge debate is
54:54
he kept saying like one of the reasons
54:56
that we're able to have hostage swaps
54:59
is he's like because Israel has a bunch
55:01
of hostages, excuse me, prisoners. And it was
55:03
one of those things where I was thinking,
55:06
you know what, that really doesn't get a
55:08
lot more attention about who exactly some of
55:10
these prisoners are. And in terms of
55:12
the way not only that they're
55:15
treated, but in terms of the way that
55:17
they're like, desperately viewed. And I think that
55:19
that is part of the issue overall with
55:21
US policy. We focus a lot on one
55:23
group. We completely obscure the actions of another
55:25
group. And the real issue
55:28
from what I really, you know, what
55:30
came home to me yesterday is that
55:32
for the pro Israel side, moral relativism
55:34
itself is the enemy and the enemy
55:36
of that. And I understand
55:38
that to a certain extent. But
55:40
the issue is that whenever we're talking
55:43
here specifically about the
55:45
government, a third party actor allegedly for
55:47
the US and our disparate treatment and
55:49
the way that we view one group
55:51
and not the other group, I think
55:53
that's where everything just completely falls apart
55:55
because we're not even talking about our
55:57
interests here. We're just like blindly supporting
55:59
another group. Well, there's just a
56:01
blanket assumption that if it's the
56:03
actions of Israelis, if
56:05
they do something wrong, which, you know, comes with
56:07
a lot of, well, I don't know who said
56:09
that, we need proof, whatever. And maybe it's just
56:11
Hamas made this up or you're anti-Semitic. That's why
56:13
you're saying this. But if they
56:16
in some rare instance did something wrong,
56:18
it was always with the best of intentions. Whereas
56:21
if it was a Palestinian and certainly
56:23
if it was Hamas, they did something
56:25
wrong. Well, the worst possible intentions are
56:27
assumed. And so you can, you know,
56:30
some of the comments that were made with
56:32
a straight face about like, well, Israel doesn't
56:35
intentionally target civilians. It's like, have you been
56:37
watching the same word that we have where
56:39
they literally announce a complete siege
56:42
that definitionally targets literally
56:44
every civilian in the God and Strip?
56:47
Not to mention, you know, the revelations that
56:49
just came out about this A.I. software, where's
56:52
daddy, where they're intentionally waiting for
56:54
militants to go home so that
56:57
they are killed alongside their wives,
56:59
children, other relatives, any other civilian
57:01
who happens to be around. There's
57:03
something else that is very
57:06
disturbing about the way
57:08
the Israelis have talked about and
57:10
conducted this assault, which is they've
57:12
just made the blanket assumption that
57:14
any man who is even
57:16
proximately fighting age is a terrorist. And
57:19
it's been sort of accepted by the media.
57:21
And I get it in terms of when
57:24
we're looking at how many people have been
57:26
killed, you know, for sure, if
57:28
it's a woman or a child, OK, they're
57:30
a civilian. So we'll count them. And then
57:32
you just sort of assume then that every
57:35
man who's being slaughtered
57:37
deserve to be killed or deserve to
57:39
be detained and tortured and had a
57:41
metal rod shoved up their ass. There
57:45
that is there's like an actual war
57:47
on men and assumption that
57:49
they are inherently guilty if
57:51
they happen to be a fighting
57:54
age that I find to be
57:56
very deeply, deeply disturbing. At
57:58
the same time, we're getting. another bombshell
58:00
report about our own government, which
58:03
again, remember the context of this segment, just
58:05
certified so that we can continue
58:08
to ship Israel weapons, that Israel
58:10
is not violating international humanitarian law
58:12
or committing war crimes. Okay, put
58:15
this up on the screen. So
58:17
our Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, is
58:21
sitting on staff recommendations to
58:23
sanction certain Israeli military
58:25
units, which were linked to killings
58:28
or rapes. This
58:30
is a pro-Publica report. Let me read you
58:32
a little bit of this. A special State
58:35
Department panel recommended months ago that Tony
58:37
Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and
58:40
police units from receiving US aid
58:42
after reviewing allegations they committed serious
58:44
human rights abuses. But Blinken has
58:46
failed to act on a proposal
58:48
in the face of growing international
58:50
criticisms of the Israeli military's conduct
58:52
in Gaza. The incidents under review
58:55
mostly took place in the West
58:57
Bank and occurred before
58:59
October They include
59:02
reports of extrajudicial killings by the
59:04
Israeli border police, an incident in
59:06
which a battalion gagged, handcuffed, and
59:09
left an elderly Palestinian-American man for
59:11
dead, and an allegation
59:14
that interrogators tortured and
59:16
raped a teenager who
59:18
had been accused of throwing rocks
59:20
and Molotov cocktails. And part of
59:22
that torture was attempting to obtain
59:24
a confession from
59:27
this teenager who they
59:29
allegedly raped with an object
59:32
and tortured in a variety
59:34
of other ways. So
59:36
let me just underscore for you, number
59:38
one, this was before October 7. So
59:41
this idea that everything was all hunky-dory and
59:43
peaceful and there was a ceasefire and whatever
59:45
before October 7. Clearly nonsense. This
59:47
was the West Bank. This wasn't even Gaza. So
59:49
you can't do, you know, butt-homos with any of
59:52
this. And second of all, when
59:55
the State Department came out and said, we have
59:57
no evidence that they've committed human rights abuses. It's
1:00:00
a lie. It's just a lie. Your
1:00:04
own state department panel
1:00:07
told you they were
1:00:09
committing human rights abuses. You
1:00:11
have the report. It's sitting in your briefcase
1:00:13
or in your desk or in your email
1:00:15
file or wherever. You have it. So
1:00:18
when you say we have no
1:00:21
evidence of that, you are just
1:00:23
directly bold faced lying, which isn't
1:00:25
a surprise, but it's still important
1:00:27
to have this direct confirmation from
1:00:29
ProPublica. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the reason
1:00:31
why it matters, I think, just to
1:00:33
reiterate is that if you find them
1:00:36
officially in violation, then you can't give
1:00:38
them any aid because of the Leahy
1:00:40
law. We have laws on the books
1:00:42
that are designed specifically for this purpose.
1:00:45
But I will also say they have always found
1:00:47
a way. And like I
1:00:49
said, one of the first stories that I chased
1:00:51
hard here in Washington is that
1:00:53
the U.S. government had direct evidence
1:00:56
that the Afghan military, who we
1:00:58
were funding, very similar cases,
1:01:00
were raping little boys
1:01:03
straight up and that our money
1:01:05
was directly supporting the warlords who were
1:01:07
participating in this. And in fact, one
1:01:09
of the sources that I had told
1:01:11
me that in some cases, U.S. military
1:01:13
equipment, Humvees and others provided to the
1:01:15
Afghans were actually being used to transport
1:01:18
some of these children. And
1:01:20
what ended up happening, all of this, by the way, is sitting
1:01:22
in a vault. It's in Congress. They
1:01:24
just won't let you and I see it. There's
1:01:26
an unclassified version that was eventually, some
1:01:28
of it was released, some of it was leaked to
1:01:30
the Washington Post. But because if
1:01:33
they released those findings, we would have
1:01:35
to shut off the whole war in Afghanistan. And
1:01:37
this was while we were still involved
1:01:39
in that. So what do you think they did?
1:01:41
They just classified the entire thing. And then they
1:01:43
also started doing all kinds of other things where
1:01:45
certain casualty numbers and others ended up being released. That's
1:01:47
when we could tell how badly the Afghan military was
1:01:50
doing. So what they would do is they would just
1:01:52
classify the number of dead for the first time in
1:01:54
19 years or whatever of our
1:01:56
experience in Afghanistan. And this is textbook, the
1:01:58
ways that you get around. laws
1:02:00
like this. And it is just this is the
1:02:03
real deep state right here. Yeah, the deep state.
1:02:05
You know, there have been a few
1:02:07
State Department officials, employees who have resigned
1:02:10
out of horror at the Biden administration's
1:02:12
policy vis-a-vis Israel. And one of the
1:02:14
things they point to is that
1:02:17
Israel gets this special
1:02:20
treatment. You know, if it was another
1:02:22
country, certainly anyone who was remotely adversarial,
1:02:25
okay, we've got our process, we had
1:02:27
our panel. This panel
1:02:29
specifically exists to
1:02:31
look at potential human rights abuses with
1:02:33
regards to Israel specifically, like that's the
1:02:36
whole point in the panel. Any other
1:02:38
country has that panel, they make their
1:02:40
recommendations, actions are generally taken. You're
1:02:42
making a good point about how there
1:02:44
are other exceptions as well, but that Israel is
1:02:46
treated unlike other nation. And it really turns on
1:02:48
the head, you know, the thing that gets thrown
1:02:50
at people who are especially trying
1:02:53
to support Palestinian rights or who are deeply concerned
1:02:55
about this conflict or saying, Hey, I'm going to
1:02:57
vote based on Joe Biden's
1:02:59
facilitation of the slaughter of
1:03:01
Palestinians here. Why are you
1:03:03
singling out Israel? Why are you
1:03:06
just picking on Israel? And
1:03:08
it really turns that on its head, because what
1:03:10
you can see is actually the US government singles
1:03:13
out Israel time and time
1:03:15
again for special treatment and
1:03:17
allows our own,
1:03:20
you know, our own government to flout
1:03:22
laws put in place to
1:03:24
constrain behavior and make sure that we
1:03:26
aren't shipping the bombs that get dropped
1:03:28
on refugee camps as one example. But
1:03:31
when it comes to Israel, all of that
1:03:33
gets buried, it gets pushed aside, there's a
1:03:35
special procedure that's different from when it comes
1:03:37
to other countries. And so you see it
1:03:40
very clearly in this instance, you know, I'm
1:03:42
curious to see how Matt
1:03:44
Miller or whoever is at the podium today
1:03:47
in the State Department briefing, if they have
1:03:49
one, how they deal with this latest, very
1:03:51
inconvenient fact, it'll be some version of like,
1:03:53
we're investigating, we are investigating, I haven't
1:03:56
seen the report, we'll look into it,
1:03:58
we'll get back to you. take
1:04:00
it seriously, of course, but they're
1:04:02
always investigating and they're never coming to any
1:04:04
conclusions when it comes to Israel. Yep, that's right.
1:04:09
All right, let's go ahead to another
1:04:11
important issue that we did not want
1:04:13
to miss, which is yesterday. There are
1:04:15
actually two separate Senate hearings into what
1:04:17
the hell is going on over at
1:04:20
Boeing. There were two different
1:04:22
Boeing whistleblowers who raised extraordinary
1:04:25
concerns about what they reportedly
1:04:27
saw when they were in
1:04:29
Boeing's employees. Here is
1:04:31
a snippet of one of the
1:04:34
whistleblowers. This is Ed Pearson, who
1:04:36
said, in no uncertain terms, Boeing
1:04:38
is engaged in a criminal cover-up
1:04:41
with regard to safety violations. Let's take a listen.
1:04:43
Boeing routinely states that their airplanes
1:04:45
meet or exceed all safety standards.
1:04:47
This is untrue and misrepresents
1:04:49
the safety of the airplanes. The
1:04:52
company illegally removed thousands of quality
1:04:54
control inspections on individual airplanes without
1:04:56
the FAA's knowledge and without the
1:04:58
knowledge of the airlines. Although
1:05:00
many of these inspections have been reinstated,
1:05:02
hundreds of airplanes have left Boeing factories
1:05:04
without those thousands of inspections. My
1:05:07
last point is the Department of Justice
1:05:09
and FBI relied on the slanted results
1:05:11
of the first accident investigation
1:05:13
to develop an illegal and
1:05:15
unjust deferred prosecution agreement. The
1:05:18
NTSB chair reiterated to Congress last week
1:05:20
that Boeing has said there are no
1:05:22
records documenting the removal of the Alaska
1:05:24
Airlines' door. I'm not going to
1:05:27
sugarcoat this. This is a biased line, which
1:05:29
isn't a surprise, but it's still important
1:05:31
to have this direct confirmation from
1:05:33
the public. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the
1:05:35
reason why it matters, I think, just
1:05:37
to reiterate, is that if you find
1:05:39
them officially in violation, then you can't
1:05:41
give them any aid, because of the
1:05:43
Leahy law. We have laws on the
1:05:45
books that are designed specifically for this
1:05:47
purpose. But I will also
1:05:50
say they have always found a way. And
1:05:53
like I said, one of the first
1:05:55
stories that I chased hard here in
1:05:57
Washington is that the U.S. government had
1:05:59
direct evidence. that the Afghan
1:06:01
military who we were funding,
1:06:03
very similar cases, were raping
1:06:05
little boys. Straight up.
1:06:08
And that our money was directly supporting
1:06:10
the warlords who were participating in this.
1:06:12
And in fact, one of the sources
1:06:14
that I had told me that in
1:06:16
some cases U.S. military equipment, humvees,
1:06:19
and others provided to the Afghans were actually
1:06:21
being used to transport some of these children.
1:06:23
And what ended up happening, all of this, by the way,
1:06:25
is sitting in a vault. It's in Congress. They
1:06:28
just won't let you and I see it. There's an
1:06:30
unclassified version that was eventually, some of
1:06:32
it was released, some of it was leaked to the
1:06:35
Washington Post. Because if they
1:06:37
released those findings, we would have to shut
1:06:39
off the whole war in Afghanistan. And this was
1:06:41
while we were still involved in that.
1:06:43
So what do you think they did? They just classified the
1:06:45
entire thing. And then they also started doing all kinds of
1:06:47
other things where certain casualty
1:06:50
numbers and others ended up being
1:06:52
released. That's when we could tell how badly the Afghan military
1:06:54
was doing. So what they would do is they would just
1:06:56
classify the number of dead for the first time in 19
1:06:59
years or whatever of our experience in Afghanistan.
1:07:01
And this is textbook, the ways that you
1:07:03
get around laws like this. And it is
1:07:05
just this. This is the real deep state
1:07:07
right here. This is the deep state. You know, there
1:07:09
have been a few State Department officials,
1:07:12
employees who have resigned out
1:07:15
of horror at the Biden administration's policy
1:07:17
vis-a-vis Israel. And one of
1:07:19
the things they point to is
1:07:21
that Israel gets this special
1:07:24
treatment. You know, if it was
1:07:26
another country, certainly anyone who was
1:07:28
remotely adversarial, OK, we've got our process.
1:07:31
We had our panel. This panel
1:07:33
specifically is exist to
1:07:35
look at potential human rights abuses with
1:07:37
regards to Israel specifically. Like, that's the
1:07:40
whole point in the panel. Any other
1:07:42
country has that panel. They make their
1:07:44
recommendations. Actions are generally taken. You're making
1:07:46
a good point about how there are
1:07:48
other exceptions as well. But that Israel is
1:07:50
treated unlike other nation. And it really turns on
1:07:52
the head, you know, the thing that gets thrown
1:07:54
at people who are especially trying
1:07:57
to support Palestinian rights or who are deeply
1:07:59
concerned about this. were saying, hey, I'm
1:08:01
going to vote based on Joe
1:08:03
Biden's facilitation of the slaughter of
1:08:05
Palestinians here. It's, well, why are
1:08:07
you singling out Israel? Why
1:08:09
are you just picking on Israel? And
1:08:12
it really turns out on its head, because what you
1:08:14
can see is actually the U.S. government singles
1:08:17
out Israel time and time again
1:08:19
for special treatment and
1:08:21
allows our own,
1:08:24
you know, our own government to flout
1:08:26
laws put in place to
1:08:28
constrain behavior and make sure that
1:08:30
we aren't shipping the bombs that get
1:08:32
dropped on refugee camps as one example.
1:08:35
But when it comes to Israel, all of
1:08:37
that gets buried, it gets pushed aside. There
1:08:39
is a special procedure that's different from when
1:08:41
it comes to other countries. And
1:08:43
so you see it very clearly in
1:08:45
this instance. I'm curious to see how
1:08:48
Matt Miller or whoever is at the
1:08:50
podium today in the State Department briefing,
1:08:52
if they have one, how they deal
1:08:54
with this latest, very inconvenient fact. It'll
1:08:57
be some version of like we are
1:08:59
investigating. I haven't seen the report. We'll
1:09:01
look into it. We'll get back to
1:09:03
you. We take it seriously, of course.
1:09:06
But they're always investigating and they're never coming
1:09:08
to any conclusions when it comes to Israel. Yep,
1:09:10
that's right. Why you should choose
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free iHeart app and search The Bright Side. Alright,
1:11:14
let's go ahead to another important issue
1:11:16
that we did not want to miss,
1:11:18
which is yesterday. There are actually two
1:11:21
separate Senate hearings into what the hell
1:11:23
is going on over at Boeing. There
1:11:26
were two different Boeing
1:11:28
whistleblowers who raised extraordinary
1:11:31
concerns about what they reportedly saw
1:11:33
when they were in Boeing's employ.
1:11:35
Here is a snippet of one
1:11:37
of the whistleblowers. This is Ed
1:11:39
Pearson, who said, in no uncertain
1:11:42
terms, Boeing is engaged in a
1:11:44
criminal cover-up with regard to safety
1:11:46
violations. Let's take a listen. Boeing
1:11:48
routinely states that their airplanes meet or
1:11:50
exceed all safety standards. This
1:11:53
is untrue and misrepresents the safety
1:11:55
of the airplanes. The company illegally
1:11:57
removed thousands of quality control inspections.
1:12:00
on individual airplanes without the FAA's
1:12:02
knowledge and without the knowledge of
1:12:04
the airlines. Although many of
1:12:06
these inspections have been reinstated, hundreds of
1:12:08
airplanes have left Boeing factories without those
1:12:10
thousands of inspections. My last point
1:12:12
is the Department of Justice and FBI relied
1:12:14
on the slanted results of
1:12:17
the first accident investigation to
1:12:19
develop an illegal and unjust
1:12:21
deferred prosecution agreement. The
1:12:23
NTSB chair reiterated to Congress last week
1:12:25
that Boeing has said there are no
1:12:27
records documenting the removal of the Alaska
1:12:30
Airlines' door. I'm not going to
1:12:32
sugarcoat this. This is a criminal cover-up. Records
1:12:34
do in fact exist. I
1:12:36
know this because I've personally passed them to the
1:12:39
FBI. Now, I want to underscore what
1:12:41
he's saying right there because
1:12:43
these hearings are of course directly about
1:12:45
that Alaska Airlines' door plug, which came
1:12:47
out in mid-flight. Terrifying, thank God no
1:12:49
one was injured, really by the grace
1:12:51
of God it could have been that
1:12:53
everyone on board that aircraft was deceased.
1:12:56
And in the context of that
1:12:58
investigation, Boeing said, oh, some of these safety
1:13:01
records, I don't know what happened to them.
1:13:04
We misplaced them. Oops, just
1:13:06
an honest mistake here. And
1:13:08
he's saying very directly, no, no,
1:13:10
no, you didn't misplace them. Those
1:13:12
records existed. And I know, and
1:13:15
I'm calling this a criminal
1:13:17
cover-up directly because I handed
1:13:20
those records to the federal
1:13:22
government. So an extraordinary
1:13:24
claim, their saga, there
1:13:27
was another whistleblower, Sam Solopur,
1:13:29
a Boeing quality engineer who
1:13:32
testified to Josh Hawley, their
1:13:34
planes are not safe. And
1:13:36
he claims he was threatened and silenced
1:13:39
by the company as well as take a listen to a
1:13:41
little bit of what he had to say. Are these planes safe?
1:13:45
Right now, I would not say, you know, it's
1:13:47
like an earthquake. You know, the
1:13:49
big earthquake is coming, but when
1:13:52
that hits, the building that, you know,
1:13:54
let's say if you're talking of a
1:13:56
building, have to be prepared to accommodate
1:13:59
the that type of a, let's say, shakeup.
1:14:01
You know, it has to be built properly.
1:14:04
Right now, from what I've seen, the airplanes
1:14:06
are not being built per spec
1:14:08
and per requirement. So your testimony is
1:14:10
the 787 line and
1:14:13
the 777, the 777 line, you
1:14:17
think are not? Well, they
1:14:19
are doing stuff that increases
1:14:21
the risk factors, okay?
1:14:23
When you increase the risk factors, you
1:14:26
know, it's not just one. You are
1:14:28
doing stress concentrations that those
1:14:30
stress concentrations, like, you know, breaking a
1:14:32
paperclip, you know, you do it once
1:14:34
or twice, it doesn't break, but it
1:14:36
breaks at some time. As the plane
1:14:38
gets older, you know, all of
1:14:40
these things that, you know, you took, you
1:14:43
know, you said it's not a safety issue, it
1:14:45
becomes a safety issue. And the company's response to
1:14:47
you was to threaten you? Threaten
1:14:52
you, sideline you, you
1:14:54
know, transfer you. You raised concerns about
1:14:56
the 787, so they transferred you
1:14:59
to the 777, right? Well,
1:15:01
yes. Initially, they just cut me
1:15:03
off of all the meetings. They took
1:15:05
my name out, and then so I
1:15:08
was just doing nothing. I wasn't informed of
1:15:10
what. Then they transferred me, and they do
1:15:12
it pretty stealthy. Oh, we have a job
1:15:14
over here, we want to go over there.
1:15:16
So they move you down there, and you
1:15:18
know, I come from like 40 years of
1:15:20
engineering background. So when I see, and I've
1:15:23
taken a lot of stress classes, even
1:15:26
though I'm not an specialist on that,
1:15:29
but when there's a problematic area that
1:15:31
you see, you can recognize. So
1:15:34
another, let's put this last tear sheet up
1:15:36
on the screen. He made an additional comment
1:15:38
that really jumped out. I mean, I'm sure
1:15:40
you'll find it noteworthy as well, Sagar. He
1:15:42
said, quote, in regards to retaliation, I was
1:15:44
sidelined, I was told to shut up, I
1:15:47
received physical threats. My boss said,
1:15:49
I would have killed someone who
1:15:51
said what you said in that
1:15:53
meeting. Center Richard Blumenthal in
1:15:55
addition asked about, hey, what about the
1:15:57
FAA? What if we hired more inspectors?
1:16:00
would that help? And one
1:16:02
of these individuals who was a former
1:16:04
FAA engineer said, yeah, that would help.
1:16:06
But the attitude right now at the
1:16:09
FAA is that Boeing dictates to the
1:16:12
FAA. So, I mean,
1:16:14
these are deep seated problems here.
1:16:16
And the consistent issue
1:16:18
that comes up very clearly
1:16:20
over and over again is it
1:16:23
was about profits over safety.
1:16:25
They were willing to cut corners. There
1:16:27
are some horrifying examples about employees
1:16:30
who were jumping on plane parts
1:16:33
to try to bend them so they would fit in. And
1:16:35
now you think you're going to be
1:16:37
safe on that airplane? That
1:16:39
they have completely lost their
1:16:41
way. And the FAA, you
1:16:44
know, has become really captured
1:16:46
by this corporation and effectively
1:16:48
has outsourced their own regulatory
1:16:50
capabilities to the company itself.
1:16:52
Yeah, he says that Boeing should ground every
1:16:54
single 787 Dreamliner, which is
1:16:56
in the sky. He says 1,000
1:16:59
Boeing planes are currently in a danger
1:17:01
of structural failure because of premature fatigue.
1:17:03
On the 787 specifically, he
1:17:05
says that tiny gaps in plane parts
1:17:07
have not yet been properly filled. According
1:17:10
to him, they have not been properly
1:17:12
addressed 98.7% of the time. And that debris
1:17:14
is now lodged in 80% of these unfilled gaps, which could
1:17:20
easily result in a fire. He
1:17:23
claims, as you said, that people are
1:17:25
literally using their feet to jump on top
1:17:27
of pieces of the airplane to get them
1:17:29
to align and that none of the stress
1:17:31
testing which is happening, which is leaving
1:17:34
catastrophic gaps of error.
1:17:37
Combine that with the criminal coverup safety
1:17:39
documents that the other gentleman said that
1:17:41
he's given to the FBI. And it's
1:17:43
like, what more evidence do we need
1:17:45
here? We need a complete national takeover
1:17:47
of Boeing until we can figure out
1:17:49
what the hell is going on. Especially
1:17:52
because we are the ones paying back to
1:17:54
the tax situation. Yes, Boeing makes a
1:17:56
lot of money in their private business. They also wouldn't
1:17:58
survive without the US government. company
1:18:00
out a million times since its
1:18:02
inception and recently in 2020. We
1:18:06
fund huge portions of their
1:18:08
business through the military industrial
1:18:10
complex. It's not just
1:18:12
passengers which are unsafe, it's our service members.
1:18:14
And then look at the F-35 program, which
1:18:16
is a complete nightmare. Not Boeing, but still,
1:18:18
it's a similar situation. My point is just
1:18:20
that commercial aviation,
1:18:22
there's 100 million Americans
1:18:24
who step foot on a plane at
1:18:26
some point in a year, on a
1:18:29
yearly basis. It's one third of the
1:18:31
entire country. And there's a great shot
1:18:33
that you're stepping on a Boeing aircraft.
1:18:35
I've been counting recently, seven out of
1:18:37
the 10 last planes that
1:18:39
I've been on were Boeing. And
1:18:41
it's like in every single one of these,
1:18:43
you just look at that and you're like,
1:18:45
well, you know, hope it works out. And
1:18:47
yes, commercial aviation is very safe statistically and
1:18:49
all of that. But the catastrophic failures, which
1:18:52
we see today, were not ever part
1:18:54
of commercial aviation before. It
1:18:56
was all a result of the pursuit of
1:18:59
profit, the sacrifice of safety, the lack of
1:19:01
government regulation and just a complete criminal cover
1:19:03
up now at this point, because lives are
1:19:05
not just at stake. Lives have been lost.
1:19:07
Hundreds of people died as a result of
1:19:10
Boeing's mistakes not just that long ago. And
1:19:12
now this is the second instance in just
1:19:14
a matter of five years where people's lives
1:19:16
directly put at risk as a result of
1:19:18
a failure at this company. And the number
1:19:21
of safety instances that are stacking up at
1:19:23
this point, I mean, it has been essential
1:19:26
to the commercial airline industry that they have
1:19:28
this pristine safety record because guess what? People
1:19:30
feel a little nervous getting on an airplane
1:19:32
and flying so high up there and thinking
1:19:34
about what could happen. And
1:19:37
the only reason that prospect works is
1:19:39
because you can look at it statistically and say, I'm
1:19:41
actually more at risk when I get in my car.
1:19:44
Well, what is that calculus starts to
1:19:46
change? And then, you know, to
1:19:48
your tax point, a modest proposal. How about
1:19:50
you send our tax dollars instead of going
1:19:53
to bomb babies? How about you
1:19:55
send our tax dollars to have a real FAA
1:19:57
that has the capability to actually regulate
1:20:00
and not just say, hey, Boeing, are you
1:20:02
doing a good job? OK, great work. Keep
1:20:05
it up. Because that's what we have right now. And by the way, this is
1:20:07
a problem across the board with regulatory
1:20:09
agencies. This was a whole sort
1:20:12
of like neoliberal ideological project of
1:20:14
we're effectively going to gut these
1:20:16
agencies. They're not going to have
1:20:18
the technical know-how to even, you
1:20:20
know, credibly regulate
1:20:23
these complex industries, let
1:20:25
alone the manpower or the funding. So
1:20:27
this is that's part of why this
1:20:29
story is so important. It's important on
1:20:31
its own just because of how significant
1:20:33
this one company is and how entangled
1:20:35
it is with the American taxpayer in
1:20:37
all of our lives. But
1:20:40
it's also important because it's so
1:20:42
symbolic of a deeper rot that
1:20:44
really exists in almost every industry
1:20:46
that you care to dig into.
1:20:48
So extraordinarily significant testimony that we
1:20:51
heard yesterday. And of course, we
1:20:53
can't forget about the
1:20:55
prior whistleblower who raised similar,
1:20:57
very significant concerns about a
1:21:00
lack of attention to detail,
1:21:02
about taking parts that had
1:21:04
been discarded as, you know,
1:21:06
these are defective, pulling them out of the
1:21:08
heap and putting them into airplanes.
1:21:10
And then lo and behold, while he is
1:21:13
in the middle of testifying, he is, quote
1:21:15
unquote, found dead. And at least
1:21:17
some of his coworkers do not believe that he
1:21:19
committed suicide. Still a lot of questions around
1:21:21
what the hell happened there. So kudos to these two
1:21:23
men who know that their safety is at risk. There's
1:21:26
no doubt about it. As he said, he literally said
1:21:28
his boss said that he would have killed somebody who
1:21:30
said what he said. So I guess we
1:21:32
should just state for the record, neither of these men are suicidal. And
1:21:34
I hope that they have some records and
1:21:36
all of that ready and that their families and all that
1:21:39
are prepared for their safety as well. Yeah, indeed.
1:21:42
We wanted to track a really important
1:21:44
labor story. Of course, we covered extensively
1:21:46
the United Auto Worker negotiations with the
1:21:48
big three, which netted a significant contract
1:21:50
improvement for all of the workers there.
1:21:53
That seems to have sparked quite a
1:21:55
bit of momentum in terms of unionizing
1:21:58
more auto workers around the country. country,
1:22:00
including at foreign automakers, and
1:22:02
the UAW's new president, Sean Fain,
1:22:05
very aggressively going after these
1:22:07
new organizing drives. And
1:22:10
one of the big places where
1:22:12
they are laying their claim is
1:22:14
in a Tennessee Volkswagen plan, which
1:22:17
has previously—they previously attempted to unionize
1:22:19
this workforce, and it got voted
1:22:21
down twice before, but they feel really good
1:22:23
about their prospects this time around for a variety of
1:22:25
reasons I'll get into. You put this up
1:22:28
on the screen from Bloomberg. Headline here,
1:22:30
how the UAW is winning over new
1:22:32
plants, starting with Volkswagen. So
1:22:34
this factory is actually voting right
1:22:36
now on whether to become the
1:22:38
only foreign commercial carmaker that is
1:22:40
unionized in the United States would
1:22:42
also be the first plant to
1:22:44
join the UAW since that strike
1:22:46
last fall that we covered so
1:22:48
extensively. One of the members of
1:22:50
the organizing committee, one of the workers there at
1:22:52
the Tennessee factory, says, quote, we're going to be
1:22:54
the first domino to fall and encourage
1:22:56
these other plants to get out there with
1:22:59
us. As I referenced before, there
1:23:01
were two prior attempts.
1:23:04
Now, the South is notoriously difficult
1:23:06
in terms of unionizing. They have
1:23:08
right to work laws, quote, unquote,
1:23:10
right to work laws and a
1:23:14
general anti-union climate. There was a lot
1:23:16
of sort of political involvement from the
1:23:18
governor at the time, effectively threatening these
1:23:20
workers that if they do decide to
1:23:22
unionize, then the plant is going to
1:23:24
be shut down. Now, that is illegal
1:23:26
to do, but there
1:23:28
was, of course, no accountability. So
1:23:31
this time around, they
1:23:33
have gotten a supermajority of workers
1:23:36
to sign the card indicating they
1:23:38
would like to unionize. So that's
1:23:40
significant. They really have made it
1:23:43
a very local worker
1:23:45
ground up movement to try to
1:23:47
unionize this time. And I
1:23:49
think the two other things I would point to
1:23:51
here, why they feel so good about this, is
1:23:54
that, number one, you have, as opposed to 2019
1:23:57
under Trump, you have a much more pro-union
1:23:59
president. much more pro-Union NLRB.
1:24:02
So you've got a friendlier climate in terms
1:24:04
of some of the, you know, decisions that
1:24:06
could come from the NLRB in terms of
1:24:09
unionizing. But the big thing is this momentum
1:24:11
from UAW. You know, you
1:24:14
look at what they were able to achieve,
1:24:16
and these workers are saying, hey, I'm doing
1:24:18
literally the same job, and I'm
1:24:21
not getting nearly what they're getting. So
1:24:23
that's an incredibly powerful motivator
1:24:26
as well. You've got some
1:24:28
Republican politicians in Tennessee and in
1:24:30
other states that UAW also has
1:24:33
their eyes set on, really trying
1:24:35
to trash this and undermine this effort.
1:24:38
A Tennessee state senator said voting against
1:24:40
the UAW is protecting Tennessee's values. In
1:24:42
Alabama, the UAW is making inroads at
1:24:45
a Hyundai plant. The governor there, K.
1:24:47
Ivey, has denounced the union as a
1:24:49
threat from Detroit, warned that the Alabama
1:24:52
model for economic success is under attack.
1:24:54
And Sean Fain, the president of
1:24:56
UAW, replied to that. She's damn
1:24:58
right it is. It's under attack because workers
1:25:00
are fed up with getting screwed. So yeah,
1:25:03
interesting there. It is actually, especially
1:25:05
because so much of what's
1:25:08
going on in the South. One of
1:25:10
the things I'm really watching is how
1:25:12
politics are changing down in the South
1:25:14
and in the Sun Belt. We've had
1:25:16
a huge population influx. The economies of
1:25:18
these states are booming, manufacturing, but they're
1:25:20
still controlled by older red
1:25:22
state ideology, despite the fact that their
1:25:25
voters have significantly changed. So, for example,
1:25:27
this is happening in the state of
1:25:29
Tennessee. Tennessee is not that many people.
1:25:31
They have had a huge influx, specifically
1:25:33
in the city of Nashville, the rich suburbs
1:25:35
of Franklin, and others from California, from all
1:25:38
over New York, etc. The question now is
1:25:40
that in the combination also with a lot
1:25:42
of the economic growth, is are they going
1:25:44
to stick to some of this right-to-work policy
1:25:47
and other things that they traditionally have? Now,
1:25:49
for right now, it does seem like that
1:25:51
is the direction. But with the change
1:25:53
in voters, but also what I think is
1:25:56
going to be a change in their economy.
1:25:58
I mean, no offense, Georgia. You
1:26:00
weren't exactly an economic powerhouse, but
1:26:02
nowadays like you really are becoming
1:26:05
one, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee There's a
1:26:07
ton of manufacturing that is down
1:26:09
there from BMW Toyota and all
1:26:11
these other Volkswagen etc
1:26:13
And they're gonna have to grapple and kind
1:26:16
of change with some of the new Updates
1:26:19
to their population and to their economies as
1:26:21
well So yeah, I think that's this is
1:26:23
actually a preview of what I expect big
1:26:25
big fights in the Sunbelt Arctic It's a
1:26:27
real test case of whether or
1:26:29
not, you know And it's very
1:26:31
symbolic to since the vote failed
1:26:33
here twice if they could pull
1:26:35
it off It really does show that it's a new
1:26:37
day that it's a new climate The other factor I
1:26:39
forgot to mention is just unions are way more popular
1:26:41
than they used to be Yeah, that's true. You know,
1:26:43
they're sort of a historic high in
1:26:45
terms of popularity and receptivity I saw this course
1:26:48
trying to find it specifically from a worker But
1:26:50
who said, you know, they looked at the UAW
1:26:52
contract and they said I want my
1:26:54
life to be more like what they've
1:26:56
got Yeah, nothing could be more powerful
1:26:58
than seeing that model of success and that is
1:27:01
a 180 From what
1:27:03
has been happening our entire lives with
1:27:05
regard to the labor movement where every
1:27:07
contract is Concessionary and they're having to take cuts
1:27:09
and cuts and cuts and so yeah Rationally
1:27:12
if you're a worker you look at that and you're like, yeah
1:27:14
This is risky and they're telling me they're gonna shut down the
1:27:16
plant and it's not even looking like they're got booming
1:27:19
manufacturing But they're still controlled
1:27:21
by older red state ideology
1:27:23
Despite the fact that there are voters that
1:27:26
significantly changed So for example, this is happening
1:27:28
in the state of Tennessee Tennessee is not
1:27:30
that many people where they have had a
1:27:32
huge influx Specifically in the city of
1:27:35
Nashville the rich suburbs of Franklin and
1:27:37
others from California from all over New
1:27:39
York Etc. The question now is that
1:27:41
in the combination also with a lot
1:27:43
of the economic growth is are they
1:27:45
gonna stick to some of this? You
1:27:48
know right to work policy and other things
1:27:50
that they traditionally have now for right now
1:27:52
It does seem like that is the direction
1:27:54
but with the change in voters But also
1:27:56
what I think is gonna be a change
1:27:58
in their economy. I mean no offense in
1:28:00
Georgia, you weren't exactly an economic
1:28:02
powerhouse. But nowadays, you really are
1:28:04
becoming one. Florida, Alabama,
1:28:06
Tennessee, there's a ton of manufacturing
1:28:08
that is down there for BMW,
1:28:11
Toyota, and all these other Volkswagen,
1:28:14
etc. And they're going to have to grapple
1:28:16
and kind of change with some of the
1:28:18
new updates to their population
1:28:20
and to their economies as well. So I
1:28:22
think this is actually a preview of what
1:28:24
I expect big, big fights in the Sun
1:28:26
Belt article. It's a real test
1:28:29
case of whether or not, you know, and
1:28:31
it's very symbolic, too, since the vote failed
1:28:33
here twice. If they could pull
1:28:36
it off, it really does show that it's a new
1:28:38
day, that it's a new climate. The other factor I
1:28:40
forgot to mention is just unions are way more popular
1:28:42
than they used to be. They're
1:28:44
sort of a historic high in terms of popularity
1:28:46
and receptivity. I saw this court, I was
1:28:48
trying to find it specifically from a worker
1:28:50
who said, you know, they looked at the
1:28:52
UAW contract and they said, I
1:28:54
want my life to be more like what
1:28:56
they've got. Nothing could be
1:28:58
more powerful than seeing that model of success.
1:29:01
And that is a 180 from
1:29:03
what has been happening our entire lives
1:29:05
with regard to the labor movement, where
1:29:07
every contract is concessionary and they're having to
1:29:09
take cuts and cuts and cuts. And
1:29:11
so, yeah, rationally, if you're a worker, you look
1:29:14
at that and you're like, this is risky. And
1:29:17
it's not even looking like they're getting that good
1:29:19
of a deal over there. So why should I
1:29:21
stick my neck out? Now that
1:29:24
calculation has really flipped. UAW
1:29:26
has their site on, as I said,
1:29:28
this Hyundai plant in Alabama. They also
1:29:31
are looking at Tesla. I mean, they really
1:29:33
want to make a push kind of across the board.
1:29:36
And there is no place that's more
1:29:38
important or more difficult to organize than
1:29:40
these auto plants in the South, which
1:29:42
specifically located in these states in
1:29:44
part because of their anti-union politics.
1:29:46
And they want to get away with paying
1:29:48
their workers less and giving them less benefits, et
1:29:50
cetera. And the union has been
1:29:52
doing a characteristic great job
1:29:54
covering this union drive. They
1:29:57
spoke to a worker there named
1:30:00
Robert about why he thinks this time is
1:30:02
going to be different and why some of
1:30:04
the intimidation tactics are not going to work
1:30:06
this time around. Let's listen to what he
1:30:08
had to say. The loudest voices of the
1:30:10
anti-union, they keep trying to impress this notion that
1:30:12
if we unionize, both wagons can shut us down.
1:30:14
They're going to close our factory. They're
1:30:17
not going to pull it out just because 4,000 employees out of 600,000
1:30:19
want to be organized.
1:30:24
Not to mention the fact that all of
1:30:26
their other factories are organized. The US is
1:30:28
a huge market for any auto
1:30:31
manufacturer. They all want in this
1:30:33
place. It really boils down to if you
1:30:35
have a bad union, it's bad leadership. It
1:30:37
has nothing to do with the philosophy of
1:30:39
unions or what unions can
1:30:41
gain as a whole. So there's
1:30:43
really not really great meat to
1:30:46
sink your teeth into when it comes to trying to tear
1:30:48
the idea of a union apart. And so they use the
1:30:51
old reliability like it's going to shut
1:30:54
your union down. The other
1:30:56
thing to note here, Sagar, is a
1:30:58
Volkswagen, because they work with unions in
1:31:00
other countries, I'm not going
1:31:02
to say that they've been like open
1:31:04
arms. The union drive, I'm sure the
1:31:06
organizers on the ground could point to
1:31:08
some nefarious dealings, but they have not
1:31:11
been as aggressively anti-union as
1:31:13
some other like Starbucks and
1:31:15
other Amazon and other corporate giants have
1:31:18
been. The last thing for this last element
1:31:20
up on the screen, I referred to the
1:31:22
anti-union climate and where this
1:31:24
goes next. So after this vote, there's
1:31:26
an organizing drive happening in that Alabama
1:31:28
Hyundai plant. And lawmakers
1:31:30
are there, are really trying
1:31:33
to go after any
1:31:35
companies that would even be like
1:31:37
receptive to unions. So they are
1:31:39
working on a bill that would
1:31:41
bar any sort of state incentives
1:31:43
to companies that voluntarily recognize unions.
1:31:46
So what this means is, theoretically,
1:31:49
they used to work more like this. Once
1:31:51
you have a majority of workers in the
1:31:53
bargaining unit who sign a card saying, yeah,
1:31:55
I want to unionize, employers
1:31:58
can say, OK, great. voluntarily
1:32:00
recognize it, that's it, you have a union, and
1:32:02
not go through the straw now, okay, now we
1:32:04
have to vote, blah, blah, blah, and there's this
1:32:07
battle going on at the workplace, et cetera, et
1:32:09
cetera. Okay, we got a majority here, they want
1:32:11
to be in the union there, it's a done
1:32:13
deal. So companies have that option, and Alabama lawmakers
1:32:16
are effectively, not that a lot of companies avail
1:32:18
themselves of that option, but Alabama lawmakers are trying
1:32:20
to take that option off the
1:32:22
table altogether. And you can imagine, Zara,
1:32:24
that at this point, if you do
1:32:26
have a victory at Volkswagen after some
1:32:28
of the other victors that we've
1:32:31
seen, how companies may calculate that
1:32:33
it's better for them to build goodwill for
1:32:35
their employees if they see the writing on
1:32:37
the wall, that union is definitely coming in,
1:32:39
that the workers are almost definitely going to
1:32:42
win, that they can avoid all of that,
1:32:44
save the expense, and just voluntarily recognize that
1:32:46
you move from there. Alabama
1:32:48
trying to undermine that direction. The other thing
1:32:50
about unionization is even if it's not successful,
1:32:52
for example, Costco leadership put out this statement,
1:32:54
which I thought was fantastic, where some
1:32:57
Costco shop decided
1:32:59
to unionize, and the executives
1:33:02
put out a statement, they said, hey,
1:33:04
you guys voted to unionize clearly, we're
1:33:06
doing something wrong, and I want to
1:33:08
hear what you guys want. And I want to make sure
1:33:10
that all my employees in this entire country are so well
1:33:12
taken care of, they don't feel like they have to do
1:33:14
this. Now, I mean, obviously, you've got an incentive to do
1:33:16
so, but the mere act of it was enough for them
1:33:18
to be like, okay, I guess we got to pay people
1:33:20
more. I guess we got to pay people a lot more.
1:33:23
That's such an important point. It's
1:33:25
such an important point because the
1:33:27
rise of unionism doesn't just benefit those
1:33:29
workers who happen to be in the
1:33:31
union, which is still a titillate percentage
1:33:34
of the American workforce. We've
1:33:36
seen this in the auto industry. Other
1:33:39
automakers, including Tesla, had
1:33:41
to increase their wages because they could see
1:33:43
the writing on the wall. Amazon,
1:33:46
after the Amazon labor union had
1:33:48
that historic success on organizing
1:33:51
the Staten Island warehouse, they
1:33:53
had to lift some of their wages.
1:33:55
They felt the pressure that even though
1:33:57
it was just this one warehouse. Roger.
1:34:00
I'm going on across the country that not
1:34:02
only a few, you've got the teamsters with
1:34:05
an organized amazon as Laos and so they're
1:34:07
under pressure So we are at. We gotta
1:34:09
do something to try to make our employers
1:34:11
on for you happier so that they don't
1:34:14
She is unionized as we still you know
1:34:16
what household top down control of what we've
1:34:18
got going on here. So it isn't just
1:34:20
the wages and benefits of union workers that
1:34:23
are at stake here, A really does sort
1:34:25
of set the pace. For the entire
1:34:27
industry, The entire economy. Yes, that's right, Splits
1:34:33
if is my. Guess
1:34:38
is is our brand. New. Will
1:34:46
take us to what. He
1:34:48
says. It's
1:35:19
appropriate make us road trip thought.
1:35:21
Test on the I Heart Radio
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at Apple podcasts or wherever you
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get your foot tests. Hey,
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networks. I heart Open your free I hard
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at and searched the bright side. Or
1:37:03
Alan Stern seal our favorite politicians
1:37:05
I, Robert Menendez. He said Scumbag
1:37:08
could not be. A better word
1:37:10
to describe this individual? Okay, You'll
1:37:13
recall he's under indictment for a
1:37:15
variety of a legit current dealings
1:37:17
including mandatory of gold bars that
1:37:19
were found in his closet i
1:37:21
used as or poor allegedly taking
1:37:24
cash and other gifts and famer
1:37:26
some foreign says this man and
1:37:28
then using that and. Doing favors
1:37:30
for them in return and for
1:37:32
their country in return. disgusting abuse
1:37:34
of power. Allegedly are a put us
1:37:36
Up on the screen so this that's not
1:37:38
bad enough. Now
1:37:41
is Allison Cpu. And.
1:37:43
How it's done a this in court. And.
1:37:45
According to court documents that
1:37:47
says the lawyers filed. He
1:37:50
is planning to basically throw his
1:37:52
wife. Under. The bus. And
1:37:55
say that she kept the truth from
1:37:57
him. See was the one getting the
1:37:59
money. She was hiding
1:38:01
what was really going on and
1:38:04
misleading. Poor. In a sense.
1:38:06
Robert Menendez into thinking that the gold
1:38:08
bars in his closet where they're in
1:38:11
it was all on the the up
1:38:13
and up pretty sore and marry them
1:38:15
for the next piece up on the
1:38:17
screen on. The reason he's able to
1:38:19
do this is because his legal team
1:38:22
was able to successfully split. His.
1:38:24
Case from his life. Apparently she's having some
1:38:26
sort of surgery and has some sort of
1:38:28
medical issue. I don't really know the details.
1:38:31
Of that, Israel's beginning of May,
1:38:33
her child's beginning in July. So
1:38:35
the thought is see the news.
1:38:37
This defense for himself. Throw.
1:38:39
His wife under the bus. And. Not
1:38:42
really impact. The. Way her
1:38:44
case is separately adjudicated since
1:38:46
they were successful and splitting
1:38:48
these two. but just the
1:38:51
idea of you know, blame
1:38:53
your wife. And. The details
1:38:55
of the as arms you guys were call
1:38:57
under way. They describe it here. They say
1:38:59
there were accused of accepting sense of thousands
1:39:02
and cash and goon bars from three businessman.
1:39:04
And what prosecutors described as a
1:39:06
wide ranging battery seem an exchange
1:39:08
center stands accused of trying to
1:39:10
help secure overseas doesn't feel as
1:39:13
was interfere with separate criminal investigations
1:39:15
related to to arm the businessman
1:39:17
or it's also like a luxury
1:39:19
car involves all kinds of stuff
1:39:21
like that and. Is. Using
1:39:23
says mans and know exactly what was going on
1:39:25
and what he was. Doing I've got a
1:39:27
bridge to nowhere because of gold and
1:39:30
dollars were found in items of clothing
1:39:32
bearing his name. How can you possibly
1:39:34
claim that? you didn't know that literally.
1:39:37
Has his name ah, Scribe on the jacket
1:39:39
and money that is tucked in the same
1:39:41
thing. I think my name is actually here
1:39:43
on the see. Imagine it's see Geico bars.
1:39:45
And. Their my name is Simon Jedi again
1:39:47
I'm really very clearly of and is
1:39:49
there one hundred dollar bills in Urban
1:39:52
Yeah was is my wife who put
1:39:54
them as such a new suits what
1:39:56
he thought about. Ah oh look this
1:39:58
is totally ridiculous and. As I
1:40:00
said to. Scum. Behavior.
1:40:02
You know at this point let's see if
1:40:04
he reason true. It's like dude if you're
1:40:07
a real man you would eat it yourself.
1:40:09
He makes your are poor wiped enough to
1:40:11
go to do and that seems all power
1:40:13
hungry. he's gonna throw it away. This is
1:40:16
a new marriage. You know they were just
1:40:18
married and twenty twenty and some of the
1:40:20
behavior actually happened before they were even officially
1:40:22
married and he was her fiance. Soak in
1:40:24
this new marriage. you have so little dedication
1:40:27
and love for your wife the or lose
1:40:29
going to blame her publicly as an official.
1:40:31
To so you can try and hang
1:40:33
on to power you know in the
1:40:35
United States and at you as you
1:40:37
are the absolute scum of the earth.
1:40:40
I don't think there a like honestly
1:40:42
this is more shameful and worse than
1:40:44
the corruption charge. Yeah to do something
1:40:46
like this as a man like is
1:40:48
pathetic and as discussed it is. Yeah.
1:40:51
Swirly. A shameful. Like I couldn't
1:40:53
think of fewer things that would
1:40:55
be less manly. And be a
1:40:57
or know traditional sense than throwing
1:40:59
your loved one, your wife. Under
1:41:02
the bus. For. Your corrupt dealings other
1:41:04
by the way see that's a senator
1:41:06
who can get some interfere in the
1:41:08
criminal investigation and you know how them
1:41:10
with their international business they'll see the
1:41:12
one who can do that So I'm
1:41:14
very curious to see how they attempt
1:41:16
to spend that you're in terms of
1:41:18
his political career that is already over.
1:41:20
The only thing is a non feel
1:41:22
as like you know what are the
1:41:24
remainder of his term as they already
1:41:26
are you know filling his seat of
1:41:28
our he had the the democratic primary
1:41:30
New Jersey voters To their credit he
1:41:32
initially. Was kind of trying to
1:41:34
ride the sound and then they started
1:41:36
taking polls democratic primary polls as ten
1:41:38
vs as potential opponents and he had
1:41:40
like seven percent and in just immediately
1:41:43
he were like you are disgusting and
1:41:45
we do not once you representing us
1:41:47
So the good people of New Jersey
1:41:49
not putting up with this corruption. saga
1:41:51
i certainly hope so going against types there
1:41:53
in terms of new jersey fall as as
1:41:55
his decision to see not scum behavior is
1:41:58
also crazy are you know his His
1:42:00
freaking son is a congressman.
1:42:02
His daughter is an MSNBC
1:42:04
anchor. It's like the nepotism
1:42:06
that exists in this world is
1:42:08
just so ridiculous. And of
1:42:10
course, neither of them has a freaking
1:42:13
comment about their disgusting father's behavior. So
1:42:15
he's gonna blame his wife. Okay. I
1:42:17
mean, I hope he just... Like
1:42:20
I really am praying that he gets
1:42:22
convicted, but I still don't yet have
1:42:24
faith because the previous case was so
1:42:26
ironclad and he still somehow got away
1:42:28
with this. I really don't. Well, I'm
1:42:31
glad you raised that. Also because the Supreme
1:42:33
Court has made the bar of what is
1:42:35
corruption so high that you almost literally have
1:42:37
to be like taking the gold bar and
1:42:39
saying, I will exchange, do these favors
1:42:42
for you. So that's how
1:42:44
Bob McDonald got out of his problem.
1:42:47
He was convicted in the Supreme Court. And now
1:42:49
we don't think that this is actually corruption. And
1:42:51
there was a similar thing of... He also kind of
1:42:53
threw his wife under the bus there a little bit.
1:42:55
It was sort of like, oh, she wants to live
1:42:57
the high life. We couldn't afford it. Forgot it. Anyway,
1:42:59
yeah. Anyway, the Supreme Court has made
1:43:01
it very difficult to actually, you know,
1:43:04
to secure these convictions and find them guilty.
1:43:06
So we'll see how this all unfolds. But
1:43:08
it's not a done deal. Maybe his little
1:43:10
gambit here is gonna work out disgustingly. All
1:43:12
right. So we have a little bit of
1:43:14
a look at who some of
1:43:16
the Trump jurors are. And,
1:43:18
you know, first of all, I want to make
1:43:20
sure we're staying on top of these cases because
1:43:23
I do think that they're very politically significant. Obviously,
1:43:25
they're important to, you know, the American people regardless
1:43:27
of how you feel about them. And
1:43:30
also because it's just
1:43:32
wild to imagine trying to be
1:43:35
unbiased with regard to Donald Trump.
1:43:37
Like, literally anybody. Because
1:43:39
he has single-handedly, you know, one of the
1:43:41
things that he has done to this country,
1:43:43
which is honestly terrible.
1:43:46
He's made politics and culture like
1:43:49
the same. So one of
1:43:51
the things that I immediately noticed, I lived in Kentucky
1:43:53
at the time when he was elected, is
1:43:56
the like swim Team Moms and
1:43:58
soccer moms that I was a real- on the
1:44:00
youth and never want to talk politics where it
1:44:02
was like you know if I've. Been brought up.
1:44:05
I was doing anything in politics. They got kind
1:44:07
of like wire we're about now. Suddenly this was
1:44:09
what everybody wanted to talk about. Never been
1:44:11
an opinion about Donald Trump Pro upon whatever
1:44:13
so it's very difficult to imagine assembling and
1:44:16
honestly and pilot very Although I'll do some
1:44:18
people suddenly you know, having a third donna,
1:44:20
a grand jury when I was at some
1:44:22
of the nearly as an interesting experience in
1:44:25
my experience, ones that the people that were
1:44:27
there were genuinely trying to take their civic
1:44:29
duty theory flame do the best that they
1:44:31
possibly go inside. You want to say that,
1:44:34
but you. If you sense of how difficult
1:44:36
it is to find. These individuals on the
1:44:38
media interviewed a potential juror who
1:44:40
had said i think i could
1:44:42
be unbiased as season not on
1:44:44
the jury because of the scheduling
1:44:46
conflicts might take a listen to
1:44:48
on. How she described her feelings about
1:44:50
Donald Trump? share. Your opinions are
1:44:52
of the former president has has
1:44:55
was is so you could be
1:44:57
a bias or not. I.
1:45:03
During our lives in nineteen I.
1:45:06
Look for someone who is. I'll
1:45:14
feel as if is nothing comes out
1:45:16
on. Therefore,
1:45:28
Made me angry. Thoreau.
1:45:31
Policies. Were to. Win
1:45:36
and. I
1:45:46
think. So.
1:45:49
See it out! Playing place is clear that I'm
1:45:51
very dry here. I don't know, I. Mean something.
1:45:53
You're not going for me on it. You're not
1:45:55
a fine. When she was first bans on cameras.
1:45:57
you're not honest in the bow or wherever and.
1:46:00
The read: Whatever it's are you been through this?
1:46:02
I haven't been He am. When she was she
1:46:04
said she was unbiased whenever he was asked by
1:46:06
the court. It's only options dismissed that you like
1:46:08
Now I can't stand like twelve different they do
1:46:10
that. He did. I mean by Ellison she
1:46:12
could make the argument like, but that has
1:46:14
nothing to do with this specific case. right?
1:46:16
Because everyone is gonna have something you did
1:46:19
the right they don't like of personnel. What
1:46:21
armor? Like every every person who is on
1:46:23
this Juri that's claiming their holy and completely
1:46:25
unbiased like there's no way, no way or
1:46:27
have some prior opinion about him the best
1:46:29
you can do is try to put that
1:46:31
aside and just look at the specifics of
1:46:33
the case. The other thing that was kind
1:46:35
of funny that will unfold in the courtroom
1:46:37
is to try you know the judge sign
1:46:40
and get at like. Are. I'd who
1:46:42
is really the most unbiased and what
1:46:44
is your social media presence looks? They
1:46:46
were reading all of these like I
1:46:48
was amazed that had been made by
1:46:51
some of the prospective jurors about Trump.
1:46:53
And I'm here is a one snippet
1:46:55
of an exchange or a compass up
1:46:57
on the screen. So I'm they're asking
1:46:59
us for second prospective juror. You know
1:47:01
about his social media, wouldn't think when
1:47:04
you do and now they say well
1:47:06
how about two thirds news any web
1:47:08
sites or any Facebook and prospective juror
1:47:10
as well. I'm a repost
1:47:13
tag at So. I'll
1:47:15
see something that I thought was interesting and
1:47:17
I'll repost it against google thing and you
1:47:19
tube I can control what I watch and
1:47:21
I can look in the thumbnail of and
1:47:23
aside if I'm trying to watch it or
1:47:26
not and I they reply that makes sense
1:47:28
and then continue on by. There was a
1:47:30
lot of this going on and digging into
1:47:32
like the social media habits, the news gathering
1:47:34
habits of these individuals on you know in
1:47:36
terms of the right, there's already on an
1:47:38
effort to kind of like scenes on their
1:47:41
bio's and and say listen, this isn't can't
1:47:43
possibly be an unbiased story. Although I will
1:47:45
say on the other side of things on
1:47:47
people were noting that were two lawyers. who
1:47:49
have already been picked for jury and been fully
1:47:51
sold on. I think they have seven jurors. And
1:47:54
by the way, they're in court today again
1:47:56
trying to complete this jury selection process. They
1:47:58
think to warriors. And. There
1:48:00
was some analysts or thing that might actually be
1:48:02
a good thing for Trump. Because.
1:48:05
They. Can't. Are more skilled
1:48:07
at like looking at the specifics of
1:48:09
the case or considering these potential technicalities.
1:48:12
So. I don't know that sir not
1:48:14
I'm just telling you have some analysts were saying
1:48:16
about some of these potential jurors and any case
1:48:18
just the wires and going through the list and
1:48:20
not liking what he was finding about these individuals
1:48:23
based on the characteristics that were describe. A thick
1:48:25
with nothing but a lot. A nurse from the
1:48:27
Upper East side with a masters degree. She's
1:48:30
not married, has no kids, and lives
1:48:32
with her fiance who works in finance.
1:48:35
She. Gets or news from the
1:48:37
New York Times, Google and Cnn.
1:48:40
She. Said do things that really stuck out.
1:48:42
One. Quote: I don't really have
1:48:44
an opinion of Trump. And.
1:48:46
Quote: No One is above the law.
1:48:50
I'm not so sure about juror number so.
1:48:54
No one is above the law as disqualifying
1:48:56
that enslavement of the water was like and
1:48:58
shibboleths right? So it's like one of those
1:49:01
things when now it's like when when when
1:49:03
people like chant Israel has arisen right to
1:49:05
defend itself. Yeah it's like bad per se,
1:49:07
but whenever you hear someone say that you're
1:49:09
like I do actually know it's liberal code
1:49:11
as yeah it's a liberal card, like no
1:49:13
one is above the law but as enhancing
1:49:16
mad You know to the end. Of. It's also
1:49:18
funny that that would be something. That. Becomes a
1:49:20
liberal code and Sir Yemenis must be the
1:49:22
law and order people over there. I see
1:49:24
both ways as as as on the showing
1:49:26
you as I was showing you, one of
1:49:28
the jurors actually just dropped out as she
1:49:31
said she was like, you know what? Screw
1:49:33
this up. Publicly available details of her bio
1:49:35
had apparently informed family and friends that she
1:49:37
was on the jury's that I don't want
1:49:39
to do. I will. I actually didn't I
1:49:41
swore. I wonder if it was this person
1:49:43
and will vary by a that a one
1:49:45
in seven chance and is a woman. That
1:49:48
drop down I was actually Neiman in our know are
1:49:50
likely is how it is possible. And I was. And
1:49:52
not that I mean. If.
1:49:54
You are on his Juri You were signing
1:49:56
up since. The. o
1:49:58
public figure and It's near and be
1:50:01
attacked. I
1:50:03
feel for them. Like it's not a job
1:50:06
that you should sign up for lightly.
1:50:08
We do have some of those details. Oh, it was
1:50:10
the nurse, Crystal. It was her. Yeah, it just came
1:50:12
out. It was the oncology nurse. That was it. Wow.
1:50:15
Wow, just got the news. Wow. Okay.
1:50:18
Well, no one's above the law. I guess that's what we did her in. So
1:50:22
last we've got this tear sheet of who
1:50:24
the first seven jurors, now six, were
1:50:28
four male, three females, now two
1:50:30
females. Some of the
1:50:32
details here that I found interesting, just to give you
1:50:34
a sense of who these people are, because I do
1:50:36
think it's kind of interesting. You've got
1:50:38
juror number one is a middle-aged salesman
1:50:41
from Ireland. He's going to be the
1:50:43
case's foreman, lives in West Harlem. So
1:50:45
he normally gets his news from, listen to this list, New
1:50:48
York Times, Daily Mail,
1:50:51
Fox News, and MSNBC. Wow.
1:50:54
That's a rare one. That's, yeah. Well-rounded
1:50:57
person. He says in his spare time, he
1:50:59
enjoys doing anything outdoorsy. Once
1:51:01
works as a waiter, but has worked in sales
1:51:03
for the last three decades. When asked if he
1:51:05
was aware of Trump's other criminal cases, he responded,
1:51:07
I've heard of some of them. And if
1:51:09
you go down the list, you got a mixed bag
1:51:12
in terms of the news sources.
1:51:14
And most of them are sort
1:51:16
of claiming like, eh, I don't really follow the news
1:51:18
that closely. So I mean, express embarrassment that they don't
1:51:20
know more of the details of the case, which I
1:51:23
thought I found unbelievable. People are busy
1:51:25
living their lives. You can certainly find
1:51:27
some jurors who are just not following things closely. That's
1:51:29
probably your best bet in terms of finding
1:51:31
an actually like quote unquote unvisory. If I'm
1:51:33
Trump, you know who I want? I want
1:51:35
people who don't read the news. I want
1:51:37
people who are actually the least informed because
1:51:39
they will not have preconceived opinions. I want
1:51:41
people who watch TV, go to the game,
1:51:43
care about sports, living their lives. And I
1:51:45
want them to be able to come in
1:51:47
with a relatively open sight. So you could
1:51:50
say, yeah, I think something about Trump, based
1:51:52
on whatever, like, you know, I vote every
1:51:54
once in a while. My uncle votes, he
1:51:56
tells me, but that's what I want. People
1:51:58
who are hardcore ideological and all. almost like
1:52:00
too informed to a certain extent. In
1:52:02
a certain way, like you're gonna have
1:52:05
very, very well-founded opinions about
1:52:07
this, which are you're not gonna be able to
1:52:09
be unbiased whenever you come to the jury box.
1:52:11
So if I was Trump, I actually think things
1:52:14
are going in a direction which may be better
1:52:16
for him. That's really his only prayer. Let
1:52:19
me give you a little bit about juror number four, because I thought
1:52:21
this one was interesting. He said he finds the
1:52:23
former president to be quote, fascinating
1:52:25
and mysterious. True. He
1:52:27
walks into a room, he sets people off, one way
1:52:29
or another, the juror said, I find that really interesting.
1:52:31
Really, this one guy can do all of this? Wow,
1:52:34
that's what I think. So originally from
1:52:36
Puerto Rico, lived in the Lower East Side for the
1:52:38
last four years, self-employed IT consultant, attended one year
1:52:40
of college, been married for a long time,
1:52:42
two grandkids. He says, I have no spare
1:52:44
time when answering the question, questionnaire.
1:52:47
My hobby is my family. So
1:52:50
previously served on a jury trial, but it
1:52:52
was a long time ago, normally gets his
1:52:54
news from Daily News, New York Times and
1:52:56
Google. A lot of them saying they get
1:52:58
their news from Google. What does that mean?
1:53:00
I think they mean Google News. That's my,
1:53:02
like, that's gotta be it, right? Like a
1:53:05
Google News reader or something like that? Yeah.
1:53:07
Listen, I don't know what they do. They automatically serve
1:53:09
you. It's like that Apple News crap they get on
1:53:12
your phone. I've deleted that a long
1:53:14
time ago. I don't use any of that. But yeah, I
1:53:16
think a lot of people use- The things they serve me
1:53:18
are insulting sometimes. Yeah, horrible. I don't
1:53:20
even know. It's like pop culture crap or whatever.
1:53:22
So in my experience, the
1:53:24
way that a lot of normal people engage
1:53:26
with the news is exactly like you said,
1:53:28
Apple News, News Reader, something like that. iPads
1:53:31
are usually involved to reach out to the
1:53:33
Apple News. I love their iPads. I
1:53:35
don't understand that. I will never
1:53:37
understand the iPad thing, but they love to
1:53:39
read news on their iPad, specifically in the
1:53:41
Apple News app. So I guess
1:53:43
they're being well informed. Very true. But you know
1:53:45
what? Sometimes my mom will get one of those
1:53:47
Apple News alerts and she'll bring up something to
1:53:49
me that I had missed. So now that she's
1:53:52
retired, she's been helping me with my- I mean,
1:53:54
that's good. Yeah. So
1:53:57
anyway, good luck and Godspeed.
1:54:00
to these jurors because I don't envy them this
1:54:02
task and every word that they utter, everything they've
1:54:04
done in their life is about to be scrutinized
1:54:06
and used against them. I would absolutely not do
1:54:08
it. But anyway, all right, we will see you
1:54:11
guys later. Thank you guys so much for watching.
1:54:13
We had a guest, but unfortunately, it didn't work
1:54:16
out. We are working on rescheduling them. Really
1:54:18
appreciate everybody who watched the show today, who
1:54:20
supports us, who watch, check out the debate.
1:54:22
We'll post it later, maybe tomorrow or something
1:54:24
like that on our podcast feed. And if
1:54:26
you can help us out, breakingpoints.com. We'll see
1:54:28
you later. Thank you. Residents
1:54:40
of Brightview senior living communities
1:54:43
enjoy and enhance possibilities, independence
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and choice. Brightview
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Terry town offers vibrant assisted living
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and memory care services through various
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daily programs and cultural events. Chef
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prepared meals, safety and
1:54:56
security, transportation, resort style
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amenities and high quality care.
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Everything you need is here. Discover
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more at brightviewterritown.com. That's
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brightviewterritown.com. Equal housing
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opportunity. We
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are coming right now. Mark
1:55:16
your calendar for the second annual
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Black Effect podcast festival is happening
1:55:21
on Saturday, April 27th. Hosted
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by B.dot and PrettyVee. Last year was
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nuts. But we about to do it
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bigger and better. You got some of
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your favorite podcasts. Like carefully reckless, horrible
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decisions, million dollars worth of games. Tickets
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