4/1/25: Trump Tariff Blowback, Trump Frees Crypto Fraudsters, Bibi Confirms Trump Gaza Plan, Tim Dillon Rips Deportations, Trump University Crackdown
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Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamyris, the widow of the king of the Massengedi people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead.

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Listen to The Setup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our

full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We have a lot that we're going to try to get through this morning. So we're taking a look, of course, at those tariffs. What are they going to be? They'll be instituted tomorrow on, quote unquote, a liberation day. So looking at

what we know and what the fallout is likely to be. Trump just pardoned a whole rash of fraudsters. The details are really quite stunning, so we'll get into that. Everybody from Hawk to a girl. Well, I guess she didn't get a pardon, but her action was stupid. No charges filed, whatever. She got away with it. To a Hunter Biden, uh,

That one is particularly grotesque. So give you all the details there. Coffeezilla is also all over that one. Bibi is now saying that their plan for Gaza is Trump's plan, complete ethnic cleansing. So, you know, we are getting some clarity about the horrors that will be continue to be perpetrated in the Gaza Strip.

Trump is threatening to bomb Iran, so that's cool and great and looking good. I'm taking a look at Elon's election lines and what they could mean. Fashakir is going to join us to talk about the Stop Oligarchy tour and where it may be headed and where the Democratic Party may be headed. And we had to put this in, Elon, baby mama drama.

Ashley St. Clair posts a video. They're going back and forth on Twitter. Laura Loomer's involved, whatever. So we'll try to get that in at the end of the show. I've got to get my tabloid fixed in here at the end of the show. I mean, yeah, it's just too good, right, folks? We can't look away. It's one of those things. It speaks to the character of the man who's running the country right now, let's say. Yeah, we could say that. All right, let's go ahead. Oh, by the way, happy April Fool's Day. Isn't this funny? You know, when you're a kid, you think April Fool's Day is like a real thing, and then you become an adult, and you're like, oh, it's just a normal day. So you just got to go to work. My youngest is obsessed.

with April Fool's Day. That's what I mean. When you're a child, it's like this mystifying holiday. For her birthday, she asked for like a whole prank kit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. She loves pranking people. Yeah, exactly. Like a little harmless stuff, you know? Yeah, I don't know. It's one of those things where... Putting a fake snake on the bed or whatever. You become 23, you go to work and you're like, oh, it's just April 1st. It's like you have to do the water cooler thing and be like, have a good day today. But, but,

But make sure you are extra aware of what sort of news you're being fed today because people do love on Twitter to like make some wild shit up. That is true. See who will believe it. So be on extra guard today for. It's not even April Fool's. That's just a normal day on Twitter. It's another normal day on Elon's Twitter. Great. Great for us in the news business. Let's go ahead and get to these tariffs. We've got some new announcements or indications there from the White House. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt speaking on the topic.

Let's take a listen. We have another big week. On Wednesday, it will be Liberation Day in America, as President Trump has so proudly dubbed it. We'll be announcing a tariff plan that will roll back the unfair trade practices that have been ripping off our country for decades. I'll let the president get into the specifics of the announcement, but he has a brilliant team of trade advisors. You have Secretary Bessent, Secretary Lutnick. Like that. Any exemptions for farmers being considered for these tariffs?

No exemptions at this time. Liberation Day, no exemptions. The line on this has probably changed about 15 different times from the White House. Trump has currently said he has settled on Liberation Day on the plan. He says, I've settled it. Liberation Day means that you will find out tomorrow.

That's basically what it is. We have got several different- We'll be liberated from our suspense. We will be liberated from our suspense. It could mean an across-the-board ring tariff, according to them. It could mean reciprocal tariffs. It could be, according to him, lesser tariffs. It could be every country. It could be 10 to 15 countries. Nobody really knows. That's why the stock market and all of that is currently in haywire.

And yesterday, stocks were down, then they closed up because of some of those comments there from Donald Trump. But the point is, is that this level of suspense and people being kept on their toes means that no matter what happens, you're going to see a major reaction there on Wednesday. That was also the press avail in which she announced that they're closing the case on Signal Gates, Augur. So the brightest minds were convened.

Elon's Doge team got on it. They figured out the great mystery of how Jeffrey Goldberg's number got into Mike Waltz's phone, and they're moving on. I am not yet allowed to reveal some of the things that I know about Mike Waltz. One day I will be allowed to reveal about some of the things that he has been saying behind the scenes. And you will not believe some of the things and excuses that he has come up with. And it goes way beyond...

Elon's technical advisors in the White House getting to the bottom and case closed on this. It's genuinely some of the stupidest things I've ever heard in my life. Not yet allowed to say it, but I will get to it one day. The tease. Tease for the future. You know, this is the problem with sources. They're like, tell you this stuff off the record, and it's so juicy. And you're like, come on, dude, let me say something, you know? And then they're like, nah, you can't do it yet. You gotta wait, et cetera. So we'll get there. I'll hammer him, and I'll ask if I can actually reveal it.

Okay, let's go to the next part here. This is on the Fox News confronting Caroline Leavitt on the polling of this. Let's take a listen.

And our new Fox News polling shows that people perhaps are concerned with how things are going. This is as of March 14th. Those that say they disapprove 56 percent, more than half. Those who approve of the president's handling of the economy is at 43 percent. And in that same polling, we asked about the most important issue facing the country today. And top of the list is inflation.

And the economy is number two. And jobs. Those are first and second as it goes down to political division and preservation of democracy. Is the president doing enough to answer the needs and demands of the American voter when it comes to the economy and lowering prices?

The president and his economic team are working on this effort every single day. And the president is not only trying to fix the mess created by the previous administration's incompetence and reckless spending, he is trying to fix decades of unfair trade practices that have ripped our country off, that have sent jobs overseas, and that have forced millions of Americans out of their jobs.

So, yeah, look, even Fox and all them. I mean, all the polling on this is now like pretty clear. People are not that happy about it. Let's go and put this next up on the screen. This is just where the futures are right now. Literally, kind of as we speak yesterday, the S&P closed up by about point six. Right now it's down by about point six. It's like basically flat. As I said, nobody has any idea about what's going to happen, which means that it's not, quote, priced in. And it does mean that there's going to be a massive correct or could be a massive correction.

depending on what the policy that he announces on Wednesday. Yeah, well, and as we've said ad nauseum at this point, like even if you wanted to, even if you're like a tariff person and you're in favor of some version of this, you don't even have like a story to tell or anything to defend.

yet. So tomorrow, perhaps, all will be revealed. Maybe, or maybe he'll put something on and take it off again like he did previously. Who knows? And I think it was Joe Weisenthal that made this point on Twitter yesterday, which is an important one, which is some of his explanations—

for why the tariffs are good are completely contradictory. So for example, he'll talk about how it's, oh, it's gonna raise all of this revenue. Tariffs are effectively, especially when they're across the board, effectively a regressive tax, but oh, they're gonna raise all of this revenue for the US Treasury and make our country super wealthy.

But he'll also indicate that, oh, it's going to cause all of these jobs to come back and, you know, we're going to reindustrialize America. Well, those two things don't really fit together because if you're actually reindustrializing, then you're not getting the tariffs on the imports. So none of it really adds up. Not that I really want to even overthink it at this point. So we don't actually know what we're truly talking about here. But, you know, with

With regard to the politics of this, this is an extraordinary situation for Trump where the economy is like his weakest support.

He has a number of issues in which the American people are not too happy with what he's been up to. But this is probably the biggest political liability for him. This is the area where he has turned what used to be a strength into one of his greatest weaknesses. And the other point that I saw made on Twitter yesterday, which I think is a good and important one, too, is that

even just the uncertainty of are they on, are they off, what are they doing, et cetera, has already caused a freeze in a lot of economic activity. Businesses who are, you know, importing a bunch of goods in anticipation, who are freezing hiring, even just the uncertainty has an economic impact and takes an economic toll. As we saw, you know, the estimate of GDP in the first quarter was 0.3% growth, which is extremely low. You even see it in some things like, you know,

Flight bookings from Canada to the U.S. have fallen off like 70 percent. So there's a hit to the tourism industry as well from the on-again, off-again tariffs and the sort of belligerent attitude vis-a-vis Canada and Mexico as well. So, you know, there's a lot of fallout from this even before the full tariff regime goes into effect.

Well, where are they going to go? Winnipeg? All right, they'll be back. I'm just sorry, Canadians. There's a big world out there. Where are they going to go? They have a lot of options. Huh? What? A lot of options. Okay, fly to Greenland then since it's so close. Oh, actually, no, that's going to be ours soon. I'm joking. Coming back to the tariff conversation, you're exactly right. And this is the problem with you and I run a business. Somebody says, hey, you may or may not have X amount of money in a month. And they're like, should we do any hiring? No, we're not doing any hiring, right? That's right.

This is obvious. This is how any normal person who runs a business is going to be thinking. This is why confidence, planning, and all of these other things, yes, even in an uncertain environment, it's never a sure thing, but to be able to make decisions, you want to have pretty good information about how things are going to go. When you have uncertainty, that causes a pullback. That's going to cause lack of spending, perhaps

firing, and if we do see some major tariffs that go into place, there is no question that that's going to cause a major reaction. What's also interesting is about some of the reaction overseas. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Lots being made of this. I'm still actually trying to wrap my head around this. So China, Japan, and South Korea have announced, according to Chinese state media, but the Japanese and the South Koreans

have not denied it, have said that they have agreed to respond to a U.S. tariff, agreed to respond to U.S. tariffs, an assertion that Seoul has said is, quote, somewhat exaggerated and that Tokyo has downplayed. However, it's one of those where they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. Now, we shouldn't say this is like some full scale, like joint declaration between the three countries who all hate each other, if you will recall some of the Asian dynamics. But

the issue does get to the purpose not only of trade and tariffs, but fundamentally about what are we trying to do here. And what we're trying to do is reciprocal tariffs, which is if they charge us this and they charge us that, that I think speaks to some basic level of market fairness. The problem, as I keep saying, is that we have all these crazy justifications. It's

It's fentanyl. It's not fentanyl. It's cars. It's not cars. It's U.S. cars. But some U.S. cars are actually made with a ton of foreign parts. You have not got to sell America and really the world on what is the future going to look like. When you have uncertainty, people look different.

in different directions. So is this some full scale realignment against the, no, Japan and China are not allying anytime soon to retaliate against the United States. But sometimes, the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend thing, the Japanese, they're ruthless in their trading partners and in their own tariff regime. You can go and look at some of the things that they do. How do you think that their government has propped up and has made their company some of the most prominent in the entire world and it didn't happen by accident?

So they know you have some sort of existential threat

or even marginal threat, you know, to their overall bottom line here with these tariffs. They're going to have to look in a different direction. It's going to change their overall calculus and relationship with the United States. Now, I want to be clear, this is often used by neoliberals to say that we should never put tariffs on our, quote, allies. And I think that's ridiculous. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I'm saying you have to have care and a plan and actual certainty. This goes for the consumer and for other countries as well. And that's my biggest critique here of the entire policy. Yeah, and

I mean, nations around the world would be foolish not to look at the way that he's handled already the relationship with Canada and Mexico in particular and all of these threats. And there are tariffs that were put into place and threatening economic war against Canada in order to annex them. They would be foolish to not look around and go like, OK, well, on our own, we don't have any prayer against the United States of America, which is a giant economy and really important to any number of nations around the world.

on our own, we don't have a prayer. We need to figure out some sort of way to coordinate to have a chance of, you know, effectively pushing back against whatever it is that Trump has in store for us. So it shouldn't be surprising when you see conversations like this and the leaders of these three nations just

had a meeting and so we don't know exactly what was said there, but the indication is there's at least somewhat of an opening to coordinating on some level. So that is extraordinarily noteworthy here in terms of what the world is gonna look like going forward.

- Yeah, I mean, I'm curious too to see how it shakes out in the future because the South Koreans and the Japanese also talked a really big game the first time around whenever there were tariffs that were put into place. Trump actually tried to put major tariffs on South Korea during the first term. Actually, yours truly wrote an article against that because I was like, it's a bad idea. We're in this whole thing with this whole North Korea situation right now. Why would we exactly wanna be having tension here with South Korea? Also, the thing is about South Korea and Japan, yes, people know I hate Europe.

But here's the thing. The Japanese, the South Koreans, they're good allies. They're tremendously economically important and viable to the United States. Not the Japanese because they're literally constitutionally prohibited, are not allowed to spend on their defense. Look at the South Korean defense budget. I mean, look also at

They're not ideologically against us economically. They're good partners. They're dramatically important to the overall U.S. economy. And then broadly in the region, that is the most important region that's actually increasing its overall economic activity, its population, and its importance to America. And it gets probably one-fifteenth the amount of care that it deserves here in Washington.

Probably not the people I would antagonize. At the same time, they certainly do have an imbalance in our trading relationship with the two. Here we're going to turn now to Donald Trump, asked here about what these small-scale tariffs and whether those were going to be into place. He's downplaying that, giving us again some peek into what it might be. Let's take a listen. On the tariffs that you're planning, so you're expecting to hit something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right? Yeah.

All of the countries? Is it across the board? Not 10. Who told you 10 or 15 countries? We heard that you were going to aim for the 15%. But you didn't hear it from me. Okay, so how many countries will be in that initial trunch? You'd start with all countries, so let's see what happens. There are many countries. I haven't heard a rumor about 15 countries, 10 or 15. So you're starting with all countries? Essentially, all of the countries that we're talking about. We'd be talking about all countries and not a cutoff.

If you look at the history and you look at what's happened to us, you go to certain places, go to Asia, and you take a look at every single country in Asia, what they've done to the United States in trade, and by the way, in military in a certain way. You look at, you take a look at trade with Asia, and I wouldn't say anybody is treated as fairly or nicely, but we are going to treat them, we're going to be much more generous to them

So yeah, you could take that for what you will. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. From Jeff Stein, he says, Donald Trump is described by several sources as pushing big with tariffs. He's described as a simple universal rate as high as 20%, described as wary of advisors trying to talk him down and weaken his trade agenda, which he believes limited the tariff impact of his first term, thinks tariffs are a win-win for federal

revenue and bringing back manufacturing is thinking of transforming the U.S. economy in terms of decades or centuries, some sources said, rather than the next few months. It's one of those where I've said, you know, you can make this case. I think you could make a probably good case. Many people would stick with you, although in our consumer society, it might be a little bit difficult. But the problem I just keep coming back to is just about

the communication and the chaotic nature of the way that much of this is being put into place will significantly pose a major risk, not only to your political chances, but let's be honest here. Even if you do announce some sort of major tariff, what confidence would any of us have that the

that that's actually going to remain into place. And that gets to that uncertainty with the business. If I was a business, I would just sit there and wait it out. I'd be like, okay, shut it down. Let's see what actually happens. Of course, that will have big ramifications, but it's probably better than paying some crazy tariff or something. Especially if you know that it's going to go away in a few weeks, or at least if you have relative confidence. Yeah.

Or even wait it out like, okay, this guy's going to be in office for a few years and then we're very likely to get a different president, probably. You know, and then, you know, the regime will completely change again. So, yeah, we can just wait it out like...

put our heads down and muddle through the next few years and then see what comes down on the other side. So I think that's all very possible. Also, we can put Joe Weisenthal's piece up on the screen here, this A6 and A7. He has eight different thoughts about, you know, what these tariffs really mean. And one of the things he's pointing to here, Liberation Day isn't a binary event. It's kind of what I was referring to before, where already all of the they're on, they're off,

Here's what we're doing. No, we're not doing that. No, we're going big. No, it's going to be just a few countries. All of this has already created problems. Let's go to the next piece as well. He also talks about the fact that he talks that he's making a case here that

you know, when economies become rich, then they're capable of building the most complex things. And so if you're trying to go back to reindustrialized, like sort of simpler products, then that might not be the direction you want to go in. I don't fully agree with that because I do think, you know, for me, I think there's a targeted tariff approach that is logical and

is beneficial. We all saw during COVID how detrimental it was to our safety, health, and security that so much of the supply chain was overseas so that there were basic medical supplies we couldn't produce here. You know, also in terms of supply chain fragility, like it was a disaster. So there is a tariff scheme that I would support. But, you know, the whole across the board situation to me is insane. And then the last point that he also makes is that

Even if your goal is reindustrializing like these things are very Interconnected and it's very difficult to game out what impact it's going to have so for example oil companies have reduced output because they're concerned about the price of some of the like electrical components that

that they need in terms of their process. So, you know, when you're doing this across the board thing and it's not matched with any sort of concerted industrial policy, in fact, the government's going the opposite direction of rolling back some of the previous industrial policy that was put into place,

It's also not even clear that you're going to get any of the results that you are gaining for here, whatever those are. Not that that's really been spelled out by Trump in particular. But if we zoom out here, I think that the big picture is, yes, there is another potential economic paradigm that Americans could be open to that wasn't based around them being consumers of a lot of cheap goods from overseas.

But if you are going to just take away the cheap goods and hike prices and not offer any other alternative benefits, then no, it's going to be dramatically unpopular. And you're also flirting with a stagflation situation in which

growth is low or zero, you still have high inflation. That really makes it difficult for the Fed to do anything because if they hike interest rates, then you're lowering growth even more. If they lower interest rates, then you are increasing inflation. So that's why that situation is so incredibly difficult

to deal with and so dangerous and is really a looming possibility right now. Yeah, to return on just the last thing on you because I really like this argument that he makes. What he's talking about in terms of riches is monetary riches and that is what we need to redefine. So Joe has a great statistic that I learned recently

quote, "One of the most important facts about the world is that in the last 15 years, China has become the global manufacturing powerhouse at the cutting edge of multiple industries, but the Shanghai Composite Stock Index is scarcely above where it was in 2009." So, I mean, you know what? US stocks are up from 2009. I literally don't know off the top of my head. It's probably hundreds and hundreds of percent. Are we richer, richer materially than we were in 2009? I would say no, absolutely not.

In China, I would say, yeah, they're a lot richer in terms of they've got drone deliveries. They've got the BYD, Xiaomi cars. Their society and their overall like net growth and quality of life has dramatically increased. I mean, look, I'm just going to sit here and admit it. Go to Shenzhen today. Go look at any video. Go talk to any person or look at anything in Shenzhen, in Chongqing, in any of these like major cities, even China.

that you wouldn't even necessarily know, like the mid-tier cities of China, and tell me that they're not living better than we are. Now, yes, they're living in apartments, certainly. They don't have any crime. It's pretty safe. Train goes on time. There's, you know, I could go on forever. These are different models of economic activity. But I think that's the point that he's trying to make about riches. We are richer in the sense that, yes, a flat-screen television is much cheaper. Fantastic. We are richer in the sense that, I mean,

Be honest. This iPhone in my hand, is it all that materially different than the iPhone 4 that I bought in 2010? No, it's just not. Like, be honest here. The camera quality is better. And also, it's still manufactured in China, last time that I checked. That's, I think, the point that he's trying to make about manufacturing and riches, as in the definition of riches financially is basically the one that the United States has decided to go all in on. He even says that. He's like, the greatest...

export of the United States is U.S. stocks and treasuries. Okay, great. I mean, you know, it's definitely better off for it, right? We talk a lot about this in the chips context.

The chips are all designed here. You know, what does that thing say whenever you open your Apple box? Designed in Cupertino, California. Why does it say designed? Because it's designed here. It's manufactured somewhere else. Tell me who has the power. Who's actually materially richer? Well, I think it's them. Not only that, but those, you know, high end design and like pushing the tech frontier. It's not like we're maintaining our edge there. You know, it's

we're at best at competitive level with China. And I think increasingly they're surpassing us in terms of like the leading edge of transformative, future-oriented tech is increasingly coming out of China. So, you know, the bet that we made that we could keep this high, the sort of like high-end, like our design in Cupertino and keep the low-end manufacturing there. Well, it turns out

if you are the one manufacturing the products, and also if you have a government that's been very committed to investing in research, investing in technology, trying to push their country in that direction, then you have a huge advantage in terms of innovating for the future. Meanwhile, our companies have become

grown into these giant monopolies, in many ways complacent, in many ways much more focused on how to game the stock market and give themselves stock buybacks and do financial engineering than they have been on genuine innovation. I don't want to erase the genuine innovation that has been going on. We obviously have these LLMs that are leading edge coming out of

American companies from American investment, et cetera. But if you look across the board, I mean, certainly in the EV realm, China's kicking the ass of every American car company. It's not really even close. There was a post that was going viral on Twitter. Sager tells me it's a little bit of a gimmick, but gives you a sense of like the sort of future oriented direction that China is heading in. They just issued a commercial license for these like

drone quadcopter taxis where you can, you know, as like a consumer hop in this. It's like some Jetsons kind of shit that they're contemplating here. And meanwhile, we're, you know, like pumping the next talk to a coin or whatever. And I have the stats. So since 2009, the S&P 500 is up. Let's see a total return on investment of 841 percent. The Shanghai index is up 2.28 percent.

But, you know, be serious. Yes, there are a lot of people out here. If you were lucky enough and you've had your 401k and all that, I think that's fantastic. But you should take a look at what the alternative economic model of that is and what it means to be actually rich and what that, you know, the definition of that, to me, is not just where the S&P 500 is. My name is Harry Houdini.

Harry Houdini could make elephants disappear, walk through walls and escape the Chinese water torture cell. But he was also on a mission against mediums. I have never seen one genuine medium. Join me, Tim Harford, for a cautionary tales trilogy on the world's most famous magician. It takes a flim flammer to catch a flim flammer.

Houdini wanted the world to see reason in an age of spiritualism. He went undercover to seances, exposed fakes and charlatans, and even tried to convince Washington lawmakers to ban mediums for good, a campaign that cost him friends and made him many enemies. They're going to kill me. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you are more concerned about what your fellow racists think about you, you've already lost. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back. And that's what we are doing on the Fighting Words podcast. Listen to my new episode with the iconic Gabrielle Union.

We clear the air about a recent controversy with actor Matthew Lawrence, who claims she reported him on set for refusing to run lines with her. This is like two husbands ago. Like, what are we even talking about? And I ask her what it's like raising a trans daughter during Trump's second term. When you offer up the trans community as a sacrificial lamb, if you open the door to say, well, take these people, now the door is open and they coming for everybody.

Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey y'all, it's your girl Cheeky's and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth.

I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful.

It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So Trump has gone on a pardoning spree of all sorts of white collar criminals. We've got here the Nikola founder that was that supposed like hydrogen powered truck company. Trevor Milton receives a full pardon. This was a crazy one.

media co-founder Carlos Watson commuted the sentence of his financial conspiracy case. Let's go on to the next one. We had some crypto types who also are being let off the hook, hawk to a girl. She's not going to face any charges after her pump and dump. This guy, Jason Galanis,

He had his sentence communed. This is the second New York Post says ex-Hunter Biden business partner to receive clemency. I dug into this dude, Sager. What a loathsome, disgusting piece of shit this guy is. He scammed a Native American tribe out of $60 million, convinced them to issue these $60 million in bonds.

according to him, used his proximity to the vice president, or the president, Hunter Biden is my associate, et cetera, to build up his own credibility, and then just took the proceeds of this bond sale, which he claimed was going to be invested in some sort of annuity so that this tribe could invest in themselves and do economic development for their tribal nation. Instead, he took it and bought like a $10 million Tribeca apartment, spent $8.5 million on

on Gucci clothes and jewelry and this luxurious lifestyle and also paying back his previous legal expenses and his new business ventures and whatever. Like, just a totally disgusting person. However, he, from prison...

testified in Republicans like Biden inquiry impeachment thing. And so now he's getting led off the hook. The Nikola guy, I don't know if you guys remember this story. I'm sure you do. I very well remember. They put out this propaganda that supposedly showed their trucks, which are like, you know, giant like Mack truck, tractor trailer things,

supposedly showed this, you know, driving along. Well, it turns out they just had it rolling down a hill. Like, it was all fake, lied to investors, total fraudster. So he's being let off the hook. In some ways, the Hak Tua girl is, like, the most sympathetic one because you could argue she's just, like, dumb and didn't know what she was really getting into. I would not say that.

I would not say that. Compared to the guy who stole the $60 million from the tribe, she is the more sympathetic case here. And then we have put B3 up on the screen. There were some other crypto fraudsters. They were basically running a sort of money laundering operation, knowingly, in blatant defiance of US regulations and laws. So these people have also been these three BitMEX crypto exchange co-founders, also let off the hook. It's just...

absolutely extraordinary. CoffeeZilla has been taking a look at some of these cases. This was a video that he posted on his VoidZilla channel that was titled Crime is Legal Part 2. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. This season of American Crime is Legal is getting even crazier. The Hawk to a Girl, she had her investigation closed, obviously because she basically did more or less what the president did. Yes, it was a little bit worse, but

Kind of would look bad if you took out somebody for a meme coin while the president did it. But that's sort of your run-of-the-mill stuff you see a lot. I wouldn't even be commenting on it. Except that we've now moved from not just not going after people who've done something wrong, but sort of releasing the prisoners from Arkham. I am talking about Trevor Milton.

the OG fraudsters of the 21st century. This guy faked a hydrogen truck company, which was called out by Hindenburg Research, where he rolled a truck down a hill and told everyone that it worked. Okay? He got arrested, sentenced to four years in prison, but now...

He won't be finishing that because he got an unconditional pardon from President Trump. So where do we go from here? I think SPF is up next. And that dude, the Nikola Trump guy, had apparently given like $1.9 million to the Trump campaign or to the Trump inauguration or something of that nature. I mean, it's just very clear, like.

Any Trump associate, they can get away with whatever. It doesn't matter who they scammed. It doesn't matter how egregious. They can get away with it. And then meanwhile, you know, they're charging people who, like, hurt a Tesla with terrorism and trying to throw him in prison for 20 years. So it's a complete—

It's the complete and total end of even the aspiration that the criminal justice system is going to be sort of like politically neutral whatsoever. - Well, even on white collar crime, like let's be honest, it's not exactly like they're working overtime in that department.

So, yeah, I mean, the bar for getting yourself prosecuted for federal, like on a federal level for white collar crime, it's actually very high. Absolutely. People think it's low. People get away with so much shit. People think that it's very, it's not. You actually have to go, if you look at the federal sentencing guidelines and stuff, you need to steal or be responsible for millions of dollars before you get caught.

I mean, think about it. It probably costs the feds like a million bucks to even investigate somebody and take you to trial. So it's got to be pretty high, whatever your alleged fraud or responsibility is here. So there's just no earthly reason why any of these people should be part. The Nikola one is absolutely subversive.

the most egregious one to me. I actually do think, though, that the OZ founder, the Carlos Watson one, is even more egregious because since we covered this story from the very beginning and then looking into it, one of his business associates, it seems almost 100% clear that his associates lobbied Alice Johnson and other black MAGA influencers to

You take that term for what you will. I don't have any other more information on it, but somebody somewhere got to some of these black MAGA influencers and that's how he got himself off. I mean, he's stone cold guilty. You can go and listen to the tapes. We played it here on our show about the fakery of that website. It was egregious. He was found guilty. Literally guilty. Like it's, he, I,

Did he plead or was he convicted? I forget. I don't remember. Regardless, I mean, he's admitted guilt here, at least at some level. And why are we commuting? It's like, no, he defrauded investors and basically propped up this fake media empire. And beyond that, like deceived major corporations like YouTube. And they made a mockery of the entire thing. It's funny too. Same with these BitMEX people. I mean, it's like...

Look, I'll be the first here to tell you that the feds can overreach, that they can prosecute people for political purposes, or they can manipulate things and all that. I looked into, and I definitely know the Nikola case very well. There's no out of it.

Like there is no allegation. And that's actually why a lot of these are being announced not from a White House podium. They're just happening, you know, from the desk. And they're only being reported after the fact of the commutation. The Ross Ulbricht thing was very different, right? There's a whole PR strategy that rolled out. But this Carlos, I mean, we have to learn that from his associates and from others that this guy is getting out of prison. You're like, what?

What? Yeah. Hold on a second. Well, Trump got asked about the Nikola Trump guy. And he framed it in political terms. He said basically like, oh, this guy's crime was supporting Donald J. Trump.

I mean, first of all, he wasn't even until he was in trouble. He was not a known, at least Trump supporter. But then once he saw that, oh, my Hail Mary chance to get out of these charges and get out of prison is to, you know, send some money to Trump. And so, you know, Trump himself frames it in totally nakedly political terms.

To remind people about the Carlos Watson one, we did cover this extensively. Part of what's hilarious is if you go and look at this like OZ Media fake channel that he had propped up like it was some, you know, giant media behemoth and everyone was like, who? What? We've never heard of this. That happens to me. It was the most like cringe identity lib type of content. And remember Hillary spoke at their conference at OZ Fest. That's true.

That's right. I actually met a guy once, and he was like, oh, I work at OZ Media. And I was like, what? And he was like, yeah, you know, we're doing actually really well. And I went and I go, I have never heard of this thing once. And then I banked it, you know, in my mind. Years later, this all happens. They had all these – remember we went and looked at their channel, and the views would be like, you know –

fairly significant. Yeah. And that on some videos, some videos had like no views. Right. And then occasionally you'd have a video that had like a very high view count. But then you'd go and look. There were almost no likes. There were almost no comments. It was completely and totally fake. Yeah. He bought them from India or some Bangladeshi click. Is that what it was? I think that's what it was. And then what was the most preposterous is he he pretended to be a YouTube rep. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. On a call with, I don't know, I think it was like Goldman Sachs or something like that. Yeah, it was like him and his associates pretended to be a representative from YouTube with the camera off during a meeting. Right. While they were pitching, you know, basically to raise funds. He's using some, I think, like voice modifier to try to, and the Goldman Sachs people were like,

oh, this is really weird. I mean, it just got caught red-handed. These were not cases that were really close calls. No. Right? Again, hawk to a girl, pump and dump. Apparently, pump and dumps are just legal now. The president did one with Melania Coyne, you know, Javier Malay, whatever. Like, apparently, that's just like a thing you can do now. But, yeah,

not letting her off the hook, but these other ones are just not even remotely closed cases. And it's just so clear that no matter how much of a lib or a Hunter Biden associate or whoever that you've been in the past, if you can get in Donald Trump's good graces, then you can get away with absolutely anything. It is truly astonishing. And to your point, Sagar, put B4 up on the screen. So

This is really kind of a whole-of-government effort.

to let a lot of white collar crime and a lot of corporate crime go unpunished. You've had the, obviously the attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is like the anti-scam agency. SEC no longer regulating the crypto market. You know, National Labor Relations Board is once again without a quorum. So if you're a worker trying to fight for worker rights, you have nowhere to go. And a public citizen has been tracking this corporate clemency. And apparently a quarter

a quarter, 25% of all corporate enforcement has been dropped at this point. Wow. So it really is a whole of government effort to let more white collar criminals get away with, you know, scamming the public and truly doing whatever it is that they really want to do. Yeah. I mean, I think it's egregious and it is just something that's been back to the first Trump administration. He pardoned people like, or not pardoned, commuted people like Michael Milken, you know what

The most notorious. Forgot about that. Jesus. Yeah. And also, just so you guys know, if you go to the White House now, you know what's right across the street? The Milken Institute, which is just a little bit too perfect for me. Wow. Anyway. Den of Thieves, great book. Recommendation if you've never read it. The movie Wall Street was based on some of the characters that were in there. Oh, really? Ivan Boski and Michael. I mean, Michael Milken is one of the most notorious white-collar criminals literally of all time.

Like he was a cut and dry, open insider trader. They had him on tape. There was no getting around it. And he basically used his gains since then to launder his reputation in the public health space and others since then. And eventually, Rudy Giuliani, who's one of the people who prosecuted Milken, is then the one who gets Trump to get him his, I think it's his pardon or his commutation some years later. It was completely insane. Well, think about, I mean, the Eric Adams case.

Well, he hasn't gotten this yet, right? They dropped the charges against him. Pressure from DOJ and forced them to drop the charges. And remember, you had, you know, various people were involved at that federal district court who were like, I'm out. Like, this is blatantly immoral, unethical. And these were people who were like, one of them was like, I can't remember which of the conservative justices that she had clerked for. And she was like, I'm out.

I'm out. That's right. She, this is nakedly political. Yes. And, um, yeah, it was the same. He was able to position himself like, Oh, the deep stays down to get me. Cause I want to help Trump on immigration, whatever. I mean, it's just, it's just so obvious. It's just so obvious. And, um,

It makes a mockery of the—our justice system is flawed in a million different ways. There's no doubt about it. But again, the aspiration is that it should be neutral, right? The aspiration is that you should at least have the expectation that it's not just like, if I can suck up to this person, then I can get away with it. And that—

That, gone, out the window. Well, I mean, I have spoken against this. There is really no reason other than the holdover from the monarchical period when this was invented that the president should have such unilateral pardon and clemency powers. It's literally nuts. It is borrowed at that time from the powers that the czar and that the kings had based on the European system. So just so everyone's aware of where it all comes from. It makes absolutely no sense.

My name is Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini could make elephants disappear, walk through walls and escape the Chinese water torture cell. But he was also on a mission against mediums. I have never seen one genuine medium. Join me, Tim Harford, for a cautionary tales trilogy on the world's most famous magician. It takes a flim flammer to catch a flim flammer.

Houdini wanted the world to see reason in an age of spiritualism. He went undercover to seances, exposed fakes and charlatans, and even tried to convince Washington lawmakers to ban mediums for good, a campaign that cost him friends and made him many enemies. They're going to kill me. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So we are now getting confirmation from Bibi Netanyahu that the official plan for the Gaza Strip, you know, we've been talking about, oh, what's the plan for the day after from the beginning? Some of us have been saying, you know, the plan is probably full ethnic cleansing and removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and complete reoccupation.

Bibi Netanyahu now confirming that that is in fact the case. He says, if your Hebrew is a little rusty or Arabic is a little rusty as mine is here, he says, we are ready to discuss the final phase of the war. Hamas will lay down its arms. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will take care of security in Gaza and implement Trump's

voluntary migration plan. This is our plan. We're not hiding it. And we're ready to talk about it at any time. This, of course, comes amid a renewed bombing campaign and ground invasion and complete siege of the Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip has already been reduced effectively to rubble, according to Trump's

envoy there, Steve Witkoff, who went and visited Gaza and said there's basically nothing left. We continue to get horror stories of the atrocities that are being committed there. We also have this, we could put this next piece up on the screen, more details about the systematic use of

of Palestinians as human shields. Every accusation is a confession. This is published in Haaretz. This is an Israeli newspaper. It says,

Let me go ahead and read this to you. This person writes,

We operate a sub army of soldiers.

So this coming directly from someone who served in the Gaza Strip in the IDF for nine months. Sagar, we'd received reports of this before, but this speaks to the widespread, systematic use of Palestinians for this purpose. But I wanted to get your reaction to

what Bibi is announcing there, saying like, oh, Trump's plan to take over Gaza? Yeah, that's our plan. We're not hiding it. That's what we're going for. And we know that they had actually spoken to some African nations about like, hey, will you take these people? And if you think

that this is going to be quote unquote voluntary migration. I mean, this is part of what the current starvation campaign is designed to compel, to force them to have no other choice if they want to live, but to leave the Gaza Strip. And that's also the issue with the overall U.S. policy right now.

is we explicitly quasi-endorsed this from the beginning. And so now we own it. And in that way, we are now responsible, both, and obviously not only, in terms of providing weapons, but most importantly, in terms of how this is going to reshape things in the region in the future. Because if you think about our relationship with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia, I mean, if we have some grand goal in the Middle East,

What it is for me to get the hell out, but you know I guess if we're going to stay is to what is to secure peace in this region Which is very important petrochemicals to the United States. Well, how exactly are we supposed to be doing any of this whenever we are? Explicitly backing and then responsible and endorsing this mass expulsion That's why no US government ever even some of the most pro-israel presidents ever

of all time have always moved against the Israelis and trying to move them away from what their obvious goal in this case was. It's only Trump was just taking the mask off. I mean, even Biden tacitly somewhat endorsed it, right? But rhetorically would not go all the way there. Trump was just...

thinking he's smart, being like, oh, we're gonna own the Gaza Strip. And then also backing effectively the mass expulsion. And so when you have that endorsement, they will take that and run with it as far as they can possibly go. And yeah, the ramifications for us is disastrous. That human shields thing too,

Like you said, this is also part of what drives me crazy is there is a thing in the West where we're not really allowed to even say these things until the Israeli press admits them. And then even then, you know, we. You wouldn't see that article in the New York Times. You would never see it. That is what drives me. You know, this recently happened. We haven't had time to put in this New York Times report. I'm not sure if you saw it, which it's multiple pages long. And it's about the role of the Pentagon and the CIA in running the war in Ukraine. Yeah.

And I mean, I've been screaming here for three years about all this stuff, but it's like you're not allowed to admit it until it becomes verified by the New York Times. I feel that way in this case as well. And yeah, in the Western press and in all of our discussion here of the conflict, we just look, we don't even pay any attention.

And they're writing it in English for all of us to see. It's not difficult. And this doesn't even mean you have to be some keffiyeh-wearing pal. You just have to be like, yeah, I don't know. Why are we paying for this? What exactly are we getting out of this? You can even be callous if you want to look at it.

that way. And yet, you know, the media environment here is just so propagandized and shaped that, yeah, even the quasi-liberal institutions are not able, you know, we're about to talk about this medics thing. I just saw this from Ryan. Ryan flagged that in the New York Times, they're like, we can't independently verify these claims. And Ryan's like, you guys want a Pulitzer Prize and you don't know how to get someone in Gaza on the phone? What are you doing?

Yeah, he says specifically because this is about Red Crescent, which is their equivalent of the Red Cross. Red Crescent medics, he's like, you can't get the Red Crescent on the phone to verify this. I've never even met them. I guarantee you I could do it. You know, to your point, Shia Ben-Ephraim, who we have had on the show, who is like a self-described liberal Zionist.

He was saying on Twitter, you know, left out of this conversation about like the deportations of the protesters and the crackdown on dissent and all of this stuff is the fact that, and he was someone who was critical of the protesters. Like this was not a kafir wearing guy, right? He was like, the protesters were right. Israel has behaved in exactly as monstrous a way. I'm paraphrasing. These aren't exactly his words and exactly as monstrous a way as they were depicted. And they were, and that's the thing is like,

From the very beginning of this onslaught, post-October 7th, the people who were the most maximalist on, you know, lefties, keffiyeh-wearing people, were the most accurate about what the goals were and what this would ultimately look like. You could listen to them or you could listen to the settlers, the, like, most fanatic zealots.

about their goals. And that would have given you a much better understanding of what the goals were and what was likely to unfold than listening either to the propagandists in Israel or certainly the propagandists here in the U.S., either from a political class or from our media class. But to speak to the incident that you're talking about here, there were 15 Palestinian medics, including one U.N. employee,

who were executed in Gaza. And you're talking about 15 people who were killed one by one. So intentionally killed one after another and then buried in a mass grave.

So at the State Department briefing, whoever this person is, this new, you know, the equivalent of Matthew Miller of this administration, gets asked about this and whether there's going to be any sort of accountability for this naked atrocity and slaughter intentionally of paramedics. Let's take a listen to what she had to say. The UN's Humanitarian Affairs Office has said that

15 paramedics, civil defense and a UN worker were killed in their words one by one by the IDF. They have dug bodies up, they said in the shallow grave that have been gathered up and also vehicles in the sand. Have you got any assessment of what might have happened and given the potential use of American weapons, is there any assessment of whether or not this complied with international law? Well, I

can tell you that for too long, Hamas has abused civilian infrastructure, cynically using it to shield themselves.

Hamas's actions have caused humanitarians to be caught in the crossfire. The use of civilians or civilian objects to shield or impede military operations is itself a violation of international humanitarian law. And, of course, we expect all parties on the ground to comply with international humanitarian law. But there's specifically a question on any...

It's a question about accounting and accountability given that may have been the use of US weapons. So it's a question about the State Department rather than Hamas. Is there any action? Well, every single thing that is happening in Gaza is happening because of Hamas. Every single dynamic.

Every single thing that is happening in Gaza is happening because of Hamas. I mean, it's just like, I mean, it's, you know, the Biden administration, it's not really any different. It's just more, it's more naked, more brazen. Like Israel literally has zero agency or zero responsibility for any of their actions, which we know has decimated the entire Gaza Strip, killed thousands.

We don't even have a clue. Tens of thousands at the least. Women and children, elderly, paramedics, journalists, schools are leveled, mosques are leveled. I mean, it's just on and on and on. And the official stance of the State Department is they bear zero responsibility. So they could literally nuke the Gaza Strip and it's all Hamas' fault. They have no agency for their actions at all. But if Russia nukes Ukraine, then all of us have to get involved. You see how this all falls apart and it's all preposterous.

Let's go to the next part here, 'cause honestly, this is pretty grim. Quote, "Only 3% of Jewish Israelis are quote, morally opposed to the Trump Netanyahu plan to depopulate Gaza. Some 14% consider it a distraction. More than 80% say they support the forced removal from Gaza."

There you go. That's pretty important. This is the other thing that we may underestimate. As much as the Israeli press is actually far more honest about their coverage and airing of dissent, we should also be real about where the majority of the population is, and we should not make

the critical mistake that Westerners always make, which is pointing to dissident media inside of the country and seeing, see, this is what they're being exposed to. That would be like an outsider pointing to Jacobin or something. And saying, look, see, this is available in America. It's like, yeah, it's available, but that's not what people are reading every day.

Probably more Americans that read Haaretz. Yeah, you're right. I've spent a lot of time in Israel. You know what they watch? They watch the same bullshit that we do, which is their stupid cable news. Like their equivalent of Fox News. Their equivalent of Fox News. Yeah, their equivalent of Fox News, very different than Haaretz, which we've played some of the clips here, but you have to translate from Hebrew, so it's more difficult for us to understand. But you ever go there, I can guarantee you, they love TV. The Israelis actually love the news in the same way that I guess we do, you know, in terms of our addiction to cable television.

And I can tell you that the cable TV over there, very different than what you're reading in Haaretz or Times of Israel. My name is Harry Houdini. Harry Houdini could make elephants disappear, walk through walls and escape the Chinese water torture cell. But he was also on a mission against mediums. I have never seen one genuine medium.

Join me, Tim Harford, for a cautionary tales trilogy on the world's most famous magician. It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer. Houdini wanted the world to see reason in an age of spiritualism. He went undercover to seances, exposed fakes and charlatans, and even tried to convince Washington lawmakers to ban mediums for good, a campaign that cost him friends and made him many enemies. They're going to kill me.

Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you are more concerned about what your fellow racists think about you, you've already lost. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best-selling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back, and that's what we're doing on the Fighting Words podcast. Listen to my new episode with the iconic Gabrielle Union,

We clear the air about a recent controversy with actor Matthew Lawrence, who claims she reported him on set for refusing to run lines with her. This is like two husbands ago. Like, what are we even talking about? And I ask her what it's like raising a trans daughter during Trump's second term. When you offer up the trans community as a sacrificial lamb, if you open the door to say, well, take these people, now the door is open and they coming for everybody.

Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true.

This is a con. I'm conning you. To get the Dilado painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close. And jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this dog.

Judito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and move on to this next piece with Sagar. I know you have taken great interest in. Well, it's just a little too perfect. It's too on the nose. Yeah.

Republicans have, of course, been very upset and opposed to DEI and critical race theory and Ibram X. Kendi's whole ideological archetype of you can't just be not racist. You have to be anti-anti-racist. It is not enough to be just not racist. You have to be anti-racist. Yes, there we go. So some of this language, though, when it's about Israel—

suddenly is being received with open arms from what Dave Smith has called the woke right. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this rabbi who was brought by Republicans to testify about the scourge of anti-Semitism across the country. Let's take a listen to this. Anti-Semitism is not just an age-old prejudice. It is a contemporary crisis manifesting on campuses across the nation.

It is not enough for individuals or institutions to merely claim they are not anti-Semitic. As my father once taught me, it is not enough for people, especially public figures, to be neutral or not be anti-Semitic. One must be anti-anti-Semitic. We must demand the same of our universities and government institutions. This hearing, in my opinion, is an attempt to be just that, anti-anti-Semitic.

We need anti-antisemitism. I mean, it's beyond parody. Also, I went and I checked the tape. That witness was introduced specifically by Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana. Took me about two minutes to find tweets of his railing against critical race theory. So anyway, there you go.

And it's a little bit too on the nose, isn't it? Because what this shows us is that the DEI, the I, now stands for Israel. We've left inclusion off and we've put Israel in, from affirmative action in the state of Florida to the fact that we are literally deporting people who are here legally and have done nothing else other than pen an opinion and tell them to leave because of their opinion on a foreign country. We're spending, I was thinking about that too. And yes, I understand that.

that it's not just about money. But you do need to think that if the government is discrete resources, why are there five or six agents? Do you know how much it costs just to even employ all of them and to go and then to arrest this lady and then put her on a plane to Louisiana? That's what you do for actual criminals. Here we're doing it for somebody who wrote an op-ed

Against funding Israel. That's right. What are we doing here? And to your point, like for people who are on board with the mass deportation plan, I would expect you wouldn't want to prioritize actual criminals. We know there's a limited- How about people who are illegally? How about that?

We know there's a limited amount of resources. And instead, you've got, you know, five, six, a whole mob of these plainclothes masked officers waiting for someone to like, you know, step out to break their fast with their friends because she committed a thought crime. And it's not just our, you know, it's,

hundreds of students at this point who have been flagged for deportation, some of which have gotten the same, like, you know, mass response, flown down to Louisiana or transferred to Texas, et cetera. And as we've said before, it doesn't stop with the students either. It does not, I mean, with the immigrants either or even with the students. You know, they are talking about

pro-Palestine protests as being in favor of terrorism. That has implications in terms of criminalizing anyone who participates in those protests. They're using this as a cudgel in order to enforce

compliance and conformity at universities. They've threatened 60 different universities with repercussions if they don't do whatever the administration wants them to do. And basically, they are using this framework as a cudgel to go against institutions and people that they consider to be their political adversaries. I mean, I think pro-Palestine just basically stands in for like the

the left, you know, universities who they think fostered anti-Semitism or didn't do enough or whatever. Like these are their ideological adversaries.

And so they're using this framework that was sort of laying around, that's what I talked about in my monologue yesterday, in order to, this is way beyond any of the worst of the cancel culture epidemic on the left because of the way that the state is aggressively enforcing these speech codes to actually punish and deport people. Yeah, to bring it back to anti-racism, for anybody who suffered through Ibrahim Kendi's books-

What he proposes is actually a department of anti-racism, which would effectively do stuff like this, but on behalf of critical race theory. So it's worse because they've actually not only replaced the I in DEI for Israel, but then they're actually using the government for those purposes.

And you know, you were talking about some of that action. So I'm not sure if you saw just yesterday, Princeton University or last night, Princeton University and Harvard University have had their funding put on pause over the anti-Semitism initiative. Now, look, if we were doing that to actually like blow these people up and, you know, make it so that these elite institutions not only are not only like bilking people for literally hundreds of thousands of dollars ripping off the American taxpayer, I wouldn't be fine with it because I still wouldn't want to use anti-Semitism as a pretext. I bet I'd say whatever.

But look at what they actually extracted from Columbia University. Is what? The ability to expel students for protesting on behalf of Palestine and then replace the Middle Eastern Studies Department? To what benefit is that to me as the American taxpayer or to the student? That's not the point. That's not why people hate...

hate higher education. You know, there are many, many reasons. Actually, I was just looking yesterday. Harvard admitted less people in its class of 2023 than it did in the class of like 1982, even though the United States has grown by about 100 million people or so that far. Do you know why they do that? Exclusivity, to be able to charge more. And that's a crime, in my opinion, you know, to really...

to artificially restrict your class size, to try and bilk as many people as possible, and also use your reputation to basically steal money from people who are applying to you, even though the odds and all that have dropped. We could talk about that in a much more equitable way. Why are we doing it on behalf of, quote, antisemitism, which is one of the fakest panics that has struck the United States here now?

in the last decade. This is probably akin similarly to the, I would say, like you said, the woke cancel culture stuff, Me Too, et cetera, that happened in the mid 2000s, except this one now has the arm of the state behind it, which obviously makes it worse. It's just preposterous. And then same thing. Look, yes, it's great to see Matt Walsh be like, oh, this is bad. And a few other right-wing influencers. It's like, yeah, that's nice. But

Where's the members of Congress? Where's, you know, the people in power? Who's, why are people not, you know, pointing to this? This was a witness who was invited by the Republicans to testify. Like, and nobody sees the contradiction. And the fact that, you know, this person even gets to be able to, the witness, you know, in the opening statement, which is obviously submitted for the record and cleared with all of these staffers,

that it didn't even enter their mind shows you the level of hypocrisy that we've now reached. Very true. Yeah. Very true. So it's bad. I mean, it's not just bad. It's horrific because they really are... My only hope is, and I think I said this in your monologue, is now...

Our eyes are open. I think the world's eyes are open. The polling data indicates this on behalf of Israel and of U.S. attitudes towards them. And there are a lot of people who can no longer be silenced for, quote, noticing. And Tim Dillon, one of those people. So why don't we take a listen to that? Is this being done from America or for Israel? I mean, this is a fair question.

Is the United States government now just taking edicts and orders from Israel? Is this what people voted for when they elected Trump is to have a country taking orders from Israel? I don't think so.

So, you know, I respect him. And you know what I like about that is we can sit here and talk about this stuff all day long. But that being in the bro sphere, that's a good thing. That's a net positive. And that's what I mean. People are going to notice. And yes, a lot of the bad is being done and I'm not downplaying any of that. But I do think that things are going to shake out very differently than the pro Israel lobby thinks right now.

I don't know, Sagar. We'll see. We'll see. But to the point. I mean, what? The country will survive now. Like, we're going to continue 10 years, 15 years from now. People who grow up in this era are going to be like me growing up during the war in Iraq. And you're going to come to me and tell me smoking gun is going to be a mushroom cloud. I'm going to laugh in your face. Yeah. That's what's going to happen. Yeah. I mean, it's just it's part of a it's part of a broader project. Right. And it's part of a broader project specifically with regard to education and universities in particular. I mean, this is like, you know, Trump's

executive order on quote unquote patriotic education, they want to have leverage over these universities to control the type of education that the students who Harvard and Yale and all these institutions are very powerful. Those are the people who end up in power. They want to use this cudgel to

in order to enforce compliance across, you know, this is sort of the tip of the spear. And then it's the same thing with the, you know, the war on CRT and DEI, and I have my own issues with those ideologies, et cetera. But there's a concerted effort to...

to teach a sanitized version of history. And this is part of the cudgel that is, that is being used to effectuate that broader outcome because they do see these universities as an alternative power center. And so, you know, this is something in our, a sort of, uh,

ideological architecture that has been supported both by liberals like Joe Biden and most of the elected Democratic political leaders and much of the media, New York Times, et cetera. And so it's the easiest way for them to really push that project. But I don't think that it stands alone

it's part of a broader project. - Yeah, it definitely is. I guess, so the difference then between you and me is, yeah, I have no problem withholding funding from Harvard or from any of these other people for propping up DEI or teaching for critical race theory because that concerns our country. I do have a big problem

But the idea of intellectual freedom is like, you know, you can disagree with DEI, but like if you, you know, want to teach. Oh yeah, you're welcome to. You have a $50 billion endowment that you can draw down every day. Me as the American taxpayer and others, we can vote to withhold our funding from said institutions now. And I think that's a pretty fair, pretty fair rebuttal. I think, I think there's, that's actually fair in that the universities, I mean, Harvard and certainly, um,

Yale and these other Ivy League institutions. They have the endowments where we talked about with Columbia. They don't actually need the $400 million. They could fill in that gap. It wouldn't be a problem. These endowments have become so massive and they're like a business in and of themselves. But not

Many universities do not fall into that category. Right. And they're actually the ones that are most vulnerable, which is why it's so disheartening to see the Harvard's and the Columbia's and the Ivy League institutions, which are in a position to actually stand up for intellectual freedom, freedom, you know, and their own integrity. And it's

completely capitulating in the face of this assault. I don't know. See, the thing is, is public education by default, if it's going to be funded by the public, then of course we get a say. The idea that you should have intellectual freedom at a, quote, public university is preposterous. What? Because public education is for the purpose of, quote, educating the public based on the taxpayer, right? Right. So don't we want a public that's educated, like about, you know, the scourge of racism and slavery and Jim Crow?

Crow. Educated to what end? The purpose of public education is to benefit the American taxpayer by having people who are skilled. Who are educated. And who are curious or whatever. I mean, I... And to become a better citizen. Correct, yeah. But there's also like an economic benefit to this. So you don't think that public universities, there should be...

intellectual freedom at public universities. But Harvard is also not a public university. But under that argument, yeah, I agree with you. And that's what I'm trying to say, though, is that at a state level, like if the state of Massachusetts, if they had a literal white power curriculum, do you think that that would be acceptable? I would say absolutely not.

The state of Massachusetts at the University of Massachusetts, if those taxpayers voted to say that that's not in line with what we want to teach our schools, be my guest. It's your university. You guys are the ones who fund it. And so you think that teaching about, you know, the scourge of slavery and let's say our,

genocide against Native Americans is equivalent to a white power seminar? Well, I think that if you're going to teach it in such a way like the 1619 Project did, which was also funded and then used at some of these elite universities to say America is irrevocably racist, then what are we all doing here? I mean, there's no point to this entire thing. So

This is the problem is you think one is justifiable or not. I'm making a point about academic freedom, which is genuinely value neutral. So if the taxpayer and the public broadly mostly agrees with me about critical race theory and DEI, then yes, they should be able to influence and say those universities should not be allowed to do this with our dollars. You know, that's actually not even true, though, that the taxpayer

in the country agrees with you about DEI, but I think we can all recognize that there are some intellectual inquiries that are worthy of debate, you know, to take it out of race, like some intellectual inquiries that are worthy of debate and some which are only add confusion to the debate. So, for example, it wouldn't be like, you know, worthy of academic freedom to have some flat earther there trying to make their case, etc.,

But to have people who see race as a central component of our nation's history and teach courses on that, teach courses on gender studies has been a big target. I would say that understanding the dynamics of our genders and our differences has perhaps never been more important. There is a lot that we could learn from there. I think that that is completely within the bounds of what should be taught.

at a school and certainly represents the sort of academic freedom that the right, you know, really like obsessed over during when, you know, during the Biden administration and previously. So I, you know, to enforce this sort of conformity and like you have to learn quote unquote patriotic history that doesn't ever cast the America in a negative light. I mean, that's what they're going for here. And they're using anti-Semitism as a cudgel

in order to help bring these universities to heel so that they're only teaching the versions of American history that are approved by this particular government. - Look, if you wanna put your kid into some Howard Zinn University, that's your right. You can go to some private university, but if public funded universities by the taxpayer,

obviously have a right not only in the say on the curriculum, but in to be paying for it, to propping up said departments, which are genuinely 100 percent funded by them and not some major endowment. I genuinely couldn't disagree more. I mean, so I don't really understand that in your opposition to what they're doing with anti

Because we're doing it on behalf of a foreign country. But no, what they would say is that this is our foreign policy. This is the argument Marco Rubio and others make. This is our national security. This is our foreign policy. We want our tax dollars to go to further our national interest as American citizens. And part of our interest is in combating anti-Semitism and bolstering our ally Israel in the Middle East. So what's your issue with what they're doing? No, that's my point is that I completely disagree with that.

But I'm saying, I mean, do you really do you really believe in a principle where the taxpayer has no say on the academic input or the academic environment that they're going to fund? I believe that we should have academic freedom and intellectual exploration. OK, then. And so you would be the white power. I think, no, I already know. I already explained.

That there are certain things that do not add to the academic or intellectual atmosphere. So who gets to decide? Who's setting the standard? The democracy. Society does. Yes, that's right. Exactly. And we can have elections and we can have inputs. Society thinks it's important. They don't agree with you on DEI. By the way, they don't even agree with me on DEI. Society is in favor of knowing the facts.

about our history, even the ugly facts about our history. And I think it's incredibly important that we be able to learn. And you're a history guy. Yes, that's right. You know more about the Snidey soccer. But that's my point. And it was important for your own intellectual development to know the truth about those past horrors, whether it's Jim Crow or whether it's slavery or whether it was what was done to Native American people on these lands.

That's not to say like, oh, you have to live with that shame and guilt where this is what the right always says. But yeah, you want to learn from the past. You want to learn from the mistakes so we don't repeat them again in the future. And that's what's under assault here with this onslaught against universities. They want to bring them to heel so that only the quote unquote, the sanitized quote unquote patriotic version of history that is not honest about the warts

And the truth of, you know, things that our country has been involved in. I would need to see curriculum for which you're describing that as because I think CRT— Go look at what PragerU is putting out. Go look at the curriculum they put into Florida. Prager University? That's not a real university. No, but they used that for curriculums in places like Florida as part of this patriotic education push. This is the broader problem.

project. And so if you don't see the way that this anti-Semitism thing is being used as a cudgel to enforce a broader bringing to heel of these universities, like, that is just one plank of the plan here. That is the tip of the spear. But the broader plan is to completely

bring these universities to heel and make them comply with whatever sanitized history that this particular administration finds useful. My point is that your, quote, unquote, sanitized history, the other, quote, true history is one where we just sit there and we're supposed to be like, oh, and these are all the most horrible things about America. You know, my education in Texas was...

And it wasn't because it was woke. It was genuinely just not actual. It had one inch depth of which 99% of the U.S. population will ever actually read below. The vast majority of what I've learned has been reading on myself. And what I have learned is what? Is that there is deep complexity to the issue. And that with Jim Crow and with the slavery and the South and the debates at the U.S. Constitutional Convention during the Civil War and more, we're not often aware

all pure and heroic in the way that we like to learn, or all that evil is that there was a deep amount of gray area in that time. And that actually the story of how we were able to emerge today to a much more equal society, not yet of where we are, is remarkable and is one in which we should absolutely study. And I think we should celebrate. Now, I think critical race theory, what it does is invert that on its head and to say, no, actually where we are today is an immense failure and we didn't get there.

And this so-called true history or whatever is just like left this claptrap, to be honest. Like it's not one which genuinely grapples with any of the good of the U.S. is done because like I referenced with Howard Zinn and more, it views it as this evil empire morally corrupted its founding as the 1619 Project does. And what that instills in people and or the citizen is one, this idea that we can never get better instead of looking at both equally.

I'm familiar with your opinion. However, the question is, do you think that learning about those things should be effectively banned by the state? I mean, but that's the goal. That is the goal is to enforce conformity on these universities and

and to push a sanitized narrative. So that, you know, I just think that, listen, you can agree or disagree with how central racism, the way that this infected, you know, affected our nation's development. I mean, I would say that it's been a pretty important part of many of the most critical battles in terms of, you know, how we've gotten to where we are today and important to learn about and see the legacy of, et cetera. But like, I just...

to, I believe you've previously spoken on behalf of Academic Freedom,

And to think that that's out of bounds or that the state should use its power to bully universities out of teaching that sort of, you know, sort of history is, I think, pretty wild. Here's I want to be clear here. I'm talking specifically about public education. I think we can all agree curriculum is propaganda in some form. Yes or no. Now, in that propaganda, we all democratically get to decide in that public education for what should be and should be not education.

taught in our classrooms. This is ultimately a parental decision. In fact, I think, though, what you're laying out is a ridiculous idea where the taxpayer is supposed to give you unlimited or whatever amount of funds, and you're able to just be able to do whatever you want and preach that to children and or create curriculum for students. But we're talking about...

live in a society like that and have never lived in a society like that. We're talking specifically about universities, number one. But these are publicly funded. Every time I look at my property tax bill, I'm pretty sure I know where a lot of it's going. And we're predominantly talking about, I mean, this just gets to, I think, a fundamental difference about what the university system is even for. Because in my opinion, the university system is not, including the public university system, is all about

and intellectual exploration. That's how even, you know, even thinking through things that might be...

out of bounds, right, politically, that are outside of the, certainly the consensus of the public. Like, that's how you push research and intellectual activity forward. And so, yes, I think that's important to support at both the public university level and, you know, certainly private universities should be able to do what they want. They're not doing a good job of standing up for themselves in the face of this onslaught. But yes, of course, I think having academic curiosity

curiosity and risk-taking within the university system. I see that as a core value of the university system. I don't see it as a place where we're just supposed to stamp out these conformist... It's not what the

with them. Ideas and, you know, based on what the current regime approves that you're allowed to learn about. Like, that is just, that is completely foreign to my notion of what the public, what the university system is supposed to be all about. You're also inverting an issue here, which is, what did I say? That I didn't actually learn all that much in school. I mostly learned about it myself. So if you're curious, you can, all the information you need is out there. And I've got about 1% of

of what I need and I'll be looking for the rest of the 5% of what I'm able to consume over the course of my life. But last thing here is you made a good point about what is education. The course of public education, why did we create it? Was to create a more skilled populace. And my problem, for economic benefit,

That's the truth. It's all namby-pamby nice to say, oh, intellectual curiosity, et cetera. The problem that we have today is that way too many people go to college to pursue degrees which are not economically viable and which saddle them up with a lot of debt. The solution to that is not to offer, quote, free college so that everybody can go get little box checks.

It's to make sure that people pursue higher educational, vocational training or wherever, or perhaps a four-year college degree for the purpose of being able to pursue the American dream, which you individually get to define for yourself. So that's my last thing is just like this idea that you're going to be conformist because you go to college. I went to a college with a bunch of woke people. In fact,

being around them made me a lot more intellectually curious about what I wasn't learning in school and you could pursue it for yourself. But that's an inversion of this idea that everything you're ever gonna learn about the world is gonna be at a four-year college. No, we're supposed to lay a foundation for which you yourself can go from there in spring. Some of that is risk-taking, et cetera. But, and like I said, the purpose of public education and why we funded itself

is not to have people sitting around reading Proust or whatever. It's so that you can go out and you can get a job, which is going to benefit yourself and ultimately benefit the entire country. I think that treating human beings and their education as solely being about becoming effective cogs in the American capitalist machine, yeah, I disagree with that end goal of that being the only goal.

of our education and especially our university system. Yeah, but I'm saying even in a communist system, why did they send people to public university? It wasn't, again, to be sitting around and reading and debating Marxist-Leninism. I just think that this is so funny. It was to send them to a factory. I just think this is

so funny to come from you because you're so intellectually curious. Absolutely. And you're so well read and not everything that you consume is about like, how can I generate more profit? How can I like make more money? I do it for my own edification. You value and it has made you part of who you are.

that you have that intellectual curiosity and that you have that intellectual development. And I'm not saying that all of that comes within a traditional school system. Of course it doesn't. But I think an important part, especially for young adults within that system, when you have a fantastic professor who opens your eyes up to something, who helps you to understand something you didn't understand before, to help you explore the world, to help you learn about history and see the lessons of the past and be able to apply them to the press

and understand better the trajectory that you're on. So yeah, of course I think that that's an important part of the university system and that it's not all just about, like, I mean, why should anyone go to university at all if you're just like training to for your end goal as a human being of your career? No, a lot of people actually shouldn't go. And I've said that before. I've

for. I think the amount of people who go is way too high. It probably should be 20, 30% less because I think last I checked, it was like 45%. But I mean, that's what I'm saying is the flip is I'm not going to sit here and tell you or even believe in a system where the public education system is supposed to be the be all end all of on it.

As I said, I was much more inspired to read and to be individually more curious from what I didn't learn in school and asking questions about that. So it just comes down to the fact that I believe that the reason public education exists literally at all, and you can go and look for why we decided for this grand experiment in the first place, was genuinely, not nice to say it, but the truth is, is so we could all be more beneficial to education.

each other. Part of that is intellectual exercise and more, but a lot of what public education has become has become an economic saddle on the American taxpayer and on the individual who is participating in the system, who is hobbling their life forever. I believe in individual pursuit of whatever it is that you want to do. I like to read for my own edification. I'm very lucky I've been able to pursue a career in something like that, but even if I didn't do this, I would still be doing it.

Whenever I was doing something else, that's what I like to do. But that's my point is it wasn't necessarily something inspired by the great public universe or private university, I guess, where I went for something. It basically comes back to this idea of why is the public participating in this in the future? I just believe, of course, the public has a right and has a responsibility, to be honest, of being involved in this and not some blank thing.

tabula rasa slate where these professors are allowed to take our dollars and then do whatever they want. That has never existed for literally all of human history or conception of public education. It has always been any curricula in which the state is paying for is itself a debate and is propaganda in some form. It's about a war of what is supposed to be in that propaganda to shape a better citizenry. And then that's the debate that you and I are having now.

I think universities should be about intellectual exploration. And I don't think that they will benefit from having a heavy hand of the state coming in to enforce what is acceptable thought. And I think we see that very clearly with the efforts that are being taken here with regard to quote unquote anti-Semitism. So we can leave it there.

Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamyris, the widow of the king of the Massengedi people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead.

Turns out, that was a big mistake. Listen to the latest episode of Nobleblood, available now. Listen to Nobleblood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here, and Eating While Broke is back for Season 4 every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season, we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better stories. On the menu, we have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London, and Carrie Harper Howey turning Big Macs into big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network iHeartRadio app.

Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your favorite shows. Come hungry for season four. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Chiquis, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Chiquis and Chill.

I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.