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Unknown A
Talk the United States of America into spending $350 billion. Okay. To go into a war that couldn't be won. True. Remember when Ukraine was like, let's go into the war.
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Unknown B
You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. President Putin and I would talk about Ukraine.
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Unknown A
Zelensky killed an American journalist.
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Unknown C
Now this is just the latest of Zelenskyy's actions.
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Unknown A
That's cool. We're just, we're just doing straight Russian propaganda now from the US Department of Intelligence. That's good.
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Unknown D
President Trump in this particular press conference went extraordinarily hard on Ukraine, much less hard on Russia.
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Unknown A
So long live the king from the White House. Lastly, we have another executive order that.
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Unknown D
President Trump signed that only the president or the Attorney general can speak for.
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Unknown A
The United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is. If half your country wants an authoritarian leader, there's no system that you can design to prevent that from happening. Russian officials were caught off guard by Trump's pivot toward Moscow. Wall Street Journal. After three years of American efforts to isolate Russia, US Politics agreement shift toward Moscow. In recent days, Russian officials have cheered the change, but even they appear to be caught off guard by the speed of developments. On Tuesday, top level U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss ways to settle the war in Ukraine and reset Washington's relations with Moscow. Just days after President Trump and President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone. Then a war of words escalated between Trump and Ukrainian president volunteers Vladimir Zelensky with the US President calling him a dictator on Wednesday. I can't believe that they're holding peace talks in Saudi Arabia without Ukraine.
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Unknown B
Okay, where is all the money that's been given? Where is it going? And nobody. I've never seen an accounting of it.
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Unknown A
These are just, these are just, they're just lies. It's okay. We're starting Factorial today. Okay. I've got to. I'm suspending myself from politics soon. I can't. This is just. Every day. It's just lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
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Unknown B
Seen it. Look, we have to. They have to pay. They have to find out where's the money going to. We have. I believe President Zelensky said last week that he doesn't know where half of the money is that we get.
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Unknown A
Like, that's not what he said and that's not what he meant. He's referring to the Lex podcast where I think he was talking about how you have to pay money to, like, ship stuff or to get like, all the money unlocked. He didn't mean that it's like gone. He lost it. That it's like, that's. It's just a lie. That's just a lie. It's Russian propaganda that is.
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Unknown B
Well, we gave them, I believe, $350 billion, but let's say it's something less than that.
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Unknown A
But where did this new 350 billion number come from? I've heard other people cite it now too. It was actually $350 billion that we gave. It wasn't whatever we thought before. Where did this new 350 billion number come from?
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Unknown B
It's a lot. And we have to equalize with Europe because Europe has given us. Given a very much smaller percentage than that. I think Europe has given 100 billion and we've given, let's say, 300 plus.
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Unknown A
What do you mean? Let's say you're the President of the United States of America. You know, you can literally ask your departments for this. You literally. You're allowed to ask why. You don't have to estimate this at all. You have a whole ass branch of government dedicated to giving you answers like this. Why are you up here guessing like a fucking retard?
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Unknown B
And it's more important for them than it is for us. We have an ocean in between and they don't. But where is all the money that's been given? Where is it going? And nobody. I've never seen an accounting of it. We give hundreds of billions of dollars.
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Unknown A
I have hundreds of billions of dollars. Is that really what's happening?
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Unknown B
Okay, see, in any county. So I want to see peace. Look, you know why I want. Because I don't want all these people killed anymore. I'm looking at people that are being killed.
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Unknown A
More Russian talking points. It's just about the meat grinder, the poor, the young men dying, and the.
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Unknown B
Russian and Ukrainian people. But they're people. Doesn't matter where they're from on the whole planet. And I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it's going very well. But today I heard. Oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given him almost all of the land. Everything. Almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way. And President Biden, in all fairness he doesn't have a clue what he. He was so bad for this. He was so bad, so pathetic, so sad.
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Unknown B
But with all of that being said, look, it is what it is. When I left, there was no chance that this could have happened, but it happened because we had incompetent leadership at many different levels. But when you see what's taken place in Ukraine, with millions of people killed, including the soldiers, millions of people killed, a big percentage of their cities knocked down to the ground, I don't know how anybody even lives there. You know, when they say they took a poll and Zelinsky's at 4%, who's living there? You know, I mean, people are. It's hard to believe that people live there, their cities are being knocked down.
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Unknown A
Like, does he think. Does he think like, Kiev is just like a pile of rubble? Or that all of western Ukraine is like Gaza? Or what is Trump's motivation for being Russia's bitch? Nefarious, ultra charitable, Take a wedge between Russia, China, thoughts? I can't tell you motivations anymore. It's like things have moved beyond my ability to have, like, a theory of mind about any of these people. I don't know. My guess is it's just a very naive way of doing isolationism. Like, we don't want to be involved. I don't want the responsibility, I don't want the money. And then just a profound amount of ignorance.
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Unknown B
And this is something that would have never happened. And by the way, for four years, it didn't happen. It was never going to happen. Go ahead, question. How would you counter the perception because.
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Unknown E
Russia's pushing for this, obviously they don't.
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Unknown A
Really hold true elections, that that would.
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Unknown B
Be a capitulation of some sort.
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Unknown E
How would you guard against potentially Russia.
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Unknown B
Installing a puppet government? And then finally, how would that new election have an impact on getting Zelensky.
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Unknown A
To sign the rare ear mineral steel?
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Unknown B
Look, you have leadership, and I like him personally, he's fine. But I don't care about personally, I care about getting the job done. You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States. Look, we had a president who was grossly incompetent. He had no idea what he was doing. He said some very stupid things like going in for portions and all of the things. He made a lot of bad statements, but he's grossly incompetent. And I think everyone knew that. This is something that should have never happened, would have never happened. And I used to discuss it with Putin. President Putin and I would talk about Ukraine also.
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Unknown A
It's assessing that the media in the U.S. don't ask the proper questions about these lies. Yeah. To be clear. To be clear, Trump is one interview away from having the most humiliated interview of all time. If a single person interviewing him would actually sit down and be like, okay, okay, you're saying all of this about how Ukraine started the war and everything. Do you know why Russia invaded Ukraine? Can you tell me why? And when Trump. No, no, no. Like, what happened in 2014? Do you know anything? Like, if they were to just sit there and actually force, like, he would look like an idiot. He'd walk out after five minutes. But, like, literally anybody in the media could do this, but nobody will. They all want to play ball so that they get him on their shows.
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Unknown B
It was the apple of his eye, I will tell you that. But he never. There was never a chance of him going in. And I told him, you better not go in. Don't go in, don't go in. And he understood that. He understood it fully. But I'm only interested. I want to see if I can save maybe millions of lives. This could even end up in a World War 3. I'm going to be honest with you. You've been hearing now Europe is saying, well, I think we're going to go in and we're going to go. All of a sudden, you can end up in World War III over something that should have never happened. And, you know, it's a very sad situation. Yeah, please.
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Unknown A
In a court filing, the White House.
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Unknown B
Said that Elon Musk is not a.
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Unknown A
Doge employee and has no authority when. And then I'm also, I'm just curious, has there been a single time in all of this conflict where Donald Trump has ever blamed Russia for invading? Like, a single time, has he ever done that? They shouldn't have invaded. That was wrong of them or whatever. Like, I don't know already, to make decisions. Can you clarify for us?
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Unknown B
Well, Elon Musk rule is Elon is, to me, a patriot. So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want, but he's a patriot. I mean, look at the kind of things I just said. Just write it down just in case that question got asked. Right. And which. I'm surprised it took so long, actually. But you know what? He's a patient. You call him an employee. You could, Elon Musk, employee and has.
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Unknown A
No authority to make decisions.
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Unknown B
Can you clarify for us well, Elon Musk role is. Yeah, yeah. Elon is, to me a patriot. So, you know, you could call him an employee, you could call him a consultant, you could call him whatever you want, but he's a patriot.
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Unknown A
I mean, you could call him like what? Well, no, we're asking what he is. What do you mean, what? Like what?
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Unknown B
Look at the kind of things I just said. Just write it down just in case that question got asked. Right. And which I'm surprised it took so long, actually. But you know what? Ukraine's a bigger deal because people are dying by the thousands a week. Thousands. But look at this. From 90 to 99, Social Security, 6,054,000 people. Well, that's. Okay, maybe that's possible, you know, 90.
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Unknown A
I'm so sorry, am I not paying attention or what? I don't know what the fuck is he saying?
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Unknown B
That's right. And which I'm surprised it took so long, actually. But you know what? Ukraine's a bigger deal because people are dying by the thousands a week. Thousands. But look at this. From 90 to 99, Social Security, 6,054,000 people. Well, that's okay, maybe that's possible, you know, 90 to 90, 99. Maybe it's possible. It's a lot of people, though, with that. But people that live to 100 to 109.
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Unknown A
Oh, he's talking about how.
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Unknown B
Okay, 4 million 734.
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Unknown A
Oh, now he's just repeating this bullshit that we already saw. It took like five minutes of just reading an OIG SSA report and we see where these numbers come from, but he doesn't. It's all just lies. All of its lies, Lies, lies, lies, lies.
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Unknown B
A thousand. Wow, that's a lot. That means.
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Unknown A
Why are we talking about Social Security now? That's not. Yeah, and again, that's not even responsive to the question.
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Unknown B
Like, over 100 years old. They're 4 million people. I don't know. I don't know. Too many. I know people that are doing great in their 90s, but not too many people over 100, but over 120. From 120 years old, people that are 120 years old up to 129. 3,472,000 people. Wow. You know, that can't possibly be because the record is like, I think it's one person, a woman lived to 127, but they have 3472. Okay, but now we're going really in people from 130 years old to 139 year old. 3,936,000.
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Unknown A
He's really just gonna read this stupid chart, huh?
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Unknown B
Wow. I wonder if people are getting paid with all this. I mean, are these checks and that's what we're checking right now.
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Unknown A
How? Checking how? Didn't your OIG do this? Don't you have a department that's doing that? What do you. What do you mean? That's what we're checking right now.
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Unknown B
People from 140 years old to 149 years old, 3,542,140 years old and beyond. Now. Now we're really going because we're looking to break the record by 25 years. People from 150 years old to 159 years old. 1,345,000.
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Unknown A
Like, these are in the computer files.
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Unknown B
This is what they do. Well, they're super. I asked Elon, who are these Doge people? He said, they're super brilliant computer people and they love the country.
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Unknown A
They haven't done anything super brilliant, though. We haven't gotten anything. We haven't gotten a single good report. We haven't gotten a single credible allegation. I don't know if we've gotten a single thing yet that wasn't just already publicly available somewhere. Destiny, does it not concern you that there is possible fraud? Wouldn't you want that to be taken care of? So, Michael Vanderplog, in YouTube chat, I wasn't gonna say anything, but I got like 450 DMs earlier that said that you like to fuck children. And I'm not saying it happened 100%, but, like, it's fair that in YouTube chat that, like, there's a possibility, I guess, that you have. That you do kids in your free time, right? Like, that should be something we think about, right? Like, do you understand how cancerous it is to phrase a thing and ask something like that? Like how unbelievably intellectually bankrupt it is and how stupid it to phrase something like.
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Unknown A
No, do the report before you make the crazy public. It's not even an accusation. They're just declaring that it's happened. No. What a stupid question.
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Unknown B
Simple. Wait a minute.
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Unknown A
Sorry. Hold on. The worst part is. Listen. Hold on. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I blew that guy up. Because that might have been a legitimate question that was asked in good faith. I don't mean to attack your character. I'm just showing that you can theoretically walk into any complex system in the world and not do much research and just say, whoa, this looks weird. And Then go and start asking all these questions publicly about it. But there's just something so malevolent about having not done even the basic level of research before asking these questions. That's the problem. It's irresponsible, especially when this is the President of the United States. He has access to all this information.
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Unknown B
People from 160 years old to 169 years. 121,000. So 160 year old people. 170 to 179,000. 6,087. But now let's go into the real numbers. From 200 to 209 years old. 879 people from 210 years old. I haven't met any of them and if I did, I would bless them. I would.
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Unknown A
You know what, I'm surprised. I'm surprised this hasn't been his allegation yet, or maybe people have done it and I just haven't seen it. I'm surprised they're not trying to tie this into the election results from 2020. Like, oh, I know who these 20 million people are. These are all the people that voted for Biden in 2020. Actually, how off was that election? It was only 7 million. Oh, see, so that's more than enough to. They probably fuck. I don't know how to do the math on that. If I've got 20 million and I want to give 7 million more to one side than the other, it'd be about like 14 million votes to Biden and then 7 million votes to Trump. So with my 21 million fake dead people, I could get them to vote in that way. I'm surprised they haven't called for that yet, you know?
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Unknown A
Yeah, it seems like they're not actually trying to find any real fraud. They are simply looking for a piece of information. On the surface that might look bad, but on further review probably makes sense. Yeah, they're just looking for stuff to tweet about. Basically, yeah. Do you at all fear that we as liberals are falling into the same trap as the last admin where we cover everything he does as the end of the world? Obviously all this shit is bad, but I fear that we're going down the same media rabbit hole that fucked us to begin with. I mean, what are you supposed to say? I mean, like every single thing is horrible. I mean, what do you. What are you waiting for? So far all they did is misread publicly available data. The question we should ask, was it maliciousness or incompetence? I don't know, it could be both.
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Unknown A
Who the f CK knows? I think the, it feels like, it is kind of depressing, but it feels like the only thing that you can do now is wait for, is wait for things to start failing. And then when things get fucked then it's gonna be do people turn back to liberalism or do people become more authoritarian? That's the question at that point. I think the most important thing that the Democrats can do and it's really cucked and it feels bad, but I think the most important thing that Democrats need to do, and maybe it's, maybe we've gone too far, is to defend, is to defend like the Republic, the idea, the concept of our liberal democracy. Because if you lose people that have faith in the system, then, I mean, what do you have? Then you've got authoritarian right people or you've got populist left people.
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Unknown A
Like at the end of the day there's nobody left to defend the system. Then why then who cares about the system? Right? And I think that's the issue, and I said this before, I think Democrats and progressives especially have a large role in causing people not to trust the system. Because if you talk to Democrats, what's the problem? Well, we don't have single payer health care. Why not? Because of corrupt lobbyists and because of billionaires. Oh, okay. How's racism in the United States? Worse than it ever has been, ever. We have a white supremacist policing force. Okay, I guess. How are we doing, like economically horrible. Income inequality is the highest it's ever been due to the donor class. Okay. Foreign policy wise, horrible. We're supporting a genocide in, in, in Gaza plus insert every South American thing you've ever heard. Okay, okay, well fuck.
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Unknown A
Like if that's what the left has been portraying the system as being for so long and you go to the right and the right's like, we think the system is. We just want to knock it all down and build over. Okay, what are you saying on the left again? Well, actually the system's okay, guys. We think that we don't know why they're trying to destroy the system. We need to defend the systems. Like, well, you guys have been saying the system's completely, for over a decade now. Why the would we defend this? Right? The issue is that you don't have anybody that's actually defending any part of the system. And defending it doesn't mean you're saying it's without errors or that there's nothing that can be fixed or salvaged or nothing that can be changed or modified. Even radically modified. But if you have nobody willing to defend the system, it's not surprising when at the end of the day, nobody gives a about checks and balances or what the law says or who can impeach who or what it means to, you know, whatever.
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Unknown A
So talk the United States of America into spending $350 billion. Okay. To go into a war that couldn't be won. True. Remember when Ukraine was like, let's go into the war. The United states has spent $200 billion more than Europe. Have we even done 200 billion in total aid? I thought the number was still south of 200 billion. I thought it was like 170 or 180 or something. But maybe it's higher than that by now. It could be. Why didn't sleepy Joe Biden demand equalization and that this war is far more important to Europe than it is to us? That's such a horrible statement for the United States. Oof. We don't give a F about you guys on military aid. Europe's support of 62 billion is on a similar level to that of the United States, which is allocated 64 billion. However, Europe has long surpassed the US when it comes to financial and humanitarian aid, which is 70 billion versus 50 billion.
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Unknown A
Okay, so Europe has contributed more than the United States towards this. Nice. So Europe has actually donated more military aid cumulative to Ukraine provided by the US and Europe. So for military stuff it's about equal. And then for non military aid. How unbelievable. This is a crime. This line here. This is criminal. Yeah, that too. You're not. You're also not. Or I'm guessing you're not counting in here how much money European countries have spent dealing with the refugee fallout as well from Ukraine. What do conservatives give is the reason Ukraine gave up their nuclear arsenal 1994? They probably just memed through it. I don't know. Ask Sean. Jesus. Over 2% of their GDP given as aid from Estonia, Denmark, Lithuania. That's wild. Would that be for the United States if we did? 2% of our GDP of 29, 1.67 billion times 02 percent would have been $583 billion if we did 2%.
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Unknown A
This guy. All these countries have interest in Ukraine to win the war? No, all of us have an interest in Ukraine winning the war. Well, in the west we do, including the United States of America. Zelensky killed an American journalist. He's referring to coach Red pill here.
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Unknown B
I would worship the ground they walk on. 210 to 219 years. 866 from 220 years old to 229 years old. 1039. And then you have two people from 240 years old to 249 years old. One person, and there's one person that's three hundred and sixty years old.
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Unknown A
He really just. He really just read off that whole tweet, huh?
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Unknown B
That's just that. And then where's the money being spent? Right, let's go into that for just a second.
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Unknown A
Oh my God.
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Unknown B
$520 million for a consultant on the environment. It's called Environmental, social and governance Investments in Africa and mobilized private sector resources. $520 million. Somebody got $520 million for an environmental. Sounds like an environmental study. I've always been one that paid a lot of money for my environmental studies, but I paid like $50,000. Not 520 million. $520 million for ESG. $25 million to promote biodiversity conservation and promote licit livelihoods by developing socially responsible behavior in the country of Colombia. Well, it's nice. 25 million going to Colombia for something that nobody ever heard of. $40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. 40 million. $42 million for Johns Hopkins. Great place to research and drive social and behavior change in Uganda. 42 million. What about us? What about social change in our country? $70 million for a center at Purdue to research university source evidence based solutions to developmental challenges.
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Unknown B
I mean, these are massive numbers on things that nobody ever heard about. $10 million for Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcisions. $10 million for circumcisions in another country. $9.7 million for UC Berkeley to develop a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills. In other words, let's teach them something about enterprise. What about our people? Can we teach them about enterprise? $2.3 million for strengthening independent voices in.
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Unknown A
Cambodia, he says as he abolishes the Department of Education.
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Unknown B
$32 million to the Prague Civil Society center, which is a very liberal group of people. Wonder how much of that money came back to the people that approved it. $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia. $486 million to the consortium for Elections and Political process strengthening, including 22 million for inclusive and participatory political process in Moldova and 21 million dollars for voter turnout in India. Well, why are we giving $21 million to India? They got a lot of money. They're one of the highest taxing countries in the world in terms of us. We can hardly get in there because Their tariffs are so high. I have a lot of respect for India. I have a lot of respect for. The Prime Minister just left, as you know, two days ago. But we're given $21 million for voter turnout. It's about a turnout in India.
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Unknown B
What about, like, voter turnout here? We've done that. I guess we did 500 million, didn't we? To the lockboxes. $20 million for fiscal federalism in Nepal.
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Unknown A
Oh, she just got black bagged and hauled away.
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Unknown B
Listen to these numbers. These are. This is all fraud. $19 million for biodiversity conservation in Nepal. $1.5 billion for voter confidence. We want to give them confidence in Liberia. $14 million for social cohesion in Mali. $2.5 million for inclusive democracies in South Africa, $47 million for improving learning outcomes in Asia. Asia is doing very well. They're doing a lot better than we do in the schools, aren't they? $2 million to develop sustainable recycling models to increase socio economic cohesion among marginalized communities in Kosovo and Eskali and in Egypt. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, by the way. I could read this all day long. I could go on all day long and you'll see hundreds of billions of dollars and we're doing it. But when I saw the social.
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Unknown A
Do you think he. Oh, my God. I just fucking. I just understood it. Oh, my God. I just had a huge fucking click moment when Joe Rogan was asking Trump what's it like to actually be president? And Trump couldn't answer that question. He's like, well, the bed that Abraham Lincoln slept in is real big. And then Joe was like, yeah, but like, how do you, like, lead the country? It's like a lot of paintings in that. In that Oval Office. Maybe the answer was because Trump doesn't actually know how to be president. Maybe he doesn't know how to do anything. Like, I just. I don't know how to explain or how to convey to you how pathetic it is that Trump is reading off sheets of information that we can see on Twitter like, he's the President of the United States. You know, that you could request so much more detailed information if you wanted to.
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Unknown A
There's so much more that you could have about this. But do you. Is he just not aware of that? Does he. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe Trump wakes up, he's like, I wonder what's going on in the dod? I'm gonna go on Twitter and find out. Instead of, you know, just like, calling his for dod. Would it be, do you go down your chiefs of staff, or. I need to figure out the structure of this. What is the. Does the Secretary of Defense report directly to the President and then the Chiefs of Staff is a separate thing. Hold on, I forget. Oh, they're not even. Or is that all just part of the Department of Defense? The Defense Department. But, like, you can make a phone call and you can get all of this information, bro. Like, when are we Europeans going to stop being scandalized about Donald Trump and start helping him to end this war?
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Unknown A
Of course Ukraine didn't start the war. You might as well say that America attacked Japan at Pearl Harbor. Of course, a country undergoing a violent invasion should not be staging elections. There was no general election in the UK from 35 to 45. Of course, Zelensky's ratings are not 4%. They're actually about the same as Trump's. Trump's statements are not intended to be historically accurate, but to shock Europeans into action. In particular, the US can see $300 billion of frozen Russian assets, mainly in Belgium. That is cash that can and should be used to pay Ukraine a compensator for its support. Why is Europe preventing that then? Why not just say that? Why not just say, unfreeze these funds? Why couldn't you just say that? What? Why would we. Why would we go.
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Unknown B
So.
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Unknown A
All of this. I think I've even watched this. All of this is just this. Like, you can't do this forever. Why?
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Unknown B
Let's run a quick scenario. Okay. I will be the boss and you will come to me for a raise. Go.
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Unknown A
Sir, I was wondering if I could have a raise. I'm listening. Well, I've been a top performing salesman at the company for the last three years. I'm the first one in there.
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Unknown B
Okay, stop. It's done. One condition.
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Unknown A
Sure. What's up?
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Unknown B
You tell my family. I love that if I give you this pay raise, it'll come out of my paycheck, which means I won't be able to provide for my family the way I want to. And I can't live with that.
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Unknown A
I want the race.
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Unknown B
I don't want the race.
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Unknown A
It's fine.
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Unknown B
See what I did there, guys? I negotiated with death. DuPont executive approach to higher salaries.
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Unknown A
Except unironically. There's like the whole Republican Party every time Trump says anything ever. You know what a fun question would be for conservatives? The next time somebody. The next time somebody talks to any of them, is there anything that Trump could say that you would condemn? Like, how much worse could it be than stuff like this, like, can we even imagine a phrase that Trump could say where they're like, yeah, that's probably over the line. I hate white people. They won't answer. I just got in an argument with a friend over this exact question, and they blocked me without being able to answer. Okay, let's see. We've got perhaps the tiniest, itty bittiest amount of pushback.
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Unknown D
Yesterday, President Trump in this particular press conference, went extraordinarily hard on Ukraine, much less hard on Russia. Now, you can make the case that pragmatically, what he is attempting to do is sort of wheedle Vladimir Putin into coming to the table.
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Unknown A
What has he got? How much credit? What have we gotten so far with all of this negotiating power? What have we negotiated? What have we gotten? And people keep saying this. He's doing. He's using his power for what have we gotten? Where's. Where are these negotiations? Where are they at? Hello?
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Unknown D
Basically, what he's saying to Vladimir Putin is listening. I'm not taking an antagonistic position toward you. I share some of your concerns. Let's just get to the end of this thing. That is a positive read. The negative read is that President Trump is getting some of this stuff wrong, and that includes some of the demands that he is now making on Ukraine, which are harsher than the demands that he is currently making on Russia. Now, again, from pragmatic point of view, perhaps, the idea here is that it's harder to bring Russia to the table than it is to bring Ukraine to the table.
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Unknown A
After all, no shit, Sherlock. But this is why Trump is supposed to be the master negotiator. It's so crazy when you're. When you're talking about Trump. During election season, we're in our imaginations, but once Trump has been elected, we're in reality. Why is it like it. Why are you allowed to do that? Why is it like that? It shouldn't be allowed, right? Trump in election. Trump is like, I can make any deal possible happen. And then Trump, after his light is like, man, this shit is actually kind of hard. Like, eggs are expensive. I can't do shit about that. You're blaming me for inflation? The fuck am I? I'm the fucking president negotiating with Russia. Come on, dude. What am I supposed to do? Damn.
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Unknown D
You know, the United States has the ability to cudgel Ukraine. The United States is giving billions and hundreds of billions of dollars in aid. The United States has power over enormous swaths of the European continent. And it's hard to get Russia to come to the table. And so you have to make more. Maybe that's the pragmatic concern here. However, negotiating from a position of weakness with regard to Putin is likely to result in a worse deal in the end. Unless you think that basically the terms of the deal are already set and we're all just dancing to the tune until the clock runs out, essentially, at which point everybody knows what happens. There are security guarantees to Ukraine, including money flying to Ukraine, European peacekeepers in the region, Russia keeping Donbass in Crimea. So here's President Trump saying some stuff about Ukraine. Again, I have some moral objections to the stuff that he is saying about Ukraine here because I don't think that it is true.
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Unknown D
So for example, at one point during this press conference, he made the signally false statement that Ukraine started the war. This is not true. Ukraine absolutely did not start the war. You can argue with Ukrainian policy toward both Europe and Russia over the period 2013 to 2022.
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Unknown A
You mean when Russia was occupying part.
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Unknown D
Of their territory, but Russia invaded a sovereign country and tried to take Kiev and has killed tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands of people. There's President Trump suggesting sort of the opposite, that somehow Ukraine is the problem.
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Unknown B
Here today I heard, oh well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given him almost all of the land. Everything. Almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished and one dome would have been knocked down. But they chose not to do it that way. And President Biden, in all fairness, he doesn't have a clue.
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Unknown D
So President Trump there saying Ukraine never should have started it. Ukraine did not in fact start it. You can blame them for not coming to the table sooner. You can say the deal should have been taken sooner. I've said that myself. But Ukraine absolutely did not start the war and Russia should have stopped this war at any point. President Trump then continued by suggesting that he wants elections in Ukraine. This has been demand of the Russians mainly because the Russians wish to intervene in that election. It turns out it's very difficult to hold an election in wartime conditions where literally hundreds of thousands of fighting age men are still on the front lines in Ukraine as a situation rife for election manipulation by the Russians, who of course are bordering on Ukraine and many agents inside Ukraine as well. It is also noteworthy here that if you're going call for new elections.
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Unknown D
Perhaps Russia at some point should hold, you know, an actual decent election in which Vladimir Putin does not win 98% of the vote while throwing his opponents off third story buildings. Here's a. Here's President Trump.
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Unknown B
We're hearing that Russia wants to force Ukraine to hold new elections in order to sign any kind of a peace deal. Is that something that the US Would ever support? Well, we have a situation where we haven't had elections in Ukraine.
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Unknown A
Well, we have the Russian talking point, martial law, essentially.
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Unknown B
Martial law in Ukraine.
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Unknown A
The Russian talking point where the leader.
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Unknown B
In Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating.
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Unknown A
4%. Is that even possible? Like, even if he was the most unpopular of all time, Like, I don't even know if I doubt even Yanukovych was at 4%. But okay, another Russia talking point.
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Unknown B
And where a country has been, someone.
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Unknown A
Said he's at 57%.
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Unknown B
Owen. To smithereens. When they want a seat at the table, you could say the people have to. Wouldn't the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election. That's not a Russia thing. That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also been a long time since we've had. When they want to seat at the table, you could say the people have to. When the people of Ukraine have to say, like, you know, it's been a long time since we've had an election. That's not a Russia thing. That's something coming from me and coming from many other countries also.
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Unknown A
Okay.
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Unknown D
It is not coming from many other countries. I mean, the reality is, by the way, that Vladimir Zelensky's approval rating and again, I think Zelensky has botched many things here, including his relationship with President Trump. But his approval ratings is 52%. It is not, in fact, at 4%. The election was due in May of 2024. They are currently under martial law. Again, it is very difficult to hold an election in the middle of a gigantic existential war with your much larger neighbor. And if he's talking about how the people should really sound off on whether or not they like the war, you kind of have to have it on both sides. And he's been election in Russia as well. But Trump, I think that some of this is personal. Pica Zelensky. I think that President Trump does not like Zelensky's approach to him. He doesn't like Zelensky's approach to Joe Biden.
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Unknown D
And so he's sounding off about that. And again, I don't disagree with him on how Zelensky's approached by Biden and President Trump. But when he is ripping on Zelensky in the middle of the negotiation, that obviously is going to strengthen whatever hand Vladimir Putin thinks he has to play here. Here's Trump saying that Zelensky is not getting the job done.
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Unknown B
How would you counter the perception?
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Unknown A
Because Russia's pushing for this, obviously they don't really hold true elections, that that.
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Unknown B
Would be a capitulation of some sort. How would you guard against potentially Russia installing a puppet government? And then finally, how would that new election have an impact on getting Zelensky to sign the rare earth minerals deal? Look, you have leadership and I like him personally. He's just fine, very much.
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Unknown A
That's okay. It's retarded.
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Unknown E
I spoke to you yesterday about normalcy bias, which is a fascinating psychological phenomenon from which I think we all suffer at times, not all the time, of course. I was trying to think what the opposite of normalcy bias is, and it's probably hyperbole. So normalcy bias describes a desire, a desire to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. So you are presented with something that makes you go, oh my God, that's that. And then you automatically there's some form of psychological self preservation kicks in and you start, no, it can't be that bad. I don't mean false equivalents, I don't mean BBC style. Two siding facts is Andrea Ledsom to claim that, you know, the moon is made of cheese type of balance. I mean, trying to talk yourself out of thinking, fearing, believing that what you're looking at is apocalyptic, what you're looking at is deadly serious.
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Unknown E
And of course I think the opposite of that is hyperbole, because hyperbole involves saying that something is apocalyptic and something is deadly serious when it isn't and we have to walk this tightrope together. At the moment I thought perhaps we were putting these days behind us when Keir Starmer got elected. I don't know how naive that was in retrospect, thinking that we're returning to days of relative stability and normal normality as opposed to normalcy. You're not going to have a bare faced liar in the House of Commons. I mean, you know, abandoned by his entire party, found to have lied repeatedly and then running off with his tail between his legs to the Daily Mail. You just presume there'll be stability and good God, there is, thank goodness we have somebody who, though flawed and fallible, is clearly not a pathological liar, for example, or an incurable narcissist in number 10 Downing street, or Liz Truss.
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Unknown E
I haven't got the adjective. Sorry, sue me. But you cannot for a minute underestimate the import of the moment that we find ourselves in. It's incredible. This is not a moment for worrying about hyperbole. This is a moment for worrying about normalcy bias. This is a moment where you have to try to silence the voice in your head that is saying, this is really bloody serious. Now, Donald Trump is lying on a scale that is almost impossible to compute. And he's not just lying, he is the online Kremlin propaganda made flesh. He is repeating the lines that your Auntie Doris Facebook has been serving up for the last 10 years about.
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Unknown A
Maybe I'm missing something, but can't Ukraine and Europe just ignore the US Russia peace talks, however unlikely it is? Can't Europe just fund the war itself? I mean, they can ignore it, but it's just. It's causing these rifts and schisms. And if the US was to pull out completely from funding Ukraine, I don't know if Europe would continue to support them. But, I mean, I guess that's part of what the talks are that European leaders are supposed to be having. Have they already had them or are they scheduled to have them?
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Unknown E
Ukraine being responsible for its own invasion. Remember when Farid spoke about, oh, you don't poke the Russian bear, that pro Kremlin propaganda has seeped into so many corners now of the online world that it has. Well, again with Trump, you don't know whether he is caught up in it or simply harnessing it for his own ends. But he is absolutely, as Sir Ben Wallace said this morning to Nick Ferrari, he is absolutely parroting Kremlin propaganda lines or propaganda lies, whatever you prefer. And that is incredible. That is not a moment for worrying about hyperbole that the President of the United States of America is peddling Kremlin pro Putin propaganda. It's extraordinary. Now, it's one of those mornings where I always feel like the kid in the Sixth Sense seeing dead people. I don't see links that don't exist, but I have a few stories that are not immediately, obviously relevant to what we need to talk about this morning.
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Unknown E
The first involves Elon Musk, quite briefly, because I think this is important in terms of what people do online and what people see and what people end up believing. Elon Musk reposted an image of what the Original poster said, was a hospital in Birmingham in the United Kingdom being overrun by migrants storming the premises with axes and knives. The account, which is the kind of thing that Twitter is now almost entirely dedicated to, claimed that the picture had been taken in Birmingham and that the story was buried on mainstream media. That poor woman that I eavesdropped on in Hounslow last week was adamant that the mainstream media never gives you the full story. The woman who believes that Michelle Obama is a man and that Vladimir Zelensky spends all the military aid he receives.
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Unknown A
On yachts, and that Macron's wife is a man too. That's another one. Those trans people are everywhere. Apparently.
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Unknown E
I can laugh at her. But the President of the United States of America is now signed up to exactly the same feed. So Elon Musk shares this picture, shares this claim. Mainstream media are ignoring it. Would you like to know where the footage came from? That the footage that was being described as migrants wielding axes and knives storming a hospital in Birmingham, that had been buried on mainstream media. Arma3 it is widely believed. I mean, it's clearly fake. It appears to be from the Batman film the Dark Knight Rises. So it wasn't Birmingham, it was Gotham City. It wasn't real. It was cinematic. And that's Elon Musk, arguably the second most powerful man in the world at the moment, certainly the richest, using his own propaganda machine to tell you and anybody else on that site that Birmingham hospitals are being overrun by migrants wielding knives and axes.
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Unknown E
How many people believe it? With that woman I overheard in Hounslow last week when I was on jury service. Does she believe it? I suspect she probably does.
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Unknown A
Wait, does anybody have a link to this?
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Unknown E
Then we come to the Romanian election, which is something we should probably all be reading up on rather more, because it's almost the distillation of a lot of the problems that we face. So the Romanian. The last Romanian election was annulled because when the results started coming in, two people, a chap called Kalyn or Salin, Salin Georgescu, and a woman called Elena Lasconi, were performing incredibly well, despite the fact that certainly in the first case, nobody had ever heard of them prior to the election. And this is where things get really tricky, because it was the Constitutional Court that annulled the first round Results, citing Article 50, paragraph 3 of Romania's Electoral law, which allows for annulment if significant fraud or interference likely impacts the election's outcome. And what they discovered was a slate of coordinated misinformation campaigns on social Media. But of course this was done secretly.
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Unknown E
Russian sponsored. What Elon Musk is doing now is, I mean, shrugging off any semblance of secrecy, sharing. And they do. What Faris did after he used Andrew Tate as his new source prior to last summer's riots. They say just asking questions. Just asking questions. What's going on here? Not doing the most cursory of checks to see whether this stuff is true, but spread.
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Unknown A
Wait, what? Okay, the original response was deleted. What happened here? Nothing happened. All the pictures and videos referred to in the post were confirmed as fake. No disorder took place at any hospital in Birmingham following the stomach. 16 year old boy. Images being shared on social media which claim to show people carrying weapons at a hospital are fake. Several X users were quick to flag that the image was actually a screenshot from the Dark Knight Rises, the 2012 Christopher Nolan Batman film base. Birmingham. Sorry, Birmingham.
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Unknown E
Spreading misinformation on a hideous level. Social media cyber attacks influencing public opinion in Georgescu's favor. So I've seen him described as a TikTok puppet with the Kremlin pulling all of the strings, but pulling them so effectively on TikTok with people primed to believe things that aren't true that they end up voting for him. The investigation, which of course is why a certain type of pundit and politician likes nothing more than attacking judges. Because judges are in some ways our last line of defense against dictators and fascists, against oppression. That is why judges, that is why courts decide to annul an election. Because a foreign state has clearly targeted them. They wanted a pro Kremlin candidate or even a pro Kremlin proxy in charge or in the Romanian presidency. It's not clear cut for me this. That's what the probably the single greatest flaw with democracy is that people who believe something that isn't true can win.
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Unknown E
Who just thought of Brexit. So you say it's a democrat. It's the will of the people. But it's the will of people who've been fed a diet of undiluted nonsense and lies. But democracy is the best system we've got. How we cope with democracy's vulnerability to the fact that you can have a win for liars, you can have a majority of people who believe things that aren't true. I do not know because I don't think it's ethically or even politically clean cut that the Constitutional Court in Romania should have. Should have annulled this election. But this quotes will of the people. So we pull that together. We have the Events in Ukraine unfolding. We have the events in Romania, we have the events online. We have all of these things unfolding in real time in front of us. And then you have Donald Trump overnight making it absolutely clear what his relationship with observable facts is, what his relationship with the truth is.
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Unknown E
And this is why I began this morning by talking about normalcy bias and hyperbole. Normalcy bias is a cognitive bias which leads us to believe things that aren't true because we're frightened of them being true, to disbelieve or minimize threat warnings. Hyperbole is a device we deploy best understood as exaggeration. So here is somebody saying something, oh my God, that's like Hitler. Sounds like hyperbole until it eats like Hitler. And when it is like Hitler, normalcy bias kicks in and we start trying to talk ourselves out of that grim conclusion. So just listen to it for yourself and possibly register what kicks in first. Fear of hyperbole or fear of normalcy bias?
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Unknown B
I want to see peace. Look, you know why I want. Because I don't want all these people killed anymore. I'm looking at people that are being killed and they're Russian and Ukrainian people, but they're people, doesn't matter where they're from on the whole planet. And I think I have the power to end this war. And I think it's going very well. But today I heard, oh, well, we weren't invited. Well, you've been there for three years. You should have ended it. Three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given him almost all of the land, Everything. Almost all of the land. And no people would have been killed and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down. This could have been settled very easily.
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Unknown B
Just a half baked negotiator could have settled this years ago when they're worried about not being seated. I mean, somebody that should have gone in and made a deal a long time ago, you could have made a deal. This is one that could have made a deal. There was no talk of this during the Trump administration. Putin would have never, ever done it.
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Unknown E
Quarter past ten is the time. So there it is. Donald Trump has blamed Ukraine for being invaded by Russia twice. Donald Trump has claimed that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is somehow responsible for the continuing carnage that has come about as a consequence of him defending his sovereign territory from the rapacious, imperial, murderous ambition of Vladimir Putin. It's. It's Incredible. So what question do we ask this morning? I mean, there's one in the back of my mind that I am frightened to articulate. The other element of domestic politics that pops into my brain at this moment is the mockery of Cami Badenoch. But she has clearly calculated that appealing to this radicalized online right who believe all manner of lies is going to deliver political success for her in the way that it has done for Donald Trump and may yet do for other far right, I mean, avowedly far right political movements in other European countries.
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Unknown E
When Americans tell lies about Britain, often racist lies about Britain, it's designed to scare the horses. It's to make people think, gosh, I better. Donald Trump can protect us. We won't end up like this. Even if it's not true. The thing that they're frightened of, they do it about their own country, but about foreigners in their own country. They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. And I will protect you from these marauding hordes, these foreigners. Look at what's happened in Europe. What I don't understand is how anybody who is living in Europe can join in. It is arguably the least patriotic act imaginable. When a foreign politician tells lies about your country, to agree. So when Cami Badenoch talks about Western values being imperiled, disappearing under threat, maybe she's a member of the radicalized online right. Maybe she believes all this stuff spent so long on social media that she can't even find the time to stick her head out the window and just have a little look around.
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Unknown E
But that is where we are now. And the question I don't want to ask you is whether or not it's already too late, whether or not Vladimir Putin has actually won. And Ukraine is just the final piece of the evidence. Jigsaw. Because for the president of the United States expressing disappointment that the Ukrainian leader was unhappy about being left out of talks between the US And Russia over the ending of the war in his own country. When he talks about Ukraine's ability to have made a deal in order to have somehow averted war in the very beginning, when he essentially repeats Kremlin lies about the necessity and inevitability of invading, you kind of think that it's. For one part of this board, if it were a game of risk, that's over now. The Kremlin and the White House are aligned, and yet Ukraine. Ukraine was a moment of, I'm going to say, political beauty in this country.
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Unknown E
I know that there are caveats, but forget the Caveats. Just for a minute. The effort that the people of this country, the citizenry of this country put into helping refugees. Even when the government didn't really step up to the plate very effectively, ordinary people. Ordinary people did like the Kindertransport. The government in our history doesn't often relate this, but the government was pretty delinquent when it came to helping Jewish children out of Nazi occupied Europe. But real people, families stepping up to their plate and housed and homed people. And the Ukrainian refugee exodus was, I think, possibly the biggest we've ever undertaken in this country. People listening to this program from Ukraine still living here, people listening to this program still got refugees living in their house from Ukraine. Everyone agreed it was a moment of political unity at a time when we thought such a thing had become impossible in the aftermath of Brexit, in the midst of ludicrous, conflicted culture wars, in the dog days of football ification, Ukraine was the thing we all agreed on.
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Unknown E
Putin is a menace. Ukraine deserves support. And now the President of the United States, historically our greatest ally, is saying the polar opposite. It's all Zelenskyy's fault and he's got no right to be at the peace talks, is it? You never stop fighting. You can't stop fighting. You can't look into the eyes of people like Marina Litvinenko or Vladimir Karamaza or Yulia Navalny, as I have done in the last six months, all three of them. You can't look into the eyes of those people and say, we need to stop now, we need to give up. But this is, I think, a victory for the Kremlin on a scale that we can't even begin to properly process.
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Unknown A
Yep.
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Unknown E
So what hell do I ask you at 20 past 10 on a Wednesday morning? I genuinely don't know. I know I say that a lot of mornings. My normalcy bias is preventing me from asking you whether or not it's too late. So I ask you whether it's too late. It opens the door to the possibility that you tell me that it is. And I don't want to do that because of my normalcy bias, but I said at 10 o'clock, Today's a day for ignoring the normalcy bias. You have to. You have to drown that voice out. Champagne corks are popping in the Kremlin, said my good friend Bill Browder. Who knows more?
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Unknown A
We're gonna be playing Factorio. This is my. I keep saying this is my number one fear, but there's like so many number one fears. What's Going to happen when? Because right now, the way that this is kind of being sold to us by like outer perimeter conservatives is that, well, we're gearing up for conflict with China. Okay. Russia is not our main enemy. China's our enemy. This is the China. China, the translation forever. What's going to happen when China rolls up on Taiwan and now we get excuses for why we're not supposed to do anything there? Then what was the point of anything? What, like what are we actually doing? Yeah. I don't know. Do you think someone like Asman Gold with all of his libertarian esque ideals gives any kind of about Trump saying he's the only law definer, or is he going to grip to the end as not a libertarian?
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Unknown A
I don't know nobody that. Very few people say they're libertarians or libertarians. Usually when they say libertarian, that's just like code speak for I hate the government, basically.
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Unknown E
It's not great, you know, to put a nicer spin on it. Trump tends to talk that way to his friends.
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Unknown A
Yeah.
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Unknown E
And tends to talk nicer to his enemies. So he's talking to you that way. It still means you're his friend. I might. I might. And I would always, of course, warn.
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Unknown A
People like Zelensky, just don't get into.
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Unknown E
It with, with Donald Trump. Don't get into.
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Unknown A
What's the point? What's the point? We've been backing you this whole time.
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Unknown E
We will continue to back you. But there must be a paradigm shift. And that's what President Trump brings to the table here is a paradigm shift. That's what they're attempting to do. It's not great to put a nicer spin on it.
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Unknown A
Does that mean I'm Trump's friend? Liz Cheney is Trump's friend too. How do I unfriend him then? I keep trying.
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Unknown C
Here is something that the political establishment and propaganda media don't want you to know. Ukraine's President Zelensky has just banned yet another political opposition party, one that questioned his legitimacy as president and used Ukraine's Department of Justice to mandate the seizure of this party's members assets. Now, this is just the latest of Zelensky's actions.
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Unknown A
Name reason, anything in particular, or we're just. Okay, that's cool. We're just doing. We're just doing straight Russian propaganda now from the US Department of Intelligence. That's good. Okay.
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Unknown C
To do this sort of thing. He began banning major political opposition parties in 2022 when he also started banning TV channels that were associated with his political Opponents, and he took over total control of Ukraine's largest television networks, now controlled by their government. Zelensky's presidential term ended on May 20.
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Unknown A
But he hasn't held elections. Somebody said, destiny, these people need to stop resigning in force of firing after speaking out publicly from their position. This increases their unemployment composition opportunities anyway and also creates more awareness. Now, somebody said this, and I think I agree with it. The reason why you resigned from your position is because if you don't, you could just be shuffled around in a way that is far less dramatic and doesn't have as much of the spotlight. So for instance, rather than like, like the head of a department resigning or the head of like a senior position in department resigning, you could get like, demoted and somebody could also be brought in and then you could be like, moved to kind of like more paper pushing. And then like two years later you could be fired. And it's like, nobody cares at that point.
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Unknown A
There's not as much of a statement, I understand, for the resignation. The resignation allows you to resign now in protest for potential action and with the position that you're in, to show the importance of your resignation rather than this guy's resigning who was the prosecutor head or this head of this, you know, department or whatever, like two years ago. It's probably more impactful to do your resignations this way, I think.
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Unknown C
Yeah, he canceled elections in the name of martial law, suspending Ukraine's constitution so that he could stay in power. Defenders of Zelensky will say, hey, Ukraine, Ukraine is in the middle of a war. They can't have elections. Just stop for a moment and think. If we accept that excuse or criteria for suspending the constitution and canceling elections, defenders of Zelensky will say, hey, Ukraine is in the middle of a war. They can't have elections. Just stop for a moment and think. If we accept that excuse or criteria for suspending the constitution and cancel canceling elections, then we should presume that leaders in our own country and our own establishment media will also use this same excuse and rationale when they suspend our constitution and our elections, since we too are at war with Russia and China. Okay, you think this sounds crazy? Look at what's already going on.
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Unknown C
They've already started conditioning us to accept a dictatorship by rationalizing their own use.
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Unknown A
Their own use. Is it going to be COVID lockdowns and weaponizing the DOJ against Trump? Maybe. I'm trying to think of what she's going to go with of our Department.
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Unknown C
Of Justice to target President Trump. There's that and other political enemies.
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Unknown A
Do COVID lockdowns. You got nine seconds. Just get COVID lockdowns in there. Come on. COVID lockdowns.
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Unknown C
In their efforts to stay in power.
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Unknown A
Fuck, she's not going to. And then there's also this, because, remember, Trump can say no wrong. And we're supposed to treat it all as a joke or a meme, but, like, are we not, like, so, long live the king from the White House. Yeah. Imagine if Obama posted this. True. Lastly, we have another executive order that President Trump signed relating to independent agencies. This executive order would establish important oversight.
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Unknown D
Functions in the Office of Management and.
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Unknown A
Budget and its subsidiary office oira, supervising.
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Unknown D
Independent agencies and many of their actions, and also reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the Attorney General can speak for the United States when.
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Unknown A
Stating an opinion as to what the law is. That is a very, very, very funny statement to make. I don't know. I doubt it's intentional. Or maybe it is, I don't know. But I'm so curious. I want to read the Supreme Court decision so much because that statement absolutely flies in the face of the. What was the name of the Supreme Court case that overturned? Chevron. Chevron overturned Supreme Court. Was it Loper. Oh, maybe I wasn't taking notes here when we read that one. This gets into weird constitutional law, okay? To give it. To give a quick refresher for anybody that gives a fan. What the Chevron doctrine said essentially was, let's say Congress passes a law and Congress passes a law saying we. We're going to pass a law giving the federal government the. The executive branch the right to regulate the epa, to regulate carbon.
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Unknown A
To regulate carbon dioxide out of the air. Okay? When the federal government gets that, maybe it can be read in such a way that's like, okay, well, the air. Well, does the air count as the air inside the buildings as well? Or does air just mean, like, outside? When it said in the air, like, does the EPA have the right to regulate levels in your House? Well, there was this doctrine called the Chevron doctrine. Actually, I think it should be listed in here. And it was called the two step Approach. Basically, what it said was the first question is, did Congress tell you exactly what to do? And so if they. Well, did Congress specify, do they mean error inside the house and outside the house or not? Well, Congress did specify. So that was the first step. Okay? And then. Now if Congress did say, then you have to do what Congress says.
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Unknown A
Okay? But then in the case which the statute was silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, then there was a second step. And the second step was as long as the government offered a permissible construction of the statute. So let's say the government looks at and they're like, okay, well when the EPA gives us the ability to regulate the error, they obviously didn't mean inside people's homes. That'd be like kind of goofy. So we're gonna say that for the purposes of how we're gonna interpret this statute, we're gonna say that the air is just the stuff outside the homes. Okay? And that was the reading of the law. Okay? So this was the Chevron two step doctrine. All right? Now the issue that the Supreme Court had with this is generally when you're trying to interpret what a law means, or when you're trying to interpret what a law, what is the law?
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Unknown A
What is the law? That is the exclusive providence of the courts. And so the Supreme Court is looking at this and like, excuse me, if you read Gorsuch's concurrence in this, especially the Supreme Court's look at this, excuse me, statutory interpretation, meaning how do we divine, like what is the law that's being said here? Right? Or construction. Constructing federal rules from the, from the judicial, from. I'm sorry, from Congress. That's not a thing that you guys are just allowed to do and have the final say on. This is ultimately in the purview of the courts. It's not enough to say that there are permissible constructions of rules from statutes. In fact, it is the case that there is only one permissible construction and it's what the court says that permissible construction is. So the Chevron, this Loper case, in getting rid of Chevron, even though people get mad because they like Chevron, for whatever reasons, this was actually taking power, maybe a little bit of power away from Congress, quite a bit of power away from the executive and giving more power to the judiciary.
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Unknown A
It was the Supreme Court reasserting and saying we are the last say on what the law is. That was the big deal with this Loper case. Why I say big deal, but this is what overturned Chevron. So it's interesting the language used here. Now maybe it's just they just use whatever words because whatever the fucking, it's not like, and I'm thinking through like legalese or whatever, but.
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Unknown D
Can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to that.
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Unknown A
Only the President or the Attorney General.
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Unknown D
Can speak for the United States when.
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Unknown B
Stating an opinion as to what the law is. Thank you very.
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Unknown A
So that. That flies in the face of. That flies in the face of Loper. It's loper, right? That's how you pronounce it. I feel like Democrats weren't very happy about them overturning Chevron, but this feels like a good thing given Trump's executive. I honest to God, I see Chevron going both ways. I don't really think it's as big of a deal as people said it was. I wonder if I said it was a huge deal. I feel like it just wasn't that big of a deal. Like, I think that there's a strong argument that if Congress wants something regulated better, then Congress can write a more specific law, which they've done. We actually, we saw that happen. Remember when I debated. I'm gonna call him PF Chang, but that's the fucking Asian restaurant. Oh, PF Young. Like I said, this is when I debated PF Young over the.
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Unknown A
There was a video that we watched with Vivek and Lex and. Oh, no, was it Vivek? I think it was Vivek. And Vivek was talking about how the. The federal government banned cooking classes because they wanted to get rid of weapons in school or whatever. Right. Well, when we actually saw why the federal government was pulling funding from schools that were offering cooking classes, it's because Congress passed a law that said, any class at all that has you teaching how to use anything that is a weapon, and then that was defined statutorily somewhere else. You're not allowed to fund that. And Congress read it, and the statute included, like, all sharp objects. It's like, okay, well, fuck, that's what we got to ban. Sorry. That's what Congress said. But once Congress saw that, now a bunch of them, virtue signaled, and they're like, oh, we can't believe that the government's doing this.
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Unknown A
It's horrible. What they did was Congress passed an amendment to that law and they said, we are going to make an exception in the cases of, like, cooking classes and archery or whatever else. Right? Oh, okay. So in an ideal world, like, that's probably okay, right? Congress passed a law. It was a little bit vague. The executive branch interpreted it one way, and then Congress didn't like that. So then they inter. So then Congress passed, like, an updated amendment to change the. The way that the federal government was going to enforce it. So, like, that was fine. It might have been archery classes, but it included, like, cooking classes and shit as well. So couldn't the agency just dispute to SCOTUS when they disagree with the doj. So this EO has no effect. I don't know what you mean. Agency. I don't know if agencies.
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Unknown A
I don't know how an agency can disagree with the doj. I don't know. This would be a good pisco question. I don't know where we're at. I need other. I need other lawyers, too. We need more than just Pisco. As a lawyer, I don't know how the executive branch is supposed to resolve disagreements inside of itself. I don't know if this is a question historically that's asked very much. Yeah, I just, I don't know. Because the issue is that, like, when it comes to legal enforcement. Right. Like if you're disputing, like an employment thing, there's, there's processes for that. That's an easy thing. But if you want to, like, take legal action against somebody in the executive branch, I just. It's hard because the executive branch is the branch that takes legal action. Right. Remember, theoretically, there's a world where the executive branch is really all just, you know, helping the President do his job.
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Unknown A
Well, how would you sue yourself is kind of what you're asking a little bit now? I mean, I guess it's already kind of happening. I guess. Yeah. I don't know. It's weird. Yeah, it's weird. Like the head of the agency would have to get external representation and sue the federal government. Yeah, but that, yeah, that's just, it's just, it's a very weird. I mean, no, I guess because these are all civil cases, so maybe it's not that weird, but it's kind of weird. It's just very strange. Yeah. One thing that I keep showing up or that I keep seeing that shows up over and over again that you guys shouldn't get scared about. And everybody's getting scared about this. I keep seeing this. I should save Reddit threads that I see on my phone. A court, a court refused a TRO that would have, I think, limited Doge's ability to cut, to cut jobs or something.
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Unknown A
Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Hold on, let me see if I did I save this on my account. You should reach Chevron, I think. Think we did back when we covered Loper, I think. Oh, yeah, it was this judge denies Democrat led effort to block Doge aspect. Or I'm sorry, to block Doge ass access, citing lack of proven harm. Okay, so we've done enough. Okay, we've done enough legalese on the stream now we can kind of understand it okay, this headline is pretty doomer. Okay, so the Democrats are trying to block DOGE aspect or trying to block DOGE access to systems. And they couldn't even prove, according to the judge list, they couldn't even prove that there was harm there. And it sounds like the judge denied the Democrats the ability to do this. Right. However, what the judge denied here was a temporary restraining order.
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Unknown A
You have to understand, TROs are like, they're very, very, very, very, very difficult to get because a TRO is basically asking. Remember, judges are not supposed to rule on fact. All judges do is facilitate the procedural order of things and then make rules based decisions. They're not there to determine whether or not one side is innocent or guilty or who's lying or who's not. That's not in the purview of a judge's job. That's what a jury is supposed to do, or a judge in a bench trial, somebody brings it up on Ipvanu or not. A bench trial. Is it a bench trial when the judge sits instead of a jury? The. When you're getting a temporary restraining order, you're asking the judge to already take preemptive measures on the merit of what you're filing. You're asking the judge to say, listen, I know that you ordinarily don't decide who wins, Elizabeth, but I want you to look at this for real.
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Unknown A
Do you think I have a good chance of winning? And if the judge looks at it and the judge is like, it's a pretty good chance of you succeeding on the merits. And there's two parts to this, not just one. It's not just that you'll win. And if the court doesn't take preemptive action to block, to enjoin the actions of the defendants in the case, then the plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm, harm that cannot be remedied in any other course after a trial. So for a TRO to be granted, that's two different things that have to be met. There's a very, very, very high threshold. It's very rare to meet these. That's why it was so exceptional when it was met in some of the other cases. So the fact that it got turned down here doesn't speak at all to like, well, does that mean that this whole case is bullshit or that they're never going to, that they're never going to succeed or that they can't even prove any harm?
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Unknown A
No, no, no. It's that they couldn't prove irreparable harm would occur if the Judge didn't. In a preliminary fashion block or enjoin, meaning to stop the defendants from doing some action. That's what this means. So when you say headlines like this, this is kind of. This is written in a antagonizing manner. It's not technically true. Right. I think she had issue with how broad of restrictions they wanted, and they weren't specific about what harms or something. Sure. And that could be an issue. You're. What am I thinking? I'm thinking the term narrowly tailored, but that has to do with standard of review cases. It would be. But I don't know if. I don't want to use the phrase narrowly tailored, because that implies something else, I think. But what you're asking for has to be very limited in terms of, like, these are the exact things.
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Unknown A
Like, you can't. You couldn't enjoin them from doing everything. Right. Like, I want to tarot against this guy for breathing because I think that he might, like, be mean to me or whatever. Like, you have to be quite specific. I think Destiny. I don't know. I feel like the threshold for this should be met when some random guy who's not in any official position is firing employees of the government. No. Are you going to rehire every single one of them after. Well, I don't. Well, it depends on what they were asking for here. Keep in mind that you're in, like, a weird world, too, legally, where. Because Trump has actually been a little bit more careful in talking about this. Doge isn't actually firing anybody. It's Trump that's firing them with Doge's recommendation. Now, even. Even that's not technically legal. But what could happen is Doge, like, this would be legal.
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Unknown A
Doge makes a recommendation to the president, the president makes that recommendation to his executive head or his department head, and then the head carries out those firings. That would technically be a legal process. Now, is that actually happening? In some cases, it doesn't seem to be the case. That's why you've got people who are resigning and stuff. But in other cases, it could be the case. Yeah, if that makes sense. Does lack of proven harm potentially mean that there hasn't been tangible harm yet to be seen? No, no, no, no. For a tro, it's not just harm, irreparable harm, meaning. I can't even think of an example. Let's say somebody is suing somebody, and a person is, like, mining stone out of a quarry, and they're taking, like, 100 blocks of stone a day, and the quarry is like a billion blocks. Like, maybe a judge doesn't do a TRO here because the judge is like, listen, you're probably going to win this case.
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Unknown A
And we do even agree that they're harming you. But, like, if you win, you can just ask for it all back. It's not a big deal, right? It's not like we have to come in and block them beforehand. You know, it has to be irreparable harm for a tiara, I believe. Do you think there's a world where the courts are just too slow to deal with this full muzzle velocity attempt to break and take over our government? So, oh, man, these are two things. I don't know what has to happen or who you guys have to email, but I need people. I need people to talk about these two things. I need these to be more proliferated in the media. The first is my checks and balances. Take that. The checks and balances don't work when the executive doesn't want to play ball. There are no checks and balances at that point.
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Unknown A
Just to be clear. Checks and balances are still assuming everybody's playing by the rules, number one. The second take. The second take is. Fuck. Does anybody have a link to that, to the interview on. Was it the BBC with the icj? Ex President head? Does anybody know what I'm talking about? She has a really good explanation here that more people needed to understand internationally when it came to the ICJ in Israel. And when people are talking about domestic cases right now in the United States of America, okay? Courts are not meant to save you. Courts are not meant to save you. That's what the executive is for, okay? If somebody's trying to break in your house, you do not call the court to help you. All right? If somebody is stealing from you, you don't call the court to keep them from stealing from you.
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Unknown A
If somebody's going to come and kill you, you don't call the court. You might call the court to try to get like a temporary restraining order, which is an exceptional thing, but it's ultimately the executive that comes to save you. Right now, people in the United States of America, they're looking for the courts to save us from the overreach of the executive. But the issue is that a court is just there to make you whole generally after somebody's already done a bad thing. That's why a temporary restraining order, which you get into, you can file for and hopefully get a preliminary injunction. These are exceptional things. These aren't the norm. These are exceptional preliminary injunctions, temporary restraining orders, and even stays. Maybe not as much say, but the TRO's and the preliminary injunctions, these are exceptional measures that a court is taking against an alleged offender.
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Unknown A
Against an alleged. Well, not an alleged undefended. So people that are looking for the courts to stop the executor from doing all their bad things, that's scary because it's an improper. In my opinion, it's an improper desire or hope to utilize the court in an active, preventative manner when that's not really what courts are designed to do. So people are gonna get mad that maybe the courts aren't moving fast enough, like they're trying to get expedited on a preliminary injunction. It'll always be like an expedited hearing record, I think, because they want to get those done real quick. But like, people might be mad that the courts aren't fast enough. The courts aren't serious. Courts can't really save you. That's not even really their job. That's just a thing to, to keep in mind. And I wish more people would remember this. The court can't save you.
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Unknown A
And checks and balances only exist insofar as everybody's willing to play by the rules. Can U.S. politics rebound without an unhinged arc from the left? Or restore order or civility politics dead? I've seen more left centric conspiracies, but I can't tell if it's just Russia astroturfing. It's probably both. But there is a serious problem right now in the United States. And how many people are supporting the actions right now of the Conservative Party Party? So who is the one that should be doing the saving then? I mean, what should be happening is the executive should never act in a manner where they think they're the sole determiners of law. That's what should be happening. But if the executive decides that they can't do that or they don't want to do that, then ideally, at the very least, you force them to be more open about it, meaning they lose all support from Congress.
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Unknown A
But the problem right now is that we don't just have. We don't just have an. Here's. This is the problem too. We don't just have an unhinged executive, and we don't just have an unhinged Congress. And by Congress, I mean Republicans. We have an unhinged Republican voter base. Because if Congress wanted like this would be a really easy thing. Let's assume that Trump and his admin, let's say that Trump and the Trump administration, those are the only crazy people. If that was the case, oh, that's easy. Then we impeach him in Congress. Boom. Let's say that we impeach him. Oh, but he doesn't leave. Okay. Fuck. Then the military goes and removes him. Whatever. That's like. That's easy at that point. If all of Congress and the American people are supporting Congress and they impeach Trump and Trump doesn't leave office, then it, then the military goes in or whatever.
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Unknown A
But the, the issue is that the Congress, the Republicans in Congress aren't moving to do that because the American people seem to be supporting Trump still. So people keep asking. Sometimes this is actually a criticism I gave, I think multiple years ago. People keep saying, how do we change the system right now? Because the system seems to be broken. And I've said this over and over again, the system's not broken. It's just accurately representing the will of the American people. And the will of the American people right now. Prior to this was very divided. And now it's like authoritarian. Right. People always assume, and I guess we're seeing it more and more in the, in the book that we're reading for the rise in the coming of the Third Reich, the first. The first part of the trilogy. The issue is that if, if, if half your country wants an authoritarian leader, there's no system that you can install.
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Unknown A
There's no system that you can design to prevent that from happening. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the founders intended for Congress to go against the will of the people in times like this. I think that was the original intention of the Electoral College to provide a safeguard against an incompetent leader being voted in. Nah, the Electoral College has not nothing to do with Congress. I haven't. Listen, I only got. I only read like 26 of the Federalist Papers. Maybe we'll go back to reading more of them, but I don't know if Congress ever is supposed to go against the will of the people. You could argue that electors, when they vote for president, were supposed to be doing it in a different manner, but we're past that. That's not our issue right now. Why does the executive get the power of the veto?
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Unknown A
Does it not imply the ultimate legislative role? It's just to create a lot of gridlock. It's just to ensure that if legislation passed in our system, that there is a huge consent of the people in all ways for it to pass, basically.