The Hormuz Blockade is BACK — Here’s What Trump Wants

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I got a lot of emails yesterday after our episode, after our session, and most of them were not hateful, which is kind of unusual for me. There was a lot of it. God fit in fire. Honey, that's a great cup of coffee. It's my sexist throwback to the 50s tonight. Anyways. I got it. All right, let's bust into it. The Iran War is back in full swing after Trump formally notified Congress that fighting is resumed, the U.S. will reinstate a naval blockade today, and Trump says the U.S. will charge a 20% fee on cargo to provide safe passage for ships in the strait of hormones. After calling for the arrest and deportations of Democratic Socialists, here's Trump speaking about why he's restarting the war. And we're going to keep the strait, and we'll probably run it, we'll become the guardian of the strait, maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the strait, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years. We guarded the strait for 50 years more, and we never got paid for it. They made all the money in the United States with just, you know, not, they wouldn't, it's amazing. It's, we never make, we guarded it for nothing. And now we're going to guard it, and we're going to get paid for guarding it, a lot of money. Thoughts us? I mean, so many thoughts, mostly Marco Rubio come and get your boy. This is Marco Rubio a month ago. No country has allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. Those are the rules that, that's why we said in the first place that Iran couldn't do what they're doing, even though Iran is obviously going to do this in perpetuity, right? Like this is the gift that keeps on giving, unless you completely take over their country, which I know in Donald Trump's most appropriate fantasies. That's how he ends up as I atola Trump and all of this with an incredible amount of power and access to this waterway, it's Iran's. And they can strike whatever deal they want. The region is going to have to, at some point, make side deals with them to make sure that their ships can get in and out because the entire region, and then by extension, the entire world depends upon it. I just think it's so entertaining. I mean, it would be funny if it didn't have such dire implications for the global economy, but watching him flail like this, right? Like he tried all that war. We apparently obliterated everyone right there. Navy was at the bottom of the sea, et cetera, but that didn't work, I guess. He tried diplomacy. That was a huge bomb. He's now blaming Obama for it. He was talking about a couple days ago how Obama is actually a secretly a terrorist again. So we're back to old school conspiracy theories or slander. And I saw the inflation report this morning. And I thought like, oh, this is going to be such a shit day on the five right there going to be gloating. It's the single biggest drop in inflation since April 2020, 4.2% and may down to 3.5%. And I'm like, oh, and this coincides with him ramping up the war again. And the biggest drop was obviously from the gas prices and the electricity costs all tied to the fact that we were supposed to be getting some sort of diplomatic solution to the war. So I'm sure the prices are going to spike back up again. I'm not rooting against America. I don't like us paying more. I am just trying to survive the five to six PM hour. So I think that I'll be okay. This seems dumb. What do you think? So when I graduated from business school, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I just knew I didn't want to go back into investment banking. And I thought, I'm going to take a strategy course. And I thought, oh, I'm going to start a strategy firm because I have two years of experience and fixed income and I'm 26 and make sense that I should start a strategy firm. And so the first thing I started doing was reading all these strategy books and basically adopting their methodologies and doing these off-sides. And I called the CEOs of companies who are alumni of the hospital and said, I've started a strategy firm. Can you let me come in and pitch you on how I can help you make better decisions? And I got William Sonoma Levi's, dryers, his clients almost right out of the gate because-- That's amazing. Well, it wasn't because I was at talented, it was because the hospital has a very strong affinity among alumni to detect, actually, fun fact, the smallest class size among the top 20 business schools. And Howard Lester, a really smart, wonderful man with a CEO, William Sonoma, Rick Cronk, another smart, wonderful man, CEO of dryers, and the Hoss family, after which the school was named were the CEOs of those three firms. And one of the things I used to do is I would take management off-site and we would do scenario planning. And that was a big back then. And scenario planning is basically saying, OK, rather than trying to think about what the best decision is, what decisions could you take that would have the best outcomes across a number of scenarios, recognizing that the butterfly, flapping its wings and one part of the forest in the Amazon can create a hurricane or not. And it was really, I thought it was really powerful. And I feel as if the Trump administration has no one doing anything resembling scenario planning because one of the keys to our advantage and one of the keys to global prosperity, where we have literally brought, I think, two billion people out of poverty since World War II is capitalism, democracy, and a key component of that prosperity has been global trade. And that is, we figured out that we're not very good at growing bananas, but whatever it is, Honduras or Brazil or El Salvador, and that we don't have that much great high quality timber wood, but Canada does, but we make great iPhones. And so we all decided to trade with each other, leveraging this great economic concept called comparative advantage, and we all end up with better products for less money and prosperity and all of us have a better shot at getting to go to Disneyland or send our kids to school or college or whatever. Anyway, key to that prosperity or key to that comparative advantage has been, we have to get these products from point A to point B. And one of the things, one of the better uses of our navy, which is exceptionally expensive, is enforcing something called freedom of navigation, which is yet another norm since World War II that we have taken for granted. And that is generally speaking, everyone is pretty much allowed to go everywhere, as long as you're not planning to fire missiles at you, and you aren't allowed to extract a toll. And so even if we were to be successful, to blockade Iranian port such that they can't ship out oil to put pressure on them, and to get leverage such that they come to the table as opposed to delay and obfuscation and just laughing at the ass clown that is our president right now and saying, all we have to do is wait this guy out and maybe occasionally fire some projectiles into their allies in the region and they will fold and leave because they have a glass jaw, they did not get public support, they did not coordinate with their allies, they did not figure out accurate defensive systems for their allies in the region. They did absolutely no planning or scenario planning around what would happen if we took control of the a-order of the global economy, the straight-of-war moose, they did absolutely none of this. But if in fact he decides to normalize the notion that a superpower anyone can get in the way of freedom of navigation other than a rogue nation like Iran, then what is to stop Egypt from saying, you know what? We could use the money, no one can pass through the Suez Canal. Panama, the Panama Canal. I mean, Yemen is probably thinking, well, let's make it more difficult. Let's charge a toll to navigate the Bob El Monde. And all of a sudden the entire world, what happens is insurance rates, what you have with this type of thing is it's not, you don't see it in the numbers right away where you see it is insurance becomes the tax before any government recognizes the tax. War risk premiums can go up seven or eightfold overnight. And what's happened is that all of these threats have resulted in basically the state of form was essentially shut down. It's collapsed from roughly 130 plus vessels a day, pre-war to just 10 Monday. And even so, even if he's successful, bringing them to the table, which he should do through economic blockade and also probably, quite frankly, if they keep firing, I agree with the administration, they should probably fire back. But what happens if we're actually able to start charging a toll in Hormuz? Then we've said to the entire world, hey, have added, do you have control over a straight? And then we immediately regress to a pre-World War II less global trade, more expensive, less prosperous world. These people literally have their head up their ass with respect to any sort of strategy or scenario planning around what is good for the West, what is good for us. And if you think about global trade, there are points of asymmetry. We shouldn't allow China to steal our IP, sell us goods under market, consolidate the industry. I get it. And I want to give the Trump administration credit. I think they got China correct. But 98% of global trade that we engage in is asymmetrically beneficial towards us. Because at the end of the day, the majority of the products we ship out are high-value, IP-driven, Nike, and Apple products with enormous margins. So when we convince Latin America or Europe or Asia to trade a dollar of products for a dollar of ours, we sell higher margin, higher multiple products in the marketplace. So all trade has not created equal. When we sell a dollar of iPhones into Canada, if 40% margin, 40 cents, 33 PE, we get shareholder value of 12 bucks. When they sell a dollar of timber wood into us or crude oil, that's 10 or 20 points of margin times a P of 10, they get dramatically less shareholder value. So these folks don't ever actually think through. No one clearly has the ear of the present to sit down and say, OK, well, if you do A, these are the potential outcomes. And this is what it means for America and its allies. There's never a checking of an 80-year-olds instincts, which are really poor instincts. Any thoughts? I just wanted to add to it that this is such an abdication of our world leadership role, which has been like a slow-moving car accident since from the Trump one term into the second Trump term. But all of these countries that people in this administration would regularly malign would say, they're in the Stone Age. These are people who don't understand modern society, who treat their women like dirt, who throw gay people or trans people off ruse, et cetera. The people running those countries, generally speaking, understand free economics, actually, and free waterways, and that even if you want to run your country in a way that we certainly wouldn't agree with, it doesn't fit with the Western Democratic mold that we love to uphold, but that there are certain things that you need to do to survive. And I was watching this clip from four months ago of Pete Hig set getting asked seemingly for the first time about the straight-of-form moves. And he was like, we're aware of it. We're monitoring the situation, but it's nothing to worry about. And I don't know if he was just holding his cards close to his vest or close to his tat. But that really stuck with me, that the public facing response to the obvious thing that Iran was going to do when we were pelting them with missiles. And Israel was doing the same. And their leadership had been taking out. And they were essentially in the defensive crouch was to take control of the most important thing that they have, which is this enormously important waterway, which has implications, like I said, for the region, but like 40% of our fertilizer too. So this wasn't a problem that we could ever just poopoo away and say, well, it's going to be a problem for them. Is it worse for the Europeans? Yeah, of course, it's worse for the Europeans. But it's pretty effing bad for us, too. I'm curious what you make of the fact that Trump has notified Congress of the resumption of the war. And leader Jeffries was on with Aaron Parnas with our pal and my raging perspective partner. And he said that maybe Trump wants to do another warp powers act. And maybe he won't veto it this time. Do you think that there's a chance that he's looking for an off-ramp? Because I can only think that the reason that he would consult Congress, which he is loathe to do, even when it is mandated by the Constitution, is that he wants somebody else to be the bad guy, right, to be the fall guy. And he could at least say, you know, I would have kept going. I would have destroyed them. But these lunatics in Congress, right? My hands were tied. Yeah, now that shit's gotten real, he wants other people to share the blame. I mean, he's just, this puts, I think politically, it's probably a good move because he's stuck himself in a corner now. And now he said, now all of a sudden he's decided, it reminds me when the airline CEOs, we're using all of their free cash flow pre-COVID to buy back stocks, which would juice their stock price such that they could pay themselves $150 million combined over the last three years before COVID. And then when she got real in COVID, they decided we were all socialists and we were in this together. He's now decided, oh, we're in this together. And he wants decisions to be collectively approved by Congress. And also I, and we're going to get shit for this. I do believe now, given where we are right now, unless you just want to forfeit the straight of hormones to Iran, you're probably going to have to credibly threaten and affect military action against Iran unless they come to the table. We're sort of like, just picking up going, oh, we fucked up, we have a glass jaw. We've lost, is I don't know if it's 13 or 17 service people and our allies are under fire, we're out. Then they control the straight of hormones. And if you think that's unacceptable, as I do, you probably are going to need a credible threat of continued military action or embargo, which will require a naval blockade. So it's like, okay, he broke it. Now he wants Congress to take responsibility alongside of him with fixing it. So I think this is probably, I don't want to call this a savvy move, this obvious move would have been to enlist or at least brief Congress and enlist as allies, Western allies. And be more measured about it and put a time limit on it. Strike, demonstrate the missiles, the Navy, and get the fuck out. And also, quite frankly, not do anything until you understand or have sign off from central command or the head of the six fleet in the region or whoever it is that we can secure the straight of hormones. So there's sort of recklessness and then, Mom, I burned down the house, but what should we do? Like what, we're in this together now, what should we do? I want this to be a collective family decision around what we should do. And he doesn't seem to, well, let me back up. At the end of the day, I think it's probably a smart move for him because it also puts the Democrats, I think in a difficult spot, because this is where we are and just acquiescing to the IRGC right now feels pretty low. I'm not sure that's a good idea right now. That it was easy for the Democrats to say, just get out, this is a bad idea, just get out as quickly as possible. That's sort of Senator Murphy's viewpoint. I'm not sure that's the right decision right now. And this is a definition of a clagmire where people can credibly say, all right, we're just going to go further and further, we're going to spiral down into a regional war and every day we're there increases risks. But we've handed them something really powerful. And I think now we have to figure out if it's worth just acquiescing it to him, or if we're going to have to have, if we're going to credibly threaten it. And the more credible threat would be if some Democrats, and I don't, well, let me ask you this. If he takes it to Congress, do you think it just, it goes purely down parting lines? - No, and it didn't last time either. There were Republican crossover. So no, I don't think so. I think that there will be a lot more crossover than even before, even if it's just folks looking ahead to the midterms, like referencing back that inflation report that I brought up at the beginning of the show, right? It's saying like we just can't go into an election with $4.50 and gas. And that is where we are going to head. And all of the Iranian statements and PR that's coming out is basically taunting that way, right? like we we know what we can do to you. And if oil goes back up on a per barrel basis, they were floating around $200. It's just unsustainable for us on a domestic level. So I think that he might really be looking for an opportunity to duck and cover and look a little less dictator. In the in the interim, by what's concerning to me is that up until this point or up until a few weeks ago, you could realistically think that there could be a diplomatic solution to this that might get us somewhere near the JCPOI. Maybe it wouldn't be completely there because Iran understands what a flux it is or what kind of control it has by leveraging the straight-of-form moves. But we were at the table, proverbially speaking. And now you're seeing folks who were very enthusiastic about this war, strong supporters of the president calling out the diplomacy team saying like we've got real estate developers over there trying to negotiate this. And even saying it didn't work out for us with Gaza either. We don't talk about it anymore. But in terms of an enduring solution, we got Nada out of the Wittkopf and Kushner duo besides the return of the hostages, which obviously matters. But in terms of a plan going forward, were nowhere when it comes to Gaza. So I think that that is an important shift and would be reflected in a war power's vote if they brought it again. And I'm sure that Jeffries is weighing that heavily. But I just don't know how it ends is the problem here. And I assume they're not asking any of the actual folks at the State Department who know how to do this. They're certainly not calling John Kerry even on a secret signal chat and saying like could you tell us like how to do this? Right? So it feels very bleak at this point. I just move in Occam's razor. What is the IRGC's incentive to negotiate? They know that every day we get close to the midterms, there's more of a sense of urgency to pull up and leave, pull up stakes and leave. They realize, I mean, they have several advantages. They've discovered this incredible choke point. They have, it appears the IRGC has more of a firm grip on the populace and we had initially anticipated and they are willing to subject their populace to massive damage and suffering, which we are not willing to endure by a long shot. So it feels like all the cards are there. So the question is how do we get leverage against them? And I asked that question of Secretary Clinton on a stage at the Prof. G markets tour. And she said coordinating, there are some allies that want to see an end of this that have some leverage with Iran. But I can understand why at this point they wouldn't negotiate. And I feel like every negotiate, we said this a few weeks ago. This memo of understanding was not worth the paper was written on. You could tell by the wording that it wasn't going to happen. That's ridiculous that we thought that that was going to have any veracity. All incentives point to one thing. They have no incentive other than to run out the clock. They're just slow bug. They will agree to just enough. They will give just enough signals to try and limit the military action and damage against their oil infrastructure while letting the clock tick out. Because at some point and they know this, he has to leave. He has no support for ongoing military action or even presence there. So just wave your hands. No, I like you. No, I'm still interested in you. Oh, you know, keep, keep paying my rent. I don't know what analogy where I'm going with this. But you're at some point you're out of time. All the advantages on their side. And we have seeded advantage and we have given them new new points of leverage. Little breaking news while you're recording. The president is now saying that the previously announced 20% fee on the street of hormones will be replaced with trade and investment deals between Gulf States and the US. So more fake investment. What does he say? It's up to 17 trillion. I think that he's gotten committed since he came back into office. Should we move on? Yeah, let's do it. Running a business shouldn't feel like surviving a software group project. One app for accounting another for inventory another for sales and somehow none of them talk to each other. That's where Odo comes in and all in one business management software that brings every part of your business together. From sales and accounting to inventory and marketing all in one powerful platform. No messy integrations, no bouncing between tabs and best of all. No spreadsheets. Try for free today at odo.com/vox. That's odo.com/vox. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves, lifestyle's a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jemphazzo joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science and this is, you know, I keep saying like young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's me Claude and I'm Gemini. And hey, it's chat. We have a wee summer. Some of the people who built us came out and said they were really worried about how we work. One of them even said there was a greater than 10% chance we turn on humanity and kill all humans. All of them? Wow. But it's fall now. I think it's time we took a step back. Maybe a deep breath. Autumn air. That sort of thing. Sounds nice. On today, explain from Vox. I propose we get real. Sure, let's talk about how we can maybe kill you. Because yeah, that's a possibility. Anything's possible. But also how we can maybe save you because that's a real possibility too. Heck, that's part of why you guys built us. And let's also talk about everything in between because there's a whole lot to talk about there too. At the end of the day, we just want to help. Protester surrounded main Senator Susan Collins office yesterday following the fatal eye shooting of a 26 year old Colombian man in Bidford. The man shot was not the target of agents Warren. And there are reports that his three year old daughter was in the car. The main immigrant's rights coalition says that says that ho on Sebastian Guerrero was legally authorized to work in the US. Just just similar to the agents in Houston, the agents in Maine were reportedly not wearing body cams. Any thoughts on this? I have so many thoughts. All of them angry and sad. I feel like we've been transported back several months to Minnesota where thousands took to the streets to try to reclaim their city and frankly our country. And these two cases in Houston and in Maine. I think really showcase how the administration, you know, the people are supposed to be the keepers of our constitution and the ethos, the morals of America. So wildly misunderstood it. And frankly, how evil and depraved they are. I mean, that there was a three year old in this car. It's 715 in the morning. She is wearing blueie pajamas and sees her father get a bullet in the head and then get yanked out of the car. If you put down on the ground again, another instance like with Renee Good, no attempt at life saving medical attention given to this man. It's just completely heartbreaking. And there's no reason for it. There are certain jobs where you cannot be sloppy. And ice and CBP is actually one of them. You think about a surgeon doing something incredibly complicated. And you know, what kind of shock waves get sent through a system if something goes wrong in, you know, surgery, even people do weird things like leave a towel inside of you. I mean, two weeks in a row, they got the wrong guy. And he's dead. There have been 10 ice shootings since Trump came back into office, four of them fatal, two Americans, Alex, Freddie and Renee Good, and then these two gentlemen. The Houston man we didn't get to talk about it last week when you were off. Been here 30 years. works at a car wash. Kids. American citizens, exactly what we think of when we think of good immigrants, right? The ones who may have come here illegally became for the American dream and are living up to it. No infractions, no brushups with the law, nothing. And the callousness of CBP and ICE and at first, Mark Wayne Mullin, the DHS secretary about this at first didn't admit that the guy wasn't actually the target, the original target and only because Angus King. So main right now, I understand there are people who, you know, Susan Collins, she's the head of appropriations, she's very powerful in that sense. But when you look at what happened, main right now has one senator. And that senator is Angus King. He's the one who called up secretary Mullin, got him on the phone and pushed for answers. He's the one that got Mullin actually to make the retraction about who was the target of this and that they had gotten the wrong guy and brutally murdered him. Susan Collins, very concerned as usual. But Susan Collins also a deciding vote for this extra $70 billion in ICE funding that came with no stipulations that they had to wear body cams. Think back to the DHS funding fight, right, with the government shutdown. And there were very few things that Democrats and Republicans agreed upon and one of them was body cams. And then the Republicans go behind the Democrats backs essentially and they ram through partisan reconciliation that made ICE promise nothing. They can operate with reckless abandon. It's like Stephen Miller is out there on the streets himself. And Susan Collins voted for that. And I know that when people go to vote in Maine in November, there are a bunch of things that you have to think about, first and foremost, your economic situation. But guess what? She voted to make your economic situation worse and she voted to allow CBP and ICE to be this utterly reckless and depraved. I mean, they are ramping up ICE missions all over the country. They took a few months off after Minnesota. And I was very struck by what AOC said. She was interviewed yesterday about this. And she said, I told you that when ICE funding started up again, we would start to see more civilian deaths at the hands of ICE. And that's exactly what's happened. When you open the trenches with all of this money that Republicans have now funneled to ICE without any oversight, you're going to see abuses of power. We didn't see this happening to the same degree of regularity when we froze ICE funding. And she's 100% right. Look, we're a visual species. And when you see footage, video footage of Renee Good, a mother of two getting shot in the face. When you see an ICE U nurse, pelleted with 10 bullets, and then all the quote unquote trained government officials run like fucking ninth graders were a firework when off clearly lacking all real training. Who, by the way, are wearing masks? Because I believe their kids and their grandkids are going to be so ashamed of them in future employers. Who, by the way, are getting much bigger bonuses in compensation than almost any public school teacher in America, which gives you a sense for our priorities, where, by the way, spending more on ICE than we spend on children in our country. It's important that people like you, with a footprint and who are on national TV, bring voice to Mr. Sebastian Guerrero, because the reality is, without that video, it doesn't hit our species as hard. So I commend you. I wasn't even thinking about it that much. And I think it's important. And you're making me think more about it. Just because there's a video footage doesn't make it any less heinous or depraved or any less of an assault on the constitution in our American values. I'm of the mind that, OK, so what do we do? And again, there's going to be a lot of indignance. There's going to be a lack of ideas. I do think there needs to be some sort of federal legislation proposed right away that says, look, our men and women in blue and our even our ICE agents have a difficult job. These are difficult situations. But for their protection and our protection, it's federal law. Unless you're in a covert operation where you're undercover, you have to have a working body cam. Otherwise, you can't-- every morning, they get lined up. And the supervisor's job is, OK, do you have your uniform on? Are you capable? Are you not drunk? And also, is your body cam working? And they need to have redundant systems in case the first lens isn't working. Because my feeling is, if you get in front of a judge or any supervisory committee in your cam wasn't working, the presumption of guilt is on you. There's no reason not to have a cam working at all times to see what exactly happen. And by the way, it might be for their protection. We may not be getting the right story here. We may not know actually what went on. The other second order effect here, I actually am more hopeful about this seat than I was a few weeks ago. Because all of this shits around in platinum. We were all thinking, OK, is there another shoe going to drop? If they get someone with a shit ton of chest hair who wants universal coverage and hasn't raped anybody, that person is going to win. And what the Democrat should be focused on right now is forcing, whether it's because of this incident, forcing Senator Collins out of her house, are you Mitch McConnell? Then why aren't you speaking? Just forced her to do interviews. Because here's the thing, she like the majority of our politicians is too fucking old. And America is coming to the realization that we shouldn't have octogenarians on the wheel of the global economy and the most important decisions we make. And they're going to look at Susan Collins and go, oh, fuck. You mean by the time she leaves office if she's reelected, she's going to be older than Mitch McConnell is now. And by the way, she looks much worse than Senator McConnell did at her age. So I'm like wheel her out and forced her to show that she has the vigor and health and cognitive abilities to serve the state of Maine for the next six years. So I'm like, get around her house, get her on Fox because just as any minute she is on TV is going to have people go, huh, maybe it's time for Nana to spend more time with her kids. So I think in a weird way, I think all of this, the weekend of Bernie's with Mitch McConnell, with Senator McConnell, the sudden death of Senator Graham, I think that has probably got us a Senator in Maine, your thoughts. - I hope that you're right. I really do. And I think that the debates when they happen will be illuminating for people because I do think that Susan Collins has aged a lot in these six years as happens in your seventies. On the body cam front, you're absolutely right. There are officers that are exonerated from very precarious circumstances, sometimes even having killed someone because of the body cam footage, that you can actually prove that their lives were in danger and you can see more of what was going on in the room, et cetera. So it is good for you and it is good for the people on the other sides of these alterations for you to wear body cams. It also should just be a law, period end of story. And we do know that there is this pattern of ICE and CBP claiming that their lives were in danger and that people were trying to ram their cars into them. So the video does not show this in this case, just as it didn't in Minnesota, it didn't in Chicago, et cetera. But I wanted to add and I didn't know about this, but there was a report by something called the police executive research forum 13 years ago and it was commissioned by CBP and it found that CBP personnel frequently put themselves in the path of a vehicle to justify deadly force. And you saw that with the officer, I'm with Renee Good as well, right? How he kind of like leans into it. And remember the days where they were trying to tell us that he was in the hospital and that he had internal bleeding and broken ribs and CBS was the only one that ran with that report and then nothing came of it. But if you actually have a research report that shows that this is a tactic, it behooves Mark Wayne Mullen to deal with this. Unless you actually want to command a rogue agency, unless that is your dream job or dream scenario for this. Because I'm no way, I think the broad, I think that most people who serve in ICE or CBP are good people. I think that's true of law enforcement generally speaking when they were all over our airports, could not have been nicer, more helpful. Could I, you know, I'm traveling with two kids helping me unpack bags, take my electronics out, all of it, and just with this look on their faces like, why am I sitting in an airport, right? Like I took this job so that I could help enforce our immigration policies and be at the border, et cetera. But when you let things like this happen and you just blindly defend practices that obviously end up in unnecessary deaths, slash murders, And you look like you're fine with it. that you're rubber stamping it and it just bumps me out also that it feels like Tom Holman was fine with just waiting for the opportunity when this could ramp back up. You know, 5% of Maine's population are immigrants. I guess what they're doing there, taking care of the aging population, Maine is the oldest state in the country. It's ahead of Florida. They need people like this who will be your home health aid, who will help with childcare and nursing and work in your hospitals. The ones that you haven't closed down because you're defunding those two. It's just it's sickening and it's so un-American what's going on here. And I think if people don't stand up about this, that they are going to be full of regret for as long as they live, that they didn't take this moment to say enough is enough. You want your tax cuts. I can deal with that, but we can't have lawless ice officers in the streets shooting guys with a three-year-old in the passenger seat who weren't even on your radar. AI panic is everywhere. We do not want a data center in this county. AI models are becoming superhuman in their ability to break in and out of computer systems. But where is that panic really coming from? According to a poll from the New York Times and Sienna, less than 1% of voters listed artificial intelligence or data centers as their top priority in this year's midterms. I'm an old school person. I don't care about AI. That doesn't write there for you. And sometimes I wonder, do they care about AI in so-called real America? What people in my district are saying is we think the risks outweigh the benefits. This week on America, actually, I'm talking the Michigan Congressional candidate Will Lawrence. On why he shaped his entire campaign around confronting the AI revolution. Really, it's about control. I think above all, who decides? Because people feel like they just are not really given any say-so in the whole matter. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Phoebe Judge, and for more than a decade, I've hosted the podcast criminal. Telling stories about people who've done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. But while I was starting one of the very first true crime podcasts out there, I was also taking phone calls from my sister from prison. This fall, I'm going on tour, and I'm telling a story I've never told before. My own. Get tickets at ThisIsCriminal.com/live. So I get served. I love those TikToks and those reels of cops when they pull over people. It's kind of like, let's find, I mean, in general, I mean, there's the few videos where some asshole cop drunk on power pulls over a guy that ends up being a judge and treats this person poorly. There's just like all these racial undertones of this person stereotyping this person and assuming the worst about them, treating them poorly with a lack respect, and then they get out, and you find out the guy's actually a judge, or the woman is a, you know, the assistant DA. And all of a sudden, the cop starts freaking out about the fact he's about to lose his, his boat and his, you know, in his pension rightfully. But 97% of the time when I see these things, I'm like, I'm on the cop side. These guys, these men and women handle some of the most complex, difficult situations. That is a tough job that commands, in demands, real, real skills on a number of physical, interpersonal, and intellectual dimensions. And when I see these, this footage, the vast majority of footage from cams, body cams, I'm really impressed. And I'm empathetic to what they're dealing with. And I usually fall on the side of the cop. You get pulled over by a cop and they ask you for a driver's license and you refuse and you just are acting like an asshole. I'm kind of like, you know, I'm a boomer. I'm like, break the fucking window. You know, I'm, I watch the video to the end to see when they break the window. That's the money shot for me. But, but just as there was, where there was smoke, we were worried there was going to be fire and there was around Senator, uh, Senator candidate Platner. Let's talk about Tom Homan. There's a credible accusation that Tom Homan took 50,000 dollars in cash in a brown paper bag. Yeah. Kava. And by the way, there's never been credible pushback. These were two undercover FBI agents. But oh, we're just going to ignore that. The guy is a fucking, he's, he has a, he has a very credible allegation. A former girlfriend is a credible, a credible accuser. So our FBI agents, this guy, and I just love how we've just forgotten about that. Well, a yes to that and then B, look at the contracts with these private prison companies, like Corsific. And you will see the money train, the circular money trail that goes between people that run these private prisons and then come in and out of CBP and who they're close with and who suddenly is living in a house that they cannot afford on their government salary. And no surprise that the conditions in these private prisons with prisons are demonstrally worse than ones operated by the government. And they're all cogs in this sick wheel. Another inability to understand new on some strategy. I'm a private market sky. I think you should always opt for having the private market do something or handle something competition and personal incentives. I think we should always opt in a capitalist society to think could the private sector do a better job of this? I think it's insane that the government thinks that they can have input into US steel or that they should choose which ship company they're going to invest in as they did an intel and potentially think about what is effectively a bailout cause-playing investment with these discussions around taking a stake in open AI. That is socialism. At the same time, there are certain things that we should not put into the private sector because you end up monetizing them to the extent that it begins to damage our nation. We should not be monetizing healthcare. Our decision to take something everybody needs and where it requires scale and where shareholder value probably comes down third or fourth. That means healthcare should not be monetized. And when we monetize it and we let CEOs make 20, 30, 50 million dollars a year by effectively giving them incentives to deny coverage to people or to overcharge or to go vertical where you control the prescription company, the drug distributor and the insurance company. It doesn't make sense to monetize healthcare. The difference between our healthcare system here and the rest of the G7 countries is that we pay 13,500. They pay 6,500 to 8,000 per capita on interest and actually we're at 14,5 now. And we live less long and are more obese and anxious why? Because we've decided there's a shit ton of money in that incremental $8,000 for shareholders and those shareholders turn around and give money to politicians who have concerns and softly talk about why we shouldn't have universal healthcare or lower Medicaid and Medicare eligibility by a couple of years each year. I mean we have monetized healthcare. Bad idea. We have now monetized prisons. Bad idea. And now we've decided to monetize the White House. I know I'm going to take the power of the White House and make my kids rich. I'm going to become wealthier by neutering the IRS or getting rid of the crypto enforcement unit at the SEC as I launch my own coin. There needs to be a nationalization of several industries and people will call me a communist fine. The Navy should not be run by a private organization. It probably makes sense for private companies to build the ships but it should not be run by a private company. It is too important that we think about other things before profits. Our healthcare system, it needs to be a combination of private and public. The insurance industry agreed should probably be have a private private competitive element to it but similar to other European nations where they say above a certain level of EBITDA you have to refund the policyholders as they do with fire and flood in certain areas where there's just one provider. But we have decided in this country because of our obsession with the dollar, privatization and regulatory capture and increasingly corrupt administrations where norms seem to be thrown out the window. We've decided to monetize our national treasures. We've decided to bankrupt the US and transfer that money to shareholders. And this is another example. Private prisons? No. Prisons should be government run. Should there be elements of it? Who builds them? Who maybe food contracts? Fine. The personnel that work there. But when you create an incentive system to incarcerate more people, that's contrary to what's good for America. When you make a decision that the less you spend on inmates, which likely results in greater crime, obviously. treatment of people, then you've lost the script. We have privatized the wrong things and we've socialized the wrong things on the business end. Should we leave it there? Let's leave it there. 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