1
00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,560
They may just say to me,
you know what, we don't want your

2
00:00:02,600 --> 00:00:08,839
kind. Ask not what your country
can do for you, Ask what you

3
00:00:09,080 --> 00:00:16,600
can do for your country. Mister
Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's

4
00:00:16,640 --> 00:00:22,120
the Ricochet Podcast. I'm Rob Long, joined by Peter Robinson and Steve Hayward.

5
00:00:22,359 --> 00:00:26,160
James Lylats is off this week.
Our guest today is Seamus Brunner,

6
00:00:26,199 --> 00:00:32,119
who's written an amazing book about billionaires. Stay with us. It's when that

7
00:00:32,280 --> 00:00:39,520
speech crosses into conduct that violates our
policies against bullying arounds that speech not cost

8
00:00:39,679 --> 00:00:43,359
that barrier? Does that speech not
call for the genocide of Jews and the

9
00:00:43,399 --> 00:00:48,039
elimination of Israel? America is a
nation that can be defined in a single

10
00:00:48,079 --> 00:00:53,880
word. How's the foot him?
Excuse me? Hello, and welcome to

11
00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:58,600
the Ricochet Podcast. This is episode
number six hundred and sixty nine. Every

12
00:00:58,600 --> 00:01:02,759
time I say that number is just
astonishing. Uh. You can join us

13
00:01:02,799 --> 00:01:06,040
at rickchet dot com and be part
of the most stimulating conversation and community on

14
00:01:06,079 --> 00:01:07,760
the web. We hope you do. Go to ricochet dot com right now,

15
00:01:08,040 --> 00:01:11,480
but in the meantime, have a
listen to us. I am Rob

16
00:01:11,560 --> 00:01:15,560
Long, coming to you from New
York City and joined as always by my

17
00:01:15,760 --> 00:01:19,159
Ricochet co founder Peter Robinson and Palo
Alto. Peter, how are you?

18
00:01:19,480 --> 00:01:23,840
I'm extremely well, rob how are
you? I'm doing great? And we

19
00:01:23,920 --> 00:01:29,959
are also joined by Ricochet's I do
we could Holy friend Rickochet, marrit Ricochet

20
00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:37,680
adjunct visiting professor Steve Hayward. Steve, are you You're somewhere kind of glamorous?

21
00:01:37,760 --> 00:01:40,719
Right? Yeah, I'm in central
coast of California. Well, this

22
00:01:40,760 --> 00:01:44,680
week I'm struggling to find my context. Rob, I've lost my context and

23
00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:51,560
I can't find it anywhere. So
you brought it up. Let's start,

24
00:01:52,159 --> 00:01:57,879
let's go so it. Presidents of
Harvard University of Pennsylvania and Matthews Institute of

25
00:01:57,879 --> 00:02:05,120
Technology MITA were somehow bested by at
least aphanic in the house, which is

26
00:02:05,159 --> 00:02:10,280
a kind of doubly triply humiliating for
them. And I was just going to

27
00:02:10,319 --> 00:02:14,520
ask you so so they couldn't answer
a simple question which seemed pretty obvious to

28
00:02:14,560 --> 00:02:16,599
the rest of us, right easy
to answer. They kept saying it to

29
00:02:16,639 --> 00:02:21,479
me, you know, whether they
condemn a calling, whether calling for the

30
00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:28,319
genocide of Jews violates their own university
speech standards, they couldn't answer that question.

31
00:02:28,879 --> 00:02:34,759
Now, my real question to you
is this, the the combined endowment

32
00:02:35,879 --> 00:02:39,159
figures for all three of those universities
got to be one hundred billion dollars,

33
00:02:39,240 --> 00:02:43,879
right, correct? Correct, But
I'm not exactly close to one hundred billion

34
00:02:43,919 --> 00:02:52,080
dollars. You'd think they'd be better
prepared. You'd think they would have anticipated

35
00:02:52,120 --> 00:02:57,560
this question, right, They both, all three of them look so terrified

36
00:02:57,599 --> 00:03:02,199
and stunned. What. Well,
Okay, so I'll go next, because

37
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:07,759
Steve, having spent a great deal
of time in academia in recent years,

38
00:03:07,759 --> 00:03:10,000
we'll actually have detailed will have thought
this through the level of detail that I

39
00:03:10,039 --> 00:03:17,919
couldn't approach. On the one hand, I felt a certain sympathy for the

40
00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:27,719
three of them because they were all
attempting to answer the question under First Amendment

41
00:03:28,080 --> 00:03:32,240
jurisprudence. They got hung up on
that. And under the First Amendment,

42
00:03:34,159 --> 00:03:42,000
even calling for the genocide of an
entire people is legal. Speech is legal

43
00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:47,159
until Oliver Wondell Holmes Old test you
get a clear and eminent danger shouting fire

44
00:03:47,199 --> 00:03:53,240
in a crowded theater. But of
course that isn't really the relevant standard because

45
00:03:53,280 --> 00:04:00,960
all three of these institutions long,
long ago tossed a sigh any attempt to

46
00:04:01,080 --> 00:04:06,680
live up to the First Amendment,
or any rigorous attempt to incorporate First Amendment

47
00:04:06,800 --> 00:04:13,360
standards into the standards of their own
universities. So I may get this wrong

48
00:04:13,400 --> 00:04:15,720
in one detail or another, but
you'll understand the general point I'm trying to

49
00:04:15,720 --> 00:04:21,800
make. At Harvard, if you
miss gender someone, that's a serious offense.

50
00:04:24,720 --> 00:04:29,959
At Penn there are proceedings moving forward. I believe they're still underway against

51
00:04:30,000 --> 00:04:38,959
Amy Waxman, a brilliant published,
widely published, widely respected teacher at the

52
00:04:39,040 --> 00:04:44,000
University of Pennsylvania Law School. And
why is that? Because she has suggested

53
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:47,560
certain things that we know to be
statistically true, that there's a higher crime

54
00:04:47,680 --> 00:04:56,439
rate among African Americans, that young
American, young African American males are more

55
00:04:56,480 --> 00:04:59,879
given to crime, they come from
broken All of this is you're not a

56
00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:02,639
allowed to say it, even though
as far as I'm aware, no one

57
00:05:02,680 --> 00:05:08,160
has even alleged that Amy Waxman has
said anything untrue. She's said things that

58
00:05:08,240 --> 00:05:10,360
make people extreme. And by the
way, of course, all this is

59
00:05:10,439 --> 00:05:13,720
uncomfortable to hear. I'd rather not
hear it, even myself, I'd rather

60
00:05:13,759 --> 00:05:16,480
not hear it, but it's true. It's certainly covered by the First Amendment,

61
00:05:16,639 --> 00:05:23,160
but it's not covered by the University
of Pennsylvania's own actual standards. So

62
00:05:23,240 --> 00:05:28,519
a least Stephanic asks asks a straightforward
question, don't come up here and try

63
00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:32,000
to pretend that you abide by the
First Amendment when we know that you cease

64
00:05:32,079 --> 00:05:39,600
doing that years and years ago according
to your own standards, Are people on

65
00:05:39,639 --> 00:05:43,680
your campus allowed to call for the
genocide of the Jewish people? And of

66
00:05:43,879 --> 00:05:49,360
course the answer should have been an
immediate no. That would violate our standards.

67
00:05:49,480 --> 00:05:54,480
They could not bring themselves to say
that, and that was just I

68
00:05:54,519 --> 00:05:59,439
don't so over to Steve, why
were they trying to pretend? Why were

69
00:05:59,480 --> 00:06:01,879
they attempt to wrap themselves in the
First Amendment? We all three of them

70
00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:06,160
absolutely had to know that they were
going to run into trouble on this.

71
00:06:06,680 --> 00:06:13,079
Yeah, well, three points.
One is the universities have been trying to

72
00:06:13,439 --> 00:06:18,040
navigate between academic freedom and the First
Amendment and preserving safe spaces for all their

73
00:06:18,040 --> 00:06:21,439
protected classes, and now that has
all blown up in their face and they

74
00:06:21,439 --> 00:06:25,240
don't know what to do about it. Second, I'm quite sure that they

75
00:06:25,399 --> 00:06:29,800
had lawyers and pr people supplying them
with talking points, and all those people

76
00:06:29,839 --> 00:06:32,079
live in a campus bubble and did
not realize. By the way, it

77
00:06:32,120 --> 00:06:35,079
wasn't just at least stemanic. There
was Kevin Kylie, I think, was

78
00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:40,199
the guy who said, if I
am a parent of a Jewish prospective student,

79
00:06:40,240 --> 00:06:43,519
can you assure them they'll be safe
on campus? They couldn't even answer

80
00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:46,879
that monequivocally, couldn't even give a
generality about having a safe space. Here's

81
00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:51,639
my hypothesis about what's ultimately the problem
here. And this will sound contradict you

82
00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:56,519
at first because it has two propositions. The first proposition is, and I

83
00:06:56,600 --> 00:06:59,800
think people will perceive this and maybe
not the second one. The first one

84
00:06:59,839 --> 00:07:04,079
is college administrators are terrified of the
campus left, of their leftist true,

85
00:07:04,879 --> 00:07:09,639
true, true. The second proposition
right now, the second proposition takes a

86
00:07:09,639 --> 00:07:13,399
minute to understand what squares with the
first one, which is campus administrators,

87
00:07:13,439 --> 00:07:17,439
deans, department chairs, they actually
don't take the left seriously. But that

88
00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:20,920
I don't mean they're not afraid of
them. They don't take their ideas seriously.

89
00:07:21,319 --> 00:07:26,600
When you hear Larry Summers, former
president of Harvard, or my Dean

90
00:07:26,680 --> 00:07:31,480
Chemerinsky say I can't believe we're getting
this anti semitism. Chemerinsky's phrase was nothing

91
00:07:31,519 --> 00:07:35,240
that's prepared me for the anti semitism
that I'm seeing right now. It's been

92
00:07:35,319 --> 00:07:41,680
there all along. But the point
is when they read some crazy you know,

93
00:07:41,720 --> 00:07:45,800
the left wants ethnic studies, gender
studies, they want colonial studies,

94
00:07:45,839 --> 00:07:49,120
and all the intersectionality business. It's
the easy, the path of least resistance.

95
00:07:49,199 --> 00:07:53,519
Say sure, go ahead, and
to have a department hire twenty crazy

96
00:07:53,560 --> 00:07:58,079
faculty in what they now call cluster
hires around social justice. And now suddenly

97
00:07:58,079 --> 00:08:00,399
these people say, oh, actually, we really do mean that we want

98
00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:05,199
Jews to die and for Israel to
cease to exist. And the reason they're

99
00:08:05,240 --> 00:08:09,199
surprised is they all thought this was
just fun and games. We can do

100
00:08:09,319 --> 00:08:11,879
land acknowledgments, right, the land
acknowledgements drive me crazy. We can always

101
00:08:11,879 --> 00:08:16,600
do. No one ever says,
let's give the land back under Yale or

102
00:08:16,680 --> 00:08:20,480
Berkeley or Harvard. Only Israel has
to give the land back. That's what

103
00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:24,360
the mob is demanding. Right,
So it was double standards galore, and

104
00:08:24,480 --> 00:08:26,240
give back to whom. I wonder
though, that's the other question is yeah,

105
00:08:26,480 --> 00:08:30,000
well, yes, of course,
I mean it's ridiculous stuff. But

106
00:08:30,519 --> 00:08:33,120
everybody, I mean, I've seen
these land A student will give a land

107
00:08:33,120 --> 00:08:35,919
acknowledgment and some professor or an illustrator
will go, thank you for that very

108
00:08:35,919 --> 00:08:39,519
profound statement. They don't mean that, they know it's nonsense, but they

109
00:08:39,519 --> 00:08:43,200
go along with it. And now
that they really mean it, they are

110
00:08:43,360 --> 00:08:46,440
powerless to say anything intelligible because they've
been complicit. I mean, sorry,

111
00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:54,200
I'm sorry, I'm ranting, But
the explanation I've heard Hilarry Summers has been

112
00:08:54,440 --> 00:08:56,840
was president of Harvard. He did
nothing to get in the way of this

113
00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:01,679
spreading cancer on the Harvard campus.
One morgal of detail. Sorry, I

114
00:09:01,799 --> 00:09:07,120
file away job ads for department searching
professors, and I file away all the

115
00:09:07,120 --> 00:09:09,919
ones saying we want somebody by the
way in English, German, literature,

116
00:09:11,399 --> 00:09:13,360
all kinds of all the disciplines in
the humanities, and we want someone who

117
00:09:13,399 --> 00:09:20,639
will work in decolonialization and intersectionality.
Now where are the provosts? You know,

118
00:09:20,639 --> 00:09:24,440
the provosts at universities are supposed to
be the quality control officers they ought

119
00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:26,080
to be saying no, you can't
have that ad. Some of those ads,

120
00:09:26,120 --> 00:09:31,440
by the way, we want especially
underrepresented minorities to apply for these positions.

121
00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:35,360
That comes right up to the water's
edge of being an illegal ad under

122
00:09:35,600 --> 00:09:37,919
Title seven of these Civil Rights Acts. So yeah, the provost ought to

123
00:09:37,919 --> 00:09:41,799
be standing up and saying no,
you can't do this, but they couldn't.

124
00:09:41,840 --> 00:09:46,200
I mean, right, but just
one moment, I'm just to repeat

125
00:09:46,559 --> 00:09:50,879
to build on Peter's sympathy, which
I you know, misplay sympathy, but

126
00:09:50,879 --> 00:09:58,159
I'm really good at misplay sympathy.
Yeah, what if Claudine Gay had said,

127
00:09:58,440 --> 00:10:03,200
president of Harvard University, had said, yes, it does violate,

128
00:10:03,879 --> 00:10:11,840
Well, then she's got to go
and punish all those students, like what's

129
00:10:11,840 --> 00:10:15,879
that one thousand of them, five
hundred them like in a in a stroke

130
00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:22,759
of a pen, one utterance that
she's got to enforce the rules, which

131
00:10:24,320 --> 00:10:26,679
she doesn't want to force that,
so she they're in a terrible position where

132
00:10:26,679 --> 00:10:31,720
they have to weasel word their way
out of it in an incredibly dishonest way,

133
00:10:31,799 --> 00:10:35,159
because you're exactly right, You're to
be honest, means you're gonna like

134
00:10:35,200 --> 00:10:37,320
they're all gonna what are they all
gonna go? Like even today there was

135
00:10:37,360 --> 00:10:41,399
a student at NYU who's too tore
down one of those posters, and NYU

136
00:10:41,480 --> 00:10:46,039
said, okay, well you're out
for till the till fall. But of

137
00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:50,120
course that's a cascade of tragedies for
this student because she's on financial aid and

138
00:10:50,159 --> 00:10:52,200
she has to beat the dorms,
and she has to do all this other

139
00:10:52,240 --> 00:10:54,279
stuff, and she's on scholarship and
all these things, right, which,

140
00:10:54,279 --> 00:10:58,200
of course you think about before you
violate university policy. But at the same

141
00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:05,360
time, most of the students had
no idea that those policies applied to them,

142
00:11:05,519 --> 00:11:09,559
right, like, these are just
rules to keep you from wearing a

143
00:11:09,600 --> 00:11:11,919
sombrero at a Halloween party. I
hadn't thought of this, But you,

144
00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:16,480
being an old time script writer,
you know exactly what would have come next.

145
00:11:16,879 --> 00:11:20,799
At least Stephonic, You're exactly right. The next way, if Claudie

146
00:11:20,919 --> 00:11:24,720
Kay, the president of Harvard,
had said, yes, that does violate

147
00:11:24,759 --> 00:11:28,799
our standards, then Elsa Stephanic would
have said, well, then, doctor

148
00:11:28,879 --> 00:11:33,799
k what disciplinary action have you taken
against the twelve students who did a sit

149
00:11:33,840 --> 00:11:37,600
in in your library? What disciplinary
action have you taken against this outrage or

150
00:11:37,600 --> 00:11:41,879
this outrage or this outrage? And
the answer, of course would have been

151
00:11:41,120 --> 00:11:46,080
actually none. You're right, You're
right, those women were in an impossible

152
00:11:46,080 --> 00:11:52,320
situation. It still surprises me that
they seem so unprepared. I'm unprepared for

153
00:11:52,360 --> 00:11:54,080
that. And also, I mean, part of the problem is that we

154
00:11:54,279 --> 00:11:56,919
now I've been listening to this for
the past three years, and one of

155
00:11:56,919 --> 00:12:01,799
the things I find ridiculous, ludicrous. But I've accepted that people believe is

156
00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:09,799
that speech is violence, speech is
harmful. So if that's the case,

157
00:12:09,840 --> 00:12:13,159
then whatever your speech is, you
got to be careful. I don't approve

158
00:12:13,159 --> 00:12:16,320
of that. I don't think that's
right. But if those are the rules,

159
00:12:16,360 --> 00:12:18,840
those are the rules. And then
suddenly say, well, no,

160
00:12:18,720 --> 00:12:20,720
no, no context is important.
Oh no, no, no, no,

161
00:12:20,879 --> 00:12:26,000
I mean actually only if it becomes
conduct Well, I mean that that

162
00:12:26,200 --> 00:12:30,480
just sounds like we're turning the clock
back because it's inconvenient now to have these

163
00:12:30,480 --> 00:12:37,840
standards, which I mean, the
other part of I have to say the

164
00:12:37,840 --> 00:12:43,399
the other part of this for me
is that I find all this really glorious.

165
00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:45,840
I gotta be honest, I'm enjoying
every second of it. I mean,

166
00:12:45,879 --> 00:12:48,679
I am not a good person.
I'm loving it. I'm loving it.

167
00:12:48,720 --> 00:12:52,919
I love a lot watching them squirm. I love the weasel worthy backtracking

168
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:54,879
the next day. I love all
the anguish. I love the fact that

169
00:12:54,919 --> 00:12:58,519
all the trustees are getting together sayings, do we need to make a change

170
00:12:58,519 --> 00:13:01,799
here? I love it. I
call it like a Christmas present, a

171
00:13:01,799 --> 00:13:07,840
big, rich, delicious, gooey
plum pudding. I mean, it's horrible

172
00:13:07,879 --> 00:13:11,799
that it's in this context, but
I mean I would be lying if I

173
00:13:11,840 --> 00:13:18,480
didn't tell you that I loved every
minute. There's that great German word for

174
00:13:18,519 --> 00:13:22,240
this, right shotenfreud. But Rob, we should you know, we should

175
00:13:22,320 --> 00:13:24,639
have that with chocolate sauce and whip
with a cherry on yep, right now?

176
00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:28,480
Man, Oh, let's just ad
this thought. Uh, you know,

177
00:13:28,519 --> 00:13:31,799
I follow the public opinion polls on
this. In public regard for higher

178
00:13:31,919 --> 00:13:35,960
education has been slipping badly the last
five to ten years. It is polarized

179
00:13:35,039 --> 00:13:39,639
more Republicans than Democrats. There used
to be no gap between Republicans and Democrats

180
00:13:39,639 --> 00:13:41,799
and regard for universities, and it
was always very high. Now it's split,

181
00:13:43,000 --> 00:13:46,840
but it's even down among Democrats.
And I'll bet the next survey taken

182
00:13:46,879 --> 00:13:50,919
that asked the question will show a
discernible drop from the events of the last

183
00:13:50,919 --> 00:13:58,120
two months. One closing observation almost
even prediction. One suggestion. The suggestion

184
00:13:58,240 --> 00:14:03,600
is keep your eyes on Pen in
particular. Yeah, Penn has, for

185
00:14:03,720 --> 00:14:09,320
various historical reasons, has an especially
act has had and especially and does have

186
00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:18,120
an especially active and devoted Jewish contingent
among its alumni. And one after another

187
00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:22,360
has gone public put it in writing, this is not the way trustees,

188
00:14:22,399 --> 00:14:28,639
former trustees alumni is a big time, big money alumni ordinarily behave. Ordinarily

189
00:14:28,639 --> 00:14:33,360
things are handled quietly. They've gone
public saying unless things change, no more

190
00:14:33,360 --> 00:14:39,440
money from us. And this one
man yesterday, astonishing that he had had

191
00:14:39,440 --> 00:14:43,440
the foresight to do this, he
gave Pen one hundred million dollars in stock,

192
00:14:43,279 --> 00:14:48,200
but in the fine print reserved the
right to cancel that stock, in

193
00:14:48,240 --> 00:14:52,360
effect, to take it back if
Penn behaved in such a way as to

194
00:14:52,399 --> 00:14:58,200
reflect badly on the reputation of his
own firm. And he has now written

195
00:14:58,200 --> 00:15:03,519
a letter to pen It's public saying, unless President McGill goes, that one

196
00:15:03,559 --> 00:15:09,559
hundred million dollars gets canceled. Now, I have had some experience with trustees,

197
00:15:09,960 --> 00:15:15,159
and I can tell you that trustees
become intensely uncomfortable with questions of equity

198
00:15:15,240 --> 00:15:18,200
and first amendment versus this right and
balance. They really they don't want to,

199
00:15:18,279 --> 00:15:24,120
they don't feel they understand it.
They don't. But money. I

200
00:15:24,200 --> 00:15:30,000
can guarantee that there have been phone
calls among the trustees at Penn saying is

201
00:15:30,039 --> 00:15:33,840
this lady really worth one hundred million
dollars? Yeah? I mean it comes

202
00:15:33,879 --> 00:15:37,960
down to this right. Either you
can take my money or you can say

203
00:15:37,960 --> 00:15:45,279
you want to kill me. But
it is a great Christmas present we're enjoying

204
00:15:45,320 --> 00:15:48,679
right now. And speaking of Christmas
presents and speaking of buying things, I

205
00:15:48,720 --> 00:15:52,000
want to talk to you about Shopify. Shopify has already taken the cash register

206
00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:56,000
online. We've all used Shopify helped
millions sell billions around the world. But

207
00:15:56,039 --> 00:15:58,240
did you know that Shopify can do
the same thing at your retail store.

208
00:15:58,320 --> 00:16:02,279
We have a lot of all business
owners for listeners to ricochet. They'll be

209
00:16:02,320 --> 00:16:04,879
interested in this. You could give
your point of sales system a serious upgrade

210
00:16:04,919 --> 00:16:11,159
with Shopify. Shopify's point of sale
is your command center for your retail store,

211
00:16:11,240 --> 00:16:15,440
from accepting payments to managing inventory.
Shopify has everything you need to sell

212
00:16:15,559 --> 00:16:18,639
in person. You get a powerhouse
selling partner that effortlessly unites your in person

213
00:16:18,679 --> 00:16:22,200
and online sales. With one source
of truth, you could track every sale

214
00:16:22,360 --> 00:16:26,279
across your business in one place.
I know exactly what's in stock. You

215
00:16:26,320 --> 00:16:32,120
connect with your customers online and inline. Shopify helps you drive store traffic with

216
00:16:32,159 --> 00:16:34,919
plug and play tools, build for
marketing campaigns from TikTok to Instagram and beyond.

217
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:38,639
You get hardware that fits your business. You can take payments by smartphone,

218
00:16:38,799 --> 00:16:44,240
transform your tablet into a point of
sale system, or use Shopify's pos

219
00:16:44,320 --> 00:16:48,080
go mobile device for a battle tested
solution. I just used that this morning.

220
00:16:48,120 --> 00:16:49,679
By the way, somebody had it
in the store I used. Plus

221
00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:53,360
their award winning twenty four to seven
Help is there to support your success every

222
00:16:53,360 --> 00:16:57,159
step of the way. So do
retail right with Shopify. Sign up for

223
00:16:57,279 --> 00:17:02,600
a one dollar per month trial period
shopify dot com slash ricochet. That's all

224
00:17:02,639 --> 00:17:07,599
lowercase. Go to shopify dot com
slash ricochet to take your retail business to

225
00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:10,880
the next level today. That is
Shopify, s h O, P I

226
00:17:11,039 --> 00:17:15,119
f Y dot com slash Ricochet.
And we think Shopify for sponsoring the Ricochet

227
00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:22,240
podcast, especially now at big Retail
Christmas season. We got a guest.

228
00:17:22,400 --> 00:17:27,240
Our next guest, Seamus Bruner.
Seamus Bruner is the director of research at

229
00:17:27,240 --> 00:17:33,839
the Government Accountability Institute. He's the
author of the recently published Controligarchs, exposing

230
00:17:33,839 --> 00:17:37,240
the billionaire class their secret deals on
the globalist plot to dominate your life.

231
00:17:40,960 --> 00:17:45,839
Shamus, that sounds very left wing, Seamus. If you're going to have

232
00:17:45,839 --> 00:17:48,279
trouble with any of the hosts on
this show, it's going to be Robbie.

233
00:17:48,319 --> 00:17:52,559
Yeah, come back right now.
I mean, I kind of know

234
00:17:52,599 --> 00:17:56,759
why I don't like billionaires, because
they all tend to do exactly the same

235
00:17:56,799 --> 00:17:59,880
thing, and they complain a lot. But what what's your what? What

236
00:18:00,000 --> 00:18:04,240
what's wrong with What's what's a control
of ARC? That's a great question.

237
00:18:04,319 --> 00:18:10,759
And I wrote this book to appeal
across the political spectrum. It's actually much

238
00:18:10,799 --> 00:18:15,440
more important than a political book.
It's this is an existential book. This

239
00:18:15,559 --> 00:18:18,200
is the billionaire are not all bad, you know, not all billionaires.

240
00:18:18,359 --> 00:18:22,359
Most billionaires are quite good. And
there's three thousand billionaires. This is only

241
00:18:22,400 --> 00:18:26,279
about thirty of them. And there's
nothing wrong with making money. I mean,

242
00:18:26,319 --> 00:18:29,960
we're capitalists, so there's nothing wrong
with making money. But it's what

243
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:33,359
you do with that money. So
I define a control of ARC as a

244
00:18:33,440 --> 00:18:38,119
billionaire or bureaucrat who is plotting and
scheming to dominate every aspect of everyone's life.

245
00:18:38,160 --> 00:18:44,200
They want to control every industry,
from food to health to information,

246
00:18:44,359 --> 00:18:48,799
I mean critically information. And once
they have control over things like the food

247
00:18:48,839 --> 00:18:53,119
sector, the information sector, the
financial sector, they can turn the dials

248
00:18:53,119 --> 00:18:56,920
and pull the levers and nudge you
in certain directions, and they really want

249
00:18:56,960 --> 00:19:00,640
to change your behavior. You see
that with control over the energy sector,

250
00:19:00,720 --> 00:19:07,680
actually banning gas stoves, banning gas
vehicles, you know, banning cows.

251
00:19:07,039 --> 00:19:11,240
So, Seamus, you're not saying
this is not the old charge that used

252
00:19:11,240 --> 00:19:15,720
to be leveled against John D.
Rockefeller Senior, that he was using his

253
00:19:15,759 --> 00:19:19,359
money to corner markets and make even
more money. He was using his money

254
00:19:19,359 --> 00:19:26,359
for profit. You're saying that there
are thirty billionaires who are using their effectively.

255
00:19:26,359 --> 00:19:30,319
They're giving, well, explain this, but they're using their money for

256
00:19:30,440 --> 00:19:34,319
ideological purposes. I'm going to guess
that one of the thirty you mentioned in

257
00:19:34,359 --> 00:19:37,519
your book is George Soros. For
example, give us two or three names.

258
00:19:38,440 --> 00:19:41,519
Yeah, so George Soros. Of
course he gets his own chapter and

259
00:19:41,799 --> 00:19:47,359
we talk about the Open Society mission
and how he uses things like that.

260
00:19:47,480 --> 00:19:49,440
I mean who could be against an
open society it sounds lovely, and who

261
00:19:49,480 --> 00:19:56,440
could be against things like a democracy
initiative or democracy partners? But he really

262
00:19:56,480 --> 00:20:02,640
inverts the meaning of these words by
buying off very small election. I mean,

263
00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:07,160
we see it with the prosecutors and
sowing chaos in our cities, opening

264
00:20:07,240 --> 00:20:11,240
the prisons. George Sorees is sort
of a special control of ARC. But

265
00:20:11,319 --> 00:20:14,240
the other ones. I mean you've
got Bill Gates of course at the at

266
00:20:14,279 --> 00:20:15,839
the top there, and then all
of the guys who go to the World

267
00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:23,000
Economic Forum and talk about things like
going cash lists or implementing digital IDs that

268
00:20:23,079 --> 00:20:26,519
are effectively going to be social credit
scores. I mean, I thought,

269
00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:30,000
the reason I wrote this book is
because there's all these things that sound like

270
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:33,119
crazy conspiracy theories, and then then
you dig in and you see, well,

271
00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:37,359
actually, no, they do want
to use a form of digital ID

272
00:20:37,839 --> 00:20:42,039
to track movements and track activities.
And if you are going the wrong places,

273
00:20:42,079 --> 00:20:47,039
doing the wrong things, buying the
wrong things, you'll get you know,

274
00:20:47,519 --> 00:20:49,519
you know, you'll have sort of
this social credit score. We see

275
00:20:49,519 --> 00:20:53,480
it right now in Ireland. If
you're attending protests or riots, whatever the

276
00:20:53,519 --> 00:20:56,480
case may be. They want to
take away your right to free speech.

277
00:20:56,880 --> 00:21:03,359
And actually they're talking about taking away
the entitlements of these protesters, taking away

278
00:21:03,559 --> 00:21:04,920
you know, Europe's got it more
of a welfare state, but they've got

279
00:21:06,000 --> 00:21:10,039
sort of basic, universal, basic
incomes. They want to freeze their assets.

280
00:21:10,200 --> 00:21:11,960
You saw it in Canada with the
truckers. They wanted to freeze the

281
00:21:11,960 --> 00:21:18,240
trucker protests assets. So the motivation
here would be what these are people who

282
00:21:18,279 --> 00:21:23,839
are already so rich that the usual
motivation that still affects most of us,

283
00:21:23,839 --> 00:21:29,680
which is paying the mortgage, setting
something aside for retirement, they got They

284
00:21:29,759 --> 00:21:34,640
blew past that ages and ages ago. The mere accumulation of money after a

285
00:21:34,640 --> 00:21:40,640
certain level becomes uninteresting to them.
I'm trotting this out to see if this

286
00:21:40,720 --> 00:21:45,359
is if you approve of this,
if this is right, And so all

287
00:21:45,400 --> 00:21:52,720
their gratification shifts from earning profits to
doing good, and they define doing good

288
00:21:52,880 --> 00:21:57,440
as in one way or another,
manipulating the way the rest of us live.

289
00:21:59,279 --> 00:22:03,839
In the interest of George Soros as
a particular and I think skewed sense

290
00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:07,359
of justice. Bill Gates is on
and on about the planet and how we

291
00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:11,960
need to shift from eating beef to
eating I don't know what grasshoppers or grass

292
00:22:12,039 --> 00:22:17,920
or somethings. Yeah, so have
I got that these billionaires of whom the

293
00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:22,799
rest of us should be on red
alert because in one way or another,

294
00:22:22,799 --> 00:22:26,160
they're coming after us. To them, they're doing good. That's all they

295
00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:30,039
want to do with all their pile
of money is to do good. Is

296
00:22:30,039 --> 00:22:33,799
that right? Yeah? I mean
the chapter one is called the Good Club.

297
00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:37,599
They actually formed this club called the
Good Club. That should be a

298
00:22:37,599 --> 00:22:40,759
big red flag right there. You'd
think they could come up with something a

299
00:22:40,759 --> 00:22:44,279
little more creative. And so the
first meeting of the Good Club was in

300
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:48,720
May two thousand and nine. Bill
Gates convened the meeting. It was at

301
00:22:48,799 --> 00:22:52,920
Rockefeller University in New York. George
Sorows was a co sponsor. There were

302
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:59,200
other billionaires there, Oprah Winfrey,
Ted Turner, among about ten others.

303
00:22:59,559 --> 00:23:03,519
And so they get together in May
two thousand age Yes, right, the

304
00:23:03,559 --> 00:23:07,440
people who want to save the planet. It's a very ambitious goal. And

305
00:23:07,519 --> 00:23:11,200
so they get together and they say, well, Barack Obama's just been elected.

306
00:23:11,200 --> 00:23:15,759
We've all spent an enormous amount of
money and influence to get him there.

307
00:23:15,119 --> 00:23:18,079
Uh. It's also in kind of
the the tail end of the global

308
00:23:18,079 --> 00:23:22,759
financial crisis. So there's this populis
resentment rising up amongst the people who've all

309
00:23:22,759 --> 00:23:27,359
been foreclosed upon. And these guys
all made a boatload of money, people

310
00:23:27,400 --> 00:23:33,319
like Warren Buffett Blackrock is a ConTroll
of arc entity. And so, uh,

311
00:23:33,440 --> 00:23:34,519
they get together and they say,
what should we spend all of our

312
00:23:34,559 --> 00:23:38,039
money on. We've got this,
uh, this great president who can you

313
00:23:38,039 --> 00:23:44,119
know, do what we want?
And they basically all unify around this cause

314
00:23:44,400 --> 00:23:47,480
of overpopulation. And you hear Bill
Gates talk about it. And this is

315
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:51,559
another one of those things that is, you know, conspiracy theorist fodder that

316
00:23:51,599 --> 00:23:55,880
I wanted to get to the bottom
of and overpopulation. So is the earth

317
00:23:55,920 --> 00:23:59,279
overpopulated? I mean, that's a
debate that we should be having. Some

318
00:23:59,319 --> 00:24:02,880
people say absolutely not. It's we've
got plenty of space. If you've ever

319
00:24:03,160 --> 00:24:07,160
traveled by airplane over and lost countries. Let me guess they never say to

320
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:11,359
each other there are far too many
billionaires. Now all say there are far

321
00:24:11,440 --> 00:24:15,599
too many peasants. Exactly right.
And so George Sorows has got five kids,

322
00:24:15,799 --> 00:24:21,400
Ted Turner's got five or six kids. So actually Ted Turner has proposed

323
00:24:21,720 --> 00:24:26,480
that entrepreneurial, enterprising peasants could actually
sell their fertility rights. I mean it's

324
00:24:26,519 --> 00:24:30,319
a new thing. I had never
heard of fertility rights. So if you're

325
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:33,359
poor and you make yeah, it's
like a carbon offs at a child offset,

326
00:24:33,359 --> 00:24:36,680
you could sell it to, you
know, a billionaire who might want

327
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:40,960
to have more than two. Okay, So these guys are lefty nuts and

328
00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:45,680
the only reason that we pay attention
to them, should pay attention to them,

329
00:24:45,799 --> 00:24:49,279
but we should is that they are
so rich and so well connected in

330
00:24:49,319 --> 00:24:55,799
the technocracy that runs much of the
country that they're coming after us and they

331
00:24:55,799 --> 00:24:59,400
can actually get Okay, Now,
one more question before I toss it over

332
00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:00,920
to Steve Hayr. You don't know
Steve as well as I do, but

333
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:06,559
I can tell from his eyes that
he's desperate to get in here. So

334
00:25:07,279 --> 00:25:15,279
are there any of these billionaires who
are doing good? Are there any who

335
00:25:15,319 --> 00:25:22,440
are giving their fortunes to the charter
school movement or to the founding of new

336
00:25:22,839 --> 00:25:27,039
churches? Are there any who are
proceeding with a certain humility and actually giving

337
00:25:27,079 --> 00:25:34,119
their money away and toward causes of
which we might approve? Certainly many,

338
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:38,200
there are many, many good billionaires
out there. This book isn't about them,

339
00:25:38,319 --> 00:25:42,480
but and I don't and I don't
want to care. It wouldn't sell

340
00:25:44,440 --> 00:25:48,400
right right one day. But no, the billionaires who fund, you know,

341
00:25:48,799 --> 00:25:52,720
like causes like our own, so
you can you can look those those

342
00:25:52,720 --> 00:25:56,799
individuals up, their great American patriots
and the funders of charter schools especially.

343
00:25:56,839 --> 00:25:59,720
And I don't want to caricature you
know, these guys on the cover of

344
00:25:59,759 --> 00:26:02,119
the look. I mean, I
certainly don't. I get deep into their

345
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:06,720
history and kind of find out what
makes them tick. And Bill Gates,

346
00:26:06,759 --> 00:26:11,119
for example, he's rebranded as this
philanthropist, so no, he's, you

347
00:26:11,160 --> 00:26:12,279
know, not the guys in this
book, they're not giving to those good

348
00:26:12,279 --> 00:26:15,319
causes. But they do, I'm
sure give to good causes. I mean,

349
00:26:15,319 --> 00:26:18,000
they've given enormous sums of money.
But if you were to look at

350
00:26:18,039 --> 00:26:19,359
a pie chart, it would be
like the width of a paper clip on

351
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:23,720
the pie chart the money that they
are they are spending. Like Bill Gates,

352
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:27,400
for example, he was never very
charitable at all. I read,

353
00:26:27,519 --> 00:26:33,559
you know, his father's memoirs and
accounts from his siblings and accounts from Microsoft

354
00:26:33,559 --> 00:26:37,000
employees. While he had a much
more active role in the company, by

355
00:26:37,039 --> 00:26:38,440
all accounts, he was brutal.
I mean, his sister said he was

356
00:26:38,519 --> 00:26:42,960
quote nasty his mother. John D. Rockefeller Senior, this is a man

357
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:49,119
who was absolutely ruthless in acquiring his
fortune, who's now rebranding himself as a

358
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:53,559
man who gives dimes to children.
Well, it's brilliant of you to bring

359
00:26:53,640 --> 00:26:56,920
up that comparison, and I get
into it in the book, and it's

360
00:26:56,920 --> 00:27:00,799
just sort of what as Rob tell
you, Yeah, of course that's his

361
00:27:00,880 --> 00:27:07,240
industry. Well, actually, it's
fascinating that the Rockefellers were in John Due

362
00:27:07,319 --> 00:27:12,720
and were a prototype of control of
arc prototype where it was only after the

363
00:27:12,799 --> 00:27:18,680
Justice Department started looking into the practices
of Standard Oil or in Bill Gates' case,

364
00:27:18,759 --> 00:27:22,880
Microsoft, that they set up their
foundations. And then they set up

365
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:26,680
these foundations in John D's case,
starts giving dimes out and Bill Gates's case

366
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:32,680
starts giving out million dollar checks to
schools and libraries. Now, was he

367
00:27:32,799 --> 00:27:34,680
just trying to help the kids learn? Or was he trying to implement things

368
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:41,119
like social emotional learning, this intentionally
vague term that does away with arithmetic and

369
00:27:41,200 --> 00:27:47,359
science and math and puts in things
like DEI into kids' brains. But it's

370
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:51,759
more like brainwashing. But anyhow,
Bill Gates, I mean, on her

371
00:27:51,799 --> 00:27:53,960
death Bet his mother was pleading with
him. He's now the richest man.

372
00:27:55,000 --> 00:27:57,640
It's the mid nineties and he's been
the world's richest man for twenty of the

373
00:27:57,680 --> 00:28:00,480
last thirty years. She says,
please please give some of your money to

374
00:28:00,559 --> 00:28:04,680
charity. He still would not until
he sets up the Bill and Melinda Gates

375
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:08,480
Foundation. I mean, you should
watch some of the anti trust depositions where

376
00:28:08,519 --> 00:28:11,559
they're in, you know, questioning
Bill Gates about his practices. It's very

377
00:28:11,799 --> 00:28:17,200
Clintonian how he's like, I don't
know what you mean by, you know,

378
00:28:17,279 --> 00:28:21,160
cut off the air supply to my
competitors. But he sets up the

379
00:28:21,200 --> 00:28:26,480
BILLI Milinda Gates Foundation, rebrands,
becomes this great philanthropist and since then he's

380
00:28:26,799 --> 00:28:29,960
gotten into a lot of industries.
Now Bill Gates is he's a farmer,

381
00:28:30,279 --> 00:28:34,680
he's he's a doctor, he's an
educator. He's got a lot of hats

382
00:28:34,680 --> 00:28:38,240
that he wears. But but and
it's not a problem that he wants to

383
00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:41,680
invest. He kind of says,
Oh, I'm just investing in farmland to

384
00:28:41,839 --> 00:28:47,440
diversify my holdings. But what we
found at the government Accountability Institute. Is

385
00:28:47,480 --> 00:28:52,079
he's using the same tactic that Microsoft
used. It was called embrace, extend,

386
00:28:52,279 --> 00:28:56,759
extinguish, where he enters an industry, extends his reach and then works

387
00:28:56,799 --> 00:29:00,559
to extinguish and cut off the competition. Now that the way they're doing that

388
00:29:00,599 --> 00:29:07,160
to the farmers is with all these
climate change regulations and emission standards and to

389
00:29:07,200 --> 00:29:10,359
save the planet ostensibly. But I
can tell you, I can tell you

390
00:29:10,400 --> 00:29:14,039
the fake meats that he invests in
beyond meat impossible foods, a lot of

391
00:29:14,039 --> 00:29:18,119
these lab grown meats that are coming
up, they're more energy intensive. I

392
00:29:18,160 --> 00:29:22,400
mean, nobody knows sustainability better than
a farmer. They go out of business

393
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:26,319
if they don't treat the land and
be good stewards of the soil. So

394
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:30,839
these companies that are growing it in
labs are much more omitting of what Bill

395
00:29:30,839 --> 00:29:36,759
Gates would call greenhouse gases. Yeah, seamous, it's Steve Hayward out in

396
00:29:36,759 --> 00:29:40,440
California. By the way, there's
something quaint. I'm glad you margin farmer.

397
00:29:40,519 --> 00:29:42,160
See if we call him, well, I did roll grapes for a

398
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:47,079
little while once upon a time.
It's funny that you would mentioned Bill Gates

399
00:29:47,119 --> 00:29:51,000
and the anti trust business because this
now is sort of ancient history. But

400
00:29:51,119 --> 00:29:55,400
what we were afraid of was,
oh my god, Internet Explorer might dominate

401
00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:57,559
the browser market, which nowadays this
just shows you the problem with the anti

402
00:29:57,559 --> 00:30:03,039
trust. But I started spending some
time around Silicon Valley entrepreneurs gosh, almost

403
00:30:03,039 --> 00:30:07,079
thirty years ago now because I'm getting
old, and there were two things that

404
00:30:07,160 --> 00:30:11,079
struck me. One was, especially
in the case of Gates, like why

405
00:30:11,119 --> 00:30:12,680
is the government coming after us?
What did we do wrong? I mean,

406
00:30:12,720 --> 00:30:15,200
yeah, we're tough competitors, but
they didn't get it. They didn't

407
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:19,920
understand politics. Instead the dominant mentality. And I know Peter probably sees this

408
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:25,519
because he lives there. Is your
tech entrepreneurs don't understand politics. They don't

409
00:30:25,599 --> 00:30:30,160
understand why social problems aren't solved like
engineering problems. They're actually social engineers.

410
00:30:30,359 --> 00:30:33,599
They don't realize that social engineering is
a you know, for all kinds of

411
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:37,799
reasons that we all know is a
ridiculous idea. They think they're smarter than

412
00:30:37,839 --> 00:30:41,039
we are, because why shouldn't they
think that they've made all this money and

413
00:30:41,079 --> 00:30:45,279
given us all this technological progress.
And I think the apotheosis of this was

414
00:30:45,319 --> 00:30:48,440
seen a few months ago or I
guess last year now with the downfall of

415
00:30:48,519 --> 00:30:52,920
Sam Bankman Freed. Now we follow
all his crypto shenanigans, But the part

416
00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:59,359
that arrested me and still does was
the fascination with effective altruism. Yes,

417
00:31:00,079 --> 00:31:02,720
and why were they going to be
effective? Because they're smarter than the rest

418
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:06,599
of us and no better. The
implicit understanding of that, by the way,

419
00:31:06,680 --> 00:31:08,920
is that what the Ford Foundation and
the Rockefeller Foundation have been doing for

420
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:15,359
decades was ineffective. I have to
say it's another moment of schadenfreud, which

421
00:31:15,359 --> 00:31:18,720
has sort of been a theme here
today. So there's this hub risk they

422
00:31:18,799 --> 00:31:22,519
have and that they're smarter than us, and that's what makes them dangerous.

423
00:31:22,559 --> 00:31:26,720
I mean Carnegie. And here's the
distinction. These guys want to change the

424
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,720
world because they have a vision.
The older billionaires like Carnegie, they thought

425
00:31:32,039 --> 00:31:34,720
when Carnegie's case, he thought it
was an obligation to give back on moral

426
00:31:34,759 --> 00:31:37,160
grounds, right, he thought if
he dived any money at all, he'd

427
00:31:37,200 --> 00:31:41,400
go to hell. And the Rockefellers
it's a mixed bag. But they want

428
00:31:41,440 --> 00:31:47,920
to do good and but no,
this new class has got they're completely different

429
00:31:48,000 --> 00:31:51,359
class a billionaire by the way,
that's why. I love your title control

430
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,319
of Guark. I think that's absolutely
perfect. They don't see any reason why

431
00:31:55,319 --> 00:32:00,279
they shouldn't be in control deep down
inside their contemptuous of democracy. Sorry,

432
00:32:00,279 --> 00:32:01,759
Seamus, this isn't really question.
It's a long rant, but I wonder

433
00:32:01,799 --> 00:32:06,920
if it's a wonderful You're nailing it, Steve, You're nailing it. Go

434
00:32:07,039 --> 00:32:09,839
on continue, No, no,
I just that's sort of my observation is

435
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:14,920
this is a different class of philanthropy
and quite sinister. Yeah, well,

436
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:19,200
you're absolutely right. So there's this
great MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum, and he

437
00:32:19,279 --> 00:32:22,160
actually captures exactly what you just said
by saying, I mean they basically have

438
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:27,519
a god complex. Why because they've
built their own worlds, these digital worlds,

439
00:32:27,559 --> 00:32:30,759
things like Meta and Facebook and Microsoft, and they think because they can

440
00:32:31,000 --> 00:32:36,319
turn the dials and pull the levers
in their own digital worlds and get their

441
00:32:36,519 --> 00:32:40,000
intended results there and everything's perfect and
to their liking, that they can export

442
00:32:40,079 --> 00:32:44,079
that ability to the real world.
And that's the problem because they can't.

443
00:32:44,319 --> 00:32:47,279
You can't social engineer. All you
can do is try to control people,

444
00:32:47,680 --> 00:32:51,880
and Americans we don't want to be
controlled. And that's one of the big

445
00:32:51,920 --> 00:32:54,200
problems. I mean, the number
one goal of these controller guards that just

446
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:58,799
the people in this book, not
all billionaires obviously, but just these guys,

447
00:32:59,119 --> 00:33:06,319
is they want to transfer power from
individuals and from even countries to international

448
00:33:06,359 --> 00:33:10,720
institutions, things like the World Economic
Form, the United Nations, you know,

449
00:33:10,759 --> 00:33:17,200
the World Health Organization, institutions they
control supernational organizations. And so I

450
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:21,559
mean that's how George Soro sort of
plays into this. He wants to abolish

451
00:33:21,599 --> 00:33:24,039
borders. I mean a lot of
the chaos that we're seeing in our lives

452
00:33:24,079 --> 00:33:29,440
now, from open borders to crime
in our cities, to even inflations,

453
00:33:29,839 --> 00:33:37,000
is really about weakening nations so that
international institutions can swoop in and save the

454
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:42,279
day. So aside from buying your
book, which however, is not to

455
00:33:42,319 --> 00:33:45,400
be neglected. The name of the
book is ConTroll of Garcs and you can

456
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:49,759
get it on Amazon or anywhere else
that books are sold, or any other

457
00:33:49,839 --> 00:33:57,039
monopolistic platform. Exactly buy it from
your localist bookstore. Please. Aside from

458
00:33:57,039 --> 00:34:00,759
buying your book, Shamus, what
should we do? What in the is

459
00:34:00,799 --> 00:34:07,079
there is there scope somehow for a
peasants revolt? Well visionary World Economic Forum

460
00:34:07,159 --> 00:34:10,079
visionary? You've all. Noah Harari
says, no, there's no hope.

461
00:34:10,519 --> 00:34:15,960
Abandon all hope, you peasants.
The peasant revolts of previous centuries are impossible.

462
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:21,360
Today. I think I have great
hope. I think there's awakening happening

463
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:24,000
amongst the people, I mean on
the right, conservatives. The debate for

464
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:28,280
at least forty years has been no
tax cuts, in regulation, that's our

465
00:34:28,320 --> 00:34:31,519
economic policy. And we're starting to
realize that the big corporations do not have

466
00:34:31,599 --> 00:34:37,639
our best interests in mind. And
so previously one might defend corporations like Microsoft

467
00:34:37,760 --> 00:34:40,840
or Meta. No, the debate
of the future and we're starting to wake

468
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:45,119
up to this is over artificial intelligence, which is going to bring about a

469
00:34:45,239 --> 00:34:51,000
unit like you're already hearing calls for
a universal basic income UBI. And Sam

470
00:34:51,039 --> 00:34:53,760
Altman, the head of open ai
chat you know, off and on again,

471
00:34:53,880 --> 00:34:59,679
head of open ai chat GPTs maker. He says that UBI is coming

472
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:02,480
because job losses are coming, big
job losses, and it's going to hit

473
00:35:02,519 --> 00:35:06,400
the professional classes first. I mean, you may be listening and thinking of,

474
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:07,519
well, I'm safe from you know, I use AI right now.

475
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:12,840
Just no, you are training your
replacement. And so when everybody starts losing

476
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:15,519
their jobs, and you'll see more
and more videos of people in their car

477
00:35:15,880 --> 00:35:20,119
crying about how they can't afford rent
or groceries. In their tragic videos,

478
00:35:21,000 --> 00:35:22,840
the UBI will be pitched as the
solution. Well, we can just give

479
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:28,320
you a meager, you know,
monthly check and you'll be fine. Sam

480
00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:30,320
Altman, by the way, says
it'll be a thirteen thousand, five hundred

481
00:35:30,320 --> 00:35:34,119
dollars check. And you may he
already knows the figure, yeah he,

482
00:35:34,199 --> 00:35:37,920
Oh, for all two hundred and
fifty million working Americans, it'll be thirteen

483
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:39,360
thousand, five hundred. And you
may think, well that ain't bad,

484
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:43,079
you know, I could I can
make ends meet on thirteen thousand, five

485
00:35:43,159 --> 00:35:45,079
hundred a month. No, no, no, it's thirteen thousand, five

486
00:35:45,159 --> 00:35:52,320
hundred per year. According to Sam
Altman's manifesto about the coming AI revolutions,

487
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,440
and so what do we back our
own billionaires? Do we back the good

488
00:35:55,440 --> 00:36:00,280
billionaires? Is there any hope of
a Godzilla versus King Kong? We've got

489
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:07,119
Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and David
Sachs and Joe Lonsdale. And in New

490
00:36:07,199 --> 00:36:09,119
York there's Cliff Ass. I mean, there are Cliff astness. I should

491
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:15,599
finish pronouncing his name. There are
good guy billionaires who seem I won't say

492
00:36:15,599 --> 00:36:20,360
they're all spoiling. Elon Musk does
seem to be a man who enjoys a

493
00:36:20,400 --> 00:36:22,559
fight. He's spoiling for a fight. But the people that just named are

494
00:36:22,599 --> 00:36:28,000
willing to fight. Do we just
repose our hope in them and hope that

495
00:36:28,039 --> 00:36:32,920
Godzilla defeats can Kong? Well?
Number one, we need to wake up

496
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:37,679
and spread the word about what's coming
and what these guys are up to before

497
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:42,559
they close the close the loop and
close the net around us. But so

498
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,119
that's that's the first thing is you've
got to be aware. You've got to

499
00:36:45,159 --> 00:36:47,440
have the facts. You've got to
be able to articulate these facts convincingly to

500
00:36:47,559 --> 00:36:52,800
your peers and your friends and your
family and evangelize you know that you know

501
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:54,840
we don't want to be controlled.
Number two. Yeah, there's a there's

502
00:36:54,840 --> 00:37:02,119
a big imbalance between the George Soros
ATM machine and the Silicon Valley lads,

503
00:37:02,159 --> 00:37:06,920
the guys in this book. I
mean, they are spending enormous sums and

504
00:37:07,039 --> 00:37:10,000
we have great funders on the right. You mentioned them, and you know

505
00:37:10,039 --> 00:37:15,320
they're very generous and study after study
shows that conservatives are more generous than liberals.

506
00:37:15,599 --> 00:37:21,360
But there's an imbalance there just is
on you know, funding causes on

507
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:23,920
the right, and so you know, not to not to say that they

508
00:37:23,960 --> 00:37:27,400
need to spend more, but they
really do. And I mean, we

509
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:30,480
may never match the George Soros ATM
machine, but it's important that we try

510
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:37,079
one more question before I repose your
final moments in the in the tender hands

511
00:37:37,119 --> 00:37:43,800
of Rob Long. And here's the
question. What are I'm very impressed And

512
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:45,880
this isn't a question I'm going to
give a little speech myself here, but

513
00:37:45,960 --> 00:37:52,039
I'm tremendously impressed by you and the
other people that Peter Schweitzer has gathered around

514
00:37:52,079 --> 00:37:58,679
himself in Florida, because what you
were doing is something that used to be

515
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:07,119
known as journalism. Your book is
research. You've interviewed people, You've gone

516
00:38:07,159 --> 00:38:09,440
through documents, you have a thesis, and you print a and you write

517
00:38:09,480 --> 00:38:17,079
a book about it. The institutions
that are capable, the legacy institutions,

518
00:38:17,079 --> 00:38:21,320
the New York Times and on and
on, that are capable of long form

519
00:38:21,400 --> 00:38:28,360
journalism are garbage. They're just not
doing real journalism. There are some exceptions,

520
00:38:28,360 --> 00:38:32,480
but only some exceptions. So just
tell us very briefly about tell us

521
00:38:32,559 --> 00:38:37,880
who Peter Schweitzer is, tell us
what you guys are up to. Well,

522
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:39,239
well, thank you so much.
It's an honor to hear you say

523
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:43,400
that, and I will pass along
your kind words to Peter Schweitzer. He's

524
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:46,119
an investigative legend. For those who
haven't heard of him, he is my

525
00:38:46,199 --> 00:38:51,760
personal hero and mentor. I've worked
with him for since twenty eleven, so

526
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:53,719
over a decade I've been working with
Peter Schweitzer. I thought I wanted to

527
00:38:53,760 --> 00:38:58,360
go into politics by the way I
studied polysci. I thought I might want

528
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:02,599
to be a politician or something.
Interning for Peter Schweitzer for six months disabused

529
00:39:02,599 --> 00:39:08,719
me of those notions, and I
find it much more gratifying and helpful to

530
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:13,719
be exposing the corruption. So I've
worked with him on the books Clinton Cash,

531
00:39:13,760 --> 00:39:16,039
Secret Empires, and I'm kind of
the nerd that Schweitzer said, Okay,

532
00:39:16,039 --> 00:39:21,920
now just go take you five thousand
pages of Clinton Foundation nine to ninety

533
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:24,400
filings and make some sense of it. And so I follow the money as

534
00:39:24,400 --> 00:39:28,239
our motto. So I put everything
into a Spreadsheet's what I did for this

535
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:31,760
book. I put all all the
figures into a spreadsheet and just start filtering

536
00:39:31,800 --> 00:39:37,239
and sorting, and eventually it's something
like a Uranium one speech where they're paying

537
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:42,559
Bill Clinton five hundred thousand dollars in
Moscow will pop out. But yeah,

538
00:39:42,679 --> 00:39:46,480
it's atrocious. What the mainstream media
has become the legacy media New York Times,

539
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:51,559
and we're seeing a renaissance now,
people like Michael Schallenberger and Matt Tayebbi

540
00:39:51,719 --> 00:39:57,559
and Barry Weiss and just like the
substack has really done such wonders for investigative

541
00:39:57,639 --> 00:40:01,440
journalism. And so I think that
that's what gives me hope, really is

542
00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:07,880
there are people out there who still
are digging through the mountain of prap that

543
00:40:08,079 --> 00:40:12,039
is thrown at us from you know, you get you get a foider request.

544
00:40:12,039 --> 00:40:15,000
Either they give you nothing or they
give you a mountain of nothing.

545
00:40:15,440 --> 00:40:17,719
And uh so it's you know,
and I and I'm you know, we're

546
00:40:17,760 --> 00:40:22,199
working on trying to use some of
these AI tools that they're putting out to

547
00:40:22,559 --> 00:40:25,920
uh expose the people who really want
to control our lives. So I actually

548
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:30,400
got bing GPT. I was on
the wait list and beta user for it.

549
00:40:30,880 --> 00:40:35,119
Uh and it was amazing because I
was searching bing gpt for dirt on

550
00:40:35,159 --> 00:40:38,639
Bill Gates, and it initially was
turning up some great results, and within

551
00:40:38,679 --> 00:40:42,039
a month it was like, why
do you It starts talking back to me

552
00:40:42,079 --> 00:40:45,360
saying, well, why do you
think Bill Gates is an altruistic And I'm

553
00:40:45,400 --> 00:40:47,239
like, oh, altruistic is kind
of an interesting word, Like how do

554
00:40:47,280 --> 00:40:53,079
you define altruistic? Mister bing or
mister and missus bing Seamus? You know

555
00:40:53,199 --> 00:40:57,440
the other side. I hope this
book sells and sells and sells, and

556
00:40:57,480 --> 00:40:59,960
I hope that by the time you're
let me see, I'm going to guess

557
00:41:00,079 --> 00:41:02,159
you're thirty five, is still a
few years away for you. I hope

558
00:41:02,159 --> 00:41:06,159
by the time you're thirty five,
you're at least you're on the way to

559
00:41:06,239 --> 00:41:09,679
becoming a Bill Gates of your own. But no, no, why would

560
00:41:09,679 --> 00:41:15,360
you wish that on the other side
pays better? You're aware of that,

561
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:19,880
are you? That's right, Yeah, we're not in it for the money.

562
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,800
This is a nonprofit. I uh
okay, yeah, yeah, all

563
00:41:22,880 --> 00:41:25,880
right, Or to rob, you're
mistaking the part. So here's my real

564
00:41:25,960 --> 00:41:30,000
question. I mean, I you
know, I'm not really scared of people

565
00:41:30,039 --> 00:41:36,480
trying to control me. I'm scared
of people trying to make my life better

566
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:39,599
and do good for me. That
the altruism that you said, like that,

567
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:43,239
that's what I'm scared of. I'm
scared of people thinking, well,

568
00:41:43,280 --> 00:41:45,639
you know what, if we let
you make your own decision, they're gonna

569
00:41:45,639 --> 00:41:47,599
be messy and complicated and chaotic,
and you might make the wrong one.

570
00:41:49,440 --> 00:41:51,599
You know, we just went through
two and a half years of that.

571
00:41:51,599 --> 00:41:58,960
That was essentially the subtitle of COVID
nineteen. Do what we tell you to

572
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:01,719
do, even if it's not really
important or necessary, because we just we

573
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:08,320
it's going to make life simpler.
And I think there's something attractive about that,

574
00:42:09,159 --> 00:42:14,000
not just for the billionaires, but
for people. People acquiesced to this.

575
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:19,199
People complain when the world isn't risk
free. They complain when well,

576
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:21,599
I know, I have to do
this all by myself. They complain when

577
00:42:21,639 --> 00:42:27,199
there's no government or no official bureau
or app to solve a problem. I

578
00:42:27,199 --> 00:42:32,159
mean, aren't I mean, I
understand you're you're focusing on thirty billionaires about

579
00:42:32,199 --> 00:42:36,039
the billions of dollars, but aren't
we the problems? And they have the

580
00:42:36,039 --> 00:42:38,360
reason, They have powered influences because
they're selling something that's very attracted to a

581
00:42:38,360 --> 00:42:43,320
whole lot of people. No,
I mean that's exactly exactly right. I

582
00:42:43,320 --> 00:42:45,440
mean I talk about it where it's
like slipping into a warm bubble bath of

583
00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:49,199
tyranny. I mean, it's very
it's very easy. That's kind of one

584
00:42:49,199 --> 00:42:52,280
of the scary things about it.
It's so convenient. And I and I

585
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:53,559
do applaud them. Again, I
said, I don't want to caricature them

586
00:42:53,559 --> 00:42:55,559
in the book, and I did, and I applaud them for a lot

587
00:42:55,559 --> 00:42:59,360
of the tools they've made that have
made life easier, right down to the

588
00:42:59,440 --> 00:43:02,840
Rockefellers. You know, they they
made life better in a lot of ways.

589
00:43:04,519 --> 00:43:08,000
But what's coming down the pike with
with the AI revolution, and it's

590
00:43:08,079 --> 00:43:10,199
and you know, we don't need
to be scared of AI. I mean,

591
00:43:10,320 --> 00:43:15,519
we hopefully can use it for all
good things. But the power that

592
00:43:15,639 --> 00:43:19,840
it has, and that this is
the economic debate of the future over UBI

593
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,880
and and whether people, you know
a lot of people think about the UBI

594
00:43:22,000 --> 00:43:24,119
is like, oh, well,
I'll just be able to finally take those

595
00:43:24,159 --> 00:43:29,639
guitar lessons and pick up painting and
culinary classes and it's just going to be

596
00:43:29,719 --> 00:43:31,880
lovely. And that's the thing.
It's not going to be lovely. Uh,

597
00:43:32,039 --> 00:43:37,159
And and working hard for a living
is gratifying, and they in trying

598
00:43:37,199 --> 00:43:40,440
to trying to take that away from
people is actually uh evil in a way,

599
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,239
I think. But anyhow, you're
right, it's I mean, were

600
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:47,320
we not you and me on this
podcast, But we, as in the

601
00:43:47,559 --> 00:43:51,679
non control of arts, are part
of the problem because we saw it in

602
00:43:51,679 --> 00:43:54,480
the pandemic. How many people turned
into Karen's and I mean our own family

603
00:43:54,480 --> 00:43:59,440
members wouldn't let us into their houses
without masks, and and the masks became

604
00:43:59,519 --> 00:44:02,159
like a safe banket. I mean
you still see people wearing masks just now

605
00:44:02,199 --> 00:44:05,079
in New York City. I see
them all the time. Yeah, all

606
00:44:05,119 --> 00:44:08,039
the time. So that is a
problem. And waking up, I mean

607
00:44:08,599 --> 00:44:13,199
we can have convenient I mean,
we live at the greatest time in human

608
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:15,880
history. I mean it's amazing.
Maybe twenty years ago might have been better,

609
00:44:15,920 --> 00:44:21,440
but this is actually little to statistically
the best time it is. I

610
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:24,480
mean, you can have a meal
delivered to your door within a matter of

611
00:44:24,559 --> 00:44:29,280
minutes at the tap of a button. It's an incredible time to be alive.

612
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:31,280
But we also do need to wake
up and take some personal responsibility.

613
00:44:31,960 --> 00:44:37,079
I guess go outside and touch grass
maybe once in a while. But it's

614
00:44:37,360 --> 00:44:40,280
you know, we may end up
like China. Is all the warning is,

615
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,840
the West may end up closer to
a system like China. I mean,

616
00:44:43,880 --> 00:44:46,440
claud Schwab talks about stakeholder capitalism and
it, oh, it sounds so

617
00:44:46,480 --> 00:44:51,079
lovely. We've got all these stakeholders. They don't consider us stakeholders, and

618
00:44:51,079 --> 00:44:52,559
we don't get a seat at the
table, just like we didn't get a

619
00:44:52,559 --> 00:44:58,199
seat at the table during the pandemic. These problems, things like climate change

620
00:44:58,199 --> 00:45:01,000
are too big for the peasant class
understand. They need to be solved by

621
00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:05,920
global institutions. And everyone to a
man in this book, right down to

622
00:45:06,079 --> 00:45:10,559
Bill Gates and and and you know
fashion they all praised China's response to COVID,

623
00:45:10,599 --> 00:45:15,920
and they said the ability of the
CCP to they use euphemisms like mobilize

624
00:45:16,280 --> 00:45:22,280
resources or or or they're quote efficiency
or something, and like, we know

625
00:45:22,320 --> 00:45:25,559
what that's code word for. It's
co word for brutal authoritarianism where the people

626
00:45:25,639 --> 00:45:30,880
don't have a say and point us. And so all the people who like

627
00:45:30,039 --> 00:45:34,719
you know, just kind of are
slipping into this warm bubble bath of convenience.

628
00:45:35,800 --> 00:45:38,239
They're they're not going to They're not
going to like a system like that.

629
00:45:38,559 --> 00:45:42,400
They're not going to like the facial
recognition cameras. They're not going to

630
00:45:42,519 --> 00:45:46,480
like the weekend driving privileges lost for
disinformation and all of that. So,

631
00:45:46,679 --> 00:45:50,840
but it's hard to choose. It's
hard to choose the hard way, right.

632
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:52,280
I mean, when I come home, I'm up traffic abroad and I

633
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:57,079
can land in the airport and I
sort of breeze through and I do you

634
00:45:57,079 --> 00:45:59,800
know, global entry. I don't
even show my passport. I just look

635
00:45:59,840 --> 00:46:02,320
in the camera. Yeah, it's
kind of great, you know, but

636
00:46:02,400 --> 00:46:06,360
I but I hear you, Okay. The book is called Control of Arcs,

637
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,280
Exposing the billionaire class, the secret
deals, and the globalist bought to

638
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:13,679
dominate your life. The author Seamus
Bruner, Shamus, thank you for joining

639
00:46:13,760 --> 00:46:15,400
us. Thank you guys so much. This was this is a real pleasure,

640
00:46:16,079 --> 00:46:22,519
Seamus. Parody think in terms of
parody. I want you to infiltrate

641
00:46:22,280 --> 00:46:28,599
some parties at Davos and do an
update on Tom Wolfe's Radical Sheet. All

642
00:46:28,679 --> 00:46:31,679
right, I'm gonna make tell Schweitzer
whatever he has in mind for you.

643
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:35,320
That's what I have in mind,
will you please? Yeah, if I

644
00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:37,360
end up in you know, a
Swiss prison, I'll thank you. That's

645
00:46:39,039 --> 00:46:43,159
the way. Think of all the
writing you could get done in. It

646
00:46:43,199 --> 00:46:45,840
could be a lot worse places.
That's probably true. It's probably quite nice

647
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:50,960
over there in prison. Think of
all the tobal run they'd serve you great

648
00:46:50,960 --> 00:46:54,000
to have you, right, all
right, take care of Seamus. Bye.

649
00:46:55,440 --> 00:46:58,360
Well, thank god. I'm not
a billionaire. It's all I can

650
00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:01,880
say. Yeah, exactly, I'm
If you were Rob, you would be

651
00:47:01,960 --> 00:47:06,840
running the counter offensive. Again,
you're insufficiently alarmed, Rob. You do

652
00:47:06,960 --> 00:47:12,719
know people want to take your guess
stoves a chef for the words. In

653
00:47:13,639 --> 00:47:16,360
Santa Monica, where I used to
I lived. I rented in Santa Monica

654
00:47:16,360 --> 00:47:20,039
for many years before I moved to
Venice, before I moved to New York.

655
00:47:20,679 --> 00:47:22,679
They met, it was early days. They put out an ordinance where

656
00:47:23,760 --> 00:47:28,719
every new toilet had to be a
low flow toilet when those toilets doesn't really

657
00:47:28,760 --> 00:47:32,159
work right, and all these you
know, Santa Monica's film People's Republic of

658
00:47:32,239 --> 00:47:36,760
Santa Monica. They called all these
millionaire billionaire environmentalists, right, they were

659
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:38,119
all in favor of this. But
when they were redod to their houses for

660
00:47:38,159 --> 00:47:42,679
their millions of dollars. They didn't
want that. So but in order to

661
00:47:42,679 --> 00:47:45,360
get the certificate of occupancy, you
gotta have an inspection, and that inspector

662
00:47:45,440 --> 00:47:49,960
is going to look and see make
sure those toilets are like low flow toilets.

663
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:52,920
So what they would do is they
would install the low flow toilets and

664
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:54,400
all the bathrooms, and they get
the inspection, and then they would swap

665
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:58,800
out the low flow toilets for they
really they're really good ones, the Japanese

666
00:47:58,800 --> 00:48:04,000
ones that like basically are like Niagara
falls. And so I think at some

667
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:09,920
point someone estimated that there were twenty
five low flow toilets in the entire city

668
00:48:09,920 --> 00:48:14,039
of Santa Monica. They just kept
rotating from house to house to house to

669
00:48:14,079 --> 00:48:20,159
house. So I guess I guess
my only comfort I take from this from

670
00:48:20,239 --> 00:48:23,000
the book and from what Shamus was
saying, was that the great news here

671
00:48:23,159 --> 00:48:27,679
is that the billionaires are almost always
wrong. They almost always make terrible the

672
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:30,920
roast. They think they're so smart, even the ones that we might be

673
00:48:30,039 --> 00:48:36,320
sympathetic to, and they make these
classic classic blunders. Sometimes it gets us

674
00:48:36,360 --> 00:48:39,360
all killed. Sometimes they lose a
lot of money. Sometimes nothing happens.

675
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:46,119
But this stuff never works, So
I guess that's what I'm comforting myself with.

676
00:48:46,199 --> 00:48:51,000
But maybe I am insufficiently alarmed.
But yeah, they do a lot

677
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:52,880
of great damage along the way,
though. I mean, one case in

678
00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:57,039
point, just one is the Ford
Foundation, going back fifty years ago.

679
00:48:57,800 --> 00:49:02,480
One of their biggest grant areas was
overpopulation, and they bankrolled international planned parenthood

680
00:49:02,559 --> 00:49:07,719
the tune of hundreds of millions of
dollars and led us some real horrors like

681
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:10,239
you know, forced sterilizations in India
and such. There's a great book on

682
00:49:10,280 --> 00:49:15,960
this called Fatal Misconception by a historian
of Columbia who's otherwise a liberal. But

683
00:49:15,039 --> 00:49:19,079
it's very savage. And by the
way, even the New York Times now

684
00:49:19,119 --> 00:49:22,159
says, gosh, just in the
last month, gosh, maybe falling fertility

685
00:49:22,239 --> 00:49:25,559
is going to be a real problem
for the next century. Which, by

686
00:49:25,599 --> 00:49:29,079
the way, it's like the universities. You know, Julian Simon, you

687
00:49:29,079 --> 00:49:31,000
know, Peter knows he was,
you know, they were saying this fifty

688
00:49:31,159 --> 00:49:36,320
forty fifty years ago. We have
been saying conservatives about university for the last

689
00:49:36,360 --> 00:49:38,360
twenty five years. And you know, boy, we have one after the

690
00:49:38,400 --> 00:49:42,719
other we get to say, I
told you so, but there we are.

691
00:49:43,239 --> 00:49:45,039
Yeah, I told you so.
That sounds that's that sort of weak

692
00:49:45,119 --> 00:49:50,039
sauce when everything's rubble, But you're
right. I mean that is that is

693
00:49:50,719 --> 00:49:54,079
I do. I do comfort myself
that way. I was aware of Seamus,

694
00:49:54,079 --> 00:49:59,360
and I was aware of his book. He's even better than I expected.

695
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:02,440
He's well stolen. Yeah, I
mean, he's well spoken, he's

696
00:50:02,440 --> 00:50:07,199
hardworking. So I take I really
do take a lot of comfort. Rob

697
00:50:07,519 --> 00:50:12,000
and Steve. All three of us
love good journalism, and all three of

698
00:50:12,079 --> 00:50:16,320
us are of an age so that
we saw with our own eyes the journalism

699
00:50:16,400 --> 00:50:22,440
business model collapse. Just collapse,
all three of us in one way or

700
00:50:22,480 --> 00:50:29,039
another. I mean we've had this
conversation over drinks how many times over the

701
00:50:29,119 --> 00:50:31,119
years. Where's the new business model
going to come from? Where? How

702
00:50:31,119 --> 00:50:35,559
can you save the New York Times? How can you revive the Washington?

703
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:38,920
Well, here's where it comes from. Peter Schweizer's put together half a dozen

704
00:50:39,000 --> 00:50:45,320
really bright guys like Seamus in West
Palm Beach, Florida, of all places.

705
00:50:45,199 --> 00:50:52,239
Barry Weiss is in Montecito with something
called the Free Press Online. Shallenberger

706
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:55,199
is up in San Francisco, Matt
Tayibe. I don't even know where Matt

707
00:50:55,239 --> 00:51:00,280
Tayibe is, but the Alex Berenson
from his home and Ry, I think

708
00:51:00,280 --> 00:51:06,079
it is someplace in upstate New York. Journalism, good journalism, is beginning

709
00:51:06,280 --> 00:51:13,360
to get done, new institutions,
new voices. I find that I have

710
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:16,159
lived to hear the first shots of
the counter revolution. That's the way I

711
00:51:16,199 --> 00:51:23,519
feel. That's actually, that's so
optimistic, Peter. It's good for the

712
00:51:23,519 --> 00:51:29,159
The paradox is brought to us by
some billionaires or otherwise a problem. Right,

713
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:34,159
the Internet has lowered the barriers of
entry to this, which that's true,

714
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:37,639
that is true. But that is
also the problem with billionaires is that

715
00:51:37,679 --> 00:51:45,679
they or rich people in general,
is that it's it's just irresistible to resist

716
00:51:45,880 --> 00:51:51,280
the idea that I'm rich because I'm
really smart. Yes, and I figured

717
00:51:51,280 --> 00:51:53,679
it out and you didn't. And
you know what, I'm really smart in

718
00:51:53,719 --> 00:51:57,000
this one area. I mean,
you could say this. You can say

719
00:51:57,039 --> 00:51:59,880
this about Elon Musk, very very
brilliant guy. Right, and we're going

720
00:51:59,920 --> 00:52:01,039
to go to Mars because if we
love Musk, he built an electric car.

721
00:52:01,079 --> 00:52:06,000
Nobody said he could do that.
Then he comes head to head with

722
00:52:06,039 --> 00:52:10,760
an ad supported media business, and
he's floundering and he's pretending that it's someone

723
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:15,719
else's fault, whereas in fact,
he purchased an ad supported media business and

724
00:52:15,760 --> 00:52:19,960
now is complaining about the terms of
that ad supported media business, which is

725
00:52:19,960 --> 00:52:22,519
a little bit, you know,
kind of like a come upance for somebody

726
00:52:22,519 --> 00:52:27,239
who's fairly arrogant. But that's okay, that's all right, that is what

727
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,519
the market is supposed to do.
The problem really is when that these sort

728
00:52:30,519 --> 00:52:36,239
of when the come up and this
doesn't happen because they are not part of

729
00:52:36,239 --> 00:52:38,679
the market. Instead, they're part
of the regulatory system, which doesn't ever

730
00:52:38,719 --> 00:52:43,599
have a come upance. We never
lose regulations, We never lose bureaus,

731
00:52:43,599 --> 00:52:46,599
We never lose people telling us,
you know, how many gallons are in

732
00:52:46,599 --> 00:52:50,039
our toilet tech. We only get
more and more and more of them.

733
00:52:50,079 --> 00:52:53,320
And the solution isn't to replace those
people with people who agree with me.

734
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:58,039
The solutions to get rid of that
altogether. Yeah, I said, we

735
00:52:58,079 --> 00:53:01,239
get the opposite. For my entire
adult life, you will hear Ralph Nader

736
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:07,519
or some other person on the left
say regulation of X or Y has failed.

737
00:53:07,679 --> 00:53:12,559
Therefore we need more and better regulation. Yes, the right conclusion from

738
00:53:12,599 --> 00:53:20,239
this right, that's exactly right,
That's exactly right, well fellas, I

739
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:24,480
mean, I I don't even want
to bring this up because it's I'm so

740
00:53:24,639 --> 00:53:30,880
I'm so exhausted by it. But
it does seem that this is am I

741
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:34,800
right, this is the Hunter Biden
endgame here. The indictments that came back

742
00:53:34,920 --> 00:53:42,119
down yesterday are sort of that.
I mean, I think it's a very

743
00:53:42,119 --> 00:53:45,000
big deal. I think it's a
very very big deal and now means it

744
00:53:45,039 --> 00:53:47,639
cannot be avoided next year. It
is also I you know, I don't

745
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:52,440
want to well put on a tiny
tinfoil hat and say curious that this indictment

746
00:53:52,559 --> 00:53:58,599
was not issued until after the deadlines
had passed for someone serious to file against

747
00:53:58,679 --> 00:54:01,199
Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.
I'll just put it that way. There's

748
00:54:01,239 --> 00:54:06,440
all that we have that's good.
Tit Foyle hatism. I gotta like it.

749
00:54:06,519 --> 00:54:09,840
I like it like we have.
If you look at one of the

750
00:54:09,840 --> 00:54:14,000
debates, I guess it was the
first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

751
00:54:14,039 --> 00:54:16,360
Biden says, this is a close
reconstruction. If I'm not quoting him

752
00:54:16,360 --> 00:54:22,199
exactly, nobody made money on China. The only person who made money on

753
00:54:22,280 --> 00:54:27,599
China was this guy, and he
points at Trump. He was lying through

754
00:54:28,000 --> 00:54:32,400
his teeth. He was lying to
the American people in an election year.

755
00:54:34,079 --> 00:54:38,159
That is a danger to democracy.
And now we know he did it.

756
00:54:38,840 --> 00:54:44,440
No thanks to the mainstream media,
but thanks to James Comer and some very

757
00:54:44,559 --> 00:54:52,119
dogged, terribly uncool Republicans in the
House of Representatives. But uh, and

758
00:54:52,199 --> 00:55:00,639
the yesterday Biden's lawyers. So he
has he's being indicted or a tax evasion

759
00:55:00,679 --> 00:55:04,480
to the tune of one point six
million, if I recall the figure,

760
00:55:04,920 --> 00:55:10,639
and Biden lawyers. Biden's lawyers had
the effrontery to say that if his name

761
00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:14,960
was anything other than Biden, this
case would never have been brought. If

762
00:55:15,000 --> 00:55:19,360
his name was anything other than Biden, he'd be in prison right now.

763
00:55:20,039 --> 00:55:25,480
It's staggering. It is just staggering
now to start thinking through the politics of

764
00:55:25,519 --> 00:55:30,039
this thing. What does it do? I mean, my fear is that

765
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:37,440
it kind of numbs the entire electorate
to serious criminal charges. Oh well,

766
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:44,119
doesn't matter that Trump has been indicted
by because now hunter Biden has been These

767
00:55:44,159 --> 00:55:46,400
should be taken seriously. And my
concern is that in some way they may

768
00:55:46,480 --> 00:55:52,039
neutralize each other in practice, in
the practice of practical politics, but it

769
00:55:52,159 --> 00:56:00,559
sure looks like it sure feels like
just a touch of justice. Yeah,

770
00:56:00,599 --> 00:56:01,639
I'm not so sure about that,
Peter. I mean, if you think

771
00:56:01,679 --> 00:56:07,719
back to Whitewater and the Clinton's complicated
land deal they lost money on and then

772
00:56:07,800 --> 00:56:12,000
ultimately an impeachment over you know,
sex scandal, which people said, ew,

773
00:56:12,079 --> 00:56:15,239
but that doesn't really rise to I
think that this is such obvious self

774
00:56:15,280 --> 00:56:21,480
dealing, such obvious influence pedaling that
even, you know, an independent voter

775
00:56:21,599 --> 00:56:23,679
or someone who's not especially idylogical,
is going to say, this really stinks.

776
00:56:23,679 --> 00:56:29,800
And I don't like these people that
that that. It does seem like

777
00:56:29,960 --> 00:56:37,719
classic government influence pedaling, corruption plus
tax evasion, which makes everybody mad.

778
00:56:38,559 --> 00:56:42,039
But what's interesting about it is the
only reason we had to do to get

779
00:56:42,079 --> 00:56:45,599
away with it was pay his thinking
taxes. He could have kept millions of

780
00:56:45,639 --> 00:56:47,719
dollars. Yeah. By the way, I don't know if you've seen the

781
00:56:47,719 --> 00:56:52,840
itemization of what he spent his money
on. It's really fun. Yeah,

782
00:56:52,480 --> 00:56:59,239
hundreds of thousands of dollars on women. I think that's the itemization line item.

783
00:56:59,440 --> 00:57:01,199
But we only reason we have this
sort of fifty six or whatever it

784
00:57:01,239 --> 00:57:07,119
is, fifty plus page indictment is
because the plea deal was thrown out in

785
00:57:07,159 --> 00:57:13,840
the summer. I mean, wasn't
the stately pace of justice. This was

786
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:22,960
a weird, unexpected judge tossing out
a plea deal in August that ended up

787
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:27,840
with the same prosecutor coming back with
this this, this kind of the size

788
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:32,639
of this indictment suggests that there had
to been something going on before that plea

789
00:57:32,719 --> 00:57:36,199
deal was thrown out, because you
don't go from a plea deal which is

790
00:57:36,280 --> 00:57:38,280
gonna be fine, suddenly this guy's
going to do time for four or five

791
00:57:38,360 --> 00:57:42,159
years, right, That's that's I
mean, I'm no lawyer, we need

792
00:57:42,239 --> 00:57:46,280
john you here, but that seems
like a bizarre swing from we're not going

793
00:57:46,360 --> 00:57:51,639
to touch him to actually, we're
gonna throw the book at him. That

794
00:57:51,639 --> 00:57:53,400
that's it. That's an interesting story
that I can't wait for to be told,

795
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:55,719
but probably won't be told for a
few years. But i'd love to

796
00:57:55,760 --> 00:58:00,079
know. Speaking of Foyas, I'd
love to have that those conversations for you,

797
00:58:00,159 --> 00:58:06,159
because that would be a really interesting
story. Let's speaking of interesting stories.

798
00:58:06,239 --> 00:58:08,840
This story is coming to an end. Thank you. Fellas for joining

799
00:58:08,920 --> 00:58:13,320
us. This podcast is brought to
you by shop Off. I support them

800
00:58:13,400 --> 00:58:16,519
by supporting us. Please I go
to rickshay dot com slash join become part

801
00:58:16,599 --> 00:58:22,239
of the last remaining sane sliver of
the Internet. We promise you, and

802
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:23,599
if you can take a five minute, take a minute to leave a five

803
00:58:23,639 --> 00:58:25,840
star review on Apple Podcasts. I
know we keep saying that, I know

804
00:58:25,880 --> 00:58:29,920
it just people don't even hear it, but it actually really really matters.

805
00:58:30,760 --> 00:58:34,440
It gets us up when the AI
algorithm helps defeat the automatic brains trying to

806
00:58:34,519 --> 00:58:42,000
defeat us, and it's all unhappy. Honkah today. First day, it

807
00:58:42,039 --> 00:58:45,519
started last night. I think last
night was the first night. First night,

808
00:58:45,559 --> 00:58:47,599
first night was last night. You're
right, and Steve, thank you

809
00:58:47,639 --> 00:58:52,239
for joining us. Always a pleasure. See you on down the road Next

810
00:58:52,239 --> 00:59:00,679
week, Fellas, Next week,
Boys Ricochet join the conversation.