Speaker 1: And Hi, how are you welcome? Welcome to the Big
Podcast on this Tuesday. Today is the twenty eighth day
of April, year of our lower twenty twenty six. My
name is Tom Sullivan. We've got probably a more subjects today.
I want to talk about them I think I've seen
in a long long time. So let's dive into it.
Because this afternoon, surprise, surprise, the Justice Department has indicted
former FBI director James Comy. No, no, no, no, this
isn't an old show. I know that he was indicted
before and that was dismissed, but this is the second
time that. This is the first time he was indicted.
It had to do with why he got thrown out
of court was because of the fact that they did
not have a proper us attorney in the Eastern District
of Virginia, and so they straightened all that around. But
this is about the seashells. Remember the photo of the
seashells that he posted on social media on Komi posts
on social media, and he claimed that he was out
walking on the beach and he looked down and the
shells were perfectly lined up eighty six forty seven, Which
how do you interpret eighty six. Well, it's kind of
an expression from mob movies, isn't it about you want
to eighty six? That guy is to bump him off,
to kill him. So it was eighty six forty seven.
And so the reason that they are indicting him is
because of the fact that he was making a threat
on the life of the president. So whether or not
this can get anywhere, but this is the second indictment
where and it goes without it's obvious, it goes without saying.
The first time they indicted him, it was from Pam Bondy,
and that was on him lying to Congress. Well, that
didn't go anywhere. So this time we've got a new
acting Attorney General and Todd blanche and you know the
president's been itching to get Komy and and so here
we are. Jonathan Durley, George down Law professor. He weighed
in with this.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say, I must be in a
parallel universe to be talking about the shell artwork of
James coming. But the fact is that it is relevant
only to the extent that he might have denied a
fact that proved to be his denial proved to be
false to federal officials in stocking.
Speaker 3: But do you mean, like if there was a witness
or something on the beach who saw him.
Speaker 2: Is that what you're going if he was questioned, well,
if he was questioned and gave false information to federal investigators,
that can be the basis of a charge. I think
that just showing the picture is going to be a
weak case in terms of a threat. What's interesting is
that the first indictment that was dismissed involved false statements
under eighteen USC. Thousand and one, and that's the most
used provision in terms of false statement prosecutions by the
Department of Justice. What's interesting about that dismissal is that
it was based on the fact that Lindsay Halligan, who
was the acting US Attorney, was viewed as not properly
in her position. That problem has now been cured by
James Huntley, who is appointed essentially by the court. Now,
it's not clear if they went back and just cured
that problem, they're going to reissue part of what they
were pursuing under the original indictment, or whether we're talking
at this point of something that is a new charge.
Speaker 1: This looks like a new charge, and the President has
made a very clear He said when he was campaigning
that he was going to get retribution. And Comy was
seen as a leader in the perceived effort to weaponize
a justice system against Donald Trump, and so Trump is
going after him. Missed on the first shot. So this
is the second indictment of James Comyan. It's about posting
a photo on social media of the numbers eighty six
forty seven. Will that be enough for a jury to
convict him of threatening the president? He wrote on the
posting that he put up on social media. He took
the photo and then the caption was cool shell formation
on my beach walk. He said he saw the shells
on a beach in North Carolina. So you can judge
that for what you like. I doubt that that's going
to go anywhere, but it does give does give James
Comy more legal headaches and more legal bills, no question
about it. And at the very least, I think that's
what Donald Trump will be happy. He wants to make
life miserable for James Comy. Harriet or Bond, who is
a legal contributor at Fox, She also waited.
Speaker 4: Here we are again with James Comy, Right, we don't
have the indictment yet, but I'm wondering if they're bringing
a charge under eighteen USC. Seventy one, which makes it
a federal crime to knowingly or wilfully make any threat
to kill or kidnap or bodily harm against the president,
vice president and so forth, all based on that ceashell
instagram post. Of course, Look, this is a project that
is near and dear to the President's heart, right, and
this goes back to really the trauma that James Comy
inflicted upon the president in the first administration.
Speaker 5: The torture.
Speaker 4: I think we all remember that pretty well, right, And
so if you recall the Inspector General.
Speaker 5: Wrote a really bad report about Komy back then.
Speaker 4: Because what he would do during the first Trump administration
he would write himself these memos, and those memos contained
sensitive information about, say the Russia investigation, and then he
would give those memos to his lawyers. And in one
instance he a memo one of his own memos to
a friend and instructed that friend to give it to
the media. He later said the reason he did that
was to basically gin up what ended up being the
Mueller investigation against Trump, which you know, it was a
burn Book concluded that there was no big collusion that
was happening between the Trump administration and Russia. And really,
you know, that investigation, I still say is one of
the biggest dist graces in American history and really in
abuse of the justice system. And James Comy really was
behind that with these memos. Now, if you remember, Bill
Barr refused declined to prosecute him based on the handling
of the sensitive information those memos. The president, though publicly
he said it showed that Bill Barr was a fair
and reasonable person, he also expressed frustration about that. Later on,
we saw that Lindsay Halligan, who is I don't know
what we'd call her exactly, but the temporary US attorney
in the Eastern District of Virginia tried to bring a
case against Comy. That one nowhere as well. So now
are they going to have shot this time around? I
don't know.
Speaker 1: I could play a long list of lawyers who are
saying this doesn't have a chance, but we'll let the
justice system take it from here. It's clearly retribution. But
that's exactly what Donald Trump said he was going to do,
no question about it, all right. The other Culture War item.
So we got culture war number one with James Comey
the other culture war item that is creating a hullablue.
I'm sorry, I just I'm tired of culture wars and
a lot of this. I'm sorry, I don't care, but
man alive. Are people on the right coming after for
the second time. Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Kimmel, Well, he
said something on his show Thursday Night. Thursday Night was
two nights before the Why he has Correspondence dinner, right,
Jimmy Kimmel made a comment that I totally believe that
he knew exactly what he was doing, and well, let
me play it for you. Makes a comment about Malania Trump.
Speaker 6: For ten ROAs. I said, our first lady, Malania is here.
Look at her, so beautiful, missus Trump, you will have
a glow like an expectant widow, which obviously was a
joke about their age difference and the look of joy
we see on her face every time they're together.
Speaker 1: It was a very light roast joke.
Speaker 6: About the fact that he's almost eighty and she's younger
than I am.
Speaker 1: It was not, by any.
Speaker 6: Stretch of the definition, a call to assassination and they
know that I've been very vocal for many years speaking
out against gun violence in particular. But I understand that
the first lady had a stressful experience over the weekend,
and probably every weekend.
Speaker 1: Is pretty stressfull in that house.
Speaker 6: And also I agree that hateful and vice rhetoric is
something we should rechecked. I do, and I think a
great place to start to dial that back would be
to have a conversation with your husband about it.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was the reaction that he got pushed back,
and so that was his reaction about what he said
on Thursday Night show about she looks like an expecting widow.
So if he was making a comment about age difference,
it's interesting because Donald Trump's going to be eighty in
just a couple of weeks and Malania's birthday was Sunday
and she turned fifty six, so there's quite an age
difference there. But one of the closest friends that Jimmy
Kimmel has is Howard Stern and Howard Stern and the
Kimmels they go on vacation together, so they're very close.
And I don't know if he makes fun of Howard's wife,
she's twenty some years younger than Howard, but Malania is
twenty four years younger than Donald Trump, and I would
think in Hollywood twenty four years is kind of common.
And it brings up the whole question about well, how
far apart can you be in age for it to
be looked down on. My parents were ten years apart.
My father was ten years older than my mother. There's
a lot of people that are ten, twelve, fourteen, twenty,
I don't know, But anyway, what Kimo was doing, it
reminds me of an old friend of mine who would
pull people's chain on purpose to get publicity. And one
of the things that I've heard today is there's a
whole bunch of people on the right that are having
major cows about what Kimmel said. I don't really care
what Kimmel said. I don't care about Kimmel. I don't
watch his show, and oh, by the way, not many
other people do either. The ratings are terrible. Late night
television is not just Jimmy, but all those shows at
late night they get next to nobody. They really have
small numbers in their audience, so they're talking to some people,
and the people that follow him and watch his show
are probably of like mind, and they probably thought that
was funny. I mean, Jimmy Kimmel. I go back to
when he was on The Man Show, and he's been
an irreverent comic for as long as I can remember.
But the more people have jumping up and down as
loud as they can protesting Jimmy Kimmel, the more it
adds to his popularity. The last time when he got
in trouble was after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and what
happened People were screaming about Jimmy Kimmel. Well guess what
a lot of people tuned in to find out. Oh,
let mean, let me see how bad this guy really is.
His audience went up after the Charlie Kirk comments that
he made, and so I expect the more people have
and here I am, I'm talking about him, the more
people have a protest about him, the more his audience
will go up. ABC is probably popping champagne bottles because
the audience has been so small. They can't make money
on that show. They can't sell advertisers for any decent
amount of money because there's not much of an audience
for advertisers to talk to. So this will boost his
ratings for a while. ABC probably isn't going to do
a thing. There's a new president of Disney and that
person has to figure out what to do with this
because Disney owns ABC. But I I mean, in this business,
we are all watching the line, every one of us.
And when you say something, and whether it's scripted or impromptu,
you've got in the back of your head you're going,
let's see, is that going to cause the boss to
come in and say you're off the air, goodbye, here's
your pink slip. Because it happens, and there's no definitive line.
There's no formula for how media companies deal with their
talent when they say something that causes a ruckus. All
I'm saying is the more you protest, the more the
benefit to Jimmy Kimmel into ABC. I remember years ago
there was some movie that came out that was really
insulting about Catholic priests. Now long before the child thing,
way back I was teenager, and I remember at the time,
all these Catholics were having big protests at the thea
where they showed this movie, and all it did was
add to more success for the movie. That's all I'm
saying Melissa de Rosa, she is supposedly a Democrat strategist.
He sounds more like a Republican. Here's what she had
to say.
Speaker 5: I think we need to hear an apology.
Speaker 7: Look, President Trump, there's been not one, not two, but
three attempts on his life at this point. And if
you were to, let's put it, let's put the age
aside of President Biden. Imagine the outrage from the left
if a similar joke would have been made towards Michelle
Obama about Barack Obama. And we're at a point right
now where the degradation of norms and decency in this
country is not abstract. It is the direct result of
people with big platforms not exercising basic judgment. And this
was poor judgment and it wasn't funny, and he should apologize.
Speaker 1: I don't disagree he should apologize that. But if she
thinks that that's some slip of the tongue, no, that's
what he does. He says controversial things on purpose, and
he's certainly that's what the First Amendment is for, is
you have the right to say not kind things, but
controversial things that offend people and the government can't stop
you from doing that. But ABC can fire him, but
they're not going to do that. They are going to
actually probably say thank you very much, you did it again,
and he'll wait another six months to a year and
he'll pull some other stunt. That's what he does. There's
a lot of comedians out there that say that comedy
has been chilled because of the fact that they're afraid
to say anything controversial. So should he apologize? Yes, Malania
Trump not happy. She put out a tweet This is
read by a television anchor.
Speaker 3: Kim Well's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide
our country. His monologue about my family isn't comedy. His
words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.
People like Kimmel shouldn't have the opportunity to enter our
homes each evening to spread hate. A coward, Kimmel hides
behind ABC because he knows the network will keep running
cover to protect him.
Speaker 5: Enough is enough. It is time for ABC to take
a stand.
Speaker 3: How many times will ABC's leadership enable Kimmel's atrocious behavior
at the expense of our community.
Speaker 1: Well, the more reaction that he gets from the first
lady herself from whatever person out there. The more they react,
the more he smiles, the more that's what he's trying
to do. And yeah, he does say corrosive things a
lot of comedians do. I don't go to comedy clubs
because a lot of their language is absolutely horrible. But anyway,
I thought it was interesting. Mark Beckman is apparently an
aid to Milania.
Speaker 8: Jimmy Kimmel should be terminated from ABC, and I think
ABC needs to determine is this the type of person
and violent rhetoric that it wants to affiliate with.
Speaker 1: Think about it.
Speaker 8: ABC has been protecting Jimmy Kimmel now for a long time.
This isn't an isolated incident. It's been going on and
on and on. And the problem, as you're very well aware,
is that there are crazy people out there who are
listening to this violent rhetoric, this terrible political oriented violent rhetoric,
and they're turning it into action. So for the third
time now, our president has had his life at risk,
and it's because of this rhetoric. There's no doubt about it.
It's completely normalized. And that's the problem. It's within the
entire Democrat ecosystem.
Speaker 1: I guess, depending upon your mindset, you might think that
that was promoting violence. I do not, but it was
in bad taste. But that's again, there's a lot of comedians,
including Jimmy Kimmel, that the whole their whole thing is
being in bad taste. That's what they do on purpose. Well,
let's follow up with the legal parts of the guy
who attempted to shoot the president and everybody else. At
the White House correspondence dinner. Jim Trustee, former federal prosecutor,
he brings us up to speed on what's happening.
Speaker 9: I think is a pretty safe bet. I mean, the
reality is you could load up and charge individual counts
of attempted assassination and firearm offences for every cabinet person
that was there. So there's a lot of room to
kill a lot of trees in this indictment. Again, well,
we have a temporary charging document right now. It's going
to be replaced by an indictment, and sometimes they even
supersede and add stuff later. But bottom line is, I'd
expect a lot of different charges. I think the only
issue about the charges is there's no assault on that
one Secret Service agent, So I think they're running down
the possibility, at least I'm not committing to this, but
the possibility that there was friendly fire that explains that
one shot. The language in the complaint was very unusual.
It kind of said there was a shot that rang
out and this person was hit, say that mister Cole
fired the gun. They just describe a shot in the
abstract and there is no assault charge. So it's a
little iffy.
Speaker 1: We'll see how that goes. Now, the FBI is going
through the process of interviewing literally everybody that was a
witness in that room. That's two thousand people plus. They
are also talking to his family, which is apparently cooperating.
Speaker 9: Lock him in though, you got to bring him into
the grand jury in DC, get them under oath, get
them saying I receive this email, he told me his feelings.
You know, they're going to be pretty important witnesses in
the long run. You can reconstruct some of these emails
just by going to the provider, the internet provider.
Speaker 1: But when you have.
Speaker 9: Live people that'll say that's my son, that's my friend,
that's my brother, whoever it is, there's almost always this
person that says, why he kept to himself? And he
seemed like kind of a quiet, nice guy. I mean,
we get that almost as a cliche. But look, the
bottom line is he's a very intelligent guy. This is
very premeditated behavior. We can talk about, you know, the
societal ills that are here in the United States.
Speaker 1: That sets a guy like that off.
Speaker 9: But you know, I think all of the taking trains
across the country, pre arming, sending out timed emails.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not going to get away with insanity. This
was well planned out, well thought out by a fairly
intelligent god. All right, let's talk about the war that's
on pause, the one in Iran. Let's start with General Keen.
Let's see where he thinks things should be going from here.
Because the White House has received apparently an offer through
Pakistan that we opened the straight up horror moves, we'd
stop our blockade, and then the Iranians will think about
getting back to us on the enriched uranium that they have.
I know it doesn't sound like much of an offer,
but here's General Keen.
Speaker 10: I don't think that's the deal that's acceptable to President Trump.
I mean, we're three weeks into this cease five. We
want in a cease Remember, they shut down the straits
of a mouse. The President to a look at it, thought,
maybe there's a possibility of getting some negotiations here. Set
a deadline. We're a week passed the deadline. The Runnings
have made a numbers of proposals to us. None of
them have been acceptable to the President, all for very
good reasons, because they're not meeting our objectives. And I
don't think that's the Runtings objective. I think their objective
is really just to stall and drag out these negotiations
so that there's more pressure on the president in terms
of the economic situation and the political situation. They believe
time is on their side and they will eventually get
maybe two things. One the President to stop the war
entirely and just accept the status quo, or to make
concessions to a deal that they are not prepared to
make right now. So I think where we really are
is likely a reassessment at the meeting yesterday that took
place in a White House on this subject to plot
a pathway forward. I think to me the obvious pathway
forward is finish what we started. The negotiations have not worked,
so go back to the combat operations. Finish up the
last two weeks that we were not able to complete
about twenty five percent of what is left. Go back
to the original objective, take away all of the offensive
capability so that they will no longer be a predator
in the region. Let's accomplish that mission. Let's also open
the straight straits of a mouse. All of that makes
some sense. And at the same time, if we're not
already doing it, I think the Masade and the CIA
should be doing everything that they can inside of Iran
to undermine this regime, because there is no doubt the
regime is getting weaker by the day as the economic
issues begin to really take its toll. I make one
more point for those who believe that all we should
do is continue to blockade and they maintain the straights
of moves closed and somehow that will eventually change the
running and behavior that is misguided, because you've got to
you've got to look at their situations through their eyes,
not through our eyes, and what's reasonable. They will absorb
this economic suffering from the blockade because they don't care
about their people. Gas lines, electricity shut down. They'll put
up with all of that for what reason, just to
survive and you've got to we have to understand who
they really are, and they are absolutely hardliners here. So
I think the most reasonable path going forward is finish
what we started, and that's return the combat operations that
open up the straits. That's the best course of action. Now,
I think we underestimate the regime, and we've done that
more than once. The reality is, yes, we've taken away
eighty percent of their revenues. That's not sustainable. At some
point the regime will economically collapse if we do that.
But in the near term they will do everything that
they can keep coming back to this point to survive
because they don't care about their people. They've already proven it,
given all the economic woes they had before we put
the blockade in place, and that's where they are. Let's
finish it, is my recommendation. The status quo, they'll drag
it on for weeks and for months that in terms
of blockade, and they shut down the Straits and Moves
and all these other countries are suffering as a result
of it. We have a much better solution than that,
and that is go back to the original plan.
Speaker 1: As I stated, well, I've applaud General Jean he's got.
The solution is to finish the job. They did not
complete their military checklist, and they need to go do that.
They need to find the regime and arrest them like
we would any enemy country, the leadership of an enemy country.
So if we keep waiting for them, they're gonna stall this.
That's what they're famous for. Colonel Cedric Layton, he's a
former intel officer, and here's his assessment of how to
handle it. Run.
Speaker 11: I think it's not something that we can know precisely
at this particular point in time. The problem that the
Iranians have is exactly as you pointed out. There is
a storage issue, and they're doing You're doing things like
using containers that you know wouldn't pass muster with the
EPA even these days. And it's one of those areas
where what the Ranians have to do is they have
to find a way to get the oil out, because
if they don't get the oil out, it eventually impacts
their production, will also impact their ability to make money
off of it, to provide money not only for normal
governmental functions, but since forty percent of the Iranian economy
is controlled by the IRGC, it also means that the
IRGC doesn't get any money and can't really cross secute
the war at least using those kinds of funds. So
those are certainly limitations that the Ranians have, and that
could mean that they have an incentive to reach some
kind of the deal because of this.
Speaker 1: Now this whole business of they don't know what to
do with all the oil and they can't store it,
so what is going to happen to it? Beth Center,
former National Security advisor. This is her view.
Speaker 5: Because it basically gets us not even back to the
status quo anti, it gets us back to a position
that is suboptimal to where we were when we started
this war. And so he just can't do it right.
He needs to show something that he's making progress. And
I think that the real problem here is that there's
just no clear path forward to figuring out how we
can do that. What do we do? And so you
get a choice of either doubling down on the pressure,
which I think is kind of where they're at, restarting
the military option, which they don't want to do, or
you know, trying to move this somewhere closer and maybe
you know, bringing the Russians in or something like that.
I mean, but not a lot of good options here.
True dilemma.
Speaker 1: Well, there's no hummin onnhawing from General Keane, and he
knows exactly what to do next. That's why I say,
I think it's going to come down to the military.
They're going to have to fire them up, even though
best Sanders said that they don't want to. What else
she going to do? And that was where she left it.
And there's another war, but it's not a military war.
It's in out in Oakland, California. The trial started today
between Sam Altman and Elon Musk. A little history on
this is just a little. Elon Musk funded the beginning
of chat GPT. Sam Altman was there as well, so
you might call them co founders, but the money behind
was from Musk. And what Elon said was, I will
put the money up for this AI large language model
program you've got, but I want it to be nonprofit.
I don't want this to be a for profit venture.
And Sam Altman said, yeap okay. And so he went
about the business of building chat GPT and saw where
he needed to raise a lot of money to build
his data centers and everything else, and also to make
a lot of money, so he changed it into a
for profit company and Elon Musk has been wanting to
oust him ever since. So the trial began today with
Elon Musk suing chat GPT and Sam Altman wanting Sam
Altman to be ousted from chat GPT. And there's a
lot of criticism about chat GPT that's being published in
a lot of financial press saying they're really not a company.
There are plenty of AI companies out there. Anthropic is
another one, Gemini is another one, but that chat GPT
really isn't a company. And Elon Musk is in They're
in a court room in Oakland, California, and this will
go on for a few weeks. Kate Rooney from CNBC
is at the trial.
Speaker 12: So, as you mentioned, opening arguments kicking off here in Oakland,
and just this is in the Elon Musk for Sam
Altman trial. We are here in Oakland. We're gonna be
here for a couple of weeks. The first witness we're
hearing could be called this afternoon. We do expect to
hear at some point from Elon Musk, Sam Altman himself,
and Microsoft CEO Sati and Adela, among otherns you're gonna
get other big AI names out here. Altman and Open
Ai president Greg Brockman, who is also a co defendant.
We're here in the courthouse behind me. Yesterday as a
handful of jurors did share pessimistic views about AI, others
disagreed with Musk's political opinions, and the judge at the
time yesterday I said, quote, the reality is about Musk,
that people don't like him in her words, but added
that the jurors, she thought, could put aside some of
these preconceptions and respect the judicial process. This is an advisory,
Jerry Guy, so the judge does have a final say
terms of liabilities and remedies. The case goes back to
the founding of open Ai about a decade ago as
a nonprofit. If you can believe it, Musk and Altman
at the time were friends.
Speaker 5: A decade ago.
Speaker 12: They came together to found what they called the Manhattan
Project for AI to take on Google at the time,
which was a big winner, and ensure that AI was
built safely. They didn't want any major tech company controlling this.
According to the complaints in this case, Musk is seeking
up to one hundred and thirty four billion dollars in damages,
as well as the removal of Sam Altman from his
leadership position and the unwind of a recent restructuring that
happened for OpenAI. Musk first sued OpenAI and Microsoft in
twenty twenty four. The twenty six original claims I've now
been whittled down to just too, We've got preach too
charitable trust, and then just enrichment. The feud between Musk
and Altman has been extremely public. It's been ramping up
in the last couple of days. Even Musk writing on
x yesterday they quote scam Altman and Greg Stockman, as
you put it, stole a charity full stop. Open Ai,
on the other hand, called this lawsuit has repeatedly said this.
They called it baseless and a jealous bid to derail
a competitor. Open Ai has accused Musk of trying to
prop up his competing firm, which is XAI that recently
merged with SpaceX head of its potential IPO. The trial, guys,
does come ahead of what is expected to be a
record IPO year for both SpaceX and potentially Openei canbine
market value it needs if you look at private markets
topping two trillion dollars.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like just a couple of rich guys
mad at each other. But it's more than that. This
is about AI, and we're in the infant stage of AI,
and some of these companies are going to survive and
some of them are not. But this is about Elon
Musk wanting it to be a nonprofit and Sam Waltman
changing it into a for profit. And look at you.
You've seen the headlines about huge layoffs from not only
tech firms but just regular big companies. A lot of
it is because AI is already having an impact on jobs.
So we'll keep an eye on this trial between Sam
Altman and Elon Musk out in Oakland, California. Wall Street
today it was a bunch of red arrows today, but
not big. The Dow down twenty five to forty nine one,
the SMP coming off a record high, down thirty five,
the Nasdaq getting hit by again, a lot of questions
about AI companies and which ones are going to succeed,
which ones are going to fail. A nasdack down two
hundred and twenty three. Price of goldfell eighty four dollars
to four thousand and six nine, and oil keeps climbing
because there's no outcome on the horizon for the Iran war.
So up another almost four dollars today West Texas Intermediate
ninety nine dollars and ninety cents. Let's call it one
hundred dollars for West Texas Intermediate Oil. That's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We will be back again tomorrow.
I hope you are turned. We'll see the other