Speaker 1: And hello, Welcome one and all to the Big Podcast
on this Thursday. Today is the nineteenth day of February,
Year of Our Lord twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan. So there's a lot to go over today.
We've got the back to reporting on Thursday morning. We've
got the jobs report out, a little bit about the
economy and how that's shaping up this week. There are
Democrats that want to get rid of ICE, want to
get rid of homeland security, the whole darn thing, and
some that don't. We have both opinions on all of that.
More from the social media trial going on in Los Angeles,
and probably the big story of the morning is about
the news out of Great Britain that the man formerly
known as Prince Prince Andrew has been arrested, arrested by
the police in London. And they yes, it's a shock.
I know that Prince Andrew has had his prince title
taken away from him, but that's the way I remember.
I don't remember the whole rest of it, the rest
of his name. In any case, it was all about
Jeffrey Epstein. And this is just another example of the
Jeffrey Epstein story is not going to go away for
a very long time. And now maybe some of you
are tired of it. Maybe I sometimes stop and think
nothing's gonna nobody's getting any nobody's getting arrested. Well, all
of a sudden, we got a guy arrested. But listen
to this. It doesn't have a thing to do with
the women with Prince Andrew uh playing around with women,
let alone under age women that would be supplied by
Jeffrey Epstein. The story is not everybody's hearing it associated
with Jeffrey Epstein. Oh yeah, and he had that photo
of him and Virginia Gouffrey uh and so there and
Julane Maxwell. So oh, thiss got to be the sex
crime thing came out. No. During this period of time,
he was also in his role in the government as
the head the trade diplomat, so he had all kinds
of information about business going on into and out of
Great Britain. And apparently he has been arrested and they're
investigating whether or not he shared state secrets with Jeffrey Epstein,
which brings up the other side of Jeffrey Epstein, which
a lot of reports have said over the years that
maybe he was working for the FBI, maybe he was
working for the CIA. There's even been reports, and maybe
he was an undercovered double agent for the Russians. So
let's start off with this reporter from the BBC that
lays out the fact that this arrest is about business
and state secrets, not about the women.
Speaker 2: Sir.
Speaker 3: Now, again, I do want to emphasize that this arrest
is around his time as trade envoy, not around the
allegations of sexual misconduct. But he did settle a civil
case with miss Giffrey, reportedly for millions of dollars several
years ago. So those allegations have absolutely swirled around mister
Andrew mount Batten Windsor for many, many years. And so
you're going to hear in the voices of victims like
Virginia Giffrey's family, a sense that there is a start
here of justice, even if this arrest is not necessarily
about the sexual misconduct allegations.
Speaker 1: This reminds me of the story that I think many
of us have heard over the years that al Capone,
the Great mob Guy, was arrested and brought into custody
and put in prison over income tax evation. He didn't
report his illegal income on his form ten forty, and
so they arrest They got him on income tax ovation,
not on murder, on prostitution, not on drugs, none of them.
And that may be what they're doing here, as they're
getting formerly Prince Andrew on sharing trade secrets. Kate Williams
is a royal historian and she says the whole country
is aghast.
Speaker 4: This is extraordinary, This is unprecedented. We haven't seen a
senior royal arrested since the seventeenth century.
Speaker 5: That would be Charles, the first in the civil Wars.
Speaker 4: I have never I never expected this, the fact that
Andrew has been arrested, that the King is going to
support that arrest, that we don't know what's going to
happen next. But will Andrew be charged? This is this
serious question. The fact is that the whole principle of
the Royal family is it's about perception, it's about message.
Speaker 5: They were ordained by God.
Speaker 4: That was the original idea, ordained by God as this
sort of almost magical family to represent the United Kingdom.
And here we have a senior, senior member, the king's
own brother, who was one second in line to the throne.
He is now being arrested in a police cell, the
same kind of police cell that they put any kind
of person who's under arrest.
Speaker 5: It's going to be very small, with very few. I
mean it is.
Speaker 4: That is where the man who is formerly Prince Andrew.
That is where Andrew Mountbatten is. And this is a seismic,
extraordinary day for history for the United Kingdom. And this
is going to be seismic, a crisis for the whole family.
Speaker 1: Well it's more than a crisis for the royal family
because the other part about this is this Epstein story.
The tentacles of it just keep going out further and further.
There was very little news here. There were some but
not a lot about it, but big news in Great
Britain about their ambassador to the United States his name
Peter Mandelssohn and Peter Mandelsshon showed up is a friendly
and friendly email with Jeffrey Epstein. So that was it.
Mandelsson had to resign. He stepped down. This is their ambassador.
The relationship the ambassador to and from Great Britain is
a big deal, and so Mandelsson had to step down. Well,
in the political world over in Great Britain, who appointed
Mandelsson to be the ambassador to the United States. It
was tears Starmer. Yes, the head of the of the
of the government, and so as the Prime Minister of
Great Britain, he is now getting a lot of grief
about Hey, you're the one who appointed Mandelsson and that
ties you in with Jeffrey Epstein. Uh, it just gets
They're worried about it growing into the British government. But
then the other question is what about the king and
did the king know about this hold on? Here's more
from Kate Williams.
Speaker 4: He's the brother of the king and you've hit the
nail on the head there. What the royal family have
been trying to do has is distanced themselves from Andrew.
For a long time, they were really burying their head
in the sand, imagining that it wasn't going to get
any worse, nothing would happen, it would all blow over.
Then by the end of last year they realized this
was serious.
Speaker 5: They distanced themselves.
Speaker 4: His title of Prince was removed, he stepped back from
the title.
Speaker 5: Of Duke of York.
Speaker 4: Only Parliament can remove that, and he was taken out
of his huge mansion on the royal estate. But he's
in another royal estate. And this is the problem. I
think people will say, but what did the king know?
How long did you know about it? At the very
least Miss Chiffray, Virginia Jeffray, she said that there was
an agreement that she wouldn't say anything about her experiences,
her suffering as she'd put it at the hands of
Andrew during the Queen's jubilee year twenty twenty two. That
was a legal agreement and when the Queen passed in
September twenty twenty to that was clearly still in place
because she didn't talk throughout the king succession. So at
the very least the king knew about that. The King
kept it in position. And people, I think are going
to say, but you're also you're an institution, your business,
but you're also a family, and how much did you
know about this man who is your brother.
Speaker 1: So it's, like I said, the Epstein story not only
far from over, it's growing, and it's growing right up
to the top, the tippy top tips of the British
government and the royal family and the problem with the
royal family. And I've admitted it before I'll turn in
my man, Carlo, I am I don't know why I'm
fascinated by the royals, But they're very They've got a
group of people, a fairly large group of people that
are anti monarchy, and they're looking for anything to get
rid of the whole monarchy because the tag e payers
of Great Britain pay a lot of money to support
the King and the rest of the family members in
there and so all the royal estates and mansions that
they have. So this is their worry, is that the
King and Prince William and Princess Kate and all the
other people there in the royal family are worried about
the fact that Andrew's problems are spreading. And again they
haven't even touched on the accusations of Charles ascusan me
of Andrew and the women with the with Jeffrey Epstein,
So it may possibly turn out a lot of speculation.
Is the reason why Epstein supplied young women, underage women,
young women to Prince Andrew was because Prince Andrew was
feeding him with top secret British government information. So as
long as he was getting the information from Andrew, he
would set him up with some of these underage girls,
and then he owed Epstein, and Epstein then had had
power over him because of the he could blackmail him.
So then the question is who was Epstein working for?
Was he working for the United States government, was he
working for the CIA, or was he working for the
Russian government. But that Epstein, you wonder how he made
all his money. This is part and parcel of the
whole thing. One more on this from Nigel Gardner.
Speaker 2: Become increasingly isolated from the royal family and he's been
practically disowned by the King because his conduct over the
the Epstein scandal, and he should fully be held to
out of face all charges up that may be laid
against him. Prince Andrew could serve many years in prison.
Actually I'm rightly so the many years it depends about
what they come up with. But the many years could
be life in prison. So, like the one reporter said,
they haven't seen anything like this since the sixteen hundreds.
So that's the big that's the big British news. Nancy
Day nineteen. I think I think the Nancy Guthrie story
has reached that point that I call my OJ Simpson theory.
Speaker 1: When O. J. Simpson was arrested until the day of
his trial and his acquittal. During that whole period of time,
people were so tired of that story, and they would say,
I don't want to hear another word about the O. J.
Simpson story. I don't tell you, no, don't want to
hear another what's the latest? What's the latest? They did
not want to know, but they did want to know.
And I think we're there with Nancy Guthrie. She has disappeared.
There is a crime that has been committed. We don't
know who did it, we don't know where she is.
All of a sudden, they're now thinking, hey, maybe Mexico.
Where in Mexico, kidnapping is done regularly. It's part of
the cartel's bread and butter. That's what they do. So
who knows where this goes. But I would imagine that
right now there's a bunch of media there going this
is a cold case. They'll never find her, and I'm going,
this is nuts. They are working behind the scenes on
DNA and other forensic evidence. Forensics takes a long time,
but they they're very he could with getting the answers.
So a lot of people are asking about the genetic genealogy,
and I'm surprised. Maybe it's because I've lived in California
for so long, so I'm very familiar with the Golden
State Killer story. This was a guy who ran around
California raping and killing women and it went on for years,
and when they finally arrested him, the way they finally
got him he was an old man, was through genetic genealogy.
And there was a detective in I think Contra Costa
County Sheriff's department. He worked in the in the crime
lab and that Contracosta County is essentially the Bay Area, Oakland, California,
that area, and he came up with this idea of
using genetic genealogy and because of that where they were
able to identify the guy who was the Golden State Killer.
So here's a lady who is an expert on this.
Her name is Barbara ray Ventor. She is she worked
on the case with that detective to bust the Golden
State Killer. But there's a bunch of police in other
parts of the country that are talking about genetic genealogy
like it's some new thing that they don't know about,
and I don't know, maybe it'll work, I'm not quite sure.
I think it's because a lot of the detectives and
experts that they have on the various news shows are
a bunch of retired guys, and when they were working,
genetic genealogy did not exist. It's been around for about
a dozen years. So here's Barbara ray Ventor explaining genetic genealogy.
Speaker 6: So investigative genetic genealogy takes a sample of the crime
scene DNA in this case, presumably DNA either from the
glove or from the home, and it's uploaded to one
of two databases that allow upload of forensic samples, and
those are jetmatch and family Tree DNA. Unfortunately, we're not
allowed to use some of the bigger databases like Ancestry
in twenty three and Me and my Heritage. So what
we do is we upload the DNA sample, and then
what we're looking for is people who share DNA with
the potential suspect. And so then what we do is
we take a sample their information and we build family
trees for each of those people who share DNA with
the suspect. What we're looking for is common ancestors. So
let's say we get a match with somebody who is
a second cousin. Second cousins share a set of great
grandparents and so we've got a couple of people who
are matching the second cousins. We can then identify that
common set of great grandparents. So then what do we
know about the suspect. We know the suspect must also
be a descendant of that common set of great grandparents.
So then what we do is we turn around and
we build what we call a reverse tree. Now we're
looking for all of the descendants of that set of
great grandparents, and we take what we know about the
suspect and try then to figure out amongst all those descendants,
then who our suspect must be. So, in the case
of the Golden State Killer, we had known that his
first rape had been in about nineteen forty nineteen seventy six,
so we had figured that he was probably born in
about nineteen thirty six or earlier. We knew that he
had been active in northern California. He probably lived in
northern California. I had been able to use this DNA
to get his eye color, which suggested that he had
blue eyes, and so that actually became one of the
pieces of information that we used to identify him. So,
in the case of Nancy Gustri, what we're looking at then, Okay,
this is a good in near to Tucson. We're probably
looking for somebody who lives somewhere in that area. From
the information that the FBI has been gathering from the
ring camera information, they've probably managed to come up with
an approximate age for that person. So again, we would
then use that information once we get the information for
who shares DNA with the crime scene person.
Speaker 1: So everybody wants the answer to this crime to be
solved immediately, and with genetic genealogy that probably isn't the case.
Speaker 6: It can take a long time. So I've solved cases
in less than eight hours where it had close matches
where people shared a lot of DNA with the suspect.
Other cases, you know, you're still working on the two
years later. So I think one of the things that's
important here for the audience to know is that this
could take a while. And so I know everybody's very
anxious to get an answer to who this person is,
but it really could take a while because depending also
on the bioancestry of the suspect, if the person is
not white, that could really be a problem. Because the
databases are about eighty percent white. So if you have
somebody who is in on white, if they're Hispanic or
they're black or some other ethnicity, could be very very
difficult to solve a case.
Speaker 1: Well, that's not good news because they're now looking at
just one hour south of Tucson is Mexico, and not
only the border between the countries, but there are a
lot of people that live in the Tucson area and
of course in Mexico. So if that's the case, and
she says there's not a big database for non whites
which includes Hispanic, then this could be more difficult than
what they thought. But the technology is constantly improving. Back
to a Barbara rayvendor.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the even since since the Golden State Killer, the
techniques have become very sophisticated, and so it's possible to
actually work with very very tiny amounts of DNA, So
that actually should not be a problem. It's more just
a case of being able to build out the trees
and there be the white people in the databases that
we can actually see share DNA with.
Speaker 1: So we wait and while they're busy doing the forensics,
that's all done in labs. But the media in front
of Nancy Guthrie's house. They want they want to add answers,
they want to have video of somebody being the handcuffed
or purp walked or something. But a Bill Daily, former
FBI guy, who makes it clear that no, this is
not anywhere close to being a cold case.
Speaker 7: Well, we're certainly not there yet. There's there's certainly a
plethora of leads that following up on. You know, we've
heard not just the issue of the DNA and the
genealogical DNA, but also we're talking about checking out the backpack,
we're checking out the face mask, we're talking about looking
at the hulster and other items that were purchased. So
there's a whole other line of investigation going on, including
the leads that have come in, literally thousands of leads
that investigators are calling through to be able to prioritize
them and to take a close look at them. So,
you know, certainly we're far away from being a cold case.
Usually that's some time after they've exhausted all their leads
and the thing kind of goes dormant. Just because the
case maybe doesn't have the headlines every day like it
did in the past week, doesn't mean that it's going cold.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I get the sense that the audience they want
the you guys want, you want something, you want something tantalizing,
and now there isn't anything for it. May I hope
it goes quick, but it may take a while. I
think this is people are getting tired of the story
because there's nothing new to advance it, but they want
to know the latest of what's going on. So there
you go. There's a little info about about genetic genealogy.
Some political advice out today that I think is worthy.
Jim Messina, who was the architect of getting Barack Obama
elected president. He's a big Democrat, a brilliant political stratistician.
He knows what he's talking about, and well, let me
play his comments. He's worried that the Democrats are falling
into the trap they fell into before, which was fund
the police, and people the broad electorate out there don't
They don't want the police defunded. They may not like
it when that red light goes on in your in
your rear view mirror, but they don't want the police defunded.
Here's Jim Messina.
Speaker 8: Both it's a plea to give the voters what they want.
What voters are very clear. What they want is accountability
for ICE, strong borders, smart enforcement of our laws, and
a pathway to citizenship. That's what they want. What they
don't want is slogans, and they don't want sort of
you know, radical change. Here the interesting thing, and you've
reported on this. President Trump's numbers have just crashed on immigration.
Now seventy percent of independent voters say they oppose his
actions on immigration. The numbers that haven't moved are the
people who want to abolishize. Twenty five percent of people
want to abolish ize before all this happened. Twenty five
percent of people now want to abolish ize after it happened.
So it's a warning to my Democratic friends to not
get too excited about what they see on Twitter and
get more excited about what the people in America are
actually asking for.
Speaker 1: Okay, So he says that having majority of people are
not in favor of getting rid of ICE. But here
is Congresswoman ill hand Omar, and this is what she thinks.
Speaker 9: There is a lot of conversation about what the dismantle
meant of the Department of Homeland Security should look like.
Speaker 1: If we're not going to go back to p.
Speaker 5: Two thousand and two.
Speaker 9: In looking at how these agencies used to operate without
this level of brutality that we are seeing, then we
need to figure out a different system.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so she's talking about getting rid of the Department
of Homeland Security. Here's another one, Congresswoman, PayPal.
Speaker 10: This whole thing is a giant military and weaponization of
ICE and CBP. They are agencies that should not exist
as they exist. When we get power back, we have
to dismantle them and we can go back to immigration
enforcement as a civil system, because that's what it is,
all right.
Speaker 1: So there you go. She says, when the Democrats get
power back, they're going to dismantle the Department of Homeland
Security back to Jim Cina.
Speaker 8: That's just not what voters hear, right, that's not reality.
Swing voters think about politics four minutes a week and
they kind of look at this and say, what are
people actually saying and trying to get into that nuance?
I think just doesn't work. We've been through this. We
know on the defund the police issue, how Republicans used
it against Democrats in election after election and one elections
after this, we've been right in the middle. We've been
fighting for exactly what the American public wants, which is
a reform of vice and strong borders and strong immigration.
And if we stay there, we will win this debate.
The American public is on our side on this. We
just can't go too far. And I think that's where
the most Democrats are. It's just a reminder to get
off Twitter and.
Speaker 1: Get off Twitter. But that's the voice of the Democrat
Party is ill hand Omar and Congressman PayPal. And that's
what people will be listening to is they say we
want to defund police and shot. Not only defund the police,
defund ice, but shut down the entire Department of Homeland Security.
So Tom Holman, what do you make of this?
Speaker 11: Good luck with that? I mean, they want to abolish
the Department of Homeland Security, what you said was developed
after the terrorist tax here in the United States. They
want to do away the agency that enforces the laws
that they enacted. It just don't make sense. I'm just
doing the same thing they've done in the last three decades.
It's just that they got more work to do now
because of the last four years open border with ten
over ten million people come across the border. It legally
released the United States many of public safety threats and
national security threats. So yeah, ICE is working harder now
because we're responding to four years of open border to
non no immigration enforcement at all.
Speaker 1: Messina is basically warning the Democrats stop with that crazy talk,
or you're going to keep losing elections. That's what it
comes down to social media. Speaking of crazy talk, yesterday,
I ran to it on about the fact that they've
got this social media lawsuit against Meta and against YouTube
and Mark Lanier, who I've known Mark for many, many years.
He's a very successful trial lawyer, and he's made a
lot of money by going after giant corporations and getting
big settlements. So I'm sure that's what he's going for here.
But this is about the fact that he is claiming
that the social media companies have created algorithms that make
their products addictive and therefore, especially underage people get addicted
to this stuff and have caused harm. They have a
number of them. The parents are talking about their children
that sadly committed suicide. But listen, here's a mother of
one of the children who died who is part of
this lawsuit.
Speaker 12: No, I don't have any satisfaction it's very similar to
what happened in Congress two years ago when he swore
under oath, and I feel just like I did when
I left that day. But we're here, and we're in
a courtroom, so that's a big thing. I believe that
there will be change. I can't say there's anything new
I heard. I just know that more children have died
since my daughter died in twenty twenty one, so things
are not any better.
Speaker 1: This is the part where people get mad at me,
but I firmly believe. I look at this mother and
my heart break for her. There's nothing worse than losing
a child. But where was she if she thought that
the social media was so dangerous and so terrible and
her daughter was having problems because of it, Why didn't
she take the social media away? Why didn't she ban
her child from using social media? Where is the parent
in all of this? They want the courts, they want
Congress to pass rules and laws, but the parent is
the one who lays down the laws in the home.
So I feel bad for her, But I'm looking at
her and all the other mothers that are there at
this trial and going, what did you do about it? Nothing?
Obviously Mark Lanier, who is the lawyer who is bringing
this case. Like I said, I've known Mark for a
long time. I understand what he's doing. He's able to
go after big companies and get settlements and he makes
a boatload of money off of this. But here's Mark
talking about the.
Speaker 13: Case, because that's the whole goal. The financial structure of
Instagram is how many people watch for how many minutes?
Times the ad rate. The only way to make the
company more profitable is to increase the number of watchers
and increase the minutes they watch. How do you do that?
You drive addiction. And they did that specifically and on purpose.
Speaker 1: I agree, that's what every company does. They want you
to like their product. They want you to use more
of their product. I talked about the chocolate chip cookies.
I love chocolate chip cookies, So should I sue the
people that make chocolate chip cookies. I've also I told
you yesterday the story about when I was a little kid,
my parents banned watching the television show Superman because kids
were jumping off of roofs and hurting themselves, and so
I could not watch Superman. I mean, whenever a parent,
first of all, says you can't don't do this, don't
do that. Well, you get to be a teenager, don't
don't you dare drink, don't use drugs. That is also
a sign for kids to go what is that? Oh
maybe I should let's go check out what drinking and
drugs are all about. But as far as addiction, isn't
that what every Isn't that what Disney wants you to
watch their cartoons? Have their children? Have your children watch
Mickey Mouse go to Disneyland? Should we sue Disney because
of the fact that they're aiming their product at children?
And I've always said it's a racket, but it is.
Kids love Disney, live, love Disneyland. So I'm sorry. I
look at this and I think this is absolutely I
hope that they get not a penny from Meta Meta
or who else YouTube on this lawsuit. I hope it fails.
And more down to earth topics. The Jobs report came
out today and two hundred and six thousand first time
jobless claims versus two hundred and twenty three that were estimated,
So it's not a lot. It's a smaller number of
job claims jobless claims. As far as the trade deficit,
our trade deficit. For the report that came out this
morning showed that we have an upside down trade deficit
of seventy billion. That's up from the previous month of
fifty five billion. So all this business about tariffs is
not slowing down our imports at all. In fact, if
anything in our trade deficit is growing, Wall Street today
it did not like that news. It also has the
jitters about whether or not we're going to be in
a war with Iran or not. So the bottom line
today was a negative market now down two hundred and
sixty seven, down to forty nine thousand and three ninety five,
the S and P down nineteen, the Nasdaq down seventy one.
Gold up a buck forty up to five thy ten.
Oil up another dollar, but that's because of again Iran
and potential of war in that part of the world,
So up up another dollar today. Oil now at sixty
six dollars for one barrel. So that's it for today.
Thank you for coming by. We will be back again
tomorrow and I hope to see you then.