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Department of War (Crimes) · Pod Save America

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  Speaker 2: Is it RFK Jr.
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  Speaker 1: SimpliSafe.
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  Speaker 1: no safe. like SimpliSafe. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Jon Favreau.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Tommy Vitor.
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  Speaker 1: On today's show, we'll talk about whether Pete Hegseth may
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: have ordered the military to commit war crimes in the
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Caribbean as part of a crusade against drug trafficking so
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: important to Donald Trump that he's about to pardon a
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: Honduran president who's serving 45 years in federal prison for
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: drug trafficking charges. We also have a few other crazy
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Trump corruption stories to cover, and then you'll hear Tommy's
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: interview with our friend Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: governor of Iowa, who stopped by the studio to talk
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: about his approach to flipping the state and whether farmers'
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  Speaker 1: anger at the Trump trade war could be a factor
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  Speaker 1: in the race. But let's start with the follow-up from
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  Speaker 1: the horrific shooting in D.C. right before Thanksgiving. For anyone
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  Speaker 1: who missed the details of this story, a 29-year-old Afghan
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  Speaker 1: national who came to the U.S. when the Taliban took
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  Speaker 1: over in 2021 ambushed two West Virginia National Guard members
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  Speaker 1: who'd been deployed to D.C. by Donald Trump. One of
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  Speaker 1: those soldiers, 20-year-old Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, died a day later.
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  Speaker 1: The other, 24-year-old Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, is in critical condition.
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  Speaker 1: The shooter, who's in custody, had apparently worked with the U.S.
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  Speaker 1: government to fight the Taliban for 10 years as part
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: of a CIA-backed militia known as Zero Unit. So he'd
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  Speaker 1: been extensively vetted multiple times by the government before he
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  Speaker 1: got here, and his application for asylum was approved by
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  Speaker 1: the Trump administration this year. Of course, none of those
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  Speaker 1: specifics matter to the White House. They've responded by using
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  Speaker 1: the shooting as a pretext to do what Stephen Miller
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: has already been doing or planning to do, which is
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: keep people out of America who are from what Trump calls, quote,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: third world countries. Specifically, the president said in a post, quote,
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  Speaker 1: I will permanently pause migration from all third world countries,
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  Speaker 1: terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, and
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  Speaker 1: remove anyone who is not a net asset to the
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  Speaker 1: United States or is incapable of loving our country, denaturalize
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  Speaker 1: migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any foreign national
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  Speaker 1: who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with
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  Speaker 1: Western civilization, only reverse migration can fully cure this situation.
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  Speaker 1: So far, the actual policy announcements have been that the
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  Speaker 1: government is no longer granting asylum to anyone from Afghanistan.
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  Speaker 1: They're no longer granting even temporary protections for any Afghans
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  Speaker 1: evacuated in 2021. And they're reviewing all green cards issued
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  Speaker 1: to anyone from from a list of 19 countries that
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  Speaker 1: includes places like Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Sudan, Yemen, and Venezuela.
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  Speaker 1: What do you guys make of the White House response
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  Speaker 1: to a shooting that pretty clearly had nothing to do
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  Speaker 1: with the vetting process, the asylum system, or the guy's nationality?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's what you said earlier. It's a
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  Speaker 2: pretext to do what Stephen Miller has always wanted to do,
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  Speaker 2: which is not just block, quote unquote, illegal immigration, but
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  Speaker 2: also stop, if not reverse, legal immigration. And in the
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  Speaker 2: case of Afghanistan, this is quite literally collective punishment. One
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  Speaker 2: individual did something horrible. He's obviously mentally disturbed. So the
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  Speaker 2: White House is punishing everyone from a country we occupied
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  Speaker 2: for 20 years, including people who fought the Taliban for
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  Speaker 2: the United States. That is a crazy reaction, I would argue.
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  Speaker 2: And it's also, I think, just worth unpacking how racist
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  Speaker 2: this is. Like, I think now the only refugees allowed
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  Speaker 2: in the U.S. are white South Africans. Am I wrong
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  Speaker 2: about that? Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. And they're also even like white immigrants from Europe.
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  Speaker 1: they want to make sure that they don't have leftist views.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't like Ukrainians anymore. It's no actual refugees,
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  Speaker 2: nobody from, say, Sudan, where there's a civil war, or Haiti,
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  Speaker 2: where there's war zone-like levels of violence are allowed to
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  Speaker 2: the U.S. And so I guess anyone with a green
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  Speaker 2: card from a country Trump doesn't like now goes back
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  Speaker 2: to this kind of legal purgatory, you know, or the
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  Speaker 2: administrative purgatory, where they don't know if they're going to
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  Speaker 2: be allowed to stay. Also, just like broader context, the U.S.
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  Speaker 2: is using sanctions to crush a lot of the countries
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  Speaker 2: you just mentioned. Like, I'm not a big fan of
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  Speaker 2: the Venezuelan leadership. We'll talk about that later, or the
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  Speaker 2: Iranian regime, but US sanctions are crushing those economies. They're
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  Speaker 2: making it impossible for people to live there. Same is
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  Speaker 2: true in Cuba. I guess it could be worse. You
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  Speaker 2: could be one of the hundreds of Venezuelan men who
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  Speaker 2: came to the United States legally, sought asylum, and then
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  Speaker 2: were sent to a torture prison in El Salvador. But
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  Speaker 2: even the language he uses, third world countries, the man's
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  Speaker 2: brain froze in the 1980s. That was a Cold War
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  Speaker 2: era description of countries that were not aligned with the
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  Speaker 2: US or the Soviet Union And he's just using it
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  Speaker 2: in like the most racist way he can think of.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, third world's pretty tame for him. Shithole
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  Speaker 3: countries was also in his vernacular. So Sean Van Diver,
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  Speaker 3: who runs Afghan EVAC, which advocates for the people that
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  Speaker 3: were our allies and who, if they are sent back
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  Speaker 3: to Afghanistan, could be killed because they were our allies.
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  Speaker 3: He said they are using a single violent individual as
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  Speaker 3: cover for a policy. They have long planned turning their
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  Speaker 3: own intelligence failures into an excuse to punish an entire
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: community and the veterans who served there. alongside them, which
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I think captures it, you know, stepping back, there were,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: it does sound as though once this person was vetted, uh,
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  Speaker 3: in the United States, uh, he slowly unravels. And if
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  Speaker 3: you took a, like Donald Trump, when a, when a
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  Speaker 3: person who was not born in the United States commits
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  Speaker 3: a crime, it becomes a story about immigration to them
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  Speaker 3: and a justification for whatever cracked down there, uh, in
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  Speaker 3: the midst of pursuing anyway. But if you, Take that
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  Speaker 3: out for a second and you read about this person.
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  Speaker 3: It reads like a lot of stories of people that
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  Speaker 3: have been in conflict and slowly unravel, cannot assimilate, cannot
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  Speaker 3: enter civilian life. In this case, it's somebody who had
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  Speaker 3: to also come from Afghanistan. We've seen mass shootings and
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  Speaker 3: acts of random violence committed by all kinds of people, citizens, non-citizens, veterans, non-citizens.
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  Speaker 1: Veterans, right?
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  Speaker 3: It is only when these crimes are committed by people
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  Speaker 3: Trump wants to target anyway that it becomes a story
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  Speaker 3: of immigration rather than the many failures along the way
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  Speaker 3: that allow a person like this, even as people in
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  Speaker 3: the community were worried that he might commit suicide, were
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  Speaker 3: worried about him, reported apparently to a federal agency, was
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  Speaker 3: still in a position to go on this cross-country journey
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  Speaker 3: and murder people with a weapon.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this guy was five years old on 9-11,
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  Speaker 1: and also then ends up working with a CIA-backed, basically
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  Speaker 1: death squad, who, you know, human rights organizations were concerned
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  Speaker 1: about during the time in Afghanistan, too, even though they
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: were fighting the Taliban. So clearly this guy got really
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  Speaker 1: fucked up and more, like many people, like many U.S.
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  Speaker 1: soldiers get fucked up and more people all over the world,
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  Speaker 1: you know. But it has just nothing to do with
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  Speaker 1: the vetting process for immigrants. And again, the Trump administration
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  Speaker 1: just will not explain the fact that They're the ones
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  Speaker 1: who granted the asylum application in spring of this year.
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  Speaker 1: So what the fuck are you talking about?
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  Speaker 2: So look, vetting, it's only so much you can do.
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  Speaker 2: You can't predict the future with vetting. You know, we
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  Speaker 2: talk about it like it's this like perfect process that always,
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  Speaker 2: you know, finds the bad guy. Like, no, like people
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  Speaker 2: have mental breaks. Things happen. Like you vetting is highly imperfect.
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  Speaker 2: Like something can always go wrong. That is just part
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  Speaker 2: of the process. And like, I'm not excusing this individual
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  Speaker 2: being here. Um, what he did was evil and a
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  Speaker 2: tragedy and it shouldn't have happened. But like, if we're
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: going to point at factors that led to this outcome,
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  Speaker 2: it's could, you could include the asylum decision that you mentioned.
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  Speaker 2: You can include sending this national guard unit to Washington,
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  Speaker 2: DC to patrol when they didn't need to be there.
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  Speaker 2: There's like a lot of like things along the way
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  Speaker 2: that led to this horrible outcome. And as you mentioned,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: like none of it was because of a vetting failure,
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: as far as we can tell.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I have no doubt that the white house thinks
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: like this is good politics for them. In the most
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: basic level, if you don't follow all the details of
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: the story and you're like, oh, there was an Afghan
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  Speaker 1: national who came to this country and then shot at
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  Speaker 1: and killed at least one National Guard member, you're like, okay, well,
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  Speaker 1: we got to pause migration from there. And then you see, like,
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: DHS tweets out, remigration now. You know, you look up remigration, Wikipedia,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: it says, remigration is a European far-right concept of escalation.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: cleansing via the mass deportation of non-white minority populations. This
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: is like, this is what the Department of Homeland Security
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: is tweeting. And then Stephen Miller also gives it away
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: where he tweets, at scale, migrants and their descendants recreate
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: the conditions and terrors of of their broken homelands. This
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: is the president's top advisor saying that not only migrants
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: from Afghanistan, but their descendants. Now we're talking about children
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: of people who come from countries that are war-torn. Stephen
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Miller wants to not only not come to this country,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: but kick them out of this country, which is what
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: you get from the Nick Fuentes and those kind of people, right?
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: White nationalists. And it's like, I do not think that
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: part is good politics for them.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: No.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: Also, in Trump's own statement, he says denaturalize migrants. It's
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: actually a contradiction. Migrants are citizens. So what you're really
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: saying is I.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Don't... Migrants. You denaturalize citizens.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: The people you're calling, you're saying you're going to denaturalize
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: are people who are citizens. You're saying you don't recognize
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: their citizenship. He's also talking, what Miller's talking about there
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: is ending birthright citizenship by saying, once we've decided this
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: whole group of people that came legally and are here
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: legally and had children here, once we declare... that they
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: are not able to stay. We will be able to
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: denaturalize their children as well. And also, look, this is
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: like heinous and racist. It's also just fundamentally just like
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: not true about America, right? Like not true of something
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: we were all raised to believe is what is great
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: about the country, that people come from all over the
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: world and they bring what makes their culture special while
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: becoming part of our society. Something that used to be
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: at least something people paid lip service to. Stephen Miller said,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: is part of the Jewish diaspora, the kind of sort
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: of anti-immigrant conspiracies about bringing their corruption from abroad is
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: exactly why Jews were kept out of the country at
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: moments when they were desperate to be let in, even
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: as I am sure he is one of those people
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: that talks about how well Jews did once they got
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: to America. And so it's obviously heinous, but it's all
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: just wrong.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: It's not true. Well, also the Miller thing, when you
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: read Trump's statement, it's clearly a statement that is, if
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: not written by Miller. Minus the third world thing. Trump
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: likes to say third world. Miller says like failed states,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: but the rest of it is very Stephen Miller, including,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump starts that post, the official United States
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: foreign population stands at 53 million people, in parentheses he writes, census,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: most of which are on welfare from failed nations or
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: from prisons, mental institution, gangs, or cartels. The 53 million
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: number is the number of foreign-born people Americans, right? Half
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: of that number, 53 million are citizens. So that we're now,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: we're just talking about now Trump and Miller are, uh,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: attacking people who are citizens of this country. Millions and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: millions were citizens of this country who just happened to
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: have been born somewhere else and then acquired citizenship in
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: this country.
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: It's literally blood and soil nationalism. And that's what it is.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: And look, maybe the politics will change because of this shooting. But,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: you know, Pew pulled this, the Pew Research Center pulled
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: some of these policies back in June, and they were
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: surprisingly popular. The Trump administration's policies were surprisingly unpopular, I
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: should say. 60% of Americans disapprove of the suspension of
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: most asylum applications, only 39% approved. And then 59% disapproved
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: of ending temporary protected status for immigrants who came to
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the U.S. escaping war or other disasters at home. Obviously,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: someone from Afghanistan would be under the numbers we're talking
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: about here. So I don't know. We'll find out. Maybe
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: people are very angry about the shooting. Maybe there is
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: this change in sentiment that decides, OK, maybe we should
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: crack down. But I don't know.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: I think it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. That's like I'm sorry,
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: like a 10 million American citizens who are Mexican are
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: less deserving to be here because of a shooting on
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: the National Mall. The people that live in the household
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: with those citizens who were born here, like it's just it.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: The idea that like, now that we live in the
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: reality of what Trump's crackdown has actually meant, we've seen
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: a swing of people that may have been open to
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: Trump swing back. We live in the reality of a
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: Trump immigration policy now. So it's not, I don't think
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: it's as easy as it was for him before to
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: kind of make these broad sweeping claims and hope people
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: don't take it too seriously.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: When they are smarter and careful in how they talk
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: about this, they frame it in terms of either national security, right?
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Protecting people from immigrants who come here and commit crimes.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: or immigrants who come here and, you know, cut the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: line and are getting all these federal benefits when Americans aren't. Like,
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: that is the, if they're looking at the polls, that's
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: what they usually say. But Miller and increasingly Trump and J.D.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Vance and some others in the administration, they just drop
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the mask sometimes and just start saying, oh, no, no,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: it's It's anyone who is foreign born, who is here,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: is suspicious. And it doesn't matter if you're not a threat.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you've never been on public benefits.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: You are a threat because you are not American for,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: you know, 15 generations.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: And like, I mean, a few years ago, it was
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: like overwhelmingly popular to welcome Afghan citizens who supported the U.S.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: in the war to the United States. It was polling
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: like 81% said the U.S. should help Afghan allies enter
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: the US only 19% were opposed. And this was a
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: couple years ago. But I agree with what you're saying,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: love it. I think like it was easier for Trump
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: to demagogue these issues when Joe Biden was in charge.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: And the numbers have sort of swung back against him
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: since he's taken office and people have seen the reality
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: of a Trump immigration policy.
• 15:37
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  Speaker 1: So in the aftermath of the shooting, the guard troops
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: who were deployed in D.C. got a visit from Secretary
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: of War Pete Hegseth on Saturday. Just a day after
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: he made headlines in the Washington Post for allegedly ordering
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the U.S. military to commit what pretty clearly seems like
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: a war crime in the Caribbean. The Post talked to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: seven people with knowledge of the very first attack on
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a boat the Trump administration claims was trafficking drugs back
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: in September. They've obviously attacked many more since then. The
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: sources say that Hegseth ordered SEAL Team 6 to, quote,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: kill everybody on board, a directive that led the special
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: operations commander to order a second strike on the boat
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: when he saw that two survivors were clinging to the wreckage.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: The House and Senate Armed Services Committees, controlled, of course,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: by Republicans, announced jointly that they'll be investigating vigorously. One
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: of the members of the House Committee, retired Republican Don Bacon,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: who's a former general, said that if the report were true,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: it would be, quote, a violation of the law of war.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: When people want to surrender, you don't kill them. Republican
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Congressman Mike Turner, a former Armed Services chairman, said it
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: would be, quote, very serious, and I agree that it
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: would be an illegal act. Trump got asked about this
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: on Air Force One on Sunday. And he gave only
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: qualified support to Hegseth. Let's listen. Caroline Leavitt confirmed the
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: second strike during the White House press briefing on Monday,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: but denied that Hegseth gave the order to, quote, kill
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: everybody and argued that murdering defenseless survivors floating in the
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: water was legal because it was conducted in, quote, self-defense.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: How can any of this be legal?
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: It's not. It's a war crime. And it's on video.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: That's why they can't really lie about it. I mean,
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: this is all taped. So again, if this report is accurate,
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: it's a war crime under international law, and it's almost certainly...
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: against the Department of Defense's rules. Basically, if you bomb
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: a target and there are survivors who are still shooting
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: at you, you can bomb them again. But if you
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: bomb a target and the people are incapacitated or defenseless
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: or trying to surrender, you can't just hit them again.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: That is a war crime. And the self-defense argument, that's
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: obviously absurd. It's like two dudes clinging to burning wreckage
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the Caribbean. They're shooting at a
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: US military aircraft or a drone.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: They said they might be able to call their other
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: traffickers and tell them.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Well, the initial explanation was- And do what?
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: Launch a satellite?
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: What is he talking about?
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Guys, guys, guys, we're going to need, I think, like
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: a B-2 maybe.
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to need a lot of hardware. And
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: this is also the second explanation. Initially, they said the
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: boat was a navigation hazard for other boats in the region.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: That's why they had to blow it up and sink
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: it again. So it's also important for context. This was
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: the first one of these strikes- And since then they've
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: changed the policy around survivors. So they know they fucked up.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: And the boat might have been carrying cocaine, but it
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: was almost certainly carrying innocent people too, because there were
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: 11 people on that boat. If you're trafficking drugs, you're
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: not carrying 11 people, right? There's probably drugs for the drugs,
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: you got to need room for the drugs, but they're
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: also probably human trafficking and smuggling of individuals and drug.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So look, I think that all of these strikes are
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: illegal and amount to extrajudicial murder because what we should
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: be doing is picking these people up with the Coast
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Guard and arresting them. But I do think like this
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: strike in particular is going to lead to prosecutions someday.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: And I hope it's Pete Hexeth.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: Unless Trump, the problem we have, like who cares? Like
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: this is a fucking war crime and should be prosecuted. Yes,
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: of course.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: This is a war crime that should be prosecuted. I
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: think one of the reasons we're in such a dangerous
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: moment is because hanging over all of this is the
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: fact that Trump will, of course, before this gets anywhere,
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: try to get out of it by pardoning him. That
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: will still leave Congress being able to investigate. I just
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: like the law, even the debate about even the idea
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: that there's a press secretary saying that that this is
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: in any way legal, like the shipwreck thing, like it's
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: the example. It's not just that we're not allowed to
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: murder people. uh, who have been shipwrecked, we're supposed to
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: rescue them. We're supposed to go out and pick them up.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: And the, uh, and it's not just like, it is
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: like military.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: It is law.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Like if you go read about whatever the, the, the,
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: the likes, the, the, the law of name, the commander's handbook. Uh,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: but it also talks about why it's not just law illegal,
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: but it's wrong. And it's in the, in this from
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: naval handbooks for the Marines, for the Navy principles of
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: humanity defined as the principle that forbids the infliction of suffering, uh, injury,
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: or destruction unnecessary to accomplish legitimate military purposes, which includes
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: protecting enemy wounded, sick, and shipwrecked. Incidents that must be
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: reported included deliberate attacks upon shipwrecked survivors. And the reason
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: they say this is from the DOD, persons who have
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: been incapacitated by shipwreck are in a helpless state and
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: it would be dishonorable and inhumane to make them an
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: object of attack.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It is just wrong. You don't think Pete Higgseth has
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: consumed that manual on day one and just sort of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: hasn't memorized that?
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Well, they all... I mean, like, the truth is he has. Like,
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: he was a commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like, he
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: should actually know better. And so ignorance isn't an excuse here.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Also, I wonder about the guy who... The special operations guy, Bradley,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: who ordered it.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Got fucking promoted.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But who now... You know, Levitt kind of... You
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: can see them maybe throwing him under the bus where
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: they're like, Hegseth didn't say kill everybody and he's the
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: one who.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: She keeps saying the admiral, the admiral, the admiral. They're
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: definitely pointing the finger down the chain of command.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: But now... The admiral, knowing that he needs a pardon
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: or will want a pardon, has every incentive to lie
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: and say, I was the one who ordered it. Your
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: point about the pardons, I love it. I was thinking
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: about this over the weekend. There is a fucking really
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: dark scenario where Donald Trump leaves office, knock on wood,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and as he leaves office, does a blanket pardon for
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: everyone who worked in the administration for the last four years.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see that.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Like every member of the federal government, which is a real.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this also goes back to why it was so
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: right and necessary that they filmed that video about the
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: need to disobey unlawful orders.
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: This is why they did it. Unbelievable timing on this
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: story with that too. Well, but like, yeah, but the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: details of this first strike have been out there. We've
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: known there was a double tap on it. It just
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: came out that Hegseth was like, kill them all in
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: this meeting or whatever. That was the new detail.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: There was a, just security had a good write-up of
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: the legality of all this. And actually one of the
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: sort of fucked up parts of all of it is
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: we're not at war with anybody. So it actually like
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: what laws apply here. But I thought it was an
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: interesting example, which is that they, that they pointed to,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: which is a U-boat. sank a Greek ship that had
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: British troops on it. And then the commander of that
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: U-boat ordered his seamen to fire machine guns and throw
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: grenades at the people in the water. And that became
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: a famous trial after the war. And obviously one of
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: the reasons we are a party to the Geneva Conventions
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: with not just forbid this, but requires us to rescue
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: people is because of what was happening, what Germans were
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: doing to British and American troops. I thought this captured
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: something about the kind of argument that you've heard from
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: the Hegsess of the world and the Trump administration and
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: why it's just so wrong. And this is what the
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: ruling said in that case. It's obvious that no sailor
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: or soldier can carry with him a library of international
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: law or have immediate access to a professor in that
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: subject who can tell him whether or not a particular
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: command is a lawful one. If this were a case
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: which involved the careful consideration of questions of international law
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: as to whether or not the command to fire at
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: helpless survivors struggling in the water was lawful, you might
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: well think it would not be fair to hold any
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: of the subordinate accused in this case responsible. but is
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: it not fairly obvious to you that in fact the
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: carrying out of the command involved the killing of these
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: helpless survivors, it was not a lawful command, and that
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: it must have been obvious to the most rudimentary intelligence
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: that this was not a lawful command? I just like
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: shooting people floating in the water, it's the hypothetical that
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: they raise. That is why we have these rules. And
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: that was from an international case, but that is what
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: we're talking about. We're talking about killing people, clinging to
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: fucking wreckage.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: It's clear when the Democrats made the video and they
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: had been saying in that New York Times story about
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: the video that people in the military had raised concerns
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: to them that there were unlawful orders potentially being given.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: The head of South Com resigned over this policy.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: The good thing here is that the announcement of the
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: investigation in Congress was not just a thing. Like Roger Wicker,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: who's the Republican, the Senate Republican on this from Mississippi,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: He just did an interview right before we recorded, and
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: he said, we're certainly going to have available to us
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: all of the video and all of the audio. So
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: they will get that. And he was asked if it
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: could be a war crime, and he said, we're going
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: to find out what the true facts are. So they
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: are clearly going to run this down. Pete Hegseth, his response,
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: one of his responses was posting a parody book cover
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: from the Franklin the Turtle Kids series. And this book
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: cover was called, uh, Franklin targets, narco terrorists that shows
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the turtle blowing up a boat. So that's how, that's what,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: that's what Pete Hegseth is doing about this.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: And Sean Parnell, the spokesman over the Pentagon tweeted a
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: couple of days ago, we told the Washington post that
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: this entire narrative was false yesterday. These people just fabricate
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: anonymously source stories out of whole cloth. Fake news is
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: the enemy of the people. A couple of days later,
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: they're confirming it.
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: Also in the original denial, they said denied the narrative, right?
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: They were very strange choice of words. And now they're
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: copying to it, but then trying to suggest that Hegseth
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: gave a broad order. And then in the execution of
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: the order, there was the second strike. So they're pushing
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: it on to the admiral. But then this idea of like,
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: what is the order to kill everybody? The order is like,
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: go kill everybody.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: I mean, I hope it's not.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: Who knows what's actually said or what was written down?
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: We don't have enough information yet. But all of this
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: is just like, he's just so not a serious person
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: who should be in a role like this, like the
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: idea that you want the secretary of defense posting like
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: trolling posts about extrajudicial killing, showing that he takes absolutely
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: no responsibility, does not treat it seriously. Forget like, I'm sorry,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: but like not just before what the law or Congress,
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: but what about the fucking almighty God? Like it's disgusting.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: And you think like somebody with that many fucking tattoos
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: about Jesus on his chest might think about it a
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: little bit.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, I realize the, uh, polling has been depressingly
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: supportive of these boat strikes. I do wonder if the
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: details of this incident as they get out there and
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: more people hear this story might change some minds. I mean,
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: there was that CBS poll where people were like, okay,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: but I do want evidence that the boats are carrying
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: drugs before there's any kind of strikes on them.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: I think people are supportive of the stated goal, which
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: is stopping drug trafficking, but that is obviously not what's
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: happening in practice. Like again, fentanyl is not coming to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: the US from Venezuela. Fentanyl is produced in Mexico with
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: chemicals from China. Some relatively small, like 10% of cocaine
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: goes through Venezuela, but blowing up 20 boats, like off
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: the coast of Trinidad or in the Pacific, like that's
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: not going to put a dent in the cocaine consumption
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: in the United States. A lot of that cocaine could
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: have been going to Europe. So I do think that
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: people are going to hear this and be like, we're
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: just like murking fishermen. There's also the stories of like,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: these Colombian fishermen who, there's a guy who went out
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: and his five kids are now looking for him. Those
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: stories are starting to be reported. So I do think
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: like the reality of it is starting to come through.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Hopefully people are paying attention.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: And again, even if you're someone who's like, well, you know,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: it's a bunch of people in boats in the Caribbean
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and they're drug traffickers. And I don't know if I
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: care about this. Like, just think about what it means
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: for the U.S. government to say, hey, you know what?
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: We can murder people in the water, and who are
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: just on boats. And when you call us on it
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: and ask us if it's legal, our explanation is going
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: to be, it's legal because we say it is. And
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: then the Secretary of Defense is just going to post
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: memes joking about it and saying there's more killings to come.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: And that's it. I mean, if they can do that
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: to boats off the coast of Venezuela, imagine what they
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: could do to Americans, other international travelers, people anywhere around
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: the world. I mean, like, what the fuck?
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: The claim of self-defense, you're blowing up people from above
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: who are floating in the water. Who is that for?
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: Who is finding that believable?
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I wonder if even Trump, with some daylight between him
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: and Hegseth, now I could imagine him changing his tune
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: probably by the time you listen to this and getting
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: back on board here, but you can tell that even
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: Trump's like, I don't know. if, not that he has
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: some kind of like moral revelation, but I do think
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: maybe he, you know, he knows that's bad to have
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: everyone know that you committed a war crime.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: One would hope.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: One thing that may get Americans upset is Trump launching
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a full-scale war against Venezuela, which he seems to be
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: inching closer towards. On Saturday, Trump posted, quote, to all airlines, pilots,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: drug dealers, and human traffickers, please consider the airspace above
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: and surrounding Venezuela to be closed in its entirety. When
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: a reporter asked Trump whether that meant a strike was imminent,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: he said, quote, don't read anything into it. But DOD
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: has now moved an aircraft carrier to the region, bringing
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: the total number of Marines and Navy personnel to 12,000.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Trump and Marco Rubio also reportedly spoke with Maduro by
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: phone last week, which Trump acknowledged after saying he couldn't
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: talk about it. And some outlets are reporting that it
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: was an ultimatum call, though Trump is refusing to say
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: what was discussed. Tommy, is this happening? Are we going
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to war with Venezuela? What's the latest?
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean, they're having it on a
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: little bit. I think Trump's dream situation is to use
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: the threat of military pressure to force Maduro to leave
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: power voluntarily in some sort of negotiated deal. He is
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: smart enough to know that. regime change wards or bad politics.
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: But Trump also wants the oil. He hates Maduro. He
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: wants the political benefit of pleasing a bunch of like
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: hardline Latin America activists in Miami. So they're running this
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: big pressure play. I think Marco Rubio would be thrilled
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: by an invasion, like would love nothing more than the U.S.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: Marines to go into Venezuela and topple Maduro. He also
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: comes from like these very right wing Miami political circles.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And he thinks that toppling Maduro is the way you
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: get to the Cuban government and then topple them. So
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: it's a little domino theory coming back like Kissinger. They're
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: also all hearing from these like the Venezuelan activists and
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: right wingers who, you know, there's this thing in Politico
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: a couple of days ago about how if this happens,
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Republicans will win Florida in perpetuity. It's like most gross,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: bloodless reporting. Unbelievable.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: So guys, just sit still. You're cool. You're already doing that.
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, there could be no other secondary or
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: tertiary consequences from a regime change war, Politico. I'm sure
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: it'll just be as simple as right-wing Venezuelans in Miami.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Any of you people alive in 2003?
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. So God knows what Maduro is thinking.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: He does not strike me as a guy who's going
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: to give up power willingly and move to Tehran or
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: Moscow or something. He probably thinks he can wait Trump out.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: He probably thinks I can bribe this guy with oil
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: contracts or maybe buy some Melania coin or whatever. But
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: like it hasn't happened yet. So we're still in this
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: wait and see mode.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: And then, of course, if he. you know, if Trump
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: does cut a deal with them, then Trump will, you know, say,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: that's another war that I ended.
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Another war I ended.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Another victory parade for all the troops coming home from
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the Caribbean.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: Without firing a shot. No, he's not going to have peace.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: He'll have won the war.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: He'll have won the war. So Trump's justification that he's
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: murdering people on boats and threatening war in Venezuela because
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: of drug trafficking became even harder to believe when he
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: announced on Friday that he plans to pardon Juan Orlando
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Hernandez's the former right-wing leader of Honduras, who was investigated
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: by Trump's own first-term Department of Justice before they passed
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: the baton to the Biden DOJ, which prosecuted him. Hernandez
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: was recently sentenced to 45 years in federal prison for
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: conspiring with South American cartels to facilitate the trafficking of
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: 500 kilos of cocaine into the U.S. Witnesses at his
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: trial testified that Hernandez took millions in bribes, including from
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: El Chapo, and protected traffickers who admitted to dozens of murders.
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: But despite the fact that Trump's own DOJ conducted most
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: of the investigation, the president said on Sunday, quote, they
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: said it was a Biden they.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: They said it.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: We don't know who they are. Yeah, they are his friends.
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: He said.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: So they said it was a Biden administration set up.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And I looked at the facts and I agreed with
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: them before going on to say that just because there's
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: drug trafficking in a given country, it doesn't mean you
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: should take action against that country's president. You think Maduro
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: was surprised to hear that comment?
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, just before we get to the specifics, it
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: drives me crazy when he gets asked about the pardons.
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: He's like, I don't know. He always like pleads ignorance.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: So I'm sorry, shouldn't you know a little something about
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: the individual you just pardoned, sir? They were telling me. Anyway,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: the juxtaposition of this in Venezuela is it's like head spinning.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Trump doesn't like Maduro. So he labels him a cartel leader,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: puts a bounty on his head, threatens to evade his
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: country and kills low level fishermen off the coast. Juan
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Orlando Hernandez gets a pardon because he's a right winger.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: He's friends with Roger Stone, or he can afford to
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: pay Roger Stone, which I think is far more likely.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: And he has friends with all these crypto creeps who
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: like Hernandez because he was behind this very bizarre libertarian
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: project called, what the hell is it? Prospera. Thank you,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: that all these guys loved. And all of it confirms
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: this widely held belief in Latin America that the United
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: States is full of shit. We do not care about
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: the rule of law. We don't care about justice. We
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: don't care about stopping drug smuggling. It's all politics and
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: money and defending your friends and killing your enemies. And
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: that is an especially big deal and bad precedent to
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: set in Latin America right now, because a lot of
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: folks there feel like the ultimate way they can stop
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: corruption and organized crime is through the extradition of these
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: individuals to the U.S. for prosecution through the U.S. justice system.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: And Trump just unraveled all of that. And this comes
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: not that long after Trump made this dirty deal with
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: Nayib Bukele down in El Salvador to send back to
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: El Salvador like real deal MS-13 leaders who allegedly had
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: cut deals with Bukele in his administration. And so what
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: is so shocking about this is it would be so
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: easy to just do nothing. All you had to do
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: was not pardon the guy. You know, it feels very simple,
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: but this is just so lawless. Like this almost feels
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: like this could be this in the boat bombings could
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: be presidency defining in some way because Trump will say
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: they're all corrupt. Everybody does it. But like, This is,
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: this is stunning stuff. 500 kilos of cocaine.
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The, the, the, in this Trump said to the
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: times that his many friends asked him to pardon Hernandez,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: they gave him 45 years because he was the president
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: of the country. You could do this to any president.
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: There's a little bit of, there's a little bit of like, well,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: but to Tommy's point, it's the, you know, right wing
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: leaders can do no wrong and left wing leaders will
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: never be safe. And that to me is what you take,
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: take away from this. If you're on Trump's side, you're, you're,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: You can really get away with anything. You're a phone
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: call away. Your friends can call. There was all these
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: people with ties to Trump had invested in this lawless
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: town where they were going to.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Because this is a wild story, Prospera. So this is
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: from a New York Times piece in 2024 about this.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: They describe it as Prospera is a private for-profit city
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: with its own government that courts foreign investors through low
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: taxes and light regulations. Peter Thiel and Mark Andreessen are investors.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: And it says critics have described it as a neocolonial
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: state within a state or an example of a corporate
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: monarchy where yacht-owning CEOs exploit land and labor in a
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: poor country. And so people of Honduras got really upset
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: about this. There was a whole protest movement against these zones.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Prosper is one of the zones that they basically were
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: selling off the land in Honduras to these companies. Castro,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: who was the president that just that is just leaving office. Right.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Or is the president now was against it. Hernandez was
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: for it. And now Trump has endorsed the guy in
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the Honduran elections from Hernandez's party because. And so when
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: Trump says, like, my friends, you can tell that they
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: were like, well. we have this good thing going in
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: Honduras and now there's all this trouble there. And we
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that this city is prosperous again.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: They're like the lefties here. They're nuts. You know, they're nuts.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: It's just like the whole, this whole, their whole foreign policy.
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's not fucking isolationism. It's imperialism. It's like,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: and especially with South America and Central America, like they,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: he just wants these client States where he installed these
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: like fucking tin pot, right-wing dictators who are going to
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: cut deals with Trump, make them rich, help us friends out.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: It's mercantilism.
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: It's just, it's a for-profit, it's for-profit foreign policy. And
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: the idea of an independent, corporate, for-profit, lawless state within
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: a state, it's like.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: The- Design your own crypto regulations.
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: It's like the opening crawl for like a dystopian, it's
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: like at the beginning of Elysian or Elysian, like one
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: of those movies, like in the future, you will live
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: in one of a dozen corporo-anarchist crypto states.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: I can't overstate how much this doesn't make sense too,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: because Trump announced this part in in an endorsement of
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: the current right-wing candidate in the race. Hernandez is fucking
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: detested in Honduras. If I were Esfora and I was
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: suddenly linked to this man serving like 45 years in
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: prison in my endorsement announcement, I'd be like, what are
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: you doing? Why are you interfering in the election, which
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: happened on Sunday? And also like Hernandez is accused of
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: killing a witness in prison. This is like a very
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: bad guy. It wasn't just drugs.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: He also stole the 2017 election.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Trump basically told the OAS to bury their investigation into
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: it at the time. But like all of this is
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: just crazy politics. And like the only explanation is that
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Roger Stone got a bunch of money and whispered in
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: his ear and facilitated this.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: I can't wait for more reporting to come out about
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: why this actually happened.
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. The way in which it feels like
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: he's just rolling calls about various, that he really does,
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: I think when he says, like, I don't know anything
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: about it, the true of the crypto pardon from a
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago, I don't think that's true. But
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: there is a way in which he seems like a
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: passenger on these like pardons that like he knows that
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: his sons and others are kind of doing out there
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: doing deals and getting things done and kind of signed.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: He's like, seems like he's like putting the like final
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: mob boss.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Approval on some of this stuff, but I think it's performative.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I like the CZ pardon. Like he knows what Binance is.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: He knows how much money that Binance just put in
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: his pocket through facilitating this purchase of the USDC, the
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: stable coin.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's a five minute meeting with Donald Trump
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and the oval where you're like, uh, Got a couple
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: of pardons for you. This guy, friend of ours, made
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: us a ton of money. You know, like just really quick.
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: I don't know how in the weeds he's getting. I'm
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: sure he is aware of who these people are. He
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: knows that they're good for him. I'm saying that the details,
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: the way these things are getting to his desk is
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: a process he is not completely a part of.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. The holidays are time
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• 41:15
  Speaker 1: That's betterhelp.com.psa. Speaking of pardons, we got a whole corrupt
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: date today. Trump also granted clemency last week to David Gentile,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: a private equity executive who was convicted for a billion-dollar
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: investment scheme that victimized more than 10,000 people, many of
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: whom made statements to the court, like the person who wrote, quote,
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I lost my whole life savings. I am living check
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to check. Gentile walked out of prison last week, just
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: days into his seven-year sentence.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Giving us Gentile's a bad name, you know?
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: Honestly, I think he speaks for the group.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: The story on this one too, they're like, there's no
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: connections yet to.
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: Trump from this guy.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: It's baffling. We'll find out.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: There'll be another week. Oh, for sure.
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: For sure. I mean, this is like the fact that
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Trump just has a crypto wallet you can throw money.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: We just have no idea what's going on behind the
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: scenes of some of these parties. We just really don't know.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: This wasn't even crypto. This was guys with like traditional
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: securities fraud.
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: OG Ponzi scheme.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: No, no.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I understand that. What I'm saying is, you know, you
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: put a call in. Like, how do I make this?
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: How do I solve my problem here?
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: $ 10, 000. investors were defrauded. That must have taken a lot
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: of time. That's a lot of, that's a lot of fraud.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: He was, he was asked about it or some of
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: the administration, they were just like, Oh, it's another, it
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: was another Biden DOJ weaponization move.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Tish James has a civil case against this guy. Maybe
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: that's how it got to Trump. Cause he's like, Oh,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: the enemy of my enemy, my friend, who knows? Someone
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: probably paid him.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: The, the, the, like the, the dark part of all
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: of this is like prosecuting a Honduran corrupt drug trafficking
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: president going after a massive billion dollar fraud scheme, it
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: is years of people's lives that they did not making
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of money, that they did for the right reasons.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: They did sometimes at like personal risk and- And the victims.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: And the victims. But like, these are just investigations that
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: are wiped away. And if you're inside of the Department
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: of Justice and you're involved in one of these, you're deciding, right?
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: Like you can only have so much time in your day.
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: You can devote your lives, your time in the public
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: sector to one of these cases. And then it is
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: blown up by a corrupt president for no reason other
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: than somebody got it in his ear at the right time.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Well, and I just, I can't help but think of
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: all of the people who've been swept up in the
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: ICE raids, including American citizens, including people who are illegally
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: taken from their families, never know if they're going to
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: come home, have not done a thing. We're seeing all this,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: you know, the judge in Chicago was just, you know,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: released a ruling on all of the, the raids that
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: went on there. And you have all these examples of
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Department of Homeland Security saying, well, this protester was coming
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: at me. And then they have the body cam footage
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: and you can see that the protester was doing nothing.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: And it's just like lie after lie after lie. And
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: these people were tear gassed, pepper balls taken, and they're
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: just lying about it. And so like, that's the kind
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: of justice that comes for most people in the country.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: And these fucking people who are connected to, you know,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Mark Andreessen or Peter Thiel or God knows whoever else
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: in the Trump orbit who are rich enough or connected enough,
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: they just fucking get pardons.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of people in the Southern District of
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: New York prosecutor's office who are just like, you know what?
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I don't like Trump, but head down. I'm doing my job.
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: This doesn't touch me. All of a sudden, Hernandez gets pardoned.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: They must be apoplectic. Hopefully, those people will start speaking out.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: You're seeing Republicans speak out. There was a former head
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: of the DEA I saw on Twitter commenting on this.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of people that are like not
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Democrats that are really upset about the Hernandez pardon.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: And I do think that is like a little bit
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: of a, like there is a sort of a natural break,
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: not to what they can do.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: They can do it.
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: It's, it's sort of like the, like the Trump project
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: can be unraveling as they're doing more and more damage,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: but like, you know, leaks out of the cash Patel FBI,
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: like that, like these are serious people who are not
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Trump loyalists. They're not Democrats, but they're not Trumpists. And
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: the idea that they're just going to sit Like they're
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: going to, first of all, follow these guys into the
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: breach on behalf.
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: Of Donald Trump.
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, look what's going to happen if you don't follow.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: If you refuse to follow an illegal order, you quit,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: you walk away. Like you may face political consequences.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: You may be attacked.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: Fuck people call bomb threats into your house at this point.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: But if you do what they say and it is illegal,
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: suddenly you are beholden to Trump. Like you are the
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: mobster that took the bribe. And I do hope in
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: moments like this, you see that side by side, these pardons,
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: the throwing somebody under the bus after giving an order
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: that seems illegal. the people wake up to the fact
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: that they have to decide what is best for themselves
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: in a world that is with Trump and then without.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: We got another one. Wall Street Journal had quite a
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: story on Friday about Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: pals who were basing their negotiations with Russia on maximizing
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: profits for American businesses, trying to bring the Russian economy
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: back into the fold and And so that US companies
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and Russian companies can sort of go after deals together.
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that'll work. Let's just be clear what's happening here.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: Trump's golf buddy turned diplomat, Steve Wyckoff, and his corrupt
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: fail son, son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are sitting in Miami with
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: this guy named Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: Sovereign Wealth Fund, and they are sketching out how to
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: carve up Ukraine. That's what's happening. And it doesn't matter
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: if you support funding for Ukraine or oppose it. That
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: is a terrible process. that is destined to be corrupted.
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: And it didn't happen by accident. Vladimir Putin is very smart.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: He knows Trump. He knows he's a mark. He knows
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: he's a quote unquote business guy. So he sent his
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: business buddies to make contacts with Wyckoff and Kushner and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: to say, oh yeah, let's explore the Arctic. Let's do
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: a joint manned mission to Mars. Let's build oil and
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: gas pipelines. And then you pull Jared aside and you say,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: you know, well, tell me more about this investment fund
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: you started, Jared.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: It sounds really interesting.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: We'd love to park couple billion from our sovereign wealth
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: fund with a sharp young man like you. And like, meanwhile, like,
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: even before the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: US Russia relationship was not big. It wasn't like US
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: China wasn't US EU, it was like 10s of billions
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: of dollars was like comparable to the US and South
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Africa's trade relationship. It's like they gave us oil and
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: gas and petroleum products and metal and fertilizer and shit.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: We send them like machinery, you know, like caterpillar stuff,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: like this idea that there is some deep economic relationship
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: to be had with one of the most corrupt countries
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: on the fucking planet is crazy.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And they're also talking about the, like how to
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: kind of carve up the $ 300 billion in frozen assets, uh, uh,
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: that are in Europe. The, all of this does seem
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: to in some way flow from the fact that Trump
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: still has an eighties brain and thinks of it as
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: the USSR and not as like a failing Petro state
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: with an economy that's roughly the size of Italy's right.
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: Like This is about, you know, it's a lot of land.
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: It looks big on the map, but you're talking about.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: He still thinks there's a Leningrad.
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. For sure. I can't believe they move
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: Leningrad on my map. But, uh, yeah, the, and the, the,
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: like there was a camera where, where I saw this,
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: but like how many times has Steve Whitcomb been to,
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: to Russia?
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: Like eight times, many times. And he said, it goes
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: into for like three hour meetings with Putin. with a
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: Russian translator, takes his own notes, and just gets worked. Yeah,
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, you're not getting one over
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: on Steve Witkoff.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: By the way, you can't con an honest man. Get
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: one over on Steve Witkoff. He walks away rich. It's like,
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: get one over on him. He can be bought.
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: And Steve Witkoff's son is co-running the Trump family crypto business.
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: Well, there was a story that like, you know, we
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: saw the story about them putting the UAA, putting whatever
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: it was, $ 2 billion into the World Liberty Financial. But
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: then there was new reporting like a month or so
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: after that about how that was tied to Witkoff. That's
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: Zach Witkoff and Trump Jr. And then Steve Witkoff is then...
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: part of getting the NVIDIA chips over to the UAE
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: a few weeks after that.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Steve Witkoff and David Sachs. Right, yes. NVIDIA chips, who
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: was also the subject of a big piece in the
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: New York Times on Sunday. The headline was, Silicon Valley's
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: man in the White House is benefiting himself and his friends.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: So look, I didn't think, I thought this story was,
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: did not have too much detail that was explosive, but boy,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: did it set off all the tech bros rushing to
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: Sacks defense. Sacks himself posted this like long letter that
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: his lawyer wrote of defamation. And, and then everyone in the,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: your Sam Altman's, your Mark Benioff's, they're all being like,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: David Sacks is the most wonderful person we've ever worked
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: with and is going to save the world with his
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you know, how, for how much he knows about artificial intelligence.
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: It was just a lot to me. I'm like, it's
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: just a fucking story. I can sack up.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, sad sack somewhere. Sad sack.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: There's something about the like overreaction to a story like this.
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: It's like the idea of just being questioned at all
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: seems anathema to them. Like the idea that you could
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: just face any kind of feedback, even feedback you might
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: disagree with, right? They may just have a different take
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: on it. Like, does it make it defamation? You just,
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: You see it a different way. They're more critical of you.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: And the whole, like, whatever the, like, I actually felt
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: the same way in reading the piece. Like, I don't
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: know what exactly has been exposed by this. I feel
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: like there's a kind of like, whatever, there's like a,
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: and like kind.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: Of a- Like a swirling controversy, but you don't really
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: land anything.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: It's a lot of like fuels claims of type stuff.
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: And I like, didn't really feel like I landed on
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: any sort of thing specific. But like that gets at
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: the problem, right? Where you're so sensitive to this kind
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: of criticism, which means like you can't step back and,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: like be objective about it. And whatever your specific business ties,
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: you're in a role where you're not supposed to be
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: advocating for your own personal financial interest or the interest
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: of your friends or an industry you care about and
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: believe in. You're supposed to be advocating for the country.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: And I'm sure the reason he went around asking people
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: or hoping people would come to his defense is because
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: he thinks he's doing that, right? I'm sure he feels
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: like he's doing that. But like people are complicated and
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: incentives are hard to fully understand. And that's why conflicts
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: of interest matter. And like, if you can't handle even
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: like a, a flick at exposing some of those questions.
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: That is really damning.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the central, the conflict in the story
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: is that this is a guy who is not fully
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: divested and he is benefiting from policies he is making
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: and the people around him, all of his closest friends
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: are benefiting financially too. And the response to that very
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: obvious fact was all the people who are financially benefiting
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: from the policies David Sachs is putting in place tweeting
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: about how great he was. Like, oh, Sam Altman, you
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: like that David Sachs is like steering people hundreds of
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: billions of dollars to open AI, what a surprise. I'm
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: glad you think he's nice. Everyone thinks he's famously a
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: fucking asshole, actually. But I'm glad you're happy.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Well, also, the challenge is, conflicts aside, their theory of
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence is just fucking go hard and we don't
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: care what the consequences are. No lessons learned from social
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: media and what happened in the 2000s and 2010s. and
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: that there are going to be no regulations, and anytime
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: someone has a complaint or concern about artificial intelligence and
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: where it's headed, all we have to say is, well,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: we're in a race against China, and if China gets
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: there first, then, you know, everything's fucked.
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: But we're going to sell China all of the most
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: advanced NVIDIA chips, because Jensen Wang argues that that's the
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: way you defeat.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: China in the AI wars.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: It's not about him getting really rich. Jensen Wang's the
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: CEO of NVIDIA. It's not about NVIDIA being worth $ 5
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: trillion and keeping that stock price up. It's about beating...
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: the Chinese by giving them our best chips. Or having
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: our chips everywhere around the world, right?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: That's what they would say. And otherwise, that that would
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: just drive more sales to Huawei if China doesn't have
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: the chips themselves, which is also an argument I don't
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: quite understand.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: Well, in fairness to David Sachs, on the list of
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: ways in which the private and public have been merged, right,
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: and interests are hard to disentangle, he's not top 10
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: on the list.
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: Of corrupt officials.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: No, that's why he was last in our roundup here. Right,
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: but the.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: like, you know, there's the whole line, like you can't
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: convince somebody of something their livelihood depends on not believing.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: And these are all people that have a financial, deep
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: financial interest in the success of this technology. And the
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: fact that this technology is not a world historic evil, right?
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: And so you can't convince them otherwise, they're going to
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: pursue their interest, even if they genuinely believe it's in
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: the interest of the country.
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: One paragraph that stuck out to me in the story,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: At the All In podcast's annual conference in Los Angeles,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: it generated this year roughly $ 21 million in ticket sales.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: That's up from $ 15 million last year. Based on its $ 7, 500
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: ticket price, in June, the podcast introduced a $ 1, 200 All
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: In branded tequila.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: What the fuck are we doing?
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: What the fuck are we doing? That's what I'm saying.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: Go get our merch guy.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: What the hell?
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Selling fucking.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: God, Dave, you have any sweatshirts we have to move
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: to meet one bottle of fucking white label tequila? Here's
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: a $ 20 mug. $ 7, 500 tickets.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Cricket Con next year. What are we doing?
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: I'm just kidding. Our merch team is fantastic. The whole
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: story is so ridiculous. Basically, their response to a lot
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: of the specific allegations of companies that Dave attacks... owns
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: a piece of and could profit is like 20 mil,
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: it's nothing for us.
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: We're billionaires.
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: I know, I know.
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: And then there was also, it's also not clear right
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: about what he owns versus what the company he continues
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: to own owns. That seems to be a gray area.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I get plenty of problems with those
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: guys and this is the least of it.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: This is the least of it. I do think they're absolutely...
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: In 10 years, 20 years, we could look back at
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: the failure to regulate artificial intelligence as like the biggest
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: Trump failing. And I do think David Sachs is doing that.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: And I just want to say.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: And that is, again, that is like all conflicts aside,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: like whether he had them or not, it's the policy
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: that really fucking worries me.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: And I just want to be clear that if we
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: do live in that future where people like John and
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: Tommy say we made a mistake in not regulating AI
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: because of how powerful it's gone. I want you to
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: know that I did everything I could to bring about
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: your rise. And I was one of the good ones.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: I was on your side.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: What's the thing called?
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: Rocco's Basilisk. Something about which we cannot speak.
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: Oh boy. I know the reaction to this is going
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: to be Tucker Carlson interviewed Sam Altman and basically just
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: tried to ask him like basic moral questions about how
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: he thinks about running the company. And he couldn't answer.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: any of them. And then he spent 10 minutes accusing.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: Of a murder. But you know what? You've talked about
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: that interview so many times. And so I listened to
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the whole thing and I was like, Tommy was not
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: exaggerating at all. It's a remarkable interview and it's terrifying
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: in that. And the Sam Altman part is terrifying.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: Sam Altman always feels like it's like, he's like, I
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: can't believe, I can't believe they're making me do this. Yeah.
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: Cause I, cause there's so many, it's, it's always feels
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: like there's somebody, there's some monkey in his back.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: He's learned a little bit from the Zuckerberg era too,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: where instead of just denying everything, he's like, and I
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: can see why that would be a problem. I can
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: see why that could be a concern, but you know what?
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: We need to do it anyway.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it is.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: It's like, I have no choice. We have no choice,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: but to go towards the future.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg got years and years of PR advice that
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: was like show contrition, grovel a little bit. And then
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: five years ago, he's like, you know what? Just grapple
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: with dudes, do some kickboxing. And never talk to Kara
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: Swisher again. Hey, we have an idea, Mark. Never talk
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: to Kara Swisher again.
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, take over a city, build a compound deep underground.
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: It'll be fine.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: Hey, you know aloha means hello and goodbye. That's what
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: his press person said the last time he left.
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: One last thing before we get to Tommy's conversation with
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: Rob Sand. Today, as you're listening to this, is Election
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: Day in Tennessee 7, the special election where Afton Bain
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: is running to flip a key congressional seat. This is
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a Trump 22 district. Trump won this by 22 points.
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: But Afton is only a few points behind the Republican.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: And Republicans are spending a lot of money on this.
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: They're a little nervous. Trump did one of his patented
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: teller rallies on Monday.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: Patented.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: And, of course, the closer, Mike Johnson, was stumping around
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: the district as well. How are you guys feeling about
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: this one?
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: I think it's a great sign they're sending Mike Johnson,
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: you know, beloved figure Mike Johnson among the low propensity
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: voters of Tennessee.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Should we do an A and a B version?
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: We always knew she was going to win.
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: It was really tough.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: It was always really going to be hard. Yeah, for sure.
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: The margin really matters. Dan's conversation with Amy Walter about
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: this was really smart and thoughtful. Everyone should listen to
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: that Sunday conversation. Go ahead.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: There's very, well, let's just say there's very limited polling here.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: There was some polling in mid-October from, afton bain's campaign
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: that had her down eight i think and then emerson
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: released a poll like a week or so ago that
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: just had it at 49 47 surprise yeah right yeah
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: so she's only down two so who knows it's parts
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: of nashville but then it's a lot of the suburbs
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: outside nashville that are wealthier and i don't know i
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: mean again low turnout special elections that are just in
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: a random tuesday you never fucking know what's going to
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: happen so who knows.
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: How do you pull a Nashville special on December 2nd
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: and figure out the likely voter universe for that. It
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: feels very hard.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: We can barely pull a presidential election at this point.
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I do want to tell listeners, one, listen to
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: Dan's conversation with Amy Walters. It was really smart and thoughtful.
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: And two, check out the Rob Sand interview because I
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: do think Iowa has been a tough state for Democrats
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: in recent years. It was a huge swing from 2012
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: Obama to Trump, I think 16 points. But we've got
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: some big statewide races this year. We've got a great
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: governor's race. Rob's going to be the Democratic candidate. There's
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: an open Democratic primary for an open Senate seat. And
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: then the House races there are always really tightly contested.
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: Three out of the four districts, I think, very competitive.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And we've really overperformed in some recent special elections
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: in Iowa. So it's the kind of place where if
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: you invest a limited amount of money early, it could
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: make a big difference in terms of our ability to,
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know, have any power in this country. Yeah,
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: and Rob's a fantastic candidate. Rob's a great candidate, great guy.
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: And if you know anyone in Tennessee 7, which includes
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: the parts of Nashville, reach out, make sure they have
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: a plan to vote today. Or if you're in Tennessee 7,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: who knows? Hopefully we have some listeners there. Polls open
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. Central in different parts
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: of the districts, and they close at 7 p.m. Central.
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: So get out there and vote. Quick reminder before we
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: go to break, this holiday season, consider giving the gift
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: of content.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: Hey, hey, now again with feeling.
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: I like when housekeeping copy kills your soul, Josh.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Friend of the Pod subscriptions make a great, easy present.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: Your loved one will get access to all the good stuff.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Exclusive content like Polar Coaster with Dan Pfeiffer, internally online,
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: ad-free episodes of all their favorite Crooked shows. Their favorite? Oh,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: I guess your loved one. And the warm Yuletide glow
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: that comes with supporting independent progressive media.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Damn right.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Gift a Friend of the Pod subscription, grab one for yourself,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: or learn more at crooked.com slash friends. When we come back,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Rob Sand. Pod Save America is brought to you by CookUnity.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: Talk about a comfort food or a meal you're known
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: for making for the holidays.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: None.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: There's nothing I'm known to make.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm making this year, John?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: I'm going to make a corn pie. There's a recipe
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: for a Mexican corn pie that I'm really excited to make.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: I'm going to make a crust.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Like corn bread?
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: No, it's a corn pie. It's almost like, what's a
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: kind of jelly pie? Like a pecan pie. Yeah, I
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 3: do like that. So it's like that style of pie.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: But with corn, it's a elote pie.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: Very excited about it.
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  Speaker 1: There you go. That's what John's known for. The holidays
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  Speaker 2: Joining me in studio today is the only Democrat currently
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: holding statewide office in Iowa and 2026 gubernatorial candidate, Iowa
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: state auditor, Rob Sand. Rob, great to see you.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You too, Tommy.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: We're in the same room physically. We can put to rest.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: We are not the same person. We are the same person.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I do.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Like I, we, I talked to you a few months back. Um,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: I demanded that I get to be governor for a day.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: I know you've been thinking about it.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: Get back to me on the constitutional elements.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: But I, I, I think what we need is if
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: we can get a commitment out of you to be
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: my body double on the trail for a few days
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: so I can be in two places at once.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: We can probably make that work.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: I'm there. I will be on the next flight to
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: Des Moines.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: All right. So there's some really big races in Iowa
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: this year. There's a bunch of contested House races. There's
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: a big Senate race. Democrats are holding a primary to
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: see who's going to take on Joni Ernst. You're running
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: for governor. I am biased towards being more hopeful about
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: Iowa because of my experience there. But you are, again,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: the only statewide elected Democrat. Listeners might know that at
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: the presidential level, Iowa swung about 16 points to the
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: right from 2012 to 2016. So to everyone listening, all
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: the doubters, all the haters, why should Democrats bet on
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: Iowa this cycle?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: I think there's a pretty simple piece of this. But honestly,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: the bottom line is there are many data points. There's
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: all kinds of reasons to support the fact that this
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: is a state that is ready for change. Here's a
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: question for you, because we I think the bottom line
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: for this for a lot of people is we think
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: oftentimes we're forced and pushed to think in terms of
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: Democrats versus Republicans. There are many people in the state
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: of Iowa and nationally, but I think particular in the
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: state of Iowa that actually look at politics and they're
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 4: like Democrats, Republicans, whatever. And instead they're, they're asking, yeah,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 4: they're all the same. They're asking like, who's real, who
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: is willing to go against their party's orthodoxy, who is
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: willing to challenge the status quo. And those are people
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 4: who supported Barack Obama and, twice, and then also supported
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump three times. The Democratic nominee for president in
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 4: all three of those election cycles against Donald Trump was
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: someone who was not an outsider.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: The consummate insider.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: The consummate insider. Right.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: All three times, Clinton, Biden, Harris. This is a state
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: that has an idea for something bigger and they want
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: someone that they feel is a genuine leader on things.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: And when you look around, Yes, we've seen those swings
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: at the presidential level, but look deeper. We have had
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: for three cycles in a row, one of the closest
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: congressional races, the closest congressional race in the country. Last
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 4: cycle for a pickup, the cycle before that for a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: defense for an incumbent Democrat, the cycle before that, closest
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: congressional race in American history, six votes.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: I'm the only statewide elected Democrat, but that's because there
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: were two other people that lost by one point.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: One in 2022.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: If they had won.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: Our state level offices would be three Democrats and three Republicans.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: And the national media could be saying like, oh, wow,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: Iowa is still so purple.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: Liberal Iowa, right?
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: Right down the middle.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: They vote for both parties. And because it's a one
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: point difference, nobody talks about that.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: That's a good point. I want to talk about Howard County.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: Small, white, rural county. It's right on the Minnesota border.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Next door from my home county.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: Swung 41 points from Obama to Donald Trump. You grew
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: up just east of Howard County and Decorah. I'm sure
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: you've been to Howard County many, many times for like
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: basketball games. What was it about Trump's message in these
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: small rural towns that made him so successful?
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, 41 points. Yeah.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 4: I think one of the reasons that But that 41-point
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: swing wouldn't be possible unless also Barack Obama did really well.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: And so the success of both of their messages was
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: the idea that politics isn't serving ordinary people.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: And that's true. It's true.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 4: And a lot of voters are looking at that and
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: they're saying, I want someone who's going to tell me
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: the truth. I'm more focused on hearing that and be
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: authentically who they are. And both those guys, Obama and Trump,
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: they are who they are.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: There's no confusion about who they are.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: And so I think when you look at Howard County,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 4: and this is a great example of this. So I
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: did 100 public town halls this year.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: Why'd you do 100 town halls with 99 counties? That's
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: going to confuse the shit out of everybody.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: Lee County down in Southeast Iowa has two county seats.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: And so I do 100.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: What happened there? It was like a Vichy county seat?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: What are they doing?
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: There was this dispute right after Iowa became a state.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: And two years afterward, the state law was like, you
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: will have two county seats.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: Quit fighting.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: You can both be a county seat. You know, just
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: like the mom and dad being like, look, you each
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: get half.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: You each get a toy.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Right. Yes. There you go.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: So I do 100 because a lot of elected officials
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: in Iowa do 99 and I'm competitive.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: So that way I'm the hardest working elected official in
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: the state of Iowa, right? Um, but I also like,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: I think this is the heart of democracy. Like you
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: shouldn't want to be in politics unless you are literally
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: willing to go talk to anyone.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 4: So every year, a state auditor, I've done 100. We
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 4: did a hundred this year. And to go back to
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: your point about Howard County, um, spent the night in,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: in Cresco, the County seat, woke up that morning, uh,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: went on a run and was getting breakfast, uh, at
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 4: a diner, uh, with my mom.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Cause she's over right.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: Next door from home. And there's a guy in there
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: who's an older gentleman. And as we're on the way out,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: I say, hey, you know, Rob Sand doing a town hall.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: Come on over. Like, you're welcome there. I want you
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: to be there.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 4: We announced all 100 the same day, by the way,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: like in June. And so no matter where you were
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: in Iowa, like we were like a rock band going
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: out on tour.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: Like, we are coming. Get ready. Like it or not.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: We want you to show up.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be there.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Right. It's not like, poof, he was here? When?
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: How? We want people to show up. So I invite
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: this guy and he comes. And the.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: uh, reporter for the Des Moines register, uh, brand fantasy
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: deals on, on the road with us and her, it
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: turns out that she talked to him afterwards and to
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: this point of like, so of not really a Democrat
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: or Republican, this guy didn't want to share what his
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: political views was, uh, were, but he said something to
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: the effect of, I'm glad I had a chance to
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: actually hear from sand and who I vote for might
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 4: come down to who's actually here for me to, which
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 4: will not sound strange to someone who.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: Worked on Bronco.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: No, it's the most Iowa thing I've ever heard.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: Right, right.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: And so we're literally, and Tommy, when we do these,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: so we did this 100 times across the state. We
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: start out by acknowledging the obvious. Our political system is broken.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: It works better to reelect the people who are in
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: power than to solve the problems of the people it's
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: supposed to serve.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: And I don't think that.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: Either party fundamentally is doing a good enough job of
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 4: solving our problems to have special legal privileges over our
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: choices on the ballot. But if we're going to change
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: our political system, we have to change our political culture.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: We have to work together. And so if you're a
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: Republican here today, I want to applaud you.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: Raise your hand.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: We clap for all the Republicans who are present. If
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 4: you're an independent here today, I want to applaud you.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: We applaud the independents. We clap for the Democrats.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: And then I say, I want to take one minute
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 4: to prove to all the people who want us to
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 4: hate each other that we can work together. Let's sing
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: the first verse of America the Beautiful.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: Okay. And we do it. How's your voice?
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: I do not lead.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: On purpose. This is not a comment on my singing.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: You don't have a tuning fork?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: This is not a comment on my singing. Okay.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: The point is to have everyone do it.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Right?
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 4: So my microphone is at my waist. I'm just another person.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: And I say, someone else kick us off. And we're
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: in small town Iowa. Usually everybody turns around and.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Is like, Maude? You know, like they all know who sings.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: But we have this.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: Moment where we've already acknowledged that we are That we disagree.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: We have already acknowledged that we are on opposite sides
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: of this chasm. And yet we are taking a moment
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: to acknowledge those differences and say, let's do something together.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: By the time you get past that, usually there's someone
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: in the room. You can tell just like hat felt
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: a thing, right? And people are just ready to have
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: a different conversation than you can have before. And to me,
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: that is what we need right now. And I think
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: a lot to the, a lot of people that are
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: coming out for these events, 100 of them, we had
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: over 10,000 people attend averaged 30%, not Democrats the year
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: before the election. And 30% of the people in the
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: room are independents and Republicans.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: And again, like the, you know, here's the message, right?
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: Not bluer or redder, but truer and better.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: Like.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: Our political system is broken. Two choices is not realistic.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 4: It functions better to control us than it does to
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: get our problems resolved. And people, I think they are
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: ready for that message. They recognize it as being true.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 4: And I think they see it as a route forward
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 4: from where we are.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: No, look, I've been hearing that I would recommend to
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: anyone running to run against the system right now. I
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: was talking about the head of swing left the other day.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: So the number one thing they are hearing on the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: doors is not cost of living. It's anger at the establishment,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: the system and all the ways it's broken. But I
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: do think talking to you is so interesting to me because,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: you know, we talk to a lot of Democrats here
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: who are taking a more aggressive approach in the Trump era, right?
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: Like there was this big New York Times story the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: other day about a group of senators who call themselves
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: Fight Club. They are frustrated with Chuck Schumer and how
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: he's running things. Now, look, I know like fight versus
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: don't fight Trump is like kind of stupid and reductive.
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: But if you were governor, you might have to figure
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: out how to deal with, say, a National Guard deployment
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: or– really aggressive ice raids in your communities or God
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: knows what else by then. How are you thinking about,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: you know, the, like those confrontations?
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 4: I think the same way I've kind of thought about everything.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: I mean, my background is not partisan warrior, state auditor
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: for two terms. Like this is where the money went.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: Is there a Republican calculator?
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: That's it. That's better.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: You know, the, the, the line that we like is
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: a money isn't blue or red.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: It's green. Right.
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: Um, And we like to talk a lot about the old, uh, uh, in, in,
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 4: in God, we trust all others.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: We audit. Right.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: Um, but it's not a, it's not a partisan thing.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: You're just, you're really thinking about like, what's the truth.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 4: Prior to that, I spent seven years as the chief
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 4: public corruption prosecutor.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 4: Uh, everybody quick buy my book. I uncovered the largest
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 4: lottery rigging scheme in American history.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: All right. All right.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: We won't get too far into it. I should say though,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 4: also my, I want my finance people to be happy.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 4: Rob sand.com.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Everybody. Please chip in.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: Donate, volunteer.
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But here's the answer, right?
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: What I have spent my career doing has been on
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: focusing on figuring out what the truth is and then
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 4: doing the right thing. It hasn't been about like, oh,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: this person is good or bad because they're wearing this
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: or that color hat. Whether it's a Democratic or a
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: Republican president, I am going to do what I think
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 4: is the right thing to do to protect public safety
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: in Iowa and also to follow the Constitution. That's the
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 4: bottom line to me. An interesting story about this. We
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: got a public records request in the auditor's office. And
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: it asked for all allegations of wrongdoing by Republican Governor
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 4: Kim Reynolds.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: It's pretty sweeping.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: Pretty sweeping. Came from the DNC.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 4: Under Iowa law, it seemed pretty clear to us that
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: we can't just go hand out allegations. We think they're
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: confidential under Iowa law. Don't think it's a complicated question.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: So we sent them, no, we can't give that to you.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 4: They sent the same records request a second time.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: Just unedited, just the same thing?
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like I think, like, to me it's like they're wondering,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: did you miss the letterhead? We're the DNC.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: I gave them the same answer. Like, I'm not here
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 4: to do what you want. I'm here to do the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: right thing. I'm not going to go along with anything
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 4: that any president says just because they are the president.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: They are people. They are fallible.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: And I don't think that, you know, look, I think
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: that right now, We should be focused on making sure
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: that our economy is working. We should be focused on
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 4: making sure that people who are in this country are
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: not a threat to public safety. But if they're not
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 4: a threat to public safety, if they're doing a job
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 4: and they're paying their taxes and they don't have a
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 4: criminal record, yes, I think that makes sense that if
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: they came here illegal, there would be some level of
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 4: consequence for that. But if they're a part of our communities,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: you can have a consequence without being evicted from our community.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: Another area where I would imagine you just diverge from
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: some in the Democratic Party is on the question of redistricting.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom is leading this, just led this major fight
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: to redistrict California. It was in response to Trump demanding
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: that Texas basically rig their maps halfway through the decade
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: to get five more seats. My views on this are like,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: I hate gerrymandering because I think it kind of gets
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: us to where we are today, where you have vast
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: majority of districts where uh the elected members on both
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: sides are more worried about a primary than a general
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 2: election yeah so they just there's less incentive to be
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: reasonable but i also think we can't kind of sit
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 2: idly when republicans are trying to rig the 2026 midterms
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: but i get the sense that you are you are
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 2: not the biggest fan of partisan uh redistricting is that
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: fair you.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: Know uh Iowa was the first state to prevent this problem.
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: We put these, the country's first independent redistricting commission into place.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: And so in Iowa, like you don't have gerrymandering, you
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: can't do it. The Iowa standard is still the best standard.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: In fact, when this came up in Wisconsin a few
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 4: years ago, uh, some folks up there that knew me
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 4: said like, Hey, you know, the speaker up here, the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 4: Republican is trying to say, Oh, we're going to do
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: the Iowa model.
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: Is this really the Iowa model? I was like, no.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: And I got her former Republican Iowa GOP chair. to
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: write a letter with me to basically like the state
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 4: of Wisconsin being like, we see what you're trying to
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: do here. This is what we do in Iowa. This
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: is why it's different. And this is why you can't
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: say that's the Iowa model to try to protect truly
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 4: the idea of independence and that brand of Iowa being
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 4: like nonpartisan to me, this whole redistricting gerrymandering battle. is again,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: is exactly what I'm talking about when I go to
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 4: the idea that these two private clubs shouldn't have special
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: legal privileges over our access and our choices on the ballot, right?
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: This is what we get to.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: We have people who are being paid with tax dollars,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: putting hours and hours and hours into efforts to solidify
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 4: one private club's control over the lawmaking capacity of different states. Now,
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: I appreciate the responsiveness to it. But the answer to
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 4: me isn't just like, Oh, uh, an eye for an eye.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: The answer is we need to break down this entire
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: system so that we have a system based on serving
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: people rather than a system based on serving politicians.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I'm there. If we could do a national
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: sort of independent redistricting process, I'm all for it. It's
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: just a long way from here to there.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Um, So I interviewed you around your announcement. We talked
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: about the sort of budding Trump trade war. It kicked
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: off in earnest. Trump slapped tariffs on most of the world,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 2: including the Chinese. A lot of the world kind of
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: ducked and covered. The Chinese punched back really hard, including
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: by basically boycotting the purchase of U.S. soybeans. Last month,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: Trump claimed that he'd cut a deal with the Chinese
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: and that they would resume soybean purchases from the U.S.,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: Iowa is, you know, top two biggest soybean producing states
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: in the country. I think it's you and Illinois, right?
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Number one.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: You beat Illinois?
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: Come on.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: You got to talk to ChatGPT. She told me you
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: guys were number two. I'm pretty sure I'm right. How
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: has the kind of like last few months of this
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: trade war impacted Iowa farmers, the Iowa economy, and is China?
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: living up to the terms of the deal Trump announced?
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean, that's exactly, your phrasing of that was precise, right?
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 4: That's the terms of the deal that the Trump administration announced.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: China has never affirmed. Yes, we're going, they have never
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: said we are going to buy 12 million metric tons.
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: They have bought 300,000.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: Allegedly they were going to buy 12 million by the
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: end of the calendar year.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: It feels tough to do.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: Those numbers are very different. Those numbers are very, very different.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: Um, and I think there's a reason that China hasn't said,
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 4: you know, oh, we're going to do this. Uh, and
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: this is just to me, this is, you know, this
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: is exactly one of those things that I think is
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: the line that you can see between people who are
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: trying to serve a party master and people who are
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: trying to serve the public.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 4: You got four members of Congress, two us senators in
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 4: the state of Iowa. Every, all four members of Congress
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: are just whatever the president says, I'm with him ushering
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: in a new golden age.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: Okay. You got it.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, farmers in the state of Iowa, right? Have no
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 4: markets to sell their crops to internationally. We're bailing out
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 4: Argentinian farmers and Argentinian cattlemen, beef growers. Well, people in
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: Iowa are sitting there with no market. And all of
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: these Republican elected officials who know how this system works,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: who are well-informed on this, who see how bad this
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: is for Iowa, won't say it. The only one that's
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 4: even coming close is Chuck Grassley. I think his attitude
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: on this is YOLO and he's mostly lived, so he's
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 4: going for it.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: He's getting to.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: The end of that four letter word.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 4: And so, you know, he's, he's, he's at least saying, yeah,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 4: he's at least saying, You know, I don't think tariffs
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 4: are going to work. If they do, I'll be the
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: first one to say, hallelujah. I'm with him on that,
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 4: but this is bad for the state of Iowa. And
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 4: I think most people in the state of Iowa, they
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 4: want someone who will work with any president to do
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: good and work with no president to do something bad.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: They will try to avoid bad things happening. These folks
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 4: are just saying, yes, boss, whatever you want.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: What do these farmers do? Like, what do you do
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: with a metric ton of, a million metric tons of soybeans?
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: It's a great question because right now you're also having
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: to make decisions about what you're going to plant next year.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: Where are you going from here?
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: If this Chinese market has gone away.
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 4: And this chaos makes their life incredibly difficult because I
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 4: think most farmers and most people, right? Most people want
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: to know what the rules of the road are and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 4: make their own decisions and sink or swim according to
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: their own merit and according to their own decision-making.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 4: You know, I thought, I thought we were going to zig,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: we zagged, but at least you knew, you know, there
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: was that fork in the road and you were going
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 4: to do one or the other.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: This kind of chaos just makes decision-making for anyone in
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: agriculture right now incredibly complicated and difficult, particularly because a
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: lot of these people, they don't get to know if
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: the tariffs are about to change in two days. I'm
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: sure somebody knows when the tariffs are about to change
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: in two days because they can place their bets.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: It's less of a bet.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: Somebody named Donald Trump Jr. knows and they can go
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: on Polymarket or the Stock Exchange or whatever. Another Iowa-specific
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: question for you. So Iowa has the second highest cancer
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: rate in the nation. It's got one of the only
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: rising cancer rates in the country. That includes a lot
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: of people, young people who are getting cancer in their 30s.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: I know that some experts point to alcohol consumption, high
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: levels of radon potentially as being the cause. Radon, for
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: those who don't know, is just a naturally occurring radioactive gas.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: Others suspect chemicals used in agriculture could be the culprit.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: And this is not just an Iowa problem. There's sort
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: of like a Midwestern belt of states that are dealing
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: with this. What do you think is happening? And what
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 2: is like the governor of Iowa's responsibility or options to
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: address the challenge?
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 4: So bottom line answer is it's certainly all of the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 4: above are a part of this. And I think the
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 4: responsibility of the governor is to figure out what are
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: our biggest causes and what can we do? What are
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 4: the best and fastest and easiest ways to lower those
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: incidents of cancer?
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: And you're right.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 4: We are number two overall. And the only one with
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: an increasing rate. Um, and this is something that I
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: did again, a hundred public town halls. And I would
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: get to this point in my stump where I would
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: say we are 49th for economic growth. We are 48th
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 4: for personal income growth, but what are we number one in,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: in for growing? And people would shout back at me, cancer. Well,
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: you just really hit people's imagination. Um, and it hits
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 4: people's lives close to home. And I always, I always,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: I always think about, um, My friend, Abby, who, uh,
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 4: she's from forest city. Uh, we met through my cousin
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: long time ago and she was a childhood cancer survivor.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 4: And then she, um, uh, her cancer came back when
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 4: we were maybe around 30 or something. And her attitude
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 4: about it was so classically Iowan and also miraculous. She
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: had to have her entire leg amputated at one point.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: And so for Halloween, she went as a shark attack victim.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: Oh my God. Yeah. Uh, the next year she was
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: a carrot. Um, and she.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: Was also a pediatric nurse and just, you know, like
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 4: taking care of kids and doing her best to, to
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 4: balance everything that she was going through with, with trying to,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: trying to be employed and help kids at the same time. Um,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 4: and then she, she passed away. Um, But people who
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: know her and people whose lives are touched by stories
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 4: like that across the state of Iowa, and you hear
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: that we are number one for that, it's alarming. And
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: I met a couple in Alamakee County. So we talked
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 4: about Howard. Next over to the east is Winnesheek, my county,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: and then next over to the east is Alamakee. And
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 4: I met a couple in Lansing at my town hall,
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 4: a young couple, I think probably younger than us, whose
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: kid has cancer now. And they said, we're working with
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: people in the legislature to try to get some funding
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 4: for research for pediatric cancers in the state of Iowa.
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 4: I do think that's an obligation for the state government
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: in Iowa. We should be funding research into why is
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: this happening in Iowa. We absolutely should. Last year, the
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 4: legislature and governor agreed to put a million dollars into it.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: That doesn't seem like much.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: That's not going to get you much, no.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: What this couple taught me is that in Nebraska, they
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: have done $ 23 million of research into pediatric cancer over
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 4: the last few years. And as a proud Iowan, I
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 4: demand that we beat Nebraska.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: I know you do.
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Like we should be.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: It's gotten easier recently.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes, it has. Yes, it has.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: Scott Frost era was not good for anybody over there.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: Well, it was good for Hawkeyes.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good for Hawkeyes.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 4: But the table stake should be 25 million because we
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 4: want to beat Nebraska. We're also sitting on a five
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 4: or six, depending on how you want to count it,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 4: billion dollar surplus. So like we have money there.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: What are we doing?
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It seems like there's no better way to spend
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: it than this kind of research. You've got a great hospital,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: the University of Iowa. I mean, we don't want to
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: make you name. I don't want you to rank your hospitals,
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: but you've got a bunch.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Of good ones.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: I know that's hard.
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 4: The other thing of this that I think is, is
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 4: we so often miss is this is good for everybody, right?
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 4: Cause you can be the person, you know, my faith
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: drives so much of what I believe in so much
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: of what I choose. And to me, you can look
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: at kids and you could say, We should heal the sick.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 4: We should want to help these people not be sick.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: You can also be the single most cold hearted person
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 4: in the state of Iowa and reach the same conclusion
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: on a different route. Well, I guess if we prevent
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 4: cancer that costs fewer tax dollars than treating it later on.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: So of course, fine.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: We should all be able to agree to this. It's
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: a simple thing that we can be doing. And right now,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: the folks that are there aren't doing enough. What are
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 4: they busy doing? Like I said, 48th in economic growth,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 4: number one for cancer growth. But let's figure out how
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 4: to gut the state auditor's office ability to find the
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: tax dollars that we misspent.
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: That's their priority.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 4: I always go back to the story in the New
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 4: Testament of Jesus flipping tables because he saw people in
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 4: a position of trust and power at the temple who
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 4: were abusing that trust and power. That to me is
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 4: exactly where we are in the state of Iowa right now.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 4: And we did, as we're going around and we're doing
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: 100 town halls, you're hearing people left, right, and center talking.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 4: Who are just fed up.
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: They've had enough.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 4: They understand that at this point, it's just insiders serving
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 4: insiders and special interest groups. They're not focused on Iowans
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 4: and they're ready for change.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: When you say Jesus flipping tables, I think of like
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: a Buffalo Bills tailgate. That's more, I guess, more like
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: splitting tables, jumping off.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: I want to see, I really want to see Josh
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 4: Allen get a Super Bowl.
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: I like Josh Allen a lot, but I'm glad the
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: Patriots are good.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: So your work– you prosecuted this hot lotto fraud case.
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 2: It's one of like the craziest public corruption stories in Iowa.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: For listeners who don't know, can you just tell us
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: what happened and why you have beef with hot lottery winners?
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: Which is how I understand it.
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: I won't dive in on the bait on that one.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 4: There's a– so, yeah. Great, amazing book that I wrote.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 4: Everyone should buy it. It's so good.
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: It did actually.
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 4: Win an award from the Washington Independent Review of Books.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: Oh.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: Which, because it has the word independent in it, makes
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: an auditor be like, okay, legit.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: They called it a favorite read of the year when
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: it came out. Okay. It's called The Winning Ticket. I
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 4: A documentary called Jackpot, which you can stream for free
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: at lottodoc.com.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 4: But that tells you the same story in 45 minutes
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: if you're not the book reading type.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: Less detail.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: Bottom line, for 10 years, there was this guy working
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: for the Multi-State Lottery Association in Urbandale, Iowa that serves
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 4: like 38 state and provincial lotteries in the United States
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: and Canada.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: And....
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: He was, I don't want to spoil it. He was
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: making it a little bit more predictable than it's supposed
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: to be. Fast forward this part if you want to
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: buy the book.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: You can tell us what happened. It's okay.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: All right. All right. Inside job.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: Like it was his job to literally write the computer
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: program that was supposed to pick random numbers. And he
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 4: made them enough less than random that he could buy
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: a bunch of tickets and kind of know what was
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: going to win. Dude, the craziest part about this. Is,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 4: so he's a, he's a Texas, small town, Texas boy.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: And no one noticed he was like driving a Ferrari
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: all of a sudden.
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: He had a really big house. People were like, did
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: you have an uncle? Did he pass away? Was he rich? Right, right.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: How are you doing this?
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: People, people sort of had questions, but you know, like,
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: the craziest part about this, beyond the fact that he's
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 4: rigging lottery jackpots around America, he's a small town, Texas boy.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 4: His brother is a justice of the peace down there.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: His brother is a Bigfoot hunter.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: And, Like the Sasquatch?
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: Sasquatch. Okay. Yeah.
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 2: That seems like a tough gig.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: It was a side gig.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 2: You're not getting a lot of targets, right?
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: You're not putting a lot of arrows on beef.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: That's why he was a justice of the peace for
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: his day job, right?
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: But he would help the guy in Des Moines, in Urbandale,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 4: buy these rigged jackpots. And then he would use his
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 4: friends occasionally from the Bigfoot hunting community to help Claim
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 4: the jackpot tickets.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm now imagining dudes in like Bigfoot outfits. Like,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: have you seen Harry and the Hendersons?
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course I have. Or that movie from when
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: we were kids? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: Like him going to cash a ticket?
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 2: That's crazy. How did you guys suss this out?
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: Long, long story.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: We actually went to trial only knowing about the one
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: Iowa ticket. And I remember this very clearly. We did
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 4: jury selection. Day one, when we were starting to bring
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: in evidence, there was a national news story being like, ah,
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 4: the defense has got a pretty powerful argument for reasonable
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 4: doubt here. I don't know how you can convict this
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 4: guy because you don't have the file. The computer that
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 4: had been used for the Iowa jackpot draw had been
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 4: wiped to Department of Defense standards. Like there was no
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 4: direct evidence at the time of like, oh, here's the
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 4: file that he wrote.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: This is how he rigged it. So it was a
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: circumstantial case. We won.
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 4: As we're waiting for sentencing is after the, after the
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 4: guilty verdict, I get this phone call at my desk
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 4: and I recognize the area code is like the area
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: that he's from in Texas. So I answer the phone
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 4: and this guy's like, can I talk to Rob Sand?
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that's me.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: Did y'all know that Eddie's brother won the lottery maybe
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: about 10 years ago or so somewhere out West, maybe Colorado.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, no, thank you.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: That is very helpful.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That is very helpful.
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: We had been sort of waiting for a tip like that. Like,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: We knew it was there, but one of the interesting
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: tactical decisions for the mastermind's legal defense was they chose
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 4: to demand speedy trial. So we didn't have time to
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 4: do this huge nationwide investigation.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 4: We had to like indict and get ready for trial.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: And we didn't, we were like, we bet there's something
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 4: else out there, but right now we got to shoot
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 4: the alligator closest to the boat.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 4: Let's get this guy convicted of this case here in Iowa.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: See what happens after that.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: I'm imagining you and Voidier being like, we're going to
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 2: strike that hairy guy. He's got some, some Bigfoot DNA.
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: He's not going to like these people.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: He's not going to like this. All right. Well, last
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: question for, I mean, even if you win, the Republicans
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: will probably have pretty strong majority of the legislature, right?
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: How do you think you can work with them to
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: get stuff done? You know, has our like zero sum
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: blood sport, DC politics infected Iowa fully yet? Are you
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 2: guys still able to talk?
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: So, so, so I'll say this, uh, number one, We
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 4: are strong believers, uh, that we can win this race, right?
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 4: The only poll that we have seen has us up
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 4: by two. Um, we keep having people come out of
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: the Republican party power structure, elected officials and recent party chairs,
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 4: like county party chairs publicly endorsing me, even if they've
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 4: never spoken to me in their life.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 2: That's nice. Yeah.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 4: Um, like when I tell you that Iowans are ready
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: for change, I think we were talking about this earlier,
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: four of the top nine special election over performances in
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 4: America this year are the only four that we have
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 4: had for special elections in Iowa. So we're, we're right
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 4: up at the top there. We can win this race.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 4: What's going to happen when we win? I think there's
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 4: a lot of people in the legislature that want to
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 4: do good. And I think they belong to both parties
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 4: and I will be happy to work with anybody. And
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 4: this is, this to me is again, like this, this
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 4: sort of is, I think rooted in my faith. I
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: love finding places of agreement. and a sense of community
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 4: where you expect to find none. Um, one of the
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 4: legislators that voted against the bill that got the auditor's
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 4: office that made it so they could hide misspent money
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 4: from us is a legislator who literally was at the
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 4: United States Capitol on January 6th, 2020 to stop this deal.
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 4: But she was someone that I called to tell her, Hey,
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 4: there's this bill coming.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: It's bad.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: It, It corrupts our government. It is an example of
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: the swamp. And she read the bill. She asked me
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 4: some very intelligent questions about it. And she said, okay,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: I'm going to vote against it.
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: People surprise you, right? Margie Taylor Greene, look what she's doing.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: There you go. And so I just like, we can
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: judge people's actions. We don't have to judge people.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: The best part of this story was when that legislator,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 4: Louina Stoltenberg, came back to me maybe the day or
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 4: two before the vote. And she goes, hey, I just
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 4: want to let you know, a lot of other people
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 4: have approached me about this bill and they've told me
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 4: some things about it, made some arguments that I think
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 4: make sense. And I'm really struggling and praying a lot
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 4: about what the right thing to do is for how
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 4: I vote on this bill. And I'm telling you this
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: now because I want you to know that I'm struggling
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 4: so that if I vote for it, you don't think
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: that it was because I lied to you. Don't you
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 4: want to be represented by people with that level of integrity?
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very decent.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 4: And so like you can be someone who literally is
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 4: there to stop the steal and yet also is calling
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 4: me to put yourself out there and say like, I'm
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: not sure what the right thing to do is.
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 1: I'm just working really.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: Hard at this.
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: And I reengaged with her. I said, thank you. Tell
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: me what their questions are. I don't care who it
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 4: was you got it from. Just tell me the question.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: I'll give you my answer. And we did that and
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 4: she did end up voting against it. I'm telling this
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 4: story to illustrate the point, right, that you made. People
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 4: will surprise you if you let them. The more we
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 4: are focused on putting each other into a box and saying, no,
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 4: you're over there and I'm over here and we're going
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 4: to have to fight, the worse we are doing for
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 4: all the people that are struggling around this state with
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: higher prices, right, with cancer. We're not solving problems if
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 4: we're not willing to work together. But when we engage
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 4: in good faith, when I look at someone like her
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: and I assume, hey, they might be willing to do
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 4: all kinds of things if we at least have a
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 4: conversation and focus on getting to something good. A whole
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 4: new world opens up in terms of what's possible to accomplish.
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 2: From January 6th to voting with you, I like it.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 2: Maybe you take them hunting. Are you a bow hunting guy?
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Dude, I got to show you the buck that I
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: shot this year.
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: I can't kill a deer. They're too big. I'm a
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 2: fishing guy.
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: I like fishing.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: I've shot birds before. Clay pigeons, that's a good time.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: I agree. I agree.
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe we do a little, that's our common ground.
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 4: You now have made me think of the buck that
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: I shot this fall. I have to talk to you
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: about this.
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: A lot of points. Big looking guy.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 4: 209 inch whitetail. If I like, can I like.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we can, you know.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: Can you zoom in?
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: We can put it in post and make our audience vomit.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 4: This thing, you know, we'll do a clean picture. A
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 4: 209 inch buck is like a once in a lifetime
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 4: if you're having a lucky lifetime.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 4: I've been a bow hunter my entire life. This was
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 4: in the city limits in Des Moines.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: What? Yes. Like downtown?
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: I've been doing the urban bow hunting program.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: Whoa, that's a big deer.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: That's a lot. How many points on that thing?
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: 14.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: I knew that.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 4: But two, but 209 inches. So again, like that's just like,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 4: that's off the charts.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: What's a normal sized buck?
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 4: So a Pope and Young buck, which is big enough
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 4: for the Pope and Young record books, typically would be
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 4: 125 inches and up.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 4: I have taken like eight of those, I want to say. uh,
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 4: as a hunter, a, a Boone and Crockett buck, which
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 4: is like a Booner is a big deal.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: 170 inches.
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: I'm like speaking a new language here.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: Yes. You're, Hey, you never know what you're going to learn.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: I'm learning a lot.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: Actually my, my wife's father's bow hunts and does all
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: this stuff too.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, all right.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 4: So they have these measurements, Pope and Young and, and, uh,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: Boone and Crockett for pretty much every kind of animal. Um,
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 4: but you know, whitetail is what we got in Iowa.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: So 125 inches and then 170 inches for that higher line.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 4: And shooting a Booner at like 170 or up is
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 4: a pretty big deal. Like 209 is just like.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 2: That's a, that's a Gooner. That's, that's monster.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: It's a Gooner.
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Forget Booner. Yes.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 2: I don't know, man. I'm just like, I really like fishing.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: You ever, you ever get out there?
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: Let's go fishing.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: Little streams, little fly rod.
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 4: Northeast Iowa, Decorah, some of the best trout fishing in
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 4: the Midwest.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Northeast Iowa is absolutely beautiful. Everyone should go visit. Also,
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 2: you should visit robsand.com.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: Robsand.com.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: Figure out how to get involved with the campaign.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: Maybe donate, maybe volunteer, maybe knock some doors.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: It's great to see you. Thank you for talking about
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: all this. And welcome to LA.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 1: Thanks, man.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: Hope the weather is nice, but not too nice. Cause
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: I know you're more of a, you want that, that
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: Iowa gloom.
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: Cool, cool weather.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It'll be a fun trip. That's our show for today.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Rob Sand for coming by. Dan and I
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: to everybody then. If you want to listen to Pod
• 1:38:49
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• 1:38:59
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• 1:39:02
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• 1:39:05
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• 1:39:11
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• 1:39:15
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