Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 8/24/26: Insane MAGA Linked Plot In Bolivia, Silicon Valley Panics Over Wealth Tax

Transcript

8/24/26: Insane MAGA Linked Plot In Bolivia, Silicon Valley Panics Over Wealth Tax · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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• 0:33
  Speaker 4: So we have a truly unbelievable scandal unfolding in South
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: America and to help us walk through it in a
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: moment will be drop sized Latin American Bureau Chief Jose
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: Luis Granado's Saiha.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It began recently on a street.
• 0:50
  Speaker 4: Side where there was as actually footage captured of two
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: hit men walking up to Nadia Beyer, who turns out
• 0:58
  Speaker 4: to be the girlfriend of Fernando Cerimeto, who is a
• 1:03
  Speaker 4: top right wing kind of Latin American political operative and
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: the business partner of Brad par Scale, who is a
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: former campaign manager for the twenty sixteen Trump campaign, is
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: that right family and is now a registered foreign agent
• 1:19
  Speaker 4: for the State of Israel and has been working for
• 1:22
  Speaker 4: me Lay and a whole bunch of other right campaign,
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: right wing twenty twenty campaign, a whole bunch of other
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: right wing figures throughout South America. And so Nadia is
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: allegedly pregnant with Ceramato's child.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And let's roll D four.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Here you see two delivery guys, guys dressed as delivery people.
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: We're gonna blur this out because this is going to
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: be a little bit shocking.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: One of them. If you're just listening to this.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: Walks up, you can probably tell through the blur footage
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: there tries to shoot her dead on the street. Now
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: it turns out that she survived this, uh, this assassination attempt,
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: and so she's now in the hospital or she was
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: in the hospital. You can put up D two uh
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: and starts to just completely uh. So here she's giving
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: a uh, she's giving an interview here from her hospital bed.
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: Just starts to completely unravel this, uh, this kind of
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: empire of dirty tricks that has been been running. She's
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: saying that he's he's These are some of her claims
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: that he's been taking eight hundred thousand dollars a month
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: from Milae in Argentina, UH, that he was bribing using
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: violence and bribes, you know, throughout a lot of his
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: other operations. So this gets so much wilder. But let's
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: let's bring in Jose Luise now to walk us through
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: some of this. Jose Luise, thank you so much for
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: for being here.
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me. Always good to
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: be here.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this is crazy stuff here, So let's walk us
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: through this. So let's let's put up D Let's put
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: up D one and I don't know if you can
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: see these on the screen here, you know, here's a
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: here's a here's a photo of Sarah Meato.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Who's he with here? And what what?
• 3:17
  Speaker 6: What?
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: What does this tell us that like kind of who
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: is who is Saramato? And why is this such a
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: big deal in UH in Latin America?
• 3:25
  Speaker 7: Absolutely so, here we see him with jabierv Nagre, who's
• 3:28
  Speaker 7: actually a key political operator as well.
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: He comes from Spain.
• 3:32
  Speaker 7: He is the co founder together with Sadi Melo of
• 3:34
  Speaker 7: A I don't want to call it a news outlet
• 3:36
  Speaker 7: because it's more of a disinformation outlet called ladrichaadio or
• 3:40
  Speaker 7: the daily right wing outlet, and essentially it kind of
• 3:43
  Speaker 7: in a lot of ways sums up what these two
• 3:46
  Speaker 7: men are doing in Latin America and helps answer the
• 3:48
  Speaker 7: question that I think a lot of people have been asking,
• 3:50
  Speaker 7: is why have we been seeing this right wing trend
• 3:52
  Speaker 7: in the region. And part of it, not exclusively so,
• 3:55
  Speaker 7: but a big part of it is precisely this. It's
• 3:57
  Speaker 7: the way that these individuals, people likes he May though,
• 4:00
  Speaker 7: people like negative, have figured out how to in a sense,
• 4:04
  Speaker 7: bring that kind of US consultancy system, those culture wars
• 4:08
  Speaker 7: into Latin American political campaigns really kind of polarize the
• 4:13
  Speaker 7: electorate and obviously deliver victories to right wing leaders. Said
• 4:17
  Speaker 7: he may Tho in particular is interesting because you know,
• 4:19
  Speaker 7: according to the biographies I was reading about him, he
• 4:22
  Speaker 7: was kind of a nobody. He was a taxi driver,
• 4:24
  Speaker 7: He was somebody who was not involved in political affairs.
• 4:26
  Speaker 7: He was a bit somebody who's always kind of chasing
• 4:29
  Speaker 7: the latest. Khan is a way to describe his activity,
• 4:33
  Speaker 7: and he managed to really rise to prominence with none
• 4:36
  Speaker 7: other than Javier Miley so haaviare Mila. Before he even
• 4:39
  Speaker 7: met Sadimelo was always kind of a provocateur, always using
• 4:42
  Speaker 7: really kind of aggressive language and making.
• 4:45
  Speaker 5: Fun of the left.
• 4:46
  Speaker 7: And he's the one who started with this whole suo,
• 4:48
  Speaker 7: which means left wing but it's kind of, you know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 7: in a disrespectful way. And these two gentlemen joined forces
• 4:54
  Speaker 7: to really kind of drive these kind of new campaigns
• 4:58
  Speaker 7: in Latin America we're seeing where they polarize the electorate
• 5:01
  Speaker 7: but really kind of run very negative kind of advertising,
• 5:04
  Speaker 7: really negative kind of messaging to make it seem like
• 5:07
  Speaker 7: not so much voting for the right wing candidate, but
• 5:10
  Speaker 7: voting against his opponent, and that has been incredibly successful
• 5:13
  Speaker 7: throughout the region. Obviously, the case of Melay, he becomes
• 5:16
  Speaker 7: president and actually helps even position him better.
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: But since then he's.
• 5:20
  Speaker 7: Kind of gone on to do far more work, and
• 5:23
  Speaker 7: obviously in this most recent incident, what we've seen is
• 5:25
  Speaker 7: him deeply involved in Bolivian politics.
• 5:28
  Speaker 5: We have to remember in Bolivia.
• 5:30
  Speaker 7: There was a coup that essentially overturned the election that
• 5:33
  Speaker 7: saw Ebra Morals elected. Then we saw this interim right
• 5:37
  Speaker 7: wing government come in and then a legitimate election happens rules,
• 5:41
  Speaker 7: but it ends up splitting the mass the ruling movement
• 5:44
  Speaker 7: towards Socialism Party. There and again there we see the
• 5:47
  Speaker 7: way that his political machine operates, using bot farms, using
• 5:52
  Speaker 7: kind of really aggressive misogynist language, going after the masque,
• 5:56
  Speaker 7: going after the left in Bolivia, and essentially handling the
• 6:01
  Speaker 7: presidency to Rodrigo Paz, and where he becomes, according to
• 6:05
  Speaker 7: Rodrio pas is his own vice president, a key advisor,
• 6:08
  Speaker 7: apparently having an office near the presidency's office as well.
• 6:12
  Speaker 7: So you know, we've seen some efforts now because of
• 6:15
  Speaker 7: this scandal, of people trying to kind of distance themselves
• 6:17
  Speaker 7: from him, although Malay seems to seem to suggest that
• 6:20
  Speaker 7: there's a larger conspiracy at play that's not actually what's
• 6:22
  Speaker 7: happening here. But we see Bass actually take a position
• 6:26
  Speaker 7: and talk about how he wants to accompany the survivor
• 6:29
  Speaker 7: and all of this. But certainly this was somebody who
• 6:31
  Speaker 7: was very very well connected to key right wing leaders
• 6:35
  Speaker 7: here in Latin America and was successful in being able
• 6:39
  Speaker 7: to deliver power to the right wing in many countries,
• 6:42
  Speaker 7: and I think helps expose precisely what's been happening in
• 6:45
  Speaker 7: the region, which is that I think a lot of
• 6:47
  Speaker 7: countries are new to this kind of campaigning, this kind
• 6:50
  Speaker 7: of political operator, and having quite figured out what to
• 6:53
  Speaker 7: do in response to him, and that's why he's been
• 6:55
  Speaker 7: able to gain so much ground in such a short
• 6:57
  Speaker 7: million of time. Although with this scandal obviously that looks
• 7:00
  Speaker 7: to have come to an end.
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, well we should get into more of the
• 7:04
  Speaker 6: details of exactly what happened, right, because this is insane.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's roll D three while we just while
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: we have it.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: This is this is Seriamato in the elevator, and you
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: can describe for us what's going on is an elevator
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: and then he happens to be then surrounded by a
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: ton of reporters. He pulls up his his hood and
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: you can hear him. He's just kind of stuck in
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: the elevator kind of just starts sobbing. Let's roll D three. Yeah,
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: and that went on for painfully long amount of time,
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: which burned you with it, just like a little bit
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: of it there.
• 7:47
  Speaker 6: One's described by the economists, by the way, not that
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: long ago. Is Maga's man in Latin America, right, Yes,
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: that's a late December story.
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And as he won some award recently and one
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: on stage he said, I wanted to thank He switches
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: to English to say, well, thank Brad Parscal, my partner here.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: So what is the relationship here between MAGA and this
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: and this movement which is now being you know, it's
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: not unraveling, but we're learning a lot about kind of
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: what it's kind of underground tactics have been.
• 8:20
  Speaker 7: Yeah, Parscal and Sedimelo are business partners. They have a
• 8:23
  Speaker 7: consultancy firm together. And what appears to be is that Parscal,
• 8:27
  Speaker 7: who has a lot of experience and likewise in the
• 8:29
  Speaker 7: United States, finding these issues that can really divide the electorate,
• 8:33
  Speaker 7: building the digital infrastructure to kind of be able to
• 8:36
  Speaker 7: identify it, to figure out what are the issues that
• 8:38
  Speaker 7: they can exploit, where are the regions where they think
• 8:41
  Speaker 7: they can invest make ground. And this is precisely the
• 8:44
  Speaker 7: model that Citi Melo has had brought into Latin America.
• 8:47
  Speaker 5: And so it's the same kind of logic.
• 8:49
  Speaker 7: Of trying to split the electorate drive these polarizing issues.
• 8:53
  Speaker 7: And there as Well said, you know, it's not the
• 8:56
  Speaker 7: left wing calling him this, it's the economist saying he's
• 8:58
  Speaker 7: Maga's man in Latin America.
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: Now the survivor of this attack.
• 9:03
  Speaker 7: You know this, this assassination attempt, should be clear that
• 9:06
  Speaker 7: he the justice system in Bolivia is so confident about
• 9:10
  Speaker 7: the situation that they have have gone on and gone
• 9:13
  Speaker 7: ahead and arrested him in connection with this. There's been
• 9:16
  Speaker 7: some leaked texts as well that say that kind of
• 9:19
  Speaker 7: explicitly saying we need to get rid of her or
• 9:20
  Speaker 7: she's going to cause trouble for us. So you know that, Yeah,
• 9:24
  Speaker 7: obviously we need to let justice play out. But clearly
• 9:26
  Speaker 7: you know there's there is a link here. It was
• 9:29
  Speaker 7: his romantic partner allegedly carrying his child. She said a
• 9:32
  Speaker 7: lot of also at landish allegations that I think require
• 9:35
  Speaker 7: more investigation, suggesting that he's tied to US intelligence agencies.
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: I mean that there is.
• 9:40
  Speaker 7: There hasn't been any more evidence of that besides that,
• 9:43
  Speaker 7: but certainly his connections to the US political ecosystem are
• 9:47
  Speaker 7: very much there, through Brad proscal and as building and
• 9:50
  Speaker 7: expanding this this method of winning elections in Latin America
• 9:54
  Speaker 7: and working with you know, these these regional actors. As
• 9:57
  Speaker 7: we know this, the United States is far more interested
• 10:00
  Speaker 7: in Latin America than it was in the more recent past,
• 10:02
  Speaker 7: really kind of trying to push candidates in the region
• 10:06
  Speaker 7: that would be favorable to US interests. We saw it
• 10:08
  Speaker 7: in Ondudahs, we saw it obviously in Argentina. We've seen
• 10:11
  Speaker 7: it now in Bolivia and Colombia as well. Now he's
• 10:14
  Speaker 7: directly connected to a couple of these, but it shows
• 10:16
  Speaker 7: that it's the same kind of logic. And whether or
• 10:19
  Speaker 7: not he's tied to US intelligence agencies is yet to
• 10:22
  Speaker 7: be determined, but it certainly shows that there is a
• 10:24
  Speaker 7: connection here with US forlorn and policy interests and these
• 10:27
  Speaker 7: right wing actors and the way that they have been
• 10:30
  Speaker 7: operating in the region and the success that they've been
• 10:32
  Speaker 7: having in terms of actually being able to deliver power
• 10:35
  Speaker 7: to allies of Donald Trump and Marco Ruby.
• 10:38
  Speaker 6: Brad Farscale has interestingly become somewhat of a punchline on
• 10:42
  Speaker 6: the right here in DC just in recent months because
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: he's not really that connected to Trump himself or even
• 10:49
  Speaker 6: this White House. He was the digital media manager in
• 10:51
  Speaker 6: the twenty sixteen campaign and the campaign manager in twenty
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: twenty had a personal meltdown breakdown, and since ran you've
• 10:58
  Speaker 6: covered this he's mostly working for Israel. He has massive
• 11:02
  Speaker 6: contracts with Israel, and I wonder then if this is Jose,
• 11:06
  Speaker 6: if this is playing out in Latin American politics in
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: a way where Israel's connection to Brad Parscale has become
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: salient to the conversation, to the coverage about what the
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: heck is going on. I mean, it's easy to make
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: a connection between Parscale and Trump. It just like if
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: we're wondering whether he would be operating on behalf of
• 11:24
  Speaker 6: the Trump White House, my guess would be no. I mean,
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: people say he has close to zero contact with Trump,
• 11:30
  Speaker 6: if any at all. It's not like he's close with
• 11:33
  Speaker 6: Susie Wilds or anybody in the White House. It's all
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: very strange. To help has parks this a little.
• 11:38
  Speaker 7: More sure, I mean, certainly Israel is as interested in
• 11:43
  Speaker 7: penetrating into Latin American politics. It's a region where there
• 11:46
  Speaker 7: is a lot of sympathy for the Palestinian people, for
• 11:50
  Speaker 7: the Palestinian cause.
• 11:51
  Speaker 5: You know that there's a lot.
• 11:52
  Speaker 7: Of progressive leaderships in the region that actually open the
• 11:55
  Speaker 7: advocated in favor of the Palestinian resistance, for example. So
• 11:59
  Speaker 7: we know is Real is interested as well so I
• 12:01
  Speaker 7: wouldn't put that, you know, beyond them to be interested
• 12:04
  Speaker 7: to try to find different ways to gain ground, as
• 12:06
  Speaker 7: they have actually quite successfully in some ways in the
• 12:10
  Speaker 7: case of Venezuela, for example, which used to be kind of,
• 12:12
  Speaker 7: you know, the standard bearer for the solidarity with Palestine.
• 12:16
  Speaker 7: After the earthquake there, and actually after the earthquake in Columbia,
• 12:19
  Speaker 7: they sent teams and that really seemed to open up
• 12:22
  Speaker 7: the door. So there's definitely an interest of Israel in
• 12:25
  Speaker 7: Latin American politics.
• 12:26
  Speaker 6: You'll know, you'll know as much better than I do.
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: But going back to the eighties and the Contras in
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: the Sandinistas, the arms and drug trafficking I mean are
• 12:32
  Speaker 6: on Contra for example, It's like not I imagine entirely
• 12:38
  Speaker 6: past history. I would imagine some of that is still
• 12:41
  Speaker 6: on the table.
• 12:43
  Speaker 7: Oh, certainly when it comes to their spying software that
• 12:46
  Speaker 7: is a major product here of interest to governments both
• 12:50
  Speaker 7: left and right wing, interestingly enough, and of course the
• 12:53
  Speaker 7: weapons shootments.
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: You know that.
• 12:54
  Speaker 7: Recently there was an article in Naclut talking about how Mexico,
• 12:57
  Speaker 7: of all countries, is one of the biggest buyers of
• 12:59
  Speaker 7: Israeli webs It happens mostly at the state level. It's
• 13:02
  Speaker 7: not necessarily the federal government, but it shows there's also
• 13:04
  Speaker 7: commercial business interests. But to go back to your question
• 13:07
  Speaker 7: in terms of you know, how close is he to Maga,
• 13:10
  Speaker 7: I think it's what's interesting is that you have these
• 13:12
  Speaker 7: kinds of personalities like Setimeelo, like Parscal, where they can
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: kind of, you know, at one point be in the
• 13:18
  Speaker 7: spotlight and be the person that everybody wants to be
• 13:20
  Speaker 7: connected to and have all kinds of leathers, and then
• 13:23
  Speaker 7: suddenly it evaporates in a lot of ways. There's a
• 13:25
  Speaker 7: parallel here in the Saraiti Meil story where somebody who
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: had accumulated a lot of power and a lot of influence,
• 13:31
  Speaker 7: who had apparently they raided his homes and found stacks
• 13:33
  Speaker 7: and stacks of both the local currency and US dollars,
• 13:36
  Speaker 7: So clearly he's moving money around. This is somebody who
• 13:39
  Speaker 7: had power and influence. Suddenly it evaporates because they're essentially,
• 13:43
  Speaker 7: you know, in a lot of ways, the same logic
• 13:45
  Speaker 7: of conment, trying to figure out how, you know, to
• 13:48
  Speaker 7: get the good connection, to get to be well placed.
• 13:52
  Speaker 7: You know, Setimeeloon is interesting in particular as well because
• 13:55
  Speaker 7: he was the personal advisor, quote unquote, this is the
• 13:58
  Speaker 7: way he's been described to now. Rodrigo Bas wasn't really
• 14:02
  Speaker 7: his man in the Bolivian election. He tends to work
• 14:04
  Speaker 7: with more right wing candidates, but Bas turned out to
• 14:07
  Speaker 7: be kind of the figure that other forces could.
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: Rally upon or rally around.
• 14:11
  Speaker 7: And so we see that, you know, they're chasing power,
• 14:13
  Speaker 7: they're chasing the interests, they're chasing their ability to get
• 14:16
  Speaker 7: that contract.
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of now allegations.
• 14:19
  Speaker 7: As a result of these raids floating around around illegal
• 14:21
  Speaker 7: enrichment or illegal funds being you know, how did.
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: He get his hands on all of this money.
• 14:26
  Speaker 7: These people are clearly being motivated by also these interests
• 14:29
  Speaker 7: of making themselves wealthy and powerful. But it comes out
• 14:32
  Speaker 7: of price because I think there's one key thing about
• 14:34
  Speaker 7: the story that people need you appreciate outside of Latin America,
• 14:38
  Speaker 7: which is that part of the reason we've also seen
• 14:40
  Speaker 7: the rise of these right wing governments in the.
• 14:42
  Speaker 5: Region has been precisely around kind of not.
• 14:45
  Speaker 7: Socially conservative, but kind of social questions, this sense that
• 14:48
  Speaker 7: the people in power should be honest, they should be
• 14:50
  Speaker 7: good brokers, they should have the interests of the population
• 14:53
  Speaker 7: at heart and actually put him into interests. And some
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: of the scandals of left wing governments have actually played
• 14:57
  Speaker 7: into this of them feeling like, well, these you know,
• 15:00
  Speaker 7: these people are just there. They claim to be progressive,
• 15:02
  Speaker 7: they claim to be there in the interest of the population,
• 15:05
  Speaker 7: but really when they're in powered, they act the same.
• 15:07
  Speaker 7: And so this moral high ground that they tried to
• 15:10
  Speaker 7: position themselves as, these right wing candidates and subsequently these
• 15:13
  Speaker 7: right wing presidents has I think, in a lot of
• 15:16
  Speaker 7: ways of starting to diminish, precisely because of scandals like this.
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: I mean, this is extraordinary.
• 15:20
  Speaker 7: I mean it's somebody who clearly was very well positioned,
• 15:23
  Speaker 7: very very powerful, probably as a result of that, felt
• 15:26
  Speaker 7: like he enjoyed a degree of impunity. They didn't actually realize.
• 15:29
  Speaker 7: I mean, how does that make sense. How does it
• 15:32
  Speaker 7: make sense to go after your romantic partners, apparently carrying
• 15:35
  Speaker 7: your child in such a brazen way, get caught on
• 15:37
  Speaker 7: video and think that it wasn't going to catch up
• 15:39
  Speaker 7: to you. Right, So they were operating with a sense
• 15:41
  Speaker 7: of impunity. But that's starting to collapse precisely because you know,
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: these are not honest brokers, These are not people who
• 15:47
  Speaker 7: are actually going to follow through on their campaign promises
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: of actually bringing well being to the population. Again, we
• 15:54
  Speaker 7: see the echoes of this also, you know of US
• 15:57
  Speaker 7: policy in our drums policy in the United States right
• 16:00
  Speaker 7: where they promise certain things, people expect them, and when
• 16:03
  Speaker 7: those expectations are dashed, then we see kind of.
• 16:06
  Speaker 5: The house of cards start to fall apart.
• 16:08
  Speaker 7: That's the case I think in some ways with Parscal
• 16:10
  Speaker 7: and it's certainly the case here with Seti Melo, and
• 16:12
  Speaker 7: I think it's going to have really important regional reverberations. Actually, anecdotally,
• 16:17
  Speaker 7: people already mentioning that they see far less bots and
• 16:20
  Speaker 7: their responses on social media because apparently this guy was
• 16:23
  Speaker 7: largely running most of them and actually feeding this kind
• 16:25
  Speaker 7: of anger and hate machine on social media. And now
• 16:28
  Speaker 7: we see that kind of disappear. And I think because
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: these are now being shown to be con men, then
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: they're not going to be as effective. And I think
• 16:36
  Speaker 7: people are also going to think twice about trusting somebody
• 16:39
  Speaker 7: who's associated with figures who are willing to allegedly assassinate
• 16:43
  Speaker 7: their partner.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a good way to lose the moral high ground
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: is to hire hitman to assassinate your pregnant mistress Gustavo
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: Petro in Colombia, as was commenting on some of this
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: bot farm activity as well.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: We can put up D five here.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: He's saying, in Colombia during the election, five hundred thousand
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: bots were active to spread lives about Evan Sepaida and
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: about me.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Uh. And then you know, links them links this network.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: To uh, you know, to to this guy who's now
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: in jail in Bolivia. And there's you know, footage of
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: one of these bought farms that that's been circulating.
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: And Parscale is almost certainly operating bought operations on behalf
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: of Israel.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: Israel, Yeah, yeah, like pretty much everybody watching this has
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: probably gotten a text literally from Israel, yeah, saying like
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you're getting them in Mexico always,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: but in the US, everybody's getting these texts saying hey,
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: let's let's talk about the US Israel relationship. And you're
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: like what uh, And and it's a Parscale operation. Uh
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: So certainly, and these these kinds of bought operations seem
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: to be, for whatever reason, even either more prominent or
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: more aggressive in Latin America than than the US. Of course,
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: in the US we have plenty, but can you talk
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: a little bit about the way that they do play
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: into the politics of Latin America. It seems like there's
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: a distinction in the scale of it that happens there
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: as opposed to here.
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: Oh.
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, And I think we can actually go back to
• 18:22
  Speaker 7: even sort of the more recent elections, all the way
• 18:24
  Speaker 7: back to Bosnato without these WhatsApp channels that we're distributing
• 18:29
  Speaker 7: this false informations, disinformation. I don't think he wins that presidency.
• 18:34
  Speaker 7: It's been a very successful instrument in the rise of
• 18:38
  Speaker 7: the right wing in the region, and it's precisely that.
• 18:40
  Speaker 7: I think, first of all, there has to be an
• 18:41
  Speaker 7: appreciation that a lot of people who are online, who
• 18:45
  Speaker 7: are very online, tend to be come from more middle
• 18:49
  Speaker 7: class and upwards sectors, and so there are a lot more.
• 18:52
  Speaker 5: Receptive these kinds of communications.
• 18:55
  Speaker 7: I think one difference that we've seen in Mexico is
• 18:57
  Speaker 7: that on the one hand, there's always been an emphasis
• 18:59
  Speaker 7: really really have heavy emphasis on kind of communication coming
• 19:03
  Speaker 7: directly from the presidency. We know we have these daily
• 19:05
  Speaker 7: morning press conferences, formerly by former President so Badorda, now
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: with Gladia Scheinbams so there's a great emphasis on that.
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: But the difference is that there's a lot more work
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: happening in the territory right like directly with the population.
• 19:18
  Speaker 7: And so I think in some ways, if you want
• 19:19
  Speaker 7: to see why a case like Mexico, there's been in
• 19:22
  Speaker 7: a sense an exception that they haven't gone down the
• 19:25
  Speaker 7: right wing trend even during you know that election year
• 19:28
  Speaker 7: where it seemed like all incumbents were being turfed.
• 19:31
  Speaker 5: Mexico was again the exception.
• 19:32
  Speaker 7: I think a lot of it's because they kind of
• 19:34
  Speaker 7: operate outside of this online ecosystem. But those that are
• 19:38
  Speaker 7: heavily influenced by it, like the case of Columbia for example,
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: we see the consequences of it. It is a very
• 19:43
  Speaker 7: effective tool, and like you well said, it's very aggressive.
• 19:46
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: It is something that where they spend extraordinary amounts of
• 19:49
  Speaker 7: money to be able to basically inundate social media.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: I mean, if you.
• 19:53
  Speaker 7: Go on Twitter on x and you look at some
• 19:56
  Speaker 7: of the replies, if you mentioned certain people, right, there's
• 19:59
  Speaker 7: always kind of if you meant Israel, if you mentioned
• 20:01
  Speaker 7: former president Felipe Gadern, if you mentioned Alito Moreno, who's
• 20:04
  Speaker 7: one of the opposition leaders here, you'll see that they'll
• 20:07
  Speaker 7: start to kind of pop up inside of your replies.
• 20:09
  Speaker 7: And it's because it's very much clearly one of the
• 20:12
  Speaker 7: strategies that has been successful because it relies on distributing
• 20:15
  Speaker 7: in a very efficient way this disinformation where people are
• 20:19
  Speaker 7: led to believe certain things that don't accurately reflect the
• 20:23
  Speaker 7: reality inside of a given country, and it is extraordinarily effective.
• 20:28
  Speaker 7: And I think it's a particularly effective in Latin America
• 20:31
  Speaker 7: because there's already an existing polarization. So we're talking about
• 20:34
  Speaker 7: these more recent re elections where they win by less
• 20:36
  Speaker 7: than one percentage point in the case of Peru, you know,
• 20:39
  Speaker 7: Keiko Fujimori one because of the vote abroad, not necessarily
• 20:43
  Speaker 7: because of the vote inside of Peru. For example, we
• 20:46
  Speaker 7: see this denunciation from Petro in the case of Columbia,
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: who's pointed a finger precisely at all of this kind
• 20:51
  Speaker 7: of interference. So we see that this is really effective
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: in terms of being able to provide just enough to
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: get them over the edge and to be able to win.
• 20:59
  Speaker 7: In fact, whether these foreign influence campaigns I think have
• 21:02
  Speaker 7: become such an issue that here in Mexico they're actually
• 21:05
  Speaker 7: discussing right now the possibility of actually making foreign interference
• 21:10
  Speaker 7: one of the reasons why an election can be annulled.
• 21:13
  Speaker 7: So we're seeing this case after case of seeing this
• 21:15
  Speaker 7: kind of influence that it's gotten to the degree where
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: elections in the future may no longer actually count because
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: of the level of foreign interference, seeing precisely because how
• 21:24
  Speaker 7: effective it actually can be in dividing the electorate and
• 21:27
  Speaker 7: creating these wedge issues and making it so that the
• 21:30
  Speaker 7: right wing, even by the slimmest of margins, is able
• 21:33
  Speaker 7: to win.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Fascinating stuff.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: And sometimes these are the contingencies on which kind of
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: historical events begin to change.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: You know that, you know, had the hit man been successful.
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: We wouldn't be we would we would we wouldn't be
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: learning all of the things that she's spilling now. And
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: we'll see, you know where where this takes us. Jose
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: Luis groan to say, how thank you so much for joining.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: Us, Thank you so much for having it.
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: So Actually a major press freedom victory out of the
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: DC Circuit Court of Appeals, James O'Keefe has won a
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: reversal of a verdict that went against him previously and
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: put up e one here. This is the case O'Keefe
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: First Democracy Partners. So this is kind of an interesting
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: one for me to cover because I actually know a
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: whole and like a lot of the people involved on
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: the Democracy Partner's side. I do not like at all
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: James O'Keefe's political project that he's engaged in throughout his career,
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: particularly the kind of deceptive destruction of Acorn from almost
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: twenty years ago at this.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: Point, jeez was yeah, seveny something like that.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, But we're separating all of that aside because this
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: is a case about press freedom and what is allowed
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: under the First Amendment. And so what happened here is
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: is in twenty sixteen, O'Keefe sent some undercover journalists and
• 23:04
  Speaker 4: I'm we're gonna call them journalists. You know, somebody like, oh,
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: he's not a journalist. First of all, it doesn't matter,
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: because all citizens have the protection of the First Amendment
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: whether you're a journalist or not. But he's gathering information
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: and he's publishing it. I don't have to like the
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: information that he publishes. Still makes it journalism. So he
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: sends an undercover journalist into this bar and he catches
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: and what they do is they say provocative things and
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: then try to get democratic operatives to agree with those
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: provocative things right, and worked fantastically with this one guy,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: faux Ball I believe his name was Tactics.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Basically yeah.
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: So he goes in and the guy says, basically, you
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: know what we should do. He's like, the guy that
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: funds my left wing organization hates voter id because he
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: loves it when illegal immigrants vote for Democrats, and so
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: what we should do is we should bust in a
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: bunch of illegal immigrants into whisks and have them vote.
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: And this idiotic democratic operative is like, that's a brilliant idea.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Let's do that.
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: And the guy even says he's like, have you worked
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: with Bob Kremer at Democracy Partners, Maybe he'd be interested
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: in something like this, Like oh my god.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: So it keeps got this footage.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: Then he sends a fake intern into this firm, Democracy Partners,
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: and the intern goes in with you, filming everything, and
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: the firm does basically no, doesn't ask for id does
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: no due diligence. The young woman works there for eight
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: days and then abruptly quits, and they publish this video
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: that includes some footage from inside the office. But mostly
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: it's it's relying on footage from the bar.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Immediately the.
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: Firm gets his contracts are cut from you know, asks
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: me it was a major client of theirs.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: They lose that.
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: It's a giant mess for this firm because in the
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: footage they're also making kind of grandiose claims like, oh, yeah,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: we're working very closely with Hillary and oh the other
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: thing the guy says in the bar, he and another
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: guy they say that like, oh, they're paying people, homeless
• 25:19
  Speaker 4: people to go to Trump rallies and instigate violence there,
• 25:23
  Speaker 4: like you know, say, you know, just get under the
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: skin of Trump people, wear a Planned Parenthood shirt, do
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: anything you can to get them to then be aggressive
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: towards you, and then film that cannery. Yeah, and so
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: then the firm suffers all of these consequences.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: They sue. They win at the district court level.
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: A jury finds in their favor and says that because
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: there was fraud and deception involved in the way they
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: got it, that the First Amendment doesn't apply. Luckily, for O'Keefe,
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: his trial attorney made a right before it went to
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: the jury saying this as a matter of law, as
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: a matter of first amendment that should be thrown out,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: and the judge said, we're going to put that aside,
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: put that motion side, We're going to let the jury decide.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: The jury finds.
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: Four Democracy partners, and first it's like one hundred and
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: twenty thousand dollars for the to pay them back for
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: the contracts. But then buried underneath that, if they can
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: prove this, this kind of tortious fraud, this like that
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: the Intern had violated her fiduciary duty that she had
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: to the organization, then they would then O'Keefe would owe
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: legal fees as well, which from when I talked to
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: O'Keefe and his lawyer yesterday, and that would have been
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: well over a million dollars if they would have.
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: Gotten hit with that.
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: And so the appeals court, which is the three judges
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: were two Democrats and one Republican, all three of them
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: basically sign.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: It with O'Keefe.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: There was one descent, but it was a it was
• 27:03
  Speaker 4: a descent in small part. They would have just narrowed
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: the amount of money they would have. It was mostly
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: a victory for Okeefe from all three. So I don't
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: think they're going to appeal, because if you get two
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Democrats that are mostly siding with them, Like, you're not
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: going to do much better either with the whole appeals
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: Court or with the Supreme Court.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: But what they.
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: Effectively said is that you can lie to somebody in
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: a bar, Say that you're a democratic operative, say you
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: can say whatever you want in a bar, like your
• 27:34
  Speaker 4: first man allows you to lie. And if you then
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: trick that person into saying incriminating things in public, then
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: that's fair game and you can publish that. And that's
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: first amen of protected activity. The court is the opinion
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: is much more confusing and unclear about whether or not
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: going into the office is kosher.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: It leaves it, it leaves it kind of open. The
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: way the way I read it was that.
• 28:04
  Speaker 6: You can't possibly trespassing at that point.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: Well, there's a higher level of fraud, Like the fraud
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: is going on for longer. They never made her sign
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: an NDA. They said they would, but then they never
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: gave it to her. Yeah, that was a mistake on
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: their part. So they made a lot of mistakes. Had
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: they not made they would have been more protected. So basically,
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: you got to make your interns signed contracts and like, yeah,
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: and then if you do that, then it's going to
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: be harder for them to get away with That makes sense,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: but they so they leave it a little bit gray,
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: but they completely in my reading, protect the right to
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: go into a bar. Now, Mark z zaid Or, zed
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: democratic lawyer, is still suing O'Keefe on behalf of some
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: of the people who went on dates with his operatives,
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: and he's he said, and I asked him on online
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: about this, he said, no, we're still going forward word
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: because this says you can't commit fraud. You can't you know, deceptively,
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: you know, obtain this information. That's not the that's not
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: what it says.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: So I'm not a lawyer he is.
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: But my my reading of his ruling here is that
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: those cases are screwed too. We'll find out, but like
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: this seems to set the president that the dates are fine.
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: And just to back up when you were explaining this,
• 29:31
  Speaker 6: I think part of the important point is about precedent
• 29:35
  Speaker 6: and how legally judges attorneys could read into deceptive practices
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: what may be perfectly acceptable journalistic behavior. And I don't
• 29:48
  Speaker 6: think that a lot of what James O'Keeffe does is
• 29:51
  Speaker 6: acceptable from like ethical practices of journalism. Legally though, we
• 29:56
  Speaker 6: have to have what we do be covered as broad
• 30:00
  Speaker 6: is humanly possible, because when people try to shut down
• 30:03
  Speaker 6: free speech, they rely on narrowing those definitions of things
• 30:08
  Speaker 6: like what's deceptive. So you could easily find a journalist
• 30:12
  Speaker 6: and in the art or in the in the act
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: of totally normal journalistic information gathering, say well that was deceptive.
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: So that's why you have to have a very broad
• 30:21
  Speaker 6: protection for what constitutes as journalism, because it's then weaponized
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: if it's not broad enough. And so, while I think
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: you know, journalists hold themselves to the standard that you
• 30:33
  Speaker 6: generally tell people you're trying to get information out of
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: that you're a journalist. You identify yourself as a journalist
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: if you're in a crowd, if you're at a protest,
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: you're at a riot, unless your life is in danger,
• 30:42
  Speaker 6: say you identify yourself as a journalist even when it's hard.
• 30:45
  Speaker 6: That's part of the standards that you hold yourself to
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: formally at news organizations.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: But those legal standards right, right.
• 30:51
  Speaker 6: Exactly, And so but you could see how you know,
• 30:55
  Speaker 6: you say you're working on a story about one thing,
• 30:58
  Speaker 6: and someone says, well, it's deceptive because you didn't narrowly
• 31:01
  Speaker 6: describe exactly what the story.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Was about, which is what people do all the time,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: all the time. It's going to be a great story
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: for you.
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: And if you're smart, as like a person in government,
• 31:12
  Speaker 6: you know that's what happens. And nobody's forcing you to
• 31:15
  Speaker 6: say anything. And nobody was forcing them to say absolutely anything.
• 31:18
  Speaker 6: They said it of their own volition.
• 31:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And to Mark Zaid's point, here's on page nineteen
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: of the ruling. This is why I think that his
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: reading of this is incorrect. So the ruling says, it's
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: basically saying that it's going to allow the bar footage
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: because quote, there was no trespass. All of the faux
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: Vall conversations were held in public locations. There was no
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: theft of confidential business information. Everything that Fauxvall said in
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: these conversations he said willingly. And although the defendants lord
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Fauvall into these meetings based on an elaborate web of lies,
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Bob Kramer does not claim that conduct amounted to fraud.
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: And so so, in other words, you in this case,
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: they were able to lie to get Folwell to come
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: to the meeting and to spill the beans on or
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: not beans like made up beans. He doesn't have any
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: project of bringing people into his.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Consin, but he's open to it now, they say.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: They say separately, though applying this principle, we agree with
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: Bob Kreamer that the First Amendment does not protect the
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: video segments that O'Keefe procured through Moss's fraud. Moss is
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: the intern, the fake intern, namely the portions of the
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: video that show Mas inside Democracy Partners speaking with Creamer
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: and his staff. Mas obtained that footage b subterfuge, and
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: the jury found that her conduct amounted to fraud. So
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: they rely they're relying on the jury who said that
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: it was fraudulent the way that they got the Inn
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: into the office, but it was not fraud fraudulent the
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: way that they got him into the bar. And just
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: because you lie doesn't mean you're committing fraud, like these
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: are very different things. And then their footnote is they
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: say it is generally true that for a lie to
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: constitute fraud, a tangible harm must follow. It is undisputed
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: that Maz's lies at least partly contributed to Creamer's harm.
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: In other words, AFSME had said one of the reasons
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: they cut ties with the firm was because of their
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: embarrassing lack of vetting of their intern And so they're
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: saying like it wasn't just the story itself, because the
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: story itself is protected First Amendment activity.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: It was this embarrassing fact that wait.
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: A minute, so you're just letting any random O'Keefe like
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: plant come into your firm without it like checking ID,
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: and then you're just sending them to the DNC headquarters.
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: Like to them, they were like.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: That that is a problem for us, and so we're
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: cutting ties, right, and that is a result of her fraud.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: So anyways, it gets a little complicated, but that's where
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: they seem to be drawing the line.
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah, this is a really interesting case and it's not
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: getting a lot of attention, but it's worth I think
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: appreciating the broadening of what constitutes is deceptive because that
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: can be weaponized.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 34:26
  Speaker 6: Speaking by the way, speaking of undercover operations, we can
• 34:29
  Speaker 6: put E three on the screen. You may have heard
• 34:35
  Speaker 6: like NBC News and other places had these big headlines
• 34:38
  Speaker 6: NBCs was FBI thwarts and alleged isis inspired plot to
• 34:41
  Speaker 6: bomb New York Capital. This thirty five year old woman
• 34:45
  Speaker 6: named Jessica Bowie in New York converted to Islam. I
• 34:51
  Speaker 6: think they say five years ago. And if you read
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: the federal complaint you find out and actually if you
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: read the NBC news story, you have to get almost
• 34:58
  Speaker 6: to the bottom of the article to find this out quote.
• 35:01
  Speaker 6: One of the confidential sources working for the FBI gave
• 35:05
  Speaker 6: Bowie two hundred dollars to purchase bomb making materials, which
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: she is alleged to have done August fifth at a
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: home depot. She then gave the items to the confidential
• 35:14
  Speaker 6: sources when she met with them in the days that followed.
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: So between August fifth and I think the arrest on
• 35:18
  Speaker 6: August nineteenth, this is all really recent. This person who
• 35:22
  Speaker 6: they were encouraging. I mean, we'll see more in this
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: trial because I imagine more of what the confidential human
• 35:28
  Speaker 6: sources were saying came out and I went through the complaint,
• 35:31
  Speaker 6: we just put it up on the screen. You can
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: see some of this as like they're not putting even
• 35:35
  Speaker 6: everything in the complaint obviously, but you can see that
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: the confidential human sources are egging this person along. They
• 35:43
  Speaker 6: literally gave the full list of necessary ingredients to create
• 35:49
  Speaker 6: a bomb and started explaining how to do it went like,
• 35:55
  Speaker 6: gave two hundred dollars to go to this home depot
• 35:57
  Speaker 6: and then for over a week between August fifth and
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: the ultimate arrest, this person who absolutely like appears to
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: have they appear to have the goods pledged support to ISIS,
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: has all this information on how to make a bomb.
• 36:12
  Speaker 6: They've gone through the plans about the Albany state, the
• 36:14
  Speaker 6: state capital in Albany. They've gone through all of this,
• 36:16
  Speaker 6: and this person isn't arrested after they gave them. They
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: apparently took the bomb making materials. But there's a week
• 36:22
  Speaker 6: where you've given this person the necessary information for how
• 36:26
  Speaker 6: to make a bomb for arrest. I mean, it's just
• 36:29
  Speaker 6: in all the headlines say things like FBI thwarts alleged
• 36:32
  Speaker 6: ISIS inspired plot to bomb New York Capital, which again
• 36:35
  Speaker 6: should read FBI thwarts an alleged FBI inspired plot to
• 36:38
  Speaker 6: bomb New York Capital. So it didn't want to let
• 36:40
  Speaker 6: that one go withoutcat it's a classic of the genre,
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: A classic of the genre.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, FBI's on it.
• 36:47
  Speaker 6: We've got Gabriel Zuckman standing by Ryan we do.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Indeed, let's get to it.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: Recently on the All In podcast, Chammeth Palpatia said he'd
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: identified who the villain in this.
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Story, and it's him and his buddies. Let's roll this.
• 37:04
  Speaker 9: Silicon Valley has completely lost what made it great. It
• 37:09
  Speaker 9: was a place for weirdos, for people at the fringes,
• 37:14
  Speaker 9: for people that really were idealistic, and it has become
• 37:19
  Speaker 9: something that's far from that.
• 37:20
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 37:21
  Speaker 9: It is the equivalent of what Harvard used to be.
• 37:23
  Speaker 9: It's a credentialing place. It's a place you come to say, oh,
• 37:27
  Speaker 9: I came, you know, to Silicon Valley. I worked at
• 37:29
  Speaker 9: a startup. You know, I got into YC. You know
• 37:33
  Speaker 9: when we came, we used to aspire to meet the
• 37:37
  Speaker 9: Bill Campbell's of the world, Mike Moritz's John Dors. Those
• 37:41
  Speaker 9: folks are gone. We used to aspire to work for
• 37:44
  Speaker 9: Steve Jobs. He's not here. And in that breach, all
• 37:49
  Speaker 9: we have done is focused on making money in every
• 37:52
  Speaker 9: single way that we can hand over fist. And I think, again,
• 37:56
  Speaker 9: there's nothing wrong with that, except now is a point
• 37:59
  Speaker 9: where we need to do a better job of acknowledging
• 38:01
  Speaker 9: it and trying to do a little bit better. And
• 38:04
  Speaker 9: every time we don't, and we're given a chance to
• 38:07
  Speaker 9: be better, and we're not. The hatred builds the animus,
• 38:10
  Speaker 9: as you said, David built, and that's what we're seeing now.
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: We're extremely excited to bring on our next guest, perhaps
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: the foremost scholar on wealth inequality, who doubles as an
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: advocate for doing away with the very thing he studies.
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: In France, he's both vilified and celebrated it as the
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: father of what's known as the Zuckman tax, a two
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: percent tax that applies to people worth more than one
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: hundred million euros. Now, before Professor Gabriel Zuckman joins us,
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: let's do a quick one, oh one of the problem. Now,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: we all know that we're living in an era where
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: the very rich are getting richer at a much faster
• 38:46
  Speaker 4: pace than at any time, certainly in the last one
• 38:49
  Speaker 4: hundred years. We don't even need chartar grafts for that.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: We can all just look around. I've been reporting on
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: this trend now since the beginning of my journalism career,
• 38:58
  Speaker 4: which began in the run up the Great Financial Crisis.
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: What I've come to realize, though, is that we and
• 39:04
  Speaker 4: the media have not done a good enough job of
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: explaining why this wealth inequality that's getting so out of
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: whack matters. We haven't explained how it directly comes out
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: of your pocket.
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: We've talked about how.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: It's wrong for the rich to have more power than
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: everybody else and to be able to buy elections, but
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: that misses the more immediate problem that the super rich
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: are getting rich by making you actively poorer.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Now here's how to understand that.
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: In the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties, as the rich,
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: we're pushing to massively lower taxes on themselves, deregulate the
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: economy and make it legal to move capital easily across borders.
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: In search of the cheapest labor, they relied on a
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: few metaphors like trickle down economics and a rising tide
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: lifts all boats. But after the rich got their wins,
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: a not surprising thing happened. The tide stopped lifting. Since
• 39:59
  Speaker 4: two Western economies have grown on an average of one
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: to two percent, that's it. The amount of the economy
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: owned by the super rich, meanwhile, has grown many, many
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: times more than that. Gabriel Zuckman has dedicated his life
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: to studying that phenomenon. So in a moment, we can
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: get some detail from him on what we know about
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: the scale of this incredible divergence, but to suffice it
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: to say, it's been absolutely huge.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: So think about it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: If their wealth has gotten many times bigger over the
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: past twenty five years, and wealth over all has barely grown,
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: where did their wealth come from.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: It came from you, of course.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: Now to understand this better, think about our economy as
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: holding three different kinds of wealth, public wealth, normal people's wealth,
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: and the wealth of the super rich. Public wealth is
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: some of the obvious things like schools or hospitals, or
• 40:56
  Speaker 4: apartments or land owned directly by the public. When the
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: public owns the schools and the buildings themselves, it's much
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: cheaper for members of the public to go there. Wealth
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: owned by normal people is obvious too. We're talking about
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: home ownership, retirement assets, pensions, cars, that sort of thing.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: Every year that the wealth of the super rich grows
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: faster than everybody else's, they have to do something with
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: that extra money that they now have because they're too
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: rich to be able to spend it buying new stuff.
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: They buy assets. They buy houses, which drives up the
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: cost of housing. They buy stocks, which drives up the
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: price of the stock market. And they buy companies directly,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: as we've seen with the rise of the private equity industry.
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: Then they loot those companies, sell off the parts, have
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: the company file for bankruptcy, and take the money in
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: the pension fund to pay themselves off for their trouble.
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: A normal company that once made, say, paper products, or
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: sold toys and supported an economy working for normal people
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: in a small town is wiped out and the money
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: flows to the top. Now the people at the top
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: have even more money, and now they have to buy
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: more assets. You see how this goes. And what you
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: might notice, though, is that things haven't gotten as bad
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: as quickly as you might think. People haven't gone immediately
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: from middle class to abject poverty. That's because while the
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: very rich have been buying up everybody's assets, leaving everyone
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: owning nothing, they've swapped that out for loans. In the
• 42:29
  Speaker 4: run up to the financial crisis, the super rich loaded
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: up American homeowners with enormous amounts of debt. When they
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: could no longer pay that debt, the government bailed out
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: the super rich, but took the homes from tens of
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: millions of people. During COVID, we shut the economy down
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: borrowed a historic amount of money and then effectively gave
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: that money to the top point one percent, minting more
• 42:54
  Speaker 4: new billionaires than at any time in history. Trump's new
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: AI policy has directed hundreds of billions in borrowed money
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: to the AI industry, money that is again flowing straight
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: to the top. The money we are borrowing increasingly comes
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: from the very rich, who are now charging even higher
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: interest rates. We're now paying more an interest on our
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: debt than we are on the Pentagon month over month.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: That means that every month we are transferring billions of
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: dollars from the public directly to the one percent, who
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: are then using those billions to buy more and more assets,
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: pricing you out of being able to own anything. So
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: now we have sold off most of the public assets,
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: and the assets held by normal people are dwindling. What
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: we're left with is the government heavily in debt, normal
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: people drowning in debt too, and all of us owing
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: that money to the super rich. Now is the time
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: it's getting dangerous. The rich don't need to be as
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: gentle with us as they did before, because we don't
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: really have anything anymore that they.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: Want, or we don't have much at least.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: There's a YouTube channel in the UK that's done a
• 44:02
  Speaker 4: terrific job of mainstreaming all of these ideas, and it's
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: called Gary's Economics. And the homework assignment for people watching
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: Breaking Points now is to switch over to Gary's Economics,
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: go find a couple of the videos that make sense
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: to you, watch those'll and watch several until you fully
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: grasp what's at stake here. He does a very good
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: job of putting the choices we face quite simply, if
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: we want to fund our growing deficits, the money has
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: to come from somewhere. Either we have to raise taxes
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: on the super rich, raise taxes on the middle class
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: and the upper middle class, or we have to all
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: get poorer by slashing the government, which would raise your
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: cost of education, housing, healthcare and so on. Now, I
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: know what some of you might be thinking. No, there's
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: a fourth option. We can end the stupid wars, stop
• 44:54
  Speaker 4: funding Israel, and stop wasting money on stupid things.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Great.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Yes, if you watch this program regularly, you know both
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: Emily and I will immediately agree with doing all of
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: that and the wars, cut the waste, jail the fraudsters.
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: But even if you cut the entire Pentagon and lock
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: up every fake medicaid riffoff in Miami. That still won't
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: do it because the gap is too wide and you
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: haven't fixed the problem we identified at the top. The
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: primary problem is that the speed with which the rich
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: are gobbling up resources is faster than anything else, and
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: it is swallowing up everything. We have to reverse that trend.
• 45:36
  Speaker 4: The rich have to start giving back some of their
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: wealth to normal people rather than the other way around.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: The only way to do this is to tax their wealth.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: So joining us all to discuss this is Professor Zuckman himself,
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: Professor grahamul Zuwan. Thank you so much for being here,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: Thanks for having me so wanted to start by getting
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: you reaction to Jamath's assessment there that Silicon Valley has
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: basically kind of been destroyed by the pursuit of greed.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: As you've been involved.
• 46:11
  Speaker 4: In so many of the debates, both in Europe and
• 46:14
  Speaker 4: the United States over how to respond to this kind
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: of yawning wealth inequality.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: What are you noticing change?
• 46:22
  Speaker 10: Yeah, I think I shared that assessment, and indeed you
• 46:26
  Speaker 10: see it today with the reaction of most Silicon Valley
• 46:31
  Speaker 10: billionaires to Proposition forty the California Billionaire tacks that's going
• 46:36
  Speaker 10: to be on the ballot in California in November, where
• 46:40
  Speaker 10: they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try
• 46:44
  Speaker 10: to defeat what would be very modest one time tax
• 46:49
  Speaker 10: of five percent on the wealth of California billionaires, frankly
• 46:53
  Speaker 10: arounding error in their wealth, which has grown by more
• 46:58
  Speaker 10: than two hundred percent just in the last couple of years.
• 47:01
  Speaker 10: I think this is really indeed illustrative of how Silicon
• 47:07
  Speaker 10: Valley has changed over the last couple of decades, let's say.
• 47:12
  Speaker 6: And one of the big criticisms of the wealth tax
• 47:15
  Speaker 6: that obviously you're familiar with because you've received this criticism
• 47:17
  Speaker 6: many times. I'm reading from of Forbes contributor here who
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: specifically is writing about you and uses the example of
• 47:23
  Speaker 6: the UK to say the UK is an example where
• 47:25
  Speaker 6: the recent policies of the Tories and labor have allegedly
• 47:28
  Speaker 6: scared all the billionaires off to either Milan or Dubai,
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: which is something that the Tremas of the world say
• 47:33
  Speaker 6: would certainly happen in California. It's been leveled at Zara
• 47:37
  Speaker 6: Maamdani in New York city. What's your response to the
• 47:41
  Speaker 6: argument that everyone's just going to leave.
• 47:44
  Speaker 10: First, that the empirical evidence is not consistent with that view. So,
• 47:49
  Speaker 10: of course, if you tag the super rich, some of
• 47:52
  Speaker 10: them are going to try to relocate to some low
• 47:55
  Speaker 10: tax states. But the academic literature is very clear in
• 48:01
  Speaker 10: finding that those relocation responses are quite small. And Number two,
• 48:08
  Speaker 10: and that's what's more important in my view, is that
• 48:13
  Speaker 10: this migration of high network individuals, it's not a lot
• 48:18
  Speaker 10: of nature like gravity. It's a policy choice. So you
• 48:22
  Speaker 10: can structure taxes in such a way that there's not
• 48:27
  Speaker 10: going to be an opportunity, a possibility to avoid the
• 48:31
  Speaker 10: tax by moving to some law tax state. So, for instance,
• 48:35
  Speaker 10: in the case of the California billionaire a tax, it's
• 48:38
  Speaker 10: a one time tax that would be owed by billionaires
• 48:43
  Speaker 10: who lived in California who were residents of California as
• 48:47
  Speaker 10: of January first of twenty twenty six, So it's.
• 48:50
  Speaker 8: Just too late to move.
• 48:52
  Speaker 10: You cannot avoid the billionare tax if it passes in
• 48:55
  Speaker 10: November by relocating to another state. Now, if you think
• 48:58
  Speaker 10: about wealth tax at the national level, if the US
• 49:03
  Speaker 10: head of Federal wealth Tax, the US taxes, it's citizens
• 49:07
  Speaker 10: based on their citizenship, meaning if you moved to another country,
• 49:10
  Speaker 10: you still have to pay federal taxes as if you
• 49:13
  Speaker 10: were still living in the US. And I think this
• 49:16
  Speaker 10: is something that many European countries should emulate, perhaps not
• 49:20
  Speaker 10: exactly the US system, perhaps some variation over it. They
• 49:24
  Speaker 10: could say, for instance, if you've lived for a long
• 49:26
  Speaker 10: time in the UK and now you move to Dubai,
• 49:29
  Speaker 10: then you have to keep paying taxes in the UK
• 49:31
  Speaker 10: for ten or twenty years. We can debate the details,
• 49:35
  Speaker 10: but what is important is the idea that this out migration.
• 49:40
  Speaker 8: It's a policy choice, it's not a lot of nature.
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: And so you recently published a book We Need to
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: Tax Billionaires, and you address one of the objections that
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: people have to wealth tax, which is that is just
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: too complicated, and the kind of wealth is just is
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: a different beast than in income.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Is obvious.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: A company pays you a wage that if your wage
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: is one hundred dollars and the tax is fifteen dollars,
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: you owe fifteen dollars of that one hundred dollars, quite simple.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: Whereas whereas wealth exists largely in.
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: Assets, whether they are equities which are rising in value
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: and having consold or paintings. You bought a Hunter Biden
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: painting for a one hundred thousand dollars, Now it's worth
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: a million dollars. So you add that to your to
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: your net wealth. And they say it's too complicated for
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: us to do that.
• 50:32
  Speaker 5: Now.
• 50:32
  Speaker 4: Representative Rocanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has recently presented a
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: solution to some of the billionaires. In a back and
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: forth on Twitter, he said, well, we can value your wealth.
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: Let's say it comes to a billion dollars. We can
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: the government can make you a non recourse loan which
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: you can use to pay the tax. If your wealth
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: then declines, you don't owe that money back.
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: The government just eats it.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: But the government then takes a you know the two
• 51:03
  Speaker 4: percent share, you know, takes two percent of the shares,
• 51:06
  Speaker 4: and you could securitize them, or you know, you could
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: create some other you know, you know, some other product,
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: financial product. So as you've been involved in this for
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: so long, and you know, you were fighting for the
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: Zuckman tax as they call it in France, what are
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: the what are the mechanisms that you've come up with
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: or that policy makers have come up with to overcome
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: this objection that this is all just too complicated.
• 51:29
  Speaker 10: You know, these arguments sound very similar to the arguments
• 51:37
  Speaker 10: that the opponents of the progressive income tax. We're making
• 51:43
  Speaker 10: modern century ago, at the end of the nineteenth century
• 51:46
  Speaker 10: beginning of the twentieth century, when the West other countries
• 51:51
  Speaker 10: that roughly at the same time created their income tax,
• 51:54
  Speaker 10: and one of the main arguments of the oponents was
• 51:57
  Speaker 10: to say that income is just too complicated to measure,
• 52:03
  Speaker 10: and to define web counts as revenue, what counts as
• 52:09
  Speaker 10: an allowed expanse that you can deduct from your income.
• 52:14
  Speaker 10: And look, we know the end of that story. We
• 52:16
  Speaker 10: created the income tax. It's a big success overall. It
• 52:20
  Speaker 10: has some limitations, especially for the superrige, which is why
• 52:23
  Speaker 10: we need on top of the income tax web tax.
• 52:25
  Speaker 10: For the superrige. By buy and love it has worked
• 52:29
  Speaker 10: pretty well. And the reason for that is that fundamentally,
• 52:32
  Speaker 10: when you create a tax, you always create much more
• 52:36
  Speaker 10: than a tax. You create accounting standards, you create norms,
• 52:40
  Speaker 10: you create an administration to enforce the tax, so that
• 52:45
  Speaker 10: those difficulties, which in some cases exists. You know, I
• 52:49
  Speaker 10: don't want to minimize that, but precisely by creating the tax,
• 52:52
  Speaker 10: you create tools and solutions to those problems.
• 52:55
  Speaker 8: So, for instance, how do.
• 52:57
  Speaker 10: You value paintings, You might say, well, very difficult, complicated.
• 53:02
  Speaker 8: It's not if you have a very valuable painting.
• 53:05
  Speaker 10: If you have a Picasso, it has an insurance value,
• 53:09
  Speaker 10: and so you can use those insurance values. Tax administration
• 53:14
  Speaker 10: could ask insurers to report those values to the tax authority.
• 53:19
  Speaker 10: So there are lots of practical solutions that to make progress.
• 53:24
  Speaker 10: We need to start somewhere in a win one state.
• 53:27
  Speaker 10: Hopefully it would be California and November to do it
• 53:30
  Speaker 10: first and to demonstrate by example that those problems have solutions.
• 53:37
  Speaker 6: One of the concerns coming from the right that I
• 53:40
  Speaker 6: would have is does it create a worse more crowning system.
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: If you have like let me just ask for your
• 53:50
  Speaker 6: response to that. Is there a concern because my preference
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: would be something like a flat tax to close loopholes
• 53:55
  Speaker 6: raise revenue that way, But obviously there are problems with
• 53:58
  Speaker 6: that approach to and I think Perfon on the other hand,
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: if we do a one time tax like this, it
• 54:05
  Speaker 6: does seem like the system will still people really wealthy
• 54:08
  Speaker 6: people who still find ways to gain the system. So
• 54:11
  Speaker 6: how are you thinking about the possibilities of further cronyism,
• 54:15
  Speaker 6: or worse than exaggerbating that problem that already obviously exists.
• 54:20
  Speaker 10: I think that number one, in the ideal tax system,
• 54:24
  Speaker 10: you have an income tax, you have an inheritance or
• 54:28
  Speaker 10: estate tax or meritocratic reasons, and you also have a
• 54:33
  Speaker 10: wealth tax for the superriage, just because for them the
• 54:37
  Speaker 10: income tax.
• 54:38
  Speaker 8: Is not enough.
• 54:39
  Speaker 10: When you're extremely wealthy, it's just very easy to organize
• 54:43
  Speaker 10: your wealth such that this wealth will generate no or
• 54:47
  Speaker 10: very little taxable income. And that's how you end up
• 54:50
  Speaker 10: in situations where people like Ill Nurse or Jeff Bezos
• 54:56
  Speaker 10: or Larry Page in some years they report no or
• 54:59
  Speaker 10: their any taxable income and they don't pay income tax.
• 55:02
  Speaker 10: And this problem has been long understood, including by economists
• 55:06
  Speaker 10: in the US. One interesting element is, for instance, in
• 55:11
  Speaker 10: the late nineteen forties, there was a commission by US
• 55:15
  Speaker 10: economists to advise the new Japanese government after World War
• 55:19
  Speaker 10: two on how to build the tax system for new democracy.
• 55:24
  Speaker 10: Is starting from ground zero after World War two? How
• 55:28
  Speaker 10: should the tax system look like? And this is the
• 55:30
  Speaker 10: Troop Commission, with people like William Vickrey, who went on
• 55:33
  Speaker 10: to win the Nobel Price in Economics, and what they
• 55:36
  Speaker 10: said is they said, look, there should be a highly
• 55:38
  Speaker 10: progressive income tax, just like in the US of the time,
• 55:41
  Speaker 10: with top marginal income tax rate of eighteen ninety percent.
• 55:45
  Speaker 10: But also on top of this, there has to be
• 55:48
  Speaker 10: a tax based on wealth, just because on the super rich,
• 55:52
  Speaker 10: wealth is a much better indicator of their ability to
• 55:55
  Speaker 10: pay taxes than income, which is very easy to manipulate.
• 56:00
  Speaker 10: So that's why you need a wealth tax. And uh,
• 56:05
  Speaker 10: California billionaire tax. It's a one time tax. So don't
• 56:09
  Speaker 10: get me wrong, that's not enough. No one thinks that
• 56:12
  Speaker 10: you can. No one believes that you can fix any
• 56:15
  Speaker 10: structural problem just with a one time tax. But the
• 56:19
  Speaker 10: reason it's too important is because it would be the
• 56:21
  Speaker 10: first ever tax on billionaire wealth enacted anywhere in the world,
• 56:27
  Speaker 10: and it could have a massive ripple effect just by
• 56:32
  Speaker 10: demonstrating that, look, the billionaires, they don't have to we
• 56:36
  Speaker 10: don't have to accept that they are bound to leave
• 56:41
  Speaker 10: in their own parallel society free of tax, which is
• 56:45
  Speaker 10: the current situation. We can actually address that issue very
• 56:50
  Speaker 10: completely with with with a wealth tax.
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: So one of the other objections that I've heard, and
• 56:56
  Speaker 4: this is I don't know if this is from the
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: left to the right. One would be that a wealth
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: tax that ends up forcing the zero point one percent
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: to sell assets to then pay to pay this tax
• 57:12
  Speaker 4: ends up then pushing down asset values, and so the
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: government ends up not really actually getting anything. All they
• 57:19
  Speaker 4: do is kind of reduce the amount of paper wealth
• 57:23
  Speaker 4: that exists in the world. It just ends up being
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: some paperwork. And a parallel argument is that even if
• 57:29
  Speaker 4: they do end up extracting some of that wealth, it
• 57:34
  Speaker 4: ends up being inflationary because the super rich, you know,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: have a maximum amount of wealth that they can actually
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: consume at any given moment. If you take some of
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: that and spread it around the middle class, they're going
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: to actually consume it, which then drives up prices and
• 57:51
  Speaker 4: doesn't and has a similar effect of just kind of
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: moving paper around. What's the reaction, what's the responsible criticism?
• 58:00
  Speaker 10: And the second point, you know, I think, look, the
• 58:02
  Speaker 10: revenue from the web stags in the case of California,
• 58:05
  Speaker 10: ninety percent of the revenue would go to health care,
• 58:09
  Speaker 10: would go to making sure that people don't lose access
• 58:14
  Speaker 10: to Medicaid, which will otherwise happen because of the cuts.
• 58:18
  Speaker 8: That were introduced by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and.
• 58:26
  Speaker 10: There would not be an inflationary effect, but quite the opposite.
• 58:30
  Speaker 8: You know, if if.
• 58:31
  Speaker 10: Those cuts go as as planned, what's going to happen
• 58:36
  Speaker 10: is that not only millions of people are going to
• 58:38
  Speaker 10: lose their health insurance, but also premiums for private health
• 58:44
  Speaker 10: insurance are likely to increase. And so if you get
• 58:49
  Speaker 10: a rebillion dollars or so to protect Medicaid, you would
• 58:54
  Speaker 10: prevent that increase in private health insurance premiums.
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: That's California, But what about on a Mormon.
• 58:59
  Speaker 10: That's more broadly so on the first point and more
• 59:03
  Speaker 10: broadly beyond California. The point is that the government, of course,
• 59:10
  Speaker 10: is not going to redistribute the revenues from the wealth
• 59:13
  Speaker 10: tax Lamson to consumers across the board, and is going
• 59:18
  Speaker 10: to use the money to fund what is the true
• 59:22
  Speaker 10: and drying of economic growth, which is access to education,
• 59:26
  Speaker 10: high quality education for all, access to healthcare, public infrastructure,
• 59:31
  Speaker 10: which if you take a broad view of history, and
• 59:35
  Speaker 10: I think it's one of the main lessons frankly of
• 59:38
  Speaker 10: economic history, this is these investments, the public investments in
• 59:44
  Speaker 10: those things education, health infrastructure that have been the core
• 59:48
  Speaker 10: and drying of modern economic growth that have allowed productivity
• 59:54
  Speaker 10: to be multiplied by the factor of ten over the
• 59:58
  Speaker 10: last century. So it's not going to be inflationary. It's
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 10: just going to allow us collectivity to continue.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 8: The rise in wellbeing.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 10: And introductivity in prosperity that has characterized the test century
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 10: re large.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 8: Now on the first issue of.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 10: The effect on asset prices, I think this is a
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 10: common objection, but I think that's a misunderstanding because what
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 10: determines asset prices fundamentally is the future income streams that
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 10: are going to be generated.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 8: By those assets.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 10: Right, So what fundamentally determines the market value of a
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 10: company is whether people believe that this company is going
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 10: to make a lot of profit or not in the future.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 10: This has nothing to do with how much tax the
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 10: shareholders of this company are going to have to pay.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 10: And so if some billionaires must sell some shares to
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 10: pay the tax, you know that's fine. Other people are
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 10: going to buy. And because the tax itself doesn't affect
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 10: the profitability perspectives of the and a company, it has
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 10: no reason to affect it's stock market value.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Any other objections, I.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 6: Don't think we can solve any other objections. It's so
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: interesting and just really appreciate you walking us through.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, last thing for me, what did you learn from
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: the fight in France that could be applied to the UK.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: The California case is interesting.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: I don't know how closely you've filed the details of this,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: because the funding is supposed to go to this medicaid
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: situation in California, and it was pushed by a kind
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: of local SEIU, not even the statewide SEIU, which is.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: The nurses union.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of intramural fighting among the California left.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: The teachers are in particular.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: Are very angry that the money's not going to education,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: and without the support of the teachers, the measure looks
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: like it's going to be in trouble. You know, there's
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: a good chance that it ends up losing, not because
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: the public is against the concept of it, but because
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: there's so much infighting over what to do with the
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 4: revenue that.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: Comes from it.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, I'm curious, and also I think it needs to
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: be national. Doing it state by state just doesn't really
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: make a lot of sense. But what did you learn
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: in France from the failed fight? There is the what
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: is the prospect for it there and elsewhere going forward
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: in the UK or anywhere else.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 10: Oh, I think in France it's going to come back
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 10: pretty soon in the discussion. So in France, the National
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 10: Assembly in February last year adopted two percent minimum tax
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 10: on wealth for people with more than one hundred million
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 10: euros or often permiion dollars in NET twelve, which was
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 10: the proposal that had developed for the G twenty the
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 10: year before and that I summarized in my book we
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 10: need to tax billionaires, and it was blocked by the
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 10: very conservative Senate. But what was really striking is that
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 10: there have been many polls conducted in France that show
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 10: an enormous popular support for this measure. So we're talking
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 10: about eighty to ninety percent of the population in favor
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 10: of such a proposal.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 8: There's are numbers that you don't.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 10: See anywhere for any other kind of social or economy
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 10: concrete policy or reform, and so there's just a huge
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 10: disconnect between the popular demand and what elected representatives are
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 10: deciding at the moment. And I don't think it's going
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 10: to last forever. I think it will end up passing,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 10: and whether it's going to take a few months, a
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 10: few years, it's difficult to know. There are lots of
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 10: parallels again with the income tax, which was it was
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 10: a big fight at the beginning of the twentieth century
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 10: many countries. It took years between the first boats in
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 10: Parliament and the eventual enactment of the progressive income tax,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 10: but you know, in the end it succeeded. And this
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 10: brings me to California and why I'm much more.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 8: Optimistic and enthusiastic.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 10: I think that the new on Prop forty on the
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 10: Californy bionare attacks because even though it's just in one state, right,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 10: I think it would pay the way eventually for a
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 10: national federal wealth tax. And the reason there are good
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 10: reasons to believe so far, at least two reasons. Number
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 10: one is that this is how it has played out
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 10: historically with the income tax, which first started at the
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 10: state level. Wisconsin famously in nineteen eleven was the first
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 10: state to create a progressive income tax, and it greatly
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 10: facilitated the creation of the federal income tax in nineteen thirteen.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 10: And second is that California is often at the angel
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 10: of broader national policy changes. In nineteen seventy eight, famously
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 10: California Pass thirteen, which kept property prices property taxes, sorry,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 10: and which was kind of harbinger of the Reagan Revolution
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 10: that would try on a few years later at the
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 10: national level. And so I think that for old people
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 10: who generally want to have a fair agrestive wealth tax
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 10: in the US at the national level, it's very important
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 10: that they support the California billionaire tax, because frankly, it's
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 10: our best shot at starting the process, at launching the
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 10: process that eventually would deliver these federal wealth tax.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: Well.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, couldn't agree more with that at least, And you're
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: targeting Emily's heart by bringing up Wisconsin there, so you know,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: they did lead the way on the on the income
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: taxent progressive, and it is interesting that a lot of
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: the arguments at the time against the progressive income tax
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 4: are now being wielded again, but which I still agree
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 4: with of course, of course, Professor's Oakman, thank you so
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: much for.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 8: Joining us, Thanks for having me, Thank you.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: All right that I'll do it for today, Emily, you sold.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 6: You know, those segments are sometimes hard for me because
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 6: I get the calculations, like as you were laying out,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 6: it's true, get rid of the Pentagon. All of that,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 6: it still doesn't do enough. There's a moral question of
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 6: taxation though, that I just don't agree with the left on.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 6: And that's why I like flat tax I'm not. I'm like,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 6: genuinely not in favorite progressive income taxation. But on top
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 6: of all of that, you said it's funny because you
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 6: were like, we have to start dealing with the top.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 6: I agree, we also have to start dealing with the top,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 6: but then we have some problems in the programs themselves too,
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 6: because most of the spending is Medicare, health social Security.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: Well, I'll have all week to convince you all that
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: you're here till Wednesday?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 6: Saga's gonna jump in on Wednesday? But yeah, no, I
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 6: thought that was so. I mean, he is one of
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 6: the leaders guy this entire thing. And your point about
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 6: state versus national I think is really important too, because
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 6: in a place like America, who just likes that the
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 6: code is basically it's on Cayman Islands right now?
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, you could just go anyway.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 4: All right, Well, we will both be here tomorrow and
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: we'll take this discussion.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: We will.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: We've got plenty to talk about because of Vessons, Presser
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 6: and Canada, so there'll be plenty of economic stuff to
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 6: go on tomorrow. We're going to jump into the A
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 6: m A right now, which you can get Breakingpoints dot com.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 6: That's how you get access to the A m as.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 6: We're doing Free month right now and it's the show
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 6: gets to a little late today it was the first
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 6: day of first.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: Day school over a little little bit late gets out. Yeah,
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: you got to get the picture of the first day
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: of school picture.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, sorry everyone,