Auto Repos, LSAT Surges, And The Hidden Recession Signals

Stocks hit records and gold surges, but we can’t shake the feeling that the real economy is cracking underneath. We start with the two-tier U.S. economy and a harsh leading indicator: auto loan delinquency. When people fall behind on car payments and repossessions rise, it’s often a sign that rent, credit cards, and everything else are already under strain, especially for households making under $100,000. If consumer spending is increasingly carried by the top 10%, even a small pullback can tip the balance toward recession.

From there, we follow two unexpected signals. First, a huge jump in LSAT registrations, echoing Great Recession behavior where people retreat into grad school when jobs evaporate. Then we talk about what makes this cycle different: the Grad PLUS loan cap, the risk of being pushed into private student loans, and how AI could reshape early-career legal work faster than most schools admit. We also dig into the “AI fake cases” problem and why verification and accountability may become the new bottleneck in law.

Next we hit housing affordability and the mortgage-rate lock-in standoff, then move into health care as Affordable Care Act subsidies expire and premiums spike across multiple states. Finally, we zoom out to the political economy: how culture war outrage, including coordinated attacks on transgender people, can keep attention off wages, health insurance costs, and inequality. We close with the push for a taxpayer-funded White House ballroom, questions about contracting and incentives, and an interview on Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to Peter Thiel and the power networks around tech, crypto, and intelligence. If this conversation helped you see the patterns more clearly, subscribe, share the show, and leave us a review.

Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:47

Turning now to the economy, we've been trying to stick to this as much as we can, the two-tiered economy where people, yes, the SP 500, record high just yesterday, gold, record high. So if you have, if you have some of those assets, you're doing well. But beneath the surface and behind the scenes, a lot of stuff happening for people who are making less than$100,000. I'm so put this up here on the screen. Lower income Americans are missing car payments. So more Americans are struggling to make monthly car loan payments, a sign that the lower income consumers are under growing financial pressure. The share of subprime auto loans that are 60 days or more past has narrowly a high of 6.5% and has lingered near that level. Repos have swelled. More drivers are trading in vehicles that are worth less than they owe, meaning that they're upside down. And lenders such as CarMax and Ally Financial have warned investors about auto loan performance. Quote, despite stubborn inflation and punishing tariffs, the U.S. economy on its surface appeared to hold up relatively well. The stock market has climbed. Companies, activists for the most part, remain upbeat, and consumers overall are still spending, but it's largely those top 10% consumers, which are the weakness is that the auto market is one of the clearest indications that lower and middle class income families could be starting to buckle because many Americans need cars to get around. Auto loan delinquency is a telling gauge of financial hardship. SHJ a good proxy, right? It's like one of the last things that you're gonna go bust on is repossessions. I'm not sure I'm not the only one, but uh videos of repo men literally go viral all the time. And it does, it does feel maybe it's algorithmic, I'm not sure my own personal bias, but I do certainly see them go everywhere. And I think you combine that with some of the other stuff, particularly with the stuffing we're gonna do later on with David Dan, the real risk to our economy right now, Ryan, is that you know, if you're already making less than 100,000, like you're basically not bust, but you're really struggling. And if 50% of all consumer spending is just from the top 10%, a slight pullback in that is just enough to send us into a recession.

The LSAT Spike And Panic Schooling

SPEAKER_06 2:38

Yeah, and what you said is exactly exactly right. If you lose your car and you can't do anything, like you know, small percentage of people live walkable enough that they can get to work, it's such a that's not that's not the situation, right? Like a massive portion of Americans. And so if so, when you start struggling, yeah, you your rent is the thing you stop paying first, maybe because it's much harder to get evicted. And then then your credit card, your student loans, definitely, you're not you're not paying those. What are they gonna do? Take your take your degree back. Uh eventually you but you keep paying the things that you need, and you need your car. When you and then when you stop paying for that, then then now you're dodging the repo man. Yeah. And if you lose your car, then you're you're you know, bum and rise to work, you keep you might lose your job, you're uh so it's a very forward spiral. That's why uh the bean counters look at this number because through all of that pain and suffering is an economic indicator, which is that if people are falling behind on their car payments, that means everything else is going really badly. That's well, that's exactly right.

SPEAKER_07 3:45

There's another uh uh metric I track very closely. Let's go ahead and put here up on the screen. When I saw this, I said sell everything because this is uh this is the biggest indicator of impending economic disaster. The number of people who registered to take the LSAT in September 2024 was 18,811. The number of people who registered to take it in September 2025 is 32,170. So let's explain, shall we? Uh, what it is is that in anybody who is my age is just old enough to remember this, is back in the great recession. You live for this, Ryan. You were entering the job market at that time. If you entered the job market between 09 and 2012, you were dead, right? You're basically entering one of the worst wage job markets of all time. So, what a lot of people did, especially those who graduated, let's say in 09, is they said, okay, screw it. I'm just gonna have to go to law school, I'm gonna have to business school. Yes, I'm gonna have to leverage myself with some debt, but hopefully things will have cleaned up, I'll have to gain the credential in the meantime. It's kind of a stopgap measure for a lot of people. It's nice if you can afford it, but it's definitely bad if you're taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans.

SPEAKER_06 4:54

Just to add to that, yeah, and then you go on. If let's say you graduated in 05, you've been working for two or three years, you just got laid off, and you're staring at now years of unemployment. Like there was this whole thing back then, what they called the 99ers, people who would exhaust 99 weeks of unemployment. Uh, and so you're like, well, I could sit around and just suffer. Because like there's not, you know, it's it's an extraordinary amount of suffering, yes, to be looking for work. It's a it's an assault on your dignity as well as your finances. Uh and so you're like, well, if I'm gonna be sitting around for three years anyway, might as well at least try to come out with a credential that could make me more employable down the line. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 5:34

And uh actually what we saw is that the number of people who took the LSAT actually dropped after the economy started to get better. So it is one of those like very good indications about how people are doing. And eventually, as the economy got better, so let's say in 2012, it fell even more precipitously. But the fact that it has such a large spike is genuinely one of those like 2009, too. It's the exact same thing. I'm looking right here at the statistics, substantial jump of some 20 to 40 percent in law school applications just in the 2009 to 2010 school year. So this is the same number if you look at what that is almost double, actually. So it's very similar metric. It just goes to show you at the lower level of the job market, there is a crushing feeling of this isn't gonna get better. And so I might as well just take out some debt and deal with it. I will also add, though, this may be one of the worst times to do it because not only do we have AI which is on the horizon, but also you know, for people who are out there, please pay very attention to the law. So there's something called a grad plus loan. Are you aware of what that is? Yeah, right. So previously, exactly. So previously, this grad plus loan was one of the most used student loan federal programs for medical students and for law students. Now the United States Congress, in their recent legislation, has capped that at 50,000. And so there are some schools. I recently saw a statistic that for the very first year ever, I think it's Santa Clara. I need to check that which law school they had their tuition at 70,000. But then the law changed and they changed to 50. I was like, oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah. All right. So there are two options there right now. Is that one is that yes, maybe law school prices will drop. I am deeply hopeful for that. Personally, I think we should make the grad plus zone zero, and then we'll really see what the market rate for law school is. My guess is a couple thousand dollars. Uh, but the the real like change here could be the Yales, the Harvards, let's say any in the T2, you know, T15, Top 25, law school, any of those, they're not gonna change. People are gonna get leverage no matter what, whether it's grad plus or not. That's where I get scared, you know, poor people is that they'll not only even have access to the grad plus only have taken a private loan. Private loans can have a you know user's interest rate right now. And you could really get stuck in a deep hole. And you're basically begging on an entire career that works out when you have a technology environment right now. We just don't know. I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer. I I know a lot. Uh from what I know, AI has not come yet. There's still a lot of guild checks in the system, but I can't be the only person who says, hey, you know, especially the the lawyers who I grew up with, their first two, three years in the industry, it was bullshit. It was like, you know, document reviews doc review. It was, you know, working uh they would when the partners went to bed, that's when you started to work and you have to do your research and make sure that the footnotes are fine. It's like an investment banking. It's just pure gut work. And that's one of those where that I'm fairly certain ChatGPT could do. Or at the very least, you could use it to check your work and then come, but the workload is gonna be much, much less. So that's where I really start to worry, you know, for dumping. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:41

I mean, which is that's the definition of automated, right? Right. Yeah, exactly. Hopefully, uh, I mean, uh put a value judger on it. There are so many like fake cases that seem to have been seeded into the world. I don't know if like a Thompson Reuters or like some other of these companies that you have to pay to get access to their cases are at are like genuinely like seeding the world with like fake cases the way that like hippies would put like a spike in a tree. Interesting. Yeah, uh something's going on that is putting in all of these made-up, completely hallucinated cases that then AIs are then writing into their memos that they're writing. Wow, and judges are coming down hard on them. Saying, like, oh, this is like this is clearly AI, you're sanctioned, you're fine. So at least you will need humans to like read the AI briefs and then actually go check the cases to see if it's not hallucinated.

SPEAKER_07 11:34

Well, you should be checking it anyway, so I can't tell you the number of times that I'll use Chat GPT for research, and I'm like, wait, that's wrong. I'm like, I know that that's wrong, right? And then I'll say, hey, that's wrong. And they're like, oh, you're right, it is wrong.

SPEAKER_06 11:45

If you work at Land Thompson Reuters or one of these other places, reach out to me because oh, yeah, I actually would that would be a great story. And if I were them, I would do it. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. You know, why not? And Jetty vs. Grim is the powerful Supreme Court case. And you can put it somewhere where the AIs will crawl it, but nobody else can find it. Yeah.

Housing Market Standoff On Rates

SPEAKER_07 12:02

My my dream is to get my name attached to a landmark case on now. In Jetty versus the United States. And Jetty versus the state of Colorado. So my name can live forever. All right, let's go ahead and put this one up here on the screen. Yeah, the Miranda rights in Jetty Right. The ingetty right to there was actually a huge case uh here in Washington, DC, where a woman sued her neighbor for smoking weed and the one actually, and one, she is my personal euro, right? Um so the home seller now outnumber buyers not adjusted, right? So even though the seller for smoking weed and the one actually, and one, she is my personal euro right now. Um, so the home seller now outnumber buyers by more than 500,000. That is the largest gap ever recorded. So yeah, you know, things are scary. And the reason why this scares me is the price still is not adjusted, right? So even though the sellers are outnumbering the buyers, the law of elasticity would tell you that the price should come down. Price is not going down, right? It's actually staying flat. And in some cases, in the big metro areas, they're going up, which uh I I just don't understand. I I don't know how it's possible, but there's something where it I have said now this entire time, it feels like it has to crack, but it doesn't. And I think that's what scares me the most is we've lived through these crazy times now since June of 2020. It's been five years, more than five years of an estate housing market. Doesn't sound that long. Let's say if you're 60, if you're my age and you're 33, that's a long time. I wasn't even married with a child five years ago, right? You're your life can change rapidly in five years. Let's say you're 28 years old, you're right around that time. Where you're like, yeah, you know, I'm thinking about it. Oh, 7% interest rate, terrible housing market. I can't afford it. I don't have the savings. Let's say I'm yeah, I'm either getting laid off or I'm not getting the raise that I thought I was gonna get. Inflation is eating away at my bottom line. Those are the people I think about the most right now.

SPEAKER_06 14:01

And I think what you're looking at there is a standoff, and I think, and this is the reason that you're not seeing the prices crash yet. You have most of those sellers there have some type of 3% interest rate that they're sitting on. And so their monthly payment very low is something that they can afford as long as they're staying employed. And so they can they can wait out the buyers. Buyers are looking at a 7-8% interest rate, which sends your monthly mortgage costs you know absolute through the roof, which changes the amount of house that you can then buy. So if you're a seller uh and you're selling on your 3% mortgage, now when you go to buy a new home, you're gonna have to take out this 8% loan. Right. So there's that huge gap. And so people are staring at that and saying, you know what? I need a lot more money to be able to get an equal house. And the person's like, well, why would I give you that much money when I mean it makes sense? So it's two people just staring at each other, and I think the only way this breaks, I guess eventually the the the force of like economic decline could do it because enough people just can't make their payments anymore. But really, interest rates have to move. Yes, that's right. Like they're not, you can't have this crazy world of where you have three and eight, like the the buyers at eight and then the sellers at three, like trying to find a place where they can meet in the middle is proving to be impossible. Like, that's why you're seeing this record. That's such a good point. Yeah, and a lot of people are are stuck in houses, they don't even want to be in.

ACA Subsidies Expire And Premium Shock

SPEAKER_07 15:29

I know a lot of them. They have like three children, and they're like, I'm not moving. I can't afford it. I literally cannot afford to move. Let's go and put the next one up on the screen. This is uh, we wanted to bring it back to the shutdown. There is, in fact, a shutdown happening, by the way, if anybody's forgotten. It's actually the fourth week of the shutdown. Not that anybody cares, apparently. Um, and so these Obamacare prices were the things that the Democrats really were zeroing in on. And there's been new public uh reporting now of these higher prices that are now actually revealed in over a dozen states. It says consumers are now facing greater costs for their 2026 ACA health coverage as Congress continues to debate whether to extend subsidies that help people afford their premiums. So health insurance prices for next year under the Affordable Care Act, now available. The annual enrollment period for voluntary starts on November 1st. The costs are becoming publicly available piecemeal through state marketplaces. People shopping for coverage can now preview the costs they face from potentially expiring subsidies, sharply rising premiums in many markets, including California, New York, Nevada, Maryland, and Idaho. Man, California and New York, what? That's a huge portion of the entire U.S. population. Based on newly published information, a family of four making$130,000 in Maine would face an increase of$16,000 in annual premiums just next year because they would no longer qualify for generous subsidies. And that is from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. That's devastating,$16,000. That's after tax income.

SPEAKER_06 16:59

That's that's one of those where you read and you're like, that can't be right. Right. That has to be wrong. That's huge. Increase of$16,000. And like you said, after tax income. So the family four making$130,000. Like technically tax development. Whatever. I'm not an account. But still, yeah. Yeah, yes, you can write that off. That's true. But your income is not, you know, your actual income is going to be more like$100, even though you can write a lot of it off. But that's brutal. And so what people so what's what's interesting here? Uh let me read something from a related report, uh, which says uh so the expiration of enhanced tax credits will lead to out-of-pocket premiums for ACA marketplace enrolles increasing by an average of more than 75%. This is the doubling that you keep hearing about. So they're they're out they're guessing they won't be a complete and total doubling, which insures with insurers expecting healthier enrollees to drop coverage, that in turn increases underlying premiums. So just to make sure everyone's clear on what's going on here, we're gonna double the price almost of these exchanges. A lot of people are gonna look at that sixteen thousand dollar price tag that they're facing for next year, and they're gonna say, I can't afford that. It's not even a choice of whether or not I want to buy this, I don't have the money for it. So I'm just dropping health insurance. Insurers have already gained that out. They know that they're estimating two million for next year and then increasing as it goes on. Okay, so it's the healthiest people who are the most likely to say, you know what, I'm just I'm not gonna family's gonna have to go no insurance this year. And so if you lose the healthy people from the pool, you then have to charge everybody else more. So not only are you losing the subsidy which dropped which is driving the price up to 75%, they're estimating, there's now already forecast the two regulators that they're going to raise the underlying price by 20%. Yeah. That is a year-over-year increase that is utterly unsustainable and insane. Right. 20% in one year. It's horrible.

SPEAKER_07 19:01

But you know, I keep coming back to what Crystal said uh with Corbin Trent, um, which is a devastating point. This is a devastating point. The whole fight is we can't afford to go back to normal Obamacare. Well, if this is normal Obamacare, this sucks. It's like I said at the time. Yeah, it's like this is horrible. This is horrible. The only reason people signed up were because of pandemic era subsidies for health insurance. And now that it's reverting back from people, like, whoa, whoa. I'm like, I didn't know that this is what the normal program was. And that's actually kind of a Republican talking point, which is not incorrect. It's like, if this was the normal marketplace, then what the hell are we doing here? I mean, I got some of these older figures. Uh, I I got a in Kentucky, a 60-year-old couple making 85,000 will face an increase of 23,700. We make 87,000. And their increase is a quarter of a dollar. 23,700. I'm rolling the dice till I get Medicare. I mean, personally. Right. If you're healthy, healthy, I'm like, let's let's roll the dice. Right. Don't take any buses, don't, don't go across.

SPEAKER_06 20:04

And that and that's what they that's what they expect people will do. So costs are gonna go through the roof. The the best thing that people said about the ACA at the time was, well, this is the first step, and they'll fill it in with subsidies. And then they did, and now they let them go. Now you have to fight to get them back. Yes, it's it's utterly absurd, it's outrageous. And it shows why you need universal coverage. Because without universal coverage, the healthiest people aren't in it, and then everybody else, everybody else pays more. Um, so yeah, it's the politics play an interesting role here.

SPEAKER_07 20:33

Yeah, I this is really what I want your opinion on because it does look like the Senate Democrats are gonna cave.

SPEAKER_06 20:39

Right. Because so think of think of so big if if you're just listening to this, this is Andrew Destori opposed reporter saying um our Senate Dems eyeing it November 1st as a shutdown off-rent Dems, think they can argue it's no longer feasible to address the uh expiring ACA subsidies legislatively and make GUP own the resulting premium hikes, no decision yet. This idea is picking up steam. So, in other words, saying, okay, well, the exchanges open up for business on November 1st, and this is what we're fighting for. So if we get past November 1st, we can then stay face and say, okay, look, we tried, we tried to save Republicans from themselves. We tried to stop Republicans from doubling your health insurance costs. They refused. Now they're doubled, it's done. Let's open the government up. Like so that's and then you've had um uh was it Foon yesterday saying, I will negotiate. You know, and what Republicans have been saying is we will negotiate around these subsidies, but we won't do it with a gun to our head, which is hilarious because it's like the exact reverse of what the party said during the last shutdown. There's no principle in process ever. Like, don't don't if anybody claims that they believe in the process, they're lying. They don't they just believe in outcomes. Uh so it in the previous case, it was Democrats who said, Why can't you negotiate with the government? Because Biden was president. Yes. Now it's Republicans saying, Why can't you negotiate with the government? It's Trump president. Uh and that's all that matters. So Democrats could say, all right, look, we tried. And also from a cynical perspective, Schumer, I'm not Schumer's personally, but Democrats in general, they're they're personally, you know what? If Trump wants to hurt 20 million people and let the whole country know that he's doing it to them, then let him do it. Then let him do it, and we'll reap the political. Yeah, but then why shut the government down for a month? To because nobody would have known otherwise. Like they would have gotten the their increase and been like, oh, this is terrible, but like life sucks. Yeah now they can say, look, we told you Trump was doing this, we fought for you, Trump fights against you. That's that check you're writing, remember Donald Trump's name while you're writing it. So that I mean that's their theory.

SPEAKER_07 22:52

I could see it, it's it's just a little weed for me. It's like if that's the political calculus to keep the government shut down, okay? I mean, because again, you know, and Crystal's made this point, I'm sure you agree with it. If you ask those no-kings people, yeah, there at least some signs about Obama king, that's not what they're mad about, right? They're mad about ICE, they're mad about all this other stuff going on, right? So for them, they're like, screw you, why should I fund you? You think these ICE agents aren't getting paid? Fine by me, right? You know, for a lot of them, they're saying there's no reason to fund this government. It make their life a little bit more difficult. Force them to do stupid shit, like, I don't know, firing an artillery shell that explodes over the city of Los Angeles. I mean, I if I'm gonna damn, I'm gonna take that all day long, right? Yes, it's very painful for a lot of the uh for the federal workers, etc. But you know, it's it's uh uh you you pawns have to be played in the in the field of battle.

SPEAKER_06 23:43

Strong for Democrats is that uh all Republicans only have to peel off a few and they're good. Okay, it's it's Democrats as a leadership can want whatever they want, but if Republicans can get a couple, I don't know, we'll see. Like November 1st is you know that's still a ways away.

Trans Panic As Political Distraction

SPEAKER_07 24:00

Yeah. All right, well, we'll see. We'll see, Ryan. I'm I'm very curious.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

It's a peculiar asymmetry in American political discourse. The most powerful nation on earth, commanding resources beyond the dreams of ancient empires, has spent the better part of a decade in paroxysms of fury over which bathroom a statistically negligible fraction of its population might use. One might think this absurd on its face, and one would be correct. But the absurdity runs deeper still. This is not mere stupidity or bigotry, though both are present in abundance. This is calculation, this is strategy, this is the oldest confidence trick in the political playbook, performed with such brazenness that one must admire. The sheer contempt the perpetrators hold for their marks. Let us be clear about what we are discussing. Trans individuals constitute roughly 0.6% of the American population, perhaps 1.6 million people in a nation of 330 million. Among these are people born with genuine medical conditions, intersex variations, and chromosomal abnormalities that complicate the tidy binary categories some find so comforting. They face discrimination, violence, and suicide rates that should shock any decent person's conscience. They are among the most vulnerable and marginalized people in American society. And it is precisely this vulnerability that has made them such perfect fodder for political exploitation. The Republican Party did not wake up one morning in 2015 seized by sudden concern about transgender bathroom policies. For decades, through the Reagan era, through both Bush administrations, through the entire culture war over gay marriage, trans people barely registered in Republican political strategy. They were not mentioned in party platforms, they were not the subject of legislative frenzies, they were not the specter haunting conservative nightmares. Even the religious right, never shy about identifying new categories of sinners, largely overlooked them in favor of more traditional targets. What changed was not the trans population, they had always existed, but the political calculus of the Republican establishment. After the Supreme Court's Obergefeld decision legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, the GOP found itself in need of a new cultural battlefield. The gay marriage fight had been lost, and fighting it further risked alienating younger voters, even within their own coalition. But the infrastructure of panic was too valuable to dismantle. The fundraising apparatus built on cultural grievance, the media ecosystem that thrived on moral panic, the reliable mechanism for turning out voters who might otherwise notice their wages stagnating and their healthcare costs soaring, all of this needed a new enemy. Enter trans people, whose very existence could be portrayed as an assault on nature itself, whose requests for basic dignity could be painted as demands for special rights, whose presence in sports or bathrooms or the military could be inflated into existential threats requiring immediate legislative action. It was perfect. The threat was not real, it never had been, but it was unfalsifiable and endlessly exploitable. Consider the timeline. In 2016, North Carolina passed its infamous bathroom bill, and suddenly every Republican politician in America had urgent opinions about bathroom usage, something none of them had thought to legislate in the preceding two centuries of American governance. By 2021, state legislatures had introduced over 100 bills targeting trans people, focusing on sports participation, healthcare, and bathroom access. By 2023, that number had exploded to over 500 bills. This was not a grassroots movement responding to constituent concerns. This was a coordinated campaign pushed by right-wing think tanks and activist organizations to manufacture a crisis where none existed. And what a successful manufacture it has been. While working class Americans argued about whether trans girls should play on girls' sports teams, an issue affecting perhaps a few dozen young people nationwide, the Republican Party passed tax cuts that transferred$1.9 trillion to corporations and the wealthy. While voters were being told that drag queen story hours represented civilization's collapse, their wages remained stagnant, their healthcare costs soared, and their unions were systematically dismantled. While conservative media devoted countless hours to the supposed scandal of gender-affirming care for minors, provided in careful consultation with medical professionals to a tiny number of adolescents, private equity firms were buying up hospitals and nursing homes, gutting them for profit while care declined. This is not coincidence. This is the con. The genius of the strategy lies in its exploitation of legitimate human psychology. People are uncomfortable with rapid social change. Parents worry about their children. The dissolution of old certainties creates anxiety. These are real human experiences, and the Republican establishment has weaponized them with the precision of a guided missile. By focusing rage and fear on trans people who pose no threat to anyone's marriage, anyone's job, anyone's way of life, they have successfully diverted attention from the actual assault on working Americans' prosperity and dignity. Consider what has happened to the American worker over the past 40 years. Productivity has soared while wages have stagnated. Healthcare costs have exploded while employer-provided benefits have evaporated. Pensions have disappeared, replaced by the Russian roulette of 401ks. Union membership has collapsed from 35% to 10% of the workforce, thanks in part to relentless Republican assault on collective bargaining. The wealth gap has reached gilded age proportions, with three Americans holding as much wealth as the bottom 50%. Life expectancy has declined for the first time in generations, driven by deaths of despair, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, among working class whites in particular. These are catastrophes. These are the issues that should dominate political discourse. These are the crises that actually affect millions of American lives. But they are not the issues Republican politicians want to discuss, for the simple reason that on these issues they have nothing to offer but more tax cuts for billionaires and more deregulation for corporations. So instead, they offer you a trans panic. They offer you the fiction that your declining fortunes result not from systematic wealth extraction by the oligarchy, but from the presence of trans women in women's prisons, or the provision of puberty blockers to teenagers, or the use of preferred pronouns in school. The cruelty is not incidental, it is central. By selecting as targets people who are already marginalized, already vulnerable, already suffering discrimination and violence, the Republican establishment ensures that defending them requires political courage. It ensures that standing up for trans rights will be painted as extremism, as out-of-touch coastal elitism, as betrayal of real Americans. It ensures that the conversation remains focused on cultural issues, where Republicans can claim moral authority, rather than economic issues, where their record is indefensible. The religious rights' participation in this persecution is particularly nauseating. These are people who claim to worship a deity, who commanded love of neighbor and protection of the vulnerable. These are people who profess to follow a teacher who spent his time with outcasts and sinners, who challenged the self-righteous, who defended those cast out by society, and yet they have found in trans people, many of whom are dealing with genuine medical complexities, who face violence and discrimination, who attempt suicide at heartbreaking rates, not an opportunity for compassion, but a target for demonization. Some among them literally advocate for trans people's deaths, calling them groomers and predators worthy of execution. If Christ were to return tomorrow, one suspects he would need a whip again, and the temple in need of cleansing would be found on cable news and in megachurch pulpits. But again, the theological hypocrisy is merely window dressing for the economic con. The religious rite has long served as foot soldiers for an economic agenda that flatly contradicts any Christian teaching about wealth, greed, or care for the poor. They have blessed tax cuts that starve programs for the indigent while cutting capital gains taxes for billionaires. They have praised the destruction of social safety nets while building prosperity gospel empires. They have found biblical justification for every cruelty to the weak while offering theological cover for unlimited wealth accumulation by the strong. The Trans Panic is simply their latest service to mammon, dressed up in the language of protecting children. What makes this moment particularly dangerous is that it works. The Trans Panic does motivate voters, it does drive turnout, it does generate donations, it does dominate news cycles. And since it works, it will continue and escalate until it no longer serves its purpose or until it is forcefully rejected. Already we see Republican candidates in 2024 centering their campaigns on trans issues, not that these issues affect more than a handful of their constituents, but rather that they have focus grouped well with anxious suburban parents. Already we see state legislatures considering increasingly draconian measures, not just bathroom bills, but criminalization of healthcare, removal of children from affirming parents, prohibition of discussion in schools. The cruelty escalates and the distraction is working. Meanwhile, as Americans argue about pronouns and bathrooms, the looting continues apace. Private equity firms continue their strip mining of American industry, pharmaceutical companies continue their price gouging. Health insurance companies continue denying claims while recording record profits. Tech monopolies continue capturing entire sectors of the economy. The wealthy continue capturing a larger and larger share of national income while paying a smaller and smaller share in taxes. The oligarchy strengthens its grip while the working class suffers and dies, literally dies in many cases from lack of healthcare, from addiction, from suicide, from the thousand cuts of economic precarity. This is the trade being offered. You can have your rage at trans people, your fury at drag queens, your panic about bathrooms and sports and pronouns. You can have the satisfaction of punishing people who make you uncomfortable, of reasserting traditional categories, of feeling that you are defending civilization itself against decadence. And in exchange, you will hand over your health care, your wages, your unions, your social security, your children's future, your planet's livability, your democracy itself. You will be robbed blind while you are distracted by the spectacle of persecution, some bargain. The test of any political movement claiming to serve working people is simple. Does it make their lives materially better? Does it raise their wages, secure their health care, strengthen their bargaining power, tax the rich, regulate the predatory, protect the environment, ensure their children opportunities they lacked? By these measures, the Republican Party has been an abject failure for four decades. They have nothing to offer working Americans except tax cuts for the rich and the satisfaction of cruelty to the vulnerable, and so they offer cruelty, wrapped in the language of tradition and faith and common sense. They offer a target for rage that is safely too marginalized to fight back effectively. They offer the oldest trick in the book. Look over there at those people who are different, those people who make you uncomfortable, those people who are changing things you thought were settled. Do not look up at the people actually robbing you. Do not notice the systematic transfer of wealth from your pocket to theirs. Do not pay attention to the fact that while you argue about bathrooms, they are buying their fourth yacht. Trans people deserve better than to be used as political props in this grotesque theater. They deserve the medical care they need, the legal protections everyone deserves, the basic dignity of being left alone to live their lives. They deserve, at minimum, not to be sacrificed to the political ambitions of cynical operatives and the economic interests of predatory oligarchs. But more than that, the American people deserve better than this con. They deserve a politics that addresses their actual concerns, their stagnant wages, their crushing debts, their lack of health care, their precarious futures. They deserve a politics that names their real enemies, not trans people using bathrooms, but billionaires using tax havens, not drag queens reading to children, but pharmaceutical executives pricing insulin out of reach, not teachers discussing gender identity, but private equity executives hollowing out their communities. What we have instead is a con that works precisely through its exploitation of discomfort with social change. A discomfort that is easier to indulge than confronting uncomfortable truths about American capitalism, about wealth inequality, about the systematic rigging of the economy in favor of the already wealthy. It is easier to blame trans people for the collapse of traditional certainties than to blame the economic system that has destroyed working class communities and security. It is easier to rage at cultural change than to organize against economic predation. But ease and truth are not the same thing. The truth is that trans people are not your enemy. The truth is that while you have been told to fear them, you have been systematically robbed by people who smile while they pick your pocket. The truth is that this manufactured panic is succeeding in its purpose, keeping you angry at the powerless while the powerful laugh all the way to their tax-sheltered offshore accounts. One day, perhaps, Americans will tire of being marks in this long con. One day perhaps they will notice that their lives have not improved one whit from all this persecution of trans people, that their wages have not risen, their healthcare has not been secured, their futures have not been brightened by any amount of bathroom policing or sports league monitoring. One day perhaps they will ask why the people who told them to fear trans people also told them that unions were bad, that taxation was theft, that healthcare was socialism, that environmental protection killed jobs, that every policy that might actually improve their lives was impossible, while every tax cut for billionaires was essential. One day. But until that day, the con continues the oligarchs prosper, the workers suffer, and trans people pay the price for a political strategy they never asked for, and a culture war they never started. It is a moral obscenity, a political travesty, and a con of breathtaking cynicism. And it is working exactly as intended.

SPEAKER_04 38:50

So, in the wake of the attempted assassination at the White House Correspondents Dinner, one message rang out from Trump to basically every Republican at this point, which is this is why we must build the ballroom. Lindsey Graham, always looking to be the leading sycophant among all of the sycophants, it's a very difficult task because there's so many to choose from, jumped out front pushing a bill now that would authorize$400 million in taxpayer funds to back Trump's ballroom, even though originally this thing was supposed to be privately funded, et cetera, et cetera. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Lindsay Graham here.

SPEAKER_05 39:28

If you don't think$400 million of taxpayer money is a good investment to create a secure facility at the White House where the president of the United States, the vice president, the cabinet, and people from the public can come and you know uh have a meal and gather without what happened Saturday, then I disagree. This is the number one job of the federal government is national security. The number one job of national security, I think, would be to protect the commander-in-chief and to have infrastructure under the ballroom that is very national security-centric. So I don't think just vote no. That's all I ask you to do is vote. I don't care how you vote, I want to vote. I want to see where is America on this. I'll bet you 90% of the people would love to have a better facility than the Hilton Hotel to make sure this crap never happens again. I can't tell you what to say on the Senate floor, but I've never seen it like this. There are people out there just one click away from picking up a gun or something else and trying to make America better by killing. You don't make America great by killing people you don't like.

SPEAKER_04 40:39

I love Sagar's assertion here that a vote on the Senate floor would be somehow representative of the views of the American people. That's a very, that's a very cute idea, not to mention the absurdity of him imagining that 90% of Americans at a time when gas prices are sky high, inflation is ticking back up, joblessness ticking up, mass layoffs are occurring, AI, we're at the war, all this stuff, that they would be like, yes, let's spend our taxpayer dollars on a gilded ballroom for uh Trump and his coterie of elites.

SPEAKER_07 41:12

Let's remember that the one of the only reasons I think that Trump was, quote, getting away with the ballroom is because it was privately funded. Now, I'm actually opposed to that. I don't think any part of the White House complex should be privately funded. Why? Because I want democratic input and say over every single thing that is built. That's part of the reason I'm opposed this entire project. This is making me much more of a NIMBY, by the way. This is why we need historical codes. We need why we need historical trust, we need architecture review, we need zoning commissions. It's to keep bullshit like this and tackiness of like the ballroom from ever being constructed. I would consider myself one of the chief anti-ballroom activists in the United States. Now, put this all together, though, is that they're using this incident to say not only do we need the ballroom, but actually we need the ballroom to be paid for by the American taxpayer. And what he's saying is daring other people to vote against said ballroom. But you know, part of what is so preposterous about this entire thing, as I explained yesterday for anybody who may not have tuned in, is the implication that any event that the president of the United States now and forever will speak at must be held at the White House? Because that would mean that the White House would have total and complete authority over who gets to enter and do what for things like the White House Correspondence Association, which is supposed to be a dinner celebrating the president's adversarial relationship with the president. Now it's not that, but I'm saying in spirit. So is the idea that the White House correspondence dinner would always be held by the president? The president, this is the first one he's ever attended, Donald Trump. Every single other one he didn't attend previously, and that dinner was held with his offices. Okay, whatever. But let's think about this in the future. Every gala, you have to pay rent to the government so that the president can come. That seems pretty sick and weird, don't you think? And then maybe they would have a little bit of a control over who comes in and who comes out, or we could maybe just have a normal Secret Service barricade, which would cost$10,000 to$20,000 more a night, and then we're all good to go. How about that?

SPEAKER_04 43:20

Yeah, I was thinking that too, like going back to our conversation with Joe Ken tomorrow yesterday, tomorrow, yesterday. Um, I'm not a time traveler, guys, I promise. Not part of the time traveling conspiracy involved in all of this. But in any case, yeah, his point was like, hey, you know, also another thing you could do is the Secret Service seems to be not doing such a great job here. You could improve that. You could stop elevating the very people who were at the scene of like the butler assassination where, you know, massive failure occurred to allow this guy on a roof to up with a you know clear sight line of the president of the United States. That's an idea. So, no, instead, we're also back to this, all of this discourse conversation, which you, I mean, you just can't take seriously, really, from anyone, but especially not from Republicans at this point. Trump literally threatened to murder an entire civilization. And we're supposed to take tips on etiquette and uh rhetoric guidance from the Republican Party, which had nothing, no problem with any of that, not to mention all of the other insane things that Trump says all the time. But just as an example of this, we had uh, and to show you how much appeal the ballroom has instantly found, the taxpayer-funded ballroom from across the swath of the Republican Party. We have Eric Schmidt, who is a Republican senator from Missouri, also saying that now, because Democrats have been critical of ICE, that it is essential that taxpayers cough up$400 million for Trump's ballroom. Let's take a listen to that.

SPEAKER_03 44:48

The Democrats have used rhetoric referring to ICE agents as the Gestapo Trump secret police. They can't help themselves. Like this is a real sickness. And what we're saying is this has to be addressed. At a minimum, we have to have a safe place to protect the president of the United States and the cabinet officials if they want to gather, or there's a state dinner or a crowd more than like a hundred people. But this is now, in order to appease the more radicalized base, the language that comes out on the Senate floor. I'm not talking about on like morning Joe, like on the Senate floor, you guys are there, you hear this. This is well beyond uh what has been acceptable forever. And it is in we were out where we're at.

SPEAKER_04 45:35

It's why. This is why, because people said things, mean things about ICE on the Senate floor, not just on Morning Joe soccer, which is like the only I guess that was his benchmark for like radical thought was the panel over at Morning Joe. It's just it's so preposterous. But I really, I really want to uh lean into some of the things Lindsay Graham was saying about how listen, take this to the American people. Run on this in the midterms, go ahead, go ahead and tell, tell them why they need to spend taxpayer dollars on this gilded ballroom for Donald Trump and uh, you know, really make that case to them at a time when they are deeply dissatisfied with the economy when we've been dragged into this war that virtually no one wanted. I think you should really prioritize this in your messaging to the American people and let's have a democratic say over what direction they want to go in here.

SPEAKER_07 46:32

And with then we can scrutinize the funding. Let's put C4 up here on the screen. This is actually very interesting to build his mammoth. White House bowl room. President Trump last summer chose Maryland-based cart construction. Since then, Trump has repeatedly sung the company's praises, saying he wanted to refurbish projects all over Washington. In January, government contracts show the Trump administration secretly gave the company a no-big contract to do another job at a sharply inflated price. The National Park Service wanted to repair two ornamental fountains in Lafayette Park. The Biden administration estimated it would cost them$3.3 million. Trump's government agreed to pay Clark$12 million to do it. Later, it added tasks and increased the contract to$17.4 million. The agency did so without considering offers from other firms, citing a rarely used urgency exception to normal open bidding procedures, usually meant for emergencies like war or natural disasters. Unlike the Ballroom Project, Trump says will be funded by private donations, the bill for the fountain repairs is being paid by the government. So again, this is for a fountain in Lafayette Park, which is just across the street from the White House, if you've ever visited in front of the iconic place. There's like, you know, benches and other things that are there. And$20 million for a fountain reserve renovation, which previously was estimated$3.3 million. Now, listen, you know, we all can understand inflation, uh, but$17 million. Uh yeah, I don't know about that, all right? Clark construction, Clark construction, from what I know at the very least, uh, is I remember because I went to GW, so they did all of the downtown. And and we were always like, who is this firm? And so now I'm like, oh, okay. So you're now in with the Trump administration, you're making sure you're building uh the ballroom, and they're behind a lot of this. Look, I mean, construction is the ultimate racket. As Trump himself will tell you, all you have to do is read his book about the art of the deal, uh, which is specifically about like scheming and making sure to how to like get his Trump Tower and all of that built. So yeah, I'm starting to think that something above this might not be a hundred percent above board. Just me.

Assassination Attempt Details And Motives

SPEAKER_04 48:51

Well, I mean, everything's just you know, pay to play in this administration. Clark was willing to do the ballroom in the most grotesque way that Trump imagined. I think there was a different architecture firm that had originally been um, you know, hired. They had to be pushed down because they were like, this is monstrosity. So Clark is willing to, I guess, do whatever Trump wants them to do. And so in return, he's going to funnel them millions of dollars for look already, probably$3 million, which was the original estimate to rehab a couple fountains. Seems kind of crazy if we're being honest. And this article goes into detail about like, these aren't really like super complicated fountains. It shouldn't be that big of a deal. There are many more complicated fountains in the city of DC. These are pretty plain vanilla in terms of what needs to be done, but we understand these things always cost more than you think they're gonna cost. So, okay, three million. What they did in the contract is they increased it for inflation and then by millions of dollars. Then they increased it again for inflation dollars. Then they just added on some random surplus, and I can't remember what sort of like, you know, corporate jargon they use to justify. I mean, they just took it and added on millions of dollars in what appears to be a pure kickback. No one would be surprised either if someone in the family is getting a taste of this or whatever. But this is the way the entire administration operates, you know, to connect it to the Iran war here, which I think uh basically everything is in some way connected to the Iran war. We just take it for granted that two of the people who are involved in these negotiations at the highest level, Whitkoff and Kushner, Kushner not even in the government, he's just Trump's relative. Both of them have massive, massive financial interests directly implicated in the Middle East. This is part of the problem with uh the negotiations to begin with. The Iranians think that Whitkoff is just an Israeli is um, sorry, but Kushner is the Israeli steerage. Witkoff, they think, is just too stupid to really understand the technical details and is basically a waste of space there, which is why they've insisted like at least we need JD Vance there, because he may have some intelligence and seems to not be completely psychotic. I don't know that their trust is really fairly placed there, but that's the way they feel about this. So, in any case, this is par for the course for the way that this administration operates. Um, just to go back momentarily to the uh, you know, the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondence Center, we have some new information this morning that it doesn't look like the uh, you know, the alleged would-be assassin here actually was able to get off any shots. Uh the latest reporting is that it was all the Secret Service firing that they may have accidentally hit one of their own. So, again, to the idea of like, what do we need? Do we need a ballroom or maybe we just need a secret service that's more competent? Um, that seems to argue in that direction. Look, no shade at them. I know they have a tough job, but certainly not a job that I would be capable or able to perform successfully. But in any case, it's looking like there was, you know, a bit of a chaotic scene here in apprehending this would-be assassin. And uh, he appeared in court yesterday. It's also been interesting, Sagar, to get a look at um CNN K file, dug into all of his posts on social media, of which there are thousands. And the ideological profile is kind of fascinating and terrifying. Yeah. He's like pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine. He thinks that Hassan Piker, he was literally like at the time when he was traveling across the country to assassinate, to try to assassinate the president, was posting about how Hassan Piker is too radical. Like, what are we like, what? How does this, how is this making sense in your brain? He was objecting to whatever Hassan said about like petty theft. He thought that would collapse the social fabric and be a real problem for society as he's going about plotting this assassination attempt, allegedly.

SPEAKER_07 52:44

Incredible. I mean, I think both are bad. Uh, I do think trying to commit uh high-level political violence seems pretty bad. Uh yet I can't explain why it makes sense that the shooter is blue anon. Like they actually are the most radical people who are on the planet. Everybody's always, you know, concerned, but it really is the blue-anon types uh which are ready to rock and roll. I know this from having lived around them now uh for quite some time. But yeah, like you said, uh there's been some details. We have here uh the charges that were released against him by the FBI and by the acting attorney general Todd Blanch. Let's take a listen. This is C6.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Today the Department of Justice filed three federal charges in United States District Court against Cole Thomas Allen. The first count is attempted assassination of the President of the United States. This count is punishable by up to life in prison. The second count is interstate transportation of a firearm to commit a felony. This is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. And the third count is discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence, which is punishable by a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of 10 years, a maximum of life, and the 10 years is consecutive to any other sentence imposed.

SPEAKER_07 54:03

So there you go. They've charged him multiple gun crimes, attempted assassination of President Trump. Uh, very likely he's looking at life in prison. Uh, that's probably what he's gonna get. So that's that's where things stand of right now. Uh I know we covered the conspiracy stuff yesterday. I know it's fun uh to delve into, but you know, I think even now is a good example. If you go on the front, because they're like, oh, he wants to save his polls and all of that. And look, I criticize CNN and all of that. I think they spent way too much time on the shooting. But, you know, front page of the Wall Street Journal, it's UAE OPEC, OpenAI misses revenue, Caladia Scheinbaum, Iran is flooded with oil. You have to scroll down to the bottom fold to get anything on the shooting. It's the same over at the Times and everywhere else. So if it was a sign-up, it was one of the most poorly executed sign-ups of all time. I guess he did get his uh legislation on the ballroom. However, uh, you know, again, if you want to talk about this from polling, trying to elevate the ballroom to the center of the conversation. I mean, I don't think Trump is that dumb. Um, but look, maybe he doesn't care. So, you know, for the conspiracy people out there, I guess you still have your fodder if we're considering the ballroom construction.

SPEAKER_04 55:13

I can't I couldn't believe even Rand Paul was like, yes, let's fund the ballroom. Like, dude, aren't you supposed to be like against wasteful government spending? Didn't we have a whole thing at the beginning, this administration with doge that was like, oh my God, we can't afford$10 million of research into pediatric cancer or whatever. And now we're like, we must. It is the most essential task of the federal government. And this is like the language they were literally using. It is the most essential task of the federal government to build this ballroom. We will have this ballroom. I don't know. Wild, wild time. So if if that was, if it was a false flag and the goal was to push the ballroom in that way, soccer, you have to admit it would have been a successful.

SPEAKER_07 55:56

Yeah, I guess. It seems pretty stupid to me, but yeah. All right. Keep believing what you want to believe. Hey, if you like that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.

SPEAKER_04 56:08

And if you'd like to get the full show, ad-free, and in your inbox every morning, you can sign up at breakingpoints.com.

SPEAKER_07 56:14

That's right. Get the full show, help support the future of independent media at breakingpoints.com.

SPEAKER_08 56:21

We're joined now by Branco March Teach. He is a staff writer at Jacobin. He's the author of yesterday's man, The Case Against Joe Biden, and is out with a truly fantastic deep dive in, deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein's relationship with Peter Thiel in Jacobin. Jacobin cannot recommend this piece highly enough. This is D1. We can put the tearsheet up on the screen. You absolutely must go check it out over at Jacobin, the headline here. Jeffrey Epstein encouraged Peter Thiel's political journey. So, Branco, let's just start with the highlights. Um, after spending so much time pacing together these emails between Peter Teal and Jeffrey Epstein, of which there are many, what can you tell us about how close the relationship was and why, over what types of issues did they bond?

SPEAKER_02 57:08

Yeah, uh, well, thanks for having me, first of all. Uh they were extremely close. Um, there's some people that I've written about in the context of Epstein, uh, billionaires in Newham, who, you know, they say, well, just because they were mentioned in the emails by Epstein uh doesn't mean that they actually had any kind of relationship with them. You can safely say that is not the case with Pier Teal. Uh Teal is all over these emails. They are communicating very frequently over the course of years. Um, they're having phone calls, they're having meetings uh face to face. Epstein is introducing him to you know people that he seems to think will be uh particularly useful and influential uh for Teal to know. Um so, you know, uh the Epstein is also showering him with all kinds of gifts. He's offering to fly him to his island in his helicopter. He's he's offering him at 1.50 million to 100 million dollars to invest. He's giving him tax advice. Uh he's in turn soliciting investment advice uh from Teal. Uh Teal at one point introduces Epstein uh to some of his Vala co-founders, um, and he suggests to put in 10 million to 20 million dollars into a new fund they're starting. Um at one point, Epstein even uh suggests, you know, Teal can use one of his uh top sleep doctors in New York. He says, I want you to stay alive. So uh it was a very close relationship. And the kinds of things they bonded over, I mean, there's a variety of things that they talked about. Um, you know, but but I think the the the most pertinent thing to me in looking through his emails is the way that Epstein seems to be very uh interested in Teal's kind of budding uh involvement and interest in politics and geopolitics, and how he seems to want to develop and encourage that by kind of introducing him to a wide variety of uh influential players around the world and and in the context of the US.

SPEAKER_06 59:03

What I think is so interesting about uh Epstein and who he was connected to, and also Teal, aside from the obvious, um is both of these guys were kind of on the pioneer of where the kind of Davos world was even the more extreme weird wing of the Davos world almost uh was headed, particularly when it comes to kind of eugenics, um when it uh when it comes to you know mass surveillance and you know deploying technologies like Palantir that you that heal was developing to usher in kind of new world, also Bitcoin and AI, like Epstein Teal, like they're they were both talking about that stuff so much earlier than you know either the public or even kind of other people in in their set. So what what do you make of that that kind of the ability that they had to see where where their kind of social set uh was heading and also to kind of drive it in that direction a little bit?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned cryptocurrency because that is a big uh uh theme, uh I think in If Sing's emails in general, but particularly with his relationship with uh with Teal. Um If Sing kind of suggests in one early email when he's trying to get in touch with Teal, and he by the way, he he is really before they become friends, he is really trying to meet Teal and to forge a connection with him. Um, you know, I think I counted something like 10 different times over the course of two years that he is emailing people trying to set up some kind of meeting with him. Um he says that that one of the things that uh is interesting him, that he hopes that he can connect with Teal over is this idea of creating a new uh financial system, an alternative financial system. Um some of that sounds a bit silly. He he kind of envisions Facebook being the kind of basis for a new financial system where you trade favors instead of currency. Um but but when you read through the emails, it's clear that Epstein's interest in cryptocurrency was was a big part of this. And and you know, I I think he hoped to use the teal connection to try and um usher this this new world into existence. Um I I think there's another aspect where you know the fact that these guys are both incredibly wealthy uh and that they kind of feel themselves at a remove from the rest of humanity, I think both gives them the kind of impulse to embark on what might uh uh look to us like um almost wacky uh schemes, uh but you know, ones that they're very serious about, and ones obviously have very far-reaching uh implications, you know, in terms of the the ideas of kind of extending lifespan and and you know, kind of um going beyond uh uh uh the limits of normal human existence. Um I would also point to this doesn't make it into the piece, but there's an exchange that they have where it's very brief. Epstein asks Teal, as he does many times, whether he's gonna come to New York. Um, and Teal responds with something like, you know, I I don't have any interest in coming to the zoo um uh this week or something. And Epstein replies, you know, well, sometimes it's fun to look at animals. Um there's a I think that exchange kind of betrays uh uh a certain way that these guys look at the rest of the world, you know, they're so far removed from everyone else. That I think they kind of view the world as as and the rest of humanity as almost kind of a petri dish for for themselves to kind of play around in and and and re-reforge uh uh in the in the vision that they see fit.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:46

Yeah, a couple of other things that stood out to me. I mean, there's a lot that stood out, but a couple of other things. They seem to be trying to, or Epstein seems to try to be brokering relationships between Teal and the intelligence community, also people like ultra-wealthy businessmen like Tom Barak, if I'm remembering correctly, who's what, our current ambassador to the UAE. He was UAE now. He's Turkey, but yeah, but he was a Trump won UAE, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:03:13

Ryan. He would no, he was doing illegal lobbying for UAE and indicted for it.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:18

Right, not so he was sort of an ambassador in in one sense or the other. But um he's trying to, I I can't tell if you I'm curious if you read it this way as well, Branco, that he's he's almost trying to like curry favor with Epstein by doing favors for him. It seems like he's going out of his way to try to help Teal, that Epstein's going out of his way to try to help Teal make all of these introductions. And then he's advising him on his speech at the RNC. It just knowing how much Epstein hates Trump and communicates how much he hates Trump to others. His relationship with Steve Bannon is much kind of more frank about that. Whereas with Teal, it's almost like he's he's trying to imply to Teal that he's fully on board with Trump. Um, there's just some weird undercurrents.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:01

I I my sense from looking at probably at this point, thousands of these emails is that Epstein did have this pulling out of Trump, and he was very disdainful towards Trump. He did not think very highly of him. But I think he understood that Trump was obviously a very influential and increasingly powerful person. And could be bought in some ways. Yeah, yeah. And and I think Epstein understood that it was probably uh in his interest to have some kind of in with uh Trump or at least his administration. And Teal, I think, was his in. I mean, when when Epstein finds out that Teal is uh a Trump delegate, that's when he starts sending him these emails, trying to help him kind of um uh increase his influence within Trump circles, uh, trying to advise him on how to you know not piss off Trump basically and and and get himself kind of kicked out of the inner circle. I mean, you know, he tells him, hey, I heard that you met with Tom Barack. And basically says to him, I can I can you know uh make that meeting happen. You should know him if you if you can kind of have your advice listened to by him, you'll be able to uh uh uh increase your influence within Trump's uh Trump's world. Um later on, yeah, he he he he brokers a meeting between them. He he reads a Buzzfeed article where uh Teal is quoted saying some unflattering things about Trump and he tells him, hey, be careful. You know, Trump is very vindictive, you don't want to uh uh anger him and kind of get kicked out of the clubhouse. And sure enough, um from what I could see, uh uh after that that email is sent, uh Teal does not say anything negative about Trump after that. He's very careful to um always say positive things. So I I think there was a there was a realization by Epstein, similar to the interest he took in Steve Bannon, where he similarly tried to uh introduce him to many, many powerful and influential people. You gave him advice and so on and so forth. I think he realized these two guys are gonna be important power players, they're gonna be influential within the Trump presidency and whatever comes after it. And it's probably better for me to have a good relationship with them and to have a kind of in. Um and and you know, the the intelligence side of things, or the the the some of the other people that he introduced him to. I think there's a similar thing going on. Um the the names that that uh come up when when Epsilon was trying to introduce Teal to people, you know, includes Bill Burns, who became the CIA director under Biden at the time. He was a State Department official. Um they include uh Kathy uh Rumler, who was um the Obama White House counsel once upon a time. He says to her at one point when he's trying to get her to meet Teal, you know, you should bring some of your spook friends. Um so Epstein seemed to have a particular interest in kind of connecting Teal to the world of intelligence. Um and of course, you know, what what has happened since then? Uh uh Teal uh is very much deep in the in the world of intelligence. Uh uh, you know, Epstein introduced Teal to Barak. Teal now has this uh uh major partnership with the Israeli military. Uh uh at the same time, Teal uh also his companies have uh increasingly aligned themselves with this kind of interventionist pro-war uh uh side of the uh political spectrum in the United States. Um, whereas Teal used to be, you know, at the at the time that he was um had first met Epstein, he was someone who described himself as a non-interventionist and he was against the US fighting all these wars. So, you know, uh uh whether it's what role Epstein played in that, uh, you know, we can we can only speculate, but Epstein's desire to have a kind of have a teal that's more politically involved and um you know less averse to war, I think has uh worked out for him, um, even if he didn't live to see it happen.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:56

And well, Bronco, great reporting. Um, really appreciate you uh uh jo uh being here.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:02

Yeah, yeah, thanks for having.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:04

I encourage everybody to check out his piece, uh Rafa Marsh, THF of Jackaman Magazine.

SPEAKER_07 1:08:08

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