1/15/26: FBI Raids WaPo Journos, Ford Worker Flipped Off By Trump, Gambling Economic Takeover

24:47But I think that if you take that to the bank, maybe – look, it's hopeful I think for any aspiring politician because if you actually just do what you say you're going to do, maybe you could actually get reelected. And or you can always find a new coalition, activate them and bring them to the ballot box. This has been the eternal problem. This was a huge problem for Biden who won a lot of those folks in 2020 by 2024. I think what was in the first election, people making under 100 ,000 voted for Trump or the significant number of those households. And a lot of that was inflation. A lot of that was culture as well.

25:19But, you know, stuff like that. People will be with you. They'll give you a short enough leash, probably six months or so, before they start saying, what have you done for me lately? So that's a good thing. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. Democrats learned that the hard way. They thought they had their coalition. They're like, oh, Latinos. Obama coalition locked in forever. And it turned out, nope. People changed their minds. People are like, what have you done for me lately? One of my favorite books on my shelf, 40 More Years by James Carlin. Oh, I read that. I mean, it's a historical artifact.

25:45It is. They're like, this is how arrogant they were. And then it's amazing they still trot that guy out like he's some genius guru. You know, like when's the last time you won an election again anyway? 96? He is interesting sometimes. I will give it to him. I have a soft spot for genius. There's a documentary. The accent and his crotchety ways and all that stuff. It is kind of compelling. I can't remember the name of the documentary. I think it's on HBO where they follow the Clinton campaign. I have a soft spot for him. I mean, again, even in that one, the fact that he became a political genius, They won 42 % of the popular vote, okay?

26:16Right. And Ross Perot cost H.W. the election. And Bill Clinton is like a generational talent. And he only won 42 % of the popular. He didn't even win a majority. Same thing with the Obama guys that are treated like these sage geniuses, et cetera. It's like, again, you had a generational talent on your hands. And you had a cratering economy and John McCain and more on a bush was in power. With the Clintons and all of that. So in any case. All right. Sorry. Got it. Let's go on to gambling.

26:50Okay. Turning now to gambling. We've been wanting to get this story out there. Very, very important new statistic. Let's put E3 up here on the screen. Our friend, Matt Stoller, who's reading through the new BLS reports, whatever data they still deign to release to the public. This one is old data. So at the very least, we're going to trust it. And here's what says, the second fastest growing sector in America in terms of GDP growth is now gambling between 2019 and 2024. I want everyone to sit with that. That means that outside of software, aka AI data center, GDP growth, that the second largest growing thing in our economy is now gambling.

27:31Gambling companies have now overtaken motion picture revenue in terms of the amount that people are spending. It is by far the largest entertainment product now here in the United States. Emerged literally from a Supreme Court decision. Zero oversight, rife with problems, massive addiction. I mean, beyond corrupt. We're about to talk with Pablo Torre in which we're going to break down this new scandal about point shaving, game ringing. Who in America, what kind of degenerate are you if you're betting on Chinese basketball games? You have a problem. And yet it is completely normalized. Tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, are now moving through these companies.

28:11Very little regulation. Cheating is openly apparently allowed. You have their ability to ban winners. Literally, imagine that. It's a product where you get to ban winners and milk the losers. People are going to be driven to absolute bankruptcy. And it is now, I think, a great symbol of the problems of our time. And it is now, and I warned about this, is it's like you think you can just restrict it to sports. It is bleeding into every sector, not just of our economy, but of our entertainment. It already, politics, remember, polymarket, the odds all became huge. Now we have a more recent one here of the Golden Globes.

28:50Let's put E1 up here on the screen. I didn't watch. Sorry. But as you can all see here, they're literally on the screen, live Polymarket odds for every single one, which was actually featured on the Golden Globes broadcast. Then you had the Polymarket CEO. Let's put the next one, please, up on the screen to show you that he actually tweeted out about how Polymarket ended up calling 26 out of the 28 winners right. I mean, this is the issue is that this is rife for insider trading. and it's so obvious that these are all like generally lower stakes because you and I'd be like, ah, whatever. You know, somebody who – I mean, look, these are not – there's no SEC regulation on the Golden Globes or on the Oscars.

29:34Like these are just private organizations. But being able to bet upon them then with no oversight or any of that makes it easily manipulatable, easily leakable. You know, for many of these types of cases, it's such that you are watching it all be normalized. By the way, my personal favorite that I just saw yesterday, somebody was booking a hotel. And in the hotel, they were being sold insurance where pay$26. If it rains three days, you get$500 back. Oh, my God. So you're basically gambling on whether it's going to rain. Oh, my God. And then rain is defined as.04 inches for more than a two-hour period and not at 2 a.m.

30:14or something like that. This is insanity. They're going to start rigging it with clouds. That's right. No, literally. It's like, this is crazy. And you had the CEO of one of these, I think it was Kalshi. No, sorry, it was Robin Hood, who said, instead of insurance, people are using prediction markets, right? So, oh, don't buy insurance. Don't buy insurance. Buy our futures or all of that. It's commoditizing everything in public life. It just cheapens literally everything. It cheapens life. Like, you know, okay, the Golden Globes, are they the biggest, most important thing in the world? No. But now you just have in the back of your head, oh, they just like rigged it to, you know, to get a payoff.

30:51All of these sports games, like, you know, you just you're watching these games and I watch them differently now. You know, when a bunch of calls start going one way, I'm like, oh, you know, somebody's on the track. You should be. Right. I mean, you just can't help but think that in the back of your head that like, OK, well, where's the money being made off of what I'm seeing? None of this feels real anymore. And that's the point from Stoller, I think, is a really important one. Like our whole economy is basically data centers and gambling. That's what our economy is, which are both deeply predatory and exploitative.

31:22And actually, they work together because the algorithms and the AI, what, you think that they're not using that to addict you? Of course. Of course they are. Absolutely, that is the case. And so they're just financially sucking you dry, sucking all of the natural resources out of the ground, jacking up your electric bills, all of that. I mean, it's just the most sort of like exploitative, predatory economy that you could possibly imagine. And it feeds deep cynicism about everything from politics to sports to entertainment, to the weather, apparently. I mean, literally every aspect of your life.

31:59And it's just become so embraced and normalized. You know, just to give an example from politics, you can put E4 up on the screen. So there was this White House press briefing. This was right after the whole Venezuela kidnapping situation. and you had bets that were placed about how long this press conference would go. And Daniel Scott tweeted this out and he said, Today's White House press briefing had a 98 % chance of lasting plus 65 minutes until Caroline Levitt abruptly ended it with just a few seconds to spare. So the bettors on the no side on Polymarket multiplied their money by 50 times in less than 30 seconds.

32:37So she abruptly wraps it up right before that 65-minute cutoff. Now, was this intentional? Did she know? I don't know. But you have to ask the question, especially the way this comes in right under the wire and how she ends it so abruptly. You got to think in your head, you know, was this intentional? To be honest, I don't even think so. But I don't want to think about it. That's exactly right. The fact that it even has the appearance of that is disgusting. Disgusting. Yes. And then finally, to your point, and by the way, this is 10 times worse. Can we put E6 up here on the screen? Polymarket is currently taking immense amounts of bet, and I mean serious volume, in their markets on whether we're going to strike Iran.

33:21They have days, various days that you can bet on, on whether we're going to strike Iran, which are easily manipulatable. But their Twitter feed is also rife with literal bullshit like this. Iranian regime security forces have lost nearly all control of Iran's Tehran, Mashhad, and Shrad. Not true. Literally not true. But what is the intention, Crystal, of that tweet? It's to get people to bet on regime change. That's right. That's why it's sick. And remember with the whole Venezuela thing. Right. And then you have people who are in a position to influence the president in one direction or the other.

33:53Are they placing bets and then giving the president information that literally impacts war and peace? I mean, that's where we are. Like, that's reality. Right. And, you know, this is why it's so right. So, like, for example, we're journalists. I've been, you know, trying to work the phones, trying to get some more info. Let's say I got some info on a specific timeline, right, as a journalist. and I bought no and I could get a huge payout that I didn't think we were gonna get an attack on Iran. Is that technically illegal? Probably not, but it's wrong because that's not what you should be doing.

34:25That's why even allowing bets like this, it's crazy. I mean, imagine that, and then if I, oh, it's not just me, I give it a taste to my friends. And then everybody starts taking the no side and then it starts to leak out and then it becomes a national security problem. The Venezuela thing, it's so, it is clear as day, somebody inside of the US military, probably a logistics guy, You know, maybe the guy like fueling the helicopter or something. He's like, hey, I'm making$75K a year. Okay, I can triple my salary right now with the single bet. Just yesterday, somebody put a$160K bet on whether we were going to attack Iran or not.

34:56Who knows? Who is this guy? You know, literally, there's no insight. There's no information. We are commoditizing our entire life. And it will bleed, as I showed you with the hotel thing. That's soon, can you imagine? You've got buy now, pay later. You've got the gambling thing. Now insurance, they're going to start coming in. Robinhood offers sports betting. Cal sheet, 91 % of the contracts on Cal sheet are all sports. 40 % of polymarket is all sports. It's effectively legalized sports gambling nationwide. And once you legalize sports gambling, not just legalized, but normalized, then why wouldn't you gamble on everything?

35:29There's famous stories. I remember Rogan talking about this once. He was with a bunch of gambling addicts. They would go to a window while it was raining, and they would bet on which raindrop was going to hit first. You can see this with Jordan. He used to, you know, he used to like gamble and Michael Jordan used to bet with the guys over like throwing quarters, like rolling them. Once you get that sickness in your mind, you will bet on everything. And that's what we're doing. We're normalizing it across the nation. And, yeah, I mean, look, it's not to your benefit. You will lose. That's literally the way that the rules are written.

36:01And I just I think it's I genuinely think it is our biggest sickness. Yeah. Like right now. And people are going broke. It's bad. Yeah. No, I mean, nothing will ruin your life faster than. And, you know, the financial losses that you sustain there. And I mean, it's a perfect pivot to talking to Pablo Torre because we just had this news break about 20 people who are indicted over game fixing, point shaving scandal. So let's go ahead and bring him in and we can get his Insta reaction to what we know so far. Very excited now to be joined by Pablo Torre. He is the host of Pablo Torre Finds Out and a great investigative journalist, friend of the show.

36:36Good to see you, man. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. Thanks for having me back, guys. There's a lot going on right now. Yeah, there's so much. We originally were going to talk about NFL ethics and reporting. And then, of course, while we have you, literally moments before we have breaking news that we'll put up here on the screen, some 20 people have now been charged in a sweeping college basketball fixing scandal. Also, though, involving Chinese Basketball Association games in China. We have multiple names involved here. Pablo, I know you have been at the forefront of a lot of this gambling investigation here with the NBA.

37:07former players now involved in college basketball, point-shavings, Keynes, China. Just give us your general reaction to the story. Yeah, I've been waiting for this. The federal government, the Eastern District of New York, their scope has not merely been professional basketball, the NBA. It's also been, of course, college games. And in college games and in the Chinese Basketball Association saga, I think there's a key important element here, which is that the incentive structure for what is to be gained if you are to participate in an alleged scheme to, you know, orchestrate the outcomes of micro events or the games themselves, micro events inside of games or the games themselves.

37:44They're just greater, right, as a cost benefit analysis is concerned compared to NBA players making millions of dollars. So these are always it's right to consider them the softer targets, the more logical targets, getting players to cooperate, allegedly in such schemes. And so, So, look, without saying too much, because I am processing all of this as I'm talking to you guys, just know that some of these names are familiar names from the federal indictments. You're looking at guys like Shane Hannon, who, by the way, was the subject of the last episode that I did that you guys had me on to talk about.

38:18Marvis Farrelly is another name. I'm just reading off of the list of names provided here, according to this indictment that was unsealed in Philadelphia. And there are some characters, including the Chinese Basketball Association, including former LSU player Antonio Blakeney, where if you were to just look at what, and again, this is lame of me to do this because I didn't break this story, but if I were to show you the amount of group chatting I was doing about Antonio Blakeney last night, all of this would seem very much of a piece with the larger story that I've been talking to you guys about for months now.

38:53Give us a little bit of insight there. I mean, with Blake, again, we just got this. You haven't had a chance to read through what has been unsealed in this indictment. What is being alleged? But what are the sorts of things that people were sort of like chattering about with regard to these guys? Yeah. So it's a social network. It's a question of, I mean, look, there's not a, it is sophisticated in one sense, but also very definitionally a bunch of guys group chatting to my earlier description of myself on the other hand. And so the question that the federal government has been asking that I have been trying to follow through, frankly, a lot of public records and otherwise social media profiles falling down the rabbit hole on NBA Twitter, on Instagram and all this stuff is who knows who?

39:36There are a bunch of guys in the NBA indictment, a bunch of characters listed as defendants. And the question is who in college basketball and beyond knows those guys? And so Antonio Blakeney has been circled with highlighter for me because he is in the social network among some of these characters. And again, my reporting is absolutely still ongoing. But the fact that his name has now been mentioned as, again, a former college All-American player from LSU who went to the Chinese Basketball Association, who has been, for those who are paying any amount of attention to the CBA, has been a character over there because of alleged rigged games.

40:14It's not exactly rocket science, but what it does require is something that I think hardcore basketball degenerates and now the federal government both have been doing, which is trying to figure out, wait a minute, is that the guy from that thing? And it turns out that in this case, allegedly, Antonio Blakeney is the guy from that thing. Got it. Pablo, the reason why we originally wanted to have you on was about this discussion of sports journalism. It struck me, you know, we talk here about journalism scandals every day, but these are political. Ultimately, that's not what most people are paying attention to.

40:46And the one I think that probably broke open into the zeitgeist more than anything is this most recent one regarding the NFL and the Jacksonville Jaguars, where a local reporter, I guess, if you will, made a very praiseworthy comment to a head coach, which ignited a scandal over sports journalism. So for those of you who haven't seen the clip in question, let's play it and we're going to get your reaction. I want to tell you congratulations on your success, young man. You hold your head up. All right. You guys have had a most magnificent season. Thank you. And you did a great job out there today.

41:15Appreciate it. So you just hold your head up, okay? Thank you, ma 'am. And ladies and gentlemen, Duval, you the one, all right? Thank you, ma 'am. You keep it going. We got another season, okay? I appreciate it. Take care and much continued success to you and the entire team. Thank you, ma 'am. So, Pablo, that clip by, again, somebody who's credentialed, press corps, went viral. It was tweeted out by the NFL, by Adam Scheff, or many other journalists. He's had a very sweet moment. Some other sports journalist said, hey, you're not really supposed to do this in a press conference. This ignited a huge scandal.

41:41And so I was curious whether that is generally reflective of a problem in sports media and in our culture writ large where something like this is to be celebrated in a venue where you're supposed to be asking a question. Yeah, I mean this is a story about vocabulary. What does it mean to be a reporter? And we're really bad at defining what that is and how that might be different from journalists and how that might be different from person doing interviews. Is every podcaster a journalist because they ask questions? Is every person at a press conference a journalist a reporter because they have a microphone in front of them?

42:13And I know that this is a story about the word reporter because the way that this broke open, Sokhar, to your point, was Adam Schefter. I'll just quote what his tweet said because nobody was paying attention to a 20-second non-question from Lynn Jones, who is a longtime, longtime employee of a black newspaper in Jacksonville. They were responding to what Adam Schefter said. Quote, this is an awesome postgame exchange between a reporter and Jaguars H.C. Liam Cohen. And so everybody was responding, if I may be so bold as to speak for people who work in sports journalism, as I think journalism is technically defined.

42:53They're referring to what it means to celebrate this as an example of reporting, as a reporter asking a question or saying anything at a presser. And it's interesting, right? Like I am I'm old enough to remember that Bill Simmons is a Red Sox fan. I'm old enough to remember that everybody who works in sports grew up probably rooting for a team. The question is, when you do one of these specific jobs of showing up at a press conference to ask questions, are you serving something resembling truth and fact finding or the public interest or are you there because you are a fan and for Lynn Jones by the way who's been truly and I get it unapologetic about this because her view is I'm from Jacksonville this is my community I serve my community I want to say something nice to this guy.

43:50And in that way, like, I understand it. The problem is, does that become what people think of when they use the word reporter? Yes. And guys, all reporters have, all journalists have is vocabulary, unfortunately. You know, all we can do and I'll explain what I mean by that. All we can do is express. We are holding ourselves up to a higher degree of difficulty, a higher standard in which we will torture ourselves trying to get this story right. Because our boss in the end is the public interest. and what that involves is a an amount of work that goes unseen and unappreciated and no one wants to hear especially sports reporters complain about how annoying their job can be but that's the reality of what it is and then the second thing is it involves debating people about who gets to call themselves this thing because all you get in return right all you get in return for the the higher difficulty and the work that goes unseen is the ability to call yourself a journalist.

44:57And so it is this thing that, of course, blew up, of course, exploded. And of course, by the way, Lynn Jones, who has such a great, by the way, just like in terms of her vibes, like the only thing that would have been worse for sports media, the press corps writ large, would have been for this person to have been like a kid reporter, like a make-a-wish child. It's just like the worst possible stand-in for a problem, but the problem is vocabulary. Yeah, I think that's really smart. Pablo, let me get you to respond to Pat McAfee who says that loves seeing these sports journalists getting absolutely buried for being curmudgeon bums and goes on to say that people like you just actually low-key hate sports.

45:41Let's go ahead and take a listen on a bit of what he had to say. Why is this show having the sense of it? And I think it's because most of the people that have been covering sports for a long time, not most, sorry, a percentage larger than you would hope, much larger than you would hope, that chose to do sports journalism. I think they don't like sports. I think these people hate sports. I think they're political journalists by nature who preyed on sports as an easier path to be able to get into the biz. You know, sports journalism is everywhere. Sports media, bum, bum, bum. I don't think they like sports.

46:10I think they cover sports. I don't think they like sports. Your response, sir. Yeah. I want to be very clear about this. Nothing is quite like sports when it comes to having to deal with fandom as well as real serious issues like the billions of dollars coursing through it, like the political favors granted by an administration, like race relations, like protest, like free speech, like what it means even to be a civic institution that benefits from public money. Right. So a fascinating thing. Right. Like movies are kind of like that. You got people who are like, you know, man, that guy's a dick because he keeps on criticizing these movies.

46:51He doesn't really love movies. But in this case, you also have this larger institution that happens to be the last monoculture left in American life. Yes. And so what I would express to anybody who doubts whether a sports journalist loves sports is. The gatekeeping fandom is, I would say it's not only childish, it's a contradiction. And I say it this way. If you're a sports journalist, two things can exist. You can absolutely love the games, have grown up loving the games, be able to give you chapter and verse, naming a bunch of guys, a bunch of players, be obsessed with the games that are being gatekept, apparently.

47:37once you express an interest in telling the truth about something. But on the other hand, you can also, because, again, it's, it's, I don't want to be the guy who inadvertently quotes the James Baldwin thing about America, right? Right. But like, I love it so much that I must criticize it. You know, and so the fact that critique and hard questions and all of that are mutually exclusive with loving something is one of the most logical fallacies. Yeah. One of the most illogical things that can be expressed when it comes to just how you exercise your free speech. Very smart. And also the last point on this, I suppose, is journalism has a problem insofar as it comes off being the school marm.

48:23Like we're holding a ruler, wrapping everybody on the knuckles who wants to have fun and just watch the games, bro. And the whole premise of what I love doing in sports specifically is to remind people that silly and serious, highbrow and lowbrow, smart and stupid can all coexist. Telling a story that is premised on truth does not need to be an exercise in scolding. oftentimes it's really fun to find out what people especially extraordinarily rich and powerful people who would love more pat mcafee saying more of exactly what he just said right it's really fun to find out what they don't want you to know and in sports because they know of this fandom and how fervent it is and how your love of something can be confused for anything resembling, gosh, an allegiance to truth, which is not.

49:20It's just not the same thing. Let's just stop confusing it. You love the team. You don't care about what the team is really trying to do. You just love it, right? Like illegally funnel money to a player potentially or – And to that point when I report on the Clippers stuff, right, in sports, because it is the toy department, I want to be honest about that too, right? Like sports reporters should acknowledge, and I do all the time, that it has the ability to touch all these other serious things, the adult sections of the newspaper, but it is still sports. And I love it for that reason. But in sports, you get to have your cake and eat it too.

49:53You get the billions of dollars, often in public money, and you escape the scrutiny that attends it because it's just the games. Man, sports are meant to be fun. And so, for instance, in sports, Sagar, you're just referring to this Clippers thing. The NBA investigation is happening right now. And it's the example of sports gets to investigate itself. They get to decide, are we the bad guys? Right. Who's the turd in the punch bowl? And so it's left a lane, frankly, for me to come in and be the guy who tries to, you know, make people realize it can be fun to know the truth. But it's a lot easier and a lot more financially incentivized to just say, can we just have fun as if there's a choice, as if there's a dichotomy between fun and truth.

50:40Well, and also, I mean, McAfee says this thing like, oh, they're political journalists by nature who preyed on sports as an easier path to get into the biz. I mean, I know some people like to imagine that sports can be totally divorced from politics, but it just can't be. I mean, as you just said, like a lot of these leagues are sponsored by public money. They get you know, they they are deeply political institutions. The owners are ambassadors. Yeah. I mean, and frankly, like every facet of public life is deeply political in some way. But you're dealing with very wealthy people who have a lot of power or benefiting from a lot of public money.

51:13Of course, it's political. Like, obviously, it's political. And to pretend otherwise is just frankly dishonest. Yeah. I mean, look, we exist in the real world. Like the whole notion of a toy department is that it is like off to the side and it is cloistered and not having to deal with the real world issues. And then, by the way, you get into these stories that break through that everybody has to talk about. And a lot of people are all of a sudden out of their depth because the thing they were pretending, which is that we don't exist in the real world, they have to engage with. Right. And when that happens, a lot of people who just say, I just want to talk about games, bro.

51:50they show their ass. And it's okay, by the way, if you want to be a person who doesn't do journalism. I want to be very clear about that. It's better for my business on some level. It is totally understandable. Maybe you just want to be a movie critic. Maybe you just want to be a fan. And all I ask in that way is disclosure, right? Just like be open and honest about what you're here to do. And don't try to pretend that because you've chosen that thing, That the people over here who are imposing a degree of difficulty on themselves that is harder are the people who are your enemy. It's not that way.

52:31It's just – yeah, it's farcical to put it in those terms. It's like a child's understanding of what the media is. Totally. Pablo, thank you so much for joining us, man. You're so elegant. We really, really hope everybody supports your channel, subscribes, and supports all of your work that you're doing. and we value you more at any time than right now. So thank you very much. Thanks, Pablo. Great to see you. I got to read this indictment. I'll come back and talk anytime. See you, brother. Would love that. Thank you. Thanks, Pablo. Thanks. Thanks, man. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.

53:03We will see you all later. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.