1/2/26: Zohran Touts COLLECTIVISM, Gavin MOGS JD, Ro Triggers Billionaire MELTDOWN

29:58And I've seen another interview clip with him since then where he's he's sort of like, oh, I was trolling. So giving himself some wiggle room to kind of like back out of this. But Newsom is leaning into it hard. You know, there's other creators online who are also like, you know, people I don't even know who they are. But other right wing creators who were like, you know, J.D. Vance is chonky and fat. It's a no for me. And posting the Gavin Newsom Chad photos. Gavin Newsom is posting those photos, posting like ugly pics of J.D. Vance from when he was younger and pudgier and like didn't have the beard and whatever.

30:33So that's that's where we are. That's the state of our politics today. I think maybe Clavicula should go to a Marines boot camp and then have words for JD versus Gavin Newsom. I think the conversation about beauty is an interesting invocation here because a lot of what I see, including for myself on the right, is this question about nature and how when we're in such an antiseptic, high-tech world, we do lose natural some degree of natural beauty because everything is artifice everything is is being constructed um in less and less natural ways not everything but you know the metaverse was all we were talking about the new year what like five years ago something yeah five years ago something like that but uh with that in mind clavicular is totally i think making the point and Gavin Newsom as well, about how natural looks.

31:37You can't like replicate natural. This is so stupid, but like you can't replicate natural good looks by hammering your jaw and injecting your face with fillers. You can do something that looks like X, Y, or Z, right? You can create an artifice of the natural, but you can't actually. It's not natural. So it doesn't look natural. And you get into that uncanny valley. I obviously watch a lot of Real Housewives, so I'm incredibly familiar with these efforts. But in all seriousness, you look-vaxing efforts from the women. From women, right. But like you can't, it's not natural. And at the same time, the people like Clavicular are trying to frame it as totally natural as like this is, it is the Nietzschean perspective that what we have is power and strength.

32:30and he will stop at no ends to construct power and strength, even if it means taking all of these high-tech medications, hammering his jaw, like whatever it is. And it's not attractive. And honestly, I think the same thing about Gavin Newsom. Like, he looks like Patrick Bateman. Well, that's the thing, is none of these, even Jimbro trend or this looks-maxing trend or even, like, Gavin Newsom as this, you know, undisputed Chad, none of these things are for the female gaze they're all for the male gaze so well said yeah i mean and that's 100 and so it's like it's working it's interesting i mean it feels very sort of like homoerotic because i'm like you are actually number one you hate women right i mean not all looks maxers but many have this total antipathy towards women and you know talk about women are whores and you know ruining our lives and all this stuff right this stuff is very adjacent to like incel ideology, pickup artist ideology, like manosphere stuff.

33:33Like it's all very similar, right? So they hate women. And then the ideal Chad male that they're trying to craft is much more based on what a man's idea of aspirational male beauty would be. So I don't know. They're literally sterile. I love that. And to this point, Emily, about like - Literally sterile. Yeah. They hate women so much that they're sterile. I watched this clip, Emily, And I was like, Republicans are so screwed. Like they were relying on like the spirit of Trump to carry them for like 30 more years. And then the Epstein thing happened. And now people are already looking into what's next.

34:09And no one likes any of the any of the lineup behind that, which is like this J.D. Gavin thing. They're OK with Gavin. And then this is dark Maha. And not just the Trump stuff and sort of like the future of the leaders, But this core sense of Republican conservatism was always about family, right? Protecting the family. And this new generation seems to be transcending the need for family or like feeling like, well, if I can't own a house or have a family, why not reject the entire concept? And something I've been seeing with conservatives is, you know, either it's Clavicular saying he's sterile and he's actually doing it for men, not women.

34:48I'm seeing people like Asmongold, another big conservative YouTuber, say, I will never have a girlfriend again, like as a positive thing. And I still see Andrew Tate, who's been for years saying it's gay to have a girlfriend. So it seems like these influencers. Quintet says similar stuff, too. Yeah, that it's literally gay to have sex with women. And so it's like all these influencers are sitting to carve and guide out a path that's like post-women. And like post even having any children or, you know, continuing the human race. And that's because I think it's important. Like Tate particularly frames it as about power and strength.

35:31And again, like these are ideas that are relegated to the fringe. I mean, there's there's for now there's a reason we're laughing at that interview between Knowles and Clavicular, because Clavicular, it's like Funtos, right? That people mistake the size of their audience for the size of people's endorsement. True believers. Right, yeah. Right, right, right. It's like entertainment versus like believing every word of them. They are extremely entertaining. Right. And the reason that they're extremely entertaining is because there were all of these taboos created. And those taboos were getting pinned, I think rightfully, to the left for the last 10 years.

36:08And it made a lot of young men totally miserable and vulnerable to this kind of thing and wanting to just reject what they felt like was the tightening of the strictures and the status quo and the cultural centers of power that they felt like were emasculating them. And to some extent, there's truth to that. But on the other hand, when you're unmoored, you are much more easily like blown by the wind in one direction or the other. And it's all about power. That's what that's what these guys are talking about at the end of the day is like what you should value is power. And that's really not funny because that can go to a very, very dangerous place very, very quickly.

36:51Well, and it's all about power because they are powerless. I mean, this is to me less about, you know, backlash to the left or whatever, although I'm not saying that there's none of that in here. But this is about where we are in late stage capitalism, where men have been told by society that their entire worth comes from being able to provide, being able to make money and provide for a household and a wife and, you know, kids and all of that. And then they've been robbed of the ability to do that. And so out of that extreme place that our society has come to with extreme wealth inequality, where there is very little hope that people would be able to obtain even the life that their parents had, even though some of that's viewed through rose-colored glasses, that's how you end up with this very nihilistic, a series of extremely nihilistic viewpoints.

37:40I mean, that's, you know, that's Fuentesism, which is, you know, effectively neo-Nazism. It's race nihilism of this is just how the world is. We can't fix it. We can't make it better. We just have to deal with it. It's looks nihilism where it's like, listen, if you look better, you get ahead. And that's just the way the world is. And they create an exaggerated version, actually, of how bad the world is because there are obviously plenty of people. I mean, Donald Trump is not good looking and fat and he's president of the United States. But, you know, so it's a caricaturish view of reality. But rather than having an aspiration of like, well, let's tackle that.

38:13Let's make it so that you don't just judge the book by its cover. Let's make it so that there's better opportunity for people, regardless of how they look on the outside. It's no, this is how it is. And so I am going to succeed by the rules of this system, no matter what it takes, because there are so few other roots left open to me. And with clavicular in particular, you know, he he talks about first of all, he says he is on the spectrum. He's neurodivergent. He talks about how in high school he had trouble fitting in, you know, had the sense of like, you know, people are getting dates. People are getting invited to parties.

38:48I'm being left out. What's going on here? And then he goes to college and he gets kicked out in like three weeks time. Yeah, he's 19, by the way, right? He's literally 19 years old. Exactly. And he talks, too, about how he wishes he could just go to college and be a normal college kid. And it's after he gets kicked out in college, he starts being a bouncer at these nightclubs, I think, in Miami. And that's where he develops this sense of like, oh, the good looking guys get the girls. That must be what life is completely about. And then applies this, you know, in his view, like scientific and again, very eugenics-y, you know, assessment of what is beauty and how can I attain it?

39:26Because this must be the path forward. So he is a perfect, you know, he's a perfect emblem of the hopelessness that I think, you know, really faces not just men, everybody in the, you know, end stage capitalistic like society that we face right now. So it's not to deny people agency, but it is to recognize that no one should be surprised that we have these weird nihilistic fringe viewpoints that are coming to the fore. Yeah. I wrote a thing to the Washington Post recently about how this is a crazy stat. More young men say they want to get married than young women. And when young women are looking at young men, it becomes a little bit clearer as to why young women are maybe saying we are going to check out of this marriage thing.

40:15And there are myriad reasons for that. And Griffin made a point I don't want to gloss over, which is for Republicans, is there a kind of rhyme to what happened, as we were talking about earlier in the show, back in 2016 and then beyond, especially 2020 for Democrats, where some of these like hyper online meme level, like liberalism was being pinned to the Republicans. to every Democratic candidate, you know, things that were going on in classrooms. Like, just think of the libs of TikTok account. Just think about that and how powerful that was, especially like around 2020. Does that then, because of our totally fractured media landscape, mean the claviculars of the world start to infect the way average voters perceive Republicans?

41:09And the answer to this is not people are not prepared for this at the RNC, just as they They weren't prepared for it at the DNC because the answer is absolutely yes. Absolutely yes. He has a big platform and he is speaking as somebody who is pro Donald Trump. He is not like a conservative influencer. He's not a conservative radio host, like a local radio host circa 1996. He's not a team player either. Like not a team player. Right. You could call up Mike Pence when he was a local radio host in Indiana in the 1990s and be like, hey, come to our retreat. You know, maybe he's getting a little chippy.

41:46Come to our retreat, be a speaker, whatever. And you can wine and dine a radio host. Like you have more control if you're the RNC. You have no control anymore. These are all decentralized. But here's the other thing. Like the DHS Twitter account is posting about deporting 100 million people. That's every non-white person, citizen and non in the entire country. That's a third of the population. They post like Nazi stuff on their main account all the time. Just overtly. I mean, Stephen Miller is every bit as extreme as Nick Fuentes or Clavicular or whoever. So, like, of course. Just not as entertaining, yeah.

42:24Yeah, just way less entertaining. Here's one that they did over for New Year's. This is the one I was referring to. The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world. And it's a car on the beach with a wave. It's actually a famous artwork from Japan. By the way, they stole this artwork from a Japanese artist, by the way. Whoops. Also, this is not where you'd want to park a car. It says America after 100 million deportations. deportations. So again, that's not criminal, illegal. That is a third of the population that is every non-white person in the country. So like, of course, people are going to associate these fringe ideologies with this administration because this administration has a fringe ideology that it puts out to the public every single day.

43:08Well, I think we're just going to see more political mainstream, quote unquote, mainstream. Like nothing is as mainstream now as it was when we had more monoculture and so i think what i was saying is like there's more more fringe is going to be incorporated into the quote mainstream in the future because of the total decentralization that you don't i guess it's part of the good and bad of losing gatekeepers is that it's like on the one hand it's good because we benefit from the gatekeepers being gone meaning that we can do this on the other hand when the gatekeepers are gone it means you have to contend with the bad actors in that space too and they do start to really change things the last thing i will say on clavicular is that um we laughed earlier at zaron zaron's collectivism line being uh i saw this on x someone said the joke griffin made he sounds like an ayn rand villain and what's interesting to me about that is Ayn Rand was a, the, took Nietzscheism to its extreme.

44:12And this idea that power is what mattered did start to change the way, influence the way that the right approached capitalism and the right approached culture. And Ayn Rand was virulently anti-Christian, was anti-religious, which was the case with everyone who was downstream of Nietzsche in the 20th century in that kind of stream of thought. And that's, again, extraordinarily dangerous because what you're starting to see physically as a symbol in ridiculous figures like clavicular trickles more and more into policy, too. If you think this is just people looking at themselves, looks maxing, it's not.

44:57It's going to be power maxing. It's going to be polymarket maxing, which we're doing in different sectors of the economy right now, too. And so it's basically saying the only thing that matters is strength. The only thing that matters is power. And that's horrifying. Again, there's a real danger that migrates from the fringe. It's a very dark view of life That's probably a good segue, Griffin, to the Nick Shirley talking about Speaking of influencer culture and bad actors and all of that sort of stuff And how much power they have now Emily, we gotta talk about Detective Shirley The Gumshoe Reporter What's going on here, Emily?

45:41There was a YouTuber named Nick Shirley who went around Minnesota Walked up to some daycare centers and they didn't let him in Break it down for us I don't know if we have like an element to put up on the screen. I'll pull something up. Yeah. Over the last couple of weeks, this really broke right before Christmas, if I'm remembering correctly. It's hard to keep the day straight right now. But Nick Shirley, who's a pretty big kind of right-coded influencer, you see the video on the screen of CNN going to talk to Nick Shirley in Minneapolis as he's investigating the massive fraud ring that, you know, like 78 people have been charged, something like that already.

46:25He goes and knocks on the door of daycare centers, places that are purporting to treat autism, those types of things, and posts a video that just in the last couple of weeks has gone mega viral. I think it has like 3 million views on YouTube as of the time that we're talking about this and many, many more views on other platforms. It's basically taken what everybody had heard about in the last month, which was the story people have been shouting from the rafters about in Minneapolis for a long time and not just people on the right, by the way. The article that I've cited the most is a 2024 piece in the Minnesota Reformer from a Somali former government official who was saying, this is a real problem.

47:13Here's what's going on, X, Y, and Z. And so Shirley's tactics made for very compelling viewership because you could see in some of the cases like he's been reinvestigated by CNN and NPR and different outlets who've called all the places that he went to. You can see very clearly in some of the cases that it's shady and that they're kind of fronts. But but it's Gonzo. And in a way that he got wrong. Like, so the fraud is real. There is real fraud, like hundreds of millions of dollars of fraud. But the places that he went to were real. He like there's real fraud and he couldn't even get to the right ones.

47:54Right. Like, not all of them. But yeah, some of them actually do turn out to have because for one of them, he came early. So like one of them was a daycare that opens at two and he came there at like 11 a.m. That's what it sounds like. Yeah. And there were others where they were just like this man and a whole crew are pounding on our door and demanding to see our kids. No, thanks. We're not opening the door for you. You know, in the best circumstances, you wouldn't let him in. I mean, listen, like this guy is a propagandist. He had previously gone to Israel and did a whole propaganda piece for them about how moral they are and all the lies that the Palestinian, blah, blah, blah.

48:32Like, this is who he is. This is not journalism. It's completely shoddy, intentional propaganda. You should see his Seacott videos. Oh, boy. Yeah. We also got to hear his voice. I mean, this is who he is. We got to hear his voice. That's important, too. Let's just take a second of CNN confronting him, Crystal, before you finish your point. Okay. Yeah. Great.

48:53doors and talk to people at various daycares he claims are frauds. Did you come during normal operating hours when you came to visit? I came at 11 a.m. I believe and I also came the following day later in the day. The point of it is not whether or not I came at the right at the right time of their operation hours. The point is that blacked outdoors, they can't give you any information. You call that number, no one answers. I wasn't trying to go inside. I think there should be a way for somebody to actually be able to call that number and somebody be able to answer. These aren't real businesses.

49:23But surely you don't think a daycare should just be unlocked. You shouldn't be able to just walk into the daycare. It should be a reception. No. Every daycare is locked. And so, okay, you bring it up to your point. Why can't they ask you to give me information on how to enroll a child? Because you don't have a child. And then there's one more moment here that's really good. Yeah. All right, let's try this moment here. Do you think that federal law enforcement hasn't done enough? I mean, they would say, look, these fraud cases have been going on. But they've already done like 80 indictments. The cases have been going on, you know, for years.

49:55And why did I show up one day in Minnesota and go to all these daycares, no children. They're receiving millions of dollars. We uncovered nearly$110 million in fraud in one day. How do you know that all the allegations that you're making are true? How do I know that they're true? Well, we showed you guys what was happening. And then you guys can go ahead and make your own now. We're coming so we can make our own analysis. Are you 100 % sure you're true? Yeah, I am 100 % sure. The sweatshirt. Incredible. The sweatshirt is the infamous Quality Leering Center, which is the name of one of the daycares with misspelled learning.

50:28So what happens here is he films this bullshit propaganda video, which like, OK, the most you should do from this is then if you're genuinely concerned about fraud, which they're not. Trump is like spending every day pardoning a bunch of fraudsters. Like that's his whole administration is like a grift and like stealing everything that's not nailed down and pardoning white collar criminals left and right. So they don't actually give a shit about this. But those are white. Those are white protesters. No, no, no, no. Hunter and President. You're right. George Santos. George Santos. Okay. So also.

51:00But in any case. So they, you know, if you actually care about this. Okay. Well, let's see if he's, you know, really onto something here. Let me call these daycare centers. Let me do some investigation. Let me press the state of government of Minnesota. Does that happen? No. J.D. Vance retweets it. I don't know. Don Jr., bunch of other government officials just pick it up and run with it because they don't care whether it is true or not. In fact, I'm sure these are not J.D. Vance is not a stupid person. I'm sure he is probably suspects that a lot of this is not actually true, but it serves their propaganda.

51:33So not only do they take it and run with it with zero checking, but they use it for official government policy. So now not only are all of the child care payments, the state of Minnesota paused based on this absolute garbage propaganda bullshit, but they are now saying they're going to pause all child care subsidies to every state in the entire country. Like this is, I mean, this has genuine consequences. And this administration, oh, we're supposed to be like pro-family, blah, blah, blah. And also in favor of people being able to like go and work hard. How are you going to go out and hold a job if your daycare center is now shut down?

52:12A lot of these places are run very, you know, they don't have a lot of extra bandwidth. So if you have your subsidies cut for a month or even a handful of weeks, that center may be closed. your child care costs have just skyrocketed. So that's, I mean, it's just disgusting to me. But like I said, it serves their propaganda in terms of, you know, they want to make it about, we hate immigrants. We hate black Muslim immigrants in particular. It also is like, oh, undercutting the social safety net and undercutting the just, oh, it's all just fraud. You know, they're not really doing anything beneficial.

52:47And it also is not lost on me, and this is the point that others have made as well, That it comes at a time when Israel has taken a major beating with the right and with the public in general in terms of their perception. Their view is the best way to combat that is by stoking Islamophobia. And now here you go with the guy who did, you know, propaganda for Israel coming in to do this anti-Somali, like fundamentally like anti-Islamophobic propaganda as well. So I think those things, you know, are worth noting that those are happening in parallel. Well, the there are, though, I think Ryan and I read from this was a Minnesota reformer article that I just referenced by a Somali, I think, worked at the in the AG office in Minnesota talking about how there were real cultural components of this.

53:35And actually, this this article was also saying some of the biggest victims of this were Somali people who were being caught up in this this massive effort. And that, listen, I think our federal subsidy system is so like rife with fraud that there are plenty of white people who are out there like defrauding taxpayers and the government. But there were even like there are Somalis who say there was a cultural component to this. So I don't think it's entirely just a question of like stoking Islamophobia. I think there were maybe we all agree on this, that there were concerns in Minnesota about. Yeah, which is why the Biden administration prosecuted some like 78 people or whatever.

54:20You know, I mean, that's and that's the thing is like it makes me sick to see Elon Musk jumping in on this like a brother. You did doge. How many people did you refer for criminal prosecution of fraud? Zero. Zero. OK, so yeah, sure. I agree. The subsidy, by the way, the biggest subsidy queens are the Elon Musks of the world. Yes, completely. Yes. And so, you know, like if you're serious about and I think that people on the I agree with Ryan, I agree with Ro Khanna, that people on the left should be concerned about fraud in these programs because it does delegitimize them when it comes forward.

54:58And I'm someone who believes in a social safety net and universalist programs. Like, I think a lot of what Minnesota did was really great and really important. So you have to be serious about fraud. This is not the way to do it. Demonizing an entire group of people, going off of some bullshit propaganda video, honestly undercuts, you know, anyone who's serious about this, like undercuts their position in seriously investigating this stuff. Instead, you do like what Ro Khanna is doing in California where he said, look, there was a report that said there is a significant amount of fraud here. We need to have a commission.

55:30We need to root this out. We need to figure out where these dollars are going so that taxpayers feel like their money is being well spent. Like there are real and serious ways to go about it. The idea that these people have any interest in this when at the very same time he's pardoning some, you know, white collar criminal who stole over like a billion dollars and then denying people restitution that they're owed, who were victimized by these crooks who like took them for all they were worth in Ponzi schemes, etc. Like, let's be serious. They don't care. They just care because it's useful. They're a political project.

56:01And Trump literally pumps and dumps the entire economy with his like crypto coins and stuff like that. He's the biggest fraudster in the world. I'm confused. Do we like it or not? Is it based or not to do this? I'm confused because I think they're just following the great tradition of our president. True. Well, no, I mean, I think maybe the biggest, I don't know, one of the bigger takeaways from this is it's a media story in that the New York Times wading into the Somali fraud case is what then elevated it into the national dissonance. course. And in Minnesota, this has been a huge story for years, like years, years, years, like 2017, 2018, even before that.

56:46And when the New York Times covered it, my perspective as somebody on the right is this should have been a national story or more significant national story for a long time, just given the scale of the alleged fraud. It's so serious and significant. And the Chargers are insane that it was downplayed. And when the New York Times comes in, elevates the story, you still have a lot of people on the right who are frustrated with a lack of, I think, understandably frustrated with a lack of media coverage prior to the New York Times coming in. And that happens so often. The New York Times comes in, elevates a story.

57:25Springfield, Ohio, is a really good example. And then people on the right will go berserk in response to that. And it completely shifts the conversation to something different. And that's what with Nick Shirley is because a YouTuber who went around with a DJI mic and an iPhone with a couple of security dudes and was just like knocking on doors, didn't have presumably didn't have like an editor or a fact checker or anything like that. He put out a 40-minute YouTube video that was, like, fairly entertaining and caught, like, wildfire. And that's now the tone setting in politics. Like, that's how the conversation is getting set going forward.

58:04And there's just nothing that we can – like, that's how it is. It's the way it goes. Yeah. That's the last thing I'll say that's been irritating me as well is I see all these posts that are like, where's the mainstream media coverage? I'm like, this literally all started because of a New York Times piece. like y 'all weren't doing anything on this until the New York like the establishment outlet wrote this piece and then I've also seen all these oh look at all these outlets that haven't covered it and then you go and look and they have um and you know a bunch like there's a bunch of videos now local news even Barry Weiss's CBS local news on it the CNN piece and like a bunch of these outlets have gone out now to be like okay well what's really going on here but because those outlets aren't feeding the narrative that they want, then they discount that.

58:55Like, that doesn't count because you're not just, you know, feeding into this smear campaign that we want to see here. Well, I think he's the Andrew Callahan, the right. I think it's incredible that the right now has an ugly guy doing man on the street stuff, uncovering. So I'm excited for the next investigation and the next national news story from Nick Shirley. Anything else that we need to cover in this hour here, Crystal? Anything you're dying to get off your chest? Yeah, I am dying to get a little bit into this billionaire meltdown just because I've been somewhat involved with it. So if we could.

59:34All right. Drama alert. Yeah, drama alert. Crystal's a billionaire. Yeah, I'm a billionaire and I'm in Melting Town. So David Sachs here says, as a response to socialism, Miami will replace NYC as the finance capital and Austin will replace SF as the tech capital. It's funny because Miami just elected a Democrat as mayor, too. So that's LOL. And Austin is always Democratic, but whatever. Anyway, this is all in response to, OK, there is a possibility that there may be a ballot proposal on the ballots in California about a 5 percent well taxed to be paid over five years. And it's a coalition of unions who are pushing this.

1:00:19And so Ro Khanna, who knows a lot of these guys, you know, David Sachs has actually hosted fundraisers for Ro Khanna, came out and was like, this is good. And I support it. Cue an absolute meltdown from these dudes. And I think it's because it's Ro and because he represents Silicon Valley and because, like I said, they know him. It feels like more of a betrayal. Like, I think if AOC said something similar, I don't think they would really care. But because it's Roe, they're like losing their minds over it. And then what you have up here, I think, is you now have a bunch of these tech billionaires who, very Ackman style, are coming out online to announce that they're going to put all this money together to try to unseat Roe.

1:01:06And they say primary him. I mean, California has a jungle primary. So they don't really have primaries. Whatever. They want to challenge him. Right. this is going to be unsuccessful but um they're throwing a complete temper tantrum about it and so you know there's threats that they're going to leave the state and they're going to go to austin or they're going to go to miami and the whole deal here's an account saying well this guy's martin cassado he says roe has done a speed run alienating every moderate i know who supported him including myself beyond being totally out of touch with that faction of his base he's devolved into an obnoxious jerk.

1:01:41At least that makes voting him the fuck out all the more gratifying. And the reply here says, time to primary him. Count me in. Happy to be involved at any level. Yeah. There was one of these, I can't remember who it was from, that was like, he's just acting like a full-on Bernie bro now. And I'm like, my brother, my brother in Christ, he was literally co-chair of Bernie Sanders' campaign. Like, what are we talking about here? And they're happy to, your point about David Sachs hosting fundraisers for Roe and then talking about Miami and Austin, relatively blue places, Austin in particular, they didn't care about that when they thought Democrats were on their side.

1:02:23I mean, as the case was so many of them, they believed that they could kind of co-opt Democrats and then realized that basically Trump was much, much easier to co-opt. Was it Chamath who basically said that to who was it? It was like Pete Buttigieg or somebody who was on all in. He was like, I would try to call the Biden administration and get them to work with me and they weren't taking my calls. And it's just like, it's not about even like left or right. This is like such a, we're tying a bow on the whole episode here. It's about who gives them power and how they can be like strong players in the economy.

1:03:00And they believe in their core that they know what is best. And what's best is them having a ton of control in the marketplace. Yeah, they are deeply authoritarian people. I mean, they genuinely are. So they hated the Biden administration for regulating crypto. They hated the Biden administration's antitrust push. I mean, there was very little in terms of AI regulation that was actually done. But the little bit that was done, they absolutely hated it. They took it seriously. Yes. And then you also have these sort of series of personal grievances. I recommend you guys watch the interview I did with Jacob Silverman about his book, Gilded Rage, because he did all the fantastic reporting about these guys.

1:03:43You also have these personal things where, like, you know, they were pissed off that their employees were woke or in Elon's case, the fact that his son transitions to being, you know, a girl that really bothered him on a personal level. And then you have, I think it's Andreessen who's upset because his daughter goes to college and becomes a communist. So you have this sort of upset over being regulated combined with these sort of personal limitations on their power and domain over either their family members or their employees that leads to this absolute embrace of Trump. And so in any case, to take it back to California and Roe here, if you look at the polling on this, it's like 70 % of the country that thinks billionaires should be taxed more.

1:04:32It is an overwhelming consensus, not just among Democrats, among the entire country, that billionaires are not taxed enough and should be taxed more. Especially as AI is coming and the circles backed, you know what I was talking about early on and thinking about what is this going to mean for our society and what could a social contract look like that would actually work. The track we're on right now is to have a handful of trillionaires and everybody else basically like, you know, lamps of the slaughter, irrelevant, unneeded. That's where we're headed. And democracy can't survive that situation.

1:05:04There's just no doubt about that whatsoever. So in any case, this in the grand scheme of all of that is a very modest proposal, right? But the fact that it's even potentially on the table, again, this hasn't even made it on the ballot yet, but even potentially on the table, and that their representative in Silicon Valley would champion it has led to total meltdown. And so, you know, for me, it reminds me a little bit of why there was such a freak out about Zoran in New York. Not only is he confronting Capitol, but also on the, you know, that he's an avowed anti-Zionist. And there's this sense like, oh, you could never hold that position in New York City of all places.

1:05:47And so for Roe to hold this position in Silicon Valley of all places has a similar character and similar flavor. And it's why I think it's an important political political battle that is brewing here. I mean, when the 2017 tax cut was passed, this is how serious the Republican Party is about actual like closing loopholes and, you know, actually having a fair taxation system. Paul Ryan was out there talking about the proposal. It's long circulated on the right to get your taxes onto a postcard and essentially a version of the flat tax, some type of version of the flat tax. And it all – that obviously was not happening.

1:06:27It's all out the window. They have this generational opportunity to close loopholes and create a more fair taxation system. They then just repassed a version of that same bill and are expending no political capital to closing loopholes. There's a way – I mean I'm a flat tax person and we've talked about this before. But if you – I think if you – if these like libertarian business supermen were serious about populism and – which they're obviously not. But were serious about opposing elites, then you can do taxation in a way that closes loopholes and is still to them free market friendly. But nobody has any appetite.

1:07:11They might say, like, in the abstract, oh, that sounds good. But when push comes to shove and stuff's actually on the table, nobody ever, ever, ever, ever wants to do it. So you could even see momentum from the right to do something like a flat tax if you have all of this generational political capital. But we didn't. And I think that tells you what type of system people really prefer. Yeah. I mean, I hate to pay a flat tax, but we can fight about that another day because it's regressive, whatever. But your point, I mean, your point stands it. Here's one thing I replied to one of these guys. I don't even remember which one with.

1:07:46But I was like, listen, in a sense, Ro Khanna is like kind of trying to save your ass here. Like he calls a wealth tax an anti-revolution tax. And he's absolutely right. Like, do you think people are just going to stand by forever and watch you destroy their jobs, destroy their communities with your AI data centers, steal their water, hike their electric bills, and they're just going to take it forever? Like, no. I mean, this was the new deal. The deal in the new deal was that capital realized, okay, we're going to have to do something here or else we're going to end up with communists. Like, they're going to end up taking our shit.

1:08:26It's not going to be better for us if we don't do some sort of, you know, smoothing the rough edges of capitalism. And it's crazy to me that none of these guys see this. I mean, it really is genuinely insane to me that they don't recognize that if they don't cut the public in on the deal and they don't, they already have more money they could ever spend in a lifetime. Like, if you don't strike some sort of a balance here, it's going to be way worse for you in the long term. The public, and I'm not just talking about Democrats, like they hate you. They hate you. They think you are villains. Listen to, you know, listen to not only Democrats, listen to Steve Bannon.

1:09:06Listen to Nick Fuentes. Like there is a very broad, Tim Dillon. Look, there is a very broad coalition of people who, by the way, rightly see you as genuine villains and despise you. So in the grand scheme of things, like a 1 % for five years wealth tax or 5 % in five years wealth tax is such small potatoes. And so for me, that's the other part of this that's important is like it just shows you there is zero reckoning with that. Like even something that is a relatively in the grand scheme of things modest proposal, there's no like, oh, I don't think this is the right way to do it. Let's do this instead.

1:09:45It's just absolutely no. We will give you nothing. We will take our toys and leave. We will go. Some of them are like, we'll go to a different country. Zero loyalty. I don't buy it. Yeah. I don't either, by the way. I don't buy it at all. Because look what's happening in New York. It's like Lena Dunham. Yeah. After Zoran got elected, there were more luxury real estate sales, right? Because there's reasons people want to be in New York. There's reasons people want to be in Silicon Valley. Those things are going to persist. So while some, I mean, I don't. I got the Mamdani effect here from the independent.

1:10:16Sales of luxury homes spike in the Big Apple. Maybe there'll be a handful of like high profile people who very dramatically like take their toys and go the way Elon left for Texas or whatever. I don't put that. Yeah, I don't put that out of the question. But overall, is Miami going to become the finest? Like get out of town. Is Austin going to out to Silicon Valley in terms of tech investment? And not I mean, it's nowhere close to that. It's preposterous. It's a fantasy. So anyway, I think this is the fight that the Democratic Party needs to take on. And if they want to win back the trust of the people, if they want to be able to deliver meaningful change in the country and a genuine populism that's actually going to be beneficial and help to bring the country back together, these are the types of fights that they're going to have to take on.

1:11:08And, you know, Gavin Newsom, by the way, is on the other side of this, just to go back to Gavin Newsom, takes money from these guys, is raising money to oppose this ballot proposition, like, you know, is definitely on the wrong side of which way you would want the Democratic Party to go. But he mogs. But he does mog. So what are you going to do? You know, me and David Sachs, we're going to be in a Miami penthouse doing low grade amounts of meth to create a new finance capital of the world. Smashing your face with a hammer. Yeah. And while J.D. Vance gets a catastrophic amount of Ozempic shipped to his house, it's just going to be insane for J.D.

1:11:44the next couple of years. There's going to be another transformation. Well, folks, that's going to do it for our Friday episode. Oh, yeah. We're going to see something crazy before after. He's already had the transformation. The eyeshadow? Oh, the beard. The eyeshadow. He grew a beard. He lost probably like 30 pounds. He changed his name like five different times.

1:12:10Yeah. I mean, I think with JD, it's going to be tough for him because they bank so much on the vibes, you know, and like he does it. The vibes are not with JD, but we'll see. All right. Well, folks, the vibes are good here on January 2nd, 2026. We're excited for a big year. Anything else that we need to mention before we sign off and see you back in studio on Monday? Yeah, regular schedule next week, whether I'm prepared for that or not. That early wake-up call is going to be rough. So, you know, the real problems. These are the real problems that I'm facing in my life. You know who's ready for it?

1:12:47I bet Sagar is just waiting for his alarm to go off in the dark. You know he's so excited. Well, you know what? Now that he's a father, you start to, like, work becomes easy once you have kids. Because parenting is so much harder. So he probably is looking forward to like, can I get away from this baby for a little bit of time? Just like, let me go and be an adult for a little bit of time. I love it. And to the audience, we're so grateful for you. We hope you're having a great start to the new year. And in the comments of this video, let us know what you want us to cover this year. Anything that you think that we haven't covered enough, things that you'd like us to look into, things on the horizon.

1:13:27We're interested to hear what you think as well. And that'll do it for us. We'll see you all Monday. Bye-bye.

1:13:36This show contains information subject to, but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy Nav Green from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what? It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Not a team who ain't going to the playoffs. They're chief. It's time to rebuild. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:14:08This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back in 2016, we said, let's do a podcast. Little did we know it would last 10 years. I mean, but here's the thing. Stay out of the forest. You're in a cult. Call your dad.

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