10/9/25: Trump Threatens Pritzker Arrest, Palisades Fire Arsonist, Gold Prices Rise, AIPAC QR Codes

24:45This is extraordinarily unusual. Usually, prosecutors, they always get their indictments. And I've forgotten the numbers, but Washington Post did an analysis, and it's the tiniest proportion. Oh, yeah. Remember, there's the famous thing you can get at a grand jury. Indite a ham sandwich. Indite a ham sandwich. Famously, sandwich guy was not indicted. I have some of the details. It's kind of interesting. It says that Collins and Robdello were in a crowd of protesters September 27th at a facility in Broadview, Illinois. In an affidavit, authorities allege that he had, quote, pushed back agents who were trying to push back the crowd, and agents detained her after seeing a gun at her waist.

25:16Collins, who saw the struggle, charged forward yelling agents to get away from his wife, and the thumb of an agent was injured in a scuffle, according to the affidavit. They said in an interview that she was coming to his partner's aid after agents grabbed her and threw her against the wall. Both defendants were legally carrying guns but did not use or brandish them. And they said it was notable that the grand jury likely had members on both sides of the political divide and still decided not to indict. So that is the circumstance here. I guess the gun being one. Yeah, well - Hey, hey, 2A, you know?

25:45It's good for the 2A people. You're allowed to have it. Good for our 2A community. And Chicago is obviously liberal. It's not as liberal as DC. So to have a grand jury, Chicago area grand jury say, no, we're not gonna indict these two individuals, definitely significant. People have also been taking a look at this, let's put C7 up on the screen, this images of a pastor who's just standing there doing really nothing and gets shot in the head with this, I guess, like a pepper ball. You can see the white smoke come up and then he drops to the ground. I don't know if this is the same guy or a different religious figure who's getting sprayed in the face with pepper spray.

26:24Another image that went viral. Trisha McLaughlin, DHS spokesperson, addressed that video that we showed you first. You can put this up on the screen. She says that footage is from almost a month ago. It just went viral now, but apparently happened a month ago. What this clip video doesn't show is that these agitators were blocking Ike's vehicle from leaving the federal facility, impeding operations over and over again. Law enforcement ordered these agitators to move off federal property so the vehicle could move. Law enforcement verbally warned them they would use force if they did not move and stop impeding operations.

26:54They did not comply shortly after rioters began throwing rocks, bottles and launching fireworks at the law enforcement officers on the roof. So TLDR is not denying that it happened. There is a longer version of the video that I've seen. It does not appear that this pastor was he was actually standing in a parking space. So he wasn't blocking anyone from entering or exiting the ICE facility. But there's a separate lawsuit going on concerning their use. They're sort of like indiscriminate use of these, you know, pepper balls and pepper spray on crowds. CPD, Chicago Police Department, was accidentally pepper sprayed.

27:28You had an elementary school that had to stay inside because of pepper spray, you know, sort of indiscriminately just deployed in the neighborhood. So this is becoming quite a contentious piece as well. It's a bad image. I mean, there's, you know, anytime you start pepper spraying priests or not priests, sorry, pastors or any of that doesn't look good. Not going to deny it whatsoever. It's one of those which is the more that the left gets their civil rights analogies, the more it's going to be able to take off. And this is part of the reason why there's a lot of people who don't want on the right who want to criticize some of the way that ICE behaves.

28:01But I keep bringing it back to the fact that people who voted in 2024 wanted law and order specifically, order specifically on the border. And when deportation, the envisionment of, quote, mass deportation was not necessarily one of which we are viewing right now. This is Trumpian and unique in a sense that genuinely is divorced from a lot of people's conceptions. You could say they should have known, et cetera. I actually – I really don't agree with that actually at all because if you look specifically not only at the rhetoric around criminals, illegals, et cetera, or even around the idea of deportation itself, it is one thing to say that it should happen in a serious and a well-ordered fashion.

28:43And then it's another kind of in this content brain area that we have arrived at today. And I think that's the part where a lot of people rightfully will look at that and just be like, look, I can agree intellectually, emotionally, morally with the idea of mass deportation, which I do, especially for people who arrived here illegally. I also do think there is something very grotesque about like turning it into content as in with what they did with the Thea Vaughn clip. We have this one as well, C10. Can we show everybody, for example? So here you have a video, right, where you got Ice chasing some guys into a storefront.

29:21But what's noteworthy is the guy in the background with a full mounted, you know, what is that? That's like a DSLR camera, right? Like this literally looks like almost like a rig of a Twitch streamer or something who is accompanying them. Now, listen, I am very supportive of body cam footage and all that. I think it's very important, you know, to keep cops accountable. And I'm assuming some of this will be available to FOIA eventually, at least sometime in the future. So it's not a bad thing for them to be documenting what they are doing. But considering the social media strategy that is now currently happening, I don't know.

29:55I mean, I don't think it is working in their favor. Look, I could be wrong, and this is what I hear. You're a squish. You're an idiot. You're not doing – you don't understand what it takes and all that. I said maybe, maybe. I'm not the person who won the election or anything like that. But I don't necessarily think that even people who agree with genuine – look, I mean there's quandaries, right? Like you can accept the fact that people who came here illegally are going to be deported and you can be okay with that. There is just to me another thing about filming it and turning it into like video game style content.

30:29Or remember the memes, like the Studio Ghibli memes and others that they were using from Chad? I go, okay, I just think that's a little bit gross, in my opinion, personally. Yeah. That's just me. The ASMR deportation videos. That's like, is that really, you know, it's just weird. Like, it's one of those where do we revel? Do we enjoy doing this? Because the way it was sold, it's like, look, it's a tragedy. This is one that the left created. I think that's correct. And yet, you know, to seriously address it, we'll take this, this, and this. That doesn't deny that you have journalists or others.

31:02People are going to be filming this. but it just seems to me very different to have you filming it yourself, turning it into meme. Like the Theo Vaughn thing to me is just like so insane. Like they used his likeness and image in a DHS video where what did he say exactly? He was like, bye or something. He didn't even know what he was saying. Somebody thrust a camera or whatever into his face. They turned it into something from the official Department of Homeland Security account. And then in his response, he was like, yo, you guys are just using this. He's like, somebody could come and kill me.

31:30He was like, I don't even know the ring password to my camera or something. He had never considered that right. I really, that's where things really seem to go in a bad direction. Also, just strategically, like if you accept, and I do accept that these guys, the Theo Vons, et cetera, were an important part, not determinative, but an important part of why they won. Yeah. And then how tone deaf to go out of your way to like piss this person off, you know? And I feel like as a human, you would then be sort of like incentivized to distance yourself. Like, I have nothing to do. Like, this is not, you know, this is not something I support.

32:06I think his dad immigrated from Nicaragua as somebody he's very proud of, you know. And so he's like, I don't want to be associated with this. And so it is giving a little bit of like the IDF soldiers filming their war crimes because the reason they did that was not, it was because there was a domestic audience for it. Like inside of Israel, these guys were getting praised and getting support for, you know, these these whores that they're putting out there. And, you know, now I was seeing some stats, Agar, that Twitter, which used to be dominated by Democrats, now dominated by Republicans, not that that would be any surprise.

32:39But I do think that some of this is a result of being inside of this media bubble where you think that this, you know, base this like based ritual or the vice signaling or whatever, that this lands with the general population in a way that it really doesn't. So you've got that dynamic. The dynamic you were touching on before, too, I think is a really important one, which you are absolutely right. People want things to feel safe, calm, orderly, like they do want that law and order sense. There's no doubt about it. And so what the Trump administration is flirting with here, if not has already crossed the threshold, is to make it appear very much like they are the chaos agents, like they are the ones bringing tumult into your communities.

33:20If you look at, you know, if you look at Chicago, if you look, I think in Portland, it's even more clear. Crime rate was way down. These protests had really died out. There were, you know, maybe a dozen or so people who were routinely outside of the ICE facility, et cetera. Now you have all of this tumult after the Trump administration comes in and tries to sort of like stoke the flames. So when you combine that with also the increasing understanding that these actions are not just impacting undocumented immigrants, they're impacting American citizens as well whose rights are being directly violated, you start to get on the wrong side of a political equation.

33:56As I told you before, my fear is that they don't really care. You feel like they just have miscalculated here. Either I acknowledge is completely possible. But, you know, I don't think that these what do I know? But I don't think that most people, even people who are in favor of a larger scale deportation than I am, are enjoying the images of like little kids zip tied. I have no idea. OK, I have no idea. And I can't speak to everybody's motivation. Only, you know, general political analysis to the law and order point. This is one which is very important. And we kind of thought about one of the reasons why I don't think there was as much backlash on L.A.

34:30is you had guys with Mexican flags on top of burning cars. And guess what? That's going to go viral everywhere. In terms of Portland or Chicago, have not yet seen that type of imagery or large-scale blocking a highway in major response, similar to the Antifa or the BLM protests of 2017 all the way through 2020, which Portland in particular was like an epicenter for quite a bit of that. And also, I mean, one of the things I personally have had to grapple with is that people who live in some of these cities just accept a shitload more crime than I ever would. I will never understand it. I don't know why it's cool to have fentanyl-leaning people everywhere, but that seems to be the acceptance that a lot of them want, and they would rather have that than somebody actually do anything about it or feel virtuous, I guess.

35:14It's your city. You can do what you want, but that is another kind of locality where you're rubbing up against. Like here in D.C., I mean, I think the crime was out of control. I think it was absolutely out of control. Some new statistics just came out actually showing that the cops were cooking the books. It's not a secret. I've lived here for over 10 years. It's a shithole compared to how it used to be. But residents broadly seemed okay with it. I was like, okay. I don't know. That's why I left. I was like, you know, at a certain point, you'd rather have a Black Trines Lives Matter flag than you would do anything about crime.

35:44That's your decision. And to allow murder, I'm just going to leave and allow exit. But that is another thing I've been grappling with as well is there is something perverse at the same time. And we have to be guilty of this, right? is we're commenting on Portland. I don't live in Portland, right? In a certain sense, I believe in supremacy. I believe in having to guarantee people's rights. I also, though, acknowledge the city of Portland is massively liberal. They literally legalized drugs there. I mean, they finally admitted their mistake in the state of Oregon. But I visited Portland at the height of it, like, I think, 20, 22.

36:18It was insane. It's probably the most, like, hippie-ish city. Yeah, no, but I'm talking about Primark. At night, literal rogue fentanyl addicts running around trying to check into a hotel. You have to get buzzed into the hotel. You cannot get in. I'm talking in the middle of downtown. People there just didn't seem to care. I was like, wow, I could never live this way. I think, I mean, we should also say that this National Guard attempting to have National Guard deployment in Portland and the increased presence of federal agents and whatever. Trump is not saying this is about crime. He's saying this is about protecting federal ops or protecting this ICE building, etc.

36:59Well, it depends on the day. But that's been the primary justification that he's been. And that is completely and totally fabricated. Like by their own admission, their own internal report said that the protests outside the ICE facility were low energy before they decided to show up and put snipers on the roof and all of this nonsense. So I don't like to, you know, we shouldn't validate their narrative about what's going on because their narrative is completely and utterly false. We got to be like, it's not nice. Like, listen, I love Portland as a place. It's cool. It's amazing weather in the summer.

37:32It is genuinely beautiful. But they do just, again, I don't get it. Seattle, Vancouver, any of these like Pacific Northwest places, they just accept like a level of drug use in public, which I think is crazy. D.C. I have no idea why people put up with it or any of that. And then, of course, what the Trump administration and the federal government wants is people like me or others who don't live there who are like, I can't believe this. Right. And then they're kind of interacts with the national dart deployment, et cetera. I do think that there is something weird about it, like in general, where we pass judgment.

38:04And I do. Certainly, I just said it about Portland, about San Francisco, about Los Angeles. I think all are crazy here, D.C., Chicago, all these other folks. I don't No, I would not personally live there given the choice. But at the same time, there is something weird, which I do acknowledge because I'm sure that they look at our life, say, wherever we live, and they're like, well, I wouldn't want to live there either. And it's like, well, I don't necessarily want them to oppose their will on me too. I don't want them to have to come in. To the extent that I have a lot of, let's say, pushback is when I see that type of BS mentality start to bleed into, let's say, the suburbs, that's when I'm like, okay, it's time to riot.

38:38So I do get it from their perspective and I want to validate their feelings. Like, yes, you do also get to kind of live the way that you want to. Like if you want to live in a city with a shitload of crime and fentanyl and I mean, okay, I don't know what to say. I guess it's your choice. It's just one that you – it's a permissiveness and a value structure which you've created all for yourselves. I think you – I guess you deserve it. I don't know what else to say. I mean I think there – I think you would understand some of it in the context of the conversations we've had about safetyism. like where there's, you know, I think we're seeing right now in real time with these extraordinary federal government actions in Chicago, Portland, other places that there's a trade off on the other side of that.

39:21You know, so there are it's you know, you have this sense of fear, this sense of surveillance, this, you know, this lawlessness coming from the federal government and sense of chaos being stoked by them when you do have those sorts of crackdowns. So I think in real time we're seeing what those tradeoffs kind of look like. I think – again, I think it's totally fair. People get to – at the end of the day, get to decide for themselves like here in D.C. It was very clear to me. I was like these people do not care how I do about crime. I'm the problem, I guess. I don't necessarily have the right to just say the city should be the way I am.

39:57So sometimes you just got to do the responsible thing and leave. But if you want to stay and that's the way that you want to live, I also have believed in the American value of like, well, maybe you should be able to live that way, right? Like if that's how you want it to be, so be it. And people, citizens can make up their rights, their minds for themselves. Hey everyone, it's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast. Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step.

40:32And we're not just lawyers, were also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it.

41:07You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman. And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did The Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:44I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. and now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Turning now to the Pacific Palisades fire. So obviously devastating fire that happened in January. We covered quite a bit of it here. It was horrible. People lost their lives, just billions of dollars in property damage and so much just about FEMA and just the general response to that and whether people would be able to rebuild.

42:31We are now learning, the Department of Justice is alleging that it was actually an intentional act of arson and one that was deeply planned using apparently chat GPT style images with some evidence that they're able to show you of an Uber driver who allegedly took part in this. Let's take a listen to what they say. The Palisades fire reported on January 7th was caused by an intentionally set fire near a viewpoint along the Temescal Ridge Trail in Topegna State Park on January 1st. The fire was a holdover fire, meaning it was deeply seeded in dense vegetation and roots and continued to burn undetected until catastrophic weather ensued, resulting in the Palisades fire.

43:16So this is including the images. Let's put this up here, guys, on the screen. This is from the acting U.S. attorney. He says, today we are announcing the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rindernacht on a criminal complaint charging him with maliciously starting what became the Palisades fire in January. The complaint alleges that Rinderknecht started a fire in the Pacific Palisades on New Year's Day, a blaze that eventually turned into one of the most destructive fires in Los Angeles history, causing death and widespread destruction. Among the evidence that was collected from his digital devices was an image that he generated on ChatGPT depicting a burning city.

43:50While he cannot undo the damage and destruction that was done, we hope his arrest and the charges against him bring some measure of justice to the victims of this horrible tragedy. His initial appearance is scheduled in the U.S. District Court in Orlando, where apparently he was. So some of the details, D3, please, that we can put and share with all of you. Like I said, is working as an Uber driver and was, quote, obsessed with images of fire, is how they characterize it. And so I guess this is like a thing. They call them fire bugs. Pyromaniacs. Yeah, pyromaniacs. They say he's accused of maliciously sparking the brush fire January 1st.

44:26The fire was then knocked down by the LA Fire Department, but obviously continued to smolder before high winds and rekindled it. They said it left 12 people dead, 7 ,000 homes,$150 billion in property damage. They say he lived in the area at some point, quote, allegedly ignited the flames near a popular hiking trail at about midnight time on New Year's Day, just moments after dropping Uber passengers off nearby. They later said that he, quote, appeared agitated and angry after arriving at the hiking trail. He allegedly filmed the scene on his phone and listened to a rap song by a French artist whose music video features him setting a series of fires.

45:10The Google record showed that he was born in France. Apparently, he had listened to that song multiple times in the music video four times leading up to the day of the fire, and it translated the lyrics from that song that something says, like, daily life is killing me. I feel like I'm nowhere. There's too much bitterness in my head. I think about the mistakes that we made. And they say at another point in the music video, it actually shows a burning barrel outside of a housing project that eventually becomes a huge inferno. They say he watched his fire burn for a minute before fleeing down the trail where he made a three-minute video recording of himself attempting to call 911 to report the blaze.

45:48As he was on the phone to dispatchers, he typed, are you at fault if a fire is lit because of your cigarettes into chat GPT, which was also featured apparently in the screen recording that he was trying to make there. So creating an alibi, I think, where he was like, I'm calling 911. And am I at fault for, because it was a cigarette, like trying to play it off as a cigarette. We're not exactly sure. He then said they drove away from the scene, turned around to follow the responding fire trucks back to the scene where he watched and recorded videos as the crew battled the Inferno. And eventually all of this comes to light now after I guess prosecutors were able to zero in with the Uber message, with the 911 records, the arson investigation.

46:33I mean, it's totally crazy. I mean, it killed so many people, caused so much damage. And I genuinely was not aware that this was a thing, that there are just freaks out there who like to set fires. I know. I was actually reading about it yesterday. I'd never even heard of it. So most arson is not set by pyromaniacs. It's like people who are, you know, looking for insurance funds or for revenge or whatever. But this certainly bears the hallmark of someone who's like obsessed with fire. And there's even people who get like sexual gratification from fire, watching fire. And like, I don't know if he is one of those people, but it certainly bears the hallmarks of someone who has like a twisted obsession when Fire listening to this video, this music video, watching it over and over.

47:14He was watching other videos about fires, even him recording himself with the fire in the background and generating these images on chat, GPT, et cetera. And we also should say, I mean, listen, I'm reading a lot into the lyrics of the song that talk about all my life, the meaningless, et cetera. But it could be kind of like have some similarities to some of the nihilist killings that we've talked about. And people did get killed here, by the way. Twelve people were dead as a result of these blazes and thousands of homes destroyed. California was, I don't know if you guys remember, like it was horrible.

47:53California was a tinderbox and it wasn't, it was, this fire was the largest one. There were others burning as well. You had the Santa Ana winds that were extraordinary, 80 miles per hour that made this thing spread just so rapidly and like crazy. absolutely sick and horrific thing to have done. And it really was kind of like a perfect, so the vegetation was very dry as well. I mean, it was just like a perfect storm for this to end up being one of the worst and deadliest blazes in California history. Yeah, that's right. It was really awful. We just wanted to make sure we gave everybody an update just because, I mean, there's nothing really political, I guess, to say about it.

48:30We don't know very much exactly. Of course, everybody immediately ran, what's his social media? And who's - The New York Post says he was a Biden supporter. He gave$2 to Joe Biden. Did he? Yeah, he gave$2,$1, and then another$1 on another date. Well, for full transparency to the audience, I have a parlay bet with our producer, Mac, on whether this gentleman and Mark Sanchez both had marijuana involved in the case. So looking forward to the toxicology report on both of those cases. And he does owe me$50 if it does come to pass. So we'll see. I don't think we'll ever know that. What do you mean?

49:04It'll come out in the criminal court. He said cigarettes there, right? You think it's a real cigarette or a marijuana cigarette? I'm just, just wait. We'll wait and see. I'll let you be the, I will let you be the person who looks and can validate the debt, or the debt. How about that? I'll be the judge. And for Mark Sanchez, we're calling for a full release of the toxicology report. Yeah. Full, full scale release in order to settle this wager between two gentlemen here. Another thing he came back, he did, which added to him being a suspect, was he came back to watch the firefighters. Oh, yeah.

49:34fighters fight the blaze also. That's so weird. Yeah. Sometimes I just get creeped out that people like this are alive and exist in our society. Very natural response. Okay, let's get to gold. Turning now to gold. This is really crazy. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Gold has now pushed above$4 ,000 an ounce for the very first time. In general, when people are fleeing to gold, things usually aren't good. So let's just go ahead and look into it a little bit. I love the lead here from the New York Times. President Trump's decorators aren't the only ones bringing gold back into fashion.

50:06They say investors, money managers, central banks across the world have piled into gold on Tuesday pushed its price above$4 ,000 an ounce. The precious metal has gained more than 50 % this year, setting a series of records in the process. Gold, often seen as a haven during times of turmoil, is on course for its best year since 1979 after 100 % surge during a period of high inflation, a depreciating dollar, and a geopolitical crisis in the Middle East. Gee, anyone reminded of any of those circumstances? Right now, it's a little weird. They say the recent rise in gold is due to demand from investors looking to shift away from U.S.

50:48assets at a time of political upheaval and uncertainty, highlighted right now by the government shutdown. The gold rally also reflects a strong undercurrent of unease amongst investors, even as stocks have repeatedly set records, giving Wall Street a bullish error. So can we go and put the next one up here? Because that actually is one of the things I wanted to highlight, is this is about eroding faith in all international financial institutions. So they specifically say that it is eroding faith in central banks worldwide. And in general, they talk about how on Saturday, Japan got a new prime minister.

51:20On Tuesday, gold topped 4 ,000. They say it's not a coincidence. The surprise nominee to lead the party is a fiscal and a monetary dove. She wants much more economic stimulus, and thus that means that there was a big run on gold from the Japanese. So there's a lot of different energies around the world which are pushing people towards gold. But I think America and its general, like the shutdown, the tariffs, even the Wall Street thing that they mentioned there, that is all part of the picture, at least for me. Because I think it's important to say the S &P 500 is like it's either at an all-time high or very near an all-time high.

51:55We talk about the AI bubble on our Tuesday show or potential bubble. And maybe it's.com. 40 % of GDP spending is from AI. 80 % of gains are all from AI stocks. So a logical investor looking at that could either say, oh, I'm going to go into cash or into gold because I think it's a bubble. So if a gold is rising, that shows that even though a lot of people who are buying the S &P 500, U.S. equities and all that, they no longer see that as safe as a usual investment. And they're buying gold. So usually, as we said previously from 1979, it's correlated with lack of faith in the government. And then at the same time, they talked about the European central banks, about the Ukraine crisis, about Japan.

52:37There is an anti-institutional financial moment across the world, which is pouring people generally into gold. So overall, very fascinating sociological development for what it means. Well, so typically, if gold is rising, everything else is falling. Right, but that's not happening. So the fact that you have stock market at all-time high and you have gold at all-time highs is why people are going, this is really, really weird. So what's going on here? And a lot of what's going on is, number one, people are very nervous about potential AI bubble. So they want to have some sort of hedge against what happens if my massive AI bets go belly up.

53:18And number two, normally in a normal environment over the post-World War II era, when you have investor nervousness, one of the flights to safety is U.S. Treasuries. U.S. Treasuries, U.S. dollars no longer feel so safe. We have, I mean, government shutdown, Trump tumult, like very high debt and deficit, like all kind, you know, political chaos. Like there's this sense and, you know, with the tariffs and the dozing and all of this that, yeah, I don't know if the U.S. is relieved the place that I want to place my bets either in terms of safety. In fact, you know, we had a credit downgrade. So this is like backed by the ratings institutions, whatever.

54:00So instead of the U.S. Treasuries being the classic flight to safety, instead, many are going to precious metals and specifically gold. Yeah. So those are kind of the underlying dynamics here. And it's not just the U.S. There's also, you know, since other central banks are maybe, you know, not on as firm footing as they should be. But a lot of it has to do with a loss of faith in the United States. Bingo. And also with AI. So let's go to the next one here. I thought this was really interesting and fits with the gold story. Bank of England has now warned of growing risk that the AI bubble could burst.

54:31They say a possibility of sharp market correction has increased from the bank's financial policy committee. They're warning of a sudden correction in all global markets, specifically about the storing valuations of AI tech companies. Policymakers said there are threats of, quote, sharp repricing of U.S. dollar assets if the Federal Reserve lost credibility in the eyes of all global investors as, quote, Trump continues to attack the U.S. Central Bank and threaten its independence. Continued hype and optimism about the potential for AI technology has led to a rise in valuations in recent months, all the stuff that we have talked about.

55:05However, the Bank of England said the risk of a sharp market correction has increased on a number of measures. Equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence. This leaves equity markets particularly exposed should expectations about the impact of AI become less optimistic. It says investors are not fully accounting for these potential risks, warning that a sudden correction should any of them crystallize, resulting in finance drying up for households and businesses. They say, as an open economy with a global financial center, the risk of spillovers to the UK financial system from such global shocks is material.

55:42So I think that's important for them. It also shows you, as you just said, usually you pile into gold when the market's already crashing. What if people are piling into gold because they expect the market to crash? And there are a lot of sophisticated investors. I was just reading. Let's put this next one, please, up on the screen just to show you all. There is some financialization that is behind this. It's not just normal investors that are doing this. It's specifically investors worried about the future of the dollar and other major currencies are piling into gold, Bitcoin, and all other alternative assets, powering on Wall Street what is known as the debasement trade.

56:16Traders have snapped up gold. Since Jerome Powell's signal in August, they would begin cutting interest rates. Actively traded gold futures surpassed that$4 ,000. The gold rally is unusual because it hasn't been fueled by a financial meltdown. They say investors are pouring their money specifically to do this. At the same time that President Trump has pledged to juice the economy through tax cuts and traders, they have pushed stocks to records with a fervor for all things artificial intelligence. And some of this is a little bit of a hedge against the S &P 500 from AI. And the gold camp is saying we're going to have structural deficits.

56:49We have fiscal pressure in the U.S. and I need to manage that risk. So anyway, I just want to keep everybody updated. When gold goes this high, I don't know. It's not usually a good sign. Not usually. I guess it's a good sign for some of the boomers who bought it from podcast advertising. Yes. So there you go. Congratulations to them and all the other gold coins that they've been advertising on Fox News for decades. All right. Shall we get to games? It's finally paying off. It's fine. Well, only if they sell. Only if they sell. Maybe you shouldn't sell, right? You know, what's the - Could go higher.

57:14I mean, I think the expectation is it's going to continue to climb. Here's my question. If you buy physical gold and then you sell it, is it capital gains tax? Or is it, like, what type of income is that, right? Is it an investment income? Like when you sell a stock, that's, anyway, yeah. I got to look into this from a tax purpose. I mean, yeah, I think that would be capital gains. It would, right? Because it's an investment or, yeah, I don't know. I need to look into that. I mean, anything that you buy, anything, art, wine, gold, et cetera. Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Because a house is taxed capital gains.

57:44That you buy and hold and then sell for a profit, that's capital gains. Okay. All right. I didn't know. I used to be a CPA, guys. I took the test and passed it. Well, we relied on our knowledge as our empire grows. All right, let's get to Gates.

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59:28I actually drop better when I'm high. It heightens my senses, calms me down. If anything, I'm more careful. Honestly, it just helps me focus. That's probably what the driver who killed a four-year-old told himself. And now he's in prison. You see, no matter what you tell yourself, if you feel different, you drive different. So if you're high, just don't drive. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Former Congressman Matt Gaetz in an appearance on Tim Pool's podcast, making some interesting revelations about his experience with APAC. Let's take a listen. I remember my first APAC reception.

1:00:11And like your fundraiser tells you you have to go. And your chief of staff tells you you have to go. Your committee chairman all tell you you have to go. And you get there and you wear this name badge. and I remember there's a QR code on it. And what we were supposed to do was go talk to donors. And then if they liked you, they scanned your QR code to make a donation like on the spot. And so can you just imagine how demoralizing that is to like be told that your job for the next several hours to go chat people up, hoping they would scan you like a can of tomato soup on the way out of the meeting.

1:00:44I mean, it's like literally purchasing. Right. And so I saw that and I was like, wow, that is so freaking weird. Literally making the choice on the spot whether or not they're going to buy this congressman. I mean, it's just like, and to be honest with you, this is not really any different from the way that other fundraising works. I mean, I ran for Congress, right? I've been to these events where you go and you try to meet and network with donors who typically give, in my case, to Democratic candidates. You're schmoozing. There's a whole dance around LA. Let me get your information. That means so I can call you later and beg you for dollars.

1:01:21They just come right to the chase. Like, we're just, you're just going to wear a QR code. And then if I like what you have to say, which with regard to AIPAC would be Israel now, Israel forever. You can genocide whoever you want. We don't care. We'll back you up even when it's completely unreasonable. As long as you're willing to say those words, then they'll scan your QR code and give you some dollars right there on the spot. They've got this down to a science, Sagar. Well, according to APAC, the QR code is for security purposes only, and it is false. What? What do you mean for security purposes?

1:01:52I don't know. Listen, I'm simply giving APACs. Have you ever needed your own personal QR code to feel secure? Maybe I should. Maybe I should. They say that they include APAC security. Yes, they say the accusation about fundraisers is, of course, a lie. Barcodes are on the name badges for security reasons, not fundraising. They are scanned for that purpose. Maybe Matt Gaetz was confused because he wanted people to scan his barcode and they didn't want to talk to him. Well, I'm glad you got their denial in. Thank you. Cover our bases here. Yeah. Matt Gaetz's response is, IDK, APAC. I read something in the history books that putting codes on people was really bad.

1:02:27Ooh. Okay. Ooh. Wow. He went there. He went there. He certainly did. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is that it's, in general, it's like you described, And this gets to the whole AIPAC conversation. And everyone's like, they should register as a foreign agent. And I mostly agree with that. But part of the problem is that in some ways the AIPAC defenders are correct only in that they're like, what are you talking about? It's all American citizens. And you're like, yeah, that is the issue that we kind of have to grapple with. The foreign registration thing almost belies the point of there is an entire connected political network, yes, of U.S.

1:03:03citizens who exist solely for the purpose or at least in this case to preserve the so-called U.S.-Israel alliance, which is tremendously impactful at the political level. I think that that does genuinely amount to some level of foreign interference or something. But it's a more sociological question of like this is so crazy about the ability – there's all these billionaires, people like the Adelson family and others who have said things in public. Like I wish I'd served in the IDF rather than the US Army and you're like, dude, like this is such an insane thing to say, right? And to use your political influence and other than that, specifically on behalf of a foreign nation, how do we draw that line?

1:03:44Like, in my opinion, we should update probably the legislation to say that if you're overtly going to push another country's agenda, even if you are a U.S. citizen, that is going to have to qualify in some way as far, even if it's a foreign dollar or not. Yeah, very, very difficult to draw that line. It's so hard, exactly. Very difficult. I mean, the truth of the matter is that, look, they're able to exploit our wide open Wild West campaign finance system where, you know, anyone can be bought for any price at any time. And there's very little limits on that. And by the way, David Starr to flag for me, the Supreme Court has taken up a case that's going to if you thought there were already no campaign contribution limits that could even more decimate the ability to regulate big money in politics whatsoever.

1:04:26And so, look, the Israelis, I mean, Netanyahu is literally like from Philadelphia. So they understand our politics. They understand our political system. They know where the loopholes are. They know how to gain influence. And they have done so extremely, extremely effectively. They have over the years convinced an entire religious group that the way for them to serve God is by allowing the Israelis to do whatever they want for us to send billions of dollars every year to them to buy weapons and subjugate an entire different group of people. So they have wielded that influence extraordinarily effectively.

1:05:00And so, you know, I don't know, we'll take APAC's word for it that it wasn't exactly as Matt Gaetz described. But there's no doubt that they have the most organized ability and the most persistent ability to get not just to politicians, but to media personalities. We're about to talk about this next story to anyone who has influence. I told before my own story as soon as I got hired as a host at MSNBC. Lo and behold, APAC wants to take me on a trip to Israel. did not take them up on that. Jabal Bowman told his story about when he's running for Congress. They went through all sorts of channels to make sure they could get a meeting with him because he initially said, no, I don't want to sit down with AIPAC.

1:05:38So they went through this well-respected organization like Uplifting Black Men in New York City that he'd been involved with before. They used them as a conduit to be able to get their meeting and get in his ear. Very persistent. And they have lots of money to spend, apparently. Let's put this next piece up on the screen. So they hatched a plan to try to hire celebrities like Chris Pratt and Steph Curry, a newly created firm. This is a responsible state craft, by the way. They've been doing some really good reporting. And this gentleman in particular, Nick Cleveland Stout, we'll have to get him on the show sometime.

1:06:12But anyway, he writes, a newly created firm called Show Faith by Works is carrying out a$3.2 million outreach and digital targeting campaign to Christian churches in the western U.S. on behalf of the Israeli government. Firm's goal, as described in its filing under Farah, is to increase positive associations with the nation of Israel. They're going to carry on that campaign through December for its work, which includes targeting churchgoers with pro-Israel ads, geofencing major churches, meaning that they're going to, like, if they see your cell phone number in the area of this megachurch, they're going to target you directly using geofencing, hiring celebrity spokespeople.

1:06:50That's where the Steph Currys and John Voight and Chris Pratt and Tim Tebow and others come in. And visiting churches and colleges with a mobile trailer called the 10-7 Experience on behalf of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This, of course, will come as no surprise because he talked publicly about how, you know, one of the fronts in the war is the, what was it, the seventh front, the eighth front. I lost track. Was this information war? He talked about how important the purchase of TikTok by Zionist allies was going to be and the amount of censorship that they'd be able to put into place there.

1:07:26Talked about Elon being an ally and being able to shape the conversation on Twitter as well. So they are very, very intentional about what they're doing with all of this. Yeah, it is. Reading it is just so crazy, but it all makes sense, right? Is that it's a$3.2 million outreach digital marketing thing. By the way, we're talking about this. It actually was, this is so what's crazy about Farrah. They actually have to admit this stuff in the documents. So they're like, yeah, that was an early, they contacted him. He didn't deny that the plan was to hire or try to hire some celebrities. He said it was an early planning document.

1:08:01He's like, but we haven't followed through or contacted any of them just yet. But he doesn't deny any of it. Just to be clear, there's no indications that any of these particular people have received these funds. This was just like their target list of people. Yeah, they say, John, all the actors and other famous people that you just listed, they say specifically that their initial planning document was to contact them. But nonetheless, can we just sit with$3.2 million? Like, this is so much money, specifically for some geofencing, targeting Christian church campaign, but it also fits a lot with a political strategy that we talked about here, which is going after the evangelicals and the megachurch pastors who become like the biggest pushers of the CUFI movement, the Christians United for Israel.

1:08:42They lead, like Mike Huckabee, a lot of those end times trips to Israel for a lot of the tourism groups. I mean, remember one of the few times that Huckabee criticized Israel was because they were holding up the visas for a lot of those evangelical groups who were visiting. Anyway, I mean, it is the bedrock of the U.S.-Israel alliance in terms of the last bastion of like genuinely very popular support. That's where it all comes from right there. And so it's not a surprise that this is where most of the pushback or most of the energy is going to be in terms of their political acts. Because this is really the last group they've got a strong grip on.

1:09:20100%. So they got to hold on tight. And it just so happens that they're a really important group. They're President Trump's most rock-solid constituency in terms of his support. So they're a very important group. And they want to make sure that they don't start to drift away the way that most of the rest of the population has. Well, same with the congressman. I mean, this is why it matters for Gates and all these other people to speak out because those people – I mean, think about it. If you're a congressman, you have to go to the groups or just go speak in general at different places. Who are you most likely going to speak to?

1:09:49Retirement homes, churches, or like religiously inspired nonprofits, whatever. Well, these are exactly the type of folks who would be involved in that. And so at a demographic level, that's where they feel so much pressure often from the people who visit their office, their pastors and others who are prominent. You know, they have a flock. Isn't that what they call a flock or something? You know, when you have a large group of people, they're like, oh, well, my flock is very supportive of Israel. Right. So you could just see how this whole pressure campaign on them, which is so organized and ingrained in Republican politics, becomes so influential.

1:10:19And it's noteworthy that Gates can only say any of this whenever he's out of office. Yeah, I know. That's the most important part. I was thinking about that. I was like, I wonder what you were saying at the time to get your little code scanned at the moment. He was usually anti-Neocon. I covered him since 2015. I can't recall an instance where he was overtly like pro-war with Iran or any of that. Yeah, but if he was in that room at the AIPAC fundraiser, getting his code scanned, he was saying something. Yeah, I was like, there's got to be something that is going on. But look, nonetheless, we appreciate it now.

1:10:49I appreciate the disclosure now, yes, for sure. As well as, remember his previous story about how he was in Israel? Or he was on a trip, I think, right? And he found someone in his hotel room. Oof, creepy. All right. Okay, guys, thank you so much for watching. Great Friday show for everybody tomorrow. We'll see you later.

1:11:29Curiosity changed the world. In this Black History Month adventure, asking questions, thinking creatively, can lead to amazing discoveries. Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas, at our 2026 iHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One. Tickets are on sale now. Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com. That's Ticketmaster.com. Hey, everyone. It's Emily Simpson and Shane Simpson from the Legally Brunette podcast.

1:12:08Each week, we're bringing you true crime through a legal lens. Whether you want all the facts on the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie or you still need to wrap your head around the ditty verdict, we're breaking it all down step by step. And we're not just lawyers. We're also husband and wife. It makes for some pretty entertaining episodes. Listen to Legally Brunette on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.