12/15/25: 3 US Personnel Killed In Syria, Candace Owens Vs Erika Kirk, Israel Breaks Ceasefire, Saagar Loses It On Weed Rescheduling

26:21And the reason we're covering this at all, and you can like i it's i haven't it's been hard for me to understand like how it's a huge of a cleavage this is created on the right um but emily was explaining like that this is like this and the whole fuentes fuentes thing that kind of flows into it is just driving the conversation on the right now um in a way that um is remarkable and i think when people look back on it years later, it's like, what did, you know, what did MAGA 2 do with its like unified control of government? Like, oh, they argued about Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and Tyler Robinson and Charlie Kirk, um, while, well, like everything burned.

27:09Um, what, what's, what's your sense on, of, of like how kind of major this is a fracture? Oh, it's huge. Uh, And I think that, listen, it's funny. I see people out there. Christopher Ruffo, for example, was like, conspiratorial thinking is dominating. Right, he's like, guys, come on. Yeah, he's like, we need to stop. We need institutions. And part of the reason, my true fracture with MAGA, does people want to know where it came from? And where, you know, I was described as a cuck? It was Stop the Steal. And it was because at that time I go, guys, you're lying to people. I said at the end of the day, lying to people is bad.

27:42Like playing footsie empirically with a completely bullshit made-up claim is going to lead to things that you have no idea. So what people tried to do was rationalize it. And I've had this fight. A lot of these people are my friends. Daryl, for example, my martyr maid. He had that whole post about imagine all these things have happened to you and that's why you feel the election was stolen. I mean I'm pretty sure I said this to him in person. I was like, dude, I just don't agree with that at all. Or there was all these books written about high – I call it high IQ stop the steal. and be like, oh, actually, Zucker Bucks.

28:14I'm sorry, it's not the same thing. Like, when you say that, you're talking about influence. The Time Magazine piece, remember? Fortify the election. That is not the same thing. That's not the same thing as Venezuelan dominions who stole the election. Like, that's what Trump means. And by the way, that's what the people who listen to him mean. That's why Trump wants to overthrow Venezuela now. I would tell you, man, oh my God, in 2021, I couldn't even get into an Uber without people being like, hey, man, the election, like, you really believe, right? Is somebody calling you and telling you? I'm serious.

28:41This happened like dozens of times. I know it. I can see it for real. Like the people who believe this stuff, they believe it for real. Like actually. And so that was one of the original sins. Because the demand is always you have to listen to what Donald Trump is saying. That's the only empirical truth that exists. And once you kind of create that, well, Trump himself in a vacuum has created a place where reality is not reality. where any discussion of facts or of empirical, any discussion of facts of reasonable thinking and in general of a systemic belief that somebody is, quote, out to get you, which is, and by the way, what's difficult about this, sometimes it's true.

29:22A lot of the times, actually, it is true. A lot of the times about the deep state or conspiracy, and this is, what makes your and my job so difficult, for example, about reporting around Epstein, Israel, is the amount of effort that you and I put into fact-checking, to making sure that everything that we say is backed up to validate people's real feelings around the world while giving them the facts to be able to color that in. It's made so much harder by a world where everyone can just color in the lines with whatever they want. They pretend like defamation law and facts just don't exist. And that's a road to getting really, really hot on the internet.

30:00This is not just about Candace Owens. This is like an entire ecosystem. That's why there's crocodile tears around this for people saying, indulging conspiracy thinking. Stop the Steal was the ultimate conspiracy. And everybody tried to justify it by saying, oh, these people feel disenfranchised. It's not this, like, no. And look, I may be guilty of that, not on Stop the Steal, but in some other instances, I'm like, well, for example, I'll give you one. The Haitian cats thing, right? I mean, it was a bullshit story. It was bullshit, right? And, you know, at the time, I was like, well, you know, what this is, is about people in Springfield who were pissed off at the Haitians.

30:36And while, yes, what Trump said was a lie, et cetera, that doesn't mean that people there, and to be fair also, all the whole left who pearl clutched around this was like, actually the people of Springfield love Haitians. And it's like, well, Springfield dramatically voted for Trump, okay? So let's be honest too around all of those dynamics. But the truth is, is that if you normalize and create an environment where stuff like that is just done and dusted and is accepted as truth, there will be shocking consequences to all of that in the future, where TPUSA was a right-wing institution, right, that was led by Charlie Kirk.

31:10But Charlie himself was not immune to this. He had to indulge a lot of stop-the-steal bullshit. He called constantly. He was constantly, his entire role was like trying to paper over fractures in the MAGA coalition, both from Israel. But I mean, that was just one of many other things. And to give a shout out to Richard Hanania, where he's just empirically correct, is if you're going to have a shift in the dynamics of who identifies with different political parties, if one of them is going to lose people who are college educated and to indulge a vast array of people who have come to politics online and who are not familiar in general with, I don't know, reading the news at a most basic level, this is a logical consequence of a low human capital-led environment.

31:59So like institutions themselves cannot be genuinely representative or if they are, they're going to look like this. They will look like a world where the Egyptian planes and all that is basically canon for a significant number of people. Again, look, I looked into it, guys. We're talking about foreign registration planes, not proven. It's based on flight radar data. I'm not saying the planes themselves didn't exist and there certainly have been claims made. And I don't think her answer was good, but that is not 100 % convincing in the light of DNA evidence, which has not yet been contested in court.

32:32If Tyler Robinson and his lawyers can prove in court that that was fabricated, I will happily hold my hands up, right? And they would have every incentive in the world to do so, but they have not made that claim as of yet. Perhaps there will be an O.J. Simpson case here. The other wild part about it is that you would have to believe that, so Charlie Kirk had that summit on Long Island where it's like a come to Jesus, bad pun, but you know. Allegedly. Yeah. I'm not even sure I buy that, by the way. There was a come to Jesus thing. I mean, all the evidence points to he was very pro-Israel. And he was doing his best to hold back.

33:07And doing his best to hold back the forces. But let's say, and then he comes out of that and now he's very angry and he's turning on Israel. You would have to believe that they went from inviting him over, having these meetings, having people call him, to being like, you know what, we give up, kill him. And then within just a matter of short weeks, you've pulled off the assassination and you found some other patsy in Utah to take the place. Like, does not make any sense. Well, look, I mean, several things can be true. Did the FBI bungle the investigation? Yeah, what did we lead our entire show with here?

33:51Did the - It's run by a boob. Right, it's run by a literal moron, all right? Allegedly, sorry. Alleged moron. Yeah, an alleged moron. I mean that in a literal sense, not in any character way whatsoever there. But yeah, it's run by Kash Patel, all right? So, yeah, they messed it up. There was the whole thing about the old man who was initially – I understand. But also, you and I have been in this business for a while. How many chaotic events have we covered? Of course. Right? There's always reports of one shoot or two, right, three initial reports. Half the time initial reports are totally wrong, complete bullshit.

34:29You know, eyewitness is notoriously bad. You had multiple people of interest who were taken into custody. I get it too in terms of Robinson. and he's taken into custody and then we hear nothing. The text messages, which we covered here, weird. I'm gonna fully admit it, weird, okay? Definitely needs to be explained in court. What else was weird? Oh, the fact that the FBI freaked out at Joe Kent over foreign assassination tires, that's crazy too. I agree with you. I agree with all of you. It's not evidence. Now, you know, absence of evidence is not evidence in the words of the famous Donald Rubsfeld, okay?

35:02But all of that, again, just to me, just me, points much more to incompetence, bureaucratic infighting. Now that said, I think all of those inquiries absolutely should be explored, especially if you do want to find justice, ultimately. But the cold hard, like rifle, DNA, just the counter case of like why, it to me does not make any sense. Personally, it doesn't make any sense. And I don't think that that's difficult to say. And I don't trust the FBI. I do not trust the FBI at all. And so what Barry Weiss is trying to do is create an institution. And she's trying to kind of put this genie back in the bottle.

35:35Let's roll a little bit more of the town hall clip. Play the next one. But any good faith effort to stop political violence must hold both parties to the same standard and expectation. So in that spirit, will you condemn the violent rhetoric of Donald Trump, the most powerful and influential person on Earth? I appreciate your question.

35:59You know my heart. Why would I ever say, yes, go murder people?

36:08this is so much deeper than just one. I understand your sentiment. I do. But this is also so much deeper than just one person. This starts at the home. Okay. This starts with family. This starts with a seed that grows and grows. You can choose to have evil in your heart or you can choose to have light. What you consume and what you absorb from the outside world will manifest itself. No, I will never agree with political violence. My husband is a victim of it. I'm a victim of it. but what I'm trying to say here is that we can blame everyone else

37:04we have to look in the mirror when you become a father when you become a mother how are you raising your kids are you taking responsibility or are you giving them a device and saying go down that rabbit hole I'm trying to go to Pilates class you can just sit in the corner and look at your iPad or look at your phone and go down that rabbit hole and see what you can learn from that instead of being a parent. So my call to action from that is parents step up. I don't understand why Pilates is catching strays here. First, that was a very odd response. I mean, look, she did not condemn. This is part of the difficulty.

37:41She got, she walked around and decided not to condemn. I was talking about this with Crystal and all that because Crystal, unfortunately, there was some power problems, so she couldn't be here. But like, this is where I am sympathetic to the difficulty of the left where Erica Kirk is both the grieving widow of Charlie. And she's the first person I thought about after Charlie's death and his children. So I think that's a normal human reaction. She since has taken over Turning Point USA. Now she's selling Charlie. I think that's fine to sell Charlie's book in the memory of your husband and all that.

38:14But it is, I mean, you're gonna get into difficult, into dicey territory when you do wanna be an overtly political actor. and you can't really have it both ways, at least in my opinion. And this is somebody who understands like and is deeply sympathetic to a grieving widow, but who also wants to take up the mantle of her husband's political force and then also kind of explicitly be involved in shaping politics and in everything. Like there will be something that wears off. And like, look, I don't know. I mean, with the whole town hall, like that was kind of the duality of what it was. And I would say for her in particular, the more you are in the latter, overtly political, working as an ally of the Trump administration, et cetera, you will remove a lot of, at least what I think, the sympathy of the entire country, which I think rightfully exists over the death of your deceased husband.

39:08And I mean, that kind of like squares the entire thing where Charlie's assassination was personal, it was a political, and it became an intercoalitional fight where – I mean that's where I find it like gross, right? We're arguing about the details of the death explicitly in the grounds of trying to make political points. But also how can you escape that if it is something which was explicitly used – I mean many people lost their jobs as a result of – as I have said here before, I don't have a problem. at least in some cases with that, because the truth is, is all of us kind of believe in a little bit of cancel culture.

39:43It's true. I mean, it is true. Some, all of us believe that there are bounds in polite society. We don't necessarily believe the government should be enforcing it, which I don't think either you and I do. And the government at one point certainly wanted to in the midst of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which I condemn, I think it was bad, and obviously backfired dramatically given their coalitional fights. So yeah, that's why I questioned the decision for this town hall in the first place. I don't get it. I'll be honest. I don't get it. Maybe it was done to help sell the book, which is fine. But I get it for Erica Kirk.

40:17I get it for Erica Kirk, of course, right? But from CBS News' perspective, yeah. I mean, to me, it just seems like Barry wants to use, this is me, outsider, kind of looking in, is use the assassination, the aftermath-like discussion and cleavages in the right. To like assert herself as a controller of right-wing discourse. She's going to referee this stuff. Right, is to referee and to be the one who's pushing social media. And oh, it just so happens to embrace a lot of pro-Israel politics, right? And I think that's increasingly what it looks like. And the problem she's going to run into with her own business model is that like one reason that the American news media has been so homogenous for many decades is that advertisers don't really want the controversy.

41:06And so we can put up this fourth element here. Major advertisers stayed away from this town hall. She said she's going to do a lot more of them. Basically, all of the ads on here were just direct sales type stuff, which is the kind of lowest, cheapest kind of ad you can get on TV. According to Variety here, among the town hall's sponsors, so she did get some new sponsors, were the Conservative Heritage Foundation, Hallow, a mobile app for Christian prayer. I think that's on Tucker and other shows too. David, a new animated film from Angel Studios, which specializes in faith-based content. A small handful of more mainstream advertisers, including Spotify and TikTok, were also present.

41:53So she got TikTok too. So one half of the Ellison's own TikTok, the other half of the Ellison's CBS. And so they are basically just paying each other. So how long? This is not a commercial play. This is obviously a political and ideological play. Yeah, which is the entire purpose. Right. So it's okay if it loses a ton of money. Let's all just remember, this is not about money. The Ellisons are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They are not buying anything for commercial purposes. They win and lose hundreds of millions of dollars every day. Yes. As the market moves. Exactly. hundreds of billions of dollars.

42:34Go and read the story at some point about Larry Ellison and how he owns like an entire island in Hawaii. It's nuts. One of the biggest islands on Hawaii. Yeah, he owns the entire, I think like 99%. He's like their whole landlord of everybody. It's psychotic. It's crazy. It's literally a U.S. state, a significant portion of a U.S. state controlled by a single individual. And CIA helped birth his company. Like, I hate, I hate. I never actually looked deeply into Oracle. I didn't know that. That's interesting. Yeah, I hate when the government makes these companies and then the billionaires get to get the money.

43:03Why can't we be the billionaires? We made the company. Like, it's terrible and we don't like it, but like, at least we can get rich from it. Well, I won't say anything. All right, let's get on to Israel, shall we? Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated and black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Sr.

43:41and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?

44:25When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.

45:04He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. You get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. Thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little...

45:43Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I'd not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self? I went blank. I hit a bad note, then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the weekend in Gaza, Israel launched an attack that killed Reh Yad Saad, who was a top Qassam commander, with a drone strike on a vehicle, which also killed a handful of other Hamas officials that were riding along with him, creating more gymnastics in the headlines around the world.

46:39The Times went with Israel says it killed a senior Hamas commander despite ceasefire. You had a lot of defenders of Israel saying that this, wait until you see the identity of the person who was killed. You will see that this was a justified attack. You're like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? There is no identity of a person that justifies firing during what is called a ceasefire. I love the headline here, despite ceasefire. Despite ceasefire. Utterly incredible. There was some speculation that Abu Mu 'ath, his top commander, they said he was instrumental in the October 7th attacks and that he's one of the kind of leading logistics experts, particularly when it comes to explosives.

47:32There's an argument that he was taking stock of armament supplies and also trying to figure out the best way to take unexploded Israeli ordinance and transform it into ammunition for Hamas in the future. Let's pretend that all of that is actually true. There's a ceasefire in place. because under this logic this would mean that Hamas could try yeah exactly oh well there's a IDF general yeah who was instrumental I'm not testifying I don't think we should do that but right I'm saying they could do that if they wanted to and they could say the same thing yeah so there have been hundreds of people hundreds of Palestinians killed um since the quote unquote, um, ceasefire, um, has, has been, has been implemented.

48:29Uh, there, there really hasn't been a day. I don't think that it's gone by that hasn't seen some, some Palestinians killed an average of roughly two children a day, um, have been killed during the ceasefire. And oftentimes we'll get questions about, you know, why is there, why do you, why do you even care so much? And if if you think about how much you cared when you heard about what happened at Bondi Beach, where at least 15 people were killed, and then imagine that you see all human life as valuable. Most days, you're getting 10 to 15 Palestinians killed in the middle of this ceasefire. And that does not count the ravages of the lack of life essentials getting into Gaza.

49:20We'll jump to E4 real quick, and then we can go back to some of these other things. The inclement weather that has hit Gaza is an absolute nightmare. So the headline here, 13 Gazans, including three children killed by hypothermia, or building collapses amid storm Byron. One man dies in Israel. The number of hypothermia deaths has climbed significantly above that. Since then, you've had flooding and cold weather. For people who are entering their third winter, living in tarps and tents, the tents are, you know, crap to begin with. By the third winter, you know, they're offering, you know, very little, like the, they're offering very little protection against the elements.

50:06And so when you have this storm surge through, people are just left completely defenseless. Tens of thousands of tents have been completely destroyed. And Israel considers tentpoles to be a, quote, dual-use item. So they will not allow tentpoles into Gaza because they say its dual-use could be military. Pencils and paper are restricted. Like, the amount of things that are blocked from going in are, it's utterly just absurd and it would be comical if it wasn't. There was an article about, I think it was in the New York Times, about the Trump administration sent some logistics, its top logistics efforts to this kind of center where they are working, you know, with the Israeli military to like, you know, get aid into Gaza because the thinking from the Trump administration was this seems like a massive logistical challenge, so let's get our top folks over there and send them in and they'll figure this out.

51:09They all left pretty quickly back to the United States and gave up. They said there is no logistical challenge. It's just Israel won't let things in. Like here's the list of things they won't let in. If you change that list, you can send things in. It's like there are checkpoints, there are crossings, There are trucks filled with life essentials. Drive them in and distribute them. You don't need my big brain logistical take here. And so they just headed back. I do have some news for you, Ryan, that just broke here. We can put it up here on the screen. We have the obligatory Barack Ravid Axios report.

51:43The White House has scolded Netanyahu for violating the Gaza ceasefire with the strike. President Trump, the White House sent a stern message to Prime Minister Netanyahu. killing over the weekend constituted a violation to U.S. officials, Axios. The angry message from the White House comes amid growing tensions between the Trump administration and Netanyahu government around the next phase of the agreement to end the war in Gaza and over Israel's broader regional policy. Secretary of State Steve Wyckoff and Trump advisor Jared Kushner, quote, have become very frustrated with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump in Mar-a-Lago on December 29th.

52:19Oh, I didn't know that we were going to kick off the new year. Or sorry, bring in the new year with what will that where else would you want to be how many visits will that be like six maybe seven seven six seven it's got to be a record um no and the bombing continues there um they all they also and we have this in drop site daily our morning newsletter um the israeli navy abducted four palestinian fishermen like what like what are you doing If there's no food, you're not letting anything in, so you got people out there fishing, and you just abducted them off their boats? Like, what is this? What kind of ceasefire is it?

53:03The fact that they're doing this in Lebanon is kind of the precedent for it. Like they, they agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah and just have not withdrawn and have just consistently attacked Lebanon on a near daily basis. It's like, what, like, what are we doing here? Absolutely crazy stuff. But yes, that is the full summary, I guess we have so far. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we have this Huckabee thing. I forgot. Huckabee did an AMA, which is like, what is going on? Like, I don't know. They're too online. What are we doing here? U.S. ambassadors should not be doing AMAs. They shouldn't even know what AMA is, in my opinion.

53:44So utterly ridiculous AMA from Israeli U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Let's roll one of these. There's been some talk that Israel attacked the country of Qatar. It did not. It did, in fact, send a missile to attack a terrorist who had been partly responsible for the murder of Israeli citizens, but it did not attack the country. There was one missile. It was aimed at one person. Now, unfortunately, there were some people who were near that missile strike that were injured or killed from it. But that was not an attack on the nation of Qatar. I mean, first of all, it's about as absurd a thing as you can say.

54:29Also not true. It was not one missile. I think Jeremy reported it was like nine or 12 missiles. It's far more than one. It was not aimed at one person. Also, it doesn't even matter because it killed a Qatari police officer. The intended target was killed. And it was aimed at the entire peace negotiation delegation. Like not just one person. Yeah. So aside from the structural absurdity of the whole claim that you did not attack a country, you just shot a missile at them that exploded and killed people happened. Unfortunately, there were people near the missile. So, you know, that happens. But also none of that was true on top of the absurdity of the claim.

55:12He also elsewhere in the AMA says there's just no evidence that there's any relationship between Epstein and Israel. yeah okay oh okay got it never mind for clarifying that uh mr ambassador all right well next time he does an ama uh i wonder if that's for premium donors to yeah that's a good question who's part of this ama yes who is this organization like can we throw in questions yeah yeah honestly i would just love to do an interview with the guy but uh yeah i heard nothing on that we'll just do we'll have to like work our way into the ama next ama or we'll get our our listeners to do so for us All right, let's get to weed.

55:45Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

56:30This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

57:06your cult. NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka neuro-linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

57:48Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. On a recent episode, I sat down with Nick Jonas, singer, songwriter, actor, and global superstar. The thing I would say to my younger self is congratulations. so you get to marry Priyanka Chopra Jonas. And also, you know, your daughter's incredible. That's beautiful, man. Yeah, thank you. That's so beautiful. I can see that got you a little... Yeah, for sure. Our daughter, she came to the world under sort of very intense circumstances, which I had not really talked about ever. Growing up on Disney in front of a million, how did that shape your sense of self?

58:28I went blank, I hit a bad note, but then I couldn't kind of recover. And I built up this idea that music and being a musician was my whole identity. I had to sort of relearn who I was if you took this thing away. Who am I? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, last but not least, we'd had to get it in here, especially with my man Brian here to throw down with over the subject of marijuana. President Donald Trump will allegedly or reportedly be rescheduling marijuana from Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 substance. This has no bearing on your life whatsoever, but it does have the bearing on a few corrupt Wall Streeters and venture capitalists who have been lobbying for this in the White House so that their stocks can go boom, so they can get big tax breaks and access to the banking system.

59:23Let's take a listen. CNBC. This is an administrative order. Trump's been very clear all along. The question was, could we get this in front of Trump and could it be something that has enough of a priority? It's very clear that the industry has engaged Washington in a way that I think is much more sensible, been much more focused. I think there's no question that top CEOs have been in Mar-a-Lago, have been in D.C., have been working with the president's team. The implications for this are incredible for the industry. And I do think that this is the kind of a domino to fall that would get other things going that don't necessarily have to be legislative follow through either, including exchange listings, which I think is the holy grail here, because that really would bring in institutional capital.

1:00:09If you're investing in cannabis here, there's not institutional capital. So he said it. All right. The corrupt Wall Streeters are in on the deal, Ryan. And Ryan, even though I know that you support this, you have to agree with me that the way that this shit down is insane, okay? Put this Washington Post piece up on the screen. They beat me to it, to their credit. I was hearing some rumblings. I called Ryan, actually. I was trying to report it out for DropSite, but they got in front of it for me. Trump, quote, seeks to cut restrictions on marijuana through planned order. Again, to be very clear, if you live in a state where weed is legal, this doesn't affect you at all.

1:00:40All this does is grant massive tax breaks and banking access to a bunch of weed companies who are being invested in by Wall Street and by venture capitalists as well as the pharmaceutical industry. And in fact, the behind-the-scenes story, this is pure corruption, pure, unadulterated corruption. Here's how this all went down. Donald Trump was visited by a woman named Kim Rivers, okay? Now, for Kim Rivers, who is the CEO of a company called Trulieve. Trulieve is the Florida-based weed company, is the one that sponsored that amendment on the ballot in Florida that, thank God, was rejected by the people of Florida.

1:01:22That multibillion-dollar pot company also hired a woman named Susie Wiles while she was not the White House chief of staff. OK, so what ended up happening is that the White House chief of staff brought in her former paying client, Ritvers, to the Oval Office, who convinced his Trump miraculously to grant her a gigantic tax break through Schedule 3, which would then mean it's since stocks flying. Truly stock itself. Yeah. By the way, you saw that there in CDC. How nice is it, by the way? Let's linger on the fact that they're green for the arrow up. Oh, right. You got a little better. Great. Yeah, at least something's going up.

1:02:02Certainly not aggregate IQ of the United States. So what ends up happening is Trump calls Mike Johnson, the speaker, and informs him of this decision. Johnson's like, I think this is a bad idea. Trump turns the phone over to her in the Oval. And it's like, why don't you explain why this is a good idea? You can go do all the research for yourself if you guys want to. Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 has no bearing on criminality, on legal enforcement, nothing. It has one reason, is to make these companies wildly profitable. And in fact, as they showed on CNBC, institutional capital, big pharma, and venture capital.

1:02:43One of the stupidest conspiracies out there is that big pharma is trying to suppress weed. You think they don't want to? They'll sell you anything to addict you. Most of you losers are out there smoking every single day. You think they don't want to sell that to you? They only don't because it's illegal. The moment it's illegal, they'll happily do it. On that point, I have looked, you know, I wrote a book about this many years ago. I have looked for evidence around big pharma's kind of relationship with weed and illegal drugs. Yes. Along those lines that there's some self-interest here and blah, blah, blah.

1:03:15Going back to the 30s and the evidence is just not there. Like pharma is more of a wait and see and then we'll move into it and figure out a way to profit. Of course. when they can. It's like this idea that it's a miracle drug that is going to make other pharmaceuticals less profitable. There's just actually no evidence to it. Now, the current system to me is completely indefensible where you have a multi-billion dollar above board market where you can go into shops, buy things, and then the companies have two problems. Well, They have multiple problems, but they stem from two different things.

1:03:58One is lack of consistent access to banking because it's a Schedule I drug, and so a bank is not supposed to actually work with you if you're dealing with Schedule I drugs. And the second, as you said, is on the tax side. You're not really supposed to be able to write off expenses associated with a federally illegal enterprise. Yes. Although there's some debate about this. and most companies do. Because imagine if you're a business, these are small margin businesses, even these weed shops. So let's say you do$10 million in revenue in a month, but it costs you $9.9 million to buy your product, to pay wages, to do your rent, all of that.

1:04:49So you made$100 ,000 of profit in that month, you would then owe the federal government and the state and the state government taxes on that$100 ,000. Yes. But if you can't deduct the costs of your illegal business, you actually technically should owe on all$10 million. Yeah. So now you have a, you know, let's say$3 million tax bill on$100 ,000 worth of operating profit. Obviously, you're bankrupt immediately. So this tries to rationalize that. I was saying on the Friday show that 20 years ago, you could see a mentality among the early marijuana business people who were getting into the medical world that they thought the whole system was corrupt.

1:05:40It's all pay to play. that you need the right lobbyists, you need to hire the right people, and they went about doing that as soon as they could have had, as soon as they had a little bit of money, they'd hire some former member of Congress. And their vision - John Boehner, former Speaker of the House. Right, and then they got more money and they do John Boehner. Their vision was, we need to be as corrupt as the rest of American industries are. They've succeeded. And they're there. They wildly succeeded. You look at them from 20 years ago and you looked at this today, They'd be like, yes, that's exactly how we saw this was going to get over the top.

1:06:14We didn't know it was going to be Donald freaking Trump. But we knew we were going to try to hire somebody who would then become a powerful government official. The fact that she became chief of staff is like even better. Like that's like hitting the industrial lottery. Boom. We're in. So go long on your weed stocks. Well, by the way, that's another insider trading thing. So if a weed CEO is literally in an Oval Office meeting where you know something's going to happen, I checked. The weed ETF, MSOS or whatever, was up by 50 % after this Washington Post pros broke. So, oh, maybe you just put out a little taste for your friends.

1:06:51I'm not alleging that. I'm just saying it's potential for corruption in this specific instance. And did it go up right before the story or did it go up after? It went up after the story. So beforehand, there was like – well, I mean there was some movement throughout the day. As you know, I had the rumor. I was waiting, trying to get it confirmed. So a lot of people knew. A lot of people in Washington knew, like hours before the Washington Post story broke. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm an idiot because I didn't buy it. Right? It's like I had it when the market was open. I'm just not corrupt enough to do anything like that.

1:07:19We don't. Yeah. We don't do that. Yeah, exactly. That's not my mentality. But apparently that's the mentality of some people because you could immediately see movement there in the hours beforehand. I just want to, again, whether you agree, disagree, this is not how stuff should be happening. All right? And I get it. this is a small ball and most of the people who watch the show probably support it anyways. And that's fine. That's your right as an American. That said, this is an absurd way to be making, to be doing business as a country. As you explained perfectly around the tax implications and all of that, they're like, well, it's unfair.

1:07:54I'm like, no, it's not because we're living in an absurd system where it's technically state legal and not, like, no, you have to change the law. If you want access to the United States tax code, you have to change the law. Period. I just get to decide because of vibes, you know, based on schedule status, which is an executive order that's gone through. Also, on the polling, what that guy said in CNBC was total bullshit. There's a 13 % drop just this year for legalization of weed amongst Republicans. I hope I can take some credit for that. And actually, there's a drop amongst independents and even amongst Democrats because of the system that's completely run amok.

1:08:28You have, like, big tobacco-era-style corruption and capitalism preying on young minds. The entire system is built around addiction. That's what I was saying earlier. 20-something percent of people who smoke weed use it every single day. Addicted. Okay, you're addicted. Period. There's no getting around that. And all the medical benefits are bullshit. Sorry. It just came out. JAMA, new study. Almost every single widespread claim when it was analyzed showed no statistical benefit for so-called medical marijuana. Well, what about the appetite enhancement? Okay, Ryan, again, whenever it comes to solely just on marijuana itself in comparison to the other miracle drug, which you just said, it doesn't exist.

1:09:13You can go read the study for yourself. Now, I'm not saying that people don't use it for a said benefit. Fine. And I'm not even saying people should be locked up for using it. I've never believed that. I still don't believe it, even though it is bullshit. There's nobody in prison right now for smoking weed. There's not a single person who's in prison for smoking weed. Nobody goes to jail for smoking weed. Some people do. No, they don't, Ryan. It's been proven. I can show you the statistics. It's completely false. I had a friend from the Eastern Shore who went to jail for weed. In the 90s? The 90s, early 2000s.

1:09:44I'm talking about today. It doesn't exist. People don't go to jail for smoking weed. Did they go to jail in the past? I don't mean 2010 even, actually. No, even then it would be difficult. The federal statistics on this are ironclad. Arianna Huffington introduced me to Bill O'Malley. What's his name? O'Malley, the Maryland governor. Oh, Martin O'Malley. Martin O'Malley. and we were talking about Maryland and I was telling him like uh he was governor at the time I was like you know my I've got a friend doing weekends now oh really weed he's like that's that's impossible like nobody's in jail for weed where does he live yeah I was like eastern shore he's like oh okay actually that could that could be something up with the cops there it's just a it's just much harsher okay I don't I don't know much about Maryland it's it's a these rural areas in general, they're just much harsher towards defendants than like Baltimore, for instance.

1:10:33Okay, okay, fair enough. Like you go to a Baltimore judge over weed, he's going to yell at the cop. Like, what are you doing? Wasting my time. Right, right. Weed in a more rural area. But even today, I don't think that that's the case. Probably not. I mean, I've looked at the federal and the state stats, which are all like, there is nobody in jail, especially federal prison. Nobody is in jail for smoking weed. Bullshit claim. Just so everybody understands. That said, I don't think it should have existed in the past. I don't think it should have existed today. Now one thing you might like about this is that moving it to Schedule 3 opens up more...

1:11:05Yeah, now they have to justify it. It also opens up more research possibilities. We don't need any research. We know everything we need to know. You can always have more research. There are tens of millions of people who use this drug every single day. We know everything we need to know. That's like me saying we need to study alcohol. What, I need to tell you that it gets drunk and it ruins your sleep? I don't need to prove that to you. It makes you dizzy. Huh? Yeah. Oh, Shio. Yeah. Come on. All right. It's like, more research is good though. No, for what? For what? Well, we just went through the medical claims are BS.

1:11:34It could be. So the other thing I learned from, um, studying the history of all different drugs is that when you get a wild west situation, um, you, you as a supporter of that situation might like it for a year or two you it's it never stays that way like the fact that there's now a little bit of a backlash that you're pointing to is completely historically in line with all of the trends remember cocaine was like popular in the 1890s which was insane and then it's everywhere and then people are like we don't like this everywhere actually we had literal coke feeds who were robbing pharmacies it was wild yeah so then they crack down on it so you get this pendulum swinging back and forth.

1:12:13So if you actually are a supporter of weed, you want to see it more out in the open and you want to see the harms discussed publicly in a way that allows the society to get it under control a little bit. Otherwise you get the hammer instead. So I'm the hammer. Yeah. It's socialism or barbarism. You're going to get the barbarism here. Yeah, I mean, it would be better than, you know, widespread weed use literally everywhere you go. But look, I'm being wildly hyperbolic. I always enjoy talking about it with you. And just as a tease, Griffin and I have filmed our review of Reefer Madness. It clocked in at 90 minutes.

1:12:54We enjoyed the hell out of it. We enjoyed the hell out of just watching the film, reviewing the film. It's one of the most important films of the last 100 years. Is this going to be one of the holiday episodes? It's going to be one of our holiday episodes. Oh, I can't wait for that. We have all the clips. We have clips. It's a real movie review. Griffin was actually, because Griffin went to film school, so he actually really knows how to dissect and do a film review. And then I insert my, I give some color commentary on the film, but we also delve into some of the claims of everything. But yeah.

1:13:20I'm watching this one. It's a good, it's a, look, very few people probably will watch it, but I enjoyed the hell out of doing it. So I hope that you do so. All right. That's one of our many benefits in addition to much more compelling content by Crystal, Ryan and Emily, which I'm sure will be much more highly rated. Also, shout out to the Breaking Points viewer who came to the Reason debate and had me sign his weed pen. That's disgusting. That's disgusting. That's paraphernalia. As I told Sagar, multiple people told me bong rips for Sagar. They're lying. That's a lie. Okay. No, anyone, if you were ripping a bong in the morning, in the morning, there's something wrong with you.

1:13:56I'm just saying it. It's empirically true. Who's doing it? What do you call somebody who drinks in the morning? an alcoholic yeah all right let's be honest call a spade a spade yeah wake wake and bake if you have a drink wake and bake doesn't have the same stigma as yeah it should this is this is my whole thing is this like oh if you're pouring vodka into a diet coke can or like that it's always sunny episode and you're drinking okay you are a disgusting alcoholic you have a problem bro you have a problem you wake and i was like oh it's so chill so cool and chill it's not like no There are people exhaling watching this right now.

1:14:32No, they're not. And if you are, put it down. Throw the bong. Break it. Break it. I forget what I said something. I said bong tears or something like that. Apparently, bong tears are real. That's what a weed smoker informed me, is that sometimes you hit it so hard you cry. Oh, absolutely. I wouldn't know. All right? I don't want to know. You shouldn't know either. All right. Okay. We'll see you later.

1:15:08Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I didn't know, maybe you didn't either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't know. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

1:15:50Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969 Malcolm and Martin are gone America is in crisis and at Morehouse College the students make their move these students including a young Samuel L.

1:16:35Jackson locked up the members of the Board of Trustees including Martin Luther King Sr. it's the true story of protest and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget I'm Hans Charles I'm Menelik Lumumba listen to the A-Building on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.