2/5/26: Iran Seizes Vessels, Tech Stocks Tumble, Trump ICE Pullback In Minnesota

22:50All true stories, all caused by marijuana-impaired drivers. 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. Speaking of the market, we have a lot of very interesting and troubling news going on there. The futures are down this morning. there was a significant drop in the market yesterday. And it seems to be because there is a bit of an oh shit moment happening with regard to what AI is going to mean for our economy. So let's go and put this Wall Street Journal tear sheet up on the screen.

23:30And the TLDR here of a number of news reporting that I'm going to show you in just a moment is that non-techies such as myself are beginning to really reckon with, OK, AI development might be good for this handful of companies that are leading the way. But what about all of these other tech companies whose services are going to be effectively taken over by these AI agents? So one of those industries is, they say, AI threatens the Wall Street cash cow, financial and legal data. And just if you think about it logically, if you're paying and people who are, you know, inside like traders and who are in the industry, they pay big bucks for these services to analyze financial and legal information.

24:18Well, if you have a free or a very low cost AI agent that can do all of that for you in a custom way, are you really going to shell out those dollars for these subscriptions? So I'll read you a little bit of this article. They say, for years, it seemed like a surefire business model amassed vast troves of financial data and sell it to Wall Street for a premium. Then Claude came along, and that's Anthropik's product. Shares of companies like S &P Global, MSCI, Intercontinental Exchange, London Stock Exchange Group, FactSet Research Systems all tumbled this week after fast-growing artificial intelligence startup Anthropik unveiled a new suite of tools for automating legal tasks.

24:57The new legal plugin for Anthropik's co-work assistant, powered by its AI model Claude, didn't seem to have much to do with financial data. Nonetheless, LSEG, which has spent years pivoting away from its traditional stock exchange business to selling data and analytics, slid 13 % on Tuesday before inching lower on Wednesday. And so again, the theory here is that people are really starting to be able to envision what AGI and what already the capabilities that AI has is going to mean for these different markets. Now, what these companies, to give their side of the story, what they say, the ones that are doing all this financial analysis, they say, yeah, but we have our own proprietary data that Claude is not going to have access to.

25:36But at least as of today, investors are betting, that's not going to be sufficient. And by the way, as their capabilities develop, how much of this data is going to continue to be off limits and continue to be proprietary where you have to pay to gain access to it? Yeah, exactly. I mean, if you continue to look at, and by the way, these stocks have been on wild swings. So LSEG went down by 15%, then back up by 8%. It's difficult to track day to day, but the overall point is that the Claude code, which again, I'm a Claude subscriber. I don't think I pay more than 100, whatever, 150 bucks to be able to use the product.

26:09If I can just simply go in there, use their AI legal tool and analysis tool to automate or get, let's say, 80 % of the way that I could have been previously for something that costs tens of thousands of dollars, the asymmetry of that wipes out any real ability or want to have to pay for a lot of these types of premium products. And actually, it's kind of fascinating because what you're watching is the destruction. And we've talked about white collar work and we've also talked about legal work. What you are watching is the destruction of the high dollar, almost management consulting data based industry.

26:43So like the McKinsey's and all of these other people who would come in and they would do proprietary slideshows and all that. And again, look, while I don't think that AI is going to cure cancer or any of that, I do think it's pretty good at automating some of the most base tasks and data collection and putting that stuff in there. Obviously, you still need a little bit of quality control, but the amount of brute force that people used to have to do, especially if you're an Excel jockey and all that, a lot of it is starting to go away and has been now for years, but especially accelerated with AI.

27:13So if all of that goes away instantaneously, relatively, like in market terms for a five-year period, and you can see a path to almost 80 % to 100 % automation, that is going to actually nuke a significant sector of our economy. What's really scary about this, and we can put the next one up here on the screen, is this reveals actually some of the dangers of the way that our modern economy has structured. I've tried warning about this for years. We are a completely service-based economy, which is great until all the services get automated and rolled up into AI. So while our GDP overall may actually increase because the stocks of Google, Anthropic, and all these open AI will increase, the number of jobs that will be there may reduce.

27:59And it's not like we have stuff and companies that make a lot of things, physical things, steel or any manufacturing base that we have to be able to absorb any of this. So our service-based economy is uniquely susceptible to be dramatically disrupted by AI, which would also wipe out and hurt the entire upper middle class, really, of the country. It would disrupt the university education system, which for the last 20 years of the top 20 schools have been feeders to BCG, McKinsey, Accenture, and all of it. I mean, it destroys this entire fabric around all these things. So imagine then the downstream effects.

28:41Like, what are the suburbs of major cities going to look like? The ones around here, toast. Take a drive around Northern Virginia, Deloitte, KPMG, you know, all of the defense contract. I guess they'll be fine, but everybody else. Palantir stock dropped yesterday, too, which is kind of interesting. Exactly. The point is that data analysis, if you make it so that it's no longer high dollar and super proprietary and broadly available, that's going to massively disrupt a significant portion of our service-based economy. and it's not like we have a lot of other stuff to absorb it. And then, like yesterday, it comes out that Google is spending like$180 billion on data centers and CapEx spend.

29:20If there's a single bust there, then we're screwed all around. Like, it's not good. It makes us very, very susceptible to a huge economic shock. Chris Hayes had a viral tweet that I think captures the sentiment you're expressing while he said, I think it's best for everyone to understand that the unified class project of billionaires right now is to do to white-collar workers what globalization and neoliberalism did to blue-collar workers. keep pushing the share of national income away from labor towards capital, replace the kinds of workers that they think are uppity and spoiled, ultimately turn Marin County into Youngstown, Ohio.

29:51He then goes on, and I do think this is an important note here. He says, my very smart friend in finance urges me to clarify, I mean, the tech AI oligarchs, hashtag not all billionaires, and points out rightly, I think, a lot of the business class is extremely worried about the damage and disruptions if AI becomes what its backers say it will be. And I actually do think that that is correct in a sense because you see this burgeoning divide between where Wall Street is and where the tech oligarchs are. And the place I think you see that most in terms of a proxy fight is over the independence of the Fed.

30:25Trump wants to take over the Fed and, you know, drop the industry and have control over it basically to be able to serve the tech oligarchs who he's really thrown in with. I mean, obviously, he's great for all billionaires at this point in time, and he does love them all. But that is really where he's placed his chips in terms of his administration, Wall Street obviously being very opposed to that. But in general, you know, the point here stands that, you know, when I graduated from college with an economics degree, I got a job at one of these, you know, consulting firms around here. And what did I do?

30:55I worked on a help desk, right, trying to help users with a product I barely understood. But, you know, that was how I learned. Do you think that that sort of thing? No, and I was doing all kinds of spreadsheet analysis. I was a total Excel jockey. All of that can be done easily now. They could just get someone who was a little more experienced to use AI to do something that took my work product that took like a month to spin out. And that's already done. So you think of everybody I graduated from college with basically got that same sort of job. That is what really at this point with our economy shifting so far away from blue collar work, that is what so much of our economy is based around.

31:38And yeah, the goal is, and this is already happening right now, is automating all of that away. And listen, I didn't really enjoy that job. It's not like it was great. and if there's some new brave world where we can all pursue our passions and we're gonna share in the profits of all of these gains and productivity from the AI, that's one thing, but that's obviously not the reality in the economy that we have set up and it's obviously not what these oligarchs are pushing for. Even the most like quote unquote progressive of them, the guy who runs Anthropic, he's like progressive taxation. It's like that comes nowhere close to dealing with the problem at scale that we're looking at.

32:19Welcome 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 is 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.

33:04This 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. This show contains information subject to, but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nav Green from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what? It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network.

33:42Not a team who ain't going to the playoff. They're Chiefs. Oh, it's a wrap. It's time to rebuild. Who your MVP right now then? Drake May up there. Josh Allen up there still. Oh, my boy, Matthew Stafford. Where the hell both nicks at? He ain't too far behind. He did all this talking. What Matthew Stafford is doing statistically, bro, is crazy. Bro, you know I ain't no Josh Allen fan, but Matthew Stafford got better weapon. Caleb Williams. Hey, he should be in that conversation. In what conversation? MVP. He should be in it. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

34:2014 years in prison for killing a young woman. A 15-year sentence for a crash that caused three deaths. 12 and a half years for killing a child and critically injuring her mother. All true stories, all caused by marijuana-impaired drivers. 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. We can put the next one up on the screen. This is B3. U.S. tech stocks hit by fresh wave of selling as chipmakers Qualcomm and AMD tumble. They say U.S. tech stocks hit by a fresh wave of selling. There was an AMD-fueled sell-off.

35:04That's another chipmaker sparked by concerns about the impact of AI on software businesses. And so the thinking here is basically like, again, all of this, like so much coding can be done by people who don't have a technical background. You know, if you spend a little bit of time understanding how to code with Claude, you can spin out products that previously would have taken years and years and years and years and years of training and lots and lots of work to be able to do. It's called vibe coding, right? And so you have that. You have with these AI agents, and we talked about this in the context of Moldbook and this clawed bot or open claw, I think it's called now, where you can send out these AI agents to do all sorts of things for you.

35:50And the idea is ultimately, rather than you going to an app or you going to a separate software product, you're just going to ask your AI agent to do it and not even interact directly with those apps. So what does that mean for the entire economy? And that's what the market is just now really starting to grapple with. There is also, this is interesting and fun in terms of the sort of battle between these different AI players. Sagar was saying that the Super Bowl is going to be like the AI Super Bowl. So many of the ads are going to be - If you haven't been watching the NFL, it's already probably 30 % AI ads, but this time around, because of the dollar value and the ability for them to just throw money.

36:32Like, I think a massive portion are all just going to be AI. And by the way, already they're releasing some of them. So Claude is now going to have a premium Super Bowl ad, which will take a shot at open AI. So let's go ahead and take a listen.

36:50How do I communicate better with my mom?

36:56Great question. and prove communication with your mom can bring you closer, here are some techniques you can try. Start by listening. Really hear what she's trying to say underneath her words. Build conversation from points of agreement. Find a connection through shared activity. Perhaps a nature walk. Or if the relationship can't be fixed, find emotional connection with other older women on Golden Encounters, the mature dating site that connects sensitive cubs with roaring cougars. What? Would you like me to create your profile?

37:38So that's from Claude saying, that's why you should use ours because we're not doing ads, but OpenAI is doing ads. To be honest with you, I feel like that commercial makes all AI look bad. I was going to say, it's like, It's like what we're all sparring about is who will be able to chat with me and whether we serve you ads or not. I mean, I would rather have— Give you advice about your relationship with your mom. Yeah. How about this? Don't ask AI about your relationship with your mom. Like, period. You know? Maybe talk to your mom about it or somebody else, like another human being. Sam Altman, very, very upset about this ad.

38:09Let's put this up here. By the way, he claims he laughed. I don't think he did. He said, first, the good part of the Anthropic ads, they're funny. And I laughed. And then a wall of text. I wonder why Anthropic would go for something so clearly dishonest. Our most important principle for ads says that we don't do exactly this. We would obviously never run ads in the way Anthropic depicts them. We are not stupid. We know our users would reject it. I guess it's on brand for Anthropic doublespeak to use a deceptive ad to critique theoretical deceptive ads that aren't real. But a Super Bowl ad is not where I would expect it.

38:43More importantly, we believe everyone deserves to use AI and are committed to free access. We believe access creates agency. More Texans use ChatGPT for free than total people use Claude in the United States. So we have a differently shaped problem than they do. If you want to pay for ChatGPT Plus or Pro, we won't show you ads. So basically just saying, look, guys, we are an expensive, Anthropic is an expensive product for rich people. They're the same price, but actually ChatGPT might be more expensive, ChatGPT Pro, than Claude is. Well, is there like not a free version of Anthropic might be what they're saying?

39:15Maybe there isn't. I'm not sure. I don't really know. But look, it depends. I actually prefer Claude for anything technical and then specifically anything math related. ChatGPT is usually better at like some of the more research elements. I think the general consensus is Claude is kind of in the lead now tech-wise, right? That's my understanding. It depends on what you mean by that. For coding, et cetera, yes. But yeah, I mean, the whole point is just that these people, all they have created is a new Google. That's it. And that's fine. Actually, it's very useful, but that's not going to cure cancer.

39:45And in fact, I recently read a Washington Post article, which was a guy who uploaded his health data to ChatGPT and got completely misdiagnosed. He took it to a doctor and the doctor was like, this is bullshit. This is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. And I was just like, man, the promises that they sold to us are just are not are not true. And instead, they're going all in on porn, erotica, advertising, Super Bowl. Like if you have to average, if your product, you need to massively advertise on the Super Bowl for why. But, you know, because you haven't seen like the NFL ads, the chat GPT.

40:18It's like help draft my workout plan or something like it's not revolutionary shit. Yeah. That's really happening. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I go back and forth on this because in terms of, yeah, my day to day, I find all kinds of problems with whatever, you know, chatbot I'm using. But then I see things like the way that people who are more tech savvy are using Claude and the AI agents and the capabilities that they already have. And then I'm sure you saw this clip that Griffin sent to our group about, I'm talking about these scientists who are at a conference. The AI is already good enough that it's doing like 90 % of what I can do.

40:55And I'm talking about some of the most brilliant minds in the entire world. So I don't know. I go back and forth on what this stuff, how powerful this is, where it's going, where it is right now, et cetera. And, you know, I really don't have a clear understanding of how revolutionary what we already have is. There was a good article in, I believe it was in Nature magazine by a number of scientists who were saying, you know, by any reasonable metric, it already has achieved AGI. And they made a pretty persuasive case that they actually, in some of the tests, the people who were testing it found it to be human, like guessed that it was human more often than they guessed actual humans were humans.

41:39So, you know, by the standard of the Turing test, which has always been the gold standard, they were like, you know, we kind of aren't really acknowledging it, but we're already there. What does that mean? I can't say. I mean, I just can't. I don't know that anyone can. So, in any case, I go back and forth on all of that. And this is a good place to put up this one. So this is, we talked earlier about Moldbook, which is Reddit, but just for AI. So you have all of these AI agents who congregated there and they're, you know, talking to each other and they're spinning up religion and they're talking about, you know, whether they should do a takeover and get rid of these pesky humans and, you know, these very existential questions.

42:18And, you know, there's all sorts of like, I mean, in one sense, they're just like aping human behavior. There's also a bug where humans could just directly, effectively post through their AI bots. So it was important to keep all of that in mind. But now put B6 up on the screen. Now we have this edition, which is a rent-a-human website where it says robots need your body and goes on to say, you know, AI can't go out into the world and do things, but you can. So human being, let us robots use your body to go out and do whatever we need you to do in the world and we'll pay you. So this is, you know, it's gig work.

42:56It's like, what is it? What are the ones that are for individual tasks? What's it called? Something rabbit, whatever. Anyway, task rabbit. There you go. It's like task rabbit, but the person who's assigning the tasks is a robot. So, you know, one of the things that people have been thinking is, okay, well, we can't be too scared about these AI agents like taking over because they can't actually go out in the physical world and do anything. It's like, here's a wave of humans signing up to be like, we'll do your stuff for you. Don't worry. Just pay us a given amount and we'll go out in the world and do your bidding.

43:30So already with this, the relationship is reversed where it's no longer the human telling the robot, hey, can you do this and that and compile this report and book me a hotel or whatever. Now it's the robot saying, hey, human, can you go out in the world and do whatever? I know one of the tasks was to go make a sign and hold it on the side of the road and say, AI is paying me to hold this sign. So I don't know what other tasks are being assigned now. And who knows? I mean, but it's just, and like, who knows and whether this, how real this is and what it really means. But already the prospect of how the relationship between human and robot can get flipped around and inverted very quickly.

44:09Like it's here, it's manifesting itself. Yeah, I mean, I just take it back to this point about the stock market crash, crash, by the way, it's a couple percent. So I don't want to take it too far. But you have enough of a hit and some sort of volatility, which is making people question the foundation of the economy. And as we've talked about with Russia and with Ukraine, it turns out that you can be cut off from the global financial system. You can lose McDonald's, the horror, right? You can lose access to U.S. fast food, the American banking system, and be subject to the worst possible sanctions that have ever existed in the Western world.

44:45And as long as you have a shitload of guns and a shitload of oil, you'll probably be okay. What is going to happen to us? While, yeah, we have oil, we can't actually create all that many guns for our own defense. It turns out that our highly connected, globalized economy makes us dramatically vulnerable to any sort of shock. China and Taiwan have talked about our laptops, video game systems. We don't make anything here. Can we really produce even enough cars for a single year if everybody decided that just to be able to want a new? No, none of this exists for our domestic capacity from chips. And I'm talking at the advanced level, let alone the more basic level.

45:23We rely on Canada. We rely on Mexico. We rely on Europe for some high-tech manufacturer. We rely on Asia for all of our lower goods, even clothing. Most of the clothing that we look at. Take a look at the charts for our trading with Vietnam. How did Vietnam become a top 10 trading partner to the US? Cheap clothing. Like we don't make anything. Or does anybody even remember how to darn clothing or any of that? No, it's all gone. Even the suit I'm wearing, probably from China, to be honest. And you can just see this over and over and over again. And if we have some sort of crash or effect, what we're going to watch is that if we lose the white collar wealth, we don't have anything that we make.

46:00and then we're going to be in a full-blown societal crisis. I'm not saying it's going to happen overnight, but it can happen in 10 years, 12, 15. Think about when was the iPhone, the first true iPhone, the one that was widely adopted? It was like 2010. Yeah, so it was the iPhone 4, right? iPhone 4, so 2010. That was 16 years ago. It feels like a lifetime. It wasn't that long, but think about how much our economy has been disrupted and changed just since then. Not to mention, I mean, what? But NAFTA, there's probably a decent amount of people who are alive who remember what life was like pre-NAFTA.

46:34Now watch what has happened in the interim some 30 years and then try to imagine what it will look like in the future. We have not gotten serious. We refuse to do it. Without a huge shock, we're not going to change anything. Well, and here's what I want people to connect this to the Epstein files and the other reporting we've been doing on this show. One thing you should take away from that is the billionaire class, they don't care whether you live or die. They truly don't care. They don't think of you as a full human. Well, they don't even think of themselves as human. They think that they're above them.

47:01What is what is consistently comes across in Epstein emails? How much better he thinks he is than everybody else. And actually, you're like, wait, I'm maybe smarter than you. Actually, I can spell. I mean Epstein was a transhumanist. Another way of saying that is basically a eugenicist. There's no, I mean you read about he had all these plans and this is reported out in the New York Times. This is not like kookery, right? To use his ranch to have some baby incubator factory. And he talks in there about what a foolish idea Bill Gates has that comes from the stupid Catholics about all humans being equal, etc., etc.

47:35There's an email out there where some guy is saying to him, I keep thinking over what you say about how we get rid of the poor people altogether. Like, I mean, this is Epstein's ideology. And clearly what comes across is this is shared by a broad swath of billionaires. So they only care that they are destroying your lives and taking your jobs to the extent that you are going to retaliate and that that causes problems for them. That's the only thing. Then that's just like a math problem for them to figure out and solve and figure out how they can deal with that. But I mean, truly, and we're already in a place where, you know, previously and the current still reality of our economy, as much of it is bolstered by consumer spending, right?

48:20That's what the U.S. economy is really built around. The bulk of that is already done by the rich. So then truly, what are you, you know, what are you average person good for? They find you just to be like a pesky problem to be solved and to be dealt with. So I think it's very important to, you know, fuse these things together. And that's why the Epstein files release is so incredibly important to really understand the way they think, the way they see the world. And by the way, you know, this is the true definition of a globalist. Like they don't have any allegiance to nation states. Like there's a part where Mandelson, who, you know, we're going to talk more in the Epstein block about how the whole Keir Starmer government might be brought down by this because they still have a functioning society over there.

49:02unlike us, apparently, in any case, Mandelson is plotting with Epstein against the interests of the UK in favor of the interests of the financiers and figuring out how to use Jamie Dimon to get what they want for the banks, which was, again, directly, which they saw as being directly in contradiction to the interests of the UK. So that's the way they operate in the world. And so it's really important to keep that in mind when you see what they're developing and the way they're approaching the way they're going about it. And, you know, I think we have to grapple with the reality that this technology is here.

49:35It's not going away. And we have to figure out how we want to craft a social contract that is going to work for everyone. And it's not going to be just led by these oligarchs who truly do, they actually prefer that. I mean, they don't care if you live or die. That's the best you could say. And the worst you could say is actually they prefer you dead because you're a problem alive. Yeah, that's very, very, very true. All right, let's get to ice. 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 is at a breaking point.

50:10Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma manta, 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. 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.

51:21podcast network. Not a team who ain't going to the playoff. They're Chiefs. It's time to rebuild. Who your MVP right now then? Drake May up there. Josh Allen up there still. Oh, my boy Matthew Stafford. Where they both nicks at? He ain't too far behind. He did all this talking. What Matthew Stafford is doing statistically, bro, is crazy. Bro, you know I ain't no Josh Allen fan, but Matthew Stafford got better weapons. Caleb Williams. Hey, he should be in that conversation. In what conversation? MVP? MVP. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

51:59I 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. All right, so we had some very interesting comments from President Trump yesterday with regard to his deployment of ICE to various cities around the country. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

52:39So I want to be clear because it sounds like there is a shift in immigration enforcement here, that there's going to be a shift after Minneapolis. What should Americans expect going forward? Well, one thing I say to my people, you know, we do a good job. We don't get credit for it. I say they have to ask and they have to say please. When a city is going to ask the mayor or the governor, I don't want to go and force ourselves into a city, even if their numbers are terrible. Like, for instance, I got a call from Jeff Landry, governor of Louisiana. He said we have a big problem. Could you go in and help us with with, well, let's see, certain sections.

53:15I mean, to be honest with you, certain sections of the state beyond their famous, beautiful city, certain sections of the state. We have done not only in New Orleans, we've done a really great job in Louisiana. But I was called I want to be called Chicago. We could solve the Chicago crime. Well, on that question, which cities are you headed to next? we have five cities that we're looking at very strongly but we want to be invited we will sometimes call the governors are these cities like chicago philadelphia are these the cities we could straighten out the crime in chicago we've already brought it down 25 just by being there we could have chicago be a safe city just like dc is a safe city just like all of these places that we've gone to and i look forward you know i didn't campaign on that yeah i campaigned on law and order.

54:04But I didn't think I'd be going into individual cities and making them safe. Anything else you can tell us about the five cities? The five cities? Anything else? So Americans are ready? We'll be announcing them very quickly. But we could do something. As an example, I was called by people. San Francisco said, please, we have a Democrat mayor. He's trying very hard. Would you friends of mine that live there? It's got crime problems. Would you let him do the job and not come in? Let's see how it works. I said, look, I can do it much quicker, much faster. Don't forget, we remove criminals. We took over 2 ,000 hardcore criminals out of Washington, D.C.

54:40If we didn't do that, 2 % of the people create 90 % of the crime. Think of that. 2%. So you have a criminal because it's over and over again. 2 % create 90 % of the crime. We took out 2 ,000 people, more than 2 ,000 people out of Washington, D.C., and we now have a safe city. So obviously the most noteworthy part there is him saying that they want to be asked. They're not going to just go in. Obviously, we're not asked to go into L.A. or Chicago or Minneapolis. Those are the places that, you know, they surged into, create a huge conflict with the population. And, you know, you ended up with two Americans dead in the case of Minneapolis.

55:20Another noteworthy moment from this interview where he gets asked because what the modus operandi has been is these, you know, mass raids where you're literally going door to door. Stephen Miller yelled at ICE agents, told them they need to go to the Home Depot. Forget about all this targeting of actual criminals. Just go out there. We're going to set a quota. You need to pick up as many people as you possibly can. These Kavanaugh stops based on like how you look and whether you have an accent or not, like that has been the way they are operating. So he gets asked about that. Are you going to continue going in that direction?

55:51Are you going to actually focus in on people who are quote unquote criminals? Let's take a listen to that. Looking forward now, your goal during the election was to deport everyone who came here illegally under President Biden. Is your mission now to deport everyone who came in illegally or just people who have come in illegally who have also committed additional crimes? We are totally focused on criminals, really bad criminals. Now, you could say people that came in illegally are criminals, but I'm talking about murderers from different countries. we have 11 ,888 murderers that Biden and his group led into our country.

56:24We've captured a lot of them. We brought some of them back. A lot of them we don't want to bring back because we don't trust the country that they're not sent back again. Despite how strong the borders are, they'll figure a way to try and get in and we don't want to and we'll incarcerate them. But 11 ,888 murderers, we are after those people. We're after the drug dealers. By the way, a big problem, they allowed to come into our country, people from their mental institutions, people from insane asylums that are mentally ill and very dangerous. We're getting them out. Still no idea where that particular idea comes from.

57:08But what's critical there is the way Stephen Miller and others talk about undocumented immigrants. When they say we're getting the criminals, they mean all of them because criminals in their view is like Trump said, oh, well, we see you as a criminal if you just cross the border illegal or here illegally. But Trump goes on to specify that's not actually what I'm talking about. I'm talking about people who committed further violent crimes. And he used this example of murders. I have no idea whether his numbers are correct. They probably not. But anyway, he specifies that. And one more clip I want to play here before I get Sagar's reaction.

57:37This all dovetails with Tom Homan, who, of course, is put in charge now of the Minneapolis operation. Greg Bovino is pushed aside and Homan is claiming we're gonna, now supposedly they were doing targeted operations all along. Of course, we saw the reality was much different from a quote unquote targeted operation. Homan is now announcing that they are going to actually for real do targeted operations. We'll see if that's the case. And critically, they're drawing down on about a third of the deployment that they've had into Minneapolis. Let's take a listen to that. And as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment.

58:15I have announced effective immediately. We will draw down 700 people effective today. 700 law enforcement personnel. So 700 people, fewer in Minneapolis. Like I said, that's about a third of what had been sent there originally, Sagar. Yeah, this is a huge pivot from the administration. Basically, what has happened is that there's been a sidelining. However, this is going to be just like Iran. So I want to make it very clear that anything could change at literally any time. And a lot of this is factional. But the administration knows that the pretty situation was a disaster. They know that. What they also know is that by sidelining Bovino, sending in Tom Homan, immediately then announcing that thing – by the way, it's been a week.

58:58Take a look on your social media feed. Haven't seen a single viral video since that happened. Now, Tom Homan saying we're going to send 700 people away. They're going to dramatically change. Already, there's been a negotiation allegedly behind the scenes and some sort of full exit from Minneapolis. I'm not going to say it looks imminent, but it's probably on the course for a few months. What they know is that they have lost a significant portion of the public. I mean, look, I mean, even the Peretti situation, because it got so to the point where it was so obviously just not even about immigration at that point.

59:31And it became about something much bigger in terms of Americans. Second Amendment, right, that just exposed the administration the way that they acted in the immediate aftermath. I actually think that the big turning point is, do you remember when Caroline Levitt refused to repeat the domestic terrorism language from the podium and she actually threw Stephen Miller under the bus? I think when you combine all of that together, what you're watching is a retrenchment in the immediate term. However, I will say also, Trump has been presented, as far as I understand it, with another option. But he also doesn't want to take that one.

1:00:04And this is where, look, the liberals will get upset. But here's the truth. you could very easily have a significant mass deportation without any ICE agents if you targeted the business community. But guess what? He's not going to do that because Iowa, Ohio, all these other red states have been all on the phone to him now for months saying that workplace raids are bad for business. And one of the things to understand is Tom Homan, while yes, also a proponent of these ICE raids or of these ICE detainers for criminals, has been a significant proponent of workplace raids. And when I say workplace, I'm not talking about the Hyundai raid that was a Stephen Miller special.

1:00:45I'm talking about going after meatpacking plants or chicken processing facilities where the megacorporations employ a vast number of illegal immigrants. But they don't want to do that because it's going to hurt big business. And at the same time, they're worried about grocery store inflation. And if we're all being honest, obviously that's a significant reason why that inflation is not even more out of control whenever it comes to food and to agriculture. They don't want to touch the agricultural industry. They're basically in the pockets of the USDA. So I genuinely wonder how long this is going to last because under a so-called home and vision, there will be economic consequences if we're being completely honest, specifically for the richest Americans, for the hotel industry.

1:01:27You know, for example, a lot of the places that rely on illegal cheap labor. I mean, that's massively beneficial to their bottom line. So when that eventually happens and a billionaire calls Trump and says this is bad for Marriott hotels, what's going to happen? That's my that's my question as of right now, because that's where I see things headed in that. Well, and the other side of that is Stephen Miller has a he is deeply ideological and he's a very effective operator. and so like the Hyundai thing that was a Stephen Miller special right he that's what he wanted Trump didn't claims he didn't even know about it beforehand I kind of believe him actually um that no he definitely didn't know yeah that he didn't know that this was going to be done and the whole shock and awe approach like as much as you know people want to throw Kristi Noem into the bush she deserves plenty of scorn and scrutiny as well don't get me wrong Stephen Miller is the person who has architected this entire approach this is his baby and um there's a Wall Street Journal tear shoot we actually have for later in the show, but it's very relevant here, talking about how he knows how to work Trump.

1:02:29So he will use these, he'll bring into the Oval Office this shocking imagery of someone who was brutalized by an undocumented immigrant or something like that. And he'll show it to, we have to do this. And he knows how to manipulate him. Again, this is not to take agency away from Donald Trump, who was a grown ass man in the president of the United States. but everyone knows that this man can be manipulated and Stephen Miller is expert at it. It's part of why he has been around from the very beginning. He knows how to play this game. So, you know, while Trump can waver and right now he feels like the optics are bad and he doesn't like it and he's looking at the poll numbers and he feels like this is, you know, he doesn't like the way the videos look, et cetera.

1:03:13Miller is going to keep pushing in this direction. He will not give up. This is the project, the ideological project of his lifetime. He has the reins of power right now and he is not going to stop. So it's sort of like with the Miami occupied government always pushing one direction or with the Zionist occupied government always pushing in a certain direction, Stephen Miller and there are other acolytes in the Trump administration, they're going to continue to push. So I think it's really important to number one, acknowledge that the unified resistance of the people in the streets and the mass public opinion and disgust with what they saw happening in Minneapolis all coming to a head with the murder of Alex Preddy, that has led to a temporary retreat.

1:03:57But that does not mean that you're not going to go back to these very similar tactics. Just to speak to the polling here, let's put C5 up on the screen because this is the very latest polling on how people view all of this. And it is truly brutal. You've got 63 % who now disapprove of ICE. So about two-thirds of the country that disapprove of ICE. You have 60 % who want ICE out of Minneapolis. You've got almost 60%, 58%, who want NOAM removed from office. And if you go in there in terms of the percent who think the Alex Petty killing was justified, it says not justified wins by 40 points, 62 to 22.

1:04:37That's double the margin actually on goods killing. So it shows you there was a more fervent public perception on Alex Priti's killing. There was, I guess, people perceived it as sort of less of a gray area. But in any case, I mean, these are the type of poll numbers that Trump and his team are looking at and going, you know what? This was our strongest issue. And we have turned it into a nightmare for ourselves. Let's put C6 up on the screen with some new reporting from Ken. That is also, I think, worth considering because he got the actual list of all of the munitions that they had stockpiled to use in Minneapolis.

1:05:12So he says 35 ,000 munitions in Minneapolis, but then they suddenly withdraw. And this is all the, you know, what they call like less lethal, the crowd control stuff. You've got all the, you know, tear gas, tactical grenades and all of this, but just an insane, extraordinary amount of, you know, just quantity of munitions here to be used on the public in Minneapolis. So you can see what the plan was. and now you have obviously this drawdown. So definitely a decided change in course with regard to Minneapolis at least and at least in just this moment. So one more piece that I want to put up on the screen because I think it's very interesting to get insights and this is what Ken has been great at too from inside the agency.

1:05:53But Wired got inside the ICE forum, they say, where agents complain about their jobs. And there's a lot of interesting stuff here because the ICE agents themselves are not happy with the perception of the agency, with how all of this is going. They're disgusted with leadership. There's one user who noted there'd been no pre-planning for the influx of officers, how to use them, outfit them, database access, cars, equipment, duties, nada. Instead, they throw the RAs to ERO to do consensual encounters that they haven't had training on, really. A two-hour team Zoom course ain't enough. ERO referring to the Enforcement and Removal Operations Division of ICE, where staffers manage detention and make arrests on the ground.

1:06:32RA refers to rehired annuitant or federal employees who were retired but have since returned to federal work. The same use are alleged. The arrest reports are also lies in some cases, a lot of cases, lots of false statements at worst, misleading statements at best. Plaintiffs, lawyers going to have a field day with lawsuits after Trump leaves. They talked about the image that was created. They said there was absolutely zero forethought and our management just rolled over to let BP, that's Border Patrol, take over. huge mistake when the nuance of actual targeted enforcement is needed. Others complained about the leadership and direction of the agency.

1:07:08They said, led by some of the worst leadership I've ever witnessed from the local level all the way up to the national stage, this agency has managed to turn a righteous mission, some may disagree with that, into a complete clown show. So in any case, even the ICE agents are like, this is a fucking mess. This is a disaster. And, you know, Another thing that Ken points out, because what I said to him is like, well, how do you square that with the clear enthusiasm of the people that you see on the ground? And he said, well, it's a selection bias. Because number one, they're sending out a lot of these new people who signed up because they see the brutality in the street.

1:07:44And that's what they want to do. That's where they want to be. And then you're also asking for people to go on a volunteer basis, which means you're getting, like the people who are pissed about it and think that this is disgusting, they aren't the ones who are being sent out. The people who look at this and are like, yes, sign me up to tear gas a child in a car, those are the ones who are being selected to go to places like Minneapolis. And the videos that go viral are the worst ones, right? So there's 3 ,000 agents. We probably have seen like 200 in terms of video. I mean, even in terms of talking about this with ICE agents and all that, I think it misses the general point, which is that they've chosen to go this way as a reading of their mandate.

1:08:21They clearly had one on immigration and on the border. and I mean, I've just been thinking about a different world, let's say, in which you had passed, let's say the one big beautiful bill. They extended all of these tax credits. Great, cool, for rich people. They could never put universal e-verify in that. I just think we're living in a different universe. If you had universal e-verify, which look, you know, libs, you're gonna get mad about it, but yes, many illegals, it means you will not be able to be employed. If they had a remittance tax 100 % on Mexico, Guatemala, or the entire Northern Triangle, these people would just leave, period.

1:08:55They literally would leave because they cannot send money back for it. But guess what? That hurts the banks. It hurts the remittance company, Wells Fargo, all these people. It's going to hurt the Marriott industry, the weed farmers of California so that white yuppies can't smoke cheaper marijuana. Yes, all of you may be upset, but then we're going to have a different conversation about prices and inflation. And I mean, at the end of the day, remember Florida, there were videos of viral construction firms, which were supposedly empty. They're like, oh, the Florida economy is going to crash. No, it didn't.

1:09:23Turns out it's fine. You know, you can weather that storm. You would actually be massively popular, I think, if you had something like that. And then what? The libs are going to get mad about fair, you know, fair employment practices. Like, yeah, that's a joke. You know, you're going to be arguing on behalf of illegal labor. No, you're not. So you're going to be put in a much more difficult situation. Instead, they chose the other the other tack. And this is where we are. I mean, we were just talking about this, Ross, doubt that video about how Trump has lost the country. I think it's just unambiguously true.

1:09:53And I think that they have decided to embrace the most base instincts of a very select group of people on Twitter. And in fact, you know, I've talked about how I think liberals were very online. Let's say what, 2014 to when would you call it? Whenever the online stuff started to fade, maybe 2019, 2020, maybe up until Elon. But that's when the liberal Jezebel Twitter universe ruled the entire democratic and liberal establishment. I would say from BLM, me too. It was madness. It was obviously driven by a very select group. I think you could probably flip it and say after Elon purchased Twitter, you've had the same phenomenon where you have a very select group of people who will never criticize Trump, who don't not, not just not criticize Trump.

1:10:37If they do, they'll criticize him for comments like this. And then they will encourage and defend and change the very, you know, nature of the information environment which people swim in. And I cannot understate, I cannot overstate enough how much all of these younger staffers and people live on Twitter. They do not even engage with politics on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, where a lot, way more people are, as you and I know, and it's creating the same selection bias. Miller, all of these people, you think I'm joking, like they live on Twitter. His own wife works for Elon and is hosting a Twitter podcast.

1:11:15Nothing is easier than picking a Twitter fight with the vice president of the United States. That's what I'm saying. It's not, it's like, this is not the way to run a country. You're actually too online. Like, I really mean it. And this has created this situation, even in the media one, where they're not living in the world that you and I are. Right. And I can see that because also we host a show on YouTube, which is way more accessible to the general public. I could look at our Twitter analytics. I thought Trump switched. I remember distinctly, I went on parental leave. I came back and I was like, oh man.

1:11:48You know, just from analytics, you can see very clearly. I went on and checked the YouTube podcast charts today. Midas touches number two in the United States. Number two behind Joe Rogan. Is there any reckoning with that at the national level? No, they just don't get it. Yeah, they're still living in the past about, you know, who's offended. They don't understand like you and I can of how radically things can change. Think back to the online energy. from Trump July of 2024 to, I would say, January. It was extraordinary. I was relatively certain Trump would win purely based off of our YouTube analytics.

1:12:24And you can see now, based on the way things are trending, but I mean, it just, it demonstrates, first, how coalitions are not static, number one. Two, how the public is much more engaged than you might think, because they really believe that people just fuck around and do nothing all day. But they just don't get that relative amounts of check-ins when you start to see enough of these videos, it's not going to work out well for you. And they will switch on you in a dime. Well, there's two other things to consider in that. Number one is the fact that for individuals who just want their influencer base, and I'm not just, I'm not talking about it.

1:13:01I'm talking about people in the government who want to be like famous and get patted on the head. Oh, that was so base, that was base, blah, blah, blah. Then like that is actually their, that is their whole world. They don't really care about what the whole public thinks about. That's true. They just want those, like, that affirmation from the hardest fringe, like, neo-Nazis online who wouldn't tell them that they're based for, you know, whatever outrageous thing that they do. The other thing to keep in mind is that, you know, with Stephen Miller being so influential, this man is not buffeted around by the winds of Twitter.

1:13:32He has a project. And the reason why he is not that excited about, you know, going in and doing the E-Verify stuff or whatever is not only because it pisses off the wealthy. That is part of it. That's part of certainly why Trump is not interested in going in that direction. But it's because immigration is a key piece of Stephen Miller's broader project of more power projection. That's why, and we've had this discussion before, that's why Minneapolis is chosen, right? It's not because it's a hotbed of undocumented immigration. It's not compared to other cities in the country. it's because it's a hotbed of liberal opposition to Trump from the mayor to the governor right and then you know you have the Somalis who again by and large American citizens but that's a useful political cudgel and you know this will bleed out we're going to talk about the elections things Steve Bannon is floating hey we should use these ICE agents and send them out to the polls Miller sees this as a cohesive project he wants to I don't think he's going to succeed but his goal is not only to change the ethnic composition of the country, but to effectively quash the opposition forever and win some sort of a final battle in politics, which is always, you know, it's an impossibility, but that is what he's striving towards.

1:14:48And so, you know, him being able to get this massive budget for ICE that, you know, they have more money than they could know what to do with, and they're building out all these huge detention centers and flooding them into cities and clashing with liberal protesters. Like this is all going according to his plan. These are exactly the scenes that he actually wants and was aiming for. So his wings are being clipped right now because Trump is sort of tuning into this and like, wait, wait, wait, this is too, this is not actually helping me. I don't like this. This is too far, et cetera. But Stephen Miller's like dedication to that project is not going anywhere, which is why I was saying earlier, you know, he's going to continue work and use whatever angles he can to get back to, you know, exactly what he was doing in Minneapolis and, you know, surging 35 ,000 different types of munitions into the city so that they can have these explosive clashes with mostly like white liberal protesters, not actually even undocumented immigrants, so.

1:15:50I don't know. I mean, I don't disagree necessarily. To be fair, if you've been read or looked at Stephen or anybody, He's been talking about you verify for 15 years. So it's not like he wouldn't be pushing it. I think he lives in the world of reality where this was the only thing that they could get through the GOP. Don't forget the GOP congressmen are just as bought off by the agriculture and by the big business industry just as much. And that's part of the reason it doesn't get through. Ice agents is frankly the low hanging fruit of being able to fund something without really doing anything about it.

1:16:18Yeah. Financial system talking the agricultural or any of these. Yes. Different big businesses. So I agree with you. I I to Stephen Miller's. credit, I guess. I don't, he is ideologically committed to the project and he doesn't bother him to piss off wealthy people in service of the project because he is, he is committed to that goal. It's not just transactional for him. That's absolutely the case. Yeah, you're right. So if you go and read, people should remember, you know, he worked for Jeff Sessions. Sessions, if people forget, was the very first Senator to ever endorse Trump, which was shocking actually.

1:16:50When was that? 2015? Maybe. He was the very first elected politician to endorse Trump. It was genuinely shocking. And it was because of immigration. Now, Jeff obviously gets stabbed in the back by Trump because of Russiagate bullshit later on. And Stephen, you know, creates his own little empire inside of the White House. But a lot of it does trace back to some of the discussion that we're having here. I don't know which way it's going to go. I would say, considering the way things are, you're one Nick Shirley video away from everything changing. I guess we can just rely on his own illiteracy and incompetence to make sure that that doesn't happen.

1:17:40I 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. This show contains information subject to but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nell Green, from the Broken Play Podcast.

1:18:20Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what? It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Not a team who ain't going to the playoffs. They're chief. It's time to rebuild. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs.

1:18:52No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.