2/6/26: AIPAC Takes MAJOR L, NEW Epstein Cell Video, Job Numbers PLUMMET

27:03on August 9th, 2019. Now, this 10.39 p.m. is also interesting because this was between the 10 to midnight period where supposedly these guards had fallen asleep or weren't paying attention. So that's when this sort of orange blob appears. But they continue, they say, that entry into an observation log of the video from the Metropolitan Correctional Center appears to suggest something previously unreported by authorities of a flash of orange that looks to be going up, again, the L -tier stairs towards Epstein that could possibly be an inmate escorted up to that tier. It also appears, according to an FBI memorandum, that reviews by investigators led to disparate conclusions by the FBI and those examining the same video from the Department of Justice's Office of Inspector General.

27:50The FBI described it as possibly an inmate. And if you scroll down here, you had the inspector general saying it could be an officer carrying orange linen or bedding, noting in their final report as an unidentified corrections officer. So, again, this is the image that's in question here, but unidentified possible corrections officer carrying linens or unidentified inmate potentially going up in that direction on the night of Epstein's death. What do you guys make of this? I mean, continue to be a lot of questions. There's another line in this CBS News report, which maybe this was already known, but I didn't know it.

28:30It says the noose Epstein allegedly used has never been definitively identified. According to the inspector general's report, a noose collected at the scene was later determined not to be the ligature used in Epstein's death. What do you mean that you never identified the noose? Like, what do you mean by that? Because you have one jail cell, like everything's right there. It's not too hard to secure that scene. and this is the one, you know, that was wrapped around his neck. That blew my mind as well. Have you guys seen on the more conspiratorial level, have you guys seen this thing about how one of his gamer accounts continues to be active in Israel?

29:13He's playing Fortnite in Israel or something. They just couldn't give up, like, whatever, you know, legacy, like, skins and tokens and progress he had. You can't stop playing Fortnite, even if you're dead. like that's they've designed how addictive and he had a hand in in the some of the addictive nature of video games so it would be um you know it does make a level of sense but no i mean listen i think the fact that they they tried to say there was no one in you know in this video and accessing that uh jail's here when you can clearly see it in the video and then they say oh well maybe it's a corrections officer carrying orange linen and they've said no that's definitely not yeah well Well, and either way, they also say in the CBS report, like, according to the people who work in this jail facility, whether or not it was an inmate or whether or not it was an officer, either way, that would have been a breach of protocol at the time.

30:07Yeah. Yeah. They said that inmates would not be like walking around the prison at this hour of the night. That would not be a thing that would typically happen. And so the other thing that we got from this release is we learned that his defense team was approaching the government in, you know, a couple of weeks before he ends up dead about cooperating, which would mean, you know, he was going to he was saying, hey, you know, I have some information that might be interesting to you. And so I think that speaks not only to potential motivation that you don't want this guy around anymore, but it also speaks to his mentality where, you know, he hadn't given he still had avenues to pursue.

30:50You know, he certainly if his defense team is exploring this, he certainly felt like this was a potential avenue to pursue, to be able to secure a lesser sentence, be able to get out of there. So I think, you know, both of those things fly in the face of the idea that he was truly suicidal and wanting to kill himself. We also had, you know, we also had indications he was afraid to return to his jail cell because he had, you know, had marks on his neck and had been attacked previously. So, you know, again, if someone is suicidal and wanting to die, that's not really consistent with, you know, a mentality of someone who is apparently trying to preserve their life.

31:25my favorite response to this question of who could the video show going into Epstein's cell has been, I don't know, the murderer? Could be. And to your point, Epstein is a person who has confronted setbacks throughout his entire life. Like, you know, rising up first of all through Coney Island and winds up at Bear Stearns. they find out he was a total fraud he overcomes that he gets fired from Bear Stearns and he leverages that to this international tax financier position he got caught with the child prostitution thing in the 2000s came back again bigger than ever in the 2010s. This is a guy who believes in his ability to overcome obstacles, which is one of the biggest reasons I have such a hard time getting to a place where he's like, you know what?

32:35I've overcome all of these other things and I have all of this leverage and I have all of these friends and all this information, but I give up. He just does not strike me as the kind of guy that gives up. I totally agree with that. He's not the kind of guy that ever thinks he's checkmated, right? Right. And you can see that even in the email, you know, that he preserves to himself about Bill Gates. Right. Clearly, Bill Gates had said to him, listen, my wife's on my ass. I can't hang out with you anymore. We got to cut this off. He's not taking no for an answer. He's like, no, like you think you're done with me?

33:05I don't care. Like, I'm not done with you. And so here's how I'm going to keep you in the loop. Here's how I'm going to keep you in the web. This is not something you can just back away from. That's not how this works. Right. So same with Leon Black. Leon Black's like, I'm done with you. He's like, no, I want my 40 million a year. And this is how it's going to go. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, and also like clearly Epstein is a, you know, a narcissist, thinks he's the main character. I mean, people like this truly don't even think the world can like go on if they aren't part of it.

33:34So it's very, I mean, it's just psychologically very inconsistent with someone who'd be like, yeah, they got me. I guess I'm out of here. But, I mean, listen, I guess on the other hand, this is someone who's accustomed to flying around the world and living in a lab of luxury and having all of his, you know, horrific carnal desires met at every hour of the day and whatever. So perhaps it was just too hard for him to bear, even for a short time, to be not living the lifestyle that, you know, that he enjoyed living. So there is that. But, you know, there are just there are just so many weird inconsistencies and questions that remain that it's just, you know, it's it's very hard for me to believe that the official story is really what happened here.

34:18And to the point of him feeling untouchable, you know, you also rewind to the Acosta sweetheart deal like he might have figured the same thing. If you buy into the idea that Epstein in some way, shape or form belong to intelligence and that's sort of what got him out of it the last time around, then, you know, maybe there's some inclination there in his mind that, OK, that'll probably get me out of this again. Right. They're not going to they're not going to push me into a situation where I feel like I'm forced to reveal all of this incriminating information about these high profile, wealthy people around the world that I have these connections to.

34:48So, you know, he may have thought he still he still had a chance. And to your point, Crystal, it seems like in the days leading up to his death, they were still planning on, you know, at least making some sort of a fight. So. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Mac, you want to roll through some of these other elements because these were some other, you know, significant discoveries contained within this document release. Yeah. So let's go ahead and start off with this one posted by Ed Krasenstein. So he says here and now appears as though Jeffrey Epstein may have met with Donald Trump Jr. in 2019, just months before he died.

35:25So if you look at this, this email again, this is from January 27th, 2019. The email here is from JEE Vacation, Jeffrey Epstein. He says, can we do coffee with Don Jr. Thursday, Friday? Only if easy. As you know, I like people that are funny. So what are we supposed to make of this in terms of the timeline from which Donald Trump said that he completely cut off his relation with Jeffrey Epstein in the early 2000s to now we've had sort of multiple things that have come out in this recent batch of files that indicate, OK, at least within his inner circle or maybe even his immediate family, that probably was not the case.

36:05Yeah, there was an email, Sagar, and I covered where he was similarly, actually right before he was inaugurated for the first time, Epstein was claiming that he was hanging out with what he described as the Trump boys, which you would assume is Eric and Don Jr. And even if you buy their denials and these meetups never happened or Epstein was just blustering and bragging and name dropping and he wasn't really getting together with, you know, Trump or Trump Jr. or whoever, clearly he had direct connectivity to the administration, as we see through the extensive Steve Bannon relationship. And Bannon, especially first-term Trump, and Ryan, you can speak to this more than I can, but especially first-term Trump, he's in the administration to start with, and he's deeply influential.

36:50I think he continues to be influential in Trump world as both an outside force and someone who knows all the players on the inside as well. So you see Epstein and Bannon going back and forth on Supreme Court picks, right, on world events. and Epstein is offering his take and Bannon's, you know, yeah, I helped get John Bolton in there, but he's controlled by Sheldon Adelson. But maybe we can, you know, work with him in this way or that way. So whether or not he was directly talking to Trump or Trump Jr. or family members, clearly he was having a direct impact on the decision making of the Trump administration.

37:29Yeah, absolutely. And Bannon is this unusual figure who kind of loves to talk to the left, like the fact that he was talking to Chomsky. He gabs with reporters in ways that, you know, a lot of the MAGA types don't do. And I think he saw Epstein as this like entree into this Clinton world, you know, of endless amounts of intel on the Clinton world or his enemies. So yeah, and Bannon and Don Jr. are very close. So that's a direct line if Epstein ever wanted it. Well, I also have to think that Bannon partly wanted to manage the relationship with Epstein because he knew that Trump had this longstanding relationship with Epstein.

38:17I mean, reportedly, Bannon had said, allegedly, that Epstein was the one guy who could keep Trump from the presidency, who could ruin it all for him. And so, you know, I think there was also a sense of like, let me keep this guy close so I can, you know, kind of control this situation and maybe find out what there is to be found out so that, you know, I can protect my guy over here. Yeah, there was that one email or text message where he's like, it kills Trump that, you know, it would kill Trump to know that you and I are so tight. There was something like he said at one point, Epstein, now you know why Trump lies awake at night knowing that I'm that I'm still out there.

38:57And actually that email was sent like, I don't know, very soon before he goes to prison and ends up dead. Yeah. Interesting stuff. We also had a couple more things that I wanted to bring up here. So on the censorship angle, right, obviously there's been widespread criticism on both sides, both in terms of a lack of censorship of some of the potential victims, as well as over censoring on people who could be potentially implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's deeds. But we had this as well pointed out here by Quad Carl that seems to be sort of like a slip up on some sort of automated redacting by the Trump administration.

39:39So if you see here in this seemingly innocuous sentence, this person says, I was going to take polo lessons in Calgary, but I redacted think my body can handle it. Now, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that this person says, I don't think my body can handle it, but probably had some sort of a typo that and said, D-O-N, my Don think my body can handle it. So could be some sort of an indication here that there was sweeping censorship and redactions on many things having to do with keywords like Don or Donald or Trump or Donald Trump or whatever else the case may be. So, you know, even with the shocking stuff that we have gotten from these files, it seems like it's still a tiny fraction of what actually exists out there.

40:24What do you make of this, Ryan? Because on the other hand, we just saw an email where Don Jr. was in there unredacted. Mm-hmm. See, it's sloppy. You know, they were wrecked by Doge. So, like, this is still a human enterprise. Like, they have to, like, actually execute it. Well, they could have assigned down different batches to, you know, different groups are working on it. So this one censored Don, this one screwed up and didn't censor Don or who knows. And there's one that was really telling to me that I was looking at the other day. It's an exchange between Epstein and Scaramucci. And it's very clearly Scaramucci because he's saying, I want to do a CNBC hit.

41:03And then at the end, he sends a Twitter link. And if you type in that Twitter link into Twitter, it's the Mooch's CNBC hit. So it's the Mooch. And he's redacted. It's like, Mooch is not a survivor of Epstein abuse that we know of. Why are we protecting this man? Why is the Mooch getting protection here? Like your eight days in the administration earn you like the protection of the of the censors here. So it's just there clearly are a lot of censors going through this who feel like it's their job to protect anybody who's friendly to Trump or to their movement. Yeah. And isn't isn't he doing a bit of a right wing turn at the moment?

41:43Separate from my just touching hours of whatever. Anyway, I mean, I just there's a disgusting level of all the men who are involved here being redacted and protected and then many victims being exposed. And, you know, I think that that in and of itself speaks to their their priorities here. And then they're using they're then using their own screw ups to then justify mass kind of withdrawing of documents from the public. like there's this one email where somebody who a woman who seems to be on pretty good terms with epstein a grown woman sends him a bunch of like nude pics and they shouldn't have but they did they posted all of those like all of those pics um then they go and they're like oh we we accidentally um included a lot of child sex abuse material a lot of c-sam was put in so we're pulling back all of this stuff.

42:38It's like, no, you didn't. You didn't actually do it. You erroneously posted this woman's nude photos and you should withdraw those. But she's an adult. And so they're using the CSAM claims because the public is like, oh, CSAM, I don't want to be anywhere near it. And just wildly so. But they're lying about what's in there. Right. Because nobody's going to then call them on it. Yeah. And in the days after the initial batch was dropped, if you did certain keyword searches on specific names, you could see the amount of results that came up would drop slowly over time. It would go from 5 ,000 to now it's 4 ,700.

43:17Now it's 4 ,300 or whatever over successive days as they were removing some of it. Well, you guys got them all over at Jmail, right? Yes, I think we do. I think we have them. Like we're constantly, it's a cat and mouse game with their posting and withdrawing, but I think we've got them. Yeah. Yeah. So another reason why you guys should check out that tool if you're wanting to do some journalism here yourselves and, you know, just get a sense for how these networks operated and what their day-to-day exchanges were like because it is an extraordinary and horrifying window. And I mean, I don't know about you, Ryan, like the I when I thought about the way the world worked and like these networks of power and, you know, how this all operated, I thought it was a little more diffuse.

44:07Like, it's just so incredibly direct, like the most, I guess, most cynical view I possibly could have had of how the how power networks operate, like was maybe not even cynical enough. Based on, you know, based on these emails and these exchanges and the way that, you know, they're all insider trading with each other. They're all protecting each other. They're all bonded together through these like heinous acts. And yeah, I don't know. Yeah, my colleague Maz and I were in New York Wednesday and Thursday filming a video around Epstein's neighborhood. And what really is so striking about being there is how tight of a social set this is.

44:52Like it's all of these super elite rich people. like we understand that they travel in the same professional circles and for people who live in the Upper East Side like they understand what the social scene there but for those of us that don't like being there is like oh like this person lives here this person lives here this person lives here Woody Allen's here Jeffrey Epstein's here Donald Trump's you know the plaza's here Trump's building is here uh the UN's right here like it's all happening in a few blocks and all the wealth that like is pouring into the United States is like just staying like right in those few blocks.

45:31And they're all hanging out with each other all the time. Yep. And so it brings home how... Going to the Hamptons this time of year, going to Palm Beach that time of year. They go to these restaurants in the Upper East Side, live in these neighborhoods, their kids go to these schools. Absolutely. Yeah, so it really does bring home your point about how tight this really is. And it's very easy to understand once you get there, he's like, oh, we all understand these social circles. They just happen to be running the world. Yeah. I think the other thing that I've been thinking a lot about is like, they use, these are not people who have any sort of like patriotic loyalty.

46:10Their loyalty is only to themselves and their class, like truly. And so the episode that spells that out, I mean, there's a number of them. The email exchange, where is it Peter Thiel that Epstein is talking to when he's like, you know, zero interest rates were too high and we need more chaos because it's easier to like, you know, to profit when there's death and destruction and collapse than trying to find a good deal during ordinary times. You know, I'm butchering the language, but that was what he was saying. I mean, that's, you know, I mean, it's deeply not just not patriotic. It's like deeply anti-human.

46:47Antisocial. Yeah. Yeah. Antisocial, anti-creation, anti-human. And then also the revelations about Lord Mandelson, where he's plotting with Epstein against the UK. And and like, let's get Jamie Dimon in here, you know, to bully the government so that this banker bonus thing we don't want doesn't go through and he can like threaten them, you know, with X or Y or Z. So, again, it's like it's actually treasonous behavior, which is part of why it's such a scandal in the U.K., because you're plotting with this financier against the government, against the will of the people directly. So that guy might go to jail.

47:27And that guy might actually go to jail. I mean, it's a pretty clear cut. Like the insider trading part of that is like pretty clear cut. You know, he's instantly. And this is crazy. Like you're in the midst of the crash in 2008. And what you're thinking of doing is like, I just got this information. Let me forward it to Jeffrey Epstein. Like, that's your first move. That's insane. That's insane. But it just shows you like Epstein didn't need to be some sort of like absolute financial wizard because the network was everything. Right. Right. And he had certainly and I mean, he was a knowledgeable person about, you know, financial inner work.

48:00He was very early to Bitcoin. There's a lot of questions about that, too, of just how involved he was in the early days of Bitcoin and how beneficial that was to him. And I'm sure he instantly understood this is a useful network for my criminal behavior, as many people do and did with crypto, etc. But but in any case, he didn't have to be a financial wizard. If you have that kind of insider information, it's easy. You get the tip. Oh, we're going to do a 500 euro bailout. You know, that's coming. OK, well, let's let's do this. There was one. Actually, do we have this one about the shorting the ruble, Mac?

48:34Yeah, yeah, we do. Put that one up because that's very relevant to this. He was shorting the ruble just before they, what, invaded Crimea? Isn't that the timing of it? Five days before? Yeah, let's check the dates. And this person might have had the time off a little bit. But yeah, he. So the date from this email from Epstein is on March 13th, 2014. So I think that is about seven or so days before the official annexation. So why that move? Right. Suddenly he just had an inkling, you know. There was another one here that puts it more into kind of explicit picture for the framework of what you're describing here, Crystal.

49:11So this is an email between Epstein and a Rothschild here. And she says, Hi, Jeff. Very long day sitting on the bank board. Numbers are OK, but not satisfactory to me. And I'm putting them I'm being put under pressure to be more innovative about asset management funds while restructuring. I'm in a dinner with a client fed up. I miss our talks and hope that you're well. We'll be home tomorrow night. Will you be free? And let's discuss Ukraine. And this was after Epstein had said, Ukraine upheaval should provide many opportunities. Many. Yeah. You know, similar. It also, one more example of that here real quick is it reminds me of this drop site reporting here from y 'all, Ryan, where, and this is in the piece on Cote d 'Avor and him working with Ehud Barak to set up some sort of a security agreement.

49:56So this was an email between Epstein and Ehud Barak, the former prime minister and defense minister of Israel. He said, with civil unrest exploding and the desperation of those in power, isn't this perfect for you? And then Barack replied, you're right in a way, but it's not simple to transform it into a cash flow. So like this is the sort of mentality that they had with chaos and disruption and destabilization around the world is how can we use this for our own power games? How can we use this to transform it into a cash flow? Yeah, which again, like, you know, this is disaster capitalism. This is, you know, these are concepts that obviously we are very familiar with.

50:36But to just see it so overt and so naked, like, oh, war. Yay. Goody. Amazing opportunities for us to get even richer and more powerful. yeah and the use of cash flow is an interesting like little bit of daylight between um at barack and epstein because epstein's like hey chaos like let's go in and make you know 75 million dollars like tomorrow and barack is thinking okay but i also i just want i just want millions flowing in constantly and and all of this chaos like makes the flow part of it tricky like he just wants to sit back and just let it flow in. Whereas Epstein's more of a peripatetic, like, let's just bounce around the world and like stash what we can.

51:21But, you know, you can do both if you work hard enough at it. Yeah, apparently. Yeah. And there's an extraordinary email about Libya as well. Yeah. Where they're like, here's, you know, here's how much natural resources they have. I think we could skim this much off of it. This is before we, you know, came in and took out Gaddafi. So, you know, That's the way that they think. And so, you know, going back to the point about nationalism, like they see nation states and they see nationalistic sentiment as like a tool to be exploited as well. Like a, you know, a rubish understanding of the world while they're operating at the level that action really happens, which is using the entire globe as their as their plaything and, you know, moving the pieces around such that it benefits them, even as it immiserates the world.

52:15And the other thing that I keep coming back to is there's an extraordinary exchange where he's talking about he sort of has contempt for Bill Gates because Gates is doing all this charity work in Africa and keeps asking Epstein, like, hey, do you want to contribute to whatever X or Y or Z global health initiative I'm doing in Africa? And Epstein is very irritated by this because he says he's got this Catholic notion that all humans are are equally worth, you know, are worth equal amounts, like that they're of equal value. And he just thinks that this is so preposterous and naive because he has this supremacist ideology and overtly eugenicist ideology that he talks about openly and is trying to put into practice through his like breeding ranch in New Mexico where, you know, he wants to seed the world with his superior his superior offspring.

53:03And it's very similar to the ideology of Elon Musk, for example, or there was like a Chinese billionaire who was doing the same thing. These it's very natural for these wealthy, powerful men to have supremacist and eugenicist ideologies because it justifies their place in the hierarchy. It allows them to fully embrace disaster capitalism and exploiting war and not giving a shit about all of the tremendous horror and harm that they're causing around the world because those people aren't really people the way that we are. They don't deserve to have the lives that we live. Welcome to the A-Building.

53:39I'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.

54:23This 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 is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years, Ryder, where I could not say your name.

55:08I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

56:00What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote.

56:33Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, should we go ahead and move on over to econ now? All right, so the economy really sucks. Mac, we've got a couple stories to go through here. And the data is starting to really put some meat on the bones of what people have been feeling for a very long time, which is that there are no jobs to be had. Like, it's this weird situation where we're starting to see a significant number of layoffs, but it's not as if you're getting a... The biggest problem has been that there just aren't job openings.

57:17Like, if you wind up unemployed, it's very, very hard to find a new job, though people are starting to get fired and laid off at a pretty rapid clip. But what has led into this has been this absolute lack of any jobs opening. Politico has an interesting lead here, which is, just let's read what they say here. President Donald Trump's economy is booming, but if you're looking for a job, good luck. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that job openings in December unexpectedly dropped to their lowest level since mid-2020 during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a sign that companies have cooled on hiring despite an economic expansion that the White House has framed as the dawn of a new golden age.

58:11So we have this weird situation where we are not at all technically in a recession because GDP is growing. but there's all of this insane, you know, tariff chaos that has been sending uncertainty into the market but people are also then wondering how much of this is AI. So if I talk to a lot of managers and executives at major companies around the world, what they all tell me, I'm curious if you guys have had any conversations with people that are similar to this, it's like when somebody leaves a job now at a company, The first thing they do is, it used to be as the economy is rolling, all right, this person left the job, we need to hire someone to replace them.

59:00Now it is, we need to look very hard at, can we do their job using the productivity gains we're getting from AI to spread the work to other humans who can be more productive because they've got these AI capabilities? In other words, if somebody leaves, can we just not hire somebody? And the answer that so many managers are coming back with is, yes, we do not need to hire for this role. And a lot of these Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies are forecasting that this process of attrition is going to lead to massive reductions in their workforces over the years. So some of it is this uncertainty sparked by Trump's kind of incessant need to like own goal, like the economy.

59:58But some of it is also these companies saying, do we actually need people to fill this role? Maybe we don't. Ryan, what is your estimation of how these tech oligarchs think this is all going to work out? Because I mentioned this yesterday. Chris Hayes had this viral tweet where he was like, I need you people to understand billionaires are trying to do to white collar workers what they already did to blue collar workers. Like, that's where we're heading. As you've pointed out in the past, now the bulk of consumer spending is with, again, the, you know, top several percentile in the country. So they don't really need your consumer dollars anymore.

1:00:35They don't need your labor. They don't need your consumer dollars. Like they don't need you even to send as meat into the grinder for their wars increasingly with like AI warfare and the use of special operations. So what is there like what do you think they're planning? This is going to work out. What they what they will tell you is a version of Sam Altman's and Elon Musk's explanation for why they're doing AI. They will say, I agree with you. And I actually fear for what this is producing in the country and in the world. And I fear what it's going to leave to the world that my children are going to inherit.

1:01:16But my job as a corporate executive is to do what the company needs to do to get ahead. And if I don't do it, my competitor is going to do it. and we're going to, and then we will fail, and we will lose to them. Like, that is what all of them say, and it is a genuine collective action problem in a decentralized capitalistic economy like this where you don't have a kind of state that's able to say, no, like, these are the forces that we're seeing, but from a social perspective, this is how we want to direct those forces, and we as a self-governing democratic polity are gonna do that. We don't have that.

1:02:03What we have is our companies who have quarterly earnings reports coming up and now are starting to be measured by the level of attrition that they can pull off, the amount of people that they can replace with AI. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I mean, my answer societally, because obviously this, you know, off to the races, AI push is coming from the Trump administration. You know, this is really their big bet on the economy. You know, it's not like Trump thinks tariffs are fun, but the real big bet is on we're going to take off all the guardrails and we're going to flood the like AI tech oligarchs. Go, go, go.

1:02:48No holds barred. And I think you see in their budget priorities the way they're thinking about how this is going to go. That's why they're funding the largest law enforcement agency in history in ICE, you know, better funded. The immigration enforcement operation is better funded than any military on the planet except for two, ours and China. So they need this massive domestic police state equipped with the surveillance state and all of that stuff. And then you also have him asking for$1.5 trillion defense budget. So that's their view. And they only like they foolishly only believe in hard power.

1:03:31Right. That's what you see in the way that they operate in the world. They are delusional enough to think it's enough just to, you know, to hold people in place using guns and hard power. And so I think that's I think that's their plan. I mean, just judging by their budget priorities and where they're shifting resources and focus and money. Yeah. I mean, Ryan, to your point earlier, like there is a way that we could be going about this that actually does serve the needs and could improve the lives of average Americans. But it's impossible to do that under a capitalist structure like we have in this country.

1:04:09It seems like AI technology is almost the most extreme example of a race towards monopoly under capitalism because it's so rapidly advancing and consolidating. And eventually we're going to have one company that ends up getting that major big breakthrough moving forward. And so, you know, under the structure that we have right now, the no holds bar Trump, let's let's let it all rip. Where is this going to end up other than just with monopolistic sort of like techno feudal society where we have a handful of people who control the entirety of the most powerful technology that's ever been wielded by human human beings?

1:04:49and then everybody else is just sort of left to rot. I mean, it doesn't even seem like they hypothetically have a sustainable plan for the next 10, 15, 20 years down the line in the future. No, corporate executives are talking to them as some of the sources of the greatest doomerism. And you can judge them for being the ones like foot soldiering and carrying it out. But they're even more frightened, shockingly, than the average public because they're seeing it happening now. Which is why they're building bunkers and planning to escape tomorrow. These are the types of people who make, let's say,$800 ,000 a year rather than$80 million a year.

1:05:42They're very rich and doing well, and they'll be fine. and they can probably make sure their kids are fine-ish. But they also care about the world. And there's, but there's, you know, they're stuck in, they're in these jobs. And they're like, what we're seeing, like unfold around us, you know, we're gonna, you know, our headcount's gonna go by, drop by 30, 50, 80%, like over the next, you know, three, four, five years. And you do that across the board. like what are these people going to do yeah and like how do you support a show like this when tens of thousands more of our like paying subscribers are laid off like it's a it is a very dark time that we're like that we're heading into and the oligarchs have nothing beyond UBI at this point like yeah you know that was their vision because they saw this they're like if we succeed in what we're trying to do we're going to desiccate society.

1:06:45And so we need then universal basic income. Like that was their answer. I haven't seen them come up with anything. And then you also have this sort of like. Concentration camps. I mean, I hate to be really dark, but we're, ICE is building out, you know, they're buying fields and installing warehouses and, you know, and it's this massive police state that is being funded. We already know that it's not just for immigrants. I mean, we already see the people they're clashing with in the streets are mostly white liberals. So I don't think it's too crazy to think that that is part of the plan, at least enough to, like, scare people into line and to control movement and control opposition, et cetera.

1:07:30So, I mean, I think that's from the political class. I think that's the way they're that's the way they're thinking about it because they don't need you anymore. Right. The only reason they need you is for your labor. and if they don't need your labor, they don't need you anymore. Yeah, and I also wonder like with this sort of like transhumanism mindset or even in some cases seemingly like anti-human perspectives, like how pervasive is that amongst the upper levels of some of these tech companies where they might just like not, I mean, you remember that Peter Thiel clip, I think it was Peter Thiel from a while back where he was asked like, is it important that human civilization continues or that human beings continue into the future?

1:08:09And he like legitimately had to pause and and think about whether or not he thought that that was something that needed to happen moving forward. So I think for some of them, there's an acceptance or a willingness to just sort of blindly go down this path that even they know will lead to civilizational destruction or mass suffering or whatever it ends up being. There is a view in Silicon Valley, I don't know how pervasive, but there is a view that having an attachment to human beings is speciest. and so that true enlightenment comes from not caring that the robots take over and crush us like ants.

1:08:50If they're, you know, furthering their civilization and able to come up with, you know, these incredible technological solutions, like we should all be in favor of that and that for us to be sentimentally attached to human beings is very small-minded thinking of us. You know, just disturbing stuff. Yeah, Mac, do you want to put up this CNBC one? Sure, yeah. because this is, so I was saying like the big problem with the economy has not been layoffs up until now. It has more been when people leave, they can't find a job that there's no, there's no new job openings. Now we're getting a double whammy.

1:09:26Layoffs in January were the highest to start a year since 2009, according to Challenger, which measures these 108 ,000 layoffs for the month, which they have doubling from, more than doubling from the same period a year ago, up 200, what is it? 205 % from last month. Like that's insane. Wow. And they say at the same time, companies announced just 5 ,306 new hires. The lowest since January of 2009. if you weren't around for January of 2009 that was the darkest time in the American economy since the Great Depression so like and this is going on while Trump is talking about a boom and while GDP is growing maybe it's going to be down in the next quarter but still growing-ish like so the thing the wheels are coming off is basically what these numbers are showing Before we jump to the premium half, Ryan, real quick question for you.

1:10:37What do you make of the Bitcoin drop? What do you think is going on there? I don't know. I don't know. I saw somewhere that an early whale dumped billions. um i so and you know the the now getting all of these um the bitcoin the bitcoin crowd really wanted all these institutions like banks and others to like get in on the on the rush so you know the more buyers the more you push the price up getting them in though you know if they're on margin and it hits a certain level, you know, as it crashes, this could, the crash becomes self-fulfilling because, you know, if you have to sell at 70 ,000 and that now it crashed and it hits 70 ,000, now you've got to sell your entire position and you selling your position moves it to 69 ,000.

1:11:34And now other people who had to sell at 69 to cover their margins have to sell.

1:11:44And who are leveraged like that, the more volatility you're going to get. It was already an insanely volatile thing. I'm sure a bunch of people are out there buying the dip. Well, it says right now Bitcoin narrowly avoids falling under 60 ,000 as it bounces off of lows. So it looks like there's a bit of a recovery going on right now. But, you know, the hope was that as the dollar weakens and, you know, people move away from it as the safe harbor and world reserve currency, that quote unquote digital gold which is what they you know what they want bitcoin to be that that would be the thing that would you know the new flight to safety would be bitcoin but what we've seen instead is that it's you know it's more precious metals it's like actual it's way significantly below what it was when trump was uh came into office which is wild he's the crypto president he's the guy if it was ever going to shoot to the moon then his coin's good yeah i mean i don't know what it's done the last couple days but like he's up.

1:12:43He's up and low down basically. UAE or Saudi or whoever is going to make sure that that continues to be the case whenever they need some deal done with the government. It is kind of funny to call it the digital gold kind of skirts around like the entire reason why gold has value in the first place or silver has value in the first place because of its physical limited nature in reality. Well, Bitcoin is technically limited, you know, because of the way you have to mine it. So that's why they said, well, that's the scarcity that's built into this that makes it akin to gold. Well, that's not going too well right now.

1:13:21Yeah. All right. Should we move over to the premium portion? We have to play these Mom Donnie clips. They're just too charming of him with these little children. They're absolutely adorable. We have to get to the right wing mess. Take a few AMA questions. So if you want to get the whole thing, guys, BreakingPoints.com. If not, we totally get it. Appreciate all of you, and we'll see you on the other side. On the Adventures of Curiosity Cove podcast, what if there's more to the story than we've been told? This Black History Month, Adventures of Curiosity Cove invites families into a playful mystery that blends history, science, and imagination.

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