5/21/26: Iran Stuns Trump With Red Line, Trump Indicts Cuba's Castro, Bezos Speaks Against Taxes

25:26If they were to resume, in Trump's mind, it would be a limited strike. Now, in Iran's mind, it wouldn't be. But in Trump's mind, it would be a limited strike. And so if he were to do it, it would happen over the weekend, I think, because the oil markets and the stock market couldn't react and he would want some chance of being able to go in and then stop before markets were able to open on Monday. But look, that's where things are right now. And in a very strange deja vu, we can now turn to Cuba to talk. It feels like only yesterday we were talking about the kidnapping of a Latin American dictator and the potential conflict coming with Iran.

26:01So, yeah, wow. Three months later and we're exactly the same. We've got our good friend Juan David Rojas standing by. Let's get to it. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nate? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it.

26:36And we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, hey, Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.

27:31are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country. From iHeart Podcasts, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam? I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk. One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire.

28:11Do you read me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine! For freedom! Get out! Freedom for Vietnam! Run! Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. Sting, here's madness. The world should hear about this. There's a fire. Coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Very excited now to be joined by our friend Juan David Rojas. He is an independent journalist. He's got his own sub-stack. Social democracy with populist characteristics. Our resident Latin America expert.

28:52So Juan, you're here to talk about what's going on between the United States government and Cuba. The White House released this propaganda video yesterday indicting Raul Castro, an age 94 years old. Let's take a listen. Today, we are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.

29:22This is a story all too familiar. on February 24, 1996, two civilian aircraft operated by brothers to the rescue were shot down over international waters by military aircraft from Cuba. Four men were killed. Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandra Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. They were unarmed civilians and were flying humanitarian missions for the rescue and protection of people fleeing oppression across the Florida Straits. As alleged in the indictment, Raul Castro and five co-defendants participated in a conspiracy that ended with Cuban military aircraft firing missiles at those civilian planes and killing four Americans.

30:20All right, Juan, that's the story. What's actually going on here? So some important context. And that announcement was made in Miami in Freedom Tower, which is an icon down here. You know, we're really pushing the limits of hypocrisy in the region now. I mean, by this logic, you know, we've extrajudicially killed like 200 alleged narco terrorists, a lot of which, you know, they've not given us any evidence for that. by the same logic, basically, how many countries, you know, could indict Trump for, like, these killings. Beyond that, as far as the incident itself in 1996 with Brothers to the Rescue, Brothers to the Rescue, the head of it, Jose Basulto, was a self-professed former CIA operative who participated in acts of terrorism on the island.

31:09Up until the 90s, there were bombings conducted by Cuban exiles on the island. Horrible, horrible stuff. There's a long history of exile terrorism here in South Florida, including of other exiles that were viewed as not sufficiently anti-communist enough. But so Brothers to the Rescue, however, was a humanitarian organization. They would try to find banseros, people fleeing the island on these small rafts or whatever. The issue was that they had violated systematically, like 20 times, Cuba's airspace. And so finally, the Cuban government decided they'd given them multiple warnings. And they'd also been warned by the Clinton administration.

31:52But ultimately, yeah, the Cuban government took those planes down. They were technically in international waters when it happened, but that's, yeah, that's all the context. Got it. And Cuba, to this day, disputes that they were in international waters. what is what do we know about like exactly where they were at at that point because some of the planes had actually flown over the Cuba's landmass these do seem to have certainly been flying over water and not landmass so that's not in question what what do we know for sure about where they were the reporting I've seen is that at the time when they were struck down they were in international waters.

32:32I mean, you know, there's oftentimes dispute of, as different countries say that, no, actually, these are our waters, that's international waters. But it's also true, however, that in the same flights, they had violated Cuban airspace. So just because they were shot down, when in the specific moment when they were shot down, doesn't mean they hadn't that same day violated Cuban airspace. Zooming out a little bit here, Juan, what are we doing? We're indicting Raul Castro, he's 94 years old. This alleged incident took place, what year was it? 96 or 98? 96. So I was four years old. I'm now 34. So it's 30 years ago whenever this allegedly happened.

33:09So why do it now? Is this the Venezuela playbook? What is the impetus for trying to do this? How does it fit with the broader Trump administration approach to Cuba? I mean, it's, you know, we can only speculate, but presumably they're trying a similar kind of playbook to Maduro. You have these charges against the head of state. Maybe, you know, they're negotiating with the regime. They might try to get to some sort of arrangement where they ask for them to hand over a Raul Castro. that seems unlikely. But most of this, it's symbolic. It's just meant to appease people here in South Florida. I mean, you heard the applause.

33:54And I've said this for a while. I think a lot of this is an electoral strategy because Trump's approval has cratered with Latinos, even a lot of Trump Latino voters. Latinos that voted for Trump. He's lost like half a third of his Latino voters since then. So in this way, I mean, even in South Florida, we talked about this, I think, last year, even among Cuban Americans, the immigration, especially the deportation policy is extremely controversial. There was this insane case of this Trump supporting Cuban national who was deported to a maximum security prison in Eswatini. He did have a criminal history, but this is, you know, for Cupid's, the thought of like being deported to a third country?

34:40That's insane, to a maximum security prison. So, yeah, I see this as them trying to salvage support among a key voting base here in South Florida. And you talk to a lot of, you know, rank and file, what I call Miami neocons down here. And yeah, they'll say they're not fans of the immigration policy. And, you know, there's been a lot of back and forth between Maria Elvira Salazar, representative down here, who's pushed for the Dignity Act that MAGA is called amnesty, but she's obviously very hawkish against Cuba, Venezuela, etc. So, you know, a lot of people will tell you, it's like, yeah, I don't really like the immigration stuff, but he's going to liberate Cuba, so that's great.

35:21And while he's talking about liberating Cuba, at least two Cubans have died in immigrant detention centers since his roundup. But let's Let's hear from Trump directly on his latest about his interest in freeing Cuba. Let's play B3 here. I have so many Cuban friends in Miami, mostly in Miami and Florida, and they're unbelievable people. They're unbelievable entrepreneurs, and they'd like to go back. I think hopefully they're going to want to live here, but they want to go back. Maybe they'll invest. We'll see what happens, but we're freeing up Cuba. And he said, hey, my secretary of state, he's even from there, which is sort of true.

36:00But he was born here. Put up before Marco Rubio directly appealed kind of to the Cuban people in a kind of Spanish language address, kind of urging them to overthrow their government. What was the message that Rubio sent to kind of the people of Cuba through that Spanish language address? Yeah, that was a stunning bit of propaganda. Yeah, he gave the whole speech in Spanish. And look, I'm a fervent critic of both neoconservatives and the Cuban regime. I think there are things we can blame both of these factions for. Like any good propaganda, Rubio mixes truth with lies. And so, you know, it is true.

36:47A lot of the Cuban elite, they live extremely comfortably in Madrid, Gaeza, like it's it's this conglomerate that controls a lot of enterprises on the island. It's basically this regime slush fund. They like pocketed the billions that they got from Venezuela during the 2000s and just have used it. you know like i was the i've been in cuba three times i was last there in 2024 and even in 2024 they were like still building hotels knowing full well that uh you know no tourists were coming in it's just a form of cronyism so you know some of that uh is true on the other hand you know he says it's not our fault that you're suffering you know they they talk about an oil embargo sanctions whatever no it's all the cuban regime they're the reason why you're suffering they're the reason why the power is going on that's completely ridiculous obviously the blackouts have to do with the fact that we're not even letting third countries russia mexico send oil to the island their energy grid sure you could argue that you know decades ago they could have improved it and you know now supposedly they're getting help from china building solar panels but the reality is that And he talks about the Bahamas.

38:02If we were doing this to the Bahamas, obviously they would collapse. We could do this to any island country in the world, and they would not survive. Yeah, Juan, there's some latest news I actually want your reaction to. We can put this in post-production. The Nimitz aircraft carrier has actually just entered the Caribbean, as you and I are speaking. They say the carrier arrives in the South Caribbean on the same day the Justice Department announced charges against Raul Castro. One of the general rules, Juan, that we have at this point is when the carriers go, usually military action of some kind follows.

38:36At first, it was there to pressure Maduro. Then we ended up using it. Then it was there to pressure Iran. Then we ended up using it. Now we've got the Nimitz there. They say, well, it may not engage in direct combat operations, but, of course, the same aircraft carrier, U.S. naval assets were used as a staging grounds for the kidnapping raid of Nicolas Maduro. Now, how do you expect the Cuban government to respond? Would it be a Venezuela-style thing? They accept it. Basically, they have some successor. Raul Castro is 94. You want to put him on trial? Whatever. All right, give us oil relief, and then we can all sail off into the sunset.

39:14Or do you think that they would resist? It's hard to say. I mean, you know, we can look at Venezuela. It's clear that a lot of the people in charge, Like, you know, it's only lip service that the for, you know, the ideology, they're really willing to do whatever to stay in power to stay in power. Maybe in Cuba, a lot of the more radical sectors would not be willing to give in. I mean, here's another thing. Rubio talks about, oh, you guys have rejected reform. That's true in the sense that like Russia, China and Cuba's own economists have been telling them to follow like the Chinese and Vietnamese models for a long time.

39:54And, you know, like Díez Canero will say, it's like, oh, they weren't subjected to the same kind of embargo that we were. But so, yeah, like Gaisa and all that, there are entrenched sectors like in any other country that are just vehemently opposed to change. But as far as military action is concerned, you know, the reporting dropside has done a lot on this that in the government, they are willing to negotiate exactly what, you know, concessions they're willing to give. it's hard to say now as far as the nimitz is concerned which ufo fans you know we know about the nimitz but in this case uh yeah like you said with iran and with venezuela honestly i'm gonna be i'm gonna be real we we could seriously expect to see some sort of military action in the future the problem is once you you know you've dedicated so many resources and pushed so far rhetorically i mean especially down here if they don't end up doing something uh they're gonna face them back Backlash.

40:54Interesting. And I wonder what it means, because in Venezuela, Maduro was the undisputed kind of leader of the country. Whereas in Cuba, power is a lot more kind of diffuse. Like Diaz-Canel is technically in charge. He's fairly weak and unpopular leader. You know, I think the pressure that he's come under has, you know, paradoxically kind of increased his stature a little bit, at least among the kind of cadre of the rest of the leadership of the Cuban government. But there are plenty of people who have their own fiefdoms there that, you know, report to Diaz-Canel, but not really. And then you've got Roel Castro, this, you know, aging, you know, he's no longer in power, but kind of everything still can sort of run through him.

41:42and so it doesn't leave you the same button to push like you had in Venezuela like okay let's say you grabbed Diaz-Canel what what has that actually achieved let's say you grab Castro but you leave Diaz-Canel you would grab them both what like you know you but you but you left all the you know various committees in place or does does none of it matter and Trump just needs some sort of something. Yeah, that's a great point. And, you know, I think that Trump would be more willing to come to some sort of arrangement with the regime. And, you know, like I said, like Rubio saying, oh, you know, we want you guys to open up.

42:23He's full of crap. Like, what do you want? He wants his regime change. And that's a fundamental problem. You know, I wrote a recent piece for New Lines where there's a part where I compare like the Israel lobby to the Miami lobby. The Israel lobby, they don't really care what happens in Iran. They'd be fine with a failed state, state collapse, any kind of stuff like that. In Miami, they want full-on regime change, and they will not settle for anything else. So you have some sort of Delcey Rodriguez-type situation in Cuba. Maybe that would work for Trump, but it's not going to work for people down here.

42:59And a lot of Trump's government, especially with regards to hemispheric policy, is staffed by these Miami neocons, a lot of the ambassadors and close friends of Rubio that are in charge. And so, yeah, and it's hard to say that the difference between Cuba and Venezuela is that, you know, Cuba is a one party state. They don't have a formal opposition. Like Venezuela has, you know, the trappings of like democratic institutions. In Cuba, the government controls everything. And so, yeah. So speaking of drop site reporting, one little funny piece to leave you guys with. We can put up B5 here. There's been all this talk about this hundred million dollar offer of humanitarian aid that Rubio has made to Cuba.

43:44He has said, you know, they're sort of not willing to take it. We looked into it. Sources told us the aid effectively amounts to about 100 million dollars worth of Starlinks that they want to send on onto the island. And Cuba, I mean, Rubio has at times referred to this as, quote, food and medicine, but in other statements has acknowledged that it's actually about fast and free Internet. So, you know, we'll we'll we'll see whether or not Musk's, you know, Musk's SpaceX ends up becoming a player in this as well. Do you have any final thoughts on this bizarre$100 million offer of humanitarian aid that is coming at the same time that we have a blockade around the island?

44:28Yeah, I mean, it's clear. Yeah, they, you know, they, who knows what's exactly in their head, but they're probably thinking, oh, if we can get more Internet to people on the island, especially if it's not controlled by the government, we can spur some sort of uprising. Oh, and but one last thing, actually, I sent this to both of you guys. Bloomberg reported yesterday, hours before the indictment, that what was the name of it? This Canadian mining company. Oh, yeah. Which is like the last one. It has like a cobalt mine on the island. They were going to pull out last week. They announced they were leaving Cuba because of additional sanctions we put on the Cuban government.

45:07And they reversed yesterday saying that they were going to give a stake to a Trump ally. So, yeah, it looks like Trump. And there's been this big push, you know, the recent meeting between Trump and Lula for critical rare earths and all the critical minerals. Amazing. You just got to get your Trump cronies in there, and we're good. Love it. Yeah, we'll see how the Florida guys like that one. I won't lie. I'm going to laugh my ass off, Juan, if they end up having Raul Castro, but then the regime becomes, like, filthy rich, and we basically strike some sort of a deal, and they're like, wait, but that's not what we wanted.

45:45I'm like, oh, oops, no takesie-backsies. Don Trump Jr. gets a casino. I'll tell you how Trump Jr. The Cuban government will issue an exclusive casino license to Donald Trump Jr. And that will be how this entire thing ends. Could be. Could be. The lobby would have to stand for it. Right. All right. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate your analysis. Thanks, guys. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, Nick? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it.

46:20We're the first people to do podcasts. Yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we actually come up with the name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Well, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers. This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey Jonas, and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

46:58But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy. Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

47:38Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like, everyone. Your coworker who quote unquote doesn't read is reading romance. Your mom, book talk, the entire internet. I'm Sanjana Basker. I'm Tyler McCall. And this is Radio 831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse. And what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn, and obsess. We're going to Wuthering Heights. which for the record is not a romance novel. And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance, age gaps, certain Russian hockey players and sentient objects in love, which is a thing.

48:26That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

48:39Jeff Bezos sat down with CNBC, which usually gives us some pretty good content. Let's take a look at just a little bit. And Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made a reference to you and others. Are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am, for example. People sometimes say that I don't pay taxes. It's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's a perfect, again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend that that's going to solve the problem.

49:17You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. So you can't connect those two things. Not logically. You know, there are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blamed it on Airbnb. OK, Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost... Let me finish here. One sec. It's already been outlawed in New York City, and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb isn't causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention. so mayor mamdani shot back at that he said i know a few teachers in queens who would beg to differ but yeah more to the point saga and then we get to some more of his comments i hate finding out how average these guys are i want that i want them to be brilliant yes because then i live in a in a slightly fair world yeah still unfair but at least they are brilliant but they're brilliant in a way that is not all that interesting as in optimizing amazon prime and delivery service.

50:25If you want to read the book, you should. The Everything Store is quite good. 2013, the actual history of Amazon. But what we often find out is that being extraordinarily good at one thing often doesn't make you particularly good at everything and may, in fact, be inverse in terms of your ability to be a good citizen. So let's break this down. Jeff Bezos says raising his taxes will not help anyone. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. Under the current system, he may not be wrong. Under a different system, he may not be entirely wrong.

50:57And what's really funny about this is that they're all couching this. I've noticed, you know, Chamath and all these others are celebrating where their new idea is that the bottom 50 % of Americans should pay zero income tax because they're like, well, they only make up 3 % of total taxes, so they should pay nothing. First of all, that's a terrible idea. But second of all, because A, I mean, it's a terrible idea. And let's just kind of go through why, even though, quote, it only is 3%. Well, we've talked a lot about this. One of the reasons why having property tax or income tax or any of these things is that you actually literally have a stake in the system.

51:31Now, I agree that the percentage that they're paying is not in any way semi-meaningful, let's say, to federal revenue. But in this case, the problem, and by the way, at the same time, when saying that we should cut those three, he's also like, you shouldn't tax me more. So if we were going to make a trade, I'd be like, all right, fine. But that's not really what he's talking about. What they're really talking about is they're trying to effectively say that paying taxes of any kind for the poor and for the rich is not actually inherently good and or doing anything for society. This is a broad scale war.

52:03And you've seen this now with all of Bezos's individual actions. So since he formed Amazon and exited as the CEO. What has he done? He moved to Miami. Why? Because he's from there? No. Okay? It's because of the Seattle wealth tax. That's the reason. So he's like, well, I got to cling to this. Also, what has he done in his post-CEO age? He's injecting testosterone. He's marrying this woman, Lauren Sanchez, partying at St. Bart's on yachts, which, okay. He gave$100 million to Van Jones. Right. And also giving$100 million to Van Jones and like the Obama Foundation or whatever. It's like, dude, you are doing absolutely nothing.

52:43And the whole ethos is he just doesn't want to pay any more taxes. Like it really is that simple. When you look at the Washington Post and their whole, what do they call free markets or free expression? It's like, it's bullshit. Like look at what the stuff that they actually care about and some of their more recent hires. It's like libertarians who are talking about why privatizing social security would have been a good thing. I'm not even joking. That's like one of the more recent hit columns that they've had over there. That's all he cares about. He just doesn't want to pay any more taxes worth some$224 billion.

53:16And it's a cynical move that they're adopting where they're saying they're trying to tie their taxation status to that of the bottom 50 % of Americans. That's what this whole thing is actually about. And then notice he talks there about government control. You and I are not NIMBYs. We probably don't even disagree about that Airbnb thing. But look at the sleight of hand where he's like, taxing me will do nothing more for you. And it's like, yeah, maybe under the current system. But that's not really what we're talking about, is it? Yeah. And I was just checking. It would cost about$200 billion to double every teacher's salary for a year.

53:54And he's worth way more than that. He's worth$224 or something, whatever the Amazon market cap is as of today. No, you're absolutely right in terms of teacher pay or salary. But part of the reason that this really makes me angry is that what they fund, by the way, he just moved to a state which wants to do what? Eliminate property tax. Oh, what? What was that? The thing that actually pays for the school? Oh, right. Oh, yeah. And by the way, how much did this house cost down there? Like$100 million? Something ridiculous. Some money. That's the whole scheme. They just don't want to pay anything.

54:28Because if you were to say, all right, Jeff, you don't have to pay any more income tax. We're just going to quadruple your property. Oh, we can't do that. You know, we can't have any of that. And the reason they're right that there's an increasing amount of the tax burden that has gone to the very richest by percentage. The reason for that over the last 40, 50 years is that all of the wealth and income are flowing to the very top. So they're the ones that have it. So it sucks that 3 % or whatever of the revenue comes from the bottom half. But why it sucks is that we want the bottom half to have more wealth and income.

55:02Also, it is a sleight of hand in the sense of the bottom 50 making up three because what does it ignore? FICA, right? Everybody has to pay FICA, especially at the lower – in fact, FICA is – in terms of the percent chunk, whenever you're bottom 50, it's pretty high. Because you stop paying after 160 or whatever. Because you stop paying because of the cap. So, of course, everybody ignores all of that one. So in terms of the cap, they're paying percent-wise and even dollar-wise, like a much more meaningfully amount than, let's say, Amazon CEO or somebody else whose W-2 income might be, I don't know,$500 ,000,$600 ,000, not to even mention all the capital gains breaks that they get at the 15 % and 20 % for where they are.

55:41And I think that, look, it's all just so naked and disgustingly cynical when you pair it with this next clip of him just like fawning over Donald Trump. Let's take a listen. When I last interviewed you, it was about two years ago. President Trump had just won. He was not the president yet. And I had asked you what you thought of him at the time. And you said that you thought that he had mellowed, that he was calmer. Yeah. And I'm curious now. Here we are. Yeah. I still think that. Two years later, we've had lots of wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think?

56:18I think he has. I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term. And I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. And, you know, so again, I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the presidents, you know, and I hope to do that going forward if they'll have me. But we need our business leaders to provide input into the administration, regardless of who the president is. I'm not on the side. You know what? I'm on the side of America. And that is so important. And that's where business leaders should be. And do you think they're not?

57:02No, I think we are, but we get perceived as being partisan or whatever. I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice. He's a very smart guy. And by the way, Trump has lots of good ideas, and he's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due. First of all, he was closer to Obama because he didn't want to pay more tax. Have you guys seen the – there's a through line here. $100 million to the Obama Foundation in 2018. What a bunch of money to Van Jones. What was it? The genius prize? The Bezos genius prize?

57:45Something like that, yeah. It's just so ridiculous. Whatever happened to that$100 million? Yeah, exactly. It was used to produce Instagram shorts by why Hassan Piker is a threat to the United States. And you need dialogue with Hassan Piker and then he refuses to talk to him. It's so foolish, the whole thing. I don't know, Ryan. It's like you said, just the sheer mediocrity also of their thought process and then the nakedness of what it's all about. And, you know, he even said, I think we have this, that line about - Too much corporate welfare. Corporate welfare. Oh, that's C3. Okay, let's take a listen.

58:16We'll talk about it. We have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies. We have there's way too much influence in politics from business. In some cases, wealthy people who really focus on that unions. There's a bunch of people interfering in the political process. And if we can make that better, we should do that, too. That's that would be another root cause. We go back and figure out what what is happening there. There's too much corporate welfare. Yeah. Yeah. Too much government interference. Yeah. Unions. What? What was that? Dang union. They're so naked. How many corporate subsidies does Amazon get?

58:56Dude, here's the other thing, too. They're so big that they actually don't. It's like Tesla. Remember with the EV credits? They didn't want them anymore because they're so big that they don't want a thriving industry. So in the beginning, sure, they were happy to take them. But I also was just thinking about this, too. Whenever we talk about taxes and all this, like I'm on pro-America. And more recently, one of the reasons why a lot of these billionaires have taken an explicit, even more libertarian turn is because what they want more than anything is to replace their entire workforce with humanoid robots and with AI.

59:29That's it. That's literally the entire project because it will massively enrich them. And they won't organize. Yeah. Unions are a huge problem for them. But beyond even humans, human beings are a huge problem for Amazon. Yeah. Like, for real, like, they do not want guys in blue vests driving all across America. They want drones, and yeah, they either want drones or robots. And then in the factory, humanoid pickers are, you know, very inefficient because they have to go to the bathroom once in a while. And so they want all of it to be automated as much as humanly possible. They don't even, like, hide this stuff.

1:00:02They say it out loud. They celebrate firing people. Like, they don't want more humans to actually work for them. and they want all of that wealth to accumulate into their pocket. That's why it's not an accident that he's sitting there in a space factory because for them, the earth is a plaything in and of itself. Going up to space with Katy Perry is like the top achievement of their life. It's no longer about what actually happens down here. And according to More Perfect Union, over the years, Amazon has received about$15 billion in government subsidies. So maybe the deal for Bezos could be this.

1:00:37Okay, you become a multi-deca or centa billionaire. At that point, you've got to pay back the billions that you got in subsidies. You're worth$225 billion. You got$15 billion in subsidies to help you get to becoming worth more than$200 billion. Give us the$15 billion back. There you go. And then we'll give it to teachers, and we'll see if the teachers actually appreciate having more money or not. He thinks they won't. I think they will. Let's find out. Right. And yeah, I just want to give a little shout out there to all my friends in Florida who are still basically advocating for this boomer tax break of no property tax.

1:01:19This is who you're working for, okay? So this is the reality about what you're actually trying to give a break to are people who are only using your state as a tax address in South Beach and making it impossible for any normal family or any of that who would ever, or even a young college spring breaker, I hope your dad has$5 ,000 because otherwise it's not happening for right now because of this. Not that they will care because they'll be scammed by Ron DeSantis into thinking it's somehow a good thing for them. It also, let's pair this with this Meta story. Put this up here on the screen. Meta, as I was talking about, human beings are very inconvenient for all of them.

1:01:59Meta lays off 8 ,000 employees as AI casualties mount. Employees have signed petitions against being tracked by AI and were trying to figure out who had let them go on Wednesday. As the Silicon Valley giant tries to transform into an AI-first company. So they said 8 ,000 of them, 10 % of the entire workforce, will be laid off by May 20th as Meta remade itself in the AI era. they learned that 7 ,000 employees that got to stay will be reassigned, Ryan, to new AI initiatives. And it seems that the emails were automated and just kind of went out willy-nilly. And all of the others were sitting there trying to update their own internal software or whatever just to find out whether they've been canned or not.

1:02:46And so this new internal AI team, they're saying it's so crazy. Internally, they're calling it a draft. So you get drafted, it's not up to you, to go into this AI unit, which is in charge of basically getting rid of all of the employees. The dystopian deal that they're making with the people who get drafted into this AI unit to execute all of their colleagues is that they will not be laid off. Of course, it doesn't mean permanently, but they won't be the first to be laid off. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg told his employees that he's very lucky to have such high IQ people there so that he can train his AI on their brains before getting rid of them.

1:03:39Let's roll this leaked audio. I think it was More Perfect Union that got this. Again, credit to those guys. They're killing it. So let's listen to Zuckerberg talking to his employees or soon to be former employees. We're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from watching really smart people do things. And if you're trying to get it to be able to do certain capabilities, having it be able to observe really smart people doing those things is very important. So there are a few examples of where we're trying to do this across the company, because one basic insight and hypothesis that we have is that a lot of data generation across the field is done by these contract companies.

1:04:26And Alex knows a bunch about this because he ran one before coming here. But in general, the average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks if you're working through the contract. through these contractors. So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our model's coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company.

1:05:06All right. Meanwhile, there's an internal petition. Employees are circulating against this. What are you going to do? This is who you work for now. I'm not saying I don't support any of that, but like, guys, this is what you're trying to help. It's coming. He says it out loud. I'm going to keep my best employees so the AI can learn from them. And then eventually, why do we even need you anymore? So if you stay there, that's basically what you're working for. I hope the interim dollars are worth it. Genuinely, I do, because you're going to need the money because I hope it continues to compound forever because you're not going to have a job anymore.

1:05:39They said one person had been there for less than a month that got laid off and then got 16 weeks of severance. So at least, okay. I mean, it's not horrible. Two weeks of work? Yeah. It paid anyway. Two weeks of work to get laid off. How long is 16? I'm trying to do that. Four months almost. Four months. Okay. Not horrible. Not horrible at all. The problem, though, is that every other type of job they were going to get is also probably going to be laid off and or automated. That person is not doing well. Learn to code. Actually, no. crystals is learn to learn to nurse learn to nurse there you go there you go

1:06:28hey guys it's us the Jonas Brothers I'm Joe I'm Kevin and I'm Nick and guess what we created our own podcast called Hey Jonas We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it, but, you know. Tired and sick. Tired and sick. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy.

1:07:00Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smigel and friends. me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I 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.

1:07:38That'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 is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.