6/30/26: MAGA Meltdown Over SCOTUS Rulings, Prof Pape On Iran Deal Collapsing, NBA Vets Caught Gambling

24:44I feel like it would be it would land a little differently with both the right and the left than now when they're looking and going, yeah, but you know who's going to inherit all of this power in the executive? President Graham Plattner or whoever's coming in, President AOC or whoever's coming in 2028. Yeah, in terms of how it's landing, because like we mentioned, the shadow docket activity existed and because like the major attacks on the executive branch and the Congress and judicial authorities have already been done, people get used to it. And it's kind of baked in at this point. And yeah, you're right.

25:17His political power has lessened in recent months based on polling, this disastrous Iran war. But you mentioned something interesting. You mentioned the tit for tat. Well, if this is going to give a great deal of power to a Republican president, surely it'll be giving a great amount of power to a future Democratic president. Don't worry. Neil Gorsuch has it all figured out. If you read his concurrent opinion, it's clear what at least he wants to do and probably what the courts are going to be able to do in the future. He's talking about reviving doctrines like the non-delegation doctrine, the major questions doctrine, and to apply it and reconsider, hey, are these agencies even constitutional in the first place?

25:52And so I expect that in the future, if you were to get a Democratic president, you would see a lot more problems in like establishing a regulatory state in the first instance, given how much authority has now been given to the president. Sounds like Democrats need to think about packing the court piece. Yeah. Well, I am encouraging guys. I have a number of debates that I've done with Josiah from Pondering Politics on court expansion. And yeah, you guys should really consider it. Yeah, there's an interesting point from Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote a 49 page dissent. and today the court discards the democratic regime created by the constitution quote in favor of one that distorts the structure of government to fit the majority's theory of unitary unitary total executive control the result she concluded according to scotus blog quote is a president who emerges with far greater greater power than ever before i put that on x and i was like well actually far greater power than ever before franklin delano roosevelt because a lot of this actually is downstream of the last like what 80 well no like 100 years you could probably say of american politics the growth of the regulatory state after teddy roosevelt and woodrow wilson as technology radio then eventually television started and railroads and airplanes like it just started uh making this fabric kind of knit even closer together because you know borders to some extent geography to some extent shrinks down when you have all of this new stuff and so you have a federal government that grows and grows and grows.

27:11And conservatives always opposed a lot of it for some of these exact reasons. But it's not, I mean, I guess in this case, Pisco, just going back to FDR, pre-FDR, there was a different kind of regime for the federal government. Is that not correct at the very least? So I think that the growth of the regulatory state happened during the 20th century. And a lot of it, you're right, like has some New Deal foundations there for sure. But it isn't the case that these kinds of agencies with protection from at-will removal just started in the 1930s. There were examples even used in the opinion of some 19th century organizations and agencies within the government that happened.

27:53But, yeah, I mean, you're right. Fundamentally, the belief by people like Neil Gorsuch, the conservatives on the Supreme Court, is that a lot of this stuff was a mistake. That certainly that Humphreys Executor was a mistake when it was written. And Humphrey's executor is a case that Project 2025 had its eyes set out on. And the Federal Society has let them cook. Let FDR cook. Well, no, think about this. In this conch of the 1930s, FDR was trying to fire Humphrey, right? Humphrey is an FTC commissioner who was like against he hated Roosevelt. And so, yeah, this was a situation in which he was frustrated that they didn't let him or that they had to pay out Humphrey's estate because it was Humphrey's executor who was suing Roosevelt.

28:39But, yeah, no, this does have its origins in New Deal and in the growth of the regulatory state, which has been a sensitive and sore subject for conservatives for a long time. You saw the decision on the Chevron doctrine, the same exact thing. This is an anti-regulatory court. Let's talk a little bit about the election law decision as well. conservatives very animated about this, Trump and many others using this as yet another reason to push for the quote unquote Save America Act. What do you see? How significant is this decision, do you think? It's a significant decision. This was a theory that essentially you had to have ballot receipts on the date of election.

29:18And it's a wonderful opinion from Amy Coney Barrett. I mean, she goes through the dictionary definition of the term election. She runs through the history to say why it isn't the case that this is how you should best read the statutes as requiring, instead of casting your ballot on election day, as receiving ballots on election day. She then also explains other parts of the federal code, which presuppose that states have laws about when they can set ballot receipt. And so this is a significant opinion on the interpretation of those statutes. I will note though, it was, even though I think it's an immaculate opinion and really well done, it was a five, four decision.

29:54It was a close shave. And I think the conservatives and Trump in particular doesn't really care so much about these clutches of ballots, you know, whether they were received afterwards. I think he more cares about having some justification to have a federal hook into the elections that are coming up and to either claim an emergency or claim that something isn't being done according to law. And so the significance of it, I think, is important both for the legal rule on when ballots need to be received, but also politically, I think it limits Trump's ability to claim a pretext. So I'm sure he'll try anyway.

30:27Interesting. Curious about your take on the Barrett opinion. I kind of read it as making an almost originalist argument in terms of who's – because it's about preempting federal law, state law versus federal law. And the way that she wrote it is like pretty fascinating from the perspective that people are mad at her for kind of doing what the Federalist Society and Leonard Leo vetted Amy Coney Barrett to do, which is to be like, listen, I have no idea how Scalia would have decided on this case. But she was crazy reading into this, trying to make an eye. No, she does originals and better than the dissent.

30:59Yes, she does originals and better than the dissent. She will go to the dictionaries used at the time, right? The original public meaning of the term election. She's like, this obviously means choice. When does the choice happen? Well, that's when the ballots are cast. And, you know, just because we don't know about it until after the decision is made doesn't mean the decision isn't made. The choice isn't made on the day of election and when people actually cast their ballots. And so, yeah, originalism in terms of the dictionary definition, originalism in terms of deciphering what was meant at the time that these statutes were passed in like the 1860s or 70s.

31:31And then calling out bad originalism by the dissent when they try to invoke a bunch of precedent from the 1900s. She's like, well, this isn't supposed to be the day that you look to. So I think that people are upset with the result here. No one's actually among the pundit class or very few people are looking into the meat and potatoes of the opinion like you did, Emily. They're just pissed that Trump didn't get his way. And so that's the problem. When you have a judicial philosophy, it's not always going to lead you to the place that you want to go. And that's why I think I respect people like Amy Coney Barrett, even though she's a very conservative justice, more than someone like Alito and Roberts, frankly.

32:09Let's talk about what remains outstanding, what we're expecting to get today. Put a nine up on the screen. This has some of the details here. We mentioned the birthright citizenship decision. That's probably the biggest one set to come down. We've also got a decision on transgender athlete bans, another look at campaign finance, how much money candidates can spend in coordination with their political parties. So always trying to get more money into our political system. That's always great. What do you expect on these three decisions and which ones are you watching as being most important? Yeah, obviously the most important one is the birthright citizenship decision.

32:49That one is rumored perhaps to come out today. This is an opinion day. Now, it's not necessary that it come out today, but yeah, this one is really, I think, not a close call on the legal issues and a major sensitive subject, I think, for all politically involved. So that should be coming down today or at least sometime soon. What's your expectation on Episco based on the oral? My expectation is that they're going to go the right way. I know that it's a conservative-leaning court, and I don't really like this court. But based on the oral arguments and some of the questions, probing questions, even someone like Neil Gorsuch asked, I think it indicates that the history really isn't on the administration side here.

33:28So I expect something like a 6-3 decision in favor of the right decision, I think, which is birthright citizenship stands and the precedent stands. Finally, from my perspective, Piesco, one of these other decisions handed down yesterday that's really significant and actually sort of cause for some optimism is we can pop up on the screen A7. the geofence warrant decision. Civil libertarians were very excited about this one. Here's the headline, court rules that law enforcement's use of geofence warrant was a search. And now this was actually somebody who was caught up in a robbery case, who then challenged us on Fourth Amendment grounds.

34:06If people don't know about geofence warrants, you absolutely should know about geofence warrants, where you can literally, I mean, in the name, you can get a warrant for data, really broad swath of data of people who were in within a geofence at a given point in time. I saw some quibbling with the opinion and like ultra nerdy circles that you're probably familiar with Pisco, but give us your reaction to this because it seems like a significant and great piece of legal news. Yeah. So it's an extension of a previous case that was decided in like 2018 called Carpenter. And that decision was basically saying, hey, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your like the omnipresent panopticon information stream, which is your cell phone location data and essentially applying principles of search and seizure to location data in your phone.

34:58So this expanded it from like the initial cell tower data to now like Google, Google location service, which actually like more information. It gives you elevation. It's more precise, it's more information. And so it's a big win. But in terms of legal development, it's basically just a follow on to Carpenter. And to get into the weed just a tiny bit, they have to, before they decide whether a search is reasonable, right? The Fourth Amendment protects you against unreasonable searches and seizures. They have to decide whether it's even a search first. And so this was a question of like, when you ask Google for information regarding your location data, is that even a search?

35:34So there are other legal issues potentially that could cause the petitioner here to lose. But in general, the court ruled that it is a search, notwithstanding the fact that you give information to Google and that it's a third party, because it's such an all-encompassing data stream and because you have a reasonable expectation to that data stream, you're going to need to have at least some element of particularity and some guardrails before the government just gets that information or just draws a circle around a location and gets like everyone's information, whoever went there in the last two hours.

36:07Wow. Pisco, anything else we didn't ask you about that you thought was significant or noteworthy you want to weigh in on? I guess the E. Jean Carroll denial of certs case where this was the case out of New York, I believe, where there was an alleged sexual assault against Trump. And that was maintained on appeal. and now the court has denied any possible recourse for Trump on that case. So that's a significant one in terms of the damages, which we're talking about, I think, tens of millions of dollars all told after the actual verdict and then the defamation case following after that. And Trump was really mad about that.

36:42So that's one other, I guess, Supreme Court decision. That's money he's going to have to pay to E. Jean Carroll now. Yes, yes. I'm sure he'll like start a coin or something or fundraise in some other way. They're finding all kinds of ways. Yeah, whenever these things happen or whenever these, like, I don't know, indictments occur, or it seems like he raises more money or gets more prominence out of it. But at least, you know, that has some final settling. Peace go. Thank you so much. Great analysis. As always, everybody go and subscribe to his channel. Peace go, Liddy. Great to see you, my friend.

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39:32We'll actually still see what comes of that. It's unclear even right now at this moment. But let's start here with B1. I want to roll this clip of an Iranian military advisor talking about disagreement with the Trump administration over the Strait of Hormuz, obviously the crucial point of leverage that Iran has in these negotiations. Let's take a listen. But regarding fees, there is a cost dimension to this matter. There is a tolls discussion, a fees discussion. Our current discussion is about service costs in the Strait of Hormuz. Yes, we want to maintain the security of the Strait of Hormuz.

40:07We want to protect the environment of the Strait of Hormuz. We must establish insurance mechanisms so that if incidents occur, ships that encounter problems are covered to reduce their risk. And when we provide all of this, these costs cannot come out of the pockets of the Iranian people. These costs must be collected from those who are transporting oil through this strait. Okay, so that's, I mean, Professor Pape, tell us how significant that statement is in the context of these negotiations, obviously, as we already mentioned, with which the Strait of Hormuz is absolutely the kind of critical part right now.

40:44It's important in a couple of ways. So, number one, what you are watching in the last week is the escalation trap snapping back hard. This is what I was worried about the last time we were on. I realized we all want this war to be over. We want it to be in the endgame. And as I was trying to explain, we're in the middle game of the escalation trap, pretty much as I have been telling you for some time. And also the modeling has shown. What you see here is Iran is playing hardball. It is Iran. The big thing that is catching people by surprise is most people have been saying, well, well, if we could just get President Trump to stop bombing, stop doing the initiation of the violence, then this whole thing will just be over.

41:30We'll walk away. It's all going to be good. And we can go about our merry way. Well, the problem is Iran is an actor. And what you are seeing is, as I have been explaining on the posts on the escalation trap, in this period of time, it's actually Iran who's most likely to initiate the violence, the bombing, to close the Strait of Formos or diminish the traffic to keep its leverage. Iran is moving into its period of maximum leverage because the oil inventories are drawing down. In this period of time, it is going to use that leverage to force the Trump administration to stick to the four corners of the MOU.

42:09Now, so far, they haven't gone beyond the four corners of the MOU. I think we can see pretty clearly what Iran's red lines are, but they include Israel completely cease-firing, not just lowering violence in Lebanon, probably Israel out of Lebanon. Number two, this means the fees will come back in 60 days. But before we just got on, the New York Times is reporting that Oman is putting forward a piece of fee structure. I didn't have a chance to even read it, so I don't know if the full structure is there yet. But what we're talking about with fees is, I think, what Iran said from the beginning. It's going to be$2 million a tanker.

42:50If there are 50 tankers or so going through, that means leaving the strait. That's$100 million a day. That is$36 billion a year. That's in addition to all the oil revenues that they're going to get, all the waivers on all the sanctions. So Iran, what they are doing, this isn't just a little bit of money. This is what you would do to become ascendant as the dominant state in the Persian Gulf. So what this is all about is not a return to the JCPOA idea. It's not a business deal where we're paying Iran fee for service. What it's about is the balance of power. And that's what the three states here don't agree on.

43:36Iran thinks it should be the ascendant state, the regional hegemon of the United States used to be the preeminent state in the region. Israel thought it was going to be the replacement rising power. Well, these three states just simply don't agree that's the escalation trap in a nutshell. I wanted to get your response to some of the analysis I heard from Professor Mearsheimer that I was just listening to this morning. He feels very confident there's not going to be a full return to war and that Trump will ultimately accept what he describes as a surrender document simply because he's out of military options.

44:12You know, in his telling, OK, they tried the air campaign that obviously didn't work. They tried the naval campaign with the blockade also didn't work. They do not want and have no concept of how they could do the ground invasion or the army approach in a way that would be more successful. So he doesn't really have another option other than accepting this, what amounts to a U.S. surrender. I wonder what you think of that analysis. Well, first, it's important, I think, for your audience to know that John's office is literally right next door to mine at the University of Chicago. I'm John's first Ph.D.

44:45student. So I got my Ph.D. in December 1988. Two of us went through Mike Dash, Bob Pape. So maybe I'm the second one if it was done alphabetically. But the bottom line is I've known John since September 1982. I started as a PhD student at the University of Chicago. He was a first-year assistant professor. So needless to say, John and I know each other really well, and I highly respect John's views. So I think there's a couple things to say. What does it mean to return to a full resumption of the war? Well, Iran is not looking for a full resumption of the war. It wants to keep the oil flow under its control, and it only needs to use small amounts of force in order to make that happen.

45:31For Trump, to go back to a full bombing campaign, there's a real operational problem I just posted before I came on on my Escalation Trap substack, which is Saudi airspace. You see, right now, there's something like 8 ,000 Pakistani troops and jet fighters, also a squadron in Pakistan, and they've been there for over a month, according to Reuters and others. And what that means, that corresponds to when Trump wanted to do that, remember he wanted to have a certain operation, Operation Freedom, it got shut down because Saudi Arabia, well, this is Saudi airspace. So there's going to be a real operational limit on just what President Trump can do to go back to this resumption of the bombing in March.

46:17So I think that in many ways, John is right. But what I would just point out here is that doesn't mean the oil, we're not going off a cliff. I mean, the big issue here is the oil inventories are running down. I've been warning about this for months. They're running down and that clock is still ticking away. It has not changed. That means come August 1st, man, we're on fumes here on the international economy with energy. And so this is, hurricane season's coming, a lot of things are coming here that could be quite rocky, and this is essentially Iran's leverage. Now, by January, they may let up on the throttle a little bit, kind of set this tone for the next administration to come.

47:02But between now in January, this could be a very rocky time with the world's economy. Well, let's get to the Lebanon element of this. We can put our next element up on the screen. This is reporting from DropSite based on, or it's a post on X based, from DropSite based on the reporting of Courtney Bono. This is going to be B2. DropSite says Israel continued its military attacks across southern Lebanon on Monday despite a renewed ceasefire announced on June 20th. And And then a framework agreement reached on Friday, looking at artillery shelling in the outskirts of a village that's about 15 miles north of the Israeli border.

47:41So, Professor Pape, this is, for the Trump administration, emerging as a challenge almost as monumental as the one with the Strait of Hormuz. is where do you make of the progress or lack thereof when it comes to the U.S. being able to secure this part of a quote-unquote ceasefire agreement that would actually be lasting? Yeah, so what I see is this is the Trump administration, or at least part of it was Secretary Rubio, trying to undermine the whole idea of the Article I of the MOU. It's the equivalent of a congressional killer amendment, they're called. You have an amendment which would undo the entire bill, because what this is doing, and Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a big public video presentation over the weekend on this, and he showed on the map what this framework means is Israel stays in southern Lebanon, and he pointed that out in absolutely blunt terms, and I'm sure Iran saw that.

48:39So this is not a situation where this is fulfilling Article I of the MOU. It's going the other way around. Now, from President Trump and Secretary Rubio, they have said, well, this is a minor thing. Iran will just dismiss it. It's the minor. No, I disagree. This is part of Iran's sphere of influence as a rising regional hegemon. They're going to want a secure base, a strategic base. That's where it moves. That's that great wealth, global economic wealth. And then they want a sphere of influence. This is what powers regional hegemons want. Russia wants it. China wants it. We want it. America wants it.

49:17Iran's going to want it. That is where Lebanon comes in. And Lebanon's important, not just for ideological reasons, but recall many people were talking about pipelines going through Syria to bypass Hormuz. Lebanon is the perfect aircraft carrier. You've got Hezbollah as the perfect troops. There are already drones there to basically enforce fees going out through the MED if they need to, if those Syrian pipelines occur. So balance of power framework here helps to explain not just generalities, but a lot of the details of what is going on, what Iran wants, why they want it, why we want to undermine it.

49:59And that's what I mean by the disagreement. This war can't end until all three sides, the United States, Iran, and Israel, all three sides agree on the new balance of power. That's how war is at. You've been telling us since the beginning that we should pay more attention to things that are actually happening versus words that are being said by the various actors involved. And in that spirit, let's put before up on the screen, there's an increasing amount of publicly available data. Here we're talking about satellite imagery confirming the U.S. is continuing a military buildup in the Persian Gulf.

50:3620 new refueling aircraft's been spotted at an air base in Qatar. CENTCOM says it has at least 50 ,000 soldiers in the region that are ready for action. What do you read into these dynamics? What I think is this confirms what I've been telling you and forecasting. And also, I really appreciate using the right metrics here because people just want to keep focusing on every post on Truth Social as if this is somehow the reality. Some are, some aren't. But this is the reality. And by the way, notice that other folks were hoping as recently as a week ago that we're pulling troops out of the region when that's not the reality.

51:18This is the reality that you see. And I think also Speaker Johnson this morning, he's floating the idea that Congress will give Trump another 60-day window for more operations. We can conduct operations from the sea with our carriers for a long period of time. We have Jordan. We have some other bases here. The idea that this is not going to, there certainly will never be a return to some serious operations is just too much. I would still say President Trump doesn't want to, but remember, President Trump thought this was going to be over in three days. He didn't want to get to, we're starting month five of the escalation trap.

52:05This is month five of the escalation trap, not day five, not a window. This is where we are. And J.D. Vance told us this was never going to happen. President Trump told us this was never going to happen. The problem is they don't have the control. They just don't have the control. And Professor Pip, one thing we've seen just in the last couple of weeks, I'm just thinking about this now as we're talking, is some of your critics, the most ardent pro-Israel folks out there. I'm curious if you think they kind of proved your point about the escalation trap over the last couple of weeks by saying this MOU is garbage.

52:39Trump needs to escalate in order to get a better deal. Now, sometimes they were saying that explicitly. Other times they were saying it's a total straw man to suggest this would necessarily involve 3 ,000 ground troops and more deaths of American service members and more time spent actually prosecuting the war. But it's hard to get around. That would have been the inevitable consequence of this. So just even as we were talking, this occurred to me that some of your critics were calling to escalate as soon as the MOU came out, which may have been perhaps amusing. It is irony of ironies that there is the overlap, as you're pointing out.

53:18And I appreciate you telling me about them because there's so much I'm doing and writing, I don't read the comments. Now, maybe I should be reading the comments. My wife tells me I should be reading the comments. So the way I get the comments is when I talk to you folks, who you always will, you read the comments. We'll let you know what you need to know, Professor Pabe. Don't you worry about it. Thank you for doing that. And I just want to point out, though, that this is a very tricky middle game. And this middle game, people want it to be over by a date. You know, we got a midterm coming. We got the NFL season coming.

53:51Man, we're busy. The problem is that this could go on. And I just want to point out over the weekend, the first news service, the IRGC, started talking about going nuclear, actually having nuclear weapons. I've been worrying about this. That's saying it's going to happen next month. But over the next year or so, Iran is very much going to want to have nuclear weapons. That's part of becoming that regional hegemon, that secure power. This is going to be very difficult for President Trump to just let stand. Maybe he can let it stand, but if Iran were to literally test a nuclear weapon, whether it's in the fall or a year from the fall, that would pretty much end President Trump's legacy.

54:34He would then become the Lyndon Johnson. So it's either Hoover or Johnson. These are the problems for President Trump. And I'm just pointing out, these are the things that are not really being solved diplomatically. None of them are being solved diplomatically because diplomacy can't do, fix what's wrong with the balance of power. The sides have to agree. They have to agree on the new balance of power. And the Iranian, the more hardliners within the Iranian government feel that the U.S. has not suffered enough pain yet to accept that new balance of power. Is that effectively your assessment as well, that, you know, whether through a nuclear test or whether through creating more economic pain, that's what it will take.

55:16That's right. This is what I said back in March when we first started to say, which is they're playing a long game. And what a long game means is just like with the North Vietnamese, they want to go at the soft underbelly of the United States in long war, which is those costs mount up. And for many Americans, they don't see a vital interest. It's not just it's not so much Americans are too soft. It's they don't. If there was an Iranian army in Mexico, I think this would be a different story. But the fundamental problem here is, if you just read any of the opinion polls or all the people I've talked to, and I've talked to quite a few, they don't see the vital interest here for the United States worth paying all these costs.

55:59Iran certainly sees the vital interest because we have toppled their governments before. We have just killed their supreme leader. So my goodness, do they see a vital interest in having a nuclear weapon or just simply being a stronger and imposing these costs? That's why I'm saying I really think that between now and January, we're going to see there's a good chance those costs are going to go up. And the point of the cost is not just to make America hurt. The point of the cost will be to get America to truly leave the region. Apparently, we've already moved our CAOC. I understand that's a command center from Qatar, our air base in Qatar, over to the states here.

56:43I think what Iran really wants here is America to truly leave the region and not just President Trump to say he's doing that for a week or two or a month or two. They want this to happen in a substantial way. And that means basically the American public has to be on board with that. Fascinating. Very dicey times we're living through and very grateful to have your analysis to help us understand what's going on. Everybody go subscribe to the Escalation Trap on Substack and Professor Pape. Hopefully we'll see you back here next week. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right there with you. All right. And tell Professor Mearsheimer we said hi when you see him.

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59:24That is according to the federal indictment that was, again, released yesterday, just in the last 24 hours here. Davis and co-defendants Rob Gordetzky, Ernesto Plasencia and William Brown were arrested Monday, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York. ESPN writes Beasley and defendant Paolo Zamorano, who was Davis's agent, were not in custody as of Monday morning. But Beasley's attorney is saying they've coordinated with the U.S. attorney's office for a voluntary surrender later this week. Now, according to the indictment, ESPN reports Beasley lost millions of dollars gambling during his nine-year NBA career.

1:00:02He agreed to manipulate his stats ahead of at least four games during the 23-24 season while he was with my team at the Milwaukee Bucks so that the co-conspirators could wager on the stats, according to the indictment. These wagers, according to this indictment, were like$75 ,000, net winnings of at least$121 ,000. He, according to the indictment, received bribes from co-conspirators. I mean, this is really brutal stuff, Crystal. Yeah. Just going through the news. It's very dark. I mean, it seems like he got himself into trouble gambling, probably has a gambling addiction himself. Yep. He's deep in the hole.

1:00:39His teammate Davis was considered to be the quote-unquote gatekeeper in the scheme. And, I mean, look, they deserve their day in court, et cetera, et cetera. But it looks like they got him dead to rights because they have text messages between them, which are pretty damning. Davis texted Beasley at one point, Only way you can beat Vegas is sports betting. We can make some good money. A month later, Beasley informed Davis he intended to underperform on rebounding in a January 26 game between the Bucs and the Cavaliers. According to the indictment, quote, the defendants and their co-conspirators placed numerous fraudulent wagers totaling tens of thousands of dollars conditioned on defendant Malik Beasley's under rebounds prop bets.

1:01:19Beasley finished with three rebounds. Guess what the betting line was? 3.5 rebounds. Yep. Other examples of this include a scheme that targeted a February 27th game between the Bucks and the Charlotte Hornets, a March 10th game between the Bucks and the Clippers, March 21st game between the Bucks and Brooklyn Nets. As alleged, Malik Beasley allowed himself to be bought and altered his game time performance to line pockets of Ed Davis and his three other his other co-conspirators. So it looks pretty bad. We can put C2 here. There's a video that has been floating around on Twitter that looks very much like suspicious gameplay where the game is over.

1:02:01There's literally five seconds left on the clock. And he, you know, the inbounds of the ball. They're down nine points and races to the other end of the court to dunk the ball and score two more points in the final, like, 0.1 second of the game. Why would you do that when the game is already over? Well, he cut the lead from nine to seven, and the spread was 8.5. So this is the sort of thing that, you know, it appears he was engaged in. And you just look at these indictments and other ones that came before, and it is, you know, there's a big problem here. There's a big problem here. There's a big problem in terms of college sports betting as well.

1:02:41It really degrades the game. And a lot of it does have to do with these prop bets because it's one thing. It's much more difficult to throw an entire game, but like to grab an extra rebound or to not grab an extra rebound or to, you know, fake an injury and reduce your playing minutes in a way that, you know, people can bet on. Like those sorts of things are very easily, easily manipulated and gamed. And that appears to have been what's going on here. Let's go back to some of the text messages in the indictment just to point out Crystal's point. Obviously, everybody deserves their day in court, but what they have on Davis and Beasley here, literally Davis saying, only way you can beat Vegas is sports betting.

1:03:18Everything else, they got the edge. At one point, Beasley says, trying to find like 2K. I'll do my best to pay in full on the first. Davis says, you got Snapchat? Beasley says, not really why. Davis says, talk to you about some shit on there. Beasley, you can't do it here. Davis says, better to talk on there. we can make some good money. So this is going to be - And you're talking about an NBA player who is struggling to come up with$2 ,000 because of his gambling debts and has continued to struggle financially, got evicted from his apartment that he was living in, et cetera, and now is out of the NBA and now being hit with these charges.

1:03:52I mean, it's just extremely dark, as I said before. It's extremely dark. And let's go to C3 because this just speaks to the magnitude of what's happened in recent years. This is from somebody on X who points out the total amount wagered on sports in the U.S. Back in 2018, it was at$6.6 billion. 2019,$13.1 billion. That's a doubling for what it's worth. Then you get up to$21 the next year. Then 2021, it increases from$21.5 in 2020 to$57.5 billion. We get another massive increase by 2022,$93.7 billion. That goes up to$121 billion in 2023,$149 billion in 2024. And in 2025, the number is at$165 billion.

1:04:37That is what has been unleashed, not just in these leagues, but in the entire country in less than 10 years. That starting figure, once again, was from 2018 and is at$6.6 billion. We are now at$165 billion. Billion dollars. Let's put CBS up on the screen. This is a report they actually did on 60 Minutes over the weekend, C4. Their headline was online prediction market traders make millions betting on U.S. military operations. They went through some of the evidence for how that's happening behind the scenes in really damning ways in just the last year that we've seen significant, significant evidence.

1:05:17Once again, by the way, when you have it at the uppermost levels, which like, do we have clear cut damning evidence? Not exactly, but we have enough evidence to say there's something going on. It's starting to look pretty damning. It's starting to look very damning. And I will just say that, like, you can't say definitively this person did this. But you can look at the whales and such and certain trades and say somebody had this. And then we have these soldiers who were talked about in the 60 Minutes report. It's like the example for them is being set by the absolute tippy top of this. As the same thing goes for NBA players, we're watching the gamification of our entire economy at the presidential level.

1:06:00And these guys are getting caught up in it. And it's dark, to your point. Yeah. Well, they indicted one dude who apparently had inside knowledge of the Venezuela operation and bet on it. And I think it was like, you know, it was not a small amount of money. It was in the tens of thousands of dollars. But what CBS found and spoke with analysts who've been tracking this stuff, they say we spotted nine polymarket accounts all connected who made collectively$2.4 million betting almost exclusively on U.S. military operations. The gentleman I was just discussing who has been indicted, he made$400 ,000 more than I said,$400 ,000, a lot of money.

1:06:39But on the other side, we have 2.4 million. So he's really a small fish when you look at the bigger picture. And their win rate for betting on these military, U.S. military operations, 98%. Do you think that's just, they're just really that lucky? No, of course not. I mean, it's statistically virtually impossible to have gotten it correct 98 % of the time, especially when the bets that they're making, I mean, these are highly esoteric things that you would have to be in the know. And so then you talk about, OK, well, what's damning about the the tippy top of the U.S. federal government and, you know, connecting them to this?

1:07:18Well, if it wasn't them, wouldn't they be investigating this? Wouldn't they also be investigating there was one whale who has made millions off of, you know, we're talking here about poly market and these sorts of things, but off of traditional insider trading on oil futures and commodities. and that person, if the government wanted to know who they are, the government could know who they are and perhaps the government does know who they are. Are they being prosecuted? No, they are not. So, you know, this connects to the discussion we are having with Professor Pape about the Iran war. The rhythm and flow of this, this is just a joke at this point.

1:07:56You know, it's all market manipulation. It's all time for, OK, we're going to we're going to bomb them over the weekend when the markets are closed. We're going to have some sort of a report leaked to Axios' Barack Ravid right before the markets open, all designed to manipulate the markets. Is it far-fetched at all to think that this government, the most corrupt government in American history, if not in world history by the numbers, that they would be cashing in in these different ways? No, of course, that's not hard to imagine. So again, if they wanted to prosecute this type of disgusting insider trading, they could easily do it and have plenty of information to be able to make the case and send a warning sign to the rest of the public and the various military operators and other people in the know that this is not going to be tolerated.

1:08:43They're not doing that. So this is an expert telling CNN. This is Victor Matheson, an economics professor at the College of Holy Cross and an expert in the business of sports and gambling, as CNN put a recent article. So in this recent article, Matheson said that these sponsorship deals between some of these sports books and some of the leagues are probably more than a billion dollars annually, worth more than a billion dollars annually. I would say that might even be a conservative estimate, but they've become, again, just since that 2018 Supreme Court ruling when we were reading earlier, it was like$6.6 billion a year on sports wagers.

1:09:20We're now at over$160 billion a year. So just since 2018, this has become a really crucial part of the industry, and it is now completely woven into the fabric of their bottom line. So good luck extricating this now from these leagues because their incentive to keep these partnerships and to keep people addicted and hooked. I mean, here's from I'm reading from the Harvard Gazette now. They say that 23 percent there's a 23 percent increase since the 2018 court ruling in Internet searches for gambling addiction help. Here's an expert who says when new forms of gambling appear, the rate of savings go down.

1:09:59Then you see the rate of credit card defaults going up and you see the rate of mortgage defaults going up. So these are long term financial and societal costs with broad implications. So think about that. Think about the incentive now with these sports leagues, who, by the way, have lobbyists here in D.C. as well, of course, or the sports books certainly have lobbyists here in D.C., of course, to keep this going at the cost of addiction and suffering. I mean, it says it ruins marriages. It can lead to physical abuse. It's a horrible, horrible scourge on the moral fabric of the society. And now our economy is tethered to it in a significant way.

1:10:38And some of these past like American pastimes are tethered to it in a significant way and have this ugly incentive baked into them. Here's the reality. Like insider trading is basically the American dream now. You know, they've decimated the industrial workforce, and now they're promising with AI to decimate the white-collar workforce. Costs are so expensive and ever skyrocketing that even if you have a decent job, it becomes increasingly difficult to buy a home, get a good education, have health care. And so what do they offer? They offer you basically a lotto ticket. That's the dream that's being sold.

1:11:15And so when you look at that landscape, it's no surprise that you see those numbers going up and up and up to$165 billion, which is astonishing. It's also no surprise, given the way that traditionally men are seen as like the providers, and this is really a bedrock of what it means to be a man, to be able to earn, to be able to provide, that men would be the most susceptible, and young men in particular, most susceptible to these gambling addictions and to betting on these websites, not just on sports, but on everything else. I wanted to give a shout out to Kylian Mbappe, who's the French soccer star.

1:11:50I'm starting to after watching so much World Cup coverage, I almost called him a footballer, but we'll keep it American here with the 250th anniversary. Anyway, I have some respect. He was very upset about his image being associated with a betting website. And he really objected to that. And he said the reason why is because sports betting is destructive. It's ruined the lives of some people I know. That's why I refuse to appear in sports betting advertisements. Many of us come from the suburbs and it destroys the lives of countless people there. I mean, the fact that that is such a remarkable and unique statement that, you know, people globally took note of like, oh, my God, I can't believe he said that.

1:12:26That's incredible. Tells you something about the dire state of affairs here. Where are the other voices from, you know, superstar athletes or others in the industry saying this is unacceptable? I'm not going to take part in this whatsoever. Yeah, and so the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is a very conservative think tank, put out a paper on this just last week. And they're reporting, based on research, 10 percent of young men in the U.S. exhibit problem gambling behavior, more than three times the rate of the general population. Ten percent of a demographic that was already struggling before we introduced all of this.

1:12:57The percentage of high school students with a gambling problem is double that of adults. And 5 % of all young people between the ages of 11 and 17 meet at least one of the criteria for a gambling problem. These numbers are huge. Huge. They say a study in the U.K. found that 49 % of students reported gambling in the past year and 17 % used their student loan money to gamble. Male gamblers in particular spent an average amount on gambling per week that was nearly equal to their grocery budget. it. Another study in the U.S. found that households that put money into online sports betting accounts reduced their financial investing by 14 percent on average.

1:13:35And it states that legalized online gambling. One study found increases in personal bankruptcy rates up to 25 percent in credit card and auto loan delinquencies of 25 percent and 27 percent respectively. Finally, the rise in bankruptcy rates translates to roughly 30 ,000 more personal bankruptcies in the United States every year. And this is, again, based on something that is really one of the few industries we have left of unification and monoculture to some extent. The NFL, for example, is like one of the few things that actually does bring a lot of people together. It's one of the few things that we all kind of still watch as a country together.

1:14:13And this is utterly predatory behavior. They're now completely, inextricably intertwined with this. And it's causing mass wreckage in the young male population in particular, which is not really something that young men can afford to have on their shoulders additionally. That's right. Student loans already are a significant problem for many reasons that we've covered here for years and add to that gambling addictions. Yeah. I was looking at that$165 billion number and I'm like, where is that even coming from? Because at the same time, you see credit card debt skyrocketing. You know the costs are going up and up.

1:14:48You know that wages are not keeping up with inflation. And yet more and more of the budget is going to, you know, these fundamentally predatory companies. Very dire situation. It's so dark. It's so dark. And just a sad statement on where we are. And ties back to our Supreme Court conversation earlier in the show, Crystal, about what the conservative Supreme Court hath wrought despite, this is an interesting tension, And the conservative groups for years vetting all of these folks to be friendly to industry. It's the perfect tension between the free market capitalism that the right claims to espouse and then the family values that the right claims to espouse.

1:15:24And this is the product of what's been unleashed over the last eight years. Very good point. All right, Crystal, let's move on to a new survey about the most popular politicians in America.

1:15:54We'll see you next time.

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