1049: Trump’s Made for TV Occupation of D.C.

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23:58So Trump took questions after his announcement and lots of them were about his big meeting with Vladimir Putin that's set for this Friday in Alaska, the place from which proto-Trump politician Sarah Palin could see Russia from her doorstep, thereby bringing the stupidest era of American politics full circle. We're right back there. Trump is theoretically looking for a deal to end the war in Ukraine, though he'll be doing so without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who isn't invited to the Putin meet-cute and will apparently get a readout later on the potential fate of his country. Zelensky is understandably ripshit about this, though I'm not sure why, as Trump's negotiating prowess was on full display at Monday's press conference.

24:40You know, I'm going to see Putin. I'm going to Russia on Friday. But it's very complex because you have lines that are very uneven and there'll be some swapping. There'll be some changes in land. And the word that they will use is, you know, they make changes. They've taken some very prime territory. They've taken largely ocean, you know, in real estate, we call it oceanfront property. That's always the most valuable property. If you're in a lake, a river, or an ocean, it's always the best property. Well, we're going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin. And at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I'll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made.

25:18There's going to be a lot of swapping. There's going to be swapping. They're going to be changing. They like to call it change. Changing. They like to call it change. Yeah, there's another. A lot of lines. There's another quote where he said, it's very complicated. We're going to get some back. We're going to get some switch. There will be some swapping of territories. To the betterment of both, he also said, I'm going to get everybody's ideas. I'm talking to European leaders. I'm talking to President Zelensky. I go into that thing fully loaded right up there, and we're going to see what happens.

25:49Yeah. Zelensky, the EU, Laura Loomer. Yeah. No bad ideas in a brainstorm when it comes to the borders of Ukraine. Yeah, anybody. Asked a question in the briefing. Whoever. He's going to take all ideas from everyone. People at Mar-a-Lago that happen to be at the shrimp station at the same time. So with Tommy out this week, you finally have the chance to sling that take you've been working on about the fate of the Donbass. All right. Yeah, no, that's right. But before I let you cook on that, the meeting with Putin, it's already being covered through the prism of whether, you know, President Art of the deal can pull another rabbit out of his hat.

26:24It does feel like the most important question, though, is not whether he can get a deal, but what kind of deal he's willing to make. What do you think? Yeah. So, first of all, it's hard to know because he said virtually everything a person can say about the situation. I think J.D. Vance sat down with Bartiromo, and we're going to talk about some of the other parts of it, but he talked about this. And I do think he is the first intellectual zamboni among equals. And what he says, I think, is kind of the most intellectualized form of Trump's brain at times. And when you watch Vance talk about this, first of all, there's that inherent kind of moral—it's just morally vacant.

27:08Like, look, these are just two countries that have been fighting and they both want to get out of this thing, which is so despicable. Like this is Russia invaded Ukraine. You know, the both Trump and Vance tend to say a version of I, you know, I believe Ukraine wants peace. I believe Russia wants peace. Right. And Vance then does an aside because he's very smart and he carefully says, look, we all condemn the invasion almost as an aside. Right. Right. But then he makes the point about the U.S. not wanting to fund Ukraine, not wanting to support Ukraine, wanting to push it back onto Europe. And he makes this outrageous claim, which is that the fact that Putin is willing to meet with Trump is some kind of breakthrough, right?

27:47Which is so embarrassing. The president of the United States, you're calling it a breakthrough that you got a meeting? You scored a general with Putin and now like all of a sudden that's an impressive feat? The guy's a fucking fugitive from the ICC for war crimes related to kidnapping 20 ,000 Ukrainian children, not to mention the torture, rape, slaughter of thousands and thousands and thousands of Ukrainians that Putin ordered. And he's come to the United States. And look, it's like it is important to talk with even murderous tyrants if we're trying to end a war. But like Putin's pretty psyched he got the meeting.

28:25Right. So this is not like a big win for Putin. And so he describes Trump getting the meeting as some kind of a win, which is very embarrassing and wrong. And then part of the explanation for what made it happen is because of the pressure that they've applied to Ukraine. Right. All of which has made not like sort of made is a signal to Putin that his antagonism is effective. It weakens Ukraine's position. That's all saying you're going to that if you don't get if you don't strike a deal soon, we're going to pull all support, all our support and let Putin Putin's tanks roll across Europe. Finally, the pressure we needed to get both sides to the table.

29:09So the whole thing is just it is strategically incomprehensible. It's like morally empty. And the end result is they would like to validate this whole idea of the U.S. has been getting ripped off and we're sending all this money overseas. And so they'd like to stop doing that. He wants to say he wants a deal. He wants to be the dealmaker and the peacemaker. And beyond that, they don't seem to have very many equities in the actual like the actual outcome of the conflict. what happens to Ukraine, what happens if we live in a world where a country like Russia is rewarded for what they did. They're apparently floating some kind of a deal where like, ah, it's just the Donbass, which Zelensky has to, of course, reject because it is a victory for Russia in this conflict.

29:57And then all Vance can come up with some version of, look, nobody's going to like the deal. That's the thing about a compromise. I mean, just think of it from Putin's perspective, right he so he's lost uh about a million russians uh in this war he his economy is in the shitter uh he's an international pariah and now he gets to go into this meeting with donald trump um who he knows by now is easily manipulated through flattery has the attention span of a fucking fruit fly probably can't locate Ukraine on a map, let alone freelance about its territorial sovereignty. Sure. So he's got this meeting and now he's going to be able to sort of set the terms of this or at least influence Trump's thinking.

30:46And what's the worst that can what's the worst he thinks can happen, right? Which is like Trump walks away and he's either like, at worst, Trump's probably like, you're on your own. I tried something and I can't I can't get a deal. I'm not dealing with this anymore. I'm out. We're out. Which, by the way, is just worth saying. He said before. Which is what he said before. And I'm sorry. He's also said, Daniel Dale, remember our friend Daniel Dale at CNN, that that of the fact check of the cataloging of the lies. You know, Trump didn't just say one time offhand, I'm going to end this on day one.

31:18He said it dozens of times. He said it at least 50 times. I'm going to end this war on day one. So Putin Putin knows he's horny for a deal. And as already said repeatedly, I, you know, I talked to both sides. It's so complicated. You guys figure it out. Maybe the Pope can deal with it. Remember that? Remember when the Pope was going to deal with it? And it's just like, what did Trump and Vance and the rest of them think? Do they really think that if you give Putin some territory, who knows how much of the Donbass he gets or how much of the territory he currently occupies he gets, right? If you give him some territory, after three years of losing this many soldiers and this, Like, he's just going to say, I'm out.

31:53That's great. I'm happy with a few provinces in eastern Ukraine. And now I'm just going to shrink back and just sort of, you know, try to rebuild at home. Like, that's it? They think that's going to be it? I don't understand. Well, and look, the whole... And like, if he dares to invade Ukraine again, to restart the war or to invade some other neighbor in Europe, like, who's going to stop him? Is Trump? Trump gonna stop him? You know, a friend of mine would say, and this is glib, but whatever. Tommy's not here. That you can think of a parking ticket as a punishment, or you can think of it as a fee.

32:36And if you say, if you invade a sovereign country on a completely bullshit pretext, which by the way, you know is bullshit, because you're claiming it's for some kind of, you know, your national security and for your protection. And meanwhile, you've put your whole fucking army into this country. You're not defending the border with Finland. You're not worried about your neighbors to the West. That if you do that, if you launch a war that leads to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, that you kidnap tens of thousands of children, you cause all this death and destruction. And your punishment is you keep a third of the territory you took.

33:11What does that say to the rest? What does it say to Ukraine in the future? What does it say to other countries in Europe? What does that say to China about Taiwan? What does that say to the world about what borders mean? We haven't even talked about security guarantees as part of the deal either, which no one seems to be floating, at least not in a real way so far. And it's like, so, you know, is there a scenario where Ukraine gives up some territory in exchange for like a security guarantee from the United States and NATO or Europe or whatever, the EU? like but like that's not even being discussed right now it's just like you get like the quote that you said we're gonna we're gonna swap territory that's mutually beneficial what it is is is ukraine getting a few russian cities yeah what are we talking about talking about what are we talking it's it's almost like trump is confusing his meetings he's confusing his meetings with wickoff about some future fucking deal because wickoff's got the poor he's got the middle east portfolio and he's got the russia portfolio he's got one izz fugitive and another one It's just un-fucking-real.

34:12Speaking of which, Trump did not get any questions on Israel at the press conference, but he did do a brief phone interview with Barack Ravid at Axios, where he publicly responded for the first time to Netanyahu's new plan to occupy all of Gaza over the objections of his own military leadership. Trump told Ravid that he had a, quote, good call with Netanyahu on Sunday and that he doesn't think Hamas will release the hostages unless something changes. Then he added, quote, I have one thing to say. Remember October 7. Remember October 7. What do you think's going on here? Is Trump just trying to wait this one out, too?

34:48And Bibi certainly seems like he's trying to wait out everyone. Do you feel like attention is waning? So what Trump says at the end there, remember October 7th, remember October 7th, That is Trump seeing the politics of this shifting, that the absurdity, the evil farce of saying you're going to what? That you're going to give notice to people in Gaza City and then you're going to occupy Gaza City, a city that we have now seen photos of, is in ruins. That you're going to take this territory where the military has told you there's no further military advantage here. that you've leveled most of this country, the city you're going to occupy is in ruins, ruins.

35:34It's an evil joke. It's indefensible. And so when Trump says, remember October 7th, remember October 7th, he's seeing that like, this does not seem justified. And people have, we are so far from where this conflict began. It seems so disconnected from it. And that is true. The only hope has to be, if this is a hope, that this is some kind of threat as part of a negotiation or a potential negotiation about some kind of a deal. Whitcoff went to... What's the threat? That if you don't return the hostages, I'm going to take over the entire Gaza Strip. I'm going to occupy Gaza City. I'm going to make everybody that's now in Gaza City leave Gaza City.

36:19Where are they going to go? Fuck knows. And that because there apparently was some kind of proposal presented by Qatar and Egypt. Today, there's a discussion of like all or nothing. That's a quote deal. Witkoff went and to one of the aid distribution sites last week. So like there's, there are still apparently conversations happening. But the other side of this is, as many have pointed out, the Times reported this in their big reported investigative piece into this that Netanyahu has been reluctant to talk about after the war, that in Israel right now, this is the reporting today, that obviously Palestinians would be killed and harmed by any kind of occupation, but Israelis do not understand what the rationale would be for prolonging the conflict and occupying all of Gaza.

37:13It doesn't seem to be any way of getting any kind of hostages back so the whole thing seems um it's just senseless well in the in i think the idf objected to this in part or senior leaders and the Israeli defense forces objected uh to netanyahu according to reporting in part because they think like this why wouldn't they kill the hostages like the hostages would be in danger in such a military occupation or another military offensive like this and then you just really like with every development you realize okay netanyahu he doesn't really, his first objective is not getting the hostages back.

37:48His first objective is not a ceasefire, certainly. His objective is to completely eliminate Hamas, as if that's a thing that you can do, and destroy Gaza, control Gaza, and doesn't seem to care much at all about the starvation acts like it doesn't exist. And for Trump, Trump's just like, okay, well, you know, first I saw the images of the starving kids in Gaza. I didn't like those images. But then one U.S. official told Axios that Trump was moved by the video released by Hamas of an Israeli hostage digging his own grave. Quote, it influenced the president and he is going to let the Israelis do what they need to do.

38:27Once again, just very easily manipulated person, Donald Trump. He sees images of starving children. He'll have a day where he says, oh, yeah, that's bad. We should fix that. But then, you know, he forgets the next day and the Israelis were like, yeah, what about this hostage thing? Okay, well then now I care about this. This is how we do it. By the way, they were like, oh, we're going to surge aid finally. Remember last time we talked about this, they were going to do some pauses in the fighting so that people get more aid. Where's that? Has that worked out? It hasn't worked out. No. In fact, a 14 year old boy was killed by an airdrop, killed by the airdrop.

38:58So they're still doing airdrops. They're trying to surge more aid in there. Not really working. It's still a trickle. Huckabee, our fucking ambassador to Israel, said that the plan to take over, to fix the aid situation, the food situation, is to increase the number of Gaza humanitarian foundation sites, the GHF, from four to 16. So this organization that wasn't working at all, that was a complete fucking disaster, we're just going to have some more of that instead of actually changing it and letting the UN in. I mean, it's a disaster. I saw, so there are some conservatives or people trying to defend Netanyahu and Trump in saying, oh, all these people are saying that aid trucks aren't being intercepted.

39:44But look at these stats. So many aid trucks are being intercepted. And Trump's former envoy to the region was asked about this. And if there is not enough food, if people in a place do not trust that there will be enough food, people, not Hama, people try to get as much, They storm the trucks. They try to get the food. Now, when this U.S. contractor backed by the IDF is doing this, they exert order and control, and it's led to people being killed. But what UN aid trucks have done is they just step back and they let people take the food. And I've seen some people saying, oh, that's the rationale for why they've cut off aid, because some of that aid is being interdicted by ordinary people, people with guns, potentially Hamas.

40:27But that is not an argument for starving people to death. That's an argument for flooding an area with aid. Because if there is enough aid, if there's only so much, if there's not, if there's only enough to feed a precious few people, people with guns may get that aid. But even experts in this say there is an answer. And the answer is to flood an area with aid. Because if people can count on it, count on it again and again, all of a sudden there is not this sense that it must be stolen, that it must be grabbed, that it must be taken. I mean, it's all a fucking joke at this point, the excuses on this, because more aid is trickling in now.

41:01It's not really having an effect. Like people are more people are dying of starvation. The IDF just killed a bunch of journalists over the weekend who they say are actually Hamas the whole time, even though they've been covering the war for two years. No real documentation of that. And unfortunately, I think that the folks leading in the polls after Netanyahu are not, you know, they're not dreaming of a two state solution either. So not great.

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44:07So one topic the Trump White House wants to talk about even less than Ukraine or Gaza is, of course, the Epstein scandal, which they are still working diligently to cover up with arguably some success. J.D. Vance seems to be in the middle of a hard-hitting media tour right now. Yeah. He's been sitting for a series of adversarial interviews with fearless journalists like former Trump staffer Katie Miller, the Gateway Pundit. He's the one with the Gateway Pundit. I didn't catch that one. Didn't catch it. And, of course, Maria Bartiromo, who did ask Vance an Epstein question on Fox this Sunday. Here's what he said.

44:40We know that Jeffrey Epstein had a lot of connections with left-wing politicians and left-wing billionaires. And now President Trump has demanded full transparency from this. and yet somehow the Democrats are attacking him and not the Biden administration, which did nothing for four years. Give us some clarity on this meeting that is reportedly happening or happened last night at the White House about the Epstein files and how you're communicating the Epstein story. So I've seen so many different fake reports about this. So let me set the record straight. There was no meeting at my house last night.

45:11There just wasn't. Was there a meeting at the White House? We did meet at the White House yesterday, but not at the time that they said that they that we're going to meet and not about the subject. that they said that we're going to meet about. Ooh, that was a technicality. What do you think? Why are Democrats suddenly attacking Donald Trump over this, who called for full transparency? It's this whole, I don't wish it on anyone to go to watch this entire Bartiromo interview. You don't have to and you shouldn't, but there is something about watching, like watching him, like he, this is his move.

45:47It's his move when he's talking about gerrymandering. It's like, what are we meant to do? We, these innocent Republicans, simply put upon by these Democratic politicians and their gerrymandering schemes. Yeah, there's like the anti-anti-Trumps online. There's like this brand of sort of right-wing pundit that for a while, their whole argument was like, well, I didn't want to support Donald Trump. But what were we supposed to do? The Democrats are so extreme and mean and nasty that they have just pushed us into his arms. yeah that's a jd vance that's it yes it's very that is sort of like like that's like the the intellectual defense for this kind of like republican radicalism is uh that we have and and by the way like you know it's not just in politics right like that is the argument that you see around like well they lost the culture war right there's gay marriage and there's there's trans people now and uh you know the american airlines makes their logo the pride flag every June.

46:43Like we lost. Why? We weren't fighting hard enough. And so that's what this is, right? And so when he gets to Epstein, right, what's the actual current real truthful situation with whatever we're going to call the Epstein files, whatever that means? Donald Trump and a bunch of right-wingers playing off a conspiracy online, which has some truth to it, by the way, promise to bring full transparency to this story. They get into office and they discover that in some ways what they were promising was overblown. But in one important way, it wasn't. There are powerful figures in the Epstein files. Their names are Donald Trump, among others.

47:19And so we know that Donald Trump's name is in the Epstein files, that that was told to Donald Trump. And so in the interim between Pam Bondi saying the files are on my desk, the list is on my desk, I'm going to release it, and her saying there is no list, and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino doing interviews saying he killed himself and there's no there there, somebody told Donald Trump that his name was in the Epstein files. And that's why it's stuck. That's it. Well, it's also like, why are Democrats attacking Donald Trump who's called for full transparency? Okay. The whole thing started when a bunch of MAGA influencers were attacking Donald Trump and were demanding full transparency.

47:52And Donald Trump can call for full transparency all he wants, but you know what? He is the president and he has the power to actually be fully transparent by releasing the fucking files. So it's like, what are you talking about? It's just, it is the ease with which he lies now. I guess he's always, I mean, he's always, but like, I feel like J.D. Vance has become, and we'll see it with the next clip too, he's become even more comfortable just like doing this sort of pathological dishonesty bit and where he's like, it's not only that he lies, but like, how dare anyone else criticize him? Yeah, it's the, it's the, that laugh when he laughs there about the question, it's the laugh of, I know why you're asking because the world is an unjust place and here we are just doing our best every goddamn day.

48:39It's because part of it too is it's, it's, yes, he will just lie flat out, but it's that he's creating the like unverifiable kind of miasma of, of like a narrative that is not rooted in reality. There's no, it's not an actual, like, you can't put it to a fact, right? There's no fact that's true or false. It is a kind of manufactured worldview to which he's kind of fitting together different pieces of fact or half fact or four lies from time to time. That's like unverifiable. But it's the cockiness of it. And it is interesting because it is something that Rubio goes to as well. And I do think there's something about the, like, it's like the tension between their view of themselves and what they've become, right?

49:25Like that's where, like in the Delta between those two things, that's where that tone comes from. Yeah. And it's like the one real solid belief they have is, well, the left is awful. Right. Right. And so like everything else is justified because I know that they are awful. Right. It's like, it's like they've, they've slid down the moral, the moral, like the side of the moral slope and they've, they've bounced and they're bouncing against the rocks and the last tree they can grab onto before where they fall down into the shoals, is that the left sucks. Well, it looks like we're not getting full transparency when it comes to at least the secret grand jury testimony in the Epstein case.

49:58A federal judge on Monday, as expected, declined to release the testimony in the trial that led to the indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell. What wasn't expected, though, was the judge's candor in explaining why he declined to release these files, writing in a scathing opinion that the Justice Department's argument that releasing grand jury materials might reveal new information was, quote, demonstrably false and that, quote, the government's motion for their unsealing was aimed not at transparency, but at diversion. Can't imagine why they'd want a diversion, but maybe it has something to do with stories like this.

50:29On Friday, Epstein's longtime butler, who worked for the sex trafficker for 18 years in his Paris home, told The Telegraph that following the 2016 election, Epstein told him Trump offered the sex trafficker a job in his new administration. So, you know, that's just one butler. Who knows? That's just one longtime butler. What job do you think Jeffrey Epstein would have done in the White House? I mean, you know, honestly, honestly, like, it's a name that could have been floated for Secretary of Treasury at the time. You could have seen him doing that. Yeah. Export, import, Bank, Commerce, something.

51:09Yeah. I don't want to have this. No, there's a lot of jobs that would be very bad. Very bad. Just to be clear, bad. Here's the bigger point. No grand jury transcripts. No transcripts yet of Todd Blanche's interview with Ghislaine Maxwell that we were told that they were considering releasing to try to tamp some of this down. We're not getting those, even though we were also told, by the way, that Maxwell told Blanche everything was good with Trump. I never saw any misbehavior by Trump in my time. And of course, she's very credible and would never lie. And no release so far of all the files that we know are there with Trump's name redacted that he knows about because Pam Bondi told him about.

51:49So is the cover up succeeding here? I mean, it is ongoing. I guess it succeeds until it fails, I suppose. uh you know every secret you know until you until you reveal a secret you're keeping it uh yeah it's the blanche the the blanche uh um interview is the one that's sort of confusing right like what if if if as we've heard from i think it's via abc news that uh maxwell said she never saw trump do anything wrong uh like what is keeping them from releasing them what is in the first of all what were those interviews about well what did they ask about what names are in there? What are they concerned about if they release it?

52:31What information do they not want in the public? Because otherwise I think we'd already have it. It's like, I have no fucking idea because who knows what the context of the conversation was about. What was the ins and outs? Are there parts of it they want to redact either for reasons they will claim is for privacy or because there are parts of the conversation that would be embarrassing to the administration? We just don't know. Now, one part of this, look, we're all conspiracy theorists now, fine. But a lot of the material that the justice department is sitting on is about terrible crimes against kids right that they can't release and shouldn't release uh and so uh like that should never be released right you shouldn't like you shouldn't we do not need to publicize these like the aspects of these crimes that that would be um uh uh victimizing again to people that were hurt by epstein maxwell and others fine agreed but it is shocking that given the fervor around releasing something given the attention that this has gotten, given the fact that they promised already that they haven't figured out how to get some new information out there.

53:32I mean, all Bondi was able to release was stuff that was basically already public. That was what was in binder phase one. When she put out binder phase one, in her mind, there must've been a, like, I don't know how far ahead it got, but you don't put out phase one without at least having conceived of what phase two was meant to be. One would think, but you know, who knows? So it is, it is strange, but they can't, they're not getting away with it because there's too many other parts of this to come. There's going to be congressional investigations. There's, by the way, like, you know, more and more like that butler who we hadn't heard from before.

54:08There's more reporting coming out of the times. There's just a lot of attention on this. And by the way, like the influencers on the right or the like apolitical kind of more conspiratorial influencers that were talking about this forever, they're still talking about it. Yeah. Like there was a Rogan the other day was saying, Like, do they think we're babies? Like, do they think we're children because they're trying to make us look past this? So they can't just make it go away. One of the proposals that CNN reported on was maybe Todd Blanch should sit down with Joe Rogan. I'm like, that doesn't seem like a good idea if you're the Trump White House.

54:40I mean, I'd like to hear that. No, for sure. I bet they've shot that one down. I bet that's not a... I think they are just waiting out everyone's attention span, which you don't have to wait long in this country. and yes, Congress is going to come back to this when they come back from break, but from recess, whatever you fucking call it. But I don't know, you know, at one point Trump can make a call to James Comer or Jim Jordan or wherever the fuck it is and be like, hey, let's not keep pushing on this. You know, like, and they've got other things to think about and they don't like the political, you know, discomfort around this.

55:14So I don't, like, I am more pessimistic than I was about the staying power on this just because, you know, it's dragged on over a month and they control the federal government with an iron fist and they're going to be able to bury what they want to bury. Yeah, we'll see. Look, Mike Johnson sent Congress home early in July rather than deal with a vote. But that doesn't mean the vote isn't coming. I mean, Ro Khanna doesn't care what Trump says about this and Thomas Massey doesn't care what Donald Trump says about this. So that means the issue isn't dead. But yeah, like even listening to Vance in that interview saying like, I see you have no problem with James Comer looking into Democrats.

55:53So then all of a sudden it becomes the, it becomes a hammer. You know, they're going to, let's get Bill and Hillary there. Let's get them all in there. Let's get Bill Gates up in here. Let's get all these people here and try to make fools of them. And then all of a sudden, they want to make that, they want to make some Democrats feel squeamish about it. Well, J.D. Vance and Maria Bartiromo, then they went down the well-worn pivot from Epstein to Obama. Sure. And so J.D. Vance doubled down on Tulsi Gabbard's attempts to blame Obama officials for the investigation about Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

56:27Let's listen. Look, of course, you've got to have the law follow the facts here. You don't just indict people to indict people. You indict people because they broke the law. But if you look at what Tulsi and Kash Patel have revealed in the last couple of weeks, I don't know how anybody can look at that and say that there wasn't aggressive violations of the law. What they basically did is they defrauded the American people in order to take Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign talking points and turn them into intelligence by defrauding the American people, defrauding the intelligence agencies, lying about what the intel said.

57:02they would take something that supported a Hillary Clinton campaign talking point, and they would overemphasize it and exaggerate it. They took anything that actually contradicted that narrative, and they buried it deep. And through that, they actually laundered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign talking points through the American intelligence services. That's a violation of the people's trust. That's a violation of what our intelligence services should be doing. And I absolutely think they broke the law. You're going to see a lot of people get indicted for that. That is, I don't know if you were as deeply triggered by that answer as I was.

57:38I started tweeting about it last night because I was like, I cannot, I know that there's been a lot of lies. J.D. Vance has said a lot of bad things. He's pissed me off. Like that to me, because like he, the guy fucking went to Yale Law. He's got a law degree. There is no way that he believes what he just said there. There is no way he believes that. Unless he just has not looked at any of the details of anything. which I also don't really buy. So, yeah. So you see him struggling, first of all, in how to tell this story, right? Because just very, like, what is he talking about? It's impossible to know.

58:14If you don't know the ins and outs of the story, it's impossible to even understand what he's talking about. But just as quickly as possible, the gist of it is... Tulsi Gabbard put out a dumb report that is not true. Basically, it's in the report that says after Donald Trump wins the election, Barack Obama and the deep state colluded to sully that victory by telling the country and the world that Russia interfered in our election to help Donald Trump win, but did not actually mess with any vote totals. And that and also do not allege any collusion in that intelligence assessment between Trump and Putin.

58:54And so and so after the election, Donald Trump has won Barack Obama, not for his own benefit, not for shits and giggles, but to warn the world about what has happened. That, hey, Russia is interfering in our elections in these ways. It may happen in your country, too. It could happen here again. We all need to step up how we respond to this because this is a legitimate threat. That is then ratified, not just by Democrats and intelligence officials, but by Republicans, including the committee led by Marco Rubio, the Intelligence Committee, saying that the conclusions are fair and fairly reached.

59:31That is what this is about. And now J.D. Vance is somehow claiming that this that that the release of this information, which was based on an assessment by the intelligence community that the Republicans said was fairly reached, is both an attempt by the intelligence to defraud the country, but also to put Hillary Clinton to. I don't even understand what he's trying to say, that it's then laundering into the intelligence community. I mean, it's such fucking nonsense that he obviously, like, to defraud the American people of what? What are we defrauding them of? They went to the polls, first of all, not knowing that there was an FBI investigation of Trump's campaign.

1:00:15Just the one of Hillary. Because guess what? The Obama administration made damn sure that that didn't leak out because they were worried that it could be taken politically. So voters went to the polls not knowing there was an investigation into the, it turns out there were plenty of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. And they also went to the polls already knowing, by the way, that Russia had hacked the DNC, which, by the way, this Trump administration, Tulsi Gabor, all the rest of them, admit that Russia did interfere. What they're pissed about is that the intel said that they interfered with the hope of helping Trump, which in 2018 Putin said, yeah, I wanted Trump to win.

1:00:53He just admitted it. So it's like, what are we talking about? But then, okay. All right. Let's say, let's say, let's just say, you know what? In some ways that was exaggerated. It wasn't. It just simply wasn't. That's not true. Even Vance has to kind of walk his way back to, he says they defrauded the country. He says they exaggerated. And then he has to add on at the end, oh, and absolutely, I believe they broke the law. Never says how, never says why. And I believe indictments are coming, which is also, by the way, like you're the vice president of the United States and you are predicting indictments.

1:01:28Or do you know them from your meeting or do you know them from your meetings that you're not supposed to be having? Un-fucking-believable. It is wild. I'm like, how can you do like you? You know the law. You know, you are familiar with the Durham investigation. No doubt you are familiar with your buddy Marco's investigation, which contradicts everything you're saying right now. Also, another tell in this is Bartiromo after that says, and was there an impact? Basically, she's basically saying, but this was, even she is sort of like, but this was after he won and became president. So what are you talking about?

1:02:06And so then he has to kind of make some sort of claims that, oh, absolutely. Like that the presidency was harmed because of the Russia hoax. Because he had to fight two fronts at once. He had to run the country and be dealing with the ways in which the Department of Justice was distracted. It's all just like fundamentally, right? Like it's like just a kind of like trick that like they're acting as though this happened before the election. But it didn't. But it didn't. And so they have to claim like, oh, telling us about this after was some terrible crime. He is just deeply dishonest and very comfortable with being deeply dishonest.

1:02:43And it's really I also think part of it is just, you know, you watch these interviews and I think people like J.D. Vance are like, oh, this must be cool for Trump. Like he spent all these years just only doing these interviews with friendly outlets and he never has to get challenged. And if J.D. Vance sat down with like any other any real journalist for five minutes, the whole thing would fucking come apart. Marco Rubio just did some some another friendly interview about whatever. No one asked Marco Rubio in that interview because it was some MAGA person. no one asked him about his committee's report on this because Marco Rubio couldn't answer that question either these people if they got in front of a journalist for five fucking minutes the whole thing would fall apart it's but they're just they've become lazy even even in their lying because they don't you know they don't have to worry about it yeah but like it's it's with Vans too they're such a um it is the like kind of that like kind of self-righteous and smug tone in it because does he believe he's lying yeah oh for sure he has to he has to and there's some there's some things I am willing to believe that someone's like, oh, I didn't even know I was lying because they're so like, you know, they've gone down the rabbit hole, but this one you even, and again, it's a complicated story, but you don't have to go too far down the rabbit hole to know that what he said was bullshit.

1:03:55Right. I just, I, I like, and he was around for all of this. He was, he was a political junkie for all this. It's, there's something about like Vance specifically. Maybe it's just the fact that he's younger than us. That's part of it. Or that he is like a kind of like a, a, someone who had like written this book that had like gotten him all these credit and all the rest. Yeah. It's that there's something about him where like, I remember when I went to college and like I went to, for some reason, a rural sports college. I don't know why I made that choice, but I remember feeling like, oh, I got to learn the language of this place a little bit.

1:04:28Like I don't fit in here. I don't know how to do this. I got to like learn the language of how to fit in with a certain kind of person that went to private school. Like there's a lot of different kinds of people, Williams. But like, you know, like the kind of like, a kind of a fancier person than I grew up with. Like the kind of, there's a breeziness to it, like a way people that grew up around wealth, with wealth, whatever. And like you learn that. And I see in Vance somebody that like is a student of people and like learn the language of success, right? Like comes from this rural place that comes from a totally different environment and then kind of learns the language of a place like Yale and becomes really good at it.

1:05:03And then I see him do this with Trump again. And I see him take on this persona so fully as someone who's so good at figuring out how to fit in with a group of people. And I just can't tell how much of like, you know, you wear the mask, the mask wears you, like how much of it has, how much of the, how much of it has seeped in and how much of it is he just performing and he's going to be the best boy in the world? Like, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's either way, it's pretty gross. Yeah. Okay. When we get back from the break, you'll hear Lovett's conversation with the New Yorkers, David Kirkpatrick about his incredible investigation into Trump's grift, but two quick things before we get to that big news cricket subscription content is now available on substack we're coming to substack that's right if you're already a friend of the pod don't worry this won't change anything for you but if you love using substack and prefer the experience there you can now find us there too when you subscribe on substack you'll unlock ad-free episodes of your favorite cricket shows plus exclusive content like polar coaster as you know subscribing on And whatever platform works best for you is the best way to support what we do here.

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1:09:41Crypto, real estate deals, watches, club memberships, corporate shakedowns. Trump's corruption is brazen. It's staggering. But in a story out today, the New Yorker's David Kirkpatrick has done what no one has been able to do, count it up to tell us just how much Trump has profited from the presidency. Here to walk us through the most brazen examples is David Kirkpatrick. Thank you for being here. It's my pleasure. All right. Welcome to the pod. Let's start with Mar-a-Lago. You estimate that Trump has made$125 million from how he has exploited the club. what changed since he, from before he was president and even in the years since his first term?

1:10:27Well, first I should say, I'm not, I'm not using the word corruption here. When he took office in 2017, President Trump, through his lawyer at a press conference, promised that he would not do anything that could even be perceived as exploiting the presidency. In fact, that was his justification for this arrangement where instead of selling or getting rid of his business empire, he gave it to his sons temporarily while he was in office. And what they said at the time was, if someone else owned our brand name, that person might crassly exploit the name and demean the presidency. You can trust us not to do that.

1:11:06So I'm not saying that any one of these things is a quid pro quo, but he's exploiting the presidency for money. Now, in terms of Mar-a-Lago, what we're talking about there, that's the one place where in 2016, in testimony that Trump was involved in, he said that the campaign had made that the best year ever for Mar-a-Lago, according to the manager there. And if you look at it, you can look at his financial disclosure forms and see the revenue go up through the roof while the costs say mostly the same during his years in the White House preparing to come back and then back in the White House because that's a place where he's got a club selling access to himself in his circle.

1:11:48And I hear you on the distinction about profiting off the White House and whether there's any corrupt outcome of that. We can leave that to other – you are cataloging the profiteering. I'm cataloging the profiteering. Another example is in hospitality,$105 million from deals in Saudi Arabia, another$40 million you're estimating from a deal in Vietnam. What are those deals and why are they so interested in doing them with Trump and his family? Well, there you got two different baskets. It's, you know, Vietnam, which is a more isolated situation. Obviously, that's a country which is future hinges on U.S.

1:12:31trade policy like nobody else, right? High tariffs on China mean more business for Vietnam. High tariffs on Vietnam, where a third of their economy depends on exports to the U.S., would be a disaster. So, as Trump's on his way back into office, the head of the Vietnamese Communist Party flies to New York. and while here oversees a new deal for a giant golf resort. We're talking about a facility three times the size of Central Park. My estimate for their profits there is probably pretty low. In the first three months after the deal was announced, he said in his financial disclosure forms that he'd received$5 million from that venture.

1:13:08So I'm just guessing that the next 10 years are going to be at least as much per year as that was over a matter of months. That's probably quite conservative. On the other side, these Saudi deals around the Gulf, beginning in late 2022 when Trump had declared his candidacy and was the presumptive Republican nominee, this Saudi company began doing a series of five mega hotel or condo deals, golf resort deals, around the Gulf with the Trump organization. Which really, there's no way to explain that without his political career. It's just it's not something that would have happened to the Trump organization.

1:13:49And I extrapolated from some of their previous hotels and golf courses and other ventures to try to estimate what those would be worth. And I put them together because they are kind of at the border between how Trump used to make money and how he's now making money, which is something that you explore in the piece. that a lot of the way in which Trump had made money up to and through The Apprentice was by licensing his name, right? Putting his name on stuff that other people ran, and it was kind of pure profit. But in the last couple of years, as he's figured out ways of making money off of being president, he's ventured into new and uncharted territory for his businesses.

1:14:33And of course, There's no better example of that than crypto. You estimate that they've made$2.37 billion through these various cryptocurrency schemes. There are so many different ones, and they actually intersect with some of these other businesses as well. But can you just talk about how Trump went from how someone who was, as you describe in the piece quite skeptical of crypto, described it semi-jokingly as a scam or that it looks like a scam to something of a true believer, at least in terms of his policies. You know, so the family has offered two different stories about that. Eric Trump, who's the face of the business now, talks about it a lot.

1:15:22And he always tells the story like this. After, well, he doesn't tell it quite like this. What he says is, we were blackballed by the big banks. What he leaves out is they were blackballed by the big banks after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. So he says, we were blackballed by the big banks, and it was political bias against our political philosophy. And that led us to love crypto as an alternative to the big banks, and even as a kind of means of revenge against the big banks. Trump doesn't tell the story that way. He's a little vaguer about it. It's clear from his statements that it wasn't until 2024, during the campaign, when big crypto donors were donating to him in crypto, that he started to get on board.

1:16:10And around that time, first of all, they started accepting donations in crypto, an old friend named Bill Zanker, who people might know from the Learning Annex, his previous business, got him into selling these NFTs, which are kind of digital cartoons of Donald Trump. And when he did that, he started getting paid in crypto. So from that point on, he's got an incentive to try to talk it up. And that's around the time when Donald Trump's interest in crypto begins to take off. So you are documenting the money, but throughout you are noting that there are obvious questions of conflicts of interest, of whether or not this has meant there has been undue influence from people that have invested with Trump or helped Trump put together these kinds of crypto businesses.

1:17:02Can you talk about Justin Sun, how he went from being somebody under investigation to somebody who was a guest of honor at Mar-a-Lago? Justin Sun is a really interesting case, right? If you're hunting for a quid pro quo, Justin Sun is as close as you can get, right? So the sequence of events is the Trump family sets up a company called World Liberty Financial, which is going to be a crypto company. They start raising money for that, you know, in mid-2024, before the election. Not much interest. Then Trump wins. After Trump wins, Justin Sun makes two investments that come to a total of, I think,$75 million.

1:17:50And that$75 million for other people interested in crypto is kind of a green light. And they all pile in. And around Inauguration Day, a ton comes in. And shortly after Inauguration, they've raised$550 million. And what happens when Trump becomes president? The SEC drops its charges against Justin Sun for a variety of infractions, infractions, evading money laundering laws, paying celebrities to hype his crypto, selling crypto to Americans when he should have been barred from doing so because they're not registered securities. All of this is going away. They don't drop it. They pause those charges to negotiate a resolution.

1:18:35Now, that said, the truth is, the Trump administration dropped everybody's charges. The SEC just stopped pressing charges against crypto. So you can't say it's a handshake deal and because of the$75 million he got off. But the sequence of events there is certainly provocative. And I should correct myself, my bias. It wasn't Mar-a-Lago. That dinner was at the Virginia, in Sterling, Virginia, at a different Trump club. I got the club wrong. Now, there's a connection here to Trump media. I didn't know this and I was confused by it. So there's a complicated transaction that leads to Trump media and True Social and the ownership structure.

1:19:20But I was hoping you could explain this part of it. Last year, Trump media lost$400 million. In each of the past four quarters, it brought in about a million dollars or less in revenue per your reporting. There is no plan for True Social to be profitable or how it would be turned into a sustainable business. And yet, True Social is sitting on a vast, vast sum of liquid assets. I believe the number was$3.1 billion in liquid assets, which is both cash and cryptocurrency. How does a money losing venture that only has about a million dollars in revenue per quarter end up sitting on billions and billions of dollars?

1:20:08Yeah, I almost had to pinch myself when I figured that out. I mean, it's it's a crazy amount of money. In short, here's the deal. So truth social is not really a business. It's not you know, we don't know. There's no convincing plan for it to make money. Trump Media Technology Group, right, the parent company that owns True Social, is basically a meme stock, right? It goes up and down without any regard to fundamentals based only on what people think about Donald Trump. So Devin Nunes, the former congressman who runs that company now, had the bright idea to basically sell shares at their high meme stock inflated price.

1:20:53and to take that money and pile up some cash and then buy Bitcoin. So they've done a few transactions recently in July. They did a big one where they sold shares to 50 big investors, shares mostly some convertible debt that could be converted into shares, at this high meme stock price. Those investors can then sell that out to retail investors and they take the money and they buy Bitcoin. So they've taken this crazy, irrationally priced stock that mostly reflects Trump supporters' opinions of Trump, and they've swapped that for an actual liquid asset, cash and Bitcoin. Now, you might say, well, Kirkpatrick, how can you call this$3.1 billion?

1:21:39That's just the price of Bitcoin today. It could fall tomorrow. Be that as it may, there is an actual market for Bitcoin. If you wanted to turn around and sell it tomorrow, you could sell it. When they were out of the market in July buying Bitcoin, they picked up$2.4,$2.3 billion of Bitcoin, and it didn't really move the price. So that's a liquid market. Yeah, and this is a group of people uniquely positioned to affect the price of both their own stock in their company and the cryptocurrency market more broadly. We've seen that. We've seen they have the ability to move these markets. I mean, you talk about an example that was with a bit more detail, but that was known at the time, which is that there were these transactions around the Melania meme coin right before it launched, right?

1:22:29Like there is just so many opportunities here that wouldn't be cataloged exactly in your accounting where there is opportunity for profit just in the ability to kind of play with the moving prices. Yeah. Meme coins, you know, they're not a security. They don't even pretend to be a security. There's no police. There's no reasonable expectation of fairness or transparency. You know, there's no such thing as insider trading in a meme coin because there's no pretense of fairness. I mean, you can almost, you know, you get what you pay for. It's true in one of his, in one of the crypto conferences that I watched, Donald Trump Jr.

1:23:07actually said that for crypto enthusiasts, the good news now is that the people who are making the rules are themselves invested in crypto. You know, in the American system, it's acknowledged that they're going to be elected officials who have businesses on the side. You know, the founders were farmers. And so we require disclosure. So in fairness to Donald Trump, he's not lying about it. I mean, it's true his family's in crypto now. So there are a bunch of other parts that you're looking at here. You go into Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law's business interests with the Saudis and the raising of billions of dollars in private equity.

1:23:55But you also talk about Don Jr.'s company that he's a part of called 1789 capital. There's something that's confusing about all of this, which is they are seemingly frantic in trying to find ways to make money off of the presidency. It's not just true social and Trump media and the way it's trying to make money and amass a crypto fortune. It's not just the crypto investments separately. It's not just the Jared deal with the Saudis. It's not just the other kind of real estate deals that are bringing in north of$150 million. There's also this sort of ticky tack stuff, going out and trying to get 500 grand for a social club, selling hats to compete with his own campaign.

1:24:48How do you explain the fact that there are schemes that are, there There are nine figure schemes, eight figure schemes, seven figure schemes and even six figure schemes. Like, how do you explain the willingness to fight for a hat sale from their users, their supporters, while at the same time shooting for the moon, you know, with these billion dollar crypto moves? I'm as puzzled as you are. Right. I mean, Donald Trump is the first to tell you that he and his family are very, very rich. and I would think that if my father was president for four years I would take that as a good time to refrain from making money in ways that would embarrass him and you know licensing their name for a phone company that's going to sell you know Trump cell phone subscriptions I do find it puzzling and I you know I went into this thinking you know what the people who really don't like Trump are going to be disappointed in me because they imagine that he's stealing, actually stealing vast sums, which is definitely not happening.

1:25:57But by the end, I had to say to myself, like$3.4 billion and so fast. You know, it's one thing after another. They're really not slowing down. And I don't know why it is that they seem so almost desperate for money. You know, if we go back to what you were saying before, in the arc of things, Trump was a medium successful but very high profile builder. He was a great reality TV star, right? And when he was a great reality TV star, that's when he got into the licensing business. And for a while, he was able to sell just the right to use his name, the right to use his name to sell a steak or a piece of pizza or sheets or something, or the right to use his name on a hotel abroad or a golf course.

1:26:47As the apprentice ratings started to come down, that whole apparatus did too. In a way, he needed a new show. He needed something else to keep his name in the public eye, to keep that machine running. And that's where the presidency came in. Why now? Why in the second term? There's such a greater desperation to cash in on that than in the first. You know, it's very speculative. You do wonder about the enormous legal verdicts that he faces. You know, 88 million that he owes E. Gene Carroll, if that's not overturned on appeal. 500 million he owes New York State because of the fraud case there, if that's not overturned on appeal.

1:27:29as much as they talk about their money that's a pretty big hole for the trumps so it might be well anyway here i'm speculating but you get the idea yeah the you talk about how he had to sell some of his holdings uh at a certain point and that uh he may not have been that that he may have been in a pretty tough position coming into this second term but that still doesn't that that look the the rapaciousness is what it is but it is strange the watches the sneakers the the kind of hats that siphon from the campaign the like the smaller moves to like take advantage of his biggest supporters while at the same time these sort of huge real estate transactions that could be worth 10 100 times anything that they could get um from moving a bunch of hats around.

1:28:21Maybe it's just the thrill of the game. Well, a more charitable way to put that is if he and his family see themselves as business people, they're going to stay in business. And that means doing the deal to license the Trump Bible, the Trump guitar, and so forth, the Trump NFTs. At the end of this reporting, what was your takeaway from how quickly we became a nerd to this staggering amount of profiteering. You know, the joke a few years ago, they made Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm. You make reference to the 400 ,000 some odd dollar donation to the Clinton library over that became a controversy around the Mark Rich pardon.

1:29:06And yet now we have just brazen and open profiteering conflicts of interest left and right. and it's only speeding up and it's become a kind of part of our daily understanding of how Trump works, even as we think about the fact that he's about to go meet with Putin and Zelensky and his intersecting personal interests there. What did you take away from all of this once you got to that number of 3.4 billion? You know, one of my old bosses used to say, you know, a billion here, a billion there, sooner or later, you're talking about real money. And I think to a certain extent that just the number of digits that we're talking about kind of goes over people's heads.

1:29:52And the other thing about Trump is, and this is maybe his genius, as I say, he's not hiding any of this, right? He holds his head high. He pursues all these money-making ventures like it's something that he's proud of, which I think leads people to believe, you know, there's nothing wrong with that. How people are going to feel about that in the long term, though, I think remains to be seen. And one reason I thought it was worthwhile to do all of this math is to try to make it a little bit more concrete and tangible. You know, maybe you're right. Maybe it turns out we were all wrong for decades to think that Americans did not like profiteering off the presidency.

1:30:34Maybe Americans, in fact, don't care about that. But it might also be that people just didn't understand it concretely enough. And over time, they will. So I'd say the jury is still out on that. Last question. What was the hardest number to figure out? What was a part of this where figuring out exactly how much they were making was actually pretty difficult? Well, in a lot of these things, I'm extrapolating, right? A lot of the where I'm trying to value how much they're going to get from their five new deals in the Persian Gulf or their new deal in Vietnam. I've got to go and look at an existing property.

1:31:14I've got to figure out what they've declared in terms of revenue, what the profit margin is on that, and then multiply it across the new venture. So that's complicated. And I'm not saying that's science. You know, if they want to come forward and tell me, no, no, David, here actually is what we're genuinely going to make. I would welcome that. But they're not going to do that. The one that was the toughest, honestly, is Vietnam. This vast complex, 54 holes of golf, hotel, residences, all in one big area, three times the size of Central Park. In an economy where the golf industry is growing really fast, the whole economy is growing really fast, very hard to extrapolate.

1:31:56I came up with an estimate of$50 million over 10 years. that's almost certainly low but i just that one's a jump ball that's the hardest one to come up with plus we'd like you know there's the minibar money that's hard to figure out in advance you know they're stocking it with exactly the other one the trump media and and technology group money that we talked about before i just couldn't believe it you know when i realized that they'd sold this overvalued meme coin stock and then bought bitcoin and hoarded cash i just it's an it's an incredible kind of alchemy to have$3.1 billion in liquid assets on their books when their business is failing.

1:32:35Right. And a business that could only exist because he is president and using it to put out statements and trying to get his people to use it. Coins that could only, you know, profit coins that could only exist because his name is attached to them. A market that because he is the president has great influence over. It really is like the intersection of all these different ways in which in the second term, Trump has realized he was unfettered and able to kind of, once he threw off the shackles of expectation and shame and previous rules and norms, and he was free to do all of these different things.

1:33:14In the first term, people were pretty upset about people staying at Trump properties and the profiteering off of Trump properties. And I was surprised to learn that by your reporting, it turns out they might have been losing as much money from people who didn't want to stay at a Trump hotel as they were gaining from people who were trying to curry favor. And that we were just so we were focused on that. We had absolutely no idea what was to come. Yeah, I think that's right. In retrospect, that looks quite overblown. Now, you know, some of my critics from the left will say, well, Kirkpatrick, don't be crazy.

1:33:55You know, all those people, Rudy Giuliani buying his$30 martinis or whatever, that was helping Trump. I mean, even if it was just reducing his losses, that still counts. But, you know, if we're going to be fair, he did, anybody in the hotel business in Washington, anybody who's familiar with the performance of that hotel will tell you it's done better as a wall of historia under Biden than it did as a Trump hotel under Trump. And it's just not only indisputable, but it's also sort of intuitive. You know, if you're a foreign leader from, say, a European country who doesn't want to get caught up in an influence scandal, you're not going to stay there, even though the location is superb.

1:34:34You know, as a Waldorf, it's a great place for a British prime minister to stay. But would a British prime minister have stayed there when it was the Trump Hotel and Trump was downstairs at the bar with Rudy Giuliani? No, no way. Yeah, you gotta, you know, it was attracting an unsavory element. David Kirkpatrick, thank you so much. The story is out today, carefully cataloging and estimating just the vast sums of money Donald Trump has made off the presidency. Thanks for being here. My pleasure.

1:35:08That's our show for today. Thanks to David Kirkpatrick for coming on. Dan and I will be back with a new show on Friday. Talk to everyone then. If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends of the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed. Also, please consider leaving us a review to help boost this episode and everything we do here at Crooked. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illich Frank, and Saul Rubin.

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