Host: Tim Pool @Timcast (everywhere) Guest: Sam Seder @TheMajorityReport (YouTube) Sam Seder is an American comedian, writer, and political commentator known for his progressive views, hosting The Majority Report, a popular left-wing talk show and podcast that covers current events, politics, and social issues. Producers: Lisa Elizabeth @LisaElizabeth (X) Kellen Leeson @KellenPDL (X) My Second Channel - https://www.youtube.com/timcastnews Podcast Channel - https://www.youtube.com/TimcastIRL
We've all seen the headlines in the news of how somebody lost their life in an act of cold-blooded murder, and it grabs your attention, but have you ever stopped to think about the life of the person at the center of the news story?
These victims were way more than a salacious headline.
I'm Eric Carter-Londine, and my podcast, The Murder in My Family, dives into some of those stories to help listeners get to know the person who was lost, and how their death affected those closest to them.
Listen to The Murder in My Family everywhere you listen to podcasts.
Disfruta el ritmo y espectáculo de Las Vegas en el Top 10 de Canela Music con una selección top de artistas latinos que se presentan este verano en la capital mundial del entretenimiento.
Let me see if I got it, because I'm pretty sure I remember this.
It was in the context of you suing Kamala Harris, and you were on with Laura Loomer, and you said the words, people who commit treason should get the death penalty.
Like, I know you went back and forth, but it was so weird because you should really, if you can find this and put this up, because what I found fascinating about it was that you literally did say on multiple times and that going back and forth, because apparently what happened is You got in trouble at one point with, I don't know, some streaming service about people calling for the death penalty or whatever it was.
So if we're talking about, in that context, people levying war against the United States, to which I said, I don't believe any of these people committed treason.
So if we're talking about the penalty for levying war against the country, whether you want it to or not, if a judge sentences someone to death, should they get the death penalty?
Well, there's been people who have been charged with treason when we're not in an act of war, but yes, I guess.
But however you want to parse this, treason is a legal charge against somebody, and there are multiple potential penalties for that, one of which includes capital punishment and...
And that's one of the things that I think, like, in terms of, like, that I have always found fascinating about you, and that there's actually a great video by Timba Toast on how you vacillate between different political ideas as a way of, like, maintaining a certain brand.
You know, if I post a joke on X that is like over the top, for instance, I tweeted Kamala Harris is like Hitler and Stalin times 200 and she's going to kill, she's going to start 800 wars.
That was actually written about in various liberal outlets as if it was a fact statement.
And so I'm sitting here being like, can they not tell?
Well, there's Poe's law.
I get it.
Sometimes they don't.
But the issue at hand right now is just semantics.
All right, so let's just try— Why would you ever say if you're against death penalty— So this is, once again, a misconception I'm trying to get past, so let me explain.
In the circumstance where someone has committed a death-worthy trespass, I oppose the death penalty.
I would advocate against it.
We recently had a big case where there were two instances where people were put to death.
One guy, the family, even said it shouldn't happen.
They'd cut a deal with the prosecutor.
It still happened.
And that was, I believe it was, who was that?
That was Missouri.
And a lot of people who watch my show were quite outraged that a family would say no.
But the issue at hand is I don't assert myself over the rest of the country in law, which means if the mechanism of the courts is as such, that's what should happen.
I'm just saying that in certain circumstances, a person will decide someone may be about to die.
And there's other issues, of course, like whether to render medical aid as a different circumstance.
If someone is already dying, then there's – if someone is in peril but you can't save them.
But in terms of a human being making an active decision to end someone's life, there are many circumstances where someone will decide that they are the arbiter of that decision.
Police officers do it every day.
Soldiers do it every day.
And often – Regular people.
We have the Penny trial in New York right now where they've got the trial going on for Daniel Penny in New York where he put that guy in the chokehold and the guy died.
He made that decision at that point.
He killed the guy.
He did.
And he made that decision for whatever reason, I am going to apply this technique to this man.
It may result in death.
So at a certain point, someone makes that choice.
The question then is, do we agree that the choice was necessary or that they were backed into a corner?
And that's a difficult decision.
So I would just put it this way.
unidentified
I think in a perfect world— It has nothing to do with capital punishment, though.
Capital punishment is definitely a punishment that is put out by the government as opposed to an individual's decision as to whether or not they're going to apply lethal force to somebody.
It has nothing to do with it.
You would never say that Penny provided capital punishment to that guy on the subway because...
Well, I mean, there have been times in the past where we've come close, I think.
Sadly, I think because of all of the ginned-up stuff about crime in this country over the past couple of years, I think we're moving in the wrong direction.
I think the Democrats actually took it out of their platform this year.
There is a cost associated with the attempts to scare people about crime in this country, and that's one of the costs, that we move further away from some type of positive public policy.
And that means at an institutional level, people in this country, except four in 100 people, will be murdered by the state, unjustly killed, for a sense of security?
Yeah, I mean, I just I think I think both in terms of efficacy, but even in terms of I think, if you feel that there is a situation where in without a threat to anybody, right?
I mean, these people all in jail, that there is a justification to kill someone in cold blood, then I think it just becomes a negotiation as to when it's not.
You know what really gets me too is what I hear from a lot of people is what about when you know?
You've seen on video they're harming a child or they're doing something, and it's funny because in a circumstance where an individual literally witnesses a crime happening, it's easy to say, sure, sure, we can – like if you're out in public and you see someone committing an egregious crime that is going to cause great bodily harm or death – But why does that justify an institutional, national-level mechanism by which the government can decide that someone dies?
I think it comes down to 12 people walk into a room, someone they've never met before points to a person they've never met, and they say, trust me, kill him.
And I think, like, you know, that's why it's even that much more egregious, in my opinion, his killing of that man, because I don't believe in that situation there was any type of threat that justified holding this guy in a chokehold for that many minutes at all, frankly, for that matter.
I mean, there were people all around there, and the idea that she felt like her life was in danger, I mean, A, she's not communicating that to the guy, to Neely.
B, it was quite clear that, you know, I don't know, minute two, minute three, minute four, that this person is not going to end up killing that person.
I would imagine that if this guy attempted to assault her anymore, Neely could have pushed him away, or they could have held them down.
But a chokehold is a lethal thing, and he held it for a minute.
Well, I mean, if he's like actively committing harm, there's a there's, you know, I would assume I don't I'm not familiar with that story, but I would assume that it would start out where the guy is physically assaulting her.
Holding her down or whatnot.
And I think at that point I would go and intervene.
But I think the problem in this instance, and again, like, you know, the guy's been charged.
That's basically where my interest, you know, I move on to other things.
But in an instance where you're putting someone in a chokehold, which again, he's trained.
I don't think you have to have too nimble or nuanced of a brain to say there's a difference between watching someone get raped and not calling 911 and putting someone in a chokehold for six minutes.
Oh, well, I mean, listen, during COVID, we had a once-in-a-lifetime event, hopefully, knock on wood, and a lot of things got messed up, but crime has backed down.
You know the only crime that has gone up, which is fascinating, And for all of the BS that we heard over the past couple of years about, you know, shoplifting and smash and grab and all that, do you know what the one major crime that is up?
Which one?
Statistically?
It's actually shoplifting.
Shoplifting went up in 2023 and...
It is now, because it went down during COVID. So as much as we heard, because, and I know you've talked about this quite a bit, and I think it's been misrepresented in a lot of respects, that all of the shoplifting was up and people are gone, mayhem, it's crazy.
It was actually below where it was in 2019, and it is now back up to where it was in 2019.
But again, you ask me why are we going the wrong direction with capital punishment?
I would say it is the absolute BS that has been shoveled.
I don't watch your show enough to know, although I've seen people on here who, you know, when Emma was on, who promote this idea that there was like this explosion of crime.
And in fact, what ends up happening is that yes, during COVID, there was a spike.
And now we're back down.
And the only thing that is back at 2019 levels is actually shoplifting because it had gone down and it's gone back up because we're back to normal.
So we had these – this was the story that happened, and this is what's a cause for contention.
The FBI released crime data showing that crime had gone down, and during the presidential debates, David Muir fact-checked Donald Trump saying actually crime is down.
However, recently the FBI released new crime data showing that actually it was up.
You know what one of the biggest factors in the decline in murder is?
Cell phones.
So back in the day, in the 90s, if somebody got stabbed, somebody had to run to a payphone to try and call 911.
And that created a massive gap between first response and medical treatment.
And so around the time cell phones came out, you see a massive drop in murder charges and homicides.
People immediately started thinking like, wow, crime is down.
And it's like, well, no, no, no, look at the crime data.
It is down.
It is going down.
But it's not the same.
There's a decline in crime and a sharp decline in murder because now people were instantly calling 911 and first responders were arriving on scene much more quickly.
So that's OK.
unidentified
But also the other part was, yeah, I mean, that's interesting.
And so if you are living in areas that had a lot of lead paint, hadn't been remediated, and on top of that you're getting...
The gasoline that's in the air, or I should say lead that is, you know, in the air because of gas, that accumulates in your brain and it creates neurotoxin.
That's why we have that problem in Flint, Michigan, with the lead poisoning.
We have a lot of children, you know, who have special needs.
And there is data.
I mean, this is, you know...
It's very difficult to assess this stuff.
But there's data that shows that about 20 years after lead gasoline is outlawed, you see a precipitous drop in crime both internationally and in this country.
This is one of the reasons why, I mean, since we are a couple days away from an election, why I think it's so important to make sure that Donald Trump is not in a position to appoint any more Supreme Court justices.
I mean, the damage has been done, but it could be rectified because one of the things that the Supreme Court has done in its assault on what is known as the Chevron Doctrine and deference is it will,
over time, Inhibit the ability of something like the EPA or the USDA or the FDA from assessing in real time that there is a problem with certain products that is poisoning our environment or poisoning our people and it will inhibit their ability to address it because We don't know in the future,
and certainly, you know, what chemicals, you know, we discovered this over time, right?
We didn't know this when plastic, you know, plastics are fantastic.
And then we start to realize there's these PFAS, there's these things that you mentioned.
Maybe in the context of fracking, there are certain things leaching into water, but you probably know that you can't just, like, there's no, I test water, and then all the bad stuff comes back on the test sheet.
You must look for specific things.
Well, what the Supreme Court has done is inhibited, and this actually is a problem for investors like the SEC and other agencies, they have inhibited the ability of these agencies to do their work as scientists, as financial regulators, Find problems that exist that were not contemplated by Congress and act upon them.
Because Congress doesn't have the ability, you know, to act on every single or anticipate every single substance that may be a problem for people.
Isn't it weird how the high fructose corn stuff happens?
They subsidize corn.
So then these researchers are like, corn's so cheap now because it's being paid for by taxpayers that we can produce—it's actually difficult to make high-fructose corn syrup.
It's more expensive than sugar, but the government subsidy has resulted in— 100%.
I don't know how you appropriately regulate or deal with things like that, because it's like you're saying, we don't know what it's going to do until we have all this data and research for a long period of time.
I wasn't quite a fan of Michael Bloomberg, but one of the things he did was, I think it was during the Bloomberg administration, there were polysaturated fats, I think it was, that were outlawed in New York City.
I think that's become the norm around the country.
But, I mean, the bottom line is all of these, there are definitely regulations that Nobody's forcing you to buy that toilet.
But there are definitely regulations that we find over time are not as effective as we thought.
But the bottom line is all of this deregulation that we're seeing is a function of largely of, well, certainly of conservatives, but largely a function of the Republican Party.
And now we see, you know, for me, I... Kamala Harris would not be the first person that I would vote for.
But in terms of the Supreme Court, that alone is enough for me.
I think free markets can only exist temporarily until someone amasses power and then displaces the market and becomes the power structure.
unidentified
know like what what is a free market it would it would be like 10 people who live 10 miles from each other they trade periodically but once you get to a point where anyone controls one we've all seen the headlines in the news of how somebody lost their life in an act of cold-blooded murder and it grabs your attention But have you ever stopped to think about the life of the person at the center of the news story?
These victims were way more than a salacious headline.
I'm Eric Carter-Londine, and my podcast, The Murder in My Family, dives into some of those stories to help listeners get to know the person who was lost and how their death affected those closest to them.
Listen to The Murder in My Family everywhere you listen to podcasts.
I mean, I would say so to an excessive standpoint.
I mean, this is, you know, and I'm not speaking positively this, but, you know, that guy Cass Sunstein underneath the under the Obama administration was absurd.
The idea, you know, look, the I don't think you ever have to worry about the Democrats putting too much regulation on things because, to a certain extent, there's still elements within that party, and hopefully it's getting drummed out.
I think that probably the reason is that we have a court that decided in 2008, after almost 200 years in this country, of not perceiving an individual right to carry a gun,
but only in the context of being a well-regulated militia, That because the court has lurched so far to the right over the past two decades, particularly most recently, that I think the idea is that you chip away at this from a legal perspective to try and build a legal precedent by doing, you know, whatever.
I mean, I'm not familiar with that specific regulation, but I would imagine that's the idea.
We're going to get as much regulation as we can in this.
I don't know, like, what's the damage done by that?
It's unfair to call it archaic, I guess, but, like, the M1 Garand is, like, a Vietnam weapon, and the M1A is a more modern version, but it's, like, a wood stock, and it's got, like, a...
It was a.308.
The Scar 20S is a modern AR-15-style variant, which is substantially more efficient...
Well, I'm happy to, you know, I mean, it's absurd, I think.
You know, the Supreme Court has lurched to the right and we have two Supreme Court justices on the right who I think want to retire in Alito and in Clarence Thomas.
And I would love Donald Trump not to have the opportunity to appoint their successors.
Didn't you tell me—we were driving up and somebody asked me if I'd been on your show before, and I said, yeah, I don't know what show it was because you got so many, but— It was actually this channel.
And nobody can find that interview, but I'm quite convinced that you also predicted a Trump victory then, and that must have been like, it was pre-COVID. Well, this was like 2017, 2018.
I would certainly say I learned my lesson with 2020, right?
So I'm looking at, for instance, Moody's Analytics, and they always release this economic report where they're like, here's our projections, and they tout how it's historically accurate.
And then what I think I saw well was there was an increase in support for Trump, and what I thought I was calling out accurately was an increase in opposition to Trump, but the opposition certainly was greater.
But I think the biggest function of 2020 was Republicans just don't know how to win elections.
Right.
They, that's why I think, what, the last Republican to win a popular vote was, was it Reagan, I think?
No, well, Bush in his second election did, but he did that by basically coming out and bashing gay people and driving out the, well, no, I think that was actually, despite the fact, I mean, you know, in the wake of 9-11,
And there was a lot of intimidation by the Republicans and they attacked a lot of Democrats for being, you know, Max Cleland, who lost like both his arms and his legs in or an arm and two of his legs.
I think it was in the he was running for reelection in Georgia and they they called him Osama bin Laden.
What I mean is, like, you say rightward shift and...
Defining what right and left are in different contexts, I think, matters because if we say— Okay, well, in the context of the Supreme Court, rightward shift would be one which— Traditionalist, I would say, versus progressive.
That's what I'm trying to draw a distinction on because, like, right economic is—they're certainly not right economic to a certain degree.
unidentified
The Supreme Court is not right-wing in terms of economics?
And I think it's a little bit of a smokescreen, but laissez-faire specifically means the government completely backs off and does not intervene in what's going on.
And what I'm saying is I think many of these powerful elites that we would describe as right are in favor of protections for their buddies and their billionaires.
Well, the reality of neoliberalism as it coming out of Mont Peleron and the society was ultimately about a protection racket for a specific industry or specific players within an industry.
I think there's got to be some push and pull, I think.
I'd like to see a Democratic Party that provides sound regulation in key areas that matter, like we're talking about lead and water and things like this.
And then I'd like to see actually any party, I don't care who does it, like it's a sound reason to be like, hey, don't dump lead and garbage in our water.
But at the same time, it's also...
To say, hey, we should reassess what we blocked and why we blocked it, then maybe there's some regulation.
So when the courts rule that pistol braces made a pistol, a short-barreled rifle...
I actually had to dismantle a bunch of my weapons and separate.
And there was no law passed.
There was no act of Congress.
This was ATF making an arbitrary decision that I was now committing felonies for simply having owned a legal product that I bought that was legal at the time.
And Congress never passed this law.
So now I risk prison over a nonsensical regulation.
This is the Chevron ruling, that the agencies have a right to self-regulate and make their determinations.
So the ATF, this is partly why people on the right were celebrating this, because the ATF was arbitrarily deciding that it was now a crime without any act of Congress.
I think it's an overestimation of, I think you may overestimate what I'm trying to say, is that typically I think like phthalates, for instance, should be regulated.
I don't believe that there's a quote-unquote free market solution to keeping endocrine disruptors in our food.
But there are regulations on things like your vehicles, your engine standards, guns, for instance.
And I'm not saying I know specifically each and every regulation that should be deregulated.
I think it is prudent for society to say, hey, there's no market solution to stop people putting poison in our food.
Our food has become just trash.
But there is still a circumstance where it's, we do understand that not every government application is going to be permanent or will work permanently.
And I can put it a different way.
There may come a point where the regulation isn't strong enough.
What we're talking about here is there is a battle between people who would profit privately and socialize the costs.
In other words, put it on all of us.
So you want to sell...
Well, let's just go back to Flint.
You want to sell...
You want to privatize this water supply.
You want to give contracts to...
Because this is what the Republican governor there wanted to do.
And the costs associated...
In this instance, like, they wanted to save money by not necessarily treating the water or, you know, by, you know, delivering it in a way that will save them money.
The costs are socialized insofar as you've poisoned thousands of these children.
So I went to Flint and I actually ran tests on the water and it's crazy.
The macroeconomic issues at hand in Michigan And what ends up with, like, a Republican politician is that for a lot of the people that live in the area, they're not directly impacted by what's happening to these kids, right?
For people who live outside the area, they're going to see the news and they're going to say, like, how could this be possible?
And so what ends up happening is I – actually, it was a dude from Occupy who was working up in Detroit who was talking about the water crisis, and the problem started with population collapse, right?
When, like, so he explained to me like this, you have a fixed water system in Detroit and the surrounding cities.
Let's say, hypothetical numbers, 100 people live in an area, it's $10 per person per month to run that fixed water system.
So let's say 10 people, and it's $100 a month.
Let's make it simple.
If five of those people leave, the fixed water costs remain the same, and now it's $20 per person.
The problem is that health insurance, there is no incentive for insurance companies to keep costs low because they basically get a percentage of what the expenses are.
The way that you contain costs is by having a single payer that can look at the data across the country and assess, is this a valid treatment or is that a valid treatment?
There's been all sorts of studies on this.
We could save this country a tremendous amount of money long term, but not just the country.
I'm saying as individuals, plus, on top of which, all the pain in the ass is associated with your health insurance.
This is one of the things, this brings up, again, we have an election in three days.
I think Donald Trump is garbage, frankly.
But the real concern I have about Donald Trump becoming president is that it's going to empower the Republican Party.
Mike Johnson the other day said he's going to cut the ACA. Now, aside from the fact that the Republicans tried to repeal the ACA like 50 times or whatever, I don't care about that.
They're lying because they have no ideas about this.
And to the extent that they're going to change anything, I mean, Trump did, you know, attempt to do on the margins to disable the ACA. There are three aspects of the ACA. And it was originally called the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, PPACA. They dropped the PP thing, which I think was a real problem, because that's actually what this law did better than anything else.
It won and expanded Medicaid.
So you had millions of people, low income people who had the ability, not every doctor takes Medicaid, but to the extent that they could get a provider, millions of people who had health insurance for the first time.
The other thing it did is it supposed, it created these marketplaces.
This is sort of a right wing subsidized industry deal.
I think it's a useless you know it didn't lower the cost it bent the cost curve but it basically just slowed the rate of increase on insurance.
I think we can do a lot better with a single payer thing.
But the third thing it did which is also the most important for for us right here in this room is is the patient protection part prior to this.
You could be denied care because you had some type of pre existing condition.
I'm sorry, buddy, but you just ran out of your health insurance.
Or annually.
I mean, excuse me, lifetime.
So you get cancer.
Your treatment costs this amount.
Not only have you exhausted it for the year, you've done it.
But when Mike Johnson says he's going to cut the ACA, What they're talking about.
Not everybody needs this insurance.
Young people maybe feel like they don't need this health insurance.
When they do that, the only way for them to do that is to raise prices on everybody else.
And so the whole point of insurance is that I may not need it in my 20s in the way that I would need it in my 50s, but I'm going to be 50.
And so it smooths it out.
I think and that's the whole point.
That's why I really am you know again with my hesitation about Harris because of you know particularly in terms of Gaza which we can talk about in a moment if you want but There's the putting the Republicans in power They have gotten progressively worse on all of these issues over the past 20 years they There are two things, I think, that play a role with the ACA especially.
I mean, the thing that Obama expended all of his political capital on was the ACA, and I think they did want to codify Roe, but I don't think, frankly, I mean, I can tell you that in talking to people in that world, they never thought the Supreme Court would overturn it.
I definitely want to get into that, but I want to add one more thing, too, is what the Republicans and Democrats have both privately been saying is – and this is funny because I think one of the arguments against these major healthcare – I shouldn't say healthcare, but like insurance companies is the bloat and bureaucracy that is created in the system, which seems to solve nothing but actually cost us money.
And then you hear these politicians have actually said, you know, a large portion of our economy is these – These health insurance systems.
And so if we were to do away with it, you're going to lose all of these bureaucratic middle managers.
And I'm like, they're concerned about getting reelected if there is a perceived economic downturn from loss of jobs.
No, I mean...
None of that is an argument for or against health care.
Because, I mean, look, you're going to need people to administer this stuff.
I mean, a lot of people in the health care industry would still have jobs.
It's just that they would be...
Either the government would contract to them, as it's done to a certain extent now, to do this work.
It's just that we would not have shareholders who are, who, you know, where 10% of what's going on or 20% of what's going on is a function of shareholders.
So there was a story I think was out of Georgia where some young kid had a genetic disorder and there was a treatment.
But it's some kind of like rare genetic treatment that cost a million dollars to produce.
And the family had sued the state saying that the state should pay for this because it's part of a plan that they had with government benefits and whatnot.
And the state argued we can't pay a million dollars every time we have to do this treatment.
And so the challenge then becomes treatments for diseases go so far as technology can allow.
I'm sure there's grant programs and ways we can develop technology, but what do we do if we do, say, like single-payer healthcare and there's 10 people who have a rare genetic disorder that's killing them, but one treatment available?
I mean, I'm not saying that sickness is going to go away with a single-payer health care program, but the bottom line is that fundamentally more people will have better coverage and ultimately more money in their pockets,
despite the fact that we'll have to tax more for it But over the course of their lifetime, will have more money in their pockets and will not have the insecurity that comes with losing their job, wondering whether or not, like you say, in between jobs, they will not have the headaches of like, oh, my insurance company has dropped me this year, or I've got new programs, or I have new things.
I mean, that's...
You will find, after your kid is born, that half of your time is spent on all of this bureaucracy in the private healthcare industry.
I don't think you need to outlaw private healthcare, but would you agree that we need to make sure that if your license to practice medicine is a function of having, let's say, 90% of your clients accept 90% of your payments from Medicare?
unidentified
I don't know if I'm smart enough to answer that question.
As a way to segue to American foreign policy and our gross spending on wars that don't provide for the American people, if we start by saying, hey, look, we don't need to raise our taxes.
We just don't need to build as many tanks.
Instead of building tanks, we're going to build, I don't know, factories for insulin and hospitals and hire medical workers.
I mean, you know, this is somewhat unique to the United States because we have such control over our currency and it is essentially the world's currency.
But the bottom line is that the reason why we would have taxes in the way that I suggest is to essentially make it illegal to have this type of wealth disparity in our society.
But the bottom line is we have such enormous wealth disparity.
The Fed came out with a report a couple of weeks ago.
The reason why the economic numbers look so good, and they do, our economic numbers look good relative to the way that we have measured the economy over years.
But the reason why they look so good is because of the tremendous wealth disparity we have in this country where very rich people are driving consumer spending.
So taxation for me is a mechanism in which to inhibit wealth disparity.
And then there's other contextual components to it.
When the tax rate goes up, for instance, like I mentioned, there's a million dollar per year tax deduction for equipment for a company.
Well, all that means is if there's a guy who runs a business and he makes a million dollars profit and you're telling him once the year rolls over, he's got to give 40 percent or whatever that number is to the government.
He's going to go buy a million dollars worth of motorcycles for the business.
And then that, you know, there's depreciation.
But then he just says if it if it applies to the business.
Now, what that does do is.
OK, I mean, if he if people who make the motorcycles are getting jobs.
A lot of people think, oh, if you tax these businesses, they're not going to hire them.
I'm like, no, it's the other way around.
If you tell a company that they're going to lose a million dollars at the end of the year, they're going to spend it on something to retain the value of the money they earned.
I mean, I don't mind taxation that gets rich people to reinvest in capital expenditures, but we have millionaires and billionaires who are sitting on money and just dumping it into the stock market.
So if you're suggesting to me that capital gains should be, capital gains tax should be raised to where it is with wages, we are in agreement.
So you've got wealthy investors who are just creating these massive portfolios where they're extracting value from systems that provide nothing, and then you have retirees.
That's a challenge in I mean, there's been an attempt by Wall Street to get more people in that boat, but we still have like 80% of the stocks are owned by like, I don't know, 10, 20% of the people.
I think they changed it a couple years ago or something.
They might have increased it.
But you had a long time ago...
$250,000 is a lot of money, you know, if we go back 50 or whatever years, and they're like, okay, so after 250-year tax at a higher rate, I've been for a long time in favor of, we've got to create more scales in the progressive tax rate.
For what the argument, it's the neolib neocon or whatever you want to call it, of maintaining support for the petrodollar, which allows us, like you were mentioning, with control of this currency, we can spend in ways other other other countries can't.
As long as we maintain the petrodollar, we do not need to maintain exports at the same rate of spending like other countries do, because.
World police, I guess.
And so what ends up happening is with, for instance, what we're seeing with Ukraine is all correlating with the Qatar Turkey pipeline trying to offset the gas prime gas monopoly in Europe.
Effectively, the simple answer is maintain petrodollar against adversaries of the petrodollar.
It's a limited component of the ongoing conflict from the Middle East into Europe.
But in 2009, I think it was, the United States was trying to build a pipeline from Qatar through Syria, Turkey into Europe, which would help offset the Gazprom monopoly.
Gazprom controls about 20%.
Syria said no.
Syria said, quite literally, and this is a quote, or I'm paraphrasing their quote, our ally Russia would never allow us to allow this to go through our country.
Lucky for the United States that a civil war just happened to occur, and Bashar al-Assad was the enemy of the United States who was gassing his own people.
I mean, but fortunately, one of the best things that Obama did was to make that nuke deal.
unidentified
We've all seen the headlines in the news of how somebody lost their life in an act of cold-blooded murder.
And it grabs your attention.
But have you ever stopped to think about the life of the person at the center of the news story?
These victims were way more than a salacious headline.
I'm Eric Carter-Londine, and my podcast, The Murder in My Family, dives into some of those stories to help listeners get to know the person who was lost, and how their death affected those closest to them.
Listen to The Murder in My Family everywhere you listen to podcasts.
When I license through, like, all these other big distributors, someone comes to me, they say, we want a license, it goes to our lawyer, our lawyer comes back, says, here's the agreed upon fee, I say, thank you, and have a nice day, and then we move on.
So when a company comes to me and says, we want to have you, who makes, as a company, a million dollars a month, a show in which we will have a non-exclusive distribution, but takes the branding, then we're going to say, in one or two years, how much do we make on this show per month?
It used to be my biggest channel where I would routinely get half a million to a million per video or maybe like 600,000 per video on certain shows.
And then we're talking about doing a show like this, where you'll get, you know, you have a million, a million five subscribers, I've got a million plus subscribers, or with the other channels, it's big.
Big names coming, doing these debates, tends to attract a lot of sponsorship.
No, I never thought that you were in the bag for, well, I mean, I never thought they were telling you what to do.
I just thought it was a lot of money to be getting, you know, and not asking who, you know, Gerard Depardieu was, or whatever the guy's name, Gregorian.
I mean, if you're Dave Rubin, what do you think about that?
Like, I mean, if you're Dave Rubin and somebody says, we're going to give you $100,000 a video, doesn't that, like, make you go, like, what's up with this?
So if we're talking about, say, Timcast IRL in the morning show, which we do around a million in revenue per month, then a comparable show is going you're going to say this when you're licensing a show If we run the show by ourselves for a year or two, then here's how much we're going to generate in sponsorships, memberships, etc.
by the end of year 2, 3, 4, and 5.
If we do a licensed deal, we jump the gun.
We generate lesser revenue than we would in the long term, but it closes the gap sooner.
I mean, I think, you know, it's quite clear to me that...
I mean, you know, there was reports about like in the run-up to the election, George Santos was on a Zoom call where people were getting paid at least $20,000 to...
Put out stuff that Kamala Harris was a slut on their social media and stuff like that.
And I'm like, I've been doing this for 20 years.
And, you know, it's not a huge amount of competition on the left.
unidentified
And I've never, nobody's ever offered me five bucks to do anything like that.
This does happen, though, where companies, politicians will use some kind of special interest and you can run an ad for any product you want, which is the crazy thing.
Well, I think that we should condition aid to Israel.
I mean, I think that we should, you know, if we have leverage in any type of situation, we should exercise that leverage.
In terms of Ukraine, you know, we had a treaty with them when they gave up nukes in 93, saying that we would protect them in the event of Russian aggression or an agreement.
There's no doubt in my mind that we spend far too much money.
So much of our economy is dependent.
You know, Eisenhower said, you know, beware the military-industrial complex, and his original wording was the congressional military-industrial complex.
And, you know, I subscribe to that.
I do think from a moral standpoint, although I don't think this is controlling, but as a moral standpoint, you know, obviously like one country is being invaded and to some extent occupied and the other is occupying obviously like one country is being invaded and to some extent occupied and the other is occupying and completely asymmetrical type of situation, you know, that
So when I read progressives, conservatives, the Atlantic all— I think that's more metaphorical, but if you want to claim that you did not mean that there was an actual— No, no, I do.
I think, to a certain extent, it's like, you know, yes, there were people who said, like, crime has increased exponentially, but in fact, it hadn't.
I mean, I, you know, I think, you know, part of what you and I do is we make assessments as to what news is actually sort of like, um, uh, real and what really has real world implications for people.
And part of what we do is assess that like these things don't and it's a distraction.
And the only thing I can really say is, look, I read the news and I opine on it and I'm wrong about a lot.
But I can probably pull up, I don't know, a couple hundred articles from CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, talking about the brink of civil war that is coming to this country that I just did not make up one day.
Straight Arrow News, I don't know, but there's a poll saying people think we're on the verge of a civil war.
The Princeton professor, progressive guy, said the Cold Civil War has already begun.
This is back in 2018.
And I look at all these things and I say the worldview of each faction in the United States is divided to a degree that There seems to be no reconciliation.
And so now what you have is city members of Congress calling for a national divorce, which means nothing.
25% of North America are right-wing authoritarians, and they're looking for a leader in the Republican Party has been stoking racial animus for decades now, and this is where the culmination...
I mean, it certainly did 200 years ago, but I think that the likelihood of civil war is low relative to the amount of times that you talk about it.
Well, I think it would require you to see what I talked about.
Like, should I not opine on the Atlantic saying, quote, there's people that are absolutely ready to take on a civil war?
What will happen if Trump loses from one week ago?
I mean, if I address that and I say something like, I think it's silly to assume that within the next few months people are going to start a civil war, is that a bad thing to do?
So you've got Stephen Marsh, who wrote the book The Next Civil War.
He's a liberal guy.
He makes a lot of these predictions.
I defer to him.
I think he's wrong on a lot of his fact assessments in the granular scope of things, but he makes a lot of points that are correct.
So we actually had this debate, I think it was last week, actually, on civil war conflict and crisis.
And one of the things I have to bring up is...
People try and look at the 1861 Civil War as if we must follow that trend for Civil War to occur when, in fact, it's rare that you actually get Civil War.
Tell people not to do it, to go out and vote, to believe in the system, to vote for who you think is going to help bring accountability to this country, denounce and reject violence.
Mark Milley, apparently, and I don't know, Mark Milley is someone that you would trust, but he basically said that Trump told him to just shoot the riders.
If you think that there's going to be a civil war or that there's a big potential for it, you don't see there's no difference between Trump and Harris as to the likelihood of a civil war or who would start this war?
Before the 2020 election, they held a war game, as reported by the New York Times and the Boston Globe, where they said, in the event Trump wins, we should advocate for West Coast states to secede from the Union.
Oh, so you mean like a bunch of people who are out of government went into a room and were working on the campaign and said, what happens if Trump wins?
Or just there's like 14 different scenarios that are being gamed out, and because they're doing the war game, this is one of them that happens in this sort of completely hypothetical thing.
Listen, Donald Trump had states competing over PPE during COVID. He completely abandoned this country at a time where there was a once-in-a-lifetime crisis.
Let's say that Kamala Harris wins the popular—here's a scenario that's playing out right now.
Mississippi had a lawsuit.
Fifth Circuit Court ruled that ballots received after Election Day, even if postmarked before, are illegal to count.
This would have to go to the Supreme Court for final adjudication.
But one scenario that is potential because of this is that— Donald Trump is winning on Election Day.
However, mail-in votes have yet to be counted, of course.
This is what happened in 2020.
Then, when those votes come in, Republicans sue, going to the Supreme Court, which you believe is right-leaning, and the Supreme Court says- Wait, wait.
If Kamala Harris is losing on Election Day, but it is perceived that she will win when mail-in belts come in the following day, but the Republicans sue, citing the Fifth Circuit Court, it goes to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court rules all of those votes for Kamala, which would give her the win, are out.
Trump is now the president despite losing the popular vote and the Electoral College.
Well, we have a model for this, the year 2000, where all of the legal establishment was shocked that the Supreme Court intervened and prevented Florida from counting all the votes.
And to the extent that we, you know, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, but the Democrats basically stood down.
I would be surprised if there weren't massive protests and I think we would see states attempt to get more progressive and become more sustainable and not rely on the federal government as much.
Well, of that 11 million people, 80% of them have been here for over 10 years.
So how is it where you can so easily work up a scenario where Donald Trump instigates a civil war, but you can't with Kamala Harris that you think they're the same?
And so the issue then becomes, if you're a lawyer and you are retained by someone who says, here's the argument I want to make, and you go, okay, then they criminally charge you for it.
But again, the question I ask, do you think, can you come up with a scenario where Harris instigates a civil war in the way that you talked about with Trump doing it?
Why would that right now as an election is looming?
So another example would be, let's say Donald Trump actually is losing on election day and votes are going to come in and they sue and get his votes disqualified.
Between Russell Vogt, who was not only one of the architects of Project 2025, but he was also the chair of the Republican Platform Committee...
They have outlined their entire program to dismantle the administrative state.
Donald Trump is not going to get involved in the micro part.
unidentified
We've all seen the headlines in the news of how somebody lost their life in an act of cold-blooded murder, and it grabs your attention.
But have you ever stopped to think about the life of the person at the center of the news story?
These victims were way more than a salacious headline.
I'm Eric Carter-Londine, and my podcast, The Murder in My Family, dives into some of those stories to help listeners get to know the person who was lost, and how their death affected those closest to them.
Listen to The Murder in My Family everywhere you listen to podcasts.
So that they're going to destroy the administrative state, like Steve Bannon said that he wanted to do at CPAC five or eight years ago, whenever it was.
And this time around, they've got a very laid out, meticulous plan to do it.
They have binders full of people that they plan to hire to carry this out.
And they're going to dismantle the administrative state.
So there's two potentialities, and we'll keep them simple.
Do you think that Trump supporters, his fans, his administration, the people you just mentioned, will just let the Democrats take over and put him in jail and do the things they want to do?
I don't know which one has the higher probability, but we do know that both are capable, and we don't know to what degree is required to start a conference.
You and I both know what the bulk of people who own weapons in this country...
We can look at the Department of Justice, regardless of who has been head of the administration, and see that they have been saying for decades that these militias exist on the right, and they're far more prominent, they're far more dangerous.
Not once in any of my content have I ever said that.
The question is, though, what does it mean to instigate a civil war?
What does it mean to be the first shot fired?
These are deep questions that go back to historical conflicts where we try to determine what started the war, and then you'll get people making arguments about when it really started, when it didn't.
A big question of the war in 1861 is, for us, we know it started with Fort Sumter, but at the time, they didn't think Civil War started until well after the fact, to the degree that the Battle of Bull Run, they were picnicking.
Despite we know historically the Civil War started, they did not make that determination.
So you could argue history is written by the victors.
In the event that the right—and the reason why I say there's a greater risk for civil war from the right is they're the ones actively calling for national divorce, which is a mistake.
They're the ones who are more likely to—well, January 6th, for instance, was bad.
The left, while they riot and there is violence from them, it is what I would call blunt, widespread, low impact.
On the right, it's typically high impact, not as widespread.
January 6th was a riot in one of the worst ways imaginable at a Capitol building during the election, the counting of the electoral vote, the certification.
really going towards the heart of a civil society, which is the peaceful transfer of power.
I mean, you know, to the extent that there were riots or protests, the idea was to change public policy, to show dissatisfaction with the police state to show dissatisfaction with the police state or the state of policing.
That is not a undermining of the fundamental principles of the way that the, of basically undercutting across the board the The issue is that I see is that if you're saying something like the threat comes from the right, well, let's parse that down.
There is a higher probability of instability or conflict arising from actions on the right because their actions tend to be acute.
January 6, sharp and extremely potentially dangerous.
The left, however, does show a different propensity for violence, which we call blunt, obtuse.
That is, the widespread riots of 2020 were not targeted at a Capitol building during election, but they were substantially larger, resulting in around 30 or so deaths.
I think we attribute around 20-plus to the director riots, and then there were ancillary deaths as a result of the actions of the riots.
There were the seizure of autonomous zones, like in Seattle.
There was an attempt in Portland, Minnesota, Atlanta.
And when we're talking about what could ignite a civil war, you don't need only acute.
But it is a higher risk.
That is, you will more likely hear on the news a guy goes into a church and shoots a bunch of people because of how extreme and psychotic it is.
Though it happens substantially less than leftists punching someone in the head.
Nobody really cares if a fight breaks out in the middle of Portland.
We're not going to report on that.
That's stupid.
But if you get to the point where you get a Summer of Love 2020 with a Donald Trump in office and this time around he says, I'm sending in the National Guard, you may end up with...
Conflict, civil strife, insurgency instigated by left violence.
Whereas with the right, you could get January 6, 2.0, where they injure politicians.
I'm, like, sitting here in amazement to the extent that you have contemplated these things and have created this whole sort of, like, macro associated with it that is, I think, like, incredibly unlikely, A, and B... I never said it was incredibly likely.
You know, like, one of the things that the last video, and we didn't get a chance to talk about Social Security, I think you had brought it up before the show.
But one of the things that I'm amazed about is how, and I think this sort of was my point about you bringing it up so much, the, you know, I suppose I can understand why, like, The Atlantic wants to make an opinion piece on it, because it's sort of like click-baity stuff.
But the depth in which you go into these scenarios, which, again, I think are incredibly unlikely, and also some attempt to create some type of equivalence, although you do concede that the probability is higher that this is going to come from the right, versus, like, Social Security...
I just said I was amazed at the depth in which you do that relative to how much little time you spend on something like just even learning the basics of something like Social Security, which essentially our government does three things.
I think it's fair to point out, as pertaining to Social Security, is if I'm going to read The Atlantic and comment on it, criticize me for having unoriginal thoughts.
If I'm going to read Forbes and comment on it, criticize me for having unoriginal thoughts.
I read Forbes saying that insolvency is coming and the system can't sustain itself because on average you need 2.8 to 4 workers to maintain a single recipient.
Honestly, in instances like that, like I say, no one's going to listen to a dry diatribe about Social Security, but when you come out with such misinformation based upon, I guess, you read an article or two that day...
But you then pontificate and say Social Security is a dumb idea.
You don't realize that increase in productivity means that while it may have been, you know, two workers for every one Social Security person back in the day, or I should say vice versa, one worker for every two retirees, now it can be one worker for every four retirees because of increase in productivity.
And Social Security is not going insolvent.
There's a trust fund that was established during the Reagan era, and that will last for another 10 years if we don't do anything else.
unidentified
But everything else in this country will go broke.
One of the things that I have criticized you for in the past is that you don't go in-depth with the serious stuff and actually, like, learn about this stuff, and you opine about it, which, you know, it's your...
Well, but you're not reading it very well, because...
Yeah, I think you need to, like, on some of these bigger issues, you've clearly gone very deep into the Civil War thing, which we both agree has a very low chance of happening, you know, somewhere above zero.
I think the Supreme Court was wrong, and I believe that the Fourth Amendment requires that the federal government make a ruling specifically on the issue of abortion.
What that becomes, I don't know, but the concept of personhood Needs to be ruled on one way or the other.
Like, for instance, we say only in the case of, let's say, a danger to a woman, you know, or a woman's life, is that that is extremely difficult to assess where that line is.
We've seen this.
Two women have died at least in Texas as a function of the abortion ban that they have there.
We also know that infant mortality in the wake of the Texas thing, because there's been studies on this, increased 15 percent in the wake of the abortion ban there.
So, in general, I would say that restrictions are, in practice, not viable, not doable.
because you end up costing women their lives.
I think that to the extent that I would have restrictions, I think you need a medical provider to provide abortions, you know, in that go past the maybe midway through the second trimester.
I think some women are going through some serious crises in their lives, and they may make a decision that's a bit more than just they've changed their mind.
Like, for instance, where a woman is being battered by her husband, and then she realizes at month six that if she has this kid, he's going to continue to beat and harm the child, and she can't stay with him or something.
Well, I think, you know, I'm not going to assess people's reasons for having an abortion.
It's not really my business.
But I think that having restrictions ends up costing women's lives.
And so I would, on balance, not have restrictions outside of, like, obviously, like, you know, particularly as you get further into the pregnancy, requirements about medical, you know, certified medical providers.
So, let's say you have a scenario where a woman goes to a Planned Parenthood, six months pregnant, and she just says, I don't want to explain it, I just would like to get an abortion.
Is that a, she should be allowed, there should be just medical professionals that say, we're going to do it, we're not going to ask you why?
Well, no, I'm not saying that they should adjudicate this, but I don't think that, like, the, you know, necessarily medical providers are going to be just like, you know, hop up here, we'll just do this right now.
I mean, I think there are procedures in which they do it, but essentially, as long as it's, like, sort of, like, you know, they're following, you know, medical procedures, like, I don't think that somebody can, you know, walk in here at six months and say to you, like, can you get rid of my baby, and you're allowed to do it.
And this is what I'm talking about, why you have women who have died in Texas, and there's probably a lot more that we're not aware of, is that imposing these restrictions is not like, there's no bulb that shows up when you say, this child is 100% not viable, or that you are, your life is 100% not threatened.
Like, where's the threshold?
Is it at 20%?
If the woman's life is in jeopardy, it's 20%.
And this is, you know, a vague, you know, a doctor doesn't have like some meter that they put on the, you know, the woman and say, oh, okay, your life is at 20%.
No.
These are vague determinations.
And when you impose these type of restrictions on what invariably happens is women die.
Because in real life, not hypothetical world, in real life, the doctors are afraid of crossing a threshold where they could get imprisoned or they could lose their license.
Or, you know, conceivably the woman might too.
And so I leave it up to a doctor and the patient.
I don't know what constitutes even elective.
Like, is it elective if there's a 20% chance I'm going to die?
So the issue is whether someone determines personhood or not is a legal constitutional question that needs to be answered.
For instance, in Civil War, they didn't think black people were humans who had civil rights, and that's clearly the psychotic way to view the world.
But you holding the view that an unborn child is or is not—an individual who holds a view, whether they are or not, is an unanswered question at the Supreme Court level that I believe sooner or later will be answered.
And they may make a determination that the unborn are persons who are— What do you think?
Man, that's tough.
I tend to be traditionally pro-choice.
unidentified
I think that when you have— Do you think there should be restrictions on abortion?
I think that we're dealing with something outside of the simplicity of I can go to court.
It takes six months to a year to figure something out, which means there's a compromise.
How can we come to the best determination to make sure that women are not lying, which I assume would be exceedingly rare, and we're actually going after the criminals?
I do not think it's fair to put the burden on someone to perform an abortion without actually taking the responsibility of yourself and saying, look, victims have responsibilities, and it's unfortunate that they're victims, but we're trying our best.
So if you don't, you don't go, so let's say, for instance, like, I mean, I don't know if you've ever, you know, spent any time exploring the psychological and the sort of, like, social pressures on people to report rape.
I mean, but you're basically saying that if you don't go and get a rape kit, It's contingent upon the police department to assess this rape kit.
I'm pro-choice, but I recognize that we're not going to live in a society where one side's demanding an extreme and the other side's demanding the other extreme.
unidentified
So you think the rule should be if you get a rape case?
It's kind of wild that I'm like, women should be able to get abortions, but you're like, yes, but in these exceedingly rare circumstances, we should remove all restrictions because sometimes...
There was a question about viability and whether or not you can end the life of— The court said, in Casey, it just changed the date in which, or I should say the week in which states could then begin to impose restrictions on that right to get an abortion.
Well, what if you make the determination that I don't want to go through what is involved with getting accountability and justice, but I also don't want to carry my rapist child?
In that scenario, the woman is out of luck, according to you.
Sam, do you think that if someone commits a crime against you— And so I'm sorry I said Rape Empowerment Act and tried to do it in a more satirical way.
That women can get abortions if they're so-- We've all seen the headlines in the news of how somebody lost their life in an act of cold-blooded murder.
And it grabs your attention.
But have you ever stopped to think about the life of the person at the center of the news story?
These victims were way more than a salacious headline.
I'm Eric Carter-Londine, and my podcast, The Murder in My Family, dives into some of those stories to help listeners get to know the person who was lost, and how their death affected those closest to them.
Listen to The Murder in My Family everywhere you listen to podcasts.
But the state doesn't have the authority to tell a person when they must give their body to another person.
There's arguments over consent, in which case rape is an exception.
However, I'm pro-choice.
So what we're talking about now, because make sure you include this in the context, and I'm glad you're here I can say it to you, is a woman up to pre-viability, in my opinion, should be allowed to get an abortion if she so chooses because of the impossibility of properly adjudicating anything in between.
I think that's where, when I say you're having a breakdown, it's because I don't think you're listening to what I'm saying.
After viability, we're talking about extenuating circumstances where a baby that could survive on its own There's now an issue there where the question becomes, why kill the baby?
If we're talking about a period where we're not sure the baby's viable or not, we're wondering why the woman carried the baby this long.
The issue is not so black and white for you to just say.
The fundamentalists who are pushing this ideology, and it's largely fundamentalists, And if not directly, certainly downstream from a religious fundamentalism, they're not interested in your compromise.
There was a compromise and the right-wing in this country did not want it.
That's it.
That's why this is a debate.
And you have an individual right that has cost the lives of multiple women across the country.
It has increased infant mortality, like I said, at least in Texas, by 15%.
And I think it also, and I think it's much harder to measure this, But it subjugates women in this country because it basically says you have less rights to have bodily autonomy, and that's just the beginning.
If there was a way to have the type of restrictions you're talking and have a child be viable outside of the womb and all this, but in reality, that's not the way it works.
These things don't work the way that you're talking about.
The left was essentially as a political matter was fine with Roe v. Wade and Casey for that matter.
To the extent that there was any talk about abortion rights amongst Democrats in the left it was to lock it in because the right is coming for this right.
And they have now done it.
So, I mean, the false equivalency you're making here is literally that.
Well, I... Like, where's a big right-wing pundit who joined a liberal network, like Anna Kasperian announcing she's leaving the left, you know what I mean?
Well, I would say, I mean, when you're talking about Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, I would say Lena Kahn, head of the FTC. I would say John Cantor at the DOJ antitrust.
Listen, for every RCP thing that you can say, I can come up with a significant amount of data that shows that there's reason to believe that the pollsters are overcorrecting from mistakes that they've made in the past.
People feel that there is value in creating that sense that maybe it's a foregone conclusion.
I personally think that a lot of it is about Trump trying to gin up what you talked about earlier, a January 6 response.
If he loses by creating the expectation that he's definitely going to win, and I think it's going to be close, but I don't think that it's in any way close to even being a foregone conclusion about either one of them.
