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Jan. 17, 2025 - Dinesh D'Souza
54:32
PLANES, BOATS, AND BRAD PITT Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep1003
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Thank you.
Thank you.
Lots to cover.
The deal over the hostages and the ceasefire in Gaza.
The parade of Trump cabinet nominees and their fate.
We're going to talk about that.
We're going to talk about Venezuela.
We're going to talk about airplane crashes.
and we're also going to talk about a woman who gave all of her money to a guy that she thought was Brad Pitt.
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Debbie and I are geared up for a Friday roundup.
And man, it's been a week full, chock full of things going on.
And with another big week coming up, Inauguration Day is Monday.
And by the way, no podcast on Monday.
Monday is a holiday, so we'll be back in the saddle.
I'll be back in the saddle on Tuesday.
A lot to cover, honey, so we need to dive right into it.
But I want to begin with the revelation that Michelle Obama has decided to skip the inauguration.
Are you surprised?
Well, no, I'm not surprised.
I think she's a vile human being.
And I think that...
Are you saying she's even more vile than Barack?
You know what?
I think they're just as vile.
But I think that Obama, he likes the limelight.
And any limelight on him, whether it be negative or positive, is a good thing.
He doesn't care.
Well, he's also...
You know, somewhat Lucifer style.
He's a camouflage artist.
Yeah.
He likes his name to be light, kind of like Lucifer.
And by that I mean he doesn't want to give the impression that he's petty, that he's ducking the inauguration.
So he has to maintain that facade.
And I think it's not just to fool the people, it's to fool himself.
Because I think he likes to think of himself as a great kind of beacon of virtue.
Deep down, he knows he's not, but there's a part of him that wants to maintain that self-image.
Well, I mean, look, maybe I have a little streak of Michelle Obama in me because I didn't...
I didn't want to watch the inauguration when he was president.
I see what you mean.
You boycotted it.
I boycotted it myself.
Kind of for the same reason.
The exact same reason.
Nor did I watch Biden's inauguration.
So, of course, you know, I'm not a public servant.
You don't have any kind of, you know, there's no tradition that you have to watch.
But I think with Michelle...
You're right.
Remember the scene where she was standing next to Obama and they were doing a lot of Americana, the flag, the anthem?
Now, I bet they both thought the same thing.
But Michelle leans over to Barack and she goes, all this for a flag.
Now see, Obama kind of agreed.
He goes with the flow.
But he wouldn't say it.
Yeah, he was thinking it.
He was thinking it.
But she said it.
Yeah, yeah.
No, she's definitely not.
In fact, I believe she's racist.
I don't think she likes white people at all.
And maybe she doesn't even like the white liberals that like, you know, oh, Michelle, you know, she probably doesn't like them either.
She probably sees through all that.
And remember, it goes back to her, you know, people, they say, don't change that much from your college days.
And I don't know, I think you remember what Michelle Obama's college thesis is, right?
Yes.
Blacks at Princeton, and black alumni, black students, black faculty, and that resentful lens is right there in, you know, at that time, young Michelle Robinson.
By the way, Debbie and I are on the same page that Michelle Obama is a woman.
I do think that there's obviously a lot of, I mean, there are funny memes.
Oh my gosh.
These drumsters are so out of control.
We have a friend in Australia who, he just goes to town with those memes.
With the Big Mike memes.
Yes.
Well, now they're saying that Michelle is not coming because she's having erectile surgery.
We have to say that that is a foul rumor.
Oh no.
That is not true.
That is not true.
This surgery is not on the Obama schedule.
I think she's just, you know, not a very attractive woman.
Well, and even more unattractive on the inside, right?
Yeah, exactly.
In other words, it wouldn't matter if there was a kind of basic decency to her, if she showed some ability to identify even with people who didn't agree with her.
You would extend a certain kind of latitude.
But, all right, let's pivot a little bit.
We're going to come back to the inauguration and Trump.
But I want to talk about this huge story just last couple of days.
A major ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
And when we talked about it, kind of on our way to the podcast, you were like, how do you make a deal with the devil?
How do you negotiate with terrorists?
Well, the short answer is through third parties.
Because I think in this case, you had...
Well, Biden has been trying to get this deal done for weeks.
And I think he couldn't get it done because, well, we know why he couldn't get it done.
Hamas thinks he's a weak and ineffective and probably, in a sense, substitutionary leader.
Netanyahu can't stand the guy.
And so neither of them take him seriously.
But then the Trump envoy, Witkoff, steps in.
Obviously reflecting the will of Trump.
And I think what happened is, it's not Hamas.
Qatar, all the Hamas sponsors were like, remember Trump already put out, if these hostages are not back, there's going to be hell to pay.
So I think these guys were like, listen, this is not really the time to rile Trump.
He's going to want to make a major statement one way or the other.
Why don't we just go along with this?
And I think Netanyahu was probably not all that happy about it, but he acceded to Trump because he knows Trump is very pro-Israel.
Is that how you see it?
Yeah, I see it that way.
But I also see it as a very bad deal because I think that releasing...
These terrorists is a horrible deal.
Why?
Because you have these roaches back to fester and do the same thing again.
You know, I think the best deal is eradicating them completely.
Hamas.
Completely.
Which is kind of the Netanyahu view.
Yeah, and I agree with that view because these terrorists are not going to quit, you know, and we're making a really exciting movie coming up next year about this very thing.
And putting it in a much bigger and I think incredibly...
Well, somewhat chilling, but also eye-opening framework of where the world is going in terms of biblical prophecy.
And where these enemies came from in the first place and how they're back.
It's unbelievable.
And so it's really opened my eyes to what's going on.
And it's also made me understand that you cannot negotiate with these people.
Well, the point is, look, let's say that Israel said, you give us back 33. And remember, these are mainly women and children.
There are some, I believe, female Israeli soldiers.
But for the most part, it's women and children.
And guess what?
We'll give you civilian captives in return.
In other words, we're not trading a commander who's going to go, as you say, right back into the field for...
And why not 33?
If it's 33...
You know, Israelis.
Why not 33 Palestinians?
I mean, talk about the Palestinians from a position of weakness negotiating a hard bargain.
I mean, this is their bargain.
They're basically getting something like 25 to 30 in exchange for one.
And for every female Israeli soldier, they're getting like 35. And not only are they getting 35, they're saying...
We get to pick which 35. We'll give you the names.
So this is a new thing that they're like, yeah, we now have to select who we want.
Yeah, roaches, like demon people.
I mean, you know, they are so evil that I can't even look at them.
You know, I just see Satan all over it.
I think from Trump's point of view, the way he's looking at it is that he's like, look, I think he thinks.
I know how to shut down the Ukraine war.
And I think I know, too, what Trump is going to do.
And I think he can get that done.
The hard one, of course, is the Israel one, because to the degree that Israel is dead set on completely eradicating Hamas, think of it.
It's October 7 of 2023. It's been now about 15 months already.
And I think Trump's thought is, how do I bring this to a close?
But I think the way Trump's looking at it, if I can shut down the two wars, I will have delivered a major kind of campaign promise.
Ukraine's going to be a lot easier, as you say.
A lot easier.
It's a bigger war.
It's a costlier war for us.
Well, it's costlier, but it's also a little bit easier to deal with Putin than it is to deal with Hamas.
And not only Putin, but it's easier to deal with Zelensky because Zelensky...
Is entirely a creation of the U.S. I mean, this guy, you know he was a dancer and an actor.
He's a stooge.
Right.
So to the degree, he's a stooge.
He's a performance artist.
He's a performance artist.
So the degree, and we're sort of like the directors of this play.
And Zelensky's out there, and he's pirouetting, and he's doing little ballet moves, and he does a little, what do you call it when you do twirls?
Well, you know what you do?
Yeah, yeah, a pirouette.
The full pirouette.
He does full pirouettes.
And so all the director has to do is cut.
And then he's like, ah!
And then he's frozen.
Ah!
He's out of supplies.
But yeah, with Hamas...
It's kind of like turning the lights out.
Yes, yes.
I'd like to turn the lights out on Hamas.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
And you know, because again, Hamas is a larger threat to...
To the West, really.
Because with Hamas comes Hezbollah.
I mean, they're one in the same.
Might as well be.
Well, you're making a key point, which is that the Israel fight is a surrogate.
It is a genuine surrogate for a fight involving us.
We're the great Satan.
They're the little Satan.
Whereas nobody could say that the fight between Putin and Zelensky is a surrogate for anything.
No, it's not.
We've made it a surrogate because we're fighting a surrogate war with Zelensky as our front man, but we don't have the same stake over there that we do.
We're targeted by the Islamic radicals, regardless of whether Israel is there or not.
Yeah.
No, I just, again, it's very difficult to come to terms with just negotiating with these people.
I mean, it's the equivalent of having someone that breaks into your home.
Armed robber.
Home invader.
Home invader.
And you're deciding, how much am I going to give you?
No, not only that, but then he's got his mom.
And you're going to shoot him, but you've got to shoot his mom first, you know?
Right.
And this is how these people operate.
They put the civilians in front of them so that they are the casualties.
Right?
And then the world is outraged because so many of their civilians are killed, but they're the ones putting them out there to be killed.
And so they're evil all the way around.
I think that they should be just eradicated.
What you're really saying is that Hamas is responsible not just for Israeli civilian deaths, but for the deaths of Palestinians because they are the ones...
Fighting a war designed to maximize those deaths.
It is absolutely abominable.
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We've been talking about Gaza and about Israel, but of course there's a lot happening here with Trump's cabinet guys coming up one by one.
This week, of course, this past week, we've seen Hegseth, we've seen Rubio, we've seen Pam Bondi, a whole bunch of other people right behind in line.
What is your take?
I was looking at the betting site, Polly Market, and They were giving well over 90% chances for everybody.
Boom, boom, boom.
Really what they're saying is that the Democrats are not landing a blow.
But I think the point that is worth noting is the Democrats, they're a little flustered.
They are discombobulated.
Some of them are just downright stupid.
And so their blows just miss.
But they do try to land blows.
I mean, in other words, they do not take the view that Trump is the president, Trump should have his own appointees.
Yes, we should ask questions, but we should vote for them because that's the way our system works.
That's the point that struck us both, the difference in psychology between the two parties.
Why don't we take that view?
Right?
Our Republicans would never dream of not giving.
I mean, look, they did the same thing with Obama.
They did the same thing with Biden.
They gave them what they wanted.
I mean, unless they were, like, super radical.
But, you know, I think these days, any Democrat...
Well, I mean, look at this.
First of all, look at the super radicals who went through.
Mayorkas went through.
Buttigieg had no qualifications.
He went through.
What about the...
Merrick Garland went through.
And the SCOTUS. Oh, Ketanji Jackson.
Ketanji Jackson.
Yeah, the Republican approach.
Now, there are going to be...
Look, there are some Republicans who won't vote for those people.
But the point is the mainstream of the Republican Party is deferential.
They tend to say unless there is some...
Scandal.
Unless you have a criminal record we didn't know about.
Otherwise...
We are not going to count ideology alone against you.
And that's the key difference.
The Democrats are willing to vote straight down the ideological ticket.
They don't agree with you.
They don't want someone with your views in there.
They're going to try to block you.
They might fail, but they're going to try.
They are, certainly.
And it is evident because, for example, Pam Bond.
Do you think Pam Bondi is going to get all of the Democrat vote?
No, in fact, I would be surprised if she gets more than one or two.
I don't think she's going to get even most.
But wait, what is the reason?
What is their reason, other than ideological?
It's only ideological.
I think that's what it is.
Now, I think what happens is that at the last minute, Democrats can count votes as we can.
They might realize she's in, and a few of them will vote for her.
At that point.
But the point is, could they stop her?
They would have stopped her.
I thought Democrats were the party of women.
Yeah, that is all purely tactical, right?
That's all purely...
I mean, think about it.
Historic, right?
A woman attorney general of the United States.
I know that...
Janet Reno.
Janet Reno was, if you want to...
I'm not going to go there, but anyway.
This reminds me of a good old joke about why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
I will not tell the joke.
No, no, no, that's exactly what I was thinking.
You can look the joke up online.
I was exactly thinking that same joke and I almost laughed out loud.
But anyway, but we don't think that way.
And so I think we need to start thinking that way.
I really do.
Yeah.
Do you think Hegseth, Rubio, Bondi, do you agree all three are going to pretty much sail through?
As long as the Republicans hold.
Yeah, I do.
Which I think they're going to.
Now, the one that's going to be really interesting to watch is Cash, because I think he is the one they are most afraid of.
They're the most afraid of him.
But we know Cash.
Cash was in police state.
In fact, we ended up putting probably more of Cash in police state than I even intended to.
But he was just so...
And then we were in a little book together.
That's right.
With brain books.
That's right.
A book related to mules.
No, Cash is awesome.
And the thing about Cash is that, I mean, he's this little guy.
He's almost sort of...
Slightly cartoonish a little bit, but then when he opens his mouth, he has such a command of detail.
He's going to be...
Really interesting to watch because, boy, I just know he's going to let him have it.
And run circles around him.
Oh my gosh, it's going to be so much fun.
I'm going to actually watch.
I really want to.
Like with these others, I've only watched clips, but I want to actually watch these...
Well, because you know it's the highest stakes, so there's the most drama.
And second of all, they are going to go all out.
They will come in with their...
They'll have all their stuff that they want because if they could just get one guy, I think...
I think you're right.
They would vote.
Let's take this guy out.
Yeah, yeah.
Do you think Fetterman's going to vote for all of them?
I know we talked about this, you know, last night.
I don't think he is, but I do think he's going to vote for most of them.
And I wouldn't be surprised if he votes for Cash.
Because, see, in all these situations, you know, you can, for symbolic reasons, vote against this guy or that guy.
Like, Fetterman may decide, I'm not going to vote against RFK Jr. Or I'm not going to vote against Tulsi Gabbard.
But if he votes for Kash Patel, that will send you a very powerful message that even he, Fetterman, knows that there's some rot at the FBI. And it doesn't matter that Chris Wray was appointed by Trump.
This guy is a product of the establishment.
Trump tried to make peace with the establishment at the beginning, and so he went along with this kind of stuff.
He's not doing it again.
I mean, that's, this is a new and different.
Did you see Trubbs?
He released his official photo.
It basically looks like he was posing like his mugshot.
He had the same, he cocked his head a little, oh yeah, he cocked his head a little bit and he kind of curls his lips a little bit and he makes his eyes in that kind of like, come and get me.
So his official photo is essentially a redo.
Yeah, it's hilarious.
My gosh.
But I think it's symbolic.
He loves to troll.
He loves it.
Well, but it's more than trolling because a trolling thing is just he's just having fun at the expense of.
But I think what's going on here is Trump is saying that's the Trump you're getting in the second term.
Yeah.
There's a bigger meaning to it.
Right.
No, I like that meaning.
Yeah.
I do.
Totally.
I do.
Hey, speaking of...
Of Texas, you know, sellouts.
What do you think of this Texas house?
Well, we were talking about the U.S. house and we were talking about the Texas house.
And what's very disturbing is that it's happened again.
Something that's happened several times before, but there was a supreme effort to stop it this time.
Oh, well, let's back up.
We're talking about now the Texas speaker race.
Right.
The race within Texas.
In the house.
But the reason we're talking about it is because it reflects a problem.
That is beyond Texas.
And here's the problem.
Let me put it this way.
You have a conservative state and let's just state it in abstract terms.
Let's say that the Republicans have a 60-40 majority and therefore they should control the House.
It's a conservative state.
You expect a conservative speaker and you expect a conservative agenda.
However, let's just say that the 60 is divided into...
40 conservatives and 20 moderates.
Now, normally, again, that's no problem.
That actually reflects the demographic of the U.S. House of Representatives.
And yet, no Republicans would think of voting for Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker.
In fact, the Republicans' view is we have to coalesce around our Speaker, whoever it is, whether it's Jim Jordan, whether it's Mike Johnson, whether it's...
Who's the guy who was there before?
You know, the former speaker.
No, not Boehner.
The guy from California.
The former speaker.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Why am I going blank?
Are you going blank?
Anyway, it doesn't really matter.
I'm going blank on him.
Kind of shows how quickly we forget these people, right?
He's been there for a long time, that he's gone.
Anyway, here's the important point.
McCarthy.
McCarthy, of course.
Of course.
The point is, I mean, my mind is focused on the other thing I'm saying, which is just this.
That what's happening in Texas is that the 20 moderates have realized we can control the house by allying with the 40 Democrats.
Then we are 60-40 against the conservatives.
And so this guy Burroughs is the guy who became speaker, defeating the clear choice of the majority of the Texas Republicans, which was David Cook.
But Cook lost.
And so the problem remains in Texas.
And I think I was making the point that it really shows how Texas politically is much worse off than Florida.
Florida is firmly in the control of the right.
Ron DeSantis would never stand for this kind of madness.
And I think that in order to fix this problem, we need active intervention.
We have active intervention from the lieutenant governor and from Ken Paxton, the attorney general.
But we also need Governor Abbott to step in and go, listen, you cannot torpedo...
I think Governor Abbott's view is kind of like, listen, that's the house.
I'm not going to mess with that.
That is as new.
But it does actually...
A lot of his agenda is actually going to be squelched and stopped because of this.
Notably, think of it, one of the things Abbott cares about is school choice.
Yeah.
One of the things that these moderates do not want, in fact, they're exclusive.
They do not want school choice.
Right.
And so you're not going to get school choice.
He hasn't been able to get it.
Why?
Because you need the House, you need the Senate.
Now the Texas Senate is very conservative.
Yeah.
And Abbott is ready to sign.
So all kinds of bills that could become law will not become law because...
Because of this dysfunctional setup in Texas.
Yeah, it's got to be strategic.
And Abbott had to have really put his foot down and said, hey, you know, if any of you, you know, don't vote this way.
I'm going to actively campaign against you.
In fact, we're basically going to...
Well, I do think that their constituents are already wanting to primary them.
I know that for a fact.
So what you're saying is that over time, this is likely to be...
There's one gentleman in our area.
That is already, people are already speaking about doing a, you know, primarying him out.
They're done.
And he's in a very conservative district.
I'm saying it's a joke.
You could knock him out.
I could probably knock him out, yes.
Yeah, but this is bad news.
I'm not going to.
Don't worry.
Don't worry.
I'm not going to.
Are you saying it's more important to be on the Friday roundup?
You know what, honey?
No, it's not even that.
It's just that going, you know, these people really take a big undertaking when they become a Texas legislator.
You're at the service.
Every couple years, but you can't do anything else.
And as you know, there's no pay.
And you campaign full-time.
And you campaign full-time, and you're in Austin most of the time.
And it's just, you know, again, there are a lot of really good people that could probably take him out.
Yeah.
And I think I just like making movies.
Yeah.
And we can help those people.
And doing the Friday Roundup.
Exactly.
So there you go.
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From all of us here at MyPillow, Although we've said a lot about the California fires and the absolute abrogation of responsibility, the Democrats trying to duck accountability, the somewhat comic assertion that nothing can be done about these fires coming from the same people who want to regulate the temperature of the entire earth.
Yeah, exactly.
My point exactly.
It's like...
Well, if all of these policies are working or are part of stopping global warming or climate change, then why are you still having it?
It's obviously failing.
It's a failure.
Well, what you're saying is they have all these policies in place in California that are supposedly aimed at dealing with climate change.
Right?
Emissions controls and these taxes on this and all these environmental regulations.
Water conservation.
Oh, you can't take three-minute showers is all you can take, you know?
Very expensive.
Even electricity aimed at causing people to use less.
Wattage allotments.
Wattage allotments.
Venezuela.
I mean, I'm just saying.
Well, I had said on this podcast probably several months ago now that, okay, we can, you know, in any proposal to fix the planet, You begin on a small scale.
So let's just take a single square mile of land on planet Earth.
And my invitation to the climate people is show me over a period of, let's say, a year.
That you can regulate the temperature of this one square mile.
Forget about the earth.
The earth is huge.
Just do it for one square mile.
Let me see if you can do it.
They can't.
They can't.
They cannot do it.
They know it, too.
No.
And the other thing is, you know, they're not really sure who's causing the fires.
Like, is it arson?
Is it, you know, fireworks from New Year's Eve?
What exactly is it?
And they have actually caught some people lighting fires.
Right.
And I told you the other day, I go, I wonder if the homeless people have just decided that, you know what, I don't think there's enough of us.
Let's cause some havoc here.
Which is the result.
I mean, there are people who are, in a very literal sense, homeless as a result of these fires.
Yes.
So what if some of these homeless people in California that are nuts are...
Helping do this.
I don't know.
I'm just putting that theory out there.
Look, these, first of all, you have people who, as you say, they have addictions.
Some of them are psycho.
And they have a lot of time on their hands.
Right?
Now, most of the time that they do, they spend fighting each other.
Sometimes they knife each other.
The other time they spend harassing people who go by.
Give me a dollar.
They throw their shoes at you.
They pick your chicken wing off your plate.
But this is a way for some of them to be very destructive.
Yeah.
Not to mention, there's some illegals.
I think they caught an illegal.
They did.
And you made a joke about it the other day.
I renamed him Climate Change.
It wasn't Manuel Saldivar.
It was Climate Change, who also calls himself Climate Change.
Cambio de clima!
If you want to say the Spanish word.
Right, exactly.
Anyway, no, it's really, really sad.
And I do pray for all the people affected.
Look, it doesn't matter if you have a lot of money or not a lot of money.
The people that have, well, the people that don't have a lot of money are going to be in very, very bad shape because...
That was really their only asset, probably, their land.
And they owe money on it.
And they owe money.
And when are they going to rebuild?
Can they even rebuild?
Well, somebody made the point, which, again, this is another reason to push Democrats to the right, is that they said, guess what?
You got your house 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
Try to rebuild today.
You'll find that seven lesbians are sitting on the city council, and they won't give you a permit.
They'll ask you to do an environmental study on your own land.
They'll charge you for this and that.
They'll block you from this or that.
They'll say that your ranch is adjoining a wetland.
And so this is the kind of stuff that you are going to have.
And I think for a lot of people, you have to bump into it firsthand.
And then you begin to get the point.
I'm not sure that these people are going to get the point.
I really, I'm not really.
Because I even, you know, I go down Twitter and TikTok.
We'll talk about TikTok in a little bit.
And I see that they're just clueless.
Clueless on the culprit of why their government failed them.
The people that are saying their government failed them already believed it.
They already believed the government was failing them.
They already believed that they lived in a one-party state, like the pastor that came on yesterday, Pastor Hibbs.
Yeah.
You know, he's amazing.
I wish more pastors would speak truth like that.
We would be in a much better place and situation if that was the case.
But he does speak truth and I commend him for it.
TikTok.
Let's talk about that.
I mean, it's going away on Sunday.
Well, they say that Trump might rescue it.
So this would be interesting because, you know, a lot of Republicans pushed for shutting down TikTok.
Yeah, exactly.
And it was all based upon the idea that China owns it and has to be owned by the United States.
But remember, Trump was on TikTok.
Trump made TikTok videos.
And Trump also knows that there are a lot of young people on TikTok, and certainly we know a few of those who get their news from TikTok.
My little girl, who's not so little anymore, she tells me everything, and I'm like, how did you know that?
She'll go, TikTok.
Right.
One of our favorite restaurants closed down.
Oh, yes.
And we are regulars at this restaurant.
Oh, that was so sad.
We get the VIP treatment there and so on.
However, and we had no idea.
No, no.
All of a sudden, I get this text from Juliana.
She's like, Mom, Tris is closed.
Fake news.
She's like, no, it's on TikTok.
And she was right.
And she was completely right.
She knew it before we did.
She also gave us a really good restaurant recommendation a few years ago on an Indian restaurant in London.
In London when we were there.
Because of TikTok.
So anyway, I'm just saying, she learns everything from TikTok.
I like to go through TikTok, too.
I think it's kind of fun.
Well, I see a lot of TikTok videos transplanted onto X. People will clip them and then repost them on X. Or on Instagram.
Yeah, and to me, they're not so much videos about what's going on in the world, but they are videos that are revealing because of the psychology that they reflect, right?
Like, you'll have some 20-year-old woman or 25-year-old saying something like, you know, I would like nothing more than to quit my job and be a mom and raise four kids, but I can't do it because...
And then, you know, then she goes on to talk about because, you know, I was told that I could be free, I could be emancipated, and I'm emancipated by working 45 hours a week, and I'm emancipated by having to pay my electric bill, and I've got a mortgage, and everything costs more, and I can barely keep going, and as a result, I have no time to meet a guy and get married and have kids.
And so what she's really saying is...
I am a victim of the lie of feminism.
That's the message.
She doesn't mention feminism, but that's what she's saying.
Oh, no, but I do think, I do think, because I, you know, even, you know, my daughter, she's a little bit, or was, a little bit on the feminist side, but she really now wants to, like...
Be a mom.
She wants to get married.
Be a full-time mom.
But she says, you know, it's going to be a really tough life like that because of the fact that it's much more expensive to be a stay-at-home mom these days.
To raise a family of five or a family of six and not have to work.
Both parents.
Right, right.
So anyway, really, really hard.
Listen, I hope we're not going on the road to Venezuela, on the road to socialism.
Some interesting developments in Venezuela.
Oh my gosh.
What's going on?
Because you told me that not only is Trump having an inauguration, so is the fake president, i.e.
the dictator of Venezuela.
And you know, this time around, Maduro has been faking his way to presidency for many, many terms now.
But this one is the one that is recognized by the international community.
As fake.
Everyone believes that this election was actually stolen.
Maria Corina Machado, as you know, she's a friend of mine.
We actually helped her in the primary.
She won 90% of the vote in the primary.
Very hard to do, by the way, because the Venezuelan opposition has a lot of parties now.
It's not just a two-party system, right?
The opposition has many parties, 12, 13, 14 parties.
So for her to get 90% of the vote of all those parties...
It was a feat, you know?
But she's known as the Liberator.
So her nickname is the Liberator, just like Simón Bolívar was the Liberator, right?
Yeah.
And so they truly believed that she was going to win the presidency in Venezuela.
Well, you know, Maduro thought so too.
So he got the Supreme Court to stop her from running against him.
The Supreme Court, that was stacked.
Which is in his pocket.
Was in his pocket, was stacked.
He stacked it.
In his pocket, they declared that for some reason or another, she would not be able to run for like 10 years.
So she was desperate.
Obviously, she had won the primary.
So she found this guy, Eduardo Gonzalez Uturia, I believe is his name.
I may be saying it wrong.
But anyway, he is in exile now.
He won the election, by the way.
She stood behind him.
She rallied with him.
You know, people did back him because she was, she handpicked him, basically.
People backed him.
He won.
Because he won and because he said he won.
And Maduro said, no, you didn't.
They were going to arrest him.
So he's in exile in Spain, and he can't return to Venezuela or he'll be incarcerated.
Well, on Monday, she had been in hiding, by the way, for several months because she was afraid for her life and captivity, right, that she would be arrested.
Well, she was arrested on Monday.
Thank God, I don't know how this happened, but she got out.
At the end of the week.
At the end of the week, she got out.
And anyway, but the thing about it is, you know, everyone knows that they won the election, the opposition.
And Maduro is going forward with this fake inauguration.
He doesn't care.
As you know, China, Russia, and Iran are really, they're pulling all the strings.
They don't want Maduro to quit.
They don't want Maduro to step down.
You and I were chuckling over this news article that says, allies of Maduro, China, Russia.
You were like, allies?
They're more like the guys controlling the puppet strings.
They are pulling the puppet strings.
Yes, sir, they are.
And as long as they continue to do that, Maduro will continue to stay.
And, you know, he threatened to take, well, he's threatened to take many places, Guyana, one of them.
But he just threatened to take Puerto Rico.
And the governor of Puerto Rico is a Republican.
She's like, I don't think so.
Over my dead body.
Can you imagine how laughable that would be?
He was threatening to send troops to take Puerto Rico.
Now, you know that the Puerto Ricans are not dumb.
They don't want socialism.
They have it really good right now.
They have a pretty good arrangement right now.
Yeah.
They're like, what?
No.
I don't think so.
And so I dare Maduro to do anything because here's the thing.
If he does that, that will be cause for the military to intervene and take him out.
He'd be visited by the U.S. Air Force.
So Maduro, let's do it, okay?
Because we've been trying to get you for a while, and this is really a great way to do it.
That will work.
For this last segment, we thought we would look at some very kind of striking, And you get these notifications on your phone, and from time to time, you'll be like, get a load of this!
And it's usually one of these things that makes you pay attention.
And we thought we would cover a couple of these interesting stories.
One of them, a near miss involving two U.S. airlines.
Now, I'll let you give the details, but this is coming on...
Quite a few recent episodes of airline takes off, airline is forced to return to the...
Well, and we just had an incident ourselves, you know, when we were going to South Carolina.
We talked about it.
We're like all excited.
We're like, we're leaving.
Yay!
We're making all these plans.
All of a sudden, we're about to take off and all of a sudden...
The plane comes to a complete stop.
It was on the verge of taking off.
They hit the brakes like nobody's business.
Yes.
And it's got to have been something quite serious because airplanes don't like to do that.
No, no, no.
Unless there is, and I suspected some, they said electrical problem, but both of us suspected complete loss of electric power.
It had to be because it was just, it was such an abrupt stop that we were literally about to take off.
Right.
Like, you know, we must have been going 200 miles an hour.
I mean, I don't even know.
I don't even know how fast, but we were going fast.
And then all of a sudden, stop.
It's also interesting that even as we were waiting, and then ultimately they swapped out the plane, they never gave us a proper explanation of what happened.
We'll talk about the latest involving, is it Delta?
Yeah, Delta.
Now, this is on the heels of yet another incident that happened, I think, last...
Last week or two weeks ago, where two planes clipped each other on the runway.
They just clipped each other on the runway, the wings, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, that's bad enough, right?
But then I read this, terrifying moment, two passenger jets come extremely close to a mid-air collision as they approach to land at Phoenix Airport before the anti-crash system kicked in.
And this was United Airlines flight 1724 and Delta Airlines flight 1070.
Well, tell how many feet they were apart.
Oh, my gosh.
So, the first time...
425 feet apart in vertical distance, and then seconds later, they were within 1,200 feet apart horizontally, which is less than a quarter of a mile.
And you're talking about planes, they were landing, weren't they?
They were both landing.
Right, on side-by-side runways.
Right.
And so then, air traffic control instructed the United flight to land on runway 7, while the Delta flight was told to shift course and land on runway 8. I mean...
I can't.
And then descend, descend, descend.
The warnings.
Can you imagine if you were a passenger and you heard that?
I mean, oh.
And someone actually captured it on video, took a photo of it.
Some aviation bomb.
Extremely, extremely close.
And so look, these are some near-air disasters.
I mean, this would have been over 400 people dead.
Right.
And you know, one of our favorite shows to watch, I don't know why, is...
Well, I know why.
Well, because a lot of times when we watch this, it is about the reconstruction.
Yeah, I know.
It's like a complete...
I know, but every time I... Technological whodunit.
Yeah, I get it, but every time...
But you're saying, what propels us to watch these things?
Yeah, we watch it, and then we're going into, like, the next day we're going to fly, and I'm like, okay, are the...
We have rather specialized knowledge.
We joke about this.
We just want to inform the pilot to make sure that he's retracted the flaps.
Yeah, retracted the flaps.
Because we've seen so many where the flaps are not and then they can't take off.
We're calling this episode, this segment...
Planes, boats, and Brad Pitt.
We're going to get to Brad Pitt, but let's go to boats.
Because you've been telling me...
Now, I will say, in my earlier phase of life, I did a ton of cruises.
In fact, at one point, I was asked to be a lecturer on the Crystal Cruise Lines.
And I did a bunch of cruises where I would speak to these very cosmopolitan groups of people from all over the world.
It was really fun.
And by the way, a chance to go on a free cruise and get some free cabins.
And, you know, Danielle would bring a friend.
And it was actually great.
Every now and then, you would hear about some...
Well, sometimes you hear about people who would die on the cruise ship and then they would be stored like in some special refrigerator.
Kind of creepy.
Yeah, but a lot of these were elderly.
They're elderly people, to be sure.
Once in a while, you'd hear about someone going overboard.
Not our ship, but in the cruise industry.
But you're telling me that more recently...
It's like every week.
I mean, I get...
You get these notifications.
I get notifications.
This person threw himself overboard.
This person threw himself overboard, landed on the deck, and then bounced off.
Now, do you think that these are people who are...
Quote, falling overboard?
Or do you think that they're suicide attempts?
Oh, I think it's both.
I think it's both.
Sometimes it's they're drunk.
Sometimes it's been murder.
But it's just gotten so frequent.
But it's just gotten way too frequent.
And, you know, a lot of them...
They don't find the body.
I mean, these are also, you know, we are living in a time where because of forensics, because of surveillance, because of DNA. Maybe also social media, right?
We hear more about it.
Not only social media, but I think, well, the thing I was thinking of when you said social media is this rather bizarre habit of going on the edge to take selfies.
People will stand, you know, they want to be like Titanic.
I don't think this is the same as the cliffs.
I think this is totally different.
The people aren't taking a selfie and falling over.
And falling over.
No, no, no.
Something is happening.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's gotten...
It's just gotten too frequent, and I think it's weird.
Let's close out on what I think is the funniest part of all.
It's tragic and funny at the same time, and it's just bizarre.
And this is the woman who had a divorce.
And ended up turning over pretty much all her money to, quote, Brad Pitt.
Explain.
I think she was a French woman who was on the verge of getting a divorce.
She was about 50 years old.
Yeah.
And, you know, this is where AI comes in.
So, apparently, she got scammed.
Big time.
But I mean, hello, Brad Pitt, really?
She thought Brad Pitt was after her.
I mean, how dumb do you have to be?
Yeah, so what happened was the first thing was this woman claiming to be Brad Pitt's mother.
Reaches out to her.
Reaches out to her about something or other.
I need this, I need that.
I'm going to talk to my son about you.
You're such a great person, blah, blah.
So then comes Brad Pitt.
And the funniest thing, and I put it on the thumbnail, because it's Brad Pitt, and he looks like he's got some kind of a rapping thing, like he's in the hospital, and he's really ill.
And so apparently, AI... Generated this.
Generated these photos to her that showed him in the hospital with all these tubes and stuff saying, oh my gosh, you know, I've fallen in love with you.
And they never spoke on the phone.
This was all just texting back and forth.
And so she would see the photos and he was like, yeah, you know, this divorce with Angelina Jolie is causing so much heartache and financial strain on me.
And she basically said, you know, I'm actually getting a divorce, and I'm going to get a really good settlement in the divorce.
And bing!
You know, this person...
But I mean, Brad Pitt is obviously very rich.
They had to give some explanation for why he could not access his money.
Because Angelina Jolie's...
You know, trial and divorce and all that was holding up his money.
Oh, it's like an escrow.
Right.
He couldn't get to his money.
But he was like, he goes, you know, I have $400 million, but I can't get to any of it.
And so I need to get, you know, however much, right?
So she wires him over $850,000.
Can you believe this?
And so she thought she was going to marry Brad Pitt.
Talk about ridiculously stupid?
I mean, of all people?
Really?
And then, oh, she goes, I found out that it wasn't Brad Pitt when I saw a photo of him with his new girlfriend.
Age 23. Yeah, like, really?
Like, you really, that's when it, like, that's when you realize that it was fake?
What?
I mean, how dumb?
You know what they say is in a lot of these scams, when the scam occurs, The woman or the person who's scammed is so mortified because they realize at some point how dumb they are and they don't want...
Obviously, think of it.
Think how humiliating it is.
Well, you read the story in the Daily Mail and so this woman is obviously like the laughingstock of the Daily Mail readership, right?
A lot of people in her position are like, I won't say a word about it because I don't want, on top of all this humiliation, I don't want half the world laughing at me.
And they are.
And they are.
So, but like you say, this is a case, this is about, I mean, there are very...
Diabolical scams where it's really hard to know you're being a scam.
And this is obviously, to me, this is an easy one because, hello, a movie star is not going to reach out to you asking you for money.
I mean, it's just not going to happen.
Movie stars don't do that.
It's kind of like me getting one of these messages from Elon Musk.
My money is all tied up to Nash.
Can you wire me a billion dollars just for now?
Way back in three months, no problem.
Can you imagine if you fell for it?
You wouldn't fall for it, would you?
No, I don't think so.
Okay, all right.
Well, there are some emails that'll say, here is your Apple receipt.
Click on this link so that you can retrieve it or get it or whatever.
And I always go to the source.
Look where the email is coming from.
Look where the email is coming from.
You have to look at it.
And if it looks like this is no Apple, this is not an Apple email, delete it, report it, do whatever.
And just don't click on it.
And no harm will come to you by doing nothing.
Yeah, no.
There are a lot of scammers out there, a lot.
And they come in all kinds of different forms, shapes, sizes.
And sometimes they pretend to be Brad Pitt.
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