Who Is GOP Mega-Donor Miriam Adelson & What Does She Want? Culture Critic Stephanie Lange On Pressures For Young People To Get Grotesque Plastic Surgery
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro (0:00)
Who Are The Adelsons (4:25)
Make Israel Great Again (16:06)
Interview with YouTuber Stephanie Lange (37:24)
Outro (59:50)
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, the Israeli-born Miriam Adelson, who is now both a citizen of Israel and the United States, has given more money in this election cycle to a pro-Trump super PAC, namely $100 million just from this one single person, than any other single donor has given in an election cycle in American history.
Adelson is one of the richest women in the world, in fact, the fifth richest woman, and she's the single richest Israeli citizen on the planet by virtue of her inheriting the multi-billion dollar fortune of her now-deceased husband, the casino mogul, and long-time GOP mega-donor Sheldon Adelson.
Now, it would be notable, and I'd argue disturbing enough, to have anyone be able to use their billionaire wealth to exert such outsized influence on our politics this way.
And most definitely, both parties, Democrats and Republicans, have plenty of these kinds of billionaires doing exactly that.
But to have a person who proudly identifies not only as a citizen of the United States, but also as a citizen of a foreign country, the one where she was a citizen first, using her unlimited wealth this way to influence American politics and the American government, as Marian Adelson repeatedly says that her primary political concern is U.S. support for everything Israel wants to do, bears at least serious examination.
So that's what we'll do, asking who is Marian Adelson and what is it that she wants.
And then...
Stephanie Lang is an Australian culture critic and commentator whose very popular YouTube show I discovered entirely by accident when YouTube's algorithm gods placed her show in front of me for whatever reason.
I watched one of her videos as a result and instantly recognized how undercover and important are the topics that she very adeptly covers.
In particular, there's a huge increase, a huge increase in the numbers of young adults and even adolescents in the West and the United States who are seeking out and paying for plastic surgery, often extremely distorting and unhealthy procedures that can cause long-term or even permanent damage, not only to one's appearance, but also to one's mental often extremely distorting and unhealthy procedures that can cause long-term or even permanent Now, this may seem like a topic slightly off the beaten path for what this show covers, and maybe it is.
There's no inherent value in clinging to the beaten path.
But I would argue that the types of social dynamics at play that are fueling these industries that play on and exploit the social insecurities and mental vulnerabilities of young people in the West who are very much tied to the Internet and its culture are very much part of the social changes we often discuss in a more explicitly political context.
That's why we asked Stephanie to come on our show to talk about all this and why we are delighted to have her here tonight.
Before we get to all of that, a few quick programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
System Update One of the central facts of American political life that cannot be denied is that income inequality has massively increased.
It was already quite extreme prior to the pandemic, but during the pandemic, a huge number of small businesses disappeared and the mega corporations and the multi-billionaires who own and control them consolidated a huge amount of commerce in their hands, especially internet platforms when people felt they couldn't go outside.
And as a result, those people got even richer, and the gap between the richest people in our country and pretty much everybody else grew even further.
Now, when that happens, and lots of people have different opinions about to what extent that inequality should be able to grow, maybe it should be able to grow for as much as it wants and can, Maybe the government should intervene in some way.
Whatever your view on that is, there's no question, and even the founders often stress this, that if income inequality becomes too large, if wealth inequality becomes too great, then inevitably it will spill over, said the founders, people like Thomas Paine, even Thomas Jefferson talked about this, it will spill over that inequality will into the realm of political rights and our political processes, which are intended to be not based on who has greater wealth, but just equal among every citizen.
And that is absolutely what has been happening over the last 20 to 30 years.
I actually talked on the After Show yesterday about my original support in 2010 for the majority ruling in Citizens United on First Amendment grounds, and I explained why I still agree with that ruling.
But nonetheless, that doesn't mean simply because I oppose First Amendment restrictions as a solution that this is not a huge problem.
It is a massive problem.
It's getting bigger, and it's essentially rendering, in some cases, our democracy illusory.
Because even the politicians who want to be the most independent, want to be the most heterodox, the most anti-establishment end up relying on...
Just a handful of multi-billionaires who finance their campaign with gargantuan sums of money.
They then feel captive to those people and their agenda, even if they don't necessarily want to follow or agree with that agenda.
And then even once the election is over, it's the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest people who pay for the lobbyists and pay for the processes that shape the actual laws that Congress passes.
Often the same people who finance it getting the same outcomes.
Now, one of the people who has broken records this year in terms of the amount of money she has given to support a single candidate, Donald Trump, by donating $100 million to a super PAC that is supposed to be independent of the campaign but that supports Trump's election is named Miriam Adelson.
And she is Israeli-born.
She spent a lot of her life, most of her life, as an Israeli citizen.
She never gave up her Israeli citizenship.
She's now also an American citizen by virtue of having married her multibillionaire husband in 1991.
And here's the Wall Street Journal yesterday explaining exactly what it is that she's doing in this election cycle, quote, Quote, conservative donor Miriam Adelson gives a super PAC supporting Donald Trump $95 million.
Quote, Adelson, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump in 2018, supplied all but $81,000 of the money that the Preserve America PAC took in during the third quarter, according to the filing Tuesday with the FEC, the Federal Election Commission.
And in reality, it ended up being $100 million.
She had given $5 million in seed money to that PAC. So in total, she did what she promised she would do, which is donate $100 million to a super PAC trying to elect Donald Trump.
And you see mega donors on both sides, on both parties, getting closer and closer to that number as well.
Elon Musk has given something similar in that same universe, though somewhat less.
And there's plenty of billionaires funding the Democratic Party and long have been, including one that we'll talk about who's very similar in trajectory and belief to Miriam Edelson.
But her wealth comes from an inheritance that she received when her husband, whom she married later in his life, Sheldon Edelson, died at the age of 87 back in 2021, as the Financial Times reported that U.S. casino magnate and Republican as the Financial Times reported that U.S. casino magnate and Republican donor Sheldon Edelson dies at Billionaire helped transform gaming hubs and wield influence over U.S. and Israeli politics.
Quote, Edelson was the billionaire founder of Las Vegas Sands and is credited with transforming the cities of Las Vegas and Macau into gaming and resort destinations.
He leveraged his vast wealth to exert social and political influence on causes from Jewish affairs to combating opioid addiction, bought regional newspapers in Nevada.
and Israel and befriended world leaders around the globe.
And I should say that Miriam Adelson is actually a physician.
She became a physician, an emergency room physician, but then also an internist prior to marrying Shadal Adelson.
And it is true that her specialty, before she married him, was working on opioid addicts in particular and the physiological struggles they faced, both in terms of their addiction and then withdrawing from it.
So that's a very genuine cause that both of them supported.
But, quote, most recently, Adelson was a close confidant of U.S. President Donald Trump and wielded power behind the scenes, including successfully urging Mr. Trump to push for the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were among the deepest pocketed and most reliable donors to Republican political candidates in recent years.
As the single largest Republican donor in the 2012 election cycle, Adelson's endorsement of Mr.
Trump for president early in the 2016 campaign helped accelerate the New York businessman's route to the White House.
The couple maintained their position in the upper echelon of Republican donors through subsequent elections, including the 2018 midterms.
The Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign contributions, ranked the Adelsons as the largest individual donors of the 2020 election cycle, giving almost $220 million, all of it, to Republicans.
Adelson helped support Ariel University, built on a settlement deep inside the occupied West Bank.
And was a guest of honor at the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2019.
At the ceremony, American and Israeli dignitaries made a beeline for him and his wife, who is now expected to take over his pro-Israel philanthropy.
And that's exactly what she has done.
She's become arguably the single most influential person in financing one of the candidates in this election cycle.
Now, as I said, I think anytime billionaires are donating massive amounts of wealth...
It's legal for them to do it, and they're not doing anything wrong, but I think our political liberties and our political system gets corrupted by having a handful, a tiny number of people, be able to basically mold and shape the political parties and candidates to their agenda, oftentimes having both political parties mold to their agenda through the use of their vast wealth, just multi-billions of dollars flowing in an unlimited way.
She could have given a billion dollars to Trump if she wanted.
There are no limits on how much you can give, but it's particularly strange when the people who are doing the most to shape your politics weren't born in the United States and have a citizenship in a country that is not the United States, which is in Mary Maddelson's case in Israel.
She's an Israeli citizen.
That's where she was born.
And where she goes around saying quite unabashedly and proudly that her primary political issue is making sure the United States does everything Israel wants and needs to serve the interests of Israel and the Israeli people.
And just imagine if we had an oligarchical Russian couple spending hundreds of millions of dollars every year in our election cycle while maintaining Russian citizenship.
With the sole overarching goal of making sure the United States government and its policies serves the interest of the Russian people.
Or imagine any country sending one of their wealthiest people to just become an American citizen and pour hundreds of millions of dollars into our policies and into our politicians to ensure that those politicians and those parties stay loyal and faithful to the interests of the other country to which they have citizenship and therefore loyalty and where they were born.
It would never be acceptable in any other instance other than a citizen of Israel exercising this amount of power in this way.
Here from Heretz, the Israeli newspaper, in January of 2021, quote, And that's how she's always referred to as the Israeli Miriam Adelson, his Israeli widow.
Quote, Born in British Mandatory Palestine in 1946 to Manuka and Seema Farbstein, who fled Eastern Europe just prior to the Holocaust, she grew up in Haifa where her father ended up owning several movie theaters.
She spent two years in the Israeli army, earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Microbiology and Genetics from the Hebrew University, and a medical degree from Tel Aviv University.
Later, she became the chief internist in an ER at the since-shuttered Rokhok Hospital in Tel Aviv.
She met the then 57-year-old Adelson on a blind date in 1991, and they were married within 100 days of that first meeting.
Credit to her and kudos to her for not just finding a husband and getting him to marry her within basically three months, but finding one of the richest people on the planet worth, according to Forbes, $30 billion to do so.
Can't do anything other than stand back and, on some level, admire that, regardless of how damaging the outcome was.
The article goes on, quote, We're good to go.
It is highly unlikely, for instance, that a Miriam Free Sheldon Adelson would have made such massive contributions to causes like the Holocaust Museum and Memorial, the Birthright Israel Program, Friends of the IDF, the Zionist Organization of America, APAC. And more recently, the Israel-American Council and the Anti-Defamation League.
And without her, it is unlikely he would be so deeply involved with Israeli politics and politicians, most prominently Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or would have founded the pro-Netanyahu Israeli Hayam Free Daily newspaper, of which Miriam is also the publisher.
So they weren't just using their massive wealth inside the United States to ensure that The United States and both political parties remains aligned with and loyal to the interests of the Israeli government.
Even policies that the United States has long opposed but are now becoming almost forced to accept and even support.
Such is the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, which the United States has long regarded as deeply detrimental to American interests, but which is one of the main policies that Sheldon and Mary Maddelson both want.
That's why he was funding settlements deep within the West Bank, because those settlements, those Israeli settlements, make a two-state solution impossible.
It means that the West Bank will be ruled by Israel, either through annexation or now through essentially apartheid.
Here is the New York Times who did a profile on Miriam Adelson when she announced her intent to spend $100 million on a pro-Trump super PAC. The headline was, the pro-Israel donor with a $100 million plan to elect Trump.
Miriam Adelson long operated in the shadow of her powerful husband, Sheldon Adelson.
Now, after her death, she is playing in politics as a sole practitioner for the first time.
And the article reads, quote...
Dr.
Adelson is poised to become one of the biggest donors in the presidential election, and if Mr.
Trump wins, one of the most powerful private citizens with a say in American foreign policy.
Fiercely hawkish on Israel, she was deeply unearthed by the Hamas attacks on October 7th and would likely shape a second Trump administration's posture on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Now, I have questions about whether that's true, but of course the New York Times wants to convince people that it is, and certainly...
While I have more doubts and questions, obviously it's possible, very possible, that if you give one candidate $100 million to get them elected and they go around with you everywhere promising to give you everything that you want, as Trump has been doing over the last year, there's going to be some captivity, some debt.
People don't spend $100 million and expect to get nothing in return.
The article goes on, quote, she is in some way is a political carbon copier of her husband, intensely pro-Israel, rabidly partisan, and a believer in the nobility of using her money north of $30 billion and her media empire to buy influence and shape the world.
But she is also, by the accounts of people who have pitched her a tougher ask, she is seen as more cerebral and disciplined than her husband, whereas Mr. Inglaterra, Adelson enjoyed the game of politics and obsessed over tactics.
He wasn't above editing the script of the advertisement, one of the people said.
She is more driven by whatever is happening in America and Israeli news.
Her fervor for Mr.
Trump, some of his allies say, actually exceeds her late husband.
At one point, she suggested adding a, quote, book of Trump to the Bible.
Her Israeli nationalism has tethered her to Mr.
Trump, especially since October 7th.
Her Israeli nationalism is what is fueling her desire and her attempt and her success, given the virtually incomparable wall she has.
There are only a few people on the planet richer than she.
That's what's driving her attempt to shape American politics, to shape the Republican Party.
And like I said...
There are plenty of people doing exactly the same thing on the Democratic side, not just funding them with their billionaire wealth, but funding them for the same goal, the same purpose, the same policy in mind to make sure the Democratic Party also stays aligned with and loyal to the state of Israel.
Now, the Adelsons have not just been funding Trump.
They've been funding the Republican Party for many years.
With incomparable levels of donations and wealth, and they make very clear that in order to get their money, the main hoop that you have to jump through is promising repeatedly that you will be loyal to Israel and to prove that you actually mean it.
And if you're running for president, especially in the Republican Party, but also in the Democratic Party, Your tendency politically is that you're going to pledge loyalty to Israel, but when someone's sitting there with, in the case of Trump this year, $100 million, and saying all you have to do is spout the most pro-Israel slogans and then convince me that you mean it and that you'll carry through on it, then obviously that's going to have a major impact.
Here from NBC News in September of this year, quote, it's not just the, quote, Adelson primary, quote, That's what it's called.
It's called the Adelson primary where Republican candidates compete to see who gets their support.
Returns as Republicans gather in Las Vegas.
Megadona Miriam Adelson met with a handful of prominent Republican politicians and hyped Trump who she is trying to help return to the White House.
For, quote, years, an informal process of the Adelson primary took place that brought politicians to meet with billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, founder of the Las Vegas Sands Casino and one of the party's largest financiers.
The importance of the Adelsons never diminished.
Miriam Adelson has had a bit of a different approach since Sheldon Adelson's passing, but the mission remains the same.
So the longtime Republican operative familiar with the family's thinking, quote, she is always going to preserve his legacy and do what's best to protect the United States.
And our greatest ally, Israel.
During the three-day annual RJC summit, Miriam Adelson met with prominent Republican politicians, including Montanator Senator Steve Dines, who this election cycle runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Florida Senator Rick Scott, who is running to become Senate Republican leader.
and Florida Representatives Byron Donalds and Mick Waltz, both of whom were considering runs for governor, In Florida in 2026, quote, every policymaker that wants to ascend in the Republican Party knows that a relationship with the Adelsons is key, the Republican operative said.
20 years ago, nobody knew what the RJC was.
That's the Republican Jewish Conference.
And today you have state house members tripping over themselves to try and go to the Vegas event.
Now, just to give you an indication of how deep this wealth goes, Miriam Adelson is also the owner of the NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks, which her son-in-law is the general manager of and runs that team for her.
I mean, it's just wealth of a kind that's unimaginable and basically infinite.
New York Magazine published an article entitled Miriam Adelson's Unfinished Business.
What does the eighth richest woman in the world want?
Quote, when she met her late husband, the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, in the late 1980s, she was a divorced addiction doctor who had left Tel Aviv for New York to pursue a research fellowship on methadone treatment.
She had dedicated her life to lifting up the weak, but like almost all Israelis of her generation, the protection of the Jewish people, the security of the state of Israel is her true calling.
So after she married Sheldon in 1991, she leaned in as a As Cicero put it, endless money forms the sinews of war.
Money to the American-Israel Political Action Public Affairs Committee, APAC. Money to the Zionist Organization of America.
Money to the Republican-Jewish Committee.
So much money up and down the ballot and across the globe that a candidate's position on Israeli foreign policy, that is a candidate's position on a tiny country that most voters cared about not at all, determined the size of their campaign war chest.
Many political fundraising experts, including Craig Holman, public citizen's chief ethics lobbyist, believe Adelson will be Trump's top patron in 2024, as she was in 2020.
What will she expect in return?
Beyond unconditional support for the Israel-Hamas war, one can assume she'll press for the unfinished items of Trump's Israel agenda from the last term.
At the top of that list, Israel annexing the West Bank and the U.S. recognizing Israeli sovereignty there.
Something that, again, even the most devoutly pro-Israel presidents of the last three decades in both parties strongly argued.
This is true of Reagan and Bush 41 and Bill Clinton.
And George W. Bush and Barack Obama that it was vital to American national security that Israel not annex the West Bank because annexing the West Bank means there would never be a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which causes a great deal of anti-American hatred in the region and also prevents the United States from doing what they want to do in the Middle East because no one will partner with them in that region as long as they're seen supporting Israel when the Palestinians don't have a homeland.
Trump said on camera, quote, I'm a very loyal person.
I've been the best president in history to Israel by a factor of 10 because all the things I do, the embassy, Jerusalem being the capital, then you have Golan Heights.
Nobody ever thought that was going to be possible.
I did that.
Miriam Adelson said, As I said, she doesn't give away her money for free.
She gets everything she wants.
Here, just one symbolic present that Trump gave her in November of 2018.
18 he gave her the medal of honor the highest honor that an American private American citizen can receive.
Now, this is something that Mary Maddelson is very proud of.
She loves to go around and boast of all the things she made Trump do for her and for Israel.
She goes around handing him buckets of money, and then she stands up and she says, look at all the things that I got him due to Israel, and look at all the things he's going to still continue to give to Israel if he's elected.
Here is Miriam Edelson in August of this year at a Trump rally, speaking with both American and Israeli flags behind her.
That president is Donald Trump.
Woo!
He promised to recognize Jerusalem and to move the embassy to Jerusalem.
Promise kept.
He promised to withdraw from Iran nuclear deal.
And promise kept.
He promised to bring peace between Israel and Arab nations.
promise kept.
And all Angolan Heights, that was a big gift.
He promised Golan Heights and he recognized it.
And all of this he did in his first term while battling COVID pandemic, race riots, and the liberal media.
Now I want to tell you, politicians make promises.
Real leaders keep promises.
So that's just her boasting of how she used her money to extract a bunch of commitments from Trump to benefit Israel.
And she says even while the country was suffering from COVID, even while he was battling the liberal media, he still found time to do all these things we demanded that he do and that he promised he would do for Israel in exchange for our money.
And Donald Trump himself, speaking last month before the Israeli-American Council, almost mocked the situation.
In the very Trumpian style that he has, basically saying, you know what?
The Adelsons, there's no giving them enough.
There's no satiating them.
Whatever you give to Israel, they come back and want more and more and more.
And he basically said, and that's what I'm going to do for them.
Here's him speaking at this event where she was also present.
Just as I promised, I recognized Israel's eternal capital and opened the American embassy in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem became the capital.
I also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
You know, Miriam and Sheldon would come into the White House, probably almost more than anybody outside of people that work there, and they were always after.
And as soon as I'd give them something, always for Israel, as soon as I'd give them something, they'd want something else.
I'd say, give me a couple of weeks, will you please?
But I gave them the Golan Heights and they never even asked for it.
You know, for 72 years, they've been trying to do the Golan Heights, right?
And even Sheldon didn't have the nerve.
But I said, you know what?
I said to David Friedman, give me a quick lesson, like five minutes or less on the Golan Heights.
And he did.
And I said, let's do it.
We got it done in about 15 minutes, right?
Thank you.
So, just to be clear, what Trump's version of events is, is that he had no idea what the Golan Heights was.
He didn't know anything about it.
It's a disputed territory that the Syrians, the Lebanese, and Israelis claim belongs to them.
It's a very strategic part of land.
And Israel has been arguing with their neighbors over who controls the Golan Heights.
It's something that Israel is occupying and wants to take fully.
And Trump said, here's what I did.
I asked David Friedman, who was his ambassador, US ambassador to Israel, to give him a five minute lesson.
David Friedman is one of the most fanatical Zionists you will ever find.
And whatever David Friedman told him about the Golan Heights and what it is, Trump immediately says that he voluntarily stood up and announced to do something for Israel that not even Sheldon Adelson had the nerve to ask for, which is to just hand over the Golan Heights to Israel to just recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
And Miriam Adelson, that was one of the things that she listed as something he promised the Adelsons and then followed through on.
Now, Now, one of the things that the Adelsons have been doing for a long time is recognizing what they regard as the danger on American college campuses and the growing belief among young Americans and young college students that U.S. support for Israel is damaging to our interest one of the things that the Adelsons have been doing for a long time
And back in 2018, even before that, the Adelsons announced that they were going to invest massive funding into battling anti-Israel sentiment on American college campuses.
From the Times of Israel in August of 2018, quote, Adelsons backed college activist group to double presence to 80 campuses.
The Maccabee Task Force, which works to counter the BDS movement at universities, will also begin operating in Canada for the first time.
So one of the things they've been wanting to do...
is to strip away criticism of Israel on American college campuses and make sure that pro-Israel sentiment reigns there as well, something that we saw manifest this year over the controversies on college campuses.
Now, just to be clear about one thing, although the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem had long been considered A sort of radical pro-Israel move,
one that most of the world was against because Jerusalem is considered disputed and was supposed to be part of the settlement that would bring peace to the Israelis and Palestinians by carving up that land and having some be part of the Israeli state and some being part of the Palestinian state because Jerusalem was disputed.
Recognizing it as Israel's capital, putting your embassy there is essentially taking it for Israel and handing over to them, which is something that Donald Trump promised the Adelsons he would do and then did.
And the Democrats were about to try and turn this into some sort of controversy until they realized that the top-level leadership of the Democratic Party also supported the movement of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and the recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli capital.
Here from National Review in May of 2018, quote, Chuck Schumer praises Trump for the embassy move.
Quote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, praised President Trump Monday for his, quote, long overdue relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
It's a long overdue move because we have moved our embassy to Jerusalem, he said in a statement.
Every nation should have the right to choose its capital.
I sponsored legislation to do this two decades ago and I applaud President Trump.
Why don't we just declare our capital, the American capital, Moscow, and then we can just demand that every country in the world recognize Moscow as the American capital, demand that they move all their embassies and ambassadors to the United States to Moscow, and we'll just declare it our own.
Every country has a right to do that.
Now, one of the reasons the Democrats are so aligned with the Adelsons and with Donald Trump and being almost entirely as pro-Israel as the Adelsons want Trump to be is because they have their own billionaires spending similar amounts of money, very similar to the Adelsons, with a very similar agenda.
And they give their money very explicitly to the Democratic Party in exchange for their loyalty to Israel as well.
From the New York Times in September of 2004, it was a profile on the mogul Haim Sabin, who is a billionaire who has funded much of the Democratic Party for decades.
And the title of the article that was a profile of him was Schlepping to Moguldom.
Quote, a self-described cartoon schlepper, Mr. Sabin became a billionaire by turning the mighty Morphin Power Rangers into a global franchise that he merged with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
And in 2001, sold to the Walt Disney Company for $5.3 billion.
He has since emerged as perhaps the most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing his weight and money around Washington and increasingly the world, trying to influence all things Israeli.
Quote, I'm a one-issue guy, he said.
And my issue is Israel.
Mr.
Sabin's views on the matter are straightforward.
He is a tireless cheerleader for Israel, but when it comes to conflict there, his views are hardly sanguine.
Quote, I'm going to make a very controversial statement, and I hope to God that I am proven totally wrong.
I think that any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have to go both on the Palestinian side and Israeli side to some form of civil war.
It's not going to be without spilling blood.
To that end, he has become one of the largest individual donors in the country to the Democratic Party and its candidates, giving millions over the past decade.
$7 million in just one donation to the DNC in 2002.
He recently had Senator John Kerry over to his chateau-style home in Beverly Hills.
Quote, we played guitar in kibitzed, he said.
He regularly spends hours at a time on the phone with Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, back in 2004.
He vacations with Bill Clinton.
So although I'm...
Profiling and asking the question of who is Miriam Adelson, what does she want from the Republican Party and Donald Trump, with the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars that she spends every election cycle, the Democrats have exactly the same incentives, exactly the sort of same financiers as their biggest donor for over the past couple of decades.
Haim Saban says, I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.
So obviously that money comes with the same strings attached, which is the Democratic Party serve and be aligned with and loyal to the interests of Israel.
And that's why you see this bipartisan consensus on this question and looking at the people who cause this and who generate it and engender it and how they do that, I think, is obviously something very important to do.
Thank you.
So there are a lot of people who are lacking a lot of confidence in the global economy, in the American economy, in the Western economy because of geopolitical risks like the ones we've seen in Israel and Ukraine that are ongoing, both of which risk destabilizing global markets.
There are other risks as well to the Fed's non-stop money printing, where the Fed just prints money every time it wants to invest in a war.
The United States does.
We don't have the money.
We just print it over and over, print more and more dollars.
And that's why a lot of people find it hard to feel secure about their financial future.
Polls show that overwhelmingly.
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Stephanie Lang is an Australian cultural critic and commentator whose very popular YouTube show, she has close to 2 million followers and subscribers, is something I discovered by accident when, as I said, YouTube's algorithm gods, for whatever reason, decided to place that show in front of me.
I randomly watched one of her videos and quickly understood...
How actually undercovered and impactful the topics are that she covers, and she covers them with a great amount of insight and passion and, I think, individual perspective.
In particular, there's a huge increase, a huge increase, in the number of young adults and even adolescents in the West and in the U.S. who are now seeking out and paying for very extensive various plastic surgeries often extremely distorting and unhealthy procedures that can cause long-term or even permanent damage not only to one's appearance but also their mental and physical health and we are delighted to have Stephanie with us here to talk about that.
Stephanie, good evening.
It's great to see you.
Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Hi, Glenn.
Thanks for having me on.
Yeah, I feel a little disoriented.
Usually I just see you on your show and now suddenly you're here on mine.
It's like being a child and seeing your teacher at the shopping mall outside of school and you just feel a little confused.
But I'll try and navigate through that.
So let me ask you, because I do feel like one of the reasons why I just now watch your videos religiously is because you take these topics that are sort of covered.
You know, there's a lot of kind of Niche content on the internet just speculating on various celebrities and whether they got certain plastic surgeries.
Kind of celebrity gossip about showing how celebrities who often falsely deny they got surgeries in fact got them.
There are doctors who do that.
It can be pretty interesting content.
But you take it, I think, many steps further in kind of trying to understand what the cultural undercurrents are that are causing so many more people, and particularly young people, to seek out really...
Advanced and often invasive plastic surgeries.
What made you or prompted you to decide to focus on that?
Probably my own experience, to be honest.
I've been in the beauty industry for a long time.
I was a makeup artist for a long time before I kind of made YouTube my job, as is now.
So I've kind of seen the trend before it was a trend and now where it is, which is almost an unhealthy obsession.
And I've seen, like, you know, myself, I was impacted by it.
I've had Botox and fillers in the past.
I thought it was the best thing since sliced bread until I started looking into it further.
I became pregnant with my first son and I've been pregnant and breastfeeding for the last almost six years.
And so I stopped getting those tweakments done and that kind of pause allowed me to step back.
Actually look at it from a different angle, research what exactly I was doing to my face and what I discovered was kind of horrifying because these aren't things that are, they're not widely known.
You know, plastic surgery, fillers, Botox, they've become so normalized that it's almost the same as just going to a hairdresser and getting your hair done.
But people don't realize that there are actually long-term health impacts and it can almost turn into a bit of an addiction as well.
Yeah, I mean, I want to talk about the dangers of particular procedures, whether extensive and kind of exotic ones or even the more common ones that you just named, because that's one of the things I really didn't realize until I started paying attention to this topic largely because of you.
But before I get to that, I just want to...
Look at the numbers.
These numbers, just any way you slice it, show a massive boon in plastic surgeries in general.
In September 2023, the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery found, quote, an 11.2% overall increase in procedures formed by plastic surgeons in 2022, with more than 14.9% Million surgical and 18.8 million non-surgical procedures performed worldwide and a continuing rise in quote aesthetic surgery with a 41.3% increase over the last four years.
I mean, those are massive numbers showing this kind of almost epidemic behavior.
Just huge numbers of people who never previously even considered doing this now seeking it out.
Why do you think that is?
What accounts for this massive increase?
I mean, in my opinion, it would have to be celebrity culture and social media.
So, you know, young women and women, I'm 36, women my age and older, we're seeing these filtered images online of, you know, people we know in real life, celebrities, influencers.
What we're seeing in the mirror and what we're seeing through social media, through these filters, it doesn't match up.
And so what you're seeing in the mirror suddenly doesn't look very good compared to the filtered version itself and the filtered version of these other people that you're seeing.
So we're marketed, you know, fillers and Botox as being a non-invasive, temporary way to kind of make yourself almost fill in real life.
And so because it's not really plastic surgery, it's become so popularized and so, I mean, you can get it done in your lunch break.
It's not as expensive as plastic surgery.
And we're told that it's temporary and that if it goes wrong, It's not a big deal because you can just get it dissolved but it turns out there's new evidence that suggests it's actually not that simple and these fillers don't actually dissolve like we've been told they do and that even getting them dissolved can have added, you know, side effects that we're not aware of.
One of the particular focal points that I think deserves a lot of attention, because on some level, adults being persuaded by advertisements and cultural pressures to do things that are not in their interest is fairly common, but they're adults.
You trust them to make their decisions.
What really strikes me is the number of adolescents and very young adults who are getting plastic surgeries that they do not need.
It's not like they were born with some kind of deformity or birth defect and they're getting it corrected.
It's purely aesthetic.
And just listen to these numbers.
The American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons in 2020, so this is four years ago, I'm sure it's much worse now, quote, "Found that nearly 230,000 cosmetic surgeries in the U.S. and nearly 140,000 non-invasive cosmetic procedures were performed on teens ages 13 non-invasive cosmetic procedures were performed on teens ages 13 to 19."
Obviously, the dangers that you just described are applicable to adults, but what do you think is causing these, not only the, I mean, I assume when someone as young as 13 or 15 gets plastic surgery, they're doing that with the consent of their parents, presumably their parents are paying for it.
What has happened in our culture that it's now very common for people that young who are sort of at the peak of their aesthetic, you know, appearance, who are growing into their bodies to get irreversible plastic surgeries, including quite dangerous ones?
In my opinion, it would be because of social media and these young people, boys and girls, comparing themselves to, you know, celebrity icons like Kylie Jenner's and the Hadid sisters, people that they see as being perfect and they're comparing themselves to what they're seeing and what they're being told is, you know, the epitome of beauty and what they're seeing in the mirror may not match up to that.
And the parents, I think, are trying to help them because they're seeing that their son or daughter is feeling deeply insecure.
Maybe they're being bullied at school.
Maybe they're being bullied online and they think that they're actually helping them by allowing them to get this plastic surgery to tweak their appearance to make them feel more confident.
But the problem is Plastic surgery rarely leads to someone feeling more confident for long.
It's kind of, you know, they might feel more confident for a year and then they'll move on to the next insecurity and it kind of turns into a slippery slope where they're starting to pick out flaws that don't really exist.
It's just that we all look totally different, but they're picking up these flaws.
They're comparing themselves to what they see online and what they're seeing in celebrity culture and even influencers.
And feeling like if they could just fix this flaw that they're focusing on, that they'll be happier and they'll be more confident.
But as we're seeing with the research, that's just not the way it works.
So, in one respect, we've always had this kind of model of beauty that we were supposed to strive to and admire that was basically unattainable for most people.
I mean, most women are not going to look like Rita Hayworth, and most men aren't going to look like Clark Gable or Brad Pitt or whoever is presented to us as sort of the model of the highest amount of beauty, and yet it does seem like Even though I'm sure that did create insecurities in people, like, oh, I don't look like that,
and I will never look like that, and therefore I'm not beautiful or handsome or whatever, it does seem pretty clear that something about how this manifests in the age of the Internet, and particularly social media, causes these pressures to intensify greatly, almost qualitatively, to a different kind of universe.
What do you think explains that?
I think, like, if you're comparing it to, say, the beauty standards of the 1950s with, you know, women comparing themselves to the film stars, I would say those film stars were very far removed.
Like, it was very obvious that they were, you know, celebrities, and celebrities were very far removed, when nowadays you've got, you know, celebrity culture, you've got these influencers and, you know, the Kardashians on your phone, and it seems much more...
Almost like you're being invited into their lives, like you are almost on the same level as them, except you don't look like them because you don't have access to the plastic surgeons that they do.
You probably don't have access to the money that they do in order to pay for the best plastic surgeons.
But it's not just that.
It's also, you know, you've got your influencer who might live in the same town as you, who you see on TikTok.
And you don't realize that they're using a body slimming filter and a facial filter, which makes them look totally different to what they look like in real life.
But you don't know that because it's not being disclosed.
And so instead of being in the 1950s where people may be comparing their beauty to, you know, Marilyn Monroe, she was very obviously on a whole nother level.
Nowadays with social media, it makes it seem like everybody but you is aesthetically perfect and that can really take a toll on people's self-esteem.
And so that's why they go to such lengths as getting plastic surgery or Botox and filler.
Yeah, I mean some of your videos that I think are really interesting draw this analogy between how social media makes everybody seem like they're living this very luxurious life of extremely expensive items and travel and homes.
And so a lot of people start going majorly into debt just to buy the same bags or the same cosmetics or the same clothing that is way out of their range because just like they don't feel beautiful, they don't feel like their lives are as happy.
But I think it's a very important thing.
You alluded to this earlier, but before I started paying attention to this and watching your show and a couple others like it that cover the same topics, I mean, I probably would have dismissed this as kind of, I don't know if trivial is the right word, but maybe benign.
You know, exactly as you suggest, we're all taught to look at Botox and fillers, the kind of basic plastic surgeries, as being sort of harmless.
As you said, you just go in, you want to break a couple needles in your face or, you know, into your lips or whatever, your cheeks, and then you leave and, you know, eventually it just kind of disappears.
But one of the things beyond that is that there are some really horrifying procedures being done, like removing buccal fat from your face that you've covered as well.
So kind of break those up into two sections, namely the really gruesome procedures that are kind of new that a lot of people are actually getting, but also the harms that might come from these more benign, seemingly benign procedures like having your lips and face full of filler.
So, like I said, we're told that Botox and filler are non-invasive.
They're temporary.
If it goes wrong, it doesn't matter because it doesn't last very long.
So, even if you end up injecting too much filler into your face, it's not a problem because you can just get hyaluronidase and dissolve it like it never happened.
And that's what we thought for a long time and that's what most people still think because that's what we're being told by our injectors and, you know, through people we watch on social media.
But there's new studies that say that filler, for example, it never actually dissolves.
It just migrates to different parts of your face and body, which is kind of gross as it is.
But the worst part about it is, is that migration can actually cause the filler to block your lymphatic drainage.
Which is a huge issue because your lymphatic system obviously is how your body kind of removes toxins and waste that it doesn't want.
And so because these girls are being told that filler is temporary and it's dissolving and that they need to go for a top-up every, you know, six months or four months when they notice that the filler is not quite as plump as it was...
What they're actually doing is getting filler on top of filler on top of filler.
And the thing is, they don't even realize that they're not looking how they thought they would look.
It's called filler fatigue.
So what they're seeing in the mirror is not what other people are seeing when they look at them.
So what they're seeing in the mirror is, you know, I look beautiful.
I've got my filler done.
You know, my lips are plump.
My cheekbones are looking great.
I've got a great sculpted jawline with this filler.
But what other people are seeing is that their face is And their facial features are becoming distorted because it's filler on top of filler on top of filler that's not actually dissolving, it's just migrating to other areas of the face.
So that's a huge issue.
And before you get to the rest, just to interject quickly there, I presume there are, like, exams or tests that doctors aren't able to do that show the presence of fillers and other things we were trained to think were harmless, like, years into the future and migrating, as you said, into the lymph nodes, into the immune system and the like.
I mean, are there now ways that doctors can detect the presence of these toxins for a long time?
So I believe the way they're detecting it now is with an MRI. So they inject some kind of It's like a fluorescent dye.
Right, exactly.
I think it's a little bit different to that, but something similar to that.
And they can actually see where the filler is and how much filler has been building up in the body.
So there's a few people that are doing that.
But obviously, you know, your girl next door, she's not going to pay to go and get an MRI, which is extremely expensive to see how much filler she still has in her body.
So it's a real problem.
So talk about some of these more kind of invasive and I think like very dystopian and grotesque and actually quite unhealthy procedures that a lot of people are doing like removing buccal fat from your face is one of them.
Can you talk about that and a couple other similar ones that are even more destructive than those ones we were just talking about?
Yeah, so we've got buccal fat, which is where a plastic surgeon, and again, this is kind of marketed as being non-invasive as far as plastic surgery goes.
They're not breaking bones or anything like that.
But what they'll do is they'll literally cut out the pocket of fat that sits underneath your cheekbone to give you supermodel-esque cheekbones.
And you can even, you know, double down on that by getting filler then into your cheekbones and you end up having this really fashionable gaunt face.
But you can't reverse things like that.
Once your, your buckle fat is gone, it's gone.
And the problem is if the trends change, which they always do, you can just looking back at history, we'll show you that.
What are you going to do?
Your buckle fat is gone.
So then you'll probably have to get some kind of implant.
And this is the problem.
It's kind of a rolling train and it's like, you do one thing to keep up with the beauty standard, but then the beauty standard changes.
And then you're having to change yourself again and undo these plastic surgeries that you had done to try and meet The current beauty standards.
But I think the worst one is the BBL, which stands for Brazilian Butt Lift.
And this is where a plastic surgeon will go in and take the fat from the less desirable areas of a woman's body and reinject the fat into her bum and her hips.
So they'll take fat from the stomach, from the back, and then reinject it into her bum and hips.
But this is literally one of the most deadly plastic surgeries.
So many women have died in an attempt to be beautiful and have a body like, you know, Kim Kardashian, for example.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you know, but we're based in Brazil and that is, for a long time, has been regarded as the plastic surgery capital.
And it's very common to just read articles about women going to plastic surgeons, sometimes unlicensed ones, but even licensed ones, and simply dying.
Because of the desire to have their fat removed from one place and put it into their butt.
As you said, it's kind of shocking that doctors would even do that.
That's even permissible under the Hippocratic Oath.
But I guess it is.
Speaking of that, that's a good segue into what I wanted to ask you.
You've talked a lot about the cultural influences, kind of big celebrities who are encouraging this sort of thing by doing it to themselves.
But there's also, obviously, a very lucrative industry here.
I mean, there's plastic surgery clinics popping up all over the place, a huge glut now of people who are studying plastic surgeons.
It's very lucrative as you go for 15 minutes, but people are still paying a lot, which means you can do this to a lot of people.
And then you have a bunch of adjacent industries, like the companies that make the toxins and make the poisons and create the tools by which this is done.
How significant of a factor do you think that is in Well, I suppose the more plastic surgeons there are and the more, you know, clinics there are offering these kind of procedures, the more accessible it is to the everyday woman.
And obviously, you know, where there's demand, people are going to capitalize on that because I guess everybody needs to make money.
But the problem is that there's, you know, reputable plastic surgeons who have, you know, they're highly trained.
They know what they're doing.
There's still risks as with any, you know, surgical procedure, but they're minimized.
But then you've got the people who just want to capitalize on the trend.
And so, you know, they're purchasing Botox and filler counterfeit off the black market and injecting it into women who are paying top dollar thinking they're getting a proper service done.
And it's actually causing these women serious, you know, health issues.
I mean, if you inject Botox or filler into an artery or into the wrong part of the face, you can literally cause someone to go blind.
You can cause some severe infection.
You can cause necrosis.
Yeah, I think the fact that there is more plastic surgeons and more clinics, and I know myself in Australia, it seems like on every street corner there's, you know, a clinic offering Botox and filler and all these other tweakments, which I suppose there's a demand there, and they are just...
They're offering their services for the demand.
People want this kind of thing done.
So in a way, you know, it's not really their fault.
It's more like we need to change the way where we as a society see beauty and what we expect women to put themselves through in the pursuit of that beauty.
So, last question, and for this last question, I'm going to use a phrase that I honestly never thought would pass my lips, especially on this show or when speaking in public, but you focus a lot on the impact of the Kardashians, the whole, like, kind of cultural empire that they've constructed, and how sort of everything has grown out of that, you know, like the various generations of that family that have been so just culturally ubiquitous and have been turned into products.
One of the things that I find disturbing about plastic surgery and everybody trying to kind of conform to this model of not just how you appear, but as we talked about before, how you live, is that it just destroys everything interesting about human beings, their individuality, their sort of quirks, their characteristics, in order to try and just force everybody, even medically, surgically, to be like everybody else.
What role do you think that family has played in sort of the cultural impact that they've had on all of this?
Huge.
Huge.
I mean, I don't think that fillers, especially, were half as popular as they are now if it weren't for Kylie Jenner.
She has had such a huge influence on especially the younger generation.
And people want to look like the Kardashians because they basically epitomize the beauty standard right now.
You know, they've got the big bum, the tiny waist, the big boobs, the perfect foundation.
Faces that look like they walk around with a filter 24-7.
And women are told that if we get BBLs and liposuction and Botox and fillers and plastic surgery, that we can be as beautiful as the Kardashians.
And potentially, if you're as beautiful as the Kardashians, you might also be as successful as the Kardashians.
You might be able to live in a mansion and buy the latest designer handbag.
But I agree with you.
It is destroying everything about us that makes us look unique.
And I think that's such a shame because there is beauty in every single person.
And that doesn't mean that we all have to subscribe to this exact same beauty standard.
And that's part of the reason I love makeup.
Obviously, I love makeup, but that's because you can wash it off at the end of the day.
You don't have to wear it tomorrow if you don't want to.
Whereas, you know, things like Botox and filler and plastic surgery, you are sometimes permanently altering your bone structure, altering the way you look in order to look like somebody else because you are being told that this is what you are supposed to look like as a woman in 2024 if you want to be beautiful and have a good life and be successful.
And if you don't look like that, I can see why women go down this route because I did it myself because it takes a huge toll on your self-esteem and your self-worth.
Yeah, I think we're seeing adolescent boys and young adults also being driven increasingly into that as well, although it's still often directed overwhelmingly to women.
All right, so I think our audience can see why I really appreciate your show.
Tell people, just please, before I let you go, where they can find your show or whatever else it is that you do on any platform.
So mostly I'm just on YouTube under the name Stephanie Lang.
I'm also on Instagram, but I'll admit I don't keep up with it very well.
I basically spend all my time trying to make in-depth YouTube videos on a range of topics that I think impact women today.
Yeah, and your videos are very well edited and very well produced, very well thought through, so I really encourage people to watch them.
Even if you don't think yet that you have a particular interest in this topic, I think you'll find that you will.
Stephanie, it's great to see you out of your little YouTube box in a different environment.
I enjoyed talking to you, and I really appreciate you taking the time.
Thanks so much, Glenn.
Have a great day.
You too.
Bye-bye.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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