Oct. 17, 2025 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:49:36
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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The Joe Rogan experience. | |
| All day. | ||
| That glass of wine is so good. | ||
| Well, one glass of wine I do not think is bad for you. | ||
| Great for you. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| But a glass of wine relaxes you, and there's probably benefit in being relaxed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
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unidentified
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I agree. | |
| But the problem was I own a nightclub and I'm there all the time. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, so you're drinking within a glass. | |
| Out with the fellas, and then I'd maybe have a couple glasses of whiskey on a podcast with some guys. | ||
| And then when I stopped, I was like, oh my God, I feel so much better. | ||
| Like, why was that poisoning myself? | ||
| Really? | ||
| You did feel much better? | ||
| Immediately you felt it? | ||
| Yeah, because when you think about it, we roll in. | ||
| So when I stopped drinking, uh I was probably having like two or three glasses of some kind of alcohol a night, two or three nights a week. | ||
| And then I'd go out to dinner with my wife and have like a glass or two of wine. | ||
| That's a lot of drinks over the week. | ||
| And you don't think it's much because you're not drunk. | ||
| But the next day I'd be like, ugh, you're a little draggy. | ||
| Like when I go to the gym, and that's gone. | ||
| That's great. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I wish I had that astronaut. | ||
| Ha ha it's not even straight. | ||
| It was easy to do. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You know, I I had uh I haven't had a glass of anything for a week. | ||
| Now I had surgery exactly a week ago. | ||
| Would you have done? | ||
| And a pendectomy. | ||
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unidentified
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Oh. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I was uh it was exactly last Thursday, which is why I have these uh books on my arms. | ||
| Um day, and then my husband forced me because I had stomach pain and I just thought I had food poisoning or something, so I kept on going to the toilet. | ||
| Those are scary. | ||
| Nothing was happening. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I didn't burst. | ||
| But uh my husband forced me to go to the hospital and I got there, and yeah, it was an uh appendicitis and we had emergency appendectomy the next morning. | ||
| Um but so uh which recovery has been t totally fine, but I haven't wanted to drink because I want to make sure I was gonna be able to come here today. | ||
| And uh I wanted to recover faster. | ||
| So um yeah, so I think that's the longest I've ever been drinking. | ||
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unidentified
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Well you have a very stressful job. | |
| It's insanely stressful. | ||
| You are one of the most boots on the ground journalists I've ever met. | ||
| You go to some really dangerous and terrifying places. | ||
| Like I still get nightmares uh from that video where you showed me where you went to the the jungle where they process cocaine. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And then walked out with them, hiked out with them through the I mean that was just nuts. | ||
| Yeah, don't don't mean to cause you nightmares, but uh I love doing what I do. | ||
| You know, we've done five seasons of traffic. | ||
| The last season just premiered a couple of months ago. | ||
| Um it's available now on Hulu. | ||
| And uh unfortunately it's the last season of traffic. | ||
| Um Why is that? | ||
| I think a few reasons. | ||
| I think it's you know, it's uh a risky show to put together, right? | ||
| It's a costly show. | ||
| It's um n Disney decided that Nigerios should be doing more natural history and animal programming. | ||
| And uh yeah, I think traffic is just a difficult show. | ||
| It is a really challenging show to put together. | ||
| But I'm incredibly proud of the work we've done and this last season, the fifth season has some of my favorite stories we've done, and um I'm now starting a podcast. | ||
| Oh, you know, I launched it yesterday. | ||
| So now I'm in competition. | ||
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unidentified
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That's right. | |
| Um someone will do your show again somewhere else, though. | ||
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unidentified
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It's too good. | |
| This is what I'm hoping is with the podcast. | ||
| It's on YouTube and I'm growing it into something bigger. | ||
| So it starts with interviews. | ||
| The podcast's called the hidden third. | ||
| Uh because an estimated at 35% of the global economy are these black and gray markets, which is what I've reported on. | ||
| Whoa, wait a minute. | ||
| It's crazy number, right? | ||
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unidentified
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Mm-hmm. | |
| 35% of the economy. | ||
| Estimated 35%, which is what economists call the hidden third. | ||
| So we're not just talking about illegal activities and goods like drugs and scams and whatnot and guns. | ||
| We're also talking about un so the gray that's the black market, and then there's the gray market, which are the is the irregular unregulated part of the economy. | ||
| So untaxed work, untaxed goods, everything from like the man selling fruit on the corner, um, you know, to um other other jobs and and goods that are in tax. | ||
| But this actually has an effect on all of us because it's less money that comes in for schools and infrastructure and hospitals And all the stuff we need. | ||
| And then apart from all that we know, which is the black market and how that affects us all, which is, you know, whether you talk about guns or drugs or immigration, I mean it all has a direct impact on our lives. | ||
| So with this podcast, what I really wanted to do is after reporting on these black markets for twenty years, is I wanted to have a place like this where I can have intimate, raw, you know, sometimes difficult conversations with people who have lived or are living on the other side of the law and um who uh you know I wanted to figure out why somebody decides to become a smuggler, a trafficker, a scammer, uh a bookie, uh, you know, all these crazy lives that people lead. | ||
| Uh see how it affects us all, understand why that what they do affects us all. | ||
| And also I think the most important part for me, which has always been, and I I've talked about this with you, which is trying to understand if um the circumstances were different, if it could have been you and me doing that, you know? | ||
| I think most certainly that that's the case. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Most certainly is the case geographically. | ||
| Aaron Powell Oh, uh a hundred percent geographically. | ||
| If you have no options and you're stuck in a third world country, guess what? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, you do what you gotta do. | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| It was that story that we did in uh uh the same episode you mentioned the cocaine trafficking, which I will never forget, which was the kid who was carrying in his backpack, right? | ||
| He was sixteen, seventeen-year-old kid carrying cocaine, twenty kilos of cocaine on his back for days on end on the in the jungles, seen so many of his friends being killed in front of him by rebel gangs, rival gangs. | ||
| And uh when he um you know, when I asked him, why are you doing what you do? | ||
| He says, because I've always wanted to be a dentist. | ||
| I want to go to school and be a dentist, but my family's too poor and they can't afford my education, and the only job that I have available for me now is uh is doing this cocaine trafficking or you know, carrying cocaine on my back. | ||
| And these are stories I hear all the time. | ||
| So the the idea of being able to place ourselves in people's shoes and understand that yes, even the people that we consider the bad guys could be me and you, as as you know, has always been very important for me. | ||
| So the podcast allows me to do that. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell Well that's great. | ||
| When when you say that like it's one third, how much of it is stuff that's not dangerous, like selling fruit on the side of the road and tax labor. | ||
| It's difficult to have exact numbers, but the estimate is that about fifteen percent, fifteen to twenty percent are black markets, and the rest are gray markets. | ||
| So the totality is around thirty-five percent, an estimate. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um but I mean a half. | ||
| Yeah, more or less. | ||
| Half dangerous stuff. | ||
| Yeah, half people. | ||
| Untaxed, unregulated stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I mean they also mixed, right? | ||
| Because um, you know, a lot of times what happens in one side affects the other, you know. | ||
| Um one of the really interest the the things that I think we've talked about a lot is uh I think this number shocks a lot of people, but if you think of the drug trade alone, six hundred billion dollars, that's the estimate, anywhere between three hundred and six hundred billion dollars every year just from the drug trade alone. | ||
| Um, you know, these these are crazy numbers. | ||
| And so it's it's not so out of the box to think that yeah, this is a hard lar large percentage of our economy. | ||
| Is it difficult to get people to come and sit with you on a podcast and talk about illegal activities? | ||
| Yes, but it's it was also on the show. | ||
| I think the harder part is that on the show we figured out a way of how to make them comfortable because I would go to them, right? | ||
| On the podcast, it's harder to convince an active trafficker or smuggler to come and sit down in my office. | ||
| Right, I would think it's a setup. | ||
| So yeah. | ||
| So uh, you know, a lot of times the meetings that we had on the show happened in undisclosed locations in vans, for example, or in places that they felt comfortable with. | ||
| Their, you know, drug labs or their drug houses or their homes sometimes. | ||
| So this has been a little bit harder, but we're we're making it we're making it work. | ||
| We're having we're hoping that it grows so then we actually have money to start traveling more and going to some of these places. | ||
| Is this something that you always wanted to do, like do a podcast, or is it something that was a necessity when the show was canceled, or did you just think maybe I should branch out? | ||
| I've always wanted to do it, and I tried uh we had done an iteration of it a couple of years ago, but I just didn't have the time because I was traveling, you know, half the year or more for traffic, so it was really hard to do a weekly podcast. | ||
| It was almost impossible. | ||
| But I spent so much time talking to people uh who have really interesting backgrounds. | ||
| And then we use only five minutes of their interview if if that. | ||
| And these are fascinating people that again have Do you have access to that footage? | ||
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unidentified
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The footage The footage that you edited out yes. | |
| I mean yes. | ||
| But do you have access to it? | ||
| Like are you allowed to be a little bit more or is it if it's owned by by National Geographic, it's owned by National Geographic. | ||
| Trevor Burrus Wonder if they would sign off on letting you put that on your podcast. | ||
| Because that would be fascinating as well because I I bet there's a lot that was missed on the editing floor. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah absolutely help. | |
| But I have all the contacts. | ||
| So as long as soon as I start brand as this starts building up the podcast, the hope is that I'll build it myself from the ground up because all the contacts are mine, you know all the expertise you have contacts with like assassins and drug dealers. | ||
| Text each other, hey what's up? | ||
| Send emojis I mean yeah. | ||
| I mean these are people. | ||
| I mean the assassins less so but the traffickers and the smugglers and the scammers absolutely I'm still in touch with a lot of people do you have like a file or you like the like yeah. | ||
| But do you have them like labeled like super shady less than just unfortunate circumstances. | ||
| Cold blooded killers. | ||
| It's all under my encrypted messaging apps. | ||
| No you know it's really crazy because of the success of traffic the amount of messages I still get on Instagram and social media on a weekly basis from people who want to be on the show. | ||
| Now with the podcast as well I'm hoping that it will grow into that but people just showing me their drugs and their guns they show me photos of the stuff that they are doing and they they because these people feel like they're gonna die anyway like they're gonna probably get killed a lot of them are you know afraid one of the most interesting people we filmed for this last season of traffic was a guy that we called El Gringo. | ||
| So it was the premier episode of this season. | ||
| It was about cartel it was called cartel USA it's about the cartel presence in the United States. | ||
| I've reported extensively on cartels in Mexico, right? | ||
| And in Colombia and in other parts but I haven't actually spent a lot of time with the cartel here or seen what kind of influence they have in the US. | ||
| And uh so I had this idea okay let's try to figure out how massive their presence is is here, how they make the money, how do they they distribute the drugs, and what impact is it having on um on in America and what I found was uh um several very surprising facts. | ||
| Um the story actually starts in Sinaloa because I had to go there to get access to the people in the US. | ||
| So I had to go to the top bosses to be able to to get the green light to then film their operations here. | ||
| What is that like Sinaloa, I mean it's the place in the world that I've reported most more from apart from the United States. | ||
| I've reported more from Sinaloa than anywhere else. | ||
| Uh I have good contacts there. | ||
| I have an incredible local journalist call called Miguel Angel Vega who's called he's uh Il fixer he's the guy that any journalist in the world who wants to get access to the cartel will contact him and then he has his own contacts he's uh just incredibly brave journalist with his own contacts and then he um basically contacts his people and then they decide if they want to talk or not and uh a lot of times they don't and a lot sometimes I've done this so many times that that by now they trust me. | ||
| They know that I'm not law enforcement and so they allow me to film their operation. | ||
| So we've I filmed super meth labs, uh super labs of meth there. | ||
| I filmed uh Fentanyl lab, I filmed a guy cooking fentanyl we were all full you know masked up and I filmed the whole operation um I mean uh I filmed uh sicarios I've uh I yeah I I filmed more from Sinaloa than anywhere else in the world but it's gotta be very scary to go there and hang out with those people. | ||
| Do they put boundaries on topics? | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell I'm not on top yes for example I'm not even though I'm in Sinaloa I'm not supposed to ask which cartel people work for where it's obvious that when you're in Sinaloa everyone works for the Sinolo cartel or I mean everybody that's involved in the cartel works for the Sinolo cartel. | ||
| Um they are the cartels trying To make um in headway in the in that region, but usually it's all Sinaloa. | ||
| Um so you're not supposed to ask uh who exactly they work for and um and yeah, there are some questions about money, for example, how much money they make, people don't like to a be asked that. | ||
| But I always ask all those questions anyway. | ||
| And I I you know you get a sense whether you're pushing it too far. | ||
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unidentified
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Right. | |
| Have you ever had a moment when you're doing that where you're like, I think I crossed the line? | ||
| Um we had a mo I had a moment where we stayed too long. | ||
| So it was a day we were doing a story, it was for season one was about guns and how about American guns, the flow of American guns to Mexico. | ||
| That was when you got the police people that were selling drugs illegally. | ||
| So for people that didn't see that episode, it's quite fascinating. | ||
| Police in Los Angeles, dirty cops were loading up their trunks with guns that they've confiscated and then selling them across the border in Mexico. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell So they were selling it to gang members or affiliate of cartel members in LA who would then ship it. | ||
| Yeah, they would cross the border and ship it to LA. | ||
| Yeah, we visit it was crazy. | ||
| It was a scene, yeah. | ||
| It started with a scene in that episode started with a scene in LA where we interviewed a guy who goes by the name of T and uh he had a room packed with rifles, and when I started asking him where they were from, he was like, Oh, this one was confiscated. | ||
| I we have an LAPD contact that you know sells us a lot of our drugs. | ||
| Well, I just don't understand what benefit to them. | ||
| To the police? | ||
| Yeah, for them no uh but for that no but for them to talk to you. | ||
| Which which one? | ||
| Any of them. | ||
| Like the especially the cops. | ||
| So I it's uh the question that I get the m the cops didn't talk, we didn't get the topics. | ||
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unidentified
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We got it from the gang member that the cops sold the guns to. | |
| So I've spoken spoken to cops who are doing amazing work here in the US in combating drug trafficking and and gun trafficking, and in Mexico as well. | ||
| Um but um but these we're talking about corrupt cops. | ||
| So we yeah, that was not the case. | ||
| Uh this was a gang member telling me how he had acquired those guns from LAPD, confiscated guns that he had acquired from the like what would be the benefit to him to talk to you. | ||
| I think for so in that case, it went back to my contacts in Sinaloa. | ||
| And I think it's three reasons why people talk to us. | ||
| I think the first one is ego, people want to boast. | ||
| And if you're part of the Sinaloa cartel, or even if you're a boss in the Sinaloa cartel, and you're there's an ongoing war between you, a turf war between you and another gang, like the CNJNG, uh which is a cartel jalisco, um they're you they're fighting for power, right? | ||
| So here's an opportunity to show how powerful you were. | ||
| So it's ego, right? | ||
| And a lot of these people that talk to me, I don't, you know, very often or more often than not, it's not the bosses or the kingpins that I'm talking to, right? | ||
| It's the sicarios, it's the middle and low-level people. | ||
| It's the traffickers, it's the chemists, the smugglers, it's not the kingpins. | ||
| And for them, they spend their whole lives doing something that sometimes their own families don't know they're they do. | ||
| Like I remember uh an episode we did about counterfeit money, people who make fake US uh dollars and euros in Peru in Lima. | ||
| And this guy, like shiny eyes, so excited showing me how he finishes these bills to make it look and feel and smell exactly like a hundred dollar bill. | ||
| And when I asked him, and he's a taxi driver by day and he does this by night, and and uh and I was asking him, but so why did you accept talking to us? | ||
| He says, Look, my wife doesn't even know how good I am. | ||
| I am the best of the best of doing this. | ||
| Like nobody in the whole world can make this as well as I do. | ||
| And I always wanted to be able to talk to somebody and show off how good my skills are. | ||
| And you're giving me an opportunity to do this. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| So I think ego plays a huge role. | ||
| And then impunity, like in places like Mexico, so much corruption, like what's the downside to talking to this woman who comes and asks funny questions, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then and then I think it's the wanting to be understood. | ||
| I think everybody wants to be understood. | ||
| And they know they're considered the bad guys. | ||
| They know that you know um, you know, there's so much stigma around what they do. | ||
| And I tell everybody I'm here to try to understand what you do. | ||
| I'm not here to judge you because I think it's much more important to understand why you do what you do. | ||
| Aaron Powell The guy who makes counterfeit bills, what's his process? | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell Oh, it's freaking fascinating. | ||
| Trevor Burrus Because it does he replicate a a dollar bill with all like the little things inside of it. | ||
| Everything it was incredible. | ||
| So there's different there's the graphics person, there's the printer, and then he is he does the finishing job. | ||
| He's the finisher. | ||
| And uh he said he was the best finisher in the job, and I said he's I I started calling him Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese football player, because he's the finisher in soccer. | ||
| So I called him Ronaldo, okay, you're Ronaldo. | ||
| And he uses he uses a a um it's kind of like a porridge that I used to eat when I was a kid in in Portugal. | ||
| It's called like uh it's a type of like a Cere Lac. | ||
| You don't you guys don't have it here, but it's like a a meal, um what do you call that? | ||
| Like cornmeal like a cornmeal. | ||
| Um and he uses that, and I saw him using it. | ||
| Uh um it's not Cedilac, actually, it's Maizena, which is another brand. | ||
| But it he uses this sort of corn meal to finish these bills to make it the consistency when you touch it feel exactly like the real stuff. | ||
| Is it made with the same paper? | ||
| Uh no, it's a different paper. | ||
| The paper is the hardest part to get because the paper you can only get um in the US Federal Reserves or wherever the paper comes from. | ||
| Like an easy thing to duplicate. | ||
| Yeah, it's not very hard, and particularly if you put the you know, all the little creases and curves and what you're doing. | ||
| What about those little things that you can only see with like a flashlight and stuff like that? | ||
| They have ways around that too. | ||
| It was incredible. | ||
| We brought some home. | ||
| Haven't used it, it's at my office. | ||
|
unidentified
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But it is and it gets. | |
| Okay. | ||
| So we actually didn't bring the actual we we brought the cutouts, so I we wouldn't be able to use it. | ||
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| You can see the cutout. | ||
| And it's really it's phenomenal. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| What how many bills that are counterfeit make it their way into our current is this it right here? | ||
| Yeah, this is it. | ||
| This is the finisher. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He is. | ||
| And you see, he's teaching, he's showing me. | ||
| And there's a glue too, yeah. | ||
| And so he's making it seem more weathered, more worn. | ||
| And they make it seem weathered and worn. | ||
| It's it's it's so crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
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And how m how money is. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So he scrubs it down a little bit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With a toothbrush. | ||
| All stuff that he bought at the store, like next door. | ||
| That that's the you know. | ||
| How much currency goes through this guy's production? | ||
| I cannot remember. | ||
| This was five years ago, season one, but it was a lot. | ||
| And it's the U.S. Secret Services that are in charge of uh going after these guys. | ||
| So we actually saw the real money being made when we came back to the US. | ||
| And um but I can't remember, but it was millions of dollars. | ||
| I mean, there was a there were it was like five or six families in Peru in Lima, they're the center of all this that were make that were in charge uh that were the best of the best at making these. | ||
| And we got inside one of these. | ||
| And how does that stuff get into US distribution? | ||
| Uh usually in bags, um commercial airlines, just like drugs. | ||
| A lot of drugs make it in commercial airlines, same thing, commercial airlines, bags, people would carry. | ||
| Uh the money mules would carry it, actual carrying money. | ||
| And then when it gets to America, what do they do with it? | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell They distribute it. | ||
| So it's funny, it's interesting. | ||
| They actually start uh they go to small towns and they distribute it in grocery stores and they don't go to like a Walmart or a big superstore. | ||
| They go to small first. | ||
| And that's how it gets in the general that's how that's a very good thing. | ||
| So they just buy things with it? | ||
| They buy things and uh I wish I remember this was five years ago. | ||
| Um they buy things, but they also have people that exchange that for m less cash, yeah, that's what it was. | ||
| I think they get end up getting people. | ||
| So people that know. | ||
| Yeah, that know, and they end up getting like seventy percent of what I think of something like seventy percent of the actual cost for real bills. | ||
| So they get real money in exchange for getting 70 percent of what a real bill. | ||
| I mean, the whole operation I think was. | ||
| So if you have a twenty dollar bill, you get seventy percent of that back in profit? | ||
| Like a fake bill. | ||
| Back in profit, yeah. | ||
| The the head of the group that then sells the bills on their maid. | ||
| Oh, I thought it would be way less than that for someone to be willing to exchange you real money for fake money. | ||
| Yeah, I have to I have to verify again. | ||
|
unidentified
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This is five years ago. | |
| But we've done fifty episodes, but I think it was something like that, if I remember. | ||
| That's crazy though that it just gets distributed by small businesses. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And and so one of the things we started was we reported on a lot of these small businesses that found out that they were having massive amounts of loss every year from fake bills. | ||
| And uh and I remember it was in in Oregon. | ||
| Um we did a few stories there where a lot of people were complaining about this small business. | ||
| How does it get how do they get discovered that they have fake bills? | ||
| I think they go to the bank and try to. | ||
| Oh, the bank knows. | ||
| So try to both deposit it. | ||
| Do they like look at every number on the bills? | ||
| Like how do they find out that they're fake? | ||
| I think the bank is able to find out just by looking at it. | ||
| Uh okay. | ||
| Because I think it it it you know it would fool us, but it doesn't fool somebody who's trained to look at these bills. | ||
| the bank when you bring money to the bank they look at every bill and make sure it's legit I know that that's how they figured out that they had given account you gotta go to a lazy bank you gotta go to a bank where people are just phoning in partying all night Yeah, there's they just assume that it's real. | ||
| They don't care. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy though. | ||
| So like what is like for the overall United States, like how much money comes in every year that's fake. | ||
| Oh, it was I cannot remember at all the statistics, but it was uh it was a lot. | ||
| It was like in the millions of dollars that people were making down there. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| It was crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But this all back to the story of why I talked about this guy about why people talk to us. | ||
| And oh, and back to the cartel USA story, um which uh started in Sinaloa. | ||
| There was a point to this you were asking me about how it ended up in the US. | ||
| Oh, that what I discovered with cartel's operations in the United States. | ||
| Um so one of the people we interviewed, which was really fascinating, um, and it was somebody who had this carried this load on his back and why he taught decided to talk to us was this guy called El Gringo, or we called him El Gringo. | ||
| And El Gringo is an American citizen who doesn't speak a word of Spanish and who's sort of the wholesale buyer of drugs from the cartel, and then is in charge of distributing the drugs here in the US. | ||
| He distributes most of his drugs uh through commercial airlines, usually Delta, because they have a really good baggage fees. | ||
| They 70 pounds, uh two bags, 70 pounds if you fly business. | ||
| And so a lot of times it was strippers who would carry the drugs from the west coast to the east coast. | ||
| And he one of the things I'll never forget, he says, if you're taking a Delta flight from the West Coast to the East Coast, I guarantee that there's a very high chance that somebody is carrying drugs on one of those flights. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| You said strippers? | ||
| Strippers, yeah. | ||
| Why do they use strippers? | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell Because uh they are uh because people don't suspect it's a woman, so people are less suspicious of women. | ||
| Uh and there's a h higher chance that they'll make it and they are more likely to take the money to do this in this case to do this job. | ||
| Or they I mean at least those are the people that he found would agree to do this. | ||
| I mean, I don't want to say anything bad about street person. | ||
| You get busted doing that though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That is a big penalty. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You go into jail for a long time. | ||
| It's obviously a terrible idea. | ||
| Such a risk. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So this guy, Il Gringo, decided to talk to me. | ||
| Um and he was the one who contacted me. | ||
| He contacted me initially. | ||
| And when uh telling me that he had a story he wanted to share, that he was uh involved with the cartel. | ||
| And then so when we started doing the story about the cartel, I reached back out to him and said, actually I'm doing a story about cartel presence here. | ||
| Would you want to come you know be on the show? | ||
| And um and he agreed and he uh traveled out to me And we met and he said, Look, I've been dying to tell this story because if I get whacked, uh which he thought he might, he wanted his story to be out there. | ||
| He wanted somebody to have heard his whole story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And he'd been threatened by the cartel. | ||
| They'd been sent him photos of his house and where they knew exactly where he lived and where his family was. | ||
| Yeah, crazy story. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jeez. | |
| So it's a crazy story. | ||
| When you go over and you have these conversations with the cartels, like w what is that like? | ||
| Do they blindfold you and drive you out there? | ||
| Do they take your phone away? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um they ask for our phones to be off. | ||
| Um that's not good enough. | ||
| Don't they know that's not good enough? | ||
| Uh we where we go in Sinaloa is areas that are operated and uh controlled by the cartel. | ||
| It's not as if law enforcement doesn't know exactly where they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They do. | |
| Oh. | ||
| You know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| They just don't want you recording. | ||
| They just don't want us recording and they they are afraid that if we by any chance are being followed by American law enforcement, they're uh way more scared of the American law enforcement than they are of Mexican law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Aaron Powell Because Mexican law enforcement's probably because there's a lot of corruption, yes. | |
| A lot of corruption. | ||
| Um I mean I've been in situations where, you know, there were police officers in the room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Um Corrupt cops. | |
| Corrupt cops, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Just in uniform? | ||
| Uh sometimes in uniform, sometimes just hanging out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're corrupt cops who work many times for the cartel, right? | ||
| And that happens all over. | ||
| I mean, that's not just in Mexico that uh it's happened. | ||
| I've seen it in Colombia. | ||
| Uh we've seen it in Brazil. | ||
| We did a story about militias um where I filmed a militia in Brazil with cops around. | ||
| So yeah, that happens unfortunately everywhere. | ||
| Um but so when it's not as if they don't know where these people are. | ||
| They are just afraid that maybe the DEA knowing that I'm a journalist and I go and do the this stuff that they might be following me. | ||
| So sometimes they ask for our phones to stay behind, but a lot of times they just want our phones off so that we don't transmit any signals. | ||
| Um but once we're in their territory, it takes months to get them to say yes. | ||
| And there's all these ground rules, right? | ||
| We can't disclose locations or people, we have to make sure we always bring masks and t-shirts, long-sleeve t-shirts and hoodies and everything with us because if they have tattoos and we want to make sure that they we don't show who they are. | ||
| Because that can create a problem for them, but it can also create a problem for us, and it can create a problem to the local journalists that help us because they're gonna be the first targets. | ||
| If I was this finisher guy, I would say you gotta put sunglasses on me because I have very recognizable eyes. | ||
| You know, it's interesting. | ||
| Most people don't want to wear sunglasses. | ||
| We always travel with sunglasses and we ask people to put on sunglasses, and people sometimes don't. | ||
| They say we don't care. | ||
| His eyes are very recognizable, very unusual coloring under the eyes. | ||
| Aaron Powell I have not met or I haven't heard of a single person yet who has been caught um from our show. | ||
| And I'm in touch with a lot of things. | ||
| Well that's great. | ||
| It's been it's been good. | ||
| It might just be because they're not trying. | ||
| I I really realistically don't think it's bec it's not because they don't know that these who they are or where they are. | ||
| It's not that law enforcement is blind to this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Um I think it's it's uh unwillingness sometimes to go after this. | ||
| It's realizing that actually these are the low-level guys and what they really want is to get at the big guys, the kingpins. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Which is a better strategy anyway. | ||
| But isn't that sometimes how they do it? | ||
| They get a low-level guy and get him to turn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Um what a terrifying world that only exists because of an illegal market that the United States fuels. | ||
| Yeah, the biggest drug consumers in the world. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're number one. | |
| Largest, number one. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| I mean, number one in incarcerations, number one, it's 150 billion dollars in drugs that we spend every year. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| And you know, we share this border with Mexico, which is fortunate and very unfortunate for them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They they blame us for creating the consumer market. | ||
| We blame th them for creating the the drugs that feed this consumer market. | ||
| And there is there anyone that has a realistic solution to how to at least mitigate some of that? | ||
| We've talked about this. | ||
| Uh we uh we had a a little bit of a debate about this last time because I keep giving the example of Portugal. | ||
| And you said which has decriminalized drugs, right? | ||
| And I know Portugal is not the United States. | ||
| We're 10 million people. | ||
| We're a small country. | ||
| But it whatever we i it worked there. | ||
| Uh drug abuse went down, incarceration went down, a HIV went down, levels of HIV went down. | ||
| So it worked there. | ||
| They tried it in Oregon, right? | ||
| It went terribly. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. | ||
| Yeah, but Oregon is a bad place to try it. | ||
| Because Oregon was already so lawless that going to Oregon, it like allowed people to like ramp it up. | ||
| And so because you could get anything and everything was decriminalized, they just went ham. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And also they didn't have the system in place for people who actually wanted rehab. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so when you don't, what are people going to do? | ||
| They're going to go back to the street. | ||
| Even then, rehab is very ineffective, like percentage-wise. | ||
| It is. | ||
| That's was another episode we did this season that you should watch is about. | ||
| It's called the rehab scam. | ||
| It's the Great American Rehab Scam. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And it's about how in California, we did we filmed in Arizona and California. | ||
| In California alone, we had an insurance, the head of the insurance investigations in California, an insurance fraud investigator in California told us that in his estimates, but he said they're probably very low. | ||
| 10% of the thousands of rehab facilities out there are probably a fraud in a scam. | ||
| And which they did 10%, which is a crazy number. | ||
| But he thinks it's a low number, that it's probably much higher than that. | ||
| So we what we our story was all about body brokering and rehab scams. | ||
| And body brokering. | ||
| Body brokering, yeah. | ||
| It's a it's an it's a term applied that applies to uh rehab scams. | ||
| So rehab scams is basically the the uh buying and selling of addicts uh in this billion dollar market, right? | ||
| So it's uh these they create these fake uh rehab centers that bill insurance for treatments that they are not actually giving people. | ||
| Um so uh for example, it's a huge problem in Arizona, and that's why we started and in California, but we started in Arizona. | ||
| Native Americans have really easy access to um health insurance through the the Indian American health plan that they created. | ||
| And it started as a good thing because there's it it was difficult, a lot of people lived in reservations far away, a lot of people, you know, because of generational trauma and alcohol abuse and drug abuse, there's a real need for health insurance and for them to have access to health insurance. | ||
| So you have these ho huge communities that when COVID happened, uh the state made it even easier for them to get the help that they needed through health insurance. | ||
| But all these bad actors realized, oh, this is great. | ||
| We're just gonna build these fake rehab centers, go around in white vans, literally. | ||
| There's like thousands of people still missing in Arizona, most of them uh Native Americans. | ||
| And they go out in white vans to these reservations in Arizona and New Mexico, and they bring people, people who, you know, um have problems with drug and alcohol, and they bring people to these centers, and then they start building insurance, they get you on an insurance plan, and they start building insurance crazy amounts of money. | ||
| Like we spoke, we were investigating this one facility that they were making eight hundred and something um million dollars sorry, eight hundred and something thousand uh eight hundred and seventy thousand dollars a week, a week from you know, dozens of people that they were housing. | ||
| And not actually providing them the treatment that they so desperately needed. | ||
| Aaron Powell So it just housed them. | ||
| So which is also illegal. | ||
| You can't house some you can't offer somebody free housing and then tell them that you will only get the free housing if you go and do our treatment. | ||
| That's illegal. | ||
| It's an illegal kickback. | ||
| But so they were doing this out in the open. | ||
| And some of these business operators were actually not even Americans. | ||
| They were Nigerians. | ||
| I found out that there were some Nigerians that owned own some of these rehab facilities. | ||
| Nigerians are so good at scam. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| It's so ingenious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
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| But Americans too. | ||
| I mean, there were a lot of them that were Americans. | ||
| So these guys are like driving around in Ferraris and you know, people are living in these fake centers. | ||
| I spoke to people who the therapy that they were they were billing like $2,500 for a therapy session, na one hour therapy session. | ||
| That was a Zoom meeting, a Zoom call with 600 people on the call. | ||
| And that's the therapy session. | ||
| It's bananas. | ||
| Or people who weren't even there and they bill for insurance and the people with the Trevor Burrus. | ||
| So six hundred people were they were collecting two thousand dollars from six hundred people for one hour. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| It is insane. | ||
| Well I could see why they would do that. | ||
| If that's a possibility to make money. | ||
| Yeah, if you open the door to criminals, and the thing about rehabilitation centers is a lot of people that get go to rehab or get involved in rehab, they've also had shady pasts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| They've been involved with criminals and then they go, listen, man, I think there's money to be made here. | ||
| Like this ain't fixing nobody. | ||
| This is court ordered rehabilitation. | ||
| I had to go in here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Let's make some money. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Start our own place. | ||
| What is what's the like what what's the steps that one has to take if one was to open up? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not that I'm thinking about doing it. | |
| Not a thing about doing it. | ||
| If someone was a scumbag. | ||
| But if someone was a terrible person, like what would someone do? | ||
| Uh what uh like what are the parameters? | ||
| Like what do you have to do to open up a rebound? | ||
| But you need a license, probably a state license, but in some cases it was just really easy to get a state license. | ||
| There was in Florida it became a huge problem. | ||
| It was called the Florida shuffle, which was this you were going back and forth between you know detox and rehabs and uh outpatient treatment centers, and they were all owned by the same sort of uh you know well-known frosters. | ||
| So you have to get a uh a license, but there's not much more, and that was the problem is that anyone could get a license and anyone can operate one of these. | ||
| I was reading about a judge that recently got busted because this judge was sentencing people to the rehab that they owned. | ||
| Yeah, that is. | ||
| And so taking like like v dangerous violent criminals and not incarcerating them, but instead sending them to these rehabilitation centers that they owned. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And just collecting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It is it's so sad. | ||
| It's it's really um, you know, as somebody who's reported on the opiate crisis for so long, just that is the only hope, right? | ||
| Let's figure out a way. | ||
| This is we we have been trying to arrest ourselves and militarize uh ourselves out of this problem. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| It doesn't work. | ||
| It's a public health crisis. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| One of the other stories we did this season was about tank dope. | ||
| Do you know what trank dope is? | ||
| Trank dope? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No. | ||
| It's fentanyl now is being mixed with a thing called xylozine, which is an animal tranquilizer. | ||
| Oh, fun. | ||
| Uh so fun. | ||
| Uh it's horrible. | ||
| Um 90% of the fentanyl that is now being that's coming out of Philadelphia, you know, Kensington. | ||
| You've seen the zombie. | ||
| Oh, I have seen trend where those people like fall over. | ||
| Yeah, like zombies. | ||
| They're walking down. | ||
| They're doing crazy yoga. | ||
| Yeah, in Kensington. | ||
| It's the saddest thing. | ||
| So we spent time in Kensington filming. | ||
| What is it about that stuff? | ||
| Is it the tranquilizer that makes them just fall over like that standing up? | ||
| Yeah, it's part of it. | ||
| So it's it's a really interesting, you know, as we all know, it all started with Huxicottin. | ||
| And then it went to heroin, and heroin was a great high for people who are addicted to opiates because it was a powerful high and it would keep keep you high for a long time. | ||
| And then came fentanyl. | ||
| And Sentinel gives you an even more powerful high, but it's fast acting, so you get out of it fast. | ||
| So somebody realized if we mix Trank um animal tranquilizer with this, you will you will still have the big high, but it will extend the time that You have that high. | ||
| And what is happening to, you know, thousands of people across the U.S. is that they are taking these drugs, getting the high that they want. | ||
| Oh my God, it's horrible. | ||
| No, they're shooting it up. | ||
| And this is what we shot in Kensington. | ||
| Intervenously. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| They shoot it up. | ||
| And what we shot in Kensington. | ||
| Well, this is it. | ||
| And where is this? | ||
| This is Philly. | ||
| Philly outside affiliates in Kansas. | ||
| It's a big problem in Philadelphia. | ||
| For some reason. | ||
| But this is if you find and this might be too disturbing, Jamie. | ||
| I'm just trying to find something that just to show what you've asked about. | ||
| What's too disturbing? | ||
| It's what we filmed in our show, which was the wounds that come. | ||
| It's like it looks like leprosy. | ||
| And it's people being amputated because the title of this is losing arms and legs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh my god, that guy's got an old because of it. | ||
| Oh God. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That guy is missing an arm. | ||
| But the gangrene and the open wounds. | ||
| And we filmed somebody being treated, and this woman's arm was like all gone. | ||
| It was just one of the most painful things to to watch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And this you know, you can imagine the smell and I know a comedian who went to the hospital for gangrene because of heroin. | |
| Almost lost his leg. | ||
| He wound up dying eventually. | ||
| But yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, and now with Trank, it's just gotten and yeah, I don't think any of these people want to be doing this, right? | ||
| Nobody wants to be living out on look. | ||
| No boy. | ||
| And this is not I mean the one we have to do. | ||
| Yeah, this is just a film is even worse than that. | ||
| There's a ton of videos about it. | ||
| So if anyone's curious, just go on YouTube. | ||
| That's good comparatively. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, there's some people in this country that have no hope. | ||
| And they're they're just c they're the addiction just has got them and there's no help for them. | ||
| And if you get sent to a phony rehab while you're in that state, that's that is really evil. | ||
| That's really easy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Isn't it? | |
| I think it's really evil too. | ||
| But I I think, yeah, in many ways, people sometimes think, oh, these they're junkies, they're they're out there, they just want this life, and they have failed society. | ||
| I quite frankly think we have failed them. | ||
| Well, not you and me, but the structure of society. | ||
| Yeah, still them. | ||
| Are you aware of Ibogain? | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I I listened to the interview you did with Rick Perry, governor, former governor of Texas. | |
| Yeah, that was fascinating. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That is insanely effective. | ||
| And um readily available in Mexico. | ||
| And now fortunately, because of former governor Rick Perry, it's available in Texas. | ||
| So they're doing it now in Texas with uh soldiers with PTSD, people coming back from the war with great efficacy and people that that have also been hooked on substances because of some of the things that they've seen. | ||
| So I think that's a great doorway into the right. | ||
| Because the right has always viewed these things, like particularly a psychedelic, which I will gain is, I guess. | ||
| Category one, right? | ||
| It's Schedule One. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I think it's schedule one. | ||
| So I've again schedule one. | ||
| Um but it's certainly illegal in America and it's thought of as I don't know how you could ever consider it recreational because it's uh apparently a very brutal experience and very introspective, and most people say I did not enjoy that at all. | ||
| I hated it. | ||
| Uh I had Dakota Meyer on the podcast and he talked about it, and he's like, I wanted to punch the guy, gave it to me. | ||
| He's like, it's fucking terrible. | ||
| For like one whole day. | ||
| You're going over over every horrible aspect of your life, and it finds like the pathways in your brain that created behavior afterwards. | ||
| And it like gives you this like insanely introspective slideshow of your life and sort of lays out this is why you're an addict. | ||
| This is why you're a gambling addict. | ||
| This is why you're addicted to ruining your life. | ||
| Like these are the things that happened to you when you're young, and these are the things that you did when you were adult that you had shame over, and all these different things. | ||
| These are the things that you've seen that are horrific that have scarred you. | ||
| And it has like an 80% effective rate for people getting off drugs with one session. | ||
| And it's in the nineties with two sessions. | ||
| Wow, that is crazy high. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And it's illegal here, yeah. | ||
| Well, it is now legal in Texas. | ||
| Well, I don't know what the regulations are or how they're doing it, but at least they're they're giving it to some people in Texas. | ||
| And I think like I was saying, this is a doorway for the right to understand. | ||
| And I think this is a lot of the case with a lot of these um special Forces guys, a lot of SEALs and Green Berets, they come back from combat and they're all fucked up, and some of their friends take them on ayahuasca journeys. | ||
| And that helps them a lot. | ||
| So that's another like doorway into the right, because people on the right have always thought of psychedelics as being for losers and hippies and people just trying to escape life, but just the sheer horror of combat experience has forced a lot of people to reconsider this position, | ||
| and then they've had so many family members that are veterans and that are, you know, especially guys that are like in the heart of combat, and then they come back and they they're just fucked up and no one wants to help them. | ||
| Nobody can just talk you through it. | ||
| And the one thing that I don't want to say universally, but v uh a high percentage have had great success with is psychedelics. | ||
| So I think it's uh another massive disservice that those are lumped in in the same illegal category as fentanyl. | ||
| I know, or or meth. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Or meth, yeah. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| But do you think that the pathway is legalization? | ||
| Because like even decriminalization, where are you gonna get it? | ||
| You're gonna get see, here's the problem with decriminalization. | ||
| In California, um my friend John Norris, he was a game warden. | ||
| And do you know the story? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So John, for people who don't know, oh, he's great. | ||
| So John was a game warden, right? | ||
| Loved the outdoors, became a game warden. | ||
| He really wanted to like check people's fishing licenses and hunting licenses and making sure the the land was taken care of and making sure people aren't littering or doing anything stupid. | ||
| So he gets this call that the stream is blocked up. | ||
| It's like the stream stopped running and they can't figure out why. | ||
| Maybe a farmer diverted water. | ||
| They follow the stream, they find these PVC pipes that are rerouting it to this massive marijuana farm that the cartel owns. | ||
| So when California made marijuana legal in the state, what they also did is make it a misdemeanor to grow c grow marijuana illegally. | ||
| So the cartels are like fucking great. | ||
| Let's just start growing. | ||
| So they're bringing AKs and assault rifles out into the woods, setting up camps, super toxic pesticides, super toxic, like shit that's totally illegal in modern farming in America, like way worse than glyphosate. | ||
| And that's somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty plus percent of all the marijuana that gets sold in the places where marijuana is illegal, it's all getting sold from these grow-ups in California. | ||
| It's by the cartels. | ||
| I've I filmed some of them. | ||
| I've been there. | ||
| I've been in those mountains in California. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| Like, it's also a side effect of like what Colorado did. | ||
| Colorado made it legal, great. | ||
| But then they also taxed it like 39%. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And so most people are like, look, it's still cheap, I'll pay 2 39%. | ||
| The state gets the money, it's a net benefit for everybody. | ||
| But there's a lot of people that are like, Oz grow weed illegally and sell that since it's legal in the state. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And because it's it's impossible to get a license in California when they legalized it initially. | ||
| It was they made it so hard for people to actually get their licenses and doing and do it legally that the actual black black market increased when they legalized it. | ||
| California's brilliant with that. | ||
| That's why they still haven't rebuilt a single house in the Pacific Palisades that burnt down. | ||
| Not a single house nine months later with some of the richest people in California. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because nobody can get a nobody can get permits. | ||
| They're trying to make it easier to build. | ||
| Allegedly. | ||
| If you would have done it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have you had Gavin Islam when you're No, he's been he's been taunting me, trying to get me to have a more why? | |
| I don't know, because he's interesting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You think he's interesting? | |
| He's interesting as like a sociology experiment. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like if you're if you're a psychologist, you're not sure. | |
| You know who I really love that you interviewed recently? | ||
| Who? | ||
| James Tellerica. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's great. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He's great. | ||
| He had great insight as to uh what's going on in Texas too, where these Christian fundamentalists who are very, very wealthy are trying to turn Texas into a theocracy. | ||
| Like these guys sound like full-on nutters. | ||
| And this is something that people have to be really careful of when you become aligned with one party or another party. | ||
| Right? | ||
| If you become a aligned with the left, like Jimmy Kimmel was like ignoring he was like mocking the president for saying that Antifa, like Antifa's not real. | ||
| That's so crazy to say. | ||
| I know it's a Democrat talking point currently, but it's dangerous for you and for everybody else to say. | ||
| Because they are real, they're real, and they're anarchists who are committed to overthrowing capitalism. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They want to destroy the Western government. | ||
| Like it's and a lot of them are retards. | ||
| A lot of them are just like goofy kids that got lost in the system and then they found like a gang, like a lot of gang members. | ||
| Like that's the same kind of thing. | ||
| They get you find a community and all of a sudden these people are yours and they're real and the and also they're willing to fight for something. | ||
| And there's like a lot of passion involved in it. | ||
| So it's kind of exciting. | ||
| And then you also realize, like, yeah, corporate society is fucked up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| United health care, that is kind of crazy that you spend all that money on health care and you get fucking nothing, and then when you do have something, they deny your claim. | ||
| Like what is going on? | ||
| And is is fucked. | ||
| And so they don't know where to turn, and so they they get involved with a bunch of people that are doing stupid shit and they light Starbucks on fire. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Or they, you know, and but a lot of it's funded too. | ||
| That's the other thing. | ||
| The reality is a lot of these uh you know. | ||
| I don't know about the funding part of it. | ||
| So I've I've organized I've spoken to Antifa. | ||
| We did I've done stories on uh on militias, was one of the stories we did this last season. | ||
| And it was important for me when we did that story. | ||
| I've been wanting to do there's uh rising militias, uh rising threat of militias everywhere in the world, but uh particularly here in the United States, and we also filmed in Brazil because it's a real problem uh there. | ||
| And we uh I knew from the start that I didn't want to just do right wing militias, that it was important to also do left wing militia. | ||
| So we spent time with a group that operates on the border, a right wing militia that operates on the border, and was basically trying to catch uh illegal immigrants. | ||
| And then we also spend time at uh you know, just a few miles away from the that group, there was another group called the black cat rifle group that is a left-wing militia. | ||
| And it is to me, what was so scary was that they existed because of the other side. | ||
| Like they're of course they existed because the other side exists, right? | ||
| And none of them understood that you know that that one would become stronger, the stronger the other would become. | ||
| And that this was all going to end not well for any of us. | ||
| And when I was asking the Black Cat Rifle Group, you know, when I was asking why they have a militia and why are they training? | ||
| I mean, they were training with with guns and and you know, they look if you look at these guys, they actually look I mean, sp especially the guys at the border, uh which were the right-wing militia groups. | ||
| If if I was an immigrant crossing the country illegally and I saw one of these guys, a hundred percent would think that this is the U.S. Army or border patrol and and I would be terrified, or I'd hand myself in and then but it's it's they're which by the way is not what that's the part that's not legal. | ||
| You're not you you can train with your buddies, you can do all that, but you can't pretend to be and you can't look like you're part of the the military or law enforcement when you're not. | ||
| And and these guys a hundred percent look like they were. | ||
| Um I know I'm gonna get a lot of flack for this because every time we talk about I talk about militias, um I get flack for it. | ||
| But why? | ||
| Uh because uh we are we're living in the most divided uh era of our time. | ||
| And there's a lot of people who you know believe that militias are important and think that it's important that they exist. | ||
| I I I find them incredibly dangerous, the existence of militias outside or on the periphery of the of the law. | ||
| I find it incredibly dangerous. | ||
| And so when I was talking to the right wing group, they said something when I started talking to left-wing group, they were giving me the exact same reasons. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean, it was the exact same conversation, but seen from the other side, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you not this is exactly the same thing that the other guy said. | ||
| And they were like, yeah, we're we're here, we think in their com their uh point was that and they don't call themselves militias, by the way, the the left-wing group. | ||
| But they and they didn't like the fact that I call them militias. | ||
| But they were saying was that but this is basically a group who trains for what they think is go going to be an incoming possible civil war. | ||
| We talked about civil war with them. | ||
| I know. | ||
| And they said, look, uh minorities in this country are under attack a lot of times by these right wing militias, uh whether they are part of the LGBTQ community or they're um, You know, um black or Hispanic, they're under attack, and it's our job to train to make sure that we protect these people that are the most vulnerable in our society. | ||
| And we have to arm up and train and be ready to fight and go after the other people if we have to. | ||
| They said they only protect themselves. | ||
| Um they only defend themselves, right? | ||
| But that's the exact same thing that I think. | ||
| It is the exact same thing. | ||
| That was my point was that um like people like Jimmy Kimmel talking about Antifa not existing, like that's not good for anybody. | ||
| No, they are they are real and they are violent. | ||
| And then people on the right that want to ignore these people that are trying to turn Texas into theocracy and put the Ten Commandments in every school. | ||
| The great thing about Tallerico is that he went to seminary school. | ||
| He's in seminary right now. | ||
| So he's a very religious person, and he does not want them to have the Ten Commandments in schools. | ||
| He's like, you should not this is gonna create less Christians, it's gonna have more resistance to Christianity. | ||
| And really, religion has no place in government. | ||
| And also, why would you have that up but you don't have something from Hinduism, something from Buddhism, something from Is Islam, something from uh Judaism. | ||
| Like you should it should be all religions. | ||
| If you're gonna have a religious class, that's a different thing. | ||
| But if you're gonna have a thing on the wall that everybody pays attention to that you have to look at every day because it's through your commandments and it's Christianity. | ||
| Well then you're forcing Christianity on people, and that's very un-American. | ||
| And I find I think he's really right. | ||
| And I think that's the thing about being on a fucking team is that you feel like you have to defend your team and ignore the horrible thing that your team does and then only pay attention to the bad things the other team does. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Now you're doing the man's work for the man and you get no benefit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Not only do you get no benefit, but you actually help society erode and become more fractured. | ||
| Yeah, and get to the place. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's horrible. | ||
| It's horrible. | ||
| We need another Martin Luther King. | ||
| You know, we need someone who's like an adamant expressor of nonviolence as the only option. | ||
| And then we all need to embrace that because there's too many punch of Nazi people out there. | ||
| There's too many people out there that think you could just go out and do violence. | ||
| And I get it, that sounds exciting. | ||
| I'm a revolutionary. | ||
| Yeah, I get it. | ||
| It's exciting. | ||
| It's the wrong way for human beings. | ||
| We're supp this is supposed to be 2025, right? | ||
| We're supposed to have evolved to a point where we recognize that violence is one of the worst things that we ever have in our community in any way, shape, or form. | ||
| Whether it's police violence or whether it's gang violence, any kind of violence is the worst thing that we can do to each other. | ||
| We're supposed to be living together in harmony. | ||
| There's a way at least to minimize that violence by never having violent rhetoric, by never encouraging violence. | ||
| And we seem to have lost that somewhere along the line. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I mean, violence and hate, you know, so much hate and talk about hate and hating the other side and hating anyone that doesn't stand by what I stand or what I believe in. | ||
| It's just well look what happened when Charlie Kirk got murdered. | ||
| People were literally cheering. | ||
| And we found out about it. | ||
| I was doing a podcast with Charlie Sheen. | ||
| And we went to the restroom, and when we're going to the restroom, Jamie told us that Charlie Kirk got shot and he's dead. | ||
| And we came back and did the podcast, and I was like people are going to celebrate this. | ||
| And this is what's is terrifying to me. | ||
| And I got a message from a a friend of mine who was like, Man, I think you're wrong. | ||
| I think it's a bunch of bot counts that are gonna uh it's just to rile people up. | ||
| But it wasn't. | ||
| I I watched it, I watched a lot of it online. | ||
| I watched it through famous people and prominent people that were just condoning his assassination, if not celebrating it, by saying, you know, that he put hateful rhetoric out there in the world. | ||
| The way they'll counter hateful rhetoric is love. | ||
| You like you have to you you you you have to recognize that these people are wrong. | ||
| They're coming from a wrong position and eloquently state the right position, which is what Martin Luther King Jr. did which is not what President Trump said at uh the memorial of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| What did he say? | ||
| Oh I hate my enemies, he loved his enemies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't agree with any of that. | |
| I don't agree with any. | ||
| I mean, particularly if you're the president of the United States, you're not you're not. | ||
| Well, he's you know, he's a nut. | ||
| But it it's also the only way that that guy survived what he did, what he went through, what they tried to put him through. | ||
| You have to be a kind of a nut. | ||
| They tried to put him in jail, they try to make a fake Russia collusion thing they did for three years, a concerted effort that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign that funded the Steel Dossier. | ||
| Nutty stuff. | ||
| Like try to uh put him he got convicted for thirty-four counts of felony that none of them were a felony. | ||
| Uh It was misdemeanor booking bookkeeping errors because he was paying off a lady he had sex with you gotta be a nut to get through that and not have any feeling about it at all and just brush it off your shoulder. | ||
| So yeah he's he's fucking crazy. | ||
| Trevor Burrus I don't think that's because he's crazy that's not why he's crazy. | ||
| I think he's no no no no no no no no I'm saying he is crazy period. | ||
| And that's how he got through all that's the only per kind of person that gets through that and gets to where he is today. | ||
| You have to be kind of crazy. | ||
| I don't agree with any of that like hating my enemies and going after my enemies I know you don't agree with the immigration raids either which I've heard you talk about in this podcast on the I am so hap f happy that you do talk about it because I do think it's an incredibly important issue. | ||
| I mean I think it's one of those right-left things too right where people on the right are like focus on the moment I have no idea every time I post it about this and I get so much hate also like I get immediately people saying horrible things about immigrants and saying horrible things about me and I I get unfollowed immediately like people don't like it. | ||
| The thing is they like do it the right way. | ||
| They like do it the right way. | ||
| Here's the problem with that you can't do it the right way. | ||
| If you live in Mexico or you've in Guatemala and you're walking here and you're getting across the Rio Gran River and here's the other thing for the last four years during the Biden administration it was well known throughout the world that the borders were wide open. | ||
| So an estimated who knows what is the total number put this into perplexity that's our sponsor perplexity how many people do they estimate came in illegally over the past four years during the Biden administration. | ||
| But it's millions and millions of people right? | ||
| So people knew that they can come across now they're here because somebody invited them right and then they were bust to these places and flown to these places and they were given EBD cards and some of them were given cell phones and now you can arrest them? | ||
| Now you're gonna like swoop in and handcuff them fuck like this is crazy. | ||
| You asked me to be here they don't know it's the same goddamn okay I have spent time on uh the trail of immigrants I was in the dare in the Southern Darien Gap where a lot of the immigrants were coming and I spoke to dozens of people who were doing the journey and um maybe I just got lucky or unlucky that I spoke to the majority of the people that I spoke to had, you know, a lot of them were from Haiti, from Venezuela, places that are completely torn off. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No economic opportunities whatever whatsoever violence, extreme violence these are the stories that I know are happening. | ||
| And I I have a good friend his name's Jacob Soboroff he's a reporter for MSNBC and he's been covering immigration raids from the beginning. | ||
| And one of the stories he did and it's like I I love that I'm talking about this because this has become really important for me. | ||
| Because I'm I live in LA and I I'm affected by this on many levels. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Also you have an accent I'm I'm an immigrant so I might get great I know they might pull you over ask for your papers. | |
| But uh this the one of the stories he covered and I think exemplifies what's happening to me right now is the Estella and Nori this is a mother and a daughter from Guatemala. | ||
| The daughter was born in Guatemala with her mother and her mother was gang raped in the small town she's from a small impoverished town in rural Guatemala she was gang raped and the next day and her daughter watched her being gang raped and she was fuel violently beaten up she had blood all over her face they broke her bones it was horrible with her daughter who was young at the time watching and the next day she decided she had family members in U.S. and she decided this is it. | ||
| I can't live here and I have to take my daughter to a place that's safer. | ||
| Her daughter was traumatized by the way by now took bro they came they came to the U.S. Um they immediately went and asked for asylum which by the way most people don't know this but it is completely legal to become to come to the United States whatever way you enter, even if you enter illegally it is legal to come to the US and ask for asylum. | ||
| That is not coming to the U.S. entering without papers and then asking for asylum is legal. | ||
| So even when people say yes but do it le y you can't do it illegally you're wrong. | ||
| It is legal to do so coming in with no papers and the requirements to uh require to repeat persecution you have to you have to be a victim of persecution whether it's you know uh cartels yeah violence uh rape uh uh political what what are the five things. | ||
| It's like Jamie, can you look this up? | ||
| It's political, uh religious, um political, religious. | ||
| There's like five reasons why people can be persecuted. | ||
| And um so they came to the US, they immediately started applying for asylum, and there's eleven million cases backlogged right now of people asking for asylum. | ||
| Race, religion, race, religion, nationality, political opinion, membership in a particular social group. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So just those five things. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So political persecution also involves imprisonment, torture, or threats of violence. | ||
| Huh? | ||
| Yeah, how m what's the numbers? | ||
| Uh ten point eight million. | ||
| This is encounter it says encounters though where they crossed them or stop. | ||
| But it's also goes on. | ||
| According to the Trump administration's well, let me say this. | ||
| According to someone I spoke to at the Trump administration, they said they they believe it's 20 million over four years. | ||
| Oh, I don't think that's done. | ||
| I think that number is highly exaggerated. | ||
| Well, this says um in addition to these uh apprehens apprehensions and encounters, officials reported an estimated two million gataways, individuals who are detected crossing the border illegally but evaded capture. | ||
| Combining these figures suggest roughly twelve point eight million total unauthorized border crossings or attempts during the Biden administration. | ||
| So not 20, but 12.8. | ||
| Here's another thing that people keep talking about is how many people um Obama deported. | ||
| But I think that's not I think they're saying it incorrectly. | ||
| Because I think when they say that Obama deported three million people, they always use this like as an as an aha against Trump deportations. | ||
| I believe Obama's deportation numbers count turn aways. | ||
| Like when someone makes it to the border and then you send them back. | ||
| Very different. | ||
| Yeah, I mean he was nicknamed. | ||
| Running into home depot. | ||
| And grabbing people like with a mask over your face. | ||
| Like what we're seeing with ice. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Oh, worse than that. | ||
| I even worse than going to the Home Depot is the case of Histella and Nori, where they were going to check in on their procedures at the courthouse. | ||
| And when they went to check on how their asylum case was going, they were detained. | ||
| They had been living here for several years. | ||
| The daughter is now is a star athlete, uh amazing student. | ||
| But wait, even worse. | ||
| So they are deported back to Guatemala, taken, like their family didn't even know they were where they were. | ||
| They were taken. | ||
| They took away her medication. | ||
| She had high blood pressure, the the mother, high blood pressure. | ||
| They got to Guatemala. | ||
| They don't know, they haven't lived there in decades, they have no idea where what to do. | ||
| They have no money in their pocket, they can't they don't have access to the medication. | ||
| So the mother dies. | ||
| And the daughter is stays in Guatemala and there's footage of her holding the coffin until it's buried and her wanting to be with her mother. | ||
| And these are the stories. | ||
| I mean, even if this just happened with one person, we should be asking if this is the right thing to do. | ||
| But this is happening to you know, hundreds, if not thousands of people all across the country. | ||
| And this is not all right. | ||
| I mean, this is not all right. | ||
| We should not be doing this. | ||
| Yeah, especially if someone's already been granted asylum. | ||
| Like there should be So their asylum procedure was ongoing. | ||
| They hadn't been granted yet. | ||
| But that is ongoing procedure, asylum procedure. | ||
| And plus that's not meaning she was trying to do it the right way. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| And and that's not what we were sold, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| A lot of people voted for Trump because they thought that he was going to go after the criminals. | ||
| Well, I think very unfortunately a lot of this stuff is political. | ||
| And um and the fear is the both sides fear, right? | ||
| So I don't know if you know this, but Minnesota governor Tim Wals, who was running for vice president. | ||
| He just passed uh You also had him on, right? | ||
| No, no, I did not. | ||
| Uh I he they just passed something in Minnesota where illegal immigrants are allowed to have driver's licenses and vote. | ||
| Which is kind of crazy. | ||
| Um because Are you sure? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes, that they're allowed to vote. | ||
| Yes, just yesterday. | ||
| As in the case, they don't even have a green card. | ||
| And they're allowed to vote. | ||
| Let's find out. | ||
| Though This is the story that I read. | ||
| Jamie, find out. | ||
| I read this story and he was proudly talking about. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Sounds crazy, right? | ||
| It sounds crazy, yeah. | ||
| Because I became a citizen so I could vote, and it took me a long time to get them to say. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| No, I know a lot of friends who became American citizens, and it's it was a long, grueling process, and they had to prove that they were exceptional. | ||
| That there was a reason for them to be here. | ||
| A lot of them were comedians and entertainers. | ||
| I'm not saying what is it? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| What are the facts of the case? | ||
| I think that laws passed illegal immigrant vote and it's a very good thing. | ||
| It was all over Twitter to the case not passed a bill. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Um driver's licenses. | ||
| That was something that happened in 2023, it said. | ||
| Yeah, but there was something that just happened a couple of days ago. | ||
| Find it. | ||
| Find it. | ||
| Yeah, I'll find it. | ||
| I'll check on Twitter. | ||
| Illegal. | ||
| I I I have to say I find it very hard to believe that they're not. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| But not because I think that what I was getting at is a lot of the reason for wanting an open border is congressional seats. | ||
| Because one of the things about when you do a census, it doesn't count how many people are citizens, it counts how many people. | ||
| And so you can get extra congressional seats if you have more illegal immigrants in your city. | ||
| And you have much more political power that way. | ||
| But why do you get more seats if you can they can't vote? | ||
| It's just how it works. | ||
| It's just how the setup it's the the way our census is set up. | ||
| So the way a census is set up, it's just counting people. | ||
| It's not counting people that are legally. | ||
| So the census is how they dictate the amount of congressional seats. | ||
| Here's what was going around Twitter. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Minnesota elections confirms non-citizens can vote with driver's licenses. | ||
| October 14, 25, this is it. | ||
| Uh state hearing Minnesota director, elections, Paul Linnell testify that non citizens holding driver's licenses under the 2023 driver's licenses for all law can register to vote and cast ballots by affirming eligibility as the ID verifies identity but not citizenship. | ||
| Secretary of State Steve Simon noted that such voting is illegal and rare, with post-election adults identifying discrepancies for prosecution, including 59, just 59 potential cases in 2024 that they, um. | ||
| The testimony has prompted Republican demands for voter role audits and reforms concite uh coinciding with federal lawsuit against Minnesota for incomplete registration data. | ||
| So at the very least, this is opening up the door for people that are non-citizens to vote. | ||
| And it seems like they're confirming that non-citizens with this driver's license can vote. | ||
| That that it can be that it can be consequence of it. | ||
| It's not that's not the goal of that. | ||
| But but it's also it's a consequence that can happen. | ||
| It is a consequence of it. | ||
| But I don't think it's purposely done. | ||
| I mean, I think that it's trying to make it easier for people to vote, and unfortunately, it's a little bit like the rehab scam, right? | ||
| You're trying to make it easier for Native Americans to get health insurance, but guess guess what? | ||
| Then there's people who are going to abuse that that that opportunity or that that's most certainly. | ||
| And that's what's happening. | ||
| That seems like what's happening here. | ||
| That's a very charitable way of looking at it. | ||
| Maybe, but I... | ||
| What are you trying to say, Jay? | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| It says that they can register to vote, but the next line says that the voting is illegal. | ||
| Yeah, it's illegal, but they can register. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But they they could do it if they wanted to. | |
| I think what is happening is that immigrants are being used as political pawns, right? | ||
| As we know. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| Both sides. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And we both agree with that. | ||
| And these are human beings. | ||
| Like the mother and like so many of these stories, like the father of the three military American so m guys went and served for our country and the father was deported. | ||
| These are, you know, horrible stories of human beings. | ||
| And a lot of times the people that are traumatized are American citizens. | ||
| They are the kids, they're pulling away their family members, their mothers, their fathers, and it's American kids who are being traumatized. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
| It's also heartless. | ||
| And you're showing to the world that you don't care, that you just want to achieve a result and you want to achieve result that is gonna leave a a terrible feeling for anybody with a heart that that looks at that store in that case, and then they're gonna associate the United States government more and more with tyranny, more and more with fascism, more and more with you know what you're you think you're just enforcing a law because these people broke a law. | ||
| But that there's uh there's still human beings that have been a part of these communities. | ||
| The law is just some shit people wrote down. | ||
| It should make sense. | ||
| And there should be exemptions or at least some sort of amnesty which is been here. | ||
| Oh, that too. | ||
| But that's a pathway. | ||
| Yeah, and a pathway. | ||
| And right now there isn't. | ||
| There's because these people are probably not paying taxes. | ||
| And if you could make them citizens, more money you would make. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But they do pay taxes, you know. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| For buying things, for property taxes. | ||
| Or for income taxes. | ||
| They actually pay income taxes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. | |
| Right. | ||
| Do they file for income taxes or they get income taxes removed from their paycheck? | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
| Can you check that out, Jamie? | ||
| I read about this recently because it's something that so many people it's you often used by the right, how these people are here and they don't pay taxes. | ||
| That is actually not it's millions of dollars a year that undocumented immigrants pay. | ||
| Oh, I'm most sure I'm sure. | ||
| Not only in sales but also in income taxes. | ||
| And both with the fake social security numbers that you get, but also I think there's something that I think. | ||
| Well, you probably have to have that for certain jobs. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Fake social security numbers. | ||
| But I think there's a way also that they figured out that people are here while they're going through asylum procedures or trying to get their green card that they can't. | ||
| But there's still a lot of people that are from 2016 says 11.6 billion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Billion dollars in state oven stuff. | ||
| Collectively. | ||
| Undocumented interview scheme. | ||
| So I I would imagine though that that's like at the very least less than there would be if everybody was co totally above board. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| I'm a hundred percent. | ||
| We could be making so much more money. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And I mean they're the bat let's not who are we kidding? | ||
| I mean, they are the backbone of our economy, particularly in California where I live. | ||
| There would be no construction, there would be no agriculture. | ||
| There would be no, you know, uh uh um kitchens and and restaurants and hospitality services without these immigrants. | ||
| Undocumented immigrants paid nearly ninety-seven billion in federal, state, and local taxes in twenty twenty two. | ||
| So the idea that they don't pay taxes is bullshit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| It's a lot of money. | ||
| Um that's money that now you have to account for because those people are gonna get kicked out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And and but meanwhile, if they had figured out a pathway to citizenship, I bet that number would increase. | ||
| You know, and also they could get different jobs. | ||
| You know, they wouldn't be stuck economically because that's the the weird thing about people that sneak abo. | ||
| Like when these farms get raided and they bust all these people, the farm doesn't get busted. | ||
| Like, hey. | ||
| I know. | ||
| What will you do? | ||
| And how much will you pay in them? | ||
| Like are you should you go to jail for paying them less than you're supposed to pay people? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that's the reason why you hire people that don't have any paperwork. | ||
| Yeah, because you want to pay them less. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| One guy is a horrible person. | ||
| I heard the the he did a job and then when the job is over, he called ice on the people so he didn't have to pay them. | ||
| It might not be real, though. | ||
| It might be a TikTok. | ||
| You wouldn't surprise the people. | ||
| Because that's a lot that's going on too. | ||
| But yeah, it's it's heartless. | ||
| And that's that's uh and if you're supposed to be a Christian nation, right, which is like with the hardline right people want. | ||
| Well, that's not a very Christian ideal. | ||
| Well, they broke the law. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| They're families, right? | ||
| You would you would have broke the law too. | ||
| But um, by the way, most of those people are deeply religious. | ||
| A lot of those people that are coming from South America, deeply religious, from Central America, deeply religious people. | ||
|
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Deeply religious people. | |
| They're they'd be on your side if they had a chance. | ||
| You know, those are like hardworking family people. | ||
| They'd be the kind of people you want in your community for the most part. | ||
| But there have to be a way to sift out. | ||
| You have to figure out, okay, who's the cartel members? | ||
| Who's who's a terrorist? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| I don't believe in an open border. | ||
| But I do believe that once people are here and they've completely integrated into society, it seems pretty foolish to just snatch them up and send them to countries that they don't even know anymore. | ||
| How about this guy in Maryland that this uh a Brago Garcia guy that they keep they're trying to send them to Africa? | ||
| Oh my god, it's insane. | ||
| Three countries in Africa said no. | ||
| But one said yes, right? | ||
| Oh, I don't know. | ||
| Have they? | ||
| Are they gonna send them to Africa? | ||
| Oh, they failed. | ||
| Okay, good. | ||
| Why are they sending them to Africa? | ||
| He's not from Africa. | ||
| It's like guys. | ||
|
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I know. | |
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I I'm happy you use your platform to talk about this. | ||
| Because I I rarely do I get an issue that I'm like this passionate about and that I see so much injustice that I feel like I need I need to talk about this. | ||
| There's no heart to you have to have a heart. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| The law should be to serve and protect, right? | ||
| This is this is the whole reason why we should have law enforcement, right? | ||
| So in this situation, what are you protecting? | ||
| Are you protecting American jobs? | ||
| Do you want to go pick strawberries? | ||
| Like these people are like c coming here because this is a way better option than where they live. | ||
| Wouldn't it be better if those people were doing that work and making a livable wage? | ||
| And wouldn't it be better if these greedy corporations weren't just able to hire illegal people and pay them under the table a tiny amount of what they really should be getting as a normal human being. | ||
| Absolutely for all of us. | ||
| It'd be better for all of us. | ||
| You're taking advantage of these people. | ||
| And once they're here, look, if you're here and you've been robbing people, it's like, yeah, fuck that guy. | ||
| Get rid of him. | ||
| Like get rid of all the parasites and all the criminals and all the predators that are destroying people's lives, all the people robbing people. | ||
| Yeah, get rid of them. | ||
| Everybody wants that. | ||
| But after that, you gotta figure out a way to like otherwise we're just gonna have this stupid divided country with left and right. | ||
| And these people will never vote Republican again. | ||
| Any this which is really interesting because a lot of Hispanics and a lot of like Latino people are religious. | ||
| And there's a lot of the things that the Republicans talk about that they would align with. | ||
| Like Cubans, for example. | ||
| Cubans are hardliner right wing people. | ||
| They don't fuck around, they're very disciplined, they know what communism looks like. | ||
| Fuck you. | ||
| They they're not they don't tolerate no nonsense in Miami. | ||
| You know, it's like and that could have been the Republicans could have captured a lot of those people that are deeply religious. | ||
| Like that's one of your core values is you think it's a Christian nation. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's just you gotta figure out how to do it with a heart. | ||
| I know. | ||
| You can't just snatch a hardworking father away from his children that he brought over here from another country just because he wants them to be able to live and not get killed in the streets. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| He wants to be able to make a living. | ||
| And this guy probably works 14 hours a fucking day, sees them, kisses them on the head before he goes to sleep, crashes, gets up in the morning and does it again. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| That's what you want in this country. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| It's like you gotta you gotta find the pathway for good people. | ||
| And like you can't tell me you don't want we don't have enough resources for that. | ||
| Because you see about the amount of money that goes through USA or went through USA, the amount of money that goes to fucking weapons manufacturers. | ||
| You you we don't have enough money to sort out who's a good person and who's a bad person and find some sort of a pathway. | ||
| I'm not saying keep the border open, but the people that are here, let's root out the fucking terrorists, let's figure out who's the bad people. | ||
| Some definitely bad people got through. | ||
| After that, let's you know, it's fucking break bread. | ||
| Let's break bread. | ||
| I agree with you, a hundred percent. | ||
| Let's we're supposed to be a community. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you come over here and you bust ass for twenty-five fucking years and you're a part of a uh the American community, and then all of a sudden you don't have the right paperwork, so they're gonna send you a country that you don't even remember. | ||
| Because you know, you came over here when you're fifteen, like you barely know how to speak Spanish anymore. | ||
| Like what? | ||
| Yeah, I know. | ||
| It's absolutely I mean it's yeah, it's I've I've been reporting on these issues for so long. | ||
| It's it's truly I mean, it's why I came to America, why so many people come to America. | ||
| It's because this is what this country stands for. | ||
| It's like it's welcoming to immigrants, and that's immigrants make America great. | ||
| I mean, Ed Caldron was telling us a story about a young man who came over here when he was a baby. | ||
| His family brought him over here when he was a baby. | ||
| So he doesn't have any paperwork. | ||
| And uh he was in his twenties. | ||
| They snatched him up and sent him to Mexico and he doesn't even speak Spanish. | ||
| And yeah. | ||
| And it's like, fuck you, you're not American. | ||
| now you're over there. | ||
| And why do they snatch them? | ||
| They just ice-frapped them. | ||
| Was it during these raids right now? | ||
| Yeah, during some sort of an ice raid. | ||
| They grabbed him and sent him to Tijuana. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| It's he doesn't even speak Spanish. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| It's absolutely just with bad paperwork. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's the only difference between him and me is that I, you know, my parents were born here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I happen to be born here. | ||
| I got lucky. | ||
| It's like I'm not saying you should have the border open, because you shouldn't. | ||
| Every country should be checked because there's threats in the world. | ||
| And also a lot of people mad at us because we've done some fucked up things all over the world. | ||
| And that's the dark part of all this mass migration in both Europe and in America. | ||
| It's like why are these people fleeing where they were? | ||
| Well, because they're all the fuck out of it. | ||
| We destabilized their government. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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Absolutely. | |
| I mean, not all. | ||
| It's not all that. | ||
| The money that we're using in trying in these raids, like let's figure out how to stem the the immigration. | ||
| Let's try to figure out how to, you know, stop the consumption of drugs so that there's less violence in those countries. | ||
| Stop the flow of guns so there's less killings and gangs. | ||
| You know, it's it's like it's a a cycle of destruction that we're enabling them and and then we go and catch them and we're all really started with moving manufacturing overseas as well. | ||
| Once we took all the manufacturing out of America and then we moved manufacturing overseas or over to other countries across national lines. | ||
| Now all of a sudden you can get things made way cheaper. | ||
| But then you create all this poverty, and then what happens with poverty? | ||
| People fall into drugs because they have massive despair. | ||
| You know, and then the pharmacy of drugs. | ||
| Well, you brilliantly documented with that with the Oxycontin Express that that piece was how I found out about you, but also how I found out about that problem, which was so insane, where you could tell people if they're not aware of how it all started. | ||
|
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Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Yeah, it's interesting because I just had the FBI and um agent that investigated that case on my podcast. | ||
| Which was fascinating. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I found out that uh reading the newspaper, my husband and I were working together at the time, and we found out that there were all these people who were going to Florida just to buy pills. | ||
| So there was these pain clinics, these pill mills as they were called. | ||
| Um they were distributing it but the the numbers were crazy. | ||
| Ninety of the top 100 uh doctors prescribed prescribing oxycotton were in Flor Florida. | ||
| Ninety of the 100. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
|
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What are the odd statistics? | |
| I know. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| And this is a sad part. | ||
| It's not as if these pharmaceutical companies or the distribution companies didn't know this was happening. | ||
| They did. | ||
| They just pretended that they didn't because it was jig it was hi huge business and it was great. | ||
| And why Florida? | ||
| Because they had really lax regulation. | ||
| So you could go doctor shopping. | ||
| You could go, I went undercover. | ||
| So that was part of the story that we did, Oxycotton Express, where I went undercover into one of these pain clinics, and I asked the receptionist. | ||
| Um I said, I have a little bit of a back pain. | ||
| Uh, what do I need to do if I want to get some bills? | ||
| And she said, Oh, what would you like? | ||
| And uh, we can give you oxycotton, we can give you some benzos, we can give you what's called the South Florida cocktail, which raised essentially muscle relaxants, benzos, and oxycotton. | ||
| That's how she was describing it. | ||
| She didn't say it, but that's what it became known as is the South Florida cocktail. | ||
| But she said we can give you this, this, and this. | ||
| It's the holy trinity trin trinity, right? | ||
| And all you need to do is you go to the back of the clinic and there's a place there where you can get an MRI. | ||
| And then you come back to us, and an MRI is a ridiculous thing because you can read anything into Namurai. | ||
| Like any all of us have backs have a spine and whatever comes out results in the memorial that you could the doctor can pretend to look at it and say, Oh, yeah, yeah, I can see why you're having back pain or neck pain, and I'm gonna give you this. | ||
| But the problem is that the doctors weren't even looking at the MRIs. | ||
| That was just fake. | ||
| There was just, you know, in case somebody ever came after them, they could say that they had MRIs. | ||
| They were seeing people in less than three minutes and saying they were doing all these less than three minutes. | ||
| So you'd have a patient come in, and then these amazing entrepreneurial twin brothers called the George brothers, uh, built this business. | ||
| It was called American Pain. | ||
| They basically built a business out of two or three payments. | ||
| It sounds like a movie. | ||
| American Pain. | ||
| So my husband did a documentary about it about the rise and fall of these twin brothers. | ||
| They started by stelling steroids, and then somebody told him, like, dude, why are you doing what are you doing stelling selling steroids or you could make making so much more money selling oxy cotton? | ||
| It's called American Pain. | ||
| You should watch it. | ||
| It's on HBO. | ||
| It's so good. | ||
| I think actually I've heard of it now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Now that you mentioned it. | ||
| It's really good. | ||
| So we we reported Oxycontin together. | ||
| And because we were chased down I-95 by these goons, By these two brothers by these twins. | ||
| Um Darren became obsessed with them and then contacted them in prison. | ||
| Okay, so it's a really funny story. | ||
| I'm gonna tell the story. | ||
| So we find out that these were the biggest operators. | ||
| Five of the top twenty prescribers in the whole country were doctors working for the George brothers. | ||
| They were it was millions of pills. | ||
| They were not only prescribing but selling out of their pain clinics. | ||
| They were making millions of dollars. | ||
| I mean, so much so that they were stashing it in bags and putting it in the attic, their mother's house's attic and stuff. | ||
| There was like insane amounts of money. | ||
| And people would come in from all over the country, mainly from Appalachia, and they would come in, drive down, and they would get to these clinics and they would say, I want, you know, see a doctor for less than three minutes. | ||
| The doctor had a rubber stamp to stamp the prescription to make it fast. | ||
| So they'd see you three minutes, okay, next one, and stamp it. | ||
| There were people passing out in these pain clinics on the in the lobby. | ||
| People passing out outside. | ||
| So when I went inside the the the talked to the receptionist, and then I went outside and I bummed a cigarette out of somebody and I explained, hey, I s pretended I had secret cameras, they didn't know I was filming, and I started saying, What do you what are you doing here? | ||
| And he's like, Oh yeah, I came from Kentucky and uh I this is one of the best clinics. | ||
| I can get all my pills here, and then I go back and you know, we sell them and we can still use the pills we want. | ||
| It's feeding our addiction, and we go out and we sell them for ten times what we're paying here. | ||
|
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|
Wow. | |
| And so it was a big business. | ||
| And and so and then no database, right? | ||
| So you can't do that. | ||
| And no database, yeah. | ||
| So you could go to several different doctors, doctor shopping. | ||
| So we're outside this this American pain pain clinic, which we knew at the time. | ||
| They had security guards outside, surveillance cameras. | ||
| So we knew they were like shady. | ||
| Uh and but we also knew that they were the biggest operators in town. | ||
| So we wanted to film outside. | ||
| And it was our last day in Florida. | ||
| We'd kept it to the last day for safety reasons. | ||
| And we're outside, and it's me and my husband, he's filming it, and suddenly, within minutes, a car comes across and these two guy big guys start yelling at us and threatening us. | ||
| So we get back in the car and we're saying, no, we're just filming this is public property, we can film. | ||
| It's like, get the fuck out of here, where you guys filming. | ||
| Ta-da-da. | ||
| We get in the car, we leave, they start chasing us down 985. | ||
| And I am running out of gas. | ||
| And I stop at a gas station, and the night before I'd watched the Sopranos, which was the wrong thing to do. | ||
| So the whole time I'm imagining it's straight a scene out of the Sopranos, right? | ||
| They stop right behind us as we stopped for gas and they come out of the car again. | ||
| I was like, holy shit. | ||
| Get back in the car, drive out, they continue chasing us, and then we ran out of gas. | ||
| Right out on the highway. | ||
| And we stop the car and decide, I'm calling 911, by the way. | ||
| And uh I called an F uh uh a sheriff's department person I interviewed the day before, and I told her what was happening, and she said, call 911 immediately. | ||
| These are not people you want to be messing with. | ||
| So I call 911, and eventually I stop on the side of the road, they stop next to us because they're dumbfounded. | ||
| They're like, what the fuck? | ||
| Why did they stop? | ||
| They have no idea that we ran out of gas. | ||
| And then the police comes up and they ask them some questions and they came up with this silly excuse and they let them go. | ||
| And a few months later, they were taken down by this massive FBI investigation that was happening at the same time. | ||
| So I interview the guy, Kurt McKenzie, who was the investigator that knew of us at the time. | ||
| They re he realized, oh my god, there's like these crazy journalists that are doing this story and at the same time as they were. | ||
| And we were actively trying to get them to talk to us, the FBI, and they couldn't because they had an ac active investigation. | ||
| Um but uh they actually tapped in, and American Pain, my husband's still knows all about that. | ||
| They tapped, they did taps, riots, on all of these guys. | ||
| So they know everything how they were how they how they knew there were people dying. | ||
| People ODing just outside their clinic and how they were just kept going. | ||
| And the doctors themselves as well. | ||
| They were dirty, dirty, horrible doctors that knew they were people dying, and they couldn't give a shit because they were making millions of dollars. | ||
| They also I think something happens when you see a bunch of people die. | ||
| There's a lot of doctors that are I think uh they get very calloused to the idea of death. | ||
| And especially if it's the idea not not good doctors. | ||
| There's great doctors out there, obviously, but there's sociopaths that become doctors and become even more sociopathic once they realize they can make money off of it. | ||
| And that that whole Florida pain pill scene was a classic example of that, because there's only one way you would have a system like this. | ||
| You'd have a system like this if you want it to be corrupt. | ||
| I mean, it's just designed to be corrupt. | ||
| Designed to be corrupt. | ||
| I mean, how is it possible that you can go? | ||
| I remember I'll never forget interviewing the mother of a kid who had just died, and then a few months later her other kid died. | ||
| So she had two sons and she lost both of them to this. | ||
| And it was all because of the pain clinics. | ||
| And she was showing me the pain bott kill the uh painkiller bottles, the prescription bottles that the kid got. | ||
| It was in it was like hundreds and hundreds of pain pills that the kid got from just doctor shopping. | ||
| They were just selling them. | ||
| And the fact that you could doctor shop. | ||
| The only reason why you would have that, like it's not difficult to have a database. | ||
| I mean, this was like 2000 and what when this was going on. | ||
| What year were you? | ||
| 2008, 2009, that's when we did our story. | ||
| Plenty of computers. | ||
| The internet was around. | ||
| Like this could all be prevented. | ||
| I know, but everybody was just making so much money. | ||
| The doctors, the pain clinics, the distributors, the pharmaceutical companies. | ||
| I mean, the Sackler family. | ||
| The Sackler family. | ||
| Yeah, I know that after Peter Berg's Netflix series, painkiller came out, that they put a halt on because they were supposed to pay an enormous settlement, like six billion. | ||
| Not really enormous compared to their profit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
|
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I was about to say that. | |
| But they was going to supposedly keep them out of jail. | ||
| And I think there was a judge that put a halt on that and they started another investigation. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
| What happened was that they the settlement uh they had agreed to s to to settle as long as they were never found. | ||
| The family itself was never found liable again. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Which is up. | ||
| Yeah, you can't do that. | ||
| You're literally buying your way out of jail when you might be responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people. | ||
| And I mean it's been it's been a million people who have died in the past uh twenty something years from the opiate crisis. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I don't think people realize. | ||
| And this family thinks they're gonna be able to buy their way out of being responsible for maybe a million people dead. | ||
| With a drop in the bucket. | ||
| I mean, they're not directly uh uh you know guilty of all those deaths, but they created the problem of the opiate crisis, the biggest drug epidemic in America's history. | ||
| And they're paying buying their way out with a you know a profit of the uh drop in the bucket of the process of the case. | ||
| Compared to what they have. | ||
| Yeah, they're not even gonna feel it. | ||
| It's six billion dollars. | ||
|
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It's crazy. | |
| Oh it's so evil. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just so evil. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They tracked down the guy who approved it for the FDA. | ||
| Do you know that? | ||
| No. | ||
| He was living in a small town in New Hampshire. | ||
| And uh apparently they had taken the this guy would not approve it, and then they got him in a hotel for a weekend and the pharmaceutical drug companies. | ||
| And no one knows what happened in the hotel, no one knows what they did what kind of deal they made or what happened, but when they got out, he approved it. | ||
| He approved what? | ||
| He approved oxycontin. | ||
|
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From just doing the original. | |
| But he was do you think he was bribed to do that? | ||
| I don't think he did it because he's a nice guy. | ||
| I mean, I don't know what oxycottin has its place, like for terminally ill cancer patients for people dealing with a lot of pain. | ||
| There's a reason why people that it should be available for those in need. | ||
| Aaron Powell Right, but that's not how they were selling. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
| No, they were not. | ||
| In fact, the ads at the time from Purdue Pharma was that less than one percent of people would become addicted from this. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That literally that was the number they gave. | ||
| Less than one percent of addiction rate from the Trevor Burrus, you know what we found out the other day? | ||
| Heroin was created uh to help people who had morphine addiction. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| To try to wean them out. | ||
| To morphine. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I didn't know that. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't know that either. | ||
| That cookie? | ||
|
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It's crazy. | |
| So it's like we've been doing that forever. | ||
| Well, I've got something better for you. | ||
| It's called oxycotton. | ||
| By the way, only one percent of the people got addicted to it. | ||
| And then it was fentanyl too. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, we've we when we investigated fentanyl, they started it started as a drug for termile cancer patients. | ||
| And we went after this one company called Subsys, where the guy, the the the head of that company called John Kapoor, was the first, and I believe only until this day, head of a pharmaceutical company to be charged and go to jail. | ||
| And we had a whistleblower in our investigation, this was before he was arrested and found out and charged. | ||
| We had a whistleblower telling us that s the company in cis pharmaceuticals, subsist was the thing. | ||
| Incis pharmaceutical was the name of the company, that they were doing exactly the same that Purdue Pharma did back in the day, which was they in their case they were actually bribing doctors, they were taking these doctors all to like travel experiences around the world and paying them to prescribe their medication. | ||
| So you'd call and and you'd go to the doctor and say I have a headache, oh, you should be taking sepsis. | ||
| It's a great fentanyl to fentanyl, it's going to cure your your your headache. | ||
| Imagine. | ||
| And then the people at the company hired by INSES, they had their insurance department would call insurance and say, Oh, this person um you need to approve this medication for this person because they have cancer. | ||
| They were lying to insurance because it was only approved insurance would only pay, and these were very expensive drugs if it was for cancer patients. | ||
| So they would lie. | ||
| And this so this whistleblower basically opened up the Pandora's box and told us all about this. | ||
| And then there was a big investigation into it, and it was the first and only, I believe, pharmaceutical company owner that ever went to the prison for it. | ||
|
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|
Wow. | |
| But it was the same playbook. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| So it's like it keeps repeating itself. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell Well, it's just evil, right? | ||
| It's just evil finds a way to manifest itself through any business if you got people that are incentivized by money rather than doing the right thing. | ||
|
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And evil finds a way to go, listen, we can just uh fudge the books. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Listen, we can form a study and make this study seem as if it's a victim by the time they get it. | ||
| By the time they figured out, we made a lot of money. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| And that's the playbook. | ||
| I mean, that's how they got VIOX through. | ||
| It's like clear uh email evidence that they knew it was going to cause serious health problems with people that took it. | ||
| But the the I believe the exact quote was but we believe we will do very well with this. | ||
| It's fucking crazy. | ||
| It's it's evil. | ||
| It's evil. | ||
| And they're detached from it because they're not like seeing the pe purple person die in front of them. | ||
| They're not seeing some child trying to wake their father up and realize their father is cold and dead because he had an overdose in the middle of the night and no one's taking them to school because their dad's dead. | ||
| You know, like they don't they don't see any of that. | ||
| They're they're, you know, sipping scotch in some fucking country club somewhere and driving around in a Mercedes and they're just looking at the amount of numbers that they made from that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It's evil. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, it's evil. | ||
| I remember interviewing a woman, we did a story about fake pharmaceuticals and why I think it's 20 million Americans that can't afford their pharmaceuticals, so they go to places like Mexico and online to Indian pharmaceutical companies or fake and buy medication that sometimes works, but a lot of times is counterfeit and is bad and actually can kill you. | ||
| And I remember interviewing the sort of the head of this big lobby, one of the biggest DC lobby groups for pharmaceutical companies, and asking her, and she was very happy to be on the show because we were talking about counterfeit, right? | ||
| And she thought she was going to be able to just talk about how bad for counterfeit medications are and how important it is it to buy the real medications from real pharmacies. | ||
| And I was asking her, but y but what does it say about the pharmaceutical companies and the healthcare system in this country when 20 million Americans can't afford their life-saving medications? | ||
| What do you think that says? | ||
| And she says, Oh, I don't, you know, I'd uh the med medications that these they're too expensive. | ||
| We have to figure out a way to bring prices down. | ||
| And you know, they always say that it's not for profit, it's for research and development, which is bullshit. | ||
| Because a lot of it there is is used for marketing and a lot of you it is is used for it's profit, right? | ||
| It's they're making a fucking ton of money out of it. | ||
| They make so much money. | ||
| And and I and I answered, have you ever actually spent time with anyone who's struggling to buy their medications? | ||
| As the head of this pharmaceutical lobby, have you spent time with any of these people? | ||
| She was like, no. | ||
| Like straight out, no. | ||
| It's like how can you how can you represent the pharmaceutical companies? | ||
| Know that one of the biggest problems we have in this country is that people cannot afford these medications and not have spent one single minute with a person who has a hard time affording these medications, right? | ||
| That sounds able to. | ||
| It's that but it's that disconnect that you're talking about, right? | ||
| It's not actually understanding the problem or wanting to know the people that are being affected by these problems. | ||
| Yeah, and they're the medications are so expensive. | ||
| Some medications are so ridiculously expensive. | ||
| And you realize like they're not they don't have to be that expensive. | ||
| This is just a a company making massive amounts of profit. | ||
| They could stop a lot of that if they cut that revolving door bullshit out. | ||
| If they made it so that if you work for the FDA, you can't just hop over to Eli Lilly like right away after you leave. | ||
| Like you have to wait ten years. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Say that. | ||
| Like, okay, you want a career some way. | ||
| You could not profit at all from the pharmaceutical drug industry for ten years after you're done being a regulator. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I I agree with you and I know that it's a huge conflict of interest, and we've seen how bad that can be and prejudicial how bad it could be. | ||
| But I also um I try to put myself if that I've spent my whole whole entire career, um, you know, with ambition and trying to do good, and then I end up at the FDA and I have a chance to do something good, and then I yeah, whatever happens, I lose my job, or right? | ||
| You're in the vampire machine. | ||
| Then what you realize like, oh, this whole system's fucked. | ||
| Let me just hop on over to Galaxo Smith Crowd. | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm just trying to figure out like what's I want to get a house in the suburbs. | |
| I know, I know, but I I try to see with it see look at it through other eyes and see like, okay, we have to figure out what these people are going to do because what do you do after if you can't work for ten years? | ||
| This is what they've lived all their lives working in, right? | ||
| Sort of, but I think it's incentivized. | ||
| I think that they're they are making laws and pushing things specifically at the behest of the pharmaceutical drug industry, knowing that there's a golden parachute awaiting them. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I don't think all of them. | ||
| I think a lot of people, and I've interviewed the head of the the uh the uh CDC the it was a a while back we did a story about um anyway, I've interviewed some of these government officials uh that work at the FDA and um I don't think all of them work are there with better. | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| But a lot of the ones that do know it's available and the shocking number of people that leave those positions of being a regulator and go over to work for the pharmaceutical drug. | ||
| I mean, that's a kind of crazy conflict of interest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It is a huge, huge problem. | ||
| If you've been passing laws and winking at people and shaking hands and playing golf with them, and then you make it easy for them, and then all of a sudden you work for them? | ||
| And you're making a million and a half a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo. | |
| Yeah, of course it is. | ||
| A lot of people like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And that's why it's a dirty ass business. | ||
| And then you got a dirty ass business because they sponsor all the news. | ||
| Like brought to you by Pfizer, Anderson Cooper brought to you by Pfizer. | ||
| It's so crazy. | ||
| It only exists in America, you know. | ||
| I think that's a good idea. | ||
| Callie Means was talking about this and said the issue is not that this way more people will buy their drugs. | ||
| The issue is now the media won't criticize their drugs. | ||
| Uh because they need it. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They've financially invested in these companies. | ||
| They're partners basically. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Without the pharmaceutical drug companies, I think cable news would be in deep shit. | ||
| Well, as a member of the media, I've never had that problem. | ||
| I have never had and I have investigated as you know, pharmaceutical companies before. | ||
| But I've never had my boss tell me I can't. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But you look at the kind of stuff you do, you know. | ||
| You're you're you're doing the real stuff. | ||
| Like you're boots on the ground in the scariest parts of the world. | ||
| You're doing a different thing. | ||
| You're a real journalist, and I really appreciate that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| And um that's you know you're not getting that on TV on for the most part. | ||
| You know, it's only it has to be on a show like yours, but like on TV news, you're you're not getting that kind of I mean not that kind of investigative journalism that you do as applied to everything. | ||
| But there's a lot of conflicts of interest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So a lot of people that don't want you investigating certain things, you know, don't want you investigate waste and fraud in government and that's the role of journalism, yeah. | ||
| I mean, people in power have a hard time with the truth. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And their job is to go out and w which I know, but which is why, you know, it's so troublesome that we live at a time where people don't believe in journalists and think that all journalists are either fake or they're lying, and that's a real problem because it's a real problem for all of us. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| I think it is. | ||
| But the one solution to that um I think is a mainstream journalism has to change its way. | ||
| They you can't just be working as a propaganda arm for the Republican or the Democratic Party, which is what Fox News does and which is what you know, MSNBC does. | ||
| They they were they're st they stick within the lines, right? | ||
| And you also it opens the door for independent journalists, which I think is the most promising part of it. | ||
| The people that come through that you know you can count on because they always tell the truth about stuff. | ||
| And then they develop a reputation like guys like Gren Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibee, those type of Michael Shellenberger, those type of people that work for mainstream organizations and then realize these are this I'm being constrained and this is not real journalism, this is not what I signed up for. | ||
| Like Matt Taibi, I trust that guy just with everything. | ||
| He doesn't lie. | ||
| And he's gonna tell you what he knows about this and why he thinks it's this way and what's going on. | ||
| Regardless of party lines, regardless. | ||
| Have you ever read Hate Inc. | ||
| No, his book? | ||
| Really fucking good. | ||
| He makes the case that Rachel Maddow is Bill O'Reilly on the left. | ||
| It's like basically the same thing. | ||
| And he's just talking about this whole industry that's sort of set up with media to keep everybody at each other's throats. | ||
| And that's what they're selling. | ||
| They're selling hate and outrage every day. | ||
| And your dad gets home, oh, these motherfuckers and he's yelling at the TV. | ||
| Like that's what that is. | ||
| It's like everybody's being played. | ||
| But in your real life, what how are you encountering most of this? | ||
| Most of this you're not encountering. | ||
| Like you you don't need to be this elevated and agitated. | ||
| But then you're online on your Twitter feed arguing with people and it's like, ah. | ||
| Everybody's going crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's the attention economy, right? | ||
| That's what we're doing. | ||
| We need a Martin Luther King. | ||
| We need someone who has a very compelling voice that preaches nonviolence and someone who resonates with people because he's a powerful speaker, or she's a powerful speaker who has this message. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Maybe it's James Talarico. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like he's he's a good man. | ||
| Like he's a genuinely good man. | ||
| And uh but that was the point was like if you're a right winger and you go, fuck those Antifa people, you gotta realize like stop. | ||
| Stop being on a team. | ||
| Because these kooky theocrats, they're on this side too. | ||
| They want to turn this entire state into theocracy. | ||
| Like there's a lot of nutty people on the right too. | ||
| The right wing militias, they're fucking insane too. | ||
| Don't ignore them. | ||
| And on the left, hey, don't ignore Antifa. | ||
| Hey, don't like the Capitol building on fire. | ||
| Hey, don't take over giant chunks of Seattle and and change the name of it. | ||
| Remember that when they did that? | ||
| Do you remember the what did they call it? | ||
| Chaz. | ||
| Remember that? | ||
| Where they took over and the the mayor said maybe it's the summer of love. | ||
| They took over blocks of Seattle. | ||
| Wait, this was we're talking about Antifa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I mean, what is Antifa, right? | ||
| It's just a lot of people. | ||
| But that's the thing. | ||
| I think maybe that's what Jimmy Kimmel meant when when he was I d I didn't see the case. | ||
| They have a handbook, they have a flag. | ||
| Like Antifa has a lot of people. | ||
| Yeah, but it's several different groups, right? | ||
| It's not there's not one group. | ||
| It's not like, you know, some of these right wing groups that are. | ||
| Right, but you can say Islamic terrorism. | ||
| Are you talking about Hamas? | ||
| Are you talking about Hezbollah? | ||
| There's a lot of different factions, but the reality is there is Islamic terrorism and there is antifa. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, I like I said, I have reported on them. | ||
| I'm not denying that they exist. | ||
| The thing is the people on the left don't know. | ||
| It's more decentralized, is what I mean. | ||
| They want to ignore it because they're the tough guys of the left. | ||
| They're the people that are gonna go out and do the dirty work that needs to be done. | ||
| The same way that people would look at like some right-wing militias if they're a right wing, uh a few extremists, but hey, they keep those left-wing people on their toes. | ||
| Like Yeah, we need we need more independent journalists, I think you're right, going back to the independent journalist. | ||
| It's it's partly why I've uh now started this podcast on YouTube, is because I know it's a place that I can keep doing if it grows, and I hope it will, doing the kind of reporting that I do that I don't have to depend on a Disney or uh as much as I thank Disney and National Notre Graphic for having me all these years, it is really important to be able to do independent journalism and not be uh limited and st and and and be told what you can and cannot do. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| It is crucial for the health and and survival of our democracy. | ||
| So YouTube is actually an amazing platform for that. | ||
| It really is. | ||
| Unfortunately, because of social media, you can kind of suss out who's legit and who's just a propagandist. | ||
| You know, it's a really interesting I agree. | ||
| Yeah, because now like if you're a person who's uh an independent journalist, but it seems fishy that you always talk about one issue all the time and then all of a sudden someone finds out, oh look, this guy gets funding from this organization. | ||
| And this organization is run by this guy, and this guy supports, you know, he's from Russia or whatever it is. | ||
| Or just by perpetrating perpetuating these lies, I will keep my fan base, even if I know that is a lie. | ||
| It's not I don't even think it's like they're being paid to say this. | ||
| I think that they get they get their audience and their followers and paid that way. | ||
| They're also probably not the most nuanced thinkers. | ||
| Oh, they're definitely not the most nuanced thing. | ||
| Or willing to be able to do it. | ||
| But yeah, but it makes them money to not be. | ||
| I had a friend who briefly worked on a right wing show, and one of the things that the host told him was, hey man, you gotta stay and defend the party. | ||
| Like whatever the party says, like whatever you gotta go with that and get them on your side. | ||
| That's how you build an audience. | ||
| And he was like, Right. | ||
| but that's exactly it. | ||
| Well my friend was like I'm out. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| No I'm not doing that. | ||
| Like I'm gonna tell you my opinions on things. | ||
| And some of my opinions are very left wing. | ||
| So I'm not doing that. | ||
| So he left. | ||
| Good kudos to him. | ||
| But this is the world that we're living in now. | ||
| Where it's like people decide that they're gonna only adhere to one ideology and you don't realize how malleable humans are. | ||
| It's so easy to form a group and have everybody like get a part of it and have an ideology and it could be positive or it could be negative. | ||
| And if it's negative and everybody's on board with it, then you got Hamas. | ||
| Or then you've got, you know, whatever. | ||
| Whatever organization it is you've got the you know fill it out. | ||
| I think it's a comfortable it's a much more comfortable way of living to believe that there's bad people and then you're the good part. | ||
| And there's that other side and you're on this side. | ||
| You're on the good side, right? | ||
| You just gotta never be willing to do evil because you think you're doing it against evil people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You can't do that. | ||
| Because then you're evil. | ||
| Like you're the thing that you're trying to which is interesting we we did a story about assassins and uh we interviewed an assassin in America and an assassin in uh South Africa which has the highest rates of assassins and that is exactly what they said when they justified what they do. | ||
| Which is the worst of the worst crime, right? | ||
| You're taking away somebody's life but that is their justification was that they were killing bad people. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so they're you know God was on their side and they were killing bad people. | ||
| But it's it's it's a little bit not on assassin level but it's a little bit that that idea. | ||
| Like I I'm that's a crazy rationalization. | ||
| You know that's what Genghis Khan used to say. | ||
| That he was killing his Khan you must have done something horrible for God to bring me Oh my God. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Then I'm your punishment of God. | ||
| That was his quote is the craziest quote from a guy that killed fifty million people in his lifetime or responsible at least indirectly to fifty plus million people dying. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| But imagine that I'm on you know God must have sent me you must be terrible if God sent me I mean when you bring God to the equation right but that's how crazy people could rationalize evil that like I'm working for God to just destroy this whole village. | ||
| I'm gonna kill a million people in this village and stack their bodies up in the center. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's what Genghis Khan did he said well God must have uh really hated you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| He sent me right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well people could do that with anything and this is the problem with tribalism. | ||
| This is the problem with being on a team because if you're on the left you hate the people on the right. | ||
| If you're on the right you hate the people on the left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And you know you you wear your outfits like maybe you have blue hair, you got an American flag t shirt you know and everybody hates everybody. | ||
| It's like for what? | ||
| Right and then they're on social media talking about stuff with so many opinions with with no actual knowledge. | ||
| Like not once having spent time actually on the ground looking at any of these issues, right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| They talk about these immigrant raid immigration raids or drugs coming across but not one not one single one of these people that have all these opinions have actually spent a fucking day reporting on it on the I saw one of the um conversations with Tom Holman where they were saying that seventy percent of the people that they catch coming across let me say this seventy percent of the people that they catch and send back are criminals. | ||
| Bullshit even if it was true why don't you get that down to a hundred percent like why don't you like figure out who's not a criminal and then you'll have everybody on your side like if you're only deporting gang members no one would be complaining. | ||
| If you're only going after known gang members and getting them only going after known scammers, criminals whatever anybody's doing then you'd have everybody on your side. | ||
| Like thirty percent is crazy. | ||
| Imagine if that applied to most things like if most people who are accused of a crime 30% of them were in the 70% were guilty the thirty percent were innocent three out of ten and everyone's getting fucking snatched up and mass. | ||
| But you know that that number is not correct. | ||
| It's actually forty percent that have some sort of uh criminal history criminal history but a lot of times nonviolent it can be a misdemeanor it can be actually a prop parking ticket. | ||
| And only seven percent of the people being Deported have been are have have criminal uh have c have been charged with criminal violence. | ||
| So it the numbers are insane. | ||
| I wonder if they could mitigate some of this shit if they just change the way the census works. | ||
| But I don't think they can. | ||
| I think it's a constitutional thing. | ||
| I think it's the way the Constitution is written. | ||
| I think it has something to do with just the way it says it, it doesn't say lawful citizens. | ||
| I think it says people living. | ||
| People living. | ||
| Which is, you know, kind of you know, they're people. | ||
| They're just people. | ||
| Like people with paperwork and people not paperwork. | ||
| We just gotta figure out who's a fucking criminal. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That should be the only thing that everybody agrees on. | ||
| Which take money, which takes money and resources, right? | ||
| It's a lot harder. | ||
| They think that they were moving people into this country politically to get these people eventually a pathway to citizenship, and then they would have lifelong voters. | ||
| And this is what this is the allegations of why they were moving people to luxury hotels in New York City and paying them and and doing it in Chicago as well, where the people that were poor that were living in Chicago were like, hey, we're not getting these resources. | ||
| Like why are you giving these resources to people that just came here from another country? | ||
| This is obviously before all the ice raids, which have completely changed public opinion. | ||
| So that's where it gets really fucked up because there's people that probably would have been willing to vote Republican again because they didn't like what the Democrats were doing because essentially they had a dead man who was pretending to be president and then they just had some people running the government from behind the scenes, we're not really sure who that was, and that doesn't seem right. | ||
| So I voted Republican. | ||
| There's a lot of people that feel that way. | ||
| But then they see this and they're like, I can't support that. | ||
| I can't support this heartless shit. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| And I'm sure I catch shit for it online, but lucky I don't read it. | ||
| You never read it, right? | ||
| You don't read the online stories. | ||
| You gotta if you have to. | ||
| If you're in a position like I'm in, you have to stay sane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And the only way to stay sane is to say as conflict free as possible. | ||
| So even though I talk a lot of shit, I don't read anything anybody says back. | ||
| Like say it all. | ||
| You're allowed to. | ||
| You should be. | ||
| I mean, I don't read what people are posting about, but I read all the messages I get sent and everything. | ||
| And I reply and everything. | ||
| That's very nice of you. | ||
| It's just it's not tenable at my Oh, of course not. | ||
| But it it it it would be nice if I knew they were gonna be nice. | ||
| You know like people that I meet are almost all nice. | ||
| Yeah, I mean it's almost universally nice people. | ||
| It's so much easier to be mean online than it is face to face, right? | ||
| Even people that I know don't like me. | ||
| Like I you know, there's certain people like I could sell say what I mean. | ||
| I say hi and they're like hi. | ||
| And like they don't like me because I represent something, but they're not mean to me. | ||
| You know, whereas in the privacy of their own home or sitting on the toilet, they could say the most awful shit on Twitter. | ||
| I don't need to read that. | ||
| And I would probably say it if I was them too. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| If you're you feel powerless and voiceless and you see someone doing something that you don't agree with, and then you have this Twitter account and you just like fuck that guy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You I get it. | ||
| I understand it, but I I can't read it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| No, I don't think you should. | ||
| Well, I never drank for that reason. | ||
| I always drank for fun. | ||
| Uh I just you know, I think uh social media for the most part is uh net positive. | ||
| I think um You think so? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I do. | ||
| I mean, I I love it and I use it and I use it as a tool from the work that I do 100%. | ||
| But uh but I I I I've you I'm a very optimistic person, and I always thought, you know, there's there's a reason you know, there's great ways of using social media like you do. | ||
| But uh with with young people nowadays and young people it's very challenging. | ||
| But this is what I think. | ||
| Information is almost always good. | ||
| And then the understanding that some of the information is bad is good because then you realize like, oh, don't trust everything. | ||
| Like figure out what's right and what's wrong, and then finding verifiable, like accurate sources of information is good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like all the things that are. | ||
| That's what I think is harder and harder to do, right? | ||
| Yeah, but you can do it. | ||
| But the point is at least more information is available now than ever before, which just makes it very difficult for governments to pull off stuff that they were trying to pull off before. | ||
| It makes it very difficult for people to get get scammed, like they were getting scammed in the past. | ||
| It's just it's it's just there's gonna be a bunch of people that get duped, no matter what. | ||
| And there's gonna be a bunch of people that get kidnapped by social media, meaning that their attention span and their focus, their life becomes a part of that thing. | ||
| But I think this is a new and emerging aspect of society that we will navigate and that we will learn from the failures. | ||
| And it will cost a lot of people their happiness and prosperity. | ||
| A lot of people will get wrapped up in that shit and it will fuck them up and that's net negative, right? | ||
| But I think we'll learn from it like you don't want to get bit by the rattlesnake. | ||
| You hear that rattle? | ||
| Get the fuck out of there. | ||
| Well we'll realize through all these other people's mistakes where the pitfalls are so we'll have to develop more robust ways of thinking about things and more resilience. | ||
| More resiliency. | ||
| And I think that's the net positive. | ||
| And then this communication with people all over the world net positive, I think, ultimately. | ||
| The real problem is the real the challenging aspect of it is a lot of people you're communicating with aren't real. | ||
| And that's that's a giant problem now. | ||
| China was busted using Chat GPT to promulgate they're using it to um they were going into Reddit forums and uh they're using it on social media and they they're pr they were pretending to be people and they were arguing about stuff. | ||
| And you know you could just give it a prompt like from the position of a white supremacist, say why all Mexicans should be to create division. | ||
| Uh-huh to create division I know in this country. | ||
| I know and so that's a giant percentage of all social media discourse. | ||
| So I don't necessarily think you should be going back and forth with people. | ||
| But I think as a source of information and news and alternative perspectives and boots on the ground people like hey I'm reporting live from Gaza look what they just did to this Air Party. | ||
| And it was what we thought was going to happen when the Arab Spring happened you know because everybody has a phone and finally we were able to film these amazing magnetic revolutions but I think that promise is sort of waited a little bit I I have to point out one thing you said how scams are not as prevalent these days. | ||
| I shouldn't have said that that's not what I meant really I meant um the government that it's very it's more difficult for government government in the golden age of scams. | ||
| I get like 30 texts a day. | ||
| The dude that owned my phone number before me this dude Raymond was a moron and Raymond Raymond you fucking idiot did you sign up for everything pitch? | ||
| Because this guy like every day like hey Raymond your loan's been approved. | ||
| So really fun I'm going to come on your podcast next year once I'm done with this project but I'm working on a really fun project for National Geographic which is where I say yes to every single scam that comes my way. | ||
| Oh boy and it's been the craziest wildest journey of the thing I I just can tell you that I've been I have romantic relationships with people. | ||
| Ah damn I spend a lot of time on my burner phone with people love bombing me. | ||
| Really? | ||
| But it's not it's a fake persona like I I put a wig and glasses and you use your own picture. | ||
| You don't even use AI? | ||
| I know I don't use AI. | ||
| We actually sort of modified we put a fake nose on me and a wig and glasses but uh people say it doesn't look at all like me. | ||
| I I can see it's me. | ||
| But um but I will talk it's it's really fascinating. | ||
| But also to talk about scams which I can talk about a lot is uh we are living in the golden age of scams. | ||
| Uh I think it was Baron Buffett that said fraud and scams are the number one industry growth industry of our time. | ||
| And one of the stories we did which is so sad and I hate to bring it down back to a b uh sad topic but is that we I didn't know this before starting to report on it which a lot of times you think you know these scammers, these guys that are texting and emailing you and calling you that these are you know people in West Africa or you know wherever but like loan operators. | ||
| Well we did a story about these scam factories. | ||
| Have you heard of these? | ||
| No. | ||
| It's these compounds in places like Cambodia and Myanmar in Asia where they are it's basically factories with sometimes with thousands and thousands of people forced labor. | ||
| So these are mostly people from India, sometimes Brazil, other Asian countries, the Philippines is a big place, where they respond to ads to work in what they think are legitimate businesses, to work in online companies and whatnot. | ||
| And they are they pay for their expenses to travel to these places to Cambodia and Myanmar. | ||
| In Myanmar, they're operating out of this area that's that's an ongoing civil war and is ruled by these militias and they get in there and they as soon as they get in, they take away their passports and they're trapped and they're forced to scam. | ||
| So they spend 24-7 scamming Americans and European people. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| And it is an industry where they're making billions of dollars. | ||
| The US government just recently seized uh fifteen billion dollars from one company from one group of people alone in crypto. | ||
| It's the craziest thing. | ||
| So these people are being tortured and and um you know beaten, sometimes killed and forced to to scam. | ||
| So we went actually to Myanmar we were smuggled into the border into Myanmar into the country illegally. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| Um across the river um and uh spent time in this town that was basically built by these this Chinese gang that was all with the money of scamming Americans and uh they were trying to build like a mini Macau and the guy that ran the the the company is called Yatai International and he took us on a tour of this mini Macau and it was so surreal. | ||
| It was like these aquaparks with no one in the aquapark and these luxury casinos. | ||
| We ended the night so crazy in uh we were trying this guy said he would give us an interview but first we had to do the tour. | ||
| So and the interview would happen the next day. | ||
| So we ended a night this was actually not filmed in a karaoke that was a massive room where every single the whole every wall and the ceiling was all a screen it was like the future. | ||
| And this is in a war torn area of a country that's incredibly poor and they've built this place with millions and billions of dollars from from profits of scamming. | ||
| And we ended the night with this guy who's basically the head of this criminal Chinese gang running these scams in this karaoke singing Celine Dion and Whitney Houston and being poured whiskey and whatever high-end uh uh brand we wanted you were getting drunk with them? | ||
| Oh my God, yes. | ||
| I was singing my heart out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I spent the whole night singing Whitney Houston the videos are so embarrassing because I cannot sing to my life. | |
| But I was like we need to get this guy on tape so I'm just gonna do whatever. | ||
| And then the next day we interviewed him and uh and it was just fucking crazy. | ||
| And we ended our last day I mean we interviewed a Chinese dude so sad like 21 year old who was caught trying to escape and was chased out of the building he ran out of a third floor broke both his legs one at the hip practically died was actually saved by an onlooker who took him to the hospital and then moved to Thailand where I met him he was in a wheelchair told us about beatings. | ||
| We spoke to another Indian kid also who was for like they had a water hose on his body for he was forced to stand for 24 hours um and then electrocuted and I mean the videos out of these places were insane like people with uh horrific wounds and people c dying and killed and yeah and just forced to be forced and I'm to scam forced to fucking scam into scamming. | ||
| Yeah, forced into scamming. | ||
| And then we interviewed a girl called Angel who was raped repeatedly by her bosses and she's sort of the face model. | ||
| So a lot of times after speaking to these what they think are romantic relationships for a long time, they want to see people's faces. | ||
| So this is the girl that then they put a fake of AI face on top of her but it has to be a girl because of the manurisms and the voice and they have this girl who actually speaks English and she would talk to victims of scams and pretend that she was the wonderful woman that they'd been dating for months and and convince them to put their money into this crypto business that was fake and uh and take millions out of these victims. | ||
| So this woman starts crying and telling me how she knows she's doing something awful but and how she's raped and how she doesn't want to be doing and uh at the end she says I just want your I said yes to doing this even though it's incredibly dangerous but I accepted doing this because I just want a message for the victims in America the people that I've spoken to that I don't that I'm sorry. | ||
| I just want to apologize for all the harm that I've caused and she's like in two years but I have no way out I mean these are heart wrenching heart wrenching stories. | ||
| And the last day we were there to um there's this amazing organization called Acts of Mercy, religious based organization that is working to try to get these people out. | ||
| And a lot of these bosses actually if you can pay for ransom, you can pay $10,000 to save a person from there. | ||
| So because if you're a bad scammer, if you're there and you're horrible and you're you know, if you're sad and depressed and you're not doing your job, it's better for these bosses if you just get paid $10,000 to let this person go. | ||
| So there was this case of this the Filipino woman who uh the boss had agreed to twelve thousand dollar uh payment to release her. | ||
| But it's really dangerous for there's this negotiator that goes and sort of tries to get her out of this compound. | ||
| But he has to come with the money and he has to be able to pay the crime boss, but he also has to pay the militias to get him in. | ||
| So it was like a whole process. | ||
| And we were with this group, Acts of Mercy, and another guy, filming them as they're on the phone negotiating her release and they're on the phone with her. | ||
| She's inside the scam center, and she's like, Where do I go? | ||
| This scam center is massive. | ||
| She had no idea where to go. | ||
| And they're saying, go to the West Gate and the guy is there waiting for you. | ||
| She's like, I don't know where to go. | ||
| And she's crying. | ||
| If they see me with a phone, because it's a confiscated phone, they're gonna beat me and they're gonna put me in the dark room where I'm beaten and you know tortured for for days. | ||
| And the and and uh Amy, the woman on this side is telling her, Believe us, there's somebody waiting for you. | ||
| Do not be afraid, bring your phone. | ||
| We need to be telling you how to get there. | ||
| It's just whole it was a sole ordeal. | ||
| It was like fucking insane. | ||
| It was out of a movie. | ||
| And in the end, they didn't manage to get her out. | ||
| Um but she was not that day, but she was released a month later. | ||
| Um and she made it to safety. | ||
| But so this just to show how dangerous and difficult it is, even when they agree to let them go. | ||
| So what are most of the scams? | ||
| Are most of the scams from the case? | ||
| Crypto scams. | ||
| They're called pig butchering scams. | ||
| Um because it's an express Chinese expression. | ||
| It started in China. | ||
| It started as a domestic scam in China actually. | ||
| And the uh pig butchering because the idea is that you fatten the pig, which is your victim, and then you kill them at the end, right? | ||
| And and uh which that's why it's called pig butchering. | ||
| But the idea is that you meet somebody online and it's usually a beautiful girl or man, and um and you create you start a relationship with that person. | ||
| You start starting to do it. | ||
| How do they meet them? | ||
| You know those texts that you get a lot of times like, hey, I haven't talked to you in a while. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| A lot of those are pig butchering scams. | ||
| A lot of messages you get on Instagram from these beautiful girls or like stepping it up because I got a few eye messages like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, me too. | |
| Like, whoa. | ||
| Me too. | ||
| Not even just a r green text bubble anymore. | ||
| They got iPhones now. | ||
| And then they tell you, you know, follow me on Instagram and then you go, let's go on WhatsApp. | ||
| And then they are sending you photos of them in their private jets and living this wonderful life. | ||
| Is that what they're doing with you? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| With your new ways. | ||
| So these scams that you're gonna do. | ||
| One of the one we're trying to get is that we're getting several different kinds of scams, like Indian call centers and all all of the different schemes. | ||
| But eventually they start saying, Look, we are leave living, and so you're curious, like, how do you like how are you making so much money? | ||
| It's like, oh yeah, I've been investing in crypto and you know, I can't really tell you much about it now. | ||
| So they they c last it can last months. | ||
| And at some point they're like, okay, I've built a relationship. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I'm gonna tell you how I do it. | ||
| You've got five thousand dollars right now, and then you put the five thousand dollars, and then they show profit on these fake websites. | ||
| It looks completely legitimate. | ||
| And you're saying, Oh my god, I put five thousand and now I have ten. | ||
| How much more can I put in? | ||
| So people are going all in. | ||
| And they're like everything they have. | ||
| 401Ks, they're remortgaging their houses, everything. | ||
| And then w did you hear the case of about the guy in Kansas? | ||
| No. | ||
| The bank guy, the guy that was the head of this bank in Kansas. | ||
| Jamie, did you hear about this? | ||
| It's a fucking fascinating story. | ||
| It was a story in the New York Times and then it got reported everywhere. | ||
| I was trying to get this guy to talk to me because the story is fascinating. | ||
| So this guy, amazing member of the community, small town in Kansas, the local bank that was started by the farmers decades a decades ago, it's where all the farm community was put would put their money, would trust this bank. | ||
| Well, it turns out that this guy, the head of this bank that everybody trusted, outstanding member of the community, was stole uh millions of dollars from the bank and the bank went bankrupt. | ||
| And he was stealing the money because he was being scammed by a pig butchering scam. | ||
| And it started with him putting his own money. | ||
| And then they kept on saying that in order to release the funds and all the mil millions that he'd made from his initial investment, he would put in more and more money. | ||
| I think he ended up putting in what something like that. | ||
| Forty-seven million from from the customer accounts to scammers depleting the bank's holdings. | ||
| When a state banking regulator uncovered this fraud, it closed the bank and called the FBI. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| He started slow investing a few thousand dollars in twenty twenty-two to buy what he thought was cryptocurrency. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| How sad is that? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| I mean, awful, obviously he was stealing from his customers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| But I find it so he actually traveled to Australia at one point thinking he was going to meet these the the people that owed him money. | ||
| I mean, he actually was completely scammed. | ||
| And this is like the head of a bank. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The head of a fucking bank. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| It's fucking crazy. | ||
| These guys are so good. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| They get a a banker. | ||
| But it's a banker in Kansas, though, you know what I'm saying? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Come on. | |
| Sorry, Kansas. | ||
| But you know what I'm saying. | ||
| Well, he's in prison now. | ||
| Oh, well, he should be. | ||
| He stole 47 million dollars. | ||
| But he's also a dumbass. | ||
| And the crazy thing is that you could be a dumbass and be a smart person if greed gets involved. | ||
| Greed is like for greed I think greed for shady people it's almost it's kind of fascinating Because it you gotta know at one point in time this is not smart. | ||
| But the greed is like, but what if it is? | ||
| But i I think more than greed. | ||
| I think it's the acceptance that you have lost all that money. | ||
| And that must weigh so heavily on you. | ||
| If you have you know, if you're about to foreclose your home, if you'd sent all the money from your kids' college funds, if you're yeah, but even the banker. | ||
| I mean, but even the banker, he sent all his initially it was a big thing. | ||
| That's all greed. | ||
| I I I don't think I think he got to a point that he was swindled and made to believe that if you give more money, he would can't he would get the money that he initially invested back. | ||
| And he would be able to put back the 45 million that he gave he stole from his customers. | ||
| I think the realization, and this is something that I know from talking to so many scammed scamming victims, the it's not so much about wanting to make that money, it's the realization that you've been talking to somebody that's not real and that you have been so swindled and you know I don't want to use the word dumb because I think all of us can fall victims to these scams. | ||
| But that the the acceptance of that is really difficult. | ||
| So you just want to keep on believing it. | ||
| You just pay whatever you need to pay so the dream stays alive. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. | ||
| There's a Carl Sagan quote about that, that it's easier to convince a person. | ||
| Like it's harder to like once a person has been swindled, it's much more difficult to convince them of the swindle. | ||
| They'll they'll find ways to justify that it must be true. | ||
| 100 percent. | ||
| I I feel that with this experiment I'm doing right now. | ||
| I mean, even though I know I'm being swindled, but there's something about once you're deep in that relationship, it's it's yeah, it's it it does something funny to you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| It's also exciting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| And that's the problem is that most of life is boring. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| And if you you're involved in something that may or may not yield money or may or may not yield some sort of romantic relationship or may or may not yield 100% a drug deal. | ||
| Or a celebrity scam, which is huge these days. | ||
| If you're talking if you think you're talking to, you know, Brad Pitt. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Like you give up, maybe maybe your life has a meaning, right? | ||
| There's a reason why you're here. | ||
| There's something exciting happening. | ||
| Aaron Powell Especially if you have like a 65 IQ. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the problem. | ||
| There's a lot of dumbasses out there. | ||
| And it's not fair to scam those people. | ||
| Some scams like we tolerate, like televists. | ||
| We feel uh we're we're like, look, if you really believe that guy with the private jet and the Bentley, that guy, you need send him money because God wants you to send him money, you're on your own. | ||
| You know, it's such a dumb scam. | ||
| It's so out in the open. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Astrology is another one I've been looking into. | ||
| I don't know if astrology is a hundred percent bullshit. | ||
| This is my take on astrology. | ||
| I think at one point in time, they had some knowledge about astrology that may or may not be lost. | ||
| Maybe some people understand it. | ||
| I I'm I'm a believer like you. | ||
| There's thousands of books that are like ancient books, I don't know, thousands, but a lot, written about the very specific details of astrology. | ||
| Like in terms of like where the constellations are, what time of the day it is, where you know where the earth is in relationship to Mars. | ||
| It's very weird stuff. | ||
| Because I want to know like what the fuck was the origin of all this. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I meant psychic scammers, sorry, non-astrology. | ||
| I meant psychic scammer. | ||
| Oh, psychic scammers. | ||
| Yes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a believer in astrology as well as I think there's something to real astrology. | |
| I need to get a real astrologer on. | ||
| I've tried to find one that I think is legit. | ||
| What sign are you, by the way? | ||
| I am a Leo. | ||
| Oh, of course you were. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| So is my son, so is my dad. | ||
| It's uh one of my favorite signs. | ||
| I'm a Taurus. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Um I don't know I th I think that like newspaper astrology is bullshit. | ||
| Yeah, of course it's a good thing. | ||
| But I don't know that real astrology is not nonsense. | ||
| Wait, do you get do you get that a lot that when you say you're a Leoli, they say, yeah, of course you are. | ||
| I've heard it before. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Oh, because you like the the spotlight, right? | ||
| Which is my son and my dad as well. | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Leo Leos like to what is it? | |
| It's uh like attention, yeah. | ||
| I'm I think I'm a little Leo as well. | ||
| But I'm a I'm a Taurus, I'm still like bullheaded, I've heard, you know, strong willed. | ||
| That's tort that's a Leo's tourist as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Taurus as well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Right, the bull. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, the bull. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Um but I don't what I'm talking about is like the super specific stuff. | ||
| Like you were born at 3 a.m. | ||
| You were conceived nine months before that. | ||
| When were you conceived? | ||
| What was going on? | ||
| They like how does you know where where what in the procession of the equinoxes, where's this the position of the earth? | ||
| You know, there's a lot of weird stuff they take into consideration. | ||
| I'm like, wow, look I'd l really like to learn about it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like from someone I'm gonna have someone on that really understand that I just have to have someone on who's not a kook. | ||
| And that's the problem, is it's like one of those disciplines that's littered with kooks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| I find it fascinating too. | ||
| And I'm a non-believer in everything. | ||
| I'm very skeptical about everything, but astrology I've always kind of believed into. | ||
| I mean, it's it's the idea that you know, where the sun and the stars they have an effect on on tides and currents and why wouldn't that all have an effect? | ||
| I mean, I know nothing about it, but why wouldn't it have an effect of on you when you're born and when and where and the time. | ||
| Right, and it's probably a part of nature's natural order too, to create a bunch of different kinds of people. | ||
| Yeah, maybe. | ||
| Because I mean what makes you who you are. | ||
| There's a lot of factors, right? | ||
| There's environment, there's genetics, and then there's probably some celestial shit going on. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I'm not you know, I don't know enough about it to but um I'm open to it because I think there's a lot of information that was lost. | ||
| I think there's a lot of information that we would dismiss, you know, from ancient civilizations that we dismiss that I think I think the problem is that these ancient civilizations collapsed and like with the burning of the library of Alexandria, you're left with very little. | ||
| Like you a lot a lot of like very important information is missing. | ||
| And so then you gotta kind of like go, well, that seems like bullshit. | ||
| That seems like old folksy stuff. | ||
| Like maybe. | ||
| Or maybe there was like maybe they had figured something out over a long period of time and there was a science to it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You should have an astrologist on. | ||
| That would be super interesting. | ||
| What is not crazy? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know? | ||
| Like a psychic. | ||
| Like get a psychic on it's not crazy. | ||
| I've had people on that were remote viewers. | ||
| That's another weird one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You have? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Hal put off. | ||
| Hal Putoff, who's um he was uh running uh some various programs for the United States government. | ||
| Uh specifically I had him on though to not talk about remote viewing to talk about UFOs. | ||
| And uh he was actually brought on board during um Herbert Walker Bush's administration. | ||
| They um well well he was working for the government at the time, but they brought him on as one of the scientists that they they'd got a group of people from various disciplines and they said we're gonna compile a list of pros and cons in terms of the impact of society of disclosure of alien life. | ||
| And this is what they were telling him. | ||
| We have recovered crashed UFOs and we are doing back engineering programs on them. | ||
| We have for years. | ||
| We also have recovered biological entities. | ||
| We are thinking about disclosing this information to the American public. | ||
| I want you to compile a list on the positive aspects of disclosure, how it'll affect society and give a numerical value to these things. | ||
| And then negative. | ||
| And all these scientists came up with a much higher negative than positive. | ||
| So they didn't disclose. | ||
| And what do you know what the list was? | ||
| What were the negative? | ||
| Yeah, it was religion, government, um, the economy. | ||
| Um negative. | ||
| Those were all negative. | ||
| It could affect religion, it could affect the economy. | ||
| It would affect government and the fact that no one would ever listen to the president because he's just a bitch. | ||
| The fucking aliens are hovering over our head, abducting people every day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| So this is where I think it would be interesting. | ||
| I actually think that there's a positive if it were to happen right now because it sure as hell would bring us all together. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, that was Reagan said that. | ||
| You ever did you ever see that speech? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| It was a famous speech that he gave at the in front of the United Nations. | ||
| And I think he gave this speech at a time where, you know, this is like Gorbachev tear down that wall. | ||
| It was that kind of speech. | ||
| Where there's like trying to unite us all together, and his speech was imagine if we were all faced with an alien threat from another world, how quickly we would unite together. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So that's good part. | |
| I mean, we need it now more than ever. | ||
| So if they're out there, I know, but is that the only way we can unite we have to be threatened by another enemy? | ||
| Like God, we're so fucking warlike. | ||
| We're so warlike, we need a an interstellar war to unite America and the rest of the world. | ||
| It's so sad because it didn't used to be like that, right? | ||
| A politics wasn't something that people talked about all day long all the time. | ||
| Like it was That's the negative aspect of social media. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because this is all people talk about. | ||
| Like even us, like you know, there's so much interesting stuff to talk about, and yet we've spent time talking about politics because we're talking about the fascinating aspects of c politics as it affects human civilization and discourse. | ||
| Yes, but we also like the division and the right and the left and being careful with what you say because what if the other side did this and that? | ||
| It it's it's now in every single home in every single conversation people have, and it it's just it didn't used to be like that. | ||
| It it just didn't. | ||
| Like government was there, it existed, it's supposed to work well. | ||
| If it's not, hopefully there are good journalists out there exposing what's not working out well, but it should not be the discourse all the time about whether you're right wing, you're left wing, whether you're with us or or not or against us. | ||
| And and it it it it just taints everything and and takes too much space. | ||
| I think for c other conversations with much more important that we should be having, whether it's about AI, whether it's about social media, whether it's about aliens, they're much bigger problems that are coming in our future, and we shouldn't be so sort of tunnel focused on whether we're you know, whether what we're saying is approved by the right or the left or whether this or that. | ||
| It's just an amazing waste of mental resources. | ||
| And it's also a way for very uninteresting people to attach themselves to a worthy cause. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| People that have nothing else going on in their life and all of a sudden it's this whatever issue it is, whatever it issue it is, that's their whole identity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And they go all in. | ||
| And it's generally a distraction for a failed life. | ||
| I think so too. | ||
| That's a lot of it. | ||
| It's not doing what you really want to do, not having the relationships you really want to have, the friendships you really and instead you're involved in this fucking stupid cause. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know. | ||
| That's so dumb. | ||
| But you're right. | ||
| If the aliens showed up, we'd probably all unite together. | ||
| But unfortunately, like I feel like the most united moment that I could remember in my adult life was right after September 11. | ||
| Yeah, same. | ||
| Were you in America? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was in New York. | |
| You were in New York. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was... | ||
| How different was the feeling? | ||
| Where everybody was like smiling to each other and saying hi on the street afterwards? | ||
| The elevators. | ||
| I mean, I did the initial reporting for Portugal, for Portuguese television that day. | ||
| Um I was at Columbia University's journalism school. | ||
| I just moved to New York a month before. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh wow. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And I think it's where were you living? | ||
| I was living on uh seventy-second on Broadway. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So you're Upper West. | ||
| Pretty far away from the actual. | ||
| Did you go down? | ||
| Yes, so I didn't go to ground zero, but I went to midtown to the rooftop of this building where everybody was doing sort of the s satellite life feed, so you had journalists from all over the world. | ||
| Meanwhile, I was 24, 25 years old. | ||
| I'm like zero experience doing a live feed. | ||
| I was just I just moved to the United States. | ||
| It's actually it's an interesting story how I even got to the US because you know I applied for Columbia University three times. | ||
| The first time I was not accepted, the second time I was put in a wait list and didn't get accepted. | ||
| The third time I flew to New York and I knocked on the dean's door. | ||
| And I explained, I'm Portuguese. | ||
| I really want to come to this university. | ||
| I want to be a journalist in America. | ||
| And he sat me down, we spoke for uh an hour, and that year I was accepted. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| That's amazing that you could do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| And it taught me my first big important lesson in journalism, which is persistence. | ||
| Don't be afraid to get no's because I mean what's the worst that can happen, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And uh but uh a month after this, I'm in New York, I'm sleeping in the morning, and I start getting phone calls. | ||
| And I was sleeping that late because I'd been studying until really n late that night the night before. | ||
| And the first phone I pick up uh was um my television station that I'd worked for in Portugal. | ||
| I'd done an internship there and worked there. | ||
| And they called me and said, Hey, turn on your television. | ||
| And uh it was when the second uh the f the first tower had collapsed, and they said, turn on a television and see what's happening. | ||
| I had no idea this was happening. | ||
| And they said, we need you to go to Midtown and do the we have no Portuguese journalists in Manhattan. | ||
| They're all our journalists are in DC or they are outside of Manhattan, Manhattan had been locked down. | ||
| You need to go down and do the live reporting for us of what's happening. | ||
| And on and suddenly my cell phone started ringing, and it was my mother who was crying and begging me not to leave the house. | ||
| And uh and I was I had to explain to her mom, this is like my dream is to become a journalist as part of my job, and I I have to go. | ||
| Anyway, an hour later, I was at the rooftop of this building surrounded by all these journalist heroes of mine that I grew up watching on live television and shaking, I was so so nervous. | ||
| Um I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to put to words together. | ||
| So nervous. | ||
| And uh I ended up doing my live report and it all went well and I was ecstatic. | ||
| I was so happy. | ||
| I was like, oh my god, I did it, I did it. | ||
| I have a future in this profession that I really want to be a journalist, and this is great. | ||
| And then I will never forget, and I get emotional every time I talk about this. | ||
| But I will never forget. | ||
| We're just walking down to the streets and uh it's every time I talk about this, but and seeing the first um people looking for their loved ones, right? | ||
| And it's like the posters with the faces of the husbands and the children and not knowing where they were. | ||
| And that moment totally changed my life because it was okay. | ||
| It was a moment that I yeah, first of all, realization like what the fuck? | ||
| This is not about you, and this is about something so much bigger that's happening where so many people are affected by this. | ||
| And it was a moment also that I realized that the kind of journalism that I wanted to do was um try to understand why this sort of evil happens in the world and how do things like this exist. | ||
| And uh a year after I graduated from Columbia, I moved to the Middle East and I enrolled in the University of Damascus in Syria to learn Arabic and to try to um do my I did my first story as a freelance journalist about the jihadis who were crossing to Iraq to fight against the Americans. | ||
| That was the first story I ever did as a freelance journalist. | ||
| And uh and so yeah, so I was I was there on 9-11 and uh um remember after reporting and going, you know, to school and going up to my building and meeting strangers on the streets and everybody was just like looking at each other and hugging each other. | ||
| And there was like so much love and support. | ||
| Um, it lasted for months. | ||
| And it lasted for months. | ||
| And it was really beautiful, and everybody came together and it was a beautiful, beautiful thing. | ||
| And everybody went right back to being a free. | ||
| And everybody went back to this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is yeah, which is me against you, you know, which is so sad. | ||
| Well, for just that one brief moment I realized like for that during that time when everybody had that American flag on their car and they were driving around with it. | ||
| In LA. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Which is like one of the most unpatriotic places in the country. | ||
| They all had American flags in their car. | ||
| It was it was a crazy moment, and I realized like, oh, this is possible to unite us. | ||
| Like we don't have to be in this stupid mindset. | ||
| But why does it take something terrible? | ||
| Why does it take a tragedy for us to be united? | ||
| Aaron Powell And and the you know what's so sad is that 3,000 people died on that day, right? | ||
| Um I'm gonna bring it back to drug and alcohol addiction. | ||
| 3,000 people die every single week in America from addiction, from drug and alcohol addiction. | ||
| These crises are happening every day. | ||
| And like, yes, let's actually unite to do some good and to try to solve problems instead of, you know, dividing to try to figure out, you know, how to hate more another person. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And how to separate us all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I mean you know that and I know that, and we both live that way. | ||
| Like we're gonna talk in circles about this. | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| Why can't the We can get the rest of the world on board? | ||
| We need to get people to stop paying attention to all this shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And just learn how to be nicer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Right. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| I mean you don't have much time in this life. | ||
| Doesn't last as long as you think it does. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| And just have empathy. | ||
| It's my main message all this. | ||
| It's just like try to place yourself in somebody else's shoes. | ||
| Don't be quick to judge. | ||
| Like actually try to understand why these migrants are coming to this country, why these you know people are carrying drugs on their backs and excruciating difficult work and dangerous work. | ||
| Why are they doing it? | ||
| Instead, and why are people scamming? | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know, try to understand why they're doing what they do. | ||
| And once you understand the root causes, then you can actually make a difference and try to change that and actually have an impact. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Which is much harder. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Much harder to try to solve it that way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| Yeah, much harder. | ||
| Well, it's it's hard for people to have empathy too. | ||
| Some people, especially as they're just tired all the time and exhausted and they're unhealthy and their life sucks, and they just want other people like fuck and they don't see those people. | ||
| They don't feel it. | ||
| They need a Martin Luther King. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They need a James Telarico. | ||
| Trevor Burrus, Jr. | ||
| Well, we need someone like that for sure. | ||
| We need someone who's got uh someone who is a powerful speaker too. | ||
| Like they have to be charismatic that has uh a message of nonviolence and love. | ||
| Because it's really the only way. | ||
| You uh you you don't get anything from violence other than more violence. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Unless you're the the biggest, baddest bully, and then you squash everything around you and great now you're a dictator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| It's not good for any of us. | ||
| Not no, it doesn't. | ||
| It's contrary to what we're supposed to be about in the first place. | ||
| This is supposed to be the united states of America. | ||
| We're supposed to be a community. | ||
| I don't think that LA is the most unpat un patriotic. | ||
| I know you don't like LA. | ||
| I still live there. | ||
| And I know you don't like it, but I disagree that it's unpatriotic. | ||
| What do you think it is? | ||
| Why would you say it's unpatriotic? | ||
| California is an incredible state. | ||
| If you have a r of American flag uh in front of your house, people will call you racist. | ||
| That's a fact. | ||
| Uh there's there's a lot of indoctrinated young kids. | ||
| Perhaps. | ||
| And th those people are assholes and not they're they're as full as hate as the other thing. | ||
| You don't get that in Texas. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But you you also have places in America where if you have an LGBTQ flag on the front of your door, you're called thoughts of other things. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that goes both ways. | ||
| Well, that's not necessarily patriotism. | ||
| That's just being an intolerant asshole. | ||
| But I think that the real problem with Los Angeles is the government and the fact that they want to ignore the rampant fraud and the fact that everything is so overregulated, it's impossible to get permits for things, so industry's leaving. | ||
| The over taxing. | ||
| Have you read Ezra Klein's book about the No I have not. | ||
| I haven't read the book yet, but I've heard him giving a bunch of interviews about about it. | ||
| Um he's getting attacked for it now. | ||
| People are saying he's leaning right, which is hilarious. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Trevor Burrus, Jr. | |
| But it's about how if you're he's a Democrat, as you know. | ||
| Um but how Democrats have to figure out how to make the system work or and and and and how to build things and how to and not do what you were saying, create all these limits and these problems for like building houses in the palisades and also the problem is that Democrats are the Democrats of 2025, not the Democrats of 1994. | ||
| If you go back to the Democrats and Bill Clinton was president, it was a totally different thing. | ||
| Like Bill Clinton's if you hear him talk, he sounds like a populist that is uh like going after criminals. | ||
| Pre-pro America. | ||
| Like it's so it's like that's what everybody can get aboard with. | ||
| It's like that's the the real problem is these ideologies shift with special interests and money and funding and propaganda and then they become something unrecognizable. | ||
| They become something that supports war. | ||
| That becomes something that suppresses free speech. | ||
| They become something that was like entirely in direct opposition to what it would have been in nineteen eighty five. | ||
| It's like of course not all but this is the same problem because it's like if you decide I'm a right winger, you're supposed to take in all of that. | ||
| You're supposed to like like w that guy said to my friend like you gotta support the party. | ||
| Right. | ||
| There's the only way you gotta get them on your side. | ||
| And like what even if I don't agree at all with what they say I have to bite my tongue because I'm a part of a gang now? | ||
| Fuck off. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And that's the problem is that we only have two stupid parties. | ||
| And huge problem. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I mean you do have liberty I've voted libertarian twice. | ||
| But y uh it's kind of like fuck these people I'm gonna vote for nothing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know that it's never going to win. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Which is crazy to say but that is kind of what it is. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You know and then you see other countries that have like six, seven the majority of European countries. | ||
| The Netherlands that have multiple parties and you know obviously there's division but there's nothing like the division that exists in the US right now. | ||
| It's well that's the negative aspect of social media I believe. | ||
| I believe it's ramping up people and it's it's pushing the divide even further. | ||
| But what I'm hoping is that this is a growing pain and that we'll sort through this and and under but we need nonviolent leaders that are very intelligent that also make sense to both people which I do think is possible. | ||
| Both groups both ideologically captured sides which I do think is possible. | ||
| Because in the middle is where we all live in the middle is where I live we all want safety we all want education we all want fairness we all want to make sure that no one's polluting and good access to resources and a chance to make a life for yourself and pursue your dreams. | ||
| That's what we all want all that other stuff is just dividing points. | ||
| One of the things I had Rep Luna on the podcast we were talking about something and she said they don't want to fix this issue because they can fund their campaign with it. | ||
| Aaron Ross Powell of course I mean that's immigration to what isn't that crazy that politicians will fail to resolve an issue on purpose because they want to raise funds by campaigning on this issue. | ||
| It is disgusting yeah but it's so gross that is un American that's that's truly evil truly evil yeah and when she said I was like oh I didn't think of that. | ||
| But I kind of did but I didn't want to believe it. | ||
| And then coming out of someone's mouth who works in government I'm like oh fuck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| If you stand for a cause right and that and and you're seen as the person that can potentially solve that problem. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then that problem goes away then you don't have a platform to stand on. | ||
| So a lot of times you don't want to solve that problem. | ||
| And I think in many ways that's what immigration has been because it is not possible that we have the broken immigration system that we have we have the backlog of people trying to become to get papers like who can't we don't have a a a way for people want to come to this country legally to come to this country legally it's you know and and and it's been decades and decades of this and we haven't been able to figure out how to solve this problem it has to be because it benefits all politicians. | ||
| That this is hasn't been solved, right? | ||
| Well another very high level politician told me once I can't remember if he said on the podcast I don't want to say his name but that he had a conversation with a man who is a CEO of a large corporation and said he was very opposed to um tightening up the border because he needs the illegal immigrants for the workforce. | ||
| Like yo like so that's part of it too. | ||
| They want cheap labor. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah because it helps their bottom line which is like oh God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh God. | ||
| And as long as those people don't have paperwork, they have to shut the fuck up they can't demand better work rights. | ||
| They can't Yeah. | ||
| Which is a problem also now with the raids is that a lot of violence is happening, you know. | ||
| Even if it's rapes or domestic abuse and people are just even if they're going through this, they're not gonna call the police because they're afraid of being deported. | ||
| They're scared of gonna get deported. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's like boy. | ||
| It's an overcorrection after overcorrection. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know without actually fixing the fucking thing. | |
| Left and right and left and right. | ||
| And that's where you get real cynical. | ||
| You're like, I think these people like it like this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think they like all this crazy shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's difficult not to get cynical, right? | ||
| And I I actually it's to me it's always heartbreaking when you hear people saying that they don't vote or they don't really like they're not into politics. | ||
| They don't they don't care about what's happening because politicians are all the same and they don't they're completely disengaged, and to me that's heartbreaking. | ||
| It is heartbreaking. | ||
| Yeah, that's taking the pa power away from people, right. | ||
| The other thing you think uh the about these d dark times is they call for people to rise up. | ||
| Like not I mean like rise up against the machine and rebel. | ||
| I mean like they call for a hero. | ||
| And that's what we always h hope for. | ||
| We're like, maybe there's one person's gonna figure this out. | ||
| Maybe there's gonna be this person that emerges, this real leader. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And they're looking at the Democratic Party and they're like No. | ||
| There's someone there. | ||
| Well, who's it gonna be? | ||
| I don't think Taller Rico's trying to run for president. | ||
| So outside of him, who who really makes sense? | ||
| Well you got a bunch of people that are just politicians, politics as usual. | ||
| And then once they get inside, you have a bunch of cowards on the Republican side that even when they're seeing this stuff happening, even though we know that they don't agree with it. | ||
| They aren't they're too afraid to t to speak out. | ||
| And they're all inside of trading. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All of them on top of that. | ||
| They're all making it's crazy. | ||
| You see, they're making 170,000 a year. | ||
| They get into office within a couple of years they're worth 10 million. | ||
| They're worth 15 million. | ||
| And you look at it, it's all stock trades. | ||
| Like, this is bananas. | ||
| That this is legal. | ||
| You motherfuckers put Martha Quinn in jail. | ||
| Put Martha Quinn in jail. | ||
| Martha Stewart, you mean Oh, they say Martha Quinn? | ||
| That's the MTV VJ. | ||
| Sorry, Martha. | ||
| Martha Stewart. | ||
| I love Martha Stewart's. | ||
| Martha Stewart. | ||
| That's so funny. | ||
| I feel like I'm not sure. | ||
| I really want to have her on my podcast. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| She's a badass lady. | ||
| Um but they put her in jail. | ||
| They put Martha Stewart in jail. | ||
| I know beloved by her. | ||
| Have you watched the doc? | ||
| No. | ||
| No, she's quite a lot. | ||
| But you also have to be quite a lot to become that person. | ||
| You know, that's how it's how you become that person. | ||
| She's a proud bitch and I love her. | ||
| Yeah, I mean that's it's kind of funny. | ||
| You know. | ||
| But that's you could say the same thing about a lot of people that are very famous. | ||
| Um listen, it's always great to talk to you. | ||
| I really appreciate you coming here and you do amazing work. | ||
| You really do. | ||
| It's so courageous and so necessary. | ||
| And I think you provide a window into various aspects of of life on this planet that otherwise people would not have access to. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I hope the podcast will be the continuation of that. | ||
| I'm sure it will be. | ||
| I'm sure it will be. | ||
| So um the hidden third. | ||
| Thanks for the case. | ||
| And uh it is available on YouTube. | ||
| Is it available everywhere? | ||
| Everywhere. | ||
| Everywhere. | ||
| Who's this first guy you have here? | ||
| Fabian Alamar is an amazing guy. | ||
| That's the retired FBI agent that I spoke with. | ||
| You should listen to that. | ||
| What is it about he's the guy who went after the pill mills in Florida who was doing his investigation at the same time as I was doing. | ||
| And then Fabian Alamar is a great guy. | ||
| And he he's a for Oh, this is a former skater, did nine years in prison. | ||
| Uh two he he was sentenced to seven years in prison for kidnapping and beating the shit out of this guy who supposedly he was on math high very high on crack, actually, very high on crack. | ||
| Anyway, he beat the shit out of this guy who supposedly allegedly had raped his sister, but beat the shit kept him in a trunk, beat the shit out of him, was arrested for seven years and then did two more years because he c he almost killed a child molester in prison. | ||
| But basically did a whole 180. | ||
| Um is now an actor on the Mayans, has an incredible life story. | ||
| He was brought up by gangs, his family member were all gang members, they're all their time in prison, but has done an whole one eighty is now involved in an until it was that show with the guy the bikers. | ||
| Oh, it's a biker gangster. | ||
| He also did that show that uh uh with uh evil on Goria, the hot chili, what was it called? | ||
| That flaming hot movie in that movie. | ||
| Anyway, he's become an actor, but also very involved, a pro skater and also very involved in anti recidivism. | ||
| And then another guy we had on was Mike Boyer. | ||
| Do you you know Matt Boyer? | ||
| He was uh you should have him on. | ||
| He's in prison right now. | ||
| We interviewed him a week before he went to prison, actually. | ||
| He's a guy in the Otani scandal. | ||
| Baseball, the baseball, the Altani scandal. | ||
| I don't know that scandal. | ||
| Do you know it, Jamie? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| What happened? | ||
| So you know Otani? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Beg biggest, most well-known, most successful, I don't know term I don't know. | ||
| Baseball. | ||
| Sports talk about the best player, baseball player ever, apparently. | ||
| Uh he's in the Dodgers. | ||
| He was signed up for the Dodgers. | ||
| It turns out that his translator, who is also his best friend, because Otani is Japanese and doesn't speak fluent or doesn't speak English. | ||
| So he has a translator who's also his best friend in the US, was with him 24-7, had a gambling problem. | ||
| And the bookie in this gambling problem was a guy called Matt Boyer, fascinating guy. | ||
| Grew up in Orange County and built it. | ||
| And and by I mean, making millions of dollars as a b as an illegal bookie, flying private jets, like betting insane amounts of money himself. | ||
| He's also an a uh gambling addict, but was like had high, you know, athletes from all over and important and celebrities, basically placing bets with him instead of placing them online, they placed them with him. | ||
| Um but all illegal. | ||
| And it was found out just before he was about to sign for the Dodgers, the Otani, that while they were investigating a casino in Vegas, they came across this bookie, and with through this bookie they found out that Otani's translator and possibly they thought initially maybe Otani was illegally betting. | ||
| This is a guy that stands to make millions for the Dodgers for all the companies that he sponsors. | ||
| So this was a fucking massive deal. | ||
| And uh it turns out that Otani was not the one betting, that it was his translator. | ||
| Matt Boyer, who's at the center of the scandal, believes that Otani knew that he had a that his friend and translator had a betting sc uh gambling problem. | ||
| Um but um he came out and said he had no idea. | ||
| And uh, you know, nobody wanted this problem on their hands for the amount of money that you you could lose. | ||
| And uh and so they basically the guy came out saying initially he said that Otani knew, the translator said Otani knew, and then he came out and said actually Yotani had no idea and I lied, and now he's also in prison. | ||
| But Matt Boyer is now serving uh I believe it's uh seven or something months in prison. | ||
| And uh illegal gambling. | ||
| For illegal for being a bookie, yeah, for money laundering and he was I think it was something like forty million dollars. | ||
| Yeah, okay, yeah, much more. | ||
| His losses were around. | ||
| 19,000 bets boy, that guy was hooked between September twenty-one and January twenty twenty four. | ||
| His winnings amassed to be over a hundred and forty-two million. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| He won over 142 million, which he kept for himself. | ||
| His losses were around 183 million. | ||
| Oh he lost 40 million million dollars that he still ow owes Matt Boyer, by the way. | ||
| He only he only g I mean his main bookie was this guy. | ||
| Oh my god, he must have been gambling so high. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the thing. | |
| And he couldn't stop. | ||
| And Matt talks about like this guy, I would text said he would like he'd be down on a place and he says, let's double that, let's triple that. | ||
| He was always sort of chasing that dopamine hype. | ||
| It is a crazy addiction. | ||
| It's the secret, it's the hidden addiction as they call it. | ||
| Because you can be a completely you can have a job. | ||
| You can be a working addict, and nobody will ever know that you have a massive gambling problem. | ||
| And until it all comes from the same thing. | ||
| It is a crazy one. | ||
| Yeah, because you because the dopamine, it's really interesting because you get the hit of dopamine whether you lose or win. | ||
| So you're always getting that dopamine hit. | ||
| Did you see uncut gems? | ||
| Uh I did uh yes, I didn't think. | ||
| The best representation of a gambling addict I've ever seen in a film. | ||
| Like watching that film gave me anxiety. | ||
| I was like, oh my god, don't do it. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| Don't do that. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's so anathema to who I am too that I always get so nervous, like, don't find people do this. | ||
| I know. | ||
| It's but I I've been around a lot of those people. | ||
| You know, um when I was in my early 20s, I spent a lot of time in pool halls. | ||
| And I was around a lot of gambling addicts, and I was just fascinated by it. | ||
| People that would go from the track to the pool hall. | ||
| So they would go to the racetrack all day, gamble on the races, and then go to you know, maybe off-track betting, Bet there, and then they go to the pool hall, bet there, try to get a poker game, bet there, try to go to Atlantic City on the weekend, bet there, yeah. | ||
| Just full-on gambling junkies, their whole life revolved around gambling. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They didn't care about anything else. | |
| They were like a full-on meth head that was just chasing the high. | ||
| I mean, there was no thought of, hey, I don't have any money and I'm 40. | ||
| There was nothing like that. | ||
| It was just there was no it was just I'm in this and this is what I'm doing. | ||
| I need to I need to win. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's terrifying. | ||
| It's really, really terrifying. | ||
| And unlike other addictions, there's no government program out there to help you. | ||
| And now we're making betting legal. | ||
| Sports betting is now legal in the majority of states. | ||
| So it's like we're and you know, we've got ESPN and all these big companies making money from it. | ||
| I know, but I'm not opposed to that. | ||
| Here's the th because I don't have a gambling problem. | ||
| So if like I I agree that you the problem is not that you're making money from the betting, but then knowing that gambling is a problem and that there is addiction, then you should be able, you have to, it is your responsibility to set aside some money to try to figure out how to address the problem of addiction and gambling. | ||
| Yeah, but I don't think there has been an established solution for gambling addiction. | ||
| I think some people are gonna fall by the wayside and they've always been that way. | ||
| It's like I'm not a gambling addict, but like say if there's a boxing match and like it's Terrence Crawford versus Canelo Alvarez, I'm like, I think Terrence Crawford's gonna beat the odds. | ||
| I think he's gonna be them. | ||
| That's what I was saying before the fight. | ||
| No, I didn't. | ||
| But if I did, I would have bet but I would have bet a couple hundred bucks or something, maybe a thousand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Um and I think the odds are I mean it might have been like two to one for Canelo. | ||
| So you would have made uh two thousand bucks on a thousand. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Uh but I don't have a problem with gambling. | ||
| You know, so it's not I think it should be legal, just like I think alcohol should be legal. | ||
| I think you should be able to go to a store and buy alcohol. | ||
| You know, I think most drugs should be legal. | ||
| I think the real problem is the fact that they're illegal, which means you're getting them from cartels, you know. | ||
| And but then there's a dilemma of how do you change that? | ||
| Like would you just rip off the band-aid and make everything legal and then you become Portland for a few years, the whole country's fucked, and how many people die of overdoses because of that? | ||
| Like that's an unfortunate. | ||
| They were also super kooky. | ||
| It's a super kooky place to live anyway. | ||
| Keep Portland weird. | ||
| Well, Mariana, I appreciate you very much. | ||
| And uh when you're done with the scammer thing, come back. | ||
| Well, please. | ||
| I need to hear everything. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| All right. | ||
| One more time, the show is called The Hidden Third. | ||
| The Hidden Third. | ||
| It's on YouTube on uh youtube.com slash Mariana Van Zeller, and we've got two episodes already that premiere this week, and it's a weekly podcast. | ||
| So new episodes all the time. | ||
| And you can also get it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| Good luck with that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thanks for being here. |
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