May 17, 2017 - Knowledge Fight
05:27
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for holding. | |
| Hello, Alex. | ||
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Jordan. | |
| We're here really quick just to drop in with what I'm going to call a spiritual correction. | ||
| On the last episode, we talked about campaign donations that Trump had gotten and Hillary Clinton had gotten, and we were not inaccurate. | ||
| But I found information later that, after we'd recorded the episode, that I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't point out and call myself out on. | ||
| One of those things that's most important is that Renaissance Technologies, the company that is owned by Robert Mercer, gave Trump $15 million in the campaign. | ||
| $15.5 million. | ||
| But I later found out he also gave Hillary $14 million. | ||
| So... | ||
|
unidentified
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So he's hedging his bets, which is what literally every billionaire did. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| Like, everybody at Goldman Sachs gave Hillary a shit ton of money, and also Trump a shit ton of money, and they would have wound up in the cabinet either direction. | ||
| Actually, that's kind of interesting. | ||
| That's the other correction that I needed to make. | ||
| We weren't specific enough about the Goldman Sachs stuff with Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| The reality is that Goldman Sachs banned all their partners for making donations. | ||
|
unidentified
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Interesting. | |
| To Trump and Pence. | ||
|
unidentified
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Interesting. | |
| And the reason is that they had made a policy change about supporting candidates running for state or local offices, as well as giving money to people who are sitting state or local officials running for federal office. | ||
| And a quote from a memo that was distributed to Goldman Sachs employees. | ||
| This policy change is meant to prevent inadvertently violating pay-to-play rules, particularly the look-back provision when partners transition into roles covered by these rules. | ||
| The policy change is also meant to minimize potential reputational damage caused by any false perception that the firm is attempting to circumvent pay-to-play rules, particularly given partners' seniority and visibility. | ||
| So basically what it comes... | ||
| Says the company with all of its fucking former members in the goddamn cabinet. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| But here's the issue. | ||
| It has to do with state and local representatives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Because those are the people who can make rules that more directly fuck with their offices. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yada, yada, yada. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So the situation is the bank's compliance team pointed to the Trump-Pence campaign as a donation no-go because Pence is the governor of Indiana, giving him influence over state pensions. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| where they couldn't give to him because he was a state official. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
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Meanwhile, the new rules at Goldman Sachs don't restrict contributions to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton because she currently doesn't hold office. | |
| Her vice presidential candidate, Tim Kaine, is a U.S. senator, so wouldn't be subject to the rules either because he's not a state or local. | ||
| So Goldman Sachs employees were unallowed to give money to the Trump campaign, but it wasn't because they hated Trump. | ||
| It was because of state and local... | ||
| So this particular thing, this particular rule that they implemented somehow wound up happening to the Trump campaign. | ||
|
unidentified
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It was not purposeful. | |
| It was just kind of coincidental. | ||
| If Tim Kaine had been a governor, it would have been exactly the same. | ||
|
unidentified
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It would have been exactly the same. | |
| They would have been banned from giving money to Hillary Clinton. | ||
| But it's fine that they gave Hillary Clinton money, and they would have given Trump money if it weren't for Pence. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| And the other thing is, while I'm calling myself out... | ||
| There were, you know, people who gave tens of millions of dollars to Hillary, too. | ||
| And I feel like when I listened back to it, I was misrepresenting things by, you know, these million dollar, two million dollar donations. | ||
| And then we said Mercer gave 15 million to Trump. | ||
| It gave the appearance that she didn't have large-scale donors. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| And that was kind of unfair of me. | ||
| It was unintentional, but... | ||
| But even then, the larger point is billionaires don't... | ||
|
unidentified
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Give a fuck. | |
| And they're just gonna give millions to anybody. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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Because if they become president, fuck it. | |
| We already gave you millions. | ||
| But also, the other point is that a lot of those high donations on Hillary's side were from unions and stuff like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| So there were, like, teachers unions and stuff like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right, right, right. | |
| Their political action committee... | ||
| No, one of the larger, like, in the... | ||
| There's a pantheon of donors, there's billionaires, and then there's unions that are not equivalent, but they still give a shit ton of money. | ||
| So anyway, this has been a tiny drop-in. | ||
| Please enjoy the longer episode today. | ||
| But I just wanted to do this because, you know, it's about being above board, and I felt like when I listened back to that episode, it was slightly unfair. | ||
|
unidentified
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Something that Alex Jones has never done! | |
| Probably not. | ||
| Anyway, thank you all for listening. | ||
| We do appreciate it. | ||
| We'll talk to you real soon. | ||
| But until then, Rappaport, he still lives. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Does he still live? | |
| He still lives. | ||
| Andy in Kansas, you're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
| I'm a huge fan. | ||
| I love your work. |
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