How The Proud Boys Convictions Connects To The Mass Shooting In Texas
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss the convictions of four members of the Proud Boys for seditious conspiracy against the United States for their role in the January 6th insurrection. They then analyze the most recent mass shooting in Texas as it relates to the politicians and their stance on gun control - starting from the same mindset as the Proud Boys. They finish by ripping to shreds an article in the New York Times meant to rebrand Elizabeth Holmes's image.
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A little stressful, but a lot of work to get done and a lot of moving pieces.
But I'm here.
I'm here.
I'm glad to be here.
You know what's incredible about this is that, so for those who don't know already, Nick is like one of the leading NBA analysts out in the world.
He is chalk in the middle of the NBA playoffs, which means he's doing double duty, having to do this show, having to do his NBA stuff.
The rest of us are like kicking up and watching this, having a great time.
It just occurred to me that next year, as we are in the middle of the presidential election cycle, you are going to be busier than hell.
Oh, let's not worry about that just yet, but yeah.
And by the way, in your honor, I even turned on the inauguration.
Is that what we call it?
The coronation?
The coronation!
Um, and I gotta tell you, I've never seen two old people look so ridiculous in my entire life.
My favorite thing about all of it, and I don't know if you caught it or if all the muckrakers out there caught it, when it came time to put the King hat on Charles, They didn't, it didn't work right.
It didn't, it didn't, it didn't, it didn't fit quite right.
It wasn't working right.
The, the, the old guy who put it on, the other old guy, he had to like twist it a little bit, almost like a little Lego man hat.
It was, uh, it was utterly ridiculous and befitting the dumbness of the spectacle.
And then they come out on the balcony, that's the part I saw, and they just stand there.
They don't even wave much.
It was so ridiculous.
And I'm trying to picture it's probably what they've been doing for thousands of years, right?
They go on that same balcony and everyone's there.
I couldn't believe that many people came, just did not even see anything because they're too far away.
And the way everything fit in the costumes, it looked like they were just doing some costume play and it was embarrassing.
Maybe it's just the American in me who just has disdain for everything that we, you know, dealt with back before.
I will say, first of all, the stuff that they're doing is not as ancient as it's made to feel like.
It's almost like, I'm sure you've seen this, it's like, you know how people can take like a piece of paper and they sort of burn it a little bit and they put it in like some tea to make it look old?
That's what the Windsors are!
The Windsors aren't real.
The Windsors are bullshit.
And, like, this whole thing is, like, completely made up and it's all faked up to make it look like it's older than it is.
Also, by the way, solidarity to the Not My King movement in England, which got roughed up By the London and British police.
Like, what a bunch of bullshit.
But yeah, I'm glad you checked it out.
It looked ridiculous to me.
Speaking of ridiculous, by the way, Nick, we have a whole host of things to talk about today.
We got to talk about the New York Times trying to rehabilitate Elizabeth Holmes, which, best of luck to you.
We've got a debt ceiling blowout that we've got to deal with.
We've got this tragedy in Texas.
I'm just developing madness.
But Nick, We gotta win!
We got some victories, we got some things that we need to celebrate.
In the fallout from January 6, 2021, we have now seen a group of four proud boys Including Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys.
They have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy from the January 6th insurrection coup attempt.
These people probably are going to jail for a very long time.
There are things I'm concerned about here.
I hope they say hello to the 15 or so Oath Keepers who are going to be in jail cells next to them.
I've got some concerns, but as always, we have to look at the victories where we can find them, and this is certainly a victory.
Yeah, I suppose Merrick Garland will not, you know, get a bump from this because he's such, you know, everyone wants to shit on him so much these days.
But, you know, the Department of Justice, you know, said that they were going to look into all these things and investigate, and if they found crimes, they were going to prosecute.
It takes a long, long time, so it doesn't necessarily feel like the connection to January 6th is still there, but yes, it is good.
You're not supposed to No, and nor should there really be.
know seditious uh conspiracies and stuff so uh yeah good good for them but it is weird i still feel like you know there's no more trust in the department of justice out of any of this right no and and nor should there really be i mean these these were the ones um the proud boys the oath keepers and of course the q anon shaman these were the ones who were just out there in front of this Like, everybody in America saw it happen.
Everybody was aware that they played a role in this.
The Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, of course, are paramilitary groups that have been dedicated to trying to overthrow the election and the results and the counting of the results.
This had to happen.
There was no way whatsoever for January 6th to have happened and for these people not to have eventually been tried for this.
This is Merrick Garland basically showing up on time, is what it is, you know?
Like, there's not a whole lot of celebrating that he showed up to work and, you know, sat at his desk chair.
But it is good that these juries recognized That these groups were intentionally and violently trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America because they were.
And the problem in all of this is that this might very well be the end of the story of January 6th as far as as far as legal repercussions.
That's what bothers me is there doesn't feel like there is a whole lot of willingness or movement on the other side of it to really go after the larger people, including Donald Trump and the people who funded this and helped him.
But I certainly hope the Proud Boys enjoy their time in federal prison.
For sure.
And you know, there's even more good news about this because they finally figured out who insurrection Ava Braun was or is.
Fascist Matilda.
Did you hear about Pink Parade Lady?
Yeah, there was this pink beret lady who was leading the charge on January 6th and was in all these clips and none of the sleuths could figure out who she was and so all of a sudden there's a guy who's at Joanne, you know, Fabrics, buying some fabric.
He goes, someone showed him a meme of something.
He goes, wait a minute, I dated her.
It turns out that he was dating this lady and he had to break up with her when he found out that she was reading Mein Kampf and was really into that.
And it's interesting that you could actually date someone for several months and it doesn't really come up somehow until later.
But that, you know, for him was the last straw and he was able to identify her and the FBI was able to kind of get her and bring her in.
But yeah, there's still people out there who participated in this and they were still trying to figure them out.
So good for them, they found Pink Beret Lady.
Is that all real?
I haven't, I feel, okay, let me be straight about something.
I pay attention to so much in politics and so much of the minutiae of this stuff, and yet there's still so much stuff that just happens that I have no idea what you're talking about.
The fascist Matilda?
Yeah, yeah, she had this pink beret.
Young, she's 19 or 20 at the time, you know, and she was out there and, you know, claimed that she wasn't in the Capitol building, but they had plenty of footage of her in the Capitol and trespassing on stuff, so... Also, is Jenny Fabrics still a store?
That is true.
Yeah, we have them here in L.A.
I'm sorry I didn't take you to one.
I am too.
I could have picked up some material.
The other way of that is that no one is safe.
You're going to get identified.
At some point, if you appear in any kind of video or photo, right, they can do reverse photo searches, they can scour any kind of social media, you know, like, remember, like, even like the guy they caught who was on Discord giving away national secrets, same kind of idea.
So that's the power of what the internet has done.
And even though the government isn't necessarily a surveillance state, per se, they kind of are, there are the other, the good, hardworking citizens of America are also part of it.
Man, that just says so much that the most powerful state in the history of the world couldn't recognize them, but a guy who had a bad relationship with somebody under Joanne Fabrics did it.
I want to point out, by the way, while we're on the subject of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, I don't want to be the Debbie Downer here.
I don't want to be the one who, you know, reigns on this parade.
There is a really bad history, Nick, of paramilitary groups, far-right paramilitary groups, running aground of the law, and the law being like, listen, we have no choice, but we have to hold you accountable, and you're going to have to go to jail.
There is a bad history of that not putting an end to the problem.
Right.
We have a bad, bad history of that being sort of the beginning of a situation.
One of the themes in these first two segments that we're going to talk about, unfortunately, is radicalization.
And in this case, what you now have is with the Proud Boys, you had essentially sort of a toxic red meat, red state wannabe street gang that, you know, was sort of like a A chauvinistic male get-together group that eventually over time became a street battling gang, right?
That would go after people on the so-called left.
Of course, you had the Oath Keepers who were former members of the military or law enforcement who had decided that they needed to take matters into their own hands and they need to step in against the tyrannical government.
These groups, now that they are being held accountable for their actions on January 6th, This has a history of then expediting what is happening and increasing and multiplying.
The four members of the Proud Boys and over a dozen members of the Oath Keepers, I have to tell you, unfortunately, that is not the sum total of the groups.
That leaves a lot of the members left behind who still define themselves based on their membership and now more or less see themselves at war with a tyrannical government that they now are going to then battle with further and further.
Well, for what it's worth, some of the guys that have been prosecuted and gone through the wringer have expressed a lot of remorse.
But I think it's obviously they're put up by their lawyer to say that, to try and get some mercy from the courts, probably.
Because you remember the movie Goodfellas, right?
So you remember what happens when he first gets pinched when Henry Hill first gets pinched and he's so nervous and they bring him in he's like he's gonna get in trouble whatever and they give him kisses and they give him money and they like they well he's not a virgin anymore whatever he popped this cherry like that that is sort of what happens here right like going to prison for this kind of thing and when you know and then kind of getting out is sort of doesn't You know, dissuade anybody from doing this.
It ends up probably being a bit of a badge of honor and like, oh, you're now on their site.
You're doing it right because they're watching you.
And that doesn't stop anybody.
And what that actually does, and this is one of the problems with law enforcement in the United States of America, is that you now have are going to make not only hardened criminals out of these people but now that they are on the other side of the law and if you're a proud boy you were sort of on the other side of the law you know like occasionally you might get detained every now and then that's if a cop wasn't on your side and helping you out because they wanted you to bust a few skulls if you're on the oath keepers like maybe every now and then you were one of those idiots who would
I don't know, blow their hand off messing around with homemade C4.
Otherwise, they've been on one side of the lot.
Now that they're on the other, I would not be shocked, and this is something I'm going to be keeping an eye on, if all of a sudden you're going to start seeing more and more Proud Boys and more and more Oath Keepers start to mingle with everybody from the Aryan Nation.
To the base, right?
We're talking about, like, the worst of the worst.
Some of these groups that are neo-Nazis.
Some of these groups that are dedicated explicitly to overthrowing the government.
And there is a very real possibility that what we're going to watch over time is we're going to see sort of the further radicalization and sort of a mutating of how these street gangs and militaries work.
Because they're not going away.
Like the right wing is not simply going to pack their bags and say, Hey, sorry for all this.
We're going to go this way.
Well, you know, because I always talk about this.
It's like, what causes people to follow the law?
Is it because they're simply afraid of getting arrested?
Or do they know right from wrong and they don't want to do it?
I think what makes this complicated, though, is because obviously you say, well, what's the solution?
You obviously have to throw them in prison, even though you're saying it doesn't stop them from doing it.
I think part of the solution is to not have fucking leaders of major political parties siding with them and winking at them and giving them all sorts of, you know, signals that like they need to continue doing what they're doing.
And then what that usually leads to them thinking, well, all right, great.
They're on our side.
So we don't have to follow every law that's in there.
We can pick and choose which laws we think that are applicable and we can ignore the other ones.
So I think that must be part of the issue.
Because I'm thinking about like Nazism in Germany is so forbidden.
Right.
And everyone is so afraid of having any kind of thing popping up like that.
But, you know, that culture has permeated.
You don't see any politicians in Germany, you know, espousing Nazism anymore.
And that, I think, is the issue here.
And I don't know if we're ever going to be able to make that happen with the way our political climate is.
No, and of course we're not.
I mean, Marjorie Taylor Greene is obviously gonna, like, sympathize with these people.
We're already seeing the regular subjects.
You know, we can always get sort of a taste of the wind based on, like, what an Alex Jones is doing.
He's already talking about them being in, like, Occupied territory and behind enemy lines.
No, it makes for a convenient story that these idiots were the ones who were on the front lines and carrying out the violence, but they're very useful idiots.
They were foot soldiers of an authoritarian movement that basically was trying a revolution, but they weren't necessarily going to go all the way with the thing.
It's a mess.
But by the way, speaking of radicalization, Nick, We have this awful tragedy that took place down in Allen, Texas.
Eight people were killed at a mall where a shooter just unloaded Shocker of Shockers using an AR-15 style rifle.
What we have seen over the past few hours, and again, Shocker of Shocker, is that this individual has neo-Nazi connections.
There's stuff to discuss here.
We've heard so far that the FBI, through looking for the social media accounts, they found racially and ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, including neo-Nazi materials, and material espousing the supremacy of the white race.
Shocker shockers, this person was in the military but was let go because of mental health concerns.
I have a few things to say about this, but just to go ahead and start, just another tragedy in a long, long line of tragedies.
Yeah, by the way, was it reporting that they said that he just, he bought the AR-15 legally?
Do we know that?
Absolutely, he did.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's, uh, the first thing you hear about it, the first sentence or question is always, you know, or the statement would be, yeah, I bet you it's an AR-15.
Now, I suppose the argument would then be, well, if you ban that, I'll just find something else to use.
But like, I'm like, great, fine.
Let's make the next level harder for anybody to do this.
Do it with a screwdriver.
Fine.
Yeah, but this is the thing where, you know, is there ever going to be a critical mass?
Like, if we have these every day, like for 10 days in a row, 30 days in a row, I mean, we kind of have them every whatever, every four days, whatever, I don't know, whatever it is now.
I mean, there was a man right before we started recording, like there was another guy, shocker of shockers again, who like shot his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend.
Um, yeah, I don't know.
I think you and I have agreed in the past that if there was going to be a moment, it was going to be Sandy Hook.
And not only Sandy Hook, but it was going to be in the political environment of Sandy Hook, where Barack Obama was president of the United States of America, and it felt like there was going to be some movement there.
Hey, but people like Joe Manchin were there to assure the NRA that there wasn't going to be anything done.
Don't you worry about it.
Um, this one, this one sucks a lot in a long line of things that suck.
This was a character who showed a long, long history of interest in Nazis, white supremacy.
This is a character who tried to sort of gain purchase online by, you know, posting extremist things.
He was a big fan of all of the regular hits, Nick.
All of the podcast, all the video streams, libs of TikTok, did all of this different types of stuff.
And what really got revealed here, as always gets revealed in these situations, we have a climate of permanent radicalization.
There are people like this guy who went in and just absolutely obliterated people.
Three of the victims, of the eight victims I believe, were from the same family.
Just absolutely obliterated a family.
You know, this person was obviously not just interested in being radicalized, but there's an entire economy of people out there to radicalize him.
You know, like all of the white supremacist stuff, it starts out with a Tucker Carlson.
You know, it starts off small with someone like a Ben Shapiro.
It just sort of percolates and gets people going.
Then all of a sudden, you're on YouTube, and the next thing you know, you're like going into the harder stuff, the less mainstream people.
And all of a sudden, like that stuff grows and grows and grows.
Their entire ecosystem of viewers, listeners, and consumers, Nick, they are all potential shooters.
And to live in a country where everyone feels so afraid, where everyone is buying guns, where things keep getting worse and worse and worse, it's not just a powder keg at that point.
You're not just waiting on things to go off.
It's an inevitability.
You know what I mean?
It's going to happen over and over and over again.
Get the guns, but take care of this shit, too.
We can't have a country in decline, particularly while this stuff is the basis of an entire economy.
People are making billions off of this, and people are paying for it with their lives.
You know, the only way I kind of feel like you could get traction with this is if a senator or a congressman God forbid it would be murdered as part of a mass shooting.
Like maybe that would do it, but the thing is... Gabby Gifford should not be reached for comment, you know?
I mean that's... Okay, well that's a good point.
But she made it, you know, but I almost feel like it would have to be like that extreme.
And by the way, Scalise is also not available for comment.
And then you have to wonder, like, you know, am I that cynical now where it would matter which political party was murdered in a mass shooting before you could do anything?
Like, I swear to God, I think there would almost be considerations there.
Remember, what you're talking about, libs of TikTok and all the things that they're influenced by, you know, I'm not going to say like the guy was listening to Ted Cruz for, you know, five, six or 18 years and then decided he's going to kill people, right?
That connection really isn't there.
But what you don't hear from those guys is any kind of leadership in terms of stopping this, or stopping the ideology, or the guns.
That really ends up being the almost approval by not saying anything about it, and that's really what's sad.
Well, and you know, here's the thing.
I really feel If there were, and this is a terrible hypothetical, but I think it's true, like if there were some sort of mass shooting and it affected elected leaders, the way that this country is staggered and the divide between the haves and have-nots, the people who have power and the people who don't have power, I think you would see an almost instantaneous vote for added security for elected officials.
I think that'd be it.
I don't I don't think that you would have a conversation about gun control.
I don't think it would move in that direction.
I mean, you know, it's the exact same thing, of course, that happened with the Supreme Court.
It was like Kavanaugh heard that somebody was protesting outside of a restaurant.
They pushed emergency funds to protect them.
You know what I mean?
When you actually take a look at what's happening.
And by the way, Texas.
Texas is awash in blood, and I'm not saying that to be hyperbolic.
Like, it's constant in Texas.
It's part of their culture now.
We've seen it.
It's elementary schools.
It's every public place.
I told you about this, and we were going to discuss it on the show.
What are they talking about?
They're talking about having elementary-age children having constant tutorials on battlefield-style triage.
Teaching children how to stop the bleeding of their classmates if they're being shot.
Like, that's where they're putting their money towards.
And I gotta tell you, first of all, that shows that there's money to be put towards something.
You know what I mean?
Like, they can put money toward it!
It just so happens that, oh, I guarantee that whoever is running that is also probably a donor.
It's probably within the right-wing Republican ecosystem.
But also, Nick, Think about what that is.
Like, think about these children who are having to go through these active shooter drills constantly.
You know what I mean?
Like, you and I, we had to deal with a different type of drill.
We had to deal with the duck and cover.
The Russians are going to bomb us.
These kids are having to deal with the fact that, like, at any moment someone might burst in with an AR-15, you know, and take out their classmates.
And by the way, for anyone who has any doubts about the seriousness of this, you're not going to stop the bleeding from these shootings.
You're done.
That's it.
These things are designed to kill human beings effectively and quickly.
But that I really don't think that anything is going to come from legislation until there is a grassroots movement from people demanding it until we're out in the streets until we're refusing to work until we're pushing the button and pushing the pressure to make them do something.
Because they simply either don't have the stomach or the will or the desire to do it.
And it is, it's more obvious than ever that this is going to become an omnipresent war zone and tragedy.
It already is and it's only going to get worse until we finally stand up and say, listen, the gears of government are not going to work unless you take care of this.
Well, what's interesting about like the Russian investigation was that they kind of exposed how the NRA really isn't a big organization, you know, not very well funded necessarily that run very, very well.
So, you know, all of a sudden it's like, well, it's not the NRA, it's not them putting the pressure on their lawmakers.
No, it's not.
You know, but it's money, right?
It's really money, right?
They don't want to do it because they're getting funded by, I guess, the gun makers, right?
This is what this is, basically, on one end.
But then also what we have to face, what you mentioned earlier, was that there's just a huge section of the population that feels like guns are a God-given right.
Well, and I want to go ahead and I want to broaden out and then focus in.
First of all, you know, back in the 1990s it was the NRA.
It was absolutely, that's what formed like the spinal part of that movement.
It was the GOP and the NRA working together basically as a reaction to the Bill Clinton presidency, and also Ruby Ridge and Waco, right?
And eventually what ended up happening is that McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh, took them at their word and then, you know, blew up the Alfred P. Murrah building.
What is happening now?
Eight people at a time.
Eleven people at a time.
These are domestic terrorist incidents.
These are little Oklahoma cities.
You know what I mean?
Like, it is, and it adds up.
These are not lone wolves.
These are not lone nuts.
This is part of a further radicalization of the United States of America.
We have an entire population of young men who are ready and willing to carry this out.
It is stochastic terrorism.
It's asymmetrical terrorism.
That being said, what you just said is exactly correct.
It's not the NRA that's the backstop anymore.
The NRA has completely fallen apart.
And of course it did.
It got too large.
It got too powerful.
There was too much money.
Wayne Lampierre was an absolute crook.
And eventually what happened was, it's almost like when there's a cast on a broken arm.
You know what I mean?
And eventually the cast falls off and the arm has healed.
It's solidified.
And like the support of this type of weaponry, it's the gun manufacturers, it's the gun lobbies, but it's also part of the larger institutional ideology of the Republican Party, which is they're coming for you, they're coming for your kids, they're gonna put you in camps, you need to have these guns, put your money in this, vote for us.
And it's part of their institutional sort of a thing.
And it's just turned into its own ecosystem and its own sort of cycle that's playing out.
And you just described how the Proud Boys recruit.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
Yes.
So these things are extremely related and connected and growing.
So that's that is the problem.
It's growing.
More of these people are turn 15, 16, 17, whatever they are, and they're willing to be part of these groups.
No one is saying to themselves, Well, you know what, this is probably illegal, or this is bad, like we shouldn't be plotting these kind of things.
That's not even a thing.
They are able to get into this, they get their guns, they get the camaraderie, and it leads to... Now, interestingly enough, the camaraderie is sort of what a lot of these shooters are missing, right?
They don't have the social interactions that could conceivably Help them.
So there's a diversion paths here that might start or have a lot of parallel roads.
Well, and it's sort of, it's interesting you bring it up like that.
It's almost like a decision tree.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, it's almost like, so you have a group of men in this country.
Also, again, shocker of shockers, this kid was an incel.
You know, like, surprising.
So basically, at this point in time, you have like an entire population of young men.
And a lot, and by the way, for the record, a lot of young men are more progressive than they've ever been, and they're rejecting all of this bullshit.
There are a lot of them, whether it's through their families or through their communities or through whatever's happening with them, they end up online and they basically go in a couple of directions.
One community that they find is a absolutely aggressively racist, violent group of people.
Nihilism is part of it, but you know what I mean?
Like a negative nihilism.
It's like, let's go out and hurt the world.
And eventually they just sort of There's like a discord somewhere, there's like a forum somewhere and they end up getting talked into like doing this and that's what their community is.
Other ones it's like put on this Proud Boys t-shirt and let's go out and you know fight the Antifa you know whoever like that is sort of where the the different parts of of this work.
And they both work in the exact same way.
It just so happens the institutionality and that camaraderie that you're talking about either funnels them in one direction or in another.
So you either end up going out to a mall and killing a bunch of families or you end up over here trying to overtake the government.
You're exactly right.
They are related very, very strongly.
Yeah it's just uh it's it's disheartening and soul-killing and I don't know well you're right we need to get the a movement needs to be fashioned out of this and it needs to be public and it needs to be large um and and you know we're so disaffected by this now that there's the outrage is getting tamped down that's it's really a problem.
I hate it.
I absolutely hate that we're getting desensitized to this.
I hate that every time that we go in public now, we have to think about it.
And that's not good for anyone.
Do you know what I mean?
Not just in terms of day-to-day existence, but we're living in perpetual fight or flight.
Yeah, and kids are being taught, you know, now to be in that situation as well.
And, you know, I think it was your book I was reading where, you know, the notion of a happy childhood full of inventiveness and imagination is kind of a new thing.
It's brand new.
Yep, it's brand new.
But it's not wrong.
No, it's not wrong!
And, like, we shouldn't be living... and you got to think about, like, how many kids right now are being put in the center of all this.
Do you know what I mean?
I just read to you in terms of the triage in Texas.
Can you imagine literally having to spend your entire childhood having to consider saving your friend's life as if you're at a state of war?
When people get back from war, they're messed up.
They shouldn't have to go through that, much less being just a public school child in Texas.
Considering smearing blood of a dead classmate on you to make it seem like... Yeah, it's not... That doesn't create a new generation that's going to be okay.
No.
And we're just sort of, like, moving forward.
And I don't know how you feel.
Like, everything that's happening now, like, we're living in this, like, state of America where, like, if you turn into the wrong driveway, you should sort of be expected to be shot.
You know it's we live in a state of perpetual aggressive fear and aggrievement and like it doesn't take a scientist to look around and say this is not a well country.
I agree.
I haunted somebody when I was driving who cut me off or whatever, and I got really, I got scared.
I'm like, I can't, I should not have done that, and I won't do it.
And yeah, that's even, that's where we are on a day-to-day level now, and it's really a problem.
I saw a really, really aggressive incident of road rage a couple of weeks ago.
Right and oh yeah and like this guy and and again shocker of shockers in a big giant truck um he got cut off but not in like a blatant cutoff it was like somebody realized that a lane was ending so they like had to hurry over or whatever this guy the aggrieved party in the truck like I saw him like get in like four or five near accidents like there is like the the the risks that he took You know, like, put a lot of people in danger.
And I have to tell you that if the person that he was chasing hadn't have, like, accelerated and gotten away, like, he could have gotten bad.
And what it is, basically, is that we have a nation full of time bombs.
We have people who are lonely.
We have people who are unwell.
There aren't a lot in the way of services or reaching out.
And by the way, the quickest thing to do, it's quicker to buy a gun and probably cheaper to buy a gun than to get the mental health care that what people actually need.
And on top of that, we don't prioritize that in this country.
It is a brutal, brutal state of things.
And by the way, On that note, and this isn't how this is being covered.
It's not the way people are talking about it.
Janet Yellen told the government that it's going to be out of money probably starting on June 1st.
Again, that's completely fictional.
I completely agree on all that fronts.
This is going to be a pageant that we're going to have to deal with, a shadow show that we're going to have to deal with.
We now are beginning the debt ceiling negotiations.
You're going to be listening to this on Tuesday, May 9th, which is when Kevin McCarthy is scheduled to sit down with Joe Biden.
Nick, they don't have a lot to talk about.
The two sides are pretty far apart.
The Republicans are wanting to hold up everything from student debt relief to investment in programs that take care of people.
They swear, Nick, that they're not coming after Social Security and Medicare, but I'm going to give that a couple of days.
I'm going to see how that develops.
How do you see this thing?
Well, you took my thing.
That was the one thing that they agreed on.
They were not going to bring up Social Security and Medicare.
But you're right.
It wasn't like they were not going to cut it or not going to try it.
They're just not going to talk about it.
Right.
And so I just I just find it amazing that for all the smart people that help design this government that we have.
And however well it worked for all these years, somebody wouldn't have thought about this in the beginning when they were structuring this and said, you know, there's going to be a scenario where, for purely political reasons, a party could easily just cause devastation across the globe in an economic way.
For political reasons, that's it.
And nobody thought about that, I suppose, or they couldn't fathom it.
They wouldn't think, oh, no one's going to do that.
That seems crazy, right?
And here we are.
It literally is the same as the idea of why is there no rule on the rule books that a dog can't play basketball?
That, like, it literally is, like, the premise of Air Bud.
The founders truly, truly believed that all wealthy, white, free men were gonna be on the same page about everything, and we didn't need parties, we're gonna agree on everything.
And then, by the way, they looked around, they were like, Have you noticed that we haven't agreed on slavery?
Like, did you notice that there's, like, regional disagreements taking place here?
Like, I'm sure this'll be fine.
I'm sure it'll be fine.
Get a bank up and going.
Yeah, this is just absolutely terrible.
I mean, the analysis, I don't know if you've taken a look at it.
The Republican plan, which is not what's going to end up being passed, who knows what shape things actually will take.
Their spending that they're pushing, Nick, is going to require $3.6 trillion worth of savings over the next decade.
Where are you going to get $3.6 trillion of saving?
And the whole point And this is what the Republicans have been doing with everything from the debt ceiling to you name it.
They keep creating these artificial things that happen up here.
Oh, guys, we got to do something to go ahead and to cut back.
We don't want to go after Social Security, but I have to tell you something.
I think it's time we take this problem on!
Let's finish the job.
And by finish the job, I mean make sure that old people and people who are on programs have even stricter work guidelines.
They have to work longer.
Hey, France, hope you're well.
Bonjour.
And basically to continue to roll this forward while pretending it's not what they want to do and blaming, of course, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, who more or less are going to go along with this charade.
I mean, sure, I can give you a real easy idea on how to get rid of all that spending in one minute.
Just don't make some of those ships that they keep making, or some of those planes, or some of those guns.
What about China, Nick?
What about China?
But by the way, just to show you how nakedly political this all is, they ripped Joe Biden to shreds over his military budget, even though he increased it more than they even wanted it to be increased.
Because they don't care.
They simply need to find a way to criticize and to tear down and oppose without ever having to legislate.
But I gotta tell you, we could build a few less tanks.
And cover a lot of that debt right away and get the budget under control.
I gotta tell you, Nick, Cold Wars are extremely useful.
They're really, really useful.
I mean, Nick, you wouldn't believe what the Chinese have.
You would not believe the weapons they've got.
And by the way, like with unraveling globalism, we need to get back on the seas!
We need to finish the job!
You know, we need to get more ships out there.
We need more hypersonic missiles.
Also, I don't know if you've seen the UFO files.
Those might be Chinese drones.
We might need to invest in some of those ourselves.
So what you're saying is completely off the board, right?
It's essentially starting a game of chess and just being like, we don't need this queen.
Let's throw this out of here.
We'll just go ahead.
I don't need this queen.
Actually, I'll go ahead and take care of everything except for pawns.
I don't need anything else.
It is deliberate and it is intentional that it creates a situation where it's like, You know, we literally can't cut anything else.
And here we are, we got to cut to the bone.
This is going to hurt.
But guess what?
We're American, we can do whatever.
Let's finish the job.
Let's go ahead and start cutting in Social Security, Medicaid, or at least the availability of them.
This thing over the next month, and by the way, they went ahead and now Yellen has put this artificial deadline over the top.
I think it's I don't think we're going to default.
I don't think the market's going to let that happen.
But I think you're going to see some really, really painful cuts and discussions that are going to take place over the next couple of weeks.
You know, and by the way, this is also related to, you know, the debt, the student debt loans that Biden was trying to get rid of or give relief to.
And I, you know, there's all these connections about it.
Basically, it's the ideology of what the government should do, what should they shouldn't do, and how they should treat their people.
And I kind of dove in for a second on another link about what was going on with this Supreme Court case that's supposedly going to stop Biden from giving debt relief to students.
And I don't know if you realize it, but in Missouri, the institution in charge of most of the student loans, they're not suing to stop this.
Someone else is trying to get standing in place of them, and they're even wondering in the Supreme Court, why wouldn't this institution be the one suing this?
They're the ones who are not getting the money back on their loans.
Because they understand why it's important.
That's how bad it's become.
These states have now tried to step in and pretend like it's some huge money-making venture that they need to be able to make money off of, and it kind of just reveals where they're starting from and why they don't give a shit about any kind of services that could actually benefit people that would cost a little money.
That's right.
And, and by the way, just to take a quick political look at this, how bad is that going to look if Biden has to backtrack on the student loan debt?
I mean, like if that happens, I mean, that's, oh, that was on very specific, you know, on the, on the Republicans, it's clear, but again, oh, by the way, two people who are suing.
Old money are students who have huge student loans, but because one guy didn't have a Pell Grant, he didn't get the full relief that Biden was offering.
So he wants to just cancel everything because of that.
He's actually benefiting from it, but because he doesn't benefit all the way, he is part of the suit against them to stop the entire program from happening.
What are we doing here, Jared?
I can't even I don't even understand.
I don't understand what we're doing.
Well, I mean, if it made rational sense, it would make rational sense.
But that's not what this is.
This is what hardball zero sum politics is.
And it's, you know, I'll get mine if you don't get yours.
And I, I think what we're going to watch, and by the way, debt ceiling talk is not sexy, and it's frustrating as hell because the debt stuff is completely made up and bullshit.
It's not even that, it's just approving stuff that they've already done, and on top of that it's just a figment of everyone's bullshit imaginations.
It's not going to be a sexy conversation, but it is going to really determine a lot going forward.
And it isn't gonna make a lot of sense.
It really truly isn't, because it's not rational.
It's not great.
Not wonderful, Nick.
I'm not excited about this developing story.
No, I'm not either.
No one seemed to think it's going to default, but it doesn't make me feel any better about it.
And you know, speaking of rational, we have lots of other... or irrational, I suppose we can get to our next topic, because I don't want to talk about it.
I love it.
So, for those who don't follow this stuff, the New York Times, and we love the New York Times, the Grey Lady folks, we love her, published this story.
It's by the reporter Amy Chozik.
And Amy Chozik went and hung out with Elizabeth Holmes.
And by the way, for anybody who is a homo, Elizabeth Holmes sounds Vaguely familiar?
Who is that?
Elizabeth Holmes.
Elizabeth Holmes was the former head of Theranos, which was the completely, utterly crooked criminal company that claimed that with one drop of blood it could run all these analyses.
Nick, did that program work?
It did not.
And it never would have, I don't think.
Science lied.
Did they defraud a ton of investors?
Oh yeah, yeah, they did.
They actually faked a lot of their data.
Also, not just with faking data, was Elizabeth Holmes, as head of that corporation, more than ready to roll out a product that she knew wouldn't work in order to have it tested on late-stage cancer patients?
Yes.
Yes, she was.
And by the way, if people are having trouble wrapping their heads around this, literally, they were going to send out machines that did not work, that did not give out accurate scans.
They knew that.
And this is for late-stage cancer patients.
This is for people out in the world who wouldn't know what was going on with their bodies.
It could have killed God knows how many people.
So, the New York Times runs this article, and it is the very definition of a rehab, rehabilitation piece, which is something the New York Times likes to do from time to time, and we'll talk about why.
But I want to jump in this article.
Elizabeth Holmes blends in with the other moms here in a bucket hat and sunglasses, her newborn strapped to her chest and swathed in a Baby Yoda nursing blanket.
We walk past a family of caged orangutans and talk about how Ms.
Holmes is preparing to go to prison for one of the most notorious cases of corporate fraud in recent history.
In case you're wondering, Ms.
Holmes speaks in a soft, slightly low, but totally unremarkable voice.
No hint of the throaty contralto she used while running her defunct blood testing startup Therados.
Which, by the way, our culture, Nick, is so brain dead, it can only focus on things like what she talked like.
Who cares?
Who cares?
She defied you.
She was going to kill people.
But it's important because it actually is central to the thesis of this article.
Remember?
I don't want to step on your toes here, but she affected a voice that was not hers and was kind of ridiculous even at the time.
And everyone was like, what is going on here?
But go on.
It's important to understand.
That's what I was trying to imitate, by the way, when I said Elizabeth Holmes.
She really talked in this weird, low voice.
But continue, please.
No, that's exactly right, and it is part of this character.
And as you sort of, like, read this, what you're realizing very, very quickly is that this is an article that is trying to, and this is important when it comes to The Voice, they're burying The fraudulent Elizabeth Holmes, who defrauded investors and was going to send out this machine that would have ended up killing God knows how many people.
That person's gone, Nick.
It's time to reintroduce to the public, before she goes to prison, the new and improved mother who doesn't talk like that or act like that.
For the record, these types of articles, they're not just thought up, you know?
It wasn't like the reporter was sitting at home and was like, I would love to go talk to Elizabeth Holmes and see what she's up to.
This is a PR strategy.
This is what wealthy people do.
They pitch the story to the New York Times and make sure that it happens.
Sometimes they even like pay a PR agent to make this thing happen.
They're killing that Elizabeth Holmes that you were talking about.
Yeah, we'll have to call her Liz now.
She's Liz.
Yeah, she wants to be Liz, which is not at all unintentional.
And that's why the PR department called them and said, hey, we have a story for you.
And then they're starting to think, gosh, we'll get a lot of hits on that one.
That'll be really important.
But they'll also lay out the guidelines of what you can do and what the piece needs to sound like.
And if you refuse, then they won't give you the access.
And so you won't have these dollar signs going through your brain anymore.
That is what the root of this is.
That's right.
So this article says, quote, the 15 week trial of Elizabeth Holmes began in 2021 and featured extensive testimony about troubling practices at Theranos.
The jury heard from several patients, including one who said a Theranos blood test revealed she was having a miscarriage when in fact she had a healthy pregnancy.
Not great.
No!
That's not it!
Holmes was not convicted on any counts related to patients, but the testimony was a stark reminder of the human stakes of choosing biotech as your startup.
No, that's not it.
It wasn't that she made a mistake by choosing the wrong startup.
It's that she defrauded people and put people in danger.
Later, Lance Wade, a lawyer for Ms. Holmes, said that his client, quote, made mistakes, but mistakes are not crimes.
She committed crimes!
She crimed.
She was a criminal committing crimes.
Guess what?
She's been convicted of that.
They were allegations.
Then she got convicted.
She committed crimes.
Those mistakes were crimes.
So, all right, I don't know what you're going to focus on in those articles.
I don't want to get in your way, but I got to bring it up because she's committed crimes.
She's about to be, she's sentenced.
She's going to go to prison for a while.
So that's a great time to start a family, isn't it, Jared?
She went and possibly had a family in order to get a moral allegiance sentence.
Okay, now that's insane.
It's crazy.
No one would ever do that, Jared.
But then again, who would ever create a company and build people for all that money and pretend like this thing actually works in the same kind of way?
It's the same thought process.
She hasn't changed except her voice and no red lipstick anymore.
No, it is exactly, it's a new scam.
That's the whole point here.
And by the way, like, we're talking about, okay, this is a person who got almost a billion dollars from everybody from Betsy DeVos, Rupert Murdoch, the Waltons.
Like, this was a scam from the very beginning.
Throughout, it was a scam.
This person is now scamming Again!
And the New York Times is more than happy to get into it.
By the way, real fast, this is on the voice.
Quote, if you hate Elizabeth Holmes, you probably think her feigned porma-horseness was part of an elaborate scheme to defraud investors.
Yes, I do.
If you are a person who is sympathetic to Ms.
Holmes, then the James Earl Jones inflection was a sign of the impossible gymnastics that female founders must perform to be taken seriously.
No!
This is not a both sides argument.
Nick, she crimed.
She defrauded people.
She was going to kill people with her product.
This is not a both sides situation.
This is so poorly written.
It's certainly not about any kind of glass ceiling for women in business.
You know, women in business need to... I don't even want to know where I'm going with that.
The bottom line is... Yeah.
Go ahead.
Well, I just want to read this last part.
Nick, I've written profiles before.
I've written articles before.
Guess what?
You make choices about how you write them.
You know what I mean?
What you include, what you don't include.
Let's have a little rhetoric lesson.
The next paragraph after all that.
Quote.
Her husband was driving the family's Tesla.
Ms.
Holmes climbed in after strapping the babies, calm and happy, into their car seats.
I rode shotgun.
Quote, that would be crazy if she answered the door and said, Hi, I'm Elizabeth Holmes, Mr. Evans said, imitating the voice.
Ms.
Holmes let out the slightest of giggles from the back seat.
Rhetorically, Nick, why is that in the article?
What's it communicating?
What am I supposed to take from that?
She's past it.
She's not that person anymore.
She can even look back on it and laugh.
Luckily, the people that she would have killed can still laugh about this.
Yeah yeah I mean right because it's like the what they leave in here what the editors allow them to leave in there as their story it's all very revealing and again the humanization of this uh is really the key she's a mother she gets she takes her kids all over the place and um I don't know it's um it's troubling because you know listen do I I now I don't want these kids to not have a mother I mean that sounds terrible too and I wouldn't want that to happen to them but Something.
It really reeks of a planned, you know, cynical thing where she was just trying to get some leniency, maybe get her 11 year sentence.
It's 11 years or something like that.
Something.
Half.
I don't know.
You know, you shouldn't you just shouldn't have done it.
And she should have known not to do it.
And there was whatever pressure and she tried to throw the CEO under the bus a little bit.
And whatever pressure she might have felt to be under, like to be successful in business, you know, it pales in comparison to what she actually did. - No, it absolutely does.
And by the way, Elizabeth Holmes is an artifact of that moment in time where we still believe these tech CEOs were brilliant god geniuses, you know?
And like, I love now that we're still trying to figure that out with one article after another about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, about how smart they are, while meanwhile, you know, Elizabeth Holmes is going to prison.
I'm going to read at length real fast from the end of this.
I just want to point this out and then we'll finish this up.
I realized that I was essentially writing a story about two different people.
There was Elizabeth, celebrated in the media as a rock star inventor whose brilliance dazzled illustrious rich men and whose criminal trial captivated the world.
Then there is Liz, as Miss Evans and her friends call her, the mom of two who, for the past year, has been volunteering for our rape crisis hotline, who can't stomach R-rated movies, and who rushed after me one afternoon with a paper towel to wipe a mix of sand and her dog's slobber off my shoe.
First of all, no!
Same person!
Same person.
And by the way, that person is going to prison to serve their debt to humanity.
Then, quote, and this is amazing, Nick, and I can't wait to hear your reaction to this.
Quote, I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person.
She's gentle and charismatic in a quiet way.
My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling me, and I quote, you got rolled.
I vigorously disagreed.
You don't know her like I do.
But then something very strange happened.
I worked my way through a list of Ms.
Holmes' friends, family, and longtime supporters whom she and Mr. Evans suggested I speak to.
One of these friends said Ms.
Holmes had genuine intentions at Theranos and didn't deserve a lengthy prison sentence.
Then this person requested anonymity to caution me not to believe everything Ms.
Holmes says.
Nick!
I don't know about you, but much like when we were talking about the person who was doing the pain box thing, you don't have to put that in the article!
Like, why?
I thought reporters were objective.
I thought they were the great priests of reality.
They couldn't do this shit.
This is embarrassing and terrible.
And I still can't believe this thing got published.
She needs a new editor, A, because the editor shouldn't be appearing in the article.
And then B, as I understand it, the way the editing process has gone in journalism now is so decimated by cuts and, you know, nobody's experience that maybe it isn't surprising that this kind of stuff gets through and they don't edit this properly.
Do you know what it was?
What's that?
Do you know who I think the editor was?
No.
ChatGPT.
ChatGPT.
I think this was an AI-rendered thing.
I think even the AI knew that Elizabeth Holmes enrolled this reporter.
Yeah, because, I don't know, I can't believe any editor would have looked at that and been like, hmm, do I want the audience or the reader to know what I told them and what she told me?
And like, you know, it just, it just reeks of, and by the way, I don't even know if I would, like, if this was happening to me, I'm going to prison now, I told the New York Times, go talk to Jared about me.
I'm not sure I'd put you on the list.
Because you'd be too honest.
You would say stuff that I wouldn't want you to say.
I'm going to give them to the people who I know are going to lie about me and say the nicest things.
Like, that's the problem here.
I, first of all, that is an interesting take.
That you think that if you needed me to speak about you in an article that you wouldn't trust me.
I think this is I think that the intimacy and honesty there is important.
It reminds me, by the way, of a friend of mine who I asked her many times.
I was like, you know, if I called you in the middle of the night and I needed to bury a body, would you help me?
She said, absolutely not.
I would turn you into the police.
I was like, OK, thank you.
Thank you for that honesty.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I thought maybe it wasn't going to be burying a body, just are you going to help her in the middle of the night?
The answer should be like, of course I'll help you, right?
Of course, but there's a body.
I mean, no.
Yeah, but now I got to, I think I have to actually quiz all of my friends now with that specific scenario to find out.
Nick Helseman, if you need me to lie to the New York Times, I would do it.
I would happily do it.
Oh, absolutely.
Oh, are you kidding me?
The New York Times that more than willingly runs these articles about people like Elizabeth Holmes and carries their water?
Absolutely.
You're a journalist.
You've written for the New York Times, right?
Yes, I have.
It doesn't seem like you learned in journalism school that if you go to interview a subject that they would provide the list of people that you should talk to and that you would then only do that.
That doesn't sound right.
It's weird.
It's a really weird thing.
Also, I have to tell you that in none of my training as a journalist have I ever been told that I'm supposed to say within an article whether I believe the subject.
Like, that is very weird stuff.
All right, that's enough.
I recommend everybody read this.
This is wild, wild stuff.
We will be back on Friday with our Weekender Show.
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