Roger Stone dissects Biden’s Syria destabilization, accusing the U.S. and CIA of enabling Ahmed Al-Shara’s Al-Qaeda-linked regime—responsible for 7,000–17,000 executions, crucifixions of children, and ethnic cleansing—while Trump and Putin act. He ties Infowars reporter Jamie White’s murder to a Ukrainian hit list targeting Alex Jones, blaming DA Jose Garza’s policies. In U.S. politics, Stone warns of Republican losses in New York’s special election, where Liz Joy’s residency loophole and Blake Genbendian’s AOC-backed campaign could swing the race, while Lindsey Graham faces a $5M-funded primary challenge from Mark Lynch. Meanwhile, Empower’s decentralized rideshare model—led by Joshua Sear—lets drivers keep 100% of fares, earning Black and brown immigrants $150M collectively, but D.C.’s Attorney General Brian Schaub (ex-Uber lobbyist) hits them with a $100M lawsuit, exposing regulatory collusion. The episode frames corporate power and globalist hypocrisy as the real threats to freedom. [Automatically generated summary]
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lead the future this is the stone zone with roger stone People love him and respect him.
Roger Stone.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
You are entering the stone zone.
And here we talk politics.
We eat, sleep, and breathe politics.
I think if I cut myself, I would probably bleed politics.
Once in a while, we talk about food.
That's the other thing I love, beyond politics.
But over the weekend, horrendous footage emerged of the new Syrian government embracing its jihadi roots and inflicting really depraved acts of violence against Christians and other ethnic minorities in the country.
You see, the Biden administration toppled the regime of Assad, who was the dictator in control of Syria previously, very much like what we did in Libya when we toppled Qaddafi, leading to even worse chaos there.
President Donald Trump 10 years ago said that while he had no love for Assad, he thought whatever came next would be worse.
More recently, Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat congresswoman, now our director of national intelligence, was roundly criticized for visiting with Assad several years ago.
She visited with him to express her concern about the danger to the Christian minority in that country.
By the way, Nancy Pelosi also visited Assad.
She was not criticized.
Some of the scenes we have seen, including men being forced to crawl like dogs as they await their executions, homes of Alawite minorities being decimated due to a grudge against the former president, demeaning Christians by having their face kicked into walls by armed thugs, stores being ransacked following the ethnic cleansing of Christians, men being executed in cold blood while begging for their lives,
and jihadis posing next to mass graves filled with the strewn bodies of the unfortunate victims.
Over 7,000 Christians and Alawites have now been slaughtered in Syria, according to a Greek member of the European Parliament.
That's Nicholas Ferrantoris, who visited Damascus on March 9th.
The death toll now estimated to be between 7,000 and 17,000.
This is what Biden hath wrought.
This is what Anthony Blinken and the Central Intelligence Agency have brought us.
These scenes are just a taste of the hell that Syria is being forced to endure under the regime of the new president, Ahmed Al-Shara.
Al-Shara is a veteran radical Islamist with deep ties to Al-Qaeda, who, in the stroke of obvious story brilliance, rebanded his former terror front as Jabhat al-Nasura.
After al-Nasura became nearly as infamous as Al-Qaeda, Al-Shah rebranded once again as Hayat Tahir al-Sam when he finally hit the jackpot.
Assistance with the CIA, they quickly moved to topple Bashir Assad before Donald Trump became president.
Under his new front, dubbed the HTS, he led a coup in Syria.
They were successful in ousting Bashar al-Assad from his post in late 2024.
Despite his multi-decade history as a jihadi, seemingly all the world's most respectable leaders eagerly congratulated Jolani after his successful coup.
This is a who's who of globalists fawning over a brutal murderer and his handiwork.
This includes the United Nations General Secretary Antonio Guterres, the International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, European Union Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management Hajad Labid, the EU President Ursula von Leyen, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, even the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Kerr Sturmer, and of course,
at the time, U.S. President Joe Biden.
But the operation to devastate Syria is far from a recent occurrence.
It has been a great many years in the making, with a major assist coming from the military-industrial complex in this country.
The Obama administration has funded a $1 billion clandestine war conducted by the CIA in Syria with the explicit goal of regime shames.
The program received bipartisan support from some neocon Republicans in Congress, including then-Senator John McCain and Senator Lindsey Graham, both of whom urged Obama to arm terrorists and bomb Syria for the purposes of overthrowing Assad.
After the war between Russia and Ukraine limited Russia's ability to provide support to the Assad regime, he was finally deposed and military inventionists the world over could not have been happier.
We're talking about the brutal murder of Christians, including the crucifixion of children as young as five years old.
The militarists were as ecstatic about as they were after the fall of Omar Qaddafi in Libya or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but now the chickens are coming home to roost in the form of these gruesome killings.
What is the response from the Western allies who cheer on the rise of Islamic terrorism in Syria?
Deafening silence.
The media sources who have helped in the propaganda effort to rehabilitate Jolani's image are either silent or they minimize the scale of the crimes that are taking place at the hands of his regime.
Only the raw videos that we can see on social media show the vicious war crimes that have been visited on the Syrian people.
The United States and Russia have taken the lead in demanding that the UN Security Council meet immediately to address this spike in violence, as most world leaders are willing to ignore convenient amnesia and rank moral cowardice reigns.
Ironically, it is Donald Trump and yes, Vladimir Putin who are taking actions to address this terror in Syria.
Trump and Putin, two men who supposedly authoritarians and threats to democracy, according to almost every supposedly respectable Western analyst, are the only men with the courage to stand up for persecuted Christians in Syria.
Most of the globists would let the Christians be brutally murdered without a second thought while mainstreaming the spread of jihad throughout the Middle East to satiate the false idol of multiculturalism.
The tragedy in Syria demonstrates exactly why the West has surrendered the high moral ground.
The decaying West, embodied most appropriately and pathetically by the out-of-touch European and UN bureaucrats in Brussels, never learns from its mistakes and continues to usher in death and destruction across the planet without even a hint of self-awareness.
They brutally impose their will on third world nations, causing untold misery, and then they misplace humanitarianism, unleashed aggrieved hordes upon the West to manifest their ethnic vendettas.
Only Trump and strangely Putin and a handful of others have resisted this impetus to commit civilization suicide.
Europe must re-embase its nationalistic roots and readopt the common sense policies of strong borders, economic sovereignty, non-interventionist foreign policy, and put its own people first for the West to regain the high moral ground when it comes to Syria.
Shockingly, also learned this week about the brutal murder of Jamie White.
Jamie White was a reporter at Infowars, someone I worked with when I did a show at InfoWars over a two-year period.
The tragic news was that White was brutally murdered near his Austin, Texas home after coming home late from work Sunday night, almost one o'clock in the morning.
This past Monday, Alex Jones, the founder of InfoWars, broke the sad news, saying, only, we are deeply saddened to inform you that InfoWars reporter Jamie White was brutally murdered around midnight Sunday night due in part to the policies of Soros Austin, Texas DA Jose Garza.
We pledge that Jamie's tragic deaths will not be in vain and those responsible for this senseless violence will be brought to justice.
Jones, who worked obviously with White, described him as a good friend.
I knew him.
He was an excellent writer, a prodigious writer, and a valued colleague when I had a show at Infowars.
White, it turns out, was on a Ukrainian kill list, along with Jones himself, Chase Geyser, and several other staff members at Infowars.
Incidentally, Geyser then was swatted only yesterday and again last night by police officers sent to his home at 2 a.m. under a false report that Geyser was going to kill his entire family.
While it is unknown whether these incidents are connected to the death of White, General Mike Flynn said that there was a plan to kill Alex Jones.
And again, all of these men were on a publicly published Ukrainian kill list.
White's family is accepting donations at Give Seng Go.
Hopefully we'll get to the bottom of this tragic murder when they start killing journalists.
That is a serious problem.
Rest in peace, Jamie White.
Republican Primary Challenge00:08:03
Up in the 21st District of New York, there is a growing contest in the special election for Congress.
Now, remind you, Republicans only control the House by three seats, but that's really on paper because two of those seats are currently vacant.
Matt Gates and Mike Waltz both resigned their seats in Congress.
Gates to initially accept an appointment as Attorney General, from which he withdraws, now to go over and helm his own show on OAN, and Waltz to become National Security Advisor.
That means that in reality, Republicans only have one seat advantage.
With Congressman Elise, Congresswoman, Elise DeFond, expected to vacate her seat in Congress in April after special elections in Florida fill that seat.
we're looking at a special election.
Now in New York State, the special election is a little different in that Republicans and Democrat primary voters are not allowed to choose their nominees for the special election.
The nomination will be chosen by the Republican county chairs who meet in convention with each county having a weighted vote based on population.
There is a big field.
Sticker Mule CEO Anthony Constantino, who has appeared on this show, has emerged as a leading candidate.
He has funded his own campaign, putting $3 million into his campaign coffers from the sale of Tesla stock.
But yesterday it was reported that even though there is no vacancy, the district Republicans are calling a meeting of the chairs to select a nominee.
That would be a violation of both state party bylaws and state law.
It is rumored that they are preparing to quote unquote designate two-time failed congressional candidate Liz Joy.
Joy does not live in the district.
She lives in an adjourning district where she ran twice for Congress.
This is going to be an important seat because this seat was held by a Democrat as recently as 2015.
Democrats have nominated a dairy farmer, Blake Genbendian, who has $2 million immediately on hand, that money having come from Hakeem Jeffries and AOC.
If the Republican convention either excludes some county chairs or does not allow a vote for any registered Republican, well, I would say that certificate of nomination will get challenged.
We'll be following this special election very closely here on the Stone Zone.
Again, crucial that the House majority be kept.
There's the possibility of vacancies in Texas where a congressman in the 28th district, a Democrat, is under indictment with 14 different charges of corruption.
We will be watching the House majority very closely.
In the meantime, you're tuned into the Stone Zone here on the Red Apple Audio Networks.
And if you love politics, don't go away because, well, we'll be right back.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
Stone Zone.
Not just ever stone.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.
Don't cut rural health care.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
They went after a guy named Roger Stone, who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now they treated him very unfairly.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
And we're back in the Stone Zone.
This is the place for politics.
You know, last season, I was at Mar-Lago attending an outdoor reception out by the swimming pool.
And who should I see but Senator Lindsey Graham, one of my least favorite Republicans?
Graham had his back to the swimming pool, only about two feet from the pool.
And well, my wife saw a devilish grin come across my face, and she said, don't you dare.
Don't even think about it.
And for a nanosecond, I admit that I thought about pushing everyone's favorite rhino into the pool, but my wife correctly said that if you do that, the Secret Service will nab you, they will throw you out, and you will never be allowed into Mar-Lago again.
So some nights in my dreams, I do push the good senator in the pool.
I don't really understand why the president tolerates him.
He undermines the president through much of his term.
Who can forget that on January 6th, he was calling the White House Council, demanding that Trump be removed from the presidency under the 25th Amendment.
Of course, the Senate has no such rule in the 25th Amendment, which requires a majority of the cabinet and the vice president to remove a president.
And then even then, it is subject to a vote of the Congress.
But now Lindsey Graham faces something he has not faced in many decades.
He's actually being challenged in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate by Mark Lynch, who is a businessman and a Christian, certainly not a career politician.
Lynch has put $5 million into his own campaign, showing that he's indeed serious.
The obstacle here is that South Carolina has what is known as an open primary.
That means a voter of any party or no party at all can vote in the Republican primary, meaning that liberal Democrats could cross over into the Republican primary to save Lindsey Graham.
Whether they're going to do that remains to be seen, but Lynch is a serious, serious contender.
Beyond that, I noticed that Bernie Sanders, who used to criticize billionaires and millionaires, now only criticizes billionaires.
I think that's because he and his wife, quite legally, skimmed millions of dollars off of his two presidential campaigns in quote-unquote media commissions.
Not illegal, but you wonder whether his donors knew about it.
When it comes to Bernie Sanders, well, it's socialism for thee, but not for Comrade Bernie.
Transforming Ride Share Business00:15:06
This is Roger Stone.
We're in the Stone Zone, and we'll be right back with Joshua Sear, the chief executive officer and founder of the company Empower.
We'll be right back.
This is the Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
They went after a guy named Roger Stone who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
Now, get in the zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
Welcome back.
You are in the Stone Zone.
Joining us now is Joshua Sear.
He is the founder of Empower.
Empower is transforming rideshares as we know them.
With Empower, drivers set their own rates and get 100% of the fare, and riders can usually get more affordable rides from drivers they trust.
This is a decentralized rideshare system.
Drivers earn more and riders pay less and feel safer.
But it's not at all like competitors Uber and Lyft.
Well, they have already had drivers working with Empower earn over $100 million.
The 15,000 drivers in DC have provided over 6 million rides, but the DC government isn't having it.
So this upstairs upstart rideshare app founded by our guest today, Joshua Scheer, is facing a lawsuit from DC's Attorney General and an investigation from an irate city council member about, and facing about $100 million in fines from regulators.
But Joshua Sear is not backing down and he joins us now.
Welcome, Joshua, to the Stone Zone.
Thank you for having me, Roger.
Let's start from the beginning and explain how Empower is different than your competitors.
Sure.
Well, look, Uber and Lyft, they run a very centralized model where they provide transportation services to riders.
At this point in time, they basically try and charge riders as much as possible, and they pay drivers as little as possible to provide rides on behalf of Uber and Lyft.
We've basically flipped that model upside down.
We have made the driver our customer.
They run their own business.
They get to set their own rates, as you explained.
They get 100% of the fare, and they pay us a subscription fee for software and support services that we provide to them so that they can run and grow their own business.
And with that business model, because they're getting 100% of the fare, they're able to charge their own customers, riders, about 20% less on average than what Uber and Lyft would charge to riders.
And they're still able to make more money.
Again, they get 100% of the fare instead of being paid 40 or 50% of what Uber collects from riders.
So you're essentially a software business.
You're not really in the transportation business.
Correct.
Right.
I kind of liken it to, you could liken it to OpenTable.
You could liken it to Expedia or to Etsy or Shopify or even Substack.
We're providing our customer is the service provider.
It's not the end user consumer.
We want to sell software and other support services that make it so that individual professional hardworking drivers who want to work for themselves and don't want to work for Uber Lyft or for anybody for that matter. who want to pursue the American dream and running their own business can do so and can compete with those much bigger transportation providers.
So I think the real story here, not just the innovative nature of your company, but the pushback you've gotten from the mayor of D.C., from the U.S. Attorney from D.C.
They even at one point threatened to throw you in jail, which seems to be a little excessive to me.
Tell us what's going on here.
Yeah, so I just want to create, it's not the U.S. attorney in D.C., it's the D.C. Attorney General.
Pardon me.
No, no, no problem at all.
His name is Brian Schaub.
And as you correct, Mayor Bowser.
Look, they have very, very strong, both personal and financial ties to Uber.
A.G. Schaub ran Venable, a large law firm, Amlaw 100 firm.
He was the partner in charge of the DC office for, I believe, 17 years right before he became D.C. Attorney General.
Tamala Harris's husband, Mr. Emhoff, ran the San Francisco and LA offices of the same firm at the same time.
They are very, very close.
And Doug Emhoff's brother-in-law and Tamala Harris's brother-in-law is Tony West, who is basically the number two at Uber.
And Venable also represents Uber.
It's one of their law firms.
It's one of their largest lobbying firms as well.
And so there are very, very close ties between Uber and Mayor Bowser and A.G. Schaub.
I did a quick search on the Federal Election Commission website to see how many Uber executives had donated to Donald Trump and how many had donated to Kamala Harris.
The answer was none for Trump.
A very substantial number of donations to Harris.
I've seen this same thing in other states.
Uber is extraordinarily political.
They hire the toughest, meanest, most influential lobbyists, and they try to drive the competition out of town.
Tell us about your typical driver, your typical, what would you call a subscriber, I guess?
Yeah, yeah, subscriber, customer, absolutely.
So, I mean, our customers are, you know, over 90% are black and brown individuals, individuals of color.
Many of them are immigrants, so legal immigrants here who have left places that are, you know, very difficult.
Many of them are, you know, communist type countries and regimes, and they've come here for the ability to, you know, have freedom.
And frankly, you know, it's been really sad to see, you know, politicians that claim to represent these folks to think that plumbers, electricians, doctors, lawyers, accountants, lobbyists, barbers, all these other professions, they're all more than free to work for themselves, determine their own worth, and compete.
But apparently, folks in the district, the mayor and the AG, don't think that these hardworking drivers who are trying to put food on the table and make a better life for themselves and their families, that they're not entitled to those same rights.
And I think that's simply wrong.
It seems outrageous to me.
I see that the DC's Department for Hired Vehicles, citing so-called safety concerns, because they say that your drivers are not registered with them, have sought to stop you from serving customers, or I should say, serving drivers who affiliate with you, use your software, and get 100% of the ride cost.
It seems to me like common sense.
Oh, it's total common sense.
And they have even admitted.
We have had numerous conversations with leadership at the Department of Four Hired Vehicles.
I do think that the director there would like to do the right thing, but he doesn't have any power at the end of the day.
He can only do, I mean, he's admitted effectively to me, you know, in multiple occasions that he has to follow the instructions of Mayor Bowser.
They have admitted in writing, they have admitted over the phone, in Zooms, that the drivers who are our customers are in compliance with virtually, as is the company, with virtually all of the regulations that Uber is subject to.
Now, we believe that we shouldn't be forced to be compliant with them, but there's a lot of common sense.
Some of them are common sense regulations.
For example, we require all of our customers, all of these drivers, to be subject to a background check.
Literally, every single one.
They have to pass a background check.
Now, that's not because we think that we're required under the law to do so, but we do it because we know that most riders probably wouldn't feel that comfortable using and requesting rides from a platform where the drivers weren't subject to a background check.
And drivers understand that too.
And they get that, well, if there weren't very many ride requests, well, the software that we're selling them won't be worth very much, and they're not going to pay us.
We won't make any money.
They won't make any money.
So it just makes sense.
But at the same time, you've got a DC attorney general who has publicly lied and said that we don't do background checks.
And he's continued to repeat that lie, even though he knows that it's not true.
You know, and so, again, yeah, it's upsetting, and we're certainly fighting it.
And you mentioned fines, you know, they claim, oh, we owe them $100 million.
I have an email right now from a couple days ago where they suggested if we would just basically fall in line, they'll wipe out the fines.
They'll drop it from $92 million to $300,000.
And by the way, I guarantee you they would drop it to zero in a heartbeat if we would just fall in line and do what they want and basically be an Uber clone.
If you're just tuning in, we're talking to Joshua Sear, the CEO of Empower, and we'll be right back.
This is The Stone Zone with Roger Stone.
They went after a guy named Roger Stone, who's sitting in the office.
And I'll say this in front of Roger.
He's no baby.
And right now, he's cleaner than anybody in this place.
Now, as they treated him very unfairly.
Now, give him a zone.
It's the stone zone.
Here's Roger Stone.
If you're just tuning in, we are talking to Joshua Sear, the founder and I believe CEO of Empower, which is transforming the rideshar business, ride share business, to the consternation of D.C. City officials.
Joshua, I've read online about a demonstration tomorrow outside the White House.
I imagine this is many of your drivers, many of your subscribers, I guess I should say.
Tell us about that.
Yeah, so there is a hearing that we have to go to tomorrow that, you know, connection with those efforts by D.C. A.G. Schaub.
And as part of that, we will be having a civil rights march for drivers and for riders as well outside of Judiciary Square.
And we'll be marching up and going towards the White House.
We expect there'll be hundreds of both drivers and their customers, riders, because riders, you know, they care deeply about this as well.
This is a huge pocketbook issue for them.
And it's largely folks in underserved communities as well.
You know, they're able to save a couple of bucks on a ride twice a day going to and from their work as a janitor or as a nurse or as a teacher or a student.
And that adds up for folks.
And I get perhaps some of these city officials who are making $160,000, $200,000 a year don't get how being able to save $20,000, $30 a week on transportation can make a big difference for folks, but it does.
And not only that, these riders also, they like the fact that the driver gets 100% of what they pay.
You know, nobody likes, you know, when they get in the back of an Uber and, you know, the fare is 30 bucks.
And if they ask the driver, hey, how much did you make on this?
And the driver says, you know, 15 bucks, obviously the driver, you know, is upset.
But riders don't like that either.
You know, that's not a good feeling.
They really like the fact that the driver is getting paid all of what they pay for the ride.
And so, yeah, we're going to have a march and we are expecting a big turnout.
And again, part of the reason we need to have this march is we've had riders have sent over 10,000 emails in the last few weeks to Mayor Bowser, her chief of staff, and they have CC'd a lot of members of, I guess you'd call it the traditional press, and they don't want to cover it.
And she hasn't responded.
She hasn't answered.
She's not responding to her constituents.
And so, you know, we're going to continue to raise attention to this issue.
And it is a civil rights issue for folks.
And it's an economic rights issue for folks.
People should have a right to be able to work for themselves and compete.
And frankly, I think the fact that the overwhelming majority of these folks are individuals of color, and you've got supposedly a city that's supposed to represent them, doesn't seem to be listening very well.
What you say is absolutely true.
When I take Uber, I haven't used Lyft, but when I use Uber, I ask the driver, so what percentage of today's ride are you going to get?
Economic Rights Issue00:06:01
And it's such a pittance that I always overtip because I feel bad, particularly when the driver is polite, the car's clean, he knows where he's going.
When you have a smooth trip, then you find that he's getting a tiny, he or she, I should say, getting a tiny portion of the overall cost.
I always think it's kind of inherently unfair, but just want to confirm this.
Empower takes zero commission from the driver, correct?
Correct.
We don't make a penny from riders.
We charge drivers a subscription fee.
We've got a few different subscription options, but that's it.
And so our incentives are very much aligned with drivers.
We want drivers to be as successful as possible.
Obviously, the more value we can add to them, frankly, the more we can charge for our subscription.
And, you know, that may sound weird coming from a CEO saying that we might charge our customers more, but drivers respect that.
We let them know that, right?
They've been lied to so much that they just like to hear the truth, which is, look, you're our customer.
And you don't need to trust that we're going to do you right because if we don't do you right, you're not going to stay our customer very long.
And so our incentives are aligned with drivers to make sure that they're able to make more money, make a living, be treated with respect and dignity.
And we try and do everything we can to help them run and grow their own business.
And we take nothing from the rider.
Looking at your website, it appears so far you have provided you have generated $8 million in revenues for your subscribers.
You have had over $300,000 worth of rides or 300,000 rides.
And driver, pardon, I got this wrong.
Driver earnings were, what, $125 million?
Am I re-innected?
That was just last month, those numbers that you were going to.
So drivers in the D.C. metro area have now provided 9 million rides to over a quarter million riders.
They've earned close to $150 million and we're growing, and it's growing pretty fast.
And it's terrifying, Uber.
Drivers in the district are now providing over 15% of all of the rides, all the private for hired transportation rides, drivers working for themselves, setting their own rates, using our software.
Last week, they provided over 130,000 rides to over 35,000 riders.
They earned $2 million, and that was just last week alone, just in the D.C. metro area.
We've recently expanded into Baltimore.
That market is growing incredibly fast.
We have a presence down in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, North Carolina, as well.
It's actually the first market we launched.
And we have a very, very small presence in New York City.
But there's obviously some very, very close ties between some of the folks in New York City and Uber as well, as you can imagine.
Now, Uber is inherently a political company.
I've seen the way they operate.
In those other locations where you have already expanded, starting your presence, are you, putting aside New York, are you experiencing the same kind of resistance that you are experiencing in D.C.?
We're not.
In North Carolina, we haven't had any resistance in Virginia, because it's obviously in the D.C. metro area.
Rides in Virginia, we haven't had any.
We've had a little bit of pushback in Maryland, but that seems to be being pushed by folks in D.C. who are trying to push folks in Maryland.
They don't seem to really have their heart in trying to stop things.
Really extraordinary.
So here's an obvious question.
This has to be costing your company a fortune in legal phase, no?
It's definitely, that's part of Uber's strategy, is to try and divert our resources, divert our attention.
I used to be a lawyer, so that helps a little bit.
I can help a little bit with respect to some of those things.
But yeah, it is.
It is expensive.
And it's a clear effort, not just to cost us money, but to cost us time and attention from growing the business.
And they're prepared to do away with this alleged $100 million in fines that they're trying to levy on you.
But what do they ask you just to go away, shut down, disappear?
They want us basically to register And comply in the exact same way as Uber does, to basically say our business model is the same as Uber's.
They want us to effectively determine how much drivers can charge for rides.
I mean, let me rephrase that.
They want us to charge riders for rides and pay drivers, right?
They want us to copy basically Uber's business model, which we think is not a good business model, and force us into a bad business model and force us to try and compete with Uber on Uber's terms using Uber's business model.
And if we're willing to do that, then sure, no problem, right?
But that's like asking Open Table to register as a restaurant or asking Expedia to become an airline or Shopify to be the same as its customers.
I mean, it just literally doesn't make any sense.
And, you know, we don't want to be a transportation company.
And drivers, our customers, don't want to work for us.
They want to work for themselves.
You know, and they should have that opportunity.
And we're not requiring, you know, that everyone has to work for themselves.
If drivers want to work for Uber, they can work for Uber.
And this isn't about, hey, we think that there should be no regulation of transportation.
We've proposed legislation in D.C. that would provide a pathway for drivers to individually register with the district and be in compliance with whatever reg the district thinks are appropriate for drivers who want to work for themselves.
All right, Fabe, we have to leave it there.
Empowering Rural Healthcare00:01:04
Our thanks to Joshua Sear from Empower for joining us.
This has been the Stone Zone.
Until tomorrow, God bless you and Godspeed.
Rural Americans deserve access to the best of what our country has to offer, especially health care.
Across every state, every community, America's rural hospitals are the first line of defense, protecting our families, neighbors, and loved ones.
No matter where you live, hospital care doesn't clock out.
They're there 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
Each year, America's over 5,000 hospitals care for millions of patients, providing 24-7 emergency care, delivering babies, cancer treatments, and other life-saving care that patients rely on.
Behind every one of those patients are doctors, nurses, and caregivers working tirelessly to keep people healthy and safe.
Hospitals are our community's lifelines.
They employ our neighbors and keep our families healthy.
But now, some in Congress are threatening access to care.
Tell Congress, protect patient care to keep America strong.