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Rumble Wallet: Freedom and Ownership
00:01:52
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| Hi, I'm Libby Emmons. | ||
| I am filling in this morning for Tate Brown. | ||
| Really happy to be with you guys. | ||
| We're going to start off with a word from our sponsor. | ||
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| Hey, guys. | ||
| So I'm excited to get started with you this morning. | ||
| We have a lot to cover. | ||
| Minneapolis is still going hard in the news, and we're going to get into it. | ||
| First off, I do want to recommend that you check out my new podcast called The Pod Millennial. | ||
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Wide Awakes Take Action
00:12:42
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| The first episode is with myself and Michael Knowles. | ||
| It's really fascinating. | ||
| It's mostly on culture and ideas and what's going on in that realm of things. | ||
| It gives me an opportunity to veer a little bit away from politics and lean into my background, which is pretty much entirely culture since, you know, I spent my entire life until five minutes ago in the arts. | ||
| So thank you. | ||
| I hope you check it out. | ||
| Let's get into this first story. | ||
| This is from Hannah Nightingale at the Postmillennial exclusive Minnesota Hotel Workers Request Agitators stage anti-ICE wide awakes to force agents out. | ||
| This is from a Women's March action training that happened last night, virtually, of course, because that's how everything happens these days. | ||
| Sunrise Movement Executive Director Aru Shinny Ajay revealed how her organization is targeting the logistical ways that ICE operates, including through actions against Hilton Hotels and the car rental service enterprise. | ||
| Now, you'll remember over the weekend, you had a mob surrounding a hotel, the home two suites in St. Paul to agitate against ICE officers that they believed were staying there. | ||
| And the way, here's what, here's what Shinny Ajay said. | ||
| The way that I think about this is that this is the offensive part of an ICE campaign. | ||
| And it's a little bit, there's a lot of different types of corporate campaigns. | ||
| The Enterprise and Hilton campaigns really focus on some of the logistical ways that ICE operates. | ||
| It sort of comes from the logic of when ICE is here, they need places to sleep. | ||
| They need places to eat. | ||
| They need ways to get around. | ||
| What are ways that we can physically interrupt the ways that they do that so that we can kick them out? | ||
| She said in the corporate accountability breakout session of this Women's March training. | ||
| She said that the campaigns to show up at night at hotels where ICE is staying and making noise with the intent of disrupting the agents have been really effective. | ||
| And here's what she said. | ||
| We have started having workers. | ||
| So this is people who work at the Hilton hotels, start requesting noise demonstrations. | ||
| We call them wide awakes. | ||
| Start requesting wide awakes in the middle of the night. | ||
| We've had reports of ICE agents leaving after our noise demonstrations. | ||
| We've had multiple hotels report to us that they have quietly decided to kick ICE out because they don't want to say it publicly so they don't get backlash, but they've told us that they've decided to kick ICE out. | ||
| We even had two hotels. | ||
| We've gotten word, not from them, but through the grapevine. | ||
| They specifically refuse to house ICE because of the noise demonstrations. | ||
| And then she talks about how they operate. | ||
| These are simple, super simple. | ||
| We just show up in the middle of the night. | ||
| We make a bunch of noise until, and you know, until the police ask us to leave and then we leave. | ||
| They're peaceful. | ||
| They're nonviolent. | ||
| There's no property destruction, nothing like that. | ||
| It's just about making so much noise that we are physically costing the hotel money and time and we're waking ICE up as well. | ||
| And they're exploring other tactics. | ||
| Now, this was on a call. | ||
| This wasn't a Minneapolis-specific call. | ||
| This was on a call to people who subscribe to the Women's March, people who are on that newsletter, and people to show up and hear about it because the idea is that these agitators don't want these kinds of actions to just stay in Minneapolis. | ||
| They want them to be happening across the country in all of the cities where ICE is conducting operations. | ||
| We saw Zorhan Mamdani, mayor of New York City, speaking about this recently himself, saying that he was anticipating taking every action possible to keep ICE out of New York City. | ||
| Could you imagine if you have agitators showing up at hotels all across New York City, wherever ICE is staying, whether that's in Queens, out by the airports, or whether that's in Brooklyn or whether that's in Manhattan, agitators showing up outside these hotels, making massive noise demonstrations called wide awakes in order to disrupt ICE? | ||
| And could you imagine also that the hotel workers in New York City are then collaborating behind the scenes, probably even with support of their union, perhaps? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Don't take my word on that, in order to, you know, evict essentially ICE officers and agents from the hotels where they're staying. | ||
| If these kind of tactics continue, not just in Minneapolis, but as I said, spread around the country, what does that look like? | ||
| And what does that look like for those cities, for tourists? | ||
| You know, suddenly we're going to have tourism issues. | ||
| Probably not a problem in Minnesota in the middle of winter, but New York City any time of year and many other places as well. | ||
| So that's something to, that's something to think about and keep an eye on. | ||
| And of course, last night outside a hotel in Minneapolis, In a hotel that was allegedly housing Greg Bovino, who was the Border Patrol chief who has apparently been ousted from his position at this point, removed from Minneapolis at least, and heading home. | ||
| Rioters arrested outside Minnesota Hotel, allegedly housing Bovino. | ||
| They say there's a place in hell for him next to Charlie Kirk. | ||
| They're still invoking the name of our deceased friend. | ||
| I hate that they do that. | ||
| At a late-night noise demo outside Spring Hill Suites by Marriott in Maple Grove, Minnesota on Monday night, escalated into a riot and drew a multi-agency police response. | ||
| This is from Ari Hoffman, of course, at the post-millennial. | ||
| As agitators demonstrated against federal immigration enforcement and alleged that U.S. Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino was staying inside the hotel, one of the agitators said there was a spot for Bovino in hell next to Charlie Kirk, and there were multiple arrests. | ||
| We can watch this. | ||
| We can watch this video. | ||
|
unidentified
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You are now under arrest. | |
| Please sit down and wait for instruction. | ||
| I can't hear you. | ||
| I'm at level 12 news. | ||
| Beats me on the scene. | ||
| I'm surprised. | ||
| Do you have any classes? | ||
| I don't. | ||
| I can tell you, love. | ||
| All right, why don't you move out there, okay? | ||
| Just get out there. | ||
| Stay outside the line, okay? | ||
| Coming out. | ||
| Coming up! | ||
| So this is one of these, this is one of these wide awakes. | ||
| Is this the kind of thing you want to see in your city or in any city or in other cities across the United States? | ||
| And I do start to wonder what happens when we get to better weather and more people are emboldened to go out when they don't have to be worried about hypothermia and frostbite. | ||
| Yeah, Greg Bavino, there's a spot waiting for you in hell, open chair, right next to Charlie Kirk and Dick Cheney. | ||
| So that's what that looks like. | ||
| And that's what the Women's March is advocating for. | ||
| They're not the only ones. | ||
| We have an Ice Watch member here in New York. | ||
| This is from Paul Rossi. | ||
| Part of his, he's posting a bunch of this stuff. | ||
| Ice Watch member advocates opening multiple fronts across the U.S., distracting law enforcement and straining their resources. | ||
| On their Instagram page, Ice Watch's first post attacks the myth of the peaceful protester and says this needs to be forgotten to create a new way of living. | ||
| This is from the same people yesterday who said that it's time to refer to ICE immigration enforcement as ethnic cleansing. | ||
| And we can check this out as well. | ||
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unidentified
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So one of the things that we have really going for us is that the United States is a really big country. | |
| And in other places where authoritarian dictators have taken over, they have been much smaller than we are. | ||
| And so the more fronts that we open up, the less capacity they are going to have. | ||
| Right now, they're really concentrating on throwing everything they can at Minneapolis, which is why it's really important for us to build up as much Ice Watch as we can to have as many people show up as possible to open up another front. | ||
| And so if this can happen in five or six different places around the country, they won't be able to deal with it. | ||
| And so I'm part of an Ice Watch for Gowanus and Ark Slope and Prospect Heights and Sunset Park. | ||
| And it's really starting to get rolling. | ||
| And so the more that we can have a presence going out there, the more that they see that there are a lot of people, we can distract them, bring people out of Minneapolis to other places. | ||
| So this is the plan, guys. | ||
| Don't be surprised when Ice Watch agitators start doing wide awakes down the street from your apartment building or in the town where you live. | ||
| This is what they are advocating to do. | ||
| And I think that something that we've seen too that is not helping is the Trump administration is basically caving in Minnesota, right? | ||
| I mean, they pulled Christy Noam out. | ||
| She had a long meeting with Trump yesterday, which we'll get into in a minute. | ||
| They pulled Greg Bavino, the Border Patrol guy. | ||
| I'm not saying I'm a fan of this guy, but certainly Trump doing all of these posts yesterday on Truth Social about how he and Tim Waltz are sort of on the same page or how he had a great conversation with Minneapolis, bend the knee, Jacob Frey is mayor there, and how Tom Homan is going out there, which I think is probably a good thing, but Homan is going to meet with Frey today. | ||
| Now, Homan is really a take-no, you know, pull-no-punches kind of guy. | ||
| He's a pretty hard guy. | ||
| So I think that that'll be interesting to see what happens there. | ||
| He has been unapologetic and unequivocal about the mission to deport and remove illegal immigrant criminals from the country. | ||
| Perhaps Tim Waltz and Jacob Frey are planning to allow their local law enforcement to work with feds to get people deported, to get criminals off the streets. | ||
| But what it really looks like is Trump giving in over here. | ||
| And when you think about that, it looks like the Ice Watch people that we were just looking at in New York or the Women's March people who are saying to bring these tactics all across the country, this is going to give them a sense of power for sure, that they've won in Minneapolis and they can win everywhere else as well. | ||
| And it's not just disruptive to federal law enforcement. | ||
| This is disruptive to all of the individuals who live in those cities. | ||
| Certainly not something that I want to see happening where I live, a bunch of people gathering around a hotel and screaming and making a whole bunch of noise. | ||
| I think that's pretty much a terrible situation. | ||
| So we'll have to see. | ||
| We'll have to see what happens there. | ||
| We can move on to the next one. | ||
| Anderson Cooper is doing his best to bolster the protesters and the narrative of protesting and all of the everything that surrounds it. | ||
|
Vehicle for Grief
00:02:42
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| And we can take a look at this one. | ||
| This was posted by Carly Bonnet, who is a delightful person. | ||
| She used to be a midnight rider in the 60s. | ||
| They marched in frigid temperatures, many learning the songs for the first time. | ||
| The singing first started four days after the killing of Renee Goode. | ||
| Six days later, some 600 people showed up. | ||
| There's a long history in America of protest songs, but here in Minneapolis, a new chapter is being written by a group called Singing Resistance. | ||
| Listen. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's culturally appropriate. | |
| I am not afraid. | ||
| I am not afraid. | ||
| I will live for liberation because I know why I was made. | ||
| We've been singing that one in English and in Spanish. | ||
| It's by a group called The Peace Poets. | ||
| This is one of the organizers of Singing Resistance. | ||
| She didn't want to be identified out of concern for her safety. | ||
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unidentified
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Song is a vehicle for us to grieve. | |
| It's a vehicle for us to feel rage. | ||
| It's a vehicle for us to strengthen ourselves. | ||
| Like we, that song I am Not Afraid that I sang, we're not singing it because we're actually not afraid. | ||
| Like we are afraid. | ||
| It is terrifying what is happening. | ||
| And it's a way to gather our courage. | ||
| Last Saturday, hours after Alex Preddy was shot to death by Border Patrol agents, some 1,400 people came to the Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church to sing. | ||
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unidentified
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We belong to the Long Tribes. | |
| Where's Don Lemon when you need him, you know? | ||
| But this is part of this narrative that is being spun about the bold, fearless protesters and the, you know, the ICE agents who deserve to have nowhere to sleep, no cars to drive around in, and, you know, nothing to eat. | ||
| So it is important to note also, you know, maybe Trump is doing his negotiation thing. | ||
| Maybe this is part of what he's doing. | ||
| You know, how he always goes back and forth until he sort of gets what he wants. | ||
| But I think we'll have to see how Waltz and Frey respond to this, right? | ||
|
Why We Left
00:03:50
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| They didn't respond with anything other than antagonism when Trump was criticizing them. | ||
| And they haven't really said much after they apparently had these amazing phone calls with Trump yesterday. | ||
| So we're going to have to see, you know, we're going to have to see what happens. | ||
| We can withhold judgment for a little bit, you know, but something's got to give here because you can't have states violating federal law and the feds just being like, okay, yeah, you don't have to follow the law. | ||
| That doesn't seem, that doesn't seem at all reasonable. | ||
| This was interesting. | ||
| We had a Minnesota Antifa militant calling for armed riots against ICE after the shooting. | ||
| And we can, this was from Hayden Cunningham. | ||
| We can check out his video. | ||
| Name is Kyle. | ||
| I'm Antifa, and there's so much rage in me that I've had to record this like 15 times trying to get the message out. | ||
|
unidentified
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I thought you were. | |
| They fucked up. | ||
| Okay, go watch my other videos. | ||
| Doesn't matter if you're not here and you're not caught up. | ||
| You've missed the fucking fight. | ||
| But if you are, it's time to suit up. | ||
| Boots on the ground, Nicolett and fucking 26th. | ||
| My house is four blocks away, anywhere between Franklin and Nicolett and 26th and Nicolt. | ||
| Show up ready to go. | ||
| Okay, I'm not talking about peaceful protests anymore. | ||
| We're not talking about having polite conversations anymore. | ||
| I am talking specifically to my fucking followers. | ||
| This is everything I have talked about. | ||
| And this is exactly what I said was going to happen. | ||
| This is exactly what I said was going to fucking come when we didn't fucking go and march on fucking Whipple with guns. | ||
| Sorry, but welcome to America 2026, where Second Amendment is the only thing that's going to keep you fucking protected from literal fucking Nazi gunmen that are killing innocent people in the street with impunity. | ||
| This is not a fucking joke. | ||
| There's nothing fun to chant about it. | ||
| Get your fucking guns and stop these fucking people. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| So we can see how that's going. | ||
| Here, check this out. | ||
| The video I posted from the Alex Predi murder calling for direct action, calling for boots on the ground, calling for someone to stand against these murderers was deemed inciting violence. | ||
| And, you know, they're being bullied by the administration, clearly. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't think it's not inciting violence apparently to take a bunch of guns to tell people to take their guns to the federal building. | |
| They're going to silence me somehow. | ||
| And they're having a hard time putting a bullet in my head. | ||
|
unidentified
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So that was my thought. | |
| We shall see what they do to get the job done. | ||
| I have a backup account from my bio. | ||
| I am basically on the run now. | ||
| You know, I have safe places and I have evacuations planned out. | ||
| But the way things are going, I'm going to have to be very resourceful. | ||
| And that's going to take support. | ||
| So, you know, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you a million times to those of you who have. | ||
| We were able to deploy over 100 gas masks on the streets in the last couple of days and help a lot of people, probably even save a couple of lives with the amount of CS gas they've deployed. | ||
| As I've said a million times, I'm going to stand this fight to the bidder and I'm not going to run away, but I will need some help. | ||
| So he's out here now begging for money after he incited violence against federal officers. | ||
| And how many more people out here out there are like this? | ||
|
Appeals Court Reverses Lower Decision
00:02:06
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| And they're getting all of their training from these women's march things and from the Ice Watch things. | ||
| And they're all heading out there to do this kind of thing. | ||
| And they want to spread this all across the country. | ||
| I think that's just so, so dangerous here. | ||
| And as he was talking about the gas masks that he was distributing on the street, we have the appeals court. | ||
| This was the Eighth Circuit said that ICE is permitted to detain, arrest, and pepper spray agitators in Minnesota. | ||
| There was a case that was brought saying that they weren't allowed to do that. | ||
| And it's gone back and forth like all of these Trump administration cases. | ||
| You know, it goes from one court to the appeals to the next appeals to the next, and it keeps bouncing around and then bouncing back to the lower court and whatever else. | ||
| So the appeals court raised concerns that the injunction, which was from the lower court, functioned as a de facto nationwide or universal injunction by extending protections beyond the six named plaintiffs in Minnesota to a broad uncertified class of future protesters and observers. | ||
| This is from Ari Hoffman. | ||
| In a brief order, the three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit stayed a preliminary injunction issued earlier this year by a federal district court in Minnesota. | ||
| That injunction had curtailed ICE agents' ability to arrest, detain, pepper spray, or otherwise act against protesters in Minneapolis unless they had a probable cause. | ||
| As demonstrations and confrontations continued, the lawsuit was brought by six individuals who said federal agents violated their civil rights while they were observing or protesting ICE activity tied to this Operation MetroSurge, the DHS initiative. | ||
| So the panel concluded that the lower court's order was unlikely to survive appeal and should not remain in effect while the case moves forward. | ||
| So, you know, everything that these guys are saying that it's illegal to stop them from interfering with law enforcement is getting turned around by the appeals court. | ||
| And we'll have to see because, of course, that bounces it back to the lower court and the case is going to continue. | ||
|
Democrats Push for Impeachment
00:15:18
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| Meanwhile, President Trump had Christy Noam in his office in the Oval yesterday for a two-hour meeting as Democrats are pushing for her to be impeached over everything that is going on in Minnesota. | ||
| This is from Thomas Stevenson at the Postmillennial. | ||
| Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noam met with President Donald Trump for two hours on Monday as she has come under scrutiny since the shooting of Alex Predi, in which some have questioned whether the anti-ICE agitator who was armed when resisting arrest may have been unarmed when he was shot by Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis, of course, because he had been disarmed, you know, like a half a second before the shooting. | ||
| Noam had pushed to meet with Trump in the aftermath of the shooting. | ||
| She's also slated to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for regular oversight. | ||
| Border Patrol head Greg Bavino, like Noam, has been criticized for making claims that Predty had wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement. | ||
| Trump did not suggest during the meeting that Noam's job would be on the chopping block. | ||
| Noam had said that Predty was a domestic terrorist, and we don't have a lot of information about what happened in this meeting. | ||
| It is a long meeting to have there. | ||
| The meeting with Noam also included a number of aides to Trump, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. | ||
| And House Democrats have been calling for Noam's impeachment since the Predty shooting. | ||
| House Democrats are set to open an investigation into Noam. | ||
| Unlike other investigations, however, they plan to do so without the help of Republicans. | ||
| So that is a little bit of a J6, special J-6 committee twinge about it. | ||
| We understand Democrats are in a minority, but that doesn't mean that we have to sit on our thumbs and do nothing, said Benny Thompson. | ||
| And of course, he was the chair of the J-6 committee, so he knows all about that. | ||
| And that should be interesting to watch. | ||
| House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries ended a caucus call on Sunday by telling his party he would have more to say when the House returns to Washington next week on moving forward with holding Noam accountable. | ||
| Now, another thing to consider is that the previous resolution to continue funding the federal government expires, I believe, January 30th. | ||
| And Democrats and the Senate have already said that they would not back a bill that had already previously been passed by the House to continue funding the government if it included additional funding for DHS. | ||
| Chuck Schumer came out against that bill, and that's what the caucus call was about on Sunday night. | ||
| All of these Democrats deciding what they're going to do if they're going to allow the government to continue being funded if that includes funding for DHS. | ||
| So that's going to be something to watch for at the end of this week. | ||
| And if we all remember what happened in the fall when the Democrats did force the government to shut down, I feel like the Democrats under Trump just really like shutting down the government. | ||
| The first time they did it, you know, in the fall, rather, the first time of this term, they were over healthcare subsidies. | ||
| And the thing about those subsidies, if we could just diverge for one second, is the subsidies were set to expire per the Democrats under Joe Biden, who said, oh, these subsidies, these special COVID subsidies will expire at the end of 2025. | ||
| And now they're saying that Republicans are the ones who are at fault for not extending them, but they were only supposed to be temporary measures anyway. | ||
| And the real problem, of course, is the increasing premiums, not the fact that the government doesn't want to keep throwing money at the insurance companies who, for some reason, aren't being audited for what they're spending all of this money on. | ||
| I think that's really where we should take a look. | ||
| Let's not forget that anytime the government gets involved in funding any industry, the cost of that industry skyrocket. | ||
| The bloat and waste increases, just like in universities, just like with healthcare. | ||
| So, yeah, we'll see what happens. | ||
| We'll see what happened this week. | ||
| Happens this week. | ||
| Long Island Democrats are siding with House GOP on that DHS and ICE funding bill. | ||
| So, you know, that's interesting too. | ||
| These Long Island Democrats, these Long Island Democrats are in a tough spot because Long Island is a little bit purple, but people are pretty hard line. | ||
| One of the Long Island representatives is Mike Lawler, and he wrote an opinion in the New York Times today, and it had a few suggestions that I just wanted to run by you guys. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Oh, I should have called it up in the first place. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| After tensions have calmed, he says, Congress can then piece together the rest of an immigration plan that settles the issue, along with building on Mr. Trump's border policies. | ||
| A realistic plan would provide a path to legal status, not citizenship, for long-term illegal immigrants without criminal records. | ||
| So he's not necessarily calling for complete amnesty, but he is calling for a certain measure of amnesty. | ||
| This path would be rigorous and fair, he says, and it would aim to keep families together. | ||
| Fair means those who benefit would face mandatory work requirements, forego public assistance, and pay fines and any back taxes that they might owe. | ||
| Congress would have to change the legal immigration system too. | ||
| Lawmakers should create a system in which applicants' merit matters more than it does now, better accounting for the country's economic needs. | ||
| And then he goes on to talk about his experience. | ||
| We must be a nation of laws, but also one that offers dignity and compassion to those seeking to pursue their American dream. | ||
| The events of the past several years show that there will be no Democrat or Republican solution on immigration, only an American one. | ||
| I'm interested to know what you guys think. | ||
| And you could, you know, you could tweet at me if you want and let me know. | ||
| Do you think that these plans that Lawler has would be effective? | ||
| Are you open? | ||
| You know, are Americans open to the kind of amnesty that he's talking about, which is not citizenship, but some kind of legal status that Congress would have to create that includes no public benefits and the rest of it? | ||
| I think that we definitely have to come up with something. | ||
| We even had Trump, maybe, I guess it was during the campaign or after he won, something like that. | ||
| And he was saying we have to do something about DACA to ensure that those, you know, the DACA recipients are able to continue their life in the United States as Americans. | ||
| But I'm definitely interested to hear what you guys think. | ||
| And we can bring in, we have our guest today. | ||
| We have a guest who we can talk to about that. | ||
| And I have his bio. | ||
| So give me a quick second because I lost it in the chat. | ||
| Dave Ehrenberg. | ||
| Dave Ehrenberg is a former Florida state attorney and state senator who's now a regular media commentator and breaks down high-profile legal cases. | ||
| Hello, David. | ||
| How are you? | ||
| Libby, it's good to be with you. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| Yeah, this is great. | ||
| I'm happy to talk to you about all this today. | ||
| So I sent you some thoughts of things that I'd love to talk about. | ||
| And I'm also interested to know, did you read, did you read Mike Lawler's opinion essay in the Times today or get a sense of what he was talking about? | ||
| Which subject? | ||
| I think, because I did read a bunch of things that Sean sent me. | ||
| Oh, yeah, no, it wasn't that. | ||
| So we can move on to the other stuff. | ||
| But it's interesting. | ||
| I'd be interested in your view. | ||
| He was talking about paths forward, legal paths forward for existing illegal immigrants in the country who do not have criminal records. | ||
| So, you know, I think it's about time to have some kind of conversation about what we're doing with everybody else as Tom Homan and Trump continue to deport people with criminal backgrounds. | ||
| You know, Libby, it's an important point because people voted for Trump because they wanted to close the border. | ||
| They wanted to deport all the people who were here illegally with criminal records, people who are committing crimes. | ||
| Where it gets controversial is when ICE goes after people with no criminal record other than being in this country illegally, which, yes, I realize that that could be this a crime. | ||
| If they're waiting for asylum, that is not a crime. | ||
| You're allowed to wait for asylum, but it gets into an area that makes people uncomfortable because then they know these are hardworking people who do jobs that a lot of Americans do not and their family, their friends. | ||
| And what was promised to us was that hey, I thought you were going to go after the hardcore criminals and not the people who are our neighbors, who we are friends would depend on. | ||
| And so I think there may be a way out. | ||
| It seems like Trump is trying to find a way out. | ||
| You see how his tone changed in his last social media post about Tim Walz, of all people, that the two of them want to work together now. | ||
| And now he's putting Christy Noam and Corey Lewandowski on a shelf and bringing in Tom Homan, who is seen by a lot as the adult in the room. | ||
| He was someone who has some street cred in this area. | ||
| And so we'll see if this is a new day. | ||
| Do you think Trump is caving on Minnesota? | ||
| That is such a good question because the term caving is something that Trump would recoil against. | ||
| But I do think that, yes, he's backing down because he was full speed ahead. | ||
| He had all, remember, his original post were that these are domestic terrorists. | ||
| These are people who deserve it. | ||
| The law enforcement was always right here. | ||
| And now he's like, well, let's take a break and let's review it. | ||
| Let's investigate and let's change our ways. | ||
| So that would be a cave in that sense. | ||
| But I hate to use that term because if he hears that term, he's more likely to dig in his heels. | ||
| So let's just say, I think it's a reflection that maybe the policy needs to change. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Yeah, the whole first segment we were talking about, if this will embolden activists across the country, because I think there's a good chance that it will. | ||
| But I'm going to switch gears entirely now. | ||
| And I'd love to talk to you about this lawsuit that is pending in court against social media companies. | ||
| It's basically taking a stance against social media companies that is similar to, you know, the way Big Tobacco was taken down for having encouraged addiction. | ||
| And we have this out from the Hill today. | ||
| They say it's an historic lawsuit accusing several prominent social media companies of intentionally designing their platforms to addict children. | ||
| And this is headed to trial in Los Angeles today. | ||
| It's against Meta, TikTok, and YouTube. | ||
| And thousands of individuals, school districts, and states have filed this suit against media giants. | ||
| And one is in California. | ||
| One case is also going to be in federal court. | ||
| And what's interesting to me about this is a lot of times these platforms, YouTube and the others, you know, Twitter and Meta, Instagram, which I guess is Meta, have been able to say, we're not responsible for the content that is posted on our platform because of Section 230, which protects them as a platform, not a publisher. | ||
| But what these cases are alleging is that it's not the content. that the cases are complaining about. | ||
| It's the way that the content is fed. | ||
| It's the algorithm. | ||
| It's the way that it is pushed out to people. | ||
| Do you think that, do you think that they, do you think that these groups have a case? | ||
| Do you think that social media companies are really in a position to defend themselves from this? | ||
| You know, I do think they have a case because they got creative. | ||
| Now, Section 230 is a bar to these cases being brought. | ||
| It says, you've got immunity. | ||
| You're a bulletin board. | ||
| You can't be held responsible for people putting out terrible things. | ||
| And so if you sue them based on the terrible content that young people are consuming, that's a non-starter. | ||
| So to get around that, what they're doing is instead of suing over the content of the posts, which are protected under Section 230, the plaintiffs are suing over the product design. | ||
| So they're arguing that the apps themselves are defective products, similar to how you would sue a car company for a faulty brake system. | ||
| This is like what was used against the tobacco companies saying that, yeah, you can have all the warning labels you want, but you've got a defective design here, a defective system, product liability. | ||
| And you saw what happened in the 90s against the tobacco companies. | ||
| They had to pay out billions of dollars. | ||
| So yeah, I do think that no matter what the result is here, I think that the AI and the tech companies are watching this and realizing that the days of impunity are over. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's so interesting. | ||
| The professor at Marianne Franks, who is quoted in The Hill, she said the lawsuits are trying to make the claim that this isn't about the content that ultimately got delivered to the individuals or to the plaintiffs because that's fairly clear Section 230 question. | ||
| The argument is, no, the way that you've designed your tool, your product, is that you have accelerated or augmented the accessibility of those harmful things to children. | ||
| There's also been some high-profile prohibitions against social media for children internationally. | ||
| We had the nation of Australia has banned social media for, I think it's, I think it's kids under 16. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
| Yeah, Serge knows. | ||
| Yeah, 16. | ||
| Is that the kind of thing that would be effective in the United States? | ||
| And is that the kind of thing that could come from a suit of this kind? | ||
| Like, let's say, like, what could the outcome be of this suit if these companies are found to have specifically manipulated the algorithm to target children? | ||
| Money. | ||
| And the trial lawyers here see that this could be the next tobacco lawsuit. | ||
| And the outcome here will set the stage for 3,000 similar lawsuits pending just in California alone and thousands more nationwide. | ||
| And these are lawsuits that are ready to go from families, school districts, and state attorneys general. | ||
| So this is why this is the bellwether lawsuit. | ||
| I do not think it will lead to a government ban on the use of these products by 16 year olds, 18 year olds Florida is attempting something like that. | ||
| But I do think it could lead to more restrictions on the part of the company to voluntarily say, we don't want to be sued anymore. | ||
| So we're going to limit our use. | ||
| Already, Facebook has like a version just for young people, and TikTok apparently has more restrictions now. | ||
| But I think any restrictions, because our country is different than Australia, we have First Amendment, we had a lot more rights than they do over there. | ||
| But I think the restrictions will come from the companies themselves because they don't want to be hit with any more multi-billion dollar lawsuits. | ||
| And it is a question whether states and the federal government here can enact those kinds of restrictions. | ||
|
AI Companies' Profit Motive
00:08:59
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| That's why I think they'll come from the companies themselves because they have the profit motive to do so. | ||
| And that profit motive would be to not have to keep forking over cash to parents and school districts who are complaining about. | ||
| Their profit mode is not to have to fork out all their profits. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Why do you think that they've been doing this for so long? | ||
| Have they been like, have they been, has this been useful for them? | ||
| Have they been generating money by targeting kids with all of this? | ||
| With all with, you know, getting them hooked on social media? | ||
| Yeah, that's their business model. | ||
| Because really, how many 60-year-olds are addicted to TikTok? | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| I mean, these companies, just like tobacco companies, had a business model to get these young people into their products. | ||
| I don't want to say addicted, but they want to get them to be frequent users. | ||
| And that's why the people who use them the most are the young people. | ||
| I mean, think about it like this. | ||
| I mean, are there many people who start smoking when they're 40 years old? | ||
| No. | ||
| I mean, can you imagine, you know, I'm 40 years old. | ||
| Happy birthday. | ||
| You know, let's start smoking. | ||
| No one does that. | ||
| They get young people, teenagers or younger, to start smoking. | ||
| And that's how they, that's their business. | ||
| That was their business model. | ||
| And I think the same thing for these tech companies. | ||
| They want to get them young and now they're facing the consequences. | ||
| There's also been a lot of conversation about AI and the tools. | ||
| You know, the kids using AI. | ||
| There have been some high-profile profile cases of parents suing AI companies saying that the chat bots have encouraged their children to do really horrendous things like step in front of trains or kill themselves or other things. | ||
| And AI companies have been working really hard to make sure that they have as much information in their large language models as they can. | ||
| And there's been substantial accusations of bias against some of these companies that they don't have, that they only have one sort of perspective and that they are too affirming as well. | ||
| So that like if you go in and you say, oh, I want to do something terrible to myself, the AI will be like, well, that's a great idea because you only have great ideas. | ||
| So everything that you do is a great idea. | ||
| But one of the issues that I've been seeing and that I sent over to you this morning that was interesting is that Anthropic is actually has been facing this lawsuit. | ||
| They've been dealing with this lawsuit where they have been allegedly, apparently, I don't think it's alleged. | ||
| I think it's in court documents. | ||
| They got a whole bunch of books. | ||
| They pirated books and then destroyed those books and uploaded them into their large language models for, you know, to give them as much information as possible. | ||
| And one question that I had about this is, I know for years Google was doing something similar, but it was just to publish the books on their website and they were taking everything that was in the public domain and doing that. | ||
| And that's how I found some really amazing, like old stuff from the 18 whatevers of, you know, like read tales of the American West and all the rest of it, because suddenly Google was raiding Harvard's library and was able to just bring all of these things to light. | ||
| But what is the legality surrounding an AI company using whatever it is that they can get their hands on? | ||
| I know the New York Times has prohibited companies from AI companies from using their content. | ||
| How does that work? | ||
| It's interesting because I see this as more of a problem in the court of public opinion rather than a breaking of the laws. | ||
| If they want to buy up books and then they own it, then they use it and then they decide to destroy it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't see any current prohibition against that. | ||
| I think where they are vulnerable, though, is where it comes to that shield from Section 230. | ||
| I don't think it really applies to them because that shield member protects people who are bulletin boards. | ||
| That's not what AI companies are. | ||
| They create content. | ||
| They're not curating it. | ||
| They're creating it. | ||
| And so I think that makes them vulnerable to lawsuits. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| When they have their affirming responses, it's like, yes, hey, great idea, great idea. | ||
| When they're giving medical advice, even if they say, don't use this as medical advice, when they're telling people to do things that are dangerous to them, yeah, they can get sued for it. | ||
| And it's an emerging area, but I think you'll see a lot more. | ||
| And I think this lawsuit over in California, even though it's not an AI lawsuit, I think it will be a bellwether as to whether or not juries are open to go after tech companies and these AI companies or tech companies. | ||
| There's another point of this. | ||
| You have to figure out if it's a product. | ||
| Now, the most dangerous thing for these AI developers is if the courts start treating AI models as products rather than services. | ||
| And if it is a product, then you could be sued for product liability. | ||
| And that would bypass Section 230 entirely. | ||
| So watch for that. | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty interesting. | ||
| What do you, in terms of AI and using all of the material that it has at its disposal, how important is it that these large language models are able to access the entire breadth and scope of human letters and human history in order to start delivering proper information? | ||
| We've had so many situations of AI doing like hallucinating, making stuff up. | ||
| The other day, I was looking up, there was the announcement that second lady Usha Vance is pregnant. | ||
| And so I was like, oh, I wonder how many pregnancies there have been in the vice president's office, you know, while the vice president was in office. | ||
| And I looked it up and AI said that Usha Vance was the first one. | ||
| And then it turns out that that was not true, but it said that right up top, you know, before I could, and it didn't provide a link. | ||
| It just said that that was the fact. | ||
| And it turns out that it was actually the vice president, Skylar Colfax, I think, under Ulysses S. Grant. | ||
| His wife was pregnant while he was in office. | ||
| But one thing that I worry about is when we have these, when we have two things. | ||
| One, as a writer, I worry about all of the work just being absorbed without any credit or attribution. | ||
| But then as a study of humanity, as someone who is interested in having as much of our human history available for study, because that's pretty much all we do, right? | ||
| Like we study ourselves. | ||
| We study ourselves for the past centuries. | ||
| We study ourselves recently. | ||
| Like there's nothing else for us to study, right? | ||
| So I feel like it's important to have as many libraries available to these tools to be called and to be put together and understood so that people can get everything that exists. | ||
| You know, I guess it's sort of a tower of Babel, or if you look at the Boerhas Library of Babel type of thing, like you want everything in there, right? | ||
| So how do we balance these two things? | ||
| These are really good questions. | ||
| And by the way, Ulysses S. Grant, fun fact, he was the only president to have been stuck in a bathtub because he was so large. | ||
| So there you go. | ||
| So that's why you come here for this content, right? | ||
| That's why they come to the podcast. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| As far as, and you brought up Anthropic. | ||
| So where I think they're open to lawsuits is not necessarily in buying up and destroying the books, but it's a question of fair use. | ||
| So when they are putting things on the web, they're arguing this is fair use. | ||
| We bought the product. | ||
| We are then discussing it. | ||
| And you don't have that copyright ability to sue us because we bought the product. | ||
| We're then putting it out with a little spin on it. | ||
| And you can't sue us. | ||
| But they're getting sued because, in fact, Anthropic paid out $1.5 billion in a big settlement with book publishers. | ||
| So that to me tells me that this industry is moving away from fighting these lawsuits, these claims. | ||
| And instead, it's now sort of a mandatory licensing model like we see with music, where go ahead, play the music, use it, but you got to pay in advance. | ||
| And I think that's where they're going. | ||
| I think the courts now are starting to indicate that it's not fair use for the AI companies just to reprint someone's material, even if they bought it. | ||
| So if they wanted to buy it and destroy the book, I don't think that's an issue. | ||
| If they want to buy it, put it out there without too much spin, just here it is, then I do think they'll have to pay. | ||
|
Extreme Positions in Justice
00:08:12
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| Yeah. | ||
| Well, I guess that'll be pretty interesting. | ||
| We'll have to see how this goes because these companies that are building these models have such a huge responsibility to essentially curate the entirety of humanity so that we don't lose anything. | ||
| You know, right. | ||
| You know, and who knows where it's going to lead. | ||
| I mean, I do think a little more optimistic than most. | ||
| I know people think it's going to cost so many jobs, and I think it will, but it'll create new jobs. | ||
| Just like all these other inventions were thought to be the end of civilization. | ||
| I think that there'll be good and bad. | ||
| It'll create new jobs. | ||
| It'll kill all their jobs. | ||
| But on the whole, I think that it could do a lot with science, with medicine, and save lives. | ||
| So I'm an optimist here, although beware of the war of the robots. | ||
| I've seen this movie before. | ||
| I think I've watched a lot of Futurama to know that their actions aren't always benign. | ||
| There was one other thing that I just wanted to bring your attention to. | ||
| And as an attorney, I'm curious as to what you think about this. | ||
| This was published in The Nation, and it's sort of a tragic story. | ||
| The writer, Anna Krauthammer, says that she did not report her rape. | ||
| She was, did you see this one? | ||
| She was gang raped in 2021 by six men in a Las Vegas hotel room. | ||
| And she said outright that the reason she did not report the crime is because she is opposed to, she's in favor of the abolition of prisons. | ||
| And she said, you know, she said, the simple answer to the question of why I never reported the rape is that I believe in the abolition of police and prisons. | ||
| What do you make of this from a legal perspective? | ||
| I mean, if we don't report crimes, don't we just facilitate more crimes? | ||
| You know, The Nation is a very left magazine. | ||
| And that's someone who wrote a story about why she didn't report her rape because she doesn't believe in incarcerating people. | ||
| That is an extreme position. | ||
| And I'm a former prosecutor. | ||
| I was a state attorney for 12 years. | ||
| And already it's hard enough to get people who are victims of sexual violence and domestic violence to speak up. | ||
| In fact, most victims of domestic violence do not cooperate with prosecutors in my old office. | ||
| So that is something we just silence is the enemy here. | ||
| And so this article is really troubling in that I hope others don't read it and say, yeah, the system is screwed up. | ||
| I'm going to stay. | ||
| quiet because then these rapists do it again to someone else. | ||
| They just get emboldened by the fact that they got away with it. | ||
| We can't let that happen. | ||
| So that is an extreme position. | ||
| Obviously, I feel for this individual. | ||
| I don't like to blame the victim. | ||
| It's not her fault, but she should speak up because the best way for society to deal with this is to make sure these people don't ever do it again. | ||
| Make sure there is justice. | ||
| And if you don't believe in it, then what is the alternative? | ||
| What, what? | ||
| Restorative justice? | ||
| Some communities do that, but here she's saying that she doesn't want to report at all. | ||
| She doesn't believe in the system at all. | ||
| I think that's an extremist position. | ||
| I think so too. | ||
| How do we let people know that they are not responsible for the crimes that were committed against them? | ||
| You know, I mean, this is something you're talking about in domestic violence situations. | ||
| Certainly, you know, kids always think if a child is abused by their parents, they tend to think that it's their fault that they did something to deserve that, you know, and you still end up loving your parents forever anyway. | ||
| That doesn't go away. | ||
| Or if like this woman who apparently thinks that she has a responsibility to protect the people that harmed her. | ||
| And when we have, you know, and I'm a huge believer in forgiveness, you know, one of the most moving things I ever saw was Erica Kirk forgiving the man who is now on trial for her husband's murder. | ||
| I thought that was an absolutely stunningly brave thing to do to free her heart from that tribulation that she was having, that difficulty, because not forgiving can certainly destroy you. | ||
| But the abolition of police and prisons is a view that is actually sort of growing in our culture, right? | ||
| You talk about restorative justice. | ||
| That's definitely been in use in cases across the country. | ||
| I think it's very dangerous when you put it into situations for minors because minors don't really have the capability of understanding that kind of taking responsibility for their actions and then moving forward in that way. | ||
| That's a difficult thing to do. | ||
| But what do you say to this whole culture of that's ongoing, defund the police, abolish ICE, get rid of prisons? | ||
| You know, you have people advocating for the eradication of illegal immigrant detention centers like the ones in Texas. | ||
| What do you do with a culture like this? | ||
| What are you supposed to, how do you deal with that? | ||
| Well, nothing hurt the Democratic Party more than the slogan, defund the police. | ||
| That was a killer. | ||
| And the party has been dealing with ever since. | ||
| How many candidates on the Democratic side have had to deal with those attacks, even though they never said it themselves, but there was a movement on the extremes. | ||
| The public rejects that. | ||
| Now, and that is still a very fringe position. | ||
| You are seeing the abolish ICE position, but right now tensions are really raw and ICE has been, we touched upon it earlier. | ||
| ICE has, I think, has been messing up so much that it needs to be reformed. | ||
| I wouldn't say abolish it, but you're starting to see that position grow. | ||
| Who knows where that's going to lead? | ||
| I think when you say abolish ICE, you got to figure out what to replace it with. | ||
| The defund the police is just, that wasn't to replace them with anything but social workers and no one believed in that. | ||
| So I think that these positions are extreme positions. | ||
| You don't see too many elected officials proposing this. | ||
| And those who do are pretty much just, they have very little power, if any power at all. | ||
| What about Mamdani? | ||
| I mean, Mamdani in New York is proposing these changes so that you have a lot more social workers and mental health people going out and dealing with street crimes in the subway, subway crime. | ||
| Well, that's right. | ||
| And by the way, restorative justice, when it is used, it should not be used for like murders and rape. | ||
| That's the low-level crimes. | ||
| I think it could be like stealing candy bars and stuff. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You know, I think in the victim, they want to, you know, this is one way because you have high recidivism rates to deal with that. | ||
| But when it comes to crimes of violence, I just, I did hear of it being used once in a murder case in Tallahassee, which is shocking. | ||
| There's a whole series of articles about that. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I would need to remember reading about that and being shocked by it, but it was, and I'll have to, without, without refreshing, because I didn't know we'd be talking about that specifically. | ||
| We can talk about that in the next show so I can have review the facts of that before I speak out. | ||
| It's too interesting. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
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I know. | |
| Hey, happy back. | ||
| We'll talk about that. | ||
| But as far as Mandami, you can get away with more social workers, but when you start talking about abolish a police, defund the police, that's a bridge too far for just about every American. | ||
| I mean, very few people would agree with that anymore. | ||
| And I do think the one area of truth in that law enforcement is asked to do too much. | ||
| In Palm Beach County, for example, the sheriff's office, the jail, is the largest mental health provider, and that shouldn't be. | ||
| So cops go to deal with mental health issues when there are certain areas where it should be social workers instead of police, which can escalate a situation unless there's actually a risk. | ||
| There's the risk of violence. | ||
| There's a crime. | ||
| I think it'd be nice if police focused on being police rather than social workers themselves all the time. | ||
| But because of stretched budgets, that's where we are. | ||
| Okay, great. | ||
| Well, thank you so much for your time, David. | ||
|
Encouraging Listener Support
00:01:15
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| I really appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks for having me, Libby. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I'm just going to do one last shameless self-promotion plug for my new podcast. | ||
| And I really encourage you all to check it out. | ||
| We're going to be dropping that show every Tuesday. | ||
| It's going to be on, you know, all the normal platforms, Spotify. | ||
| We're going to be putting it up on, you know, Apple, iTunes, podcasts, and Amazon. | ||
| And we're going to be putting it up on YouTube as well. | ||
| Eventually, we are going to be moving to video. | ||
| We're starting with audio, you know, the little rollout, see what we can do. | ||
| And let me see. | ||
| Let me just bring it up again. | ||
| It's here. | ||
| It's here. | ||
| I have it. | ||
| I promise. | ||
| So you can see it. | ||
| You can go to the pod millennial and check it out there. | ||
| And all of the links will be up here as well. | ||
| And I really appreciate your support. | ||
| And thanks for letting me fill in for you a couple of days, Tate. | ||
| I appreciate that too. | ||
| And are we rating anybody? | ||
| Are we rating anybody today? | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Who are we? | ||
| Who are we rating? | ||
|
unidentified
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We are going to be rating Devori Darkens. | |
| Okay, Devori Darkens. | ||