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- [00:00]
Ariella Markowitz
This is not a drill. You can get the new iPhone 16e.
- [00:03]
Luke Goldstein
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- [00:06]
Host
Wait, that's the actual fire alarm. We need to go visit your nearest Boost Mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.
- [00:15]
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- [00:54]
Ariella Markowitz
Folks, I am very happy to welcome to as the World Churns, two fantastic reporters at Lever the Lever News, which I truly enjoy. Ariella Markowitz and Luke Goldstein, who we're going to dive into a range of topics here because that's what the the Lever News does. But I want to start out with the thing Ariella, and I'll direct this to you first, the topic that Donald Trump doesn't want everybody to talk about. So I'm going to continue talking about it because anything that he doesn't want, I'm going to do the opposite of as should everyone, which is the f st drama that continues to unfold where at the, you know, the end of this week, we just had, again, actions that take place in the middle of the night. The firing of Maureen Comey, who was one of the lead prosecutors on the Epstein case, as well as Maxwell, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now serving 20 years in prison for her involvement in sex trafficking with Jeffrey Epstein team. And the Department of Justice decided to fire her. Now, she has a familiar last name, but you give us the reasons why you think that she would have been fired.
- [02:17]
Luke Goldstein
Now, I'm not completely up to date as to like, the reasons why the Trump administration claimed that they fired her. You know, this is all coming in line with the memo, the July 7 memo the Trump administration released basically claiming that there is no client list in regards to the Epstein trials, the Epstein files, I mean, and that, you know, Epstein's death was definitely a suicide. And, you know, Comey is this, you know, really successful prosecutor who tried these cases. So I think it's fair to assume that she's on the inside asking questions about this case and trying to bring more perpetrators to justice. And the Trump administration wasn't a huge Fan of that.
- [02:56]
Ariella Markowitz
I guess my question is, like, right now this seems to be one of the biggest fissures inside of maga. It wasn't the deportations, not the cutting of Medicaid, not the big billionaire bill, but the Epstein drama that they have been fed over the last several years directly from Donald Trump. And so how do you think then that moves like this, which again, you're saying we don't really know. Right. Why she was, she doesn't even know why she was fired. There was no letter. It was just like, get out. Why do you, like, do you think that this is going to help stop the conversations that the MAGA base is having and continually like discussing and asking questions about, or is it just going to be more fuel to the conspiracies that are swirling?
- [03:50]
Luke Goldstein
No. The irony of this all is that every time the Trump administration is trying to kind of slam the door on the conspiracies and put a stop to the conversation, they are literally, as you mentioned, adding more fuel, like just in that memo alone. You know, the link, for instance, to this 11 hour jail recording of like a common area, not even Epstein's cell really is supposed to like, be this like proof that Epstein's death was absolutely a suicide. Whereas now, you know, this video, it's been proven that it's a composite video.
- [04:27]
Ariella Markowitz
Yep.
- [04:28]
Luke Goldstein
Wired is reporting three minutes are missing.
- [04:30]
Ariella Markowitz
Yeah.
- [04:31]
Luke Goldstein
So it's like time. It's just absolutely absurd. Like this level of like, oh, this is our consequential proof of this suicide. But in reality there's so many unanswered questions. And it's the same with this claim that no client list exists. It's, you know, the Trump administration trying to slam the door, being like, this list is a conspiracy theory, it's not real. When in reality there's so much redacted information in all of the memos that were released and so many unanswered questions. So, yeah, the MAGA base is absolutely up in arms about this issue right now and it's hard to see them letting go anytime soon.
- [05:08]
Ariella Markowitz
Not when he keeps peppering them with things like this. I don't think that they're going to let it go anytime soon.
- [05:14]
Host
One thing I think maybe that's kind of helpful for the context here of the firing of Maureen Comey is that, you know, usually what sets this whole fight in the MAGA base apart from some of the, you know, the more minor skirmishes that, you know, we've, we've seen so far in the administration is, you know, there Are these different kinds of wings and factions, you know, of the party. The most kind of visible one is you have the kind of Elon Musk faction and then what's referred to as, like, the Steve Bannon faction. Right. And what's kind of convenient about the factions, though, for, for the MAGA movement is that whenever they can never criticize Trump directly, so whenever there's something they don't like, they get to say, oh, well, this was the other, the other wing of the party that's been influencing him. You saw this a lot with the bombings in Iran as well, which I think was kind of before the Epstein stuff, probably the biggest confrontation that there was. And immediately in the days after the DOJ put out that memo and there was this whole uproar, people were calling for Pam Bondi to. To be fired. Right. Initially. And, you know, Trump really threw cold water on that kind of immediately he put out this truth social post. And, you know, I think the, the door, you know, shut on that. There was, you know, a lot of murmurings throughout Dan Bongino. If he was going to be pushed out, everyone was looking for a fault person. And so I think what they ultimately, you know, perhaps landed on was, yeah, we'll. We'll kind of, we'll push Maureen Comey out the door and, you know, we'll make that like, the sacrificial lamb more or less, for this whole obstacle.
- [06:58]
Ariella Markowitz
The funny thing to me, though, that you, and I'm so glad that you brought up the wanting to feed Pam Monty to the MAGA wolves, because Megyn Kelly was probably one of the most vocal around that. Like, and I, I said this earlier in a, in a segment that Megyn Kelly never misses an opportunity to throw another white woman under the bus. It's like, what she's good at. But what was amazing to me is that, sure, you could use Maureen Comey as your fall person, but she wasn't the one that said that she had the list on her desk. So I'm just like, I'm, I'm curious, as you know, last thoughts for the both of you on this. How do you think that the firing is going to play? Like, we all know Donald Trump hates James Comey, right? Like, we all know the vendetta that he has against Comey. And it would not have been peculiar for her to have been fired at the beginning of his administration, right? Like, he came in, he was cleaning house in a lot of different ways. But to do it now and to make this person that no one knew as A name as the lead prosecutor on this case, the fall person. When Pam Bondi is on record on television saying that she has the list on her desk. How do you both think that this is going to continue to play out? Because I don't know, for instance, Luke, if his truth Social post was enough cold water to stop the calling for her head.
- [08:31]
Host
Yeah, no, and I don't think it. I don't think it has. And sorry, just to. To kind of clarify, what I mean is, their whole line now is, you know, the, the Obamas, the, the Democrats are the ones who cooked up this whole file. So the Democratic Maureen Comey, you recognize that name, this bad guy, James Coney, like, it's kind of just throwing, you know, red. Red meat to the wolves, you could say.
- [08:50]
Luke Goldstein
Yeah, yeah. And Pam Bondi, you know, she's a really. She's a close Trump ally and pawn in a lot of ways. Like just this morning, she's in Alcatraz in San Francisco, like, touring the facilities and just kind of drumming up support for the whole ICE agenda and the funding for, you know, the prison industrial complex and whatnot. So she is like a key player right now in this push for Trump to be like, oh, this is like liberal outrage and, you know, this manufactured controversy. Meanwhile, we're doing all this great things, funding ice, funding, immigration enforcement. So, yeah, Pan Vondi is like this incredible ally for him in that regard.
- [09:32]
Host
Right. She's passed the loyalty test, you know, so he hasn't really been, you know, given any other reason to throw her off the ship.
- [09:38]
Ariella Markowitz
There also tells me something that because she has been his attorney before, that there are some things that Pam Bondi actually knows that you would like to keep her close to the vest. I wanna switch gears to what I perceive it's existential to public broadcasting, but also can serve as a distraction to the Epstein drama, which are, um, the cuts that were made to NPR and PBS in the middle of the night at 2:00am, the doge cuts of $9 billion, PBS, NPR, foreign aid, AIDS research, et cetera, et cetera, are now on the chopping block and has passed the Senate by the skin of its teeth and is now going to the House. Just want to get your thoughts. I obviously, I believe that it's going to pass. I can't imagine that House Republicans, even though rural districts deeply rely on public radio and public media for their emergency alerts, for their information on local community, et cetera. How do you think that the both of you think that this is going to play out in the House and just play out, I guess, in general with people.
- [11:01]
Luke Goldstein
Yeah, well, the wild thing is it's already playing out even though the vote hasn't been passed in the House. Like, public radio stations nationwide are already kind of in advance laying people off in some instances because of concerns over funding. Kqed, which is the NPR member station in the Bay Area, preemptively laid off 15% of their workforce this week in part because of, you know, concern over this measure. So it's already going to make a huge impact on communities. Already making a huge impact. And that's rippling across. And yeah, no, if this passes through like what you said, this is really going to affect those small stations, too, in rural areas like Alaska's Lisa Murkowski, who's one of the two Republican senators who voted against the rescission. She was talking about these tiny radio stations in Alaska that people rely on for emergency alerts with weather, all these, like, critical services which, as we've seen, are absolutely necessary in alerting the public for, like, environmental disasters. So, yeah, Luke, what do you got?
- [12:07]
Host
So Doge had gone after npr. This is Doge when it was under, you know, Elon Musk's direct at his direction. So they'd gone after, you know, NPR in particular, they'd gone after public broadcasting as well. And I think there's a few admissions here about this recision package being brought to Congress. So when Doge was, you know, doing it, doing its thing, whatever, trying to take the chainsaw to government in those first months, you know, one of the main responses from Democrats was, you know, if you want to do cuts to the federal government, you have to come before Congress and you have to actually, you know, vote on this. You've been allocated a budget. You can't just retroactively cut out all these contracts and such. And the really kind of the subtext of a lot of this is that Republicans were totally happy in some ways to let Elon do his thing because they didn't want to have to actually take votes on some of these, you know, cuts that he was implementing. And so what's in this rescission package that's now been brought before Congress? Some of the background is that there have been these court challenges and some rulings have said you you can't actually, like, terminate a contract that was already, you know, signed. So this rescission package in particular is about cutting foreign aid pepfars in there and then also public broadcasting. And I think the sad thing is that public broadcasting is something that Republicans feel United enough around that they're all willing to take a. An official vote on the record and that they're not going to, you know, receive any kind of, you know, political backlash for that. And I think the same with the foreign aid stuff. And then there's a lot of other doge things to healthcare and other parts of the government that is not in this resistant package that I think they believe would be more politically toxic. Though, obviously they did just cut Medicare and Medicaid and the tax.
- [13:54]
Ariella Markowitz
I was gonna say, there is that.
- [13:55]
Host
Yeah.
- [13:56]
Ariella Markowitz
And they voted on that. And they seem to not give a damn, so.
- [13:59]
Host
Right. Yeah, they cut services for, like, military members as well. And that's not something I want to vote. There's certain, I guess, kind of red lines, but I think that's big picture how this is all, you know, kind of shaking out.
- [14:11]
Ariella Markowitz
So finally, I, I want to talk about what has been happening with Crypto Week. Crypto is probably something I paid the least amount of attention to, so I want that. But except for the fact that it seems that the Trump family finds different avenues in which to grift as it pertains to crypto. So tell us, Luke, I'll start with you. What's been. What we need to be paying attention to with regard to that?
- [14:37]
Host
Yeah, I mean, I think for you and many others, the Trump family crypto corruption, grift has been in some ways their main, you know, kind of foray or entry point into the, the whole kind of crazy world of, of, of crypto. And that definitely has been one of the political arguments that the Democrats oppose these bills have made, that this is basically giving, you know, a rubber stamp for the millions that the Trump family has been already raising through the world Liberty Financial Family business on the side. So, you know, this was supposed to be Crypto Week, which was going to be this big kind of, you know, triumphant push to get these. A package of crypto bills passed. One of them, called the Genius act, has already passed in the Senate with bipartisan support, and there was a whole fight there. So this is now moving to the House for the, you know, the final step of its passage. But it got, it got held up. And it was mainly because the House Freedom Caucus, who are the more kind of, you know, rabble rousing, you know, kind of libertarians on the Republican side, they really wanted this other bill to be included in the package that would ban central banks from launching their own digital, digital assets. You know, basically cryptos. So they're like true ideologues in the sense that they think crypto holds this potential for a completely decentralized, you know, financial system away from banks. And no, you know, there's no government involvement or anything like that. So that's their basis for having this bill included. And it, you know, had a bunch, it hit a bunch of obstacles because Republicans want Democrats to come along for the other two major parts of this package. And Democrats aren't interested in doing this ban on central bank, you know, digital assets. So the House Freedom caucas actually voted against a procedural vote to move forward with the whole package. Trump called them all into the White House and, you know, he basically like gave them a talking to and said, you have to, you know, fall in line and pass this Again, if you don't care about crypto, it's just also about the legislative dynamics of what's at play here. And they had a meeting and then what was reported after is that all the Freedom Caucus members said, okay, we're, we're fine with this. So now this bill that they wanted is going to be attached to the National Defense Authorization act, which is also being worked on by Congress right now. And they last night also went through a procedural vote that now passed. So these crypto bills can, you know, move forward. There's two parts of them. They're both sort of establishing light touch regulations for a pretty volatile digital, you know, asset. So they're going to have it regulated by the Commodities Future Trading Commission, which is mostly an agricultural regulator, if you know anything about it, instead of the securities and Exchange Commission, which is actually the financial regulator. And it's, you know, for the very clear purpose that they would like crypto to, you know, not be really touched by the regulators. Then the other one sort of creates a general legal, legal framework for a specific kind of crypto called stablecoins that are supposed to be pegged to the US Dollar. The whole idea is to build confidence among more users and investors to put their money into crypto because it's had some issues getting kind of widely adopted and the industry would like, you know, Congress to kind of, you know, help them out.
- [18:12]
Ariella Markowitz
Fascinating. Fascinating. Ariella, any thoughts?
- [18:15]
Luke Goldstein
No thoughts on this one.
- [18:18]
Ariella Markowitz
You're like, I got, I got nothing. I appreciate the breakdown, Luke, because again, it's an area that's seems so shady to me, I think as something that I initially thought could be, you know, an opportunity for regular people to build wealth and like, for regular people to have entry. But it's just still, to me something that seems relatively shady and that because Donald Trump wants it lets me know that maybe it is actually still very shady. But I appreciate the breakdown. Last thoughts?
- [18:54]
Host
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's attracted grifters for, for many years now. I, I just to be, you know, to be clear, I think that there are proposals that would allow people who want to use, you know, crypto faster transactions and stuff that, you know, would allow that to be done safely. The objections to these bills or that they will basically create this category of a financial asset that is more unregulated than almost anything else we've seen. And you know, just given you how certain volatilities that we have in our financial system periodically, it's not like, you know, really the best, the best idea to go forward with.
- [19:34]
Ariella Markowitz
All right, well, we will leave it there today. Thank you Ariella and Luke from the Lever for giving us your perspective on a range of topics today. We appreciate you guys.
- [19:47]
Host
Yep. Thanks for having us on.
- [19:48]
Luke Goldstein
Thanks for having us.
- [19:52]
Host
The McDonald's snack wrap is back. You brought it back. Ranch snack wrap. Spicy snack wrap. You broke the Internet for a snack? Snack wrap is back. Bottom up.
- [20:07]
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