← Jimmy Dore Premium Podcast
Jimmy Dore Premium Podcast
Exclusive Interview! Kshama Sawant CLAPS BACK After Breaking Points Snub!
02:51:02
Loading summary
Transcript173 lines
- [00:02]
A
Establishment media sucks August lighting so good luck. Bullshit. We can't afford why he's commenting this
- [00:10]
B
watch and see as his jack golf the medium speeds and jumps the medium
- [00:15]
A
and hits him head on.
- [00:17]
B
It's the Jimmy Door Show. This is Russell Dobular filling in for Jimmy Dore, who is literally on his own odyssey on a boat. Hopefully won't fall for those sirens we have an amazing guest today, somebody I've wanted to speak to for a very long time. It's very rare a few times in your life you read a book that you know is going to be part of how you understand the world after you've read it. And that has definitely been the case for me with the book End Times Elites, Counter Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration By Peter Turchin Peter Turchin is a Russian American complexity scientist and a founding figure of Clio Dynamics, an interdisciplinary field that uses mathematical modeling and historical data to analyze societal dynamics. Born in the Soviet Union, he emigrated to the United states at age 20 and earned a PhD in zoology from Duke University, leveraging his background in theoretical biology to study long term social processes. He currently serves as a project leader at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, a research associate at the University of Oxford, and an Emeritus professor at the University of Connecticut. Please welcome Professor Peter Turchin. Hello professor, how are you?
- [01:52]
A
I'm good, thank you.
- [01:54]
B
It was amazing to speak to you. After I read your book, I started referencing it all the time. Probably my audience got a little sick of it, but some of them went out and read your book and a lot of them were already fans. So to give people who might be watching an idea of your work, in 2010 you wrote an article predicting that beginning around 2020 the US would face increasing social and political instability. You did this by applying the system of historical analysis you call Cleo dynamics. For people who are not familiar with it, what is Cleo dynamics and how did that allow you to make that prediction?
- [02:40]
A
Well, first let me explain the name. Clio is the muse of history in Greek mythology, and dynamics is the study of change. So Clio dynamics is simply to study the historical dynamics, how nations grow in decline, how populations increase and collapse, perhaps how religions spread or wither. So these all are dynamical things that we would like to understand. We want to understand the causes of them. And that's what is about. Now. Dynamics is not history. History is a wonderful discipline. I have all respect for historians who train very hard to collect the data. But historians have not been doing such a good job explaining why? Things happen in history and every different historian has their own ideas. And so, for example, for the collapse of the Roman Empire, you have about 240 theories. Now, in science, obviously you do want to advance theories, but then you want to decide which of the theories actually fit the reality better. And we do it by testing them empirically with data. And that's what theodynamics does. The first step is to translate verbal theories into mathematical models, because you cannot do dynamics simply by naked human brain. Then we extract predictions from rival theories and then we collect huge amounts of data in order to test them. So that is the process in a nutshell.
- [04:21]
B
Okay, now an obvious comparison. And I've seen you talk about the fact that you love science fiction. Did Psycho History in the foundation series give you the idea? Or is that parallel development?
- [04:37]
A
Interestingly enough, I read a foundation 50 years ago actually. But I decided to start the dynamics completely unrelatedly, and only later I realized that there is a connection. Also, there are many big differences between psychohistory, as Asimov explains it, and the dynamics. So for example, we don't know that we cannot predict very accurately far in the future, unlike what Harry Seldon was able to do. That's because the dynamical systems are often in the chaotic regime, right? And so the butterfly effect rules, which means that you can predict, just like weather, you can predict maybe a week or two and days ahead, but after that it's unpredictable. So that's. You don't try to predict the future in with clear dynamics.
- [05:35]
B
Okay, but you did kind of predict the future in terms of your article in 2010. Now, in end Times, you present the theory, I think that underlies that, that the elite class, when it's overproduced, starts to create social tension. So can you explain that a little bit?
- [05:58]
A
Yeah. First of all, let me say a few words about predictions. There are different types of predictions, the useless ones, what I call prophecies, you don't know where it's coming from and you don't know whether it's going to be true or not until it happens. And usually it's not. Now, scientific prediction is different. How do you know whether phlogiston theory or the molecular theory of heat actually is closer to the truth? Well, we extract predictions from them and test them, get data. So that's where scientific prediction comes from. And this was the spirit in which I published my prediction. I said, okay, we've been working on this body of theory for maybe 20 years by that point. And the theory actually says that the United States is on the path to crisis. So let me stick my neck out, make this prediction, publish it, and then you'll see what happens. And I did not expect for this prediction to happen exactly as predicted. And of course, I had no idea about individuals I didn't know about Donald Trump at that point and things like that. So the point was to see how the actual future will depart from prediction so that you can adjust the theory accordingly. Interesting enough, the future actually, well, now, the past did not depart very far from this prediction.
- [07:32]
B
Now, what patterns of history were you basing that prediction on? What did you see, what social forces did you see in the United States that matched the data you had amassed of previous societies and the patterns that they followed?
- [07:51]
A
Yes, indeed. When I started working in Clio Dynamics, I actually did not want to go into the present and future because it's a political difficult territory. It's a minefield, actually. So initially I wanted to study only societies that have raised and fallen apart in the past. Right. But every time I would give a talk about the Roman Empire, about medieval France or England, people would ask me, okay, where are we? So I decided I eventually broke down in the early 2000s, and I applied the methodology, suitably adjusted obviously for how the societies have changed during the industrial revolution and post industrial period. Surprisingly, not that much in things that matter. All right, so we can talk about the specific forces that lead to outbreaks of violence and internal war. They are actually very common for pretty much all societies, all complex societies organized as states that first appeared about 5,000 years ago. They all go through this regular, if not completely predictable periods of first, nice periods, integrative periods, when they keep internal peace and order, although at the time they may be fighting very intense external wars. Remember that this is a very important distinction. But then eventually, at some point, some kind of end times show up. And so the societies in the past could go through nice good periods for maybe 100 years plus minus, and then they would always get into end times. And it turns out that our society is not immune. Our modern democratic societies are not immune from the same forces.
- [09:55]
B
Okay, now in end times, you say that the elite class, basically during the Great Depression, made a social contract to take a lesser share of the wealth in exchange for social stability. And then in the 70s, they began to claw back at the institutions that had created a broad based prosperity, creating what you call the wealth pump. Can you explain that?
- [10:22]
A
Yes. Well, first of all, let's go back 100 years ago. Why did the ruling class made this implicit bargain? Well, because they were really, really scared. United States was in the pre revolutionary situation. We see this in the data. Huge outbreak of all kinds of political violence. And so it eventually dawned on people, especially FDR and the and his crew, that we either reform capitalism ourselves or we will be overthrown by a revolution. They really worried about communist revolution. And of course also another bad example was the Nazi Germany at the time. So they essentially shut down the wealth pump. So what is the wealth pump? The wealth, well, the wealth bump refers to how the fruits of economic growth are distributed in a society. What we would like to see is that as the economy grows, it lifts up all the boats so the wealthy do well and the workers do well in proportionate terms. However, if this balance is disturbed, right, if the elites start getting more than their share of the economy, that will have a number of negative consequences which eventually come around and bite the elites, but not immediately, maybe in 20, 30 or 40 years. What happened was that during the, especially the New Deal era, but starting in the progressive era, the American elites allowed workers to organize, so gave them power to argue their case. They did a lot of reforms that increased the well being of people, Social Security, health and many other types of things. And so they balanced the system. And the system worked extremely well for about two generations until 1970s. And the system actually brought unprecedented prosperity in human history to people. United States was a very affluent country where affluence was broadly shared. Now after one or two generations, people forgot about that fear they had and so they started, you know, rejiggering economy in their own way. People, I mean people with power elites, all right, and so they thought that the system would continue working well even if they start getting more, share a bit more, more more. And that's how they turned the wealth pump. So they in particular after power of workers to organize and push their case has been greatly diminished. And there were many other mechanisms. It was a complex mechanism moving the jobs overseas where the labor is cheaper, increasing massive immigration from overseas, and taking the power of workers to organize. All those contributed together to the share of economic growth going to the workers started to decline, in fact.
- [13:52]
B
Okay, so now this leads to a condition that you call popular immiseration, where the population in general is destitute and in a state of desperation. But you've argued that that's not enough to really cause a revolutionary condition. That when they're immiserated, but the elites are content, the elites will crush any attempt to overthrow the system. So you say the secret sauce, and this is, I think, a phrase that you Coined that. Now everyone is repeating is elite overproduction. That that's really the thing that tips things over to the edge into a revolutionary condition. Can you explain that and how we see that currently in the United States?
- [14:45]
A
Yes. Well, as in all theories, you have to analyze the society. And we analyze society by representing it as consisting of three compartments. The majority of the population, the working class, so to speak, or the common people, a small proportion of people with power, elites and the state organization. So all three are important players and dynamics result from those three compartments interacting with each other. Now, as you said, if the elites are unified and the state is strong, then popular immiseration can lead to hopeless and maybe even bloody rebellions. Just so think like what Tyler rebellion in England or in France, which they were all easily suppressed. And this is no different today. If just people start, you know, rising up, you've got the state in its huge power. Just look at all those armored cops, the equivalent of the armored knights of the 14th century. So any kinds of such unorganized popular outbreaks of violence will be fairly easily suppressed. Now this is where elites come from, because elites are the key people who actually direct that power in a variety of ways, including military power, but more importantly to the economic power, ideological power, and also organizational or political power. Now, in the past, it was only when the elites started to be driven by these differences and started to create different parties that increasingly used violence against each other, that's when things start to unravel. And also usually by this point, because of a variety of factors I'm happy to go into, the state becomes quite weak and it typically loses its fiscal health and also legitimacy. So that's when the violence, inter elite violence escalates. There is no other ways, no other breaks to keep the situation under control.
- [17:20]
B
So I, I, I've seen you argue that what winds up happening when you pump all this wealth up to the top is basically it's a civil war between elites, between different wings of the elite class for a shrinking number of positions. Do you think that's a condition that we're in now in the United States?
- [17:43]
A
In fact, this condition we have been in by 2010 for sure, and it's getting only worse. So just to amplify a little bit on the last point, keep in mind that it's not the poor people who are leaders of revolutions and so on and so forth. It's the members of elites. We call them counter elites. So examples would include Vladimir Lenin, Fidel Castro, who came from a very wealthy. Both of them came from wealthy and privileged backgrounds. And also today we see counter elites like Zoran Mamdani for example. He's certainly not a scion of the working class. So this is a rule. As you look through all the leaders of different rebellions, 99% of them were counter elites. Now why do we have. Suddenly the big question is then why do we have many counter elites? Massive numbers of counter elites appear during these pre crisis periods which actually result in crisis. This is again the second consequence of the wealth pump. The first one is immiseration. But the second one, think about it, Elites are doing great. And for the first 10, 20, 30, 40 years they are doing great. But as they're doing great, their numbers increase, right? So we have, well, in the past, elites would have more children and set them up as nobility. Today it's upward social mobility, which is much more important also in the 19th century America, because when the business people could pay their workers less, they would get more, right? So many of them would, many of the very active, you know, former workers would actually set up shops and then bootstrap themselves into the millionaire class. And so we see this in the most recent history. Most of the wealthy class today are people like CEOs of 500 Fortune companies who as a result of not paying the workers, holding down their worker wages, have increased their own wealth and you know, and they end up in golden parachutes. And as such. So as a result of that, we are fortunate to have good numbers. Since the. We measure those pump by what I call relative wage. It's the typical wage divided by GDP per capita. It started to decline in late 60s and 1970s and between 1980 and today we have the numbers of multimillionaires such as Deca millionaires. People with wealth of $10 million in inflation adjusted money. Over the past 40 some years, the number of those people increased tenfold. The population has grown by like 40%. But we have 10 times as many Deca millionaires. And as you travel up the wealth distribution, the effect becomes even stronger. Again, in inflation adjusted dollars, we have 20 times as many billionaires today as we had 40 years ago. All right, so that's what illegal production is. Now on one hand, this is not bad for people who become wealthy, but for the society, this has some downsides. Specifically, let's take the political arena. Let's talk about the political leaders, such as president, of course, the senators, House representatives and so on, down to the state legislatures and so on and so forth. Now it's a matter of fact that not every wealthy person desires to have a political office, but certain proportion of them do. And today we have 10 times as many such people as 40 years ago. So it is not surprising that we have people like Donald Trump and many others. All right now because the supply of political positions is fixed. Only one president, only 100 senators. But now you have 10 times as many wealthy candidates vying for these positions. In the book, I compare this process to a game of musical chairs, except that you don't remove chairs. You keep the same number of chairs, but you add players. You start with 11 players for 10 chairs and then now you have 100 players for the same 10 chairs. So you can imagine if you try to play this game, you will not get to the point where you have hundred players because it will be fist fight free for all. And the same thing works in the as a result of elite overproduction.
- [22:56]
B
So in this, you know, theoretical battle between Democrats and Republicans, is this simply a battle among elites for to to got to have the power of government in the society? Is this just two wings of the elites fighting each other?
- [23:16]
A
Well, that is a bit more complicated than that. First of all, after the New Deal, the Republicans and Democrats were not that different. In fact, there is some political scientists have scored how they vote. And in 1950, the distribution of Republicans and Democrats was completely overlapped. All right. And then over the next 40 or 50 years these distributions departed. And for a while the main source of tension was between Republicans and Democrats. But if you go back to like 1850s, the decade just before the Civil War that we had a two party system, at that point it completely broke down. There was like 20 different parties. Each party was fragmented. So this is what we see today because Trump and MAGA movement, it is not traditional Republicans at all. They are counter elites. They are insurgents within the Republican Party. And now we see Democratic socialists who have been under a Bernie, they've been very ineffectual, but now they are breaking up the Democratic Party. So we have now at least four probably more different types of factions of elites who are vying with each other. So this is very typical. This fragmentation of power of elite rather elites is a very typical precursor to social breakdown and political violence outbreaks.
- [24:55]
B
All right, the rise of dsa, that's kind of perfect. Going into my next question, it seems to confirm your theory. So it was a recent op ed in the Times about DSA called a working class party without many workers. And it went to the most recent DSA survey of its own members, which is probably, to be fair, a Little different it was in 2021. These numbers would probably not be quite so stark now, but would continue, I think to trend in the same direction. So 4% of the members had blue collar jobs. Of the DSA, 80% had a college degree, 35% had an advanced degree. Both those numbers are double. The general population, 58% have professional class jobs with the rest being students unemployed or disabled. At that time, 85% were white. I've seen more recent numbers saying it's around 68, but still obviously pretty, pretty dominant block. Do elite class children throughout history only take up liberty, fraternity, equality when these forces start to affect them and then they take on the causes of the poor and the immiserated because they need them as cannon fodder to fight their war, to regain the privileges that they've lost or are in fear of losing. Is this the pattern in history that you've seen?
- [26:33]
A
Well, when do you think was the first populist party? 2200 years ago. It was the Populares they were called in Rome. In Rome. So brother Gaius and Tibelius Gracchi, they were the leaders, they came from the top of the Roman aristocracy and they were the ones who were trying to bring it down. And same thing I was talking about recently before, when we look at the revolutionary leaders, they come from the elites. They are part and parcel of that. But let's now talk about little bit education, because I want to bring education in in a minute. Now, in our types of societies there are two routes to power. We talked about the power, the wealth route to power. Right. But the more common is education. So if you don't have wealth and you want to become president, what do you do? Well, first you go to college. All right. And back in the 1950s, going to college was a sure route to get from the working class century. You would almost certainly get into 10, 15 upper percent of income and wealth. Right? But now almost 2/3 of people in the United States, 2/3 of high school graduates go to college. So the college is really worth it. So you have, you go to some kind of get advanced training. If you want to go into politics, you go to the law school. Interestingly enough, this is a very. I mentioned Lenin and Castro, both lawyers. All right. Maximiliano Robespierre was also lawyer. Gandhi was a lawyer and Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. It's a very recurring pattern now in this country. About five years ago, we overproduced lawyers. There were three times as many law school graduates as jobs for them. Now half of those jobs are gone and Maybe more because of AI. So we are hugely overproducing people with law degrees. And these are people who go through pretty demanding training. They're smart, they are driven, they are well networked. And so they are the most dangerous class from the point of view of state stability. All right, so educational route now is very important. And now here I would like to recently, Nate Silver, right, who is probably familiar to all of us, I think two or three days ago, he published another study where he looked at who is actually supporting democratic socialists. I don't know if you saw that. Turns out it's heavily depot means advanced degrees who are in the 30 to 60,000, you know, category by income, which is not a lot. All right, so. And he actually apparently read my book because he said that this fits very well what Peter Turchin calls, you know, little reproduction. So this is precisely the pattern that we should expect. And so you should not be surprised when they see it.
- [30:01]
B
Now, how would you applying these principles? Because I'm assuming you don't see civil war as desirable.
- [30:11]
A
Absolutely not.
- [30:13]
B
What recommendation would you give to governments going forward? What policies would you advise for them to avoid that outcome, which, based on what you've studied, seems to be where we're going?
- [30:27]
A
Well, as you mentioned at the beginning in the introduction, I lead the project in Vienna Institute of Social Complexity, Social Complexity Hub. So this is. We have been fortunate to secure some funding from Austrian Science Foundation. So this is precisely the question that we are working very hard to. To answer. But I can tell you some of our preliminary results. First of all, we have constructed a fairly large database of societies that go into crisis and then emerge from that. Currently we have about 200 such cases. Even before doing the formal analysis and doing many more things that we are planning to do, what I can say is that in the majority of cases, The crisis turns out to be a bloody crisis, a prolonged civil war revolution where people's heads get cut off and all kinds of nastiness. Right. But in about 10, 15% of cases, the societies managed to navigate those shoals in a reasonably bloodless way. And so we've been looking at this. So I was talking about fdr. This is actually one of our case studies, and there are several ones, like the Chartist movement in British empire during the 1830s, mid 19th century, the reform period in Russia in 1860s, which postponed revolution by 50 years, and so on and so forth. All right, so what seems to be the secret sauce? Right, right. That helps it. Essentially, the critical thing is the wealth pump. You have to shut down the wealth pump. Now keep in mind that this is actually a very painful thing to do for the elites. Their wealth pump, which was shut down during the New Deal, resulted in the numbers of millionaires declining twofold over the next 20, 30, 40 years. Of course the Great Depression helped, but it was not just the Great Depression. It was because the wealth pumps. In fact, wealth pump was operating a little bit in reverse. Workers were doing better than the economy. So you need to rebalance this and turn off the wealth pump. How we do it, every society does it will have to do it in different ways. You cannot just use the same thing as the New Deal because our society is different. But we have to get those typical wages back to grow together with GDP per capita, with the worker productivity essentially.
- [33:22]
B
Okay, now they say there's nothing new under the sun, but a lot of people seem to feel that AI is something new under the sun, that every other technological innovation assumed the need for human labor, just in different forms and in different areas. A lot of people are seeing AI as a singularity, as an event in which all bets are off. All predictions based on past patterns go out the window. In a world where AI can take everybody's job or a good portion of the population. What are your thoughts about that?
- [34:10]
A
Well, yes, this is the bleak scenario that I am very worried about. It's not just AI taking the jobs. You have to push this very negative scenario a bit further. So what will happen if the 90% of the population are jobless? They will be extremely immiserated. Also, AI has now come for the elites, the lawyers, the law degree holders. They are out of job and they are great organizers. So if we allow this to happen, what will happen next is that you'll have a real revolution, however, if you push this scenario further. So if people multi trillionaires now actually figure out how to make robots, robot soldiers, now that's where things get really bleak. Because if they just manufacture millions of robotic soldiers, then the rest of us will have no chance whatsoever. So fortunately, even though AI is already taking some jobs, actually the story is not yet, you know, it's not over yet because AI is also creating jobs. But it's very important that we as a society control how we use AI so that a small proportion of of selfish elites doesn't just grab all of its fruits to itself. There was a recent letter by a bunch of economists who, they did not propose any solutions, but they actually suggested that we really should start thinking about those solutions. Think about the worst scenario. Is AI driven Robotic armies, that is. That will be in science fiction, which I love to read. There are bleak futures of this kind. And let's not go that road.
- [36:29]
B
Okay, now there are other models of government. You actually came from one, the ussr. Would you apply these principles to the collapse of the ussr? Do you see that as a result of an overproduction of elites?
- [36:49]
A
Yes. Interestingly enough that the pressure from reduction of elites coupled now explosive combination is when we have counter elites and huge masses, immiserated masses who provide the rope out. And the third period when the state starts breaking down. Right, so this is the scenario which happened over and over again hundreds of times in history and we are in the beginning stages of a similar dynamic. All right, so, okay, remind me your question. Sorry, I got. So
- [37:32]
B
would you say there was an overproduction of elites and this pattern and the collapse of the ussr?
- [37:38]
A
Absolutely. So the point I was going to is that in fact the specific arrangements, democracy, autocracy, aristocracy and so on, they are not as important as whether the elites are unified and are not fighting amongst themselves. All right, so look at China for example. China is actually. I don't know if you've been to China. I've been to China many times.
- [38:08]
B
I've been very recently. I came back in May.
- [38:12]
A
Yeah, I was there three times over the past two years and the first time I was there in 2004. It's amazing how the country has changed. And it is also, it's also well governed countries. You know, the. We are told by our media that there is no freedom there. And it is actually, it's not a democracy, it's a true autocracy. However, this autocracy managed to deliver really incredible increases in well being to huge numbers of people. And they are also keeping the elite overproduction down. You've seen for example, reports that some of the Chinese billionaires like Ma. What's his first name?
- [39:04]
B
Jack Ma.
- [39:04]
A
Jack Ma, that's right, Jack Ma. He disappeared from the public view. All right. Then he appeared chastened and he's not doing any kinds of. So there is no. Donald Trump is impossible in a situation like it is right now in China. So you may like or dislike their government, but it is keeping social stability and delivering huge increases in well being for them very broadly based people. Now, I don't argue that we should have autocracy in the United States. I agree that democracy is a better way of governing countries. However, what we have in the United States, as I argue in one of my chapters of my book, we don't have a democracy anymore. It's plutocracy, the rule by wealth. So what we need to do, we don't need to, we don't want to copy China, obviously what we want to do, we want to reform our democracy, that it really delivers for the common people as it did from 1930 to 1970s.
- [40:22]
B
I think, I think the question at this point for a lot of people and certainly going to China left me with a lot of questions about what systems are best for the greatest number of people. And as you point out, because they have a centralized authority like that, they're able to control the expansion of elites. And it seems like within our system it's inevitable that elites, and this was the argument, as I'm sure you'll know very well, that came from Lenin and, and, and the USSR Bolsheviks, that eventually the capital will buy your politicians and your courts and then you're not going to have a democracy. How do you, how do you avoid that? Because in a lot of ways you look at China and their system seems to avoid that. And consequently, when I, us Westerners grew up on these terminator scenarios of technology out of control, of being a threat, whenever I tried to make those jokes with Chinese people, they seem to just completely not get it because they just don't expect the government to set the technology loose on them because they look around at where there was a fishing village and here's Chongqing now. That's right. So they see technology as something that will only be used to benefit them. They're much more comfortable with it. Are they right? Is that system removing your personal, personal inclinations? Is that better for the majority of people, a system like that?
- [42:02]
A
Well, first of all, I want vehemently correct your misunderstanding. The Chinese system is that China has worked just as any other past societies and there were cycles of integrative and disintegrative periods, except those cycles were brought not by capitalists, but by overproducing the Mandarin class. We have recently published an article on the Qing Crisis Dynasty. The taiping Rebellion of 1860s was actually the bloodiest civil war on earth. And all the leaders of the, all the top leaders of the Taipings, they were all failed candidates for imperial examinations. China at that point was producing too many elite aspirants and the number of jobs for them was fixed. And so at some point the numbers of elite aspirants were 10 times larger than the jobs for them. And they were in the start organizing and they brought the dynasty nearly to the point of extinction in 1860s and then to the point of extinction in 1910s. So and the same thing in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, it was not capitalists who brought down ussr, it was over overproduction of credentialed class specifically, interestingly enough, USSR overproduced technical intelligentsia. All right, so these are people with degrees in, in, I'm blinking out, you know, engineering engineers basically. Right, right. If you, if you were to go to the, you know, during the uprising led by Boris Yeltsin, if you were to go and see who was there, 75% of them were engineers actually or people of technical intelligentsia. So then now, so the point is this. At one theoretical level, all state level societies are similar because they all have to have elites, people with power. And they all break down when you have too many aspirants for those elite positions. And that is the same today as in Roman Empire. So we have, you know, a space age technology, but we are still using pretty much the same methods of governance as Romans. For example, remember, Roman was a republic, it was not an autocracy. All right, so the key is in this balance between the positions and aspirants. Now I think that in a democracy we can solve it because first of all, in two steps. First of all, by shutting down the wealth pump, we will decrease the push factor that makes people go into higher education. Believe me, I taught at a State University for 30 years. 95% of my students did not want knowledge. They just wanted to have a piece of paper with which they would compete for jobs. Which is why you appreciate the remaining 5% so much. So that would be shutting down the wealth pump will greatly diminish the push because people will have decent jobs without getting those credentials. And secondly, we will need to do something more creative. We will need to bring the dream back. So, you know, people, you may like or dislike Elon Musk, but he dreams big. And having a space exploration of the solar of the planetary system would divert energies of many ambitious young people and many other, not the only ones. So it would have to be. My hope basically is I don't have a cut and dried recipe for you, but understanding the forces, which is what we do, will help us to engineer responses that will harness these forces. You know, take all those bright, energetic young people and give them something positive to do rather than fight for power.
- [46:52]
B
Well, you mentioned Elon Musk. I went to in Chicago. I think it's called the Museum of Industry and Industry and Science, I can't remember exactly. It's pretty popular there. And you go through the space program section. And something that really struck me is you see all of these NASA developed rockets and then as you get into modern times, it's Elon Musk, it's SpaceX satellites from that. And you can see at that point how the center of gravity in society moves from collective effort and a sense of, of a society accomplishing this together to oligarchs like Elon Musk being the ones who in very Ayn Rand fashion, bring the lights of Prometheus. Right. Isn't that part of what you have to address to shut down the wealth pump? Don't you have to pull that power back to the people?
- [47:59]
A
Well, actually, Elon Musk did not create everything with his two own hands. What has shifted is that private enterprises are doing more than the government government did, like NASA, which is what happens frequently in history, as initially technology is harnessed by the government because only government can have such a long term view. Right. But eventually it goes to the private enterprises. Now, how many thousands of people work for Musk? Why, why are we forgetting them? I mean, they are extremely important. All right, so I mean, Musk is a genius. I don't think that anybody can argue against it. Right. But he is. He. His genius is in organizing and having vision. 99.999 of the work gets done by actual other people. And now, of course, but the real. Yes, the real, where I agree with you is that amongst the Silicon Valley billionaires, the ideas of Ayn Rand are extremely popular. It's probably natural if you make, if you become a very exceptional person. Right. It is human to think that you have accomplished it all on your own. Right. Luck had nothing to do with it. You know, being in the country, United States, which has a rule of law where the government actually funded Musk very substantially. Yes. Well, it's easy to forget that no, it was me. I have accomplished it all. So that type of hubris is natural to expect. And it is our job to bring them down to earth a little bit and not to allow them to do destructive things.
- [50:04]
B
Okay. Professor Turchin, it has been amazing to speak with you, really. Your book is one of those seminal works that I think a lot of people, it's become part of their toolkit. And I definitely see people, without necessarily even crediting you, using a lot of your phrases and ideas. I'm definitely one of them. But I do try to give credit. Where can people find you?
- [50:30]
A
Well, first of all, thank you and I enjoy this conversation. My people, sorry, people can find me on my substack. It's called Peter turchin.substack.com and I post there at least once a week and sometimes more frequently. So if you want to keep up with that, then sign up and also sign up as a paid subscriber because all the money I pledged that, all the money that I earned on the substack, they go to support researchers in my team. So I'm not going to get.
- [51:09]
B
So you're not taking advantage of the wealth pump?
- [51:12]
A
Yeah, I'm very well set up myself and I'm tired of getting our grant proposals turned down by, you know, by small minded people, if I'm allowed to say that. And so, and, and so this is kind of mass, mass crowding. If you like the research I, I do, then, then subscribe to my SAPS tech.
- [51:37]
B
All right, Professor Peter Turchin, thank you very much for joining us.
- [51:41]
A
Enjoyed it.
- [51:44]
B
All right, so sign up to the professor substack. That was amazing to, to speak to somebody whose work has had a great influence on how I understand what's happening in our world today. And it's had, it's had that impact on a lot of people. All right, we are going to go to a break and we're going to come back with Shama Sawant who's been in the news just a little bit today. This is Russell Dabular filling in for Jimmy Dore. You know, it bothered me the whole last interview. Let me move over. There we go. I like to be centered. It's, it's my leftover directing training. All right, this is Russell Dobular filling in for Jimmy Dore. We have as our next guest Shama Sawant. She's a socialist economist who served on the Seattle city council from 2014 to 2024, becoming the first socialist elected to the body since 1877. She is a prominent advocate for progressive labor policies, notably leading the movement that established Seattle's $15 minimum wage. After leaving the Socialist Alternative Party to found Revolutionary Workers, she launched an independent campaign for the U.S. house of Representatives in Washington's 9th district in 2025. Please welcome our friend, Shama Sawant. How are you, Shama?
- [53:14]
C
I'm good. Thanks so much for having me. Have you been good the last 12 days or so of the campaign?
- [53:22]
B
It sounds like it. You sound like. I sounded. A few days ago. I was in bed sick because we got all that Canadian wildfire.
- [53:32]
C
Oh my God.
- [53:33]
B
It was, I was like, I was like choking. You could hear mom, Donnie in interviews. He was like, he sounded like Batman. He was like, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna look for Netanyahu like everybody was, was dying down here.
- [53:44]
C
That's terrible.
- [53:46]
B
All right, so you've been making a, making a lot of news. Just by coincidence we already had you scheduled and you happen to be causing a lot of trouble this week like you do. All right, so Crystal Ball, she had a very contentious interview with your opponent Adam Smith. We will show some clips of that and get your reaction. But first I want to talk about something that was missing from the interview. You, you. Here's, here is a little bit of a statement you put out on X. Crystal Ball, you just had genocidal arch Zionist Adam Smith on your show. I appreciate that Smith was clearly squirming at several points in the interview over his despicable record and close ties to aipac. However, the question still needs to be asked. How does it serve the cause of Palestinian liberation for you to platform Adam Smith and to not even mention that there is an anti war socialist challenger to him. And that too someone running the strongest challenge to smith in his 29 year career and it was won four Seattle City Council elections as an independent candidate. We are just two weeks away from the August 4 primary election and ballots have been mailed out already. I wanted to include that for anyone who's an eligible voter. Ballots have already been mailed out and the primary date is August 4th. Okay, so why do you think Crystal would challenge him so forcefully on his positions, which she did and never mention that there's an alternative with positions that much more closely track her own?
- [55:37]
C
Yeah, I mean that's a good question. And just to say the development since then, and I'm sure you're going to talk about this, but just to say something sort of to free in that is that Crystal Ball is, has agreed to have me on our show and I'm going to be on it on Monday. So that's okay.
- [55:55]
B
All right, great.
- [55:56]
C
But you know, but it came out of. Yeah, I mean I, I, I, I'm. It, it's, it, it's, it's not clear. Had, would that have happened if without the public pressure, I mean there was enormous, enormous numbers of people who were supporting our campaign and they don't always all live in this district. You know, these are people on the left, people who want to see a fight back in Congress and who don't necessarily agree with me on every single position. But they do understand that I've had historic impact in Seattle because I use my office fundamentally differently than all the progressives who have gotten elected and they want to see that fight back in Congress and say there was an uproar, absolute uproar. You saw that on XX X was just erupting with the, the people, hundreds upon hundreds of people who said, how can you, how can you not feature Shama Sawad? And also just the main question that I asked is how is it that you're not mentioning that this guy is running, you know, that there is an anti war socialist running against him. And yeah, I mean, I, you know, I don't want to be a mind reader. I, I do want to acknowledge, as you said correctly, Russell, that Crystal did a really fantastic job challenging Adam Smith and making him squirm and just simply, simply not letting him off the hook. And at the same time, I think there's this idea that, that tough interviews or are giving tough questions to these Zionists and warmongers is, that's as far as we want to go. Ultimately, we just want to push them to the left. That is actually a very, I'm not ascribing it to anybody on Breaking Points, you know, they can speak for themselves. But I'm just saying that in general, usually this type of silencing comes from that standpoint. And I think that is problematic because I'll tell you one thing. Did Adam Smith enjoy the experience of being grilled? Absolutely not. That guy is so arrogant and he's so used to being softballed everywhere because he, you know, he, he is one of the mainstays of the establishment and cnn, NBC, they're all part of the capitalist apparatus. And so he gets, you know, he's had a red carpet welcome everywhere he goes. And then he, you know, he asked to go on the, on Breaking Points, which itself by the way, is an indication of how extremely nervous he is of our campaign because he doesn't want to go and talk to Crystal Ball and get grilled by her, you know, and, and he, he's, he, he had the personal experience of how she is going to do that and, and I appreciate her doing that. But, but, but I also want to say just from a sober assessment standpoint that, you know, did Adam Smith like the experience? No. But is simply grilling him in interviews going to dislodge the Zionist agenda? No, absolutely not. You've got to defeat these people. You got to actually bring them concrete challenge. And so I think that by not even mentioning that he has a credible challenger that sort of, you know, gives you the idea that, yeah, I hate this guy. I mean, everybody who watched an interview are like, oh my God, this guy. I can't watch it without feeling angry. You know, these are the kinds of right you saw on X. But then what are you left at the end of the day? At the end of the day you're left with a feeling that I hate this guy with every fiber of my being, but what can I do? He's going to win the re election instead of saying, oh my God, this person, this anti worship socialist who has won all her elections in the city council is running against this guy. Our campaign is incredibly popular on the ground and there's an actual shot here. Let's make, let's, you know, let's really build that potential by having her on. You know, that should be the approach of people on the left and I'm, I'm glad they're having me on. But my point is that that is the approach we need rather than what Ryan Grim said, which is that, well, you know, she, she, she, she has no chance of winning, so I'm not going to platform her.
- [59:49]
B
Well, well, well, you know, you know what, let me, let me pull that up. So this is what Ryan Grim said. I told her campaign to show me some polling or any evidence at all, anything showing that she wasn't going to get blown out by 50 points. She has raised like 400,000 I'm told. And you can do a poll for a few thousand. The refusal to do what all other candidates do to demonstrate that their campaign is remotely serious and apparently that's not true in congressional races that they contract polling is unusual. But I don't want to be responsible for people sending hard earned money to a campaign that loses by 50 points or just show some polling that shows she can make the top two. Plausibly, I'm not asking for much. Now to your point of how overwhelming the pressure was on them, our friend Nick Cruz responded, okay, why did you guys interview Zorin and many of these other progressive Democrats when they were down big in the beginning? Zorin at one point was only polling 1%. Why interview any underdog ever based on this logic? A journalist's job is not to be a gatekeeper but to inform people on what options they have. And another response, also in that direction, you covered Marianne Williamson, Dean Phillips and Sakat, and they all lost by damn near 50 points. Shama Sawant's local name recognition, multiple wins in city council fundraising and track record should be enough to make her serious. And then Ryan starts to climb, climb down here. But he also claimed that nobody reached out for an interview. But once he saw that, that you had gotten the endorsement from the stranger. You said, well, that's something. And I guess finally they went with that. So what, what do you, how do you respond to that argument? That because you haven't shown any polling, they don't have to interview you?
- [61:55]
C
Well, for my first thought is that when I saw that, my first thought was that and everybody on the campaign team actually was saying the same thing, is that, you know, we canvass the district. You know, we are a very serious campaign. I don't know what world Rand Grim lives in, but you know, we are a very serious campaign. We have talked to tens of thousands of people in the district and we have raised nearly $700,000. Can you believe it, Russell? We have.
- [62:20]
B
That's amazing.
- [62:22]
C
It's amazing.
- [62:23]
B
An independent campaign. That's almost unheard of.
- [62:26]
C
Yes, exactly. It's an independent campaign. It's an openly socialist campaign and we are only taking money from working people. You know, compared to Adam Smith who's obviously being bankrolled by the war profiteering executives and the Zionist lobby and so on and so forth, his median donation is a thousand dollars. Our median donation is $25. I mean it's a night and day difference and We've raised nearly $700,000 at this point. It's an incredible campaign. And we have talked to tens of thousands of people in the district and not one person has asked us, do you have polling? You know what working people ask about? They ask about what are your demands? And the first thing they want to know. Many of them, not all of them, but many of them. Is she a Democrat? If she's a Democrat, I'm not interested. You know, that's the response we're getting from young people. Young people want independent politics. And there is a lot of excitement around our campaign for three reasons, Russell. One is that I'm not a Democrat. And it's the demands. We're running on very powerful demand, you know, ending all military aid to Israel for a permanent arms embargo to Israel, on Israel, sorry. And free health care for all, funded by taxing the rich, so on and so forth. And you know, we can get into demands in a bit. And the third reason is my trust track record. People are the most excited when they recognize that this is not another careerist camp candidate who's going to sell us out. This is a person who has a 10 year track record on the city council. I have shown that it is possible to win elections and not sell out and that after winning elections you can actually win Elections, I mean, win victories for the working class. We won the nation's highest minimum wage. You mentioned this, that wages now.
- [64:07]
B
Well, and that was the first, wasn't it?
- [64:09]
C
Yeah, yeah, that was the first. I mean, my first campaign in 2013, I ran it on the, you know, the flagship demand of ours was the 15 minimum wage. We won that victory less than six months after I took office in 2014. But one of the pitch battles that we won during that fight, Russell, as you know, is inflation increases. And that's why the wage today is 21.30 an hour. And so just to, in answer to this polling question. No. Yes. I mean, yes, Ryan is right, that the polling, you know, conducting a poll is cheaper now than it used to be. Like, you know, eight, $10,000, you could conduct a poll. But no, we're not going to spend those $10,000 on polling. We're going to spend those $10,000 on canvassing thousand people more. You know, 10,000 people more. That is what gets us the votes and we are going to insist on doing that. We never had polling. We never did a poll ever. In all our election campaigns that we won, we never did a poll.
- [65:02]
B
Well, and why do you think to their point that they did interview Marianne Williamson? When did Marianne Williamson ever have any shot, like you could make much more of a case for somebody who was in the Seattle city council for 10 years, who won the nation's first $15 an hour minimum wage is a serious threat and a serious candidate than you ever could have made for Marianne Williamson. So why would they interview her by that logic, like, why not you? Why are you ruled out? Because clearly they've interviewed a lot of long shot candidates, but they were all running as Democrats. Is it just because you're not running as a Democrat? Do you think they would interview you if you ran as a Democrat?
- [65:52]
C
I don't know. Because, you know that, that brings up an interesting question. Because if I was running as a Democrat, but I still did the, the kind of fight back I have done, I don't think that they would have. I mean, I don't, I don't want to speak for everyone on Breaking Points, but I certainly don't think that Ryan Grimm would have wanted that because of, you know, just know from what I know about his politics now, like I've said before, I have nothing, no, I have no personal animosity towards anyone. So if they want to say that, well, that's not their position, then they're free to say that. But from my observation, I Don't. I don't. I think the biggest disagreement that many of them have, including many DSA leaders, is that I've always used my office to fight for the working class. And fighting for the working class does mean that you also fight against the gatekeepers. And that is the whole, that's where all the personal character assassination against me is wrapped up. You know, that she's not nice. She doesn't, she doesn't build coalitions. I mean, Ryan Grim says I don't know how to build coalitions or something to the effect in that same tweet he says that. And my first thought to that was, but dude, look at, look at the coalitions we're building in the sense that you refused to have me on and you made excuses for not to have, to not have me on and the Internet erupted in opposition to you in favor of featuring our campaign in support of me. That is how we build coalitions. It's not through trying to curry favor with powerful people, which is the approach of many of the DSA leaders, which I, which is the strategic difference I have with them. I support the demands they run on, but I don't support the approach that they use which ends up not winning the demands that they promise many of them anyway. And so, but, but to say that I don't know how to build co coalitions or I'm isolated, that is so absurdly untrue because how could I possibly have won election after election? How could I possibly have won the nation's highest minimum wage, the Amazon tax, all these renters rights that are incomparable to any other city? How could we possibly have won any of that without having quote, unquote, coalitions? I don't use the word coalition because it often implies trying to wheel and deal with some people at the top. We build rank and file led movements and that's our coalition. If, you know, if you, if you, if, if you will, we, what we do is build mass movements. And obviously I'm not trying to characterize what happened yesterday on X as a mass movement, but I'm saying that it was, it was a mass of people saying we don't accept this type of gatekeeping. You know, if you're going to feature Adam Smith, who is an art Zionist, then you should feature his opponent. But at the very least, shouldn't you mention that he has a viable opponent? And, and I also wanted to say, just say that, go ahead. We don't, we don't, we don't guarantee, you know, we are not, I'M not guaranteeing victory. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. I'm saying that we have to be sober. We have an uphill challenge here. August 4th is the primary election. There's a Republican running in the race who's openly declared that he is running to take votes away from me. And there's another Democrat who's effectively doing that. So we know it's an uphill task. But how does it make any logical sense to say something to the effect of, well, she's not viable, so I'm going to make sure she remains unviable. If you agree. That's why political principles have to be at the center. If you agree with our campaign, if you agree with our demands, if you agree that Adam Smith is an absolutely horrific Democrat who's for 29 years been a warmonger and has funded the genocide and that you need you, that we need to defeat him, then why wouldn't you feature our campaign? Help our campaign help us win the votes.
- [69:37]
B
All right, since, since you mentioned dsa, I'm going to jump ahead a little. We'll get back to my Adam Smith video. All right, so you've been very critical of DSA and Zorin Mandani. Here's something you put out in February. I'm a little insulted I didn't hear from you. You were in New York, although actually I was in Asia, so I can't be insulted.
- [69:57]
C
Yes,
- [69:59]
B
you were at Star Bar in Bushwick.
- [70:03]
C
I was remotely there. I actually didn't go there in person.
- [70:05]
B
Oh, you weren't. Oh, well, there you go. Double not insulted. The aocification of Mamdani has taken place at lightning speed. From promising to reappoint brutal arch Zionist police commissioner Jessica Tisch months before his election and endorsing millionaire strikebreaker Kathy Hochul for governor to turning his back on key campaign promises like taxing the rich and expanding rental assistance. There is only one way to break with this endless cycle of disappointment and betrayals from so called progressive and socialist Democrats. Breaking with both bloodstained parties of war and genocide. Now, as somebody who lives in New York, I'll say my view on this kind of thing. I can't imagine ever getting involved in a campaign for a Democrat ever again. But if there's a vote in my city between Zora Mamdani and Netanyahu's lawyer, which was Andrew Cuomo, sure, I'm going to go in and vote for Mamdani. He has been. And a lot of people who are very skeptical have said this better than A lot of us expected he did do the rent freeze. He got the pie to tear tax. I saw one commentator, I think he went on, I think it was on Breeze show who said about the Tish thing. Well, you know, probably the reason that he did this and this isn't a justification but it's probably the reason he, I think it probably is the reason he doesn't want to fire Tish and then if crime goes up, he takes the blame and he would rather have her there than not there and keep your enemies closer kind of thing. Now this is very rough and tumble politics. You gotta be nice to Hokul because she controls the state budget. Donald Trump is famously vindictive. You were very critical, critical of him, going to meet with him, he say should instead be organizing a protest. We know that Trump is the kind of guy who'll just cut your federal aid. He doesn't really care very much about the laws or niceties. Is a lot of what you've criticized Mamdani for some of the realities of office. And do you credit any of what he's done as being good for workers like a rent freeze? I mean, I live in Harlem. There are a lot of people around here for whom that makes the difference between groceries and not groceries. So what are your thoughts about that?
- [72:45]
C
Yeah, I mean just first of all, absolutely, I support the rent freeze. And you know, my fellow revolutionary socialists and I, we have a completely non sectarian approach. Meaning, and I want to define sectarianism because it's widely misunderstood. Sectarianism doesn't mean that you have a critique of some other people on the left. That's not what sectarianism means. That's how I am called a sectarian. But that's not what sectarianism means. It's my obligation to speak truthfully about what I think should be done. If I'm wrong, then people can say I'm wrong and they disagree with me. You know, anybody's free to disagree with me any at any point. But I'm simply explaining what I think is my best understanding of what history shows or what strategy is the best. But we are completely non sectarian, meaning we always keep the interests of the working class at the center. And if something is good for the working class, then we are absolutely going to push for it and also, you know, laud it as something positive, even if it was somebody with whom we have some disagreements. You know, so absolutely. I always supported rent fees. I mean I, you know, I. My whole record on the city council in Seattle has been that as I said, we, we have won unparalleled renters rights. I mean, absolutely unparalleled. And so of course I support the rent frees. And I've also said throughout his, even while I was, I had critiques, I, I've said multiple times, many times during his campaign and since then that if there were, that I supported all the demands he ran on and that if there were there was a movement to win a $30 hour minimum wage in New York, I would personally come and help that movement. Because if New York City's working class was to win $30 an hour, that would be a gigantic, gigantic victory. You know, it would be a phenomenal thing for the working class as a whole, nationally and even internationally, just because of New York City's significance as the, you know, that's the, the seat of capital, so to say, and also the place where a big section of the working class lives. And so, you know, so I have, you know, I have no division from anybody in DSA in terms of fighting for those demands because I agree with all those demands. We do have significant differences on strategy, and that shows up every which way. I mean, I don't agree with endorsing arch Zionist Jessica Tish, and I don't, I don't disagree with what you were saying, Russell, that, you know, it's, it's not straightforward at all. You know, if you run for mayor, and I wouldn't run for mayor because, you know, I don't want to be managing or governing the capitalist system. That's, that's also right. It's a, it's a fundamental difference between someone who is, you know, who wants to reform capitalism and somebody who's, who's a revolutionary, clearly, but also has, not coincidentally, has a huge track record of winning reforms as we do. But the point is we are not run, we are not doing this in order to reform capitalism. We're doing this in order to build the movement, to, to build the revolutionary movements. And so that is a fundamental difference. And so, so in, in a sense, it's almost like, well, you know, if you're going to run for mayor, then you're, you're probably going to end up making those deals. But I fundamentally don't agree with that. But even there, I would say that there, if, if, if Mamdani wanted to build mass movements around these issues, he could have. And that's also a big difference in strategy, which also, I think, which flows from the fundamental theoretical differences also. It's not, it's not disconnected from that and so rather than reappoint Jessica Tisch, what I would have done, you know, hypothetically speaking, I would never have run for mayor, but hypothetically speaking, that we should. We should actually have a real public discussion, you know, mass discussions about what is, what does police accountability look like, and that we have to push for elected civilian oversight of the police with full powers for hiring, firing policies and procedures. And through that, we should select the leadership. Now, would that create absolutely enormous upheaval in the city? Of course it would. But that is the kind of upheaval you want, or at least I want, because I'm not looking to govern the capitalist state. My. My job is to disrupt politics as usual. Another question about Hochul Okal. You know, he endorsed Hokul in the middle of the nurses strike when she was issuing repeated executive orders to make it easy and legal for the hospital bosses to hire scabs to undermine the strike. You don't do that. I'm sorry, my opinion as a socialist. You don't do that. You don't break strikes and you don't endorse strike breakers. It's as simple as that. And so, so my question is, like, if there is no line that you're willing to cross, then what is. What is the difference? Then it's just a slippery slope. You know, it'll be one thing after another. And so I think we have to reframe the whole debate. And so when you say, well, he needs to be nice to Hokul, that stems from this idea that, well, the way we are going to get anything is by making sure that the people who are at the top, our people who are elected at the top, keep cordial relations with other people at the top. Well, I just don't subscribe to that framing in the first place. I don't subscribe to that in the first place. I think you need a real fight back against people like Hobby Local. And the way you do that is, obviously you don't want to be isolated, but the way you do that is by building mass pressure along with you. I mean, just to quote one, one thing as a counter to, you know, to provide a counter framing is this guy who was the main corporate landlord lobbyist when I was on the city council. He retired around the same time that I left City Hall. And he publicly stated that, you know, that he and the other corporate lobbyists, landlord lobbies, would talk to the Democrats in the privacy of their offices. All the discussions would go well, and then they would come on to the dais in chambers and then everything would go south, you know, in his words. And he said that that was because of his quote, was Sawant's army. So he. What he noted incorrectly. So sometimes your political enemies give you the best compliments. You know, he. He knows, correctly, that all the promises that the Democrats made to the corporate landlords, which, you know, think about how shitty that is. You know, these Democrats are making the corporate landlord lobbyists, but then when they come to the dais and they are confronted with an organized mass of working people, they are forced to give in, because at that moment, they themselves, the politicians themselves, each and every one of them is a careerist. They are faced with a political price tag for their own careers. Like, at that moment, if they voted against, they would pay a price for that because they have been exposed by my office building, this movement. So that's a fundamentally different framing of how you win victories. And my contention from reading, from my read of history and also from my experience in City hall, is that you can win far, far more magnitude of victories, bigger magnitude of victories, orders of magnitude, higher victories, if you use this type of fighting approach rather than the more, you know, like, let's be friends with everyone at the top approach. And so, yeah, specifically on rent freeze. Yeah, of course I support rent freeze, but let's be real, three rent freezes were passed under Bill de Blasio, you
- [80:19]
B
know, so well, two of them during COVID though.
- [80:22]
C
Yes.
- [80:22]
D
And.
- [80:23]
C
And that's actually a very important point because the working class won real concessions during COVID You know why? Because there was an absolute mood of revolt at that time. People were so angry because, you know, everyone was in crisis. And suddenly there was a realization that, wait a second, it's not the billionaires who are essential to the, to society. It's me, my me, grocery worker, me, the emergency room nurse, me, the, you know, the other workers. Like, you know, the workers were essential. And so there was an actual mood of revolt at that time. And so even the Trump administration, they were forced to give, you know, the stimulus checks and so on. So my point is that it's under those pressures that the, the. That the establishment is forced to give those victories concessions. But we also have to look at what else is possible. So do I welcome the rent freeze? Absolutely. But I refuse to accept that because the rent freeze was one, that what Mamadani is doing is, you know, overall, the strategy is something that we should sort of subscribe to, because the truth is that at the same time that the rent freeze has been won, rents are Going up for the vast majority of the. The homes and rental homes, you know, because rent freeze applies to about a million apartments or so.
- [81:37]
B
Sure.
- [81:38]
C
You know, so that's a fraction.
- [81:39]
B
Yeah, that's right. Stabilized. All right, go ahead.
- [81:44]
C
At the same time, there's a New York City public Housing Authority devastation of housing that's happening on a massive scale.
- [81:51]
B
You're talking about the public housing whether.
- [81:53]
A
Yes.
- [81:53]
C
Nycha. Nycha, what is that?
- [81:54]
E
8.
- [81:55]
B
8 billion dollar deficit on repairs.
- [81:57]
C
It's huge. But. But what they are doing is privatizing and then demolishing. Basically it's going to be gone. That's the history of privatizing public housing. But. And it didn't. It's not something Madani started. But my point is that if you use the approach I use, then you would absolutely fight against all of that rather than limiting yourself to these small things.
- [82:18]
B
All right, so now you do say that the responsibilities of an executive are different. And it seems like, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, you feel that being in Congress is more complementary with your basic orientation as an activist and an agitator than being a mayor, which is an executive position would be. I also, I want to ask you this kind of second part of the question question before we move off this. Get to the Adam Smith interview. I have been arguing to people and you tell me if you feel that I'm wrong, whether you like it or don't like it in the minds of the public or not even aware of the internal conversations that happen among different shades of leftists about economic theory and approach in the minds of the public? Mamdani is the most visible avatar of the ideas of the left in existence. And if you are a more radical leftist, shouldn't you want him to succeed in order to be able to approach a public that has a more positive attitude towards leftism so that they'll be open to your agenda? Whereas if he goes down, isn't that going to make it even harder for people who have further left ideas? Isn't that going to make it much easier for the reactionaries to go as they're salivating to do? See, See, I mean, especially being from New York, every mayoral election they bring up fierce city. It's going to be 1977. If you elect this person, they're dying to be able to do that with Mamdani, so nobody like him ever gets in office again. So what are your thoughts about that?
- [84:04]
C
Yeah, that's an important question. We strongly oppose the Wall street types and the right wing attacks on Mamdani and as you said, they surely will come during, during the re election time and all of that. In fact, that would be very, very contrary to what the Democrats did. When I was facing a recall attempt Against Me in 2021 by Trump supporting Biden billionaire landlords, not a single Democrat, not a single Democrat supported me. Not a single one. Not a single one. And I see a lot of the media asking me if I support this, but nobody has asked them. Why didn't you support it? Isn't, isn't, wasn't it your, you claim to be anti Trump? Wasn't it important, regardless of your differences with Sawant to stand against the recall, even say openly I disagree with everything she says. But you know what? I disagree with this Trumpy attack on her because if they can attack her, they'll come after us too. And so I, you know, as a matter of principle, I oppose it. Not a single one. And yet we defeated that recall attempt because we organized working class people. And so as far as working class people's consciousness is concerned, yes, we, we, we again, this is a non sectarian approach. We don't want Mamdani to fail. You know, so this idea that somehow because you know, we want him to fail because then it'll make our point, that's, that's a very sectarian approach. We have a non sectarian approach. We want and things to succeed. But I don't even put it in terms of I want him or any specific person to succeed because I'm not interested in anybody's career. I'm interested in what the working class can win. So to, for the working class, it would be bad if the, if these attempts failed. We want to win universal childcare in New York. We want to win $30 an hour. Like I said, you know, and I said, as I said, I will personally come and help that movement. So we have the exact opposite position as sometimes we are, sometimes it's alleged about us at the same time because we care about the working class. It is also our task as Marxists to point out that this strategy ultimately is not going to help the working class and that we should have a class struggle based fighting strategy. That is my job too. And I would be betraying the interest of the working class if I didn't say those things. And sure, are there sometimes things that I say that some working people don't like because at that moment they don't understand it. Yes, that is, that is the unfortunate, my unfortunate duty. You know, look, you don't Become a Marxist revolutionary. If you want to run a popularity contest, you don't. You, you have to take, you know, it is hard, but you explain it with respect and with friendliness and people will understand. I'll give you, I mean, I have a ton of concrete examples because, you know, I've been activist for 18 years and I was on the city council for 10 years. I'll give you one example. In 2013, you know, I was elected in November. Just a few days after that, a massive historic sellout happened in Washington state, state, which was nearly $9 billion of corporate tax giveaway to the Boeing executives. And it was like a, like a, you know, insult upon injury like thing. They already did that. And then on top of that they demanded that the unions give up pensions for the workers. I mean, it was such a horrendous attack. It was like a full frontal stabbing of the union movement. And at that time though, you know, obviously nobody stood on the side of the workers. And keep in mind it was a democratic governance and a democratic dominated legislation that carried out this highway robbery. And I spoke at that rally, I had just won my first election. I said that if there is no way out of this, what is extortion? Then really it brings up the question of taking Boeing into democratic public ownership like big corporations. And at that time many working people were angry at me. Since then, so many have come up to me and said, well, you know, I know we are a long way off from taking the companies into democratic public ownership, but I'm starting to see the logic of it right, right to the bottom of this. So that's going to happen all the time when you say some things and then people may not agree. But at the same time, I can also tell you a lot of people who are supporting us also support Mamdani and they understand we have some differences in strategy, but they like me, understand that all of this is showing that the working class of America is refusing to accept anymore the status quo. I mean, there's a huge anger against the cost of living crisis, against the forever wars, the imperialist wars, against the genocide in Gaza. In fact, the victories of the DSA candidates in the primaries in New York City and in Colorado. They are a huge repudiation of, of the Zionist agenda and of the billionaire class. Absolutely, we welcome that. But that doesn't mean that we don't ask questions about, okay, what are they going to do with it? You know, both of those go together.
- [89:08]
B
All right, so let's get to the Zionist agenda. All right, so Crystal, right at the top of this interview with your opponent Adam Smith. I wrote the ironically named Adam Smith. I gotta stay with you as his opponent right at the top. She asked him about the NDAA that would effectively merge the US and Israeli military, which he originally co sponsored and now he's saying he won't support. So let's take a look at a
- [89:40]
A
little bit of that.
- [89:41]
D
The concern is that it would make the Israeli US military relationship more entrenched in a way that lacks any sort of of democratic accountability.
- [89:50]
F
Yeah, no, I don't agree with that at all. I mean we're talking about.
- [89:53]
D
What are your concerns then?
- [89:54]
F
Oh, so two different questions here. My concern is I don't support the Netanyahu government and I certainly don't support what Ben GVIR and Smotrich are doing. And that's been, I think the real challenge for me is Israel has a right to exist. Israel is threatened profoundly by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran. So how do we help them define, defend themselves? Well, at the same time they've got a government that's frankly out of control, particularly in the West Bank. I associate myself with Rahm Emanuel's speech in Tel Aviv last week where he said Netanyahu has decided that he is going to be able to defeat all of his adversaries. So whether you're talking Lebanon, Gaza, West Bank, Iran, it's perpetual war all the time. And then with Smotrich and Ben Garrett, you've got people who really do want to drive all of the Palestinians out of Gaza and the west bank and they're in the government. Okay. So the basic idea of the program when it was first presented to me, like I said, it's co development programs and like a missile defense, something we could definitely learn from Israel on. And it's a program, you can decide whether or not do co development programs. And by the way, if we decide in Congress that we don't like like that program, we can vote it down. It's not outside of the democratic process.
- [91:10]
B
All right, so Shama, what do you have to say to his contention that this does not is not designed to merge the American and Israeli military? Nothing to see here, doesn't take it out of the democratic process. Basically separating as many of these born again anti Zionists do, support Israel while blaming some bad apples for all the problems. It's Ben Gavir, it's Smotridge, it's Netanyahu, it's not actually Israel. And do you think there's any way he would be taking these positions if you were not in this race.
- [91:51]
C
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It is entirely the reason he's taking, he's taking these positions. It's not even that there is generally in the air, which is true nationally, that the American working class, the majority of it, has turned against Israel. That's true. But he wouldn't care about that unless he was facing an existential threat in his own career. It is not an academic question for Adam Smith, by the way. Can I say it's so ironic also that his name is Adam Smith and I am an economist and I'm a Marxist. So it's like
- [92:27]
B
if it were in a novel, you would say it's too on the nose.
- [92:30]
C
Exactly. You're totally right. That's, that's exactly how I would say it. So yeah, I mean this is, this is absolutely posturing. And you know, you, you saw from the vote of the NDA earlier this afternoon, it, it really is true that the, the Democratic Democratic Party, like the Republican Party, represents the war profiteering billionaire class. You know, as I've said, they're both the two most powerful parties of global capitalism and as such they are adept at playing the rotating villain game, or really it should be rotating good guy game in the sense that Adam Smith needs to win his re election and he's facing a serious threat from our campaign. So he needs to, to try to launder his reputation by voting no on this one thing or voting yes on that other amendment, the 3.3 billion dollar,
- [93:25]
B
you know, the Massey amendment.
- [93:27]
C
Yes, exactly. But look at the, look at the, look at the political theater here, Russell, because they knew that amendment wouldn't pass. They knew the NDA was going to pass and so they all act like they're just incidentally voting yes or no. But it's entirely orchestrated and for the Zionist lobby, it is important for them that Adam Smith gets reelected. It's less important for them as long as the NDAA passes and, and for the war profiteers, as long as the NDAA passes, which is what they care about, they can sacrifice one vote here and one vote there, as long as they have enough votes to pass it. If that helps them launder the reputations of those specific politicians whose careers are under threat. That is what's going on here. And that is actually, you know, that's very important that you, you brought this up because it shows you the power of this type of fighting politics. Because just our campaign being in the primary election is so threatening to them. Imagine what it would do if we were to get into the November election. And on top of that, if you were able to win. And I say that with due caution in the sense that we, you know, it's an uphill, uphill, uphill task. And right now, you know, just our first challenge is even getting to the general, to the general election and we only the top two vote getters can go go into the November election. But my point is that this is evidence, the fact that he voted no on the bill that he sponsored that.
- [94:59]
B
All right, hang on. Shabbat gets better. It gets better because then she asks him about whether he would still vote for the NDAA with the provision in it. So this is just a short clip.
- [95:13]
D
I wanted to know is if you would use that position when it comes to conference, which is when the, this is for our audience. I know obviously you know this when the Senate version is merged with the House version and a difference of reconciling.
- [95:24]
F
Yes, I will advocate for the removal of that provision.
- [95:26]
D
And if it's not removed, will you refuse to sign off on the conference report?
- [95:31]
F
I don't know that I would go that far. It depends on what else is in the bill. And look, the bill itself has the massive problem that it's continuing to fund the war in Iran, which is an utter disaster. So I am probably not going to vote, well, almost certainly not going to vote for the bill as it comes off the House floor. Now, just in and of itself, regardless of that particular section, just because of that one section, I don't know that I would vote against the entire bill.
- [95:55]
C
Okay.
- [95:57]
B
So yeah, I'll vote against it before I vote for it. Isn't that what he's doing?
- [96:03]
C
Yes, I mean, exactly. The thing is he, I think what's possible, I mean in the, in the show he said, well, I'll still vote for the NDA even with that provision in it. And, and by the way, just let's remind people again, that's his own bill. But I, it's possible that he, he is more nervous now than he was before. I mean, I would say that the fact that he reached out to crystal ball to go on the show itself shows that he's nervous because why on earth would he ever want to go to a show that is that he is so far to the right off he has no need to, he doesn't appear on anything even, in fact, he was, was not even appearing on corporate media so much. Now right now he's feeling really scared. So you know, everybody is featuring him, cnn, NBC, every his everywhere you go. And people tell me People in the district tell me I've never seen Adam Smith on the news until now. Like, he must be really scared because he keeps going everywhere to speak and, but, but I think what might have happened and kudos to Crystal Ball for this is that I think he has recognized that he has gotten in enormous flack for this interview. This is like, I didn't see even a remotely positive comment anywhere out there. It's like people are like, you just exposed yourself. You know, you're, you're such a horrible guy. And I think that his, maybe somebody, somebody with some heads on their shoulders in the establishment decided, look, you got to vote no on this because otherwise it's, you'll, you know, you'll never live it down. But I think the main thing we have to, we have to share with working class people here is don't fall for these, these, you know, these performative gestures because he is still APEX darling and you know that he is going to go back to his genocidal ways and he's not even, not gone, but he's still in his genocidal ways because let's keep in mind he has, this was his own bill and he in just in June, by the way, he took more than $51,000 in campaign donations from, from APAC and NORPAC, both notoriously pro genocide, pro occupation PACs. And so it's never stopped. So this idea that somehow, yeah, he,
- [98:18]
B
and he tried, he tried to duck that by saying, you know, I have some friends who give money to other people and they give it to me and I don't know where it goes comes from.
- [98:27]
C
Yeah. And then he, but he, but he did tellingly, he actually said I would still take. Because Crystal asked him would you still, would you take in the future? And he said I would. I mean, so he's so nakedly Zionist warmonger. And also did you notice earlier in the episode he, she asked him, do you have any regrets? And he says, I have no regrets. This guy voted for genocide. He voted for the war in Iraq. And he has no regret.
- [98:51]
A
Regret.
- [98:52]
C
He has no regrets.
- [98:53]
B
This is the guy she was bringing, she was bringing that up in the context of this recent article in the New Yorker where the Biden people are having regrets. All right, so here's one clip of the back and forth that they had about Israel and its right to exist. One of a few sections where they talked about that
- [99:17]
D
at the peak of the, you know, the Gaza onslaught, you had a complete siege. You had entire neighborhoods that were leveled. They created the largest Population of child amputees. Do you have any regrets about your votes during that time period?
- [99:31]
F
I don't. Because everyone forgets about October 7th. Everyone forgets about what Hamas and Hezbollah and Ron have done and their desire is to wipe out the state of Israel and, and all the Jews living there. Is that not. I mean that's in Hamas's charter and Hamas is still extent, they're still doing that. I don't like the way Israel decided to defend themselves. But the solution being proposed is, and this is the consequence of what you're saying is, sorry, you know, we had this IDEA Back in 1948, we were going to give you a state and that way you could protect yourself against all these attacks. Didn't work out. So go back to Europe, go wherever. This just isn't going to work anymore.
- [100:14]
D
I think the question, and I don't
- [100:15]
F
think you understand how difficult that is to just go, yeah, I guess that's fine.
- [100:20]
D
Because no, I think the question, and this is not, you know, this is my perspective, but I think this is also what the Democratic Party base in particular and most of the country view at this point is why should our tax dollars, given all the things in the world and all the things in our country, why I voted should be.
- [100:38]
F
That's why I voted for the masses,
- [100:40]
D
you know, spending more effective ways.
- [100:42]
F
Exactly.
- [100:43]
D
Why should that be going to prop up an ethno state that is an apartheid state. And I wonder if you agree with that characterization that has been committing, if you don't want to say genocide, certainly war crimes with that tax money, that's fine.
- [100:56]
F
Yeah, look, no, that's why I voted for the Massey amendment. I don't think we should be sending that money over there. But look, I have concerns about Hamas, about Hezbollah that people don't seem to share. You know, let's say that this plays out the way you describe. And okay, there is no Jewish ethnostate and the consequence of that is there is no Jewish state. Basically you have the Palestinians as they would now be governing that area and that means Hamas would be governing that area. Do you have any problem with that? Do you have any problem with Hamas suddenly becoming a much more powerful entity and having the country from the river to the sea, if you will, will now be a Hamas run state on the Mediterranean. Are you okay with that?
- [101:40]
D
First of all, I'm not convinced that that would be the reality.
- [101:44]
F
How would it not be the reality?
- [101:45]
D
I don't know how you can get away from how illiberal it is to not Support equal rights for people regardless of if they're Jewish, Arab, Muslim.
- [101:54]
F
Totally, totally with you.
- [101:55]
D
Look, and then the other piece is,
- [101:57]
F
but Hamas doesn't support equal rights either.
- [102:01]
B
Okay, where, where to, where to begin with that? Okay, so, so he concedes that it's an ethno state, seemingly while justifying its continued existence by. It seems like his points were, well, how do you just tell them to go home now that they're there, right? That seems to be the first part of his argument, how you can't just tell them to go, well, why can't you? They stole somebody else's home. Which at another point she brings up. He doesn't really refute it. When she talks about the right of return. He, he laments what it would become, which he says there by definition would be an illiberal Hamas run state that doesn't have equal rights anyway. So why would you want that? So we have to continue to have this supremacist ethnostate there because Hamas, well, however you want, in whatever order.
- [102:59]
C
And just on, just on that, by the way, he literally rejected the idea of Palestinians right to return. I mean, it's not surprising to me in any way whatsoever. But it's absolutely horrible. Horrible. It's a horrible position to have. But, but to be clear, you know, crystal ball clarified that, you know, she's not, we're not talking about Israelis being asked to leave. We are asking about can we have a state that does not have apartheid? That's the question here.
- [103:27]
E
Right?
- [103:27]
C
And he refused to answer that by conflating everything into saying, well, either we are going to have this, the state that is, that he refuses to acknowledge is an apartheid state, or we're going to have this horrific, this imaginary horrific state apparently run by aas. I mean, all of this is, you know, what he does, Russell, these are all debating tricks. Like he refuses to answer the actual question. Then he creates a straw man and then he attacks that straw man like, you know, so. And she pointed that out many times like, so you're taking one extreme position and then you're brushing everything on the left, all positions with that. And then you're saying, well, I reject that. So that's why everything you're saying is wrong. That's a debating trick and we should reject that. And, and it's. He, what he said is actually he exposed himself as what he is, which is a pro capitalist, pro billionaire, pro war profiteer Zionist. Because all of this is connected to each other. I mean, the formation of the Israeli state itself. Was a project of American and British capitalism. And the role it plays is as a garrison state which is keeping working class rebellion in check in that region. And the deep, deep oppression of the Palestinian people, the brutality that they have faced, including this genocide. But not only the genocide, the ongoing brutal settlements, the forcible taking away of the land, the bulldozing of the home, homes, just the absolute, just carnage and brutality and inhumanity of it, all of this is, is necessary for the, I mean, for the capitalist state. That is what they're doing in order to protect their interest in a geopolitically extremely crucial region. And so we have to be clear, very clear that, that this apartheid state absolutely does not have the right to exist and needs to be smashed. The state as it exists today, which is an apartheid state, which is doing the bidding of the capitalist interests and carrying out utterly brutal occupation of the Palestinian people, that state needs to be smashed. The Israeli ruling class needs to be overthrown and we need a revolution for all of this. And absolutely the Palestinian right to return has to be guaranteed. You know, in, like, there shouldn't be any questions raised about that. And so this, in my view is a reasonable position. It's a humane position, It's a reasonable position. And most people who, you know, may, who may not be tuned into every detail of the politics of the region if you present it in this way. Don't you think that we should eliminate apartheid? Don't you think we should eliminate ethnic cleansing? Don't you think if I tell you these settlements are brutal, don't you think that's horrible? Like, how would you, would you accept somebody taking away your home and your land at gunpoint? Which is literally, literally what's happening. And you know, Jasper, Natalie, Nathaniel, the, you know, the journalist has shown so much footage recently, which is incredible to, I mean it's very, very, it's gut wrenching to watch, but people need to watch it to understand the reality of what it means to be Palestinian in that region. And so this position of ours is the reasonable and humane and the only possible position that's acceptable. But if you listen to people like Adam Smith speak, he portrays us, those of us who are fighting for that vision, as extremists. He has called us left wing fascists and he demands that we be arrested. You know, we, meaning anti war activists. And he speaks in such reasonable, even tones like, oh well this is just reasonable, you know, like, oh well, what about what hamas did on October 7th? And as Jeremy Scahill pointed out to Rokana well, you cannot talk about October 7th unless you talk about October 6th and October 5th and all the time before that, all the way going back to the formation of the state of Israel and the first Nakba in 1948. You cannot talk about any of those dates unless you talk about, as I said, literally the formation of the state of Israel. And so the keeping the state of Israel as it is an ethnic cleansing apartheid state is very much wrapped up in the project of global capitalism itself. And that's why we will need militant movements both in the region. In fact, it will need to include the Egyptian working class moving into struggle as well. And we will need militant movements in the US of course, because you know, the, that state exists at the behest of capitalism and specifically US capitalism and the war profiteers. Because if you follow the money, who's profiting from everything that's happening in the region? It's the, it's all of the same billionaires and multi millionaires who have shares in BlackRock and Vanguard and so on, which are the, whatever the funds on Wall street that own all the other companies as well, all the way from Lockheed Martin to Rolls Royce, all of the companies that are involved in this genocide. And so that's why we will need massive working class movements, we will need strike actions. And I would say that is why our campaign is so crucial for those of us, us who are fighting for Palestinian liberation. It's not the be all and end all. But truly truthfully, Russell, if we can win this election, it would be the election of the first ever revolutionary socialist in the US Congress. It will be a political earthquake because of the way we are insisting on using our elected office. It will be a little bit, will provide a little bit of the parting of the waters in order to build movements. Because right now the anti war movement, the labor movement, all, all of it is in a log jam because of a whole host of gatekeepers, including the business unionist leaders. I mean just to give you one example, all these unions, they've passed resolutions against the genocide because the rank and file is demanding it. But then what are those union leaders doing? They are endorsing Adam Smith. The leadership of the Washington State Labor Council, the Washington Education association, the ifpe, which is the parent union of the Boeing engineers, and the state, the, the largest public sector union in this state, Washington Federation of State Employees. The leaders of all these unions have endorsed Adam Smith. You know who just donated to Adam Smith? Faye Gunther, the president of UFCW 3000. This is the largest union in our state. 50,000 members. They have grocery workers, home care workers and so on. So many of the grocery workers, workers make so little. They live in their cars. And this person is donate, is donating to Adam Smith. This is the state of affairs of left leadership. That is why the campaign like ours is so crucial.
- [110:01]
B
All right, so Sharma, quickly, because I know you got to go. I don't want Katie yelling at me. Jimmy has a very diverse ideological audience. Ideologically diverse. Now listening to what you just said, and I'm sure you, as I do, hear a lot of different voices from all over the ideological spectrum and your activism, so much of what you're talking about, globalism and corporations keeping down the working class is something that everybody seems to agree on, right? What would your pitch be to voters who consider themselves conservative, maybe Republican, maybe maga? Why should they vote for you over Adam Smith or the Republican?
- [110:52]
C
I don't care whom you voted for. I don't care if we disagree on other things. If you agree with me that the, the. The. The United States as, as we live in right now, as our lives, ordinary people's lives, lives is. And you want to do something about it. You want to fight an end to the trillion dollars that spent every year on war and instead have it spent on education, health care and housing for all of us, regardless of what your political ideologies are. If we, if you want a, a nation where we have free health care for all, where we tax the billionaires and multi millionaires, if you want to fight to shut down the data centers and fight against the mass layoffs, if you want to fight for a better life for yourselves and your communities, then you need to join our campaign. Because we are the only candidate in this race and perhaps this entire midterm election who has a long track record of standing with the working class and always being able to unite the working class, regardless of other ideological differences. And that above all is going to be crucial if we are going to change anything in this nation.
- [112:03]
B
That's why we say Shama is ride or die. All right, Shama, how can people support you? Where can they find you?
- [112:10]
C
Please go to shamasawant.org, my first name, last name.org and please donate, please volunteer. Even if you're not in the Seattle area. You know, in this District, Congressional District 9, you can phone bank for us. Look, between now and August 4th, we have to get out the vote. That is the mantra. Get out the vote. We need to be one of the top two vote getters. Let's be sober this is a hard task because we have the entire establishment against us. The corporate media has invisibilized us. So we need a campaign on the ground so you can help us if you can phone bank, that's one less phone banking shift that somebody in Seattle has to do so that they can go out door knocking or tabling inside in the district. And if you're in the district, you've got no excuse. You've got to sign up for a canvassing shift because. Because that is how we win campaigns when you get involved.
- [112:55]
B
All right, Shama, thank you very much. Best of luck rooting for you. Looking forward to your appearance on Monday. I will be watching. Thank you, Shama.
- [113:05]
C
Thanks. Take care, Russell. Bye bye.
- [113:07]
B
Take care. All right, thank you very much to Shama Sawant and hopefully she will finish in the top two in that jungle primary and face off against that ghoul that you just saw a little bit of there. Okay, we are going to go and rumble. We're going to the rumble side of town. We will be reading the super chats over there, right at the top. Hello, Russell Dobular here filling in for Jimmy Dore who is off on his own odyssey this week. So Washington Times reports here that Trump asserts that Iran desperately, desperately wants to meet with the United States. Let's see a little bit of that. President, Mr. President, there are no signs
- [114:00]
D
that Iran is ready to stop fighting.
- [114:02]
C
So, so what is the plan?
- [114:03]
D
Is the plan to just keep bombing
- [114:05]
C
until they give up?
- [114:08]
E
Why? Do you know something that I don't know?
- [114:09]
B
Well, they continue to attack our allies.
- [114:11]
E
You know what the dialogue is behind the scenes that they want to meet desperately to try and end it because they're getting decimated. You don't get that when you listen to your fake station. But you don't know. You don't know anything. So talks. Are you know something that I don't know? Do you know something I don't know?
- [114:29]
C
Well, tell us.
- [114:30]
E
I will tell you. They want to desperately meet. And until they're ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest in even. I'll be going to Dover for something that I feel is, it's a great honor for me to do it. These are people that want it and they feel like I do that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. It's a very simple dictum. They cannot have a nuclear weapon and they won't have. They're not going to. They have no chance of having a nuclear weapon. And as far as Iran is concerned, I'll let Pete maybe say a couple of words, but we are doing very well. We are degrading them at levels that nobody thought was possible. They're being degraded, really. So seriously, they did slip something through in Jordan and if we had other operators, you know, would have, would not happened, unfortunately.
- [115:27]
B
What does that even mean? What does that even mean? If we had other, if we had other operators. You see, you ever see the X Files? Yeah, well, we got a deal like that going. But I, but our Alpha Centauri friends, they haven't been around lately. I'm a little disappointed in them. I picked up the bat phone. You know, we have one of those in the White House, and they didn't answer. All right. So. According to CBS News Iranian official and remember, remember, this is now Zio BS News. Iranian official calls Trump's assertion that Tehran requested negotiations completely Unfounded. President Trump's assertion that Iran has asked for a meeting to resume negotiations is completely unfounded. And Iranian officials said Wednesday the claim by Trump that Iran has requested negotiations and that comes from a spokesperson for the Iranian government. This now from the Washington Post. US Strikes unlikely to move Iran. According to intelligence reports, Iran's government is unlikely to feel significant impact or soften its negotiating position as a result of new rounds of US Military strikes like those now underway, according to a new intelligence assessment described by current and former U.S. officials. Analysts at American spy agencies also have concluded that Tehran and Washington are, for now, stuck in an indefinite limbo between peace and war, the official said. An uneasy dynamic given the increasingly deadly nature of the tit for tat hostilities between the two nations. You wouldn't know it from the stock market, right? Just, just chugging along. The findings, which have been briefed to the administration, appear to underscore the dilemma President Donald Trump faces in a war that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in late February. Trump's current course of ever expanding attacks appears to have led to a stalemate, but with the war deeply unpopular at home. More on that in the next segment. Continuing escalation by the United States, such as the possible introduction of ground troops, poses political risks for the president, with no guarantee of military success. The latest intelligence report was written primarily by the CIA, where analysts have underscored the Tehran regime staying power despite the loss of many of its top leaders and much of its military hardware to U.S. and Israeli attacks. In May, a CIA analysis concluded that Iran could survive a U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before facing more severe economic hardship. But could America bear not getting Iranian oil for that four months? I think not. Jonathan Panikoff, former deputy US national intelligence officer for the near east, said that the Trump administration appears to believe that if it keeps hitting Iran harder militarily, Tehran eventually will become more flexible. Quote, that assessment is almost certainly incorrect, said Panikoff, senior director at the Atlantic Council think tank. Iran's government has repeatedly shown that its number one priority is the survival of the regime. You know, I'm going to say government. It's the Washington Post. They're going to say regime. If they have a regime, we have a regime. Because if you think this government represents the democratic will of the American people any more than the Biden government did or many successive governments before it, I got a bridge to sell you right here in New York. They call it the Brooklyn Bridge. I'm going to sell it to you. And that is willing to suffer blows despite the harm to its people and economy. He said, quote, I'm struggling because I don't think there's a lot of great options for the United States, Panikoff said, adding that he is skeptical Trump would launch a ground invasion. Quote, you'll continue to see significant flare ups in this conflict, he said, followed by periods of calm and then renewed fighting inside Iran. U.S. officials say they increasingly see tensions within the Tehran government between those Washington considers pragmatists and those seen as hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and elsewhere whose power has grown. I'm just going to interject that I actually asked Professor Morandi last week that very question, and he dismissed the idea that you have different factions pulling different ways inside the Iranian government. Ridiculous. And he pointed out the unity of action that they've demonstrated as evidence that how could they be divided when they're so clearly united in the way that they're conducting this war? I think that's a good point. Rubio said the US has heard directly from Iranians in government that they support a diplomatic agreement. But he acknowledged there's a tension with hardliners who seem to oppose it. The secretary of state acknowledged he did not know what would happen if the hardliners prevail. I don't think it'll be good for Iran. I mean, Iran's economy is in shambles, right? He said. Well, apparently not enough. In statements over the weekend, both Supreme Leader Most and Muhammad Bagar Galabouff, Iran's chief negotiator in earlier talks with the US Urged unity as a necessary condition for victory in the struggle against the enemy. Is from Florida public affairs consultants. They could have just watched the Lego videos. They made that very explicit. Yes, I have been saying this from the beginning. It's become. It's been pretty apparent that the Iranians are not going to meet us,
- [122:07]
F
Trump
- [122:08]
B
and the administration and the people who run Trump, but primarily Trump, because I think most of them want to keep this going. I genuinely think he does not. Yeah, he's been paid off by Miriam and many other people to do whatever Israel tells him to do, but I think that only goes so far. You're talking about an extreme narcissist who wants to preserve his place in history. And as dumb as he is in some ways, he has enough animal cunning to understand that this is going to make him one of the most hated figures in American history. If this continues to its logical conclusion, which at best is a global economic collapse, and at worst, well, at worst, there won't be anyone left to worry about it except the people in the bunkers, and they're not going to look back on him fondly either. It's. It's a bear trap. He put his foot in it. You can't get it out. Once you get in it, you can't get it out. Even Joe Biden, with half his brain leaking out his ears, wouldn't do this. Obama wouldn't do it. Clinton wouldn't do it. None of the Bush wouldn't do it. None of the previous presidents were stupid and, or compromised enough to put their foot in this trap because they all understood they wouldn't be able to get it out. And beyond money, Trump is all over those Epstein files. Who knows what videos might be sitting in a safe in Tel Aviv that have forced him into this course. I think when they did the MoU, he. I don't think that was for show. I think Trump was legitimately trying to get himself out of this bear trap. You can't. You can't. That's why nobody before him did this. He can't get out and he can't win it. Because at the end of the day, the Iranians could very easily, if it's existential, they could hit the water salinization plants all over the region and make it uninhabitable. If push comes to shove, there's always that threat. They are not going to be removed from power and they are not going to meet American demands. And if you look at the nature of the two cultures, Iranian will to withstand these attacks is going to last a lot longer than the American will to live without gasoline for a war that nobody supports as we'll get into in the next segment. Increasingly, even Trump's own supporters don't support this war. It's an absolute no win situation. It has been amazing to me. I kind of mentioned half in jest, how the stock market keeps chugging along, but it really is like a mania. It's just, it's that casino mentality, man. People, it just keeps going up, just keeps going up. Everybody just keeps throwing their money in. Meanwhile, the oil reserves are getting lower and lower. Not to mention the fact that there are structural problems with this AI and data center build out that suggests you're going to have something that's going to make the 2000.com bubble look benign by comparison. That combined with this, it's, it's not. I don't think there's any good way that this ends and there's no gentle way out of this. It's just always difficult for people to imagine things being drastically different, meaning catastrophically different from what they're accustomed to. But if you've lived through Covid, you know that the whole world can turn upside down in a week, right? You experienced it personally. Most people alive today know from experience things can turn upside down in a week. I don't see any way that we're living in the same world that we're living in today. As I record this by October. I don't see any way that you do not have a complete crisis because you have irresistible force. Immovable object. There's, there's, there's no way out of it that's going to be good for average people. That's the average people who always suffer in these situations. All right, let's, let's go to a card and I will read some super chats when we come back. All right, so let's see what we got here. Rorschach. The difference between a threat to your civil liberties and the new normal is about two years. Stop complaining. You'll get over it. I won't. McKady Keik. This is my Castillo. So what are you doing to me with that? What are you doing making me pronounce that.
- [127:27]
C
That.
- [127:28]
B
Russell, we at the Do Dissidence army wish you a speedy recovery. Rex killed it yesterday in your place. Free Palestine. We are all Persia. Yeah, that. I, I mentioned that with Shama. Yeah, it was the. The wildfire smoke got me. I. I was sick for like two days in bed. I'm pretty sure that's why Rorschach.
- [127:56]
E
Oh, no.
- [127:56]
B
Sorry. Roger Meadows mistake of the labor movement was allowing the mob to infiltrate, to control the unions. Forming unions to force boss class to negotiate with them when, okay, the rest of it got cut off. Roger Meadows. That is something I know something about. I used, you know, I used to do mob tours here in New York City, so it's kind of interesting. Early in the labor movement, the mob used to get hired by both sides. They sometimes they would get hired to be strike breakers, and sometimes they would get hired to beat up the management goons. Eventually, they gravitated towards supporting the unions because the capital class had too much power for them to really ever take control of that. Whereas with the unions, they could actually seize it. They could actually take control of it. So, hey, you want to say it was a devil's bargain. Sure. They were desperate because the managers had the resources to hire Pinkertons and all kinds of people to beat up on them. So the mob offered to solve the problem. And, and yeah, you're right. It was very undermining to their movement, but they were kind of between a rock and a hard place. Steve Bertram. Crystal Ball is friends with Marianne. That's why. Yeah, man, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna say Shama. I, I, I, I almost want to ask Shaman to ask Crystal about that, but she has bigger fish to fry than this kind of, you know, very online stuff. Steve Bertram. Shama Sawan is hands down the most principled and honest politicians running for Congress right now. That's why everyone should be interested in her. Yeah, I love Shama. She's, she's a hardcore man. Hardcore, uncompromising. Not the Cat Williams. Looking forward to voting for Shama. Hope you both feel better. Runs she. I think it's just from talking campaigning. I don't know. She's sick. Steve Bertram. When we fight, we win. That's right. Another from Steve Bertram. The reason that makes Grim such a scumbag is that he constantly pretends like he's a real journalist committed to a progressive viewpoint. Yeah, I mean, that's something else. You know, I had a certain amount of time with Shama. I knew she had to get to Katie show. Right, right. At 8. You know, I didn't get into that, but yeah, there was a whole blowup between her and Ryan when Ryan wrote that whole book about the squad and then defended their vote on the railroad strike. So, yeah, we'll see. Maybe she'll get into that Monday. I'll, I will be very interested if it's just Crystal or Crystal, Ryan. Probably just crystal. Duly noted. A quantum processor engineer stated a small quantum Computer the size of a 50 gallon drum processed more data than an entire massive data center. A fraction of the power, no water or liquid cooling. Does this story end with this professor being found dead from a suicide that he executed by shooting himself in the back a few times? Roger Meadows Instead, we should have done what we need one to do today and campaign for worker cooperative ownership of the economy. Workers owning, manufacturing, distribution. Steve Bertram Ryan Grimm cares about one thing, protecting Democrats and his access to them because his livelihood depends on it. Yeah, I honestly, I feel like it's a complicated thing because Ryan Grimm does do some valuable reporting, particularly on Israel. I treat Ryan grim the way I treat the New York Times. Like I read from New York Times articles on this show and on dudes and so does Jimmy, so does everybody. Because we don't have a news team that we can send out that has their resources. You just, you have to always be aware of the biases and try to strain and filter that out as best you can. And remember that you just can't take everything these people say with a grain of salt. Okay, we got another batch here. Mr. Android. Demonstrate peacefully, remain calm and non confrontational. Make no kings. No make it a place for the family vote in November. You're right about that man. As I don't know if you saw the Peter Torchin interview, but one of the things he points out is when the lower class immiseration is the only part of the uprising and it's not matched with elite class backing, you just get crushed. Roger Meadows Russ they interviewed Marianne Williams because she is an ordained minister. Married her and Kyle According to 2025 out of reach PJ RPT NYC minimum wage should be $55. Well, that would be nice. Yeah. No, I know that she married them. I know why. But it was, look, one of the craziest things. Like I said, I didn't want to waste the time. I had Rashama getting into those kinds of very online things. I remember that well, but because we covered it quite a lot. I will never forget Crystal making the argument that you had to work with the Democrats because if you want power. That was how she said it, very condescending. If you want power, then you have to, you know, blah blah, blah. And this is while she's supporting Marianne Williamson. She's making the argument that you have to be a hard headed pragmatist if you want power. Oh yeah, that, that's very pragmatic. The. The power Crystal Queen of Topanga Canyon is your pick for. For president. Yeah, no, I could See how you're very legitimately pursuing power that way, Tusker. What's up, Tusker? Adam Smith fundamentally believes the Palestinians can't govern themselves and therefore believes Palestinians aren't as human as us civilized Westerners. That's a very good point, Tusker. And that is a common denominator of pretty much every Zionist I've ever known. Like, when you get like a liberal Zionist, which I don't even think he is, I think he's just playing one on TV because Shama's challenging him. But yeah, no, liberal Zionists will basically tell you that, you know, well, you know, it's a stock racy. They have. They have bad leadership and, you know, oh, gosh darn. It's the same racist, racist analysis you'll see people have about Haiti. Oh, you know, they just. It's terrible. They're just beset by these terrible leaders and, you know, oh, no, this has nothing to do with the fact that after they had the world's only successful slave uprising, they were sanctioned by the west and put into debt and economic hardship for 200 years. Nah, it's not that. It's that they just fundamentally can't govern themselves. Same old story, Abu Kid. Israel has been an ethno supremacist country of squatter terrorists since 1948, long before Hamas or Hezbollah ever existed. It must be denazified, demilitarized, then radically equalized and re educated. Amen, my friend. Amen. All right. And. Okay, I got them all. All right, so let's go to our next segment. This is Russell Dobular filling in for Jimmy Dore, who is out on.
- [136:26]
F
On.
- [136:27]
B
Actually, you know what's really cool about. About the trip he's taken? He's on an authentic trireme. He's not on this fake Viking longboat that Nolan used in the Odyssey. Jimmy went for the real thing. He's rowing. Him and Steph. They're gonna. They're gonna film it all. They're gonna release it in IMAX, I think, in 2028, they said. But okay, MAGA is not very excited, increasingly about this war, but not according to the Big Guy. According to the Big Guy, this is the most popular war since the Revolutionary War.
- [137:11]
E
Americans aren't against the war. The poll just came out. Americans don't want high gasoline pressures, but they're not against the war. That just came out loud and clear in a poll. Nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Do you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
- [137:26]
B
You think it's good?
- [137:28]
E
Go ahead.
- [137:31]
B
Hey, remind me, remind me, what's the only country in the world to ever use atomic weapons on a civilian population, or any population for that matter? What country is that? Is that Iran? Is that Iran or is that. Oh, that's. That would be us. That would be us. Maybe we shouldn't have any nuclear weapons. So. From cnn, A new Washington Post Ipsos poll last week was the latest to provide a pretty dismal historical comparison for President Donald Trump's war of choice, which he launched in late February. The survey showed 68% of Americans said the Iran war was not worth fighting, while just 28% said it was. That negative 40 point split is worse than for either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. In Washington Post ABC News polling, the worst numbers for the Afghanistan war were a similar 67 to 28% split split in 2013, nearly 12 years into it, the Iraq war also saw about 2/3, 66% saying it wasn't worth fighting in its worst poll in 2007. But the percentage who said it was worth fighting never dipped below 33%. In other words, even the Iraq war never lost as much support as this war has. So is from Politico. Half of President Donald Trump's MAGA base thought the Iran war was worth its economic costs in May. Now just a little more than a third do. That precipitous 13 point drop in just two months according to a new political poll reveals how the President's most die hard supporters are starting to agree with the majority of Americans who have Long opposed the US's involvement in the war. Oh, you just wait until the strategic oil reserve runs out. I think the last I saw, I think that was Yesterday we had 57 days, right? So it would be like 56 more days. That's why I'm saying by October going to be in a very different situation. Additionally, 37% of self identified MAGA Trump voters say the US should continue its involvement only if it doesn't increase costs, up from 29% who said the same in May. According to the survey conducted by independent polling firm Public first, nearly one in five MAGA voters believe that the US should end its war in Iran regardless of the costs. And here's a little bit of the poll. You can see this is this all self identified MAGA voters. The US should continue even if it increases costs in America, down 13 points. US should only continue if it does not increase costs in America, up 8 points. The US should not continue regardless of costs here in America. Up 7 and don't know, down 3 so opinions are hardening on this that flagging support among the president's most loyal supporters is the clearest sign that Americans patience is wearing thin as the economy continues to dominate as voters top concern heading into a cross critical midterm cycle. But Trump on Monday gave little indication that he was looking for a quick end of the war. The US Military has pounded Iran for the last two weeks and speaking to reporters on Tuesday, the president claimed that Iranian officials want to desperately meet, but that until they are ready to meet in a meaningful way, we have no interest in even talking. The White House is at a maximum level of frustration right now and I was told by very senior people that the President is now fully aware that the only way to the victory that he wants is completely politically impossible. The American people just will not support the kind of escalation it would take at this point, said one person close to the White House granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. We've got more dead Americans and a politically impossible situation. The latest polling shows that non MAGA Trump voters are even more down on the war, with only 21% believing it is worth higher costs, while 28% say that the US shouldn't continue the war regardless of costs. And the results show the president's voters are broadly comfortable blaming the war for higher prices. When asked why gas prices have increased since the president took office, the majority of respondents blamed the conflict, including 57% of MAGA voters and 63% of non MAGA voters. Prominent Republicans, including strategists in key races, have spent the last several months warning about the impact of backlash to the Iran war on their chances of holding the House and the Senate, with frustrations around the war playing out in competitive races across the country. Quote, this shows that as unpopular as the first round of war was from February to early summer, this second round is even more ridiculous, said Kurt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine. Quote, the American people quite simply do not get it, do not understand why we are in this war. And yes, President Trump is king of the Republican Party. Yes, the president can do a lot and has a lot of latitude with his own supporters, but kings are not invulnerable from political reality. But Trump on Tuesday said he wasn't concerned. They won't have any impact on me. I'm just here to do the right thing. I don't view it as g we're having an election in a period of time. You know, everyone says, oh, I'm doing something before, no the election. I can't think about that having to do with this. Trump said, yeah, so this is what I was saying earlier. He can't get out. And being a consummate bullshit artist, he's just going to try to bullshit his way through it. I mean, bullshitted his way to the presidency. Right. I've told this story a couple of times on due dissidents. I went to what I call Braga, Trump's Bronx rally, and I was right, literally right at the front. I was like 10ft away from, from the stage. And at one point, a woman passed out in the crowd, as will happen on an open field. It was a hot summer day, I think it was August when he did this. And Trump immediately, this woman passes out so they, he stops speaking, speaking so that the medical workers can get to her. And he just offhandedly says, yeah, it's terrible. People were waiting out there for two days. It's awful. Yeah, it was very Eric Cartman. Because I knew for a fact, because I got there at one o', clock, that, no, nobody was waiting there for two days. I, I show. I wasn't even there in the morning, I got there in the afternoon and I wound up literally in the front. Literally the front. I was up against the metal barrier and I got there at one o'. Clock. He just lied and gave me a lot of insight into how he handles himself because I watched him from 10ft away. I watched his face. He didn't break character, man. This guy's always playing a character. This guy will march us right into the apocalypse playing that character. Total. Just projecting total swagger, total confidence. Yeah, I got this. While your life gets worse and worse, but as they say in the article, there's only so far that goes. There's only so much you can baffle people with. Bullshit. They know when they're broke. People know when their wallets are empty. They know when gas is $10. They know when there's literally no heating oil available for their houses and it's the dead of winter. They know when they can't take a vacation because a flight that at one time would have cost 5, $600, cost $2,000. They're gonna, you can't, you can't bullshit your way out of that. This is all, I think, gonna end in a very ugly and disastrous way. But you know what? Trump will be fine. His kids will be fine, his people will be fine. His class will be fine. All the PayPal mafia people, they're going to be fine. All the Silicon Valley people, they're going to be fine. All these people in government who ruined your life, they're going to be fine. The ones who won't be fine. Are you the one who's not going to be fine? And that's why they really don't care. If there was the slightest threat to them, they wouldn't do things like this. They do things like this because they know no matter what happens, they'll be fine. They got, they got, they got lots of bunkers under DC for these criminals to escape to and repopulate the planet once it's habitable again as. As we all suffer the consequences for what they do. All right, let's see if we have any more super chats. We do a couple more. All right, our friend Steve Bertram here. Shama simultaneously gives me hope and destroys my hope. She's such a unique case of honesty and principles, but the vast majority still dismiss her because of preconceived notions based on labels. You know what, though, Steve? I think it's changing. I think it's changing. This is the most visibility and attention I've seen Shama get in her post Seattle City Council public life People, as she said in the interview, people are sick of it. They're over it. They, they, they realize that the system we have is not working. And once people realize that, they become much more open to listening to people with other ideas. And that's part of what's happened with dsa, which I think Shama agrees with. Andrew, the unions were better for workers under the mob than the Democrats. You know what? Amen, my friend. Amen. Was he saying the Godfather, one man with a suitcase can steal more than 100 men with guns or a thousand men with guns. Yeah, I often think of that, especially living in New York, which was the home of the mob, you know? Yeah. And I'm not one to glorify the mob. I'm really not. A lot of people do that. If you really study what they did to people, what things were really like under the mob, like concrete cost 75% more in New York than anywhere else in the country in the 70s because they controlled all the bids. There was a mob tax on everything you bought. Right. Because they controlled the trucking that inflated the food costs. They controlled the garment district that inflated clothes construction. Goes without saying, forget about it. There was a mob tax built into every brick laid in New York City. Every girder that went up, there was a mob tax. So I'm not one to glorify the mob, but if you want to argue that the mob stole from people one way. And when you got rid of the mob, it turned it over to an elite class that just robs you another way. You'll get no argument from me. Okay, this is Russell Dobular filling in for Jimmy Dore, who is off on on his own odyssey. All right, for our. This was breaking right before we went on as our last segment for the day. Pretty crazy story. Model recruiter who introduced young women to Jeffrey Epstein found dead in France. Isn't that funny how all these people end up dead? Daniel Syed's body was found in his house in Columbus, a suburb of the French capital. Marie Celine Lorigs. These names, man Loris, deputy public prosecutor at the Nanterre Judicial Court, told CNN in a Wednesday statement. An autopsy will be performed on the body to determine the cause of death. Even after Epstein's 2008 conviction on sex crimes, modeling industry insiders like Syed continued seeking business ventures with him, invited him to fashion events and allowed him to associate with their companies. Siad said Epstein had assured him he had paid for his crimes and that this would never happen with anybody. That Sayad referred to him. Yeah, you know, because the modeling industry is known for its ethics and lack of pedos. The Paris public Prosecutor's office said an investigation they opened on Saad in February relating to allegations of human trafficking and criminal conspiracy would Continue. So far, 24 women have come forward or have been identified following a review of information and a call for victims by prosecutors. At least 16 women have been interviewed by investigators and additional interviews are due to take place. Files released by the Department of Justice show Epstein paid tens of thousands of dollars to Syed. In one message, Syed wrote, quote, cute French girl in Marrakech. She said that she will be happy to meet you, unquote. Sounds innocent. Syed separately said that Epstein had asked him for help finding an assistant. In a 2018 email, Syed wrote that he was looking for a good looking young assistant for Epstein. Yeah, no, like you do with your supposedly reformed pedophile friends. Send them a good looking young assistant. Nothing to see there. In another message, Syed sent a photo to Epstein of a woman describing her as very polite and. And someone who has potential as a model or assistant. Too old. Epstein replied, nah, that didn't ring any bells. That didn't. Didn't set off any alarm. That's not a red flag. SED repeatedly sent Epstein photos of young women he encountered during his travels, some of them in provocative poses. According to the DOJ files, Syed's name appears more than 2,000 times in the DOJ's. Epstein files. Wow, it's almost as much as Donald Trump. CNN affiliate BFM TV reported Svetlana Posidaiva, a Russian born model, previously told CNN that Syed introduced her to Epstein and that the disgraced financier abused her. Quote, if it wasn't for him, my life would have unfolded completely differently. Posadiva told CNN Wednesday. That's what Melania says. She said that Siad's death meant that he could not be held accountable. Quote, I wanted for justice to be served, for there to be some kind of investigation and achieve some closure. She said Epstein's ties to the modeling industry are part of ongoing investigations which include a criminal probe launched this year in Paris that is reviewing information related to Siad. According to the city's chief prosecutor, Syed was also facing accusations of abuse. A model also accused him of. On our end of the universe, to get around the YouTube algo, we say grape. So I'll apply that here. When she was working in France in 1990. Syed denied the allegation. Okay, so here's, here's a little interview with this now deceased piece of work who sent young girls photos in compromising positions to Jeffrey Epstein regularly, but claimed that he had been assured he wouldn't abuse any of them and he had no idea what was going on.
- [155:17]
G
A French model recruiter linked to Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at a his home in the suburb of Colomb near Paris. According to prosecutors. Daniel Sed had been the subject of renewed scrutiny in the wake of the latest releases of the Epstein files by the US Department of Justice. For over a decade, he'd arranged for the late sex offender to meet several models. CNN's Katie Paul glaze recently interviewed Seyad who said he'd had no reason to believe the two women he'd recommended to Epstein had been harmed by him, even though those two women told CNN that they were indeed abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
- [155:53]
B
My work with him has been strictly professional.
- [155:57]
A
I never doubt that because I never heard anything from anyone who came back to me.
- [156:05]
B
I'm sorry, I want you to understand, I in absolutely no way laughing at the horror of what this ghoul allegedly, and let's face it, with the evidence, almost certainly was responsible for just what a, what a disgusting person to even think that anyone would believe this, that they had a bad, a bad situation with him.
- [156:34]
G
Siad said he believed that Epstein was a casting director for Victoria's Secret and for a modeling agency. CNN has found no evidence to support that claim.
- [156:44]
A
I didn't know a lot about him until when he comes to Paris, and I told you again, he said he
- [156:50]
B
passed his due to the government.
- [156:53]
A
So for me, he's free man, he's clean. He was such a powerful person, and how can I not trust him?
- [157:03]
G
Epstein, Thompson. Ties to the modeling industry are part of ongoing investigations, including a criminal probe launched this year in Paris involving Seyad, according to the city's chief prosecutor. Seid's lawyer has pointed to the stress the man was under due to the unbearable weighting, and I quote, the stigma cast upon him. Sead's lawyer's statement also calling for respect for his loved ones as they mourn, adding that he died and was innocent. Sead himself was also facing accusations of abuse. A model accused him of rape when she was working in France in 1990. Seyade had also denied that accusation. His death certainly marks the latest macabre twist in the Epstein saga and a reminder of the ripple effects of the revelations from the Epstein files and of the fact that they are far from over. It's a bel.
- [157:57]
B
All right, so this from Michelle McPhee, another model scout who worked for Jeffrey Epstein found dead in Paris. Daniel Sed had been implicated in sex crimes by French prosecutors and was in The Epstein files 2090 times. Hey. Hey, guy. So how many times is Trump in there? I'm. I'm curious. Which one of them is in there more? He is the second model scout for Epstein found dead. Jean Luc Brunel, whose estate is being sued by a California woman, was found hanging in his cell in February 2022. He had been arrested at the city's Charles de Gaulle airport while he was trying to board a plane to dakar, Senegal, in December 2020, and charged with grape of minors over the age of 50, 15, and sexual harassment. Let me guess. He committed suicide by shooting himself three times in the back. Yeah, that's how these things tend to go. Okay, so yet another person intimately connected with the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein who could have shed some light, perhaps, on what he did and who else might have been involved. Maybe some of them now elected to president. Maybe some of them serving as First Lady. Maybe some of them running Tesla, who emailed about being invited to the wildest parties, and mysteriously, after raising a lot of questions about Zionist control over media and government, suddenly went on a humiliation tour with Ben Shapiro to Auschwitz and Israel, which was extremely out of character for this CEO of Tesla. Who knows what people he might have known something about or that Jean Luc Brunel might have known something about. We'll never know now. Or who knows what Jeffrey Epstein, for that matter, who also died conveniently under mysterious circumstances, might have told us. In my opinion, I think in most people's opinion, the idea that there is nothing to see here, that these are all just suicides as presented, is absolutely absurd. There are tracks being cleaned and a lot of people being protected. What did Trump say to Marjorie? Taylor Greene is going to hurt a lot of my friends and my friends. He meant me in addition to maybe some of the people connected to him. So, yeah, man. One loose end getting. Getting tied up, and I. I suspect that that will not be the last person who has intimate knowledge. I think you're gonna see, uh, you're going to see a lot more victims who might have damning information turning up with suicides, sadly, unfortunately. We'll see. We'll see. What if Thomas Massie goes scorched earth on the way out the door and releases some more files? But, yeah, one more mysterious death in the strange case of Jeffrey Epstein. All right, we're going to read our last two super chats, or last few. We'll see what we have, and then we're going to shut the lights. I'm doing what my esteemed colleague Keaton calls the cloping. I'm closing, and then I'm opening tomorrow. Noon show on due dissonance tomorrow. Steve Bertram. Shama simultaneously gives. Oh, no, I already read that. Oh, okay. All right, here we go. Nina, can't. I'm still hearing people say, if Kamala was president. I tried to tell them, if Kamala was president, we would be in the same boat, the sinking boat. So listen, Nina, I'm gonna say something controversial here, and I've said things to this effect on my own show. My logic of not voting for Kamala Harris was never that in certain respects, Trump wasn't going to be worse. I think that this second Trump administration, for people who expected it to be more like the first, which I was definitely among those who felt that the hysteria around that administration was largely more about manners than policy. It was. It was typical Republican tax cuts for the rich with mean tweets. And frankly, there were some things about that first administration that was better than a typical Republican or Democrat. Like, not no new wars. And, yeah, I know there were actions, the assassination of Soleimani, but they're formally. We did not get into new wars. So I think a lot of people, myself included, in all honesty, thought the second Trump term would be like the first. At which point, certainly, if genocide is not aligned for you and Kamala was emphatic that she would not embargo weapons to Israel, that nothing fun, nothing would fundamentally change her. A her APAC handler that she married is going up there talking about how she feels, her Israel and her Kishkas in her guts. She gets it. And okay, all right. If they know you will vote for them, even if they support genocide, you have absolutely no leverage over them. Right. Because now they know there's literally what's worse than genocide. Right? There's nothing worse. So if you'll vote for that, there's nothing you won't vote for. So to me, it was a strategic calculation. Not that I did not think, even seeing it through the lens of the first term, that there were things that Trump would do that that would be worse than what Kamala would do, like ice, like abuse of immigrants. I don't think any reasonable person did not understand, even with the hypocrisy, even with deporter in chief Obama, even with all that. Still Trump's whole political brand was so built on abusing immigrants. I don't think any reasonable people think thought that that wasn't going to be worse. I certainly did not see people getting shot in the street, just random people. I did not see Renee good mother just going about her business getting shot. I didn't see that coming. I didn't see see coming. I don't think anybody could have imagined that because it didn't happen in Trump's first term. And it's never, nothing like that has ever really happened in history. At the same time, I think you have to take some responsibility if you did make that choice, that you understood that certain things about the Trump administration would be worse for certain groups. And if you're like me, it's groups that you're not a member of. And you made a calculation that if you do not draw a line of genocide, you don't have a line. And that is simply a political strategy you're going to have to execute whatever the consequences. I stand by that decision. I don't regret that I voted for Jill Stein, not Donald Trump, and I would do it again, even knowing what I know. At the same time, I'm not going to be a coward about it and say, well, no, no, I don't think anything would have been different with Kamala Harris. Because for one thing, what did we just lay out? Israel pulled this song and dance about Iran's going to have a nuclear weapon next week. With every single president, every single president for decades. They put, they went to every president. Yes, Mr. President, you have to come and help us fight Iran, none of them bit. So given that every single one of them said no and Trump, who was also in the Epstein files thousands of times, and while, you know, Kamala may be in the Willie Brown files, I think we could safely say she's probably not in the Epstein files. I think to say we would have been at war with Iran anyway, the evidence does not support that the same exact ghouls wanted to go to war with Iran through all these other presidencies. And none of these presidencies were good. While Barack Obama was the figure and form of integrity, he didn't do it. I, I, I don't think you can make the argument, yeah, no, Kamala would have done it too. I, I think Trump is uniquely compromised. I think he did on that island that they have videos on and I think he got crazy amounts of money for, for Miriam. So no, I, I don't think you could say it would have been the same. So that's my, that's my, that's my long response of saying, even so, I would still vote the way that I did because for the same reasons. And part of my logic was also, if the libs know that they could get that elected on that platform, they're just going to keep doing this. They're just going to keep doing what they've been doing. Like what's going to change? What you've seen with some of these DSA victories is Trump getting elected again did what I thought it would probably, probably do. It broke them, it broke the libs, it broke their brains, it demoralized them. It finally made them realize that most of the people that they believed in are full of and I don't know how else you could have gotten that result. The ugly thing about politics is very often you are going to employ an ends justify the means approach to politics. And that's what that was. I mean, at least from my perspective, I always understood that decision that way as an ends justifies the means decision. I never thought the Trump presidency was going to be good for a lot of groups I'm not member of, but I thought it was going to be worse to continue to empower the Democratic Party even as they supported genocide. I thought long term that would be worse for vulnerable people, not the least of which are the Palestinian people themselves, to have no political leverage against what's being done to them at all, which is what you would have had if Kamala had been elected. But I'm not going to pretend that didn't have consequences for a lot of people that again, I'm not. I'm not groups I'm not member of because it definitely did. All right. So you got your money's worth on that answer, huh? All right. So that's it. We'll be back next week with Joel. Whitney wrote a book called FINX that I'm very fond of that really lays out the fact that the left as it exists today is a psyop that was created by the CIA back in the 1950s largely through funding arts institutions, a lot of the literary magazines and directly, a lot of the most prominent writers and cultural figures of the 1950s and 60s were working knowingly and unknowingly, directly and indirectly for the CIA. And they went about the business of constructing a left that would be no threat to power. And today we very much are living with that legacy. So that's going to be my guest next week. I thank you all for joining and as always, thank you to Andrew, Malcolm, Misha, Steph, Jimmy, it's always a fun ride. And thank all of you for joining. And thank you to Shama and Professor Peter Turchin, who I was very excited to meet and Shama, who I'm very glad is getting some much deserved recognition for her campaign. We're all pulling for her. So thank you all, folks. We will see you next week.