3550 - Epstein Cover-up & Conservative Crack-up, Continued

Summary

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3550 – Epstein Cover-up & Conservative Crack-up, Continued
December 22, 2025

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Episode Overview

On today’s lively "Funday Monday," Sam Seder and the crew tackle a swarm of headline-grabbing stories at the intersection of scandals, authoritarian creep, and conservative infighting. The main focus is on government opacity around the Epstein files, the ongoing transformation of right-wing media and politics, and how internecine squabbles are defining the conservative movement. The episode jumps between scandal, palace intrigue, and sharp critique of both government and right-wing media players, keeping the show’s trademark irreverent, analytical, and sardonic tone throughout.

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Key Discussion Topics & Insights

1. Epstein Files Cover-up and Contempt Charges

• House and Senate Action: The House is seeking contempt charges against Pam Bondi (now overseeing Epstein files) over withholding evidence. Schumer introduced similar legislation in the Senate. ([00:12])
• Partial File Release Controversy: DOJ waited until the final hour to release only part of the files, citing the need for more time to “vet” photos, especially those involving Donald Trump.
• Theories on Limited Disclosure:
  • Bureaucratic incompetence after career experts were purged.
  • Possible intentional “breadcrumb trail” left by insiders.
  • Suspicion that the DOJ redacted material to protect influential figures across parties.
• Illustrative Example: Pictures of Trump with women were uploaded, then taken down from the release, allegedly to protect “victims,” but the panel is skeptical, noting years-long advocacy from victims’ groups demanding visibility, not secrecy. ([04:46]–[13:37])
• Quote:
  • “There’s a lot more stuff they did not and they redacted and they did not release.” — Sam Seder [07:09]
  • “It felt like they were only hanging out with prominent people that would not implicate the real power players.” — Matt Taibbi [08:39]
• Oversight and Political Fallout: Ro Khanna (D) and Thomas Massie (R) are pushing for accountability. Fines proposed for non-disclosure seem symbolic, highlighting reluctance to directly confront Trump despite his sagging approval. ([14:03])

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2. The Conservative Media-Industrial Freakout: TPUSA, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens & Co.

• Turning Point USA (TPUSA) and Right-Wing Schisms:
  • TPUSA’s "America Fest" became a venue for high-profile conservative infighting.
  • Erica Kirk’s showy emergence as Charlie Kirk’s widow and religious-right maiden.
  • Strange, almost cultish mourning practices: attendees taking selfies at a recreation of Kirk’s death site ([59:47]).
  • The gathering showcased the far-right’s performative, megachurch-like spectacle. ([58:12])
• Infighting and Power Struggles:
  • Ben Shapiro launched attacks on right-wing rivals like Candace Owens, Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson. Shapiro rebuked "conspiracy theorists" but, as the hosts observe, ignored his own long record of platforming them for years.
  • Candace Owens responded with unmasked antisemitism, blaming Jews for capitalism, slave trade, and America’s woes. ([115:13])
  • Vivek Ramaswamy on stage explicitly demanded racists and antisemites (esp. Nick Fuentes) be purged from the movement, only for J.D. Vance (the new conservative hero) to immediately demur, expressing a “big tent” and refusing to censure open racism.
• Quote:
  • “[Vivek says] if you can’t say loud and proud [to exclude Nick Fuentes], then you’re a weak leader.” — Sam Seder [69:04]
  • “We don’t care if you’re white or black…controversial or a little bit boring or somewhere in between.” — J.D. Vance [71:33]
  • “If you want the definition of a coward…it is J.D. Vance.” — Sam Seder [73:47]
• Moral and Rhetorical Contradictions Exposed:
  • Vance touts “not apologizing for being white” and “judging by character not race,” yet refuses to distance himself from open bigots targeting his own family. ([131:17])
  • The panel spotlights the contradictions and bankruptcy of right-wing “identity politics” posturing.

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3. Media Landscape Meltdown: Barry Weiss, CBS, and Right-Wing Billionaires

• Bari Weiss at CBS News:
  • Weiss, formerly of Substack fame and right-wing billionaire patronage, is now CBS News chief and swiftly running into backlash from veteran journalists.
  • She spiked a 60 Minutes investigation into El Salvador’s See Cot gulag, reportedly fearing fallout with the Trump administration (and to please billionaire owner Ellison, seeking regulatory favor).
  • Correspondent Sharon Alfonsi’s leaked email denounced this as a "kill switch" for inconvenient stories. ([33:04])
• Quote:
  • “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a kill switch for any reporting they find inconvenient.” — Sharon Alfonsi, via internal CBS email [34:49]
• Analysis:
  • The panel links this to the wider concern over private control of the press, the right’s manufactured outrage over “censorship,” and growing billionaire idiocy and hubris.
  • The segment doubles as a scorched review of Bari Weiss’s career ambitions and transparent ideological bias (“just Dave Rubin with an Ivy League degree”).

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4. Conservative Politics: Policy Vacuum and Reactionary Identity Battles

• No "Big Ideas," Only Personality Warfare:
  • The right’s internal drama has reduced its “movement” to petty personality feuds—no real policy debate, just jockeying for platform dominance and donor attention.
  • The only unifying political project appears to be opposition to trans people, protection of the ultra-wealthy, and performative Christian nationalism.
  • As Sam remarks, the "industry" of conservative media is increasingly indistinguishable from late-stage capitalist infighting (“lemonade stands out-lemonading each other”).
• Affordability & Populism:
  • The left’s focus on “affordability,” championed by new DSA politicians like Zoran Mamdani, is now polling as the central public concern—forcing even mainstream Democrats to pay attention.
  • “Affordability is now the watchword,” Sam affirms [53:05], adapting Bernie-era wealth inequality politics toward practical populist messaging.

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5. Consumer Affordability Crisis and Anti-Working-Class Trends

• Economy & Class War:
  • Despite government and Fed triumphalism, consumer sentiment is at historic lows. Even Trump merch had to be discounted because attendees couldn’t afford it. ([143:04])
  • Discussion about the creep of class stratification into public services: TSA PreCheck and Clear as monetization of state dysfunction, symbolizing broader late-capitalist rot. ([147:22])
• Quote:
  • “We have monetized the dysfunction of flying.” — Sam Seder [148:00]
  • “There should be just one grade of public service: good.” — Sam Seder [149:19]
• Panel Consensus:
  • Both the promo code shilling and government capture by the rich are condemned. The class war is the real war on Christmas, not the right’s conjured culture war.

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6. Right-Wing Antisemitism and Conspiracy Theories

• Candace Owens' Break from the Pack:
  • In graphic, conspiratorial language, Owens blames Jews for slavery, “contract lord” control, and asserts the Talmud licenses Jewish domination. Other hosts slam her as trafficking in old blood libel and contemporary hate speech, masking the real dynamics of American racism and capital.
  • The episode closely unpacks these antisemitic tropes, highlighting how right-wing media incentivizes conspiracy mongers to fill power vacuums left by collapsing leadership.
• Quote:
  • “Jewish people were the ones that were trading us? Jewish people were in control of the slave trade.” — Candace Owens [122:24]
  • “This is where ultimately he’s got to be pressed and that cleave has got to happen soon.” — Sam Seder, about J.D. Vance [133:05]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Sam Seder (on DOJ redactions):
  “I want to know which victims’ rights group asked them to take it down… Oh, I, yeah, it’s called None.” [13:33]
• Matt Taibbi (on right-wing media):
  "You’re just seeing a bunch of lemonade stands and they’re just trying to out-lemonade each other. There has been, like, the amount of actual policy talk has been virtually nil." [95:12]
• Sharon Alfonsi (CBS, via internal email):
  "If the standard for airing a story becomes, 'the government must agree to be interviewed,' then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the State." [34:49]
• Emma Vigeland (on Right's identity politics):
  “You don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” [131:17, quoting J.D. Vance, expressing the absurd white grievance at TPUSA]

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Detailed Timestamps for Important Segments

| Section | Time | |---------------------------------------------------|----------| | Epstein Files, Gov’t Cover-up, Pam Bondi | 04:06–17:00 | | Ro Khanna & Congressional Oversight | 14:03 | | Epstein Release, Trump, and Media Reaction | 16:25–18:32 | | Barry Weiss, CBS, Spiking 60 Minutes | 33:04–43:25 | | TPUSA, Conservative Crack-Up, Erica Kirk | 44:56–64:49 | | Vivek Ramaswamy, JD Vance, Nick Fuentes Debate| 66:38–76:24 | | TPUSA Pyrotechnics & Grief Spectacle | 57:02–62:05 | | Ben Shapiro v. Candace Owens, Bannon, et al. | 80:30–93:50 | | Candace Owens’ Antisemitic Tirade | 115:13–127:06 | | Affordability as Populism, Class War | 143:04–152:19 | | TSA Precheck & Class Stratification | 145:53–149:22 |

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Summary Takeaways

• Establishment Protectionism: The government continues to shield powerful interests in the Epstein case, further eroding public trust in institutions and highlighting elite impunity.
• Right-Wing Media Cannibalism: Conservative media and donors are locked in a public civil war marked by personality clashes, overt racism, antisemitism, and complete absence of policy seriousness.
• Crisis of Affordability and Class: While right-wingers spin up their culture war, most Americans are focused on affordability and material security, an issue being seized by the new left.
• Media Capture: With billionaires buying legacy newsrooms and placing ideologues atop them, basic investigative journalism is under siege.
• Antisemitism Goes Mainstream: Elements of right-wing media are now openly trafficking in historic antisemitic conspiracy theories, pulling the GOP coalition ever further rightward.

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For New Listeners

Whether you care about the future of populist politics, the capture of public institutions by billionaires, or simply want to laugh at the right-wing circus, this episode is a rollicking summary of the crises and absurdities at the heart of American politics entering 2026.

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Note: This summary skips ads, sponsorships, and off-topic chatter, focusing on the central news, analysis, and moments that matter for understanding both the politics and theater of this wild week.

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Transcript

[Matt Taibbi]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily.

[Sam Seder]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Monday, December 22, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. This is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, House members seek contempt charges against Pam Bondi over the Epstein files cover up Schumer. Meanwhile, intros legislation in the Senate for the same Trump halts five wind farms off the US east coast because electricity prices are not high enough. Meanwhile, Denmark upset as Trump appoints Louisiana governor envoy to Greenland who also wants us to control Greenland. New CBS News chief Barry Weiss preempts a 60 minute story on the El Salvador gulag because she was afraid of hurting Stephen Miller's fifis. Meanwhile, Kilmar Garcia to face a federal judge over his return to immigration custody. Israel establishes 19 more illegal settlements in the West Bank. Netanyahu blocks the independent investigation into October 7th and pitches Donald Trump on another bombing run in Iran. Trump regime has a secret deal with 11 states to purge voter rolls suing the rest of them. US looking to pirate a third Venezuelan tanker in a bid for regime changing war with Venezuela. And Elise Stefanik, we won't have her to kick around anymore. She drops out of the race and is leaving politics. Delicious ice hiring bounty hunters from private prison company Geo. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

[Matt Taibbi]

It is Funday Monday.

[Sam Seder]

Not just Funday Monday, but the final Funday Monday of 2025.

[Matt Taibbi]

At least live Funday. Well, the last, last truly fun day Monday because we've got best of next Monday.

[Sam Seder]

That's correct.

[Matt Taibbi]

We got best of starting on the 24th, folks.

[Sam Seder]

In some ways, the next fun day Monday will be more fun.

[Matt Taibbi]

Exactly. Right.

[Sam Seder]

Because we won't have the litany of horrible stories to discuss. Although because it's implied the best of is probably also.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

At least you'll be nostalgic.

[Sam Seder]

Yes. And I should also say that today is my final day of the year. Live. Although. Yeah. Wait, no, that's in January.

[Matt Taibbi]

No, I'll be, I'll be live.

[Sam Seder]

You'll be live tomorrow.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, we still don't have a guest yet, so just, it's going to be just me talking about the show. Heated rivalry for 45 minutes. No, I'm joking. We'll do a show but have a.

[Emma Vigeland]

Visit from jolly old St. Nicholas. No, I'm joking.

[Matt Taibbi]

If anyone wants to talk about heated rivalry in the ims, please do. I am in because it's all.

[Emma Vigeland]

I did see my first trailer for that.

[Matt Taibbi]

It is so good. It's all the girls and the gays are talking about, baby.

[Sam Seder]

I have not heard this at all. But it's fun day Monday, so live and learn. As you know, the Trump administration, or I should say the doj was compelled by legislation to release the Epstein files by Friday night at 11:59pm Statutorily, they had 30 days from the passage of the law. They waited until day 30 in the final hours and then they released only part of it because they said they didn't have enough time.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's final season. The college kids can relate to that, right?

[Sam Seder]

They didn't have enough time to go through or you know, clean it of all of the pictures and the documents regarding Donald Trump. And in some instances they put up stuff and did not vet it carefully enough because the pictures weren't. There were photos that they took down and do you have the close up in there too? I linked the close up. Okay. Yeah. Well, here is a. Where's the bigger one? If you scroll up, I think you'll see the bigger one. There was one photo as an example. No, go back. I'm sorry. Oh, shoot. It was, it was in the slack the one before that there were photos that the obviously the stooge. Well, there's two explanations. One is that the stooges at the DOJ just not detailed, oriented enough and didn't look closely at these photographs.

[Candace Owens]

Or.

[Sam Seder]

There are people in the DOJ who are like f this guy. I think I can sneak this one through.

[Matt Taibbi]

We had this theory about the metadata in the footage for Epstein of Epstein Cell. If you recall, earlier this year Wired uncovered the or reported on just looking at the file the metadata from the supposedly unedited footage outside Epstein Cell and found out that there were multiple minutes that were taken out in Adobe Premiere. Now this is a very incompetent FBI and doj. They have purged their ranks of the more career people, the more competent folks. So that's an explanation.

[Sam Seder]

And competent people tend to tend to leave operations like this. That's basically what happens.

[Matt Taibbi]

Competent people, you mean, Right?

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it. That's one explanation. But you also have an explanation that perhaps someone's trying to leave a little bit of a breadcrumb trail and that's also possible as well.

[Sam Seder]

Well, nevertheless, we don't. We only have the close up Here. But this is. This was a. This is actually. Put this up. This is actually with. Was in a drawer of a desk that somebody had opened up. And these photos of Trump were all in the desk. And the picture is much wider than this, so you really have to zoom in, and you can see Trump is there surrounded by four women. Unclear where this is or whatnot, but here is Todd Blanche explaining why they took this picture down after the fact. Now, remember, I also think the other explanation is, like, they wanted to do these, like, this is, like, limited hangout stuff, because there's a lot more stuff that they did not and they redacted and they did not release.

[Matt Taibbi]

The whole grand jury testimony is just a, like, bunch of black pages. They released a lot of things that on their face, seem salacious, like Michael Jackson being photographed with Jeffrey Epstein. And then Diana Ross in one photo, although her son came out, comes out and says, hey, there's a child in this whose face is blurred out. That's me. And, like, this wasn't. This was just like, you know, these are elite people in circles together. Not everybody. Michael Jackson, he has his own, you know, issues. But.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah. Eyebrow raise.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right, Right, obviously. But, like, I mean, point being, that doesn't mean that they are in the, like, the ring and all of that kind of stuff. It felt like they were hanging out with prominent people that would not implicate the real power players that Thomas Massie and Ro Khanna have been talking about, the political donors to the Republicans and to the Democrats and Trump himself.

[Sam Seder]

Here's Todd Blanche, who is the deputy attorney general, which he became around January 20th or 21st of this year. And of course, like, in early January of this year, just weeks before he was Donald Trump's defense attorney. So Trump really understood that the guy was very good at defense. Oh, yeah. Okay. Here's the wider picture. Sorry, it's right here. Oh, and this. She's presenting this. And again, you got to look in the drawer, and you start to see the pictures of. Of Trump. But. So here is Todd Blanche on with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes. Yesterday produced.

[Megyn Kelly]

Mr. Blanche, I want to follow up.

[Sam Seder]

With you on what you just said.

[Candace Owens]

You were referencing the 15 files released Friday. They disappeared from DOJ's website yesterday, including this photo of what looks like a.

[Sam Seder]

Desk with a drawer open containing photos of Donald Trump.

[Candace Owens]

Justice be very clear to put a.

[Sam Seder]

Fine point on it, why were these files taken down?

[Megyn Kelly]

You're saying it was at the direction of a judge?

[Ben Shapiro]

Well, you can see in that photo there's photographs of women. And so we learned after releasing that photograph that there were concerns about those. About those women, and the fact that we had put that photo up, so we pulled that photo down. It has nothing to do with President Trump. There are dozens of photos of President Trump already released to the public, seeing him with. With Mr. Epstein. He has said that in the 90s and early 2000s, he socialized with him. So the absurdity of us pulling down a photo, a single photo, because President Trump was in it is laughable. And the fact that everybody's trying to act like that's the case is a reflection of their true motivation. But the reality is anybody, any victim, any victim's lawyers, any victim rights group can reach out to us and say, hey, Department of Justice, there's a document, there's a photo. There's something within the Epstein files that identifies me. And we will then, of course, pull that off and investigate.

[Sam Seder]

Hey, Todd, it's me. I'm a victim. You're my lawyer. Pull it down.

[Emma Vigeland]

Worried about the victims?

[Sam Seder]

I'm worried about the victims.

[Matt Taibbi]

But do you see how he does that sleight of hand where he then begins to talk generally about if a victim were to reach out, then we would, of course, want to comply, because he can't actually say, I think, publicly, that a victim did reach out.

[Sam Seder]

Undoubtedly, I'm sure not.

[Emma Vigeland]

He's about to continue walking. That exact.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, right, yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Saying that one or more of the women in one of the photos or.

[Candace Owens]

Several of the photos is a victim.

[Megyn Kelly]

Or a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein.

[Sam Seder]

And that's why you took those files down.

[Candace Owens]

And will they be put back up?

[Ben Shapiro]

No, that's not. That's not what I'm saying. We, of course, if we knew that, if we had. If we believe that from that photograph contained a survivor, we wouldn't have put it up in the first place without redacting the faces. But notwithstanding what we believe, we don't have perfect information. And so when. When we hear from victims rights groups about this type of photograph, we pull it down and investigate. We're still investigating that photo. The photo will go back up. And the only question is whether there will be redactions on the photo. And of course, if there are survivors in any of the photos, we will redact them as Congress expects us to do, as President Trump expects us to do, and as the Attorney General and Director Patel have directed the department to do.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, so any pictures of women they're going to not put up unless they find out that they are victims. In which case they'll put it back up, but with redactions. I mean, that seems to be what the standard is. If they were not contacted by a victims group about those women in those photos, they took it down because of the possibility of them being victims. But won't just simply redact all the pictures of women.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

Then they'll keep those photos off. Unless, of course, you get, you notice people notice that you've pulled it down and you get questioned about it on national television.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. I mean, I would like to know which victims rights group reached out and asked them to take it down.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, I, Yeah, it's called None.

[Matt Taibbi]

None. Okay, gotcha.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mar A Lago Special Victims.

[Sam Seder]

They're suddenly listening to victims rights groups, even though we know that the victims rights groups have been. Have been arguing for months, if not years.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

To release these documents. Here's Ro Khanna this morning on Ms. Now on Morning Joe, talking about that issue.

[Matt Taibbi]

I just feel like when I hear.

[Sam Seder]

You talk about inherent contempt or impeachment, I mean, these are words that Democrats have been really careful not to throw.

[Candace Owens]

Around, especially the impeachment word. It's come up a few times and you've seen leadership walk it back.

[Megyn Kelly]

Why is this time different?

[Sam Seder]

And do you have the backing of.

[Candace Owens]

Democratic leadership to actually push forward with.

[Sam Seder]

Impeachment if it comes to that? Is that the next step when we come back in January? It's different because it's coming from Republicans, too. If it was just me out there or Robert Garcia out there, it would be seen as okay, as this is just a Democratic thing. This is going to be Thomas Massie leading it. There are a few Republicans who are on board with it, but we're not going straight to impeachment. We're starting with contempt. And the idea would be that she'd get a 30 day grace period. By the way, she's already in violation of the law. 30 day grace period to get the documents out. 30 day grace for the sergeant at.

[Candace Owens]

Arms, detaining and arresting, because that's what it is.

[Sam Seder]

Well, it would be a fine refine of up to $5,000 each day she doesn't get these documents out. My goal is not to destroy Pam Bondi. I didn't even know who Pam Bondi was. I've gotten to know these survivors and my goal is that on a personal level, these documents need to come out. They wives were traumatized. They want these documents out. And whatever we can do to get the documents out. Pablo is.

[Matt Taibbi]

And Khanna has spoken about this before and he said or his opinion is that basically those names are going to come out anyway because the victims know who they are. What they need is the protection of the United States government to give them the ability to speak about who they are. But that's what the files provides. It gives them like the credibility and that they're not going to be sued out of existence, whether it's by Trump or by any of the associated individuals who are very powerful. We still don't even. Like, some of the images that were released revealed new information. Like we saw Sergey Brin at that dinner with Donald Trump, very, very powerful Alphabet executive and he was dining with David Brooks. That doesn't mean anything, but it just gives people a sense of like, there are still names that we don't necessarily maybe know that have a lot of power, that the victims are begging the government to protect them and say like, can you provide us with this legal cover and give us the names and put that out there. And the government is actively saying, we don't want to protect you. We are protecting the wealthy. And I think that's why this story resonates.

[Emma Vigeland]

The picture of the Epstein with Trump in it and all those pictures. Why does he have those pictures of him with all these powerful people, including Bill Clinton? Why does he have it? Because he.

[Sam Seder]

All in the drawer.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Something weird about the whole way that. That staged. And I don't know if that was like, I like a part of the.

[Matt Taibbi]

Search, but you see how he collects photos to Matt's point.

[Emma Vigeland]

Like, like, like he's a nostalgia.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. He's not a freshman in college.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. Making. He loves making collage.

[Matt Taibbi]

Like, I'll make my ex really jealous with this beer can.

[Sam Seder]

It's insurance.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Megyn Kelly]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

You can show it to people and say like, well, look, you got a problem.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I think it also probably you come into his office and you see all these pictures. It makes you feel more comfortable with having your picture taken. I mean, there's Clinton, there's, you know, whomever. Although I got to say, 30 day grace period. They just had a 30 day grace period. A&B, $5,000 a day. You know, Trump's not going to say like, that's, that's just one email I send out about, about like Trump coins.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Why didn't you say so last June?

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, it's silly.

[Sam Seder]

If it was only gonna be $5,000 a day.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'll get the boys together, we'll pitch you.

[Matt Taibbi]

But do you think that.

[Sam Seder]

No, I'll have, I'll have the CEO of some random company pay for it.

[Matt Taibbi]

Do you think that that's the, the like. I mean I'm sure the fine, it's insufficient but that might be the only mechanism he thinks they can get enough Republicans on board for.

[Sam Seder]

That's, that's possible as well because they're.

[Matt Taibbi]

Also not going to go after Trump. Just, just given like they're going after Pam Bondi. It's just so amazing that even at this date where he, Trump's unpopularity is basically record breaking, he still has the Republican Party in a chokehold. We'll play that TPUSA stuff later. But like they refuse to go after Trump. They'll go after everybody around him. But the Republicans still won't take a shot at the big guy with like the exception of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[Sam Seder]

I mean he still, even with, with, even with an approval rating in the mid-30s, that's still probably 60, 70% minimum of the Republican Party.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

And who approve of him because it's not Democrats, it's not independents. It is, it's Republicans. And you're still, you know, maybe it's even higher, maybe it's in the 80s. But nevertheless the Trump is still the guy for now. Although, you know, time marches on. We've got, speaking of health, we've got a couple of sponsors and speaking of health, one of our sponsors is zocdoc. I don't know about you, but my social feed is filled with different health trends. Can red light therapy solve every skin problem? Should you be slamming olive oil shots? I would give the algorithm a rest and instead turn to healthcare professionals like doctors. With Zocdoc, it's easy. You can find doctors that are right for you and instantly book an appointment. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high quality in network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. Zocdoc lets you book in network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors across every specialty. You can filter for doctors who are near you. You can filter for doctors who take your insurance. You can filter for doctors who are a good fit because whatever you prefer a female doctor, a male doctor, you are looking for someone with a good bedside manner or rated as having good listening skills or you know, cle waiting room, I don't know, whatever you want. You can see their actual appointment openings. This is key. You as soon as you choose a doctor, you can see what appointments are available when. So there's no going back and forth talking to the receptionist or the front office there you just click on A slot that works for you and you book a visit. Appointments made through ZOCDOC generally also happen faster than normal. Just typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking you can even get same day appointments. I had a dental emergency. I was on the road. Zoc Doc saved the day for me. I know both you guys have got.

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[Sam Seder]

There you go. It is super easy to use. It tells you immediately whether they take the insurance or not. There's no rigmarole. It really is. And it's all free. The website is completely free. Stop putting off those doctor appointments. Go to ZocDoc.com Majority to find an instantly book a top rated doctor today. That z O C Doc.com Majority Z O C Doc.com Majority Zocdoc.com Majority also sponsoring the program today. The way that I have had probably for the past three or four years and it's only been the last three or four years that I have left my doctor's office and him not excoriating me to increase my vitamin D. This is not going to be a surprise people. I spent a lot of time indoors and the way I did this is a ritual. It is the obsessively researched multivitamin rituals. Essential multis have the nutrients most of us don't get enough of from food. All in their clean absorbable forms. No shady additives, no ingredients that can do more harm to your body than good. I was this is how it would go. I would leave my doctor's office, my annual physical and he would say you have a vitamin D deficiency. This is bad for men because of like prostate cancer I think it was. And I would say okay, I would go to the pharmacy, I would buy a multivitamin, I would take it sporadically and then when I ran out I was done. And the thing that works for me about ritual, not only do they send it to you on a monthly basis so you never run out, but also it is much gentler on the stomach so you don't have to worry about whether you got to eat food or not eat food. Like when you remember, you remember, which is important for me. And this stuff is all traceable and you know that it's not coming from a place where like oh, one of the ingredients we put into this is mercury. It is a science backed multivitamin for men. 18 plus. I go with the over 50 again. High quality traceable key ingredients in bioavailable forms. Vitamin D3 to support normal muscle and immune function and Omega 3 DHA to support heart and brain health. They're essential for men. 18 plus multivitamin contains 10 key nutrients and two delayed release capsules designed for optimal absorption per day. Like I say, designed to be gentle on the stomach and it is third party tested for heavy metals and clean label project certified so you know you can trust what you're putting in your body. Ritual Multivitamins are vegan. They are non GMO project verified. They are gluten and major allergen free made traceable. It is HSA and FSA eligible with a seamless checkout experience so you can save when you shop with pre tax dollars. Essential for Men is a quality multivitamin from a company you can trust get 25% off your first month at ritual.com majority that's ritual.com majority for 25% off your first month. Also sponsoring the program today. The reason why I am functioning as well as I am functioning. Last night I went to the Yola Tango Hanukkah show. The final one of the wow. It was awesome. And I had a few drinks and why am I able to function this morning? Because my first drink of the night was Zebiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic. Zbiotics Pre Alcohol Probiotic drink is the world's first genetically engineered probiotic. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle rough mornings after drinking. And here's how it works. When you drink, alcohol gets converted into a toxic byproduct in the gut. It's this buildup of the byproduct, not dehydration, that's to blame for rough days after drinking. Pre alcohol produces an enzyme and it breaks this byproduct down. So just remember, you make pre alcohol Zbiotics your first drink of the night, which is what I did. I drank it like, I don't know, like 7:30. Doors opened at 8 or 7. I don't know. I got there at 8, 8:30.

[Candace Owens]

And.

[Sam Seder]

There was a little bit of comedy. John Benjamin did a little comedy bit and that was fun. And it was always fun to see Yola Tango. I've been seeing that band for 35 years, which is terrifying. But I had a few drinks to celebrate this morning. I feel great. I mean I'm not going jogging but I never jog. So there you go. Make the most of every toast this holiday season. Just don't forget to bring the pre alcohol along for the ride. Go to zbiotics.com majority to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use majority at checkout. Zbiotics is backed with a 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com Majority use the code majority at checkout and you'll get 15% off. Also, just a reminder, you want to support this program? Go to join the MajorityReport.com your support helps the show survive and thrive. And also you get the free show without the commercials.

[Matt Taibbi]

Very nice.

[Sam Seder]

So free of commercials. So join themjorityreport.com also am quickie folks, three days a week. Get the news in your email at 9am For a couple of bucks more you get five days a week. It's a great deal. Highly Ricky Wimbish, Corey Pine, two great writers. Whitney's tearing it up at the American Prospect, doing great job and we're lucky to have both of them. So check it out. All right, let's get into this. There was a story in the Higher the Chronicle of Higher Education about how University of Texas this what is it? University of Austin, which is the anti woke university unaccredited university started by Barry.

[Matt Taibbi]

Weiss and with the help of course of a bunch of really, really rich guys like Andreessen Horowitz, etc.

[Sam Seder]

And what's his face? Harlan Crowe. Harlan Crowe, the guy who bought Thomas or kept him on the Supreme Court. Clarence Thomas.

[Matt Taibbi]

So a bunch of, you know, Bari Weiss, her whole career has been elevated by right wing billionaires and this is no exception.

[Sam Seder]

And the funny part about this is that UATX was started because it was supposed to be. We don't censor. We are not censorious. We allow all different opinions here. According to analysis from the Chronicle Higher Education, many of the people who joined UATX at the beginning of the school Project have departed either by choice or due to public disagreements with the school's trajectory. Over 20 university employees have left UATX. Elie Avashi, the co founder and director of the Mill Institute, which is an educational organization working with uatx, was asked to leave the university after posting an article about diversity initiatives on LinkedIn. In that post, Avashi wrote, we can have criticisms of DEI without wanting to tear down the whole concept of diversity and inclusion, and Barry Weiss fired her. In a piece for the website Quilet in May, Avashi said that she had been drawn to UATX initially because she experienced ideological tribalism while at Harvard. But Avashi said that instead she never expected to also find ideological litmus test at UATX in other Words. There's ideological tribalism everywhere. But Harvard didn't fire you.

[Matt Taibbi]

It's almost like Barry Weiss did.

[Sam Seder]

Who, I guess of why you posted on LinkedIn.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, Barry Weiss. You know, when reading about this this morning, I was reminded that I guess after the election, she hosted the debate between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro. And Sam Harris was Kamala representative and Shapiro was the Trump one. It's like, yeah, both sides. Both sides. That's why a center right Zionist and a far right Zionist are going to debate American politics.

[Sam Seder]

Well, that was like my old buddy Indy Mike who said, I'm an independent. I listened to both sides. I listened to both Megyn Kelly and Sean Hannity, Bill Marneau. Yeah, but this story is not about Barry Weiss at UATX or UAT or whatever that unaccredited Trump.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's it, uatx.

[Sam Seder]

She is now the head of all the news at CBS based upon her running a small substack. And there was for weeks apparently advertising about a 60 Minutes story that was going to be about Seekot, which of course is that gulag in El Salvador that the Trump administration sent. Just randos who were not American citizens there, although I think there was one. Was there one American citizen.

[Matt Taibbi]

But either way, this is where Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent. This is where the hairdresser, the gay hairdresser was sent. The man with the autism awareness tattoo. The real horror stories that we've highlighted, people remember that seacot's essentially a torture camp. They horrifically, horrifically abused the prison, the detainees there.

[Sam Seder]

And so CBS had advertised the segment on Friday featuring interviews by Sharon Alphonse, among others. They interviewed some of the deported migrants who have since been released from the gulag, saying they described, quote, the brutal and torturous conditions they endured. And Barry Weiss apparently, I think at first killed it and then said we're just actually holding it back for more.

[Matt Taibbi]

Content, for comment, for comment by the Trump administration.

[Sam Seder]

Well, and here's the thing. Yes, they want to actually allow Stephen Miller to go on camera. And the point is, is that the, for weeks, in fact, weeks and weeks, they have asked, at least the reporters did comment from the White House, and they said nothing. So Sharon Alfonsi, this 60 Minutes correspondent, said that Barry Weiss had spiked the story. And the reason why we know this is because apparently the Wall Street Journal reported it because they got a hold of this email and the email, I'll read parts of it, this is an.

[Matt Taibbi]

Internal email of that correspondent to, I guess the rest of the CBS team.

[Sam Seder]

Yes, because on Saturday, apparently Barry Weiss spiked the story. And people were found out about it, like, throughout the next day, I guess, and said, what's going on? What's going on? So she wrote, news team, thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier. I learned on Saturday that Barry Weiss spiked our story Inside See Cot, which was supposed to air tonight. We, Ori and I asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy slash opportunity. That's what's sort of like. That's honestly the most shocking thing about it, that she's like, I don't need to give you a reason at all for spiking this story that we have been advertising, and it clearly has been set up to go. I mean, let's be clear what happened here. Someone in the White House saw that they were gonna run with the story, and Ellison's trying to take over WB. In fact, he just offered, like, a $40 billion guarantee. And they realized, like, oh, this is gonna be a problem for us.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. And her explanation of, we need Stephen Miller to come on camera and comment about this, it literally just allows the Trump administration to hold the story and to kill it. Because if they never comment on it, if that's your standard, then the story doesn't come out. And that's the purpose.

[Sam Seder]

This is what Sharon jump in? No, but that's what she wrote. We requested responses to questions or interviews with dhs, the White House, and the State Department. Government silence is a statement, not a veto.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story. If the administration's refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a kill switch for any reporting they find inconvenient. If the standard for airing a story becomes, quote, the government must agree to be interviewed, then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the State. These men risk their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism. Giving voice to the voiceless. She goes on to compare this to. What was the name of that movie they made about this?

[Emma Vigeland]

Actually, the Pacino one?

[Sam Seder]

No, not Pacino. It was the guy, you know, the. The Australian guy. The guy who was in the. Oh, come on. You know, he's the Australian action guy.

[Emma Vigeland]

Crocodile Dundee.

[Sam Seder]

No, not Crocodile Dundee. He was in Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe.

[Matt Taibbi]

I don't know what movie you're talking about.

[Sam Seder]

The one about this.

[Matt Taibbi]

Cbs.

[Sam Seder]

Like the Jeffrey Wiggin interview. Due to legal concerns nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that low point. By pulling this story to shield an administration, we're repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones. That was the one about the inside.

[Matt Taibbi]

The inside.

[Emma Vigeland]

I was right. I've never seen it.

[Sam Seder]

No, it's not Pacino. Oh, maybe he was also in the film. Yeah, but it was. He wasn't the. The insider.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. Yeah, no, it was. Russell Crowe was the insider. Yeah, pacino was the 60 Minutes journalist.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, thank you. Pacino was over the hill at that point. It was all. It was all Russell Crowe. We're getting sidetracked. We've been promoting the. She. She wrote. And I should say we are getting sidetracked. I get. Yes, I am getting sidetracked. I got this. The full letter was posted by Yashir Ali. We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of gold standard reputation for a single week of political quiet. I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight. I mean, of course it's Ellison. I mean, look, there's two things that are going on here. One is Bari Weiss desperately, desperately wants to be seen as an adult by these right wingers. That has always been her. Her thing. She said, no, excuse me. She's had two things. One started when she was at Columbia trying to get Palestinian professors fired because they were Palestinians. So it's her racism and her Zionist bigotry. That's one thing that she has. And then the other is complete. She. She so desperately wants to be embraced by the right. That's why she. Although some, you know, like she's a woman married to another woman. She.

[Matt Taibbi]

She's Jewish. They have issues with that.

[Sam Seder]

Now, she famously addressed a Republican caucus or conservative group and said, look, I know you guys don't agree with why I'm here, but we all can agree that we want our taxes cut. And she is the one who introduced the world to the idw. That secret cabal of brilliant thinkers like Dave Rubin and the Weinstein brothers and Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris, who were not able to get any publicity whatsoever or any exposure to the public, help.

[Emma Vigeland]

So many lost men find their way with that shout out.

[Sam Seder]

So this is a twofer. I mean, she has this job because she knows that Ellison, she's Ellison's lapdog and they have aligned interests. Ellison wants the Trump administration to okay his takeover of Warner Brothers. And they don't want to upset the president. But then they have this conflict that they have a major news organization that's supposed to report on the president.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. I mean, she. I can't imagine what the rest of that newsroom is thinking right now. Like, we're already.

[Emma Vigeland]

I should have resigned. Like Dickerson did. Get out, by the way, he threw to the Barry Weiss thing, but he's out now.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, it's. She is alienating really quickly. Basically anybody with self respect that works at cbs.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah.

[Sam Seder]

So without a doubt. But. But the thing is, is that it's going to be hard for them to dislodge because I don't think at the end of the day they care. Right, you don't care. This is like she has no experience in doing this and she goes from the opinion pages. I don't think Ellison, at the end of the day, cares about the news division except for it to carry one message and one message only. And so I don't really like, at most news organizations, alienating all of the reporters and journalists and, you know, writers would be a problem. I don't know if it's gonna be a problem at cbs because I think they're perfectly willing to say goodbye. We don't care if you give us a degraded product because we have our people writing the, you know, the pro Israeli stuff and the pro administration stuff. So we don't really care.

[Matt Taibbi]

But I just wonder, like, they bought the Free press for what, $150 million? It was wildly overvalued. She has value, I guess, but when does she have, like, when is it more valuable to have a faceless person who is the bulwark against, you know, the crazy leftists that care about the genocide in Gaza and you know, believe that diversity is actually something we should engender like that, that when does her value go away? When you could just replace that with a similar person with similar ideology who isn't this, you know, desperate, cloying, publicly embarrassing and yeah, expensive. But I guess the dies already cash.

[Emma Vigeland]

They have so much money. Who cares?

[Sam Seder]

It's interesting, I mean, because it speaks to how stupid you can be and still be a billionaire.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

Like, you know, that type of money engenders stupidity. And I'll tell you why. I mean, it doesn't mean that, like the guy's not capable of, of being smart in one specific area, but that kind of money and power makes you think that you're a genius. And then you start to, like, apply your genius to areas where you do not have any understanding, any experience, any insight. And so the first charlatan who comes along, maybe the second who comes along and is good at selling themselves as opposed to actually knowing what they're doing. Like, I saw this at Air America all the time you had people with money and they had no idea about the business at all. They just were attracted to the person with the nicest watch who came through the door and sold them a thing. But that person was just good at selling themselves.

[Matt Taibbi]

But that's her talent. That's always been her talent is the ability to flatter the sensibilities of right wing men, particularly if they're Zionists and particularly if they're conservative and wealthy. And she's sold them a whole bill of goods that she's able to carve out this new center that is going to make sure that the lines of acceptable debate basically include anybody or exclude anybody. That is going to change anything. And the Ellisons are some of the most powerful Zionist donors in the world. I don't think that we can get around that. And this is very much motivating it.

[Emma Vigeland]

David Ellison said he hired Weiss to bring cbs, quote, news that reflects reality and journalism that, quote, doesn't seek to demonize, but to understand. And nobody believes that. Nobody in this industry believes that. But we have to. They have to act like it's true. Because he's got the money.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know if, I mean, people aren't maybe sort of half like, pretending like it's true. But the funny thing is, like, the question is, is this guy going to realize he's not. I mean, I don't want to spoiler alert, but he is going to be faced with the question of, like, do I realize that maybe my sense of what reality is, is not actually reality? Maybe Barry Weiss's sense of reality that the country is hungry to hear from Erica, Erica Kirk, and I can't remember her name and find out what's like, in her heart, you know, like, and to promote her book. I mean, no, I mean, like, even, even with all the sort of like conspiracy around it, Even with like the, the reality TV show about it, like. No.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, you're so. You're supposed to be a little more subtle when you Manufacture Consent. I feel like, like it's just been brute force. It's just so obvious.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, by scene, I mean, if you did this when the insider came out like a billionaire, just bought CBS and said, do this, everyone. Be like, what? And that's exactly what's happening now. Except they're trying it anyway.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

All right, let's talk about. We got a little bit of time here. We can also do a freebie to Monday, huh? Oh, yeah, let's do that quickly. I want to just without being a little bit too self. Congratulatory.

[Candace Owens]

Congratulations.

[Matt Taibbi]

Gradually. Well, you stepped on it, so that should humble you a little bit.

[Sam Seder]

A little bit. Pronunciation has never been my forte. But I was on CNN about a month ago, almost to the. Actually to the day, I guess, and driving over, I was hearing the press conference or watching it actually on my phone, the press conference between Donald Trump and Zoran Mamdani. And I was amazed at this segment here. Oh, and you know, we should say, I didn't realize it at the time, but it was Ryan Grim. What's her name?

[Matt Taibbi]

Emily Jashinsky.

[Sam Seder]

Emily Jacinski, who asked this question in the White House.

[Matt Taibbi]

President Republican Elise Stefanik has campaigned multiple times by calling Zoramdani a jihadist. Do you think you're standing next to a jihadist right now in the Oval Office?

[Sam Seder]

No, I don't. But she's out there campaigning and, you know, you say things sometimes in a campaign. She's a very capable person, but you really have to ask her about that. But I don't particularly. I think I met with a very, I mean, I met with a man who's a very rational person. I met with a man who wants to see, really wants to see New York be great again. And I can say, again, because New York was great, you know, when I came down to Washington initially. All right, we don't need to hear him wax poetic about the times where he was committing statutory rape. But, but this was my reaction. Literally. I don't know. We were on set. This is taped on Friday night. It aired on a Saturday. But I was, I was just amazed.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, yeah, like.

[Sam Seder]

And my first reaction was, well, the second one was this. But Mamdani, in an hour was able to essentially blow up the idea of demonizing Democratic socialists. So Elise Stefanik is now lost in the middle of the ocean without any tether. Even people like, you know, Chuck Schumer, even people within the Democratic establishment. All of that is true. But Elise Stefanik now has acknowledged that she has been lost at sea for the past month and has set up a flare saying that she's going to drop out of the gubernatorial primary on the Republican side this Guy Blakeman from Long island doesn't seem to have any chance whatsoever. And she has now said she is not going to run free election and she is going to just go into business.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. So just to recap her the last few years of her career, just because it makes. Yes.

[Sam Seder]

You relish this.

[Matt Taibbi]

I love it so much.

[Sam Seder]

Hate her.

[Matt Taibbi]

I hate her so much. I hate her so much. Sorry to editorialize, but God, I just. There's something about. If you're going to be a rabid racist and a Zionist, treat yourself with a little bit less self seriousness. And the way that she was so gleeful about going after it was Claudine Gay and the other college presidents for not being brutal enough to the voices and the students on their campus who were trying to protest the genocide. The rabid nature of Elise Stefanik's McCarthyite Zionist hearings just really, really got under my skin. And I think a lot of people should, like, go back in the record and watch some of those hysterical hearings. She was going to ride this, in her view, to like a strong gubernatorial run. And that included racist attacks on Zoramdani that Jaszynski asked Trump about there. The jihadist stuff. This was going to be her whole campaign strategy. So I relish one that she had to withdraw from the UN Because.

[Candace Owens]

Right.

[Matt Taibbi]

They were worried about their house margins because Trump was so stupid when he and Elon Musk, Ketamine, Elon Musk, were at Mar a Lago doing cabinet appointments based on, like, fan fiction. And many of them got through, like Tulsi, Gabbard and rfk, but she didn't because he jeopardized their house margins by trying to put her in office. So she had to go back to her district. She had already gotten her fancy apartment. She'd already gotten her nice little clothes. She thought she was gonna be dining in New York and getting to make this her career. She goes back to her district upstate. They hate her. They call her out for never doing town halls. She's like, oh, God, all right, well, at least I'll run for governor. And then Trump destroys her again. This is what he's like. The only thing he's good for is going after other Republicans. We played that clip the other day of him going after Jeb Bush. And that's when Trump is at his finest and when I appreciate him the most.

[Sam Seder]

And the about Stefanik that is the most odious in my mind is that all of this is cynical. I don't think she believes anything. Yeah, she came into office as an anti Trumper, that's the other thing. And she came in as like the sort of like old school Jeb Bush Republican from upstate New York and then just basically stuck her finger up in the air and was like, whoa, I didn't realize which way the winds are blowing. And I mean, I wonder on some level if a lot of this throwing her under the bus is a function of them going like she's not, she's not really. She's not real. I mean, we don't know who she is, but she's never who she says she is.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, if she was hotter, maybe Trump would, would be on board with the.

[Sam Seder]

Problem is I want a person that she's a, she's a central good at least eight. But the other thing is, the other part of that, but that happened out of that moment with Trump is you don't hear, I mean we were told what we were going to hear if Mamdani got elected. And this is certainly what Jeffries was afraid of. Supposedly we were told that every Republican across the country was going to be running against Zoran Mamdani.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

That this is the party of Zoran Mamdani. This is the party of the socialist communist. Like you haven't heard a word about it?

[Matt Taibbi]

No. You've seen polling she AOC and Zoron in terms of like, like, like popularity across the country. They still have time to catch up with name recognition, but they are popular politicians. I mean Bernie Sanders is a very popular politician too. So I don't know how long the Democrats can avoid, can ignore these numbers. But it doesn't have the salience that it should because Trump, even in his adult state still has a bit of a sixth sense about some of this stuff. And like when someone's authentically popular. He sensed it with Bernie back in the day when he co opted some.

[Sam Seder]

Of his messaging though he didn't have to go, so he did.

[Matt Taibbi]

But that's cuz Zoran's charming and flattered him and we know the theory about that. We know that he mentioned he won one in every 10 Trump voters. He know he, he, I'm sure used that.

[Emma Vigeland]

He said, the reports are that he said that like the people in my district that voted for you, like there's a lot of people that voted for me. That voted for you.

[Sam Seder]

Oh yeah. And I went to a place where your dad got his shoes shined or whatever it was. I mean so cheap but easy. But it's so disturbing. I know that that's like the politics of the country are gonna turn on how, like, three minutes of flattery of some moron who's in charge of essentially the nuclear codes. Like, you can't. I don't care where you are. You know, you're in Texas, you're in Iowa, you're in Indiana. You can't run against your opponent. It's being the party of Zoran, because their opponent, the Democrats, is going to go. Like Donald Trump said, this guy is actually just wants to make things better for Americans. If that's what he's accusing me of, that's exactly what I'm doing. And if you also look at what Mamdani has done, and I didn't want to go, you know, talk more about Mamdani, but every poll now, you see it's affordability is the question. Every, like, the word affordability is everywhere now. In the same way that, like, Bernie had this impact on wealth disparity and money in politics, affordability is now the watchword, despite the literally hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent over the past six months to make abundance the word. And now abundance was just a word. That's the problem. It was just a word, and different things were sort of crammed in there. If you read the book, which I did, incidentally, you would see, like, oh, my God, this is just like a hodgepodge of like, Like, I've had stews that were more, you know, like, sort of like coherent and cohesive and, and homogenous than what's in that book. And the affordability is an extension of economic populism, period. End of story. It is. Affordability basically says, how do we make this country more livable for a greater amount of people? It is not. We're trying to have, like, see how much one person can amass.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right?

[Sam Seder]

It is about the quality of life of working people, of the broad base of people in the country, and the.

[Matt Taibbi]

Racism that they rely on becomes less salient in the same way in 2008 that the racism against Obama was less salient because he was the candidate that was one speaking against the war, but also as the economy began to fall apart, like offering something different. And Trump is speedrunning his way into a really early lame duck period. And the Republicans are, I guess, in general. So, like the, the. I just think running on Zoran and using racism against him for being Muslim, when you contrast that with people's material conditions, it's just not going to have the same weight. So I love to see that fail for her epically.

[Sam Seder]

All right, let's. Let's get to the tpusa. And then we're going to take a quick break, but maybe we'll do a freebie Friday. I mean, a freebie Monday. Monday. Why not? It's the Christmas season.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

Although Hanukkah's over, so maybe I shouldn't.

[Matt Taibbi]

Be giving any more. Yeah, like, we've given enough.

[Sam Seder]

So TP usa, well, really started Thursday night with. With Ben Shapiro, right?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Do you want to start there?

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, let's start. Let's. I mean, let's sort of try and go in some type of thing, because this is there. TPUSA's America first, or whatever the hell they call it. America.

[Matt Taibbi]

America Fest.

[Sam Seder]

America.

[Matt Taibbi]

How could you get that wrong?

[Sam Seder]

America Fest got more attention this year because they invited. You know, everybody got invited. And of course, Charlie Kirk was assassinated and everybody wanted to see what Erica Kirk was gonna wear.

[Matt Taibbi]

And spoiler alerts.

[Sam Seder]

Lots of sequins, lots of sequence. Actually, let's play that. This was very moving when Erica Kirk came out and took the stage. Did we get that. That video of the recreation of the. Do you know what I'm talking about?

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes. Well, we didn't have the video, but they recreate.

[Sam Seder]

No, there is a video of it.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, I know. I mean, on the sound sheet.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, okay. We should find that. Okay. Because that I thought I put in that is pretty.

[Matt Taibbi]

Of the Kirk death site.

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, I did see that.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's a normal thing.

[Sam Seder]

Well, find that. And then. But just to give you a sense of, like, of how.

[Matt Taibbi]

The.

[Sam Seder]

I don't know. I guess the. I don't know how really to describe this, but listen. And again, I'm not judging the way that people mourn. When my great uncle passed away, Saul, who I named my son after, we celebrated. We celebrated and we celebrated because he had lived 104 years, and that was a very. But here is Erica Kirk, and this is the way that she was introduced to TP usa. And, you know, life is for the living, is what I say.

[Matt Taibbi]

For those on the podcast, the amount of pyrotechnics seems like a fire hazard.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm genuinely concerned. Yeah, we're gonna get a.

[Matt Taibbi]

Like that. That's too much. How is that that close to people?

[Sam Seder]

It could be just lights.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, my God. No, those are.

[Emma Vigeland]

Maybe they do have a new type.

[Sam Seder]

I think it's. I think that can't be real sparks either way.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, I. That is what they. You see how they are obsessed with, like, the Christian nationalism thing, and they're really, really leaning into that. That looks Like a megachurch. And they.

[Megyn Kelly]

You.

[Matt Taibbi]

Every. Everything is. Everything is like, in the fashion of a megachurch. And like, the. Even the way that they're martyring Charlie Kirk is like the template is how Christ is spoken about. It's just the same things that are motivating the Republican Party for my whole lifetime.

[Sam Seder]

And here is. This is. Yeah, this is the. This is Charlie Kirk's widow, Erica Kirk endorsed Vance for 2028. And one of the things that they had at the TPUSA America Fest conference was a recreation of the site where Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And I don't. Let's listen to this.

[Candace Owens]

And you can see from behind me, this is a recreation of the tent.

[Sam Seder]

Where Charlie Kirk lost his life at.

[Candace Owens]

Bichon University in September.

[Sam Seder]

And people are taking selfies with it.

[Matt Taibbi]

It's like the cross evangel.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, this is.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. I saw evangelical churches doing AI Charlie Kirk stuff in the month after he passed. You know, I mean, detached from reality entirely.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, this is odd. I think that's odd.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I think objectively odd.

[Sam Seder]

I think it's really odd that you would do that and take selfies.

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't even.

[Sam Seder]

Honestly, I don't have.

[Emma Vigeland]

If the left did that.

[Matt Taibbi]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

They should be fired.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. They would literally prosecute you.

[Sam Seder]

Al Franken, one of his books was inspired by Rush Limbaugh going on and on that there was a politicization of the senator from Minnesota. Gosh, what's his name now? Wellstone. Of Paul Wellstone's funeral. The people were talking about politics there. Paul Wellstone was probably like, sort of like, around, like, you know, in terms of, like, on the spectrum, like, you know, sort of like to the left of Markey a little bit. I'm trying to place him, you know, in the current environment. He wasn't Bernie Sanders left, but he was probably, you know, the closest to Bernie Sanders.

[Emma Vigeland]

Critical of the Iraq war. Right.

[Sam Seder]

Critical of the Iraq war and the Farmer Party in Minnesota and his funeral. People were like, talking about his life was all political. And that was a huge scandal generated by Rush Limbaugh. And Franken wrote his book basically saying, like, it wasn't that political, as opposed to go f yourself. Like, what are you talking about? And now, like. Like, it is amazing. It is just amazing. And all of this is all like, you know, everything. We're going to hear if any of this happened at, I don't know, net roots or. There's nothing equivalent on the left because there isn't like a. You know, this is. This is like the this is. If this feels like the Oscars, it is, because this is an industry. They are all in the same industry, even if they have supposedly divergent ideologies. It is just. It is just. This is an industry event. There's not like, there's no political ideology beyond our love of movies, you know, like this. That's what's going on here. This is just like a. That you talk about identity politics, and that's what. That's why there's a fight here.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Because there are different. There are two competing, maybe three competing ideas of, like, identity. Because the Republican Party, for a moment, thought they could expand the tent. And the problem is they can't expand the tent, because if they do, they're not the Republican Party. This is a homogenous, white, fundamentalist, Christian party. And if you made the mistake of marrying a woman of Indian descent when you were younger, you got to go on a tour to essentially apologize for that. And that's what J.D. vance does at this place.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

And if you made the mistake of being a Jew. Oh, you gotta. You got. You're gonna be tested. And if you made the mistake of being of Indian descent yourself, you are SOL my man. That is it for here, then.

[Matt Taibbi]

Is that what you want to do?

[Emma Vigeland]

No, let's do the. I just want to tack on this Freudian slip that Erica.

[Sam Seder]

And this explains sort of like, this is an amazing. So much of like. Like, where her head's at is in this fight that she's engaged in for. Not. I mean, she. I mean, let's face it, it. Just to be clear here, we're two months out from her husband suffering one of the most violent public deaths I think we've seen in decades in this country.

[Matt Taibbi]

And.

[Sam Seder]

You know, again, different people grieve different ways, and she seems to have thrown herself into the business of tpusa, because that's what she. Where her mind is at now. I do. I think that she knows that she's engaged in a grift. No, I don't think they perceive it that way. I don't. I don't think they. You know, it's like. Does. It's like those. You know, the.

[Matt Taibbi]

The fish know they're in water.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

That was the story. The two young fish and the old fish comes by. How's the water, guys? And he's like, what's water?

[Candace Owens]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

But. But here she is.

[Matt Taibbi]

Despite the devastating loss of Charlie Kirk, my incredible husband at uvu, Caleb has persisted with the same grift. Excuse me. Gift, grit. It has been a long day. Trust me, you're not a grifter.

[Candace Owens]

Honey, it's all good.

[Sam Seder]

You couldn't have scripted that better, though.

[Emma Vigeland]

She did it so poorly that usually when you do something like that, you just move on and don't acknowledge it.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, I think she had to acknowledge it.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, I thought she got it right on the correction gift. Okay. No, it was a third thing.

[Ben Shapiro]

Great.

[Sam Seder]

Okay.

[Emma Vigeland]

We're not getting anything out of this. It's how it is. Determination. It's not about material. You know, incentive.

[Sam Seder]

All right, well, let's go to, like the. Let's get to Ben Shapiro a second. Let's do. First, this. This juxtaposition I thought was fascinating.

[Emma Vigeland]

4.

[Sam Seder]

This is number 4. This is Vivek Ramaswamy, who is running for governor in Ohio in a primary.

[Megyn Kelly]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, in a Republican primary.

[Matt Taibbi]

But he's very wealthy, well funded. However, there have been some issues recently with him at conservative events where you'll have questions from people like, hey, you're not a Christian and you're not white, so what gives?

[Sam Seder]

It's funny. Remember Ann Coulter that. Yes, Ann Coulter.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, Ann Coulter said she wouldn't vote for him for president because he's an Indian. And that's what she said.

[Sam Seder]

Her words said it to his face.

[Matt Taibbi]

To open the interview. To open the interview. Which, by the way, tactic, obviously. Tactic of a shock jock like her.

[Sam Seder]

And. But the point being that Vivek is trying to sort of, like, get past the Republican barrier because they don't believe in identity politics. So if you have an identity that's different from theirs, they don't believe in it. But here is Vivek making his case. And it's sort of fascinating because this was like. I think he did this, like Thursday or Friday night.

[Matt Taibbi]

Saturday night, he did a Saturday night.

[Sam Seder]

Okay.

[Matt Taibbi]

And then Van spoke the next.

[Sam Seder]

Okay. Vance spoke the next night. Now, prior to this, you had Bannon, Shapiro, what's her face, Megan Kelly, Megyn Kelly, all throwing attacks at each other. And so Vivek comes in and he's the unifier, and he's going to unify everybody, except for exclude one person. Here he is. Believe.

[Ben Shapiro]

And you will forgive me for giving you an exact quote from our online commentator, Nick Fuentes. If you believe that Hitler was pretty fucking cool, you have no place in.

[Sam Seder]

The future of the conservative movement. You could debate foreign aid to Israel.

[Ben Shapiro]

All you want, that's fine, that's fair. But you have no place with that level of hatred. You could debate the right resolution to the Russia, Ukraine, war. But if you believe Joseph Stalin is.

[Sam Seder]

Someone to look up to, you have.

[Ben Shapiro]

No place in the future of the conservative movement.

[Sam Seder]

If you call Usha Vance, the second.

[Ben Shapiro]

Lady of the United States of America, a jeet, you have no place in the future of the conservative movement. And if you can't say those things without stuttering, then you have no place as a leader at any level in.

[Sam Seder]

The conservative movement either.

[Ben Shapiro]

Certainly not in my state of Ohio.

[Sam Seder]

Okay, so let's just sum up here, what he said. You need to, if you're a leader, full throated, no hesitation, exclude people like. Exclude Nick Fuentes and people like Nick Fuentes from the Republican Party. And if you can't say that, first of all, you have no, he's just saying it definitively. These people are not conservatives. They must be excluded, Period. End of story. And if you can't say that loud and proud, then you're a weak leader.

[Matt Taibbi]

Mm. If you can't say that calling the Second lady of the United States, that kind of slur is offensive, then you have no place in the conservative movement.

[Sam Seder]

But J.D. vance, the guy actually married.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, right.

[Sam Seder]

To who Nick Fuentes calls a cheat, will he stand up for her against Nick Fuentes? Let's see. Will he say that this has a place in his movement, which Erica Kirk.

[Matt Taibbi]

Just endorsed him for president. He's supposed to be taking the TPUSA mantle with him. I'd imagine he's representative of the movement they're talking about.

[J.D. Vance]

You lead an incredible movement at Turning Point. And I will fight alongside you, you and President Trump and every patriot in this room to defend the country that we so dearly love. And when I say that I'm going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you. Each and every one. President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his support through endless self defeating purity tests. He says make America great again because every American is invited.

[Sam Seder]

Posit. I seem to remember he literally invited Nick Fuentes to have dinner with him.

[Matt Taibbi]

Trump did? Yep.

[Emma Vigeland]

Every American.

[Sam Seder]

Every American.

[Matt Taibbi]

He just thought that Kanye, by the way, having dinner with just Kanye, who was praising Hitler at the time, also quite problematic, but he just thought Kanye brought like a buddy with him.

[J.D. Vance]

We don't care if you're white or black, rich or poor, young or old, rural or urban, controversial or a little bit boring or somewhere in between. People of every faith come to our banner because they know, know that the America first movement will make their lives better. And they also know that the Democrats don't care about anything Other than maybe transing their kids.

[Sam Seder]

Okay. Aside from the fact that they don't care who you are as long as you're not trans.

[Matt Taibbi]

And.

[Sam Seder]

Or a Democrat Republican.

[Emma Vigeland]

Saying trans in your kids is like Urkel saying, did I do that? At this point, they just pedal to it when they need to.

[Sam Seder]

And. But the bottom line is there Is JD Vance willing to say. Because this is like he is saying the opposite of what Vivek said in. Vivek said, it is not. You are not part of the conservative movement if you are Nick Fuentes and believe all these things he said and.

[Matt Taibbi]

Say this about J.D. vance's own life. This is. He lectures and J.D.

[Sam Seder]

Vance is saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, this is a guy who's like, I think. Was it in this speech where he's saying, like, you know. Oh, yeah. He says later in this speech we'll play it about not being a coward. This is a guy who said that Donald Trump was a fascist until he had to cower to Donald Trump. And here he is cowering to Nick Fuentes in the groiper movement. There is no other way to describe what JD Vance just said at tpusa other than particularly he knew what Vivek said. Incidentally. Ohio. Right. Vivek is running for governor in Ohio, the state that J.D. vance was a senator from.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

And Vivek says none of this has no place in a place like Ohio. That was a direct challenge to J.D. vance. And J.D. vance said, JK, you. I'm not. I'm not going to say I'm not going to kick Nick Fuentes out of this party.

[Matt Taibbi]

But that's why he mentioned Usha Vance in that same breath, is because he was trying to get an assist. And he's like, hey, look, you love your wife. Right? Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

And just to contrast with the first night, Ben Shapiro. We'll get into it probably later, but. But Ben Shapiro mentioned Bannon and Carlson and they responded to him, oh, yeah, like, you have time to change your speech.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, no. Yeah, he knew. I mean, I mean, without a doubt, he was aware of this. And let me. Let's make this other thing clear. J.D. vance, when he says he will not go after Nick Fuentes to protect his wife, who Nick Fuentes called a Jeep, JD Vance went on some other podcast, I think it was unheard, and said, like, I'm not gonna. They can suck my ass. Nick Fuentes and Jen Psaki. Because Jen Psaki was on I've had it, and said, Usha Vance is like, being held hostage. I Want to tell her right now, we're here for you. He has to equate these two because he's so afraid of Nick Fuentes. This is if you want the definition of a coward, if you want to see someone who is not going to fight for you if it costs him a nickel, it is J.D. vance. J.D. vance is making that explicitly clear. Now. I don't think it's coming out to this audience right away, but at one point they're going to realize if there is a, if there is an element of the Republican Party that does not want to associate with an out and out fascist like Nick Fuentes, an out and out Nazi like Nick Fuentes, they're going to realize that J.D. vance is not willing to stand up to him, is not willing to put it on the line and fight against him. There is a moral cowardice. And I say moral only because that is what their whole sort of like ecosystem is built around. Some fault, some sense of morality that is associated. It shifts.

[Matt Taibbi]

It shifts, right.

[Sam Seder]

You know, it's like, it's, it's, you know, no purity test is there, is his new morality. Vivek has a different one. Don't call the vice president's wife a jeet. Don't be blatantly racist, don't be blatantly anti semitic. It all just depends on like, you know, whatever their brand is at any given point, what their morality supposedly is.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's funny him saying black and white, like he's trying to say, as if he's having an open door policy but then has to follow it up with controversial, which everyone knows means Nick Fuentes is boring.

[Sam Seder]

Right. Where does that controversy from? I mean, give me a break. And I think like, here's the problem. He can't sell this. He can't sell it. He's going to bathe himself in the, in the flag. He's going to bathe himself in the cross. But I don't think he can sell it. I just think that there is just too much inherent contradiction. If you cannot, you know, all you're going to exclude is Democrats who want to trans their kids. That's, that's the distinction. The Democrats because they want to trans your kids, we stand with Nazis because the Democrats want to trans their kids. That's their politics. Give me a break. Let's go to, to Ben Shapiro, I guess. Right?

[Matt Taibbi]

Sure. We have a little more J.D. if you want.

[Sam Seder]

Well, we'll get to J.D. because he comes in a little bit later, I guess on this. Yeah, but here is Ben Shapiro at the beginning of the Turning Point USA Conference. He's on Thursday night.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep. Opener.

[Sam Seder]

Interestingly, he's the opener. Incidentally, I think they did this because they wanted the opportunity to strike back at him and not give him the last word.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

I. It feels like. And you hear this a lot now like that Shapiro is trying to buy his way in. Like we heard this first from Milo Yannianopoulos a year ago on Tim Pool show. Not the most recent one. That Shapiro bought a lot of his views.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

And in. In his words, faked it till he made it. And he said that happens a lot on the Right. And then just last week I get an email. I don't know if this is an experience, but from a listener, a viewer on YouTube who said, I watched the show weird times at night on the weekends. And there's an ad from Shapiro which we've had. You know, people run ads against our show all the time. Tim Pool does that. I mean, but apparently it's a 30 or 45 minute ad in the middle of our show.

[Emma Vigeland]

You have to skip after like a minute or something.

[Sam Seder]

I think so. But it would run for 30 minutes unless.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, right, right.

[Sam Seder]

And it would buy like they're literally inserting their show in the middle of ours, which, I mean, I hope they pay a lot of money. I mean that probably helps us.

[Emma Vigeland]

But.

[Sam Seder]

I bet you they count that as a view. If it goes past like two minutes or something, I get to look into that. But I suspect that's what's going on. There's a full on panic over there.

[Matt Taibbi]

And Jose, we talk about that creator a lot. Their channel did a deep dive into his engagement and his views and just showing that it looks like there's a significant gap in between what you would expect of an engagement for his view count to be when you compare it also to other. Just to be fair, conservative. Here it is, the video the sharp fall of Ben Shapiro. Maybe there's a graphic at one point, if you can scroll your cursor over it, Matt, towards the end about his views. I think that's closer to where it is. But people can check out the video. We don't need to find it in real time. Either way, it appears like, yeah, his views are down, his engagement is down compared to other conservatives of similar view count. And that would bolster the claim that perhaps he's buying views. But you can, you know, always match that to engagement.

[Sam Seder]

But here is Shapiro starting off the TPUSA cavalcade.

[Ben Shapiro]

Business colleagues. But even if it were true, that Other public figures were our best friends, our very best friends. That does not relieve us of our duty to speak out of principle and not to cover up evil or shy away from addressing it out of friendship. So no, Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace's targeting of tpusa. Or to mirror her bull lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly, a person I consider a friend. Characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from condemning her actions or filming about them. That is a non starter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. Ilhan Omar is a young mother. That doesn't matter. When man said this week, quote, my goal and my job.

[Matt Taibbi]

I just love the idea. And he'll do this later with a, with a slur where he knows he has to like throw these things out there as he's being critical of these popular right wing figures. And he's like two, two black women that you hate for Meghan Markle, One the princess or whatever she is and this politician. It makes no sense.

[Emma Vigeland]

But you're. Yeah, what you're focused on is stupid if you care about Meghan Markle, but that's their base.

[Matt Taibbi]

You know who does is Candace Owens. Candace Owens is frequently attacking Meghan Markle and like because she does the right wing tabloid stuff. And so that's what he's trying to do there. And it's really inauthentic.

[Sam Seder]

What's also fascinating to me is that we would not know the name Candace Owens at this point were it not for the Daily Wire which platformed her and put a lot of money behind her conspiracy theorizing and her Hitler love. I mean we talked about this years and years ago and really chalked it up to her just being an idiot, which may have been our failure to realize that she's an out and out Hitler lover. But she talked about what was Hitler's problem. He was too ambitious outside of his country.

[Emma Vigeland]

He didn't just try to make Germany great. He like got into other people's business and lots of.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, I think some German Jews might have something to say about that.

[Sam Seder]

That's quite possible. And but here is Ben Shapiro, who's incidentally Matt Walsh, also one of the people that he platforms on his network literally the other day was pushing a conspiracy theory about a, was it about a Palestinian student at Brown or at least that there was some nefarious thing going on with the local authorities that they were protecting somebody like his whole, his whole channel has been a Disseminator of conspiracy theory. That is their entire, the no go parts of London. I mean, his whole brand was built upon.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was just like climate change.

[Sam Seder]

Yes.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, but now there's two things happening. There's the, that Candace Owens was lapping them in views and was doing better than them. And two though, that now she's not just anti Semitic, she's trafficking in criticism of Israel. And that is what. It's just so cynical when you see how, how obvious her hatred of Jewish people was even when she was at the Daily Wire. Then as soon as that happens, he turns and so let's not laud Ben Shapiro as a man of honor here.

[Ben Shapiro]

Of Megyn Kelly, a person I consider a friend. Characterizing Candace as a young mother and thus shying away from condemning her actions or filming about them. That is a non starter. Meghan Markle is a young mother. Johan Omar is a young mother. That doesn't matter. And when Megan said this week, quote, my goal and my job here is to try to understand. Yes. Where Candace is coming from on this and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself quote into this. On one side that is a moral and logical absurdity. There is only one moral side here. Erica Kirk's side.

[Sam Seder]

It's funny how they all are rushing to be on Erica Kirk side. How can they all be on the Erica Kirk side? And no one's on the other side.

[Matt Taibbi]

Except maybe Tucker Carlson. Right. And I guess Steve Bannon, who he goes after here.

[Sam Seder]

Well, let's. Yes, let's hear Shapiro say Steve Bannon.

[Ben Shapiro]

Fourth, because we have a duty to truth. We also have a duty to provide you with evidence of the claims that we make. Emotive accusations, conspiracy theories and just asking questions that's lazy and stupid and misleading. None of them are a substitute for truth. None of them are a substitute for evidence. So when Candace Owens says I don't know. No, but I know that is. And we are all more retarded for having heard it.

[Sam Seder]

Listen, I know that I was hung up by my underwear on the school locker when I was in junior high multiple times every day. But look at me now. I can use the R word multiple times. Incidentally, the idea that Candace Owens just started saying no, no when she was off the Daily Wire is not, not true.

[Matt Taibbi]

I like that. Yeah, he's really masking the fact that he's a giant dork by using that slur. Gets people with disabilities like, I'm a cool kid, guys. I know I just lectured you about facts and logic and Truth and evidence. But I'm one of you. See, I have a leather jacket. Yeah. And also the audience is dumb enough to lap that crap out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. That's why, like comedians do it too.

[Ben Shapiro]

People honk for it and we are all more retarded for having heard it.

[Sam Seder]

Positive. Also, I just want to kind of say like, just like as a. They are, they're not applauding him going after Candace.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

They are literally only applauding that he used that word. Like, like, yeah, not even that. Like they just, they're just excited to hear that word in public. This is how demented and small minded and puny brain they are. Even as they're being told, we need logic, we need facts, we need soundness of argument. The one thing they applaud for is just the most puerile, juvenile thing.

[Matt Taibbi]

Remember that banker that was quoted. I think I forget early on in the Trump presidency about how. Yeah. And ft about how excited they were that Trump was in office because they could say the R word again. Like, like, why is Trump their three time nominee of the Republican Party? You can see why in that audience, which is that he presents a level of like, catharsis and, and, and, and someone who they can live vicariously through, who says all of the offensive things about the people that they hate and look down upon that they cannot say in public life.

[Sam Seder]

Center spiral saying. No one's pointed out that Shapiro is paraphrasing a line from Billy Madison there. It's Adam Sandler movie. Just pure thing.

[Matt Taibbi]

Whatever. Okay.

[Ben Shapiro]

When Steve Bannon, for example, accuses his foreign policy opponents of loyalty to a foreign country, he's not actually making an argument based in evidence. He's simply maligning people that he disagrees with. Which is indeed par for the course from a man who was once a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein. Check the record.

[Sam Seder]

Check the record.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, that was basically it.

[Sam Seder]

Dude. You're a PR flack for a, for a close confidant of Jeffrey Epstein's. His name is Donald Trump.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right, Right.

[Sam Seder]

You're a PR flack for a guy who were not for the United States sanctioning the International Criminal Court Court would be on trial at the Hague right now. You're literally a PR flack for a war criminal.

[Matt Taibbi]

There is exactly right. There's no, like the Bannon connections with Epstein are really interesting, I think. Although, you know, you can dig into it and show that wasn't most of the contact happening in Trump's lead up to the, to the election, which you could probably see that Steve Bannon is attempting maybe to run interference for some of the things we know now that, like, Trump and Epstein were close friends during the 90s, for example, among other accusations.

[Sam Seder]

Keep it quiet.

[Matt Taibbi]

But like. But what Ben can't argue himself out of is that Bannon's America first kind of isolationism is much more where the young Republicans are than where he is at with his rabid Zionism and anti Palestinian racism and support for the genocide. And what Bannon advocates for here. Yes. Is it's like a Christian nationalist vision, and it's much more where TP USA is than what Ben Shapiro is saying in terms of where the heart of the party is for the young people they're trying to covet or trying to bring in right now.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I'll just say, speaking of logic, because I know Ben really likes it. He did a fallacy there. Ad hominem. It is true that Bannon is associated with Jeffrey Epson and taking selfies together. Yeah, like eight years ago or five years or so ago, whatever it was. But that doesn't mean that Ben Shapiro isn't distorting our politics towards Israel's purposes more than he should. Like, that's a fair assessment to make. Those are two separate claims.

[Matt Taibbi]

Exactly. Bannon responded. I guess this was the next night or the night after, at least afterwards. Yeah, the next night. This was Steve Bannon responding to Ben Shapiro.

[Ben Shapiro]

Shapiro is like a cancer and that cancer spreads.

[Sam Seder]

It's a cancer and it metastasizes. He tried to take over Breitbart and I ran him out of there. He tried to take over David Horowitz's. Who was his mentor. Don't ask me, as the guys associate with David Horowitz, what he did there.

[Ben Shapiro]

He tried to take that over.

[Sam Seder]

And mark my word, he will make a move on Turning Point because he's always been envious of Charlie Kirk.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, yeah, that's the other thing. The make a move on Turning Point. Basically trying to say that he has the financial resources and the donors that got Daily Wire off the ground to fold tpusa in. But that was also so, like, it's just so bizarre. When Ben Shapiro was speaking, I wrote this down. He said on Candace's targeting of tpusa that people are silent about that, as if that's the problem there for him. I mean, that she's targeting tpusa. Dude, you're not upset about that. You're upset that her conspiracism that you gave birth to her and now she's getting what, like 4 million views on that stream and that she's criticizing Israel. It's not about tpusa. It's so weird.

[Sam Seder]

Well, that's what they're trying to use. Yeah, I mean, I mean, they're all literally trying to use Erica Kirk and TPUSA as a shield. Exactly. Exactly. Here is Megyn Kelly. So Shapiro fires at Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly and Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson. Bannon and Kelly are at the thing. Kelly is sitting down with avowed white. White nationalist Jack Posobiek.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right?

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

Is he an avowed white nationalist?

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, he does a lot of the sort of griper style signaling that I would use to condemn him as such.

[Sam Seder]

And no word as to whether he's fired up bumble on this trip or not. Maybe he doesn't need to anymore. But here is Megyn Kelly responding to, to Ben Shapiro. And it's interesting, like how they were going back and forth. Supposedly Megyn Kelly sent Tim Pool stuff like thank you for going after Candace Owens because she doesn't have the courage to do it, according to Tim Pool, who's mad at Megyn Kelly. But here is Megyn Kelly now responding to Ben, responding to Ben Shapiro.

[Matt Taibbi]

And recall that Ben Shapiro called them friends a day ago.

[Megyn Kelly]

Well, I found it kind of funny that Ben thinks he has the power to decide who gets excommunicated from the conservative movement, which shows a willful blindness about his position in. Reminded me a little of when the girl who was the head of our middle school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away from me.

[Matt Taibbi]

You remind me of a girl.

[Sam Seder]

Listen, listen.

[Matt Taibbi]

He reminded me of a little girl.

[Sam Seder]

First off, this is, this is incredibly insightful what she's saying. Maybe not necessarily insightful, but certainly incredibly telling. First off, we just saw Vivek Ramaswamy on Saturday night attempt to say who's in and out of the conservative movement based upon. If you are calling J.D. vance his wife Jeet and you're an out and out bigot and you loved Hitler, she doesn't address that.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, that happened the night after. We're back on Friday.

[Sam Seder]

So fair enough. But I doubt that she's going to go on her show and complain about that. The other thing is she's picked up on Ben Shapiro's essentially his status as Pope. He is always, he's usually been the pope of the Jews, deciding who's a good Jew and who's a bad Jew. Right. Like, I mean, he said like Bernie Sanders is not a good Jew because of whatever it Is that Ben Shapiro deems Gino's. Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

He had a Jews and name only.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh my God, Gino.

[Sam Seder]

But Megyn Kelly is also, I think sort of like either being very insightful on purpose or accidentally in that she's comparing all of what they're doing to junior high.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep, yep.

[Sam Seder]

Because as much as they talk about facts and not your feelings and odd hominum and using logic and ba ba ba, they're just a bunch of like, like mental midgets who are in an industry. They are just trying to like a bunch of lemonade stands and they're just trying to out lemonade each other. There, there has been like the amount of actual policy that is, that has been like, like they're talking about has been virtually nil.

[Emma Vigeland]

It makes the Dr. Seuss era look like there are wonks.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. It's like. Wait, wait, what like what are we talking about here? Is this is about the supporting of Israel? Like I haven't like heard any like even arguments about it one way or.

[Matt Taibbi]

Another, but they submerge that because all of that is happening in boardrooms. Like the future of whatever TPUSA is is being dictated by the donors that are behind it. And so they make the circus the show and they make it about their personalities or the free or. You don't get to tell me what to say. Where it's like no one is. There's a, there's an interesting, to use your word, Sam battle right now within the right wing online media ecosystem and they're all jockeying for position, which shows.

[Megyn Kelly]

A willful blindness about his position in reminded me a little of when the girl who was the head of our middle school chorus told me she was going to take all my friends away from me Chorus.

[Emma Vigeland]

Without hearing more of that story, I take that girl's side.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, there's no doubt Megyn Kelly deserved it. But like, are you really like, like, are you really proudly saying this whole tiff I'm involved in? Because let's, let's be clear. When Megan Kelly says it reminds me of when that girl in chorus said she was going to take away my friends from me. What Megyn Kelly is thinking about what Megyn Kelly did to strike back and win that little eighth grade war or whatever it was.

[Matt Taibbi]

She's thinking that little girl was me.

[Sam Seder]

And no, she's thinking I'm joking. She's thinking about like she is fully. She's not just indicting Shapiro, she's indicting herself.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, good.

[Megyn Kelly]

The head cheerleader maybe but like. So I resent the whole thing. I object to the whole thing. Ben and I. He. He had the nerve to call me a friend right before he called me a despicable coward for not calling out the people he wants called out. So he both wants to parent me and be my child. He wants to tell me what I have to do and who I have to say what to. And then when I don't, he and some of his friends want to act like utter victims because I won't do what they say. They need me. I have to be their daddy and step in to protect them. And I am not their daddy. And I resent that he thinks he's in a position to decide who must say what to whom and when.

[Matt Taibbi]

Thank you, guys. Can you pause it? I'm sorry. She wasn't talking like this always. But notice how like the there it's all their insults to our based in hierarchy where one he. She. I think know your place. She deliberately calls him a little girl and then says that he wants me to be the father in the situation.

[Emma Vigeland]

I just want the Freudian stuff is off the chain.

[Megyn Kelly]

But.

[Matt Taibbi]

But she is. She's. She's smart. Like as those. As these personalities go on the right. She's on the smarter end. We can put Tim Pool and Dave.

[Sam Seder]

Rubin at the bottom. She's now functioning like she did against that girl in chorus.

[Matt Taibbi]

Exactly.

[Sam Seder]

And by saying like. Like you're not the head of the cheerleaders.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

You're the head of chorus.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Sam Seder]

You can't get at me.

[Matt Taibbi]

You're a little girl and I'm like the man and I'm in charge. I'm like your father. There's probably nothing more humiliating you could say to a male conservative influencer than you're a little girl and I this.

[Sam Seder]

Woman that she could say Ben is bleeding out of all of his holes.

[Matt Taibbi]

There you go.

[Sam Seder]

Right?

[Matt Taibbi]

But even. But even female influencers put women in a lesser place and use that as. And she does that expertly. No. She's hyper aware of her gender and her place in it in conservative society.

[Megyn Kelly]

Thank you. So I don't think we are friends anymore. I've been a very good friend to Ben. Nobody knew who the heck Ben Shmiro was when I started putting him on my shows on the Fox News channel and I helped make him a star. Are. And I've been very, very.

[Matt Taibbi]

Amazing.

[Sam Seder]

We just watched that friendship end, folks.

[Emma Vigeland]

Check the Facebook status.

[Sam Seder]

Somebody's gonna get defriended on Instagram. No more following her on Pinterest.

[Emma Vigeland]

Looks.

[Sam Seder]

Like you guys won't be vaping. Yeah.

[Matt Taibbi]

She is out of the MySpace bathroom.

[Emma Vigeland]

I love that. For the entirety of when they were friends that she was keeping in the back of her mind, like, I made you.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

[Matt Taibbi]

So she made Ben and then Ben made Candace.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, well, she thinks she made me. I did. I don't think that's true. I was one of the. I was already being called the whiz kids. What is it?

[Emma Vigeland]

These cool kids, Philosophers.

[Sam Seder]

Cool kids philosopher by.

[Matt Taibbi]

Was that by Barry Weiss?

[Emma Vigeland]

Who?

[Sam Seder]

No, no, no, that was.

[Emma Vigeland]

Who was that?

[Sam Seder]

No, that was ages ago.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, yeah, the Barry Weiss was the IDW guys, I guess. But.

[Sam Seder]

But here is Megan Kelly now calling out Barry Weiss. Yes, so it appears. I mean, Megan Kelly is definitely walking a typewriter vote here. Right. Like she, her audience, she wants some of that Candace Owens audience, but she also wants to stay in the good graces of like the more mainstream Republicans. Yes. So she's sort of walking this line.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, and all of this sort.

[Sam Seder]

Of go back and forth over the years. Remember, like she was a villain to Donald Trump and then she became a full on Trumper. She was a full on feminist when she left Fox because she was being sexually harassed. And then, you know, it was on.

[Matt Taibbi]

She got hired by the Today show. Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

And then when, when they realized that was a big fail, she attacked back to the right.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, she's a little harsh for morning television. I don't know if they could have.

[Emma Vigeland]

Picked up on that the Santa's a white person angle. It was not one that like played to the audience. I was just in the dentist's office.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, everybody knows Sant as white. She said back in the day. Incidentally, I should just tell you, for those conservatives who are tuning in right now, Santa Claus is not real. He doesn't really exist. He's fictional, regardless.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And he's non binary.

[Sam Seder]

There's. I mean, I've noticed there's no fly on that suit. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. You know, going all the way around the world.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

People with beards could be non binary.

[Sam Seder]

You know, if it was as simple as just like going through the fly. You do it because you're on the move. Right. I'm just saying.

[Emma Vigeland]

Good.

[Sam Seder]

So here's Megyn Kelly calling out Barry Weiss. Now, there was also.

[Ben Shapiro]

There was also some response where it seemed like that call was being co.

[Sam Seder]

Signed by the new head of CBS News, Barry Weiss.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I wanted to know if you.

[Sam Seder]

Wanted to respond to that as well.

[Megyn Kelly]

So it's a similar situation with Barry. None of this is about them calling me out for anything I've said or haven't said or it's certainly not about Erica Kirk, as Ben tried to make it sound last night. It's about Israel. Those two are very pro ardent Israel activists, which is fine, but they don't get to dictate how the rest of us feel about Israel or what we do with respect to our friends and our friends opinions on Israel. And I'll tell you, you know, Barry.

[Matt Taibbi]

Weiss wants to what is your opinion?

[Megyn Kelly]

Megan Couch herself as Erica's protector, Erica's defender. She's tweet, retweeting the Ben speech saying anybody who doesn't call out conspiracy theorists is a coward. Erica Kirk barely knows Barry Weiss. Barry doesn't know anything about Erica. Barry, we've never been to a turning point.

[Matt Taibbi]

This is what is just so annoying. She approaches a substantive argument like right there where she says Israel and why I I interjected there. She doesn't say what her opinion is. It's back to drama. You don't get to say what I. But what do you have to say? And it's just amazing how they perform. It is like a play and it's like a bad play. It's like a middle school play. And the audience eats it up where it looks like political disagreement, but they're just fighting for money. I mean I've never seen anything like it. Cuz they don't even talk about the disagreement at hand.

[Sam Seder]

And they all are trying to place themselves either as like closer to Erica. I mean it's fascinating.

[Emma Vigeland]

It reminds me of Bacon's Rebellion, a Virginian colonial rebellion where both sides were saying, actually I'm the one on the side of the king. You're not doing what the king would want.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

And like Erica Kirk gave Barry Weiss the exclusive. She waited to address Candace Owens by name in that explicit interview. Like if she doesn't know who Bari Weiss is, she has bad advisors. You're actually criticizing Erica Kirk by even making this sort of point. And also, but also Candace's thing about Erica is not about Israel, it's about lunacy, conspiracy theories.

[Matt Taibbi]

Candace is saying about Erica.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

And about Turning Point usa. It's not really about Israel at all. It's about just, you know.

[Sam Seder]

There'S an element started there, but it really went on to like, she just realized like, oh, this is good for me. This conspiracy theory stuff is good for me. Egypt. And you know, first it was Israel and then it was, I mean, by the time Candace Owens was like called to heal by Erica Kirk and, and who knows what it was. Maybe she wasn't called to heal. Maybe she was like offered a sinecure. Like, you know, you're cutting into our bottom line. Here's some cat. We don't know what was, what, what went on there, but whatever it is, she came out of there. Not really stopping with the conspiracy theorizing, but more with, hey, I was just joking about not donating to tpusa.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, keep giving them money.

[Sam Seder]

Keep giving them money. Because, you know, look, for all we know and we don't, but for all we know it could be one of those situations. Keep donating to TP USA because now I get a dollar for every, now I get a dollar for every 10 that gets in there or whatever it is.

[Matt Taibbi]

At the very least it's harder for her to engage in the level of conspiracies. And she has been about Emmanuel Macron's wife, who is in France and not an American citizen, based on my knowledge versus say a bunch of really wealthy people who know Candace well within her own circles that could take action against her for certain arguments.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, she's being sued by, by the Macron's. She is for defamation.

[Matt Taibbi]

True.

[Sam Seder]

But also I would say, you know, like, she's still like just going off on the conspiracies. And when she was called to that meeting, her, her conspiracies were leaning towards like some type of like cabal around Charlie Kirk in TP usa.

[Emma Vigeland]

On Friday, she came out with the interview. A guy that I'll say on the surface doesn't appear credible to me, but said he saw Erica and a TPUSA guy, I think at a Air Force base and he recognized her eyes.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, they are something to behold.

[Emma Vigeland]

So yeah, you know, more on that later.

[Sam Seder]

But it is interesting that Kelly is trying to make this exclusively about Israel, not about the idea of just general conspiracy theories that Candace Owen is going. And she's trying to make it about like Bari Weiss and Shapiro are just, are on one side with Israel. The funny part is not only she attacking, you know, Shapiro earlier, but Bari Weiss has gotta be so depressed because Bari Weiss's like, whole thing has been, I'm gonna bring the conservatives into the CBS world and that's not going to work. Like, you know, she's, it's, she's like.

[Matt Taibbi]

She'S like Dave toxic. She's just Dave Rubin, but with like an Ivy League degree. I mean, she's also gay she's also married to a woman.

[Sam Seder]

They, she's, she's smart. She's smarter than Dave Rubin. Without a doubt, she's smarter than Dave, but she's not that much smarter.

[Matt Taibbi]

Not that much. And like Megyn Kelly's smarter than both of them.

[Sam Seder]

And the problem is, is that her, her, her, her aspirations are way out of line with what she can do.

[Matt Taibbi]

Exactly.

[Sam Seder]

Because you can certainly make a fake university down in Texas and you can certainly have a good substack by sort of being like the conservatives, you know, sort of liberal or whatever it is. But it ain't gonna work at CBS News. She may never get fired because Ellison only has like, you know, maybe, maybe just has one agenda. But it's, it's not going to work. It's not, she's not going to get the ratings that she wants.

[Emma Vigeland]

She's announced a bunch of these talks like she did with Erica Kirk, as if she's turning CBS into Jubilee. But the Erica Kirk one didn't even perform well. That one didn't perform well.

[Sam Seder]

Like, I am going to bet that whatever the slate is of those, that they will not all be Eric.

[Emma Vigeland]

No good.

[Megyn Kelly]

Couch herself as Erica's protector, Erica's defender. She's tweet retweeting the Ben speech saying anybody who doesn't call out conspiracy theorists is a coward. Erica Kirk barely knows Barry Weiss. Barry doesn't know anything about Erica. Barry Weiss has never been to a Turning Point event. Do you guys remember her here standing up for what we believe in when Charlie was alive? I don't remember her standing up for our principles. I don't remember her defending Charlie the many times he was called a racist or an anti Semite. I really don't remember that at all. What I do remember is she had Erica Kerr. Come on. One town hall in which Barry Weiss tried to play both super important VIP executive and super fabulous star anchor at her new network, CBS Pro Tip. Barry, that's no way to win friends at your new organization to try to steal all the hosting abilities of the on air talent. So good luck with that. And what she did when she had Erica there was to have the nerve to bring on the man who asked the final question of Charlie right before he got shot.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hunter. Hunter Kozak.

[Megyn Kelly]

To put Erica in the position of having to defend whether Trump uses hateful rhetoric. The nerve.

[Sam Seder]

I'll just say, I love that. I love that. So the guy who asked the question of Erica Kirk, one of the people asked the question, said, do you, Will you criticize Trump for his hateful rhetoric after she had said we need to tone down the rhetoric. And Kirk said basically, no, she wouldn't do that. But what's fascinating is that Megyn Kelly has clearly like this was, this was part of her agenda.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

This wasn't like a question just comes up and I'm rambling off the top of my head. This is part of her agenda going after Bari Weiss, which is sort of fascinating because like Matt said, Erica Kirk chose to go on, basically gave her story to Bari Weiss in the most high profile manner possible. And it underperformed for cbs, but it was still probably the big one of the biggest audience that Erica Kirk has had certainly to deliver that entire message. And Megyn Kelly clearly has a problem and wants to alienate or feels her audience has an issue with Barry Weiss, either because of Israel or maybe something else. As Megyn Kelly defends Candace Owens. Will you play this on the.

[Matt Taibbi]

Just as you just. But as you pull it up, I just want to say one, she's, she's basically her accusation is that Barry Weiss didn't do a good job for you, Erica. Barry Weiss didn't set you up. Right. That's what she's saying publicly. Is that not the case? She's saying, oh, she brought you on, she brought on this, this guy and she gonna have to make you defend Trump's rhetoric. Got to. We all try to avoid criticizing Donald Trump. My God, then we don't wanna step on or touch that third rail. And she put you in that position. How dare you. That's what she's implying. Right. And then, and I did like the accurate critique though of Bari Weiss, that Barry is such a frickin narcissist that she had to put herself in that interview for no reason. CBS has so many hosts that they could use, but Barry has to put herself as a central figure, which I feel like is. I've never seen anything like that with like the editor in chief of an organization or whatever.

[Sam Seder]

Her position is accurate and legitimate critique, but a very weird one. All aesthetic to make in that moment when she's making a critique about Shapiro and Weiss as sort of cops saying that you need to be on the side of Israel. It is oddly personal. Like, I mean, nobody in that crowd is following the newsroom dynamics of cbs. In fact, everyone in that crowd should love the fact that a conservative friendly, and that's Bari Weiss is, you know, her ideology is definitely at the very least conservative friendly. She has built the careers of a lot of these people. Everybody in that audience should be happy about this.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, she just platformed Erica Kirk in a way that obviously, you know, nobody cared. But there was an attempt to have her go mainstream. I mean, you would imagine that they would all be excited about that. But here Megyn Kelly is also defending Candace Owen, not necessarily by name, but in the way that she has positioned herself and Candace Owen now, because she no longer has TP USA as her like sort of main target, but she needs to continue on. It's going to be tougher for her to tack back to Israel did this because she sort of like blew past that into its tpusa. So now she's got to go on to something completely different, which is build off Ben Shapiro the person. And in the same way that Megyn Kelly is building off Barry Weiss the person and extrapolate what is the quality of Ben Shapiro that is really problematic. And oddly enough for Candace Owens, it turns out, not his politics, not his support of Israel, it's the Jew thing.

[Candace Owens]

I am done with it. This one is so fully off of the mother effing plantation. Truly, Ben Shapiro. Fuck you and the midget horse that you rode in on. And I say that on behalf of the world. I know you're going to get applauded by Constantine Kissen and Andrew Christ is King Clavin and all of the people, the men who have to keep applauding what you do like you're a 4 year old to make you feel good, but the rest of the world can't stand you. You're obnoxious. You have absolutely no values that exist outside of the Talmud. You describe yourself as a Talmudic Jew.

[Sam Seder]

All right, pause it. So I was with her up until the point about the Talmud.

[Matt Taibbi]

Is Andrew Clavin Jewish? I just want to check that she did she.

[Sam Seder]

I don't think so.

[Emma Vigeland]

I didn't think so.

[Sam Seder]

No. But this is where this is. I mean, this is very similar to what Megyn Kelly just was about to do on some level like go at them personally, which again, I have no problem with in and of itself. But now extrapolating out the Jew part. Now incidentally, where she's going with this Talmud is a complete lie. The book that she's referencing was written by a famous anti Semite who passed on years and years ago, not the Talmud itself. Look, the Talmud is no different than any other religious book where it's all talks about like, you know, stoning women who, you know, on the period or you know, magic happening or horrible stuff without a doubt. But here.

[Matt Taibbi]

But that's what she's just so people can identify these tropes. Because it's very scary that we're seeing this, like, complete inability for people to distinguish between someone who is an anti Semite and someone who's anti Zionist. Like, she is talking about the Talmud and I think the Kabbalah as well, and basically trying to insinuate that Jewish people, they don't just believe in the Old Testament and we believe in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and so they're not like us. That's what she's implying. She's basically saying that Jewish people have these other secretive texts that are satanic. And that's not even like, subtle. This has been so much of her commentary for like, months and months, if not years. At this point. She's. She's just run out. Like, she is worried that she's going to get sued into oblivion and she's going after a bunch of really powerful people with these conspiracy theories. She got a little ahead of herself. So now she's got to just go to what the people really want to see in her core audience.

[Sam Seder]

And also, let me just say this too. If you go back and you listen to someone like Sam Harris's conversations about the Koran, it's this the same playbook. I personally have a problem with all religious fundamentalism. I find it very problematic, particularly when that fundamentalism, you know, defines your worldview. If you want to live in your own enclave and live that fundamentalism, fine, as far as I'm concerned. But you still need to. You're a citizen of a country and you have to follow civil laws and your fundamentalism shouldn't dictate. But the way that these Islamophobes, anti Semites, the way that they operate is they go into these texts and pull stuff out. You can pull the same things out of the Christian Bibles. Any fundamentalism is bad. But it's all like the secret, secret stuff that is, you know, know, they secretly believe this. Have you read the Quran? Sam Harris would say, you know, like, I have. Have you read the Hadith? Is that what it is? And like, you know, sort of like the commentary associated with it. Like, it's. It's all the exact same strategy, good mood.

[Candace Owens]

And I encourage other people at home to learn what is in that Talmud that, you know, what Ben thinks of you. Because he doesn't just hate me, he hates you too. White men, he hates all black people. Okay? If he's following the rules of the Talmud, I mean, when I say hate, they think that we're animals, that they have a right to own us, that they have a right to make us worship them, that they have a right to lie to us.

[Matt Taibbi]

Can you have a right to sue? Here's another. Like she is basically saying that Jewish people are responsible for chattel slavery. That's what she's implying.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, yeah, no, she, she has been explicit in that. In other Words posts.

[Matt Taibbi]

And you'll just be vigilant about this for the audience. This is about capitalism and colonialism and chattel slavery, which, like how many tens of millions of black people were stolen from Africa for capitalism, for chattel slavery. It was a Christian expansionist and capitalistic movement.

[Emma Vigeland]

England had something called the Royal African Company.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, this is the real problem with all this conversation is they try to make it about religion when it's actually about nationalism. But they're all insane nationalists so they can't make that critique. And this is actually where anti Semitism come from. Is this Christian sort of lunacy us.

[Candace Owens]

And take everything that we have, that they have a right to deceive us. That they have a right to treat Charlie the way that he treated Charlie while he was alive, only to then try to defraud the population into thinking that he is somehow a part of his legacy. That he somehow cared about Charlie Kirk and cares to protect the people that are working at Turning Point usa. Goodbye, Ben. Goodbye. Question is, how much more money is Ben Shapiro going to spend to make people think that he's popular? How many more articles is his father going to write under a pen name Hank Berrian of a Daily Wire under the pen name Hank Berrian as he wrote while Ben was at Breitbart before he turned his back and betrayed them too, because that is his nature. One of these belly creatures sliver on question is how many more weeks and years do we have to keep pretending like Ben Shapiro is relevant? An open ended question, of course. What followed Ben Shapiro on stage is somebody who Charlie Kirk loved very much and we fought for to the very end against the Jewish donors who were pressuring him, some of them, because Ben Shapiro insisted that they do. That is Charlie Kirk's true legacy and that is Charlie Kirk's true friend. Just as I was and am and will continue to fight and ask questions about who killed Charlie Kirk. And to people that are at home, I implore you to wake up to these people who believe that they are contract lords. I challenge black Americans to wake up to your true history because your quarrel is not with white men. Okay? Wake up to who publishes these books and keeps us warring with one another. Christians versus Christians.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Candace Owens]

Christians versus Muslims. Wake up and learn the true history of slavery. Because that wasn't exactly a white men sport. Okay. Jewish people were the ones that were trading us. Jewish people were in control of the slave trade.

[Sam Seder]

Positive.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, my God.

[Sam Seder]

This is an out and out lie. Lie. Were there Jews who had slaves? Yes. Were there Jews who were plantation owners? There's maybe just a couple. Not that many. Actually. The vast majority were not Jews. In fact, the overwhelming. There was very few Jews in America. Were there Jews who owned some slave ships? Undoubtedly. But this was not run by Jews. It was. It was an industry that had. Was set up by the British, some instances the Dutch. And it was not Jews.

[Emma Vigeland]

Anglicans.

[Sam Seder]

It was not Jews. Were there, I'm sure, some Jews who owned a couple of boats? Without a doubt.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Sam Seder]

Were there. And like I say, did Jews have slaves? Probably not, like in the big numbers. Because Jews were not plantation owners.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes. And in the beginnings of it, say, there was an article in the New York Review of Books that talked about this. It's called the slave Trade and the Jews. And they did like some math on it that between 1658 and 1674, the Jewish investment in slave trading. West India Company like rose. But that was basically. It's like slow. Like at maximum 16% of the total. Because Anglican. Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

They're all Anglicans.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yes.

[Emma Vigeland]

There was not a Jewish person in the House of Burgesses.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right.

[Emma Vigeland]

The House of Burgesses was the big government body that the. All the plantation owners got together to use to figure out how we're going to maintain slavery. Like, it's. It's ludicrous.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, but. But this is. See the pivot, right? I mean.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

We're three minutes into this clip and she has gone from Ben Shapiro is a little boy who has been faking it. Okay, agreed. Into Jews created the slave trade.

[Candace Owens]

Up to your true history because your quarrel is not with white men. Okay, wake up to who publishes these books and keeps us war with one another. Christians versus Christians. Right. Christians versus Muslims. Wake up and learn the true history of slavery. Because that wasn't exactly a white men sport. Okay.

[Matt Taibbi]

What?

[Candace Owens]

Jewish people were the ones that were trading us? Jewish people were in control of the slave trade. They've buried a lot of it, but it's there and you can find it. I think all of us need to wake up to this because it's making me absolutely sick at the. He is so bold that he dare sit near Charlie Kirk's chair, that he dare grace that stage when Charlie Kirk knew exactly what Ben Shapiro was and will always be. So again, on your belly, Ben Shapiro.

[Sam Seder]

I mean again, I got no problem what she says about Ben Shapiro, but the, this is where she's headed it and to be fair, it's maybe where she's always been. She's getting a lot more attention now. Again we had said, Matt and I remember years ago talking about Candace Owen extolling Hitler but for his like imperial designs. But domestically he did good stuff. The book burnings, the gas chambers, Audubon, I guess. Central spiral. I looked it up, there was about a dozen slave ships owned by Jewish people out of the 35,000 total.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Emma Vigeland]

Again, like anybody with any sort of passion, familiarity of American slavery would not be thinking this is not a white man sport.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean that's crazy. It's crazy. But, but, but, but that's, that's, I.

[Sam Seder]

Mean it like actually it's not a sport.

[Emma Vigeland]

It created whiteness almost in this country. Like before slavery had really advanced, it was Christians versus non Christians and all of a sudden the black people started being Christians. It's like, wait a second, not like that.

[Matt Taibbi]

And everything she does and all of this commentary is designed to obscure like the true reality of why people can't get ahead or build gen or why like black generational wealth has lagged behind that of white people and all of that that she's gesturing towards. She finds a group that can be basically pigeonholed and discriminated against and don't look at the rest of the structure which is capitalism.

[Sam Seder]

Well, we gotta pick this cotton here. And I'm about to pay a lot of money for people, but this hit break come by and said hey wait a second, I got a better idea.

[Emma Vigeland]

And actually for any of the anti Semites listening, Zionism also wasn't originally a Jewish thing, it was originally a Christian colonial thing.

[Matt Taibbi]

And they have to come up with conspiracy theories to obscure the fact that it was Christianity, Christian conquest and capitalism that are behind all these ails. So just know she's actively misleading you too.

[Sam Seder]

It's going to be interesting to see if she will retain her audience as she goes down this anti Semitic wormhole. My guess is interesting is one word for it. Significant amount.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. Yep.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, yeah, I mean she's, she's already been speaking to damaged people about this whole Charlie Kirk thing and she did upset a lot of them with the secret meeting with Erica. But who remains is going to be even more of a broken core of Cult followers.

[Sam Seder]

Now let's go back to number six because this takes us full circle. Candace Owens is out there now telling her audience, the black people in our audience, you gotta wake up. You gotta wake up to what not whitey is doing. Whitey was not responsible for slavery.

[Matt Taibbi]

It was the Jews.

[Sam Seder]

It was the Jewish. The Jewish were responsible for slavery. And what's fascinating is you've got J.D. vance at TP USA telling people we're not going to kick Nick Fuentes out of this coalition because he's controversial. Like his controversial opinions that black people shouldn't live amongst us and that Jews are, are, you know, shouldn't live amongst us.

[Emma Vigeland]

Controversial. My wife.

[Sam Seder]

A slur controversial in that he was like called my. Basically called my wife the N word for Indians. We're not going to kick him out. And he now has come full circle to where I don't know if it's the full on horseshoe with conservative. Like, because, because it's, it's really just more like, like this, you know, right. There's not really this, there's no gulf. But he comes out like literally within a day or two of Candace Owens saying we should not be demonizing white people for slavery because it was the Jews. Here is JD Vance with his own extolling of, of how America is back.

[J.D. Vance]

We believe in hard work and merit. Unlike the left, we stand against treating anybody. And I love what Nikki said about this, we don't treat anybody different because of their race or their sex. So we have relegated DEI to the dustbin of history, which is exactly where it belongs.

[Sam Seder]

To.

[Emma Vigeland]

Can I just comment? Every crowd shot is very old. Although people here are not like Turning Point. CS Space is supposed to be a college outreach, youth outreach thing. All these people are like, good point, 55 years old. I mean, not, you know.

[Matt Taibbi]

Just a lot of interested parents.

[J.D. Vance]

In the United States of America. You don't have to apologize for being white anymore. And if you're an Asian, you don't have to talk around your skin color when you're applying for college. Because we judge people based on who they are, not on ethnicity and things they can't control.

[Sam Seder]

Pause it for a second. Now wait a second. Like this is contradicting itself because earlier in the speech he's saying, we're not going to police people who call my wife a Jeep. Well, is that not based upon, like, what is that based upon? That's not a compliment, right?

[Matt Taibbi]

Or I don't think it's a compliment.

[Sam Seder]

Well, I mean, he's contradicting himself and this is the thing is that it works in that room.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

But this is why J.D. vance. And look, this is gonna more than likely, I mean, going to be the Republican nominee. He could very well be president this time next year or this time two years from now in the run up to the 28 election. But this is the contradiction that he's not. That's not going to be able to hold. He's not going to be able to both maintain. I mean, if I was him, I would not want to be president before 2028. Because. Because he's got to stay subterranean to some level so that he can speak to the Nick Fuentes, his people, and then later in the general, speak to normal people.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

But you cannot both say, I'm not going to disavow somebody for calling my wife a jeep and everything that implies. Because it's not just personal to Usha.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

It is calling, we should say Southeast Asian people because I thought he was going to go there with Asian, but he wasn't Southeast Asian people. Jeets. And he can't then turn around and go like. We don't judge people by their. The skin color. What, what, what is it that, what is the essential part about his wife that is a jeet if not her skin color? Has she not acclimated to us, to American customs? Is that what's going on? I mean, that contradiction is going to fall apart. And that's where ultimately he's got to be pressed. And that cleave has got to happen soon. Let's go to this number seven. This is also disgusting insofar as, like, I mean, I don't know what.

[Emma Vigeland]

Decent.

[Sam Seder]

Defense attorney in the world will not use this speech as saying it is impossible for my client to get a fair trial in this country.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, let alone the way that the FBI acted the whole. I mean, but yeah.

[Sam Seder]

The Vice President, United States has now said somebody who is the alleged killer of Charlie Kirk is the killer of Charlie Kirk. There has not been.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

An hour's worth of trial that has gone on. The guy just showed up and, you know, so, like, this is, this is so textbook.

[Matt Taibbi]

But do you think that they know almost that they bungled it so badly with the way that the FBI was leaking all of this false information that they're, they don't, they don't care about justice for Charlie Kirk. They're doing a pyrotechnics display and like a booth about where he was assassinated, because they are like, this is about getting some sort of political benefit from him. Making a martyr of him for Christian fundamentalists in this country.

[Sam Seder]

This clip is very, very strange in that way.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

And I mean, you also have to like, tease out all the sort of like, handmaiden's tale, Christian, Christian fundamentalism that's in there. But this clip is very, very like, you know, this guy's not an idiot. This was in some ways the most stunning thing that, that he said.

[J.D. Vance]

He said of a true Christian Scripture tells us, by your fruits ye shall know them. And we might ask, what are the fruits of these people and their principles? And the answer is a man named Tyler Robinson who killed my friend. Think about it. He has everything that the far left want from our young men. He rejected the conservatism and the spirituality, the values of the. His small town family. He moved into a small apartment. He became addicted to porn, he became addicted to hate, and he ended up sleeping with somebody who doesn't know whether they're a man or a woman. That is the nightmare scenario, but that is the scenario that the left has actively advertised they want for American families and the young men in the audience in particular. That is exactly why the. We have to fight them. Because the fruits of true Christianity are men like Charlie Kirk.

[Sam Seder]

Let's, let's be clear. This kid was so bathed in weapons. Now, again, allegedly, he is the, he killed Charlie Kirk. But the idea that the Vice President of the United States would say that this guy's the killer without a single day of trial is sort of stunning.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's prompted by Candace, I think, and.

[Sam Seder]

What she's been saying that he's trying to get out in front of it.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, Erica Kirk, before she referenced Candace explicitly, said, we're trying to prosecute this guy and we don't want the, the case to be, you know, I guess unfairly influenced from the outside of referring to Candace because they're worried that Candace is. And all the stuff she's doing is going to mess up the jury pool. So now they're trying to say, like, no, he is guilty. Like, and Candace yet last week said no, they actually don't have any evidence. That's her one takeaway from the meeting for her audience was that they don't have any more evidence than they're sharing publicly. So she's not going to stop asking questions.

[Matt Taibbi]

But, but this incentive is kind of this. Well, I don't know if it's exactly the same because they look incompetent. If that's the case, then. And they can't get a conviction. But for Candace's Purposes, if this is never resolved, it's literally the dream scenario for her.

[Emma Vigeland]

And I mean, from their perspective, I just think they're just playing for immediate propaganda value and don't care if it like, even the Luigi stuff, like the way they talk about that is just insane. They like. It's crazy the way that, that they open investigations get talked about by people who are supposed to be looking into them.

[Matt Taibbi]

I mean, anytime an immigrant kills somebody, like a young white woman, they're using it in the exact same way that they would the Lake and Riley act or that girl on public transport in Chicago.

[Emma Vigeland]

The Brown shooting. Yeah, These are just propaganda opportunities for them.

[Sam Seder]

All the conspiracy mongering around the Brown shooting by all of the right wingers who decry Candace Owens conspiracy. Talk about Charlie Kirk and this guy going out there and sort of disseminating for all we know, half truths about. About any of this. Also, I should also point out that this guy was raised in a very conservative family. Again, bathed in guns, gun culture.

[Emma Vigeland]

How do you solve problems? Shooting them.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Emma Vigeland]

Gunfighter nation.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah, we have a. We have a mass psychosis problem in this country, and the amount of guns that we have doesn't help.

[Sam Seder]

Let's do a couple more clips and then we'll head out. I want to play this clip of Rick Santelli. He is this guy, sort of a scumbag. He was the guy who was on the floor of the Chicago Commodities Exchange complaining that homeowners might get bailed out from loans that were issued by people who are called loan officers. Not loan salesmen. Not loan saleswomen, loan officers. Why? Because they had a fiduciary, a fiduciary responsibility to make loans that the loan loaner was capable of paying back. And they didn't because they wanted to sell these on secondary markets. They wanted to make fees. They wanted to sell them into tranches so that they could be securitized, et cetera, et cetera.

[Matt Taibbi]

Would you be shocked to know his business is derivatives trading?

[Sam Seder]

I would not be shocked. And I should also add that had Barack Obama, instead of bailing out the banks, bailed out the homeowners so that they could then pay off the bank. Right. Like, the money could have gone one of two different directions. You go to the bank, all these loans, these bad loans that you have, we're gonna, we're gonna make you whole. And they said, and incidentally, we make you whole. Please cut some slack to the people who borrowed the money.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. Don't throw people out of the homes that you Irresponsibly borrowed money to let people live in.

[Sam Seder]

Or they could have paid the homeowner who had then a legal responsibility. They didn't have to ask the homeowner, give the money to the bank. They had a legal responsibility to pay the bank. They could have done it, could have gone in one of those two different directions. And they decided to give the money to the bank. And oddly, the bank said, thank you for the free money. Now we're gonna foreclose on those homes.

[Matt Taibbi]

And what do you know, The Democrats lost 1,000 seats across the country in the wake of Obama's 2008 victory. With the backlash being so enormous because of the slowness of the recovery. Based on exactly what you're saying, that.

[Sam Seder]

And 2 to 3 million people lose their homes and then Donald Trump gets elected.

[Matt Taibbi]

Obama's whole domestic agenda out the window.

[Emma Vigeland]

By the way, Silicon Valley gets a bunch of free money, cheap money from these banks. And we privatized space for Elon Musk.

[Sam Seder]

But here is Frank Santelli. It's a different day. And what's his name, Rick Santelli, a different day. And he's out basically talking about consumer sentiment, which as a, I mean, it could be an economic indicator. It's a little bit soft as far as economic indicators come because you just don't know what this means for behavior and whatnot. But as a political issue, it's a problem if you are the party in power and consumers think things are shite. To Michigan sentiment and the inflation metrics.

[Ben Shapiro]

Embedded in this report.

[Sam Seder]

So the mid month read gets tossed.

[Ben Shapiro]

53.3 was the mid month read on the headline.

[Sam Seder]

It now moves lower to 52.9. That would be the weakest since it.

[Ben Shapiro]

Was 51 in November. And I'd like to point out that.

[Sam Seder]

If you look at the absolute low.

[Ben Shapiro]

It is 50 from June of 22. We're not far away from the low.

[Sam Seder]

Going back to my database in the 70s.

[Ben Shapiro]

Now, if we look at current conditions, same dynamic. 50.7, mid month becomes 50.4 and 50.4 is a new all time low replacing the 50.7. Also, my database goes back into the 1970s. Look at expectations, same dynamic mid month.

[Sam Seder]

55 now becomes 54.6.

[Ben Shapiro]

And 54.6 be the weakest since November when it was 51 to Michigan.

[Sam Seder]

So there you have it. I mean, the consumer sentiment is at an all time low. There was a piece about Donald Trump just doing his affordability tour in North Carolina and one of the quotes was that they had to lower the price of the Trump beanies down to $5 because people couldn't afford them who were coming to the rally.

[Matt Taibbi]

Wow. He hates doing those, by the way. What's fun? The route. No, the affordability ones. Because he gets mad that he has to be on the defensive. So he's lashed out in a variety of different ways, including calling it a Democratic hoax over and over. But you have Susie Wiles and I think his 2024 campaign director, whose name is escaping me, but who's been trying to try to force him back onto the tracks with affordability. And he just.

[Megyn Kelly]

He.

[Matt Taibbi]

He is. He is built to be a politician from the outside in that way. And. And he can't defend what he's done.

[Emma Vigeland]

His entire life has been set up so he doesn't have to know what affordability means.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly.

[Emma Vigeland]

And now he has to, like, in his final years, react to it as, like, the dominant. What is that? When you have to ask for the price of something and you're not sure on the price and you feel anxiety. I've never felt that horrible.

[Sam Seder]

Really horrible. Last video. I guess we'll have to wait. We can wait on the Tim Pool thing. That thing is ever.

[Matt Taibbi]

We'll do a lot tomorrow, too.

[Sam Seder]

I really want. Well, you can talk about that. That savage piece, too, I guess. But here is. This has always been something that, like, I felt this is so validating because I have capitulated and got TSA. Pre.

[Matt Taibbi]

Pre check.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, pre check. It's like 65 bucks for the. For maybe the year. Maybe it's even less than that.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

But I resented it. That just on principle, the idea of, like, wait a second. Why are we getting, like, this is supposed to be. We're going through security supposedly as a public service to everybody. Right. We're keeping everybody safe. Why is it that, like, you can. I mean, I would never do the clear thing.

[Matt Taibbi]

I really resented the privatized one.

[Sam Seder]

The privatized one. And now they have another one. Because it's just like, what the f. This is messed up. This is messed up. There shouldn't be like a, you know, a speed through based upon your. You know, this is really sort of like, antithetical to what supposedly, you know, like, public service should be about.

[Matt Taibbi]

You're telling me that airports are dividing people by class, sometimes by first and then business and then economy.

[Sam Seder]

At least those are private airlines. Right. I mean, the. It's the government.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

That pays everybody at those checkpoints. And that's what really gets me. I agree with you on our whole. Society is Divided up in class in terms of, like, dollars. But the idea that the government would participate in that, I think is very problematic.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. So Zoran talked about this. I guess this was an interview with.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah.

[Matt Taibbi]

Trevor Noah a few days ago.

[Sam Seder]

It feels like New York has, like.

[Ben Shapiro]

Many cities in the world, fallen into the trap of fixing what needs to be fixed for the wealthy and then.

[Sam Seder]

Sort of ignoring or pushing aside the problems that affect the poor. I mean, I think about. I think about when you fly.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

We have made it such a difficult experience to go through TSA that there's now a financial incentive to sign up for a separate program.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

That can move you through it quicker.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

I mean, we have monetized the dysfunction of flying. Do you think that's by design, though? I'm gonna leave that to you and Dave, man. Yeah. Convenience is up for sale.

[Matt Taibbi]

Absolutely.

[Sam Seder]

Convenience has been up for sale for the longer. But it's absurd to me that you should have to pay for the experience that you should already be getting. You were already paid.

[Matt Taibbi]

We already paid, like, to get to the airport. You paid probably three to four times more to buy water and a granola bar and maybe a couple coffee and.

[Emma Vigeland]

Taxes for the security.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. And then you get on a plane and they've shrunk the seats to such a degree that you have no breathing room. If you are, like, above average in height or weight in any way, it's crazy. And it's already insanely expensive, too. And if you have an emergency, you can't cancel. And if the flight has an emergency and cancels on you, you're not really guaranteed to be made whole again. It's. It's the, it's late stage capitalism stuff.

[Sam Seder]

The, the idea, though, like, what he's talking about is these grades of public service. There should be just one grade of public service. Good.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yep.

[Sam Seder]

Yep, that's it.

[Emma Vigeland]

And it's kind of a tell that, like, there's no all, all, all rich or all first class planes. They all need like, like to balance it out with having the rest of us on board in the back of it, which I think kind of tells, like, we could outnumber these people if we want.

[Matt Taibbi]

Well, then there's private. Then there's private, which we wouldn't even consider.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah, that should be outlawed.

[Sam Seder]

Yeah, that should be outlawed.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

And, you know, like, why is the faa, like. Like, this is the whole thing. This again, you want to. They could privatize the FAA and you would see planes falling from the skies constantly. Constantly. You have 12 different private FAAs across the country.

[Emma Vigeland]

North Dakota, North Dakota kind of has private air traffic. And there was a near miss earlier. We talked about on the show how.

[Sam Seder]

Many, how many, like flights are going over North Dakota. Exactly, let's see it go into Chicago.

[Emma Vigeland]

But they said like, we tried to ask anybody and they're like, well, we don't have any, we don't have to respond to you about that incident. And there's all these near misses now a second midair near mid air collision reported near Venezuela involving US Air Force. I mean, and we opened Trump's administration with that helicopter and the plane crashed into each other. Like, we, we can't, we need to focus on what is valuable and instead we're stretching our resources to accommodate rich people.

[Matt Taibbi]

Do you think that they know? Do you, like, we just got this IM from Laudi. Aman says American Airlines just announced this weekend that they will no longer reward frequent flyer miles to people who fly economy. I don't know if that's true, but if that's the, like, I got it. I have some, I have some frequent flyer number I got to check out. But like, do you think that the corporations know that they're doing this consciously in the Trump administration right now, that there's like this grab bag mentality, that they know that something's coming run.

[Emma Vigeland]

They know rich people have too much money.

[Matt Taibbi]

Right. So I just wonder if it's like, you know, it really feels like all of this stuff, the mergers, the corporate exploitation of consumers that is just at an all time high right now. Like, like they must just realize we have a short window to expand and make as much money and make this company as big as we can and we're going to do that.

[Sam Seder]

I think, I think that that is, I think the grab bag mentality is, is definitely there, but I also think there's just an impetus of, like when you see the space to, you go and you take it, it's just like they're just, it's like the opportunity is there. You strike, you strike. You make as much money as you can as quickly as you can and get out.

[Emma Vigeland]

Businesses will do this so long as inequality exists and rich, everyone else has no money and rich people have more money than they know what to do with. The economy will reflect that.

[Sam Seder]

All right, folks, gonna read some IMs. These are, these are going to be the final IMs for me for 2025. Oh, I don't know. In past years I've gotten a lot more sentimental. This year I'm like, good riddance.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah this year. This year it's been a lot.

[Sam Seder]

This has been not even like the calendar year. The sort of the fiscal year was a rough year. So I'm. I'm happy to see this one go. Nick from East New York all the in companies making buck this week with redactions. Ty Warren Yay. The app is working for me again. Yes, we had a problem with our restreaming service and we're using something different. We've got to figure this out future reactionary all The Shapiro running 30 minute ads on YouTube is yet another reason to stream on Rumble JK scary Carrie my birthday is during your Christmas break and I have finally have a membership to request this. Can I get an early birthday shofar? Yes you can. Happy early birthday. Go Bills. Central Spiral. Any predictions for next year, Sam? Oh, we should have done that on some of the.

[Emma Vigeland]

You already did. You predicted Trump would die.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, did I do that on air? Pretty sure so far. Or was it you did on there? Okay. Yeah.

[Matt Taibbi]

I think maybe not.

[Sam Seder]

I think, I think 2026, I think that there is a. I, I think there's a 60% chance that he is not president this time next year or it's been announced that he's. That. That's my guess. I mean you know I would, I would I bet on this new.

[Matt Taibbi]

Okay.

[Sam Seder]

However, I would bet that we are not going to take an ad for Kamala Harris in 2026.

[Matt Taibbi]

Okay. Well now we have to take one to choose the odds or to bet to win the money.

[Sam Seder]

That would be the way to do it.

[Emma Vigeland]

I don't know if you guys saw this from this morning but just on the Barry Weiss thing. Barry Weiss just addressed the 60 Minutes situation on CBS News 9am editorial call. She says she pulled the 60 segment on a Salvadoran prison because it did not advance the ball.

[Sam Seder]

So what the.

[Matt Taibbi]

You know, when I look at Barry, I think that woman knows sports.

[Sam Seder]

But, but also the, the point of.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of what team are we on?

[Sam Seder]

Of 60 Minutes. Exactly. But no, what she's saying. She's saying there's no nude news there. But that is absurd.

[Matt Taibbi]

First of all, 60 they interviewed the. The, the detainees and aren't you guys supposed to be the refs, not the players on the field?

[Emma Vigeland]

It's very strange the idea they only do stuff that introduces completely new reporting.

[Matt Taibbi]

What.

[Sam Seder]

How did Erica Kirk advance the ball? What did we learn from that? That.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, if her advice to young women.

[Matt Taibbi]

Please ball is getting barried on tv. You know, with all of her charisma.

[Sam Seder]

Exactly. Hack all things. Sam, can you give us our final poggers of the year, please? Thank you to our Twitch streamers. Poggers. May your Christmas and holiday season and New Year's be a massive level 35 hype train. Yeah.

[Matt Taibbi]

Wow.

[Sam Seder]

Matthew Philadelphia. Maybe Dave Rubin was right. A drop. Maybe the drop. I'm staying in the race. Hi, Sam. I sent an email about Francesca Hong, a socialist running for governor here in Wisconsin. She's been getting good traction lately and I think it would be helpful for you to talk about her a little bit. Yeah, we'll look into. I heard about that. You know, like. And we were contemplating, you know, maybe doing an interview. I just don't know. Like, governor's races are just sort of doing primaries in governor races are tricky because it's just. It makes us cast our net even further afield. But. But maybe he did. Rivalry Canada State sanctioned. Yeah, I don't know. Tomo flank. Happy fun day Monday, folks. Fun fact for maga. Many Muslim families have been in Europe for longer than many white families have been in the United States. Also, the alpha male Trump testicle caddies would piss their pants and cry after five minutes around European soccer fans. All right, I'm going to read five more. Bingo, Dango. All I can think of is listening to CBS letter is Mario's the Wire quote. You want it to be one way, but it's the other way. We are firmly in the other way now. Sam, you're being like Thanos right now.

[Matt Taibbi]

Wow.

[Sam Seder]

Hot, hot local owl. I'm starting to wonder how a guy involved with Epstein could be the could become president. It's almost like he could have some leverage over powerful people.

[Matt Taibbi]

I don't know. If Trump had access to that stuff from Epstein, Trump might have been the subject of leverage.

[Sam Seder]

Cedar B. Worth lifting up after last week's discussion on AI data centers, the Michigan Public Service Commission voted unanimously to approve an electric provider's request to fast track a massive Oracle OpenAI AI data center, bypassing a contested case standard that would have required the commission to consider through evidence and testimony from all sides. It had the full and unequivocal support of Governor Whitmer despite massive overwhelming opposition from the public. That's called abundance. That is abundance. Tommy from Yakubia. Sam, I asked this question a few years back but never got a clear answer. Does Barry Weiss's University of Austin have a 28 story tower with an observation deck and is there an elevator that can accommodate a good sized footlock?

[Candace Owens]

I am.

[Matt Taibbi]

What?

[Emma Vigeland]

That's a reference to a Horrible incident on the campus of ut.

[Sam Seder]

Oh, back in the day.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. The original sort of sniper.

[Sam Seder]

Yes. That was in the 70s. Yeah, early 70s.

[Emma Vigeland]

Everyone forgot about that now because we've had so many shootings since.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah.

[Sam Seder]

Jonathan Armstead. Emma, I want to thank you this weekend when I watch your interview from a few weeks ago with the vanguard when one of the hosts said that Candace Owens was objectively more attracted than Zendaya. I like how you jumped in and said, zendaya is an angel sent to Earth. Earth as a black nerd. It was manna from above to hear you defend the best girlfriend Spider man has ever had.

[Matt Taibbi]

Oh, well, I don't care about that, but she's very talented and I just thought. I forget who said that. That's just. That's a crazy opinion by Zach.

[Emma Vigeland]

Pretty wild one.

[Matt Taibbi]

Yeah. He's like a stunning model.

[Sam Seder]

Nicola. It's capitalism and the imperialist capitalism which is bound up. And it's why a serious anti imperialist critique has to be anti capitalist and vice versa. They're playing a game called capitalism. And the final I am, at least for me, of 2025, but not for all of you. Emma will be here tomorrow. Comes from. Let's see. I'm not gonna go. Sam's tent pole. Oh, what the heck. Sam's tent Pole. This content would have made against the Web Volume 2 One Hell of a read. Emma, the girl on the bus in Charlotte was a refugee and she was killed by a deranged American man.

[Matt Taibbi]

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I must have confused that with the other crime that they tried to elevate. It might have been in Atlanta. I forget. I'm sorry.

[Sam Seder]

All right, well, let me take one more since that was not even addressed. Kowalski from Nebraska.

[Matt Taibbi]

You don't want the final IM of your year to be me getting corrected?

[Sam Seder]

No.

[Matt Taibbi]

Okay.

[Sam Seder]

Kowalski from Nebraska. There is a war on Christmas, but it is a class war. The rich and powerful and fake Christians have done nothing but take what has been historically a sacred time of the year, the winter solstice celebration. We have celebrated the solstice in practically every culture across this planet with feasts, sensation, the cessation of hostilities, gift giving and singing for thousands of years. It connects to our ancestors. But these powerful groups have decided to remove the sacred, commercialize the whole thing, and this year inflict austerity upon the population to the point where there will be a lack of feasting in many homes with snap cuts, people are being burdened with excessive health care costs, which will make gift giving practically impossible. There is a war on Christmas. It is a class war. Matt, Brian and absentia. Emma, Great job this year, folks. See you. Well, Emma will see you tomorrow. I will see you in January. To get to where I want But I know somehow I'm going to get.

[Matt Taibbi]

There.

[Sam Seder]

I wasn't looking when I just got caught between the truth and the light fall the f it out won't make me feel any better yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the meds are gonna kick in and my pilot light shining bright I get somewhere the choice was made for the option where you don't get paid for the road that bends before it finally breaks you I get somebody I lost my drive between the 101 and the 5 do you know how far the teacher takes you? Yeah, I know the clock is ticking but the man's not gonna kick in and my pilot light shining bright. While I shifted in and out of gear Waiting for my moment to have.

[Candace Owens]

Love.

[Sam Seder]

I don't know how much longer I can stay in or how much more I got to pay to play I know somehow the line got great in.