← The Majority Report with Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3604 - Israel Escalates; How Cuba Endures; Tracking Anti-Trans Bills w/ Helen Yaffe, Erin Reed
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Emma Vigeland
You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this show@jointhemajorityreport.com and get an extra hour of content daily.
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Sam Seder
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
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Emma Vigeland
It is Thursday, March 19, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Seder and 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, Helen Yaffe, author of We Are How a Revolutionary People have Survived in the Post Soviet World will be with us to talk about how Cuba continues to endure U.S. brutality. And later in the show, Aaron Reid joins us again to help track the anti trans legislation and ballot measures across the country. Also on the program, Israel bombs Iran's gas fields in a dramatic escalation and Iran responds by bombing Gulf states energy infrastructure. Oil prices begin to spiral out of control. Reuters reports that Trump is considering sending thousands of troops to Iran and now is asking Congress for $200 billion for this war, up from 50 billion. Russia has been ramping up its intelligence and military assistance to Iran as it fights back against the US And Israel. Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe contradicted Trump's claims about Iran's imminent nukes in their Senate intelligence testimony yesterday curiously left some things out of prepared remarks. The FBI is investigating the counterterrorism official Joe Kent, who resigned over the Iran war, saying he's a leaker. The Fed leaves interest rates unchanged as February's inflation data shows a sharp rise in wholesale prices. And this is before the Iran war was launched on February 28. The FBI and IRS will investigate non profit organizations that the Trump administration says are linked to domestic terrorism, which we know from Ken Klippenstein's reporting means anti capitalism, anti Christianity, gender identity extremists. Yep. Elizabeth Warren endorses Mallory McMorrow.
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Aaron Reed
Why?
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Emma Vigeland
And then endorses Graham Platner. So it's hard to stay that mad, but still, what is going on?
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Matt Binder
Classic war girly. I had just heard of the Platner thing. When I entered the office today, I was feeling very angry.
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Emma Vigeland
Oh no, you heard the McMorrow thing.
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Matt Binder
Yes, I had not heard the moral thing until you told me.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah, so that's. She makes it so hard for me. Republicans strip the newly independent Representative Kevin Kiley of his committee assignments. And lastly, Mark Wayne Mullins hearing to lead DHS goes off the rails after his celebration of violence against Rand Paul comes back into focus. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show everybody. It's an em Majority Report Thursday. Hello, Matt. Hello, Brian. Hello. Lovely audience. It is great to be back. I'll be off for the next few days in my little jaunt out to la. I'll be on some shows while I'm out there, including Francesca Fiorentini's live show on Sunday. There's. It's all sold out, sadly. It's nasty typewriter but if you want to see a recording of it, you can become a patron of the Bituation room. So that's my little plug there. But we have a lot of news to get to so let's just start here. Yeah, yeah. Like to say that this Iran war has been a disaster every single step of the way would be a massive understatement. At least 13 U.S. service people have been killed, hundreds wounded. The new figures in terms of the death toll in Iran is 3,000. And reminder that we bombed that girls school children are among those dead. Israel's also been bombing Lebanon over and over again. They have bombed central Beirut and killed around a thousand people in Lebanon since February 28th. Just bombing apartment complexes and now apparently more troops. US troops are a real possibility in this spiraling war. The escalation trap that Trump has entered us into. Reuters reported last night that Trump is considering deploying thousands of troops in addition to the around 2,000 Marines that are already on their way. They want to go to send ground forces or they're talking about options about sending them to Iran's Kharg island, which we just bombed. That's the hub for a lot of Iran's oil exports. That seems like boots on the ground. Island is a land, right. I guess they don't count boots on the ground. If we have this entire naval armada encircling Iran. But that's boots on the sea.
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Matt Binder
Look at a map. Kharga Island. If any troops go there, they will be immediately, in my opinion, hit with missiles from Iran. There's no way Iran's going to allow them to take that island. And also it looks a lot like Little St. James.
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Emma Vigeland
Size wise and size wise. Well, I mean I have a, I have a suggestion for how we could repurpose a little St. James and send some people over there. An island prison.
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Aaron Reed
I don't know, just an Australia type thing.
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Emma Vigeland
That's what I'm thinking. I'm just what I'm thinking. But no one is going to be able to repopulate there because it's all going to be like 7 year old pedophile men, the ones that populate our
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Aaron Reed
administration, who will be castrated if we see this through.
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Emma Vigeland
If we see this through, of course, I mean, and then, like, you know, we all know what's up with Netanyahu right now. I've got a lot of suggestions. But NATO allies refused Trump's demands that they send their own troops into harm's way because Trump was toying with the idea, as we just said, of the US Navy escorting these oil tankers, but didn't want the political blowback of what would happen when inevitably Iran would bomb US Troops. So Trump's like, hey, Europe, can you put your bodies on the line so I don't have to take the political hit?
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Matt Binder
And I'll just say they're saying no with the language that we should use. Instead of this bullshit forever war thing, which opens the door to have short wars, they're saying, no, wars of choice. We're not going to participate in a war of choice. And that's much clearer language that can't be co opted.
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Emma Vigeland
Exactly right. This idea that more troops are going to be sent would fit into the insane request from the administration for $200 billion in supplemental funding for this criminal war in Iran. The initial request was $50 billion. And by the way, we're already in a major economic crisis. There was this atrocious inflation report that even had the financial press freaking out. That came out this morning. And Fed Chair Powell, who's a few months away from having to leave his position, Trump's going to appoint some crony, sounded the alarm at the press conference yesterday about this inflation data. But there, this is before the war in Iran. This is before oil prices are skyrocketing like this. And yesterday, Israel dramatically escalated. They bombed Iran's South Pars gas field, which is the largest gas field in the entire world. It produces two thirds of Iran's natural gas. And this is an attack on Iran's economic infrastructure. So of course they retaliate. They lobbed missiles at Israel, Iran, they struck the uae, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and they struck their energy infrastructure as well. But most importantly, they hit Qatar's LNG site. And that is an enormously important liquid natural gas energy producer. So this is spiraling out of control in ways that obviously Trump did not foresee. He's trying to, like, fill in the gaps with removing sanctions on Iranian oil has been floated. Of course, he's talked about waiving the Jones Act. They waived the Jones act for 60 days to try to slow the bleeding here. But here is Trump's statement on this true social last night. He says Israel, out of anger for what has taken place in the Middle east, has violently lashed out at a major facility known as South Pars Gas Field in Iran. A relatively small section of the hole has been hit. The United States knew nothing about this particular attack, and the country of Qatar was in no way, shape or form involved with it, nor did it have any idea that it was going to happen. Unfortunately, Iran did not know this or any of the pertinent facts pertaining to the south parts attack. What are you talking. Oh, okay, okay. So he's trying to claim that Israel acted alone with all the weapons and the diplomatic. Giving them everything that we give them
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Matt Binder
and the license to act alone that we give them.
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Emma Vigeland
Yes, but he's Qatar. The Qataris must have given him a call and said, are you effing kidding me? We gave you a $400 million plane free of charge. We appealed to you directly, not through, like, the Zionist lobby buddy. We did it in the language that you usually appreciate, which is a literal
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Matt Binder
gift to you, a luxury item.
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Emma Vigeland
And you're still allowing your attack dog in the Middle east to target our energy infrastructure. This is, like, really, really scary and significant, but here, Iran's not the attack dog.
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Matt Binder
Israel's the attack dog. Iran.
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Emma Vigeland
That's what I meant to say.
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Matt Binder
Yeah.
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Emma Vigeland
Did that Qatar attack.
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Matt Binder
Iran attacked Qatar. You implied that Israel attacked Qatar by saying the attack dog. Oh, unless I misunderstood.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah. I'm not fair.
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Aaron Reed
Israel did attack Qatar.
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Emma Vigeland
Earlier I meant to say Israel attacked Iran as our attack dog in the Middle east, and then Iran retaliated, and that is the blowback for it. Thank you for clarifying my. My sentence structure there. But, like, I mean, in 24 hours, this is what we have to kind of get our hands around. And so, like, the Gulf states here are kind of understanding that they're the little brother of the United States. They're feeling this because we're prioritizing Israel. Above all, Qatar gave Trump this plane. They're still bearing the brunt of this, and they're not getting the defense that we provide to Israel. So they're obviously furious. And Trump had to come out with this. This truth social statement and disavow what Israel did. But, like, I'm honestly so. I just am a little bit in disbelief when you see the discourse online about Trump's relationship with Israel versus Biden. Because here on the left, we're actually consistent. We talked all the time about how Biden could have reigned in. Is reigned in Israel during This genocide over and over again, cut off arms tomorrow. This is how you yank on the leash. And yet you have Tucker Carlson, you have Republican commentators, conservatives, what have you blaming solely Israel for this war. Because we see where this is going. They're trying to make it into like a cabal of Jews that are running our foreign policy and manipulating the somehow strong but also simultaneous, simultaneously, incredibly weak president into this war. Does is Trump the authoritarian with all of the power or is he the completely supplicant to Israel?
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Helen Yaffe
Pick one.
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Emma Vigeland
Because if we can blame Biden for aiding and abetting a genocide and not reexamining the US Israeli relationship, to put it mildly, then we certainly can put the blame on Donald Trump and not blame solely Israel for this incredible escalation. But the. Here, hold on. Let's pull up number two, then here. Here's Pete Hegseth asked about this very question about how this is number two. Right. Mrs. Pete Hegsett this morning asked about this very question about Israel's involvement in this war.
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Pete Hegseth
Take one more right here.
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Jordan Conradson
Thank you, Sir. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Jordan Conradson with the Gateway Pundit. So with the strike yesterday on South Par's gas field, you know, if the US didn't know about it or didn't approve of, kind of seems like a trend of Israel apparently pursuing their own objectives over US objectives. I'm not sure if you agree with that, but the president has said he doesn't want to hit Iran's oil infrastructure right now. As you said, the US avoided this on Park Island. Oil is nearing $120. Why are we helping Israel prosecute this war if they're going to pursue their own objectives?
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Pete Hegseth
We hold the cards. We have objectives. Those objectives are clear. We have allies pursuing objectives as well. And the truth speaks for itself. I mean, President Trump was very clear about that. Iran has weaponized energy for decades. Israel clearly sent a warning and POTUS has made it clear, very clear. Iran knows when you hit Carg island and you hit military capabilities on Karg island, which is the only thing we hit, we can hold anything at issue. Anything. The United States military controls the fate of that country. Iran has the ability to make the right choices. It should not going forward. Target Arab allies, Arab countries trying to create pain, the pain that they created themselves. Thank you all very much.
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Emma Vigeland
They should not. They should not. Well, they're gonna. And they've already done it. And that's the problem. That's why you have the GCC countries that are furious at the president right now. And we've played Pete Hegseth this old clip of him speaking about how we should be targeting Iranian energy infrastructure, economic infrastructure and cultural sites and saying things like the only thing that these people understand is strength. You know, perhaps the Islamophobia of the Secretary of War is getting in the way of him having like a full understanding of how say our supposed partners in the region are going to respond to the very simplistic language of violence that you're teaching these simple people. Like the we're not thinking strategically one, because it's we're led by a mad king. But two, everyone around him is like an ignorant racist that is was unable to foresee Iran acting strategically and acting in their own interests. And so that's the same reason why I don't buy the fact that like a lot of people in the press are running with the administration's claim that they didn't know that they were bombing that girls school. I think Hegseth is perfectly capable of getting off on the idea of killing a bunch of little kids in Iran.
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Matt Binder
No reason to give them benefit of the doubt.
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Emma Vigeland
And to underscore this, this is just another clip from this press conference here we where you can see how there's the way that the west speaks about the Middle east and also Iran and other Muslim countries as if they're operating based on religion and not logic. This is how our Secretary of Defense is speaking about our war in Iran.
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Pete Hegseth
And I say the same to every American who wants peace through strength. May Almighty God continue to bless our troops in this fight. And again to the American people, please pray for them every day on bended knee with your family, in your schools.
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Matt Binder
No thanks.
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Pete Hegseth
In your churches in the name of Jesus Christ.
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Emma Vigeland
Send them home in the name of Jesus Christ. I mean that's not a contradictory claim when looking at our policy towards Israel. What's our objective? The Republicans are populated with a bunch of people that think that this is just a precursor to Christ coming back and the Rapture happening and a majority of the Jews in Israel dying and going to hell on that basis. And it sure sounds like Pete Hegseth has embraced with that statement.
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Matt Binder
Hegseth is a lunatic. But as far as the question of like what is our objectives America, there's nothing. There's nothing for America in this for you and me. And I'll just go back to a Tony Judd quote from Israel, the alternative in a book that Emma's going to
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Emma Vigeland
be reading on her on the plane. Thank you for that ebook.
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Matt Binder
This is from, I think the best essay in that here's just one section. It is now tacitly conceded by those in a position to know that America's reasons for going to war in Iraq were not necessarily those advertised at the time. For many in the current US Administration, that being the Bush administration, a major strategic consideration was the need to destabilize and then reconfigure the Middle east in a manner thought favorable to Israel. That's Tony Judd saying that in the Bush administration, that's exactly what this war is about now. There's no other meaning for it. It's because Israel doesn't like their neighbors and they want American might to crumble it for it. In America, missile companies are like, fine, yeah, that's good business for us.
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Emma Vigeland
The missile companies are also, are Israel. I've also been slowly kind of rereading because I've recommended it so much, Anthony Lowenstein's the Palestine Laboratory. And there are estimates like, you know, even Thomas Friedman, as a Jerusalem correspondent at the time, was speaking about how like something like 10% or that was his estimate of Israelis are involved in the weapons industry. That's basically, you know, we talk. We've had Gilder Ann on the show to speak about the nation or the, what does he call it, the network state. And how there are all these techno, techno, oligarchs, technologs, Bologarchs, Peter Thiel, that envision a purely privatized surveillance state where they have full control over that that's already Gaza. And Israel is like the Death Star where all the technology is. And so, like, when you think about it as a country, you should probably think about it more as a kind of corporate nation state that tests weapons and surveillance technology and does business with a lot of corrupt governments and namely is our military outpost or our intelligence and military outpost in the Middle East. So conservative media is going to try to blame Israel for this and pretend like the United States doesn't have control over our dog in the Middle East. And we know what Trump could do and what he's not doing. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Helen Yaffe. But first, a word from our sponsors here. You know, I'm all in for self reflection and rethinking things this year, how to make a healthy impact. I'm trying to use less plastic here. I'm bringing this little, what do you call, not disposable. It's the opposite of disposable, reusable Thermos. I was looking for thermos.
- [21:02]
Helen Yaffe
Okay.
- [21:02]
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- [26:50]
Sam Seder
It's.
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Emma Vigeland
We are back and we are joined now by Helen Yaffe, professor of Latin American Political Economy at the University of Glasgow, author of We Are Cuba How a Revolutionary People have Survived in a Post Soviet World. Helen, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
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Helen Yaffe
Thank you for inviting me. It's great to be here.
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Emma Vigeland
Of course. It's great to have you. So I wish we were talking about Cuba in less dire circumstances, but at the very least, over the past 24 hours, Cuba's been able to restore power due to or after this blackout due to the US Blockade. The Trump administration has not even made an effort to manufacture consent about Cuba being a threat to the United States because they just, they have nothing, like, they have no evidence. They've got nothing to hang their hat on. So I guess the question is from a macro level, what about Cuba is so threatening if the United is so threatening to the United States if it's not an actual threat?
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Helen Yaffe
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good point. So actually, on the 29th of January, Trump issued this executive order saying that Cuba is a threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Now, if we think of that in terms of military or even sort of political confrontation, it's absurd. However, there is only one way that we can understand Cuba as a threat, and that is the threat of a good example. So, you know, when the United States is the sort of leading power of US sorry, globally, neoliberalism, of imperialism, of capitalism as a system. And, you know, the message is that the only way to have efficiency is through market mechanism and competition and so on and things like health care, housing, education, you know, these are goods that you have to purchase through the market according to demand and supply. And then there's little Cuba subject to 400 years or hundreds of years of colonialism and imperialist domination that after the revolution of 1959, within one generation already had human development indicators that could compete with the advanced capitalist countries, the imperialist countries, and then proceeded to overtake them in many areas. For example, by 2000, early 2000s, Cuba had more doctors per person than any country in the world, three times more than the United States and Britain. And you know, it's done this with a GDP which is minuscule, and it's done it because it has a socialist planned which prioritizes human welfare and the environment. And in that sense, you know, the sort of demonstration effect for the Global south is actually the route to development isn't through the international financial system. And, you know, the loans you're going to get from the World bank and the IMF that are going to entangle you in debt, that are then going to give the lenders the leverage to, say, roll back the state, to make structural adjustments to your economy, to, you know, even determine the political systems. Actually, you know, there is another way to do it. With very few resources, you can create a society which is, you know, human centered development.
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Emma Vigeland
And can you mention the history and the hundreds of years of the United States, you know, trying to get its talons into Cuba? But I'm wondering if we could just briefly go over that, really, even speaking about, say, how Trump is invoking the Monroe Doctrine, for example, calling it the Donroe Doctrine, his position about how the United States has inherent domination over the Western hemisphere, perhaps we can take a look at really maybe even starting in the 1800s, when Spain lost control of Cuba in, in 1898. And what came afterwards?
- [31:55]
Helen Yaffe
Well, the thing to understand Cuba and the sort of battle or the determination of first Spain, then the US to control Cuba is you just need to look at a map. Cuba has a really key geostrategic location. It's kind of like a gateway. So it's got the Florida Straits on one side and the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf Coast. So it's a sort of gateway where many trading routes, historical trading routes, have intercepted and the United States, I mean, you talk about 1898, but already in 1823, we had this famous letter that said, you know, Cuba must fall to the United States as naturally as an apple, you know, falls from it, from the tree to the ground, because it belongs to us. So this notion that Cuba belongs to the United States has a very long and deeply rooted history. And, you know, there have been elements in Cuban society, the old elite, the bourgeoisie, who supported that view. They believed that Cuba's destiny lay or its prosperity lay with alignment with the United States. And there were those who supported his annexation. But there have also always been those who, even while they were struggling against the Spanish colonial war and struggling for independence from Spain, you know, were aware of the expansionist, burgeoning imperialism of the United States and warned against it. So the famous, you know, national hero of Cuban independence, Jose Marti, the night before entering battle against the Spanish, he. He wrote a letter to, as he called, a comrade in Mexico Warning that the battle to prevent the United States taking control of Cuba was one that should concern the whole of the Americas because he recognized how the US Would use control over Cuba to launch its expansionism over the rest of the region. And if you look at Trump's language in the last few days when he talks about being the one to take Cuba, I'll take it whichever way. You know, some way or another, I will be the one to take Cuba. And it so reverberates with the sort of racist and sexist terminology that was used in. You can see it in the cartoons in Punch and other, you know, US Media and the depiction of Cuba as a. A sexualized black woman, and the United States is the white male that's going to come and take it and. And, you know, rape Cuba.
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Emma Vigeland
And it's not. I mean, this is the guy that said, grab them by the P word and they'll let you do whatever you want. So I just. And has been found liable for sexual assault in courts and has dozens of accusers. So just putting that out there. It's a rapacious, really violent imagery, and it goes back hundreds of years.
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Helen Yaffe
But one thing I will say is you are right that they have dropped the veil of a kind of liberal gloss on this effort to destroy the Cuban revolution. I mean, nobody can talk about it being in favor of the human rights of Cubans when for three months, Cuba hasn't had a drop of oil entering because, well, back in December, they were hijacking and kidnapping, stealing Venezuelan oil tankers. And since then, since their executive order, they have threatened to put. Trump has threatened to put tariffs on any country that sells or even donates oil to Cuba. So, you know, you are causing. You are weaponizing starvation. Hospitals are running in emergency situations. They're only doing emergency treatments. More than 11,000 Cuban children are waiting for surgery. With no prospect of that happening, schools and universities have closed. Transport is totally at a standstill.
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Emma Vigeland
Now.
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Helen Yaffe
Although Cuba has made a rapid and remarkable effort to speed up the transition to renewable energies, mainly solar panels, there are limits to the benefits of that because the transport fleet is almost entirely, I mean, mostly dependent on what you call gas, petrol and diesel. So even when countries like Mexico, which has stopped sending oil, sends a huge shipload of material, aid of medicines and food, how do the Cubans get that from the port in Havana down to the, you know, through the Long Fin island that is Cuba if they don't have fuel for transport? So he has created a total humanitarian crisis. And it's just testament to The Cubans, that they are so resolved and so resilient that, you know, at the moment, they're just continuing life as they always do and always have done under this attack from the United States.
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Emma Vigeland
We should say that as of 20 minutes ago, this is some positive news. President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that Mexico will seek to resume fuel shipments to Cuba. So we can at least hold our breath for a second about what? I mean, you know, we'll see how this shakes out, but hopefully the worst of this is over. But I don't know, because, you know, the humiliation of Cuba being right off our shores and to United States capitalists, I think, is like, a really important kind of point to hit on here. Can you speak a little bit about how Cuba, and you wrote about this in your book, restructured its economy under global capitalist markets even after, of course, the fall of the Soviet Union, although their relationship is overstated by the west and capitalists, I understand. But there still was, you know, it was difficult, of course, I would imagine, for Cuba to kind of reset after the fall of the Soviet Union and say, like, how can we make our economy resilient in spite of this blockade right off our shores and the US Trying to ice everybody out from doing business with us? Like, what were the difficulties? What were the different paths discussed, and where does that bring us today?
- [38:31]
Helen Yaffe
Yeah. So, I mean, the first thing to understand about Cuban socialism and its resilience, why they continued when the Soviet bloc collapsed, is that for Cuba, socialism is the system that they've adopted in order to struggle against underdevelopment and for real sovereignty. So social justice and sovereignty are the keys that link the Cuban struggle for independence to the post1959 socialist the development of socialism. And it's that commitment that sees the Cubans even today, you know, even Cubans in the street today who maybe don't support the government, maybe are full of criticisms, don't regard themselves as socialists, but they, you know, really are committed to sovereignty and social justice. So with that in mind, the first point is that when the Soviet bloc collapsed, the Cubans made a decision that they would stick with socialism. How were they going to do that when 87, 86% of all of their trade and investment was with the socialist countries? And remember that the United States has worked hard in the early 1960s, as it is again today, to make sure that all the governments of the Americas cut off relations with Cuba. Now, Cuba has made great progress in reversing that situation, but we're seeing the same happening today. So what Cuba had to do is go from having an economy which was based on the export of sugar, a good to the Soviet bloc and their market completely, well, more or less disintegrated. And they had to reinvent their economy while retaining the key tenets of a socialist system, right. With all the, what they call the Logros, the achievements of the Cuban revolution in health care, education, housing, culture, sport and so on. So the first step was to open up the economy to encourage tourism. And tourism became Cuba's biggest source of revenue from the 1990s. I mean, this is the period I first went to live in Cuba, not as a tourist, I went as a teenager to go and live in Cuba in not quite the worst year of what's known as the special period of economic crisis, but the year after 1995. And just saw for myself how an experience living with and among Cubans, how the Cuban people found collective and creative solutions to get through the hardships and scarcities of that period. But what they then happened was that the Bolivarian Revolution with Hugo Chavez as president of Venezuela dovetailed with a period in Cuba called the Battle of Ideas. And the two countries, Fidel Castro and Chavez had a famously close relationship. They set up this exchange where Venezuela, which has the greatest known proven supply of oil, could provide that oil for Cuba. And in exchange, the Cubans provided medics and educators for the Venezuelan masses whom Chavez represented. And that was a fulfillment of his promise to them as he was elected by an overall majority for that population. So this was the famous oil for doctors program. And it then switched from Cuba being paid for their medical services and other development aid services from oil to being cash. By 2005, the greatest source of revenue for Cuba was the export of health care professionals. Then you know, in there. This coincided with the pink tide in Latin America where other left wing governments were brought to power mainly by social movements. The Bolivia, Ecuador and other places, and the Cubans expanded those projects to those countries. And you know, this was a key part of how Cuba survived. And it has subsequently from literally the year after it became the greatest source of revenue, it came under attack from the United States. So this has happened. This is a recurring theme when Cuba, you know, turns to tourism. You have hotel bombs going off. You have legislation in the US to prevent tourism people going as tourists to Cuba. You're still not allowed to go from the United States to Cuba as a tourist. You have to go under one of different, more complicated categories. And what we're seeing now, part of the current attack on Cuba by the United States, very much spearheaded by Marco Rubio, is this question of the earnings that Cuba gets from Cuban medical internationalism. But linking to the other question, the first question about what kind of threat is not just the earnings that Cuba gets because many of the countries it operates, it still gets no payment, is also the prestige that it gives Cuba and the whole notion of socialism because they have achieved these extraordinary, this extraordinary public health care system, biotech system. Their children in Cuba are vaccinated with 13 vaccines for your childhood vaccines. And of those, eight vaccines for 11 diseases are produced by the Cubans themselves. And these are, you know, kind of statistics that put to shame even a country like Britain, which is a very wealthy old imperialist country.
- [44:09]
Emma Vigeland
So, yeah, well, you bring up Rubio and this is probably a good place for us to round out our discussion. You know, the, we've been talking about, obviously, of course, this criminal war in Iran that our country has launched. And we've on our show been debating what are the motivations. Does Trump have anything corrupt that's motivating him here, or is it just purely the Israel lobby? And I think sometimes we can underestimate the desire to discipline nations that are outside of the sphere of Western capitalist influence. And I think that that story is perhaps the most present or the most acute in Cuba's case because there's no real threat other than its existence and its endurance. And Marco Rubio comes out of a very far right Cuban diaspora in Florida, although I believe his parents fled Bautista and not Castro, doesn't mean that he can't use his heritage for his own kind of like self enrichment and for some of this brutality. But that's, I guess, where I'm wondering if you could help us understand better, like, the depth of the humiliation that Cuba inflicted upon the United States and how Rubio, who seems to be driving policy here on this issue, is viewing American foreign policy in that light.
- [45:49]
Helen Yaffe
Yeah, so Rubio built his career on taking a hard line against the Cuban government, against Cuban socialism. And, you know, that means he received incredible funding and lobbying support and so on from that sector. A new talking of, like, recent news, a new survey has come out, a new poll which looks at US Attitudes towards the Trump policy, the Trump and Rubio policy towards Cuba right now. And it shows that a minuscule percentage of the population actually support the oil blockade and the threats on Cuba or think that the United States should intervene. So, you know, this is a very small, very powerful, very vocal lobby of Cuban exiles, Cuban Americans. I mean, Rubio as you said, his parents left Cuba under the Batista dictatorship, but he allowed that rumor to simmer that they were somehow victims of the Castro regime until the Washington Post exposed it not that long ago. And these people, I think you're right. It's a question of principle, right. They cannot allow Cuba to have be this audacious and intransigent country because of the problem of example, because it doesn't help them to discipline Cuba. And, you know, if you look at. Well, actually, I mean, I think that Fidel Castro and the revolutionaries understood that in 1961, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which the Cubans call Playa Heron, Fidel Castro said what they will never, what the imperialists will never forgive us for is having made a socialist revolution right under the noses of the United States. So, you know, while they have, they have restored relations and trade and so on with China, with Vietnam, with other countries while they were socialist countries, they cannot forgive Cuba. The Cubans have not been. They have. Well, let's me rephrase that. They've been unruly neighbors as well. We must be clear, right? So, you know, we talk about the discussion of to what extent they're a threat, but they have supported national liberation struggles, newly independent countries. They have opposed US and imperialist interests all over the world. They're the only, what used to be called Third World country that projected itself beyond its own region. So, for example, they sent 400,000 Cuban soldiers to fight alongside the newly independent Angolan state when it came under attack from the apartheid South African forces, the racist apartheid forces that had occupied Namibia and tried to occupy Angola. And the United States was supporting enemies of that new government. So the Cubans, I mean, we can't pretend that they have been passive victims. They are revolutionaries and they have supported in international forums relentlessly. They have expressed support for Puerto Rico, for its independence, for Palestine, for the Central American guerrilla movements when they were underway, and for all sorts of causes. Western Sahara. They have opposed imperialism vociferously. And you wouldn't expect to see the kind of response we've seen in Venezuela very recently after the abduction of Maduro, where, you know, there is some sort of deal that's been done between the Trump administration and the vice president, Dulcie Rodriguez. On the other hand, Miguel Diaz Canal came out with a statement yesterday saying, we're threatened with new threats every day. And the only thing that we can be sure of is if the US Tried to come here, they will be met by unrestrained resistance. So you Know, in, in that sense, the Cubans, they know what they have to fight for. And till this point, there seems to be a lot of determination to not allow the Marco Rubios and the old cronies of Batista to return to Cuba to reclaim the wealth that they had misappropriated. This was the term the Cubans used after, after the revolution, they set up a ministry of misappropriated Properties and goods. And this was the properties and goods of the, you know, the sort of the members of the Batista regime. So they also have very strong memories and they have no intention of being subjugated to that old elite.
- [50:49]
Emma Vigeland
Well, Helen Yaffe, really appreciate your time today. The book is called We Are Cuba How a Revolutionary People have Survived in a Post Soviet World. We'll link to that down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today, Helen, and giving us your expertise on this issue.
- [51:07]
Helen Yaffe
Thanks very much.
- [51:08]
Emma Vigeland
Of course. Quick break, folks, and when we come back, we'll be joined by Erin Reed and we will be speaking about the anti trans measures cropping up across the country. Be right back.
- [51:25]
Sam Seder
Sam. It.
- [52:33]
Emma Vigeland
We are back and we are joined once again by friend of the show, Aaron Reed, journalist tracking anti LGBTQ legislation around the world and in the United States at Erin in the Morning on Substack. She's been tracking some of these anti trans measures across the country with her anti trans national legal risk assessment map. Erin, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
- [52:57]
Aaron Reed
Thank you for having me on.
- [52:59]
Emma Vigeland
Of course. So let's just talk about that map that your newsletter, the do not travel advisory list that you have on your site. And I would highly recommend that people subscribe to Aaron in the Morning if they want to follow this really important reporting. You've recently added Kansas to that list. And we can talk about Kansas specifically in just a second. But which states are on that list?
- [53:24]
Aaron Reed
Yeah. So right now, Texas, Florida and Kansas are the three do not travel states. The states that whenever transgender people ask me if it's safe to travel through, I say that you should take extra caution and avoid non essential travel to those states.
- [53:38]
Emma Vigeland
And how do you make that assessment?
- [53:41]
Aaron Reed
Yeah. So starting in 2022, I started mapping out the risk assessment in each state for transgender people because increasingly I was getting messages from parents, from students, from friends asking, hey, is this safe for me to travel to? Can I go to this state safely? And the laws have been changing. You know, every single month a new anti trans bill passes in a different state. And I was the one keeping track of all of these laws. And so rather than answer each one of these questions individually, I started mapping them. I started saying, this data is dark red. This is a state that you might have extra difficulty in bathrooms or whatnot. So the things that make a state do not travel. The very first do not travel state that I added to my map was Florida. In the end of 2023 is Florida passed a bathroom ban that was different from most other transgender bathroom bans. Florida's bathroom ban allowed you to be charged with a misdemeanor and put in jail for six months. And so that was a significant escalation because a trans person traveling through any other state could use the bathroom, not be in risk of jail time for doing so. But in Florida, somebody who's unaware could find themselves the wrong side of the law. And so then in Texas, we added that one as well, because Texas likewise had a similar bathroom provision, as well as some very concerning things from Attorney General Ken Paxton in Texas, where he was targeting driver's licenses, saying that it was fraud to have driver's licenses that don't match your assigned sex at birth. And then in Kansas, just this last, just a couple weeks ago, Kansas passed a bill that immediately revoked all transgender people's driver's licenses in the state, which we saw. That made national news, international news, even. But it also created a bathroom bounty hunter system where every member of the public can, if you find a trans person in the bathroom that you think they don't belong in, can sue that trans person for $1,000.
- [55:26]
Emma Vigeland
This is a copy paste of the bounty system, by the way, in Texas as well, for abortions that we were talking about just a few years ago. The danger of what is happening in Texas with these driver's licenses is, like, you know, can't be overstated. This has also come up in the context of the immigration debate, where you have these psychotic Republicans that want to take away driver's licenses from people if they're undocumented. They're like, this is literally a safety issue. If people are. People need to drive and be behind the wheel, and you need to have people who have licenses and who have gone through some sort of DMV training. And now this is about making trans people sub citizens in the same way they're trying to make immigrants sub citizens. But it presents major safety issues for the general public.
- [56:19]
Aaron Reed
It does. And then let's also talk about how in Kansas, for instance, the bill that invalidated transgender people's identification documents, it had no waiting period. The Immediate aftermath. The day after the bill passed, every trans person found themselves with revoked licenses. And so all these people, you have to get to the DMV to update your license. How are you going to get there? You can't drive. You got to call a friend. What if you're in a rural area? What if you can't make your way to the dmv? And what's worse is if you travel to that DMV and you drive there and you get caught, they could revoke your license for even longer. They can say for 90 days you cannot get a license. And so people are struggling in Kansas right now. People are really struggling. I know people that have fled the state because of it.
- [57:02]
Emma Vigeland
It's also a major safety issue if you're a trans person that has to present your driver's license in any setting, which is going to be in a lot of settings because it immediately outs you as a trans person. And that's the goal, is that there were steps away from genital inspections. That's what it seems like these bathroom bills are designed to gear our society towards. But the license plate thing is, I mean, it's about these like completely psychotic puritanical fears that, gosh, you may be attracted particularly to a trans woman and not know that she wasn't assigned female at birth. And if you have a driver's license that tells you then don't worry, your, your gay panic can be quelled for just a second. Just shove those feelings down deep.
- [57:52]
Aaron Reed
Absolutely, absolutely. It is about outing people. And you know, you mentioned like the genital inspection thing in Idaho, which I do believe will likely be the next state that gets added to my list if a certain bill passes, a bill just passed the house there that sets for a second offense, using the bathroom, a five year prison sentence. It is the most extreme anti trans bill that I've seen in any state. And in that bill, the Fraternal order of police came and testified against the bill because they said we don't want to have to inspect people's genitals and throw them in jail for five years. But that is how far they're going. I'll also add that that bill, you know, the second offense, using the bathroom, five years in jail. Idaho has a three strikes law. So if you get three felonies, you can get jail up to life. Like that's how the Idaho criminal code works. So if you use the bathroom four times in Idaho, you could be imprisoned for life as a trans person if this bill passes. And so, yeah, I don't know, I don't know where the bottom is here. Like, what are they? Where does this end? Where does this go? Like, what will be enough for them? And I just. I haven't seen it yet.
- [58:55]
Emma Vigeland
It's also. We have did an interview a few weeks ago about the neo Nazi contingent within the state of Idaho. It has, you know, some of the more far right elements in the entire country. And. But it's not unique to your point. Idaho, if this legislation goes through, they'd be the 10th state to also ban Medicaid funding for gender affirming care for anybody. Can you speak a little bit about the efforts to ban gender affirming care across the country and where we're at in terms of, like, total states?
- [59:31]
Aaron Reed
Yeah, absolutely. So roughly half of the states in the United States ban gender affirming care for transgender youth. And we are seeing an expansion of this as well into a new phase. So earlier, just last month, the Heritage foundation president got onto a podcast and announced that it was the Heritage Foundation's intent to ban gender affirming care for everyone. To outlaw it for everyone, he said. And immediately afterwards, we started getting news that, you know, the president was starting to target transgender care nationwide and that Republicans are starting to target transgender care nationwide through Medicaid bans. And we just got a 4th Circuit decision, which is the circuit that I belong to. I'm in the D.C. area. We just got a 4th Circuit decision that specifically says that states can pass laws that can make transgender people appreciate their sex in Medicaid bans. So these are gender affirming care bans for transgender adults, whereas you cannot get it covered through their Medicaid. And we did see in just this last appropriations fight in Congress.
- [60:31]
Emma Vigeland
I'm sorry, Aaron, can I just pause for a second? When they say appreciate your sex, can you explain what that means? That means that, yeah, you've got to just be not trans. Like, we are erasing your identity.
- [60:43]
Aaron Reed
Okay, so this is. This is the thing, is that the precedent is now set in court to where basically any law that you pass against a trans person could be considered legal because you are helping them appreciate their sex. So right now, it might be a Medicaid ban on transgender adults, but in the future, what if it's, you know, psychological commitment, which we have seen Republicans, certain Republicans stand up and say that that's what they want for us. Nancy Mace has said that, for instance. And so, again, I don't know where the bottom is here, but yes, there are increasing attempts to ban gender affirming Care for transgender adults. We actually see this right now in incarcerated trans people who are currently being mass detransitioned in the federal prison system and where the. The new guidelines is to withdraw their gender affirming care and to put them on psychotropic medications. So this is basically psychotropic medication conversion therapy that they are currently attempting in prisons right now. And it's, it's terrifying as a transgender person who's not in jail, who knows that if I drive through Idaho, maybe in the future, and they put me in jail, then I could end up on, you know, psychotropic medications, trying to do transition me.
- [61:47]
Emma Vigeland
And are these medications, are these prisoners in the prison that assigns with their, their gender or are in some of these instances, are these trans and that, you know, you worry about trans women and the danger there being forced into, say, male prisons under these conditions.
- [62:08]
Aaron Reed
Yeah. So in many cases, they are forced into male prisons. There are several states that do this, as well as certain fights in the federal prison system where this is also occurring right now. And just so your listeners understand how horrifying this is for a transgender woman, there is an unofficial practice called V coding or carding, where they will place a transgender woman with an unruly inmate to basically quell them. And you can basically imagine what that means.
- [62:32]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. And once again, the focus on transgender women, I mean, it's. It's over. It's over emphasized in this legislation because we. This is why homophobia and transphobia are intrinsically connected. This is why women's sports and girls sports are the disproportionate subjects of transphobia. It's because it all comes from a patriarchal, homophobic, traditional values, religious fundamentalism, and the people that try to extricate the two are aiding and abetting fascism.
- [63:06]
Aaron Reed
Absolutely. And the same organizations like the Alliance Spending Freedom have already come out and said that it is their intent to overturn Obergefell. It is their intent to overturn gay marriage. And we are seeing bills in places again like Idaho targeting gay marriage. Next, they want to challenge Obergefell.
- [63:22]
Emma Vigeland
Well, North Dakota was another state that was trying to target Obergefell, and they are included in some of the worst states categories in your risk assessment. On your substack, can you talk about how North Dakota and other states like Oklahoma, and I'm forgetting perhaps the third one that are trying to prohibit changes to birth certificates. Because. Because right now on the federal level, the Republicans are trying to create a very difficult system to register to vote. That doesn't just. You can't just Use your driver's license, you would need to provide a secondary form of identification that includes birth certificates. Now, 70 million women, married women in this country would have trouble, CIS women would have trouble with that category because they've changed their names and now on the like, for trans people, they're trying to prohibit birth certificate changes on the state level.
- [64:21]
Aaron Reed
Yeah, it would be an immediate disenfranchisement of, for one, basically every transgender person and then for two, for, for many cisgender women who have changed their names after marriage. And this is something that, you know, we saw in again in Kansas whenever they revoked the driver's licenses. Kansas has very strong voter ID laws and they revoked these licenses immediately before the primaries and the primaries happened. And many trans people couldn't vote in the primaries. And so yes, we do see these sort of voter, voter harassment techniques that are also being used and tied into the fight over transgender rights. This is actually very relevant right now with the save bill that's happening in Congress.
- [65:00]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [65:01]
Aaron Reed
Where they have, you know, inexplicably taken this bill that is focused on voter ID and on birth certificates and on mail in voting. And then they've just tacked on two anti trans provisions just on the end of it. And so, yeah, we do see this fight very much connected.
- [65:20]
Emma Vigeland
We had somebody write in and I have this Im somewhere about blue states. Wanted to ask. Here it is, Charlie. She her says if you get to this during her interview, can you ask Erin if there are blue states she's worried about? I know in Washington there's been pushes to implement sports bans and quote, parental rights petitions.
- [65:41]
Aaron Reed
Yeah. So there are four blue states that I'm concerned about based on what I'm seeing on the ground. California, Washington. I'm also seeing some concerns out of Maine and Colorado. All four of these states have various concerns. Three of them have, have ballot initiatives moving based on sports and, and on other things. And then in California, we have seen, you know, a significant amount of attacking of transgender youth in the state. We've seen some support from Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance, on sports bans in the state. And then we have also seen forced outing happening in school systems in the state. And so these are things that I am concerned seeing in blue states. Blue states are not immune from any of this. And we've seen hospitals in several blue states capitulate to Trump administration demands that they drop gender affirming care. This is something that you can't run away from. You can't escape this by running to a blue state. You can maybe find yourself in a somewhat safer situation for a little while, but this is a federal attack on transgender people as well as a state based attack.
- [66:39]
Emma Vigeland
Can. Can you talk about how these attacks on Medicaid funding for gender affirming care, and just generally, the more barriers that are being created for gender affirming care, both for adults and for young trans people, are creating cost burdens or exacerbating existing cost burdens. Because it is not cheap to be trans in this country. Like, it's not cheap to be CIS and get health care. Imagine if you're trans. I mean, of course, you don't need to imagine, but people in this audience that are CIS imagine if you're trans and trying to access care. And this just, I would imagine, has exploded the costs of gender affirming care in just a short time period of time.
- [67:21]
Aaron Reed
Yeah. So the employee. The unemployment rate for transgender people is 18%. So this is much higher than the general public unemployment rate. And for those who are employed, transgender people typically receive much lower pays than cisgender people. We are often put in jobs that are not very highly rewarding or lucrative. And so, yes, we do already have an enormous cost burden. And whenever you ban Medicaid coverage for transgender care treatments, in many places, it is like outlawing gender affirming care, period. Because these people cannot afford medications, it becomes extremely hard for them to get their medication. If you're in a major city, sometimes there are programs that can help you. But if you're a rural transgender person who you know is either suffering from unemployment or low income, these Medicaid bans make it enormously difficult to get your care. And this is especially true for transgender youth. Transgender youth have even heightened burdens because some of the medication and the extra care that they receive by virtue of being a trans youth getting that care, it can make the cost prohibitive in many cases, especially whenever it comes to psychological care, which already isn't well covered by Medicaid and which already suffers from lack of insurance coverage in many cases.
- [68:36]
Emma Vigeland
Lastly, can. Can you just speak about the impact of what. What a ban on gender affirming care for. For youth looks like? Because the right uses sports and graphic imagery of surgery that no one wants to think about surgery. It is, you know, difficult, no matter what kind of surgery you're getting, to scare people off or to spread misinformation about what gender affirming care for young people under 18 really looks like. We know that this surgery is exceedingly rare, and there's a very specific timetable of years long of therapy and care before you approach even, you know, hormones. And sometimes some of these instances. Can you just myth bust some of these things? Because we're up against the usage of. Very cynical usage of graphic imagery from the right.
- [69:34]
Aaron Reed
Well, I want to actually start with the beginning of your question, which was, what does withdrawing this care look like? And so for a trans youth who has known about their gender identity since they were young, who went through the process, who made it to 11, 12, 13, 14, started puberty blockers, got on hormone therapy, they're 15, 16 years old, they, you know, let's just say it's a transgender girl. She might not be out to her peers. Everybody might know her as a girl. She looks like a girl. She has been living in her gender identity for years, and then suddenly the state takes away that medication. That transgender girl will begin to grow facial hair. Her voice will drop. It will be terrifying for her. She is in a school, and everybody that has known her for who she is her whole life is suddenly going to see that. It's horrifying. It. You can imagine why this kind of thing leads to suicide. You can imagine why this kind of thing leads to horrific mental health problems. And so that's what it looks like whenever you pull care from this population. As far as what it looks like for transgender youth right now, it's hard to get care, period, because of the fact that so many hospitals have been shut down by the Trump administration. But these families, the ones that I talk to, they have binders full of all of their psychological appointments, full of all of their endocrinology appointments, their levels that they've had measured. They do this so that if they're ever attacked by, you know, legal forces, they can have this to show them that they did their due diligence. You know, I think that the biggest thing that. That medical practitioners want for transgender youth and I think that everybody wants for all medicine is individualized care that makes sense between you and your doctor. Those are the only people that should be making these decisions. If you can talk to a doctor and you have come up with a plan and you have work, worked so hard on that plan individually for what works for that transgender youth. It's nobody's place to come in and say, we want to just blanket ban it.
- [71:22]
Emma Vigeland
Well, Aaron Reed, really appreciate your time today, everyone. Check out Aaron in the morning. We will put a link to that down below, wherever people are listening to or watching this. Thanks so much for coming on the show today.
- [71:33]
Aaron Reed
Always a pleasure, Emma.
- [71:34]
Emma Vigeland
Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thank you. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half of the program where we'll talk about these topics, but perhaps with more of more humor involved. To be determined. Matt, what's happening on Left? Reckoning with the Jacobin show.
- [71:54]
Matt Binder
Yeah, New Jacobin show. Tomorrow at our new time at 3 o' clock Eastern, we're going to be talking about Alex to Alex Brunel about Zoran and DSA and being serious about power and organizing for power and to win power and talk about some of these APAC election results. So that's tomorrow. Subscribe to the Jacob and Meg YouTube channel, folks.
- [72:18]
Emma Vigeland
Do it. Do we have Brandon? No, we will.
- [72:26]
Sam Seder
Creation indeed.
- [72:30]
Emma Vigeland
I heard about this. I heard about this this morning. Oh, my God. Indeed.
- [72:40]
Matt Binder
Also, there's another one.
- [72:41]
Sam Seder
We're pounding a certain area.
- [72:44]
Emma Vigeland
Okay. I like the first one because it's. Alex Jones is so drunk. He sounds like Tom's impression. I mean, Sam's impression of Tom Homan.
- [72:54]
Matt Binder
Oh, yeah, that's right.
- [72:55]
Emma Vigeland
Marbles in his mouth. Good job of that. We will see Brandon and Binder in the fun half. They'll give us updates on their shows. As a reminder, this show relies on your support. Jointhemajorityreport.com please. Helps us stay resilient in these uncertain times. All right, quick break. When we come back, we'll be. We'll hang out in the fun half with you. That's not.
- [73:20]
Sam Seder
The ladies of the View are fully said.
- [73:23]
Emma Vigeland
Okay.
- [73:26]
Sam Seder
Okay.
- [73:26]
Aaron Reed
Emma, please.
- [73:27]
Emma Vigeland
Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.
- [73:31]
Sam Seder
Wait, look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.
- [73:40]
Helen Yaffe
It is Thursday.
- [73:42]
Aaron Reed
I think you need to take over.
- [73:43]
Matt Binder
For sale?
- [73:44]
Pete Hegseth
Yes, please.
- [73:44]
Sam Seder
Sir, I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this and I'll tell you why. So it was offered a tour. Sushi and poker with the boys. Work sushi and poker with boys who was offered a tour. Yeah, sushi and poker with boys. What tour? Sushi and poker.
- [74:05]
Emma Vigeland
Tim's of set.
- [74:07]
Sam Seder
Sushi and bulker with three boys was offered with twerk sushi and that's what we call biz. Twerk sushi and bulker with two boys.
- [74:16]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [74:16]
Sam Seder
Twerk sushi and we're gonna get demonetized. I just think that what you did to Tim Pool was mean.
- [74:24]
Emma Vigeland
Free speech.
- [74:25]
Sam Seder
That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about him. I think you're responsible.
- [74:31]
Emma Vigeland
I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.
- [74:35]
Sam Seder
Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Who was offered with twerk, sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Twerk, sushi and poker with the boy. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a kid. Twerk. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a dick. I'm losing my mind. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids.
- [75:11]
Emma Vigeland
That's not what we're talking about here.
- [75:15]
Sam Seder
It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's real thing. Real thing. Willy wonk. That's a real thing. That's real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Real thing. That's a real thing that's offered. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. That's a real thing. I think he might be blowing it out. Proportion. Real thing offer. That's a real thing. That's poker. Let's go, Joe. Sushi and poker.
- [75:47]
Jordan Conradson
Take it easy.
- [75:48]
Sam Seder
Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker with the boys. Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live YouTube.
- [75:59]
Emma Vigeland
Sam has, like, the weight of the
- [76:01]
Sam Seder
world on his shoulders.
- [76:02]
Emma Vigeland
Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore.
- [76:04]
Sam Seder
Anymore.
- [76:05]
Emma Vigeland
It was so much easier when the majority the of report was just you.
- [76:10]
Sam Seder
Let's change the subject. Rangers and Knicks are doing great. Shut up.
- [76:14]
Emma Vigeland
Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.
- [76:16]
Sam Seder
That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.
- [76:19]
Emma Vigeland
This is the pro Killing podcast.
- [76:21]
Sam Seder
I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury
- [76:23]
Emma Vigeland
the hatchet and left his best trump.
- [76:25]
Sam Seder
Violet. Twerk. Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't. The way Emma has all of these people love it.
- [76:32]
Emma Vigeland
That's where my heart this. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.
- [76:35]
Sam Seder
Oh, sorry. She wrote an honest thesis.
- [76:40]
Aaron Reed
I guess I should hand the main
- [76:41]
Sam Seder
mic to you now. You are to the right of the unfore.
- [76:45]
Emma Vigeland
We already fund Israel, dude. Are you against us?
- [76:47]
Sam Seder
That's a tougher question I haven't answered. Incredible theme song. I bumbler Emma Vin. Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game, like, period.