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3614 - BONDI FIRED; Trump's Deranged Iran Speech; The Downfall of Nation States w/ Rana Dasgupta
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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 Cedar
The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.
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Emma Vigeland
It is Thursday, April 2, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar 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, Rana Dasgupta, author of after the Making and Unmaking of a World Order. Also on the program, oil prices surge after Trump's addressed to the nation, confirms that the war in Iran will continue, but also that we've achieved victory and also that it's not a war because that would be illegal. Although he has had no accountability for anything, so just gets more and more unhinged. He's threatening to stop all Ukraine aid unless European countries help him join or join in on the war in Iran. Help him open the Strait of Hormuz.
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Matt Leck
Cherish the Strait of Hormuz.
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Emma Vigeland
U. S Israeli strikes hit a medical research center in Tehran. Iran ups its missile attacks on Israel and the death toll in Lebanon rises to at least 1300. Iran's Revolutionary Guard begins a recruitment drive to get volunteers to defend the country from a US Invasion. Mike Johnson may have caved, signaling the House will support the Senate plan to fund dhs, but not ICE or Border Patrol. Supreme Court oral arguments to end birthright citizenship did not go so well for Trump and Republicans. Trump sat in the audience, apparently to. To make direct eye contact, I guess, with the Supreme Court justices, but they still expressed skepticism. And Pam Bondi was his date for these arguments. You know, you put on a brave face when you have reports that say a breakup could be coming. Apparently he wants to fire her and replace her with EPA head Lee Zeldin. Lateral move, yeah. Democrat in name only. Governor Jared Polis appears to have overturned the sentence of election denier Tina Peters at Trump's behest in Colorado.
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Matt Leck
Libertarians, everybody.
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Emma Vigeland
Isn't he the abundance guy?
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Matt Leck
Yeah, but he's literally a libertarian.
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Emma Vigeland
But so are they. So are they.
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Matt Leck
Yeah, well, they don't identify that way. Or at least Ezra.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah, Derek. A liberal. I mean, but like liberals and libertarians, where, how, how much are we distinguishing? That's the conversation for another day. The death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam, the nearly blind refugee that Border Patrol agents abandoned a closed donut shop in the cold, has been ruled a homicide. Coral Springs Vice Mayor Nancy Meteor Bowen, a progressive voice in Florida was found dead in her home after a suspected killing by her husband. And lastly, Bernie Sanders endorses Claire Valdez in New York, in New York's 7th district, joining Zoran Mamdani's endorsement in that key race. All this and more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an M. Majority Report Thursday. Hello, Matt. Hello, Brian. Hello, audience. Let's get right into it. We pre recorded this interview with Rana Dasgupta just a few hours ago and I'm really excited for everybody to listen to it. Fascinating book. Fascinating book and really relevant to current events. Last night, Trump addressed the nation trying to calm the markets ahead of the three day weekend where it appears like a ground invasion of Iran is imminent. Let's pull up two here. We can just give you a preview of how this went. This is a live view of oil prices. Well, I mean live in like in the middle of his speech. So this is as. Oh, this is the wrong one. Oh no. Okay, great. Now, yeah, not live right now. This is as Trump was speaking,
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Brian
it
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Emma Vigeland
surged to this is now above $112 a barrel. It was, I believe a 13$10 or $13 increase just from his speech alone. So it didn't go so well because that's literally all he seems to respond to. And he's, he wants to do what he wants to do because he wants to look like the tough guy, but he doesn't want the markets to react negatively. The markets have been operating outside of logic so seemingly on this front and taking him at his word for weeks within this five weeks of war. But that is changing now because he's consistently lying, lying to the Iranian negotiators, lying in public to try to do what he wants to do with this criminal war in Iran without the consequences that he cares about.
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Matt Leck
Yeah, I think the taco stuff is looking like it was maybe a miscalculation.
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Emma Vigeland
Yes. And this speech was like, hey, the war is over, but it's not a war and it will be over when we do this operation that I'm previewing. He talked a lot about bombing them. There was in the introduction to the speech bragging about the Venezuela operation as quick, lethal, violent and respected. So got rave reviews. Yeah, right, right, right. Did you check the Rotten Tomatoes score on our kidnapping of Maduro? I like calling something respected. Doesn't make it so. Perhaps they view it as a success within their own kind of limited psychopathic worldview. But as we've said, Iran is not Venezuela. Iran is significantly larger. Iran has a long history of resisting US And Western imperialism. And as does the Iranian government. They've lived through the bombing campaign last summer from the Israelis and with the with the approval of the United States. For example, he also blamed in his speech Iran for October 7, says that Iran wants to annihilate Israel. The most standard Zionist talking points possible. He said that there would be no Israel in this speech if he did not get out of the JCPOA that Obama negotiated, which is just like he's a ventriloquist dummy for Netanyahu here. The JCPOA was a complete success. And our intelligence and the assessments of this from third parties, that fact is. It's a fact. But we have warmongers and Zionists that want to obscure that. So when Trump got into office after the 2016 election, he ripped it up. And now we've been escalating with Iran ever since. And then apparently Trump is still fascinated with this idea of going into Iran and taking their uranium, which would involve building a Runway, sending in extremely expensive special equipment, and would be really risky for US Troops because the stockpiles of uranium are in mountains in many ways. Some parts of the stockpile are currently buried under rubble due to US bombings. So we would have to excavate in that area. And it's also material that is protected with layers of concrete and other protective coverings that they would have to break through, then get to the bottom of these silos safely, take the nuclear material out and fly it out, requiring this Runway to put the cargo onto the special planes on. All while having US Troops doing this mission, this mission impossible thing and putting them in harm's way in a country that is now trying to get volunteer forces to help defend their homeland. What a shock. Carpet bombing a country, bombing schools, medical facilities, universities, has engendered some sort of nationalism and pride in defending the homeland. Who could have seen it coming? It's almost like bombing them wasn't going to make them more likely to be pro Israel defenders and people that believe in Western capitalism. But then this morning, Trump tells Reuters that he doesn't really care about the uranium anymore because it's so far underground. Because maybe people got to him and said this is insane.
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Matt Leck
So, I mean, very clearly they were like he was sold on a Venezuela style James Bondstone mission. I thought it'd be, well, did it once do it again, going to get that uranium, which they haven't really been tracking very closely. I there's a story like a couple weeks ago that they barely like kind of forgot about it, but now, it's like, this would take weeks. This would take, like, thousands of people on the ground in. Within Iran. They would just be sitting ducks. So, you know, he could go for it. So I still don't know which way if I had to bet on one of the illegal betting services, but it would be like, a huge problem if they try it.
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Emma Vigeland
The bet that we've been having on the show is that it's going to be over the long weekend, Good Friday tomorrow. It's closed the markets, and it's going to be some sort of Christian nationalist Easter theme.
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Rana Dasgupta
Yeah.
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Emma Vigeland
My bet is Operation Resurrection.
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Rana Dasgupta
Ooh.
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Emma Vigeland
Okay. All right. If they go for the uranium, perhaps we could. There's an Easter egg hunt involved, but I would say that that doesn't involve enough implied crusade stuff for Pete Hegseth and the bloodthirsty Christian nationalists that populate this administration. Here is part of this address from Trump in which he is bragging about being an absolute savage, speaking about the war crimes that he wants to continue to inflict upon the Iranian people.
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Sam Cedar
What was coming, they've never imagined it. Remember, because of our drill, baby drill program, America has plenty of gas. We have.
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Emma Vigeland
This is part wrong, part sorry, part two. Part two. Yes, yes. But that part was funny when he said, we have plenty of gas.
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Sam Cedar
So much gas that's.
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Emma Vigeland
He's not lying. You. You have plenty of gas, sir. We've heard about all of this before. Ask Susie about it. Or anyone within a 1 mile radius are fully achieved.
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Sam Cedar
Thanks to the progress we've made. I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly, we are going to hit them extremely hard. Over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong. In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change. But regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders. Death. They're all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet if during this period.
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Emma Vigeland
Wait, okay, all right. I mean, I'm sorry, just pause for a second. What were our objectives? I just want to list them out because they didn't really say regime change was a purported objective. And then he says that we achieved it already. Oh, you know, by killing the elderly father and having his son be in charge. Technically, there have been changes within the regime, but. But does that constitute regime change? No. The Iranian people have not risen up against the government, which was one of the other objectives that he said they wanted to achieve. The nuclear program has not been destroyed, even though they said last summer it had been. Then they claim that was the objective this time, to destroy it. And the Strait of Hormuz has been perhaps indelibly pushed in the direction of Iran's sovereignty and leverage, where it's quite possible that going forward, they exert essentially taxes on ships that go through there, which is a objectively worse outcome for Western interests. So also the Stone Age is plural. Come on, buddy. We're talking to them and negotiating them, but we want to destroy them so that they have no modern society. That's the two things that he said
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Rana Dasgupta
back to back on key targets.
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Sam Cedar
If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all because it would not give them even a small chance of survival.
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Emma Vigeland
Okay, just pause really quickly. The Israelis did, did hit the oil fields. We spoke about that. Within the first week or so of this illegal criminal war. It was such a devastating attack that it is likely to remain in the soil and waterways in Iran for decades to come, causing cancer and other health issues.
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Matt Leck
It's a war crime to attack civilian infrastructure.
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Emma Vigeland
Well, he's bragging about, I mean, talking about going after their domestic energy capacity.
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Matt Leck
I mean, to hear people talk about our allies and stuff like this, like these are sort of things where Putin did it that we would rightly call it a war crime. And instead we like, act like, well, I guess. Well, actually our president is just bragging about it. So it's not like we're even having a pretense about it anymore.
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Emma Vigeland
I mean, but this is where our complicity in Israel's genocide has led us to this moment.
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Matt Leck
It's ripped the fabric of international relations apart.
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Emma Vigeland
No consequences for genocide means why would Trump anticipate any consequences for bombing civilian infrastructure like this? It's the unraveling of any kind of world order.
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Sam Cedar
But we could hit it and it would be gone and there's not a thing they could do about it. They have no anti aircraft equipment speak. Their radar is 100% annihilated. We are unstoppable as a military force.
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Matt Leck
The new reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
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Emma Vigeland
Yeah. Then do it. Then stop begging.
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Sam Cedar
Europe clear sites that we obliterated with the B2 bombers have been hit so hard that it would take months to get near the nuclear dust. And we have it under intense satellite surveillance and control. If we see them make A move, even a move for it will hit them with missiles very hard. Again. We have all the cards. They have none. It's very important that we keep this conflict in perspective. American involvement In World War I lasted one year, seven months and five days. World War II lasted for three years, eight months and 25 days. The Korean War lasted for three years, one month and two days. The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years, five months and 29 days. Iraq went on for eight years, eight months and 28 days. We are in this military operation so powerful, so brilliant, against one of the most powerful countries for 32 days.
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Emma Vigeland
Okay, so I just want to, first of all, is there a word limit on this speech that he had to hit? They're all, they're all writing chatgpt. Their speeches in chat GPT list the length of other wars to make our not war look so much less time consuming than the other. And Matt, the reason I want to play that part is because you've been on this, the whole like, no forever wars thing enough. And no wars of choice.
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Rana Dasgupta
No wars of choice.
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Emma Vigeland
Offensive wars. Because when you hear Democrats say no forever wars, what does that mean? It's literally what he just listed there. Hey, these other wars were really long and costly. This one, that will completely. That involves a litany of war crimes and will be devastating to the Iranian people and probably also to the ground troops and to the world at large. That's okay, I guess, if it's a short military conflict, it aids what we've spoken about, how the executive branch has entirely taken over the wartime authority that Congress is supposed to have. When you say that limited wars in their scope are allowable because it just feeds into the hands of more unilateral action by the executive.
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Matt Leck
It's a coupon for the military industrial complex that it will cash every time you say that. Because what the real problem is is that we over prepare for war in this country and we should be addressing other things, like daycare, for instance. And instead, for our entire lives, we've just been giving more and more money to the Pentagon and they need to burn it somehow. And every once in a while, yeah, it's nice to fire off some missiles at a country and get everybody's, you know, defense contractor stocks up. But we shouldn't be doing any of these wars at all. The military, we way overuse our military and look where it's got us.
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Emma Vigeland
And you mentioned daycare, you mentioned childcare. To top it off, this was before the address last night. Trump here is speaking extemporaneously. And he says more of what his true thoughts are. And as he degrades, it's becoming, it's interesting to see him just say exactly what his motivations are explicitly as he's declining and as there are no consequences for his actions. This is what narcissists do as well. Like, they like to give you little breadcrumbs as to what their thinking is. But Trump's becoming even more and more undisciplined about this. And every Democratic candidate should have this clip in one of their ads in the general election because the United States
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Matt Binder
can't take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people we're fighting, fighting wars. We can't take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare. And they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes to them to make up, but it's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can't do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing. Military protection. Protection.
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Emma Vigeland
So Trump ran on something called America first and no new wars. We all knew he was lying. If you were paying any attention, Smith didn't know. I would love to see him react to this clip. He's literally saying he show, he's, he's giving it away. We cannot pay for daycare. We cannot pay for childcare. We cannot pay for health care. They're trying to further gut health care to pay for the war in Iran even more than they did previously with the one big ugly ass bill where they kicked tens of tens of millions of Americans off their health care, raised premiums, doubled them to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Now let's double dip back into your health care and cut more from that to pay for this war in Iran, which is America First. Apparently this is one of the greatest. Trump is a scam artist and he scammed the American public for a decade at this point. But this might be his greatest, his greatest scam.
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Matt Leck
It's a Capone like mafia hit which this the entire world because we didn't play this. Maybe we'll play in the fun half, but where he's like, we don't really get any oil from the street of Hormuz. So we don't really care if you want it open so bad, because we got it closed. You should go fix it. But in the meantime, you can buy from us. That's like Al Capone going to a rival moonshine dealer, smashing up all their bottles and going to their clients and saying, hey, you need some liquor for your speakeasy. That's just what's happening. He is a gangster on the world level.
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Emma Vigeland
Yep. And we've gotten to this point not in a vacuum, not by the actions of one individual or one individual political party.
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Matt Leck
The
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Emma Vigeland
tactics of our colonial outposts in the Middle east have now been fully and unapologetically adopted by the state that gave birth to its client state. We're doing war crimes and bragging about it and acting as if that's strength and showing how completely divorced public will is right now from the actions of our supposed democracy. I think, you know, when we talk about how it's a myth that people don't vote on foreign policy, this is going to be an example of that, because people do want to see a government that is responsive to mass public sentiment. And whether it was Biden committing genocide in spite of how his party was reacting, or even running for reelection in spite of what people wanted. And whether it's Trump here doesn't matter that at the outset of this war in Iran, it's the most unpopular war in the modern era. We're still going to pursue this because it's largely irrelevant at this point what people think. We are a country that has completely been taken over by the explosion of dark money since Citizens United in 2010, insulating our government from public opinion and public will. And the consequences of that are deadly.
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Matt Leck
It's going to hurt that we've geared so much of our economy towards just killing. As the Palantir guy said, like, we're the best at killing. That's not much to offer the world. We used to offer them much more. Now we. I mean, look, we still lead culturally. There's a lot of media and entertainment that we do in this country and still do make some good things. But also, I don't know that our tech exports are really that much to hang our hat on for the future. Either it'd be nice to be making, you know, the future electric vehicle or being really good at making high speed trains, or like, you know, it's. It's depressing that all we do is, as Trump said, is fight wars.
- [25:02]
Emma Vigeland
In a moment, you will hear my conversation with Rana Dasgupta. But first, a word from one of our sponsors. This episode of the Majority Report is brought to you by Wild Grain. Wild Grain is the first bake from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, seasonal pastries and fresh pastas. Unlike many store bought options, Wild Grain uses simple ingredients you can pronounce and a slow fermentation process that can be easier on your belly and rich in nutrients and antioxidants. There's no preservatives and no shortcuts. Plus all items conveniently bake in 25 minutes or less with no thawing required. Wild Grains boxes are fully customizable. In addition to their variety box, they have a gluten free box, vegan box and a new protein box. And I was a hit in my household using bringing in this wild grain and cooking or baking I should say some great stuff. I started with those dang chocolate chip cookies which phenomenal. The kind that came out both like a little bit crispy but soft in the middle. I mean Brian's shaking his head right now. I am getting the office all hungry. My stomach's gonna be grumbling sooner than 2:30 today potentially because I'm talking about all this good stu stuff. But gosh, the croissants are amazing as well. And they have a sourdough that was phenomenal that I had a few weeks ago. It's great because it comes packaged, prepackaged, you have it in your freezer, you just heat up your oven and you're good to go. And you know that again they use ingredients that are easier on your belly and they have antioxidants in it, no preservatives. So you know that if you're indulging in these kinds of warm breads and pastries and cookies and such that it's not going to be bad for you as well. Imagine having fresh bakery quality bread, pastries and pasta at home without any trips to the store. And don't just take my word for it. They have over 40,000 five star reviews and have been voted the best food subscription box by USA Today for three years in a row. For a limited time, Wildgrain is offering you $30 off your first box plus free croissants for life when you go to wildgrain.com majority to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free croissants for life when you go to wildgrain.com majority. Or you can use the promo code Majority at checkout, link in the video and episode descriptions and at Majority FM get $30 off your first box and and free croissants in every box. Go to wildgreen.com majority to start your subscription. Quick break. And when we come back, you will hear my conversation with Rana Dasgupta. We are back and we are joined now by Rana Dasgupta, essayist and author, including of his new book after the Making and Unmaking of a World Order. Rana, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Rana Dasgupta
Thank you for having me.
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Emma Vigeland
This book is fascinating. I'd really encourage people to pre order it. I know it's coming out in a few weeks. It's so relevant to this current moment because as we're living through this kind of rise of nationalism, particularly right wing nationalism within like a European and American context, you could also describe this period as the death of liberalism to a degree. But your book takes the time to kind of denaturalize, if you will, the concept of the nation state, meaning just unpacking how the nation state became this dominant form of political organization really in the 20th century. So let's begin there, maybe 1900, comparing how many nation states existed then to where we are right now.
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Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, I think that is a good place to start because, you know, we our news media are very short term. It's not just news media. It's also indeed our education. Even the last few decades weigh very, very large in our conversations. And so we don't often reflect much on how recent are all the structures that we live with today. So as you say, there were in 1900 somewhere around 50 sovereign states. It's difficult to count them exactly because there are some that are a bit ambiguous, but somewhere in that region compared to 193seats in the UN today, plus a few other territories. So the number of sovereign territories has pretty much quadrupled in that time. Of course, there were two big waves of it. One was the end of the European empires, which produced about 100 new countries. And then there was another big wave after 1989 when a lot of states that were made independent from the Soviet Union. And so we have and that's of course, only 30 years ago. So the situation of having a globe which is totally covered by a mosaic of sovereign nation states is a very recent phenomenon. And my book started, I mean, I started thinking about it when Trump was elected for the first time, when Brexit had just happened and when there was a lot of shock in various countries as to about changes, big changes that seem to be happening within states and between them. And so I thought I'd go a bit further back in history and try and work out how shocking in fact this was.
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Emma Vigeland
So you go back to even in the beginning of your book, France in particular, having the nation state having some of its roots in religion as well, the theocratic origin of the nation state. Let's go to your first chapter and trace it back even to them.
- [31:28]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, I wanted to start with religion because one of the shocks that we were all having at the time that I started writing this was, and this includes lots of other countries. I was spending a lot of time in India, where Prime Minister Modi was elected in 2014 and was pursuing a clearly non secular idea of a state that had been famously secularized for since independence. France was panicked by the rise of the far right, which at that point was proposing a sort of union of defenders of Christendom, seeing Putin, Trump and Marine Le Pen as the three sort of vanguard members of that union. I felt as I started looking at this history of religion that it wasn't actually surprising that as liberalism began to crumble or lots of people felt that it was a hoax or it was a conspiracy against of elites, that religion would rush in to that vacuum. Because if you look back at the long history of the nation state, theology has always played a very important part. So you talk about France. The sort of opening gambit of the book is the moment when the King of France in the 13th century bought the crown of thorns that were supposed to have sat on Christ's head as he was crucified in order to boost his own political and spiritual authority. And that crown he put on his own head, literally taking the crown of heaven and putting it on the King Francis head, and thereby giving France a sort of mystical theological authority akin to the Church or anything else. And that has not disappeared over the centuries. That's my argument. It's not disappeared over the centuries, it's just been institutionalized into the state. But at its foundations, there are very powerful theological energies still in the state. And that's what nationalism is all about to some extent.
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Emma Vigeland
And the exclusionary nature of it, going back to the kind of theological roots of say, excluding Jews and women from this, or even to add to that, the idea that France, the crown being put on the head of state, in France's head, attempting to fuse, or perhaps this is later on, but like the rifts between the Protestants and the Catholics, it's like, okay, you are a part of this national identity under Christianity, but there is always still that exclusionary nature in this premise. Jews, women, etc. Not a part of it.
- [34:24]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, I mean, we can contrast this with what went before. So if we think back to the Roman Empire, so France is just one of a number of countries that come out of tribal conquests emerging from the collapse of the Roman Empire. So the Roman emperor, who by that time was a Christian emperor, proposed himself as a universal emperor, ruling over countless nationalities and language and ethnic groups and indeed religions. The problem of these nascent states was that they were clearly not universal entities, they were tribal entities, but they wanted to have the same kind of authority. So they had to work a sort of trick of borrowing God for their own little territory. And that territory was bounded and it was in conflict and competition with other similar territories around. So exclusion was also there at the heart of the identity of the state, that not everybody can be a member of the state, it's not an empire, it is bound to a certain religion or a certain ethnic group or whatever it might be. So that's another thing that's in the sort of foundations of states, that the foreigner is a very big character in the state and the internal foreigner, the person who's a suspect citizen. Jews played that role for a very long time in many European states, risks potentially enormous danger because the state can at any point whip up violence and anger towards those who don't have a legitimate claim on citizenship.
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Emma Vigeland
And perhaps we can look at Britain for a second because I do want to take us to the modern context, but so much of this history is so rich, just the idea of, say, the joint stock companies and the rise of a sort of entity that is somewhat sovereign but working for capital interests alongside the nation state, working hand in hand. In the modern context, we've now seen kind of the global elite supersede the nation state. And I do want to get there. But when we look at the origins of this kind of structure, take us to the British Empire, the East India Company, etc.
- [36:56]
Rana Dasgupta
Yes. So Britain is the first capitalist superpower, the first country. I mean, there really only been two, Britain and the United States. There were very powerful capitalist states before that, Netherlands, Spain, etc. And they hosted sort of major financial centers, but they never did what Britain did, which was to supply a currency to the world and to try and lay a net of British law also across the world, which is essentially the drive behind the British Empire. But the very interesting part of this is that in the early stages it was not the British government, but a joint style corporation, the East India Company, that primarily drove this. So the East India Company had its own armies and navies. Its own ambassadors. And it governed large areas, let's say, of India, for instance. And what's fascinating when you get into that history is that the East India Company is essentially one of the most dynamic forces on the planet. It is expanding the capitalist system. It is creating vast and very savage economies of slaves and trade and conquest. But it is producing profits and value on such a level, capitalist value that can be traded. But by the 18th century, the British state is totally mortgaged to the East India Company. The heart of 25% of all MPs were stockholders in the East India Company. So British policy was essentially kind of bound to company policy. But even more than that, the country itself, its entire financial system, was underwritten both by East India Company profits and East India Company share value. So the country was following behind the corporation rather than the other way around. As I explained in the book, this meets a crisis in the 1760s and 70s when basically parliament, when the company kind of crashes because of things going on in India and the government has a choice whether to bail out the country company and risk the country or vice versa. And it decides to do that to save the company rather than the state. And the result, through lots of complex tax innovations, is American independence. So it's extraordinary that the state would risk its American colony rather than allow the company to go bankrupt. And of course, I'm going to draw parallels between that and Silicon Valley today.
- [40:03]
Emma Vigeland
I'm so eager to get to those parallels. I'm trying to kind of follow a sort of timeline to a degree, but there's so much to chew on. Perhaps we can then move then to the history that we touched on at the beginning of our conversation, which is where we were at at the beginning of the 20th century, with nation states with around fewer than 50 nation states. But then you have, of course, the two world wars, you have the fall of the Ottoman Empire, you have the carving up of the Middle east via Sykes Picot, the Balfour Declaration, but the creation of these kind of newer nation states that are right now having their sovereignty completely disregarded because of Israel's expansion. And then of course, the post World War II order that cemented this reality. What role did nation states play in both of these two world wars and where did it set? And then we can move, I guess, to the back half of the 20th century as nation states kind of play a role in the expansion of the capitalist system as America takes over the globe as the capitalist empire.
- [41:18]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, this is where we get into the crucial significance of America and the crucial importance of America not just in building a powerful state, but in building a world order. So by 1900, British hegemony is clearly in decline. Britain is not the power it once was, and it's faced increasingly by very powerful competitors. America, which already has greater industrial capacity than Britain at that time, but also Germany, which is more technologically advanced, and Japan, which is increasingly ambitious, territorially ambitious, in Asia, where Britain, of course, has immense territory itself. So Britain is in decline. And we enter this period from 1914 to 1945, where there's 30 years of immense turbulence in the capitalist system and in competing imperial blocks to essentially replace Britain. And of course, the Second World War is that sort of final conflagration. And the Second World War ends with a situation that is so much more extreme than 1815, when Britain takes over from France, because you have Germany and Japan totally destroyed as economic powers, even as simple physical entities. Most of the rest of Europe is also destroyed. And so America enters the post war period with something like 50% of global industrial capacity and the ability essentially to draw on the back of an envelope the kind of world it wants, which is exactly what it does. And the world it wants is a new kind of empire. It is an empire whose creation will require the dismantling of the European empire. So the breaking up of the world into a set of sovereign states, all of which will trade with each other in a global capitalist system from which America will draw immense rents and profits, and to which America will supply various hegemonic services, keeping the seas open, keeping the free trade system afloat, supplying a stable currency, and indeed administering the system through various arm's length organizations like the World bank, the imf, even the United Nations. That system is finally.
- [44:00]
Emma Vigeland
NATO is another example to increasing Europe's military dependence on America.
- [44:04]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, the Marshall Plan, rebuilding Europe, all that stuff. That system becomes mature in the 1990s when the Soviet Union disappears from the picture and you have the sort of the Washington consensus and the ability finally of America to dictate the terms on which global trade happens and to implement a global property regime through the World Trade Organization and all that. So the nation state system in its mature form is very much an American creation. And America has always played an exceptional, had an exceptional position in it, setting international laws that it alone did not have to abide by. So America was always exceptional in being able to wage any kind of war it wanted, impose, you know, dictators on foreign countries and all that sort of thing, but only America could do that sort of thing. And it would be a powerful Policeman campaigning against other powers that tried to break the rules of the international system. And that is what is disappearing now. America, like Britain, is losing its hegemonic position, is no longer able to, you know, guarantee the supply of energy, guarantee the supremacy of the dollar, keep the seas open, even very topically. And so that's why we're again entering this period of turbulent competition between other empires that would like to take away from America some of the powers it's had.
- [45:43]
Emma Vigeland
Would you describe the promulgation of nation states in the very kind of American framework that places us as Americans, as supreme, that we're now seeing decline? Would you argue that that is an effort, that that was an effort by the United States to sort of maintain the skeleton of a colonial world while giving kind of the appearance of some sort of evenhandedness? Or is that too simple of a way to describe what the vision was?
- [46:22]
Rana Dasgupta
No, I think the vision. I mean, it's very interesting when you look at the actual individuals who designed the system, and I look in detail at the Dulles brothers, for instance. I mean, many of these people had come out of finance. They were bankers, they were very wealthy, they were directors of companies. Americans corporate CEOs had a very large. And Wall street had a huge say in the design of what I'll call the American empire. And absolutely there was a nostalgia for Britain. They wanted to, essentially to maintain a lot of the dynamics of the British Empire, to maintain, very importantly, Western superiority in the capitalist system, whilst not wishing to have any of the ambiguous rights and responsibilities of actually administering large parts of the world, which was very expensive and was clearly not possible in the climate following World War II. So I think, both in its intention and in its actuality, yes, this regime continued in a more virtual and more modern, technologically heavy way many of the principles on which the European empires have been set up. And we can see this in a very interesting statistic described by Branko Milanovic in his work on global inequality, where he describes the fact that essentially until the 19th century, being rich in Africa or Asia was pretty much the same as being rich in the West. And what happened under the influence of the Ukraine empires was a massive and very rapid divergence. So that by the beginning of the 20th century, it was better to be lower middle class or even poor in the west than rich in much of the rest of the world because of the extraordinary affluence of the. The society and power of the society you were part of, and that line of divergence in wealth between different regions of the world did not stop in 1945. Its peak was actually in 1974. So there's unfortunately a correlation between everything we think of as best in the west, meaning democracy and equality and all those kinds of things. Those things hit their peak precisely at the moment when the west was most. When the world was most unequal and the west was. The gap in wealth was the greatest between the west and everywhere else. So yes, I think the system of the Americans set up after 1974, after 1945, perpetuated and intensified actually in a more effective way what the European empires had done.
- [49:22]
Emma Vigeland
It's so just, I mean, chilling, prescient, important to understand the limits of, if you're somebody that cares about the world and not just the nation, the limits of democracy. When living in true democracy, when you're living in the imperial core under capitalism. You know, we see this very acutely with Israel. Israel has a so called democracy within their cloistered colony. But of course the people that they rule over and extract from in Palestine have no democracy. I mean, the US is to the global south as Israel is to Palestine. To use an SAT formulation of logic here.
- [50:14]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, I think the moment we're in now is unfortunately very different as far as the US is concerned. I mean, I think. The U.S. the system that we're talking about was built very much on the supremacy of oil and the supremacy of an industrial system. There's a particular kind of energy and a particular kind of economic structure to the.
- [50:48]
Emma Vigeland
And just to interject for a second, I mean, you mentioned the Dulles brothers, of course, oil and the explosion of kind of capitalists out west, this new rush of money, the Bushes, I mean, they were so embedded in the United States covert operations and in the post World War II order of installing the despots that you describe to benefit the oil and gas conglomerates in the United States. I mean that is an industry that of course you can't tell the story without.
- [51:19]
Rana Dasgupta
Absolutely. And in fact, I mean, it's not even a secret. It is actually. America's official role is to supply cheap energy to the world and keep oil flowing into the capitalist system. And it's at moments of crisis and the Iraq war was one of those. When you see what really counts, what is really at stake in the U.S. is it the spread of democracy and freedom and all that sort of thing, or is it something else? So often behind America's wars and wars for legal reasons are always couched in certain terms. If there's a threat from another party or whatever it might be, or a threat to human rights or threat to democracy. But wars are usually fought over other things which are more existential, such as currency and energy. But the point here is that the offshoring of America's industrial production and then later on a sort of move to an AI economy where human labor becomes less and less important to the production of value, completely changes the relationship of America to the rest of the world and to its own population. Because a major reason why all the Western countries granted democracy to citizens who've often been fighting for it for a century and a half. They conceded it because finally those citizens were very, very valuable to them as industrial workers. And granting those people some kind of political voice and making sure that the industrial system could function without massive breakdowns and strikes and class conflict was very, very important. And so those countries suddenly granted something that they'd been withholding for a long time and self consciously built up a working class. Free public education and healthcare and all those things that made the working class feel that they had a stake in the system and made them feel secure and all that sort of thing. So there's a sort of late 20th century system where a lot of these things are linked in a virtuous circle of industry and democracy and the west being much richer than the rest of the world because it's monopolizing the industrial system. And none of that really holds today. So all those things are under pressure. There's, there's a lot of labor in countries like the US which is not really important and is losing value to other parts of the world because it's in direct competition with Asia. And again, the population doesn't have the same strategic significance. And democracy, I mean, we are looking at a much more oligarchic structure to the US economy. And democracy is under threat and is even, I would say, being withdrawn in various devious ways.
- [54:29]
Emma Vigeland
So with the countries like the United States needing workers a lot less, with the outsourcing of all of this to other countries with globalization, we see the rights of folks within the imperial court, within the United States in this context, diminishing. Because as their importance as workers diminishes, so do their importance, I guess, in terms of buying into this system. I guess we could turn back to the role of nation states because they served a purpose for a few decades for the promulgation of the US as the world cop the hegemon, et cetera. But when did nation states or did they ever become a threat to, say, the capitalist order? Is there a situation where nationalism has Bumped up against capitalism. Where are we at today?
- [55:46]
Rana Dasgupta
Well, I see the nation state essentially to be crude. I see it as the political apparatus of the capitalist system. And that has lots of implications. The capitalist system is very dynamic. It's not the same from one decade to the next. And so if we define the nation state in that way, we should be skeptical about the nation state being a stable unit too. It may not be the same in 1975 as in 2050, and that may especially be the case in terms of things like democracy. So democracy might be very useful to the sort of partnership of politics and capitalism. At one point, democracy might actually be the sort of energizing tool that allows capital and labor to work together in the best way. But at another point in time, that convergence of interest might completely have broken down. So I see us as in a moment where the sort of interests of the capitalist system and therefore of the nation state diverging from the interests of citizens. And I think Trump is very interesting in this respect because in whatever way his mind works, he seems to have quite a profound instinct for the, the particular pressures on the United States today. And he's almost like one of these guys who comes in and strips down a corporation and turns it around for greater profit. Trump is not only stripping down a lot of the things domestically, but stripping down a lot of America's previous historical commitments internationally. I was just in Peru, where the withdrawal of USAID services has meant a complete arrest of a lot of the work going on to try and convert farmers from cocaine to other crops in an attempt to sort of diminish the power of non state actors in that country. So America has, as the hegemonic power has not only been global policemen, all this sort of thing, it has actually physically held other states together and sustained them because it has had a fundamental commitment to states as states. They shouldn't collapse. This is our system and we need to sort of, if there are states in trouble, we need to give them expertise or arms or whatever they need. Trump has sort of pulled out of a lot of those kinds of historical responsibilities. Both Britain and America, when they were capitalist superpowers, they would charge very low tariffs on other countries imports, even if those countries charge high tariffs on theirs, simply because they were the superpower and they had to advertise the, the virtues of free trade, even if other people didn't fall in line. And that was a cost that they would bear as superpowers, just like NATO and all these other things. Trump is pulling out a lot of those things. And in a way leading the transition from America as hegemon to America as a regional empire with the same sort of strategies and indeed moral status as Russia and China and its other competitors. So, you know, whether he's a genius or he's a fool, I think he has very, very single mindedly decided that no longer is America going to play the role that it has in. It has until now, with all the consequences we can see around us.
- [60:07]
Emma Vigeland
Yes, except, I mean, in terms of militarism. I think, you know, that Trump has this. I believe that he acknowledges, at least on the surface level, the fact that we are moving towards a multipolarity. And he will say rhetorically, this is the Donroe doctrine. We're going to focus on domination in the Western Hemisphere. And yet what we're seeing in Iran right now, this war, is still very much within the framework that you describe. It's almost immense. It's accelerating, I would say multipolarity, because it's been done so stupidly and barbarically and without planning. So I'm a little hesitant to assign some intentionality to it. It's like he has a recognition of the reality as opposed to Biden, you know, trying to fortify NATO, turn back the clock. Trump understands where we are, but his attempt to reify American power is backfiring. It's accelerating the dynamic you're talking about.
- [61:11]
Rana Dasgupta
Yeah, I mean, there are much better people than me to analyze American military strategy today and all those sorts of things. But all I would say is that once again, Trump, like previous American presidents, has to give a sort of legalistic account of his reasons for declaring a war like this. But his actual reasons might be quite different. And I don't know what the discussions are going on around him, but I suspect that much more than is discussed in the media today, his motives for a lot of what he's been doing, a lot of what he declared with respect to Greenland, a lot of what he's done in Venezuela and in Iran, have to do with an attempt to seize a window of opportunity to improve the US's competitive situation with China. I think that the US faces
- [62:17]
Sam Cedar
an
- [62:17]
Rana Dasgupta
existential threat from China which it does not face from anyone else. And that existential threat is that China has a plausible currency alternative to the US dollar. And China is also using energy politics to create coalitions around the world that don't involve the United States. And it's able to do that partly because it has a near monopoly on rare earth minerals, or at least on the processing of those minerals. So Greenland, for instance, I read that very much as an attempt to sort of quickly make up for this deficiency as vis a vis China. And as you know, as Trump keeps telling us, America is quite self sufficient in terms of oil. But China depends massively on cheap oil to keep producing and most of that oil comes from the Middle East. So I wonder if there are not intra imperial competitive motives behind all this. But as you say, I mean, There is a long standing American and before that British desire to prevent a powerful state from emerging in the Middle East. This is a very, very long tradition and I think the creation of the state of Israel is part of that attempt to essentially keep the Middle east chaotic and conflicted. And to some extent I think Trump and maybe some of his colleagues have bought into their own fantasies that the Middle east is extremely weak and can't do anything for itself and that wars like this would be won very easily. And yes, I agree with you that potentially he is actually creating the opposite effect of what he intended, dramatically enhancing Russia and China's situation in the world vis a vis America and indeed creating, throwing lots of other countries into their arms because the US is proving so unreliable and so. Difficult to deal with that alliances with Russia and China seem much more attractive to many other states.
- [64:53]
Emma Vigeland
Just one or two more questions here, just because I want to return to the East India Company comparison to the tech industry, an AI industry completely capturing our government here. You know, China's competitiveness is also in its state capacity, is in its ability to have long term planning, in its ability to direct resources in a way that the United States no longer can because of a investor class that is taking and gobbling up historically historic amounts of value for themselves, efficiency be damned. So when you look at the tech industry and you compare it to the East India Company kind of running the show for the empire, where do you see those parallels and how do you see that as it fits within the context of competition with China?
- [65:50]
Rana Dasgupta
Well, the East India Company was essentially doing a lot of the British states worked for it in maintaining its competitive advantage against France, especially other countries too, but especially France. France had its own similar trading companies, but they were nothing like on the scale of the East India Company. And Britain had a much more developed stock market and debt market, so it was able to fund the expansion of the company much more efficiently. And the East India Company also plugged into one of the most dynamic industries in the world, which was India's textile industry. This had the effect that the British economy elites made their Money essentially from outside the British Isles. It was land in the Americas and trade in Asia that was basically putting money in the pockets of elites and giving them a greater and greater share of the British economy every year, not what British people produced. And so the political apparatus was designed really to protect that company and joint stock companies in general and elite interests all over the world, rather than give British citizens a voice. In fact, it would have been impossible to give British citizens a voice. Silicon Valley is performing a similar role for America today. Silicon Valley spends much, much more money than the US government on scientific research, which is a reversal of 50 years ago when the US government was by far the biggest funder of scientific research in the world. It is Silicon Valley that is producing most of, not only of the technological edge that America has, but also a lot of the dollar inflow, since they account for such a large amount of stock market value and indeed pulling rents from users all over the world and increasingly accumulating data about citizens of countries all over the world. So Silicon Valley is this enormous asset to American power, which is the only thing really that can stave off an incredibly effective, as you say, state run program of technological development in China. So inevitably, the state must give concessions to Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley, The Silicon Valley CEOs were all there at Trump's inauguration, which was an advertisement of a kind of alliance between Washington and Silicon Valley that's now very apparent. We saw Musk's involvement with the early administration. It's quite clear that the sort of power of social media, of Tesla, of private space exploration, of Amazon as a sort of a new style East India company, which is essentially taking rents out of the entire, out of every transaction on the planet almost. America is disproportionately reliant on these firms. But the difference between these firms and let's say General Motors and AT&T of the previous era, is that they don't necessarily contribute to state power in the same way, they compete with it in some ways. So there are lots of well meaning US Officials who would like to preserve a certain integrity to American democracy. You can see that Silicon Valley is able to basically hijack American democracy, automate a lot of opinion, produce enormous confusion around what is the truth and what people actually believe. And Donald Trump has enjoyed that chaos and confusion a lot. So I think the parallels are really to do with a sort of a disproportionate political power, which is not of the same sort of the car companies and steel companies and oil companies, even of a different era where antitrust regulation could break them up and create competition between them. It's almost in the nature of Silicon Valley to create monopolies which are meaningless if they're broken up. If you break up Google into 12 different companies, it's not very useful to the users anymore. Users depend on that monopoly. It's supposed to be a universal data system. So those companies, they have a monopolistic power. They've devoted all their immense political energy to making sure they are not regulated and that they maintain a lot of their legal freedoms. And they have ideas about political organization, about economic organization, And even about the nature of human life that is quite different to what the US State has promoted for quite a long time. And I'm not just talking about the. The private opinions of many people in Silicon Valley, which, however, I think are quite significant. Some of them are very radical. I don't think it's insignificant that some of these individuals hold views that are massively at odds with what most Americans believe and what the state officially believes. But I think it's also in the nature of these companies to start becoming geopolitical actors in their own right and holding states increasingly to ransom because they can run states, they run the military, they run the bureaucracy, and they can produce outcomes of elections. So clearly they will only have more be able to extract more and more concessions from states in the future.
- [72:18]
Emma Vigeland
Well, the book is phenomenal. After nations, the Making and Unmaking of a World Order. There's so much that we didn't even get to touch on. But I was thrilled to have you on today. Rana Dasgupta. We will put a link to after nations down below wherever people are listening to or watching this episode. Rana, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
- [72:42]
Rana Dasgupta
Thanks for a great conversation.
- [72:51]
Emma Vigeland
We are back. Hope you enjoyed that interview. We now have breaking news and I would use that dang sound drop if I had remembered to fix my soundboard. Thank you. Well, maybe we'll let Fox News take it away for us. But Pam Bondi is out. What is her next position? We do not know. Perhaps ambassador to Atlantis. Is there a position, not the fun one in the Bahamas?
- [73:21]
Matt Leck
Is there a position at the Shield of the Americas opening up?
- [73:26]
Emma Vigeland
Vice Vice ambassador. She'll have to serve under Kristine. He's just sending the women there. They say the shield of fired broads. Fired mouthy broads.
- [73:39]
Rana Dasgupta
Right, right.
- [73:40]
Emma Vigeland
Here's FOX News with the breaking breaking news for us.
- [73:46]
Fox News Reporter
Kelly, I just got off the phone with President Trump. We have a big scoop. Pam Bondi will soon leave her job as the Attorney general. She is going to get a different job within the administration. It doesn't sound like there is any bad blood between her and President Trump, but it does seem like they want her to go and do something else.
- [74:08]
Rana Dasgupta
She will be.
- [74:10]
Matt Leck
Let's take that again.
- [74:11]
Emma Vigeland
It does seem like I don't want
- [74:13]
Rana Dasgupta
to go do something else.
- [74:16]
Matt Leck
Not firing you.
- [74:16]
Emma Vigeland
Can you make me a sandwich or something? Ambassador to Boar's Head is her next. Is her next gig.
- [74:25]
Fox News Reporter
It doesn't sound like there is any bad blood between her.
- [74:28]
Rana Dasgupta
Sure.
- [74:29]
Fox News Reporter
But it does seem like they want her to go and do something else. And in an interim role, she will be replaced by Todd Blanche, who is currently her deputy at the Justice Department. So it doesn't sound like Blanche is being elevated long term to the Attorney general. There might be somebody else that the President wants to go in there. But President Trump soon will announce to the entire world that it is the end of Pam Bondi's time as the Attorney General. He still thinks that she is a great person and she did a good job. That's a breakup because she will still be an important part of the administration, he tells me.
- [75:09]
Emma Vigeland
But she's got a lot of dirt on me.
- [75:13]
Fox News Reporter
Officer of the United States that at least for a little while is going to be.
- [75:18]
Emma Vigeland
She's going to be like, I like how he's keeping them under his control, but with the most humiliating possible non position position.
- [75:26]
Matt Leck
I'm actually promoting you a higher thing than Attorney General, but we don't know what is yet.
- [75:32]
Emma Vigeland
If she had any dignity and wasn't involved in a literal criminal conspiracy to cover up the Epstein files in contravention of the law, then she would, I would imagine, just be like, f this, I'm going to private practice. But I was trying to remember, you know, Trump has fired a few attorney generals at this point. The first was Jeff Sessions. Do you remember why he fired Jeff Sessions? It was because Jeff Sessions refused to recuse himself from the Russia interference investigation that was happening independently in the Justice Department. Like how far we have fallen. Jeff Sessions looked at Trump like it was. He was the love of his life, that little Keebler elf. And that was. That was what Trump was upset about. Now, Pam Bonney did everything that she could to politicize the DOJ on his behalf, but she wasn't as probably directly obsequious and effective as Todd Blanche as a bully. Like, we saw what Blanche did in going to Ghislaine Maxwell and negotiating her to get to that cushy prison which by the way, Real Housewives of Salt Lake City's Jen Shaw just got out of prison and was saying, you know, she scammed a bunch of elderly people, but is trying to take the moral high ground when giving her people interview about her experience with Ghislaine. And she was saying that she felt no remorse seeing the victims on tv, which we knew already. But apparently Trump's upset about her poor handling of the COVID up of the Epstein files. And the other reporting is that the. He's literally just firing the women now because Tulsi Gabbard's next. It's apparently, like, already going to happen. They're already floating this.
- [77:23]
Matt Leck
Yeah.
- [77:23]
Emma Vigeland
They call her do not involve the DNI position, which is somehow worse. Yeah, I mean, so he's upset that the cases against James Comey and Letitia James were dismissed, I guess. And he's upset that there were all the Epstein files. Cover up didn't go that well.
- [77:45]
Matt Leck
He was talking about Levitt maybe doing a bad job for the reason why he's getting all this bad PR too. So maybe she's. The motor mouth might be running out of gas.
- [77:55]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. Oh, oh, someone corrected me. It's because Sessions did recuse himself. Yeah, that's what I meant to say. I say didn't.
- [78:02]
Matt Leck
Yeah, I was confused by that.
- [78:03]
Emma Vigeland
I hate when my brain does that. I hate when my brain does that. Didn't. And. But Bondi RIP she was a good soldier. Trump loved her when she was on his impeachment defense. But prior to that, when she was Florida Attorney General, she basically blocked an investigation into Trump University. And it was after he gave her $25,000 donation.
- [78:28]
Matt Leck
Right. I also failed to re look at the sweetheart deal that Jeffrey Epstein got for his time when Alex Acosta was the AG of Florida.
- [78:38]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. Yeah. All right, well, there's the breaking news, folks. And with that, we're gonna wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half. And we will say hello to our fun half friends, and that includes Brandon Sutton. Brandon, your reaction to this breaking news?
- [78:56]
Brandon Sutton
Oh, I mean, honestly, I can't help but feel like it's an unfair Another one of Trump's UNF HR decisions to blame the failure to cover up the Epstein files on Pam Bondi. If he wanted the Epstein files properly covered up, he should have made sure to kill Epstein when it was Joe Biden's presidency instead of his own. Because that's really the set of events that kind of put this into motion.
- [79:24]
Emma Vigeland
Right, Right. What's happening on the discourse, Brandon Well,
- [79:31]
Brandon Sutton
I am back from a little micro vacation and so we're going to hit the ground running. Honestly, it's going to sound crazy. I think Trump is going to launch his special ground operation on Easter. So I'm preparing myself to be streaming on Easter. But in the prelude to that, I'll have some clips out for you all today over on the YouTube channel the discourse with Brandon. We are, I think, only 75 followers. I'm just. Every time we're near a milestone, we're only 75 followers away from 19,000. So it's still not too late to be part of the first 19,000. Or not, it's fine. But either way, you should send me your money.
- [80:13]
Emma Vigeland
All right. Hey, Matt Bender.
- [80:17]
Matt Binder
Hello.
- [80:18]
Emma Vigeland
Hello. What's happening on your shows?
- [80:21]
Jacob
Leftist mafia tonight@YouTube.com mattbinder at what time? 8:30pm Eastern Time. I forgot what time it was for a second.
- [80:34]
Emma Vigeland
All right. And Mat Leck, what's happening with Jacobin and Left Reckonings?
- [80:38]
Matt Leck
Yeah, a new Jacobin show tomorrow. We're talking about Brazil. And also follow me on Instagram Atleck, where I am fastly approaching 8,000 followers, which is only 2,000 lessons. Then I need to, like, be able
- [80:53]
Emma Vigeland
to post links for free without having to pay Instagram.
- [80:57]
Rana Dasgupta
You can.
- [80:58]
Matt Leck
For the, for the highest thing. It is $150 a month on Instagram for unlimited links. That's too much money.
- [81:06]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah. And it's so amazing how they just stole the Elon model after he started
- [81:10]
Matt Leck
doing Elon really broke the seal and let them do, like, that's what the problem is. Like, it's. They all suck. They're all Elon's. Elon is just public about, you know, sucking, but.
- [81:20]
Emma Vigeland
Exactly.
- [81:21]
Matt Leck
Zuckerberg. And there's actually texts Binder, maybe you've been following the story, but text between Elon and Zuckerberg. And it turns out that the whole, like, challenge to fight thing really, truly was political kayfabe. And they're in fact, like, conspiring against things like, you know, to do business deals.
- [81:41]
Jacob
Oh, yeah. Zuckerberg reached out to Musk earlier last year when Doge was fully ramping up and told Elon that he really liked Zuckerberg. Telling Elon via text message that he really liked what Doge was doing and to let them know how Facebook can help because they're already making sure to stop and censor anyone who's sharing information about the Doge member. Like Zuckerberg openly saying that the. The public employees of Doge who were cutting everybody's you know, programs and stealing their personal data from government systems. All those people should have been able to do so in the shadows, according to Zuckerberg.
- [82:31]
Rana Dasgupta
Yep.
- [82:32]
Matt Leck
So, yeah, if I was somebody who credited the Trump era Republicans as being free speech, speech champions, I would probably want to reassess that. But, you know, probably.
- [82:44]
Emma Vigeland
All right, folks, with that, we're going to wrap up the free part of the show and head into the fun half. As a reminder, the show relies on your support. Jointhemajorityreport.com you can become a member. You can im the show. We'll take some calls in the fun half. Have some fun with it. Fallopiantube says can we get a somber the dow is over 50,000 for our fallen soldier?
- [83:06]
Matt Leck
Oh, yeah, actually, I wanted to play
- [83:07]
Emma Vigeland
a little bit Dao. The Dow right now is over. The dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. I just found out you're over 50,000 right now. The S P at almost 7,000 and the NASDAQ smashing records. Americans 401ks and retirement savings are booming. Oh, so good to get rid of her.
- [83:44]
Brandon Sutton
I can't believe they got rid of her.
- [83:45]
Emma Vigeland
I can't believe it.
- [83:48]
Matt Leck
We, there's no bad blood. There's nothing going on. We just wanted to do something else now. Okay.
- [83:54]
Emma Vigeland
I too will bury her in the back of my golf course when she's dead and gone.
- [84:02]
Jacob
Watching that very weird. Watching that Fox News segment, they, like Matt said it sounded like a breakup. I mean, yeah. What are you doing reporting on this like this? Can you imagine any other administration people coming out when someone was fired or leaving their position or resigning or whatever? If they came out like, oh, but don't worry, the, the guy or girl resigning and the president, they're still friends.
- [84:26]
Rana Dasgupta
There's still a place for that.
- [84:27]
Emma Vigeland
Like, that's ridiculous. Yeah.
- [84:29]
Matt Leck
I'm just not emotionally available right now.
- [84:32]
Brandon Sutton
I do think, we do have to admit, though, agnostically, she did handle the COVID up very poorly. I don't think there's ever been a cover up handled as poorly as she handled it Now. I think that's mostly a commentary on Trump's hiring policies, but it was really terrible. I think everyone agreed to that. Susie Wiles Bongino. It was the binder thing. Like, the binder thing really sold it for me.
- [84:57]
Jacob
I mean, to be, to be fair, it really felt like they, they ramped it up because it wasn't a cover up, obviously in the beginning to them because they really believed they were going to unveil things. And then they actually took a look after all that, and then.
- [85:11]
Brandon Sutton
Oh, shit. Whoops.
- [85:12]
Rana Dasgupta
We.
- [85:12]
Jacob
We actually. This is now a cover up. We didn't realize Trump was in here so much.
- [85:17]
Matt Leck
Donald Trump's like the guy who doesn't tell his attorneys, like, everything that might be a problem in the. And they get into the evidence.
- [85:25]
Emma Vigeland
Yeah.
- [85:25]
Matt Leck
Oh, shit.
- [85:26]
Emma Vigeland
Right, Right. I also found it. Find it really amusing that Bondi was his date to the Supreme Court birthright citizenship hearing yesterday, which he attended as a way. As an intimidation tactic, like staring at the Supreme Court justices. And she apparently came with him. And it's like that last ditch effort right before you got a breakup. Like, let's go on one more date. Let's go on one more day to the Supreme Court to see if we can intimidate the justices into participating in our ethnic cleansing campaign. And it didn't go that great, you know? So time to break up. All right, guys. See you in the fun half.
- [86:02]
Matt Leck
Okay.
- [86:02]
Sam Cedar
Emma, please.
- [86:03]
Emma Vigeland
Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report.
- [86:08]
Sam Cedar
Wait, look.
- [86:09]
Brandon Sutton
Sam is unpopular.
- [86:10]
Brian
I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show.
- [86:16]
Emma Vigeland
It is Thursday things.
- [86:18]
Rana Dasgupta
I think you need to improve it for Sam. Yes, please. No, no, no.
- [86:21]
Brian
I'm.
- [86:21]
Rana Dasgupta
I'm.
- [86:22]
Brian
I'm going to pause you right there.
- [86:23]
Sam Cedar
Wait, what?
- [86:24]
Brian
You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. Was offered a tour. Sushi and poker with boys. Twerk, sushi and poker with the boys who was offered with tour. Yeah, sushi and poker with the boys. What? Tour, sushi and poker.
- [86:41]
Emma Vigeland
Tim's upset.
- [86:43]
Brian
Twerk, sushi and poker with two boys. It was offered with twerk sushi and that's what we call biz. Sushi and bulker.
- [86:52]
Emma Vigeland
Right.
- [86:53]
Brian
Twerk sushi and we're gonna get demonetized. I just think that what you did to Tim pool was mean.
- [87:00]
Emma Vigeland
Free speech.
- [87:01]
Brian
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.
- [87:07]
Emma Vigeland
I probably, probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here.
- [87:12]
Brian
Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God.
- [87:15]
Rana Dasgupta
Wow.
- [87:16]
Brian
Sushi. I'm sorry. I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered a tour. Sushi and poker. Boys, sushi and poker. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like A kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this debate 7,000 times. I don't care. I don't care. I'm losing my mind.
- [87:37]
Sam Cedar
Some people just don't understand.
- [87:39]
Brian
So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the us should be combining me with a wife and kids.
- [87:47]
Emma Vigeland
That's not what we're talking about here, all right?
- [87:52]
Brian
It's not a fun job.
- [87:53]
Emma Vigeland
Twerk.
- [87:53]
Brian
That's a real thing. That's real thing. Real thing. Willy Walker.
- [87:56]
Sam Cedar
Twerk.
- [87:57]
Brian
That's a real thing. To twerk. That's a real thing. That's real thing. Real thing. That's a real thing. That's real thing. Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again. Offered that's a real thing. Oh, I think he might be blowing
- [88:13]
Rana Dasgupta
it out of proportion.
- [88:14]
Brian
Real thing. That's got poker with the boys. Offer. That's a real thing. Let's go, Joey. Twerk, sushi and poker with the boy.
- [88:23]
Rana Dasgupta
Take it easy, gl.
- [88:24]
Brian
Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand. Sushi and poker. Boys. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live.
- [88:34]
Sam Cedar
YouTube.
- [88:35]
Rana Dasgupta
Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
- [88:39]
Emma Vigeland
Want to do this show anymore?
- [88:40]
Brian
Anymore?
- [88:41]
Emma Vigeland
It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.
- [88:46]
Brian
Let's change the subject.
- [88:48]
Rana Dasgupta
Rangers and Knicks are doing great now. Shut up.
- [88:50]
Emma Vigeland
Don't want to people saying reckless things on your program.
- [88:52]
Sam Cedar
That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.
- [88:55]
Emma Vigeland
This is a pro killing podcast.
- [88:57]
Brian
I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet.
- [88:59]
Emma Vigeland
Left his best trump. Violet Twerk.
- [89:02]
Brian
Don't be foolish and don't tweet at me. And don't the way all of these people love it.
- [89:08]
Emma Vigeland
That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it.
- [89:13]
Sam Cedar
Wrote an honest thesis. I guess I should hand the main
- [89:18]
Brandon Sutton
mic to you now.
- [89:19]
Brian
You are to the right of the UN policy.
- [89:21]
Emma Vigeland
We already formed Israel.
- [89:22]
Rana Dasgupta
Dude.
- [89:22]
Emma Vigeland
Are you against us?
- [89:23]
Brian
That's a tougher question.
- [89:24]
Rana Dasgupta
I have an answer to
- [89:29]
Brian
God. Incredible theme song.
- [89:32]
Emma Vigeland
I bumbler.
- [89:32]
Sam Cedar
Emma Viand.
- [89:33]
Emma Vigeland
Absolutely one of my favorite people, actually. Not just in the game like.