What’s Worse: Pam Bondi, Jimmy Kimmel, or War with Russia?
Summary
Investment Themes: The podcast discusses the implications of government intervention in free speech, highlighting concerns over potential overreach and its impact on market dynamics.
Market Insights: There is a focus on the regulatory environment, particularly the role of the FCC in media censorship, which could influence media companies' operations and stock performance.
Company Discussions: ABC and its affiliates are mentioned in the context of media regulation and censorship, with potential implications for their business strategies and investor considerations.
Geopolitical Risks: The podcast touches on geopolitical tensions, including the U.S.'s stance on Afghanistan and Ukraine, which could affect global markets and investor sentiment.
Economic Policy: The discussion includes the potential economic impact of U.S. foreign policy decisions, particularly in relation to military spending and international trade tariffs.
Opportunities and Risks: The podcast highlights the risks associated with government control over media and speech, suggesting potential investment opportunities in alternative media platforms.
Key Takeaways: The overall perspective emphasizes the importance of understanding regulatory and geopolitical factors in investment decisions, as these can significantly impact market conditions and company valuations.
Transcript
Welcome back to the power and market podcast. This is the current events podcast of the Mises Institute and I'm Ryan McMak and the executive editor here at the institute. And I've got with me today two of our contributing editors. We've got th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe both of whom are writing regular columns here at the Mises Institute. And uh this week we've got uh some good issues to talk about. We're going to talk about uh freedom of speech. We're going to talk about America first and if there's anything left of that or if Trump has just completely given up. But before we get to that, uh though, uh it turns out, hey, it's the it's the fall fundraiser. So, why don't you tell us about what's going on there? Absolutely. Well, on next Monday is Lou Visa's birthday, the big 144. Not a round number. So, you know, we're still working on that one, but it uh so every year around this time, you'll start seeing pop-up ads. We have a little bit of different branding. 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I'm sure you can find it in the show notes wherever you're listening to this episode. But help us celebrate Mises's big 144 next Monday by being part of the team. And if you want to hang out with the team, we have our supporter summit that is coming up next month in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida. We've got an allstar lineup including the great Ryan McMaken but also Golzman coming in from Europe. The great Jim Board always a classic and again a beautiful Delray Beach Resort that is on October 16th through the 18th and if you want to join that we will be talking about economic freedom the key to liberty. Find more at mises.org/events. All right well let's go straight to issue one. Issue one is Pam Bondi and her declaration that the federal government is going to go after people who engage in hate speech and just I mean we're not misquoting this woman, right? Like I just want it's actually worse if you go go and you find the original in context stuff because she names all sorts of enemies that she's going to go after and that's how she phrases it. We at the federal government are going to go after these people. She doesn't just mean some sort of rhetorical we're going to say mean things about them. This is an attorney general, a government prosecutor saying this, but just so you have like the full context on it. So the the the comments came as part of her Monday appearance. This was a week prior Monday, not this past Monday. Uh she was on the the Katie Miller podcast. Uh this is the wife of one of these administration people. Uh when asked by the host if colleges and universities are somehow complicit in Kirk's murder, uh Bondi agreed and stated on a broader level, she she brought this up voluntarily. On a broader broader level, the anti-semitism, what's been happening at college campuses around the country, it's disgusting. So, she wanted to make sure and mention that this has been an administration sort of hobgoblin is going after anti-semitism. Uh because if you say that, then you're you're guilty of some crime. Charlie noted noted noted some so. Right. So it's it's despicable that uh and we've been fighting that. We've been fighting these universities left and right and that's not going to stop. There's free speech and then there's hate speech and there is no place especially now especially after what happened to Charlie in our society. we will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. And then uh Miller I don't she didn't react much to that but but she knew that was going to be fairly controversial. She she kind of gave Bondi a chance to back out of that a little bit but Bondie didn't do that and says she she doubled down. So Miller says do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech? She wanted to clarify, is this law enforcement that going to go after these these people? And Bonnie responded, "We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." So, uh, that's, you know, this cannot be misinterpreted as far as I'm concerned. Um, so I mean, that strikes me as, uh, a, uh, I don't think that was part of Charlie Kirk's message. I could be wrong. I wasn't a regular follower. Uh, but as a, you know, defender of property rises up, I'm kind of a free speech absolutist. I I think that things you say are not violence. That's a left-wing talking point. The whole concept of hate speech is a left-wing talking point. The whole idea of of going after people because they say mean things is all left-wing garbage. Pam Bonnie seems to like that all of a sudden. So th Bishop, what what's our takeaway from from Pam Bonnie's declaration that she'll go after you for hate speech? Well, diving back to the Kirk dynamic, I mean, you literally said he he doesn't blame hate speech. The entire idea is absurd. It's a thought crime, right? So again, nothing nothing quite like uh Washington DC politicians going directly to subvert whatever legacy um you know, in the name of of honoring Charlie Kirk. I mean, it's really really it's it's absolutely loathism. It's absolutely disgusting. As a Floridaian, I've hated Pam Bondi for you know, close to 12 years now. So, I'm glad everyone else is catching up um to to there. I mean, you said, you know, she's she's allegedly a law enforcement official. I mean, she plays one on TV. She's had great campaign commercials that look like a Law and Order thing. You know, you've you know, this this, you know, strong blonde is is coming in to fight crime and all that sort of stuff. I mean, it's it's she's always been an absurd figure. Um she was there to be, you know, a face to play someone on TV. Uh luckily I mean there is some kind of weird reporting that like her actual role in terms of the overall DOJ is more public appearances than not. Um of course when you screw up public appearances in this way then that also doesn't really help your case. I think I that's exactly the sort of competency I expect from Pam Bondi there. Uh it was good. So but I think there's some positive things from this and also some negative things that are going to be part of this broader trend. I think some of the positive things was almost, you know, universal backlash from, you know, the right, the MAGA right, whatever you want to call it, like no, this is absurd. You know, people throwing up Charlie Kirk quotes like, "No, this is exactly what, you know, Charlie Pose and all that sort of stuff." Um, so, you know, they they had to walk it back. I mean, I think she then tried to say, "Oh, we're talking about people threatening violence and whatever and okay, but like that's that's really not given the context there, like that's really not what you're saying." Um, so at least they had to kind of walk that back. The scary thing though, and of course we had another shooting, um, you know, with with with with ICE agents and things like that, more, you know, engraved bullets. Do with that what you will. Um, but, you know, we're already seeing now kind of members of Congress. And again, I mean, the the upside here is luckily it's Congress. These people don't matter. They don't govern anyway. So, you know, you have all these kind of crazy insane ideas thrown out there that will never become um, you know, policy. They're probably more likely than like saying things being out there by the handful of congressmen that are capable of that. necessary. They're more likely to do the insane stuff than the sane stuff, but most likely to do nothing. Um, and Jimmy Patronis, who is is a local here in the panhandle, you know, otherwise, you know, nice enough guy, but like I mean, he was going out there saying, "Oh, we've got to take away the liability of social media companies for being mediums that allow for people to engage in this sort of content, like pointing like Facebook and Discord and things like that." And it's like, "Oh, golly, gosh darn. I can't imagine that ever going wrong, right? It's not like we haven't seen this already play out." So, yeah. Yeah. Let's go broadly. Let's let's let's further en enhance um the need to crack down on speech of all types because it could theoretically propose uh be made liable for you know future violence in this crazy world that we're living in. And again this kind of goes to again this this running around people don't you know you know you want to talk about kind of you know going after you know anti fall or something specific sort of groups like fine we can have that conversation but you don't need to these these broad you know just just crackdowns on speech on social media platforms and things like that. I mean this is just absolute insanity. Um, but it again is is what we've come to expect from Washington DC at large and the absurdity of it. But it it is interesting to see people, you know, particularly in these moments, right? Like if anything, if if everything is everything's captured for cameras, right? It's all these people that are meant to be on Fox News and you can't do that, right? That's probably not a good sign. Do you think that Bondi was surprised by the backlash against this? It's the sense I got when she said it was, "This will make me look tough. This will win over my constituents." and then they didn't seem to go for it. Did that surprise her? I mean, I I don't know what goes through Pam Bondi's mind and I haven't for quite some time. Um, but but again, I'm glad it was there, right? Like again, the backlash was quick, it was immediate, it was massive. Um, and and again, I think what you're seeing is part and maybe this goes into it, right? I think there is growing pressure because she's mishandled so many things. Um, and I mean just from the again all mostly having to do with optics which again is like the one thing that like theoretically right you're supposed to have like you know this this you know camera ready you know you know fa Fox News face doing this sort of stuff and she can't get the optics like it's been bad after bad after bad and so again she's just kind of leaning into oh we're going to get get tough here and she can't even do that right so again it's just it's it's just remarkable the sort of mediocrity that we this is what we should expect but like you know just remarkable examples of that. But is is she part of the team that was deployed to tell us all that that Epstein files aren't real and that was saying well she had the Epstein files on the desk and then they didn't exist. Oh, right. That's right. Both. Yeah. Connor, what was your reaction to this whole thing? I mean, kind of same as you guys. I was pleased to see how much backlash there was on the right, but I think that's just cuz it was too blatant. She was like using the exact same language that all the progressives have been using for I mean at least as long as I've been paying attention to it that was driving a lot of the energy that like figures like Charlie Kirk and Ben really rode um up to fame on this kind of backlash to this crazy woke insanity especially on college campuses and she just used the exact same words that you know hate speech is not uh free speech and so it's just I think it was just too hard for the people that would usually go along with the administ ation to swallow something so blatant. But to to your point though, there are still concerning things happening on the right in terms of um not really like it's you know some of it's being blown out of proportion. I think we'll talk a little bit about the the Kimmel stuff later, but just this broader kind of idea which I think is a general theme with this administration and a frustration that I frequently have. there's just seems to be this assumption that the right has just won and that they've won, you know, control of Washington DC and that's just how it's going to be going forward. And I think you look back at um how the progressives were were talking about all this stuff. And it was under the same assumption that their political enemies were never going to come to control the apparatus that they were building up to kind of go after speech. And then what do you know? Trump comes back in, takes control over it, and now they're the left is floundering, but now the right is operating with the same exact assumption and to your point, kind of building up. I mean, I was hoping they would just tear all of this down um and kind of deny the tools to their future enemies, but it seems like so many of them really have this like delusion that there's never going to be like their ideological enemies are never going to be in power again. So, they're totally fine to just build up all these tools when in reality they're just going to have to hand them right back over to the Democrats. Maybe in I guess what, three years, maybe in the next term, maybe a little bit after that, but at some point it's going to happen. And so it's very frustrating to see them just completely dismiss, you know, like always the very idea of actually abolishing and rolling back some of this power under that I think very very flawed and delusional assumption. Yeah. The and I I did an article on this last week and and I mean I just felt like do we have to even like does it even need to be said that free speech is just a basic property right? And I I don't know if our audience needs to hear that. That is at least our regular mises.org audience. I think that's fairly clear, but I mean if there was any right in the Bill of Rights that we can be absolutists on as libertarians, it's freedom of speech. Uh I know that there have just been a lot of efforts and there was even some creeping in about 10 years ago uh where I saw some libertarians try to redefine speech as some sort of violence. And you do get that a little bit from some of these like reason and kato type libertarians of the bake the cake libertarian variety, right? We have to have a civil rights bureaucracy to force people to bake cakes for gay couples cuz that's a type of hate speech and feelings might be hurt. And those people are out there while claiming to be libertarian. So I guess I guess it does have to be stated. Uh freedom speech is an absolute right. Well, Pelon Bonnie was even going to the bake the cake dynamic. It's like oh like you're if you're Office Depot, right? Because you had these like, you know, three like, you know, slay queen, you know, you know, just just insane lefty, you know, like teenagers, you 20somes, you know, running the print department, not not post. It's like, oh, you're going to have to print that poster. Like, luckily, Office Depot is not like, you know, they're not dumb. They fire those people and just replace them out and I'm sure those posters got printed, but like no, like bake the cake, print the poster. Like, come on. I completely forgot about that. That's right. She's online talking about how we're going to sue Office Depot into oblivion because they won't do they they're discriminating against you. So, they've just gone full into hardleft sort of politics except with a different goal in mind. Gee, I'm sure those powers could never be used against the good guys. I mean, that just seems to be what the administration's doing now. I do think that uh the property point property rights point does need to be made a lot more. think actually that that is completely absent from discussions of free speech and I think that's the root of the problem here is that people have a very vague idea of free speech and at least for me that was a very clarifying point. I remember I first read it in Rothbart's uh for new liberty but he also gets into it in ethics of liberty where he just drills down that no at the end of the day it's about property rights and when like we actually have free speech issues most of the time they're taking place on government property where like rights can kind of come into conflict with each other in terms of like if you're on a street corner and you're uh you know hosting some protest that's getting in the way of people that need to get to work it's like whose rights matter there. That's stuff that goes away when you have um private property. But on top of that, like this sort of the thing that we there's so probably so many articles on misuses.org going against this uh who was it that that said the whole like you can't yell fire in a crowded theater point. Which justice? It was all over Wendell Holmes, I believe. Yes, of course. But like people seems one of his many stupid quotations. Yes. One of his many. Yeah. But people just accept that and that's like kind of presented to this day as this like got you like Yeah. We all kind of like free speech in theory, but there has to be limits to that. And I even saw uh today, I think it was David from talking about how um defending in retrospect a lot of the crackdowns on speech during the COVID pandemic because you had these quacks that were like going against the science. And so it's still a very very um common retort. And I like I highly recommend anybody go read Rothbart's um specific explanations of how um this all fits into uh or free speech is only able to be absolute in a property rights uh framework there. And uh also as a fun just another recommendation, um Josh Maher, who we've had on the show a few times here, one of our editors, he he just wrote a fun uh takedown of the the shouting fire in a crowded theater argument and kind of bringing that into the property rights ethics. And he points out um points to a real world example which was um I don't remember I think earlier this year it came out the the Minecraft movie. And there was like this ongoing meme where there's a part of the it's like I I don't know Minecraft chicken jockey. Yeah, the chicken jockey. So like so there's like a scene and everybody would yell chicken jockey and like it became like a this funny thing on the internet a running joke where the theater would just explode and people would be going crazy and it was all kind of ironic but then you know in a lot of ways that is kind of like shouting fire in a crowded theater and that you're completely disrupting the experience of the people that are there to watch the movie. Um but you know these are private companies so they would just stop the movie and say you can't do that. But then interestingly um as Josh uh highlights there there was still kind of a demand for this kind for that experience when watching these movies. So some theaters started specific showings for people that wanted to actually like go crazy at that certain point. And another example was uh Wicked they had like singalong showings. So under freedom like a if when property rights are like the basis um of society you like a lot of these free speech issues go away. Yeah. Yeah. I seek out movie theaters where I can yell fire explicitly. That's usually my my filter there. But but the downside is this stuff is going to get worse because we're going to see more violence. Like let's be clear like we're going to see more violence. We're going to see more of it come from radicalized online areas. We're going to see it, I think, large part from from the left right now because what the left historically do in America when they feel they're not in power, they they they kill people, they blow things up. I mean, they just gotten the record they had for quite some time. Um, and and it's going to create more and more pressure to do something. And and the sad thing again like this this parasitic political class that we have like, you know, how many of them really have like really feel like that they even have ideological enemies, right? Like I don't I don't think they they they feel things in that sort of level at all. They just want to do something, right? Right. So, we're we're going to see a committee task force dealing with online radical extremism, right? And ra rather than like going down actually focusing on like particular groups that like have like names and addresses and like are dealing with like, you know, criminal conspiracies. They're they're going to go they're going to they're going to go after the big tech people, right? They're going to they're going to bring them in. They're they're going to they're going to harang them. We're going to get a new new type of censorship just as we're getting after, you know, we could Google, you know, promoting a pilot program of like taking people off the suspension list, but don't do it too fast because like they'll get kicked off again. I mean, again, it's just it's again, this is just the stupidity. You know, this is what Washington does. I mean, we're living in a political clown world. Um, you know, nothing is nothing is changing in that regard. And so, again, we should expect more of this because I think we're going to get more unfortunately, tragically, horrifically of, you know, what brought this up in the first place. Well, and a key issue, and this will take us into our next topic, a key issue, right, about what are your property rights in terms of of free speech is where are you expressing your speech, right? The question is the only place there's any ambiguities on quote unquote public property, right? Like you say, a street corner, someplace that's government owned because you're forced to you're taxed to pay for the maintenance of that curb, that sidewalk, that street, whatever. But if you're in a movie theater, it's completely up to the owner what you can say and there a newspaper, whatever it is you're saying in a newspaper, that's up to the owner. is government should be totally irrelevant to what is being said in someone else's uh forum whether it's paper whether it's the internet whatever those privately owned stuff government should have zero say over what is said in those places so that's the key factor right obviously you do not have free speech in the sense of you can't come into my living room and berate me call me slurs whatever because that's my living room you could maybe do that uh I suppose on the radio that somebody else owns and then there's I have right I have no say in that because that's somebody else's radio station that they own. Uh so it's the key factor is where when how is the is it being expressed not what is being said that is not the important factor but that brings us then to to issue two. The issue two is Jimmy Kimmel is he being censored the national tragedy national crisis. Now, of course, you know, my I got to say my life has not been ruined by Jimmy Kimmel being off the air for a few days. Uh, nonetheless, it's it is an important question. You you have a column on this. Actually, Bill Anderson has looked at this a little bit at some of these methods that are being used. So, why don't you just talk kind of introduce us to the issue using your column and some of your observations there. Yeah. Well, first off, I have to confess uh you know, I do appreciate a little bit of shot in Freud when it comes to Kimmel in particular. Um but you know you it is a very interesting story from a variety of levels. Um because for one um you know you you have Kimmel that was basically implying right that you know someone from MAGA world someone from the right was the one that killed Charlie Kirk and that kicked off the controversy. Um you you had comments from the FCC commissioner Brennan Carr that said basically you know ABC needs to be held liable or or accountable for for this that Kimmel you know needs to face ramifications from it. um you know was voiced out into you know into the ether from that. Um but then you also had um concerns from ABC distributors uh NextStar uh and and Sinclair media in particular that said that you know we we don't want this. We're preempting Kimmel. That results in ABC pulling him off. There was some interesting Wall Street Journal report that went into the whole decision-making process that ABC top brass, you know, Mickey Mouse sat down Jimmy and asked them to apologize and like they kind of thought that his response was going to only further flame the issue and so they put him in timeout for a little bit. Um, you do have some of the the broader context where some of these ABC affiliates are looking to add more stations. Are they then concerned about the FCC playing a regulatory role in terms of allowing them to expand and buy a few more stations here? Right. So is this part of like the jawboning process of just the threat of government enforcement in this dynamic? Um and and so you know it was this a decision made by ABC was a decision made by these distributors or was it made by government pressure? Was it you know deacto whatever? Um, you know, at at the end of the day though is um, for one, like I if if your if your solution to this, if your proposal, if you're criticizing Jimmy Kimmel, it's a suspension timeout and you're not calling for the abolishing abolishing for the FCC, I really don't care. I really don't care about your opinion as is my is my personal opinion because the entire purpose of the FCC was to do just this. The FCC was created by FDR. Uh, it it was immediately, you know, it it shortened the licenses for having public air ra, public radio uh, addresses, right? They they immediately got the message like, "Okay, we're we're not going to platform people that are dissenting from the president's agenda." You know, the fairness doctrine enacted shortly thereafter. That was used again explicitly by the JFK administration, explicitly by, you know, typically Democratic administrations for quite some time to to censor the use of public airwaves. You look at public airwaves and you don't really see a lot of ideological diversity anyway, right? Uh, as it is. And and and again, you have Jimmy Kimmel who's actively promoting and celebrating, you know, uh, uh, people being censored by big tech and, you know, all these things with government thing, you So, so again, not exactly the most sympathetic murder, but it becomes this national crisis, right? You this becomes the biggest story because, oh, golly gosh darn, how dare the FCC silence political opposition when when again, this is the entire purpose of it. So, again, if if you're not if you're not going to going to go after, okay, well, let's let's let's let's uh let's dearm on both sides. All right, let's just take away let's address kind of the root pressure point here, then I really don't think that you're really caring about free speech here. I think we're just creating some sort of sophomoric martyr. Um, and and to me like the the more interesting story is just what it says about the culture where Jimmy Kimmel was originally hired to be a non-political comedic force or presence on ABC. That's why they got rid of Bill Maher, right? Um, you know, it was it was an interview that he he had he like Desh Duza who always pops up in weird moments in like contemporary American history. Neither here nor there. Um, but you know like Bill Bill Mah was Bill Maher and Desh Duza talking about you 911 and like that brings down his show on ABC. Like that's when they hired, you know, the man show guy, the the crank yanker guy from Comedy Central. Oh, we're going to bring in some someone that's non-political and then a decade later like he's like one of the most like, you know, hyper political comedic voices. What does that say about us? What what does that say about cultural demand? What does that say about you this entire you know cultural industrial complex and the way that has become hyper politicized like to me like that story that that evolution is a lot more interesting than people faking outrage about the FCC in the worst interpretation doing what the FCC does. So that's my personal point of view. Uh I I don't know how old you have to be to really remember the man show. Uh it was a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I watched it like in 99 2000 maybe. I had cable back then. It was popular high school with middle school boys. Okay. Well, understandably I remember the bump. This is Jimmy Kimmel's show in 992000. I remember the bumpers that is kind of like between the the episode and the commercials. sort of the we'll be right back sort of stuff. It w they showed films of women in skirts on trampolines. I remember this. And that was Jimmy Kimmel. That was their source of comedy. And so so then he somehow became, I guess, the uh the standard bearer for a left-wing sensorial sort of ideology. Very strange transformation. Well, it was also fun because like one of his big like his big public, you know, political moment was talking about um his son having a very serious medical issue. So, I mean great, you know, sympathy there and he was complaining about the medical system and obviously there's a lot that we can talk about in the medical system. I don't know if Jimmy Kimmel's solutions would be our solutions, but whatever. Like, you know, understand that as a father, but that's the same guy saying like, okay, well, if you didn't get vaccinated, you should die at a hospital. So, like those are my favorite type of universal healthcare advocates, by the way. Like, you should have died if you didn't listen to us, but we want everyone to know universal healthcare. Those are my favorites. And the government should control how we dispense all health care services. Yes. And be able to freely deny that. I mean, that's what's going on in Britain right now. And Jimmy Kimmel is apparently fine with that sort of coercion. But of course, coercion is bad when it's used against him. Uh Bill Anderson has has touched on this issue as well. And he's got a column. Uh I think it's today uh Thursday. Uh presidents have a long history of using the FCC to silence their critics. And this is how the the the article starts. The president was angry at the press, claiming that journalists were spreading quote unquote poisonous propaganda about him, using the Federal Communications Commission as a political weapon, he threatened the licenses of broadcast firms that employed people critical of him. Bill goes on, "While while Donald Trump likely is the first person to come to mind here, the opening sentences are not about him. They are instead about the spiritual standardbearer of the Democratic party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt." Indeed, while President FDR used the powers of his office to punish, bully, and intimidate print and broadcast journalists that dared to disagree with the New York patrician 100%. I And if you follow him in in other aspects as well, he used to make personal phone calls to newspapers to browbeat the editors to make sure that they didn't let soand so columnist who said bad things about FDR get another column or maybe fire somebody. And that's that's just what the FC FCC is used for. So, of course, I mean, I hadn't thought of it in those terms, though. But you're absolutely right. Right. If you don't see the FCC as a problem, but you're going to whine about Jimmy Kimmel being let go, well, I mean, your your your opinion is forgettable. Slightly off topic. That's my favorite genre of writing is describing a political episode and then revealing that it's from like the 1930s. Uh there's a great article in uh the capitalism the unknown ideal by Ran that is the same thing about like the origin of LZ fair is talking about I was reading it like 09 it's like oh the government's calling for massive stimulus and like at the very last like page it's about like president Linda May Johnson it's like oh my gosh like this is I was like my mind blown like oh this economic stuff is fun off topic there but I love that genre. Bill Anderson's a great writer. Well Connor you a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel. What are your thoughts on this matter? Not at all. I don't really get it with him. Like I I'm not a fan of any of these late night shows that on especially the broadcast ones. Like they are just pure propaganda. If you know anything about the topics they're covering, it's clear that they're very very misleading. They're always on the side of like the kind of established power structure um in DC and then they kind of hide behind comedy uh to sort of dismiss criticism of of them being very misleading. But there are some like very talented hosts in that world that are like clearly good comedians and are very talented at what they're doing. I don't find Jimmy Kimmel funny at all. I feel like he just takes jokes written by other people and sometimes if the even if the jokes are good, uh, he just makes them worse with his delivery. I don't really get it. I guess, you know, to what you were saying earlier, he has a past that I'm not very familiar with. I'm definitely um on the younger on the younger side here, but I don't really get it in terms of the I'm certainly not a fan uh of him on this front. But yeah, I agree with with what uh what you're saying there though that it's kind of like what I was talking about earlier. What's so frustrating about this um from our perspective is that like we've been and like our movement has been talking about this the entire time like and this is a topic I've uh I did a Mises you talk on this like the government uses access to control the media that's like their main I believe the American government's main means of controlling the media is access and then of course like they seized the broadcast spectrum there and so for these like broadcast ABC um being one of them They literally control the means of them getting their message out. So, of course, the government is going to have a lot of um leverage over these media companies. Even if they don't go in and like threaten them directly, there's always going to be some leverage there just cuz they're the ones holding on to the actual, you know, technology that allows them to get their message their uh their message across. And so I guess my point is this is a point that's been made to the left and to the progressives for decades that hey this is a terrible system. Someday it's going to get used against you and so this is all a mistake to just completely rally against it. And they just completely dismissed that. And now for whatever it was 4 days this was used against against them a bit and they just completely and utterly utterly freaked out about it. And it's just it's frustrating to see um because yeah it's like the the obvious takeaway here is that to go back to what you were talking about earlier Ryan like private media and private venues for information completely solves all of this. That's actually like the path to not just a lot more freedom of speech but a lot more stability in our country. It's it was completely not just dismissed but like ridiculed that whole idea by the left. Now they're freaking out because they're sort of out of power a little bit and the right is, you know, it's acting like the left was before and it's just it's very frustrating to see. Yeah. It creates these unnecessary ambiguities in terms of whose property is it and of course it's just it's just more federal regulation like so much that happened during the New Deal under FDR. People talk about the creation of social security and the war and things like that. But probably his most lasting contribution, quote unquote, a bad one, was the regulatory state. All of these alphabet organizations that have just changed the lives of every single American in massive ways, in ways that people don't even know about and makes it so that people are committing federal crimes that they don't even know about. I mean, there's just thousands upon thousands of pages of crimes and regulations that were created all under FDR for that regulatory state. And then that was of course used by his successors. I mean, Bill's column goes on to talk about how uh JFK used uh these same sort of methods in the 1960s. And I don't even hate Kennedy, but typical president, right? He just used those powers that were available to him thanks to FDR. Well, I should say I don't hate him like relative for presidents. I mean, I'm no fan of any president, but uh yeah, I don't see him as any worse than these other guys. And uh so it's just astounding. And then I mean really what is the point of the FCC now? I mean I could see the arguments in the distant past. Oh people's only means of getting television is through these broadcast means and there's only a few and we'll have a monopoly that are controlling all the all the frequencies etc etc. Who needs broadcast television? You you you got the internet, you got cable. Of course, there are so many other means of getting information. The FCC is just the most useless thing. But of course, they're not going to give up their power because it's just another thing that they can beam into people's homes. And maybe I'm sure people in older demographics, I guess, maybe still watch broadcast TV or something like that. And so that's that's still an issue. That's not something they're going to give up is at least the control over those viewers. Um, but yeah, spare me any arguments about how we need to have some sort of regulation of the of the airwaves or else there will be just it'll all be controlled by some right-wing warlord or something. I'm I'm skeptical that that is a valid argument. Well, Congress needs the FCC because that promotes Google having very lavish lobbying offices that have very nice receptions for members of Congress and their staff and to flood their campaign coffers with donations to make sure that the FCC is not used against them. Oh my god, I remember the whole, you know, the whole uh the other national tragedy of uh of uh uh the the internet um uh equal you what was the the the common carrier? Yeah, net neutrality thing like that was that was that FCC territorial sort of thing there like that that flooded a whole lot of campaign cash from Silicon Valley. Uh both sides of that one. Um so like that's that's why you need the FCC. you know, you you need needed to have a have have a stick to uh make sure that certain interest groups are are doing their part to make the Washington DC economy great. And of course, it's just another layer beneath, right? I mean, you're lobbying members of Congress, but they're not even the ultimate decision makers because it's some shadowy commission that is making these decisions, which you as a normal person have absolutely no hope of influencing in any way. And probably like all these other agencies, there's a significant amount of regulatory capture going on, right? It's the regulated agencies that spend all the money and and have all the influence. No normal person is making a difference at all. So that's the FCC for you. And then it just offers another chance for presidents to now browbeat people into firing people in browbeating agencies into firing people, making sure that uh the federal government isn't overly criticized. And I think as we all know, right, the left clearly has more influence over uh the TV stations and their news outlets and all of that than than the right does. And uh that's I guess that's probably the only reason we're hearing complaints now. I guess we didn't hear any complaints when Obama made a phone call and got Roseanne barf fired from her job for I don't know saying something that was racist or whatever. I who even remembers? Personally, as a young father, I was really hoping that the Kimmel thing would become bigger because like you have all these like progressive groups threatening to boycott Disney. I was like, man, I'm gonna be be able to actually bring my daughter to Disney and not have to worry about a gay pride event. But sadly sadly, I don't know if that's going to be on the table for for some time. No, Universal Studios, man. It's uh Yeah, it's just more neutral, I think. But yeah, for little kids, I don't know. They have the same stuff. But you know what? There's diversity there, right? There's no monopoly over the message. You got two different companies that they're promoting different sorts of different tone, different feel. Thank goodness there's not someone I don't know. Is there a federal uh amusement park regulator? Not to my knowledge. I don't think there's any centralized control over that. But you just don't give them ideas, Ryan. I ju I just can't believe that we're still arguing about how we need the federal government to control what's on TV and what bad words you can say and that sort of thing. It just strikes me as the most utterly useless and and of course it always reduces competition. That always is the the result of these federal regulatory agencies is there's fewer firms that are able to deal with all the regulation uh because they're very costly. And when when you have just a small number of wealthy firms controlling the regulatory outcomes of these organizations, lo and behold, it usually ends up favoring the large incumbent firms. And that's what's going on right now. Man, I would love to see this sort of thing just disappear. And you know what? You don't have to watch the stations that have too much cussing or whatever that is. Um especially if you look at the flowering of lots of other organizations that are trying to put out stuff that's more familyfriendly. And so the idea that there's no market for that is is pretty absurd. Um, but I guess in the end, right, I I don't care what Jimmy Kimmel is saying. I just at the same time, I don't think the federal government should be in the position of the president making a phone call and getting some clown, I mean, literally, uh, fired because, you know, he makes jokes in a way that the president doesn't like. I literally the exact same arguments on the left. if you're if you're if you are firing Jimmy Kimmel for misinformation. That was that was the argument, right? Was that he said that some right-winger murdered Charlie Kirk and that that's at least what the articles were saying was the trigger there. Uh misinformation. Oh, okay. So, we it's good to fire people for that now because I seem to remember five years ago when we were all horrified by that sort of thing. But that's just where I guess we're going with this administration now. It also like I've heard some right-wingers push back um at like Ron Paul was kind of going off against this and they're sort of presenting this theory that this will be a form of deterrence that if we basically are if we crush the left enough then when they you know come back in power whenever that might happen they're going to be they're going to understand that no we shouldn't have this kind of apparatus policing speech and I just see no evidence of that whatsoever. you you saw how much energy um this whatever it was 4 days Kimmel was off the air um how much energy that garnered on the left kind of like how years and years of cancel culture and you know uh cracking down on right-wing takes energized a lot of the Trump movement. I just I once again think the the path forward needs to be rolling back the tools to use this rather than trying to deter by being extra aggressive out of the some delusional like theory that it's going to get them to calm down. Well, it's going to ratchet up more next time because again I think there's kind of been this working philosophy, this working theory um which is absurd as soon as you you spend two minutes in the real world, right? But the the theory, right, is that oh well Trump is so sort of like a right-wing fever. As soon as that's gone, then we're gonna get back to like Mitt Romney Republican party and therefore the Democrats are gonna have not not gonna have to like act as if, you know, every day with a Republican president is some sort of massive civilizational crisis. But of course, I mean, again, they would have said the same thing about Romney as they about Trump. Like every everything's going to be a civilizational crisis. Everything is going to be this Russian domination. And again, until you start actually breaking up these tools, um, you know, it's and then I I get why you some people out there that, you know, sounds like a, you know, a libertarian sort of utopian kumbaya sort of fantasy like, oh, well, this just like that. But again, what else are you going to get? Like this is it's going to be a continual pol politics of domination. Um, and so again, there's not going to be any ratcheting down of this there. Again, there's no bipartisan coalition building to deal with the FCC in this particular situation where it's on the other foot. The shoe is on the other foot. There's there's again it's it's going to continue to escalate and that's just you know that's where we are. Yeah. And it took like decades and decades and decades to build up these tools these government tools to the level where you know they have as much control as they do now. So rolling them back is like that that would be like putting the left back decades in terms of the the amount of uh influence that they would be able to um you know uh put on the on the culture. I think like yeah I I I really disagree with that whole idea that like we're just being these naive libertarians that you know uh want us to all get along like no I think that the uh that sort of fever deterrence philosophy I think is the very strategically inept and and naive path. Well at least we know not to take Tylenol if we have any fevers for time being. So oh we got to come back to that issue at some point. There's probably not time today, but yeah, that's that's that's a phenomenon that requires discussion for another time. Let's move on to issue three, though, as we continue our search for the virtues of the Trump administration beyond better than Kamala. I mean, we can all agree that's kind of the baseline for the administration, but it would be nice to have something in addition to better than Kamla to really speak well for this administration. We don't have freedom of speech. We don't have undoing of the regulatory state. Maybe we have foreign policy, right guys? That doesn't seem to be going on there either. Sorry. Sorry. Right. I'm checking by the price of Bitcoin right now, but you could please the So the I mean what's going on with the Trump administration right now is uh two bad things. First of all, we got Trump suddenly suggesting that maybe he wants to go back into Afghanistan. he was. Now, of course, this is just Trump talking, right? And you never know, is this going to Sometimes it does translate into something you have to start worrying about. Sometimes it doesn't. But I always also wonder why he thought it was a good idea to say this. But Trump's now saying, "Oh, constituency is there for for Afghani tourism. They it's just going to take off." And so now he's saying Bram Air Force Base uh was an Air Force B. Yeah, the Bram Air Base, uh, which was a thing for the US for for a while. Uh, that's that's back in Afghani hands after the US's, uh, exit from the country. So, here's what CBS News reports. The Taliban government on Sunday rejected US President Trump's bid to retake Bagram Air Base four years after America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan left the sprawling military facility in the Taliban's hands. Mr. Trump on Saturday renewed his call to reestablish a US president's presence at Bagram, even saying, quote, "We're talking now to Afghanistan about the matter." He did not offer fur further details. Uh asked of a reporter if he'd consider deploying US troops to the base, the president demurred. Gee, uh I would have appreciated a no, we're not going to send US troops back into Afghanistan, but apparently that's a bridge too far. So we got that on the one side and then on the other side we've got Trump seemingly totally capitulating to Zalinski on the Ukraine issue because one of the ways that Trump has been good on Ukraine is uh coming to the very reasonable conclusion that Ukraine is not going to take back the Crimea. Ukraine is not going to take back the southeastern portions of the country. All of which are surrounded by huge minefields protected by the military uh uh establishment of Russia which has very extensive defensive capability even if Russia is not great at conquering territory quickly which has been showed in this war. Also, by the way, evidence that Russia is not going to be rolling into Berlin and Warsaw anytime soon. Once they have established themselves in territory, you're not going to be rolling back in there except without maybe a nuclear war and in which case we won't have a whole lot of infrastructure to roll in there with either. Uh but yeah, September 23, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he believed Ukraine could retake all of its land occupied by Russia and that Kiev should act now with Moscow facing big economic problems in a sudden and striking rhetorical shift in Ukraine's favor. Now he's basically saying what Zilinski has been saying for years, this pipe dream about, yeah, we're going to take back the Crimea and all this territory in the Ukraine. And I guess Trump's new idea is that this is justified under the idea that Moscow has big economic problems, as if that were the deciding factor and whether you give up on a war or not. Hey, got news for you. the the uh the United Kingdom had crushing and existential economic problems during the Napoleonic Wars, but they weren't going to stop because that was a major major issue for them in politics far beyond whatever their economic realities were. And that's how uh national defense and and national uh defense priorities work for a lot of countries, even though Trump doesn't seem to understand how that works. So, we were told for the duration of the last campaign though, this was an America first campaign. We're going to bring the troops home. And I think some of us even thought maybe there's a chance of that. Maybe he's going to bring these maybe he's going to disengage from Ukraine. We all knew that maybe he was going to probably keep sending money and that sort of thing, but maybe there'd be at least like a serious disengagement also in the Middle East. Well, now it's it seems to be the opposite. We got Afghanistan on the table. We got reclaiming territory in eastern Ukraine. Of course, the Middle East is just escalating. So, uh, what are we to make of this? Is there anything left of America first? Well, trying to trying to figure out the whole Afghanistan thing because that was a that was a real curveball. I had forgotten that place existed. Um, I I trying to figure out like where where this stuff came from, like I do know that um like you know, one of the things that Trump talked about like during, you know, because people were saying, "Oh, well, you know, he's the one that set the timeline for withdrawal." like the B administration was blaming Trump for the chaos and like Trump was trying to say like no like we were you know we we were going to kind of keep a presence at Bagram I think like Eric Prince and like you know I know it's not Blackwater now but whatever his his project is I think that the the idea was like he was going to like replace American military presence there and so like they would keep keep the air base at the time and I don't know if this is just like like still in like back of Trump's mind it's like oh yeah back room air base like we could still take that like we still we still got a plan there it's got dusted off um so I don't know if that and and you know so that that thing is just is wild that's the best I can come up with in terms understand there may maybe thought thinks like an American presence could like help normalize I don't know again like planes going there again it's about China yeah yeah okay China there's a national security fine there but I I okay um the Ukraine stuff I I think it's interesting for for two reasons for one like I I think in order to understand all of Trump's public statements in particular is I and he even he said like you know I you know he's very disappointed that his relationship with Putin means nothing essentially is another comment that has come up in the last couple days and I think a lot of this is Trump just extremely frustrated and angry that Putin is not interested in a ceasefire that you Trump's willing to you know he's willing to make out a deal that gives you Crimea gives you this that that Putin is not interested in in stopping the Russian side of the conflict. Um, again there's been tit for tats and you know the drone bombings and that sort of stuff negotiations but you you can have a you know broader conversation about the the willingness of of sincere negotiations both side there fine but I think a lot of this is just public just frustration and anger from Trump over thinking that he could come in that he could bring both sides to the table that his you know his his diplomatic personality would get Putin to to accept whatever wins that he that you accept the territory that's there carve out something that that makes the appearance of a security uh uh deal you know security presence with Ukraine and that goes back to the minerals deal of you know feels like four years ago but was what you know 4 months ago. Um and so I think this is just him him lashing out at that and I wonder if you know I I I do think that this goes to again the the the the you know undermining of the the broader America first mission is that America's detour back into the Middle East with Israel with Gaza with Iran. You know, I I I think Putin knows that America is not narrowly focused on Russia right now. That they are doing everything they can to help Israel and again they are staying within you that that that that good old arena is still there. And so therefore they don't feel any immediate pressure to to to stop taking whatever they can get their hands on right now. And so this is the consequence right of of playing around of continuing to be involved in the sandbox is that you know you're you know you undermine what other positions that could otherwise perhaps be capital on the table to help deal with a deal that I do think Trump generally wanted uh when it come when it came to to that particular front. And so I think this is Trump lashing out. I mean at least he's not talking about you know we're not terrifying a new country in in response to this quite yet. I'm guess maybe India. Um, so yeah, there's always a way to work terrorists back into this, but I I think this is just his frustration with you him not being able to get the deal that he thought he was going to be able to get because of his great personal beautiful relationship with Vladimir Putin. Yeah. I mean, Connor, what? Well, he's saying these things. Do you think that uh we have to worry about this actually manifesting as real policy? like how would it manifest as a real policy in Ukraine? Are they really going to try and put boots on the ground? There's where would they even get the money given all the money they're spending in the Middle East? So, I I don't know on a on a scale of 1 to 10, uh what what are the chances of of his about face on both Afghanistan and Ukraine translating into any actual real change in policy? Oh, I think the big risk is that there's no change in policy. I don't really see him ramping things up. I hope like I the I think the best case scenario here is that this is just another negotiation ploy. He's trying to put some pressure on Putin um to gain any little bit of leverage. But if he's serious and he's actually been convinced that um that unlike last time that Ukraine can mount a counter offensive and take back all this territory. Um I don't know. I mean maybe there's some intelligence out there that uh that backs that up. certainly nothing public that points to that at all. Um, and it it just strikes me as like if if that was the case, like why wouldn't they have done that already? If there was some special, you know, weapons system they could have sent or some new strategy um that would have started pushing the Russians back, why have they waited this whole time? Like I just I think it's very unlikely that what he said in that post about you know what he learned from Zalinsky or whatever this new report was. I I'm I'm highly doubtful of that. Um I'm a little less worried about the Afghanistan thing. I think um I mean the strategic um value of Bram air base as it relates to China is the big reason that I was pretty convinced we were never actually going to leave Afghanistan. I'm still kind of surprised to this day. I do think it's one of the best things that Trump and Biden ever did. Um, of course, the way it happened was chaotic in large part because they had to keep up the lie that the Afghan National Army or that the regime that we were propping up was going to hold until they were literally fleeing um from not even Bram. They gave up Bram before they left uh Kabell, which was crazy. But anyway, I so I I think from Trump's comments, he was kind of hinting that he his government was talking to the Afghan government, which is the run by the Taliban. Now, the Taliban came back and said that's not true. Um but there's like there's a lot of steps we'd have to move through, I think, before they would like Trump would actually order um you know, the military to go in and seize it. Maybe not. Maybe he does this tomorrow. Maybe it's happening right now as we record. But um I am a little bit less worried than that. I would say Venezuela and the potential for that situation to escalate um is more worrisome to me than Afghanistan. But yeah, with with going back to Ukraine, I I don't really see um I mean once again like maybe there is some new intelligence and Trump will I don't think he's from the reports I was seeing it wasn't that he was interested in sending American troops in. I think that's a that would be a tough cell with some of his base. Um, but there was some talk about the US helping out with intelligence and that a counteroffensive could actually start making a difference there. Um, if there's this big push, I just I don't see that going well for uh the Ukrainian people or the American uh taxpayers at all. But it's just kind of an escalation of the the same terrible path we're on right now. I I think I figured it out. The secret the the change that can allow Ukraine to advance is Steve Morin on the Fed. We're we're gonna print more money. Therefore, that's the secret. That's what we've been missing. It's it's that overly harsh that overly overly restrictive monetary policies preventing the big gains that Ukraine needs. And the last comment is is is I I'll be convinced that Trump is serious about taking uh the airface back when when we we impose 300% tariff rates in Afghanistan, which apparently I had to Google this. We we have a 15% tariff rate right now with the Taliban. So, doing that what you will. So, we start we start juicing that sucker up. We We know we're back in negotiation, baby. We're going to You're going to have to pay more for your Afghanyade television now. It's uh what a what what a disaster. Uh by the way, where is uh where's Bitcoin now since you were just checking the price as of Thursday afternoon? How we doing on Bitcoin? Hey, we're we're we're still over six figures right now. So, uh All right. better than Biden. Not not as good as a couple weeks ago, but hey, you know. So, yeah. Loving Trump 2.0, baby. Keep number keep going up. All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining me this time on Powered Market podcast. Thank you, Connor. Thank you though. We'll be back next week with more, I suspect, and there'll be plenty to talk about. So, we'll see you next time.
What’s Worse: Pam Bondi, Jimmy Kimmel, or War with Russia?
Summary
Transcript
Welcome back to the power and market podcast. This is the current events podcast of the Mises Institute and I'm Ryan McMak and the executive editor here at the institute. And I've got with me today two of our contributing editors. We've got th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe both of whom are writing regular columns here at the Mises Institute. And uh this week we've got uh some good issues to talk about. We're going to talk about uh freedom of speech. We're going to talk about America first and if there's anything left of that or if Trump has just completely given up. But before we get to that, uh though, uh it turns out, hey, it's the it's the fall fundraiser. So, why don't you tell us about what's going on there? Absolutely. Well, on next Monday is Lou Visa's birthday, the big 144. Not a round number. So, you know, we're still working on that one, but it uh so every year around this time, you'll start seeing pop-up ads. We have a little bit of different branding. This is our fun our fall fundraising drive. Um, and we've got some great offers. Uh, if you want to become a member, it's only nine bucks a month. Uh, that's a lot less than Netflix these days. Um, and again, if you like this material, if you're if you're listening to our podcast, you like what we have to say, we're the only one that's that say it. So, if you want to be a member, it's a great way of supporting it. You get our the me the messian magazine and you get free gimmies this week. We've been giving away hike books. So that will be part of your package. We have special bundles every day this uh this week. We'll have different minibooks and things like that. So if you want to become a Mises member, if you want to renew your Mises membership, if you just want to, you know, give us $5, that we'll also take that. Uh you can find all that information at misesus.org/fall25. That's misuses.org/fall25. I'm sure you can find it in the show notes wherever you're listening to this episode. But help us celebrate Mises's big 144 next Monday by being part of the team. And if you want to hang out with the team, we have our supporter summit that is coming up next month in beautiful Delray Beach, Florida. We've got an allstar lineup including the great Ryan McMaken but also Golzman coming in from Europe. The great Jim Board always a classic and again a beautiful Delray Beach Resort that is on October 16th through the 18th and if you want to join that we will be talking about economic freedom the key to liberty. Find more at mises.org/events. All right well let's go straight to issue one. Issue one is Pam Bondi and her declaration that the federal government is going to go after people who engage in hate speech and just I mean we're not misquoting this woman, right? Like I just want it's actually worse if you go go and you find the original in context stuff because she names all sorts of enemies that she's going to go after and that's how she phrases it. We at the federal government are going to go after these people. She doesn't just mean some sort of rhetorical we're going to say mean things about them. This is an attorney general, a government prosecutor saying this, but just so you have like the full context on it. So the the the comments came as part of her Monday appearance. This was a week prior Monday, not this past Monday. Uh she was on the the Katie Miller podcast. Uh this is the wife of one of these administration people. Uh when asked by the host if colleges and universities are somehow complicit in Kirk's murder, uh Bondi agreed and stated on a broader level, she she brought this up voluntarily. On a broader broader level, the anti-semitism, what's been happening at college campuses around the country, it's disgusting. So, she wanted to make sure and mention that this has been an administration sort of hobgoblin is going after anti-semitism. Uh because if you say that, then you're you're guilty of some crime. Charlie noted noted noted some so. Right. So it's it's despicable that uh and we've been fighting that. We've been fighting these universities left and right and that's not going to stop. There's free speech and then there's hate speech and there is no place especially now especially after what happened to Charlie in our society. we will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech. And then uh Miller I don't she didn't react much to that but but she knew that was going to be fairly controversial. She she kind of gave Bondi a chance to back out of that a little bit but Bondie didn't do that and says she she doubled down. So Miller says do you see more law enforcement going after these groups who are using hate speech? She wanted to clarify, is this law enforcement that going to go after these these people? And Bonnie responded, "We will absolutely target you, go after you if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." So, uh, that's, you know, this cannot be misinterpreted as far as I'm concerned. Um, so I mean, that strikes me as, uh, a, uh, I don't think that was part of Charlie Kirk's message. I could be wrong. I wasn't a regular follower. Uh, but as a, you know, defender of property rises up, I'm kind of a free speech absolutist. I I think that things you say are not violence. That's a left-wing talking point. The whole concept of hate speech is a left-wing talking point. The whole idea of of going after people because they say mean things is all left-wing garbage. Pam Bonnie seems to like that all of a sudden. So th Bishop, what what's our takeaway from from Pam Bonnie's declaration that she'll go after you for hate speech? Well, diving back to the Kirk dynamic, I mean, you literally said he he doesn't blame hate speech. The entire idea is absurd. It's a thought crime, right? So again, nothing nothing quite like uh Washington DC politicians going directly to subvert whatever legacy um you know, in the name of of honoring Charlie Kirk. I mean, it's really really it's it's absolutely loathism. It's absolutely disgusting. As a Floridaian, I've hated Pam Bondi for you know, close to 12 years now. So, I'm glad everyone else is catching up um to to there. I mean, you said, you know, she's she's allegedly a law enforcement official. I mean, she plays one on TV. She's had great campaign commercials that look like a Law and Order thing. You know, you've you know, this this, you know, strong blonde is is coming in to fight crime and all that sort of stuff. I mean, it's it's she's always been an absurd figure. Um she was there to be, you know, a face to play someone on TV. Uh luckily I mean there is some kind of weird reporting that like her actual role in terms of the overall DOJ is more public appearances than not. Um of course when you screw up public appearances in this way then that also doesn't really help your case. I think I that's exactly the sort of competency I expect from Pam Bondi there. Uh it was good. So but I think there's some positive things from this and also some negative things that are going to be part of this broader trend. I think some of the positive things was almost, you know, universal backlash from, you know, the right, the MAGA right, whatever you want to call it, like no, this is absurd. You know, people throwing up Charlie Kirk quotes like, "No, this is exactly what, you know, Charlie Pose and all that sort of stuff." Um, so, you know, they they had to walk it back. I mean, I think she then tried to say, "Oh, we're talking about people threatening violence and whatever and okay, but like that's that's really not given the context there, like that's really not what you're saying." Um, so at least they had to kind of walk that back. The scary thing though, and of course we had another shooting, um, you know, with with with with ICE agents and things like that, more, you know, engraved bullets. Do with that what you will. Um, but, you know, we're already seeing now kind of members of Congress. And again, I mean, the the upside here is luckily it's Congress. These people don't matter. They don't govern anyway. So, you know, you have all these kind of crazy insane ideas thrown out there that will never become um, you know, policy. They're probably more likely than like saying things being out there by the handful of congressmen that are capable of that. necessary. They're more likely to do the insane stuff than the sane stuff, but most likely to do nothing. Um, and Jimmy Patronis, who is is a local here in the panhandle, you know, otherwise, you know, nice enough guy, but like I mean, he was going out there saying, "Oh, we've got to take away the liability of social media companies for being mediums that allow for people to engage in this sort of content, like pointing like Facebook and Discord and things like that." And it's like, "Oh, golly, gosh darn. I can't imagine that ever going wrong, right? It's not like we haven't seen this already play out." So, yeah. Yeah. Let's go broadly. Let's let's let's further en enhance um the need to crack down on speech of all types because it could theoretically propose uh be made liable for you know future violence in this crazy world that we're living in. And again this kind of goes to again this this running around people don't you know you know you want to talk about kind of you know going after you know anti fall or something specific sort of groups like fine we can have that conversation but you don't need to these these broad you know just just crackdowns on speech on social media platforms and things like that. I mean this is just absolute insanity. Um, but it again is is what we've come to expect from Washington DC at large and the absurdity of it. But it it is interesting to see people, you know, particularly in these moments, right? Like if anything, if if everything is everything's captured for cameras, right? It's all these people that are meant to be on Fox News and you can't do that, right? That's probably not a good sign. Do you think that Bondi was surprised by the backlash against this? It's the sense I got when she said it was, "This will make me look tough. This will win over my constituents." and then they didn't seem to go for it. Did that surprise her? I mean, I I don't know what goes through Pam Bondi's mind and I haven't for quite some time. Um, but but again, I'm glad it was there, right? Like again, the backlash was quick, it was immediate, it was massive. Um, and and again, I think what you're seeing is part and maybe this goes into it, right? I think there is growing pressure because she's mishandled so many things. Um, and I mean just from the again all mostly having to do with optics which again is like the one thing that like theoretically right you're supposed to have like you know this this you know camera ready you know you know fa Fox News face doing this sort of stuff and she can't get the optics like it's been bad after bad after bad and so again she's just kind of leaning into oh we're going to get get tough here and she can't even do that right so again it's just it's it's just remarkable the sort of mediocrity that we this is what we should expect but like you know just remarkable examples of that. But is is she part of the team that was deployed to tell us all that that Epstein files aren't real and that was saying well she had the Epstein files on the desk and then they didn't exist. Oh, right. That's right. Both. Yeah. Connor, what was your reaction to this whole thing? I mean, kind of same as you guys. I was pleased to see how much backlash there was on the right, but I think that's just cuz it was too blatant. She was like using the exact same language that all the progressives have been using for I mean at least as long as I've been paying attention to it that was driving a lot of the energy that like figures like Charlie Kirk and Ben really rode um up to fame on this kind of backlash to this crazy woke insanity especially on college campuses and she just used the exact same words that you know hate speech is not uh free speech and so it's just I think it was just too hard for the people that would usually go along with the administ ation to swallow something so blatant. But to to your point though, there are still concerning things happening on the right in terms of um not really like it's you know some of it's being blown out of proportion. I think we'll talk a little bit about the the Kimmel stuff later, but just this broader kind of idea which I think is a general theme with this administration and a frustration that I frequently have. there's just seems to be this assumption that the right has just won and that they've won, you know, control of Washington DC and that's just how it's going to be going forward. And I think you look back at um how the progressives were were talking about all this stuff. And it was under the same assumption that their political enemies were never going to come to control the apparatus that they were building up to kind of go after speech. And then what do you know? Trump comes back in, takes control over it, and now they're the left is floundering, but now the right is operating with the same exact assumption and to your point, kind of building up. I mean, I was hoping they would just tear all of this down um and kind of deny the tools to their future enemies, but it seems like so many of them really have this like delusion that there's never going to be like their ideological enemies are never going to be in power again. So, they're totally fine to just build up all these tools when in reality they're just going to have to hand them right back over to the Democrats. Maybe in I guess what, three years, maybe in the next term, maybe a little bit after that, but at some point it's going to happen. And so it's very frustrating to see them just completely dismiss, you know, like always the very idea of actually abolishing and rolling back some of this power under that I think very very flawed and delusional assumption. Yeah. The and I I did an article on this last week and and I mean I just felt like do we have to even like does it even need to be said that free speech is just a basic property right? And I I don't know if our audience needs to hear that. That is at least our regular mises.org audience. I think that's fairly clear, but I mean if there was any right in the Bill of Rights that we can be absolutists on as libertarians, it's freedom of speech. Uh I know that there have just been a lot of efforts and there was even some creeping in about 10 years ago uh where I saw some libertarians try to redefine speech as some sort of violence. And you do get that a little bit from some of these like reason and kato type libertarians of the bake the cake libertarian variety, right? We have to have a civil rights bureaucracy to force people to bake cakes for gay couples cuz that's a type of hate speech and feelings might be hurt. And those people are out there while claiming to be libertarian. So I guess I guess it does have to be stated. Uh freedom speech is an absolute right. Well, Pelon Bonnie was even going to the bake the cake dynamic. It's like oh like you're if you're Office Depot, right? Because you had these like, you know, three like, you know, slay queen, you know, you know, just just insane lefty, you know, like teenagers, you 20somes, you know, running the print department, not not post. It's like, oh, you're going to have to print that poster. Like, luckily, Office Depot is not like, you know, they're not dumb. They fire those people and just replace them out and I'm sure those posters got printed, but like no, like bake the cake, print the poster. Like, come on. I completely forgot about that. That's right. She's online talking about how we're going to sue Office Depot into oblivion because they won't do they they're discriminating against you. So, they've just gone full into hardleft sort of politics except with a different goal in mind. Gee, I'm sure those powers could never be used against the good guys. I mean, that just seems to be what the administration's doing now. I do think that uh the property point property rights point does need to be made a lot more. think actually that that is completely absent from discussions of free speech and I think that's the root of the problem here is that people have a very vague idea of free speech and at least for me that was a very clarifying point. I remember I first read it in Rothbart's uh for new liberty but he also gets into it in ethics of liberty where he just drills down that no at the end of the day it's about property rights and when like we actually have free speech issues most of the time they're taking place on government property where like rights can kind of come into conflict with each other in terms of like if you're on a street corner and you're uh you know hosting some protest that's getting in the way of people that need to get to work it's like whose rights matter there. That's stuff that goes away when you have um private property. But on top of that, like this sort of the thing that we there's so probably so many articles on misuses.org going against this uh who was it that that said the whole like you can't yell fire in a crowded theater point. Which justice? It was all over Wendell Holmes, I believe. Yes, of course. But like people seems one of his many stupid quotations. Yes. One of his many. Yeah. But people just accept that and that's like kind of presented to this day as this like got you like Yeah. We all kind of like free speech in theory, but there has to be limits to that. And I even saw uh today, I think it was David from talking about how um defending in retrospect a lot of the crackdowns on speech during the COVID pandemic because you had these quacks that were like going against the science. And so it's still a very very um common retort. And I like I highly recommend anybody go read Rothbart's um specific explanations of how um this all fits into uh or free speech is only able to be absolute in a property rights uh framework there. And uh also as a fun just another recommendation, um Josh Maher, who we've had on the show a few times here, one of our editors, he he just wrote a fun uh takedown of the the shouting fire in a crowded theater argument and kind of bringing that into the property rights ethics. And he points out um points to a real world example which was um I don't remember I think earlier this year it came out the the Minecraft movie. And there was like this ongoing meme where there's a part of the it's like I I don't know Minecraft chicken jockey. Yeah, the chicken jockey. So like so there's like a scene and everybody would yell chicken jockey and like it became like a this funny thing on the internet a running joke where the theater would just explode and people would be going crazy and it was all kind of ironic but then you know in a lot of ways that is kind of like shouting fire in a crowded theater and that you're completely disrupting the experience of the people that are there to watch the movie. Um but you know these are private companies so they would just stop the movie and say you can't do that. But then interestingly um as Josh uh highlights there there was still kind of a demand for this kind for that experience when watching these movies. So some theaters started specific showings for people that wanted to actually like go crazy at that certain point. And another example was uh Wicked they had like singalong showings. So under freedom like a if when property rights are like the basis um of society you like a lot of these free speech issues go away. Yeah. Yeah. I seek out movie theaters where I can yell fire explicitly. That's usually my my filter there. But but the downside is this stuff is going to get worse because we're going to see more violence. Like let's be clear like we're going to see more violence. We're going to see more of it come from radicalized online areas. We're going to see it, I think, large part from from the left right now because what the left historically do in America when they feel they're not in power, they they they kill people, they blow things up. I mean, they just gotten the record they had for quite some time. Um, and and it's going to create more and more pressure to do something. And and the sad thing again like this this parasitic political class that we have like, you know, how many of them really have like really feel like that they even have ideological enemies, right? Like I don't I don't think they they they feel things in that sort of level at all. They just want to do something, right? Right. So, we're we're going to see a committee task force dealing with online radical extremism, right? And ra rather than like going down actually focusing on like particular groups that like have like names and addresses and like are dealing with like, you know, criminal conspiracies. They're they're going to go they're going to they're going to go after the big tech people, right? They're going to they're going to bring them in. They're they're going to they're going to harang them. We're going to get a new new type of censorship just as we're getting after, you know, we could Google, you know, promoting a pilot program of like taking people off the suspension list, but don't do it too fast because like they'll get kicked off again. I mean, again, it's just it's again, this is just the stupidity. You know, this is what Washington does. I mean, we're living in a political clown world. Um, you know, nothing is nothing is changing in that regard. And so, again, we should expect more of this because I think we're going to get more unfortunately, tragically, horrifically of, you know, what brought this up in the first place. Well, and a key issue, and this will take us into our next topic, a key issue, right, about what are your property rights in terms of of free speech is where are you expressing your speech, right? The question is the only place there's any ambiguities on quote unquote public property, right? Like you say, a street corner, someplace that's government owned because you're forced to you're taxed to pay for the maintenance of that curb, that sidewalk, that street, whatever. But if you're in a movie theater, it's completely up to the owner what you can say and there a newspaper, whatever it is you're saying in a newspaper, that's up to the owner. is government should be totally irrelevant to what is being said in someone else's uh forum whether it's paper whether it's the internet whatever those privately owned stuff government should have zero say over what is said in those places so that's the key factor right obviously you do not have free speech in the sense of you can't come into my living room and berate me call me slurs whatever because that's my living room you could maybe do that uh I suppose on the radio that somebody else owns and then there's I have right I have no say in that because that's somebody else's radio station that they own. Uh so it's the key factor is where when how is the is it being expressed not what is being said that is not the important factor but that brings us then to to issue two. The issue two is Jimmy Kimmel is he being censored the national tragedy national crisis. Now, of course, you know, my I got to say my life has not been ruined by Jimmy Kimmel being off the air for a few days. Uh, nonetheless, it's it is an important question. You you have a column on this. Actually, Bill Anderson has looked at this a little bit at some of these methods that are being used. So, why don't you just talk kind of introduce us to the issue using your column and some of your observations there. Yeah. Well, first off, I have to confess uh you know, I do appreciate a little bit of shot in Freud when it comes to Kimmel in particular. Um but you know you it is a very interesting story from a variety of levels. Um because for one um you know you you have Kimmel that was basically implying right that you know someone from MAGA world someone from the right was the one that killed Charlie Kirk and that kicked off the controversy. Um you you had comments from the FCC commissioner Brennan Carr that said basically you know ABC needs to be held liable or or accountable for for this that Kimmel you know needs to face ramifications from it. um you know was voiced out into you know into the ether from that. Um but then you also had um concerns from ABC distributors uh NextStar uh and and Sinclair media in particular that said that you know we we don't want this. We're preempting Kimmel. That results in ABC pulling him off. There was some interesting Wall Street Journal report that went into the whole decision-making process that ABC top brass, you know, Mickey Mouse sat down Jimmy and asked them to apologize and like they kind of thought that his response was going to only further flame the issue and so they put him in timeout for a little bit. Um, you do have some of the the broader context where some of these ABC affiliates are looking to add more stations. Are they then concerned about the FCC playing a regulatory role in terms of allowing them to expand and buy a few more stations here? Right. So is this part of like the jawboning process of just the threat of government enforcement in this dynamic? Um and and so you know it was this a decision made by ABC was a decision made by these distributors or was it made by government pressure? Was it you know deacto whatever? Um, you know, at at the end of the day though is um, for one, like I if if your if your solution to this, if your proposal, if you're criticizing Jimmy Kimmel, it's a suspension timeout and you're not calling for the abolishing abolishing for the FCC, I really don't care. I really don't care about your opinion as is my is my personal opinion because the entire purpose of the FCC was to do just this. The FCC was created by FDR. Uh, it it was immediately, you know, it it shortened the licenses for having public air ra, public radio uh, addresses, right? They they immediately got the message like, "Okay, we're we're not going to platform people that are dissenting from the president's agenda." You know, the fairness doctrine enacted shortly thereafter. That was used again explicitly by the JFK administration, explicitly by, you know, typically Democratic administrations for quite some time to to censor the use of public airwaves. You look at public airwaves and you don't really see a lot of ideological diversity anyway, right? Uh, as it is. And and and again, you have Jimmy Kimmel who's actively promoting and celebrating, you know, uh, uh, people being censored by big tech and, you know, all these things with government thing, you So, so again, not exactly the most sympathetic murder, but it becomes this national crisis, right? You this becomes the biggest story because, oh, golly gosh darn, how dare the FCC silence political opposition when when again, this is the entire purpose of it. So, again, if if you're not if you're not going to going to go after, okay, well, let's let's let's let's uh let's dearm on both sides. All right, let's just take away let's address kind of the root pressure point here, then I really don't think that you're really caring about free speech here. I think we're just creating some sort of sophomoric martyr. Um, and and to me like the the more interesting story is just what it says about the culture where Jimmy Kimmel was originally hired to be a non-political comedic force or presence on ABC. That's why they got rid of Bill Maher, right? Um, you know, it was it was an interview that he he had he like Desh Duza who always pops up in weird moments in like contemporary American history. Neither here nor there. Um, but you know like Bill Bill Mah was Bill Maher and Desh Duza talking about you 911 and like that brings down his show on ABC. Like that's when they hired, you know, the man show guy, the the crank yanker guy from Comedy Central. Oh, we're going to bring in some someone that's non-political and then a decade later like he's like one of the most like, you know, hyper political comedic voices. What does that say about us? What what does that say about cultural demand? What does that say about you this entire you know cultural industrial complex and the way that has become hyper politicized like to me like that story that that evolution is a lot more interesting than people faking outrage about the FCC in the worst interpretation doing what the FCC does. So that's my personal point of view. Uh I I don't know how old you have to be to really remember the man show. Uh it was a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I watched it like in 99 2000 maybe. I had cable back then. It was popular high school with middle school boys. Okay. Well, understandably I remember the bump. This is Jimmy Kimmel's show in 992000. I remember the bumpers that is kind of like between the the episode and the commercials. sort of the we'll be right back sort of stuff. It w they showed films of women in skirts on trampolines. I remember this. And that was Jimmy Kimmel. That was their source of comedy. And so so then he somehow became, I guess, the uh the standard bearer for a left-wing sensorial sort of ideology. Very strange transformation. Well, it was also fun because like one of his big like his big public, you know, political moment was talking about um his son having a very serious medical issue. So, I mean great, you know, sympathy there and he was complaining about the medical system and obviously there's a lot that we can talk about in the medical system. I don't know if Jimmy Kimmel's solutions would be our solutions, but whatever. Like, you know, understand that as a father, but that's the same guy saying like, okay, well, if you didn't get vaccinated, you should die at a hospital. So, like those are my favorite type of universal healthcare advocates, by the way. Like, you should have died if you didn't listen to us, but we want everyone to know universal healthcare. Those are my favorites. And the government should control how we dispense all health care services. Yes. And be able to freely deny that. I mean, that's what's going on in Britain right now. And Jimmy Kimmel is apparently fine with that sort of coercion. But of course, coercion is bad when it's used against him. Uh Bill Anderson has has touched on this issue as well. And he's got a column. Uh I think it's today uh Thursday. Uh presidents have a long history of using the FCC to silence their critics. And this is how the the the article starts. The president was angry at the press, claiming that journalists were spreading quote unquote poisonous propaganda about him, using the Federal Communications Commission as a political weapon, he threatened the licenses of broadcast firms that employed people critical of him. Bill goes on, "While while Donald Trump likely is the first person to come to mind here, the opening sentences are not about him. They are instead about the spiritual standardbearer of the Democratic party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt." Indeed, while President FDR used the powers of his office to punish, bully, and intimidate print and broadcast journalists that dared to disagree with the New York patrician 100%. I And if you follow him in in other aspects as well, he used to make personal phone calls to newspapers to browbeat the editors to make sure that they didn't let soand so columnist who said bad things about FDR get another column or maybe fire somebody. And that's that's just what the FC FCC is used for. So, of course, I mean, I hadn't thought of it in those terms, though. But you're absolutely right. Right. If you don't see the FCC as a problem, but you're going to whine about Jimmy Kimmel being let go, well, I mean, your your your opinion is forgettable. Slightly off topic. That's my favorite genre of writing is describing a political episode and then revealing that it's from like the 1930s. Uh there's a great article in uh the capitalism the unknown ideal by Ran that is the same thing about like the origin of LZ fair is talking about I was reading it like 09 it's like oh the government's calling for massive stimulus and like at the very last like page it's about like president Linda May Johnson it's like oh my gosh like this is I was like my mind blown like oh this economic stuff is fun off topic there but I love that genre. Bill Anderson's a great writer. Well Connor you a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel. What are your thoughts on this matter? Not at all. I don't really get it with him. Like I I'm not a fan of any of these late night shows that on especially the broadcast ones. Like they are just pure propaganda. If you know anything about the topics they're covering, it's clear that they're very very misleading. They're always on the side of like the kind of established power structure um in DC and then they kind of hide behind comedy uh to sort of dismiss criticism of of them being very misleading. But there are some like very talented hosts in that world that are like clearly good comedians and are very talented at what they're doing. I don't find Jimmy Kimmel funny at all. I feel like he just takes jokes written by other people and sometimes if the even if the jokes are good, uh, he just makes them worse with his delivery. I don't really get it. I guess, you know, to what you were saying earlier, he has a past that I'm not very familiar with. I'm definitely um on the younger on the younger side here, but I don't really get it in terms of the I'm certainly not a fan uh of him on this front. But yeah, I agree with with what uh what you're saying there though that it's kind of like what I was talking about earlier. What's so frustrating about this um from our perspective is that like we've been and like our movement has been talking about this the entire time like and this is a topic I've uh I did a Mises you talk on this like the government uses access to control the media that's like their main I believe the American government's main means of controlling the media is access and then of course like they seized the broadcast spectrum there and so for these like broadcast ABC um being one of them They literally control the means of them getting their message out. So, of course, the government is going to have a lot of um leverage over these media companies. Even if they don't go in and like threaten them directly, there's always going to be some leverage there just cuz they're the ones holding on to the actual, you know, technology that allows them to get their message their uh their message across. And so I guess my point is this is a point that's been made to the left and to the progressives for decades that hey this is a terrible system. Someday it's going to get used against you and so this is all a mistake to just completely rally against it. And they just completely dismissed that. And now for whatever it was 4 days this was used against against them a bit and they just completely and utterly utterly freaked out about it. And it's just it's frustrating to see um because yeah it's like the the obvious takeaway here is that to go back to what you were talking about earlier Ryan like private media and private venues for information completely solves all of this. That's actually like the path to not just a lot more freedom of speech but a lot more stability in our country. It's it was completely not just dismissed but like ridiculed that whole idea by the left. Now they're freaking out because they're sort of out of power a little bit and the right is, you know, it's acting like the left was before and it's just it's very frustrating to see. Yeah. It creates these unnecessary ambiguities in terms of whose property is it and of course it's just it's just more federal regulation like so much that happened during the New Deal under FDR. People talk about the creation of social security and the war and things like that. But probably his most lasting contribution, quote unquote, a bad one, was the regulatory state. All of these alphabet organizations that have just changed the lives of every single American in massive ways, in ways that people don't even know about and makes it so that people are committing federal crimes that they don't even know about. I mean, there's just thousands upon thousands of pages of crimes and regulations that were created all under FDR for that regulatory state. And then that was of course used by his successors. I mean, Bill's column goes on to talk about how uh JFK used uh these same sort of methods in the 1960s. And I don't even hate Kennedy, but typical president, right? He just used those powers that were available to him thanks to FDR. Well, I should say I don't hate him like relative for presidents. I mean, I'm no fan of any president, but uh yeah, I don't see him as any worse than these other guys. And uh so it's just astounding. And then I mean really what is the point of the FCC now? I mean I could see the arguments in the distant past. Oh people's only means of getting television is through these broadcast means and there's only a few and we'll have a monopoly that are controlling all the all the frequencies etc etc. Who needs broadcast television? You you you got the internet, you got cable. Of course, there are so many other means of getting information. The FCC is just the most useless thing. But of course, they're not going to give up their power because it's just another thing that they can beam into people's homes. And maybe I'm sure people in older demographics, I guess, maybe still watch broadcast TV or something like that. And so that's that's still an issue. That's not something they're going to give up is at least the control over those viewers. Um, but yeah, spare me any arguments about how we need to have some sort of regulation of the of the airwaves or else there will be just it'll all be controlled by some right-wing warlord or something. I'm I'm skeptical that that is a valid argument. Well, Congress needs the FCC because that promotes Google having very lavish lobbying offices that have very nice receptions for members of Congress and their staff and to flood their campaign coffers with donations to make sure that the FCC is not used against them. Oh my god, I remember the whole, you know, the whole uh the other national tragedy of uh of uh uh the the internet um uh equal you what was the the the common carrier? Yeah, net neutrality thing like that was that was that FCC territorial sort of thing there like that that flooded a whole lot of campaign cash from Silicon Valley. Uh both sides of that one. Um so like that's that's why you need the FCC. you know, you you need needed to have a have have a stick to uh make sure that certain interest groups are are doing their part to make the Washington DC economy great. And of course, it's just another layer beneath, right? I mean, you're lobbying members of Congress, but they're not even the ultimate decision makers because it's some shadowy commission that is making these decisions, which you as a normal person have absolutely no hope of influencing in any way. And probably like all these other agencies, there's a significant amount of regulatory capture going on, right? It's the regulated agencies that spend all the money and and have all the influence. No normal person is making a difference at all. So that's the FCC for you. And then it just offers another chance for presidents to now browbeat people into firing people in browbeating agencies into firing people, making sure that uh the federal government isn't overly criticized. And I think as we all know, right, the left clearly has more influence over uh the TV stations and their news outlets and all of that than than the right does. And uh that's I guess that's probably the only reason we're hearing complaints now. I guess we didn't hear any complaints when Obama made a phone call and got Roseanne barf fired from her job for I don't know saying something that was racist or whatever. I who even remembers? Personally, as a young father, I was really hoping that the Kimmel thing would become bigger because like you have all these like progressive groups threatening to boycott Disney. I was like, man, I'm gonna be be able to actually bring my daughter to Disney and not have to worry about a gay pride event. But sadly sadly, I don't know if that's going to be on the table for for some time. No, Universal Studios, man. It's uh Yeah, it's just more neutral, I think. But yeah, for little kids, I don't know. They have the same stuff. But you know what? There's diversity there, right? There's no monopoly over the message. You got two different companies that they're promoting different sorts of different tone, different feel. Thank goodness there's not someone I don't know. Is there a federal uh amusement park regulator? Not to my knowledge. I don't think there's any centralized control over that. But you just don't give them ideas, Ryan. I ju I just can't believe that we're still arguing about how we need the federal government to control what's on TV and what bad words you can say and that sort of thing. It just strikes me as the most utterly useless and and of course it always reduces competition. That always is the the result of these federal regulatory agencies is there's fewer firms that are able to deal with all the regulation uh because they're very costly. And when when you have just a small number of wealthy firms controlling the regulatory outcomes of these organizations, lo and behold, it usually ends up favoring the large incumbent firms. And that's what's going on right now. Man, I would love to see this sort of thing just disappear. And you know what? You don't have to watch the stations that have too much cussing or whatever that is. Um especially if you look at the flowering of lots of other organizations that are trying to put out stuff that's more familyfriendly. And so the idea that there's no market for that is is pretty absurd. Um, but I guess in the end, right, I I don't care what Jimmy Kimmel is saying. I just at the same time, I don't think the federal government should be in the position of the president making a phone call and getting some clown, I mean, literally, uh, fired because, you know, he makes jokes in a way that the president doesn't like. I literally the exact same arguments on the left. if you're if you're if you are firing Jimmy Kimmel for misinformation. That was that was the argument, right? Was that he said that some right-winger murdered Charlie Kirk and that that's at least what the articles were saying was the trigger there. Uh misinformation. Oh, okay. So, we it's good to fire people for that now because I seem to remember five years ago when we were all horrified by that sort of thing. But that's just where I guess we're going with this administration now. It also like I've heard some right-wingers push back um at like Ron Paul was kind of going off against this and they're sort of presenting this theory that this will be a form of deterrence that if we basically are if we crush the left enough then when they you know come back in power whenever that might happen they're going to be they're going to understand that no we shouldn't have this kind of apparatus policing speech and I just see no evidence of that whatsoever. you you saw how much energy um this whatever it was 4 days Kimmel was off the air um how much energy that garnered on the left kind of like how years and years of cancel culture and you know uh cracking down on right-wing takes energized a lot of the Trump movement. I just I once again think the the path forward needs to be rolling back the tools to use this rather than trying to deter by being extra aggressive out of the some delusional like theory that it's going to get them to calm down. Well, it's going to ratchet up more next time because again I think there's kind of been this working philosophy, this working theory um which is absurd as soon as you you spend two minutes in the real world, right? But the the theory, right, is that oh well Trump is so sort of like a right-wing fever. As soon as that's gone, then we're gonna get back to like Mitt Romney Republican party and therefore the Democrats are gonna have not not gonna have to like act as if, you know, every day with a Republican president is some sort of massive civilizational crisis. But of course, I mean, again, they would have said the same thing about Romney as they about Trump. Like every everything's going to be a civilizational crisis. Everything is going to be this Russian domination. And again, until you start actually breaking up these tools, um, you know, it's and then I I get why you some people out there that, you know, sounds like a, you know, a libertarian sort of utopian kumbaya sort of fantasy like, oh, well, this just like that. But again, what else are you going to get? Like this is it's going to be a continual pol politics of domination. Um, and so again, there's not going to be any ratcheting down of this there. Again, there's no bipartisan coalition building to deal with the FCC in this particular situation where it's on the other foot. The shoe is on the other foot. There's there's again it's it's going to continue to escalate and that's just you know that's where we are. Yeah. And it took like decades and decades and decades to build up these tools these government tools to the level where you know they have as much control as they do now. So rolling them back is like that that would be like putting the left back decades in terms of the the amount of uh influence that they would be able to um you know uh put on the on the culture. I think like yeah I I I really disagree with that whole idea that like we're just being these naive libertarians that you know uh want us to all get along like no I think that the uh that sort of fever deterrence philosophy I think is the very strategically inept and and naive path. Well at least we know not to take Tylenol if we have any fevers for time being. So oh we got to come back to that issue at some point. There's probably not time today, but yeah, that's that's that's a phenomenon that requires discussion for another time. Let's move on to issue three, though, as we continue our search for the virtues of the Trump administration beyond better than Kamala. I mean, we can all agree that's kind of the baseline for the administration, but it would be nice to have something in addition to better than Kamla to really speak well for this administration. We don't have freedom of speech. We don't have undoing of the regulatory state. Maybe we have foreign policy, right guys? That doesn't seem to be going on there either. Sorry. Sorry. Right. I'm checking by the price of Bitcoin right now, but you could please the So the I mean what's going on with the Trump administration right now is uh two bad things. First of all, we got Trump suddenly suggesting that maybe he wants to go back into Afghanistan. he was. Now, of course, this is just Trump talking, right? And you never know, is this going to Sometimes it does translate into something you have to start worrying about. Sometimes it doesn't. But I always also wonder why he thought it was a good idea to say this. But Trump's now saying, "Oh, constituency is there for for Afghani tourism. They it's just going to take off." And so now he's saying Bram Air Force Base uh was an Air Force B. Yeah, the Bram Air Base, uh, which was a thing for the US for for a while. Uh, that's that's back in Afghani hands after the US's, uh, exit from the country. So, here's what CBS News reports. The Taliban government on Sunday rejected US President Trump's bid to retake Bagram Air Base four years after America's chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan left the sprawling military facility in the Taliban's hands. Mr. Trump on Saturday renewed his call to reestablish a US president's presence at Bagram, even saying, quote, "We're talking now to Afghanistan about the matter." He did not offer fur further details. Uh asked of a reporter if he'd consider deploying US troops to the base, the president demurred. Gee, uh I would have appreciated a no, we're not going to send US troops back into Afghanistan, but apparently that's a bridge too far. So we got that on the one side and then on the other side we've got Trump seemingly totally capitulating to Zalinski on the Ukraine issue because one of the ways that Trump has been good on Ukraine is uh coming to the very reasonable conclusion that Ukraine is not going to take back the Crimea. Ukraine is not going to take back the southeastern portions of the country. All of which are surrounded by huge minefields protected by the military uh uh establishment of Russia which has very extensive defensive capability even if Russia is not great at conquering territory quickly which has been showed in this war. Also, by the way, evidence that Russia is not going to be rolling into Berlin and Warsaw anytime soon. Once they have established themselves in territory, you're not going to be rolling back in there except without maybe a nuclear war and in which case we won't have a whole lot of infrastructure to roll in there with either. Uh but yeah, September 23, US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he believed Ukraine could retake all of its land occupied by Russia and that Kiev should act now with Moscow facing big economic problems in a sudden and striking rhetorical shift in Ukraine's favor. Now he's basically saying what Zilinski has been saying for years, this pipe dream about, yeah, we're going to take back the Crimea and all this territory in the Ukraine. And I guess Trump's new idea is that this is justified under the idea that Moscow has big economic problems, as if that were the deciding factor and whether you give up on a war or not. Hey, got news for you. the the uh the United Kingdom had crushing and existential economic problems during the Napoleonic Wars, but they weren't going to stop because that was a major major issue for them in politics far beyond whatever their economic realities were. And that's how uh national defense and and national uh defense priorities work for a lot of countries, even though Trump doesn't seem to understand how that works. So, we were told for the duration of the last campaign though, this was an America first campaign. We're going to bring the troops home. And I think some of us even thought maybe there's a chance of that. Maybe he's going to bring these maybe he's going to disengage from Ukraine. We all knew that maybe he was going to probably keep sending money and that sort of thing, but maybe there'd be at least like a serious disengagement also in the Middle East. Well, now it's it seems to be the opposite. We got Afghanistan on the table. We got reclaiming territory in eastern Ukraine. Of course, the Middle East is just escalating. So, uh, what are we to make of this? Is there anything left of America first? Well, trying to trying to figure out the whole Afghanistan thing because that was a that was a real curveball. I had forgotten that place existed. Um, I I trying to figure out like where where this stuff came from, like I do know that um like you know, one of the things that Trump talked about like during, you know, because people were saying, "Oh, well, you know, he's the one that set the timeline for withdrawal." like the B administration was blaming Trump for the chaos and like Trump was trying to say like no like we were you know we we were going to kind of keep a presence at Bagram I think like Eric Prince and like you know I know it's not Blackwater now but whatever his his project is I think that the the idea was like he was going to like replace American military presence there and so like they would keep keep the air base at the time and I don't know if this is just like like still in like back of Trump's mind it's like oh yeah back room air base like we could still take that like we still we still got a plan there it's got dusted off um so I don't know if that and and you know so that that thing is just is wild that's the best I can come up with in terms understand there may maybe thought thinks like an American presence could like help normalize I don't know again like planes going there again it's about China yeah yeah okay China there's a national security fine there but I I okay um the Ukraine stuff I I think it's interesting for for two reasons for one like I I think in order to understand all of Trump's public statements in particular is I and he even he said like you know I you know he's very disappointed that his relationship with Putin means nothing essentially is another comment that has come up in the last couple days and I think a lot of this is Trump just extremely frustrated and angry that Putin is not interested in a ceasefire that you Trump's willing to you know he's willing to make out a deal that gives you Crimea gives you this that that Putin is not interested in in stopping the Russian side of the conflict. Um, again there's been tit for tats and you know the drone bombings and that sort of stuff negotiations but you you can have a you know broader conversation about the the willingness of of sincere negotiations both side there fine but I think a lot of this is just public just frustration and anger from Trump over thinking that he could come in that he could bring both sides to the table that his you know his his diplomatic personality would get Putin to to accept whatever wins that he that you accept the territory that's there carve out something that that makes the appearance of a security uh uh deal you know security presence with Ukraine and that goes back to the minerals deal of you know feels like four years ago but was what you know 4 months ago. Um and so I think this is just him him lashing out at that and I wonder if you know I I I do think that this goes to again the the the the you know undermining of the the broader America first mission is that America's detour back into the Middle East with Israel with Gaza with Iran. You know, I I I think Putin knows that America is not narrowly focused on Russia right now. That they are doing everything they can to help Israel and again they are staying within you that that that that good old arena is still there. And so therefore they don't feel any immediate pressure to to to stop taking whatever they can get their hands on right now. And so this is the consequence right of of playing around of continuing to be involved in the sandbox is that you know you're you know you undermine what other positions that could otherwise perhaps be capital on the table to help deal with a deal that I do think Trump generally wanted uh when it come when it came to to that particular front. And so I think this is Trump lashing out. I mean at least he's not talking about you know we're not terrifying a new country in in response to this quite yet. I'm guess maybe India. Um, so yeah, there's always a way to work terrorists back into this, but I I think this is just his frustration with you him not being able to get the deal that he thought he was going to be able to get because of his great personal beautiful relationship with Vladimir Putin. Yeah. I mean, Connor, what? Well, he's saying these things. Do you think that uh we have to worry about this actually manifesting as real policy? like how would it manifest as a real policy in Ukraine? Are they really going to try and put boots on the ground? There's where would they even get the money given all the money they're spending in the Middle East? So, I I don't know on a on a scale of 1 to 10, uh what what are the chances of of his about face on both Afghanistan and Ukraine translating into any actual real change in policy? Oh, I think the big risk is that there's no change in policy. I don't really see him ramping things up. I hope like I the I think the best case scenario here is that this is just another negotiation ploy. He's trying to put some pressure on Putin um to gain any little bit of leverage. But if he's serious and he's actually been convinced that um that unlike last time that Ukraine can mount a counter offensive and take back all this territory. Um I don't know. I mean maybe there's some intelligence out there that uh that backs that up. certainly nothing public that points to that at all. Um, and it it just strikes me as like if if that was the case, like why wouldn't they have done that already? If there was some special, you know, weapons system they could have sent or some new strategy um that would have started pushing the Russians back, why have they waited this whole time? Like I just I think it's very unlikely that what he said in that post about you know what he learned from Zalinsky or whatever this new report was. I I'm I'm highly doubtful of that. Um I'm a little less worried about the Afghanistan thing. I think um I mean the strategic um value of Bram air base as it relates to China is the big reason that I was pretty convinced we were never actually going to leave Afghanistan. I'm still kind of surprised to this day. I do think it's one of the best things that Trump and Biden ever did. Um, of course, the way it happened was chaotic in large part because they had to keep up the lie that the Afghan National Army or that the regime that we were propping up was going to hold until they were literally fleeing um from not even Bram. They gave up Bram before they left uh Kabell, which was crazy. But anyway, I so I I think from Trump's comments, he was kind of hinting that he his government was talking to the Afghan government, which is the run by the Taliban. Now, the Taliban came back and said that's not true. Um but there's like there's a lot of steps we'd have to move through, I think, before they would like Trump would actually order um you know, the military to go in and seize it. Maybe not. Maybe he does this tomorrow. Maybe it's happening right now as we record. But um I am a little bit less worried than that. I would say Venezuela and the potential for that situation to escalate um is more worrisome to me than Afghanistan. But yeah, with with going back to Ukraine, I I don't really see um I mean once again like maybe there is some new intelligence and Trump will I don't think he's from the reports I was seeing it wasn't that he was interested in sending American troops in. I think that's a that would be a tough cell with some of his base. Um, but there was some talk about the US helping out with intelligence and that a counteroffensive could actually start making a difference there. Um, if there's this big push, I just I don't see that going well for uh the Ukrainian people or the American uh taxpayers at all. But it's just kind of an escalation of the the same terrible path we're on right now. I I think I figured it out. The secret the the change that can allow Ukraine to advance is Steve Morin on the Fed. We're we're gonna print more money. Therefore, that's the secret. That's what we've been missing. It's it's that overly harsh that overly overly restrictive monetary policies preventing the big gains that Ukraine needs. And the last comment is is is I I'll be convinced that Trump is serious about taking uh the airface back when when we we impose 300% tariff rates in Afghanistan, which apparently I had to Google this. We we have a 15% tariff rate right now with the Taliban. So, doing that what you will. So, we start we start juicing that sucker up. We We know we're back in negotiation, baby. We're going to You're going to have to pay more for your Afghanyade television now. It's uh what a what what a disaster. Uh by the way, where is uh where's Bitcoin now since you were just checking the price as of Thursday afternoon? How we doing on Bitcoin? Hey, we're we're we're still over six figures right now. So, uh All right. better than Biden. Not not as good as a couple weeks ago, but hey, you know. So, yeah. Loving Trump 2.0, baby. Keep number keep going up. All right. Well, thank you everyone for joining me this time on Powered Market podcast. Thank you, Connor. Thank you though. We'll be back next week with more, I suspect, and there'll be plenty to talk about. So, we'll see you next time.