Trevor Bauer is a baseball pitcher who was signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 2021 to a three-year contract worth like $100 million. And in August of 2021, suddenly, there was an accusation that came out that he had sexually abused a woman. And this turned into a few more accusations of sexual abuse. And finally, on February 8th, 2022, the L.A. County District Attorney s Office announced that they wouldn t bring an investigation into Trevor Bauer while he was still on the roster. And that s how we ended up with the worst case of sexual assault I ve ever seen in the 21st century, and it s not even close to being as bad as the one we ve all been talking about in the Me Too movement. This episode is brought to you by the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers. We are all in this together, working hard to make a difference in our world. Thank you so much for being a part of this movement, and we can't wait to see where it goes next. Our hearts go out to all the women out there who are brave and courageous in the fight for equality, justice, and a safe and fair world. Thank you for standing up for themselves, and fighting for what matters most important to us. #MeToo. - John Muldowney and his words - Thank you, Maureen McCarthy and her story - Your words are so much more than enough, thank you for coming forward, and you deserve a chance to be heard and a place to shine your voice, too much of it, and your words are heard, so much of them are enough, and they are not enough, so we can be heard, and so much so more than they are it is enough, and more than that, thank them - thank you, maheeeeeeeeeeeeedeedeedeeeeeedeee - your words, etc., etc., so much less than they get it, etc. etc., etc. -- - - etc. - etc, etc.. - ENJOYING IT? - EAT ME TO SEE IT, ENJEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeEEEEEH? (Amenand ) AND PODCAST
00:00:00.000So, the Me Too movement was predicated on one truth and a lot of lies.
00:00:05.000The one truth is that men sometimes really mistreat women and women don't report that mistreatment out of fear of retaliation.
00:00:12.000And that men's crimes against women have spanned the generations and been really terrible and that men have not been sufficiently punished for this.
00:00:19.000Not as a class, but like individually.
00:00:21.000There are a lot of cases in which men abuse women and that doesn't go reported because women don't like coming forward with those allegations because then they go through the limelight and men get away with it.
00:00:29.000All of that is true, and it was particularly true in Hollywood, which is where the Me Too movement originally started, because the casting couch is indeed a thing in Hollywood, and that leads to sexual exploitation.
00:00:38.000This has been a thing all the way since the beginnings of Hollywood.
00:00:40.000In fact, you don't even have to talk about Hollywood.
00:00:41.000You can go all the way back throughout human history, and what you see is that men with power very often abuse women.
00:00:46.000That was then surrounded with a bigger lie, and the bigger lie was believe all women.
00:00:51.000Me Too, which was the idea that virtually all women had been abused at some point or another, which is not true, was then surrounded with an even bigger lie, which is that any accusation was tantamount to a conviction.
00:01:01.000Anytime a woman said that she was abused by a man, we had to take this not only seriously, which we should, but we had to pretend that no further evidence was necessary or needed.
00:01:09.000No woman would, under any circumstances, Lie about something like this for any level of gain.
00:01:15.000In fact, there would be no level of gain that would be concomitant to actually explain why a woman would make a false accusation.
00:01:20.000Now, there is no other area of human life where we make such a claim.
00:01:24.000It just doesn't exist where an accusation is tantamount to proof.
00:01:27.000We tried to do it a little bit in the United States over the past 10, 20 years with regard to racial allegations, and it turns out that that just incentivizes people to make false racial allegations.
00:01:36.000This is how you end up with the Jussie Smollett story.
00:01:38.000Well, the same thing is true with regard to a movement that is predicated on the idea that no matter what a woman says, it must be true regardless of what the evidence shows.
00:01:48.000Now, there have been a lot of cases of MeToo stories blowing up in people's faces.
00:01:51.000MeToo stories that aren't really MeToo stories being blown out of proportion.
00:02:21.000Dodgers back in 2021 to a three-year contract worth like $100 million.
00:02:26.000And he had been the mainstay of the rotation.
00:02:31.000And in August of 2021, suddenly, there was an accusation that came out that he had sexually abused a woman.
00:02:38.000And this turned into a few more accusations of sexual abuse.
00:02:42.000The accusations broke on June 30th, 2021.
00:02:45.000The Pasadena Police Department confirmed to news outlets, according to Wikipedia, that Bauer was under investigation for the alleged assault of a San Diego woman in May.
00:02:53.000The woman was granted a temporary domestic restraining order on June 28th, alleging she had met Bauer on April 21st, and that she had been physically and sexually assaulted by him on two separate occasions.
00:03:02.000She alleged that he had sodomized her without consent, punched her in the face, choked her to the point of unconsciousness.
00:03:06.000On May 16th, she went to the emergency room at Alvarado Hospital, where after her injuries were examined, she met with several detectives from the San Diego Police Department.
00:03:14.000MLB in response placed Bauer on administrative leave on July 2nd, and the Dodgers removed merchandise from the team's store that had Bauer's name on it.
00:03:23.000Bauer said he had sexual consent with the accuser and that his accuser sent him a text message requesting he inflict pain on her.
00:03:30.000He denied certain specific aspects of the allegations.
00:03:33.000On August 20th, a temporary restraining order against Bauer was removed after Bauer was determined not to actually pose a threat to the woman's safety.
00:03:42.000The judge found the woman was, quote, was not ambiguous about wanting rough sex in the party's first encounter and wanting rougher sex in the second encounter and that Bauer had honored the woman's boundaries when she set them.
00:03:52.000MLB then extended his leave for the rest of the season while they finished their investigation into Bauer.
00:03:56.000And then, February 8th, 2022, the L.A.
00:03:59.000County District Attorney's Office announced they wouldn't bring any criminal charges against Bauer.
00:04:02.000Now, that should have already been, I mean, there should have been like a thousand red flags at this point in terms of this case because a restraining order is really easy to get.
00:04:11.000If a woman accuses a man of a level of abuse, The notion that she wouldn't get a restraining order in the LA justice system is absurd.
00:04:18.000I mean, those orders are not hard to come by when it comes to Los Angeles jurisprudence.
00:04:33.000Then the LA prosecutor's office, which is looking to put famous people behind bars.
00:04:37.000This is how you make your name as a DA in Los Angeles.
00:04:40.000I mean, I once summered as an intern over at the Los Angeles District Attorney Major Crimes Division, so I know a lot of the people over there.
00:04:46.000Like, the idea that people in that office are like, no, no, no, no, no.
00:04:50.000Like, if they could get a celeb dead to rights, they would do it.
00:04:57.000In March 2022, Bauer then filed a defamation lawsuit against Deadspin and The Athletic, and a former reporter for The Athletic named Molly Knight.
00:05:05.000In that lawsuit, he dropped the detail that The Athletic had suggested, not just suggested, reported openly that this lady's skull had been fractured when in fact they had medical evidence that her skull had not been fractured.
00:05:15.000They suggested that it might have been fractured and they already knew that by technical data it had not been fractured and all the rest.
00:05:23.000None of this stopped the MLB, which is deathly afraid of controversy, from them suspending him.
00:05:28.000They didn't just extend his leave for the remainder of the entire season.
00:05:31.000They then went forward and ended up suspending him, like the longest suspension in MLB history.
00:05:39.000They ended up hitting him with a two-season suspension.
00:05:47.000It ended up being downgraded later to like 194 games or something.
00:05:51.000In a statement, League Commissioner Rob Manfred said that an investigation conducted by the MLB came to the conclusion that Bauer's conduct violated the policy and warranted suspension, the domestic violence policy.
00:06:00.000The MLB did not reveal the specific conduct triggering the suspension.
00:06:03.000Okay, so, if you were just a casual watcher of this particular case, and you hadn't paid attention to the fact no restraining order was granted, and you hadn't paid attention to the fact that the prosecutors dropped the case, what you would get, because of the MLB's suspension, is this guy probably is a repeat sexual assaulter and possible rapist.
00:06:19.000That is what you would have gotten from this.
00:06:21.000And now, Bauer plays in Japan, because he can't play in the MLB because of the suspension.
00:06:27.000In fact, As it turns out, he now has the receipts.
00:07:45.000Okay, so, according to ESPN, former LA Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer and the San Diego woman who first accused him of sexual assault, triggering the investigation that led to an unprecedented suspension from MLB, have settled their civil lawsuits outside of court with no money exchanged between the parties.
00:08:04.000The woman accused Bauer of sexually assaulting her during two encounters in the spring of 2021, prompting the former Cy Young Award winner to be placed on administrative leave that July.
00:08:11.000The woman was later denied a permanent restraining order in LA Superior Court.
00:08:14.000The DA's office declined to file criminal charges, we say.
00:08:17.000But MLB, which has the authority to apply punishment outside the criminal justice system, and spoke to other women who made similar accusations, then handed Bauer a 324-game suspension in April 2022.
00:08:26.000An independent arbitrator shortened it to 194 games.
00:08:30.000Bauer sued the woman for defamation in April 2022.
00:08:32.000The woman countersued for sexual battery four months later.
00:08:35.000The woman apparently will receive $300,000 in insurance policy proceeds that will be sent in a trust account to her lawyer's office, according to an email from Hill's lawyers provided by a representative with Bauer.
00:08:45.000So all the litigation ended up being settled and the money actually ended up changing hands.
00:08:51.000Now, Trevor Bauer has now come forward with the actual receipts, and this stuff is unbelievable.
00:08:57.000To understand how unbelievable this stuff is, you first have to understand the nature of the allegations.
00:09:01.000So these are pictures that the woman revealed, the original accuser revealed, the one who just settled, that she revealed to the press.
00:09:11.000These are unredacted photographs showing the alleged injuries.
00:09:16.000And her lawyer said the damage could not possibly be part of a consensual encounter.
00:09:42.000Well, now Trevor Bauer has come forward with text messages that were found during Discovery, and video that was found during Discovery, and my goodness, my goodness.
00:09:52.000Here's some of what Trevor Bauer had to say.
00:09:55.000Next victim, star pitcher for the Dodgers.
00:09:59.000A text Lindsay Hill sent to a friend before she ever even met me.
00:10:45.000Since then, her legal team has approached me multiple times about coming to a financial settlement.
00:10:49.000But, as I have done since day one, I refuse to pay her even a single cent.
00:10:53.000In August of 2021, Lindsay Hill's claims were heard in court, and during those legal proceedings, critical information was deliberately and unlawfully concealed from me and my legal team.
00:11:04.000Information like this video, which was taken by Lindsay Hill herself the morning after she claimed she was brutally attacked, emotionally traumatized, and desperate to get away from me.
00:11:14.000And now we have the metadata, so there can be no dispute.
00:11:17.000It was taken mere minutes before she left my house on the morning of May 16th, 2021.
00:11:39.000Which would suggest that sometime between when she left his house and then went to the hospital, someone else did the damage to her that she then, I mean, there's like nurses who are saying that they'd never seen anybody who'd been pulverized in the general area the way that she was, like somebody had like punched her there.
00:11:57.000The video, I mean, and he's got the metadata.
00:12:01.000Now he can finally speak about all of this.
00:12:03.000She could theoretically still sue him for defamation if this were false.
00:12:06.000There's no evidence that this is false.
00:12:15.000Without my knowledge or consent, of course.
00:12:18.000In it, you can see her lying in bed next to me while I'm sleeping, smirking at the camera without a care in the world or any marks on her face.
00:12:26.000I think it paints a pretty clear picture of what actually happened the evening of May 15th and why the video was originally concealed from us.
00:12:35.000After hearing the evidence available to her, Judge Diana Gold Saltman found that Lindsay Hill had misled the court.
00:12:40.000She found her claims to be materially misleading.
00:12:43.000she denied her request for a domestic violence restraining order and
00:12:46.000She found that no sexual assault or non-consensual conduct took place
00:12:51.000Now some of you might not know about restraining order hearings
00:12:54.000I know I didn't but I've since Learned that it's extremely rare for a request for a restraining
00:13:01.000order to be denied because the standard of proof that you need
00:13:04.000To obtain one is extremely low right about that. Obviously you can make of that what you will
00:13:09.000The fact is I was never arrested I was never charged with a crime and I won the only legal proceeding that took place
00:13:14.000without My side of the story even being heard
00:13:17.000And most importantly, as I've said from day one, I never sexually assaulted Lindsay Hill, or anyone else for that matter.
00:13:23.000So I sued her, which prompted her to countersue me.
00:13:26.000Quite frankly, regardless of the outcome in court, I've paid significantly more in legal fees than Lindsay Hill could ever- Okay, so he continues along these lines, but the evidence there is, like, astonishing.
00:13:35.000Actual text before she went over to his house, before she knew him, saying that he was worth a lot of money and she was gonna go after him.
00:13:41.000Now, there are other accusations that have now been made against Trevor Bowers, one in June of this year, in which an Arizona woman, according to the Associated Press, accused Bauer of sexual assault, alleging in a lawsuit updated this week, he held a knife in her throat and choked her out until she passed out during a rape that left her pregnant.
00:13:55.000But, Bauer was never arrested or charged.
00:13:57.000He's now countersued, denying the allegations, accusing the woman of faking the pregnancy and trying to extort money from him in the first place.
00:14:03.000The player's co-agents said in a statement, this woman is unhinged.
00:14:06.000They said she'd made several million dollar demands against Bauer over two years, prompting him to file a criminal complaint against her.
00:14:12.000And apparently, Bauer did file a criminal complaint in January, alleging that the woman was trying to extort him.
00:14:18.000So, again, this, herein lies the problem with the entire Me Too movement.
00:14:22.000There is no such thing as Believe All Women.
00:14:25.000When women make accusations like this, it actually completely degrades the actual reality of sexual assault and rape.
00:14:33.000And if a woman goes after a man this way, she should pay whatever penalty she was attempting to get for him criminally is what she should receive.
00:14:38.000If she was attempting to get a 10-year jail sentence for him for rape, she should go to jail for 10 years.
00:14:42.000Because this sort of stuff has to stop on behalf of rape victims and on behalf of people who are being falsely accused.
00:14:47.000It's disgusting and it's vile and it's gross.
00:14:50.000And the fact that you still have headlines now that are treating Trevor Bauer as a disgraced person, despite the fact that now this evidence has been revealed.
00:17:04.000But the problem is you can have consent, as Trevor Bauer apparently did, for all of this, according to a judge.
00:17:09.000And it doesn't matter, because it didn't take place in the context of a committed relationship in any way, and so there is no way for Trevor Bauer to protect himself against these sorts of accusations.
00:17:20.000When you throw away traditional morality and you substitute a culture of consent, and consent is incredibly malleable.
00:17:28.000This is one of the things that we have now learned in American society.
00:17:30.000If a woman regrets a thing happening to her, if she consents to sex and she just doesn't like it the next morning, that turns into a Me Too story now.
00:17:37.000If that's the way that we're going to roll, that means that the only real solution is go back to something that remotely resembles traditional morality.
00:17:46.000In which it is considered absolutely behavior beyond reproach to go to a man's house at three o'clock in the morning, consent to sex with him, and the next morning decide you didn't like it.
00:17:56.000That is considered absolutely morally meritorious.
00:18:01.000Whereas if you're Mike Pence and you say, listen, here's the deal.
00:18:03.000I'm not going to meet with a woman alone who is not my wife in a room with a closed door.
00:18:16.000This is the society that we've created because when you get beyond traditional morality in the sexual realm, there is no rule system that actually can be followed, that is capable of hemming in people's behavior.
00:18:27.000Again, committed relationships and sex within them is the best insurance against this sort of stuff for both men and women.
00:18:32.000But it's something that we as a society have completely discarded in the name of sexual hedonism.
00:18:36.000And again, consent, it turns out, is not the whole ball of wax.
00:18:42.000It is an important part of the ball of wax, but there needs to be more.
00:18:44.000If you wish to guarantee that this doesn't happen to you, again, reminder, don't pick up people on Tinder and screw them.
00:18:50.000This is not... Again, you don't have to be a Bible believer to believe this.
00:18:54.000All you have to believe is in incentive structures.
00:18:56.000And that's particularly true if you are very rich and very famous.
00:18:58.000I remember a few years back, Henry Cavill suggested that dating was really, really difficult because, again, he's very, very rich and he's very, very famous.
00:19:08.000And he suggested that he couldn't just go out with, like, random women or go home with random women because what could happen next?
00:19:16.000In the name of caution, famous men should definitely be very careful about this sort of behavior because the notion, again, that there are not women who are out there targeting them is ridiculous.
00:19:27.000As far as MLB, as far as other institutions, there needs to be a standard that is set with regard to these institutions, which is that unless there is a criminal conviction in these cases, an accusation cannot be tantamount to ending somebody's career.
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00:21:59.000Donald Trump yesterday went to court in Manhattan.
00:22:03.000According to the New York Times, he detoured from the campaign trail on Monday to attend the opening of the civil trial in the New York Attorney General's fraud case against him, as his political team seeks to turn the spectacle into a rallying cry for supporters.
00:22:13.000Now, Trump hasn't been in the headlines for at least a couple of weeks about his legal travails.
00:22:17.000Every time he is, it boosts him in the ratings, which presumably is why he showed up in Manhattan.
00:22:22.000He didn't have to show up in Manhattan.
00:22:25.000Again, this is the bizarre politics of the moment.
00:22:27.000Trump right now is trying to head off at the pass any possible consolidation of the rest of the 2024 field.
00:22:32.000So his team has already come out and said that they want to nix any possible future debates inside the Republican Party, even though he's not taking place because he doesn't want any attention on any other candidate.
00:22:41.000Also, he's now showing up in court as like a campaign ploy.
00:22:45.000Now, two things, as always, can be true at once.
00:22:48.000Donald Trump is being absolutely railroaded in this New York case.
00:22:56.000The people who did business with him are not suing him.
00:22:58.000The state of New York is not even alleging that they had losses because of him.
00:23:01.000Instead, the state of New York is alleging that he engaged in a pattern of fraudulent behavior that damaged no one, and they are grabbing his businesses in New York and taking control of them to the tune of $250 million in liability based on no damages, which is crazy.
00:23:15.000Again, let's say that you and I go into a mortgage arrangement, and I say to you, listen, I say my house is worth twice what it's worth, and you kind of know that's true, but you also know that I'm good for my debt, and you also know that it's good to be in business with me, so you give me the loan.
00:23:41.000How many crimes does the state punish that are truly victimless in the sense that everybody involved knows exactly what's going on and it's a regular part of the business?
00:23:49.000And if it is that they go after people, it can't be that they only go after Trump for this.
00:23:53.000Like, show me some precedent of how often this law is used in the absence of any damages even alleged.
00:24:01.000The other thing that is true is that Donald Trump is using this for political purposes.
00:24:03.000So every time he goes to court, he knows that the American public, at least on the right side of the aisle, rallies to his defense because we all see that it's BS.
00:24:11.000And the way that the right rallies to his defense is not by contributing to his legal fund.
00:24:14.000Instead, the way that the right rallies to his defense is by saying he should be the nominee, which again is a very weird form of rallying to his defense.
00:24:23.000And two, this does not make him stronger as a candidate against Joe Biden because my chief priority is not Using my vote as some sort of loyalty pledge to Donald Trump, my chief priority is using my vote to defeat Joe Biden.
00:24:33.000So what I'm looking at is who is most likely to beat Biden, like a drum.
00:24:37.000And that involves making Biden the issue, because Biden is the issue.
00:24:54.000He was joined by several of his political aides, including Walt Nauda, his co-defendant in the federal case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.
00:25:02.000So, here was Donald Trump talking about... I mean, he says the quiet part out loud.
00:25:06.000The thing you have to love about Trump is that he's absolutely transparent in every way.
00:25:10.000Here he was saying the quiet part out loud, that he's basically there for the polls.
00:25:14.000And I don't think the people of this country are going to stand for it.
00:25:18.000If I weren't leading in all the polls, or if I weren't running, I wouldn't have any of these cases, I wouldn't be seeing you this morning.
00:25:42.000I can tell you the voters getting it because every time they give me a fake indictment, I go up in the polls and that's never happened before.
00:26:32.000This is a continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time.
00:26:38.000We have a rogue judge who rules that properties are worth a tiny fraction, one one hundred.
00:26:45.000A tiny fraction of what they actually are.
00:26:49.000We have a racist attorney general who's a horror show who ran on the basis that she was going to get Trump before she even knew anything about me.
00:27:28.000It also happens to be that in other legal cases, things are probably going to get worse for Trump, not better.
00:27:33.000According to CNN, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office has now issued a subpoena to former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerrick to testify in the first trial later this month in the case stemming from election subversion plots in Georgia.
00:27:43.000According to his lawyer, Kerrick's lawyer is demanding that his client be granted immunity in exchange for testifying, pointing out that prosecutors indicated in the indictment that Kerrick was a co-conspirator in the case.
00:27:54.000He's not named in the indictment, but he is considered co-conspirator number five.
00:27:58.000So basically the idea here is that Carrick would be granted immunity in return for testifying against Donald Trump.
00:28:03.000This is one of the big problems that Trump has, and this is why the RICO case in Georgia is dangerous for Trump, is when you wrap in a bunch of other people surrounding Trump, and they don't have anybody paying their legal bills, then the temptation is going to be to cut a deal with the Fulton County prosecutors, get immunity, and then testify against Trump.
00:28:19.000This is leaving aside the documents case in Florida.
00:28:21.000All these legal issues are going to stack up against Trump, and Trump championing them in the primary is to elevate him To the nomination.
00:28:28.000If he thinks he's going to be able to turn off that spigot and not talk about this stuff in the general, that's wrong.
00:28:32.000I mean, this is going to be a chief issue in the general election.
00:28:35.000And it may be the only thing I can say Biden, because Biden is struggling out there.
00:28:41.000Between this and Trump continuing to do what he can to alienate suburban women, does he have a path against Biden?
00:28:48.000Sure, he has a path against Biden because Biden is deeply unpopular.
00:28:50.000There are a lot of people who might not show up for Biden because they just don't like Joe Biden very much.
00:28:54.000And because a lot of people know, we all know in our bones, he is not going to serve out a second term and Kamala Harris will be president if Joe Biden is reelected.
00:29:01.000All that may be true, but it seems to me that if you can bet on a horse that is not weak, That would be better.
00:29:08.000It seems to me that if you're going to bet on a candidate, you don't want to bet that the other guy is just going to fall down on the job.
00:29:13.000You want to bet on somebody who can beat him when he's at his strongest.
00:29:16.000And right now, I'm not sure that that's what Republicans are doing.
00:29:19.000Over the weekend, for example, Donald Trump spent the weekend dropping lines mocking Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband, at the California GOP meeting.
00:29:28.000Now, this is the kind of stuff that gets laughs inside a room because he's joking.
00:29:31.000But also, is it the kind of stuff that is going to drive independents and suburban women back into his camp?
00:29:38.000Together, we will take on the ultra left-wing liars, losers, creeps, perverts, and freaks who are devouring the future of this state like a swarm of locusts.
00:29:53.000And we'll stand up to crazy Nancy Pelosi who ruined San Francisco.
00:30:01.000How's her husband doing, by the way? Anybody know?
00:30:03.000And she's against building a wall at our border, even though she has a wall around her house,
00:30:13.000which obviously didn't do a very good job.
00:30:16.000I mean, I don't know what Paul Pelosi has to do with anything.
00:30:20.000That sort of stuff gets played in ads.
00:30:22.000The entire Biden case is going to be that Donald Trump is a nefarious character.
00:30:25.000That's going to be the entire case for his reelect.
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00:32:16.000A Christmas Carol with a K. Now available for pre-order.
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00:32:22.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden's policies continue to fail across the board.
00:32:25.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans are still spending like there's no tomorrow.
00:32:28.000Consumers should be spending less by now.
00:32:34.000But household spending, the primary driver of the nation's economic growth, remains robust.
00:32:38.000Americans spent 5.8% more in August than one year earlier, well outstripping less than 4% inflation.
00:32:43.000The experience economy boomed this summer with Delta Airlines reporting record revenue in the second quarter and Ticketmaster selling over 295 million event tickets in the first six months of 2023.
00:34:10.000I know that we now consider this not a matter of moral But actually, when you take out a loan, you owe somebody the money.
00:34:19.000I'm just absolutely confused by this idea that when I take out a student loan, I don't owe the money, that somebody else owns the money.
00:34:24.000In any case, now the student loans are going to come due.
00:34:27.000Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently ticked off the resumption of student loan payments along the potential threats he sees in the economy, alongside forces like the auto worker strike, higher long-term interest rates, a potential government shutdown, and surging oil prices.
00:34:38.000Most of those things, by the way, are Joe Biden related.
00:34:43.000Now, the Biden administration is trying to pretend that all of this could be avoided if you simply just cancel the student loan payments.
00:34:49.000The only problem is that's deeply inflationary.
00:34:52.000It turns out that one of the biggest own goals in recent memory politically is Joe Biden dubbing the economy Bidenomics, because most people hate the economy.
00:34:59.000Jared Bernstein, the chief of the Council of Economic Advisers, he still continues to try to make fetch happen.
00:35:06.000Just saying that tying the president to the economy maybe wasn't the best idea when so many Americans don't feel like they have gotten ahead, and so many of them are now saying they feel better with Republicans in terms of the economy than Democrats at this point.
00:35:21.000A lot of that's inflation, people having to try and keep up, even though wages may be going up at this point, trying to keep up with some pretty high inflation numbers over the last several years.
00:35:32.000Well, we think Bidenomics is clearly working, and it's not just about the here and now, although it's about that, too.
00:35:38.000So let's start with where we are right now.
00:35:41.000Again, we have real wage gains over the past few months, and that consistently supports strong consumer spending, which is leading to a GDP... Yeah, we don't need more from him.
00:36:22.000You've suggested you will not present an off-ramp.
00:36:24.000What you guys have suggested in the Biden administration is as long as it takes with as much as it takes and you won't demand Any sort of endpoint.
00:36:30.000You have no clue what winning even looks like.
00:36:33.000And it turns out the American people are not up for that.
00:36:34.000You know what else they're not up for?
00:36:35.000They're not up for pouring tons of money into the corruption rat hole of the Ukrainian government.
00:36:40.000It's one thing to pay for weaponry to repel a Russian invasion.
00:36:43.000It's one thing to give them old weaponry to take out Russian troops, degrade Russian military capacity, and prevent China's strongest ally from becoming stronger.
00:36:52.000It's worth it to dissuade China from invading Taiwan by pointing out that there will be repercussions for doing so.
00:36:58.000However, what Americans are not up for is spending billions of dollars rebuilding the Ukrainian economy when that is a really corrupt place.
00:37:08.000It's called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
00:37:09.000If I go down to Panama, and I decide I want to build a hotel, and somebody demands a bribe for me to build that hotel, and I pay that bribe, I will be prosecuted in the United States of America for having done that, even if I'm bringing jobs and economic growth to Panama.
00:37:22.000If, however, I'm the federal government of the United States, and I decide to pour billions of dollars into a corruption rat hole in Ukraine, then apparently that's totally fine.
00:37:31.000If you do it on a personal level, Then you'll go to jail.
00:37:34.000If you do it as the federal government, then not only is it fine, it's praiseworthy.
00:37:37.000Well, now there's elite communication from the Biden administration talking about corruption in Ukraine, which has been a longstanding problem over there.
00:37:46.000Are far more worried about corruption in Ukraine than they publicly admit, a confidential U.S.
00:37:49.000strategy document obtained by Politico suggests.
00:37:51.000The sensitive but unclassified version of the long-term U.S.
00:37:54.000plan lays out numerous steps Washington is taking to help Kyiv root out malfeasance and otherwise reform an array of Ukrainian sectors.
00:38:00.000It stresses that corruption could cause Western allies to abandon Ukraine's fight against Russia's invasion, and that Kyiv cannot put off the anti-graft effort.
00:38:07.000Perceptions of high-level corruption, the confidential version of the document says, could undermine the Ukrainian public's and foreign leaders' confidence in the wartime government.
00:38:16.000The confidential version is about three times as long as the non-confidential version.
00:38:20.000The administration wants to press Ukraine to cut graft, not least because U.S.
00:40:14.000I mean, when even the governor of New York is calling you out, that's a serious problem for the Biden administration.
00:40:17.000Meanwhile, Crime continues to spiral out of control in America's major cities.
00:40:21.000In Washington, D.C., Henry Cuellar, who is a Democratic congressperson from Texas, was carjacked today in Philadelphia, which is dominated by left-wing D.A.
00:40:39.000He had recently written articles for a wide variety of sources, And apparently, in writing about that, he talked about how the city of Philadelphia was not being too easy on criminality.
00:40:50.000It's terrible and it's awful, and this is what happens when a city is too easy on criminality.
00:40:56.000Meanwhile, on the federal front, Obamacare has been a giant fail.
00:40:59.000Joe Biden's chief achievement as Vice President of the United States, the big effing deal that Joe Biden talked about, has been a complete failure.
00:41:05.000Good piece today by Megan McArdle over at the Washington Post.
00:41:08.000Titled, Obamacare has been unable to save money on U.S.
00:41:22.000The next highest spender, Germany, spent 12.7%.
00:41:25.000As the Affordable Care Act took shape almost 15 years ago, its architects started looking for savings in earnest.
00:41:31.000All these years later, we still haven't found the magic money pot.
00:41:33.000This isn't because people aren't trying.
00:41:35.000Obamacare contained a lot of elements that were expected to realize significant cost savings.
00:41:39.000Preventive care, it was hoped, could catch conditions early and forestall expensive emergency room visits.
00:41:44.000Doctors and hospitals could be paid to keep patients healthy.
00:41:47.000Rather than form expensive procedures, there would be a government board that could rigorously assess treatments for cost effectiveness.
00:41:53.000But instead, the savings just have not materialized at all.
00:41:58.000In fact, the so-called CMMI, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, which was supposed to run pilot projects to reduce costs, instead ended up costing the government $5.4 billion, expected to cost another $1.3 billion by 2030.
00:42:11.000Preventive costs turned out to cost more than it saved because doctors may need to treat a lot of minor conditions to prevent one major serious health crisis.
00:42:18.000Expanding the number of insured turns out to make emergency room visits rise, not fall, Because newly insured people don't worry about the cost.
00:42:26.000It increases demand, just like you would imagine if you look at any supply-demand curve.
00:42:31.000There are ways to save money, but this would make people wait longer for tests and treatment.
00:42:35.000Again, as I've said for years and years, for a decade, there are three elements of healthcare.
00:42:40.000There's affordability, there's universality, and there is quality.
00:42:44.000And you can only have two of the three.
00:43:10.000Well, now Democrats are blowing themselves up in Congress.
00:43:13.000So Jamal Bowman is making a fool of himself on every possible angle.
00:43:17.000This is the guy who decided to pull a fire alarm the other day in order to forestall a vote on the continuing resolution, then pretend that he thought the fire alarm was going to open the door.
00:43:39.000This is a man that has gone on and yelled at members, and his behavior has been unbecoming.
00:43:44.000But what's interesting, if it really was just an accident, when the Capitol Police came to interview you, why would you lawyer up right away?
00:44:04.000The only question is how we can fit so many clowns in this small space.
00:44:07.000But, Jamal Bowman, his people are now suggesting that Republicans are Nazis for asking about it.
00:44:13.000Quote, I believe Congressman Bowman, when he says this was an accident, is the suggested response from Bowman's office to questions about the incident.
00:44:20.000Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.
00:44:26.000That is what Jamal Bowman's press secretary sent to all House Democratic offices.
00:44:57.000So probably Republicans should have a fight over the speakership.
00:45:01.000I think that would be beneficial at this point.
00:45:02.000When I say that, I'm being as cynical as it is possible to be.
00:45:05.000So yesterday, Matt Gaetz, who has been ripping on McCarthy for quite a while, So, let me get this straight.
00:45:12.000to formally move ahead with a vote to oust McCarthy as Speaker, known as a motion to vacate.
00:45:16.000Here he was yesterday explaining that he was going to issue a motion to vacate.
00:45:21.000So let me get this straight. To extend Joe Biden's spending and Joe Biden's policy priorities,
00:45:30.000the Speaker of the House gave away to Joe Biden the money for Ukraine that Joe Biden wanted.
00:45:41.000It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden feeble
00:45:48.000while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy's lunch money in every negotiation.
00:45:54.000It's just, and because of this, because of McCarthy's supposed failings in not prying more savings spendings out of Joe Biden, he should have his speakership challenged, is according to Matt Gaetz.
00:46:26.000So you have the usual cast of characters like Andy Biggs from Arizona saying that he can't remain speaker and all the rest, but they have no one else in the wings waiting to do anything.
00:46:33.000There are over 200 Republicans in the House who already don't support getting rid of McCarthy.
00:46:39.000So there's just gonna be another humiliating vote take over and over and over if it actually gets past the motion to table, which is going to be issued, I assume, to stop Gates's motion to suspend.
00:47:08.000Well, I will just say that what we saw happen yesterday was a repeat of past failures by Republican leadership.
00:47:16.000And frankly, that's what January was about.
00:47:18.000What I most spoke about back in January during the speaker contest is that we couldn't do what we've done the last 10, 15 years when Republicans had the majority, which was to pass major spending bills with a predominant majority of Democrat votes.
00:49:47.000Our incentive-laden society has basically decided that women who settle down and have a happy marriage are less valuable, at least when it comes to pop culture, than women who date a lot.
00:49:57.000And maybe that's because there is the allure of, well, she's, maybe she'll date you next.
00:51:02.000Surely you understand and provided you are part of the human population.
00:51:05.000But for those of you who for whatever reason aren't, Taylor Swift showed up at a football game to cheer on Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce.
00:51:11.000After a week of national tittering and wishing and hoping that these two might be right for each other, Swift showed up again Sunday night at MetLife Stadium for Sunday Night Football.
00:51:18.000The sight of the planet's most famous pop star jumping and yelling, let's effing go, as one of the NFL's most talented and charismatic players scores a touchdown would cause a commotion if we were living in normal times.
00:51:27.000But it's 2023, so this budding romance story has consumed every corner of the internet, sports media, non-sports media, sports betting apps, cable news segments, memes, and text messages.
00:51:34.000From dads to daughters announcing, have you seen this?
00:51:37.000During the September 24th game, Fox announcers gleefully dubbed the Swift-Kelsey pairing as the romance we all need.
00:51:45.000Okay, so first of all, I'm just going to point out that Taylor Swift faking enthusiasm for things is part of her brand.
00:51:51.000If you watch the MTV Video Music Awards, like any of it, they were playing some of the crappiest music imaginable and she was smiling and dancing along like she actually cared.
00:52:00.000So, do I actually think that this is a thing?
00:52:03.000I hope that the NFL is paying her royally for this.
00:52:08.000On Sunday, NBC just as eagerly panned a Swift watching the game in a suite with her slew of celebrity friends, including Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Sophie Turner, Sabrina Carter, Carpenter, Antoni Porowski, and Hugh Jackman.
00:52:19.000Swift spent time during the first half talking with Brittany Mahomes, the wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and shared a hug with Kelsey's mom, Donna.
00:52:26.000At one point, commentator Chris Collins would dreamily recall how Swift and Kelsey left Arrowhead Stadium together September 24th in Kelsey's convertible, saying it had to be the most freeing thing Taylor Swift has done in 20 years.
00:52:36.000Um, that's just... Okay, call me when they get married.
00:53:08.000Said Sunday Night Football coordinating producer Rob Highland.
00:53:10.000Okay, so let's just be real about this.
00:53:11.000His fanbase is not even remotely her fanbase, and we all know that.
00:53:15.000But the fact that this is getting wall-to-wall coverage shows how starved we are for anything remotely like a communal sense in the United States.