The Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of, has blocked President Trump's tariffs in a sweeping ruling that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners.
00:00:00.000As you can see, I'm not broadcasting from the studio right now.
00:00:03.000I'm actually in a room in the presidential complex in Budapest, Hungary.
00:00:08.000I just finished interviewing Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
00:00:11.000That interview is going to be available in very, very short order.
00:00:14.000Plus, tomorrow's show is going to be a speech that I'm giving here in Hungary in just a few hours, complete with Q&A and all the rest.
00:00:21.000Just a quick warning, we have lots of content that will emerge next Monday, Tuesday.
00:00:29.000That is the one where the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai.
00:00:32.000But as to the actual news of the day, I didn't want to leave you hanging.
00:00:36.000We have a bunch of news that we recorded just before we left for the airport yesterday, but also a bunch of news broke while we were on the plane.
00:00:45.000The big news of the day is that the Court of International Trade, which is a court that nobody has ever heard of, blocked President Trump's tariffs.
00:00:52.000In a sweeping ruling, according to Reuters, that found the president overstepped his authority by imposing across-the-board duties on imports from U.S. trading partners, the court essentially suggested that the law under which the president of the United States was declaring these tariffs was not, in fact, capable of carrying those tariffs.
00:01:09.000Because, essentially, the president used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, the IEEPA.
00:01:17.000It gives the president the power to regulate imports during certain emergency situations, according to CBS News.
00:01:23.000But those emergency situations do not actually extend to things like, you know, a trade deficit.
00:01:28.000Big trade deficits do not amount to a national emergency, and that's what the court found.
00:01:57.000It's not something that I want either.
00:01:59.000Whether you like the tariffs or you don't like the tariffs is actually sort of irrelevant.
00:02:03.000To the question of whether the president ought to have the unilateral ability to do as President Trump did on Liberation Day and simply declare a 46% tariff on Vietnam or 145% tariff on China, like the Congress should have to sign in at some point.
00:02:17.000Now, does this mean that all the tariffs are going to go away permanently?
00:02:21.000The markets spiked on the news of all of this.
00:02:24.000The Dow Jones Industrial Average Futures Market immediately jumped significantly.
00:02:30.000It then came back down to earth a little bit as the markets realized, oh, wait a second, it may be, in fact, that President Trump is still going to be able to do some of these tariffs.
00:02:37.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration has already said it will appeal the ruling.
00:02:41.000Trade experts and lawyers say it has a variety of other legal avenues to prosecute the trade war that are unaffected by Wednesday's decision.
00:02:47.000Deborah Elms, who's head of trade policy at the Singapore-based Henrik Foundation, says this is just one more bump in the tariff road that we're going to be on for as long as President Trump remains in office.
00:02:56.000He loves the idea of being able to impose them at will.
00:02:58.000I don't think he's going to give that up particularly easily.
00:03:01.000Now, the judgment undermines the legal basis for the reciprocal tariffs that are the centerpiece of President Trump's effort to rein in the trade deficit.
00:03:09.000The court also shot down special levies of 20% that were imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China, supposedly based on national emergency rooted in the fentanyl crisis.
00:03:18.000Now, theoretically, you can make the case that we should put tariffs on Mexico and declare a national emergency on the basis of fentanyl.
00:03:24.000You could at least make a colorable case for that.
00:03:26.000You could never make a colorable case that that was the case with Canada.
00:03:30.000The United States last year, in terms of fentanyl, seized something like 50 pounds of fentanyl the entire year at the border.
00:03:35.000So the idea there was a national emergency that merited a 20% tariff on Canada originally, that, of course, was far exceeding the scope of authority originally presented to the President of the United States by that act in 1977.
00:03:50.000Now, there's still a bunch of other tariffs.
00:03:55.000So the court's decision does not impact 25% levies that have been placed on steel, aluminum, and cars because those levies were imposed using alternative legal avenues, not the national emergency situation.
00:04:31.000It does mean that the president, again, does not have the unilateral ability by declaring a national emergency simply to impose gigantic tariff regimes across the board.
00:04:42.000I mean, listen, as a person who believes that we should be drawing closer trade relations with our allies and that the shot across the bow, if it was meant to get them to the table, that still exists.
00:04:51.000The fact is that the economic damage and the uncertainty wrought by the tariff war on our allies, again, I fully believe that we should be gradually ramping up tariffs on China, reshoring manufacturing away from China, making closer trade alliances with countries that are more aligned with us, ranging from Vietnam to India, for example.
00:05:11.000I don't like the tariff policy, but that is actually a side point here.
00:05:14.000It turns out that whether you are a fan of the president or not a fan of the current president, Balance of power that was drawn in the Constitution should be something that we like.
00:05:25.000Because I promise you that the next time a Democrat takes office, that same exact national emergency power will be used for something that you don't like.
00:05:42.000He will find other ways to pursue a trade policy that is more legal.
00:05:48.000Meanwhile, the other big news of the day, after we stopped covering the news yesterday, was that Elon Musk has now officially left the Trump administration after what the Washington Post calls a contentious tenure.
00:06:00.000Let's just put it out there that what Elon did here is actually politically heroic, like actually really heroic.
00:06:06.000This is the richest man on Earth who took time away from his gigantic companies ranging from XAI to Tesla to SpaceX simply to come in and try to cut waste, fraud and abuse at the governmental level for no pay.
00:06:20.000And at massive financial cost to him because many people got very angry at him and started targeting his companies.
00:06:25.000He did not get richer over the course.
00:06:47.000He got markedly poorer over the course of the last several months if you count his stock holdings The stocks have not been kind to Elon Musk's companies.
00:07:03.000President Trump thanked Elon Musk for it.
00:07:06.000Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform that his scheduled time as a special government employee had come to an end.
00:07:13.000He's not permitted to work more than 130 days in a 365-day period.
00:07:17.000It prevents him from having to do financial disclosure and conflict of interest rules.
00:07:21.000In the Post, Musk thanked Trump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending and said Doge's mission will only strengthen over time.
00:07:29.000Now again, we will see how much it is strengthened over time.
00:07:32.000In order for that really to effectuate, the President of the United States does have to send a rescission letter requesting that all of the cuts that the executive branch is currently making under Doge become permanent.
00:07:42.000At the congressional level, President Trump hasn't done that yet.
00:07:44.000Presumably, he will do that sometime soon.
00:07:48.000So, again, Elon Musk, he's taken an enormous amount of crap, but the reality is that what he did here was a rare act of political altruism.
00:08:22.000We're going to actually talk about the WNBA.
00:08:24.000Plus, we're going to break down the latest on the economy with a Harvard conservative professor and Megyn Kelly stops by to talk Diddy Watch.
00:08:31.000But first, this Friday night, 7.30 p.m. Eastern, we fire up the cameras, dim the lights, and make at least three people in legal very nervous.
00:08:38.000Adam Carolla is here to help me weaponize negativity.
00:08:40.000Jordan Peterson drops a recommendation that briefly unhinges the entire production team.
00:08:44.000And Savvy electrocutes me in the name of entertainment.
00:08:46.000There's mailbag mayhem, unvetted content, and enough off-the-rails production choices to qualify as a cry for help.
00:08:51.000If that sounds like a mistake, that's because it most certainly is.
00:08:54.000Ben After Dark, episode three, only on DW +, only for members.
00:08:59.000Well, folks, the left has a real problem in the United States.
00:09:01.000They've spent the last several decades talking about how racism is an endemic problem in American life.
00:09:07.000And there's a problem with that problem, which is.
00:09:11.000They require instances of racism in order to support the idea that every maldistribution of outcome is, in fact, rooted in racism and white supremacy.
00:09:22.000And so they're constantly looking for their latest racial conflagration.
00:09:25.000It has to be a white-on-black racial conflagration, obviously, because white supremacy and white privilege and all the rest.
00:09:31.000latest iteration of this comes courtesy of the WNBA.
00:09:34.000So it is amazing to be discussing the WNBA, like seriously at the top of the show, because I will say that based on some of her late comments, I'm not sure that we got the better end of that particular deal.
00:10:00.000In any case, the WNBA entered into an investigation over the course of the past couple of weeks.
00:10:07.000Because there were allegations that fans were being racist during a game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever.
00:10:15.000And yes, I should get points for knowing the names of both of those teams.
00:10:18.000The Indiana Fever is, of course, the team of Caitlin Clark, who's the only player in the WNBA who seems to matter right now.
00:10:24.000And the Chicago Sky are the team of Angel Rees, who is sort of her arch nemesis and has been since her college days.
00:10:31.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:10:33.000First, a lot of good work is being done by the administration on the economy trying to get regulations in order.
00:10:40.000And while the Trump administration tries to stabilize the country's economy, it is difficult for them to consider everybody's individual personal finances.
00:10:46.000In the past 12 months, the value of gold has increased by 40%, and with central banks buying gold in record quantities, demand does not appear to be subsiding.
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00:12:46.000If you watch the video, it's pretty clearly not a flagrant foul just by any basketball standard.
00:12:49.000Basically, Angel Reese goes up for a layup and Caitlin Clark doesn't clothesline or anything, kind of grabs her and Angel Reese falls over.
00:12:56.000And there were allegations that people in the stands were then being racist.
00:13:00.000So the league immediately launched an investigation into these alleged racist comments.
00:13:06.000And the WNBA had responded with a statement confirming the investigation.
00:13:10.000Quote, the WNBA strongly condemns racism, hate and discrimination in all forms.
00:13:13.000They have no place in our league or in society.
00:13:15.000We are aware of the allegations and are looking into the matter.
00:13:18.000Now, there was no evidence at the time that any of this was true.
00:13:20.000And given the fact that cell phones are ubiquitous and that everybody now tapes everybody else saying anything racist, the chances that this actually happened in real life were extremely, extremely low, especially at like a WNBA game.
00:13:32.000Who are the white supremacists showing up at a WNBA game?
00:14:12.000And certainly we want every person that comes into our arena, whether player, whether fan, to have a great experience.
00:14:17.000So I appreciate the league doing that.
00:14:19.000I appreciate the Fever organization has been at the forefront of that since really day one and what they're doing.
00:14:25.000So hopefully the investigation will leave that up to them to find anything and take the proper action if so.
00:14:33.000Well, I mean, she needed to say that because if she hadn't said that, then you would have thought that the WNBA was just filled with deep and abiding racism, obviously.
00:14:41.000And of course, this is not the first time that Caitlin Clark has been forced to go to the camera and then speak the words, say the thing.
00:14:48.000So not all that long ago, 2024, December, she came out and she had to acknowledge her own white privilege.
00:15:23.000Well, here was Caitlin Clark back in December.
00:15:26.000Acknowledging her white privilege because there are so many players in the WNBA who are getting angry that people are out watching Caitlin Clark.
00:15:32.000Really, this is a thing inside the WNBA.
00:15:33.000There are a bunch of players in the WNBA who are angry that Caitlin Clark is bringing notoriety to their sport.
00:15:39.000Their idea is, why didn't people watch the WNBA before?
00:15:42.000The answer is because Caitlin Clark is uniquely talented and, yes, uniquely appealing.
00:15:50.000Well, I mean, there are other white players in the WNBA who don't have remotely this kind of following.
00:15:53.000So I really don't, She was a wildly popular player when she was in college.
00:16:01.000Was that also based on her race or based on the fact that she was hitting threes like an NBA player?
00:16:07.000Well, back in December, she actually had to issue a statement in which she suggested that there's an element of white privilege in her stardom.
00:16:17.000I feel like I've earned every single thing that's happened to me over the course of my career, but I also grew up a fan of this league from a very young age.
00:16:46.000She said, The more we can appreciate that, highlight that, talk about that, and then continue to have brands and companies invest in those players that have made this league incredible, I think it's very important.
00:17:01.000I have to try to continue to change that, she added.
00:17:03.000The more we can elevate black women, that's going to be a beautiful thing.
00:17:06.000Now, hilariously enough, her presence in the league is elevating many of the black players around her who nobody knew about until five minutes ago.
00:17:13.000But she's been the one who has been targeted by so many people in the WNBA.
00:17:20.000And in fact, there are entire compilations of people Basically laying hard fouls on Caitlin Clark last season.
00:17:26.000Now putting her in danger of actually getting hurt.
00:17:30.000In fact, she recently was hurt and it turns out that a bunch of fans are very unhappy about it and have decided that they are interested in essentially boycotting the entire WNBA over it.
00:17:42.000According to Total Pro Sports, there are a bunch of fans.
00:17:47.000Who are suggesting that the WNBA's failure to protect Clark, specifically because Clark is white and many of the players fouling her are black, that that is in and of itself a problem and racist.
00:17:58.000So, you know, again, there actually is some racism in the WNBA, but it's directed the opposite way.
00:18:04.000And that's the stuff you're not allowed to talk about.
00:18:06.000So I mentioned that we would speak about Brittany Griner.
00:18:09.000Brittany Griner is caught on tape during a game with the Indiana Fever, dropping racial slurs against Caitlin Clark and pretty obviously doing so.
00:18:23.000And it doesn't take a lot of genius to lip-read Brittany Reiner, whose voice, by the way, is about as low as mine is, calling her trash and an effing white girl.
00:18:35.000Now, of course, if Caitlin Clark had ever suggested the same in reverse using black as opposed to white in that sentence, that'd be the end of her WNBA career.
00:20:22.000Now, the reason this is important is because it's part of a broader rubric, the whole kind of diversity, equity, inclusion rubric that the left has embraced that, of course, is part and parcel of a broader worldview that suggests that all inequality and outcome is due to inequality in the system.
00:20:41.000There's a kind of shocking story that has emerged via NewsNation about the Biden administration pointing out that NewsNation has spoken with a whistleblower from the U.S. Department of Agriculture about loan forgiveness policies under the Biden administration.
00:20:55.000This whistleblower discussed the passage of the American Rescue Act and how there's a section of that act that provided loan relief specifically for socially disadvantaged farmers.
00:21:06.000It was supposed to be Based on social disadvantage would be based on economics, presumably.
00:21:12.000And the American Rescue Act, which passed by a Democratic majority in Congress, allowed the Secretary of Agriculture to, quote, provide payment in an amount up to 120% of the outstanding indebtedness of each socially disadvantaged farmer.
00:21:28.000The socially disadvantaged farmer was defined by the act on a racial basis, which I have no idea how that's even legal.
00:21:34.000So farmers then sued, and they said, this is race-based.
00:21:37.000And violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
00:21:42.000And then the judge found that this was an actual constitutional harm and it didn't matter.
00:21:46.000In the end, the Biden administration just went ahead and did the affirmative action anyway.
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00:25:01.000So, meanwhile, speaking of idiots, Gavin Newsom on Tuesday welcomed a decision by school athletics groups to expand the number of high school athletes eligible to compete in a track and field meet.
00:25:12.000That came after a strong showing by a transgender student, which drew anger and a threat of funding cuts from President Trump.
00:25:17.000So there were new rules that have now been set out by the California Interscholastic Federation.
00:25:22.000Athletes who were identified at birth as female and fell one spot short of making the cut for the upcoming statewide championship at qualifying meets around the state will now be allowed.
00:26:44.000But I ran in 2010 as part of the Tea Party movement because we were mortgaging our children's future back then We experienced our first Justice in excess of a trillion dollars under Obama, but we were 14 trillion dollars in debt now.
00:26:58.000We're approaching 37 trillion dollars in debt.
00:27:01.000Ms. Senator Scott said over the next 10 One of the other critics of the bill is Elon Musk.
00:27:13.000So Elon has basically removed himself from the federal government at this point.
00:27:18.000And he did an interview with CBS Sunday Morning talking about this.
00:27:22.000Ripping into the big, beautiful bill, saying, this thing just spends too much money, which, of course, it does.
00:27:27.000It spends less money than Democrats would have.
00:27:29.000It doesn't mean that it's actually making enough cuts, obviously.
00:27:34.000You know, I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and unreminds the work that the Doge team is doing.
00:27:47.000I actually thought that when this big, beautiful bill came along.
00:27:54.000I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful.
00:28:04.000Okay, and I don't think that Elon is wrong on any of this.
00:28:06.000I mean, the reality is that the bill may be the best that you can do in the moment, given the extraordinarily fractious caucus that Republicans have.
00:28:12.000But to pretend that we are in any significant way bending the cost curve in any sort of real way, that we are solving the national debt.
00:28:21.000Now, to be fair to the proponents of the big, beautiful bill, the sort of explanation that we are radically increasing the debt by maintaining current tax levels and then making some future cuts to Biden programs, again, it all depends on where you're using the basis of comparison.
00:28:37.000So if you say that this quote-unquote explodes the debt, what you mean is that in the absence of this bill, tax rates would increase.
00:28:43.000And so if tax rates increased, Then you would get additional revenues into the government.
00:28:47.000So even if you maintain Biden levels of spending, there would be more revenue into the government.
00:28:54.000If you are measuring this against the possibility of the tax base basically staying the same, the tax rates stay the same, then it cuts from where we normally would be under Biden.
00:29:04.000So it sort of depends on what you're using as your baseline.
00:29:06.000There's a point that's been made by Stephen Miller, that if you use the latter as the baseline, namely you're assuming the tax cuts are permanent, then it actually...
00:29:16.000It cuts from where Biden's spending actually would be otherwise.
00:29:20.000But regardless, does it solve our debt crisis?
00:29:22.000Does it get us toward solving the debt crisis?
00:29:26.000And Musk also has complaints about how Doge was handled inside the White House, by the way.
00:29:29.000He sort of suggests that every time a bad thing happened, Doge got blamed for it.
00:29:33.000And again, I don't think he's wrong about this.
00:29:34.000I don't think it's coming from inside the White House.
00:29:36.000I don't think that's President Trump's fault.
00:29:37.000President Trump was a big fan of Doge, obviously.
00:29:40.000If President Trump wants the cuts that Doge made to actually become permanent, he needs to actually submit a rescission letter to Congress asking them to make those cuts permanent.
00:29:47.000He suggested in an interview with the Washington Post, Doge is just becoming the whipping boy for everything.
00:29:52.000So if something bad would happen anywhere, we would get blamed for it, even if we had nothing to do with it.
00:29:56.000And again, I don't think that that's wrong.
00:29:59.000He said that people were burning Teslas, going after him personally.
00:30:03.000And so to that extent, I mean, he literally put his own net wealth on the line in order to try and do things that he thought were very important.
00:30:14.000And he did the best that he could, given the constraints that he was provided.
00:30:20.000Again, you're not going to find trillions in waste, fraud, and abuse inside the federal government, but he certainly found tens of billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:30:26.000He deserves enormous credit for all of that.
00:30:29.000Now, where exactly does that put us, economically speaking, just on a generalized level?
00:30:33.000Joining us on the line to discuss is a conservative, a rare conservative professor at Harvard University, Kenneth Rogoff, who also has a brand new book out titled Our Dollar, Your Problem, an insider's view of seven turbulent decades of global finance and the road ahead.
00:30:46.000Professor, thanks so much for joining the show.
00:30:53.000So, there's a lot to talk about, obviously, in the markets and in the world of finance right now.
00:30:58.000Why don't we start with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill?
00:31:01.000There's been a lot of talk on the right side of the aisle about the necessity of maintaining current tax rates, not allowing those to rise.
00:31:07.000There's a lot of heartburn on the right side of the aisle as well about the amount of spending that is in the bill, the unwillingness of Republicans or Democrats to go back to 2019 levels of spending.
00:31:16.000How big a problem should we perceive the American debt and deficit to be and how urgent is that problem?
00:31:24.000I think it's a problem people have been talking about for decades.
00:32:19.000The deficit's going to be even bigger than the records he said.
00:32:22.000At least, you know, that's the forecast I'm seeing.
00:32:25.000So when we look at what that means for the future of America's economy, obviously, we are watching as people rush away from American bonds.
00:32:34.000They're not trusting that we're going to pay back our debt outside of inflating the currency in some way.
00:32:39.000And the reality is that at some point here, there are only a few choices.
00:32:43.000The other is radically increased taxes.
00:32:44.000And the third is serious austerity measures with regard to many of the social programs that nobody actually wants to touch.
00:32:50.000It seems to me that just politically, the most likely outcome is going to be some form of inflation because people don't like high taxes and they don't like austerity.
00:33:00.000I don't see the American people being willing to accept an adjustment until we've been through another round of inflation as bigger, bigger than the last one.
00:33:12.000There are other options to kind of try to temporize by forcing the insurance companies, the pension funds, the banks to hold debt.
00:33:21.000Japan has stuffed government debt into every orifice of its financial sector.
00:33:32.000So there aren't a lot of pleasant alternatives.
00:33:35.000I mean, there's some things like raising the retirement age.
00:33:38.000I think we're the only big country besides France not to do that, which would help.
00:33:47.000When we look at what that means for the ability of America to raise debt out into the future, there's been a lot of talk about the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
00:33:55.000And you talk about this at length in your book, Our Dollar, Your Problem.
00:33:57.000The dollar, of course, is basically the thing that allows us to raise this extraordinary amount of debt and sell our debt at these really low rates, just historically speaking, to finance all of this.
00:34:09.000I've had a lot of concern about the reality of the dollar as sort of wavering in terms of the world currency.
00:34:15.000It used to be 80% of the global foreign exchange reserves.
00:34:18.000Now it's down to about 60% of the global foreign exchange reserves.
00:34:20.000You talk about in your book the fact that there isn't really like an amazing replacement for the dollar right now, including the Chinese currency.
00:34:27.000You make some points with regard to China that I think are quite fascinating.
00:34:30.000Do you see China as a rising power capable of replacing the United States in this?
00:34:36.000Well, what are the big threats to the dollar as the world's reserve currency?
00:34:39.000Well, I don't see China replacing the United States as a power.
00:34:43.000But the U.S. dollar had sort of colonized the whole world as the communist countries became free and integrated into the global economy, Africa, Asia.
00:35:29.000So it isn't so much that we're going to use the renminbi, that's the Chinese currency in New York, or even the euro.
00:35:35.000But they might not be using the dollars as much in street markets in Africa and, you know, using it for trade the rest of the world.
00:35:43.000So that'll push up our interest rates because it lowers the demand.
00:35:48.000That will weaken our ability to put on sanctions such as it is.
00:35:53.000That will lessen our ability to see into what other countries are doing, which right now our dominance in finance, everything goes for the dollar, gives our NSA and our CIA this information that's just fantastic.
00:36:10.000You know, and when we look at the possibility of all that happening, that stuff is exacerbated by the fact that we are now in giant trade wars with pretty much everybody.
00:36:18.000Because one of the things that facilitates the use of the dollar in commerce is the United States being involved in commerce.
00:36:23.000And as we withdraw from being the sort of global hegemon militarily, as we move.
00:36:43.000Yeah, I mean, I do teach at Harvard, but I'm one of the 3% of faculty, maybe it's 6% who identify as conservative.
00:36:52.000I by no means think that everything Donald Trump does is wrong.
00:36:55.000The tariff policy, I just don't understand it.
00:36:59.000It seems to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater, the uncertainty, the chaos.
00:37:05.000And the market seemed like, oh, it's just going to go away.
00:37:12.000I mean, even if he says, "Okay, just kidding, in a year, I think that policy has been incomprehensible and I think undermining his presidency.
00:37:27.000One of the things that many people in sort of the Trump arena are talking a lot about these days is crypto as a possibility as sort of a hedge against the erosion of the dollar, the possibility of crypto being a safer store of value, sort of like digital gold.
00:37:42.000One of the points that you make in your book.
00:37:54.000And governments all over the world are not going to allow there to be a separate safe store of value that could actually be used in actual commerce on a regular basis.
00:39:04.000And of course, that's going to lead to a crisis just like it does in other banking systems.
00:39:08.000And because we're having pension funds hold it and ordinary people hold it, this time, when we have a crisis, it could be a lot bigger thing affecting the whole economy and not just contained in the crypto world.
00:39:23.000I mean, there are people inside sort of the crypto worlds who are looking for rational regulation.
00:39:28.000I think one of the great dangers to crypto, and again, I'm a fan of crypto.
00:39:36.000I like crypto, but one of the things that I'm actually quite fearful of is the fact that there are so many people in the crypto space who are so warm with the Trump administration in a deregulatory environment that if the economy were to take a tumble, that the reaction to this would be to basically wipe.
00:39:51.000As much out of crypto as humanly possible in sort of a political reversion.
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00:41:25.000So one of the big questions all of this actually bears is...
00:41:33.000So there's been a lot of talk about the idea that basically we're now a slow-growth economy, that we may be a slow-growth economy out into the future.
00:41:38.000And then there are people who have this sort of deus ex machina view of what AI is going to do to productivity growth in the United States.
00:41:45.000My own view of that is that AI is unbelievable, but the adoption of AI in sort of everybody's regular life and its adoption in industry, it takes a little bit longer for the adoption of new technology to actually adhere than people tend to think.
00:41:58.000The internet was working by the mid-90s.
00:42:01.000It probably took until the mid-2000s at a minimum for the internet to really start making a massive difference in everybody's economic life.
00:42:07.000So what does that mean for American productivity?
00:42:09.000Should we be expecting 2% increased GDP year on year?
00:42:18.000Well, I'm with you that it's transformative, but the pace of it's much slower.
00:42:23.000I'd also throw in there that the social disruption could make globalization seem like nothing, so we don't really know where it's going.
00:42:32.000This is maybe hyperbolic, but I worry a little bit that we're going to be so dependent on AI to produce growth, to pay our debt, that we won't regulate AI to try to provide guardrails there too, because we need it to grow so fast.
00:42:49.000But in general, of course, Of course, AI is the future.
00:42:54.000I was a professional chess player in my youth.
00:43:02.000And so I don't see why it wouldn't be the same and everything else.
00:43:06.000So if you were making policy for the Trump administration right now, and you were trying to grow us out of, Let's take some parameters as reality.
00:43:19.000So for example, we're not restructuring Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security in any serious way.
00:43:25.000So putting aside those parameters, what growth-oriented policies?
00:43:29.000I'm sorry, I just put in place all of the roadblocks that prevent anybody from doing anything, which is, of course, the big problem.
00:43:34.000But assuming all of that, what do you do?
00:43:38.000Professor Rogoff, what do you do to spur growth in the moment?
00:43:42.000Aside from things like tax cuts, what regulations do you look at?
00:43:45.000Where do you see areas of growth in the American economy?
00:43:49.000Well, there are fantastic areas of growth in the American economy.
00:43:52.000That's still there, although I think some of these tariffs and trade wars could undermine that.
00:43:58.000Let's not forget about the fact that our university system has been a magnet for the best and the brightest in the whole world coming here, not just going to university, staying here, founding companies.
00:45:30.000I don't want to say we're going to walk away from our debt.
00:45:33.000Great for sales of my book if we do that, but I'm not counting on that.
00:45:38.000I think we're going to have another inflation crisis, and this time it's going to be more painful.
00:45:42.000I mean, last time, people gave the Fed a pass on it.
00:45:46.000If you look at inflation expectations, they've gone up, but they haven't gone hysterical.
00:45:50.000And I think next time they won't, and interest rates will go up, and we'll have to adjust.
00:45:54.000And everybody else in the world does it.
00:45:57.000I mean, we have done it less than anybody else in the world's done it.
00:46:01.000We don't have to go crazy, but, you know, you have to make some moves in the right direction.
00:46:06.000So it's very disappointing that the big, beautiful bill actually looks like they'll have a higher deficit.
00:46:13.000If you'd asked me to bet on that back in January, that didn't even occur to me.
00:46:19.000So, you know, I'm not going to ask you to be held to your crystal ball here, but I talked to a lot of investors, obviously.
00:46:26.000Everybody is sort of in this bizarre mode where they're excited but nervous and nervous but excited.
00:46:31.000Every time President Trump makes a positive economic signal, then the markets spike.
00:46:35.000Every time he makes a negative economic signal, the markets dump.
00:46:38.000The thing that I've been looking at is the sort of delta between where the markets would be if he had not done a lot of this stuff and where we are right now.
00:46:45.000So instead of just looking at, you know, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 44,000 when he took office and now it's at 43,000, so it's really not that big a deal.
00:46:52.000The way that I'm looking at it is probably the Dow Jones Industrial Average should be at 47,000 or 48,000 if we had not done a lot of this stuff as opposed to where it's sitting right now.
00:47:01.000Because of so many investors, we're sort of holding dry powder, not knowing what the next day brings, and all of this sort of uncertainty, which is its own form of economic hampering.
00:47:11.000I mean, it obviously puts a cap on people's capacity to grow.
00:47:14.000Because of all of that, when people ask me what I think the future of the economy is, if I had to ballpark recession or no recession inside the next three years, say, during the rest of President Trump's term, it sounds wishy-washy.
00:47:31.000Probability that there's a fairly serious recession sometime in the next three years.
00:47:45.000You know, it's going to be the greatest thing ever.
00:47:47.000But I think when you overheat the economy, which is what we're doing, that at some point the Fed, it's going to be raising interest rates and raising interest rates.
00:47:57.000It's raising interest rates because that's where the market is driving it.
00:48:00.000It's not because it's wanting to be the economy to crash.
00:48:04.000I think the odds of a recession are well over 50% or significant slowdown to be wishy-washy about it.
00:48:31.000You should definitely read it because it is a fascinating history of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, but also just currency exchange, debt problems.
00:48:39.000What you need to know is in this book.
00:48:41.000Professor Rogoff, really appreciate the time.
00:48:43.000Thank you so much for having me, Ben, and good luck with the rest of the year for all of us.
00:48:49.000Meanwhile, the foreign policy of the United States appears to be at least a little bit discombobulated at this point.
00:48:57.000So Russia continues to strengthen its talk about its own imperialistic image.
00:49:02.000Unbelievably enough, Joseph Stalin has now returned to Moscow's ornate subway stations.
00:49:07.000So I look forward to other commentators traveling there to talk about the beauty of the subway stations featuring actual honest-to-God Stalin.
00:49:13.000In any case, the New York Times reports a new statue was unveiled by the authorities this month showing Stalin gazing sagely into the distance, flanked by adoring workers and children holding out flowers to him.
00:49:22.000A replica of one that was removed in 1966 during a de-Stalinization campaign.
00:49:27.000The new relief quickly became an attraction with people leaving flowers, stopping to pose for pictures, including with their children or just watching pensively.
00:49:34.000The sculpture is part of the gradual rehabilitation of a brutal leader who still has the power to divide Russians 72 years after his death.
00:49:40.000The Kremlin has revived parts of his legacy and its efforts to recast Russia's history as a series of glorious triumphs that it is determined to continue in Ukraine.
00:49:49.000Well, that's absolutely horrifying, considering that Stalin is responsible for the death of legitimately millions of people in Ukraine under the Hladimir, as well as hundreds of thousands of people during the Great Terror from 1936 to 1938.
00:50:05.000Things are going really well with Vladimir Putin and company.
00:50:08.000The Trump administration's approach to Putin remains unclear at this point.
00:50:12.000We can hope that they are shifting toward a more hawkish view of what needs to happen with regard to Ukraine.
00:50:17.000Meanwhile, Germany is starting to step up, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:50:21.000German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Wednesday, He said this is the start of a new form of military-industrial cooperation between our two countries and one that has huge potential.
00:50:41.000Well, Germany is in fairly decent fiscal shape, so they certainly have the capacity to spend more in places like Ukraine.
00:50:47.000The question is whether they actually can provide the military materiel.
00:50:54.000Again, the goal would be to actually go after critical infrastructure inside Russia itself.
00:51:06.000So, where is the United States on this?
00:51:10.000The same holds true, by the way, with regard to the Iran negotiations.
00:51:14.000President Trump keeps putting out sort of warm statements about the Iran negotiations.
00:51:20.000Apparently, according to Reuters, Iran is suggesting that they might pause their enrichment if the United States recognizes their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, which of course is ridiculous.
00:51:33.000Why exactly would we recognize their right to enrich uranium for civilian purposes?
00:51:37.000The whole goal of that would be so that they can then ramp up their enrichment for quote-unquote civilian purposes and then break out and two months later they have a nuke.
00:51:59.000How long is the pause that you are talking about?
00:52:02.000Isn't that pause just going to, I mean, presumably this would mean the end of sanctions, by the way.
00:52:07.000Iranian sources suggest that any temporary suspension of the enrichment, even temporary, would require the United States to then release assets to the government of Iran.
00:52:19.000What exactly is the, what is the goal there?
00:52:22.000Just to get a name on a piece of paper?
00:52:24.000First of all, once again, this is where the Senate should step in, seriously.
00:52:27.000Like, it turns out that treaties, I know, it's become non-practice, but it turns out that the Senate does have treaty power, just as the JCPOA should have been approved by the Senate of the United States, and was not.
00:52:38.000Anything that's done here should be approved by the Senate of the United States.
00:53:44.000Well, joining us on the line to discuss all of this is, of course, friends of the show, Dr. Marty McCary, who is the commissioner for the FDA.
00:53:55.000So let's talk about the new standards with regard to the COVID vaccine.
00:53:59.000Obviously, you and I talked about this a lot during the actual rollout of the COVID vaccine.
00:54:04.000Much of the data that was presented to the public was not actually rooted in data.
00:54:07.000There was a lot of talk at the very beginning about how the COVID vaccine was going to prevent transmission of the disease, which it actually did not do a particularly good job of doing, at least with regard to Omicron and the later variants.
00:54:18.000What is the new guidance from the FDA?
00:54:20.000What is the new standard for the FDA with regard to the COVID vaccine?
00:54:23.000Well, Ben, there's been two camps that have evolved in the scientific community about the COVID booster strategy, giving people a booster in perpetuity every year.
00:54:33.000One camp has said, we need some clinical trial data.
00:54:36.000We need to know that it's still necessary, that it works, that people should take it, that there are benefits.
00:54:52.000So a young baby today would get 80 COVID shots in her average 80-year lifespan.
00:54:58.000And so we are clearly in the science camp.
00:55:02.000That is, we believe in evidence-based medicine and common sense.
00:55:05.000And we're saying to the companies that are bringing products to us now to be stamped every year with an approval that we'd like to see some clinical data.
00:55:13.000And so that is where we are, and I think that's where the American people are.
00:55:16.000Remember, 85% of healthcare workers said no to the last COVID booster in the last COVID season.
00:55:25.000Now, there are a lot of people who are suggesting that because of the FDA's new approach to all of this, somehow people who need COVID shots are not going to be able to get them, that because the FDA is essentially pushing for the idea that COVID shots are mainly applicable to the people that, again, you and I were talking about this when it was happening.
00:55:41.000To people who are at high risk and seniors, or the people who are, again, most at risk of COVID in general, that somehow this will deprive people who need the shot of the shot.
00:56:10.000While we're saying that the indication that is the official label is for high-risk people, people with severe immunosuppression and other high-risk cases where doctors are using their discretion, they're still on the market.
00:56:22.000And certainly somebody can take it off-label at their own discretion, but it's not something that we recommend.
00:56:29.000So the broader question is, do we need the government recommending Which Americans get the vaccine and which Americans do not?
00:56:38.000And if we are going to be doing that, we want to make it based on evidence.
00:56:41.000So we have a label that is consistent with where we think the evidence and the common sense best supports the use.
00:56:48.000Well, again, a lot of this raises questions about the conduct of the Biden administration, particularly during the rollout of the vaccine.
00:56:55.000And now that you're actually in the seat.
00:56:57.000What sort of information do you think should have been presented to the American public?
00:57:00.000I know that there's been a sort of Senate investigation that's ongoing into what the public knew and when the public knew it about things like myocarditis resulting allegedly from the use of the vaccine.
00:57:11.000What should the Biden administration have been doing differently?
00:57:13.000What did they do wrong during the original rollout of the vaccines?
00:57:16.000Well, Ben, I've learned a lot about what's been going on at the FDA as I've looked under the hood.
00:57:32.000A lot of myocarditis cases, maybe thousands, could have been prevented had people had good information or modified the vaccine strategy or recognized natural immunity.
00:57:43.000There's a lot of stuff that we're learning.
00:57:45.000So we're trying to create a transparent process.
00:57:47.000I do think the vaccine-injured community deserves better answers than they were given over the last four years.
00:58:10.000We're trying to let people know what we're thinking and give the companies an early heads up ahead of the vaccine schedule and manufacturing timeframe.
00:58:20.000Now, meanwhile, obviously a lot of controversy has arisen because of RFK Jr.'s running of HHS, and people have been asking questions about where focus ought to be in terms of trying to discern the causes of disease, something that obviously RFK Jr.'s been putting tremendous focus on, Secretary Kennedy.
00:58:37.000When we talk about that, the biggest and most controversial one is all the discussions of autism.
00:58:42.000What is the FDA doing to look into that?
00:58:44.000Yeah, the secretary has controversially said What do you make of that?
00:58:53.000Well, first of all, the secretary is asking questions that people in America are asking, and I think they deserve better answers than they've been given.
00:59:00.000The NIH has been entirely focused on genetic bases for diseases.
00:59:06.000And so they've created a culture within the U.S. academic community that kind of...
00:59:13.000The gene can fix a lot of our health problems.
00:59:15.000Well, we have to study genetic science, but we also have to study food and microplastics and pesticides and seed oils and the 70% of the diet of children that is ultra-processed and all these chemicals in our food supply that are banned in Europe and other places.
00:59:45.000At the NIH, we're supporting it by curating databases that we think are useful for adverse event reporting instead of these clunky systems like VAERS where people report.
00:59:56.000Vaccine complications of myocarditis or a death from the COVID vaccine.
01:00:13.000So we're curating good national electronic health record data with millions of records de-identified where we can do good adverse event reporting.
01:00:26.000Well, that, of course, is the brand new commissioner of the FDA, Marty McCary.
01:00:30.000Dr. McCary, thanks so much for taking the time.
01:00:32.000Really appreciate your hard work on all of this.
01:00:36.000Meanwhile, in lighter news or heavier news, depending on how seriously you take celebrity trials, Diddy Watch continues apace.
01:00:43.000Some of the witnesses in the case are now going out and speaking to the media.
01:00:48.000One of the big questions for all the witnesses is, why didn't you do anything about all this terrible stuff in the first place?
01:00:53.000And the answer for most of them is that they actually just thought everything was hunky-dory, because I guess this is just de rigueur in celebrity land.
01:01:00.000There is a male escort who worked with Diddy who is called The Punisher.
01:01:07.000I believe that's what this person's name was.
01:01:17.000He was on CNN, because this is the world in which we now live, explaining Why he didn't actually come forward with any of this stuff?
01:01:25.000There was always pressure in terms of being disposable because obviously I'm there to create something, like a scene, to create an environment.
01:01:33.000So at times where there was sexual pressure, you know, because it's out of my norm, I did have a feeling of, okay, I'm one.
01:01:43.000You know, scenario where if I don't perform the right way, if I don't create the right ambiance, then maybe I won't get called back.
01:01:50.000But that's the most pressure that I had.
01:01:53.000There was no indication of I mean, there are no signs.
01:02:19.000And my general take has been I'm not sure why what we are watching is not just an expose of Diddy being a terrible person and his girlfriend also kind of being a bad person, as opposed to what are the charges and how does what we're watching actually justify the charges?
01:02:37.000Diddy's long-term girlfriend, Cassie Ventura, and others were not participating in his weird romps voluntarily, but were essentially coerced into them by threats and or force by Diddy, who had this weird obsession with bizarre things involving workers, tons of baby oil, and lots of lube.
01:02:57.000If I hear that word one more time from reporters I respect and like, it's just so jarring.
01:03:03.000In any event, that that I used to think that this revolved solely around the workers who they definitely have proven he used regularly.
01:03:13.000But I was corrected on that by a source close to the case that the theory is that the girlfriends themselves were being.
01:03:20.000Because while they may or may not have been voluntarily participating in some of these so-called freak offs, in many of them, they were doing it just because they were being threatened by combs, either threatened with a beating.
01:03:40.000And that's really where the prosecution's going to make something.
01:03:45.000There's no question they've proven transportation.
01:03:49.000They've got that, and each one of those is potentially a 10-year sentence.
01:03:52.000So he's definitely looking at some very serious jail time on the least of the serious charges.
01:04:04.000And for that, you have to prove that somebody's basically running a crime organization, that he lives in crime.
01:04:10.000He regularly engages in crime with the help of those around him.
01:04:14.000And to prove RICO, you only need two predicate acts, so two acts of crime.
01:04:19.000The prosecutors have spent this trial so far, we're in week two or beginning of week three, By proving multiple, I mean multiple, they opened the case with that infamous videotape from the Intercontinental in L.A. of Diddy beating Cassie Ventura outside in that hallway and then dragging her back into the hotel room.
01:04:39.000Right there, you've got assault, battery, and kidnapping.
01:04:42.000And there's been multiple testimony introduced of him beating her several times.
01:04:48.000Right now, they're in the midst of trying to prove that he blew up or tried to.
01:04:52.000Kid Cudi's car, this is another singer, Who testified himself about how Diddy and he were seeing the same woman, this Cassie Ventura, the star witness.
01:05:01.000He didn't realize that she was still with Diddy, but when Diddy found out, he went over to his assistant's, Diddy's assistant's house.
01:05:09.000She just left the witness stand saying, her name is Capricorn Clark.
01:05:13.000She said he came, he was brandishing a gun.
01:05:16.000He said, get dressed, get in the car, we're going to go kill that N-word.
01:05:20.000As a reference to Kid Cudi, that she did get in the car with him.
01:05:25.000He wasn't at home, but that Diddy broke in.
01:05:28.000We had testimony earlier from Kid Cudi saying, hey, my house was broken into on that day, and my Christmas gifts, this is right before Christmas, had been opened up.
01:05:36.000My security cameras had been moved, and my dog was locked in a room.
01:05:40.000And I saw Black Escalade, that I thought was Diddy's, there at some point that day.
01:05:45.000And we just had testimony from LA authorities saying, They traced that black Escalade back to Bad Boys Records, which is Diddy's company.
01:05:54.000Then later, Kid Cudi said his Porsche got blown up.
01:05:57.000Somebody cut a huge hole in the top of it and threw a Molotov cocktail in there.
01:06:01.000And today we've seen an L.A. fire department guy testifying to what kind of Molotov cocktail it was, exactly what kind.
01:07:39.000That's great evidence for the prosecution's case that...
01:07:53.000People who had to clean up the room after the fact confirmed her report.
01:07:57.000So, I mean, that right there lends so much credibility to her report that while, yeah, sometimes I wanted to do it, I didn't always want to do it.
01:08:03.000The defense is introducing evidence like emails from her saying, I love the freak-offs.
01:08:34.000They'll show up at your house and they'll work for you.
01:08:38.000And so she was the one running herd on all of that.
01:08:41.000Diddy didn't have the direct interaction with them, but he would sit there and watch these romps.
01:08:45.000So the defense is trying to show she was a willing participant.
01:08:49.000They also elicited testimony from her that one of the reasons she didn't leave, because her relationship went from, I think, 03 to 18, 15 years, was she enjoyed the lifestyle.
01:09:00.000She loved the cars and she loved the boats and she loved the Diddy lifestyle.
01:09:05.000They're trying to style her as like a money-grubbing, you know, glomer who was totally fine with all these proms.
01:09:14.000And she's only got like regrets after the fact now because things blew up.
01:09:19.000And they're also painting her as just a jealous woman.
01:09:22.000The main source of their arguments wasn't these freak-offs.
01:09:26.000It was her jealousy over a woman named Gina.
01:09:29.000Who was supposed to testify as victim number three, but has absconded.
01:09:34.000She's had second thoughts about testifying, and now she will not testify.
01:09:38.000Though, Ben, she did give an interview to a YouTuber a couple of years ago.
01:09:42.000At least the New York Times is reporting that the woman who appeared on this YouTube feed is Gina, victim three, not independently confirmed by yours truly.
01:09:50.000And in that interview, she talks about how he beat her, he kicked her in the stomach, her, Gina.
01:09:56.000That he made her get at least two abortions.
01:09:58.000I mean, you hear these testimonials and you hate P. Diddy.
01:10:15.000He actually showed up on day one with a Bible.
01:10:19.000And he wants them to believe he's this Bible, you know, sweater-wearing, cashmere, little old man.
01:10:25.000And yet you hear these testimonials and you really look forward to whatever is happening to him in prison, happening for years to come.
01:10:33.000So this is going to be the, you know...
01:10:36.000That we're really growing to loathe him progressively every day, but that doesn't necessarily mean these are crimes.
01:10:42.000So one of the big sort of open questions about all of this that a lot of people have kind of trended toward conspiracism on is why it took so long for any of these prosecutions to be brought.
01:10:51.000Because a lot of these predicate offenses are taking place over the course of decades.
01:10:54.000Everybody who's famous apparently went to his white parties and some of these people took part in these freak-offs.
01:11:02.000One is that there's some sort of conspiracy, that he was working with law enforcement to create tapes or whatever.
01:11:06.000And the other theory is that in Hollywood, actually the line between just being some of the worst people on planet Earth and criminal activity is really thin.
01:11:14.000And you can get away with an awful lot of crap in Hollywood until the point that you can't.
01:11:19.000Which one of those do you think is more explanatory?
01:11:33.000So she's decided to use some videotape of me pointing out that country music's been around for a long time before she got into it and she's not the be-all end-all.
01:11:42.000She's very focused on me and this one line of commentary.
01:11:48.000Where's her commentary about that disgusting pervert with whom she and her gross husband were best friends?
01:11:53.000Because I've seen plenty of pictures of them celebrating together and at Diddy's parties.
01:11:59.000Gee, she didn't have a moment to spare a word for him.
01:12:02.000So yeah, it runs deep, the rot in this community.
01:12:05.000And I do think that these people are extremely well connected.
01:12:08.000I mean, Alan Dershowitz was on our show today talking about how in the Epstein cases, he knows, firsthand he knows of multiple men's names that have not yet hit the press, who should be coming under the microscope as Not victims, perpetrators of this thing that Epstein was perpetrating.
01:13:29.000Federal officials and state officials can be bought off too.
01:13:32.000So I think it's actually very likely that whether it was explicit or implicit, Diddy persuaded many federal officials or other officials to look the other way.
01:13:40.000And now they have to keep the secret because they're complicit.
01:13:45.000And I don't know that we'll ever know the full extent.
01:13:47.000I, for one, will say I was very disappointed in the results of both the Epstein raids and the Diddy raids.
01:13:52.000The Diddy raids that, of these two properties, only resulted in, like, tons of lube, back to that word, tons of baby oil, the high heels and, like, you know, provocative clothing, and various guns and gun parts, which could be nefarious.
01:14:09.000Some of them had the serial numbers scraped off.
01:14:11.000Or not, because he is a celebrity who I'm sure is under threat, and therefore it's not surprising that there would be guns on his property.
01:14:28.000And so one of the questions that arises just on sort of a moral level that I wanted to get your take on is the question of Cassie Ventura and some of the women who were willing participants at least some of the time in this sort of stuff.
01:14:41.000You know, raise the sort of broader societal question of if there are abusive men and people know about these abusive men, what obligation should women have, do women have, if these guys are doing criminal things like beating the crap out of them in hallways, to actually go to the cops and stop this sort of behavior?
01:14:54.000Because obviously these guys are not just a threat to them, they're a threat to plenty of other people.
01:15:15.000By the way, my neighbor's lovely and is not beating his wife.
01:15:18.000But yeah, I do think it's a question of morality.
01:15:20.000You have no legal obligation to do it, but you definitely have a moral obligation to do it.
01:15:24.000And whether the victim participates in the investigation is really the problem of law enforcement.
01:15:29.000I mean, we've seen that in case after case, where victims do call the cops and complain and then will not cooperate with the investigation once it gets going because they don't actually want to go through this.
01:15:39.000And they're afraid, nine times out of ten, of their abuser.
01:15:42.000And they know they're going to get it even worse when they're behind closed doors with him again.
01:15:46.000Now, in the case of Cassandra Ventura, I have to say I have a lot of empathy for that woman.
01:16:42.000And he started to exploit her slowly with these weird prompts that were sold to her as like, oh, this is how you'll show me that you love me.
01:16:50.000Oh, I know it's weird, but I really love it.
01:17:04.000And he exploited the name she had for her grandpa and called her baby girl and had her call him pop-up, which is just one of the weird pieces of the dynamic between the two of them.
01:17:16.000So I easily could understand how this young girl got pulled into his web.
01:17:35.000I interviewed one at NBC who was one of the first women on board at Apple who helped invent Siri and was like a high-up executive there who was getting beaten, she said, by her husband.
01:17:46.000And she was one of the ones who wouldn't cooperate with the investigation once the cops got involved.
01:17:51.000Even if you're very savvy, very smart, and very accomplished.
01:17:54.000And it can certainly happen to somebody who gets involved with somebody age 19. So I do want the audience to understand this is not an Amber Heard situation.
01:18:01.000She did not walk off the stand and you were like, oh my god.
01:18:04.000I think most people were like, oh my god, he's a monster.
01:18:08.000And this poor girl, while she does have some texts and emails suggesting it was not all involuntary, the prosecution doesn't have to show that.
01:18:15.000If they just show some of these freak-offs were not involuntary.
01:18:19.000She said he forced her to do one with a urinary tract infection.
01:18:23.000Like, absolutely no woman would do that voluntarily.
01:18:26.000Like, that is somebody who's being coerced or feels like she cannot say no.
01:18:29.000So I think he's heading for a conviction, Ben.