#1114 - Matt Taibbi

May 9, 2018

Matt Taibbi is a journalist and author. He has reported on politics, media, finance, and sports, and has authored several books including: Insane Clown President, Griftopia, and The Business Secrets Of Drug Dealing.

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go to stamps.com click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in JRE that stamps.com and enter j a r e I'm very excited talk this guy because I've been a fan of his writing for a long time he's one of my favorite journalist and you've no doubt heard of them if not go research all the stuff and go Google and he's the shit please give it up for Matt Taibbi

set countdown gives me anxiety I got to stop doing the countdown see look I spilled my fucking Alpha Brain God damn it is Alpha Brain it's like a cognitive enhancing supplement with nootropics you know what nootropics are no you have an extra essentially the building blocks for human neurotransmitters the improve your memory not like your fuck with modafinil or any of that stuff no no no modafinil provigil it's a fighter pilot but there was just an article recently about it improving cognitive performance going to probably have to bite into that

give me too I've enjoyed your writing for sure and get that you got there unless you got it to get scissors for you if you don't want to fuck with that I got it I got it so he was going to come on wearing a mask if you wanted to come on wearing a Barack Obama mask actually it's it's actually really funny thing this book I spelled it too it's called the business secrets of drug-dealing you can find it at business secrets of drug-dealing. Com serializing it but basically somebody I knew for ages in a completely different capacity should have came out to me laugh

dear

and said you know I've been a high-level drug dealer for for a long time basically my whole life and wanted to tell his story about you know some of the the whole progression of his life what kind of drugs only things are growing out of the ground okay he started off this is a is an African American guy started off blue mushrooms he should have grew up half in the projects and half and in an upscale suburb in the upscale suburb he sold mushrooms which he basically got through mail order at a time early in this order history the internet when there were some loopholes about things you get Spore yeah well actually you could get the actual wow so he ends up having this whole career

she wanted to explain to me what the rules of the game of a book version of the ten Crack Commandments and so we sat down and we couldn't quite figure out how to do it at first but we ended up essentially doing this or fictionalized version of his life and the progression is amazing because he he goes from being a dealer all these different parts of the country in different social spheres he's in college he deals too rich white kids he deals on the street and you know tough over neighborhoods

Eminem's episode of in the legal business in this state and no no no no no no and so he's describing that world which is not there are a lot of misconceptions about it there are there is some things about it that are not known terribly well like you know what do you do when you work you know at a farm and your crop test dirty you know with it with a contaminant well you know not everybody just throws it away you know a lot of that stuff ends up ship to cross country goes to other markets and you should have describes a lot of this like what I can tell me this would that be like fungal or like a fungus or something like that you know there are Labs at this we have to clear from what I understand

they have to clear each of the crops and and there are situations where you know there's a whole bunch of crap and you got workers enough to be paid and what you do with it and the legal Market isn't big enough to accommodate all the stuff that's grown and so they're sort of still you know what kind of a black market that goes on and he he he describes this and but it didn't before that it's just a faster than a book about you know all the different things that he learned in the course of his career about how to get a you know do the job and not get caught how to how to rig a load at to drive cross-country how do you do a dummy car tells a story about how basically you want for car as you want the guy in the front seat to be to be to look like a drug dealer I have a terrible record Drive badly to attract the police

the third car is the loud car the second car still watching to see if there's there's cops in either direction and then the 4th car is basically driving up behind the load Car Duster to prevent anybody from seeing the license plate and that sort of thing and so he just talks about all this stuff and it's it's it's fascinating and it was a new kind of writing for me because I never really done anything except straight journalism and we should had to do it now reform and so we're putting it out see really online right now which is really cool so you did one of those to change the names to protect the innocent exactly oh yeah but were the guilty for the most part based on facts yes yes yeah yeah yeah the observations were that that he describes are all you know the things that he actually learned the situations you know of relatively close

the things that actually happened so yeah that's interesting so that's available now yep yep, it's the kind of a new thing I hate I grew up a huge fan of serialized detective stories I was a big fan of like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and I love black mask magazine which was the big pulp Noir magazine in the twenties and thirties and you know I grew up reading all those stories I always thought it was in the back of my mind always said I wanted to try this and write a book on a deadline

so I'm doing this now is it says it's basically co-written with this Anonymous character who can appear with me on shows like this anywhere because he has he's still not captured and so is the other warrants out for this guy know he's never been picked up I don't get arrested never been arrested he is a smart dude and some of his employers would be very surprised to know that he's got a hobby like this it's one of them again I knew him for years and didn't have the faintest clue that that this was this was going on so keep a job in order to avoid suspicion so the book is actually structured with all these rules it's chapter has has rules at one of his his most important rules is always have a job and it's for a number of reasons number one

he talks about how when he was young he worked at places like you know a Marriott or Applebees and he's like you know if you can serve have the patience to serve people at an Applebee's and not blow up and scream at people then you won't screw up a package so I can have the self-discipline to actually get through one of these jobs and not blow up and be crazy then you're going to handle it handle yourself well a car stop that's fascinating so he used it almost like as a discipline exercise is it as a discipline exercise he learned and among other things like another one of those rules is dress like an off-duty is Applebee's waiter right like do not dress anything you talks about this about how most dealers they learn their their profession

by watching movies you know there is no business book out there I mean there it's not like this generation is growing up reading that you do old Iceberg Slim or Donald goines novels or whatever it is they're watching you know the wire or blow or Ozark now or whatever it is but dealers very often dress like dealers you can you can kind of spot him know and he says that's exactly the opposite of what you have to do you know where Sperry shoes wear boring clothes look like you know you if you're on your way to to your freshman English class or whatever it is and you know that sound like a nerdy college kid when when the cops pull you over and all the stuff is that is so Central to his his whole world you about how to avoid getting caught

wow that would be a great book I mean it is it's it's it's really fun and the other the fact that that the any other co-author is actually a person is pulling this off makes it makes it really interesting and it makes it a real challenge to write it too because you know I had to kind of simulate his voice and kind of communicates people what what those situations were like and what things look like from his point of view and obviously I'm white and he's African-American and that's that stuff and but you know it. I think it works if it's kind of a cool story they must of been a juicy like when you found the subject and a boy we got something here how much fun I haven't had this much fun like fun fun writing anything for her for a long time because you know most most criminal Memoirs and again I grew up a junkie in terms of reading this stuff

I love I love books that are written after the fact by people who were in crime you know like Papillon was one of my favorite books growing up I mean it's something that's an amazing story about not much is crying but about prison and what's that like but they're always written by people after they got caught right and so there's never that book by the person who still out there and talking about what outlaw life is like it successfully still on the other side of the law

and that the part of it is fascinating it's just it's a completely new thing and and he has all these insights that I had that I would never have thought about it like he talks about how there's a thing he calls the hood price like if you when you're dealing with selling to in black neighborhoods even charges a higher price because there's more there more problems that you never leave it run into when you're dealing in those neighborhoods because there's more cops which means more lawyers which means more security which means more attention to detail when you deal to the rich white kids cuz nobody's paying attention so you just there's less overhead you know in the business which is which is fascinating its its side and he talks all about this in and he at he does he spend a lifetime kind of just keeping all the stuff in his head always wanting to to put it down

he just got to be too much and you just have to tap me on the shoulder one day and so can we have lunch I just want to talk to you about something

I would say three years while he was crying because he would get busted yeah exactly I would be how he would think about that yeah like you can't like if you were on something and you had a mask on people that's Matt Taibbi heat up maybe doesn't understand that there's millions of people listening I didn't totally agree to those people would go that's whatever even the Unabomber got caught and you only talk to like two people specially today with this Jeff sessions mother fucker and oh my God yes is he's scared to actively separate parents when their children if they catch illegals coming over with their families I mean that's just vindictive and it's funny

I'm on the campaign trail and I watched episode of the progression of his thought or not thought as it is on things like immigration and it seemed to me that he couldn't very quickly that people just want to be mean to invert immigrants it's not so much about the policy he was very non-specific about that whenever you could be he just wanted to say things that that that feel vindictive and cruel and nasty and so give me something to children it's just it just Monster see now but session session is a real creep horrible he's good people don't smoke marijuana just saying that alone do you know how many grandmas out there with cancer or smoking marijuana course no fuck you you crazy ass hole

10 points and say something like that right this isn't just your dad saying that this is this is ignorance and then the full weight of the executive branch especially the apparatus that's that's a terrible terrible combination with it it's too bad because I think I think even the law enforcement Community was kinda coming around on this people for dealing weed on me and I talked to her for my last book talk about the Eric Garner case I talked to lots of cops and they just hate having to do that you know those those bus or not fun for them Eric Garner cases to go got choked in New York right exactly cigarettes

if you got to drag somebody in for selling a $0.50 cigarette like you know that's not exactly Serpico you know what I mean like again cops don't let me know the sessions thing is terrible in that kind of a position and saying things like good people don't smoke marijuana or you know when families come across the border illegally we can separate the parents when the children like the fuck is wrong with you and then you throw in a good joke dose of the Jesus got a lot of Jesus but he's not going to support sessions on going after marijuana in states where it's legal he's going to leave the states to take care of it themselves that's encouraging the the problem with Donald Trump and this is something that I didn't Clue Into until I spent a lot of time watching the guy and following them around is that he can sound like you believe something very deeply

you can be absolutely convinced that he even logically thanks thanks a thing but he'll have a meeting with somebody and five minutes later I'll have the opposite opinion so I have no confidence that Donald Trump will anything that he says that he said it won't stay his opinion on anything give me convinced to go to a complete 180 on basically any issue which is scary isn't he in some ways the perfect representative of America because of that absolutely has no attention span and I talked about this when I was covering him because people sit all what it what is a billionaire New York or have in common with ordinary Americans is the same dumb shit on the internet she has the same total inability to separate fact from fiction

he's completely credulous when he reads a news item about something that he personally agrees with and hill hill tweet it out 5 seconds later before he checks it out which is like whatever the other American does he know they get something on Facebook and they manually share it with you know all their friends and this is what it this is an American thing now it just the total inability to to logically look at things and yeah the short attention span to short attention span drifting in and out of conversations not being able to pay attention to Memos and lessons his name is in there Chipotle sounds like you know it's it's funny because if you watch Trump speech is actually better better yet if you read Trump speeches it's they would pass out the text of what Trump was supposed to say before his events and so I be sitting there I be looking at

the three marks and they would be coaching from one end to the other then he would get up there in the first line would be like oh it's so great to be back in Manchester New Hampshire I'll be right and then he was your off and he would he would start saying one thing and then the other thing and his thoughts would drift an all these different directions and then when you look at the actual transcript of what Donald Trump has said he not only wasn't completing thoughts he wasn't completing sentences he talks a new soda strange fragments and Hill Drift from what I do to another and they won't have any logical connection to each other and people still responded to it which tells you something both about him and about his audience right because they're on the same weird metal wavelength where we're just so disconnected bits of emotion and thought is enough

right isn't that weird I mean ideas where it's really strange people don't know that someone's not smart if they're dumber than the person small amount of time most people spend actually thinking thinking about ideas thinking about themselves thinking about Behavior thinking about the impact that someone was in the position of President can have very few people or out there actually thinking large number overall but very few terms of percentages in terms of the people you can reach in the people to show up at his press Rouse that's a big thing to write who the fuck is going to go to a campaign speech for anybody unless you're in campaign Rollins write my opinion on them is not I would rather basically stick a railroad spike in my ear then then voluntarily go to one of these

saying right and not not be paid to do it because normally a campaign speech is like the super naturally boring experience where a guy or a woman stands up there and reads out a pre-selected a market tested list of political cliches that have no meaning whatsoever and that mean I don't represent what they're actually going to do in the in one there an office anyway so and if you have to listen to that 40 or 50 times in a row which is what happens when you're covering campaigns like you want to kill yourself so why anyone would go voluntarily to to see that as entertainment is going to be on me but that happened in in 2015 2016 Trump's events were a little different they were

they were a little bit and I think you got a little bit of his from his WWE experience so he turn them into these kind of menacing weird audience participation Brian sings where he would have the audience turn on the press and shouted us and throw things and you know because we're always standing up on those risers ropes around us we look like zoo animals or something and and we were the representatives they hated Elite you know and send it into the city like physical menacing intimate thing and then people would come from all over that come from down in the Hills you know and drive 50 Mi to see the spectacle it was it was fascinating to watch but kind of terrifying to was a PPI the people that are going to those things like boy that is an odd group of humans that have decided this how you going to spend your day going to go

I just got a rap about fake news is going to ramble about this you're fake news in point the CNN got your people like yes yes they say things that make you feel good say things that excite me. Solutely absolutely look at these blood suckers that was a line that eat that used to pull out a lot look at these bloodsuckers these people reporting information and arrow shirts you know if we got to be iPads and we're kind of looking for surrounded by you know in some cases 15,000 people who you know what kind of turning in our Direction and a couple of cases at you know they were it was definitely up in the air whether this was going to turn ugly or and in a few places it did turn on the way and and but he eat

is very cute in the one thing I will say about Trump is that he has a keen Instinct for audience he knows where they are he knows what their mood is he knows what he has to do to get the door to wake them up just to stir them up he can tell when he's losing them. That is that is one time that he does have but it it's a negative talent for sure what use it certainly in a negative way absolutely how much attention If You Paid It All To His use of diet pills have been following using all diet pills reporter Washington Post that first talked about it they found at Duane Reade Pharmacy where he was first prescribed diet pills by this Doctor Who described it for a non-existent condition like a bit metabolic the fish

can see or some shit like a metabolic disorder I think he called it and it allowed him to prescribe in the sky was like a known prescriber of these things to him he's got every day carry a metabolic disorder helicobacter going to feel Pepe all day and you supposed to be on these for a very short amount of time he's on them for a long time and this guy is reporter put to print it out at tweeted out the actual Duane Reade Pharmacy where Trump was feeling this prescription and then now they they're saying that he's on some other diet pill which is one of the ingredients that was in fen-phen do you remember phen phen phen phen was something for people don't know that the young folks out there it was a pill that people are taking in the 1990s and I knew a gal who was a very pretty girl

but she was large and she got on the fence then and I hadn't seen her in like I don't know like 6 months or something and I saw an all said she was like a hundred twenty pounds looks like what are you doing are you exercising or something as you go crazy and join a gym and now I start taking the stuff called then then and she would start having weird feelings in their heart so she stopped it and people are just dropping dead left and right off of this stuff you would you fucking heart attack so I'll kind of shit hardcore stuff but they recognize the combination of these two things was the issue but one of these things by themselves is okay so this one thing by itself is what they think he's on now which makes sense that a guy who's in his 70s has so much energy right I mean they say he's up at 5 in the morning watching Fox News and that he start tweeting like a 5:30 in the morning he's tweeting gets very little sleep you dream

12 Diet Cokes a day when the guys just he's got Boundless Energy when he was campaigning there was a thing is so stunning to me I know what it's like to go on the road and just do stand up stand up will you have your Accu fuck around it's fun you have a good time his fucking wears you out after a couple days one town to the next town by the time that third day rolls around you're fucking beat down this guy was doing day after day after day after day to all you wonderful people going to make America great again and everything is with energy and this is the speculation the speculation is he like I mean I'm sure you're aware many many journalists run out or all right he's on something sure I like the way I look at it it's like this is indicative of where America stands today it's not just that he's a good representative Amir because he has the same media consumption habits and same inability to read books and all these

variable but also because he's pulled up right which is everybody in America everybody in America right yeah some Kennedy had so many physical problems that not sure if you remember there was a book The Dark Side of Camelot the Canon camera by Sy Hersh where they talked about how Kennedy in the morning used to have an S secret service agent give him a shot of basically amphetamines every every morning and he would serve pesar pound the Oval Office talking about who you wanted to whack today you know that this was like the background for Bay of Pigs and you know all these other things so it's very dangerous when a president is pharmaceutically altered when a person who is you know if he's if he's on speed and he's tweeting threats to a nuclear power or like

that would be a very ironic in but terrible way for elephant all of us to end

I'm looking for it was hard to find the first time I know who wrote it but I do know you got to get a save that and put in your favorite cuz we talked about it so many times you got to figure out a way to save that and put it in a bookmark because it was on in like he had the Duane Reade Pharmacy and then there's a speculation about what the most recent stuff is that he's on which is a again one ingredient in fan but one of the things they were saying is that when you look at the side effects of this stuff one of the side effects is delusional perception of reality delusions of grandeur aggression impulsiveness like all these things that we associate with Donald Trump like we don't even know who he is we know who he is pilled up if this guy is right which is fucking fascinating might be dealing with essentially a pharmaceutical intervention into not just American lives in terms of individuals

in terms of the way policy is driven country Blues 4th it might literally beat pharmaceutically in pants that's it all seems true right it seems like like I'm not saying anything that's out land its first of all not we talk about something that's real pills are these pills are real we talk about something's widely consumed everybody knows this and we're talking about a guy was an extraordinary extraordinary amount of energy per somebody doesn't work right there workout rather doesn't eat healthy right and I quit working on this energy reporters because the campaign Trail is incredibly grueling there's a reason why some candidates can't do it or or they opted lots of Legacy Media appearances or dad buys they they travel lesson appear more the people who tend to succeed are the ones you can do three or four appearances a day

a fly to three different cities a day and they most of those people are either hellfreaks people who are you know in good physical condition Obama was was definitely one of those people who who you know how to have a run at some point or else he couldn't do that schedule but Donald Trump you know you look at him and it's kind of a mystery is Trump start taking amphetamine derivative abused them only supposed to take to for 25 days date on for 8 years really this is Kurt eichenwald right White House submit admitted it to me said only a short time for diet and quotes when he was not overweight I countered with medical records they cut me off people mistreating drug was diethylpropion propane on 75 milligrams a day prescription filled at Duane Reade on 57th Street in Manhattan. Prescription dr. Joseph

Amber diagnosed him with metabolic imbalance which we have never heard about again Greenberg was later publicly slam to someone who provided upper history rich people in Manhattan a metabolic imbalance in quotes if true could be electrolyte insufficiencies anaerobic and balances acid and balances and an assortment of Related Disorders that can have serious health consequences yet his other doctor dr. Harold Bornstein said he had been Trump doctor since 1980 and it never mentioned the metabolic imbalance found by Greenberg

yeah right right so save that save that in book market now find out what the the other stuff cuz he was just to just Google Trump is on one of the ingredients in fen-phen 2016 at said he was on Center of what are the actual name of Phentermine yeah so this is what they think is on now Phentermine which is also a price on the truth Kurt eichenwald is telling the truth that means that he was on pills and feta means for 8-year results so if he was a doctor prescribes Donald Trump cheap speed in this is a Ashley what is your name Ashley Feinberg

make sense absolutely it makes sense absolutely I mean everybody to Heart got filled up and I don't know how a person whose diet is cheeseburgers and Diet Coke I could run for president for the weirdo who are you so I would know that because they keep the press in a separate plain fried chicken with a fork and knife see that's bad but I think I would think ordinary American wood would think I'm for that because that's just how you doing man fork and knife V Fried Chicken you God damn elitist amazing

very cheap speed that used to be imported when I lived in Russia they did it was there was a type of speed that used to come from the baltics that allegedly the urban legend was was that the Nazis had all their soldiers on a cheap speed for the Long March is going into into Russia and they set up these pharmaceutical plants in fear and again the street legend was that that was what the strike was but they called his fan so I wasn't that the origins of methamphetamines wasn't methamphetamines created by the Nazis

I believe it was and I think this is one of the speculations as to why they could get suicide bombers the kamikazes to slam their Jets and two aircraft carriers. We have those go pills right speed that gets prescribed and steroids price of soldiers 8 maybe talk to people that have been in you know they'll tell you about what different things that they allow them to take and gave him to take but that stuff is that's really common and then I know a lot of fighter fighter pilots will take that keeps you from getting sleepy keeps you alert and awake and there was also something Hillary Clinton supposed to be on yeah she's supposed to be on modafinil those one things that she admitted to and it's legal until it's so weird one doesn't speed you up in terms of like heart

play it's not like like drinking 5 cups of coffee right it does give you this weird sense of alertness he's got some health issues and he's on it all the time and he said if I don't take it I'm a mess I just really yeah yeah well I made it sounds sounds perfect because I had everything figured out the next a picture how she's dead she's been dead for decade day after they took that picture she can now she can cook breakfast again when you prescribe new morn Dean morning

chicken make breakfast again thanks honey after after she's done and just I think there was a time where people didn't understand how bad that stuff was for you and this is probably a lot of people on it right. Now we're all kinds of stuff is being prescribed that we're going to find out 50 years from now like I really would like we prescribed Adderall 250 million children or whatever it was Prozac batter all the numbers of ssris that are prescribed me Riley look who who knows how many people actually need those things versus how many people just having a bad day and went to the doctor and they give you something you up right right and how many how many schools are are are mandated to put in a bunch of kids on on these drugs I think probably

for sure means were experimenting people's brains and absolutely these pharmaceutical companies have billions of dollars in massive influence and making it so the stuff is okay just dying from opiate pills but there's no question that it's a conscious strategy to get people hooked and and get them taking those pills for in every conceivable scenario so that they will see come out in other areas not legally I think but some some prosecutors going to have to figure out some way to get the hold some of those companies accountable because they're definitely doing that on purpose but even if they do it seems like they just it's like the tobacco thing they get paid right now they pay off a few billion dollars it's barely scratches a dent in them

write it all off jack up the price of everything a little bit over the course of 10 years of balance itself out the zero write write write a couple of movies will be made but the same thing will happen exactly like that Russell Crowe movie The Insider it was great about the death of the press is it turned out that it was movie about the death of the tobacco industry but yeah it was really interesting what is it like being a reporter and being a journalist rather today with all this fake news talk like this this is a new thing this whole calling something fake news there certainly is manufactured stories and things that just aren't true websites that are just designed to get people to click on them and they may have crazy stories that didn't really happen but they're pretty obvious right yeah and I think a lot of what people call fake nose is just news that is very

play slanted One Direction and young people people talk a lot about how foxes fix fix news well most of the time when you want watch Fox with her just doing is there selectively picking out stories that they know we're going to rile up their elderly freaked out terrified audience you know and so they they pick out the four or five things that bit that actually happened around the world they can do that without lying you know they don't they don't have to make the stuff up they can find them they felt the lineup of fact that they want but you have to be working as a journalist now is is very very different the business is undergoing extremely rapid change and it's not something that we really have reckoned with we haven't sat down and had a discussion about where this is all going and how we can fix it because the business is changing in a way that is extremely negative and no one's talking about how

how to reverse that like long-form investigative reporting is it started to disappear in the 80s but it's accelerated to the point where there's almost none of that now almost everybody who works in the business is doing quick hits and there's almost no time left to do you know kind of real real hardcore investigative work and we trained our audiences also to be unable to consume that kind of stuff so you know we're at we're all basically doing clickbait now and I think it's weird it's a really big dark time in our business well it's it's also this weird time transitioning between paper and digital and trying to get people to pay for digital I mean I subscribe to a few of my mind Washington Post New York Times where you pay but I don't think very many people are doing that it's probably a small amount of people that are paying right

give you like 10 articles a month or something like that for free right come on man you're here everyday right time to pay up right and I'll give you like a little countdown then I'm going to pay this is this is a fascinating so does subplot to what happened to the media business because a lot of that is because of something that Google did a long time ago they have this thing called the first click rule which considered mandated that all all new sites have at least some free content or else the algorithm would would push the the new story far down on the search results right so if you if you didn't have free content on your side if you didn't meet Google's first click rule when you search for a new story you just wouldn't find it so all these in the early days of should have digital journalism

all the news companies offered their content basically for free and that trained audiences to not pay for journalism basically and it's it's pretty hard to put the genie back in the bottle and can tell everybody to go back and and pay for everything it just doesn't work that way so we're at we're in this place for everybody should have consuming free media and not only that there's this additional problem of the you know the internet platforms like Facebook and Google pushing news that they already know people are going to agree with two users so there's there's their set of last news the challenges people they're just not going to see it you know because that's not the way the algorithms work the algorithms are really confusing so the algorithms like will actively

pick out things they think you'll be interested in so if you're someone who's got a particular set of interested it become sort of an echo chamber chamber your I have that Google News app on my phone while check every morning see what's going on but some shit that I'm interested in right it's it's probably a little bit worse on Facebook then it is on Google but cuz it's Google eat you at least has some control over what your hours for you with things right like so but what's up with both of them yeah they're they're accumulating lots and lots of information about your not only about what you read but about the things that you buy the movies that you watch what your predilections probably are what your opinions your political stance and so they pick out new stories that they think are your you're likely to endorse or spend a lot of time reading which likely means that you're never

the news story that says you personally are responsible for something bad right that's like saying one you will see a lot of new stories that say your neighbor is responsible for something bad and that's one of the reasons why I like divisiveness is a conscious commercial strategy it's just it's a natural result of a lot of this a lot of these behaviors what is the mean age of people that are watching Fox News you're talking about how old is there all MSNBC MSNBC The you know it's it's worse it with Fox and and and CNN and I don't want to I don't want to miss quoted but I know they're all like above 65 so TV 68 your right look at that median age of

Primetime Fox News

do we do we have a lot of it has to do with the fact that young people just don't watch television right leg right there done they're done so that they're getting a new some other way and not getting it fixed in YouTube videos Wrecking almost no news exactly when I was a kid I should deliver newspapers did you get your due to the club I was going to take it where is your route I had one in Hingham I had one in Newton yeah I did the globe I did the The Herald Boston Herald and I deliver the New York Times while the chest so I didn't like that the New York Times as interesting cuz

wasn't didn't pay as well and they were larger routes like you had to go much further huh because there was very few houses that would get the time's right but you felt like you were doing something special delivery New York Times that they had clear blue plastic bags deliver those in clear bags but the times in a barrel should have been in a brown paper bag does that get delivered they must have to have subscriptions and the x is the Daily News definitely does have a delivery for sure yeah I don't think so I just spent a lot of time that model where newspapers had this.

direct relationship with their readers write like they not only owned get the content and created the content but they also completely control the distribution right they they have the trucks they had the paper kids like us right that was all part of what gave the Press its power is that we were we had the unique ability to reach all these people well you know once the internet came along they cut that in half right so now the distribution is all Google and Facebook the content is all being made by somebody else so it's it makes it very difficult to make money you just don't have that that personal relationship with the with the consumer anymore which is which is a completely different set of paradon do you think there's a connection notebook to ponder this myself it seems like the early days the internet won a big factor

with the music industry for sure was Napster Napster came along and then people got this initial Taste of getting a bunch of stuff you normally paid for for free get just get tons of it and then to the internet service get associated with being a free thing and then there was BitTorrent and through BitTorrent you can get films and all kinds of different stuff you could download movies and and people just started filling up hard drives with this stuff they would get off a bit torrent and in my mind at least it became this connection with the internet stops free there's so much stuff free like what I pay for this trait and I've tried to say this to friends get involved with podcasting who have come over from Radio I just friends have been fired from Radio jobs like five people five bucks a month but as soon as you do that people like why the fuck would I pay or Adam Carolla for free $5 for you

audience expectations now or that they're going to get free kontakt everything's free and obviously that has huge consequences because that forces people who create the content to get the money from somewhere else they had to have to be sponsored by an Advertiser who might have certain expectations but if you know it's certainly not good for people who make content that that that it's like that yeah I think a lot of bad habits with with with the readers to I mean they they just so you know rather than rather than look for the best stuff they just look for what's available and what they can read for free also I think it opens up the door to all this wacky advertising were pop-up ads and and scroll down as I can try to scroll down the screen in the ad follows with you then I'll go down so annoying right it's weird distant it's there so invasive and they're everywhere even really good websites like like see if you go to see

you get the real stories and then below you get the stuff that looks like stories but there's a very faint print it says paid content right and then you look at it like you're not going to believe what she looks like now what does she look like now and then you click it and then I finally you get it sometimes you don't even get to the original one so you confuse like I think it's better if they don't satisfy you cuz any just go back to the Restless I well what does he look like I know you go to all these different looks like one of those pages that you go to where there is just dozens and dozens of Windows and boxes you can click on Fred different individual quick Ebates stories where you go to each one of them and I'll take you to 40 pages Sprite of different people that have gained weight or lost weight or poor now or whatever it is but that's

I mean I think it's one of the things that's really bad about that is that if you spend enough time doing that your brain stops being able to do other things you know like when you're reading books books require you to sit there and constructing your head all the visuals for everything that you're reading you have to imagine what the people look like you have to you know do all this mental work to construct the scene right side brain is actively engaged in this in this really highly specific and and creative way right but the internet now just has it moving from place to place clicking from place to place. Going from Sensation to sensation you don't have to ponder anything you don't have to have an opinion about anything you don't have to look at both sides of anything you just have to move from one thing to another to the next thing which is what you're talking about that's the way his brain works right like and it's it's a I think it's a bad thing

you know what you do it's not only bad in itself but it makes it impossible for us to do the other thing you know which is which is more constructive yeah I know it's almost like mental range of motion like if you are some how to do your joints were restricted where you could only like move a certain amount after awhile you would lose your full range of motion absolutely gets atrophy again I have a hard time reading books now than I did when I was you know probably 11 years old and and that's just from and you're a writer right I'm a writer I mean I love it and you know I said I still I find that I have a harder time doing the work you know that's difficult or like when I was when I was younger I read more fiction which which is harder because it requires you to do more eat instrumental construction work now it's much if I'm going to read a book it's typically nonfiction which is Lenny here which is an argument right it's it's it's it's less

it requires less work of the rear right um it may be just as interesting but it's requires less work so that the hardest thing to read is you know Anna Karenina or something like that right but you have to not only think but you have to construct but with your true just reading you know the Diary of Kim Kim Kim Kardashian or something like that you're just you're just kind of listening to somebody you know going I think it's bad I think all the stuff is negative but I don't know maybe I'm an old fogey about it well I definitely think it's not the most ideal in terms of constructing a healthy mind right but but it's what we got yeah and it's it's weird so weird time absolutely and it's and you know there's there's lots of positive things the positive things are like that anybody can have a voice has something interesting to say candy instantly elevated and have an audience overnight and that's great right like no other than in the old days if you have to penetrate this

ridiculous oligarchy live entertainment people who who really owns tightly-controlled who got access to what who got to be at you no have an audience and now you get to bypass that entirely and so directly appeal to to two people which is great I mean that's an amazing thing but then you get YouTube Stars down Lil Tay Rabbit Hole the other day you fucking asshole Jamie told me about little chat about another writer who went out of built a rabbit hole and so I went down that rabbit all my God today is a 9 year old girl is famous now on the internet for talking shit and showing all the money she has and all the things she buys you don't know about little tiny Death of society

will tell me the youngest flexer of the century who makes cash me outside girl look like a scholar she's fucking 9 dude okay I have a 9 year old right this is crazy play play this video Jamie so he can understand what little tase all about

that's her revving up her Lamborghini gets out

tell Jake just throwing money around

LaserJet over the next president knighted states in the background I mean this is what we're doing this what we're doing

337000 likes God damn it we are here Stuntin on all y'all broke ass haters 500k in cash and it's Lambo cost more than your college tuition I'm nine and I ain't got no license apparently all our shifts rented so embarrassed to admit this but I would watch this over reading my own articles

so what the fuck

I might as well just give up now what to do what to do what do I do in 40 years that's what I want to know where where else after Kanye's children when she's good she's going to be next to go down right away we all just because I remember when Bush was president was talking to reporters bushes to do this thing or he would carry around a biography of Jean Aitchison for weeks and weeks and weeks just to prove to reporters that he could read and we always joke with each other like nobody nobody stupider than this is ever going to be present and now you know you look back and then pushes yeah he's like Einstein compared to Trump I had a joke that I did back in my Netflix special from 2005

when when Bush was in office where it was a bunch of people were trying to figure out how dumb people are and they're like the only way they like to speculation a smart guy to act on like no no no you got to get a real dumb guy otherwise we'll never know you got a real dumb guy and then so they get the real dumb guy and they put a bunch of things in time and then some of the back of the room goes I think we can go dumber and this is where we are right you know if you were 13 years later life imitates art we went away Dahmer that's right super reasonable in comparison to some of the shit that Trump says in terms of like Supreme Court rulings like it was a Supreme Court ruling that went against bushes way while he was in office and he had a really reasonable response he was like of course we're disappointed but we have to abide by the court in and their ruling

and I was like something you would never hear Trump say never hear him say something like that no absolutely I mean Bush seems to me almost like a Scandinavian Statesman compared to Donald Trump I mean the White House if it's going to look like the White House in Idiocracy when she's when she's in there right I mean it's it's it's it's going to be terrible but that was a weird time to write like during the inauguration no celebrities wanted to go and they were like really weird like real fucking on the outskirts celebrities right over the RNC and and and they had to have Scott Baio do one of the first Day speeches

I'm sure he is a list for the Republican National Convention and outside of you know like the Hannity's the right those type fellas right right exactly yeah yeah it's fascinating it's it just seems like everything is off like we leave we skipped Dimensions will I jolted over until I get this parallel world where things just don't seem like at least things used to make setley could be disappointed at this guy one or you can be disappointed the country was doing this or that we were invading Iraq whatever it was but it would kind of seem like the world if it's kind of like what we're talking about we were talking about before I mean

previously like the entertainment industry politics was tightly controlled by a small group of cigar-chomping people who sat in the back room and in both parties today they had that carefully outlined a certain narrow range of acceptable political opinions and in one party you could be all the way up to you know somebody like Ron Paul but they tended to put somebody like George Bush's is the candidate but there was no directly appealing to the electorate and asking them who they wanted to be the candidate I mean Donald Trump is really the first internet president he completely bypassed that entire oligarchy you didn't have to go through do you know the priesthood to to get to be president which on the one hand is evidence of a good thing because it's actually more democratic than this system

before where it was pretty much close to everybody except for a few people who paid their dues through the system but Trump direct we are just by being famous and just buy a tracking media attention he was able to bypass all the usual tests and bypass the parties you know of decision-making process and he got to be president but he's like will pay right I mean you just represents the Dumber side of us as opposed to the more in light inside of us so it's it's hard to know what to think about it I mean when I was covering and I thought on the one hand this is evidence that you know the electorate is breaking away from being told who to vote for the other hand the first time they take it that freedom out for a test drive this is what they pack I mean I don't but Lisa throws a giant monkey wrench to the gears absolutely done that but you know what the result of that will be

and yeah man it could be the end of civil and said this before that you know that when I was covering the Trump Run Part of Me wanted to write it as a comedy like all the early stories were like highly comment I was trying to write about the funny aspect of it and then after he became president it's like well this is out of the funniest thing that's ever happened in America or it's the end of civilization right does that make it funnier if that's the end of civilization I don't know if I should ask you if I don't know either it's all depending upon how it plays out right I mean civilizations of absolutely fallen in the past this idea that Civilization won't fall in my opinion is a kin to the people that live on the big island thinking that the volcano will erupt again exactly about maintaining civilization are in attempt to

prolonged estate or mitigate any possible disastrous effects of collapse right but it's going to fall apart it's an old system that was constructed on scrollspy people riding with feathers that really had no idea what the future had install right we didn't it didn't know what the future in store they had no idea right now. I certainly buy a fucking airplane and cellular communication and we live in a world that requires a completely new set of rules and guidelines and you know this is always been the article against the Second Amendment like okay did they had muskets when they wrote this they didn't have they are 15 so they didn't have 50 caliber guns that can kill things when they miss them threaded playing a video yesterday about a guy shooting a deer and with a 50 caliber rifle and he misses the deer and it still killed the deer that the bullet going

ask the deer's head just of sheer force of it blows the deers brains out and it is going dead when I love favorites to make a folder for shit repetitively talk about when I was in better than Iraq that they took me out and the guys apparently Recreation date did they cut cars in half with 50 cal calibers gun now watch this he misses boom

and watch

you just fall down dead

from the bullet passing it

this is Jesus it just whizzed by it in the force of the bullet passing by he's psyched right yeah I watch The Slow Mo

it just falls down cuz I get in thank God this guy's got camel on some Million Miles Away so we literally sitting on a bench he's on a bench shooting something in the distance pics is deer up in the deers brains I just completely scrambled

no I don't know bullet wound at all nothing no hole dead at the horror movie waiting to happen that's yours going to wake up in the middle of the night and and reanimate and oh what happened to Bran's coming out of the ears of the bullet passing it she says that it would be a good time to reconsider how we run things right and I think one of the good things about having a guy like Trump and offices maybe we should sit down and say hey we probably shouldn't have a popularity contest to see who controls the nukes right see who's the commander-in-chief of the greatest army that the planet has ever known right far the most destructive forced the planet has ever known then we'll least find out if he's on diet pills rushing me at least shouldn't be safe mr. president wouldn't would like a urine sample from you

you know right right yeah yeah no I think there should be more than a pee test for launching a nuclear strike definitely a lot lot of changes I'm hoping is it this this presidency and the whole idea of like having a popularity contest will allow people to realize we shouldn't have one alpha champ running things that's that's an Antiquated idea that was really great A Tribe of 50 Nomads battle experience that guy should be really think he knows more than I do for Ork Ork Ork is the guy with the knowledge and 50 million people and you have the ability to manipulate things and Facebook posts in Fred make wacky Lil Tay videos design for this know now and we have some structures that rely on the popularity contest and some that have

Vincent the public has no control over what's the weather like right at all reserved like it doesn't fit a lot of it makes no sense at all and five different people. Rescinded right right yeah exactly yeah yeah no I mean it's really make a whole lot of sense the the the Congress in Gresham OR races now in the run-up to 2018 and the process is almost 100% about money it's just like you know but like I said I talked to a guy who jumped in the ring to run for a seat in the in the 19th district and he told me he calls up the National Party in a writ they basically asked you two questions for him like can you raise $300,000 for the next 3 months and can you braze a million dollars by election day and you know that was the whole of the conversation and it has to be based on more than something more than how much money can you raise

there has to be another variable for picking leaders Beyond you know how much cash can you get your hands on the next few months do you see the Rosie O'Donnell got in trouble for raising money under various names and donating too much money so I cry Roy Moore's opponents and what exactly happened website that she thought should have liked stopped her from donating the extra amount cuz it was being divvied amongst many people and that it should have been returned to her which I say I don't know enough about candidates are supposed to return the extra funds once they've crossed over the amount that individuals supposed to give doesn't she know how much you're supposed to donate isn't theirs fruit that's what she was saying she's $2,700 right

four names that was one of the stories that wasn't followed up after 2016 but it was it was one of the things that came out in the DNC saying this was that there was a a little bit of a scam going on in terms of individual is pretty small it's like $2,700 for an individual so a couple it's $5,400 so what they would do is they would host these these dinners with celebrities like you know George Clooney and a bunch of his friends and they would raise all this money and theoretically the money was supposed to go only a tiny portion of it to the presidential campaign the rest of it supposed to go to the original parties but what was actually happening according to political anyway was that the money was basically going to the parties and then going immediately back to the presidential campaign and and

a lot of the people who gave the money didn't even know that that was happening and and they were upset about it and but that was a story that wasn't followed up after after 2016 entirely too much money would you ever do it without the money now it wants the money is in how do you pull it out how do you say no no no more influence no more special interest groups lobbyists are illegal yeah I think they should they should probably have very brief publicly funded elections where the course of time is maybe 5 weeks and what always this is just the Adele special election against Roy Moore $3,600 to Pennsylvania Conor lamb for the special general election he wanted March 2952 California

Adam shift for his primary $4,200 to Illinois Congressional candidate Lauren Underwood for her primary run in 3400 452 Omar vaid a Congressional candidate in Staten Island and Brooklyn nothing the farias she's Rosie O'Donnell says I was not choosing to / donate $2,700 cut off can they should refund the money she wrote I don't look to see who I can donate most to I just donate assuming they do not accept what is over the limit for right yeah I don't know how to Ben Stein by that explanation but it doesn't really matter because the reality is

there are a million ways that you can legally give money to campaigns now that don't involve just the individual donation like you can you can give money to a foundation or a 501 c 3 or whatever it is that buys an ad that will help the candidate just as much as they let you know as it would if you don't don't need to directly so me and then the post citizens united Universe this is this this is a two-story but you know the bigger story is that you can based of the very rich people and companies can basically spend unlimited amounts of money on on campaigns of this is this whole story is over like what was that the all told for $5,000 most yeah not a lot I mean you know I don't have feelings one way or another about Rosie O'Donald but not. Doesn't make me Outrage terribly Will trump hates her rice what's fascinating about it all yeah

got a big bump from talking about her in the debate and you know but I was another thing that he did very early on as he he clued into the fact that people hate people hate journalist and they Hollywood actors and so he made he made sure as much as possible to talk about all the all the groups than major food groups that hate in America right like me and my parents Hillary Clinton Hollywood actors and reporters and that goes for the Staples of his routine and end it worked maybe it was it was smart on his part I think particularly the targeting of journalist was brilliant because he was able to portray us as the wealthy Elite and now he's the billionaire buddies pointing the finger at us as all looked at you know that there are the guardians of of Rich America which which worked and when was a brilliant thing it's just it's unprecedented any presidential Nixon

find about them at the time but I believe it was privately yeah well he he hated the Press pretty openly I mean he had that 1962 press conference where he's like you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore and from all accounts he was an incredibly profane nasty person in private in the only talk to a few report politicians hate reporters if they if they don't there's probably something wrong with them because he knew the Press Corps in most cases is really is out to get them or at least is is dangerous you know but with Trump and Nixon it was similar to a whole new level and it was and went to a paranoid place and you know but on the other hand I don't want to bore you with this but but the the whining about being kicked out of the White House and not being able to fly with with Trump and and the separation between

the president and the Press Corps in fact he doesn't show up at the White House Correspondents Dinner like my response to that is so what we should be on the outside you know I don't shed a tear about that I think it's very strange the response in our business that we're not hanging around with the president and you know pal around behind the Rope line with them anymore like we should be adversarial I think as long as you're honest and accurate yeah yeah I mean I mean not even adversarial but not connected right it's it's it's kind of a separation of church and state thing for me like I had an experience when I when I covered the Obama campaign and I like Barack Obama as a candidate in 2008 was really impressed by him but I remember going into the plane the first time

going back into the Press section and I see that there's photos all over the walls of the of the campaign plane and apparently was a tradition where each of the reporters had like a little too high school yearbook photo taken with a candidate where you know they got their arm around Obama and they're posing and it was a tradition that kind of put the the photo up on the wall and I'm like you know that's not a good look for for the Press Corps you if you like the guy you got to at least pretend to have a little bit of that the motor supposed to be there you know what I mean what is certainly influential certainly going to have some sort of an influence on you yeah it's just a bad look like what happens if you do a story about the guy that's complementary and it comes out that you know you're you're you put a picture of yourself with your armor on the guy at you know what I mean. It's just that the reporters are kind of supposed to be a tease

unpleasant kind of grumpy people who instantly the face the posters of you know powerful people you know when whenever they get a chance and throw darts at pictures of them and stuff like that pic that that's who they kind of used to be and you see there's people that are jockey in the position to potentially run in you know the next election obviously the 2018 elections but in 2020 for president you seen people that are moving in the position you see these congressional candidates they're showing promise like what what is it when your covering this week what's the what's the feeling of like the future from these races so like what is it from the standpoint of reporters like mint but yeah well first of all like that is the Holy Grail of reporting is to latch onto a politician be before they become famous and before they become president and follow them all the way and that way you get to be The Insider

who gets invited to the Oval Office so it's it's like a it it's a big thing that a lot of reports kind of dream of his to latch on early to somebody like Bill Clinton and become the The Sitter favorite reporter on that beat that's why it's at the outset of presidential elections you often see a lot of jockeying with in newsrooms to see who gets to cover which campaign because people always want to pick the winner because I think they're going to wreck it a book deal out of it at the end and we're going to end up having their own Show on MSNBC or whatever but the but yeah I mean the what's the feeling right now like who are people coalescing around is that what you're asking well I think there's an expectation is that some of the same people are going to be involved believe that Bernie is going to run again but then there's also

Kamala Harris there's Cory Booker Vino people believe that those those those folks are going to run but the Press Corps is less focused on that than they would be normally I think they're they're the only story that matters to political reporters right now is the Russia gate Trump thing and they're following that and kind of hoping that will be some the thing that happens instead of the 2020 election you know that they're the big the big set of trial of Donald Trump is what everybody's kind of waiting for the recent take on that is that there is some sort of a connection between Russian oligarchs in Michael Cohen write this name amen I thought I just heard about that this morning so I can't say that I know a whole lot about that what would that payment before when was it you know it was allegedly after the elections so that way

a story I mean I've gotten a lot of criticism because I've been a little bit of a skeptic on the Russia get front not so much that I don't believe it but I just kind of think the Press should be a little careful about it but if that's true yes that's a big story if Cohen really was in Prague that's also a really big story you know but we'll have to see what those what what what really comes out of that she's such an unusual moment in history it's crazy it's crazy it's it's the as unstable as American history he's been in our lifetime certainly right or close to it right as civil war on the fact that we've had concerns about nuclear conflict with two different nations right and since since Trump has been elected I mean there's there's the North Korea thing and then there's the fact that we've had

military exchanges where are Russian mercenaries you know reportedly have died that certainly unnerving you know the nuclear clock which was established the Doomsday Clock which is established way back in the 50s has a sad that the most dangerous Point since 1953 yeah a bit at a time in there estimation I forget what the organization is actually called but I think it's positions for supper social responsibility but the this right now is more dangerous than you know that the K7 shooting the Cuban Missile Crisis like we're at a moment that's incredibly tense between these two countries in the Cuban Missile Crisis is there estimation yeah

using as a metric you know I guess they're just reading the news like everybody else but it's off derided by my people in washing is Ben Washington is being too hysterical but you know it is an indicator and the people who who do it I think are the same people who want to win Nobel Prize last year for their antinuclear on on nuclear weapons so nice to have terrorist threat colors on the board everyday that used to have a meeting of a group of people in the various intelligence agencies to decide what the color would be

the yellow yeah exactly and what what's fascinating about this tonight I only heard about this cuz I wrote about this a few months ago and I made a mistake by saying that the color use toggle between red which was the highest in Greenwich was the lowest but apparently not once in its entire history was it Evergreen like that they never had fret level low even want once in its history so we were all we were always some level of anxiety but those those are weird times to remember that when you're supposed to be about stuff and with a real simple distinction like colors orange holy shit it's orange dude be careful you going to fly today to go to an airport today in the Super Bowl

right well so the the de program it took a huge hit when one of the guys who was involved who was the former head of Homeland Security I'm not mistaken I came out with a story that he had been told by some of the Bush People to jack up the the color in advance of an election and it was shortly after that story came out that they discontinue the program it came out in the book by by the former head of the homeless Curative right before an election to get people scared and they'll vote a certain way and no

so you know amazing times though as a journalist do you look at these times and say this is great this is great for business or do they do more so look at it as a human being and go this is just a fucking mess and I wish we weren't so ridiculous so when when I first started covering the Trump campaign I thought this is the most awesome thing ever because I was talking about before about about reporters wanting to be on the ground floor with with a future winter nobody wanted to be on the Trump campaign because nobody thought he was going to win I was stoked to be assigned to cover Trump because I thought this is the most insane thing ever in need me anime perfect for your style Journal exactly I thought this is this is the black comedy that I was I was born to cover and born born to write and for the first I don't know 5 or 6 things that I wrote about it at

about Trump I thought it was the most amazing crazy interesting story of my lifetime and then it took this incredibly doctor Nori actually one and I think it was a dark term for him to yeah there's no question about it. There's no I mean I knew some of the people in his campaign I can't save as definitively but I had but I I have a very good educated guess that they had absolutely no expectation of it ever even seen close let alone winning and that and that they that they did this as a publicity stunt in the beginning probably with the aim of either creating a media Network or just pull string comes over all curating or whatever it was I think NBC might have pushed him towards the presidency by firing him from The Apprentice cuz he was still the host of that fucking show while he was running for president they fire him

Arnold takes over people forgot already that Arnold Schwarzenegger was for a very short time you're fired fired fired he was the guy that play more remember yeah it was really weird fucking strange NBC might have given him the final

Arnold Schwarzenegger says he's done with the Apprentice oh that's hilarious that's right blame for the ratings but I don't listen as a host of that show Donald Trump was create the perfect guy Arnold's to nice it's not the right guy is not a billionaire asshole you need a total jackass and end in the matron perfect for that show made him perfect as the main protagonist in campaign coverage which is actually really just a really long super boring reality show release that you have until Trump came along Trump completely change the dynamic of it you know if you were thinking of it in terms of how it looks to a network

what were the networks thinking before if they if they were going to have people like Scott Walker and Lindsey Graham be the stars of of their lead reality show like let's get a real performer in their right and then when they did when they when they when Trump entered The Fray and became a real Canada and started getting votes suddenly news started making money I like like real money for the first time and there's a there's an amazing data point right now which is that the public trust the Press less than ever right they believe the things that we say less than ever all the poll showed us that there's been a dramatic downturn and how much people put stock into things that people like me say right but they're watching television television news more than they ever have buy a lot so what are those two data points Stay Together put together that people are consuming news not as new as but it's entertainment there their they're watching it more right so weird

CNN made over a billion dollars last year they're just eating it's the entertainment budget that's that's all they're doing and it's all Trump which is is fascinating and kind of horrifying but but really interesting person that also what he played upon when he was running like he would say outrageous shit so they would cover him that essentially gave him Free Press absolutely yeah and there was no doubt in my mind that he was doing that intentionally I remember watching him in

in New Hampshire where he's giving a speech and you probably remember this woman stood up and said Ted Cruz a pussy Trump looks over at her that's terrible that's terrible she just had a terrible thing about Ted Cruz right and I remember I remember looking over at the at the rise roll the cameras are and you could see him thinking he's thinking it's it's a story for 6 hours of she says it it's a story for 3 days if I say it right and he thinks he goes he just said that Ted Cruz a pussy and next thing you know it like completely dominated the news in and he he completely understood the dynamic of how the news works better than than even the people in the news understood it will certainly better than Ted Cruz Cruz that the recent Praise of trump and then they go back to like what he said during the campaign all my

it is it's no one should ever listen to him ever again about anything no it was it was it it's hilarious Ted Cruz my favorite part of that whole campaign what's the thing that he couldn't shake about being the Zodiac Killer like and ask him about it next you know and end and everybody knew that it was it was bullshiting you know that he was born after the killing started and everything all that stuff but somebody would always make it a point to say so you know the rumors about and you can see that it just a completely drone to distraction he didn't know how to how to make a joke out of it yeah I know you're a Hunter S Thompson fancy to Ed Muskie absolutely crazy

welder was a rumor he is taking ibogaine and I knew about that rumor cuz I started

you drove that guy crazy to the point where you see I think it was in New Hampshire he was giving a political campaign speech in he be broke down so hundreds of this great thing he he he wrote about it it was it was kind of a spoof of campaign coverage because he he he did this whole campaign diary and then he just kind of went into this deadpan recitation of what sounded like a breaking news story about him discovering muskies secret relationship with a witch doctor who is providing him with it will gain and then he dug up some file photo of Muskie that looks like this it was like they put in a must-read Muskie in the grips of a nipple game frenzy and it was completely dead Penny ever said he was kidding never said it was

restriction and must he couldn't handle it I mean he was doing that was probably the first real political trolling that went on but had a brilliant want to because I'm a game it's not even that kind of a drug is a drug that helps people get off drugs it's a chance I'd lie enough for illegal right turn off opiates its it just ferociously introspective drug that rewires the way your brain deals with addictions it literally rewires the connection alleviates Addictions on a physical and psychological level what's the

what does it feel like I don't know I haven't done that one pill problems and have gone to Mexico and taking up my friend had an actual Center down there now he started it after he had gone down there for treatment in a back injury I believe it was and got hooked on pills and is like cheese I got to figure out a way to get off these fucking things and did ibogaine and then clear it right up wow he realize like wow but this is this is crazy that this is illegal so the one drug that punter chose was actually a drug that gets people off drugs or just even more ironic it just had a great name yeah oh yeah that really was the original political troll yeah probably did oh yeah absolutely I don't think it was an accident

Hunter's coverage was he chose that year to do these Diaries I remember my father telling me about however reporter wood would wait for a Rolling Stone come out that week so they could you know read the coverage of of the election but you know Hunter kind of took this unknown government you know of the senator from The Dakotas George McGovern it made him into this because just like Christ that you're basically I don't think that McGovern would have won the nomination without that suit of Relentless hyping that he gave him because I probably would have won the presidency if it wasn't for the vice president having that issue with he had gone through electroshock therapy legal to turn right yeah yeah that was that was terrible but but fascinating to the last last version of that

again. That's one of my favorite books of all time. Talking bug yeah I mean it's just like I did such a crazy, kappachino oh yeah definitely the great thing about Hunter Thompson he was so incredibly funny in a way that was completely rare I mean you you can't just trained to be that way if you get you either born with that ability verbally you're not and he just had this completely strange four-dimensional way of looking at things and you know he would he would watch a completely boring campaign speech and when he got done writing it up it was like you know a psychedelic wrestling match or something like that I mean it was it was so much more interesting and

bizarre and weird and he saw these great details and and he was just I think it was a great approach to journalism but you know Sally there aren't that many people who can pull it off because it just required you know the surpassing literary talented and that's that's not that's incredibly rare what was the unique combination of fiction writing along with like an actual understanding analysis and see if they have that was that was his his great cuz he cuz you're right he he he would bring you in and the reader wood would come surf along this incredibly charged fast-paced narrative that read like you know the fastest most engrossing fiction or it but he wouldn't respond or sit with any dents stop and pull back

what we call it if there were only some people of wisdom's Right Where You know you was just going to stop and say Here's my take on this and those were amazing I mean he just he just had this ability to cut through the bullshit and see see things from an angle that nobody else saw and that was the rare technique back then the id id individualized take on things nobody was doing that and Reporting back down and it was the know nobody even thought of it as a as a form that you could really experiment with him and there were a few people back then Mike Terry Southern and Tom Wolfe who are who are doing something like that but but Thompson was completely unique and there hasn't been anybody like him you know so since since that night and I think I think it's just not an accident that nobody's been able to pull that off again

you can compare to him a lot and one one way I really saw that comparison was your brilliant coverage of the financial crisis and what was the the mechanisms behind the scene of the financial crisis and that. I became really big fan of your work reading that because that I think you covered that as well if not better than anybody I will thanks yeah I mean

so I knew nothing about any I couldn't even balance my checkbook when they assignment to that story and and I had to start basically from square one and I was calling people and saying things like can you tell me something about something that I don't understand you know I was running cold calling investment Banks and literally saying that and I finally got a guy to to have lunch with me and he said your problem is that you're trying to understand this as an economically Story Once you look at it a crime story you'll get it and and from that point forward I I totally I felt like I started to understand the whole mechanism what happened to the subprime mortgage scam it really was a scam it's really it's really just a massive corporatized version of like

selling oregano is weed basically they took stuff that this is incredibly worthless highly risky mortgage loans right you know they would give out loans to everybody with a pulse you know whether you got a job or not whether you were a citizen or not didn't matter poor thing was to get the loan immediately sell it off chop it up turn into Securities and then they use this highly Advanced mathematical trick to turn all that serve mortgage hamburger into aaa-rated Securities so you'd have like a you know a junk rated mortgage like the riskiest Loan in existence something that was so toxic that country companies like country ride wouldn't want to hold onto it for more than a week cuz they were afraid of that's the stuff would blow up and then they would sell it off to like a pension fund or

insurance company in the form of a AAA rated security which you know is as safe as the US treasury bond so is it was a scam the metaphor of you know baby powder baby powder and selling it as Coke or whatever that that's exactly what it was I just took worthless shit and sold it as something that was that was called and they got they did it for years and years and years and years and that they knew that this gigantic huge bubble of risk and disaster was just accumulating in that someday it was going to all explode and Cascade and then ruin the economy but everybody was trying to time it right and and dad on when that would happen and make their money before that that Judgment Day came and it was it was fast and once I started to learn about it it was just such a

disgusting fascinating story that it was just hard not to not to get into it a crime story I think of it as a crime story I even got one guy gave me a book

it was called famous famous con artist in history right it was like this little Tom I've smaller than like the smallest paper back and it was the biography of this guy Victor lustig was his name his famous cuz he sold the Eiffel Tower twice and he had this the scam that you called I think it was called. The the Hungarian box I have to go back and look but basically what he would do if you would get on a boat in New York had this beautiful mahogany box with a crank on it that had two holes in it and he would show all the guests that he would put a blank piece of paper in one and turn a crank and a hundred-dollar bill will come out the other end and he convinced them all of it was mushy

that made money and everybody would offer him an increasing amount of money for this invention and you wouldn't sell it until the last day when he would sell a Farina for your $50,000 and then you would disappear and jump off the boat and in France never be seen again people would it is what it what's it called

wow yeah there is but but that's exactly what the more that is picture let me see his face

look at that fucking creep Michelle box again

wow that is crazy so that yes it was obviously fake and and and but that's what the mortgage can was there they they were taking

basically black paper these these subprime loans that belong to jander's who were going to foreclose within 10 minutes and they were telling people that we have this new mathematical process that allows that actually makes this stuff really safe and you can put it in your your college endowment you can put in your pension fund and so all these people you know who is retirement monies were based on Securities were buying all this shit that they thought was was aaa-rated and that's that's how they woke up and you know and then 2008-2009 they found their 401K is were or get out of wiped out by 40% or whatever it was my neighbor really did I happen to him my neighbor bought this plot of land and I had this dream to build his dream house and he would go by the plot of land and there's always cleaning up and get ready and I was talking to

and then boom 2008 happened he lost everything and he would still go by that plot of land and cleaned up and he never talked about it and they just told me lost everything yes that's never going to happen huh yeah no I think he think he died he eventually got really sick and they they took him out of his house and brought him somewhere but I think he's dead now but yeah his his story was awful awful to hear this guy who is in his 60s who had got this piece of land with a nice view and it's like this is where I'm going to drink build my dream house and you had all this money prepared for it all this money saved away and he was ready to rock and roll and then boom it all went out it just drained out somebody put a hole in the bottom of the boat and everything everything went to the bottom of the ocean probably got ripped off twice because his tax dollars went to go bail out the guys who you know some of the some of the max got stuck

play some of the shed rather than eat the losses like your your friend did they got the Federal Reserve to buy it from them or treasury sell the fuck did they get away with giving the CEOs bonuses during that time yeah yeah that was another scam like so they were if you look at the fine print of all the bailouts but it basically said that you had to repay the money by a spy X time before you could start paying people exorbitant amounts of money again but a lot of those a lot of those conditions were never really followed and do you know the conditions of repayment what kind of glossed over and the companies that they were supposed to be able to pass these things called stress test which

they were back on solid footing again before they paid people bonuses but the stress test for all fudged Indiana crime and Corruption Haley gallaty basically in every direction during that whole. And and not just in the government but in in all these companies as well yeah what was it like covering that mean how about how long did you spend working on that 7 years probably was

I did my first story about this and I got this incredible reaction because it turns out that the financial press there is nobody in the financial press who writes for ordinary people like it's basically what I was doing was a translation job I was trying to basically take what had happened and explain it in a way that a person who knew nothing about Finance would be able to understand and it turns out that nobody's doing that so all these people who had questions about it who wanted to know what happened to their money you are why do why do my house get foreclosed on or what it is you know what's with the subprime mortgage or anything you know that there was there was nobody else doing that work so I had lots of it to do and it was really interesting and I just kept doing it

trying to be depressing yeah oh yeah of course of course I mean people did God call people minorities I mean I do want story about a bank in Maryland well it's National Bank it's it's a bank that I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of people listening I have their accounts back they had to pay settlement to the government because they were intentionally targeting elderly black people to sell subprime mortgages too and they called the mud people and they're all the is this like toxic emails going back and forth about how stupid they were and how they'll buy anything etcetera etcetera emails

but the racial component of the of that crash was something that I didn't really Clue Into until late but that was a big part of it too it was a lot of it involved these mortgage lenders going into particularly like lower-middle-class black neighborhoods and knocking on doors where there be like an elderly person at home and saying hey would you like to refi your mortgage and you'll have a little bit of extra spending money this month right and the person won't know anything about financing else Del sinus refinance dealed it allows them to save a little bit of money each month not knowing that they had just converted their fixed mortgage into a floating mortgage and that as soon as the interest rates changed you know you have people who went from paying $900 a month to paying $7,000 a month right and suddenly they're out in the street

and and being out the company that sold in the loan is long gone by then date that they're not holding it they as soon as they got her name on the on the dotted line they sold off to a bank in New York who in turn again chopped up into hamburger and sold it probably to your pension fund or whoever or whatever so there's nobody she can complain too and you know yeah that stuff is really depressing what was the feeling like of having very little understanding about finance and then immersing yourself in it and how is Vaseline the same structure that our society is wrong on that are our money is established through the this is this is how we we sell houses and loans and this is what we're doing the dishes I know it was it was fascinating night before that at I was mostly covering

Recollections right and again if you cover elections it's incredibly boring and you never hear anything of substance and it's not terribly complicated and you no one won the Democrat says that you know we want to help the middle class in the Republican says who I protect my family values and that's pretty much the extent of the intellectual challenge in terms of covering that stuff and I always thought to myself in a politics in America must be a lot more complicated than this right there must be some other hidden thing where it's incredibly complex and diabolical in and do you know the real Mash addition to the power must be visible somewhere and I think that you find that when you when you start looking at the how Wall Street Works how money Works Howell Central Banking works out so you know how the concentration of wealth works I mean basically the sub

I'm scheme was an effort to pull the remaining savings out of the population I just wasn't in the old days investment Banks made their money by lending money to companies to build factories and they would make stuff and sell it on the world everybody would make money and never you know even even the the population would wood would benefit from it but that manufacturing economy it's all God it's so Percy's so you have this financial as the economy and they have no normal beneficial way to make money and all they all they can really do is look to see where is there money and how can we get it and most people had money in their houses right like the accumulated Savings of most people whatever was left after the internet crash in the nineties was in real estate and this was the scam by which they took the well that was

left in the pockets of ordinary people and transferred it to nine people in Manhattan basically I mean not that's why you have do you know if we told him we talked about wealth inequality now right it being a huge factor that you know the top 95 I'm sorry the top one percent of the population owns 90% of the wealth in the country whatever it is that's a consequence of schemes like this where they're just they're finding out where people have a little bit of money and there are systematically coming up with scams to move it from there to here with no consequence. With no consequence and that was the other part of the story that I ended up having to cover later which was the last time they tried something like this like they're in the S&L crisis which which was also serve a giant fraud scheme also that involves real estate lending and you know

but that the government after that actually you know indicted 1800 people they put 800 people in jail I put a lot of serious influential people on the dock after that nobody nobody went to jail after this stuff in there and there was and people think that well they didn't do anything that was technically legal on that bullshyt there there was lots of stuff that was that was brazenly criminally illegal I mean they they committed fraud on a broad scale but some of these companies are into the things that were even worse than that I mean do you take HSBC HSBC admit it's a laundering 850 million dollars for a pair of Central and South American drug cartels including the Sinaloa cartel right which is expected in thousands of murders like and they they admitted to this activity they agreed to a deferred-prosecution agreement with the government

nobody did a day in jail no individual had to pull out a dime out of their own Pockets to pay the shareholders ponied up 1.9 million dollars but some of that was tax deductible which means we we paid some of that fine and I and the only real punishment with any Chiefs is that some of the executives had to partially the further bonuses for 5 years so laundering 850 million dollars for narco-terrorist gets you a total walk you know that tells you basically everything you need to know about do we prosecute white collar crime in this country basically know you know I mean that's the answer ultimately that you find out and there was paperwork that show they knew it was from the cartel South yet if you if you look at the the agreement and you can watch the Thursday there's a video of

Loretta Lynch and Lanny Breuer kisses before Laura Loretta Lynch was attorney general but she was she was basically the head of this deal they talked about the fact that the HSBC branches cuz most of this was done in Mexico H Max which was the subsidiary company they had special teller Windows built to fit cash boxes that the drug cartels were bringing into the bank so basically you seem to be seeing the same in Scarface for the guys come in with duffle bag of cash to the bank and you know that's like a montage you know there's that that song I forget what song is in the background same thing these guys would come into the bank they would slide in these boxes the cash when after the other and that's admitted activity the bank signed off on this thing you know it's not like they're contesting it or not saying we neither admit nor deny it's it's part of the deal

ISO and in they agreed to the amount everything so yeah it was a 1.9 billion dollar settlement but you know what it's like it came out of the pockets of the people who did it and it's not like any of the people who did it are in jail it's just you know a thing that happened and if you know that's 5 weeks of profit for the bank so what the fuck I don't care did you see the documentary inside job in the same territory yeah that was a sobering documentary where they are talking to the very people that caused the financial crisis and and realizing that these people were economics professors that eventually got these jobs really lucrative jobs Banks and how they finagle the system and made it so it looks like these things were appropriate yeah I know I talked to some of the things they invented that made this the crash possible sounded

like good ideas like they they came up with this thing called the credit default swap right and I won't bore you with what that is exactly but basically it's a kind of insurance where it's it's basically a bet it's hard to explain but it it's a way of of Quasi insuring a product without having to Pony up a lot of money and the it's it's called the derivative right and these instruments are completely on regulated is like you and I are betting on whether or not the third person's house is going to burn in a fire right like the old school insurance said that it had to be your house in order for you to get insurance on it

this new form of Quasi insurance said that to totally disinterested parties could have an interest in it in a in a third thing that happened so it's basically gambling and on the one hand it's allowed people to create a whole lot of capital of which allowed him to lend more money which theoretically allowed people to buy more houses but in reality it just created the system where all these people had bats that were back and forth on and on all these properties that's one of the reasons why the one the crash happen when when all those mortgages start to fail it wasn't just the failures of those properties was all these people were betting on whether or not these people could could pay their mortgages they started to lose money and I know where people who had that's on that it started to lose money and it's like this cascading Whirlpool of shit that happened and it just started out as an idea to just create more money to lend to land and it turned into this

nightmare mechanical scenario that just that created losses you know in this almost apocalyptic fashion and and a lot of them had no idea that that that was going to be the eventuality

wow yeah it's just it's crazy it is definitely crazy stuff as a person who didn't really follow Finance before how much is that affected your life down like the way you look at things I definitely pay a lot more attention to the fine print when I enter into any Financial contracts I think about where I do my banking but the reality is you just don't have a whole lot of choice in this country anyway I mean it's like everything else is only a few companies left so almost every bank that's out there where you can have a bank account in the mortgage is it is a bank that I've written about some massive Scandal before so that's that's a problem but yeah I worry about it all the time but I have friends in finance to call me and they they tell me that you know that the things are incredibly unsafe and

this that and the other could could could happen then so I have an anxiety level about things that I never had before but apart from that yeah that's the natural consequence of having to spend 7 years looking at all these horror stories do you see any other bubbles coming up

deaf people talk about that all the time there's a lot of

a lot of negative press about subprime auto loans for instance which is it's not exactly the same but it's it's a similar thing to be the same basic scam of taking loans chopping them up and then repackaging them as something that's more valuable than the original loan you can do that with anything any kind of credit you can do credit cards you can get with aircraft loans you can do it with with car loans you can do it with with home mortgages and so the the mechanism of taking things that are

are toxic and risky and making them look like AAA is still is still part of the economy and it's everywhere the plus side of that is that there's more credit available in almost anybody can get a credit card or even if you had screwed up credit you can get a car I can you know I mean there's just put us on the second life cycle of build up bubble collapse build up bubble collapse rebounding collapse again that's that's that's why I have to be nervous about the queen of the skyrocketing Stock Exchange you should be right there I just went when the whole Trump saying the account has never been better look at the stock market stock markets killing it always did and then it'll have a bad day and you're right it's okay what's up we're doing great like what's going on with this bad day can you not control these bad days

what's happening here right if you're if you're in control the good days you're also control the bad days right yeah of course of course it just it seems it seems super suspicious in the old days you have a lot of confidence that well the stock market always eventually goes up so yeah there's going to be bad days but it just isn't all that hot you know like like what are we really making this country would where is the floor right like we have we have some industries that sort of perform well but if you know periodically we go through these bubbles that are based on nothing more than through Z as in the 90s it was the tech bubble where people like Alan Greenspan would say things like what we have a new paradigm in economically right so it doesn't matter whether a company hasn't shown any ability to make money or

and has no reasonable profit and loss statements it's just if it's a good idea the stock is sound and everybody should invest in it and the stock market is going to continually go out go out so don't worry about it of course that doesn't happen if everybody bought it blows up everybody loses their shirt but what do they do the FED lowers interest rates basically allows Wall Street to recapitalize drink itself sober and they plunged into the next the next Madness which is mortgages and once again you have Alan Greenspan saying hey you know real estate is a great bet it's so you know it's going to continually ass and people should use their homes as ATM machines you know you should you should consider refinancing your house so that you can get a little bit extra cash and and if this is this was actually the message they sent to America and a gigantic rates as artificial Mania where

Artemis stoked artificially to gigantic Dimensions but it's not based on anything and so when when it crashes when you finally get like any Ponzi scheme if you know it depends it depends on more new investors coming in and told investors leaving right so there's always going to be that moment when suddenly we don't have as many new ones and old ones and the instant that happens it all goes Kaboom and that's what happened with with the subprime market there was a moment in time where they just couldn't keep it going anymore they couldn't find more new suckers there to get to to sell mortgages to and the Mania ended it all went Splat and then it was Amplified by the fact that we have this system now of people betting on credit that is legal which creates more losses out of out of thin air so

yeah I'm terrified every time I see this the stock market go up what's it based on is it based on our economy actually doing well I don't know I don't think so you know I'm sorry I'm scaring you a little bit scary but I think you know I have financial advisor let them handle money when it when I hear things like this I just got Jesus I get terrified when I hear about really smart people getting scammed yesterday were talking about the Rhinos do you know that blood testing company that turned out to be total worship no I didn't hear about this so it's great story it's it's a story of one of those things where you find someone who you hope exists and you build them up there was this woman she look like Steve Jobs she wore a black turtleneck and every photo and she was the the richest ever self-made woman she was worth

4 billion dollars used to build this company called the Rhinos right out of college she was like 19 when she started the company was a blood testing company that just required a small prick of your blood to do complicated blood analysis for disease and things along those lines turns out it didn't work at all and they faked a bunch of shit and widespread fraud lot of people got their blood tested to turned out to be you know that they were at risk for all these diseases and Warren Buffett invested hundred million dollars I think 125 Betsy DeVos more than a hundred million dollars like all these super wealthy people get scammed wow yeah when you find out that really wealthy people write that do this for a living you want to buff it does that for a living right that he can get scammed out of a hundred and twenty five million dollars right

picking the the absolute long-term investment right so it's not he's not like us DV Towing type who just looks at the tape and tries to time it just right so you can you can make an investment for 10 seconds and come out with with a you know if he's investing in a company and even you can be fooled that's that's pretty terrible but look at Enron a man run was was another example of the world's best financial analysts were looking at this company for a decade and the results were completely ridiculous like it should have been obvious anyway person that that these profit numbers couldn't possibly be real and it wasn't until one of those guys and I think it was Jim chanos so it's a little bit of a famous short seller Minnesota said hey wait a minute there's something up here but

people continually invested in these companies and there's just not a whole lot of oversight that goes on with Wall Street and I think that's that's a major lesson of the last 20 years is that is that there's just not a lot of eyes on on crime in this in this area another example is I'm sorry for the way I scanned all the rich people yeah I was going to bring him up like he he was literally just said of taking money and you know when someone cashed out he would do it was it was like who's that little girl to get a big pile of cash and you know you would you take some man and throw some out but if the SEC it had it anytime

just looked at his books and said what are you invested in it all would have you know that whole house of cards would have fallen and

trades you wasn't doing anything you know and and there are a bunch of stories like this there's a great book called The Octopus which is about as somebody who did Madoff like scam another had fun same thing they weren't really making trays they were just serve creating phony profit-and-loss statements and and and creating records that look like trades are they could they take at other investors about the door actually doing anything so if anybody any expert at any time had just poke their nose and into this person's books that would have seen it in 10 seconds of boonie that's the amazing thing about this not to get back to my drug dealing book but this is one of the things that he says which is that you know you can be in the you-know-what a poor black neighborhood and a couple of kids will be on a cell phone talking about selling $10 worth of weed

I'll be picked up by cops you know within 20 minutes or something like that mean wow you know somebody like you know Bernie Madoff can commit hundred-million-dollar frogs year after year after year and not even take any effort to try to to cover it up all that well and get away with it well Bernie's big crime was it he ripped off rich people absolutely if he had done the exact same thing to poor people what he did was just it was just too easy to call what he did a crime versus what you were talking about what these Financial assets Ryan's right yeah if he if he had lawn if you have laundered it through a a slightly more legitimate process he would have gotten out fine but the one of the things that a lot of These Guys these scam artist get into it thinking that they're actually going to be real hedge funds and if they they have some stock-picking system that's actually going to make all their clients money and one of the things they find out is that a they suck

trade name they're not a performing the market and they're not that smart but be that their clients can't tell if they just make up the numbers so they're there are a number of cases of people who start out trying to be legitimate and trying to be real real investment advisors but they just end up turning at the Bernie Madoff types because it's just easy there's no there there there aren't that many people watching for it and that's that's kind of scary to it seems like there's so many people doing it how could there be enough people watching it right about how many investment firms there are and how many different people that are involved in trading how could anybody be watching all of it but even Steven so even if you take that into consideration than that then the number of eyes that are that are on this world is is ridiculously low like take take AIG AIG

he was one of the world's largest companies that pay out before it before it crashed they had like a hundred eighty thousand employees it what if it took advantage of this weird loophole that allows Financial companies to essentially choose their own regulator so because because AIG adath Thrift Savings and Loan that's basically the same thing they chose to be regulated by the OTS which is the office of thrift supervision which is this tiny tiny little you know office in Washington that oversees basically Savings and Loan operations and is this is this is actually true they had exactly one Insurance expert on staff so essentially with the world's largest insurance company was being regulated by the government office that only had

one person who really understood insurance and can't even and even that person wouldn't have understood the part of the company that blew up which was essentially an investment Bank within the insurance company that was creating you so highly Advanced serve derivative operations that they just would not have been able to understand that stuff so the government just does not place a lot of resources into you know keeping an eye on even the most basic things and when you compare that to the law enforcement other areas you know is how many how many people do we have you know where he went back bank robberies in this country or or drugs right or how many people are are being washed because they're marijuana dealers in another state sand mean it it dwarfs the number of people who are watching freakonomic rhymes

yeah one person yeah I just love the the name of it office of thrift supervision and some other cuz they're used to be the OCC officer of the Comptroller of the currency and I think they created a new regulator out of all that after the crash but but yeah AIG shows it's regulator and it's regulator you know was totally overmatched didn't couldn't understand shut and that's one of the reasons why the company blew out the company also blew up because it was run by insurance people who didn't understand

Belgian was busy wall Street's bookie all these people were betting all these Investments for bedding on whether or not mortgages were going to fail or not and AIG was selling the product that they could use to make those bats essentially you were they were taking out insurance on on packets of mortgages so if they exploded you would get a payout right it was it's like a it's like buying an insurance policy on your neighbor's house if it goes up in flames you get paid you get paid AIG was selling a product that allowed bags essentially to buy insurance on on Howard on mortgages and if they if people foreclosed if the mortgage is failed or

pools of mortgages failed if you if you bought that kind of insurance you got these huge payouts of people are betting against mortgages basically and AIG was taking all this book and but the the heads of the company were old school Insurance Executives and just didn't understand this newfangled complicated Farmers Insurance and so they would look at the numbers they were being given and even they didn't get it but it didn't understand how how expose they were and so and all the bed started going the wrong way Sunland are being asked to pay out billions of dollars and they're like where is this coming from so it's so even the companies were kind of clueless about the ship that was going on it turns out Chase listen man if it wasn't for you dummies like me would not understand why we should be scared like everybody was scared but read

your your articles about it maybe understand why and I think that's the way you described his great that you translated this stuff you actually worked at as a translator and I appreciate you work man thank you so much and forever I'm looking forward to seeing your special I ain't that the excellent thank you man I really appreciate it thank you very much Matt Taibbi ladies and gentleman thank you and thank you sponsors thank you to stamps.com go to stamps.com click on that microphone at the top of the homepage and type in JRE it will hook you up with a 4 week trial plus Postage and a digital scale that stamps.com and enter j a r e thank you again to butcher box butcherbox delivering healthy 100% grass-fed and finished beef free range organic chicken and

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I really enjoyed talking that guy he's awesome that was I was looking forward to doing it for a long time it was that was one that I was like yeah we made it

alright that's it for today thank you appreciate you buy