Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome the call it like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're going to discuss what stood out in the indictment of Donald Trump on federal charges related to his retention and handling of classified documents, and also, also his efforts to cover up his retention and handling other documents, and how Trump, once again, is asking a large segment of his supporters to essentially turn their back on principles they claim to hold dear.
And later on, we're going to react to the premise from a recent article in Esquire that asserted that we in America are living through a sex recession.
Joining me today is a man who uses his podcast to put some new flavor in your ear. Tunde Ogo and Lana Toonday. You think the original's okay, or do you think we're gonna need a remix for this one?
[00:01:10] Speaker B: Remix, for sure.
[00:01:12] Speaker A: All right. All right.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Especially on today's topic, might be a remix of the United States by the time this is all over. Let's see.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Oh, man. Now we're recording this on June 12, 2023, the day before Donald Trump goes to appear in court for, you know, based on this indictment. And, but last week, over the past few days, we got word that former President Trump was being indicted on federal charges related to his handling of classified documents and his effort, efforts to cover up the mishandling and ultimately, apparently, to not return the documents.
So now we have Trump indicted for a second time. But this one is historic because this is the first time a former president has been indicted on federal charges as opposed to state charges. So this is like the US versus Donald Trump versus state of New York or, you know, whatever and state of Georgia might come later. Now, the 37 count indictment itself is pretty wild in that, you know, it details a lot into what was going on, what Trump was doing, and also how he ultimately got caught. But as with any criminal proceeding, it's important to remember that this is just the beginning and nothing has been proven as of yet. And we still have lots of information and evidence that will hopefully come out, either corroborate what the government's laid out or refute it. But to get us started, Tunday, what stood out to you in the indictment, you know, just in terms of what was interesting or just notable?
[00:02:34] Speaker B: There's a few things, man. And it's interesting as, as you just were winding up, I never thought about what you said, which is pretty amazing because I just, for reference even to talk about it today, I pulled up the, the actual indictment on my iPad and you're right. It says United States of America versus Donald Trump. And let's not forget and Waltin Nata, who is co defendant. But you're right. I mean, it's just something surreal about seeing that the United States versus the former president. It's just. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of fascinating. And I'd say I wasn't ready even to say this, but after seeing this, it's more of, what a culmination of everything from 2015 when he walked down those escalators, you know, or he rode down the escalator and made his first pronouncement that he. When he was running for president. And my point is, is that because there's a lot of people, even in the Republican Party at that time, that said that if he were to be elected, that he had the potential to really damage the country or potentially ruin it.
And, you know, many of those people, at least on the republican side, may have changed their tune, but to see United States versus him is almost like the culmination of this whole seven years. You know, just, this just. No, I'm just saying that he's. He's. He's taken a bat to many norms and many things that we've held dear. Some maybe.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Maybe claim to hold dear.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah. And I'll say this to his defense. Maybe the system was a bit stale and we needed to throw a hand grenade under the tent, figuratively. I know some people felt that in 2015, 2016.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: But I really. His defense? Cause I don't think that's what he was trying to do. But, I mean, it is a good point on the side.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: So I'm just making a point that, hey, it changed. Sometimes can be. Can be needed. Right. But it just. And I know we'll get into this, but that's why I said just the fact you stated that it was like, wow. And I'm looking at this thing in writing like, it's true. United States versus this man. It's. It's interesting.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: So, honestly, man, I'll be a little bit more reductive than you. Like, it really is apparent when you read it. Like, this guy just doesn't think that the law should apply to him. Like, it. What. There's. There's a level of audacity that comes with this. And again, not necessarily even him. And originally him originally taking the stuff means something, but once they're like, hey, we know you got this stuff. You got to give it back. The efforts he made then is like, wow. Like, he was just decided. Or maybe this thought never occurred to him, like, hey, maybe, you know, maybe I should cut bait at a certain point and not just, you know, like completely Stonewall or have all these people doing all this stuff running behind the scenes. Like, I don't know. I've seen a lot of movies, and it feels like people, like, when you put a lot, when you have a lot of people doing stuff and message, that kind of stuff gets out eventually. So to me, there was a level of audacity about this. Like, didn't he think this would ever come up? Like. Or that these things would ever come out, so to speak? Or did he think they would just go away? And that's why I'm just like, wow, it really does read like you were talking about some of the stuff today or the other day when we were talking offline about, oh, yeah, they're sending text messages. Oh, President Trump told me to do this.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: What do you think's gonna happen with all this stuff?
To me, that's really the thing is just like, okay, so at some point, there's a disconnect here. Cause it's not even like you're being secretive in a way where you could be like, as long as somebody doesn't talk, I'll get away with this. It's like, no, you're creating paper trails.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: No, well, here's the thing. I mean, we talked about this privately, right? I mean, I thought about what this reminded me of was member the name and the audience, I'm sure, remember George Papadopoulos, who was the 28 year old guy who was on their national security team during the 2016 campaign who was.
[00:06:16] Speaker A: Totally in the air being Trumps, correct.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Yep. Thanks. So who was totally inexperienced at anything at that level? And so was drunk one night having a conversation about what kind of help they were getting from the Russians to an australian diplomat. And that person is the one who rang the bell to the FBI and started the whole Christopher Steele dossier. Right.
[00:06:36] Speaker A: So I think this, essentially, the whole Russia investigation stuff was, you know, sprung from, in significant part, somebody just blab, some 28 year old on Trump's team getting drunk and blabbing.
[00:06:49] Speaker B: Correct, exactly. So I look at this as another extension of that, and this is probably a deeper extension because back then, Trump could still attract some very competent people to be on his team. And I think what happened, what we saw post the election of 2020, is all the real competent people, like the William Barrs and the people that kind of were like a moat around some of the harder impulses, basically, it all jumped shit. It seemed probably too chaotic and all that internally. So who does he have left? And that's why I mentioned the co defendant, Waltin Nuada, because you're right. I mean, look, we'll talk about the political side. I think at the tail end of the discussion here, anyone, like you said, this is not the Mueller report.
I read a large part of the Mueller report.
You know, they had some evidence there. There's obviously some signals intelligence and human intelligence and just emails and things that they had in the Mueller report that you could make a case that there was some footsie and some feet rubbing, especially once Trump became the nominee in August of 2016 of the republican party, that the Russians, and I can understand their angle. They didn't want Hillary Clinton in because she would have been a big adversary to them.
This one, though, is cut and dry. Like you're, to your point, because he had amateur hour around him. It reminded me, reading these texts a lot like the Dominion lawsuit, where the technology and the way these people are communicating is what is incriminating them. And that's what I also felt. I mean, this is deeper than the January 6 committee hearing where you had, it was primarily Republicans blowing the whistle on what they saw internally and what was happening leading up to January 6.
This is even deeper. This is people, like you said, texting each other. POTUS. President Trump told me to do this. You know what I mean? So I think that's where this is.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Just texting each other, like, not texting a whistleblower text. Like, hey, hey, hey, man, I know he told you to do this. He told me to do that.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Like, he told me to move the boxes. And a lot of the photographs, I didn't realize this. I thought those were FBI when they went in and found it. The pictures, a lot of the pictures that they have in this indictment are what they grabbed from the phones of the employees. They were texting pictures to each other, talking about this thing is the one with the boxes all turned over.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:14] Speaker B: So, I mean, you know, look, it.
[00:09:15] Speaker A: Is what I think you raised an interesting point about, like, the, how much more cut and dry this is than I would say, particularly the Mueller report. The Mueller report, even what they were investigating then, it wasn't whether or not Trump was helped by Russia. It was whether or not Trump and his people were being, were in communication with Russia as Russia was trying to help them. You know, so it was a much more nuanced position. You're like, okay, yeah, we, Russia helped, but did Russia just do so on their own volition, which you know, is a plausible thing, too.
And even with. With January 6, that still, like, in a sense, you have a paper trail here. Like, in a very real sense. Like, these are the documents, are the paper trail, the text, and all this stuff going around. And so, again, like I said, the audacity of it is just like, okay, yeah, we've just. There was a decision that was made. It's like, look, I'm just gonna keep this stuff, and, you know, like, they're asking me about it. I'm just gonna throw them off. And it's like. It's like a movie almost. And it's like, really like that. That call was made, and it's like, you know, and then you get indicted. It's like, I can't believe you're doing this. Like, you. This is what you were ducking the whole time. But I. I want to move beyond the indictment, because, again, there's so much more that's going to happen in the legal sense from the indictment. Like, right now, we have the government's. The government has laid out what they have, basically, and they're going to.
[00:10:35] Speaker B: Can I stop you right there for a second? Just to say what they have? Because I think that's important.
Yeah. Just to say, you know, I'll quote here from the indictment. I'll just say, quote, defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries. United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerability, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military tech and plans for possible re italiation in response to a foreign attack. This. It's. My point is this is like the real stuff. You know what I mean? This is the crown jewel.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: Yes. That trivial stuff.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:09] Speaker A: This is classified.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: The people that care about law and order and the military and all that. And that's what I mean by the human part of it. This is putting our troops at risk. This is putting us as Americans at risk if this gets into the wrong hands. And to learn that this was held in boxes next to the party room in Mar a Lago. You know what I mean?
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Yeah, but I mean, the thing that you have with that and, like, you laid out. Yeah. Okay. Here's what they accused of. And I've seen a lot of throw offs on this, by the way, also, where it's like, oh, well, you know, he would just wanted his keepsakes and stuff like that. This is one of those things that we haven't talked at all right now about what his motives would be. That would be pure speculation. But the way the law is, it doesn't really matter like this. The law is set up that you just can't do this. And more significantly, I believe in this case, once if you do do this and they come back and say, hey, here's what we got, we need this stuff back. You definitely can't try to throw them off the scent, you know, Mystery Inc. Style and try to set up all this stuff and move the boxes around or they're coming here, we're gonna move them there. To me, that's the biggest thing as far as the culpability piece is that once they said, hey, we need this stuff back, it was like, oh, we don't have anything. And they know they have it. They said, hey, go move that stuff. They might show up. And so that part of it, to me, you know, is that's not, it's whether what he wanted to do with it is irrelevant from a legal standpoint and ultimately from his intense standpoint because his intent was to keep it no matter what. But I mean, I want to, I want to get past that because again, the, for this purposes conversation, there's still this lot going to come out on that. You know, it was really just about the broad strokes that we wanted to hit there. But beyond that, you know, we've seen there's two things happening here as far as, from political fallout. Piece of this. One is that Trump is running for president again. You know, so that creates just a dynamic with the people he's running against in the Republican Party in the republican primary where, you know, like there, there's just a, there's a conflict there. Do they attack him for this? Do they defend him? Which then they're defending their, their opponent and the primary and all this other stuff. But then also there is a, there's a dynamic here because right now, Republicans, for a long time, or at least a large number of Republicans, have sold themselves as the law and order party. You know, the party that it's like, hey, the law, you got to enforce the law. You know, and then, you know, law enforcement deserves some deference. You know, when things are happening, we shouldn't be questioning law enforcement, all the stuff like that. And as it relates to anyone but apparently Donald Trump, that's what we've heard. That's what we've heard with social justice stuff. That's what we've heard, you know, all the way back, going back to civil rights stuff and everything like that. And so right now, though, it does appear, appear that expressly Trump is asking his supporters to not be like that, to at least as it relates to him. Say, look, no, we're not going to be about law and order right now. It's about, what about ism now? Like, what about these other people? What about that? It's about anything about, or anything but whether or not I broke the law. So what do you, what do you see when you see this in terms of the way that this is? It's almost, it's a direct contrast to the person who says, I'm about law and order to now say, okay, well, I don't think it's fair what's being done to Trump, because ultimately, if you were about law and order before, you weren't about fairness necessarily, you were about upholding the law and, you know, dispassionately.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, look, it's, the indictment does a great job on section 22, page nine of 49, with all the public statements Trump made at the beginning of his presidency in debate about all of his, you know, his, how he would take classified information so seriously and blah, blah, blah.
So it's just, it's funny. I quote, we can't have someone in the Oval Office who doesn't understand the meaning of the word confidential or classified. He said that September 6, 2016. But remember, that's when it was in his interest to behave that way because Hillary Clinton was getting hammered, and rightfully so, for her email issues and the fact that she may have had classified information on a server that was at her house. So I think what we've seen here, and everybody, including his strongest supporters, can, you know, usually acknowledge this, that Trump is mercurial and that he will say certain things at times when, just like, I think because his, his supporters listening would, would know this, that I think two weeks ago to be, you know, the contrarian to Ron DeSantis. Now he said he's never heard of woke. And what's woke, remember, come on, from a guy who said it a million times in the last three years. So that's what I'm saying is at some point, I think, to peel out to 30,000ft on this comment, everybody knows what they're looking at, even the people that really like them. Right? And I think everybody needs to make a choice. Some people made a choice early on, maybe in 2015, 2016, that they saw that this would be damaging potentially to our national discourse, our spirit, our norms. Some people, you know, realize that maybe further along the way through his administration, some people it took maybe after the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and some people, this might be it. And then there's still going to be a whole lot of people that are going to continue to look the other way. And I think, you know, the further we go down, I just saw a poll today that was taken last week after this stuff generally came out that 80% of Americans believe that this is very serious and that he should be held accountable for taking this classified information.
So are we now? Do we have one half of the political system in terms of the Republican Party performing for 20% of the country? I don't know. Maybe that's where we're going. But I think that this is a decade in the making, and I'll hand it back, but this is going back to the influence from the tea party. And then Trump saw it. And this type of energy that's within the GOP base that does not want to be part of the mainstream kind of reality that the rest of us are in.
[00:17:02] Speaker A: Yeah, reactionary kind of. It's. Yeah, it's a reactionary kind of mindset. It's not a conservative mindset. It is a, it's not trying to maintain the status quo. It's not trying to return to some previous, either actual or imagined, as becoming imagined, though.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: That's what I think.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: That's what.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: What I would want to say, though, on this, and which is really interesting to me, is I always remember, like, Trump is. Yeah, mercurial is a good way to say it. Like, Trump is, like everybody say, he'll say what he needs to say in the moment to win that moment, you know, and we all know people like that. You know, like, so it's not something like, oh, I've never met anybody like that before. But he does it on a national stage, and he's able to do so in a way that he's been very successful with for a long time, you know, to his credit. But I'm always reminded of James Comey in these situations, because Comey was the one that said, quote, trump eats your soul in small bites. He's always asking you to make small compromise, small compromise, or a large compromise, but he's always asking you to make compromises on your values or what you hold dear. And ultimately, at the end, Comey's point was, at the end of that, you have nothing left. You have no principles or morals anymore, because you're just, your only value is him. Because he's asked you to make all these small, these small compromises on yourself. And I always think about that because at the time when he said that and around that time, what I pointed to was the evangelicals who wrestled with this, with Trump, you know, and then who he was, because evangelicals and the Christian, you know, the religious right had for a long time held out there that being an honorable person, being like a decent person, you know, being a good family man or, you know, some stuff like that was important to them, that was part of their principles. And if you weren't that stuff, you were unworthy for these positions of leadership, so to speak. And he offered him a deal. He said, look, I'll give you your judges. Look past all my, you know, like, I'm a wild guy, you know, like, and you know what? You can argue with Roe v. Wade going down, that that compromise that they made, the religious right made may have been worth it for them, but it was a compromise nonetheless. And so to me, this, I see this is the same thing that's happening now with the law and order crowd. You know, it's like, look, he's been indicted now. It's not hypothetical anymore. You know, like, oh, well, you know, we don't want, you know, this may happen or that may happen and, you know, this investigation and stuff like that, like, this is an federal indictment, United States versus Donald Trump. And he's going to ask them, and he's already asking them to, hey, do not support rule of law. So I know I previously said no one man is above the law. Now, let's take that back. I'm above the law and everybody else is under the law. And that's the compromise that he's asking them to make. And I won. Based on his past precedent and his ability to get people to do this, seems like he's going to be able to get everybody, well, not everybody. Get the people who are inclined to support him to make this, this compromise as well. And it's just another bite out of their soul, you know, in the words of James Comey, well, this is where.
[00:19:56] Speaker B: You know, if you look back over the last decade, and I think, you know, this is where kind of the intellectual crowd and kind of, quote unquote, the elites, right, the people who couldn't, who kept trying both on the right and the left side of the american political spectrum, tried to kind of always figure it out and game out what he was doing and were so shocked and surprised when he did certain things. And then I think we see the culmination of it now, and I think we're at that, that inflection point.
Who's going to win this one? Is it, is it going to be him or is it going to be the United States in the system, because.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: I don't know, is it going to be rule of law or is it going to be.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't have the answer because you're absolutely right when you make the point that, yes, did the evangelical christian community make compromises? And I guess for many, held their nose in a certain way and the end justified the means and it was a transactional relationship.
[00:20:49] Speaker A: You've said this before. I believe it was. You said this before, which is a very unreligious approach. INS justified means is typically not the approaches that are preached in religious context. But go ahead.
[00:21:01] Speaker B: Maybe they're showing us they're human beings and so and so, and they're not perfect, but that's neither here nor there. Right. Like, we can see it. It was a transactional move and it worked out in their mind that, yeah, Trump gave them the judges and made certain things happen that the evangelical community hadn't gotten from any republican presidents in our lifetime. So I, you know, do we got to acknowledge that? Right. You're right. I don't know what the compromise for someone who wants to look the other way on this is because what you're compromising.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Peace.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Like, what everybody could see. Like we, there were contemporary stories discussing it in the, in 2016, you know, when it was grab them by the you know what and all that is like, oh, what are the evangelicals going to do about this? What are the, what's the heart religious right going to do about this? And, you know, like he, and Trump comes out, hey, I'm going to do all the judges. I'm going to bring Mike Pence in. Like he said, he tried to make a deal and they made a deal, but we could see what they wanted. You know, like they wanted the Roe v. Wade overturned. The piece that I don't see right now. And maybe it'll become later. He's going to what the law and order crowd wants.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: No, he's going to bring in Chief Wiggum from the Simpsons.
That's going to be his ag. So he's going to say, okay, no, that doesn't work. Okay.
[00:22:11] Speaker A: But I mean, no, if you can tell me, man, I would be interested in, like, what?
[00:22:15] Speaker B: No, here's the thing.
[00:22:16] Speaker A: We called him, well, let me say this. We called him reactionary. I called him reactionary previously. So I don't know if what they want is to go back to some either real or imagined past and they think he's going to be able to implement that here in the United States or what else it is like, what is it? Because the piece I don't understand about that is what is it that he and only he can provide for them?
[00:22:35] Speaker B: You know, here's, here's, let me answer that in a second or not in a second, but with this kind of few seconds here, because this is now no longer rational mindsets. Right? People that are really, really gonna defend him on this one are people who have emotionally staked themselves in a position where their value system is based on how he does so they can't really make emotionally, they can't make a reverse. It's very difficult.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: Let me add something that as well. And that's the, the whole concept of, of teams, you know, or aka political parties, like, and just like at a certain point, and we've seen this now, the motivation can be simple as, as simple as, I don't want the other side to get a win. Like, regardless of what it could be like.
[00:23:21] Speaker B: No, but I think it's deeper than that. And that's why another symbolism of this type of authoritarian bend to just this one man dictatorship that the party has right now was in 2020. Remember when the platform.
And think about, but think about. I thought about.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Say it. Say what it is.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: The Republican Party platform was, we have no platform as a party. It's whatever Trump says.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: And that paraphrasing, but that is very close.
[00:23:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that was very close to what they had in writing. And. No, but here's what I thought of. Think about what's the role of a political party? Because you don't really need political parties for people to run. I mean, if you just had a mechanism where people go throw their hat in a ring, we could have a thousand people running for president every year. Right? And just different ideas, different parties. Part of the idea of a party is to vet candidates, make sure that they're prepared for the big stage, and make sure that they are kind of, that there's some kind of reality to whatever they're saying. And I thought about this name. I thought this, this kind of the republican party no longer being able to vet itself and some of these people coming through the ranks, because I'm not here to say that the democratic party is great, but I am here to say that the democratic party has stuck with its own ideals. I know when I get a Democrat, I'm getting green energy, I'm getting some social safety nets, the higher tax rates. That's the regular stuff that we used to argue about, the Republicans and Democrats. When I get a Republican now, like you asked earlier, I don't know, am I getting a law and order person? Am I getting a religious person or someone who's going to excuse non religious behavior because they're just going to get the Un justifying the means? So I just.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: Well, but to your point, though, what are the ends at that point? Are your ends law and order or your ends that we need to break down the wall between religion and government?
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Well, this is an inflection point because this is a very, getting back to the indictment specifically, it's an extremely clear cut case of. Because he's quoting in here. I mean, I'll read a quote from, he says, see, as president, I could have declassified it. The staffer. Yeah. Trump now I can't, you know, this is still a secret. Staffer yeah. Laughter now we have a problem. Trump isn't that interesting.
He's acknowledging, I can't declassify it because I'm not president and I have it. And we have a problem with the staffers and staffers laughing and Trump's like, yeah, this is interesting.
[00:25:45] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: This is like a phone call to Georgia. This is worse.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Well, I mean, I don't know if.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: It'S worse, but it's about the same.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: It's essentially, it's actually worse in the.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Sense that what we just said, we have information that is so highly classified, it was marked non for, which is that no one foreign could see this. Only american intelligence people. We have stuff that's for the five Eyes only, you know, our most trusted allies, you know, the Brits, the New Zealanders, the Aussies and the Canadians. And there's a reason why these relationships are important. And that's what I mean by not only damaging our military and people potentially can, you know, suffer for this, you know, remember there's something like a lot of news headlines come back to me in this era. Remember I told you in 2022, I started, I saw an article that in 2021, the CIA, like 100%, sorry. Well, not 100%. 100 of their assets around the world has disappeared.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:26:44] Speaker B: And they couldn't find them. I'm thinking, I don't know how long it takes to groom and really create an asset for the CIA, but it doesn't happen overnight. And how did, who knew where those hundred people were around the world scattered.
[00:26:57] Speaker A: And who they were and all of that. Yeah, yeah.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: And how they disappeared. That's what I'm saying. We're finding out that from the time that the National Archives asked for these documents in around February of 2021, realizing that they weren't returned to the time that the FBI raids the president's house in August of 22.
That's a long time that those documents could have been floating around.
[00:27:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And we don't know what happened for the stuff the whole time. And they're getting thrown off the scent and everything like that. Yeah. I mean, I think that you threw a lot out there, right there. But, I mean, I think the concept of how damaging this is, I only.
[00:27:36] Speaker B: Got an hour to have this show, so, you know, I gotta cram it all in.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah, but the concept of how damaging this is is like, that's the part that we won't know for years, you know, because, and then we won't ever really know. Because if something did get out, it's not in our interest to say that it got out, you know, and so, but damaging to the actual human beings that are putting their neck on the line to acquire this stuff, which is another piece that was acknowledged by Trump. You know, they got from the indictment. November 3, 2016 Trump stated service members here in North Carolina have risked their lives to acquire classified intelligence to protect our country. So he's, he's aware of that, you know, so it's not just something that's damaging from that standpoint. But you pointed out some of this stuff is damaging to our, you know, with our allies. You know, like, do we want to be the guy who can't be trusted? You know, is that what that, is that who we are now in the United States here and over the world? Like, oh, give it to Americans and they're going to have, you know, former presidents running off with this stuff and showing it off at dinner party, you know, like, is that, is that us now? You know, and more so. I mean, I think the vast majority Americans understand that this is serious, but which is why I'm just fascinated by the trump aspect of this in that, you know, it's another one of these scenarios where he says to people, he who support him, who like him, you know, who are fond of him, don't worry about this, just keep putting your faith in me. And that's a lot like, the only I can save it. That's a lot like a lot of the themes. And as you point, you threw it in there. But the themes all point to one man above all others, more of an authoritarian type of an approach. That's how the Putin's of the world sell themselves, or the orbans they sell themselves as. I'm the one that can make all this happen for you. Our system typically hasn't been like that since George Washington, basically, who made it a point to not run anymore after his second term. We've been a system based government and nation. You know, our system is what we hold dear, maintaining our system. And so it's not lost on me right now that what he's asking us, his people to do is to turn their back on the system, support me over the system, which is where you get, it's real dangerous. So, but I want to move on. But I know I want to get, just briefly your thoughts on how you think this will play out.
I don't think from a criminal standpoint or you can go into either criminal or a political standpoint, either one.
[00:30:04] Speaker B: On the political side, you know, I won't speak to the legal side. I think that's got to play out. But on the political side, I, I mean, look, at this point, I think we're going to have a rally around the felon kind of moment here. Yeah. I mean, what you've already seen, I mean, I think this is the sad part, right. Is that everything so polarized and for some reason, I mean, I shouldn't say for some reason, the Republican Party has chosen to exist in the recent years on kind of a minority rule because they continue to lose at the national level or maybe not perform as well, like in 2022 in the midterms. And I feel like this lining up and circling the wagons around this stuff that is very cut and dry, there's no ambiguity about what happened in this case is not going to help them at the national political level. But I recognize through redistricting and the electoral college and all that, they're being very strategic in trying to just hold on to their base. They're not really growing it. And so I think what we're going to see politically is what we've already started to see. Think about it. When this, when the indictment was announced last week, before anyone saw it, they're already circling the wagons without knowing what the facts of the indictment are. So once you do that, you can't just now, like this week, come say, well, now that I read it, I'm totally changing my tune and I think we should, you know, take some time to see how the trial plays out and let the justice system do its thing. I think they're going to continue attacking the United States government. They're going to continue to attack the FBI and the justice system. And it's, it's, and like you said, for what? For one man who has continued to show us that he doesn't care about the norms and the rule of a, of kind of, you know, our country.
[00:31:47] Speaker A: So, I mean, beyond that, he doesn't care about anything but himself. Yeah, like, that's the, that's kind of the craziest thing about it to me is like, he doesn't deliver for his friends in that sense. Like, he leaves a wake of people that are broke or in jail, you know, like, and it's like, yeah, I mean, you're right.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Think about it. All the insurrection people that are in jail right now that went for him in their trials, they said we went because President Trump told us to, and they're sitting in jail now. He promises to pardon a lot of them and all that if he gets back in. But, you know, and this is the thing on the political side, that's why started with this. And I think it's just interesting. I don't have to talk much about it, but I've never seen a presidential campaign where the majority of the people campaigning, like, competing with the former president in the primary is, are sitting there defending him. You would think this would be the time to put a bullet at him. You kick him down the stairs while he's already kind of tripping.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: But, so I think they're making a calculation, man. I mean, and that, that's like, they're making a, you know, at least reasonably informed calculation that if they do that, they'll, they'll be losing the, the primary, basically, or else.
[00:32:54] Speaker B: That's why it's fascinating because how do you get past this one man rule, right. If as a competitor in a democratic environment, you have to toe the line and also defend him when you're trying to tell everybody to vote for me because I'm better or different than him somehow. So, yeah, that's why it's just fascinating to me.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: It creates a pickle, for sure.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: For me, as far as, like, yeah. Like, as far as how I see this playing out, like, these things take a long time.
And so what I think, and this is unfortunate, and I think you already saw, you mentioned this already and this, the seeds of it is that the loser here is the american system and the american people who are faithful to the constitution. I mean, honestly, like, who put the constitution above partisanship, put the constitution above anything else. And I say mean that on any side, you know, like, because Democrats, so to speak, don't win if the constitution is driven drug through the mud, you know, and I think this, that's what's going to be the biggest takeaway here. It's not about Donald Trump. You know, like Donald Trump, you know, he's a man, you know, like, so, you know, he's gonna have his run and then that'll be that. And, you know, like, but our country outlives men. At least the intention for it is, you know, and so where you can see the tip off on where you can see this is going to is what you already pointed to. And that is the fact that before anybody saw what was in this thing, they were already priming the pump to be biased against it and staking out positions very definitively that it was wrong or it was bad. There was no, well, let's wait and see and let the legal process play out, which is like PR 101 in many respects. You know, it was like, oh, just let the legal process. Can't comment on active daddy. That's, that's like PR 101. And so it wasn't that, though. That wasn't the message that was going out, at least on the, on the right. And so to me, that kind that's not going to soften as he put the Trump potentially becomes in more and more jeopardy. That's going to harden. And so you're staking out these positions that are anti rule of law. And I don't know how far that's going to go or if that can be all unwound eventually and relatively easily. But you're really, I see a lot of poisoning of the well. And that's what, to me, I think is going to, what we look back in five years, what we're going to see is that, wow, there was so much done to poison the well there in terms of the legitimacy of a system that's based on rule of law where no one man is supposed to be above the law.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: You know, I'm so disappointed in looking at our leaders, and I say ours because they're mine and yours to these republican leaders in the Senate and the Congress, because they're political leaders in our country and we're american. Right? And so the majority of people in Congress and Senate are actually attorneys. And I'd say a majority of the republican senators went to Ivy League schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, as much as they don't like to flaunt it.
And they understand, like guys like Josh Howley, Ted Cruz tried cases in front of the Supreme Court. They understand how the legal process works. They understand the fourth and the 6th amendment due process. They understand that this was not a political witch hunt. They understand why Joe Biden and Mike Pence didn't get the same type of level of scrutiny because they cooperated and that Trump didn't. You know, I was even reading about an article where they were complaining about Hillary's emails and I didn't know this. This is a rule that I learned in reading that at the attorneys for the defendant, when it's a government official and it's their emails, the attorneys themselves can go through and purge emails that deal with personal stuff like scheduling your frigging senior grandkid or whatever. So what happened is there were 60,000 emails originally and the lawyers gave over 30 and said, hey, the other 30 we deleted because they were all personal. I don't know if that's true or not. My point is, is that this is a rule that's been well known and this is probably why since 2017 that Trump was in office, no one went after Hillary Clinton because they all get the same rights. But instead of being honest to the american people and just allowing this type of information to come out so they can say, you know, we don't need to have all this energy going this direction that's going to destroy the country, these are rules that are in place. If you don't like it, you know, we can legislate it and all that. They come and say this is a witch hunt. This is, what about ism? Why aren't you getting these people on that? And I don't blame some of the people watching it because if you've got a senator and a congressperson who are trusted people and trusted messengers telling you something that seems serious, you're going to believe it. So I do claim the people in control of the party because they have had multiple chances to be honest with the american people after the insurrection, now after this one, and they just not, so this is going to be the.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: Ones with the real responsibility. You know, like, in a sense, they.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: What do you expect from the people? Right.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Well, yeah, but, exactly, because the other piece you didn't mention is that's also where that, what their media source are telling them as well. Yeah, but the media sources, like, I would say the news media should have a higher obligation and responsibility, but that's not explicitly encoded in anywhere. But the elected leadership does. You know, like, the responsibility of leadership is not just to respond to and follow the public, it's called a leader because the whole point is that you're supposed to exercise leadership. You don't just follow consensus, you build consensus. And so the, what you point out is very, very, very important in terms of, because the only way this gets pulled back in terms of this poisoning of the well that's about to happen, Donald Trump's not going to do it. He's shown that he will blow something up if he can't control it. You know, he's fine with that. And, but if the rest of the leadership, you would, they're the only place that can be a Democrat or even a federal judge most likely is not going to convince the people that have been convinced to go down this path and eschew the rule of law. They're not going to convince them. It's going to have to be somebody that they trust who's on, they see as on their side, who's going to say, look, rule of law is important to us, to all of us. This is something that we should take seriously. And that's the message you don't see happening. You didn't see that happening. You didn't see people saying, hey, let's wait and see what it says. You don't see people saying, now, hey, let's wait and see what the evidence, if they could prove their case, none of that. It's like complete anti this, you know, anti rule of law at every step. And so, like, so we're just going to keep going down this road. But I do want to get to the next topic.
The, the second topic we had today is essentially a complete 180, you know, from, from the political and legal thing that we were discussing just now. But it was very interesting, you know, just on the headline. It's something that is incredibly interesting. But what it talks about essentially, or what the, what the thing, the premise, this is from Esquire magazine. We'll have it in the show notes, is title of the article is we're living through a sex recession. So, yeah. You see that thing? Yeah. That is if there's ever been clickbait for many adults. What is exactly is that, I know what a recession is. I know the other thing is, what exactly is the recession there? But I want to get your reaction to this, because now the article went in a more anecdotal way, but it did give some pretty interesting stats in terms of how people are behaving relative to back in the past and just how the direction the american culture is taking in terms of intimacy and sex in particular. So, you know, what were your thoughts on this?
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, it was interesting, like you said, about the direction things have been going. We've been hearing about these things. I think I spoke to you offline about an article I had read about loneliness and it's just about friendship and how most adults, especially adult men, I think the number I saw is interesting. The amount of men with six or more, what they would consider close personal friends, has dropped 50% in the. Since 1990.
[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: And so. And so I think that, you know.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Which is significant because we, while we use sexual reproduction and pleasure and all other stuff, we're social creatures.
[00:40:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: You know.
[00:40:57] Speaker B: Well, I think that the two come kind of hand in hand.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Right.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: Like you. You got to be out and kind of mingling with people to eventually have sex with one of them. Right. So if you're not. If we're kind of all kind of more, you know, insulated.
And it's probably a combination of many things, I think, you know, the technology and all that. Yeah.
[00:41:14] Speaker A: We.
[00:41:14] Speaker B: We all kind of stay at home more. We. We've been able to make our homes much more entertaining. So it's kind of, you know, the idea of going to movie theaters and certain things is less than it was maybe 2030 years ago, and we didn't have all this cool, fancy stuff in our house and 70 inch tvs and streaming services and all that stuff. And then I think there is something I've read other studies that talk about just kind of I don't want to use. I mean, I'm going to use it because it's the only word I can think of. But almost the word prudish, like prude like that. Americans more so than some other cultures. And I think Japan is one as well, wherever. I just. The younger generations are less interested in exploring, you know, kind of sex and the other sex, in a sense. And the article does a good job of saying how, you know, people complained about too much sex in the early seventies on tv, but they were talking about the love boat shows like that where. And now we have, like, literally porn is everywhere. You got sites like Tinder you can easily hook up with people. And so it's kind of interesting that, I guess, as we've gotten the ability to maybe to get our rocks off more virtually, maybe. Let me put it that way, maybe where people are kind of subconsciously choosing less to deal with other people because, you know, dealing with other people actually takes work. Right.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: But throwing up your iPad and going to Pornhub, you know, and knocking one out in 510 minutes, that doesn't take much work.
[00:42:50] Speaker A: I mean, I'm sure there's something to that, but, I mean, our hormones are supposed to make us want to get out and do that. And especially, like, this is not really the conversation that 40 plus year old men, you know, would specialize in. I'm looking more at the younger generations, and even the statistics provided, you know, talk about a drop in an activity from the younger generations. The people that are, you know, like, they're on fire all the time and they're ready to go. And so what's happening there? There's a couple things that I'd want to see, like, and I would want to see from a cultural standpoint, like, I'd want to see these numbers if they're tracking them from other countries as well, other parts of the world, because I imagine there's not something going on with humanity in that sense, you know, so it definitely would be something about our culture that's happening. And then anytime you have something like that, it's going to be difficult, if not impossible, to isolate individual factors. But I'm sure there are certain things that we can point to.
One of the things that I noted in the article is it talked about kind of this arc starting with the sexual revolution in the 719 seventies, which came out of a very repressive time, you know, especially for women, but just in general. And, but everything was still there. Like, you have this, that, you know, you come out of this, that this very repressive time, and there's more openness, but things are still structured in a way where, you know, the quote unquote male gaze, you know, sex is viewed in that sense, and that's what's presented on television and all the other type of stuff. So you have that. You're looking at that. And so the people that are involved there are coming out of something. They're exploring something new. This is, this wasn't a part of their lives. This wasn't something that they saw their whole lives. Like, oh, yeah, that's just what it is. To get to the point, I wonder if sex has been so incor, like, incorporated into our culture. Like, it's not a thing to see people in skimpy clothes or, you know, just all types of stuff, you know, simulated acts and movies and tv and all that kind of stuff. Like it, has it become like, too ho hum? Like, is, is it just peanut butter and jelly now? Like, that's just like the, just the, the act, the, the desire. It's like, oh, you know, that's no big deal. Which, how could that be no big deal? Somebody like me. But even then, I grew up in the nineties. I mean, that's nineties, two thousands. Like, it still was, there was still much more. That was taboo in our. In society versus now, when so little in many, you know, in many environments, particularly amongst young people, so little was taboo, you know, so is there. You take away the. There's no rebellious aspect of it at all.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. That's kind of an irony, actually, that actually, the more you. And you know what? I'll say this. I think we did a show years ago on the kind of this concept of if you legalize drugs, and we talked about the country. I think it was either Portugal or Peru. I just can't remember. It was a country that started with a p, that had legalized basically pretty much all forms of drugs, and they didn't see an uptick in crime at all. And I think that. And I think that that's what happens, that maybe we found that out, because I think especially in the United States, we have kind of this. This influence of kind of the puritan culture, and then we still have the victorian age protestant culture from. From kind of the european to british.
[00:46:09] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:10] Speaker B: And a lot of that was very prudish, you know, remember, think about it.
[00:46:13] Speaker A: And they. That those groups used to control, like, our media images and stuff like that, and now they don't even back to the nineties. Like, I want to say this real quick, like the Super bowl show with Janet Jackson. Like, you know, they're this pasty gets ripped off or something. And it's like a huge deal if that. Nowadays, I don't think people would really blink an eye.
[00:46:32] Speaker B: Well, remember we spoke at a recent. On a recent show, we're talking about another topic. But I made the comment about how in the fifties, it was Elvis Presley who was, like, shaking his hips. Dangerous thing, because he was literally shaking his hips with jeans and a shirt on.
And so, and so my point kind.
[00:46:48] Speaker A: Of is, like, nowadays, people wouldn't get out of bed for something like that.
[00:46:50] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: Well, think about is everybody. People talk about being desensitized to violence. I wonder if people are desensitized to sex.
[00:46:58] Speaker B: No, I think.
[00:46:59] Speaker A: But it's in opposite. Because our hormones are supposed to take care of that.
[00:47:02] Speaker B: But think about it. But it's interesting, right? Like, I mean, you're right. I mean, there's a. There is an interesting conversation that. Yeah. You know, human evolution has definitely made it that our hormones make us want these things.
[00:47:14] Speaker A: Maybe these aren't necessarily conscious decisions on our part. This is, like, how we're wired.
[00:47:19] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But I think it's interesting because as we're talking about, you know, whether it's, it's, it's, it's the love boat in the seventies, Elba, Elvis in the fifties, you know, Janet Jackson, you know, 15 years ago, whenever that was. I mean, I'm thinking about what, like I said in the victorian age, remember the jokes back then were in the 18 hundreds is if a woman showed her ankle.
[00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:37] Speaker B: Remember that's supposed to be showing a little leg. I was like, showing some ankle was like, turn guys on. So I think it's a function of the more things that are covered, the more the human imagination is allowed to run wild and want to fetishize something or be, or think of it as mysterious. And I think probably this is why when you had colonization of Europeans and some of the other cultures in the world, there was this sense that they were uncivilized because they were unclothed. You know what I mean? And so this idea, because think, like you said, you know, some hunter gatherer tribe in the Amazon or in the african savannah or something, you know, you're right. They had to procreate in their hormones, made sure they had sex. But, you know, ladies running around bare chested. The guys weren't running around sitting there saying, oh, look at her. Boobs are out. Ha ha. They became desensitized.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: And in our society, there's some cultures.
[00:48:29] Speaker A: Actually, where they're not even considered part of the, like a sexual attraction, you know? No, but I'm just saying related, we've.
[00:48:36] Speaker B: Seen kind of in the United States, in our culture, you almost get more sex appeal having a woman in a real skimpy bikini or something like that than having her fully nude. Because having that little bit of mystery of what's under the, that little bit of the clothes may actually kind of turn men on more to this, this kind of, this, this, this fantasy of what's under there versus just a straight.
[00:48:57] Speaker A: Naked body is like, okay, I don't know, man. That's spoken like a man in his forties. I don't know if a man in his twenties would agree on that. But there's a couple other things I wanted to mention on this.
[00:49:07] Speaker B: No comment.
[00:49:09] Speaker A: But the other thing I like, the other piece I can't really, or I'm trying to sort out from this is the impact of maybe disease, you know? And there's always been, you know, with sex, the, the quote unquote threat, if you're talking about just kind of leisurely, you know, just for fun, so to speak, of pregnancy. But we also have saw once the sexual revolution hit particularly, like, it became very, very, very prominent, just STD's and so forth and a varying stuff. So I wonder if that.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: Sure. That did, you know.
[00:49:43] Speaker A: Well, but see, but it didn't put a chill on it in the nineties, or at least to the extent that it has now. And so that's why I'm trying to sort it out. But it is something that is a negative feedback loop. Like, hey, go out and have, because some of the stats talk about the numbers of number of partners, you know, I'm saying. And so that may be where it's like, well, people are just not necessarily seeing out as many new partners because there's a negative feedback loop there. But honestly, man, I really can't make anything of it. The other thing, I'll make a part.
[00:50:08] Speaker B: Of it because I've talked to some older people older than us that, you know, told me about, you know, the.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: People who we, who we, I remember.
[00:50:16] Speaker B: Seventies, you know, they'll say, I remember the seventies. And in other kind of good studio 54 type of environment, you're right, people would just kind of swap around with each other. But they say when in the eighties, when AIDS came and this kind of stuff got real serious, like, you're gonna die, you did it. I'm sure that there was some, some effect of that. I'm not saying it was the majority of it because I think if you, if you put that together with, like we said, the ability for people to just be more distracted, the ability for people to have access to other ways to satisfy themselves without having to deal with somebody, you know, and all that, and then you put down also, and I don't want to make this, you know, negative about certain ways that, you know, women have had a better run at being protected from sexual violence and predation in the last couple decades than in prior decades. But there is something about kind of, I know the me too movement is very recent, but I mean, the last 20 years, women's rights have been much more taken serious. And I think there is in a good, and I say this in a good way. Right. Like a lot of guys used to do some stupid stuff when it came about just, you know, drinking, things that.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: We would consider, things that we would consider inappropriate, you know, and, and.
[00:51:26] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think it goes back to conversations that have been had openly kind of in our, in our public discourse in, in the last decade or so, like when certain politicians were accused of when they were in their thirties chasing high school kids. And you find out, hey, you know what, Elvis Presley was 25 when he married Lisa Marie. She was 13. There was a time when guys in her twenties or thirties were actually marrying and dating women in their teens, and that was the norm then. It's not the norm anymore.
[00:51:54] Speaker A: The cultural norms. I mean, and to that same point, women were expected to deal with stuff, you know, in terms of, like, they're not expected, like, now it's like, well, no, that's not cool.
[00:52:05] Speaker B: You can't correct, like, a lot of things that happened even when we were in college. And I'll say this very seriously, not as a joke and not saying that you or I, you know, did these things, but, you know, they would be unacceptable today. Let's just leave it at that. Right? And that's, and that's just life. So I think if you combined, and I say that with all respect to, you know, the fact that it's, I'd rather be a woman in today's environment than, you know, just even 2030 years ago. So, so I think it's, you need.
[00:52:30] Speaker A: To be careful saying that in 2023 because that, that statement right there can be confused very easily in a whole nother way.
So just make sure you're clear as far as what you mean right there.
[00:52:45] Speaker B: Are you talking anything to do with if I wasn't a woman at birth, but I am just confused, man.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:55] Speaker B: All right. Now I'm officially too old for these conversations.
[00:52:58] Speaker A: Yeah, there you go.
[00:52:59] Speaker B: I'm growing and I want to go to bed.
[00:53:02] Speaker A: That's exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying, if you would have said that in 1995, nobody would have thought anything of it. You say that in 2023, people were like, what did he mean by that? Should I call. Should I call Tunde?
[00:53:11] Speaker B: They, I mean, the type of human that's born with a vagina, they come out of their, their birthing parents womb. Let's just put it, there you go.
[00:53:22] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:53:23] Speaker B: Is that a definition of a woman? Is that a born.
[00:53:27] Speaker A: I want to, I do want to close this up, but there's one other, one other potential, like, I guess that I was going through in my mind all these different things that could be at play. The other thing is hormones themselves. Like I keep mentioning, our hormones are supposed to take care of that. Our hormones are supposed to take care of that. Well, we do know that BPA and all, there's things in our environments that are screwing with our hormones. And so it's very conceivable to me that that's something that might be getting screwed with as well. And honestly, that may be the one issue that is above among all, you know? But obviously, that's something we would never get to the bottom of because people make a lot of money selling all these things that put all these chemicals in our body. And so, you know, if tobacco was able to escape judgment for so long and that was so cut and dry, this kind of nebulous, you know. Oh, yeah, you put drink or you put to rub this thing on your skin that has this thing in it. It lowers your hormone, it lowers your testosterone. But again, and we see all of that now. Like, all of these things test even younger men, testosterone is lower. Or this and that. Like, so I think there also could be something going on there that's a part of this as well, because I keep saying it, our homos are supposed to take care of this. Like, this isn't something where we're supposed to be consciously planning it out. Like, okay, yeah, yeah, we need to have. We need to do it this much, and we need to do it with this many people. And it's like, no, no, no. We're programmed to seek this out to some degree. And if the opportunity is still there to seek it out and in fact, has been maybe made easier, it just. It defies a certain amount of logic that the conduct would decline in that sense. So that's all I got.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Yeah, that's cool. Well, we can wrap it up. Cause I don't want to keep talking about a sex recession, or I'll be winning one. So I gotta go.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: We gotta be very careful.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: If my wife texts you later and says, jamie, what the hell did you guys talk about on that show? Cause this guy won't leave me alone. Then you can prove a point. Yeah. Yeah. Just say, just deal with him today, tonight, and I'll apologize to you tomorrow.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: That's hilarious.
[00:55:22] Speaker B: He's gotta prove a point. That's exactly what you're gonna say.
[00:55:26] Speaker A: I feel like everybody listening to this, everybody's conversation might need to go prove a point.
I don't want to contribute to a recession, so. But no, we can. We can close this up from here. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call. Like I said, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review us, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend. Until next time, I'm James Keys tune to Elgato. All right, we'll talk to you next time.
