Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to 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 the historic nature of the indictment of former President Donald Trump by a Manhattan district attorney and consider whether there are any parallels to what we're seeing in Israel right now, where you have a Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is attempting to weaken the judiciary of his country while he's, he's been indicted and then facing investigation and trials for his own conduct or misconduct. And, you know, basically, he's, he's the empire striking back at the judiciary.
And later on, we're gonna take a look at Utah's move to ban minors from accessing social media without parental consent and try to figure out if that is, if we're going down the right road there or if that's something that's an overstep or what.
Joining me today is a man who can tell you all about the bare necessities of life. Tunde ogonlana Tone Day. Are you ready to give people the book on survival in a political jungle?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Only if they read it.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: All right.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: All right.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Now we're recording this on April 3, 2023. And in the past week, we've crossed the line in American politics that's never been crossed before, which is the indictment of a former president on criminal charges. On March 30, 2023, former President Donald Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury who voted to indict him after they heard testimony about the alleged hush money payments that were made on Trump's behalf in the 2016 president during the presidential, the 2016 presidential campaign. Now, Trump will be arraigned tomorrow, April 4, 2023. And at that time, we'll find out all the specifics of the charges. Right now, we just know what the grand jury heard and that they voted to indict.
But even without knowing the specifics of the charges, we know already we're witnessing history. And, you know, this is the oldest active Democratic government in the world and, you know, where there's rule law in place and all those things. So we want to take a look at it from that angle. So to get us started today, what are your thoughts on the indictment that we're looking at here and also the historic nature of it? You know, as we go on this, we continue on our journey. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah, it's.
I have a few thoughts. I think it's like your intro was well done in Terms of this is obviously historic.
And let's see where it lays out. Because, you know, as you already stated, I'll reiterate the fact that as we're recording here on April 3, 2023, we aren't. We have no facts yet as to what the indictment is around or entails. No details have been released yet. So what I see is kind of what we've seen just, I guess, over time, over the recent years in our media ecosystem and our political landscape, which is without. With a vacuum of facts because no one knows really what's going on except for the district Attorney and maybe Donald Trump and his attorneys in terms of the details. So we have now a race to control the narrative, which actually began a couple weeks ago, a little bit early, when the president himself announced that he was going to be arrested literally two weeks prior to tomorrow in the two weeks prior to his actual arraignment, which looking back in hindsight, may have been better that he did that because that might have softened the blow of the real stuff that's about to happen. Right. Because at least he primed the media to start talking about this and start speculating on what's going on. And so, you know, I was thinking and preparing for this conversation. I'll hand it back in a second. Okay. What else can I say here that stands out to me because we don't have those facts. Right. And so what I really started thinking about. Okay, go ahead, just to finish up, is how we got here. And that's what I thought of is this specific case, not any of the others that the president, former President Trump's involved with. Yet what we already know of that has happened in New York is that if it's around the hush money payment to the porn star prior to the election, his attorneys already spent, was sentenced to spend time in jail for that one. And then we know that his CFO was just sentenced to prison for fraud. So what it tells me is that whatever's going on must be around whatever's already been found in these years of looking into the president's operations into New York.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Well, but there's, there's separate ones with when you have the New York State stuff that's going on and the stuff that's happening in Manhattan as well. And then so, I mean, he's has four active investigations because there's New York State, Letitia James, Manhattan D.A. which is Alvin Bragg, you got the Justice Department and the special prosecutor, and then you have the stuff happening in Georgia. But I want to look at more of the historic aspect of it.
[00:05:05] Speaker B: That's the last thing I'll say. The irony that this is happening to a guy who gained his fame to politics with a slogan of lock her up about his opponent. But that's a whole nother story.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Well, yeah, maybe that was.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: Go ahead.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: But to me, I think that you look at it, okay, from a historic standpoint, why hasn't this happened before? You can go in a couple of different directions because, okay, we elected people to president that weren't doing things to get subjected to all these investigations at all times where there's just. He's been under investigation for acts and alleged conduct for the whole time that he's been in politics pretty much. And so why hasn't happened before? Is it because of the people that we were voting in or is it because of that prosecution and people gave more deference to, hey, you could break the law a little bit if you're the president. And we don't really know that because we can't go back in history and so forth. But what we do know is that if we truly believe in this country that nobody's above the law, that this was an inevitability, like eventually somebody would get indicted for something criminal because, you know, like it's just a matter of odds, you know, X number of people, you know, eventually get charged with something. And so what I'm trying to figure out though is like there's, as you pointed out, like there's this vacuum of information and so people are filling that and by the time this comes out, that vacuum will be filled and then they'll be, we'll go to something else that people are yelling and screaming about. But there's, it, it is the issue here that I, that people are really taking issue that he shouldn't be indicted because of who he is because he's Trump or because he's popular or because he's the leader of a political party or that they're just sure he didn't do it. You know, like, is it a rush to judgment from a facts which we see all the time. Like we see when there's ever higher high profile cases, people take sides not from I just like this guy and I hope they get off. But like I'm sure he didn't do it, even though I'm not seeing testimony or anything like that. And so, you know, like that I can't really make out one way or the other, you know, in terms of what's happening because I remember, you know, just in our lifetime, John Edwards, you know, got prosecuted for something similar, you know, like where he was. He had, you know, somebody on the side. And then, you know, there was something going on with that. And then there was money involved. And was it campaign money? And if it was campaign money, was, you know, or what was the money essentially about? You're trying to preserve your good name for the campaign, or was the money about, oh, I'm just, I don't want my family to find out. Which. That's legal. That's how John Edwards got off. You know, it was like, okay, no, I just didn't want my family to find out. That's why I paid them off. It wasn't help my campaign. But either way, you know, like, it's just, when you're looking at this now, Edwards doesn't count because he wasn't a president, he was a congressman and a presidential candidate. But either way, I think just the historic nature of it, you know, one, like I said, it's an inevitability. And two, this is just, this is how rule of law works. Like, sometimes, you know, people get caught up with the law. Trump gets caught up with the law a lot, but in this case, he's gotten indicted.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Well, I think we got a lot going on here, and obviously I can't get into everybody's head, but from what I've seen, let's say at the 30,000 foot level, just watching our media. Right, all of it, and watching conservative media and how they've dealt with these type of situations now for probably a generation or two, it's interesting because I think that unfortunately there's people do things. I'm going to go back 20, 25 years. We look at the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and if you look at what was said by a lot of people who are actually still in the Congress and Senate today back then, as to why they felt that impeaching him for, you know, having an affair in the White House made sense.
You know, those people have been very silent on the behavior of others when they have behavior that's not seen as virtuous or someone with values, you know, family values and things like that. So I don't think that it's something that people, from an intellectual standpoint, if you ask them, can a president or a leader of a nation do something wrong or illegal? And like, if they were to do something illegal or wrong, should they get away with it? I don't think they would say yes en masse, because like I just said as a joke, but I realize now I can follow up with a serious comment that when I said that Donald Trump, part of his rise to prominence in politics was a slogan where he said, lock her up about his opponent and would lead chance about that. Right. That tells you that a lot of people who support President Trump would support locking up somebody in power politically if they felt they did something wrong. I think this is where the tribalism and the media ecosystems of recent years are that strong. Like we've talked in other discussions on this show. And then the last thing is that there's a lot of people that really did believe in Donald Trump and maybe some still do. And I think from a psychological angle, when you put that much of your emotional kind of worth into someone else, it's very difficult to acknowledge that they've done anything wrong. Because. And we see this a lot with religion. It's kind of like the Tammy Faye Bakers and Jim Baker. Remember we were kids, those kind of scandals. And they were getting money the same way, $25 from people's Social Security checks. And when it found out that they were embezzling money and they were a big mess. Right. That they were basically crooks, people were still sending them money.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: And so I think there's.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Because it was too harmful to them, to their own psyche.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. Because if you admit that Donald Trump did something wrong here, even though. And that's where I think people like you and I that aren't really trying to take a side, but are just looking at information that we consider facts, like the fact that he was recorded on tape paying Michael Cohen, his lawyer, the 130,000. And he knew what he was paying for. He was recorded. And like you mentioned the Georgia prosecution saying he wants to find more votes to Secretary of State. So there's certain things like that that are factual. But I think for a lot of these supporters, if they acknowledge one, then they'd have to now open up their mental filing cabinet to acknowledge a lot of other behavior that was negative. And that's very difficult.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: It's easier to take an all or nothing approach. Like, no, just all of this stuff is a witch hunt, and it's all a witch hunt.
[00:11:14] Speaker B: Correct. Exactly.
[00:11:15] Speaker A: And so like, and, but in one other piece, I think that just from a historic nature that I wanted to mention that just to draw a parallel, and that is like, okay, we've had other historic things happen with the executive branch, with the presidency. You know, you had the Nixon. You had the first president to be impeached. You know, so to speak. And he, he got out of Dodge before he got convicted and removed. He didn't want to be the first of that. And so, you know, McClinton being the second one that was impeached. But that was historic also, though, in a good way. And we're going to get into this later, but because the question is, okay, when you hit historic things like this, things that have never happened before, every action has a reaction. And so the question will ultimately, and like I said, we'll get to at the end of this conversation, is whether this is historic in a positive way. Does this move us closer to a understanding amongst all Americans that, hey, no man is above the law. You can get investigated. If you, if you find, do something wrong, then, you know, like it's, you're going to go to trial. Like, that's the other thing here. An indictment is just this government still has to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt, you know, so this is just part of our legal process, you know, and so but nonetheless, is that going to move us that way or is that going to move us in a direction of, okay, now, now the system is just broken. Like people, it's all partisanship now. And I'll tell you something, if one side is all partisan, then there is there it can be no nonpartisan discussion because you need two sides to have a discussion. And so either you can have a discussion on principle between two people who are talking about principle. But if just if you have two people and one of them won't talk about principle and only will talk about partisanship, then you can't talk about principle, you know, so it takes two to tango, so to speak. So we could hit a point, you know, if as we go down this road where this actually could be historic in a bad way, where it takes us to where we cannot have dialogue based on principle anymore because at least one side is only looking at things from a partisan lens. And that's it.
[00:13:09] Speaker B: So that's a. You're right. And I think my fear is that we're going to go that direction, not the positive one, because like we've talked in other discussions, the media ecosystem that enough Americans are daily latched onto and the misinformation in those ecosystems and not to say that other ecosystems don't have misinformation, but the seriousness of this type of stuff, because I thought about it in preparing for today. Think about how many Republicans really think of Hillary Clinton. Clinton as a crook, right? Like, they really think that, you know, and they remember we had the email leaks and everybody, oh, you know, we're going to read all this stuff. And I'm looking at these emails and there was nothing there that was like of real huge criminality. So what? Some people had to make up that there were pedophile and stuff. But the serious people that didn't go that direction still never acknowledged that, hey, you know what, it's messed up. She had a server. It's not good. But this may not rise to the level of a crime where she got to be put away for the rest of her life and something like Benghazi and all that, you know, it was all muddied and all these stuff. But there's no, no one ever followed up and said, well, the State Department conducted an investigation in 2019 while Trump was in office and concluded she didn't do anything wrong. The FBI under William Barr investigated the emails and found it didn't rise to the level of criminality. They said she did something wrong.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: To your point, our law enforcement systems looked at it and decided not to do anything about it. It's one of those things. But let me tell you this because I want to keep us moving because the thing is, to your point, and I don't want to get too far away from this with the media ecosystems taking sides, what has been established taking sides is more entertaining than saying, hey, let's wait and see and whatever. And so, and honestly, that's why I didn't want to have too much conversation about actually what was happening here because by the time this comes out, yeah, everybody's got more information than we have historic nature. But what we have seen though, and to your point on the, how the media ecosystems work with the Dominion v. Fox lawsuit is that with the taking sides being more entertaining and the networks know, or at least some networks know what tune they have to play in order to keep their audience and they are not shy about playing that tune in order to keep their audience because it's a financial endeavor more than it is news or information providing endeavor. But the other, the parallel, and you raised this interesting parallel to me when we were talking about this offline and that was with over in Israel, you know, with now in Israel right now, there are protests in the streets. The Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to push through judicial reform and essentially it would weaken the, the judiciary system, which, you know, it basically tries to make it more subservient to the legislative branch of their government. Now they don't have a constitution or anything like that. So these things are pushed through in, in different, you know, it's a different overall system, but in general, they're trying to, to weaken the independence of the judiciary. And people have been in the streets protesting this. And that's what we've seen really covered in our country is just the protests and so forth. And it's very interesting, you know, to see because people are pushed, say, hey, this is making us less democratic, or this is making us not really democratic if you take away the independence of the courts. And so now preceding this was Netanyahu getting indicted with, you know, things related to corruption and, you know, just normal kind of, I shouldn't say normal, but just normal abuse of power type of stuff, getting indicted. And he's still kind of at risk at these things. Like these trials and stuff are ongoing as far as the charges that were brought against him. And he hadn't been cleared. You know, it's not, it's the admin convict hadn't been cleared. It's still ongoing. But, you know, so people are looking at that like, yeah, of course this guy now is trying to weaken the judiciary while he's at, you know, in trial with the judiciary. So you said just a second ago how you thought you're concerned that this is going to go a negative way, that this is a line that's being crossed from a negative standpoint. Do you see any parallels here in terms of how this, whether it be like you've pointed out to me, the Weaponization Committee in Congress now, where it's like, all right, we got to, to find ways to undermine aspects of our government. But what parallels do you see as far as the action that we see here and then now maybe political actors wanting to push back on this stuff for political reasons more than anything, you know, to try to, to try to stop this type of stuff from being able to happen to them?
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Yeah, no, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, I'll start with, you know, there's some differences, right, with two different countries, two different cultures, different size populations, you know, the big time, you know, and all that. So. And there's different political systems. They're a parliament, like you said. Yeah, we're a democratic republic. But at the end, I would say the similarity is we're both secular democracies. And let me explain.
[00:17:45] Speaker A: Democratic systems, you know, secular democratic systems, people.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Secular means we're not theocracies, you know, that we don't work on. Even though Israel is considered a Jewish state, they don't operate by Jewish religious law, they operate by secular laws like we do. And so that we're very similar in those ways. And the other similarity, what I think is important to mention is the judiciary serves as a co, equal branch of the political leadership. And so, and so that is what makes systems like Israel's in the United States so sought after.
For example, the global investment community, you know, maybe not everyone knows that, but Israel is an extreme hub of technological and scientific research, for example, and a lot of international money pours in there. But it's not because Israel is somehow smarter than everyone else, is that Israel, just like the United States, has very, very good judicial laws on title and privacy and all that. So again, the system of these type of countries seem to be very attractive for people living in other systems around the world because Israel also is a place that has had a huge net migration from authoritarian countries. And so, and so that's what I see as great similarities. And then unfortunately, the similarities between, or similarities between Netanyahu and Trump are similar as well, is that both appear at this point, I didn't, I might not have said this a year or two ago, but appear that to believe that by holding onto power politically, they can influence the judicial branches of their own countries for their long term ends to keep, to save their own skins, in a sense. And I think that's the dangerous part, is that I think in both countries, the United States and Israel, we've never had leaders that have gotten themselves into this position, like you said about Trump, just this many investigations that have lived lives this way. And same with Netanyahu. And then the fact that unlike Nixon, who resigned and who, you know, for whatever reason, but you know, I'll say in appreciation, he didn't put the country through this. Right. That these two men are going to put their countries through this.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: And me, it's either me or the system, essentially.
[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: And yeah, I mean to me that's like the parallel to me and why I thought it was really insightful when you brought it up though, was the issue of how you have this like a supremacy of law type of environment where you have a man, man kind of decide that he's just not there for that anymore and come up with reasons, come up with ways to get other people on board with that. Because essentially like when, when Netanyahu is being put in legal jeopardy, he's been fighting it, which is his right. But his response now is to say, okay, well, let me, let me overstep basically the authority of the legal system. You know, like I'm just going to, I'LL just be able to. They can't try me if I can fire them, basically, so to speak. And so what I, what I see with that is just kind of a different. It's not with the ethos of this type of approach to governing, you know, where no man is above the law or where, you know, the law applies to everyone and so forth. And if we're going to hold on to those types of things, generally speaking, personalities like that come around from time to time where they're like, they're going to test you and say, okay, how committed to your principles are you? They're going to seduce you. They're going to say, oh, you know, you need me because of this, you need me because of that. That world is scary out there, whatever, and certain people will eat that up, you know, and a good number of people eat that up if the leader's charismatic enough or if the circumstances around them either are dire enough or if they can convince you that they're dire enough either way or, you know, or if you've been convinced that they're dire enough. So it's almost like it's. These are the kinds of tests that come up from time to time in these type of governments where the people either say, no, no, no, no, this is very important to us. You, we're not going to just stand idly by while you gobble up power and are set it up so you no longer accountable. You know, like the part of co. Equal branches of government is checks and balances, meaning. But if we're going to protest, if you say you're not going to be able to be checked by any other branch of the government, we're going to protest and so forth. This is the attitude places where the reason why like the United States can't go somewhere and give them a democratic system or freedom and so forth is because of stuff like this. If you, if the people aren't win, Stu, when, when the leader who wants to take more power does this kind of stuff, if the people aren't willing to say, look, I might like the guy, I might not like the guy, but either way I don't want to go down this road, you know, I don't want to have my system erode to where it's about this one person or this one group or whatever. And so if, if the people don't aren't willing to do that, then this kind of stuff backslides. And so to me, that's really what we're seeing there. They may be a couple years ahead of us because it seems like we might be on in the situation right now. Whereas, like you said, if things go negative here, we might end up where we're going to have the independence of our law enforcement. They're going to try to check that, or people are going to try to intimidate law enforcement to say, look, you better not, you can go after everybody else, but you better not come after us, because you come after us, we're going to do this and that to you and so forth. So to me, it's, it's one of those it's put up or shut up moment for the people.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, it's just fascinating to me that especially a lot of the people that are not supportive of looking at anything that former President Trump did, the potentially wrong right. I'm willing to have him investigated just like I was willing to have Hillary Clinton investigated. I don't have a dog in that fight. My dog's in the American fight.
But these are people that otherwise would tell you how much they love the Constitution and how much they love the Fourth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment and all these First Amendment, Second Amendment, all these protections for us as people from the tyranny of a government or an authoritarian or an autocrat. And to your point, what Netanyahu has proposed, which luckily, I guess is being postponed for a couple months because of the amount of protests and the resignation of his defense minister over this, is basically he, as the leader of the country politically, to take over the judicial brains and make changes to it so that they basically can't come after him. I'm sure that part of those changes would be also. So that makes it very difficult for the opposition parties to operate as well. So my point is, is that, like you said, we could see that if President Trump were to win the nomination for President in 2024, I don't think it's beside reality, looking at how he's already behaved when in office, that if he won again, that he wouldn't try and bend the judiciary to his own leanings, you know, so that he could escape any.
[00:24:47] Speaker A: Well, he's already done that. I mean, that's what, remember, ultimately Barr, the attorney general, resigned at a certain point because he was like, look, I'm not willing to, I'm not willing to do all this stuff. And then. But I mean, you raised another point, like I said, and I don't want to stick too long on this. But there's one other thing that, because you talked about the weaponization committee that exists right now, who's Essentially purportedly what they're out there. Not purportedly but what it appears that they're out there doing now is trying to chill any type of dissent or any type of investigation, whether it be into their own activities, like people that were involved in the insurrection or like, oh, we're gonna go investigate the people that are, that are looking, the law enforcement people that are looking into me possibly breaking, you know, breaking the law or doing it against their political, their perceived political enemies, their political adversaries. And so that's already starting to go down that road where, hey, our goal here is to try to set up something that we can use to embarrass you or to cost you a lot of money or cost you a lot of, you know, what, like, take you down this and make things uncomfortable for you for the purpose of politics so that we then can exert control over you.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: I mean, the first thing that when we had this indictment come down, that House of Representatives is talking about trying to bring in the DA for questioning. And it's like, what, this dude is a New York state official. He's not a federal official.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Well, you know, we should ask Americans who don't see a problem with that is, what do you think, George? What side of this argument do you think King George would have been on?
Right. I mean, that was the whole point why the Congress was created to be separate from the judicial branch so that a king, a tyrant, can't get in there and start wielding an ax over with the law. You know, and so the, the. But the interesting thing is, man, I went back because I wanted to discuss real quick about what is Netanyahu actually being, you know, what, what is all this about? And it's, and it's, again, it's similar stuff that you would want a judicial branch to be looking at leaders about. So I get. There's three major cases that I found. I mean, there might be a few more, but these are seem to be the main ones. The first One is Case 1000, was officially opened in December 2016 and involves basically bribes and gifts without getting in the weeds of it. Case 2000 is. Seems to be more of cronyism. When Netanyahu was prime minister, he is very friendly with the leader of one media organization, which is a newspaper and just a large media outfit. And what his friend who owns that paper was trying to get him to do was through the Parliament, crush one of their opponents. So again, that would be like if the head of MSNBC was cozy with Obama in 2012 and said, I want you to use your position as president to help me crush CNN and fox again. That's not something we'd expect our political leaders to be doing is having their hands in business stuff. And then case 4000, at least if.
[00:27:51] Speaker A: We still really want to adhere to the principles espoused by our nation.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And so case 4000 was another bribery case. And I'll quote the article I'm reading here quoted. The Israeli Police recommended on 2 December 2018 that bribery charges be brought against Netanyahu and his wife. So what it says, In November 2019, Israeli Attorney General Avachi Mendelbild officially brought charges against Netanyahu. A fraud, breach of trust and receipt of bribes. So what it shows me the similarity is that again, they recommended something in December, the police. It took till November 19 of 2019, almost a year later, for the Attorney General to officially bring charter meeting. There was investigations. They're looking into it. Just like this with Trump. We've talked about this. There's been years of stuff going on. And so I think the point you make about the Weaponization Committee is very good because remember, when you have facts like this coming out, you need to create any kind of distraction so that at least the people that are on your side stay on your side. And the dangerous thing here is that again, both men appear to have done things. Like I said, the Republican Party has now made a decision to protect a man who we heard on tape acknowledging paying his lawyer 130 grand in a check to a porn star to shut her up about an affair.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Yet this is the attorney that already went to jail for that.
[00:29:20] Speaker B: Correct. And now we're realizing that the Likud Party in Israel is protecting a man who. The same thing the police found that he's messing with. Him and his wife are basically getting bribes and that he's over there trying to use his power to influence businesses and things like that.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: Well, no, I termed it. I'm glad you broke it down, but I termed it as that's general run of the mill abuse of power.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like draconianism that we've all grown up to not want. Right.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: But in a system where rule of law is supreme, you can go to jail for that kind of stuff. That stuff isn't legal. That's not just. So if you get caught, and like you said, they noticed it, they investigated it, charges have been brought, you know, it hasn't resolved.
[00:30:00] Speaker B: And you know what I want to say.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Well, but I mean, I want to keep us moving, though. Because the last piece I wanted to get to on this is something that really, like we talked about. There's multiple investigations, like you said, there's the, there's the Manhattan one, there's the New York State one, which involves that started looking at the whole Trump organization. And the, one of the officers is already in trouble, you know, in jeopardy for that one. And then they're potentially looking at other officers and principals, Donald Trump being one of them. And then you have Georgia and then you have the Justice Department and their special prosecutor. That's, that's where looking at the January 6th stuff, and as you noted, the Georgia stuff is about the potential election shenanigans that we've heard audio, you get.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: Through all of them before the end of the show.
[00:30:41] Speaker A: So, like, the crazy thing about it, at least with the Georgia one and the, well, the Georgia one, the New York City one and the, the Justice Department one, we've seen most of the stuff we've seen most of the fruits, you know, crazy.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: So you know what's crazy, though? He was investigated when he was running for president. I don't think that investigation about the Russians was ever closed. I think it was still open while he was president. Like, seriously under bar and everything.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: Well, yeah, well, that was, that's, that's one that, that was not part of all this. But, but let me, but see, I want to know, and what I want to discuss really is we got all these other ones. Do we think that this indictment, like, was there hesitation from other places to say, hey, I don't want to be the first one to indict a former president? Because the historic nature of it means that who wants to kind of break that seal, so to speak? And so I wonder, and I'm gonna kick it to you for this. So I'll speak on it just briefly. I do think that it's more likely now whether it happens or not depends on what the investigations uncover. It's not what, you know, it's what you can prove to quote a few good men, that, that great bastion of all that legal, legal argument and stuff going on. But either way, I just learned that.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: I couldn't handle the truth when I watched.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. But no. And so what, what can they prove? Because if you, if this is one of those, if you, if you take a shot and it quote usual suspects, if you shoot, shoot, try to shoot the devil in the back, better not miss, you know. And so looking at this, it seems like this could loosen or grease the skids, so to speak, for other stuff to come down because nobody else has to be the first. But what do you think about that?
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think we're in uncharted waters here. I mean, I think this is why I'm sounding like a broken record on our various shows. Leadership's important. And I'd say this to us collectively as a nation. Right. That we want to pick leaders. Like I said, at the very minimum. You know, again, I'll bring up Richard Nixon, I'll bring up Al Gore. We, we've talked about that. Where, you know, that was the only time in American history an election was actually stopped and the Supreme Court made the call. Yeah. And so he had every right to be upset. And he could have been up there railing and getting Democrats all in the street to go storm the Capitol and force finishing, counting the votes.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: He wouldn't have had to. He had to settle everybody down because everybody else was ready to be all fired up and go. And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm backing out.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: But that's my point is just saying that. So this is the first time that we have had. And I'd say us and Israel at the same time. Right.
In this type of position of the ultimate power within the country. That, and I think you said it before, after one of my comments, is that they really just put themselves above their nations. And I don't know if it's narcissism or whatever. I'm not here to be clinically diagnosing guys. But clearly they feel it's more important for them to save their own skin and to really divide their respective nations by behaving this way. And by behaving this way, what I mean is, you don't have to be happy you're being investigated. And because you're being investigated doesn't mean that they're terrible guys that never did anything good. I mean, I was reading about Netanyahu, did great economic stuff for Israel in the early 2000s. You know, he's a hero in their military. He really was a captain in their Special forces going deep into Syria and Lebanon, and he was shot and wounded several times. So here's a guy that's got all the credibility to be the leader of a country like that. But you know what if he's getting bribes and behaving this way, you know what? You know, the Israeli people have a right to be concerned, just like we do. And again, it's not to say I'm not judging President Trump on his presidency, on his ideology, on his all that I'm just saying that we've heard him on tape say things that we will be uncomfortable with anyone else in that situation.
[00:34:39] Speaker A: At minimum, it warrants an investigation. I mean, and then you let the chips fall where they may. You know, we can't pick and choose when we're okay with law enforcement doing what they do. I mean, there are many. I can give you many.
[00:34:51] Speaker B: Some people are now, remember?
[00:34:52] Speaker A: Well, but I can give you many instances where myself, you know, I'm like, oh, I don't know that, you know, law enforcement's going about this in the right way or going about that in the right way or if they're treating people fairly and so forth. But ultimately, this is the system we have. And so, you know, like, you can't pick and choose and say, okay, well, this is going to be okay now. And this is, you know, if people get indicted, then I'll support it, depending on who it is. You know, it doesn't work.
[00:35:16] Speaker B: No, but it does. But in a lot of people's mind, it does. Remember what was fascinating to me just as an American, and this is again in 2021, during, after the January six riots, when, you know, you're watching all the footage and I remember hearing people say, the cops are shooting at us. They're, they're, they're attacking us. I thought they only did that to blm. Yeah, there are people in this country that do look at law enforcement as somehow only to get the other people and not to get them and their quote, unquote people.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah, if you look at it like that, then, then, yeah, that doesn't make sense. Believe that no man is above the law. You don't believe that. And, you know, like, this, this would be a shock to you. But yeah, and the other thing I'll say is, you know, interestingly enough, and we'll see how this plays out as well, but this is kind of just, you know, noteworthy is that many people are saying, and I'll just get a quick, quick from you on this, that the fact that he gets indicted here actually increases his chance to get the win the Republican nomination next year and he runs for president. Yeah, I think. Well, let me, let me say I tend to agree with that because it does create. It hardens this, us against them, 1 and 2. All of his contenders, I guess, except Asa Hutchinson, all of his contenders are on TV now defending this guy and saying, oh, this is so messed up. This is so messed up. They are creating the victimhood men. They're, they're rallying people behind the person they're running against.
[00:36:36] Speaker B: Apparently the DA Is backed by Soros. Apparently, you know, I've been hearing, but, you know, from all of them. But that's the interesting thing. And what did Asa Hutchinson say?
He just said, I guess the grand jury saw enough to. To indict the guy. Right?
[00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:53] Speaker B: That's all he said.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: And by saying that, he's like the.
[00:36:56] Speaker B: He's like the pariah. Yeah. Yes, it's amazing.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: But no, I think we can move on from there. You know, it, but it's, you know, it's something to keep an eye on, obviously, you know, we'll know more information as time goes on and we'll see how this plays out. But. Historic event. And, you know, but this is, this is the system we signed up for, so to speak. You know, like, this is, this is what it is. This is an independent judiciary. And, you know, this is law enforcement. This is rule of law. No man above the law. So we'll see who's really here for that and who's not. But our second topic today, another interesting topic, because it really goes down a road of another one of these American principles as far as privacy and freedom, you know, things like that. But Utah recently passed a law, and it bans minors from accessing social media without their. Without parental consent and puts a bunch of restrictions on just what can happen as far as until you're, you know, an adult consenting age, so to speak, how you can use this stuff, what can you, like, certain times a day, can't use it. And this builds on, on this has been a trend, you know, already. Like, there, there's federal law going into what can't happen when somebody's under 13. But this goes even further than that, obviously, because this is going all the way to 18. So just, you know, what are your thoughts or your reaction to seeing something like this, something you're in favor of? Is this something, you know, that you think that everybody needs to be looking at, or do you think this is going too far or what? Just, you know, what are your thoughts?
[00:38:20] Speaker B: No, I think, you know, I tend to side on the fact of agreeing with it, and I like it. And just for the audience to know that we're not partisan after the last show is that the Utah legislature is overwhelmingly Republican controlled. And I can say, well, this is an issue.
[00:38:37] Speaker A: It doesn't seem to be very partisan.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: I'm just making a joke because anytime you talk about President Trump and you're fawning over him, then it must be a total Liberal hack.
[00:38:46] Speaker A: Well, to your point, though, by the way, you mentioned this earlier, I want to emphasize a little bit more. You and I have our. We have. It's not that we're. We are flaky. Like, we have clear thoughts and positions. We're just not emotionally invested into any one of these. Just like, yeah, you know, whatever. This is kind of. We see this as just kind of the stuff that happens when you get a bunch of people together. Like, there's just, you know, argue about this, argue about that. Like, it's not. None of this stuff. There don't seem to be any crimes against humanity going on, you know, with. With this issue or not with the, with the Trump issue. We might get into some. With the social media issue. So.
[00:39:17] Speaker B: But remember that guy who was from. He was running for office in New York, I think, and like for mayor, and he was from the party called the Rent Too Damn High party.
I might have been emotionally invested in him.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: You were emotionally invested in that way.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: If he, if he'd have lasted a little longer. He just looked funny at those crazy chops. Remember his beard? Yeah, he looked like a real crazy guy. I could have, you know, I was thinking of, too, with reading all this bribery stuff for the last part.
Remember the guy, Congressman from your state, James Trafficant?
[00:39:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:47] Speaker B: That crazy hairdo.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
[00:39:49] Speaker B: I could have gotten emotionally invested behind him. But hey.
Anyway, but that's what I was going to say as a joke is that Utah is extremely. Considered an extremely Republican and conservative state. And again, we can commend them and say with all seriousness that I say this is something I definitely support. And I think they did a great job in passing this bill. And part of it is not because I want to see more government control and all this kind of stuff on people and blah, blah, blah. But we have facts now, right? And it goes back to like we talked about with certain other discussions earlier. Like after a certain period of time and facts have really been allowed to play out. You got to look and say, okay, do we need to make any changes? And so in this one, what I'm saying is we have facts now that documented, well documented over the last decade, that social media does more damage to teens than good.
And you talk about the rates of depression and suicide and all that having increased. And even studies like we've learned, just like with what happened with tobacco and with big oil and all that, that certain research that Facebook did themselves got leaked out and that they knew this stuff was harmful for kids. And so what it reminds Me of is more of what I just mentioned, like tobacco and alcohol legislation, where. And you've alluded to this in some private conversations on other topics, whereas we've generally agreed as a society that 18 is the age of cutoff where you're. Yeah.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Where you're free to make your own mistakes at that point, basically you're legally.
[00:41:24] Speaker B: Allowed to make certain decisions on your own. Yeah, except alcohol. But under 18, it's considered that kids really may make decisions that could cause serious long term harm so that parental supervision is necessary, like a rated R movie. A kid under 18 can't really go by themselves, but they can go if escorted by a parent. So that's the way I see this social media legislation is it's not that kids under 18 can't use it, is that they can only use it going forward with the consent of their parents and with their parents having access to their accounts so that they can check. Which I think is totally fine if you're under 18.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: I mean. Yeah, I, generally speaking would be cautious about stuff like this, you know, in the sense that, you know, you're restricting people's quote, unquote freedom. But again, it goes back to the issue of, in the same way that we don't let people buy cigarettes until they're 18, that's restricting people's freedom too. But the science has shown that that's something that can be very harmful. So you have to be a consenting adult, you have to be old enough to make your own mistakes before society will let you do that. And the social media seems to be just as addictive and potentially just as harmful as a lot of the tobacco or the alcohol and so forth in terms of what it's doing to people, the psyche of young people. So it seems completely justified to do this, you know, like, and I'm not going to sit here and like cherry pick, oh, I'm not crazy about this little piece or that little piece, like, look, do something. And then the thing about the law is we can do something and then we can figure out if it goes too far or if it, you know, what, what the results are. But right now we are in the stage where people need to do something about the social media. You know, and this is something that is bipartisan. Like you, they run through states that have put stuff in like this. You're talking about, you know, states that are, that are the lean right states, that lean left. California is amongst the states that have done things with social media. So it's not this surprisingly, you know, in Today's world, this is something that everybody can kind of say, hey, you know, there's something we need to look at this. So ultimately I was happy that they did it. And again now here's where I always talk about democratic system and stuff. This is where, you know, and if you're in a, this, we're in a republic, you know, we're not doing direct democracy where we vote on the budget, we as people, we vote on representatives. And this is where you're supposed to select representatives with the kind of ethics and you know, kind of, you know, just mentality that you want to see in your leadership. And so I, I'm not going to second guess and say in, in, in, you know, going through detail, okay, well this provision and it's like I, let's see what these people, these people put something in place, let's see what it does. And if it's too far, then we'll look at it then. And you know, then hopefully people get voted out and they'll, they can take another swing at it. But I'm just happy that they did something. Is kind of my point that you know, we see, we see a need. Don't be paralyzed by debate, don't be paralyzed by oh well, has to be perfect or I don't want one side to win or to lose or anything like that. It's like, well let's do something. We see it, we have a problem. And I'm happy that they're making the effort to address.
[00:44:20] Speaker B: It's interesting is the arguments against, at least in the article were very weak. That was the other thing I noticed. Normally, you know, even when it's industry pushing back on something is usually like even when the fossil fuel industry pushes back against climate change initiatives, it makes they almost have a stronger case than what I'm reading here.
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Well, what it was, let me tell you something because that's interesting because what they're better at, the people who came up with these arguments weren't as good at evoking emotion in their arguments like the fossil fuel.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: I think it's just also that this is just, I think it's just easier even to see than climate change. Right? That's something slow moving that you kind of got to get into the science part of it to believe in it and all that. But this is like, like I saw that the one was net choice at tech lobby group and they're like these laws are infringed on Utah's First Amendment rights, something and these are kids under 18. Like yeah, every porn site asks you if you're over 18 or not and if you're not, you're not supposed to be let in. Right.
[00:45:15] Speaker A: Like I mean you're under 18, you have limited. First you can't vote.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Like he's like good point that he can't even vote. So yeah, your argument doesn't hold. And then there was another one of.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Those a lot of rights that you don't have if you're.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And civil liberties groups talking about raise concerns of provisions will block marginalized youth including LGBTQ plus teens from accessing online support and networks and information. Like really that's the reason why you want kids to have access to this shit where they can get also I.
[00:45:42] Speaker A: Mean, I mean that because that has a flip side. It also see the bullying, the negative stuff.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I thought. Like yeah, maybe it's not like social.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: Media is some bad of sanctity.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Maybe if these kids that are marginalized and all that don't get on social media they'll actually just focus on what's around them and actually enjoy like their day and not be stuck on the phone getting harassed. So it's a good point. I mean, you know, so yeah, I'm a fan of it. I think that's.
[00:46:10] Speaker A: No, I mean the best one you left out the point that I thought was the best point was that you know, some of the text group tech groups were saying that this will require Utah actually to get more information about the users in order. Oh yeah, I remember nation on whether or not you know, their age and stuff. You know they're going to collect driver's license information which will have addresses and identifiers and then that stuff can all be hacked. Once you put it like it creates more issue. But that's kind of what I mean.
[00:46:40] Speaker B: In terms they were trying to go on the emotion. That's what they tried. But I think that's going to fall.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Well but even if that is the case, like that's not. There's a problem that needs to be addressed. Maybe it is too heavy handed, you know, like I'm not saying that this is the right way to do it, this is the only way to do it or whatever but this they're doing something. If we see in two or three years like hey we don't, we should not have everybody uploading their driver's license to use social media then you know, we can make that change. Then this is also the benefit. Sorry to anybody in Utah, but there are guinea pigs here.
We the rest of the country. We can see kind of how they work this out and how this plays out and then we can do a law that's better if we see where this succeeded, where this fails. That's what federalism is about, where each state can kind of do to a certain degree can make their own laws. In the same way that Obamacare was Romney care in Massachusetts before it became Obamacare. And now granted, they didn't improve it that much because of the way it got lobbied, but nonetheless they were able to take something they saw in one jurisdiction and apply it elsewhere. So this is again, this is how the system is supposed to work. And so it's good to see that somebody's taking a swing at it again. There's other states that are, that are doing stuff as well, but this is more of a comprehensive approach. People are taking a swing at it and then we see if they connect or if they miss or if there are unforeseen consequences that we'd want to avoid in the future.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's good.
[00:48:01] Speaker A: But no, that's so we can wrap from there, man. But you know, it's, it's again somebody taking a swing and you know, if it's heavy handed, we will see. But ultimately the social media thing like in terms of like we've talked about in the show, like the things with depression that we are seeing with teens and some of the things you've sent me more recently as far as how it creates addiction and that's one of the things that's addressed I just admitted, I failed to mention it addresses. Now this is one of those laws I don't know how you really enforce, but it prevents them from doing things to get people addicted or to get minor is addicted. But it's, you know, that's, that's a little more subjective but nonetheless the effort is being made. So we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call Like I see it, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:48:46] Speaker B: I'm tuned to.
[00:48:48] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
