THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 36 — Dead Boeing Whistleblowers? Aaron Rodgers for VP? TikTok Ban: Good or Bad?

Hey, everybody. Happy Thought Crime Saturday.

Should Aaron Rodgers become vice president, or at least vice presidential nominee with RFK? We talk about banning TikTok, what America could have been under the Polk map and more. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.

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Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. Okay. Happy Thought Crime Thursday, everybody. We have with us Blake, Tyler, and Jack from a very special studio. Let's get right into it. To ban or not to ban? That is the question.

Blake, set it up. All right. Well, so it seems like people have talked about this for two years and it went nowhere and then suddenly it just went everywhere in one week. Congress just like all unravels and they're going to ban TikTok, possibly. The US House voted pretty overwhelmingly. Most Republicans, most Democrats advanced a piece of legislation, which to be specific, it empowers the White House, the president, to designate an app as owned by a foreign adversary government. And then they have a time limit of a few months to divest themselves of that app. And if they do not do so, then it is banned from US app stores, which means the iPhone, Apple App Store, Microsoft App Store, Google's and so on.

And it's going to the Senate. It wouldn't ban it. It would not ban it. It doesn't say it's not a one line piece of legislation that says TikTok is banned. In fact, all it does is say it lets the Biden administration say TikTok will be banned if they do not do the following things. And what they're required to do is ByteDance, which is the Chinese company that owns it. They would be forced to divest themselves of TikTok in the US so they could just sell its operations to some other company.

And if they do that, then it can no longer be banned. So, Jack, how do you, where do you fall on this? There's been kind of a division in certain Trump circles or conservative circles.

Do you think, do you support this bill, this piece of legislation? So it's really weird, right? You know, I'm coming at this from a guy who spent the better part of 18 years either learning about the CCP or focused on China, and I've never seen this level of support for something that is just on its face anti-CCP before. So right there, that just gives me pause to say, wait a minute, is there something else going on? Is there something weird, something amiss?

Because I've never seen this in Washington DC ever in 18 years act like this before. In general, in general, yes, 100% divest TikTok from the CCP. However, comma, I do have pause as to what the actual guts of this bill are.

I know you and I both had Raheem Kassam on today. He says he's gone through it and hasn't seen any issues in the exact wording of it. But I'd love to hear from you.

I'd love to do a little bit more of a deep dive to make sure that there aren't any of these, you know, kind of hidden meanings or hidden effects from the thing. In general, though, of course, this is something that I would support. I don't know about this specific bill enough, but in general, yes.

Tyler, how are we scoring this or looking at this? And what was the vote tally in the house and kind of walk our audience through the Freedom Caucus versus MAGA wing? So not everyone in the Freedom Caucus opposed it, but a good chunk of the Freedom Caucus did.

So what I think a lot of people would consider the most conservative members of the Freedom Caucus that are likely to kind of go to the Andy Biggs and Co, like kind of the former Freedom Caucus shell, Matt Gaetz, others, they opposed it. And part of the reason why I'm hearing that their opposition to this is because it gives way too much control to the executive branch to make determinations. And there's a concern that the determination is that they could score an American company as being too foreign or foreign influenced, in which case then that could ultimately just give the executive branch the control and power to start wheels in motion and and really ahead of this next election, shut down social media again. So is that so, Blake, that's what some people have said is that this can be then used and abused.

Where do you fall on that? Some people call it fear mongering. Some people say that's just what the government does.

Yeah, I guess I feel like with any piece of legislation that comes together very quickly and it just does seem like this came together very quickly after a lot of after a lot of stalling out. And then everyone's saying we're going to do this right now in an election year and even if it's not intended to be abused, even if it is written in a manner to prevent abuses, I just I feel like the trust level with the federal government is low and always going lower. And, you know, just like glancing through this, it gives the power to the attorney general to start investigations into violations of this. So what happens if they just start harassing your company and demanding all of your stuff to see, oh, are you actually controlled by a foreign adversary? And and that's part of it is it gets into it's controlled by a foreign adversary. It's not owned because I don't believe the Chinese government literally owns TikTok. It's more that in the sense that every Chinese company is perceived as to some extent dominated by the CCP because it's an authoritarian country. And so you can easily see how definitions start getting loose in there. Well, they'll say, well, any app that's linked with this country is really owned by that regime.

And then you get this you see the chain of events start taking place. Yeah. So, Jack, kind of our China expert here, Chinese Communist Party, is that is what Blake is saying, correct? I mean, can saying that it's CCP or is it is it factually correct to say that it is owned by the Chinese Communist Party and owned and operated asset of the CCP? Well, so, I mean, the way that OK, the way that business in China operates is very different from the way that business in the United States works, where in the United States you have clearly delineated lines between what is a private entity? What is a public entity? What is a political party?

What is not in China? The party has sort of control over everything. In a sense, every enterprise is allowed to rise or fall because the party at one level or another, not saying that they're Xi Jinping sitting up there like making decisions on what the algorithm is going to push today. And I've heard people say that. I think that's a little silly.

But it's sort of like, as long as they're respecting the things they need to respect, as long as they're doing the things they need to do, then they're fine. And by the way, ByteDance and Douyin, which is what it's called in China, are not the only, you know, there's a ton of other social medias in China. The main piece of it, of course, is that each of them do have to fall under the auspices of the CCP. Now, to answer your question directly, my big take on this is that the angle has always been, they keep saying, well, you don't need to do this because actually, they're saying that, oh, the servers are in Texas, you don't have to worry about it, your data is not being shared at all. Well, if that were true, then couldn't they just divest it on their own and set up their own new company?

So Jeff Yass, who's this guy that's invested in it, couldn't he just set up like TikTok America, and suddenly it comes out and it's founded in Texas, whatever, and do that, but they won't do that. And I can only believe that number one, the main reason is caused on one hand, but then number two is because they probably do have a very robust data sharing agreement. I don't think it's a backdoor.

I think it's the door between your data and anything that's going on in the server partners in China, which of course are absolutely fully open to any Ministry of State Security, Second Bureau, PLA, Second Bureau operatives in the Chinese Intel community that they want. So the question also is, can it apply to other apps? We're streaming live on Rumble right now, as the way the bill is written. Rumble has Canadian connections, so that's not necessarily an adversary, but we're literally communicating on what application.

Not yet. Well, right. So Tyler, we're literally texting right now on Telegram. We love Telegram.

My blessed love Telegram, but they say Telegram is Russian. Could they use this bill to ban Telegram? Yeah, I think so. I think so, too. People that say they can't.

I mean, we had Raheem, who I respect, and I reread the bill. Telegram is totally on the chopping block here. I don't know why anyone would think it isn't.

Like, am I wrong? I mean, it's the sort of thing where they could probably sue you and a court could say, well, no, they're not owned by the Russian government. You can definitely make the case. But then you can see them try to abuse the bill. But whatever precedent that they make with TikTok, could it just be applied?

What it's doing is it is creating a new tool in the toolbox that they could use. And I think we always need to be wary of that because I guess this is taking a bigger step back here. I'll be blunt. But what do I see as the biggest threat to American freedoms right now? I'll be honest, I don't think it's the Chinese Communist Party.

The biggest threat to American freedoms as I enjoy practicing them is substantially other people in the United States. It's large companies in the United States. It's the United States government. It's ideological actors in the United States. China is an adversary in a lot of ways. They compete with us. They even sometimes want to hurt us. But I don't think they have this same agenda of like maximizing restrictions on like my personal speech.

I don't think China actually cares that much about that. But or even if they do agree, though, China's an enemy of the United States. They are an adversary of the United States.

What is that? What is that different? I think, well, so I think enemy implies that they really would go out of their way to hurt us even if we were not really important to them. Like it is an express goal of theirs to hurt us as opposed to having the goal of like China being number one, China being the most powerful country. And the U.S. is an obstacle to that.

Sure. But that's an enemy relationship, right? It's an enemy that's an enemy relationship, right?

Tomato, tomato. But OK, adversarial. And but further than that, I just see a lot of stuff about like China owning TikTok is bad because China can use the algorithms in TikTok to destroy the United States. Well, they're making our kids trans.

That is I just I don't think that's true. I think Americans are making each other trans and making the kids trans. And it's convenient for them to blame China for this. I don't blame if blame TikTok. If TikTok gets sold off to a U.S. company, do you think that will make TikTok more woke or less woke? Less woke.

Really? I mean, for example, if Google bought this company, it would be less woke. I mean, I can say I can say things on Google and Instagram and Facebook I can't say on TikTok. Why is that? I don't actually think that's true. It's 100 percent true.

And even if it is, I don't think if they bought them that they would change. For example, let's just take Facebook. I can take talk about trans issues all day long on Facebook. I cannot on TikTok. But that's because Facebook is entirely dependent on boomers who don't like Obama for their bottom line. But the employees, the employees, young people, but to the extent TikTok is woke, it is because TikTok's American users and American employees and American political actors want to talk to be woke.

Can I can I say why I disagree with you on that? Because the way that TikTok is operating and the reason why Charlie's had the experience that he's had, which is what our organizations had in general, is that TikTok is only beholden essentially to the District of Columbia in the United States. So the way that TikTok views how they moderate content is essentially all through just the District of Columbia, which isn't far off from Google, to be honest. But at least Google and Facebook and other groups are a little bit beholden to the 50 states.

And why is that? Because they're so dependent on their income that comes from the stores that they own. The number one fear that the American companies have is that that antitrust laws will be invoked in each of the 50 states. And that's probably and we don't take advantage of that enough. We don't talk about this enough in the conservative movement. But all 50 states, all the red states together collectively can effectively control Facebook and Google and Apple by by flexing that muscle.

That muscle cannot be flexed right now against TikTok. And so that's a real concern. That's a legitimate concern. That's part of the reason why I believe that the content moderation is much more severe because all they care about is what answer they get out of the District of Columbia as far as operating in the United States. So having an American ownership element would help because if we do flex that muscle, which the Republicans have not, conservatives have not so far, then that gives some balance of power. And that's part of the reason why I believe Facebook pulled back so significantly over the last two years. But ahead of this next election, we'll see.

They could be worse than ever before. Your argument could be proved valid. I just don't think that we've invoked antitrust laws as much as we should. So you don't think that the CCP manipulates the algorithm? I don't even think they would know how to manipulate the algorithm. Like if you wanted to manipulate China, if we owned an app in China, do you even think we'd know how to do it? But then why is the Chinese TikTok different than our TikTok?

Someone's going to manipulate it. Because China censors the crap out of their internet. You said they don't know how to do it. China censors their internet with the and also they're censoring it for Chinese people in China. That's them doing the algorithm.

No, I'm not saying they didn't know they don't know how to do algorithms. I'm saying how would China, a country that actually doesn't understand America that well at all. They have American assets here. Of course they do. But they're really good at understanding America. Do you think Xi Jinping understands what American meme culture is? Do you think he even knows what a meme is?

He might not. And China's own censorship in China is imperfect and extremely brute force. They just have to like blanket ban things because that's what they're able to do. And then there's some stuff with AI. And AI is very good at flagging, let's say, oh, find anything that looks like Winnie the Pooh and delete it because it's making fun of Xi Jinping. But it's not very good at deducing that Winnie the Pooh is a meme in the first place. You would need someone else to figure that out.

So, Jack, split the tie here. Does the CCP, are they in favor of manipulating the algorithm to try to push trans content or just, let's say, the more left wing stuff that we see? I think that it's probably overstated.

And this is what I said initially. I don't think Xi Jinping is sitting there or that the Chinese Communist Party have a direct outlet that is focused on manipulating the algorithm. What I do think that they're doing is those intelligence agencies and those intelligence services are using it for those purposes, using it for data collection purposes, reading messages that people are writing on there if your son or daughter or even a high-level, high-profile individual, high-value target, whatever you call it, is using the app.

And they're certainly going to be using that. But as far as their algorithm, unfortunately, I think that number one, they're definitely not trying to make it positive. But I do think that there's something that Blake is pointing out here that I think gets maybe to the heart of why we don't like TikTok. And that's because so many of the users in the United States on TikTok are searching for those things, because those things are becoming so popular. And because more people are searching for them, then it's becoming this sort of negative feedback loop, a toxic feedback loop, because this is what they know, quote unquote, does well on TikTok. But it's not necessarily because the CCP wants it to, even though, of course, it is to the CCP's interest. I think, unfortunately, it's the United States and the culture, the youth culture, and the just really the culture of degeneracy in this country that that has taken so much hold.

Final thoughts and let's get to one of our partners here. It reminds me a lot of a lot of conservatives know this video. It's the former KGB guy describing how you would undermine America. And a lot of people see this and think, oh, that means all the things I don't like are a KGB plot. And the answer really is, if the KGB was involved in that, they just saw something that was already happening and they amplified it and probably not that effectively.

Yes. The real truth is, is we're looking at the mirror and not liking what we see and we're deciding like, oh, the Chinese did this. And mostly we do it to ourselves. And if we want to ban TikTok because the CCP is bad and we should take an asset away from them, that's fine.

But I don't think it's really going to fix any of the problems socially that we attribute to TikTok. Let's get to the rumble cloud here. Rumble cloud.

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All right. What do we have next? Aaron Rodgers for vice president.

So this just broke on, I believe, late Monday that or maybe it was Tuesday that this is in The New York Times. Aaron Rodgers and Jesse Ventura, top RFK juniors list for running mate candidates. I think that Aaron Rodgers would be brilliant. You get you get 20 million eyeballs every single Sunday during election season. And I just I just think it would be brilliant.

I think what am I missing here? Well, I don't think it would boost his actual take in the November elections. And then I do wonder who would draw more of I think it would take him under one percent of the vote. I think it would actually hurt Trump more than Biden. What do you think, Tyler?

Oh, for sure. It doesn't help us. Do you think Aaron Rodgers would do it? Leverage? I don't think so. Do you think the Jets would like the Jets might sue or something? They release them.

I don't think so. The Jets would have to take all that dead cap money. I think they might just have to have to grit it out. What are they paying him, three or 40 million a year now? Something like that. Yeah, they'd release him or bench him.

You think so? I just I can't imagine that to be too expensive. They went all in on Rodgers and then he got hurt. Back to Zach Wilson, everybody. I just can't imagine them doing that. That'd be a it'd be very funny. I wanted to happen just because it would be extremely entertaining.

And that's a good rule for what to do in politics these days. Part of the fun, by the way, The Daily Beast reports today, Aaron Rodgers was on another ayahuasca vacation. Another? Yes. In Costa Rica.

We should do a thought crime on ayahuasca. Yeah. And when the news broke, he apparently was blindsided by the New York Times piece. He had no idea it was coming. He thought he was still on his trip.

Yeah. According to NFL punter Pat McAfee, who has that show now, the quote, the world, McAfee, whatever. I don't follow this crap. It's OK.

The world found out while that man was in Costa Rica ready to sit with the medicine, as he calls it. And McAfee said he spoke with a source about the situation, implying the source was Rodgers himself, and said he is one not 100 percent sure that the quarterback for the New York Jets necessarily knew the New York Times was going to be reporting that he was potentially going to be vice president. You guys realize, like, and again, I like Aaron Rodgers. I like him. I like him a lot.

I didn't know he had three Achilles heels here. But like this is do you understand out of the woodwork? And again, everybody we know gets their entire life completely investigated. The stuff that professional athletes have that they have skeletons in their closet is beyond any normal citizen on earth.

And we just let it go. But when you run for president and vice president, those things aren't let go. It will make Trump's the stuff that the skeletons they pulled out on Trump look like nothing. Well, with the key difference that I think we can agree, at the least, RFK is not going to be elected president. He's not. No, but he could decide the next president. He could if he's polling high.

I just my the reason I don't think it would boost his candidacy is I think it would create the sense that this is all a carnival act. It's a joke that a lot of people like Aaron Rodgers. A lot of people agree with Aaron Rodgers. They like that he is willing to say whatever comes to mind on McAfee's show, that he'll say whatever about the vaccine or anything like that.

But there's a big leap from that to I literally like the idea of Aaron Rodgers as second in command of the United States of America. And I think, yeah, but it's a gimmick, obviously. It's a gimmick.

Right. OK, then you have a president, a presidential candidate who's running as a gimmick. And I think you saw that it was I think you even saw that with Ross Perot, actually, that it went a bit downhill as a result of that. Like it was just perceived that he was like a little too weird and out there, even though on policy he had a lot of stuff to like, a lot of stuff we would agree with today. But people do most voters take the idea of becoming president pretty seriously. And I think it would just make this all a huge joke.

So what do you think, Jack? First of all, just strategically, you could you couldn't buy the earned media. You couldn't buy the earned media that Aaron because Aaron Rodgers would be on Sunday Night Football. You might bench him. You're right. They might release him because he would hijack like the prime time of the prime time.

He would wear just like a Rogers Kennedy like socks or whatever. OK, but before I get that, we got to play cut 80. Then I want Jack's reaction. Well, there's there's ideas that some of the noises from the Dolphins when they love making the frequency of that is actually healing to the body. So.

I guess what is this? I believe Aaron Rodgers listened to Dolphin's sex sounds to heal his injuries. Because the frequency aids, that's an old tape, that's what McAfee was at Boulder when people thought Deion Sanders was a good coach. Well, he's not allowed to go on McAfee anymore. No, but by the way, they brought him back. They brought I think they brought him back. Oh, did they? Or at least are you sure he's still banned?

I thought he I thought he was banned. I thought they said no, but I actually have a theory about this entire thing. I think this is all a plant to get to make Kennedy look more conservative by by the liberal media.

That could be. And this is entirely none of this is true. Like Jesse Ventura, like like like literally Aaron Rodgers is just people that have agreed publicly that are liked more by conservatives. And they're trying to give Kennedy and Kennedy might even take the bait with this thing. Right.

Which is like, oh, I need to have someone more conservative as my VP. Jack, sorry, it's hard when you're this this remote set up. Go ahead, Jack.

The floor is yours. Yeah, I mean, it's not like we, you know, interview people or whatever. So when we when you look at this question with Aaron Rodgers, I just don't know that he would do it, to be honest. Like, it just doesn't seem like it's something that he would be interested in, you know, that much. It's obviously not a huge part of his life, politics. He's done some podcasts, he's done some stuff.

But that's, that's really it. He's never really run for anything. And, you know, I think when people first get involved in something like this, they realize how nasty it is, and they just don't want to get into it. But then, you know, what I thought was really interesting, though, if you actually read through the report, there were two other names that they mentioned that again, according to sources, that RFK had reached out to one of which was Rand Paul. And apparently, one of Rand's strategists is also working as a consultant for RFK's campaign.

Obviously, there's a lot of connective tissue and where those guys stand on a number of issues. And, and apparently, they had had some conversations, Rand Paul, though came out unequivocally and said, I don't want to get involved with the campaign. And another person they had been apparently was, and again, this, you know, if we were, if we trust, you know, the NBC reporting here, but Tulsi Gabbard was apparently being vetted at one point by RFK. But she has now pulled out of that, and as we all know, has been getting a little bit closer to the Trump camp, holding a meeting with President Trump at some point over the past year. She's, she was at Mar-a-Lago, I think, like last night or the night before for not a Trump fundraiser, but a separate fundraiser. But you know, it's very interesting kind of seeing some of these names in the mix in this VP race that could go for Kennedy and then potentially use that as a way to kind of springboard over to Trump to hear, oh, you know, it's kind of like when you're when you're trying to play one employer after another, get a higher salary, it's like, oh, I might go to Kennedy, but I could come over here.

So I don't know. Here's the problem, Charlie, that Kennedy has. And it's the problem for all of us, actually, to be to be perfectly square, is that all the polling is showing that Kennedy's dividing the Biden independent support and not really pulling enough from the Trump independent support. So Trump's number on independents is like 40 percent on most of the polling that we're seeing, where he's pulling 40. In a two-way race, you know, Trump may win that, but it's clearly he's pulling more from the Biden independent source. So the way that if I if I'm just like a just a very novice political onlooker here with with Kennedy, it's like, well, I need to pull more independents first from Trump in order to have any kind of shot at winning. And then I need to obviously pull more Republicans.

If I'm not pulling more independents, conservative independents, I'm definitely not going to pull more conservatives in general. It sounds like a gimmick, but if it happens, I think that I disagree. I think I don't think it would be one percent. But I mean, it would be stupid for RFK in the sense if you want people to take your ticket like super seriously. Yeah, it would be probably smarter for RFK to pick. Let's think who it would be smart.

Like if we were to give another person named in the article is Yang, Andrew Yang would be interesting. That is not all conservatives, though. But like to that point, I'm saying is like he's looking at it and going to the prism of polling. Oh, my gosh, I'm not winning enough conservatives.

Think about. So who else would be like a top level freethinker? Just think of who goes on Joe Rogan. Basically how we know Rogan.

Joe Rogan would do it. Trying to think the problem with the conservative movement is that it's like for him, it doesn't buy him anything to play with like the establishment arm because the establishment arm is effectively in the Republican side is effectively supporting Biden. So he can't pull anyone. And then anyone that's not the establishment arm doesn't want to cross Trump.

So this is part of the problem. And it's interesting just because he's a. He kind of is appealing to moderates, but then his kind of big, distinct issue is obviously the vaccine stuff. And so you could think, oh, should you try to get a mainstream politician? Like what if you grab Manchin or something and played to the middle?

But all of that would then go against everything he's done in terms of his advocacy on more eccentric issues. So, yeah, maybe it's going to end up being Aaron Rogers. Apparently, according to The Times, Kennedy Rogers got registered on GoDaddy last week. Oh, I'm sure somebody. I'm sure somebody saw it. Someone knew it was coming. Someone in the New York Times. Maybe I got a friend who does that all the time.

They're domain like everything. I mean, I think Kennedy's best move, if you were wanting to split conservatives. And I really I hate seeing this in public because I just don't want to give them ideas.

I don't want to give people I don't like putting things into the ether. But I think the smartest move is is to pick up like a libertarian ask like someone legitimate, though, that was like a former governor, like in this situation, like Gary Johnson, if if if this was years ago, Gary Johnson hadn't already run and destroyed his political career and destroyed his political career. If this was like a Kennedy and Johnson never run type situation, that's a little bit scary. Kennedy, Ron Paul. Yeah. Kennedy, Ron Paul.

Right. Like that if we de-age Ron Paul, you know, I'm saying like 90 now. But just the premise of it like is like that's what's probably most frightening to splitting the vote, because then that basically legitimizes in a significant way. It turns the independent run that is lean Democrat Democrat to like a tilt me. That's what that's what he's thinking, though.

He's thinking towards tilt libertarian, which is like Jesse Ventura's. Make no mistake. This will probably be the last time R.F.K. runs for president. So he'll probably do this two or three more times and build to try to build a coalition each time and name ID. And by the way, final thing I'll say in R.F.K.

before we get to Noble Gold, R.F.K. was not platformed on major news networks. He was kind of a laughing stock, just thought on the vaccine issue. I mean, he has he's like totally changed his persona. He's taken seriously. He's more viral, more, you know, well-known.

So it's been a total win. I mean, he's kind of a guy that will never stop running for president. Right. I mean, he's just the guy that 2028. Yeah, go ahead, Jack. 2028 is going to be open seat. Yeah, no, I know. So I mean, if you're R.F.K., you know, you're not you don't become president this cycle.

You might win 10 million votes or 15 million votes. You call it a start, right? You just keep on the small dollar donation army and you just keep on doing interviews. You know what I mean?

You just kind of keep on doing interviews. OK, on scale one, how much do you hate bad coffee? I, for one, really hate bad coffee, which is why I'm so excited to introduce a company revolting against bad coffee. In 1770, in 1775, the world awakened to a new era and now 1775 coffee is bringing you coffee that embodies that revolutionary spirit.

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Oh, this was was he murdered? Well, just talking about Boeing in general, I have to be very careful when I talk about airlines and pilots. That's fair. That's fair. Why? They just keep they just keep making themselves.

Jack, I said things I guess that were too true. Yeah. So the news story here is there is a. A whistleblower against Boeing, who was in a lawsuit with them, had just recently given testimony and a deposition for his case against them. He was scheduled to give more last Saturday and then he was found dead in the parking lot of a Holiday Inn with a bullet wound in the head, which had proven fatal.

And in fact, already the CEO of Boeing has come out and delivered a public statement about this. Let's play clip 90. I can't believe you committed suicide. I cannot believe you committed suicide. How could you have done this?

How could you have committed suicide? It's from some bad movie in 2011 or so. But obviously it's very similar to what the reaction of Lewis.

It's some guy who's in a centric who makes bad movies, but I don't want to get too far into that. But obviously that's the reaction of a lot of people. You can probably guess what my unpopular reaction is going to be and all the comments are going to call me Boeing Blake over it.

But I suspect he wasn't murdered by Boeing. Why do you immediately go to the normie explanation? I'm not saying you're wrong. Normie explanations are usually true.

Are they in like modern time? Yeah, I'd say so. I can name three examples where that wasn't the case. Can you name three examples of whistleblowers getting murdered? Vince Foster, do you think he killed himself? Probably. Do I think the Clintons murdered him? Is that the question?

Vince Foster. I don't know all the details on it, but I don't see why it'd be weird for a guy to basically kill himself or turn into a wreck and die. So just on this example. Did Epstein kill himself? Maybe, probably. No way.

I don't know. And even if he didn't, it's like Epstein being an actual intelligence operative potentially with possibly multiple countries. There's way more layers. It's like this actually ropes in people who would both have a reason to kill him and the means to do it. Boeing or Epstein? With Epstein. So Epstein, it's like, okay, if he was with Mossad, Mossad actually does kill people. We know they've killed people.

I'm just trying to see the line. Here's what I'll say. I looked into this when news broke. And yes, he was a Boeing whistleblower.

That is true. But they say, oh, he was giving testimony against Boeing. Well, in what? In a lawsuit that he brought against Boeing. It is a wrongful termination lawsuit or I think it was a retaliation lawsuit. He's suing Boeing, saying Boeing ruined his career because he was calling out problems with Boeing and he's suing them. And he's been doing this for more than half a decade.

He, I believe, got pushed out in 17. He's been suing them at least since 2019, because that's when he was interviewed by the BBC over this. He is in a long running legal battle with Boeing on a personal scale. So this is not some trillion dollar lawsuit where if the, you know, his next day's testimony might decide whether they're convicted or not. It's just his personal lawsuit with them. So in that context, it makes a lot more sense to me that this is a guy who perceives his life as getting ruined by Boeing.

And he's been doing this for years on end. And unfortunately, maybe this eventually he's already a depressive. Maybe he had substance abuse problems.

It could be any number of things. And this culminated in him killing himself. And no one had heard of this guy until his death. So I guess if he also was feeling suicidal anyway and he wanted to hurt Boeing, this certainly is a way to do it because not everybody knew who Jeffrey Epstein was before he killed himself. Everyone knew Jeffrey Epstein was.

There were memes about that. Hold on a second. Do you think a majority of Americans knew who Jeffrey Epstein was before he killed himself? Yes or no?

A majority? No. Yeah. Okay. Was he, was he, was he, was he pretty well known?

Yes. How about popular? He would kill himself before it was a popular meme that he would kill himself. But because there was, it was like a 30 day lag between arrests. There was a 30, 60 day lag between arrest and suicide.

Epstein gradually built up in fame, but he was 100% a big deal before his suicide, which is why his suicide, suicide was such a big deal in the first place. Because people are always claiming everyone who died was actually murdered by the deep state. So Jack, do you, I think Jack, you and I, when we see stories like this, go ahead. What was strange with, for me though, what was strange for me though, was that, you know, I was reading the news and apparently over in Russia, there was a whistleblower of the Russian, I think Aeroflot is their, their big, you know, you know, communist airliner or whatever.

And they had a whistleblower and their whistleblower was found shot in the head as well by Vladimir Putin, who was standing there with a shoot, a smoking gun. And so, so clearly, clearly there's just an epidemic of suicides going on. The other, the other one I thought of was, was what if it wasn't suicide? What if he had actually just ridden a Boeing plane recently and fell out? Yeah.

This is getting bad. Every day there's a Boeing problem. I do wonder about that. Do you think it's confirmation bias? I wonder about that just in the sense, we know there are feeding frenzy type stories where something becomes a big deal.

So they look for all of these. Some of these are for real, you know, window blows out and you know, there's a catastrophic decompression and the plane nearly crashes. People nearly die.

That's a real story. But a lot of these stories we've had this past week are stories like flight out of San Francisco has minor mechanical issue, turns around and lands again. And I think planes do that.

My gut feeling is that happens relatively often, just like planes turn around because they have all passengers. Well, there's only really two companies that even make planes. So it's going to be Boeing or Airbus. And so just from that, and I think there's more Bowens than Airbuses in the US. So I think a lot of them were 737s, right? For sure. Yes. The 737, the 737 has real issues.

I don't just use that. Yeah. There are real issues, real safety concerns. Didn't they say they used like hand sanitizer or something to like, Yes, they audited after that decompression incident, they did a quick audit. And they found that out of I think 96 processes or so, I think 31 of them, they failed. And two of the most notable things they saw is they were using dish soap as an emergency lubricant. And they were using like a credit card, a plastic credit card as a as a tool in some capacity. So this is something in their factories. And the big picture here that I think is interesting is everyone's debating what's causing the decline of Boeing. And it's not the easiest thing to answer. Now, an obvious thing to blame is DEI.

I don't think I think you can very reasonably. That's a variable. They're allowed. They're they're a very loud pro DEI company. They made big DEI commitments in 2020. That's not surprising because Boeing is such a big defense and government contractor. And all of those companies just fall all over themselves to adopt whatever the Washington ideology is these days. But it's also Boeing is so immense. They're such a huge company, they produce these products that take, you know, a decade or more to design and prototype and build. And then they have a service life of decades on end. So stuff is Boeing is very obviously going bad. Now, we might be looking at things that started to go wrong 20 years ago that are really only manifesting now.

And it's interesting to look into this because one of the stories this is just sort of a more boring take. But a take I've seen in a lot of places is in the mid 90s, Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, which was another major jet manufacturer. And what's funny is Boeing bought the company. But the sort of take from insiders is it's really more like McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing because they absorbed all of these executives from them. And these guys were better at being executives, basically. And so they took over Boeing.

So for example, the former head of McDonnell Douglas becomes Boeing CEO in the early 2000s. And what McDonnell Douglas was, is they were not as much an engineering company. Boeing was all West Coast Silicon Valley engineering.

It was an engineer led company very focused on the product. McDonnell Douglas was a businessman led company very focused on the bottom line. So they spun off all of Boeing's operations. So now their planes aren't built by Boeing and Boeing factories. Instead, Boeing is just assembling parts made by 500 different contractors and subcontractors. And there's a lot of reason to believe this is what ruined Boeing is they spun off everything that they controlled themselves. And they ruined their culture of perfectionism. And now we have this company that slaps things together.

And you know, think, you know, 99% certainty is pretty good. And then they start having all these problems. Final thoughts on this topic, Jack? I think that's a huge part of it. And by the way, we really shouldn't be asking questions as to Nikki Haley's role or whatever role she played in this the move from from the Seattle area to South Carolina. Obviously, Nikki Haley played a huge part in that that's what won her the board seat on bullet on Boeing. And so why is it that we have this politician who was running for president and yet there was no question about it whatsoever. The media didn't bring it up. I don't even really remember Trump bringing it up that much. And frankly, I think it's something that when we do have politicians that are this clearly bought off by one of these failing companies like this, we should be asking those questions.

And especially with Boeing, in many ways, similar to Aeroflot and similar to what you're saying about TikTok, Boeing is by and large, a state owned or at least state related enterprise in the United States. And it's kind of silly that we don't talk about it like that. OK, next topic. Final topic goes to Jack. It's James K. Polk's America. All right. Yes.

How America. Tyler has strong opinions on this, too, is blowing up the chat. I love this.

Jack, I love this. So this is a this is kind of a conception that we've talked about for a long time. And if we have the map, it's probably easier to show it to everybody. And so so Polk and people remember that he was a president during the Mexican American War. And there was this question after the war, kind of like, what would America look like during or after the war? America wins, Mexico is defeated. It's like this resounding victory.

And of course, everyone remembers or everyone knows as of now. So we get Arizona, we get California, we get the current borders. We don't get Baja California.

Polk at one point was actually calling for full on, right? Full on Baja California, the entire northern half of Mexico, the island of Cuba, the Yucatan Peninsula, though notably and perhaps presciently not Haiti. So the question is not necessarily so much. And there's a long conversation that we had offline, you know, kind of about like, what would the politics of the region have been had this actually gone forward? But there is a sense I think, as well, of why is it that we as Americans just limit ourselves to thinking that, oh, well, you know, this, this is where the border is, and this is where this treaty was, and that's the end of it. And we sort of lost that spirit, that pioneering spirit of Manifest Destiny. I mean, why did Manifest Destiny have to stop?

And is that a good thing? Tyler, you have strong opinions about this, about what could have been in the American Southwest? Yeah, I mean, we talk about this all the time, you know, in the Gadsden Purchase, we should have acquired more of Mexico. And the history is pretty simple.

Most Americans actually don't know this history at all. The Mexican armies were horrible. You know, they pillaged, raped, killed most.

I mean, they're the episode. So it's so funny because you see the the Marxists today in California, Arizona, talk about how like, oh, indigenous people and they and they loop in, you know, That's like La Raza, right? Hispanic people. It's like, actually, the historic Hispanic peoples of Mexico, raped and pillaged and killed so many Native Americans. And actually, the only saving grace was that a lot of in Arizona and Arizona history, you know, white pioneers came to Arizona and actually defended some of the the Native American tribes from other tribes and from the Mexican armies and pushed them back. And then that led to the Mexican-American war.

And yeah, yeah. But that the fast forward to this whole concept is like, should we have acquired Baja California? Should we have more of Sonora and Chihuahua?

And the answer is yes. Like the reason why shouldn't we have taken on more? Think about all that prime real estate in Baja, California. And the big question is today is if we had Baja California, would that be a more conservative version of California? Would California be less liberal because of that?

You know, I don't know. I don't even know if you need to think of it in terms of liberal conservative today. This is a controversial way of framing it. But one of the simplest ways of putting it is would it have been better for the inhabitants of Chihuahua, Sonora, Sinaloa? Those are all of those states that you can see on the screen are the northern, the northern parts. These are all the northern states of Mexico.

At the time when this war was being fought, those were almost, I don't want to say totally empty, but they were very lightly populated. I checked a census for Mexico around 1900. And you're looking at about maybe a million people across all those territories. And that's 50 years later.

So 50 years before that, it's probably under half a million. And so if those areas have been part of the United States, then they would have had the benefit of United States government, United States stability, United States settlement patterns. Instead, they were in Mexico. And if you read a history of Mexico, it's really bad. Mexico is just entirely drenched. Yeah, I just read it recently.

The book was titled Fire and Blood, which tells you everything you need to know about its contents. Mexico is an enormously unstable country. It's an enormously violent country to the extent Mexico is viable at all. It's mostly just because it's adjacent to this huge economic power of the United States to somewhat, you know, keep it viable as a country and not totally disintegrating into like warlords like it's, you know, some medieval state. And so it's you think in terms of would have just been better if the United States, the stronger country had been running those areas.

And it's awkward because you don't like to just say, oh, we should just kick in the door and take stuff over. But that is basically what we did for California, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico. And would you rather live in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas? Or would you rather live in Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez in those places?

And well, Ciudad Juarez has its ups and downs, but most years, it's one of the deadliest cities on planet Earth. What could have been? Yeah, final thought, Jack. No, I was just gonna throw out there. Blake, have you ever heard the story about when L. Ron Hubbard was in the Navy and accidentally invaded Mexico? I have not.

I have not. Yes, the L. Ron Hubbard, who was supposed to be doing this finder Scientology, he was in the Navy, he was supposed to be doing this escort of a of a new aircraft carrier out of San Diego with like this little picket ship, and which which had like, like actual shells and artillery on it and all this other stuff. And he accidentally went to his navigation was not so great. And so he actually went south of the border there and like 19, like during World War Two, goes south of the maritime border and ends up on the Mexican side. And like the Mexican Navy, this is like south of Coronado Island and all that the Mexican Navy actually sailed up like, excuse me, what what is going on? And you know, it's it's kind of amazing in the whole story of L. Ron Hubbard. We just mentioned McDonnell Douglas. And in L. Ron Hubbard's cosmology for Scientology, it was Douglas DC-8s that brought the alien souls to Earth.

It was the DC-8s, yes. Douglas DC-8s were to drop the souls into the volcano before they were blown up with atomic bombs. Well, the Thetans. The Thetans, is that what it was? Yeah, we are all Thetans. We are all Thetans in Scientology. We have to clear the Thetans. A Thetan is a human. So Thetans are what we're... No, you're doing the same thing. A Thetan is a human body. Okay. But I think we also have the alien spirits in us. So you want to get rid of them. The Thetan is the shell.

Yes. So it all it all circles back to Scientology. That said, I have a problem with that, Matt, before we go.

One, we should definitely... So if he hadn't invaded Mexico, if it had been part of Baja California, then he wouldn't have accidentally invaded Mexico, which means he wouldn't. His Navy service may have been better, which means we may not have gotten Scientology. If James Polk had gotten his way.

Would have been a win. But the point, the bigger picture for today is we should aspire to a grand greater America. And that's why we should buy Greenland from Denmark. Yes. And we should annex Antarctica. Hard to disagree.

Greenland, 100 percent Republican state, by the way. All right. Check out the rumble cloud and 1775 coffee. Thank you guys for watching. Until next week, keep committing thought crimes. Thank you.