Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:21]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 17th, 2023.
It is 3.08 UTC as we are starting to record, meaning that for Ivan and I, it is actually still Friday night, June 16th.
For me, it's just after 8 o'clock PM.
Him it's just after 11 PM. So hello, Yvonne. Uh, Aloha.
Neither of us are in Hawaii right now.
|
Ivan:
[0:47]
| You know, we aren't, but my wife, uh, went and when she got, well, we got her new car a couple of months ago.
|
Sam:
[0:59]
| She drove it to Hawaii.
|
Ivan:
[1:01]
| She didn't, but she, for some reason was looking for a license plate frame. All right. Okay.
Um, and she went, I don't even know where, I think she must've shopped for it at some, some, uh, website that sells stuff from Seattle.
Okay. Okay. Yeah. Uh, and, um, and she bought a license plate holder that says live Aloha.
|
Sam:
[1:29]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:32]
| And I was like, I'm like, sure. Why not?
Sounds good. good. So, so yeah, but no, I'm not in, no, I'm not in Hawaii.
No, no. My, uh, my boss is in Hawaii. My boss owns an Island in Hawaii. It was a whole thing.
|
Sam:
[1:50]
| Well, that's nice. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51]
| Yeah. I've been to that Island before he bought it. It was very nice then I hear it's a lot nicer now.
|
Sam:
[2:00]
| Well, you know, there's – there was news this week actually about Hawaii.
|
Ivan:
[2:08]
| Oh, about Hawaii. What happened in Hawaii?
|
Sam:
[2:11]
| Well, it's not happening yet, but they announced that the little mini airport near me, the Everett Airport, is going to start having direct flights from here to Honolulu, I think in the fall.
|
Ivan:
[2:27]
| Wow. From Everett, you know, not, you know, okay, well, that's pretty interesting.
Well, I will say, look, I will say this. I booked a vacation.
Finally, we had been tossing around and I'm going to go on vacation. No, that's good.
Well, you know, contrary to contrary to what I wound up booking and buying it.
My brother goes and I, I, we haven't got, I haven't gone on vacation with my brother in a while. Okay. You And so I went, I was planning different vacations and I was a little bit frustrated with some of the vacation planning because some of the options that we had originally thought of.
|
Sam:
[3:04]
| I think you're like, I think it's a while back.
|
Ivan:
[3:06]
| Yeah. Yeah. It was, did you come to a conclusion? I did.
|
Sam:
[3:10]
| And so we're going, Oh, by the way, let me, let me agenda wise.
Cause I, I feel this transitioning into Yvonne's, but first we're going to do our, but first Yvonne's going to do something.
And then as I've promised lately, I'm going to do media until I catch up and then our big segment is of course going to be on Donald Trump, the indictment, blah, blah, blah.
And depending on how that goes, like if we just blow out that topic and talk for an hour or whatever, maybe we'll just be done after that.
If we feel like we have more time though, we'll do one more segment with one topic from each of us that we pick on the spot at the time. Okay.
With that out of the way, Yvonne, Tell us your travel story as your but first.
|
Ivan:
[3:55]
| Well, the only thing I was going to tell about the travel story is that I and that wasn't my but first, but just to mention, because he talked about service between small airports.
Yeah. So they wound up to my brother booked to go to the British Virgin Islands to a hotel in Virgin Gordon. Now to go there. OK, these islands are a little bit east of Puerto Rico.
Okay east of the US Virgin Islands. Okay. Uh, I don't know if you remember but when I Sam went to visit me with our friend Rebecca many years ago when I had the boat many years ago I took you to the island that's right beside the other island that I'm gonna fly to Okay, where we anchored off.
Okay, it It was there, it went to St. John, Tortola is north.
So we're gonna fly to Tortola, but they started it back then, The ways to get to that island was from very small airlines from Puerto Rico.
You'd fly to Santa on and then you'd take a little small airplane and fly out to one of these prop plane or whatever. I mean, in Virgin Gordon itself, there's an airstrip and there.
Well, it's an airstrip. It was unpaved. OK, you could fly out of there, but you were flying in a plane that could hold like five people, basically.
OK, and I did that a couple of times. It's, it was cool, but, but anyway, um, but they started now because there's these smaller jets that they've got, that got longer range from like Embraer.
And, uh, Oh, bombardier. Uh, they actually are taking one of these and E one 75, which is the ones that usually you see now in a lot of commuter replacing a lot of the regional planes.
And they're going to have a direct flight from, they have a direct flight from Miami to that, the, the, the, that island, we usually flew in Tortola. They have a nonstop.
Now, the one thing about this though, is that, um, the last time I did it, I had to connect in Santa Juana, it took forever.
Now you got a nonstop. Um, you know, it's a, it's a relatively small airplane, but because it's that small of flight, it's nonstop for here.
The price of the tickets was not cheap.
I mean, I could have basically gone to Europe for the price of these tickets, OK?
But but no, we're going to go to the side. But the thing is that I wanted really to go on vacation with my brother, OK?
And he had already planned this out.
And I'm just like, OK, all right, you know, we'll bite the bullet, we'll buy the tickets.
But but that wasn't really my but first, you brought it up because you talked about Before you move to your real life, I looked up the news article about the Hawaii flights.
|
Sam:
[6:44]
| Starting this fall, Alaska Airlines travelers can fly directly from Painfield in Everett, Washington to Hawaii.
The new nonstop service from Everett marks the airline's first new route to Honolulu in over a decade. It will be the longest flight Alaska Airlines operates from the airport.
The daily year-round flight will begin service on November 17th, with one-way fares starting at $149.
|
Ivan:
[7:10]
| Okay. One way fare is starting at $149. Yes. Okay. I will, the round trip ticket to, from here, which is a two hour flight to that island was, what the heck was it? $1,600. Per person.
|
Sam:
[7:32]
| So this looks like 300 round trip to Hawaii. Yeah, basically.
From an airport five feet from my house, basically.
|
Ivan:
[7:39]
| Basically.
|
Sam:
[7:41]
| Yes. You know, at that price, it's like, might as well do it.
You know, that's not bad. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[7:48]
| At the price that I'm talking for my price, Hawaii is lovely, man. The weather is, listen, you would love the weather. The weather is great.
|
Sam:
[7:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:59]
| It's not humid in the summer. It's in the seventies.
It's beautiful. I I mean, it's, it's great, but anyway, my butt first is that I went and, um, I bought a car.
Now we've had a discussion before here, Sam, uh, uh, you know, thought that I bought cars very frequently than you actually do.
|
Sam:
[8:25]
| But the reality is that I, between, because I figured you were one of those, like, yeah, replace your car every three years kind of people.
|
Ivan:
[8:33]
| And I didn't for for a long time. I went, you know, my cars, I was averaging about seven years with each of them, OK?
But but last three years have not been that way. I went and I got I had got at least a Volvo three years ago. OK.
And, you know, what happened is that I was looking at What's happening right now with a lease end and whatnot with the car and look I'd leave some of these other cars that I kept them longer anyway, so I had to buy it, whatever.
But the interest rates for used cars are higher and so therefore say buying out the lease right now at the rates that i can even get at the usual places that i finance used cars before.
I'd higher use to be it really changes the equation i mean i used to be able to get up but you know even when rates used to be high.
6% 5, 6% I looked at I was eight and a half.
OK, I was like, wow, that's that's that's a lot higher, but it's not, you know, it's not crazy high. I mean, we keep thinking about, you know, these rates is high. I mean, people have to look over history.
These are not super high rates compared globally. There aren't either.
But but but eight and a half makes makes the numbers be a little bit different.
The other thing is that I was like, you know, So I like this car and I like the Volvo, but I think I may want to make a change. And I've been looking at different cars and whatnot.
And the one thing that happened is that they had sent me offers from Volvo saying, hey, you know what?
Your car, listen, if you want to get out of your lease early, we'll let you, listen, bring in your car.
You'll just, you know, I, this lease, I did a lease where I put no money down.
Okay. I, I mean, I just, I just signed and drove away with a car.
I didn't, I don't, these are no money down lease. I didn't put anything down or whatever. And so they say, Hey, look, bring your car. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll take back the lease early and you take a car, but they didn't have any cars that really interested me.
|
Sam:
[10:48]
| Okay. Are you still like your, your, your, your last car, you talked a lot about how it was a plug in hybrid.
|
Ivan:
[10:55]
| It was a plug in hybrid. I was looking at either. No, no, no.
I was I was I was looking at either full electrics, I was looking for the most part at all electric cars. Okay. Um, uh, I mean, I was willing to consider other plug-in hybrids because the one thing is that the newer generation of plug-in hybrids, including the ones from Volvo have a lot more range. Okay.
Like the all electric range is 40, 50, 60 miles.
Okay. Then a whole bunch of them come out now, which makes it that, you know, it's highly unlikely that on your regular use, you'll be using any gas at all.
Um, yeah, you know, when you're, when you've got a range of 45 miles, uh, if, if, if all, if your normal use is just around town to the grocery store back, you know, to school, you've got double, you got to do double trips or whatever, man.
You're, you're just not going to dip into the gas at all. Period.
|
Sam:
[11:54]
| Um, you know, and so unless you actually like go somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[11:56]
| Yeah, exactly. And so I mean, hell, even for a lot of people, their roundtrip commutes are like 20 miles each way on.
I think I saw a report said the average commute each, you know, roundtrip commute is like about 40, 50 miles. If you think about it, my roundtrip's about 50.
So think about 50. I mean, with that 45 miles range, basically you'd be using what?
Gas for barely five miles.
|
Sam:
[12:22]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[12:23]
| You know, of the trip. So that, you know, so, so that covers most people's like commute, okay.
In a day, uh, with that gas range. So with that electric range, so I've been looking at the different ones, but I didn't see anything that interested me. They sent me a thing for an SUV and I'm like, I don't want a damn SUV.
Um, but one thing is that I have always had a, a thing for.
A station wagons. Okay.
|
Sam:
[12:53]
| Okay. I've always liked I think wagons, the little s of the little SUVs are basically station wagons, aren't they?
|
Ivan:
[13:02]
| But they aren't okay. My wife has a little SUV. No, they aren't.
Okay. It's a it's much taller writing. They don't drive to say but even I really like to be fair.
I'm not talking about the old like, for, you know, you don't want wood on fire.
No, No, no, no, I'm not talking about those. The ones that I really like are more the European and more the high performance ones, because over the last 30 years, they had some very high performance station wagons coming out.
And I remember that one of the first that I got, our buddy Al, his dad had bought a Mercedes station wagon, OK, for a while.
And that that station wagon was super cool. OK, and it was fast. It was cool.
However, I liked it. It was like really cool. And I've had other friends that I've had that I've had those.
And, you know, almost all the car enthusiasts are like, you know, it do YouTube have bought some kind of high performance station wagon.
Now, the thing is that Volvo has those, but they're super rare.
They're made, you know, they they sell in the U.S.
Like they they do sell station wagons. But as far as I can tell, over the last three years, They may be shipped to the U.S. like a thousand.
That's it. They sell them all in Europe or other places.
They don't. They barely bring any here. So they're very rare to get.
And they have a very high performance version that is a plug in hybrid.
OK, because Volvo, the thing is that any other high performance cars are plug in hybrid electric. And so they they have been sending me the stuff about ending the lease early or whatever.
And and, you know, they didn't have any car like that. Then all of a sudden I get this.
I think I saw it on a Facebook ad, OK, that the dealer like near me That, that, that, that Salsvalvo had one of those.
Very high performance wagons in in stock. It's it's called it's a it's a the V60 is called a Polestar.
So Polestar is like their their performance efficient. So it's got like, you know, it's very fast, you know, really massive brakes and stuff or whatever.
It's the suspension is a lot stiffer.
Everything is done for for for performance on it. But at the same time, it beats the whole thing that I want a car it's eco-friendly.
Plug-in hybrid, 45 miles range, 74 MPGE rated.
Okay. Which that's, you know, I mean, the only things that really get any more than that are like really, you know, full electric cars. Okay.
So it's not a very high MPGE rating.
And I, you know, I called them up and I said, because the thing is they usually, when they get these cars at a dealer, they will put up take pictures of it and put it on there. But the picture I saw was a stock picture.
And a lot of dealers that I've seen when I've been looking at cars lately, they put a stock picture is the car isn't there, right?
It may be on its way or something or whatever, but they don't have the car.
So I call I went, I sent an email inquiry. I said, like, do you guys have this car?
And I get back, I says, yes, as a matter of fact, the sitting in our showroom.
Okay, and I went, okay, let me go take a look at it. and then they actually...
Went and like took it out of showroom and got it ready for me to to to be able to test and stuff or whatever.
And I went and I I tried it and I liked it. OK, I'm like, OK, this is yeah, this is cool.
OK, I was I was there, but I really didn't have time to to negotiate that day, in part because I had gone that day, I was going to take part of the day off.
But one thing that happened is that I went to my doctor to get to do my annual checkup, and then my doctor was close to there.
And so I decided, look, I'll stop by after I go to my doctor, get my blood drawn and then whatever went on.
And the thing is that as I'm heading over there and I stop first to get lunch, because number one thing you should never do at a car dealer is go without having eaten.
Because if you get dragged there and stay a long time, you're going to wind up like my wife once almost wanted to just close a deal on a car.
It was a terrible deal just because she was hungry.
|
Sam:
[17:38]
| Right. And she wanted to get it done and get out of there.
|
Ivan:
[17:40]
| Yeah. And I'm like, no, no, you don't.
|
Sam:
[17:42]
| Don't do that.
|
Ivan:
[17:43]
| OK, so I stopped to get a sandwich or something or whatever at a place that was right beside the the car dealer. And I got a I got a note that I had a call that they wanted me to be on a on a call.
The thing is, because I was I had marked myself to be out. Normally, I wouldn't be on the call, but this is for the most important deal I have, OK, that I'm doing this year. So you're like, oh, fuck. Yeah, I got to take this damn call. I mean, I cannot skip this call.
So I went over there and I, you know, I said, look, I'm interested, but I got to see the numbers, see if this is interesting. Well, the numbers they threw out at me were I didn't like, which is always what happens anyway.
And I'm like, look, I got to leave. OK, look, bye. I like the car, whatever. Call you later. And I left, okay.
Well, this guy, okay, I get on my call, and I call him up.
This guy, they're like, listen, we want to make this deal. We want to make this deal.
Well, Wait, are you now talking your work call or the No, no, no, this after, after, after I got home, I did my work call.
Okay. And then they called you back. And then, yes, exactly.
And they're like, they want, we want to make this deal. We want to make this deal, but you're asking too much. I, I basically, you know, we were like about I calculated.
I said, listen, I thought what I would come in.
We were about $400 a month apart.
OK, on what I thought it should be.
OK, they I mean, they I mean, it was a big difference.
OK, and I'm like, look, I calculated But my amount that I originally thought my my I mean, basically 400 bucks a month was at the border of where I was like, that's my best deal that I will take that that's my maximum that I think that I would go basically over the phone, they came down seven, they met me 75% of the way, okay, over the phone.
And basically I said, Well, do you want to come over here? And I'm like, No. I know.
Listen, we went over the terms, I was just gonna, he said again, look, just bring the the car over here, bring me the paperwork.
And I'm not going back there. Just bring me the damn car.
Take the other car and I'll sign everything over here. And that actually, by the way, that's a much better way of getting the car at the end.
I did not. I spent basically just an hour and a half, which which part of it was just looking at the car, like some stuff or whatever. Yeah.
Haven't bring me the fucking stuff over here.
I sent everything online. I filled out their credit application, scanned my documents, agreed on the numbers.
They brought, they brought a folder where here were the papers.
We signed them on the trunk of the car, change the license plates.
They took off the car and that's it. So I'm driving a station wagon, Sam.
|
Sam:
[20:36]
| Now, so, so I've been looking around on Volvo's website. Is this the V 60 pull?
|
Ivan:
[20:43]
| Yes, that is correct.
|
Sam:
[20:45]
| Yes. The V 60 hybrid model. Yes, correct.
|
Ivan:
[20:49]
| I'm looking out there.
|
Sam:
[20:50]
| I'm curious. It looks okay. I like it. It's I, I would probably not like, I wouldn't probably not pick this car, But it I can see you in it.
|
Ivan:
[20:58]
| Yeah, it's like now here's the other reason why I wanted to get this car over some others for whatever reason, you know, and used car prices have been coming back down.
|
Sam:
[21:07]
| So this was a used one.
|
Ivan:
[21:09]
| No, no, it's a no.
|
Sam:
[21:10]
| You're talking about your trading.
|
Ivan:
[21:12]
| But now, no, no, no. Even for the one talking, I'm thinking future resale value.
The one thing is that, you know, look, I've done this thing many times where I have not bought the I bought cars that I know up front that will get take a massive depreciation hit.
Right. OK. Basically, because I'm like, I don't care. That's car I want, so forth and so on. OK. And at the end, it's like, you know, at least if it's an lease, you know, you just walk away and turn it in.
But but in most cases, you know, I own the cars. And so at the end, you know, like I paid for a car, you know, where the depreciation at the end, the car was like worth like what?
The she's maybe 20, 15% of what I paid for it, you know? And that's not the greatest feeling, OK?
I have to be honest. And so the one thing is that for whatever reason.
I think in part because of the rarity of these, OK, the resale values of these are are ridiculous, OK? I mean, literally.
I mean, I, I see one listed here, two years used that basically is selling for what I paid for my new.
OK, because, well, another reason is because I hope the important part.
OK, so it's a plug in the hybrid, right?
And you know that there were these car incentives that were put in the Inflation Reduction Act, OK, for for electric vehicles, that for purchases, they only apply to a very limited number of vehicles with a limited number, with limited prices and so forth.
|
Sam:
[22:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[22:57]
| If you buy them, but if you lease them, basically it applies to almost any damn plug-in hybrid or electric car, no matter what the hell the damn prices. Okay.
And so the thing is that, so my car was eligible for that.
And so I basically was able to take advantage of the $7,500, uh, uh, government rebate, plus a couple of other rebates that I had stuff.
I was able to get $10,000 for the rebates, which is why, uh, the price I paid is like the one that I could, that I could basically, I mean, I could, that that I could sell the car for used, okay.
A couple of years from now, but, but it's because of the taxes.
I mean, the dealer got his full price.
It's just that the, I got the rebates. Okay.
Uh, so, uh, so yeah, I did take advantage of that.
I heard that the trick that they are doing at the dealers with most of the customers right now is because you can get the credits on the lease cars is like, Oh, you want to buy the car here, do this, uh, lease the car right now.
Then tomorrow, you know, uh, get a car load and, and purchase it because that's the only way you'll get your 7,500, uh, tax rebate. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:28]
| So I heard that that's the, so how many days have you had it now?
|
Ivan:
[24:32]
| Uh, what day is it today?
|
Sam:
[24:34]
| Friday.
|
Ivan:
[24:36]
| Uh, when did I go to my doctor? you, Uh, I think it was, uh, shit. Okay.
|
Sam:
[24:42]
| It doesn't matter, Yvonne. I was just going to ask you how it is.
|
Ivan:
[24:45]
| Wednesday, Wednesday.
|
Sam:
[24:46]
| So you've had it like three days.
|
Ivan:
[24:48]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[24:49]
| My question is just still happy. You'll like it.
|
Ivan:
[24:52]
| Oh, listen. Oh, yeah. Listen, listen, the what the big difference between this car and mine, although they have the same engine, because this is the performance to the everything is programmed different, the transmission, everything and the suspension, it oh my God, it drives, accelerates and handles so much better.
I I I already I did a turn somewhere where I was able to.
I've never been able to do this in my sedan.
I had the tail like go swinging out a little bit during the turn.
The brakes look, it's got these massive uh, uh, uh, uh, performance brakes, um, the, the, the breaking is just insane. Okay.
The breaking action, plus the region is really aggressive in this car.
It's, I mean, this car, when you want to slow down, it's like, it's like you're running into a brick wall.
Like it's crazy. Okay. My wife today got a little bit pissed at me because I, because I was a little bit, I was a little bit exuberant with it.
Um, so yes, I do like it very much. I do like the convenience of the of the vehicle.
Oh, you know, and the thing is that it I don't like SUVs, but this has the best combination of performance books, you know, capability to carry stuff.
It's just everything in one in one package and fuel economy.
OK, then I mean, you know, so I, you know, and I got my rebates.
Very exciting, but I bought, I mean, but, but I think that, um, uh, you know, it's gotta like, uh, right now, because, you know, this vehicle type is very practical and it's, I find it as I drive this, that it's, it's ridiculous to be that more people don't buy it because just station wagons in general.
|
Sam:
[26:57]
| In general?
|
Ivan:
[26:59]
| Yeah, because, you know, they they are they are they are better driving.
Although a lot of people don't care about that. The one thing is that I noticed that my wife talked about this is that, you know, she's you know, she's driving now an SUV again, even though she's driven a car.
And she's like, oh, well, I like to be high. Is this whole thing about being high? And I'm like, you know, in the car and looking down, I'm like, I'm like, no, I want to be low. I don't want to be high, right?
I like being low, so I don't, I don't, uh, uh, you know, like that.
But the other thing is that, you know, inherently they're more fuel economical.
Just the aerodynamics of it. They're, they're, they're, they're more, you know, they're more, they're more, you know, fuel economical there.
I think that they're easier to get into and out than an SUV.
Uh, especially some of those really high ones. You have to climb into the damn thing.
|
Sam:
[27:53]
| I mean, well, this is why I was saying earlier, like the comparison has got to be to the small SUVs, right?
Like the, I guess, cause like I, I look at like, you know, I have a, I have a have a compact hatchback, but like, I look at some of the small SUVs and they're basically the same shape, just a little bit bigger, just taller.
|
Ivan:
[28:17]
| Yeah. That's basically what they have done. Yeah. Basically.
|
Sam:
[28:20]
| So yeah, I mean, anyway, okay. Are you done?
|
Ivan:
[28:25]
| I'm done.
|
Sam:
[28:25]
| Okay. I will do my movie.
|
Ivan:
[28:30]
| Do it a movie.
|
Sam:
[28:32]
| So my movie this time I watched back in when, when did I watch this one, I watched this one back at the beginning of March and I'm continuing to work my way up that AFI list of best movies of the first hundred years of movies, et cetera, and, oh, I should tell you what number this one was. Hold on, hold on.
I will get you the information that you need.
|
Ivan:
[28:58]
| You are the provider of information. I have all the best information, all the best, all the most wonderful information from all the best people.
|
Sam:
[29:10]
| Uh, it was number 29 on the AFI list. So I'm getting up there.
I I'm, I'm getting really close to the top of this list at this point.
Yeah. Um, but it was Mr. Smith goes to Washington, Mr.
|
Ivan:
[29:24]
| Smith goes to Washington. Okay.
|
Sam:
[29:26]
| Have I, it is a classic movie. Have you ever watched?
|
Ivan:
[29:29]
| I believe I did once a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.
|
Sam:
[29:35]
| Yeah, it's not that one. That one's coming up soon. Like that is on this list.
But no, this is 1939. It's Jimmy Stewart. And he unexpectedly becomes a senator, goes to Washington.
Discovered, oh, my goodness, there's corruption going on there.
And spoilers, spoilers for an almost 100 year old movie.
Um, I guess not quite It's 1939. We're not quite at 2039 yet But anyway, he discovers there's corruption going on and he's able to...
Shut down the corrupt thing he discovered through the use of the magical filibuster.
|
Ivan:
[30:23]
| Oh yes, and I remember that scene.
|
Sam:
[30:26]
| Yeah, so, uh, bottom line, yeah, I liked it.
It's a classic. It's a classic for a reason. Some people will probably find it a little bit cheesy, but you know, I enjoyed the movie.
I also thought the person who, like, is on his staff, the woman who's on his staff that eventually becomes a love interest, etc, Jean Arthur played her, and I thought she was great too.
It was sort of, she put a comedic twist on this, like he was sort of the straight man person, and going through is like discovering the corruption, blah, blah, blah.
But she was fun and gave a nice twist. I looked up like, enough so that I looked up like some other movies that she was in and added them to my list, uh, to watch at some point, you know, so what can you say about these kinds of classics?
It is old timey. It is a little old fashioned.
It seems a little naive when compared to like today's politics, but it was a nice sweet movie. I enjoyed it. Thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[31:35]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[31:36]
| Yeah. And one thing I found out that I've also put on my list now, uh, is there was a 1960s TV show based on this too.
|
Ivan:
[31:48]
| Oh, there was, okay. Yes. No idea.
|
Sam:
[31:51]
| Well, you know, I don't know if it was that good, but, you know, uh, but it existed and so I'm like, okay, well, you know, I'll add that to a list too. Maybe I'll see it someday.
Um, but yeah, I, I, I, I enjoyed the movie. It was fun. Okay.
Anyway, I don't know that I have that much else to say with it. Um, thumbs up.
|
Ivan:
[32:14]
| Well, uh, so that, that's it. You, you gave it, you gave it your thumbs up. Yes.
|
Sam:
[32:21]
| The bottom line, bottom line, thumbs up. It's a classic. If you haven't seen it, go check out Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
Good old flick. You know, I, you know, I like a lot of these like 1930s pre-war movies.
They're actually, I like a lot of them. Not all of them, of course, but I kind of, like, I think I've said this before, like some of the 30s and 40s movies, I resonate with their style a lot more than I do with, say, 1970s movies.
|
Ivan:
[32:53]
| All right, but, you know, OK, all right. What one thing one that I forgot to mention about the car earlier? Yeah. Which which was well, which this was because this was a tech related thing.
|
Sam:
[33:08]
| OK, so.
|
Ivan:
[33:08]
| Yeah. So this is an Apple related thing. So this car had this new implementation of Apple CarPlay.
Now, now the one thing is that I think the originally almost every car play that I've used almost every vehicle.
The way that Apple CarPlay showed was in a kind of like a little rectangular box.
And in my previous car, even though the screen was like, it looked like an iPad.
What it did is only showed it at the bottom half of the screen.
That's a rectangular box with other features about the vehicle up on the top.
But almost every car that I'd seen, it'd been that way.
|
Sam:
[33:49]
| And like the only one I've experienced in person was the, um, uh, when, when I've had loaner Subarus and they haven't been like that, the whole thing has been car play. That's right.
|
Ivan:
[34:00]
| But it's been like a little rectangular, but it's, it is rectangular, but you don't have other, you don't have things, right?
You don't see any yet. The only thing that shows it right in, in the world, you've started it.
Right. Right. In most cars, it's like that. And the Volvo would actually split the screen where the bottom was car car playing the top.
There were other functions for you to switch to. But but the thing is that in in in in this car now that they they actually switched rather hastily because some features, Which I guess are the features that are the least use they haven't have been migrated from their old car operating system to this but I will say that most of them happen. If they moved it to anger during automotive.
And there's there's a there's a lot of pluses there are some minuses there are some things that are missing but but there are a lot of pluses one of the things is that they did this implementation where they did the latest version.
Of CarPlay for the car. Plus it accepts over the air updates and stuff for the for for this, which, you know, makes it that it's a lot of the features.
If there's a new feature coming out, it could be really rolled out pretty easily.
The one thing that they did is is that a CarPlay on the screen.
When I go to CarPlay mode, it looks like I have an iPad basically in the in in in the middle screen. I mean, it's it's it literally that's what that's how it should be.
That's the only way it should be. And it's great. OK, I mean, it's it's it's it's awesome.
OK, but aside from that, yes, what they've done is that Apple had sent out code for people to be able to use, like, say, put navigation, say, because my my my speedometer and all that is a digital display. Right.
But in almost all these cars, the secondary displays would not display anything for car play.
It in the old version, but now they can and they did that implementation where if I say I Ask for navigation it will put whatever maps I'm running which could be ways whatever Yeah in the in front of me in the display between the speedometers right there Yeah for me to be able to see the navigation instructions Well, I have whatever the hell other thing I have on carplay music phone, whatever running on the main display But that I'm telling you, I was like, whoa, this is really good.
OK, and it worked works really, really well.
I'm very and I think they only rolled this out like a couple of months ago in a software update. OK.
And it works really well. It you know, the you know, I got to say that Uh, but this is the way in the future. I'm liking this future with, with this kind of, with this kind of stuff like this.
Um, so yeah, so that was one thing that I saw this has the, that CarPlay implementation, and if that's what's coming, that, that, that's really cool.
|
Sam:
[37:07]
| I, and well, from what they've previewed on CarPlay, it's going to go even further, but, uh, I, you know, you know, this is one of the things where, you know, I I hopefully will be able to squeeze a few more years out of my car and won't be shopping for a new car immediately.
Whenever I do, like, I'll...
The Apple CarPlay experience is going to be a significant part of my deciding factor, right?
Like I'm gonna look at different cars and how well that interface works and where it is in the car like for instance, one of the things is I Like the middle screen the the secondary screen that's in the middle that you were talking about like yeah So right, I like it higher up not lower down and that's one of the things I've seen in various cars Sometimes it's lower, sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's in between.
I basically, the higher, the better, you know?
And so I'm like, okay, that will be a, one of the things that I consider when I look at a car, like I'm not a performance person like you, I, I couldn't care less how fast the damn thing accelerates.
I don't give a shit, but where the screen is, I care about that. Yeah, I can see that.
|
Ivan:
[38:18]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[38:18]
| Yeah. You know? And, uh, and as I told you before, I care where the cup holders are, you know, they need to be in a comfortable position.
|
Ivan:
[38:25]
| I got these cupholders.
|
Sam:
[38:28]
| But the other thing I'll say is like, from when I did have the Subaru loaners, when my car has been in the shop once or twice, the one thing I absolutely miss is car play.
Like, you know, my car is old enough. I have nothing of the sort, you know, and I really did enjoy car play to the point where I keep, I keep, I keep every few months I look at some of the, um, the external car plays you can get, like not to replace the actual radio, but like the ones that you can just mount and be there and have a bigger screen on your phone.
And they've been getting better and they've been getting less expensive.
Like the ones from a couple of years ago were really pretty crappy.
And as far as I can tell now, they're not like...
Super great, but they're getting better and they're getting cheaper to the point where I'm like, yeah, you know, I've got, I've got another round of like stuff I have to do to my car this summer. Maybe after I do that, I'll, I'll just get one of those.
Cause you know, they're coming down in price.
|
Ivan:
[39:29]
| I've seen those, some of those definitely, you know? Yeah.
|
Sam:
[39:32]
| Yeah. I mean, well, the cheapest ones at this point are under a hundred bucks, but, but those suck.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, but, but for 300, You can get a decent one, you know, I don't know.
And of course, if you want it like if you actually want to replace your stock radio there, you can get much more expensive ones that are also nicer.
But I wouldn't want to do that. But I might get one of the ones that I just, you know, I just mount there and put it up there.
And instead of mounting my phone, I mount the CarPlay device.
It's the same damn, you know, I'm mounting something there. Might as well mount something bigger, you know, with a little more function. Well, I shouldn't say more functionality.
My phone actually has more functionality, but with functionality specifically designed to be safer to use in the car than messing with your fucking phone.
|
Ivan:
[40:20]
| Yeah, no, no, no, totally.
|
Sam:
[40:22]
| Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[40:23]
| Yeah. Yeah. It makes it a lot easier. I mean, you know, I, I just press a button on the, on the steering wheel. I can say, Hey Siri, do this.
Yeah. You know, whatever.
|
Sam:
[40:31]
| And it'll read you your texts.
|
Ivan:
[40:33]
| Yes, it did.
|
Sam:
[40:37]
| Yep. And of course I want, and yours prop yours probably is at this point is the wireless car play at this point. Right?
|
Ivan:
[40:43]
| Well, you know what? Uh, in my wife's car, it's wireless in this car. It is not wireless.
I will say now, now look, I will say that still it's here.
I, you like the better. Yes. There's a couple of reasons I found.
One thing is that, well, every time I get into my car, I plug in the damn thing to charge the phone anyway. Thank you.
And so, you know, I'm like, what the hell do I want at wireless when anyway, I'm going to plug in the damn thing to charge. I want the damn phone charging in the damn car.
|
Sam:
[41:18]
| That's true. If you and I have thought about that, you plug it in anyway, blah, blah, blah. Now, if you had a car where you had some place where you could just throw the phone and it would be charging wirelessly anyway.
|
Ivan:
[41:30]
| Yeah, well, well, look, my wife's car has a wireless car plate with a wireless charging pad.
And I will tell you the two the two things that I found that are that suck about this.
One, these car charging pads and I've read about, they're kind of slow and shitty.
And then the thing is that I keep fiddling with like, well, I didn't put the phone down right on the pad or, or, or, or so. And then you got to, I'm like, damn it.
I'm like, I'm fidgeting more to put the damn phone right on the pad for it to charge.
|
Sam:
[41:58]
| You would, if you just plugged it in.
|
Ivan:
[42:00]
| Yeah. And so I, yes, it's so weird.
|
Sam:
[42:03]
| And the wired and wired charging is still faster, way faster.
|
Ivan:
[42:07]
| And so like, yeah, I mean, it's so slow on the, on the, on the wireless pad that I found my wife has started fricking plugging in the damn phone anyway. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[42:19]
| And I'm like, okay, well, and the thing is that sometimes the, the, the, sometimes the signal gets interfered with on the wireless.
|
Sam:
[42:28]
| It's, it's not common. I don't know. I I've, I've just about, uh, I've, I've tried a few of the wireless chargers and I'm close to going back to just doing wired all the time for the speed reasons. It's just, yeah.
Anyway, we have talked enough about cars, like, you know, like, and movies.
Well, yeah, but let's be honest here.
The movie was like five minutes out of all it's true. And we talked about your car for like 40. So now we're talking carplay and now we're talking carplay.
So yeah. Okay. Let's take a break.
|
Ivan:
[43:03]
| Now we went back to Apple. So, of course, you know, but probably, you know, this we have pissed off probably all.
All the people that we could piss off at this point right now, nobody's listening.
|
Sam:
[43:13]
| Yeah, anyone who actually came to the show for the politics is like, oh my god, I can't believe I've had to wait through all of this stuff.
Of course, there is a fast-forward button there.
You know, every podcast player lets you skip forward.
|
Ivan:
[43:29]
| It does?
|
Sam:
[43:30]
| Yes, although I do not use chapters in this podcast, as some people have, you know, said they would like, But I don't know, I, I, I dislike chapters.
Like when I am listening to something, I don't like the chapter feature.
So I don't put it in my podcast. Damn it.
|
Ivan:
[43:48]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[43:50]
| And the reason is simple. It's because, and of course this depends on your podcast player too, but in last time I was doing anything with chapters and I wasn't using the podcast player.
I use, if you hit the next button, it goes to the next chapter instead of the next podcast.
And that's just almost never what I want.
And so I just got frustrated and unsubscribed from that podcast.
|
Ivan:
[44:12]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[44:17]
| So anyway, we are going to take a break and then we will get to the main agenda.
Of the show, which is going to be all the Donald Trump, I was going to say impeachment.
It's not an impeachment now. It's an indictment. Uh, but we'll, we'll talk about Donald Trump and his lovely documents and everything he's been doing.
And, you know, we'll talk about that however long it seems we need to, and then we'll decide if we want to talk about anything else or whether we'll just be done. Yeah. So we'll see. Back after this.
Since there wasn't an Election Graphs promo, I will just say this.
First of all, I'm probably, yes, I'm checking. I am due to do another blog post on Election Graphs this weekend, so it'll probably come out sometime after this podcast comes out, but I'll probably do a blog post this weekend because it's been four weeks since my last one.
But I will say the one significant thing that happened this week is for the first time since July, if you take my straight up election averages in every state and say whoever's ahead by even a tiny bit wins, for the first time since July, Biden is ahead again.
So Trump peaked almost exactly at the midterms in November and his situation has been deteriorating ever since.
And Biden is once again very narrowly in the lead in the Electoral College.
If you just give all the states to who's ahead at the moment with the poll averages, and again this is if the election is held today, it is not a prediction or a forecast in any way, it's if the election was today you get Biden 276 Trump 262 which is Biden by 14.
Now my probabilistic views still have Trump with a slight edge because there are so many states that there are several states that yes Biden is ahead but by just the tiniest little amount so anyway uh that that's that so So last we spoke, Yvonne, we knew that Donald Trump had been indicted, but the actual indictment had not yet been released.
So I actually put in a note at the beginning of last week's show to that effect because the indictment came out within less than 24 hours after we recorded and before I put the show out.
So we did get the indictment drop. It was 37 counts, not just 7 against Donald Trump.
His valet got a few counts as well.
The indictment was an easy read. I took a half an hour between meetings the day that it dropped and I just read the whole thing.
Very detailed. It's got pictures. It's got quotes from recordings.
Obviously, indictments are always just the prosecution getting to tell their story. We haven't heard from the defense yet, but it looks, it was pretty bad.
|
Ivan:
[48:47]
| And yes, he it's, it's, I mean, from what I've been able to gather, I mean, it's this guy basically, they have him on the record himself saying that he knows that the documents are, uh, you know, that he shouldn't have the documents because they are what the hell classified documents.
And in one of the recordings, he admitted to people that he could have declassified it while he was president, but that he didn't.
|
Sam:
[49:30]
| End. Yeah, he did not. Yeah, there's no credit.
He admits all that. And he admits he knows he shouldn't show it to people.
|
Ivan:
[49:39]
| He didn't know does that anyway?
|
Sam:
[49:41]
| Yes. And he still does it anyway. He does not admit what you said that he shouldn't have them.
|
Ivan:
[49:48]
| He can. Oh, no, no, he shouldn't. Correct. He he didn't say that part. He shouldn't have them.
But but but that they were classified documents.
|
Sam:
[49:59]
| I mean, basically he admitted literally- He admitted that he knew he shouldn't show them and that he knew he could have declassified them while he was president, but he was no longer able to.
|
Ivan:
[50:10]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[50:11]
| And that they, which implies that therefore they are still classified.
You're right. So this whole argument of I declassified them in my head before I left the presidency is- It's horseshit.
|
Ivan:
[50:22]
| He, he, he had to advise his own case.
|
Sam:
[50:25]
| And, you know, and, and since then he's been on TV. Yes. Once again, admitting to the crime over and over and over again.
Now he said in those same conversations, he always sort of says, and it's perfectly legal, but he's admitting to the actual behavior, like again, and we, we talked about this even before the indictment dropped but like his not once have we heard Trump or his people actually say this stuff didn't happen right they've They've only said, everything was fine, everything was legal, but they...
They haven't been denying the actual facts.
And everybody who is not Donald Trump, his family, or being paid by them, practically, you know, that's not quite true.
There's a whole bunch of fucking Republicans. We'll talk about them in a second.
But all the experts of the law are like, no, they're completely and totally wrong about the law. Of course this is illegal.
And he's admitting the behavior flat out. And we've, in any normal, like, if things played out the way you'd normally go, you'd be like, there's no way this guy's not being convicted.
|
Ivan:
[51:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[51:53]
| But, of course, there's all kinds of craziness. As there always will be.
|
Ivan:
[51:57]
| The guy is the, is the luckiest bastard on earth.
When, you know, it's in certain senses, what he, you know, he goes to a judge and he gets basically what I, by the luck of the draw, he gets judge Canon.
|
Sam:
[52:14]
| Yeah. It's the same judge who made up bent over backwards, bent over backwards, made up law that nobody had ever heard of before. And all the experts were like, what is she doing? This is completely crazy.
|
Ivan:
[52:29]
| And then an appeal got basically completely crushed.
|
Sam:
[52:32]
| And an appeal got completely crushed and reversed and slapped down and all of this stuff while succeeding by the way, in delaying the case, like at least a couple of months while it went through that process.
But for those of you who don't remember, it was all that stuff about it needs a special master and we're gonna go through all the material and you know blah blah blah blah blah and you're you're getting all kinds of stuff.
And so he, through the luck of the draw, got her.
And one of the big open questions right now is, will she mess with it?
Will she do that kind of stuff again, going full out, all out mega?
Because there are lots and lots of things the presiding judge can do to screw with the case if they wanted to. Yes. And hold on, let me find the list.
OK, so let me read this. I looked it up as a Politico article published on June 12th by Kyle Cheney.
Trump drew one of his favorite judges. Here's how she could help his case.
I recommend you guys read the whole thing. I'm not going to read the whole thing.
I will just click off the headings.
The pace of the case. She could decide how quickly or slowly to move proceedings along.
Jury selection. She can put her thumb on the case, basically, on who can be dismissed and who can not.
So she can influence that way. Each of the defense and prosecution get a say in that too, but so does the judge.
And she can influence that. Pretrial motions. She can just decide to rule in favor of Trump if she wanted. Admissible evidence. What evidence is admissible? What evidence is not?
Exactly the classified information is going to be handled and who has access to it and when and finally there's some actually not finally there are two more things there's a rule 29 acquittal which basically says after the prosecution rusts its case before it goes to the jury, she could just say...
Eh, they didn't make their case, we're done.
And then finally, sentencing. She could, even if there was a conviction...
|
Ivan:
[54:55]
| Conviction, she could send him to no jail time.
|
Sam:
[54:58]
| She could sentence him to zero. And, you know, and apparently, you know, on the curmudgeon's corner slack, Yvonne, you said, but that's appealable, but I've seen the legal experts weigh in and say, actually, that's not.
Not. If she sentences and gives him a nothing sentence, you're done.
|
Ivan:
[55:18]
| I'm not sure which legal expert said that, but a sentence can be appealed.
|
Sam:
[55:23]
| A sentence can be appealed down, can't be appealed up.
At least in this particular case, in the federal case, I've heard multiple of the talking heads on TV have said that. In any case...
|
Ivan:
[55:38]
| Tom heads on TV. Yeah. Fucking shit. Yeah. These are, you know, say people that were saying, Oh my God, I don't know. I heard some shit that are saying that I'm like, which court are you going to?
|
Sam:
[55:49]
| Um, well, the thing, well, in any case, even if it's appealable, it is still, uh, stuff she can mess with.
Um, and we have yet to see, will she mess with stuff?
And we've heard, you know, and there are a few moments in the process where the prosecution could potentially petition for her to be replaced to the next level of court up.
But those are all, it's a highly risky move. I've heard people say that they don't think Jack Smith is gonna do that.
He's just gonna let it role and see what happens.
And one of the reasons for that.
Um, is this might not be all right. You know, we've got the New York stuff already underway.
We got the Georgia stuff coming. Those are both state level on the federal level.
We've got this, uh, it is looking very, very likely that there will also be an indictment related to January 6th stuff, probably not too far in the future, but also, also importantly, even related to the documents case, they left a lot of stuff on the table.
Um, one, just an obvious one.
|
Ivan:
[57:10]
| Okay. By the way, I've just double checked because I don't know who the talking heads that you're going, that thing about not being able to reveal a sentence is higher is that they're all wrong.
|
Sam:
[57:20]
| Uh, I, I made up the higher and lower thing, but somebody said in this particular case, that's bullshit.
|
Ivan:
[57:26]
| That's not true. Okay. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[57:29]
| Tell me what you have found. You have the reference and tell me what you found.
|
Ivan:
[57:35]
| Listen, I'm looking for, well, I know it from experience. I've seen the, listen, I know this going back to the fact that in federal, of course, there are guidelines for sentencing, all right?
There are specific guidelines. And I know that there have been cases where judges have deviated, okay, downward in the sentencing guidelines according to what the guidelines are, and on appeal have been reversed, okay, in the past that I remember now, and I'm looking up there is a there is here from the first search like this, which came up with some law firm, OK, which actually says that's thus a federal prosecutor might seek to appeal for a long and sentences if he or she believes the trial court judge failed to follow the federal sentencing guidelines or some other applicable sentence.
|
Sam:
[58:25]
| Ah, ah, but in this case for these particular laws, there is a maximum, but there is no minimum.
|
Ivan:
[58:34]
| No, I get that, but it's appealable. I don't know in this case if they may be able to get it, but but you can appeal for a higher sentence.
|
Sam:
[58:45]
| I mean, anyway, the point is she can screw it.
|
Ivan:
[58:49]
| She she can screw with it. Yeah. And it will make it complicated.
|
Sam:
[58:54]
| No, but let me get, I had moved on past that and was on something completely else and you pull this back.
|
Ivan:
[59:00]
| Well, because back, say, well, you can't appeal a sentence higher.
That's bullshit. That's, that's not true.
|
Sam:
[59:05]
| I made up the sentence higher thing. The specific thing that I actually heard people say was in this specific circumstance with these specific charges in this specific case, If the judge gave a sentence of zero, they could not appeal it.
And I don't know what specifics make it make that true.
|
Ivan:
[59:26]
| I mean, well, like I said, I've seen sentences appealed before.
For multiple reasons. So I don't see what is it.
And now what I understood is, uh, that a sentence handed out by a jury can't be appealed, but a sentence issued by a judge that prosecutors can appeal.
Okay. That's basically the one thing that I know makes a difference.
|
Sam:
[59:59]
| So what one summary I saw here is yes, sentences can appeal, but not just because the judge gave you a lighter sentence.
There has to be a specific basis.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:10]
| Usually, it's...
|
Sam:
[1:00:11]
| Usually, in this case... If it's not... Ah! Let me finish reading the damn quote!
Okay, go read it. There has to be some specific basis, such as the sentence is illegal because the judge didn't follow a specific statute.
So it's very rare for prosecution to file an appeal.
So if there was a legal mandatory minimum and the judge did not follow it, that would be appealable.
Or if the judge specifically did something wrong in the sentencing procedure, but there has to be something specific where the sentence was actually illegal.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:51]
| Well, we'll see. I don't know. We're getting to that.
|
Sam:
[1:00:57]
| And I shouldn't, before I even mentioned it, I thought to myself, I should not even say this because Yvonne is gonna go off. but I have heard.
If it was just one person I'd heard it from, that would be one thing, but I've heard this repeated multiple times by multiple people who I cannot, of course, remember at this moment.
But anyway, I had been trying to move past that to say, basically, the whole thing is, though, that even though she has all kinds of ways she could screw with this case, people have been saying they feel like it's unlikely that the special prosecutor will will specifically try to get her replaced unless an issue actually gets appealed and they have a specific reason that they can like go to the appeals court and say, not only should she be reversed on this, but she's shown by multiple reversals that maybe you should just take her off the case, right?
But absent that, they don't think they will.
And one of the reasons is because there are these other cases.
And I was listing them. There's New York, there's Georgia, there's potential federal cases going on with January 6th.
But then also what I was mentioning is even on the documents case, first of all, they included in this indictment 31 counts on specific documents that Donald Trump was holding that he should not have been holding.
But they actually seized something like 300 documents that he should not be holding.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:39]
| Well, I think it looks like they held back stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:02:43]
| Yeah, and there's two reasons that they would hold back there.
One is any of these classified documents that are brought up may have to be, you know, they'll be brought up and discussed in court. And so they would have had to go through a process with the intelligence community basically saying, which of these documents are you actually okay with us taking to court?
Are there some of these that are so sensitive that we shouldn't even mention them? And then those would be taken off the table.
And then also what we're talking about here is potentially holding some back for purposes of, hey, you could have another shot at this with additional charges on additional documents if this went against you this way.
However, with that, you probably couldn't redo the obstruction of justice and the other things, but you would have documents there.
The other thing that they pretty clearly left on the table right now is actually showing the documents.
You mentioned in the indictment they have these quotes from an incident where Donald Trump was showing the document to a couple people who weren't supposed to see it.
And they actually had two separate incidents, the ones that had been reported previously and another one.
But there were no charges about that. There were no charges about showing the documents or distributing the documents, anything like that.
There was nothing about that.
And if there were ever going to be charges about that, because at least the examples we've heard so far happened in New Jersey.
So if they were going to go for charges of actually showing the documents to people, they could file them in New Jersey, completely separate from these Florida charges.
And I don't know that they would, but that's back pocket stuff that is there if they need it at some point.
But, you know, people put it this way, between these four cases, you know, you only need one of them to actually get a conviction.
Right. You know, Donald Trump, in order to get out of this cleanly, has to win all of them.
Yes. You know, and so, So even if you take the scenario where, okay, he wins the election, he's president again, he makes the DOJ drop all the federal charges, or pardons himself if that's gone along that far, which there's legal argument on whether or not you can pardon yourself, but if you You tried it?
Who's gonna, if we get to that point, things are so screwed up anyway, that like, who the hell knows what would happen. But you still have the state charges.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:43]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:05:45]
| But although even with the state charges, if he actually won the election, how do they go about enforcing that? Like it's, it's, it's, it's, well, it depends.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:55]
| I mean, I think the one thing with the state charges that I would expect is that he would have to be arrested, thrown in jail before the election.
And at that point, I mean, even once the election, we're going to do well, they got up in jail. So, so what?
|
Sam:
[1:06:11]
| Yeah, he can be president from jail, but what, what if he became president first, before those cases got to their conclusion?
|
Ivan:
[1:06:20]
| Uh, that's a great question.
|
Sam:
[1:06:24]
| I mean, do you have the Georgia state police walk up to the white house and put them into custody?
I mean, that would issue the warrant, you know, I just don't like the bottom line is if we get to those, any of those kinds of scenarios, like the utter chaos that we'd be in.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| I mean, I, I started thinking about this and I, you know, I really, I, I, I mean, I thought about this in a couple of ways that I'm like, will the fucking Republicans just really with all these people jumping into the race, just fucking trot out this asshole again, that is under every fucking possible criminal indictment known to man.
|
Sam:
[1:07:17]
| Well, you know, and this is the thing too. I mean, this is what all of these other people running and we've talked about this before.
You've got to think that their path to winning is somehow the Feds take care of Trump, or he actually does completely implode at some point.
Even amongst Republicans, it starts to look like, okay, he can never win.
There's so much drama. Can we just have the drama over?
Let's go for DeSantis or whoever.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:51]
| Or whatever, right, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:07:55]
| And just from the sheer exhaustion of dealing with this crap.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:00]
| And by the way, and some people, and listen, this whole dream that, listen, come on, DeSantis wins the White House, he's going to pardon Trump?
Fuck that, or probably like put the second lock on it, Make sure the son of a bitch doesn't get out!
|
Sam:
[1:08:19]
| Oh, I don't know.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:22]
| I mean, I do know there is no advantage to these guys if you've vanquished them already.
You're going to fucking let them out? No way!
|
Sam:
[1:08:31]
| Here's the scenario, though. If Trump actually loses the Republican nomination, do you actually see him sort of going along calmly in this scenario?
No, he's going to do everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:44]
| No, he's going to go third party.
|
Sam:
[1:08:45]
| He's going to go third party or he's, or even absent that he's going to do everything he possibly can to sabotage them.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:51]
| No, I, I get that. But at the same time, you know, this whole thing that somebody said that, look, if any of these other guys that aren't Republicans get to the white house before him, or is like the VP up the VP and he's, Oh, he's in jail.
I've got to park him. Fuck that.
I am like, this has got to be the dumbest son of a bitch ever.
I mean, you've got him in jail, you've got the White House, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to give it to him? What are you, nuts?
|
Sam:
[1:09:26]
| Like, if the president is actually in jail, you either work out a circumstance where he can somehow do the job from jail, or you just say, he's incapable of performing his duties, so therefore the vice president is acting president as long as he's in jail.
And yeah, you're right. Like the vice-president's going to bust him out at that point. No, no.
But yeah, I keep thinking like any of these scenarios playing out this way, like it feels like it feels like the same kind of thing where we're always talking about brokered conventions and things like that, where the super crazy scenario, if that can't happen, right?
Something normal will happen before we get there.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:13]
| We got a guy running for president who is the GOP favorite, who is under multiple criminal investigations and is already indicted. How much more crazy do you want this to get? I mean, it's bonkers.
|
Sam:
[1:10:31]
| And according to the polling, it's a dead heat right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:33]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:10:35]
| It's not like you would think in a normal world, if this was the case, like Biden would be crushing him. It would be a landslide. But no, no.
It's a dead heat, it could, you know, and Trump has been deteriorating, but it's still a dead heat. Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:10:53]
| But listen, but his support right now, I have to say.
|
Sam:
[1:10:57]
| It's gotta be faltering.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:58]
| It's not warm. It's not warm. Look, because.
|
Sam:
[1:11:01]
| Even among Republicans. Even among Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:03]
| Even among the, listen, you remember what happened in New York where he was like clamoring for people to go out there and protest for him.
|
Sam:
[1:11:12]
| And how he did the same thing for the indictment this week, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:11:17]
| And they didn't show nobody. No, they didn't show up.
And by the way, those guys that he was clamoring for show up, I didn't hear them this time say it. But the last time they loudly said it, they were like, fuck that. He let us go to jail.
The hell with him. We went out there and we're going to take the White House for him. And you know what he did? He let us go, he let us flounder and we wound up in jail. Fuck him.
|
Sam:
[1:11:45]
| You know, if Donald Trump was not as stupid as he is, and was not as vindictive as he is, and as petty as he is, on his way out, he would have just signed a blanket pardon for anybody who was at the Capitol that day.
Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:03]
| But he thought they were losers.
|
Sam:
[1:12:05]
| He thought they were losers, because they didn't succeed.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:08]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:12:10]
| So fuck them, right? Like, that- Yeah! Because of course, that's as far as it goes for him, is like, they were supposed to come here and make sure I stayed president, and they failed, so screw them.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:23]
| Exactly! Screw them.
|
Sam:
[1:12:27]
| And not like I'm defending the January 6th people. I think it would have been awful if he had more- No!
|
Ivan:
[1:12:32]
| What I'm just saying is that, the whole point is that- He's dumb.
He's he will stab in the back even his most diehard of supporters.
Yeah. Without you know, without even thinking about it. One second.
|
Sam:
[1:12:47]
| And people are figuring that out like slowly, but surely, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:54]
| I mean, the other day, you remember what's her name? That idiot, Kaylee McEnany, whatever. The one that you're a leader. Yeah, it was this press secretary.
The other day, he said something, you know.
She said something about about him that wasn't even like really negative but i guess somebody spun it into negative.
He was taking her out.
Call a birdie i mean just just rip it or shreds this this is a person that basically just went out there minute second day after day every living breathing moment that that.
Person has and fucking lied for him, you know, nonstop and he misheard something, whatever. And he completely took her out.
|
Sam:
[1:13:44]
| Right. Um, a couple other things I want to make sure we mentioned on this one is the actual documents listed in the indictment.
Like there was a lot of talk for a long time about, yeah, you had all these documents and even if they're classified, like some things are over classified, like, yeah, they're, they could be innocuous documents. They could be nothing, you know, but these were innocuous documents.
They were not, they were, they were, they were, you know, the one that we talked about him showing to the reporters or whatever, that was war plans for Iran.
Like if we had to talk to Iran, what if talk to, if we had to attack Iran, what would we do? if we had to go to a full-scale war with Iran.
He was showing plans for that to random people in his office.
There are stuff about the nuclear capabilities of other countries and of our own capabilities.
There were just all of the example after example after example.
Nothing that was included in this indictment was innocuous.
Now, amongst all of the documents that he took that he shouldn't have.
Were there innocuous things? I'm sure there were. There were reports early on that one of the things that he had that he was not supposed to have, because it actually was a federal.
Government official record that was supposed to be held by the archives was that stupid hurricane map that he drew on with a sharpie. Okay.
No one fucking cares about that map.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:20]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:15:23]
| Like no, technically speaking, he should not have had it. It belonged at the archives, blah, blah, blah.
But if that was the thing he kept, nobody would care. Nobody cared.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:35]
| Nobody gave a shit. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:15:36]
| Yeah. And so there was stuff like that amongst the stuff, but there were several hundred things that did matter.
And I'll add to that, the indictment included more information on where exactly in Mar-a-Lago this crap was.
And it ended up in a storage room, but before it was in the storage room, tons of these boxes were just sitting on a stage in a ballroom at Mar-a-Lago.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:12]
| Well, the other ones were in the toilet.
|
Sam:
[1:16:14]
| And then they were moved to a toilet.
Or I should say a bathroom, because it had showers in there too, and apparently there were a bunch of boxes in the shower as well.
They spent some time in his office. But the ones that I think about the most here are the ballroom and the bathroom. If these were...
Not secured in the slightest. People come in and go in all the time.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:37]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:39]
| And we know there have been news reports of at least three different people taken into custody at Mar-a-Lago.
Yes. Two that are potential Chinese spies. Yeah.
And a third who was pretending to be like a Rothschild or something nutso.
I forget what it was, but at the very least, we know about those three and there are probably more that we don't know about because you got to know that that place for his entire presidency and potentially afterwards as well, had got to be one of the top targets of foreign espionage out there.
Could just buy a freaking membership and start wandering around or I'm sure you, they, they hire people as staff all the time, apparently with not very much vetting at all, like, you know, so you want to be, you know, come on, you want to be a, you want to be a maintenance person or a housekeeper at Mar-a-Lago?
Sure. Yeah. Like the fact that, you know, you come from North Korea or Russia or Saudi or something. That's great.
Will you work for minimum wage? Okay, cool. Yes. And that's probably a slight exaggeration, but the point is the place is not secure in the slightest.
And some of the early reports had, at least we're talking about, Oh, okay, it was in a locked storage room.
This was not in a locked storage room. Most of the time.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:23]
| No, it, it, yeah. Locked storage room. So, so what are you thinking?
That's oil. What? So he would go take a shit over there to start like perusing his documents. Is that what he was doing?
|
Sam:
[1:18:33]
| I, I, I, I don't think so.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:35]
| Actually, you don't think so.
|
Sam:
[1:18:36]
| I think he probably sticks to his private bathroom. I think this was, this was just an extra space that they could throw some stuff in when they weren't having weddings.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:45]
| But, but is it that, you know, I don't know about you, but, but I sometimes go like, for example, uh, it over here, my house, I like to avoid like the master bathroom.
I use actually the guest bathroom to go, to go do that because my wife will be using the bathroom.
So I don't want to, I don't want to be, I don't want to be taking a dump while she's there. So I'll go use the other bathroom. So maybe, you know, you want to stay away from people, whatever. I mean, there's places I would go.
|
Sam:
[1:19:11]
| Yeah, but this is more like the public bathroom that the people who are having a, who rented the place for a wedding use and stuff like that.
Actually, I think it was like the pool bathroom, wasn't it? Maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:24]
| Yeah. So, so I mean, I don't know. So maybe nobody really went to that bathroom.
|
Sam:
[1:19:29]
| Well, once it was full of boxes, they couldn't exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:35]
| Oh, my God. This guy had a bathroom full of like classified documents.
And I'm like, he's just, I mean, you know, it, but here's the worst thing.
Yeah. You know, they tried to.
You know, come to an agreement with him about this whole thing.
|
Sam:
[1:19:53]
| Oh, yes. I'd almost forgotten about this.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:56]
| And he refused? Oh, no.
|
Sam:
[1:19:56]
| Actually, just to be clear, this was not DOJ...
Well, it depends what part of the process you're talking about.
Yes, DOJ from the very beginning is just...
Well, even before DOJ was involved, of course, the archives asked over and over and over again to just get the documents.
Then DOJ asked him, politely a couple of times, then they subpoenaed him.
And then after the subpoena.
Then was going to be the raid, right? Right. But at one point, and I think it fairly laid along in that process, his lawyer, one of his lawyers was like.
Make a freaking deal. Just give them all the stuff and make a deal.
And Trump is like, no, like this whole thing all along.
And everybody's said this over and over again, all he needed to do was the first times some, the first time someone asked or how even the fifth time they asked, just give back all the stuff.
Right. And we would not be here.
Right. You know, like the, the reason we're here today is over and over and over again, he refused to give back the stuff because as he keeps saying, it's mine, mine, all mine.
He is on TV every day now.
He's now demanding on social media and in his speeches that the federal government give him back the government that the federal government give him back the documents they stole from him.
Yeah, good luck with that.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:52]
| Oh, God. Yeah, good luck with that one. Yeah. You know, God.
|
Sam:
[1:22:00]
| Now, moving from that, the next bit is how all the miscellaneous Republicans have been responding to this.
Yes. There are a very small handful, including Mitt Romney, what's that guy, Asa Hutchinson, maybe Chris Christie.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:24]
| Oh, Chris Christie is just hammering him.
|
Sam:
[1:22:26]
| Yeah. These guys who have been saying not only was this wrong, but the DOJ is right to go after him for it.
Right. Most Republicans, even a few who've said that- C.M.:
|
Ivan:
[1:22:42]
| Nikki Haley has been hammering him, too. C.M.:
|
Sam:
[1:22:44]
| Well, Nikki Haley has gone back and forth a little bit. Like Nikki Haley- C.M.: Well, she's- C.M.:
|
Ivan:
[1:22:49]
| Yeah, but she's actually- C.M.: She's been- C.M.: But she's actually said negative things. C.M.:
|
Sam:
[1:22:54]
| Yes, she has said negative things, but let's go through, because she's the next category beyond the first ones I mentioned there.
There's the first set who are very rare, who are consistent.
This is wrong. DOJ should go after him. He looked, yeah, if he's guilty, he should be punished, et cetera, et cetera.
That's a very small group of Republicans. The next is sort of the Nikki Haley type, who have said that this looks bad.
He shouldn't have done this. It looks like he was irresponsible.
But then they say things like, but, and Mike Pence said this too, but DOJ should have found solution that did not involve an indictment.
And then Nikki Haley has said, well, and if she won, she might pardon him because the country would need to just get over this.
And then you get to the vast bulk of Republicans at this point who are just saying, this is unfair, they didn't go after Hillary Clinton like this, they're not going after Joe Biden, so why are they going after Donald Trump?
This is unfair, this is political harassment, this is weaponizing the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, you know, they're talking about Biden weaponizing the Department of Justice, and Trump is giving speeches explicitly saying that if he wins, he's going to set the DOJ on Biden.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:30]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[1:24:31]
| On day one.
Uh, yes. Yeah. And I don't know, it has seemed to, like, it did shift a little bit after the actual indictment came out with the details, because there were some people who were immediately jumping to the, you know, what about Joe Biden?
What about Clinton? This is unfair weaponization, blah, blah, blah. And some of those people backed off a little bit once they read the indictment.
But most of them are still there as far as I can tell.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:09]
| I, but you know, this is like the, uh, the standard substandard response that you get right now, where I saw a chart of like, uh, Republicans where, you know, what they're I think this was in the New York Times or something.
Yeah, in the New York Times versus what they're saying in public versus what the fuck they really think. Jesus. Look, all these guys, come on, man.
|
Sam:
[1:25:33]
| People have been saying since 2015 that the standard Republican position is to support Donald Trump in public and in private be like, oh my God, I can't believe how horrible this person is. I wish the Democrats would take care of him for us.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:49]
| Right. I mean, basically.
I mean that's the reality i mean and if all the text that fox didn't you know clarify that to you i mean none of these people whatever they're saying in public is anywhere close to their true feelings on it but at the same time if they won't say it in public it almost doesn't matter.
Well, but what that means, listen, there, that also creates an enthusiasm gap for this whole damn thing.
|
Sam:
[1:26:24]
| Yeah, it does create an enthusiasm gap. But the bottom line is like, you know, what you expect a leader to do is to come out with with what they think the way is and bring their people along and convince their people.
If you had the major Republican leadership from the very beginning with a unified front against Donald Trump, we may never have had the Donald Trump presidency.
But that's not the world we live in. The world we live in is all of these people are afraid of Trump's base.
Because they know, or at least they feel, that if they go strongly against Trump ...
Then they get screwed in the next primary. And specifically in the primaries.
Because most Republicans in Congress are in safe Republican places where the general election does not matter, and the only thing that matters to them is the primary.
Now, there are a few that are in purple areas, and that's a different dynamic, but most people in both parties, to be honest, In both parties, most incumbents are in places where the primary is the real battle, not the general.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:49]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:27:51]
| And so, yeah, so they're afraid. They're afraid. And because they're all afraid, nothing happens. And we're very, very afraid.
And so we're in this scenario where once again, we got Donald Trump plus Plus stupid mayor of Miami jumped in like yesterday or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:12]
| This is the guy I had shared about it in the group. I just supported slack earlier that he was getting paid by developers.
I mean, he's taking, oh, it's the same guy.
|
Sam:
[1:28:22]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:23]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:28:23]
| That's that guy. I got it together in my head. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:26]
| That that's that guy that was taking payoffs from developers that are pushing projects in front of the president.
Yes. This guy has been pushing crypto scams.
This guy is one of the most crooked bastards there is in history.
And for whatever the hell damn reason, I have no idea why he thinks he is a viable GOP presidential candidate. Well, I guess because he's a crook in that, I guess that that's the main qualification right?
|
Sam:
[1:28:57]
| Well, here's the thing though. Like of all these people running, again, maybe DeSantis thinks he can actually be president. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:08]
| I think DeSantis definitely thinks he can be president.
|
Sam:
[1:29:10]
| Yeah, yeah. But what I'm saying is once you get further down the list, you're talking about people who are just trying to increase their visibility for future runs later, or they're just using it as a money-making opportunity, increase their visibility and then get on Fox News or Newsmax or whatever, you know, it's not, it's not really about, you know, becoming president.
It's about serving themselves in other ways.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:41]
| But look, I do think.
I think there are some, but I do think that these guys have such a big ego for the most part, that they think they can win.
They really do. I mean, you don't run for this many elections like these guys that you just don't run it run as a throwaway.
I just don't believe that that's the case. I do think that these people think that they could win.
|
Sam:
[1:30:05]
| I think there's some of them that do, but like, but not, not all of them.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:11]
| I'm not all of them, but I got to say the majority of them do.
|
Sam:
[1:30:15]
| I'd say the bottom half of the field damn well knows they're not going to win this time around anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:22]
| I mean, yeah, we're all delusional anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:30:24]
| Okay. What else we got here?
Possible Trump defense tactics.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:36]
| He's going to drop his pants and take a shit in the middle of the courtroom.
|
Sam:
[1:30:40]
| Well I've actually said for a long time, like if only Trump would let them, an insanity defense would not be a bad defense here. Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:50]
| We'll go in the middle of a trial, just drop his pants, dig his shit in the middle of the courtroom. There you go. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:30:56]
| Trevor Burrus But I don't think Trump would let him, just like Trump.
The rational thing to do is take a plea deal at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:04]
| Paul Jay Yeah, and he could probably get off with almost nothing.
|
Sam:
[1:31:09]
| Trevor Burrus I believe that he could get off with almost nothing, yeah. He could potentially do the Spiro-Agnew thing where basically he gets off with nothing other than an agreement not to run for anything ever again.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:23]
| Exactly. Right. But he won't agree to that, but he won't never agree to that anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:31:29]
| Or he'd agree to it and then do it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:31]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:31:32]
| You know, but just like that, I don't think ...
There's defenses that Trump just won't do because his ego won't allow.
Doing a plea deal is one of those, doing an insanity defense is another.
More at this point, well, first thing he has to do is get some lawyers.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:55]
| Cause he doesn't, well, he's having difficulty with that.
|
Sam:
[1:31:58]
| I was having difficulty getting lawyers. He's using some that just don't, that he could potentially go with the ones he has for arrest, but they don't have the experience that you would want in a case like this.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:12]
| Um, but nobody wants to get tainted being a, nobody wants to deal with him.
And no serious, no, no serious lawyer wants to take on this kind of a client, right?
|
Sam:
[1:32:23]
| Because he doesn't follow advice and he goes off.
I mean, as simple as the stuff we were talking about earlier, every day, practically, I am hearing about him saying things in public that incriminate him more.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:38]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:32:40]
| You know, the first thing any competent lawyer in this kind of situation tells you is to shut the fuck up.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| That's the first thing that every attorney I've dealt with has told me, just shut up. Yeah. I mean, just shut the fuck up. This is, you know, the less talking, the better period. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:01]
| So the things they are going to do, apparently some of the things we've been hearing, um, is they are going to allege prosecutorial, prosecutorial misconduct, uh, basically on the theory that the prosecutors asked the lawyers to reveal some stuff that was attorney-client privileged.
Now, of course, the problem with this is the prosecutors went to court to pierce the privilege and there were several levels of appeal and they won, but they essentially still want to make a motion that none of the evidence that came from the lawyers should be admitted because none of that was proper, uh, even though they did everything right to get that information.
Um, I don't know what else people keep saying, like his tactic is delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, delay.
We'll see if that goes in this case, you know, the judge may help with that or she may not like we just don't know.
Um, the, the, again, we talked about her earlier, but the extremes are on one hand, if she decides to go full MAGA, she can do all kinds of stuff to tank this case.
But the flip side of that is people are like, she really got spanked by the appeal court last year.
Maybe she's going to want to rehabilitate her reputation by playing it completely straight and not giving Trump all these extra stuff this time around.
Right. Who knows? We could be anywhere in between.
Of course, I've heard the other people say, well, you know, If she does get Trump out of this and he wins and he becomes president again, she's got a sure shot at the next Supreme Court slot. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:48]
| Bye.
I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I, Jesus, I, I, I, I laughed out because it's impossible.
I laugh because it's yeah, I could see, I could see her thinking that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:35:07]
| Okay. Um, B B besides defense.
Next thing is Walt now to this, uh, his ballet fucking idiot.
This is another one where for some reason, like he was apparently offered multiple opportunities to cooperate and he just lied to the FBI and such instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:28]
| What a genius.
|
Sam:
[1:35:29]
| Um, I don't know what loyalty he has for Donald Trump, but you know, uh, what's his name, Michael Cohen has been on TV repeatedly saying, Walt, Walt, he will stab you in the back.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:46]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:35:47]
| Run, run, get out of here. You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:50]
| I mean, that's exactly what it will do. The first chance he gets, I mean, for God's sakes.
|
Sam:
[1:35:56]
| Well, and of course it's happening even right now. Like Walt now to was not, did not fully go through the arraignment process because he did not have a local lawyer at all.
And so he's got a, another date scheduled for later this month.
Um, but at the meantime, the lawyer he does have is paid for by Donald.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:17]
| I mean that, how, I mean, what is that lawyer going to do? Bury him in favor of Donald. That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:36:25]
| Exactly. Like, you know, if, if, if, if this, if this guy had any sense whatsoever, he would quit his job with Donald Trump.
Trump, get himself is a completely independent lawyer and fucking flip right now. He should have done it months ago, but he could probably still do it now. And he would.
And if, if he has anything new to give on Donald Trump that has not already been given, I mean, that might be his problem at this point.
Like if he has nothing new to add, they don't need him, right?
If he has something new to add, he could get off Scott free from this fucking thing, like a little probation or something, if he gave up what he knew.
But so far, nope, doesn't look like that's happening. And, and, and again, it may be too late. The feds may be like, you know, six months ago, you could have done that, but at this point we don't need you.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:24]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:25]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:26]
| Oh, well, by the way, you know, I, this whole thing with, with this guy and it's, I still always just get shocked how he manages to...
Like put these people that are close to him and some kind of like a temporary trance.
Right to be like completely to his bidding like to this extreme.
And they don't see that everybody else that is done it winds up getting fucked.
|
Sam:
[1:38:02]
| I mean, how can you not know at this point?
|
Ivan:
[1:38:04]
| I don't know, man. I don't get. Oh, I'm the one that's not going to get fucked.
You know, I will say this. I mean, sometimes we do the I know that when I was younger, sometimes I would do these with women, you know, this girl screwed over everybody.
Oh, no, no, no, but she's not going to do it to me. No, because she really loves me. Right? Yeah. What an idiot.
|
Sam:
[1:38:27]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:28]
| Yep. Oh, you know, stupid thing, what the hell was I thinking?
And that's what I think happens with these people.
Oh, no, no, no. He's loyal to me.
|
Sam:
[1:38:39]
| I mean, there's a freaking cartoon about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:43]
| Yes, I know. It's a great cartoon. I wish I could find it. Jesus Christ.
|
Sam:
[1:38:47]
| With all the people on the little treadmill going around and Donald Trump's passing in the back.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:52]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. And then just on the exit, stab in the back, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:54]
| Yeah. I just, Walt, you know, just if you're listening, oh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:04]
| Give it up.
|
Sam:
[1:39:05]
| He's much more likely to hear Michael Cohen than he is to hear us, but yes, if he's listening, but if he's listening, I wouldn't put it the way Cohen was like, run, run. Okay. The way he put, no, he shouldn't like try to escape.
Like he should separate himself from Donald Trump and work with the fat to try to explain escape.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:25]
| Maybe he just goes to Morocco or somewhere. I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:39:29]
| Yeah, yeah. Um, final thing on this, I think, unless you think of something else, is the feds, when they were at the, um, the arraignment, the judge was asking about what conditions do you want to put on Trump?
And special counsel was like, nothing.
We don't even want to ask for anything. And the judge, who, by the way, was some temporary judge, not Judge Cannon that we were talking about earlier, but was like, are you sure?
Because normally in this situation, we would require him to give up his passport.
We would require him to stay in Southern Florida. We would require him to check in regularly with a, with a parole officer, we would, we would, there's a whole list of things that the judge basically said, like, we would normally do all this. I get that.
And the feds themselves were like, Nope, we don't want any of that.
And we would not object to it if you insist, but we're not going to ask for anything.
And the judge did insist on one thing, which was about restricting in communication with potential witnesses, and they basically asked the prosecutors for a list of people that they think Donald Trump should not be talking to that they would then pass on.
One of them is obviously his co-defendant, Walt Nauda, but the problem is he still works as Trump's valet.
As they were leaving the arraignment, he went and followed Donald Trump and got behind him to take his stuff and hold his stuff while he went to the car.
You know? And so they were like, well, you know, we don't want him to have to give up his employment, so we're not going to say you can't talk to Donald Trump at all, but you can't talk about the case, okay?
And that's the condition as it exists now, with no enforcement mechanism or anything, I guess, just, you know, they said, please don't talk about the case.
Now, here's my thought on this, is that the feds are okay with this because of how Donald Trump freaking behaves.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:55]
| Well, it's not just that, it's that, you know, let me, let me finish this, there's two things.
|
Sam:
[1:42:03]
| One, they want to, they want to make it absolutely clear that they, you know, despite everything that the Trump camp is saying about how unfair this is, blah, blah, blah, they're bending over backwards to give him every deference, every opportunity, every whatever to respect his former position, et cetera.
I mean, hell, the fact that it took as long as it did to get to this point is part of that.
But also just this kind of stuff. Look, he's a former He's surrounded by secret service.
We don't think he's really a flight risk, um, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
We'll give him that. But also without these restrictions, like we talked about before, he's further incriminating himself almost every day.
Yeah. So why not let him let him and the judges said, you know, don't talk to now to now all they need is some random person reporting that, Oh yeah, we saw them talking about the case and he can be in even more trouble, you know?
And in the meantime, like with all of this, from everything we've seen about Donald Trump, leave him loose, he's gonna commit another crime next week!
He can't help himself. Yeah. And I mean, this is what we're, when he left office, we said that even if prosecutors have trouble going after him for things that he did while he was president for one reason or another, don't worry, he'll commit more crimes.
And guess what? That's exactly what we're talking about right now. Anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:50]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:43:52]
| Yeah. Anything else to say about Trump?
|
Ivan:
[1:43:54]
| You know, I did, I did briefly talk about what happened downtown during this thing in terms of the, the, the, the guys didn't show up and you know, it was, uh, I heard from some people, they, they, they were there live, um, as it happened and all you had was some oddballs and some, some weirdos with stupid stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:44:21]
| But, and I saw some of the interviews with them, they were completely like, Oh my God. Yeah. They showed them pictures from the indictment and they're like, no, that can't possibly be.
If he had anything, he would have had it very secure.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:34]
| And they had this guy who is blacks for Trump. I mean, just, just a group of people. They're just ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[1:44:41]
| And most of them aren't black, but yeah, most of them.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:44]
| Yeah. But, you know, anyway, some are, but the leader is black, you know, the guy that they had this one guy driving around with a truck that had this thing of Trump.
I'm standing outside a jail where inside of it were inside this inside this jail these are pictures that he put on this this truck it's like one of these advertising trucks he was towing it behind this pickup truck and it had this these like big pictures It showed like a jail where Donald was outside as a jailkeeper and inside were Clinton.
Uh, you know, Bill Clinton, Hillary Obama, Kamala, all of these people, like them in jail, because he's going to put them all in jail.
Uh, it was just a whole, that's kind of like the, the, the, the, the scene.
Basically the guy that was down there said this was the, I mean, it was like, I mean, he was like, where the hell am I? Hell, this is ridiculous.
It was just the group of people that showed up was just so insane.
|
Sam:
[1:45:59]
| Yeah. And by the way, that just reminds me of one additional thing.
And I know we've said it before in the show, and I hate that we're repetitive so often, but by God, And like all of these people talking about, like they're, they're clearly two levels of justice, one for Donald Trump and one for everybody else.
Yeah. Um, implying that in some way he is being targeted because he is Donald Trump.
Oh my God. If it is so completely the opposite of that, he has gotten so much.
Deferential treatment that anybody else who had done the same shit would have been, Everything would have moved faster. They would have gotten much harsher.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:47]
| Oh, hell yeah. You know, like we talk. If it was say like, well, like this guy to share, right?
|
Sam:
[1:46:54]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:55]
| The isn't the share. I'd like fucking like a jail.
|
Sam:
[1:46:58]
| Are we? We mentioned that last time I and I meant to check, but I didn't last last time we said we thought he was in jail pending trial and had not been released on bail or anything, but we didn't actually check.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:12]
| I'm checking. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:47:13]
| Good. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:15]
| Good.
|
Sam:
[1:47:15]
| Good. Check. Check.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:17]
| Order to remain in jail as he awaits trial. Yes. There he is locked up. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:47:22]
| And that would be normal.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:23]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:47:24]
| I mean, now he was charged with distributing the docs, not just having them, but there are plenty of other examples now and people, people do bring up the examples of people who didn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:36]
| Look, wait, wait, wait. But yeah, basically did the same shit that Donald was.
He was showing the documents off really to show off the people to his friends, to his friends, the same thing as Donald.
|
Sam:
[1:47:48]
| And then of course, some of those people leak them further, but yes, right.
And as far as we know, that hasn't happened yet, but like, and people keep comparing, like I said, to, to, to what Biden did or what Pence did or what that general did a few years ago.
All of them are completely different classes of things, you know?
And again, it's just like, no, Donald Trump has had kid gut glove treatment this whole goddamn time.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:22]
| Fuck yes.
|
Sam:
[1:48:23]
| You know? And yeah. And yeah.
Yes. So, yes, there are two levels of justice or whatever, but Donald Trump's getting the benefit from that, not the bad side of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:37]
| No, not even close.
|
Sam:
[1:48:38]
| You know, and honestly, like if it was a prominent Democrat, they would probably get some kid glove treatment too, you know, because there is some, well, you give deference to some of these high-level people and they, rich people get better treatment, high-level people get better treatment.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:00]
| Well, I guess- All of John Edwards got prosecuted, you know.
Yes. And, you know, I don't, well, he didn't get thrown in jail.
It was a different case, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:49:10]
| Well, he ended up having it thrown out because some of the prosecutors screwed up, blah, blah, blah.
I'm not saying people don't get prosecuted. I'm just saying that the government does take extra care and is extra careful if the person they are going after is rich or famous or prominent in other ways, because they want to make damn sure they get it right.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:33]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:49:35]
| Yeah. So, okay. I think we are done here, Yvonne. We do not need two more topics.
No, we don't wait too long.
Um, so shall we wrap it up? Yeah.
I, I can hear Yvonne tiring rapidly. Uh, yeah. Okay. Uh, we're at curmudgeon-corner.com.
Please go there, see all our archives, find out our email, our, not our Twitter, not our, I almost said Twitter, our email, our Mastodon, our, uh, Facebook.
Uh, and of course our Patreon, where you can give us some money to help with the show.
We appreciate that, and at various levels, we mention you on the show, we ring a bell for you, we'll send you a mug, we'll send you a postcard, all kinds of stuff like that that's fun, and very importantly, for $2 a month or more.
Or if you ask us really nicely, we will invite you to our curmudgeon's corner Slack.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:35]
| Or if you, or if you're mean, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:50:37]
| Or if you ask angrily and yeah, you know, demand it, anything, you know, on the table, we would just like more people on our Slack.
I mean, I love the people who are there all the time, but the more people that are there, the more fun it will be. So like, yeah, come join us.
Um, anyway, there we're, um, uh, we're sharing things, stories, news stories, things that are happening and just chatting throughout the week.
Uh, and we'd love to have more of you. So Yvonne, as the one last thing, as we often do name one thing that we have discussed on the curmudgeon's corner Slack that we have not talked about at all on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:22]
| Well, didn't we haven't really discussed because I just posted it like this afternoon, but, uh, you know, there, you know, how the when the Russian war against Ukraine started, quite a lot of sanctions were put on a lot of very rich Russians.
Yeah. And one of the things is that the Russians, man, they love mega yachts.
I mean, these guys that have a lot of money I really had a lot of these like lying around, okay, really expensive ones.
I mean, you know, they, you know, we're talking 300, 400 feet, yachts worth 80, a hundred million dollars.
A lot of them. Okay. And the one thing is that there is, there's one guy who basically had two of them that just abandoned them.
And then said, but this is this boat yours. No, no, no, no. it's not mine.
I don't know what you're talking about. Not me, whatever.
And two, literally, like these yachts were like less than five years old, old.
I think that between these two boats, They had to be worth like about... ... ... ...
Hundred and fifty two hundred million dollars with the yachts the two of them and one of them was in antigua.
Antony was a relatively small island this yacht basically wound up there the owner the guy disavowed that he owned it the crew was not getting paid a lot of them left.
And the government was trying to seize it and they seized it finally and they had one thing they needed was that the U.S.
Had to lift it was listed at at this place where they list sanctioned assets and if it had that sanctioned then they wanted to auction off the boat but then nobody could could like register it you couldn't take the boat off the boat wound up you bought the boat you didn't have that sanction lifted, you you go into, you could go somewhere in the US government sees the boat from you. Okay.
So they wound up the US government finally lifted it.
They went they put an auction, they suspected, because they have seen this happen before, that section lifted and through a straw buyer that maybe they thought that the owner is going to wind up buying the boat back.
But apparently they did something to be able to weed out those.
And it wound up being that the yacht Nanti got bought by Eric Schmidt, the ex-CEO of Google, for a cool 68 million bucks. And apparently you're saying he got a really good deal.
Yes, at 68 million for this yacht. So it's finally, it's one of those that, uh, It's been disposable. There's, but I found out I'm following this, uh, this guy who is, uh, reports on yachts on YouTube.
He's pretty good. He's got, he's got sources all over the place, man. There is this entire fleet of Russian mega yachts, just playing hide and seek all over the world to not get seized. It's crazy.
And you know, they keep reporting, I'll look at this. We showed up in the mall dives. It showed up here, you know, Where the hell are they showing up?
But they are literally just playing hide and seek, you know, with authorities trying to seize the boats. I mean, there's this other yacht that is Putin's.
Look, everybody says it has to be Putin's. Basically, he's abandoned it in Italy.
Right. And it's been seized.
It's just, there is that. There's one that's identical.
There was an oligarch friend of his head. They seized that one too.
I mean, I mean, I do think that it's like poetic justice to have Eric Schmidt by, you know, have one of our, have one of our billionaires, you know, take away their, your precious little toy.
So, and he got a deal. I mean, 68 million is quite a bar.
I mean, I know you're grabbing one of these, I'll get into one of the next auctions soon.
I mean, you know, especially with our stocks soaring, like right now at work, I mean, you know, soon they'll be, you know, yeah. Yeah, we'll pick up one or two of them. Yeah, we'll pick up one or two.
We need one for day, one for night, one for every ocean. Yeah.
Have one in the Pacific and have one in the Atlantic. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:55:50]
| And, and one in the Indian and one in the Arctic.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:55]
| But well, yeah. Okay. So that's cool. That's more than two. I mean, we're talking.
|
Sam:
[1:55:59]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I realize that the two was not enough.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:05]
| No, no, no. Two is not enough. No, no, no. We need more. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:56:09]
| Need one just for the Mediterranean, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:56:11]
| Yeah. We need to leave one in the med. Yes. Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:56:15]
| So, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:17]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:56:17]
| Well, I'll start working on that soon as we, you might need a different style for the one in the Arctic ocean.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:23]
| You know, there are these different like types of boats that these Explorer boats I saw, uh, what's his name? Uh, uh, actually there's an interesting story about this.
Uh, uh, uh, Paul Allen, uh, used to own one that was an Explorer boat like that.
And when he passed away, it got sold to the US Navy recently, the last couple of years. And it was at a shipyard getting work done in Scotland or something or whatever. I don't know what the hell happened. It was a dry dock.
Apparently, the supports of the dry dock failed and the boat fell sideways.
Huge hole on the side of the boat.
It was above the waterline, so the boat could float.
But they basically, I think the Navy got pissed off with the yard and they took away the work and they towed it to Tampa across the Atlantic.
Okay, this thing, we just put a tow on it, put it in a float.
Okay, we're bringing this thing over here to US to work because you guys just basically just took the fucking thing and just let it fall over on its side.
|
Sam:
[1:57:25]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:26]
| Not the, not, you know, I have to say that I've been at shipyards.
That's the kind of shit that gets like a lot of people fired.
|
Sam:
[1:57:34]
| I could imagine. Yeah. Anyway, I think we are well past done at this point, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:40]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:57:41]
| So, okay. Everybody tune in next week.
Have a great week. Stay safe. Be fun. Be fun. Have fun. Whatever.
You guys know what I mean.
If everything goes as planned, we will be back again next week and we hope you will be too. With that, goodbye. Bye.
| |
|
