Ep. 2303 - I’m Shocked – SHOCKED! – To Find NBA Gambling Going On!

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A gigantic NBA scandal breaks out with prosecutions, galore.

Plus, Bernie Sanders just let the cat out of the bag.

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Well, folks, the biggest news in the country is a gambling scandal that involves the NBA and also the mafia.

So it's getting really spicy out there.

The Wall Street Journal has the details according to the Wall Street Journal.

More than 30 people, including Portland Trailblazers head coach Taunce Billips and Miami heat guard Terry Rosier, were charged on Tuesday as part of a sweeping investigation into illegal gambling, rigged poker games, and match fixing in the NBA.

Federal prosecutors unveiled an indictment against more than two dozen defendants that outlined a nationwide scheme backed by organized crime families to run corrupt poker games and learn victims by offering them a chance to play alongside figures including Chauncey Billopson, a former player, and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones.

The revelations instantly ranked among the most damaging in NBA history, throwing into question the integrity of the NBA product just six years after the NBA opened its doors to the

lucrative legalized gambling industry.

I'm going to get to that in a a moment, the legalized gambling portion of all of this.

There are really two indictments.

So indictment number one has to do with actual game fixing.

That indictment charged six defendants, including Rosier, with a criminal betting scheme using insider information and performance manipulation to profit off NBA games.

This would be what you would consider to be normal game fixing, typical game fixing.

Apparently, Rosier would take himself out of games at a certain point in order to make the under in terms of minutes played or points scored.

Or there would be information shared with gamblers that said that somebody wasn't playing tonight and that would change the odds, going all the way back to sort of the guys and dolls days of American sports and mafia, or going all the way back to the 1919 Black Sox, like that kind of sports fixing.

Then there is a second case here, and that case involves Chauncey Phillips being used at what was called a face card, meaning like a famous person, to get other people to come and gamble with him at these mafia poker games that were rigged, where they were using shuffling machines and x-ray tables.

Prosecutors said that Co-Conspirator 8, which would have been bill-ups, told members of the gambling ring the team intended to tank arrest players to try to lose and improve its drafts position in a March 24th, 2023 game in which the Blazers were playing the Chicago Bulls.

Now, again, that is not surprising.

That part is not surprising.

The attempt to turn that into a game-fixing accusation is kind of silly because, again, unfortunately, teams in the NBA tank in order to obtain draft position all all the time.

And everybody knows it.

There are always teams that are attempting to basically lose more games because you have a better shot at obtaining a higher draft pick if you lose more games.

That's not a gigantic shock.

However, the Gamblers wagered about $100,000 on a Portland loss before the lineup was made public, netting them a significant profit.

And the Blazers lost by some 28 points.

Rozier.

kind of similarly was accused of telling people close to him he planned to make an early exit from a 2023 game he was playing for the charlotte hornets in order for gamblers to hit the under on bets tied to his performance.

And again, prosecutors say gamblers obtained insider information from several NBA players and coaches, including Rozier and Jones, and then distributed that information to a network of bettors in order to profit from another half-dozen NBA games through March of 2024.

Here's the FBI director Cash Patel outlining the sports rigging operation.

But as you now know, individuals such as Chauncey Billips, Damon Jones, and Terry Rozier were taken into custody today, former current NBA players and coaches.

What you don't know is that this is an illegal gambling operation and sports rigging operation that spanned the course of years.

The FBI led a coordinated takedown across 11 states to arrest over 30 individuals today responsible for this case, which is very much ongoing.

And unfortunately, this is not the first such scandal to plague the NBA in the last couple of years.

Just last year, there was a case about a Toronto Raptors forward named Jante Porter, who was banned from the league for life because he conspired with gamblers to fix his performance in NBA games.

He pled guilty to a criminal charge after faking injuries to manipulate his points total and hit the under on prop bets related to his individual performance in two NBA games in January and March 2024.

And he said that he participated in that scheme because he himself was in hockey to a bunch of gamblers, that he had huge gambling debts.

So here is the New York's FBI assistant director, Christopher Raya, explain what happened with Chauncey Billops in that case.

This alleged illegal gambling operation hustled unwitting victims out of tens of millions of dollars and created a financial pipeline for La Cosa Nostra to help fund and facilitate their organized criminal activity.

Victims were attracted to play alongside well-known professional athletes and coaches like Chauncey Billips, only to be unknowingly deceived through rigged shuffling machines, fixing the odds in their favor, as alleged, and as you just heard from the U.S.

Attorney's Office.

The Eastern District of New York, District Attorney Joseph Nasella, he said to the gamblers that their days of winning were over.

My message to the defendants who've been rounded up today is this:

Your winning streak has ended.

Your luck has run out.

Violating the law is a losing proposition, and you can bet on that.

All righty, coming up, David Cohn joins us to talk about the NBA scandal.

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Okay, so what does all of this mean?

Joining us to discuss is David Cohen, co-host of Crane and Company, available over at Dailywire Plus.

So David, obviously this is a gigantic scandal that is now engulfing the NBA.

It's a little confusing.

Why don't you walk me through it?

Yeah, well, I wish we were talking about the World Series starting tonight, Ben, but it's not every day you get a gambling sting operation in the NBA.

So, FBI Director Cash Patel came out yesterday and stated that this was a nationwide takedown across 11 states, resulting in 30 arrests.

And what I really want people to understand here is these are two separate indictments, but there are three overlapping defendants, so they are related cases.

Let's start with the first indictment.

This is your more typical on-court game fixing.

This is where Miami Heat shooting guard Terry Rozier's name is coming into play.

It's alleged that he was involved in some of that game fixing, notifying

gamblers when he would play, when certain players would not play, or even more specifically, removing himself possibly from games after only nine minutes so that his prop bet point total under would hit, things like that.

And that's going to be very problematic, Ben, moving forward for all sports leagues as legalized gambling has sort of ushered into this space.

The second indictment related but a separate

incident, this is where we get into La Cosa Nostra, Italian mafia, pretty much every crime family name that you've ever heard in any movie or TV show.

And this is where Chauncey Billops' name and Damon Jones come into play.

Now, if you're like me, Ben, you remember Chauncey Billips as being one of those pillars of those great Detroit Pistons teams 20 years ago, winning finals MVP.

He's now the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers and apparently was involved with these mafia mafia families in fixing poker games.

So he would lure in quote-unquote fish, high-stakes rollers, where he would be the quote-unquote face card because people want to play poker with famous celebrities and famous athletes.

And then they would take their money through.

rig shuffle machines, through x-ray tables, pretty much any instrument and gadget that James Bond ever had was being used in this scenario.

And not for nothing, Ben, I think it is humorous that the night before Chauncey Billup's arrest here, he used the phrase, let the chips fall where they may.

So sort of an apropos idiom there, the the day before you're arrested for a poker scheme.

So David, when I look at that, what I see is one scandal that, you know, is kind of a normal criminal scandal.

And here I'm talking about the Billups poker games, because we have seen situations before.

There have been movies made about them with criminal poker games that are happening, illegal poker games.

The fact that the mafia is coming up makes this more colorful.

And the fact that obviously there's a famous person like Phillips involved makes it more colorful as well.

But it seems to me that the bigger scandal here, the one that really should be worrying everybody is the Terry Rosiera scandal.

The idea that you actually have game fixing or effects on actual NBA performance, that's the one that should scare everybody.

What is the NBA saying about that?

And how does that play into the debate over legalized gambling, for example?

I was really interested to hear your take on this because I agree with that point 100%.

One situation, you have a mafia family who's trying to take people's money and they're using famous people to do it.

And it's sort of an isolated incident.

Not that it's not nothing in Chauncey Billup.

Look, all of these guys are facing 20 years in prison, even though they may not be held right now

until their court appearance.

Obviously, this is an ongoing investigation.

But I agree with you 100% because gambling is legalized now and you have incidents like yesterday, ESPN is reporting on this story and they have ESPN bets at the bottom of the screen.

And that is not going away.

And so, you know, part of me, Ben, you and I have discussed at length the Black Sox scandal and shoeless Joe Jackson.

It was bad enough in an era where you weren't getting paid a lot of money, but you had no respect for the game that you were playing or the teammates that you had.

It was bad enough then.

But in an era contemporarily here where you're getting paid millions and millions of dollars, these players, even if you're just on a roster, you make more than doctors make.

There's absolutely no excuse that you would go out and just, you know, throw everything away so that you can win a couple bets.

And it sounds like there were multiple franchises that were involved in this across these 11 states with these indictments.

I think you will be happy to know that the Boston Celtics, they did not come up in this investigation as far as I'm aware.

A rare bright spot for the Boston Celtics these days.

But, you know, when I look at this, obviously, I saw what ESPN did.

I saw that ESPN had the ESPN bet marquee underneath

on the screen, and then they pulled it down in the middle of the conversation.

I thought to myself, that's incredibly stupid.

And the reason that's incredibly stupid is because it is not a crime for you or for me or for anybody else to go and put 10 bucks on a sports game.

And I'm not sure why ESPN would be shy about that or make the implication that because you or I are allowed to go over to Vegas and lay down a few bucks on tonight's Clippers game, that somehow Terry Rozier breaking the law implicates everybody else in that.

That's sort of like saying that we have to pull down all Budweiser ads because there's a drunk driver who decided to get behind the wheel and then hit somebody.

That's not the way these things work.

And it's bizarre to me that we live in such a sort of black and white society that the minute somebody does something criminal, it indicts the practice as a whole.

Now, again, this doesn't mean that I think that gambling is like the greatest thing that ever happened.

But I also don't generally have tremendous objections to people going and playing a hand of poker at the local casinos, so long as they're being responsible and they're just having fun with friends.

I mean, I will admit that I play poker with friends on occasion.

And as do I, you know, if you don't care about the money that you're losing and that's just the way that you're, you're blowing off some steam and having fun, I really don't see a huge problem with that.

It's the difference between gambling addiction or somebody actually participating in what would be, if, if it were in the stock market, insider trading, effectively.

100%.

If you look at that money as if it's entertainment, like you're paying to go to a ball game, I agree with you 100% on that.

And look, you're tapping into things that we have these serious conversations here on Craning Company, and we've had them with you, which is, you know, know, there are some times where you have daily wire members who don't necessarily have any respect or any tolerance for the concept of gambling, but I like the analogy that you use with alcohol.

Some people.

Don't touch alcohol at all.

Some people don't gamble at all.

Some people engage with alcohol use recreationally and don't have a problem.

And then there are some people who cannot be near alcohol and they cannot gamble at all because they have a serious problem.

And we try and, on a daily basis, reach out to those people and say, hey, this is not for you if you are putting your family in in jeopardy.

But the more serious side of this is a player, you know, actually participating in on-court game fixing.

And Ben, I just worry, I just worry that this is not going away.

Obviously, the NFL had a situation two years ago that was much less egregious where you had players simply gambling on other teams.

But because they're all friends and they have inside information on who may play or who may not play, the NFL did crack down on that hard, even though there was no evidence that they were necessarily throwing games or altering their performance at all.

And you saw a situation where Calvin Ridley, for instance, wide receiver was suspended for an entire year, or Jamison Williams, wide receiver for the Lions, I think was suspended for roughly half a year.

So the NFL came down hard on that.

I just, I think we're going to see more and more instances like this.

I just worry at what point does someone at the executive level get implicated?

that's when we're really going to sort of cross cross the Rubicon there and sport is really going to be tainted.

Yeah, I mean, we've already seen, obviously, scandals involving referees.

Tim Donaghy, going back to 2007, who was indicted for betting on games after an FBI investigation.

He admitted to betting on games that he had officiated in the early 2000s.

We saw that about 20 years ago.

And now we're seeing this with Terry Rosier.

I just wonder if this is going to crop up every so often with people who are corrupt and if there's any way to really avoid that.

But obviously, it is going to be a black stain on what is, you know, I think a rising league.

I mean, if you had to bet on the leagues in America that are in fairly good shape and seem to be increasing in size and appeal, the NBA seems like a pretty good bet.

This is going to be a serious headwind for them for sure.

David, really appreciate the time and the insight.

Thank you for having me.

Well, as I was discussing with David Cohn right there, when it comes to this NBA gambling scandal, I think that there are kind of two societal messages that are worth talking about here.

Obviously, the inherent corruptibility of man is a very, very real thing.

People become corrupt.

People do bad things.

That is not a shock.

There are kind of two fascinating aspects to these two scandals.

One is the legalized gambling aspect, where people are saying that the broadening of legalized gambling, that that is responsible for this sort of activity.

And I think not.

I really think not.

It certainly makes it easier to make money off of your illegal activity, but it is not illegal for you or for me or for any of your friends to go over to the local casino and place a bet or go on one of the betting services and place like a prop bet for 10 bucks because, you know, you consider it just a fun night out.

Again, I don't recommend that anybody expend serious quantities of cash betting.

It's a dumb way to lose your money.

However, I'm also going to say freely that I enjoy playing poker with friends.

And, you know, for me, if I lose a few bucks to friends, it matters to me, not one iota.

And it's a fun night out.

And I sort of believe about legalized gambling the same thing that I believe about drinking alcohol, which is in excess terrible.

bad for addicts.

Don't get in a car after you've had too many drinks.

And also, I'm not going to treat it as though there is some tremendously evil thing going on when you have a beer, nor do I think all Budweiser commercials need to be banned because there are people who drive drunk.

That does not seem like a rational response with regard to legalized gambling.

So trying to blame Terry Rosier's activities here or Jon Tay Porter's activities here on legalized gambling, they did an illegal thing.

If they'd done a legal thing, we wouldn't be talking about it.

They did an illegal thing.

Know your limits and don't do illegal things would be the lesson right there.

And I think it's easy sometimes for us to say, okay, well, well, now we should just ban activities wholesale.

I need to have to look at the downside of banning the activities.

And when it comes to activities like, for example, legalized gambling, if you ban legalized gambling, you should just understand the gambling will likely continue.

And not only will it continue, it will be run not by more legitimate outlets.

It will be run by, you know, the mafia, which will then actually do the same thing that you saw in the Chauncey Billups case.

It will manipulate.

It will cheat.

It will go after people and take their money illegally again.

Again, there's always a balance here.

You can make the argument I'm making about a bunch of activities that I think should be banned.

But I also don't think that gambling in and of itself is of the same ilk of evil as many of the other sort of vice-driven activities that people tend to lump together.

I don't think gambling, for example, is on the same order as, say, prostitution.

People tend to put these sort of vice crimes together.

I don't think these are the same things.

They're very different crimes.

They're very different sins.

And pretending that all things are the same is a simplistic way of thinking.

Again, it's not to say that gambling is like what you should be doing with your life, but it is to say that over-the-top government regulation of particular activities very often is going to result in precisely the counter of what you're attempting to achieve.

All righty, coming on, Bernie Sanders seems to be, you know, picking his 2028 nominee.

And guess who?

Guess who?

I told you.

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And meanwhile, Bernie Sanders yesterday let the cat out of the bag.

He was being interviewed by Axios, and he said what I think we've all been thinking, which is that AOC is almost certainly going to run for president in 2028 with the backing of Bernie Sanders.

She is an incredibly intelligent person, and in the best sense of the word, a very, very good politician.

I've been out on the streets with her.

People come up, and how she responds to people is so incredibly genuine and open.

You know, it's just something that's a gift that she has.

It's a quality that she has.

She's a great speaker out there.

She comes from the working class.

She was a kid.

She was cleaning houses with a mother.

She knows what it's like not to have any money.

And she's going out fighting for working families all over this country.

And I think as a young person who six years ago was a waitress,

becoming politically prominent has been incredibly inspiring.

Okay.

She's not inspiring.

But I guess that to the wild left, she is inspiring.

I mean, sure, she is a dunderhead who says unintelligent things every five seconds, but Bernie Sanders is also a dunderhead.

He's been able to get away with it for, you know, 2,000 decades at this point, since he was a contemporaneous follower of Methuselah, I believe.

Well, Bernie Sanders, he has taken over the Democratic Party wholesale at this point.

The Democratic Party is moving further and further to the left.

Of course, one of his chosen acolytes is, of course, the main Democrat who is now running for the Senate and leads in the polls by

leaps and bounds in the Senate Democratic primary race, Graham Plattner.

Plattner, according to new reporting from our own Luke Roziak over at DailyWire.com, was a member of a radical left group whose members have been linked to a slew of attacks, including an assault on an ICE facility that was designated a terrorist attack this month as part of a crackdown on Antifa.

Maine's Democrat Senate primary was upended after CNN reported that Plattner called himself a communist in posts on Reddit, where he wrote that if people, quote, expect to fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle, they ought to do some reading of history.

The forum name, Socialist RA, refers to the Socialist Rifle Association, a group whose members have been repeatedly linked to violent political crimes.

On July 4th, a group of militants allegedly swarmed law enforcement at an ICE facility in Elvarado, Texas, and opened fire at the unarmed DHS correctional officers.

One of them, Benjamin Henelsong, is charged with shooting a police officer in the neck.

He was a member of the Socialist Rifle Association's Dallas-Fort Worth chapter.

Last week, the DOJ charged two suspects in that attack, Cameron Arnold and Zachary Evats, with providing material support to terrorists, calling their crew an Antifa cell.

It was the first use of the terrorism statute against domestic extremists since Trump ordered a crackdown on far-left political violence.

Arnold, like the founders of the Socialist Rifle Association, is transgender and goes by the name Autumn Hill.

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Images of the main chapter include training.

There's a man training in a pink tutu shooting a gun and one who has facial hair matching Platiner's.

So, you know, good times.

This is a person who

the Nazi tattooed, Antifa training,

pseudo

man of the people, oyster farmer, who actually went to a $75,000 a year prep school when he was younger.

Plattner, that is Bernie Sanders' chosen guy in the Senate race in Maine, and he could very well win that Senate seat or at the very least be the Democratic nominee for that Senate seat.

And herein lies the problem for the Democrats.

If they wish to embrace this sort of radicalism, I do not think the American people will move alongside them.

I do not think the American people are for it.

Now, I know there are a lot of Republicans who are then rooting for the socialists to take over the Democratic Party.

I do not.

I've been saying this since 2020 at the very latest when Bernie Sanders was running against Joe Biden.

What I said in 2020 was that I preferred Joe Biden to be the nominee rather than Bernie Sanders, even if Bernie was more likely to lose to Donald Trump.

Why?

Because the risk factor in having a socialist leader was higher than the risk factor in having a dead leader like Joe Biden.

That even if Joe Biden had slightly higher odds to win the presidency than Bernie Sanders, If I have to calculate out the damage that a Bernie Sanders presidency would do versus a Joe Biden presidency, astronomically higher via Bernie Sanders than via Joe Biden, no matter how bad Joe Biden was.

I feel the same way about the Democratic Party falling wholesale to the wild left Democratic socialists.

If they do that, yes, there is a lower chance that they will win power anytime soon.

However, to pretend that chance doesn't exist is to whistle past the graveyard.

Let's say, for example, that the Democratic Party in 2028 right now has a 40% shot of winning the White House with some sort of pseudo-moderate like a Gavin Newsom or a Westmore.

And let's say they have a 30% shot of winning the White House with a clear, insane socialist like AOC at the top of the ticket.

The damage that would be done by a Westmore or a Gavin Newsom, let's say that it's a 7 out of 10.

And the damage done by an AOC would be like a 10 out of 10.

And well, if I'm just doing the math there,

I would rather take the low-risk scenario, even if there's a greater risk that person might become president, than take the absolutely disaster apocalyptic scenario of having a Democratic Party controlled by the nutjobs with the still somewhat plausible shot of taking power.

This is why the rise of the Zoran Mamdani left is truly, truly troubling.

And the people who are fomenting this,

I think, ought to be noted here.

There's been this sort of bizarre move on the right to treat people who are fellow travelers of the Trump election in 2024 as though they are leaders, thought leaders in conservatism or for the country.

And listen.

Anytime you create a victorious electoral coalition, there are going to be a bunch of different opinions within that electoral coalition.

But if you are a new convert to the conservative or Republican cause for one election, I'm not sure that you get to lead the church.

You don't get to go directly from the back pews to being the pastor or the priest.

And one of the mistakes, I think, that we make in politics is treating people who are sort of the new converts, because we're excited to have them, as though they ought to be the actual thought leaders.

And here I'm calling out some of these so-called Manosphere.

boys, the kind of Podbro boys, who are new converts sometimes to conservatism, who show up late to the party and they bring friends, and that's great.

There are lots more friends at the party now, but who

probably ought not be trusted with the future of conservatism or be considered actual thought leaders just because they are reacting to the excesses of the left.

Because sooner or later, they end up flipping and going right back to the left.

And it seems as though the answer there is sooner.

Because again, it is not coming from any thoroughgoing ideological commitment to conservatism or to conservative principles.

It's kind of just reactionary ping-ponging.

And you cannot have reactionaries who ping-pong between political positions as the leadership voices of your movement.

That would be a dumb thing to do.

The reason I'm talking about this is because yesterday, Zara Mamdani was featured on a podcast done by the comedian Andrew Schultz.

Now, again, I think Schultz is a funny guy.

I think that his specials are quite funny.

He's a talented comedian.

He and I have some rather large disagreements.

But there are a bunch of people who have suddenly deemed Schultz to be sort of an important voice on the quote-unquote conservative side of the aisle.

I didn't think Andrew would consider himself to be on the conservative side of the aisle.

In fact, I know he doesn't.

And so I was not particularly surprised to find him glossing Zorin Mamdani on his show, like a lot.

Here is Andrew Schultz basically propping up Zorin Mamdani, an overt socialist with jihadist leanings.

When I say jihadist leanings, I mean here that he is sympathetic to jihadists.

He is.

Globalize the Intifada is a jihadist call.

He refuses to say Hamas should disarm, which, if you care about Palestinians, you should want Hamas to disarm.

And he used to rap about freeing the Holy Land Five, who were, in fact, a front group for Hamas as charged by the federal government.

He has posed alongside people who are unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

And here's Andrew Schultz basically glossing him because, again, I don't think that Andrew Schultz thinks of himself as a deep political thinker.

So, you know, in my opinion, no one else should, probably.

I also think this idea that like New Yorkers are going to flee because of a 2% increase, it's like, I've been everywhere else.

You're not going anywhere.

Bill Ackman's not going nowhere.

He's going to be in the Hamptons all one place to write those tweets.

That's it.

New York City.

Oh, and you've got the Smarmie smiling.

And again, it's until the Pod Bros joking with Mom.

Oh, he's so hilarious.

Oh, he's so charming.

Oh, yeah.

There was more of Andrew Schultz really massaging Mamdani.

I don't think anybody's moving, and I honestly feel that way.

And like, I'm in the tax bracket.

We're going to tax more.

Like, dude, if you're going to deliver all this shit for 2%, give it.

I'm 100% supportive.

It makes life easier for New Yorkers.

It's my one identity in my entire life is a New Yorker.

It's the thing I care the most about.

But

what I will say is that I think that there are going to be people in government that are going to try to restrict you from doing that.

And I know that you're aware of that.

Okay, first of all, he doesn't have the power to increase state taxes by 2%.

And yes, by the way, people who are mobile will move.

Historically, they do.

I mean, because it's not the 2% increase that's going to do it.

It's the belief that there is a trajectory of income tax increases that is only going to steepen.

I know because I did it.

I am a person who grew up not rich, and then I made a lot more money.

And then the state of California kept trying to take more and more and more of my money.

And that was a major factor in me taking my company and moving it to Tennessee and me personally moving to Florida, both zero state income tax states.

The idea that you can incessantly just grab money from people and that at no point will they move, especially when they are the most mobile class in the country, is beyond.

I mean, listen, if Schultz wants to pay more cash to the government, he's free to do that.

There's a box you can check on your IRS forms that allows you to send more money to the federal government.

I assume there's one on the state forums that allows you to send more money to the state government.

If Andrew Schultz wants to start a charity where he gives more monies, there can be free bus fare in New York.

He's free to do that as well.

But, you know,

this idea that you can change policy with no ramifications for anyone else is sort of bizarre.

And again, this goes back to the central point.

Andrew's entitled to all of his opinions, obviously.

He was a very popular show.

He's a popular comedian.

To pretend that he's some sort of great shakes politically, at least on the right side of the aisle, he himself would not, Andrew would not tell you that he is a thought leader on the right side of the aisle.

I keep pointing this out because there are people who keep trying to treat him that way.

And there are people who do the same thing with like Tim Dylan or Joe Rogan

or a bunch of other people who themselves would tell you they are not on the right.

Don't do that if you're on the right.

It's silly.

It is stupid.

The reason that Andrew Schultz moved to the right is because he got tired of the censoriousness of the left.

But anti-left does not make you conservative.

And that is important when you're defining which voices get to shape and lead the coalition that is going to be running from the right side of the aisle.

Again, here's Andrew Schultz continuing to gloss, an open socialist who hates capitalism, Zoran Mamdani.

I'm worried about entrenched politics.

And I'm worried about the people that fund them because they're the same people that have been fundraising against you.

And I'm worried about them bending to their whim.

And what scares me a little bit is there are going to be people that are incentivized for you to fail.

And then if that pendulum swings all the way the other way,

how many more people get hurt?

and i guess my question is like do you ever worry about that or do you have to be so blinders on

wow i mean the tough questions there tough questions

again

my point here is not that andrew schultz needs to be some sort of right winger he isn't so people should stop treating him like that because he isn't one and the same thing goes anytime you're trying to define the sort of boundaries what conservatism looks like you might want to actually ask yourself definitionally is this person in the corner of the ideas that I share or are they a fellow traveler against the thing that I don't like for the moment?

And it can be either.

It doesn't make it a bad thing, but it would be a foolhardy move to say that people who joined the Trump coalition in the waning moments of the 2024 election are somehow conservative voices and thought leaders who we must pay tremendous outsized attention to.

I just don't think that that's correct.

All righty, coming up, Andrew Cuomo getting himself in hot water because someone near him made a mean comment about Zara Mamdani.

Oh, no.

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And meanwhile, the Democratic Party continues to fall under the sway of Mom Donny.

Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader.

He doesn't want to give up the ghost of Mom Dani, but he also doesn't want to let go of Mom Dani.

Here he was,

basically avoiding all hard questions on Mam Dani.

What do you say about the criticism that Mamdani is getting from the Jewish community, specifically a lot of rabbis signing documents saying he's a potential threat to the Jewish community in New York?

What's your reaction to that?

Well, I'm going to continue to stand up strongly for the Jewish community, of course, to uplift the the special relationship that the United States and Israel continue to have with each other and lean in on supporting, hopefully, a path toward a just and lasting peace in Israel.

I'm thankful that all the hostages have been returned.

I'm thankful that humanitarian assistance is being surged into Gaza.

Well, I mean, thank you for not answering the question at all.

He was asked about the New York City mayoral race directly.

He said he'll have more to say on that in the future.

Well, I'm sure you will after the election takes place.

Early voting starts in just two days.

Will you finally make an endorsement, Leader Jeffries?

Well, as you indicated, Wolf, early voting starts in a few days.

And I look forward to saying much more about the mayor's race, as I've promised, in advance of that moment.

I haven't gotten a chance to actually review the debate clips from last evening.

Yeah, well, I mean, they can only avoid this meat grinder for so long.

Meanwhile, Mamdani is asking, deeply outraged, over a situation that arose on Sid Rosenberg's show.

So, Sid had on Andrew Cuomo, and Rosenberg made some sort of joking comment about how Zorin Mamdani would have cheered 9-11, and Cuomo kind of chuckled at it.

And this apparently is a scandal for the Islamophobia.

Here's the deal: Cuomo is not saying that every Muslim in New York would have celebrated 9-11.

That's not what he's saying.

Zorin Mamdani, unfortunately, has a lot has a long record of basically massaging terrorist entities.

He does.

I wish that weren't true, but he could stop doing it.

He could, you know, like condemn Hamas, actually.

I love the news cycles in which we're more outraged with the person who reacts to the bad thing than the bad thing itself.

Here is Andrew Cuomo getting himself in trouble.

And people's lives are at stake.

God forbid another 9-11.

Can you imagine Mondami in the seat?

I could.

He'd be cheering.

It's another problem.

But can you imagine that?

No.

So again, it was Rosenberg who really made the joke there.

Cuomo was then getting slammed.

And Mondzani was like, this is just disgusting.

It's just disgusting.

How dare he.

Again.

If you are a New York voter and you're more offended by Sid Rosenberg's joke or Andrew Cuomo not slapping down Sid Rosenberg for making the joke than you are by the fact that Zoran Mandani legitimately like a week ago refused to say that Hamas should disarm

and posed last week with an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, then, you know, let me just say, I don't think that you care very much about terrorism.

It's not a priority for you.

Eric Adams, for what it's worth, did endorse Andrew Cuomo yesterday after dropping out of the race.

This is something I wish Curtis Lee will do.

So we actually had a one-on-one race.

Here is Eric Adams yesterday.

That's what I'm fighting for.

I'm fighting for the family of New York.

That's why I'm here today to endorse Andrew Cuomo to be part of this fight.

And I'm going to give him my all these next few days.

So, you know, again, we'll see whether that matters at all.

If Sleebo doesn't drop out, it probably will not.

Meanwhile, the Democrats who continue to radicalize, they actually made a move yesterday that I think is actually kind of politically insane.

They insisted that federal workers not be paid during the shutdown.

So Republicans keep pushing forward these clean CRs, these clean continuing resolutions.

Democrats keep stopping them.

So then Senate Republicans put forward a bill to continue at least paying people during this government shutdown.

Senator Ron Johnson had put forward a bill to pay employees who are on the job despite the closure.

It failed 54 to 45.

along mostly partisan lines.

Republicans blocked two bills to pay all federal workers.

Democrats tried to pass that by unanimous consent.

So that would have just, I guess,

allowed for all federal workers, even the ones who are currently furloughed, to be paid for not doing their jobs.

The shutdown continues into its fourth week.

The Trump administration, according to the Washington Post, has moved money around to pay some of the workers who are required to come in, mostly in military and law enforcement.

About 750,000 federal workers have been furloughed without pay during the shutdown.

Workers whose jobs involving protecting life and government property have been expected to continue working without pay, including air traffic controllers, TSA officers, employees of law enforcement agencies.

Senator Johnson said, we're talking about making sure that 2.8 million federal employees aren't worried about getting their next paycheck.

That overwhelms, quite honestly, the smaller differences.

Democrats are arguing that Johnson's bill gave the White House budget director Russ Vaughat too much leeway to determine which workers would get paid and which ones would not, which give me a break.

I mean, seriously, give me a break.

Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer is trying to make the case that because Donald Trump is trying to reconstruct the East Wing of the White House's ballroom, that means that Donald Trump doesn't care about the shutdown.

Dude, all you have to do is vote in favor of the continuing resolution.

This would be a you problem, not a Trump problem.

It's hard to fathom someone more out of touch and oblivious to our nation's struggles than the current president.

Let's take the ballroom, for instance.

Oh my goodness.

Come on.

This is the image Donald Trump doesn't want America to see.

This is the picture Donald Trump told his people to hide from the American people.

And do you know what the picture represents?

It's not just the desecration of the White House.

It shows that Donald Trump is not focused on fixing health care, but rather on vanity projects.

You guys can vote for this anytime.

This is so tiresome and stupid.

Meanwhile, by the way, the governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, has now declared a state of emergency because SNAP is set to expire November 1st without a continuing resolution.

Governor Youngkin said the Democratic shutdown will cause SNAP benefits to run out for over 850,000 Virginians in need starting November 1st.

I refuse to let hungry Virginians be used as leverage by congressional Democrats.

I'm declaring a state of emergency.

The Commonwealth Commonwealth will provide food benefits until congressional Democrats put the interests of Virginians in need ahead of their politics.

So, this is something that Democrats are facing down.

According to Politico, it's a shutdown cliff that could hit Democrats hard.

Again, November 1st, SNAP, that's the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps to feed more than 40 million people.

It starts to run out of funds November 1st.

25 states plan to cut off benefits starting on that date.

Democrats are going to have to explain why they would prefer for SNAP funding to expire rather than just signing on to a normal normal continuing resolution.

So, again, this seems to be a gigantic mistake.

Senator Josh Howley of Missouri said, what's it going to take for Democrats to say, jiha, maybe people should be able to eat?

One White House official told Politico the shutdown is Democrat performance art.

The audience starves while the elitist critics applaud.

That seems basically about right.

So, again, Democrats, I do not know the game that they are playing, but it does not seem to be a particularly smart game.

Meanwhile, Caroline Caroline Lovitt was at the White House yesterday speaking with the press, and she was asked about illegal immigrants receiving health care because this has been an argument made by the administration, including Vice President Vance on the show, that basically what Democrats are stumping for is changes to the one big beautiful bill that would allow for fungible money to be given to states that will effectively go to funding health care for illegal immigrants.

Here was Caroline Levitt talking about it from the White House.

An illegal alien from Laos was arrested for murder, robbery, and felony possession of a firearm.

An illegal alien from Guatemala who was arrested for rape and burglary.

An illegal alien from El Salvador who was arrested for strangulation, DUI, and burglary.

An illegal alien from Mexico who was arrested for attempted murder.

The Democrats' open border policies allowed these threats into our country, and then they provided them with free health care.

The President and the Republicans, through the One Big Beautiful bill, implemented a common sense reform to end this fraudulent scheme.

So, again, I think this is not an argument that's going particularly well for the Democrats.

Again, the fact that they are relying on the destruction of the current East Wing as though this is like a major scandal that Americans are going to get up in arms about,

that is their big move here.

I mean, good luck with this.

Seriously, good luck.

First of all, it is not going to be taxpayers who are paying for this.

According to the New York Post, billionaires owners and top corporations are footing the bill.

The 90,000 square foot Grand Hall will soon sit at the north end of the mansion's executive East Wing, thanks to contributions from companies including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

That also includes Coinbase and Gemini, the Winklevoss twins, Mary Mattelson, Commerce Secretary Howard Luttnick, and his family as well.

President Trump said it's four sides of glass, beautiful glass, but totally appropriate in color and in window, shape, and everything else with the White House.

It will seat 900 people.

It would be near the East Wing, but not touching it, apparently.

And somehow, again, like this seems to be one of the least controversial things.

Like, I wouldn't care if Barack Obama did this.

I mean, first of all, I think Barack Obama would build something incredibly ugly.

If you take a look at his presidential library, which looks like a sand crawler from Star Wars episode four,

with maybe fewer windows, it, you know.

I think he had worse construction taste than President Trump.

And I'm not even a fan of the gilding that the the Trump administration has done in the Oval.

But the idea that this is like a major thing and people are freaking out about it, I'm just having a tough time seeing it, folks.

I really am.

People have actual real problems in their lives.

Here is Caroline Lovitt sparring with a reporter over the new ballroom.

You mentioned any construction project comes with changes.

The president had initially said that this project wouldn't interfere with or touch the current structure.

Now he says to do this properly, he realized that the East Wing had to be demolished.

This is the people's house.

Why not inform the public of that change?

And when it was decided that the East Wing would have to be demolished?

Look, again, with any construction project, changes come.

And we have informed all of you.

We've been keeping you apprised of this project.

We've shown you the renderings.

And if you look at the renderings, it's very clear the East Wing was going to be modernized.

Instead, in fact, I said that in the briefing when we initially introduced this plan to all of you and to the public.

Again, this is not a major scandal.

Now, what's amazing amazing to me is the Democrats do have a bit of a target-rich environment, but they're ignoring all the stories they should be focusing on.

So, for example, a story that I think is problematic.

Yesterday, President Trump pardoned Chiang Peng Zhao.

He's the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family's own crypto company.

This is according to the Wall Street Journal.

The president signed the pardon on Wednesday.

People familiar with the matter said.

President Trump recently indicated to advisors he was sympathetic to arguments of political persecution related to Zhao and others.

Caroline Lovitt said the Biden administration's war on crypto is over.

Now, the problem, of course, is that Binance has some pretty serious problems involved with it.

It was barred from operating in the country in 2023 for violating U.S.

anti-money laundering requirements.

He served four months, so he's not in prison right now.

And Binance has been a very, very large supporter of World Liberty Financial, which is the Trump family's crypto venture.

And World Liberty Financial is, shall we say, a bit dicey.

World Liberty Financial, the assets that it is putting up for sale, are essentially tokens that are not fungible.

They're not really saleable.

They don't give you voting power of any real sort.

And there are a lot of people pouring money into World Liberty Financial.

This is not to say that everything World Liberty Financial related is a problem, but

if you keep having situations where people who are under legal scrutiny keep pouring money into World Liberty Financial, and then they find themselves on the other end of pardons, it seems seems to me like Democrats, if they were smart, would be focusing on that.

But apparently they're not.

They're choosing to focus on the East Wing of the White House.

Now, again, I think most Americans are going to overlook all of that.

I've said it before.

I'll say it again.

The biggest danger to the Trump administration

is this sort of activity, having to do particularly with the crypto world, connected with an economic downturn.

If the economy goes the wrong way, then all of the sort of edgy play in which members of the Trump administration and family members are engaged is going to become the number one issue.

That's how you get president AOC.

The way you get president AOC is not because she's a good candidate.

You get an economic downturn.

You get Democrats in the media jumping on the yelling about world liberty financial and all the deals being made in the Middle East and with Chinese figures.

And that turns into a an oligarchy campaign, which is what AOC is already laying the groundwork for.

That is a real problem.

Now, Caroline Lovett addressed this yesterday.

She was asked about the pardon of the Binance founder.

Here's what she had to say.

I would respond and say the president is exercising his constitutional authority to grant clemency requests.

And the president and the White House have a very thorough examination of every pardon request that comes to the president's desk.

It is thoroughly reviewed by the White House counsel office.

And I spoke with our great White House counsel about the pardon after it happened.

This was an an overly prosecuted case by the Biden administration.

Even the judge in the case admitted that the Biden administration was pursuing an egregious over-sentencing of this individual.

So, again,

maybe that's true.

The bottom line here is that making that connection is going to be a target-rich environment for Democrats if the economy goes down.

Now, the good news is that right now it looks like the economy is doing just fine.

The latest CPI report is out.

It came in

relatively cool.

There was an expected increase in the CPI of 3.1%.

It's actually at 3% annually.

According to CNN, the September CPI inflation report shows prices rose at a slower than expected rate of 0.3% last month, but annual price hikes for a range of consumer goods rose to the fastest pace so far this year.

The Federal Reserve is very likely to continue cutting those interest rates.

The White House has said there's very unlikely, it's unlikely that there will be inflation in October.

Now, again, inflation is still running 50% too high, according to the Fed's own benchmarks.

The Fed is supposed to be at 2%, it's at 3%.

Does that mean that they're going to stop cutting?

Probably not, because there are some indicators that the economy is starting to slow a little bit, including cuts in retail.

So according to the Wall Street Journal, Target plans to cut around 1,800 corporate roles as part of an effort to remake its strategy to reverse a period of stagnant sales.

Target announced on Thursday it will lay off around 1,000 global corporate employees and cut 800 open roles.

The move will cut around around 8% of its approximately 22,000 corporate employees with around 80% of the cuts in its U.S.

ranks.

Meanwhile, EV sales are down.

Tesla's profits have been dropping.

Its net income dropped 37% in the third quarter, despite growing vehicle sales, marring an otherwise record-setting quarter for a company ahead of the November vote on a new pay package for chief executive Elon Musk.

So the bet that Tesla investors are making is really not EV sales.

It's about AI.

And it's about the use of data and the development of AI via Tesla.

Tesla is a tech company masquerading as a car company.

The jump in revenue is being aided by that expiring electric vehicle credit.

It expired September 30th.

And so people kind of rushed to get the Teslas

to beat the rush, basically.

Listen, I have a Tesla.

I love Tesla.

I think it's a great car.

I enjoy driving it.

more than any other car I've ever driven.

Also,

again, these are some indicators that people are starting to downscale in terms of their expenditures.

People are instead shifting, it appears, their buying habits in cars to kind of the old-style pickups and SUVs because oil prices are comparatively low right now.

And, you know, without that $7,500 tax credit with regard to EVs, it might be cheaper for people to go and get a Ford.

Bottom line is, again, as always, every administration, the strength of the administration rests on economics.

If the economy continues to move under President Trump, he'll be fine.

If it doesn't, that is how you get a radical left backlash.

Joining me online is John Bickley.

He's co-host of Morningwire.

They have been covering this week another insane story out of the state of Massachusetts, where foster parents have now lost their license after they refused to sign a policy that said that they would have to respect the gender-affirming care chosen by minors.

John, what's going on with this story?

Hey, yeah, this is a major case.

It could be a precedent-setting case.

We'll see what happens with this.

In some ways, there's a real opportunity here, I think, for Christians and people that are just pro freedom of religious expression, free speech.

So what's happened here is that Lydia and Heath Marvin, they're both Christians.

They're both foster parents.

They usually take on really special needs, medical needs, kids under the age of four.

They've had eight in the last five years.

So what happened here is that their license was suddenly revoked in April.

The reason is, let me read the full, the LGBTQIA plus policy out of the state requires you to affirm the gender identity of the kid.

Also dress them in gender-neutral clothing, as I understand it.

They said, look, this is a violation of our religious perspective.

These are deeply held beliefs.

We cannot sign this policy.

Suddenly, their license is revoked.

Again, they've been a crucial family for the state.

Eight kids that most families could not actually take, would not be willing to take, could not take because of the special medical needs.

Suddenly, they're taken out of the potential

pool of families that can take in kids.

So what they've said is, look, this is obviously religious discrimination.

They're partnering with Alliance Defending Freedom, Alliance Defending Freedom ADF, such an awesome organization.

We've talked about them a lot at Daily Wire.

They're taking on this case.

This is another case in Massachusetts.

There's actually something that happened last year, a similar case.

Alliance Defending Freedom, again, stepping in on that one.

So they're claiming, you know, again, religious discrimination.

And I think one of the big keys here is the timing.

So we have the Trump administration who is really leaning in on wiping out all kinds of anti-Christian, anti-religious discrimination, they've gotten involved.

So, this is where I think that we have an opportunity in the state of Massachusetts to really change the situation there.

There's tens of millions of dollars on the line, as we've seen from the Trump administration.

They're not afraid of pressuring major states like California to make sure that they're following their policies, that they're not discriminating in these kinds of ways.

So, they're involved.

There's a major, already we have have some statements from the state that are pretty weak, kind of saying, hey, look, we're just trying to protect children.

That argument doesn't hold up when you say, well, you're also not allowing families that are actually taking real action to protect children's lives, raise children that have special needs again.

So major case here.

We're going to see where this goes, but I have a good feeling that Massachusetts is going to be feeling a lot of pressure in the coming weeks.

Well, Massachusetts has been psychotic on these issues for decades at this point.

I remember when I was in law school over in Cambridge, Massachusetts, there was a case that came down in 2006 in which Catholic adoption agencies literally just shut down across the state.

They've been not operating there for 20 years because of the same-sex adoption policies that were put in place by the state of Massachusetts that said that if you're a Catholic adoption agency and you say that a child should go to a mom and a dad rather than two moms or two dads, that this is an act of discrimination and therefore you can't operate in the state of Massachusetts.

And Catholic adoption agencies literally shut down in the state of Massachusetts and have not been operating there for two decades because of this.

The kids always seem to come last.

The kids never seem to be a priority for all these people who are significantly more interested in the social implications of gender ideology than they are in the actual fate of kids who require parents and kids who require adoptive and foster parents.

Yeah, for sure.

And you might remember this.

I mean, there's Supreme Court precedence that is set, that specifically addresses Catholic adoption agencies at a Philadelphia.

So this was a situation, I think it's 2021 Supreme Court decision, Fulton versus City of Philadelphia.

And the city was discriminating against this Catholic, they call themselves the Catholic adoption services.

They would not let them participate because they would not affirm, they would not allow in same-sex couples as potential adoptees because of, again, deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics.

And eventually, SCOTUS ruled against the city.

So there is precedent here that I think works against the state of Massachusetts.

Again, they might back down before this goes further.

If they don't, they could be in real trouble.

The Trump administration is going to lean in.

And SCODIS, we've seen how they're already leaning on cases.

It kind of reminds me, actually, of some recent, we've seen some recent oral arguments where we've heard similar arguments in the Supreme Court, and we've seen even some of the liberal justices having a hard time rationalizing some of these policies that are these, like, for instance, anti-conversion therapy, so-called conversion therapy arguments.

I think Massachusetts would lose and lose big if this goes up the chain.

Well, that is John Bickley.

He is co-host of The Morning Wire, available at Daily Wire Plus and everywhere else.

The podcast are available.

John, really appreciate the time and the updates.

Thanks for having me on, Ben.

All righty, folks.

Coming up, we'll get into

the situation in the Middle East.

There seems to be a bit of a misinterpretation about what's going on in the Israeli parliament.

I will explain.

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