transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:13] Hello, and welcome to The Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We've got a double header for you today in segment two, Teen Heartthrob. Ben McKenzie, aka Ryan Atwood, has a new movie out about the crypto and how it's a big scam, and seems like he was pretty prescient on that front, given what's happening in the White House. So that's a really fun conversation. Stick around for that. But first up, she was White House Deputy Press Secretary in Trump's first term, but you know, she did the right thing at the end, and we love that for her. And she joined us at the Bulwark, thank God, doing TikTok videos. If you're not following us on TikTok, what are you doing? Follow us on TikTok as well. She's doing some other stuff and it's been overdue for her to join me on the podcast. It's my girl, Sarah Matthews. How are you doing?

Speaker 2:
[00:57] I'm doing well. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
[00:59] All right, let's do it. We got some news items that we want to run through. But before we do that, I'm just curious if we're at like, are we at the regret stage yet? Whenever I go on shows, people are like, what are people saying? What are the MAGA people saying? I'm like, none of them talk to me anymore. I was like, it's been 10 years since I was a Republican. It's relatively more recently for you. You're in DC, you see these people every once in a while. Are you getting any whispers yet? I feel like that's a good barometer for how bad things get once Sarah Matthews starts to get some whispers, that people are like, boy, this is rough.

Speaker 2:
[01:33] No, that's a good point. I definitely still have connections within the Trump administration. And people will privately say things to me like, hey, just want you to know that really big fan of everything you're doing and support you privately. They're like, I'll never be able to like one of your videos, but just know that everything you're saying, I agree with. And I think there's a lot of those people too, who are now seeing everything that's playing out. And they're like, oh yeah, this is really bad. And there was a difference, I think, between going and working in the first Trump administration versus Trump 2.0. So a lot of the people that I do have connections with, they're a little bit more disconnected from maybe like the immediate White House inner circle orbit. But I think that there's a lot of people who are looking at everything that Trump's doing and they know that shit is hitting the fan, whether it's price is going, continuing to go up, Iran war, et cetera.

Speaker 1:
[02:30] You haven't had a satisfying you are right conversation that has anybody given you that?

Speaker 2:
[02:35] Oh, definitely. There have definitely been some people that were like, yeah, how does it feel to watch everything that's playing out? I'm like, don't get me wrong. Of course, there's a little part of me that thinks internally. Of course, it feels good to be right. But I didn't want to be right about all of this.

Speaker 1:
[02:53] I did. That's one way that we're different. I don't want to be immodest or anything, but it does feel like as I survey the news or to go to this morning, that the most extreme cringe version of Never Trumpism seems like it was correct. Whatever person you have in your minds, you're like, this person hates Trump so much, that some of their takes are even a little bit, make you wince a little bit because they've gone so far around the bend. That person, whoever that person is in your mind, was way more right than anybody who tried to say, let's call it balls and strikes. He had some good points on this or that. It is just an across-the-board shit show.

Speaker 2:
[03:38] No, exactly. I remember thinking when I was working in the first administration and looking at Never Trumpers, I was never really fully bought in on the MAGA brand, but I was in that camp of thinking, oh, but I like some of the stuff he does and the economy is good and all that, but then it's never worth it. I always knew deep down, and so I'm happy to be on this side of things now, and now obviously five years of being on the anti-Trump side, and feels good to know that we were right.

Speaker 1:
[04:10] Me too, right about everything. Hope we survive the next two and a half years. Let's run through what's happening in Iran trolling Trump calling it the Strait of Persia now, asking that they change the name. Here's a couple of news items. Iran is saying that they control the strait, they're taking tolls, and they've actually gotten revenue from their tolls now. We have evidence of that. Trump on the other hand is saying that we have control of the strait and that it's quote sealed up tight until such time as Iran is able to make a deal. The problem Trump says is they can't make a deal because we don't know who we're negotiating with, in part because there's internal strife in Iran and we killed a lot of the leaders that we thought they were going to negotiate with. Trump says now we're going to shoot and kill any of the small boats. So we're back to active hot war with Iran on the sea. He also bled that additionally our mine sweepers, which he put in quotation marks, I don't know why, sweepers are clearing the strait right now, and he writes, I am hereby ordering that activity to continue but at a tripled up level. There's some challenges with that. We don't really have a lot of minesweepers. I don't know if we're capable of doing it at a tripled up level, but that is his announcement. Amidst all this, lots happening on the sea, the secretary of the Navy was fired or quit. We don't really know. I was dismissed. They haven't explained why. This is one of the comedy of errors, Trump stories. John Phelan was a Trump donor who had no qualifications to be the secretary of the Navy, and then he got in there, and I guess Pete Hengsef had imposter syndrome with the secretary of the Navy, even though the secretary of the Navy didn't know it was a Palm Beach donor. And so they butted heads, he's out, he's been replaced by Hung Cal, a perennial MAGA candidate loser in Virginia. So it doesn't seem good to me.

Speaker 2:
[06:02] No, it does not seem good. I mean, first off, yeah, it's just crazy to think that we had someone who had no military background even serving as the secretary of the Navy, and then dealing with a naval blockade during a time of war. And so whether he was fired or he quit, it's just astounding to me that, yeah, someone like that would be appointed to a position like that. But then, I mean, this is, I believe the 34th person that Pete Hegseth has fired in the military. I think I saw that number floating around somewhere on Twitter. And if we're assuming that this guy was fired, which I'm going to assume that he was, because the reporting says that they were butting heads. So you and I talked a while back and you asked me who I was most concerned about within the cabinet. And I think at that time, your answer was Christy Noem. This was obviously before her firing. And mine was Pete Hegseth, because I just thought this is not the guy that I want heading the Pentagon. And that was before we even got ourselves into a war. And so I just can't imagine anyone worse right now to be in charge of the Pentagon at a time like this. But then going back to the Strait of Hormuz too, I mean, what a shit show. I saw a tweet about this, where someone compared it to Schrodinger's cat, and how it can be open and closed both at the same time, because Trump is always tweeting or true socialing about how it's, now it's open, but then the Iranians are like, no, it's closed. And it's so frustrating because it's like, Trump is out there pushing this narrative of, oh, like, yeah, we're going to be tripling the time that we're going to be mind sweeping. But I also saw reporting saying that it could take up to six months for them to clear the Strait of Hormuz of all of the minds.

Speaker 1:
[07:43] It's the Washington Post.

Speaker 2:
[07:44] Yeah. And that assumes that you're probably having to shut down the Strait in order to clear those minds. And so can you imagine it being closed for six months and what that would do to gas prices?

Speaker 1:
[07:55] We're going to find out. I mean, that's my thing about his belief this morning. He says the Strait is, quote, sealed up tight. We don't want that. That's not good. That's the problem, actually. And it's almost like he doesn't even know at this point. He just wants to spin any news item is positive. Right. And as you're saying, if it's open, that's great. If it's closed, it's great. And there's no clear objective. We don't have a counterparty. The negotiations aren't on. I continue to think this is just far worse than conventional wisdom like the normies in my life really understand. And you mentioned the six months that Washington Post reported yesterday, six months to clear the mines. And then there's a piece from the FT that says that even if the Strait were to open tomorrow, energy markets will show the scars of war for years. It might be 2030 before the market for refined products returns to the old equilibrium. 2030. God willing, we're all here in 2030, you know, with deteriorating Donald Trump's finger on the button. So I talked about this with Sam yesterday. We kind of are past the point where Trump was able to do the face-saving, we won, I'm out. You know, and like that's like the classic Trump move. You know, the thing that he can, that he always has been able to do when he gets into a problem, it's like, I created this problem, but now, now I've solved the problem. And people who pay attention to the news recognize that it's all kayfabe, but his fans go along with it. That doesn't work when everyone's paying more in gas. The plan doesn't work. And the Iranians know that they have them over the barrel. Pun not intended.

Speaker 2:
[09:33] No, exactly. I think that the Iranians know that they have them backed into a corner, that he wants to end this war as quickly as possible. But when you look at the Iranians, their war with Iraq lasted eight years. And so they're willing to drag something out and make it painful for us. And they know that they have the upper hand right now, and that he needs to end this war and get the strait open. So that way, gas crisis can come down, and they see that he's watching his polling absolutely crater right now because of this war of choice. And so that's what's really concerning, is that when we're looking at the negotiations, and speaking of the negotiations, having Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner leading the charge, I couldn't be any less impressed by who we're sending for negotiations. But I think that the Iranians know right now that Trump is panicking, and he needs this war to end, because of the price of everything, and just going to continue to skyrocket, not just gas, because the ripple effect of gas going up is going to affect everything economically.

Speaker 1:
[10:37] Yeah, the Iran-Iraq war history is good to go back to, that you referenced, because there are parallels, and obviously these things are complex, and there are differences, but just at the top level, Iraq went in, fucked them up, and then wanted to negotiate a ceasefire, and Iran was like, nah.

Speaker 2:
[10:56] Exactly.

Speaker 1:
[10:57] The Kushner thing has me enraged. Axios yesterday quoted a senior American official updating people in the negotiations. I'm like, that isn't a thing. There isn't a senior, like you're either in the administration and you're a senior administration official where you have to be vetted and get a background check, we have to know about your finances, or you're the president's son-in-law. If the president's son-in-law is doing side deals, like the fact that he is the one being quoted is the news, not whatever bullshit he's spinning you. Anyway, this is like an insider baseball media thing, but it's driving me insane that people are letting him be quoted on background as a senior official. He's not a senior official.

Speaker 2:
[11:38] No, exactly. It was so comical because it was so obvious to anyone who has worked in political comms that he was obviously the source of that. It's like, if you're going to put someone on background, there's a level of anonymity there where you're not sure which senior administration official it is. But with the attribution being a senior American official or whatever it was, I mean, come on, it was obviously him. So it's like, why not just force him to be on the record? And also when he obviously has such a vested interest with all of his business dealings in the Middle East and then he's the one negotiating, it's like, I would think that our media outlets would be forcing him to go on the record if he's going to be talking to them. But during my time at the White House, he was always very well connected and was the source of a lot of leaks. And so it's not surprising to me that they let him be on background for that.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
[14:14] I met him once during my time there, but it was like brief. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[14:18] He wasn't like hammered to bull feathers or anything when you met him?

Speaker 2:
[14:21] No, no. He was in the West Wing whenever I met him. But I did not witness the behavior that has been outlined in the Atlantic. But obviously, I saw it on video when he was with the USA Men's Hockey Team or his friends as he called them. I don't know if you caught that in his. Yeah. I was like, buddy, those aren't your friends. They were probably like, who is this guy? Yeah. When you crashed their-

Speaker 1:
[14:44] He probably doesn't have friends. Yeah. This is the thing. He might think they're his friends because he doesn't have real friends. Here's a new New York Times story about him. We've covered drunk cash. You're welcome to talk about that if you want. But this is from Michael Schmidt. The FBI began investigating New York Times reporter Elizabeth Williamson after she wrote about how cash was using bureau personnel to give favors and free stuff to his girlfriend. So then cash ordered the FBI to investigate Williamson to see if she broke federal stalking laws. So the FBI is going after a reporter because the FBI's director was unhappy that she wrote something mean about his girlfriend.

Speaker 2:
[15:26] Yeah, I didn't realize that traditional reporting was now equated to stalking. I mean, I can't imagine a worse waste of resources than having the FBI start an investigation into this reporter, when all she did was what any good reporter does. They ask around. I mean, the amount of times that I've been asked by reporters, oh, hey, you know this person, tell me a little bit about them. I'm doing a profile on them or I'm reporting on this event that happened. That is how it goes. That is absolutely normal. That is not stalking. For Cash to use his power in his role to try to intimidate this reporter, it's just absolute bullshit. I mean, they're doing the same thing with the Atlantic and the defamation suit there too, where it's just an intimidation tactic. Then to think that the Trump administration is going to be attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner and celebrating the First Amendment, and all these reporters are going to have to clap along, and it's just absolutely ridiculous.

Speaker 1:
[16:28] What do you think about that? We've got the Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. Trump had skipped it. I had hoped that Trump was going to kill the Correspondents' Dinner. It's not for me. People keep asking if I'm going to be in town this weekend. I was like, absolutely not. It was annoying and decadent even in the pre-Trump times, this fake performative bipartisanship, and we're giving awards to each other, and everybody's dressed up in a tuxedo, and it's kind of like, it's when Hollywood does it, you roll your eyes at them, but it's like, that's Hollywood, right? That's what they're trying to do. It's glitz and glamor. This is DC. This is supposed to be public service. Like all of us pretending like we're Leo DiCaprio and honoring each other never really worked for me. But this time, it's like Trump is going to be there, and I don't know. It makes me feel itchy. It's like why? I guess why is my question.

Speaker 2:
[17:21] It's such a slap in the face to what journalism is, that they're going to sit there and he'll ramble on for hour plus giving a speech, and probably just shitting on them the entire time, and not in a fun light-hearted way where a president can poke fun at the media. It's going to probably be like a humiliation ritual for them to have to sit there through his speech, and then I just feel like it's a slap in the face to what journalism is, what the First Amendment is, and because we've never seen an administration that has abused the First Amendment more, even though they say that that's why Trump ran on, wanting to bring free speech back and all of that. But it's like, no, we're watching free speech die in this administration. I mean, the way that they're going after reporters, like how we were talking about with Cash Patel and having the FBI investigate a reporter that had the audacity to report on his girlfriend. It's like, you cannot pay me enough to attend that dinner. And I didn't get to go to the dinner when I was in the first administration because it was COVID times. So the dinner got called off. So I've never had to to sit through one of them. But I can't even imagine attending this year.

Speaker 1:
[18:35] I have. And they were they were long and annoying even before Trump. Just think about all of the staffers who were excited, all the people who are in DC who are excited to go to that dinner, who are listening to this podcast right now, and now we've ruined their night. Now they're going to have to feel a little bit of shame.

Speaker 2:
[18:52] A little bit of shame. They should.

Speaker 1:
[18:53] Feel some shame if you're going to go to the Correspondence Dinner this year. Feel a little shame.

Speaker 2:
[18:57] Yes. If you're going to partake in the humiliation ritual that Donald Trump is going to thrust upon you, feel a little bit of shame for God.

Speaker 1:
[19:04] Speaking of which, our managing editor, Sam Stein, was going to the Cutter Correspondence Dinner Party. Think about that, Sam. I want you to think about your choices right now, Sam Stein. You talked about the free speech attacks. The other attack on traditional conservatism that I think Merritt's mentioning in the news this week is we're going to take over spirit airlines. There's some discussion that the government will take over 90 percent of spirit airlines. I don't know if they're going to make the planes use the old Trump airline branding. Trump once, people who don't remember Trump once did try to have an airline that failed and went bankrupt, obviously, like most of his businesses. It's almost annoying to even have to say at this point. But imagine what the Fox crowd would be saying if Barack Obama was like, the government should really take over the airline industry. We're going to have an Obama plane. It's going to be Obama Airlines now. The whole thing is just ridiculous.

Speaker 2:
[20:03] No, it's absolutely ridiculous. That's one of those things where people will tell me all the time, oh, you're no longer a conservative because you left the party and you don't like Trump and all these things. And then I watch them have to support policies like this. And they have to be cheerleaders for it and be like, yay, go Trump. It's like, what are you talking about? I can't imagine anything less conservative than something like this, like the government taking a stake in this airline. And it just makes me laugh because I'm like, no, I actually have stayed true to my values. You guys are the ones who have changed because Trump has completely remade the party in his image. And this is just one example of it.

Speaker 1:
[20:46] On the taking over of the airline, the spending, I mean, everything is going the way of Trump Airlines and Trump Stakes. I mean, he's working on bankrupting the entire country. And I guess he's going to probably fail at this airline, too. I want to end, because I want to get to Ben McKenzie. I appreciate you jumping on so we can kind of run through the new stuff. I discussed this with Sam yesterday. Trump posted a bleat with a picture of eight Iranian women, kind of pretty, saying that he wants Iran to not execute them. They're out for execution. Subsequent to the podcast yesterday, Trump announced that he had saved them, that the pretty Iranian girls have been saved. Iran says that's not true. Who the hell knows what the truth is, honestly? Like, who knows? It could be anything. But I wanted to get your reaction to how this story was covered on Fox. And I see this is kind of like a, you know, Sarah Matthews, this could have been your life moment. You know, had you just rode it out, had you just stuck on the Trump train after January 6th, instead of hopping off, maybe you could have been on Fox News discussing Donald Trump's deep passion for human rights in Iran. Let's listen to Carolyn Lovett.

Speaker 3:
[21:57] Well, first of all, Martha, only President Trump could save the lives of these eight beautiful Iranian women who he has received direct word from the Iranian regime or what's left of it, that their lives are going to be spared. And that comes as a result of President Trump asking them directly not to kill these young beautiful women who certainly deserve a chance to continue living their lives freely and peacefully. And now that will happen thanks to President Trump, because he's a humanitarian at heart.

Speaker 1:
[22:29] He's a humanitarian at heart, Sarah. What do you think? Could you have pulled that off?

Speaker 2:
[22:32] You know, I know so many humanitarians who threaten to annihilate an entire civilization that just goes hand in hand. You know, it's so funny because I look at Caroline Levitt and her career trajectory. And at the time in the first Trump administration, when I was deputy press secretary, she was an assistant press secretary. So the position right below me. And yeah, I'm very happy that I hopped off the Trump train because I would not want to be doing her job right now. And not saying that that would have been me and whatever. But I think that there's a possibility that it could have been me. And so I watched something like that. I'm like, God, I'm so happy that I don't have to go out there and spew a bunch of bullshit like that and kiss his ass. And I mean, it's just absolutely ridiculous. And then the fact that even the story when we're looking at, he saved these Iranian women and then the Iranian regime is saying that this is all fake and that these women weren't going to be executed or aren't even real. The fact that we even have to question who is telling the truth here is absolutely mind boggling and terrifying that there's a chance that the Iranians are the ones telling the truth and that the Trump administration is lying. Can you imagine that we live in a time that we have to question our own government when it comes to if they're the ones telling the truth or the Iranians are? I mean, that just says everything about this administration. I mean, that's why Caroline Leavitt is paid to be up there on that podium and on Fox News telling lies and spewing a bunch of bullshit.

Speaker 1:
[24:03] Do you think you would have had the Mar-a-Lago look? You know, their hair and makeup, the fillers?

Speaker 2:
[24:10] Sometimes I get some pretty mean comments on my videos and whatnot of people telling me that I look Mar-a-Lago. They're like, get rid of the blonde hair and someone called me the other day in one of my comments, blonde Kristi Noem and I was like, you know what? I know. I was like, that is offensive. And I don't let a lot of hate comments get under my skin. And I was like, fuck you to that person.

Speaker 1:
[24:32] But you have the same face you've had since I've met you. So that's a big difference between you and Kristi Noem, among other things. You know, you haven't you haven't done any pinup photos, enough films and foreign gulags either. So, you know, you got a lot going for you.

Speaker 2:
[24:44] And no alleged affairs with, you know, Coyle Lewandowski or anything. But yeah, it is it is funny to watch the transformation of so many women within Trump world and getting them our logo face. And, you know, I look at that world and I'm just very happy that I got off the Trump train when I did, because I can't even imagine having to be on Fox News and do what Caroline Lovett is doing and then be able to look myself in the mirror.

Speaker 1:
[25:08] Feels good. You wouldn't be looking yourself in the mirror. You'd be looking at your new, your new face in the mirror by the time.

Speaker 2:
[25:14] I wouldn't recognize myself.

Speaker 1:
[25:16] It feels good to know you did the right thing. It does. We're grateful that you're helping us out with social media stuff and we'll be having you back on the podcast soon.

Speaker 2:
[25:28] Sounds good.

Speaker 1:
[25:29] Thanks so much to Sarah Matthews. Enjoy not going to Nerd Prom this weekend. Everybody else. Wait, hold on. Before Ben McKenzie, I did a Bulwark take last night with Catherine Rampel that you can get on the Borg Takes Feeder on YouTube. Tucker went after her. You won't even believe what Tucker went after Catherine Rampel for. If you haven't seen the video yet and you're imagining, what could it be? It is even more gross and outrageous and bigoted and insane than you could possibly imagine. I want to leave that as a teaser for everybody. You can go watch it. Tucker's Despicable. That was Sarah Matthews. Up next, Ben McKenzie. You might know him from the OC or Gotham, or from being a six time Teen Choice nominee with zero wins. He's also the author of Easy Money, Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and The Golden Age of Fraud. And now he's made his directorial debut with a new documentary called Everyone is Lying to You for Money. It's Ben McKenzie. What's up, bro?

Speaker 4:
[26:47] What's up, bro?

Speaker 1:
[26:49] Why haven't I seen you lately? Why haven't we been hanging out?

Speaker 4:
[26:51] All right, so I want to tell the story. I invited you. So this movie is now in theaters, but before I was doing the festival route, and basically going to any festival I could get into, trying to build some buzz because it's a straight indie movie. I have no idea if I'm a studio. So I've already hooked up with the New Orleans Film Festival. One of my first thoughts, I swear to God, Tim, was Tim Miller lives in New Orleans. He's in the documentary. He would probably love to come to this. So I messaged you, I DM'd you. You remember this? I DM'd you on Blue Sky.

Speaker 1:
[27:23] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[27:24] Of course, because I'm a Lib. Yeah, you're such a Lib.

Speaker 1:
[27:27] I'm hoping that this story ends with Blue Sky being the problem, because it is...

Speaker 4:
[27:31] Well, no, no, no. The problem is my dumb ass. But I invited you to a screening on a Saturday afternoon to a documentary during college football season. And there was an LSU home game that day, that time. Did I get you?

Speaker 1:
[27:47] That is right.

Speaker 4:
[27:48] That's what you did? So I didn't, I didn't figure this out until after you politely were like, Oh, I can't do it. But I meet for a drink the next day. And I was leaving town the next day. So it's my fault as a Longhorn, as a diehard college football fan in Longhorn, that I did not realize you can't. It's like going to, like going to church. I can't, I can't, I can't schedule something up as a church.

Speaker 1:
[28:10] Yeah. I'm pulling it up right now. Here it is. Damn. I'm in BR that day. Sorry, dude. Tiger's. I should have come. I should have come. It was an awful, they won that game, but it was an awful season. And F Brian Kelly and I should have hung out. All right. Well, next time through, next time through. Yeah. You know, you got to prioritize in life. I have many people ask me right now if I'm going to be seeing me in DC this weekend, because the White House Correspondents dinner is this weekend. And if you're listening to this, this one let you know, you'll never see me at that again. It's the same weekend as Jazz Fest. You guys should enjoy it. But you know, I got my priorities in life. All right, so the movie's crypto-skeptic, hostile, crypto-hostile, let's say, not skeptic. We did this kind of already on your book tour, Easy Money, I don't know, God, three years ago now almost. So people kind of want the long sermon on how, you know, Ryan from the OC became an anti-crypto advocate. You can go listen to that podcast. But I do want just kind of the basics for people who have missed it, on like why you care about this, what underpins it, what the main thesis of the movie is.

Speaker 4:
[29:14] Sure. I have an undergraduate economics degree.

Speaker 1:
[29:17] Oh, great. Yeah, I got a C- in Macro 101, so.

Speaker 4:
[29:20] Yeah. Well, that actually explains a lot, Tim. That's very helpful. I appreciate that. No, I'm just kidding. You're very smart. Catherine Rampal is doing excellent work for the board.

Speaker 1:
[29:30] Yeah, luckily we got Catherine on too.

Speaker 4:
[29:31] Exactly. You guys can help us all along. Undergraduate degree in econ, it was the pandemic. Showbiz was on ice. I was 40 something years old and kind of in need of a new adventure anyway. Don't call it a midlife crisis, just call it a midlife reordering of priorities as the pandemic did to so many of us. A buddy of mine came to me and said, you should buy Bitcoin. I had never heard of it, but my buddy has given me terrible financial advice before. So I said to Dave politely, I'm not going to buy it. What is it? What is this thing? And he said the word cryptocurrency. I was like, OK, so it's money. So can you buy stuff with it? Dave, you know, no, you can't buy it. Not really. I put money into it. I'm trying to make money off of it and I'm not doing any work myself. I'm like, so it's an investment day if you're putting that's that's what that's what investment is. And I very quickly, sorry, consider Google. Yeah, consider Google, consider like basic elementary sort of economic terms and financial terms anyway. I just became obsessed with it and I was looking at it both from, you know, point of view of economics, which was really confusing initially because if they weren't currencies, what were they? They were investment securities, but they weren't regulated that way. Like basically, how did we get here? And then also I got fascinated by the true crime of it all. I love true crime. I particularly like what I call stupid crime, which is sort of a sub genre where like they're like obviously committing crimes and sort of like sometimes via tweet. And they then turn on each other as soon as the fed circle, because of course all these criminals for all the community that they live in, they all hate each other and all competing with each other. So sort of Coen Brothers' s crime. And it felt like crypto had a lot of that. And sure enough, I was right. So that's basically it. I ended up selling a book proposal with the journalist Jacob Silverman, and we went out into the field to report on it. And I just turned the camera on and started recording what I saw.

Speaker 1:
[31:27] Well, I guess before you go into all the negatives of crypto, as people listen to this now, I'm also crypto hostile. I think it might be an interesting way to start the conversation by hearing you kind of steel man the case for it. Like after I had you on last time, for example, I have a buddy that works for one of the big crypto companies. He's not happy calling me, talking my ear off and making the case for it. I thought that we have listeners, obviously, who are invested in this stuff, who sometimes push back at my little side swipes, and so oftentimes, what you hear, I'm going to start steelmaning the case for you and you can take from there. Oftentimes, what you hear is something to the effect of, yeah, there's a lot of scam coins out there, but there's a lot of scams in the economy and the good ones, Bitcoin, Ethereum, some of the stable coins, like that is a legitimate investment, it provides a service, you can trade after hours. That's, I think, the gist of the case that I get, but how would you add to that? If you are representing the Bitcoin side of this?

Speaker 4:
[32:29] If I was representing the Bitcoin side? Okay, all right.

Speaker 1:
[32:31] Yeah, I'm not representing it. If you were just making the argument, what's the best argument you can make?

Speaker 4:
[32:35] You want me to do the John Stuart Mill thing? Okay, so I...

Speaker 1:
[32:37] I do.

Speaker 4:
[32:38] So our regulated system is terrible, it's deeply unequal. People are getting screwed over, both in this country and overseas, and it's an insider's game, and Wall Street wins, and regular people lose, and Bitcoin fixes this.

Speaker 1:
[32:54] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[32:55] That's basically the argument. I could go into what they would say is, and that it's decentralized, and it's not in the hands of this terrible government, and you're gonna be empowered, and we're all gonna walk into the sunset all being super rich.

Speaker 1:
[33:12] Is there not some value in that? Like, is there not... I mean, shit with the weekend wars that we're having with Trump, is there not point in being able to make wagers outside of market times? Is there not value in a kid who's in a third-world country being able to get access to money that doesn't have a bank account?

Speaker 4:
[33:31] So, sure, there's value to the second part, right? Could you use crypto for good? Of course you could use crypto for good. I heard about a woman in Afghanistan. She can't get banking out of the Taliban. She's running her business in Bitcoin, paying employees. We can all agree we like that. That's a good thing. But if we accept that, then we have to accept the bad as well. And to give you a sense, if we're being intellectually honest, which I'm sure your crypto friends are going to be intellectually honest, everyone in crypto is very intellectually honest. So to give you a sense of the amount of crime that's in crypto, a crypto company estimated last year, $154 billion of criminal activity was facilitated via cryptocurrency. $154 billion worth of crime was facilitated via crypto. I just want to give you a sense. This is a supposedly trillion dollar market, trillions of dollars, but you see in the movie, a guy say, it's only about 10 percent real money, and the rest is speculation. Do you remember this?

Speaker 1:
[34:24] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[34:25] If it's a trillions of dollar market and there's $154 billion of crime within it, and this is coming from a crypto company, by the way, that's their estimate, then maybe what we're really talking about is gambling and crock. There are not that many women in Afghanistan running their businesses via cryptocurrency. There are a lot of bad guys getting a lot of money for doing the worst things in the world, such as Russian oligarchs using cryptocurrency to sell sanctioned oil to the Chinese in exchange for drones they sent to Ukraine, such as the cryptocurrency that the tankers are paying to the Iranians. You saw that one of them got ripped off, that he was like they were scammed.

Speaker 1:
[35:05] It's a scammer.

Speaker 4:
[35:06] Fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[35:07] It's funny, you have to laugh about it. You have to laugh.

Speaker 4:
[35:10] No, no. I feel so bad. I feel so bad for the scammers. This is stupid crime. This is what I'm talking about. I love this stuff. This is fantastic.

Speaker 1:
[35:17] The boat thought it was able to go through the Strait of Hormuz because they were paying in crypto, but they were dealing with the scammer and they weren't dealing with the Iranians and the Iranians fired on them. Nobody died. Yeah. It's kind of like a victimless crime.

Speaker 4:
[35:30] But it is.

Speaker 1:
[35:32] So there you go. That's what's happening.

Speaker 4:
[35:33] Yeah. So the crypto people, I remember last time I came on and I didn't actually get a chance to respond to the criticism you had gotten from a friend. And the criticism as I remember it is that basically, he's a nice guy and he's the most handsome of the skeptics, I believe is what you said, which was sweet. But that I just don't understand the technology. So let's talk about that for just a second, because I have some things to get off my chest. Okay. So blockchain technology is 35 years old. It goes back to 1991, Stuart Haber and Scott Stornetta working out of Bell Labs, building off of the work of cryptographers such as David Chom who I interviewed for the book. Blockchain is old. You'll notice something about blockchain. Hardly any other business outside of the cryptocurrency industry uses blockchain. If you can name a single one, then I will be very impressed. It's only cryptocurrency companies, right?

Speaker 1:
[36:22] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[36:23] But you remember in 2022 when they were like, blockchain is going to do this, blockchain is-

Speaker 1:
[36:27] Yeah. There was a period of time where it was kind of hot, where people were like, we're going to have laundry mats on the blockchain.

Speaker 4:
[36:34] It was going to be pet insurance on the blockchain. None of those companies are around now, right? In fact, the industry doesn't use blockchain anymore because it has a sour taste as people lost a lot of money. Now, they use digital assets, which is a wonderfully vague phrase. Kudos to the marketing department. What is it? It's digital. It's an asset of what? Computer code? Is that what it is? Here's the reason that companies don't use blockchain.

Speaker 1:
[37:00] The NFT is like the ape. It's like the monkey. It's like the monkey baseball card.

Speaker 4:
[37:04] Exactly. The receipt for the link to the JPEG, which is what NFTs are. So why does nobody use blockchain? Because it sucks. Bitcoin can only process five to seven transactions a second. Visa can do 24,000. It literally cannot scale as a payments method. Even Sam Bateman Freed, when I interviewed him, admitted that. It cannot work as a payments method. You have to build systems on top of it, which would, of course, violate the purity of this incredible thing called Bitcoin. By the way, to get those five to seven transactions, it uses an enormous amount of energy. Enormous. Like a few years ago, it was the equivalent of Argentina, the entire country, to operate this system. I don't know what it is now, but it's a lot. So it's really inefficient. It's really slow. All right. Here's a question. If crypto does not come from the government, this evil government, this democratic government that we live in, where does it come from? They don't like to talk about this, but the answer when it comes to cryptocurrency is corporations. It's world liberty financial, in the case of Donald Trump. It's also with Bitcoin. The majority of Bitcoin that are mined today are mined by multi-billion dollar corporations, many of which are publicly traded. So if literal corporate money seems like a good idea to you, then sure. But that is not a good idea, both because of the corruption element. So in economics, if it's not issued by the government, a public money, it would be private money. It would be money issued by individuals and corporations. That's a bad idea for fraud and other things. And we tried it before. We tried it in the 19th century during what's called the free banking era, which is also called the wildcat banking era. When banks were allowed to issue their own notes, their own currencies, and there was a lot of fraud. It was called the wildcat banking era because you only were allowed one chapter. And you would set your physical location up as far away from your depositors as possible where the wildcats roamed. And once you had their money, what's to stop you from running off with it? So there was a lot of fraud. It was very unstable. And basically you scrapped the system and we ended up with a central bank. So not only is crypto not the future of money, it's the past of money. And it is a failure that we revisit at our peril.

Speaker 1:
[39:22] I want to get into how to fix it and how particularly this intersects with the current president, because that's obviously the craziest development since we last talked in 2023. But just a couple of other little things from the movie. And then we'll just give people a teaser and then they can go watch for themselves. But you did get the SBF interview, as you mentioned. You're in your FTX t-shirt. What's the tagline there?

Speaker 4:
[39:42] This is FTX Risk Management Department 2022.

Speaker 1:
[39:47] Is that a real t-shirt?

Speaker 4:
[39:48] It's a real t-shirt.

Speaker 1:
[39:49] I mean, like, was it given to FTX staff in 2022? Or did you just make it?

Speaker 4:
[39:54] No, no, no. Oh, it's not. No.

Speaker 1:
[39:55] Okay. I think I wear a Project Orca sweatshirt sometimes. You know, Project Orca. That was on the Mitt Romney campaign. We pitched that there was this really great system that we are going to use for moderating the votes and we're going to know more about the votes than anyone. And then the system totally collapsed and it was called Project Orca. But we did make t-shirts and I do still have one and I wear it. So I thought maybe it was like that.

Speaker 4:
[40:18] No, this is like my hat make lying wrong again. This is just dad humor. I'm just a dad. I'm a straight dad. Well, I'm a straight dad. So you have my better taste in clothing.

Speaker 1:
[40:27] Yeah, that's a good dad humor.

Speaker 4:
[40:29] That's a good dad joke.

Speaker 1:
[40:30] Okay. So you interviewed at SBF, which obviously, I just think his megalomania is behind that. Michael Lewis obviously spent a lot of time with him for his book and I interviewed him about this. And in some ways he was kind of charmed by us. In some ways he was kind of like SBF. He understood what the attract, because I didn't, right? And he's trying to make the case about why he was able to kind of manipulate so many people. But in your conversation with him, why don't you just kind of give everybody a little teaser of you and SBF, mano a mano.

Speaker 4:
[41:01] Sure. So I never met him. I DM'd him, said, hey, would you be willing to talk? No, this was on Twitter when Twitter used to be Twitter and not X. By the way, I'm locked out of my Twitter account. I've been locked out for years because people keep hacking into it after I started talking about crypto. So just if you've been DMing me on Twitter, just know. And I'm so grateful to be off of it because it sounds like it's turned into assessable. All I see is terrible. But anyway, no, it was on Twitter. So he agreed almost immediately with no preconditions to an on-camera interview, which already I was like, what is happening? Because Jacob Silverman, who was writing the book with me, in our Twitter bios, it said, writing a book on crypto and fraud.

Speaker 1:
[41:43] Yeah, right.

Speaker 4:
[41:44] I couldn't understand for the life of me, like why this guy did it. I can get to that later because now I think I understand what might be a plague. I didn't know exactly what he was doing, but I had a lot of, this is in the book, a lot of red flags for why what he was doing was probably not good. He owned a trading firm as well as an exchange that would never be allowed in a regulated market, for obviously insider trading, trading on insider information. He was selling these things that looked an awful lot like securities out of the Bahamas. Potentially, he's selling unregistered and licensed securities, which is a literal red flag for Ponzi schemes, and he's selling them overseas outside of US law. So there's a lot of things that I was suspicious of. So I prepared, as any financial journalist should do, to actually look at what the guys say it says in interviews and be ready to respond to him if what he's saying is bullshit. So I prepared and I went in there and the one thing that I did was buy a cup on Etsy that said fraud investigator. I placed it right down in front of him and was very friendly and nice. I brought him a LaCroix. He likes LaCroix water. So I was giving him a little nice stuff and I was giving him a little, you know, PsyOps. I was messing with him a little bit. And then I just tried to have an honest conversation with the guy. I was not charmed by him at all. I found him completely unimpressive, so much so that I couldn't believe that we'd gotten to this place because people will see the movie and judge for themselves. But he couldn't answer basic questions like, what does crypto do that's good for the world? Give me one thing that it does that's good for the world. And he said remittances, sending money between countries. This was a big talking point back then, right? Well, I had just come from El Salvador. Like literally the week before, I'd been in El Salvador, a country that was taking Bitcoin as legal tender. The foundation of the Salvadoran economy is remittances. 25% of the economy, a quarter of the economy, is the money the two to three million people of Salvadoran descent living in the United States sent home to their friends and families. The foundation of the economy. If this was going to work anywhere in the world, it should work in El Salvador. Government launched the system to much fanfare, gave everybody 30 bucks of Bitcoin to try to encourage them to do this, and price of Bitcoin crashed 20 percent in a few hours. All the exchanges shut down. Nobody used the system. Less than 2 percent of remittances, according to the government's own figures, used the system they built. It's now less than 1 percent and the government has abandoned the project because they needed to get a loan from the IMF. Anyway, Sam, I said bullshit, and then he really didn't have a good response to that. If you can't defend your industry and cite one example of the good that you're doing, I do question what is your industry and why are you the figurehead of it? Because that seems like a perfect illustration of just how stupid cryptocurrency is that this guy, this kid, had worked his way all the way to the supposed top.

Speaker 1:
[44:48] Yeah, you mentioned El Salvador. It's not a coincidence how some of the worst people in the world and the worst scammers have flocked to this product. It doesn't seem like that is by accident. I just pulled this up. So it looks like the most recent data, 8% of Salvadorans have actually used Bitcoin to make payments at all ever.

Speaker 4:
[45:09] I'm surprised it's that high.

Speaker 1:
[45:11] Yeah, obviously these things are all based up. But it's like whatever it is. I mean, this is a minuscule percent. When you're down there, obviously, you've had all these El Salvador controversies since with Bukele and otherwise. I have to imagine that your sense was that Bukele was attracted to this because Bukele likes to do extra legal things.

Speaker 4:
[45:34] Yeah. So if you want the inside game, this is a little bit in the weeds, but there's this massive company called Tether, the large stable coin company.

Speaker 1:
[45:43] We're going to get there.

Speaker 4:
[45:44] Okay, great. So I'll just go there now. Tether supposedly has 184 billion US dollars backing its 184 billion Tethers. We can talk about whether that's true or not. We don't know. But regardless, it's a massive company with a lot of money. They're headquartered in El Salvador. They at least have a real presence down there and they're very tight with Bukele. So I just think that's worth pointing out. There are a lot of crossroads with El Salvador and the crypto industry in terms of where the players go when they don't want to be in America. One of them, do you follow the recent New York Times thing about Satoshi? Who Satoshi is?

Speaker 1:
[46:22] I don't care enough to have actually read it, but I read the tweets about it.

Speaker 4:
[46:26] Okay. So real quick, the guy they think it is, this guy, John Kerry, a great investigative reporter broke the Theranos story. He thinks he's proved that it's Adam Back, who's a British cryptographer who could be Satoshi, very much one of the top candidates because he was the first person that Satoshi emailed. I don't think he's proved it. I don't see any controvertible proof, but I do see a lot of evidence that he made a strong case. He's certainly a likely candidate.

Speaker 1:
[46:51] The last time you're on the pod, you did say that you thought Chad Michael Murray might be Satoshi. It's been a change. We're learning more and we're adjusting our priors.

Speaker 4:
[47:01] I actually ran into him at something and he knew, and I had to apologize.

Speaker 1:
[47:06] You had to apologize to him over and shitting on him on my podcast?

Speaker 4:
[47:11] Your podcast is watched by a lot of-

Speaker 1:
[47:12] He saw it? Yes. But is his feelings for her, Chad Michael Murray?

Speaker 4:
[47:16] He handled it. I have to say Chad did a very nice job not being angry, but I had to apologize. I just want to say that was a joke.

Speaker 1:
[47:27] He's unbelievably handsome. I don't know if I said that on the last time, but I've had a crush on him for decades. It hurts me to think that he might have even at all felt slighted by our podcast.

Speaker 4:
[47:38] You know what?

Speaker 1:
[47:39] I'll talk to him.

Speaker 4:
[47:40] I'll talk to him.

Speaker 1:
[47:40] Please let him know. Please let him give my number.

Speaker 4:
[47:43] You want to talk to him. I got you.

Speaker 1:
[47:45] There you go.

Speaker 4:
[47:47] Anyway, Adam Back is the supposed Satoshi. Where John Kerry was found back was in El Salvador. The supposed Satoshi.

Speaker 1:
[47:55] Oh, got it.

Speaker 4:
[47:56] A few other things you should know about Adam Back is that Adam Back's company Blockstream received funding from Jeffrey Epstein. That's in the Epstein files. The supposed Satoshi, his company has received funding from the world's most notorious pedophile. You know what I mean? I want to have a real conversation with the crypto. They're freaking out whenever I say this, they freak out. But there's nothing you can do because there's an email. That's the reality. The fake stuff is all the high mind to talk.

Speaker 1:
[48:22] Again, it's like the McKelley thing. It's not surprising that Jeffrey Epstein was attracted to this new currency that would help him evade the law because he was doing a lot of sex trafficking. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[48:33] If your main businesses are money laundering, sex trafficking, and blackmail, then yeah, it would be pretty useful to have this thing called Bitcoin.

Speaker 1:
[48:41] Interesting product for you.

Speaker 4:
[48:42] Yeah, totally. And Epstein was also funding Bitcoin core development. So Bitcoin is maintained by this group, Bitcoin Core Development. He was funding it secretly through the MIT Media Lab a few years ago. The New Yorker did a big report on this. But he was funding it secretly because, of course, at this point, he was already a registered sex offender. And so the MIT Media Lab didn't want to actually make this public. But he was paying to keep Bitcoin alive by paying for these programmers and developers to maintain its operating system. And he was doing so in 2015, which is very early, relatively speaking, for crypto. Crypto started off absolutely tiny. Nobody cared about it, grew, obviously, and it's grown enormously over the years. But you go back to 2015, like you're not talking about a lot of people, right? Like might even be just a few hundred thousand people, maybe a few million people. But like Jeffrey Epstein was into Bitcoin before 90 plus percent of the bros who are hawking it now even knew it existed. And they do need to wrangle with that. They can't just like hand wave that away. Crypto is only gambling and crime, guys. That's all it is.

Speaker 1:
[49:50] One of the other elements of the film is talking to this guy, Alex Mashinsky, an Israeli American CEO of the Celsius Network, another less famous scammer than SBF. But what were your thoughts on that?

Speaker 4:
[50:03] That was our first day of filming. The first day of filming, we walked onto the Austin Convention. Yeah. Look, straight up luck. Walked onto the convention floor, saw the booth, knew that Celsius was sketchy. It was being sued by multiple state regulators, including the Texas Securities Regulator. Even though the booth was in Texas, in Austin, it just hadn't been adjudicated yet, so they could get away with it, and they're trying to pitch people on this thing. Celsius was saying, give us your crypto, we'll give you a guaranteed interest on it, like 15 percent interest, right? Which is a literal, again, go to the SEC's website, one of the seven red flags for Ponzi scheme, you cannot guarantee above market return. That is just impossible. I see the booth, I'm getting pissed. I turn to my left and I see Mishinsky. I see the CEO, who I recognize from his TV hits. It's funny, I got really nervous because I'm just an actor. What do I do? What do I know? I'm not an investigative journalist. But I talked to the cameraman who I met that day, and got the sound pack on and walked over to Mishinsky and was like, hey, Ben, I'm an actor. I'm writing a book about crypto. I left out the frog part and he was like, hey, hey, oh, yeah, we met in Vegas, right? I am 47 years old. I have not been to Las Vegas in a very long time, right? I used to love it, but I have not been there in a very long time. But I'm an actor, Tim, a professional actor. One of the rules is, especially an improv, yes and. So I said, yeah, absolutely. Anyway, would you mind chatting? We sat there together. It's in the movie. You can see it. And I mean, the guy is just a car salesman, right? I use car salesman like he is just their story was. We're better than a bank. We are basically you're going to give us your money, but we're going to give all the money back to you, right? That's why we can give you 15 percent interest instead of whatever you're going to get in the market, like 3 percent interest or whatever. So we're better than a bank and we're here. He said we're we're like a community bank. And my first question is, okay, so how do you make money? Because if you're giving people this return, and he couldn't answer the question, he couldn't give me like his business model, which was pretty funny. And then I asked him about, well, I asked, are you guys in illegal trade? Is anybody suing you? And he kind of hemmed and hedged. And the marketing guy was on the other side of me. This like long haired guy, very handsome, sort of like a Southeast Asian Yachty, long hair, younger. And the marketing guy is kind of like waving to him, like, you know, just say no, just say no. So eventually the marketing guy says, no, that's a lie. Sorry, I skipped out the big lie. The big lie is when he says he's a bank, they're not a bank. It's on their website in a very fine print. They're not a bank, right? Obviously, they don't have an FDIC license. They are FDIC insured. They were operating under a money transmitter license, which is a much easier license to get. And even that was being disputed by these securities regulators. So it's just lie after lie after lie. It was sort of comically stupid. And that was our first day of filming. So I decided I should keep going.

Speaker 1:
[53:06] So all that was, what, 2022, 2023 is during Biden era, where the crypto people were talking about how Biden and Gary Gensler were really cracking down hard on crypto. And they were so mad about all the regulation that was happening. And all of these scams were happening during that period. Now we're at a time where there was a regulator who quit recently, you know, who basically said, if I was the type of person to do scams, I would do a crypto scam right now, because there is nobody at home. Like the cupboard is empty of regulators, and it's totally the Wild West out there. I just kind of wonder, like, what is your sense for, like, are there other FTXs out there right now, or is it more kind of small ball stuff? Like, what do you see happening?

Speaker 4:
[53:50] Yeah, I mean, there's always tons of small ball, right? But I completely agree with that sentiment. The Trump administration has disbanded the Crypto Crime Task Force the DOJ had set up. The SEC has been gutted. Hundreds of lawyers, if not more, have left. I've heard from some of them. Trump has pardoned CZ, who was the head of the largest crypto exchange, Binance, that still exists. Binance is an admitted money launderer. CZ pled guilty to money laundering, did four months, only four months in prison, but did do time. And Trump pardoned him. And if you remember the Wall Street Journal recording on this, and others, I guess, the sheik that invested 500 million, invested, I'm using air quotes, 500 million dollars in Trump's stable coin. They got the NVIDIA chips, but they also got CZ. CZ also got a pardon, and he lives in the UAE now. So, and this is an admitted money launderer, right? Like, they're not even hiding the ball.

Speaker 1:
[54:50] The other part of the Trump stuff, just like the scale of the corruption. I mean, you mentioned the Tether thing earlier, that the guy, the thing's based in El Salvador, and that guy has put huge amounts of money into Trump's businesses, and they've created the stable coin, but I want to talk to you about, which is kind of pitched as a less risky product, but might be one that is more akin to criminal law.

Speaker 4:
[55:17] It's not intended for the retail public. Stable coins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged one to one with a real currency like the US dollar, meaning their price is not supposed to fluctuate, they're always supposed to be worth a dollar. They're not issued by the government, obviously, they're not backed for the full-filling credit of the United States, they're issued by this company, Tether and others. So, it's a...

Speaker 1:
[55:39] And World Liberty, well, kind of, they're kind of issued by the US government now, because Trump's company has one.

Speaker 4:
[55:43] No, it's not the US government. I know, you're joking, but the distinction is crucial, right? But I hear you.

Speaker 1:
[55:50] It's the president's company offering a stable coin.

Speaker 4:
[55:53] So, what is it? It's a way of going around the banking system, because you don't have to go through the banks in order to get these, for the ones that are overseas. So, it's a block market dollar. It's a dollar that can be traded instantaneously all over the world, synonymously, right? Like, to skip over what the technology in crypto really is, it's the pseudonymity, it's the ability to obscure your identity while you're sending something of value. So, who does that appeal to? It appeals to criminals. And for stable coins, particularly Tether, there's been a lot of reporting on this, it really is the preferred tool for criminals. They'd rather use stable coins, because then they're not subject to the volatility of Bitcoin or any of the other cryptos, right? And so, much of the crime, whether it's pig butchering or the oligarchs sending the crypto to the Chinese for the drones, the arms deals, all this stuff, the Strip Iranians trying to go through the, or the ships trying to go through the Strait of Hormuz, paying probably in Tether. So, here's the thing about Tether. Their broker is Cantor Fitzgerald, Howard Lutnick's firm.

Speaker 1:
[56:56] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[56:57] So, the kids in charge of Tether's money are his kids. And it is the firm that until he was commerce secretary, he was running. And of course, we saw that Lutnick was on the island with Epstein after saying that he wasn't, and they hit the picture and the picture came out. So, only the best people and also Lutnick, of course, with the next Epstein anyway.

Speaker 1:
[57:21] Yeah. You would think that it feels kind of like a conflict of interest that there are black market dollars out there, essentially digital dollars that are being controlled in international trade by the commerce secretary's kids and the president's kids.

Speaker 4:
[57:36] It's pretty wild.

Speaker 1:
[57:37] It's an unimaginable type of corruption. I mean, like literally, when you're taping it, like in 2023, when you're talking about the scale of the possible corruption, the idea that the president of the United States, his family would be using one of these coins to do billion-dollar deals overseas.

Speaker 4:
[57:53] Like I did not see it coming. I didn't. I think I wanted so much to believe that we wouldn't do this again, that we're not that country, that I had willed myself into believing, I think she'll pull it off even though the circumstances were terrible. I agree pretty much with your commentary on her campaign, what the Democrats did wrong and all that stuff, which is really, I think, the takeaway for me at large. At the time, I had convinced myself she was going to squeak it out, but I remember that summer when Trump, so Trump as recently as 2021 called Bitcoin a scam. That's actually how I met Jacob Silverman, my co-author on the book. He'd written an article for Slate, even Donald Trump knows Bitcoin is a scam, which I thought was funny and I was like, oh, I should work with this guy. By the way, why did he hate crypto before and why does he love it now? My personal theory, it's just a theory, hypothetical, is that Trump's business prior to becoming president or in the interim really was branding himself, putting his brand on hotel properties, right? He doesn't even build them anymore, he just puts his name on them. Well, on an unrelated note, Tim, there's a lot of money laundering in real estate. I don't know if you knew this or not. It's not that many people know about that. But there's also a lot of money laundering in crypto, which is an interesting coincidence. If Trump wasn't getting a cut of what crypto business, in fact, it was a rival business potentially. Again, hypothetical. He didn't like crypto then, but then over the summer in 24, he realized two things. First, I can make a lot of money at this. Second, those are the gettable guys. Those are guys who, if they're not already voting for me, would definitely vote for me if I write a lot of them.

Speaker 1:
[59:35] Well, it's the perfect Trump scam because he can't just brand it. He just brands it. He puts his name on something fake. He doesn't even need permits for a building. You just put your name on it, have these fake digital cards of him with muscles. He doesn't have muscles. He appeals to his megalomania. He's a scam artist. I know he's honestly the perfect business friend. So much so that David Kirkpatrick of The New Yorker, we had on a couple months ago until I break down all the money he's been making since he's been in there. Just did a follow-up to The New Yorker this week, where he's up to 4 billion according to his assessment. He's made 4 billion. Almost all of it is crypto. Almost all of it is crypto. Four billion dollars Trump and his family has made. I guess I have two thoughts about it. One, I want to go to the solutions next, but first, let's both vent for a second. Yeah, please. You would think that the people that object to your advocacy and to a lesser extent mine on crypto, who are like, this is legit business. You got to get on board. There's value here. You would think that they would be furious at Trump. You would think that they would be the ones that are right now. Yeah, because you would think that they would be the ones right now, if they actually thought it was legit and not a scam.

Speaker 4:
[60:53] That part is fairly important.

Speaker 1:
[60:53] Yeah, if they actually thought it was legit, then you would think they would be the ones going to Congress right now and saying, no, guys, we need rules to rein this in because what he's doing is so comically corrupt that when he eventually leaves, whoever replaces him is going to ruin our whole business. And yet nothing, like almost nothing. Every once in a while, every once in a while, a tweet.

Speaker 4:
[61:14] That is way too generous. It's not nothing. It's how much can we help you? Coinbase is contributing tens of millions of dollars to the ballroom, right? I can't remember the number, but it's a lot of money. They've paid a lot of money to various, you know, they've spent enormous amounts of money on political campaigns and they use it as both a carrot and a stick. And the people that support them, which the majority of which are Republicans, but there's a lot of Democrats as well. And I'm happy to talk about that if you like. But a lot of Republicans have gotten a lot of money. So it's not just like, oh, they're just sort of timidly, you know, it's by the way, first of all, I thought these guys were the tough guys. I thought they were libertarians. I thought they hated government. Oh, now the guy that's the head of the entire government who's a convicted fraudster himself, who's selling you on this fraudulent coin, you can't criticize that? Wow, that's really, really telling, you know, like I honestly, first of all, it's supposedly the decentralized future of money. And now it's being sold by the president of the United States and his own private coin, which is not exactly.

Speaker 1:
[62:19] I guess it's one of those things where it's kind of similar to the discussion of the Iran war. Sometimes you hear people who are on the pro-Israel side make this case, which I think is like not irrational, which is like, hey, this is your last chance at the table. You know, like you got this guy in there who's going to do what you want. Like put the pedal to the metal, you know, make as much money in the case of the crypto guys, make as much money as you can, see how the chips fall afterwards. You can always, you know, do your maya culpas and your apologies and pay the lobbyists in the inside game and try to protect yourself in the future. But I get why the getting is good, I think, is kind of what the mindset is, which I guess I guess.

Speaker 4:
[62:57] I think that's absolutely right. And of course that's-

Speaker 1:
[62:59] It's shameful, but you can understand.

Speaker 4:
[63:01] It's unbelievably shameful and disingenuous. So never lecture us again on your supposed morality then. If that's the moral lane you're choosing, which is immoral, you know, unethical, then fine, but live with that. And by the way, don't expect us to forgive you. Now, what I think they're really planning on is yes, getting the money now and then buying off Democrats when they need to. That's what they're doing.

Speaker 1:
[63:23] OK, so let's talk about that. And because I think it'll be important to put a lot of pressure on Democrats on this. What are the options? Let's just say we get out of this fucking morass and it's 2029 and whatever. Like there's a there's a workable press. You know, there's not somebody who's a crypto scammer running the government. OK, there are two types of things I want to get your take on. It's like, what are legit reforms and then what are legit investigations? Right. Because I do think that, you know, that part of the risk, I think, that people outside of government are playing in getting into business with Trump is that they could be subpoenaed. If you like, this administration might not investigate them, but the next one might. And, you know, is it possible to find out who's been putting money into the various Trump coins or is it so anonymous that it's not possible? Like, what are the options on the investigative side?

Speaker 4:
[64:11] The options are a lot.

Speaker 1:
[64:12] Great.

Speaker 4:
[64:13] Can we start with what I would do? Regular regulatory advice?

Speaker 1:
[64:16] Yeah, we'll do regulatory then investigate.

Speaker 4:
[64:17] Just let me just real quickly because I think it's relatively simple. It just requires political will. So all of the speculative cryptocurrency, all the ones where the number can go up and down. Bitcoin, Ethereum, fart coin, Wallonia, come rocket. Thank you. See, you jumped the punch line. I love come rocket. Come rocket is my personal phase. Is that your favorite too?

Speaker 1:
[64:39] I love come rocket. Me too. I mean, I wish there was a butt plug coin, but since there isn't come rocket.

Speaker 4:
[64:44] I'm pretty sure if you say that enough on this podcast, it'll be created within the next year.

Speaker 1:
[64:49] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[64:50] All of those are investments for the retail public. They're all putting money in, hoping to make money off of them. That is a security or should be under American law. We regulate them like securities and just watch how crypto does. I'm not saying it's going to go away tomorrow. Say in the film, the crypto industry is going to keep selling this story for as long as people are buying it. I'm not asking you for it to be outlawed. I'm just asking for it to be regulated properly. Why does the industry not want crypto to be regulated like securities? Because securities laws are predicated on disclosure. You need to know who you're giving your money to and what they're doing with that money. Gee, I wonder why crypto doesn't want that. That's the speculative ones. For the stable coins, that is a different story because the price does not go up and down. I mean, a lot of stable coins.

Speaker 1:
[65:37] So, not just the meme coins. All of them. You think Bitcoin and all of them should be securities.

Speaker 4:
[65:44] 100%. The way Bitcoin got classified pseudo as a commodity is a very bizarre story. We're the only country in the world that separates our commodities regulation from our securities regulation. So we've created two rival agencies competing over jurisdiction, overseen by rival committees in the House and the Senate, you know, senators and congresspeople who want to be on those committees in order to get donations from the very industries they're quote unquote regulating. It's really bad. And we should consider merging the CFTC and the SEC and there's going to be a lot. You're going to get some comments on The Bulwark because the nerds and me like we're into this. So securities wise, that's, I think, honestly, really, really simple. It requires a very simple piece of legislation. On the stable coins, I think we need to ask ourselves this question. If something is representing itself as a US dollar, but it is not a US dollar, it is not backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, which where does that credit come from? Us, all 300 million of us, all the work we do to contribute to our economy, all of the 250 year history of this country, both the good and the bad, has all contributed to us being at this point in history where we are lucky that people are still trusting the US dollar given the- For now, given how irrational and insane our president is behaving. So if these people are drafting off of all of that, that is to me a counterfeit dollar. That is a dollar and it's being used for crime almost exclusively. If someone is issuing that, and these sketchy teller guys are issuing it, and Howard Lutnick is profiting off of it, or his kids are profiting off of it, we should have an investigation into that first, honestly, and then see what happens, and see what legislation we can get through. But my guess is, when everything comes out, I think people are going to be shocked about what's happening underneath the surface. There is just a staggering amount of crime.

Speaker 1:
[67:41] To that point on the digital dollar, a lot of the crypto guys are very opposed to having a US digital dollar. CBDC. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[67:52] Central Bank digital currency.

Speaker 1:
[67:53] Yeah. I know nothing about this. This is outside of my wheelhouse. Just listening to you make the case for opposing or regulating or designating as counterfeit stable coins pegged to the US dollar, would it be smart to pair that with having a US government digital coin or digital currency?

Speaker 4:
[68:14] I think so. The libertarians lose their mind.

Speaker 1:
[68:17] Why?

Speaker 4:
[68:18] Because they want private money that they may believe in. But again, we've gone over the history. It hasn't worked before. We've tried it. Look, here's my thing. Libertarians, the hardcore ones that insist that crypto is a good idea, they fundamentally misunderstand what money is. Money is made up. It's just a social construct like government or religion. All social constructs are only as strong as the social consensus that underlies them. Always that social consensus is in flux. It's imperfect. All currencies are imperfect. All governments, all religions, I might add, in practice, the actual practice of them. And the only way we've been able to figure out how to create that social consensus is originally by force. The emperors of ancient times would, you know, you had to accept the coin or you were going to get flogged to death. But now they're issued through, you know, at least in our case, a democratic government, right? So all of the problems with our financial system are really problems that start with our democratic system. Citizens United and the influence of corporations and the inability for our representatives to actually represent us, the majority of the population, instead representing effectively a minority and corporations. When the crypto people think that they can just issue private money, like what do you think is going to happen? You can't scale the trust necessary because no one should trust these corporations that are issuing these coins, right? Just like they don't trust Amazon to issue coins, right? Which by the way, is going to happen later this year, one of these big companies. The bad law that they passed is called the Genius Act. If you know this Congress and the legislation is called the Genius Act, you know it has to be fucking stupid. What it does is allow corporations to issue their own money in the form of stable coins. This is something that Metta has wanted for a very long time. They're going to be coming out with their own currencies. When you get on Amazon, you're going to have to buy an Amazon box or Metta box or whatever, and it's pretty clear how they benefit because then they have your real money that they can collect interest on. Billions and billions and billions of dollars, so they'll make money. Pretty unclear how the customers benefit. A hundred Democrats voted for this, including Hakeem Jeffries, including my congressman Dan Goldman, which is why I'm supporting Brad Lander. Can I just say, if you're a Democrat, I don't have a lot of litmus tests, but if you're a Democrat and you're having trouble deciding between supporting people or corporations, my humble advice to you is get the fuck out of the party. I'm really angry that they are voting for literal corporate money against the interests of their constituents.

Speaker 1:
[70:52] Can I throw out there as a never-Trump-er that you could even have sold me on you being pro-crypto money if at least as a condition for passing the bill, you had done the minimum amount to put some type of regulation or limit on what the fucking Republican president of the United States is doing to enrich himself by $4 billion. There's generational wealth being created by the Trump family. You guys, it was your one leverage point that you had, and they didn't do it. So they went along with the Genius Act and said, well, we'll deal with putting some rules in place around whether administration officials can trade in crypto. We'll deal with that down the line. That to me was totally unacceptable. I should note while you are righteously ranting, but Club Coin is available on DEX. No way. So we can come up with that already. That's already out there.

Speaker 4:
[71:51] You want to go in on some?

Speaker 1:
[71:52] It's not doing that well. It doesn't look like it's doing that well.

Speaker 4:
[71:54] I'm not a good ambassador for us? Well, I feel like if we're promoting it, we might be able to boost the price.

Speaker 1:
[72:00] Do a little rug pull, do a little rug pull on but Club Coin. Let's go, buddy.

Speaker 4:
[72:03] Come on.

Speaker 1:
[72:04] I'm not a rug pull guy.

Speaker 4:
[72:06] You don't want to pull the butt pump?

Speaker 1:
[72:08] I don't want to pull the butt pump, I don't. It gets harder and harder. Where was I? You got me distracted now. My mental image is off.

Speaker 4:
[72:16] I can't remember the second part.

Speaker 1:
[72:17] The first part of the question was, can we figure out who's putting money into these Trump coins?

Speaker 4:
[72:23] Definitely. One of the misperceptions of crypto is that it's an anonymous blockchain, anonymous ledger. It's not, it's pseudonymous. If you can figure out which they call them wallets, but they're basically like accounts, which accounts are transacting, you can follow the money. It's actually a record of all of the money and where all the money went. So you can do the blockchain analytics and you can know who's giving what to whom. But more, I mean, personally, I think more important for a jury, let's say you're trying to get Don Jr. in 2029, not protected by the sort of, oh, he was the president of the United States, not protected by the office. I'm not sure those guys are real tight lipped. That's just my impression of Don. Maybe they're smart like Trump and don't send emails, maybe. But I think there's going to be a lot of people. I think you do the investigatory thing. You work your way up the chain. You start with a small fish, you get them to flip. I'm going to take a wild guess that the small fish in the Trump pyramid scheme are not going to be happy with Trump by 2029. Some of their lives will have been ruined. So start there and work up.

Speaker 1:
[73:29] Yeah. You got to go talk to the House Oversight Dems. That's what I said to them. It's the Epstein, obviously, cover up is their top priority. But I think figuring out the crypto money because the corruption inside the administration is going to be hard. None of those folks are going to testify. Trump's going to give them all immunity. But the people that are putting money into World Liberty Financial, they're not as protective. And they might be more interested in being responsive to subpoena. So we got to look at that. All right. Well, that's pretty good. You started the film by saying this, that the only thing anyone asked you about is the OC. Is that starting to change? Are you becoming crypto guy now? Are you still when you get seen on the straighter, people still being like Chris McCaw?

Speaker 4:
[74:10] There's a lot of that still. However, every once in a while, a guy in a fleece vest and a collared shirt comes up to me.

Speaker 1:
[74:16] It says, fuck off.

Speaker 4:
[74:17] No, no, you know who else hates crypto? Finance people, a lot of the majority of them, because they're smart and they're like, this is not a legitimate investment.

Speaker 1:
[74:27] So the goody two shoes finance guys.

Speaker 4:
[74:29] Oh, you mean non-supporting criminals guys, those guys? Yeah, the goody two shoes is what they call them now, in this current age, the law abiding people. I'm sure your friends are wonderful people and I would never disparage all of them. But anyway, they come up to me and they're occasionally, they're big fans of my work on the book and the movie, and they literally are not familiar with my work as an actor, and I could kiss these guys. I could do it.

Speaker 1:
[74:59] I love that. Our friend Adam Brody, he's also had a rejuvenation in his career. Is that a word? Rejuvenated. He's been rejuvenated in his career as Hot Rabbi. And so now you guys in like middle age have this these whole new brands for yourself. You know, you are anti crypto warrior fighting for justice. He's Hot Rabbi. Yeah. Do you feel like he mugged you on that one or who like, who do you feel? Whose second act do you think is?

Speaker 4:
[75:31] I so I say, OK, first of all, we're friends. I saw him literally this last weekend.

Speaker 1:
[75:37] Well, I got to do I got trouble with Chad Michael Murray. So I'm now trying to start a spout.

Speaker 4:
[75:40] Yeah. Like, what the fuck, dude? So he he did a Q&A with me after a screening, which, of course, sold out in minutes. And we had a chance to reconnect. I am so happy for him. He is in such a good place in his life. He is so good in that role. And he's also a Jewish American himself. And I think, you know, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but he's a very thoughtful person. And I think he recognizes he has a platform. So I'll be interested to see what he does with it. But he is a good one. He is a real one. I am very happy for him.

Speaker 1:
[76:13] I think he wins. Hot Rabbi wins. I'm sorry. It's fine. I mean, you're doing great. I'm really proud of you. Like, you know, if we were going through the whole list of OC characters and talking about how they're doing.

Speaker 4:
[76:25] OC characters, people, people playing OC characters. You understand these are people.

Speaker 1:
[76:29] Is your feelings hurt? Are your feelings hurt to be called a character? You know, I don't mean it like that. I mean, the actors, if we went through the list of all the actors.

Speaker 4:
[76:38] You understand that actors play characters, right? Like characters are fictional people. Actors are real people. Okay. It seems to be getting a little squishy, Tim.

Speaker 1:
[76:49] Yeah. Well, the OC was kind of real for me. Okay. I'm sorry. A lot of these other things are some distance. I felt as if I was there. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[76:59] You cared a lot. Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 1:
[77:01] I cared a lot. I was invested in you guys. It was the time when I was doing the most pot in my life. So it was easy to kind of put yourself there in your mind.

Speaker 4:
[77:10] You just imagined you were on like a bicycle, like riding behind, like I was riding the bike and you were Misha Barton behind me, wind in her hair, down at Don Doe Beach. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:
[77:24] Misha, we'll talk about it another time. Okay. That's Ben McKenzie. He's pretty good. It's not Ryan Atwood. I was literally about to say that's Ryan Atwood. See, there's no difference. You can't tell.

Speaker 4:
[77:33] Unbelievable.

Speaker 1:
[77:35] He's a good guy. He's one of the good ones. Go watch his movie. Go watch his movie. Everyone is lying to you for money. I'm not. But many people are lying to you for money right now, including the president of the United States. I appreciate all the time, brother. And we'll schedule around football the next time.

Speaker 4:
[77:52] Yeah. Next time, I won't hit you up on a Saturday in the fall in New Orleans. We'll go for a Friday drink instead.

Speaker 1:
[77:57] All right, brother. We'll see you all soon. Appreciate it. All right.

Speaker 4:
[77:59] Thanks, sir.

Speaker 1:
[78:00] Thanks so much to Sarah Matthews. So pumped to have her in The Bulwark fam. And obviously, just smitten to be able to hang out with Ryan Atwood, me, Ben McKenzie. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the podcast. It's going to be a good one. See y'all then. The Bulwark Podcast is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer, Katie Cooper, associate producer, Ansley Skipper and with video editing by Katie Lutz and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.