[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to U-Slide, it's on Arnetic.

[SPEAKER_02]: Katie Helper is traveling this week, so we have a truncated episode.

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[SPEAKER_02]: For this week's interview, I'm joined by Kenneth Vogel, he is an investigative reporter at The New York Times.

[SPEAKER_02]: His new book is Devil's Advocates how Washington lobbyists get rich enabling dictators, oligarchs, [SPEAKER_02]: and arms dealers.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Kenna's book covers corruption across the aisle, whether it's the Biden's and Ukraine, or it's the Trump family.

[SPEAKER_02]: And they're various ventures all around the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: So we get into that in this interview and a whole lot more.

[SPEAKER_02]: Here's my interview with Ken Boba.

[SPEAKER_02]: Ken Boggol, thanks so much for joining us.

[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's pleasure to be with you.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me.

[SPEAKER_02]: The book is called Devil's Advocates, how Washington lobbyists get rich enabling dictators, oligarchs, and arm Steelers.

[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to start with Jared Kushner.

[SPEAKER_02]: He served officially in Trump's first term.

[SPEAKER_02]: Doesn't have an official role in this White House, but yet, [SPEAKER_02]: is overseeing arguably the biggest geopolitical issue in the world.

[SPEAKER_02]: And that is the crisis in Israel Palestine.

[SPEAKER_02]: And Jadi Vance was just visiting Israel.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is how he described Jared Kushner.

[SPEAKER_04]: Well, Jared's the investor here.

[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to give you a percentage, but look, what we've seen the past week gives me great optimism that the ceasefire is going to hold.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's Jenny Bance describing Jared Kushner as the investor is referring to the so-called ceasefire deal that Trump has negotiated in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_02]: And then you had in another, [SPEAKER_02]: media appearance.

[SPEAKER_02]: Jared Kushner and Steve Woodcock, they appear together, and Woodcock makes a reference to a master plan for Gaza devised by Jared Kushner.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, part of the plan is the reconstruction, the building rebuilding of Gaza.

[SPEAKER_00]: And your builders, you've been in real estate.

[SPEAKER_00]: As you said, it's extremely complex.

[SPEAKER_00]: Tell us more about the plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: And how much it's going to cost?

[SPEAKER_00]: Where's the money going to come from?

[SPEAKER_00]: And who's going to reward the contracts?

[SPEAKER_00]: Three questions.

[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's going to cost a lot of money.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's a lot of money?

[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the estimates are in the 50 billion dollar range.

[SPEAKER_01]: It might be a little bit less, it might be a little bit more.

[SPEAKER_01]: I happen to think that that's not a lot of money in that region.

[SPEAKER_01]: You have governments that are going to jump on in.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that Middle East countries are going to provide the money.

[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, what do you'll see European participation and so forth?

[SPEAKER_01]: I think the beginning of this plan is how to get it going.

[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what me and Jared work on all the time.

[SPEAKER_01]: The money raising we think is the easy part.

[SPEAKER_01]: We think that happens relatively quickly.

[SPEAKER_01]: But it's the master plan.

[SPEAKER_01]: And we're working with a group of people who have been working on master plans for the last two years.

[SPEAKER_01]: So there are plans already.

[SPEAKER_01]: We have a master plan already, and by the way, and Jared's been pushing this, and we're working together on it.

[SPEAKER_02]: There's Steve Wickov, Jared looks a little bit uncomfortable as Wickov is talking about the so-called master plan for Gaza, but talk to us about these individuals, and how Jared Kushner has gone from serving in the Trump term, his time out of the White House, making a lot of lucrative deals, including in the Middle East.

[SPEAKER_02]: And now, being described by Jady Bantz is the investor in Trump's peace plan in Gaza.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I think you got to go back even before he entered the first Trump administration when he was in New York real estate.

[SPEAKER_05]: And his biggest project was a massive boom dog all the six, six, fifth Avenue, six, six, fifth Avenue, but giant building in Manhattan.

[SPEAKER_05]: And he got bailed out by the Qataris, and then he comes into the Trump administration.

[SPEAKER_05]: And he's helping to negotiate or helping the administration sort of navigate this blockade [SPEAKER_05]: had on the guitar, and he's got interest there, and, you know, they don't shy away from it.

[SPEAKER_05]: Maybe in the first term, they were a little bit more bashful with some of this stuff, but then soon as the first term ends, Kushner hangs out his shingle affinity partners.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think is the name of his firm gets a $2 billion investment from the Saudis as one of his first as one of the first deals that he does.

[SPEAKER_05]: And like, [SPEAKER_05]: I mean, sure, the guy's got some experience in investing in New York real estate, but if you honestly believe that the Saudis would give this guy $2 billion worth not for the work that he had done previously with them while he was in the White House and what they expected rightfully turns out to be the possibility of a future second Trump term and there, you know, that if you don't think that this this investment was a way to carry favor or reward, [SPEAKER_05]: sort of past efforts.

[SPEAKER_05]: Let's not forget, Jared was the guy who brought MBS into the White House, and was seen as whispering in Trump's ear, and it's sort of like help mitigate concerns about MBS after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, you know, here you have an example where I like look, this actually paid off, and it's interesting in another clip.

[SPEAKER_05]: on that 60-minute's joined appearance with Kushner and WICCoff, Leslie Stahl asked about like, isn't this a conflict of interest?

[SPEAKER_05]: We guys would be doing this stuff and you have all this business in the region.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I think it was Kushner said, well, we actually considered a strength.

[SPEAKER_05]: We considered experience and trusted relationships.

[SPEAKER_05]: And look, maybe there's an argument to be made for that in this case.

[SPEAKER_05]: There are certainly plenty of other, you know, that like this help them [SPEAKER_05]: arguably the people of the Middle East, but like there's certainly plenty of other situations where there is U.S.

policy being set in a way that favors business partners of the Trump family or the wick coughs or [SPEAKER_05]: Mossad Boulos and his family that is not it is arguably not in the best interest of the American people and does seem to be a conflict of interest that is you know A jurying to the favor of the business part of the people who are putting money in the president's families pockets and you know They're a laws and there are sort of norms that are intended to prevent that kind of thing and the Trump folks in the second term [SPEAKER_02]: We are excited to share with you this week's sponsor, Venice AI.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Kushner this week said that there won't be any reconstruction funds going into the parts of Gaza that Hamas still controls, which as of now is about half of the territory.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's a lot of people.

[SPEAKER_02]: who won't be seeing any reconstruction.

[SPEAKER_02]: Have you heard anything in your reporting about what the Trump administration actually wants to do in Gaza and who would financially benefit?

[SPEAKER_05]: No, not the on what we've seen public and what we've seen, you know, from from Whitcoff there, the Trump, you know, uh, Riviera of the, of the Middle East plaid, uh, pretty offensive, but, uh, no, I've ever looked.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, Kusher has talked about this.

[SPEAKER_05]: And Kusher has talked about the potential, um, sort of, um, [SPEAKER_05]: you know, the like real estate development opportunity.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's not just there, by the way, he's like talking in the Balkans with the, you know, the Serbian leader, and Albanian leader, and like, it's again, it's just, it's like pretty obvious that these are like, there's so much writing on like US foreign policy and decisions that the US makes about military [SPEAKER_05]: You know, these far-flung, far-and-interest, like they want to shape those decisions.

[SPEAKER_05]: And they will do anything to shape those decisions.

[SPEAKER_05]: And oftentimes, they come from parts of the world, whether it's the Balkans and the or the former Soviet countries in the Middle East, where there is an open plate, paid-a-play culture.

[SPEAKER_05]: And we, again, we have all these rules, whether it's the emoluments clause, or lobbying restrictions, or campaign finance rules, and all these disclosure requirements that are intended to prevent that kind of thing.

[SPEAKER_05]: and we have like an interest in maintaining this moral high ground where we can lecture you know allies and potential allies about like how they should fight corruption and deal with human rights and freedom of speech and we lose that high ground when we have you know members of the president's family or vice president's family or their close associates who are openly engaging in this type of deal making that does implicate U.S.

foreign policy interest.

[SPEAKER_02]: And as you point out, that loss of the moral high ground is firmly bipartisan, a large part of your book deals with Hunter Biden, the Biden family's dealings in Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go to a clip.

[SPEAKER_02]: This is back in December 2015, Joe Biden comes to Ukraine, gives a speech before the Ukrainian Parliament.

[SPEAKER_02]: And this is what he tells them about what he calls the cancer of corruption.

[SPEAKER_03]: against corruption.

[SPEAKER_03]: It's not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption.

[SPEAKER_03]: The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform, the judiciary should be overhauled.

[SPEAKER_03]: The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles, not sweetheart deals.

[SPEAKER_03]: Corruption's ciphons away resources and the people have blunts the economic growth, and it affronts the human dignity.

[SPEAKER_02]: So that's Joe Biden lecturing the Ukrainian parliament about because the cancer of corruption and he rails there against what he calls sweetheart deals.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this is not long after the Ukrainian company Burisma has given Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden, a very lucrative board sheet.

[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this has been very well-liticated, litigated, Trump made this a major topic of his attacks on Biden.

[SPEAKER_02]: You go into heavy detail on this.

[SPEAKER_02]: When you hear this speech now from Joe Biden, sort of finger wagging at the Ukrainians on corruption, I mean, what do you think is most important to know?

[SPEAKER_05]: I think it in many ways is like an advertisement for his son's services, the oligarch owner of Burizma, the company that ended up putting Bur, uh, uh, uh, Hunter Biden on his board, he was, uh, he was a minister in the government of, uh, victory on a COVID.

[SPEAKER_05]: and he is essentially like assigned to himself and his companies, these extremely lucrative gas and oil drilling licenses that became the basis for his building of fortune.

[SPEAKER_05]: This is like a quintessential oligarchic fact pattern, where you're sort of privatizing, particularly in these post-communist countries, you're privatizing the assets that were once [SPEAKER_05]: uh...

fortunes off of them that's what joe biden is talking about here he's talking about theft of like public assets for private service and so it makes sense that this guy uh...

macolozile cheski would be a top target of the very type of anti-corruption prosecutions that joe biden is encouraging there and by the way not just joe biden encouraging the u.s.

government is funding [SPEAKER_05]: those anti-corruption initiatives and encouraging the Ukrainians to go after these companies.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, if you apply that sort of post-Soviet mindset that paid to play mindset, how do you get protection from a government that is coming after you and targeting you as like a poster child for this anti-corruption initiative?

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, you just pay the family members of that.

[SPEAKER_05]: And that's exactly what Silchewski did.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by the way, it's not just in Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_05]: I go into great depth about a very similar example in Romania where a Romanian oligarch who very similarly was being prosecuted in Romania for essentially a corrupt landfill where he bought land from the state.

[SPEAKER_05]: He's a well-connected guy.

[SPEAKER_05]: He bought land from the state at what prosecutors ledger was just pennies on the dollar of its overall worth.

[SPEAKER_05]: he was being targeted by a U.S.

backed anti-corruption initiative that Joe Biden gave a very similar speech in Romania encouraging that type of thing.

[SPEAKER_05]: He hired a center Biden and he wants Hunter Biden to, I mean, this is not me saying this although he did a lot of reporting.

[SPEAKER_05]: This is the U.S.

prosecutors who ended up bringing the tax charges against Hunter Biden and in the course of [SPEAKER_05]: when he was sort of being obstinate and suggesting that he would fight it, they sort of dangled the possibility, we could bring a fairer charge against you for going to work for this Romanian oligarch who wanted you to back off your dad's government from pushing the Romanian to prosecute this guy.

[SPEAKER_05]: There's an interesting side story there where he, uh, he's simultaneously Hunter Biden is decult of any relationship with this Chinese government back to fund, uh, that he is trying to do a deal between the Chinese fund and the Romanian oligarch where the Chinese would invest 300 to $500 million.

[SPEAKER_05]: in a joint venture that Hunter Biden would be a part owner of that would come to own this contested land.

[SPEAKER_05]: That was the subject of this anti-corruption prosecution.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by the way, the contested land included the land on which the U.S.

embassy in Bucharest in Romania was built.

[SPEAKER_05]: So you would potentially have a situation where Hunter Biden is pushing a land deal that would result in the Chinese government owning the land on which the U.S.

embassy [SPEAKER_05]: You want to talk about like an op-sec nightmare that really undermines US foreign policy, that would be it, but same sort of deal where the Romanian is like, okay, Joe Biden is pushing this anti-corruption prosecution.

[SPEAKER_05]: I wanted to go away.

[SPEAKER_05]: I'm going to throw a bunch of money at Joe Biden's son.

[SPEAKER_05]: So I think that it was, yeah, it was like a fairly concerted effort by Hunter Biden into capitalized on this sense that like the U.S.

doesn't have the moral high ground and this paid a play system, you know, that that works in these posts.

[SPEAKER_05]: communist country is going to work just the same in the US.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by the way, I should say like in both of those cases, ultimately the oligarch paymaster of Hunter Biden got what they want it like people say like, well Joe Biden, you know, fired that prosecutor, you know, he pushed for the firing and that prosecutor that prosecutor, you know, he was doing anything.

[SPEAKER_05]: He was corrupt and they got a prosecutor was going to look into it.

[SPEAKER_05]: No, like Barismo wanted that prosecutor gone, not necessarily because he was aggressively prosecuting them and investigating them, but because he was using the threat.

[SPEAKER_05]: of such a prosecution to elicit brides from, from Borizman, from Zalchewski.

[SPEAKER_05]: And ultimately, when the prosecutor was fired, a new prosecutor came in, and at much as Borizma wanted sat down with the Borizma lawyers, who were lawyers, by the way, who were recruited indirectly by Hunter Biden, and resolved like Richard Resolution that ended the case.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, Borizma got what it wanted.

[SPEAKER_05]: even if it was indirectly out of hiring Hunter Biden, even if Joe Biden, even if you want to accept Democrats at face value when they say that Joe Biden didn't do anything expressly to benefit Hunter Biden or Hunter Biden's employers, it did ultimately have the indirect benefit, the indirect result of benefiting charisma.

[SPEAKER_02]: And is it fair to say, and this is what I get from your book, that Joe Biden sent a signal, [SPEAKER_02]: Then Joe Biden would look favorably upon that and might reward you for it like I said fair enough that that was communicated.

[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, it was, yeah, there was no signaling.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like Joe Biden, you know, it's been sort of well-documented now that Joe Biden would call Hunter Biden and he could put a month's speaker phone to kind of impress some of his foreign business partners or clients, well, I take it a step further and have a source telling me that one of the things that Joe Biden would say during these conversations is, you do a favor for me, your friend.

[SPEAKER_05]: You do a favor for my son, your friend for life.

[SPEAKER_05]: So that's like fairly overt.

[SPEAKER_05]: in the weeds of the business, you know, discussions and he's not, you know, again, he's not like pressuring the, you know, for the fire in the prosecutor because there's no evidence that he's doing it because it will benefit his son, but it does all sort of work together here and it's signaling and people like wanted to dismiss that and say, [SPEAKER_05]: Oh, that's not a big deal, you know, because it's not as like over and blatant as the way that the Trumps do things, but like that's traditionally the way that diplomacy works it is a lot of signaling and these signals are important and how to buy them was certainly a part of sending these signals to, you know, domestically in the places where he was doing business and to some extent to the US government that like this is not so clear cut like if you go after this person, it's going to, you know, it's going to have ripple effects.

[SPEAKER_02]: and because Trump got impeached over trying to get Ukraine to scrutinize the Biden's, he continues to make this an issue.

[SPEAKER_02]: And so just this month, as your book was coming out, uh, very good timing.

[SPEAKER_02]: The CIA, Trump's CIA declassified some CIA intelligence.

[SPEAKER_02]: showing that Ukrainians were complaining about Joe Biden lecturing them about corruption, which they saw as a double standard.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the CIA also revealed that Joe Biden got that intelligence suppressed, that they didn't want that CIA memo capturing Ukrainians misgivings about Biden's lecture to them, that Joe Biden blocked that for basically [SPEAKER_02]: being disseminated.

[SPEAKER_02]: And the CIA memo also shows that the Ukrainian government was basically expecting Biden to come and talk to them about personnel matters, which just speak to the incredible influence that Biden had instead of Ukraine, starting after the coup, the Oster of the government of Yanukovic, back in February 2014.

[SPEAKER_02]: This released by Radcliffe.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, [SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, that's what I mean.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think it does undermine, you know, Democrats claims that Joe Biden wasn't aware of.

[SPEAKER_05]: That's like that was their sort of stick, you know, when I first started reporting this in 2019 and then, you know, during the Trump impeachment and that door, the Biden sort of aborted impeachment and created like that Joe Biden just didn't have any idea.

[SPEAKER_05]: about this and he was too overwhelmed and, you know, his other son, Bo Biden was sick and and it would eventually die of brain cancer and so people didn't want to bother him with this.

[SPEAKER_05]: And first of all, like, that's not a great fact pattern either, even if that's true, you know, like, oh, he doesn't want to hear about his son like undermining a key element of like US foreign policy, [SPEAKER_05]: You should be aware, not only should you be aware of that, you should shut that down.

[SPEAKER_05]: If you're like truly interested in good governance that you, you know, good governance at home, but the good governance that you're preaching that your allies have to embrace as well.

[SPEAKER_05]: But this takes it a step further and shows like, no, no, he did know about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: He knew it was problematic and he didn't want other people in his government to know about it.

[SPEAKER_05]: cover up type of territory where it's not just like ignorance, you know, unintentional ignorance or willful ignorance.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's something more than that.

[SPEAKER_05]: It's trying to prevent other people from realizing like this is a serious problem.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by the way, it was, yeah, sure, it was a serious problem in Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_05]: We already sort of knew that George can't one of the, you know, the star impeachment witnesses or in Trump, uh, the [SPEAKER_05]: first Trump impeachment talked about that and talked about he wanted to flag this for Joe Biden and and people around him said like no this is you know don't don't bring this to him now but you know but it wasn't just in Ukraine it was also in Romania when I'm [SPEAKER_05]: this deal that I'm talking about with the Romanian oligarch and the Chinese, the Chinese linked fund, 100-button went to the U.S.

ambassador to Romania, visited him in the embassy compound there, the embassy compound that 100-button was trying to sell to the Chinese.

[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I report that that ambassador was like deeply uncomfortable with that.

[SPEAKER_05]: He's like working for Hunter Biden's dad, and here's Hunter Biden coming to him representing this top target of an anti-corruption push that is being backed by the U.S.

government and by Joe Biden specifically.

[SPEAKER_05]: So like mixed messages is the most charitable way that you could view that.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think a more appropriate way to view it is that it was.

[SPEAKER_05]: possibly intentionally undermining U.S.

foreign policy.

[SPEAKER_02]: For people who've tried to discredit the reporting you've done and just, you know, basic scrutiny of the Biden's and Ukraine.

[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the one charge that they lodge is that this is Russian propaganda or Russian disinformation.

[SPEAKER_02]: And when Trump tried to raise, you know, attention about this, he was accused of falling for Russian propaganda.

[SPEAKER_02]: No one actually disputes the veracity of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: They just say it all comes from Russia.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm curious, this isn't as much of a thing now.

[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's kind of died down, but there were many years when basically, you know, people, [SPEAKER_02]: cover this, these stories would be accused of spreading Russian disinformation, even though it's all shown to be factual.

[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm just curious, as a reporter trying to apply equal scrutiny to all sides, I mean, you also covered Rudy Giuliani's dealings in Ukraine very critically.

[SPEAKER_02]: What to you was the deterrent power in the media industry of just being people being afraid of being called names like spreading Russian disinformation.

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, obviously didn't determine that I wrote about it, but I think they tried to make an example of me and of like the others who, you know, were had the tamarity to write about some of this stuff and that was like the cudgel that they used.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, they they said, you know, that we were.

[SPEAKER_05]: Russian, you know, disinformation assets or that we were, you know, at the very best to, you know, quote, your podcast name, useful idiots.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I agree with you.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it was, it was deeply cynical because it's like, [SPEAKER_05]: You know, again, we're reporting facts here.

[SPEAKER_05]: You're not disputing the facts.

[SPEAKER_05]: You're trying to say that, oh, and the Russians have also seized on this.

[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I mean, you should be able to trust the news consumer that listener or reader reviewer enough to be like, OK, here are facts that cannot be disputed.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like evaluate them on the basis of the facts, and not who else is seizing on the facts.

[SPEAKER_05]: But they knew that at that time, coming after [SPEAKER_05]: the 2016 election and the Russian interference that this would be a powerful narrative that they could use to discourage other reporters from following this thread.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I think, you know, I do think it probably had an effect.

[SPEAKER_05]: And by the way, [SPEAKER_05]: I also think that this was like sort of a beta test for them.

[SPEAKER_05]: They saw like, oh, this is like a good trick here that we can pull and then they tried it again with Joe Biden's cognitive decline in the cover up there.

[SPEAKER_05]: And you know, I think even there like had some, had some effect until it was just too painfully apparent to everyone that like this was what was happening after the [SPEAKER_05]: after his debate to buckle with Trump, but like they tried that too.

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, they were talking about like cheap fakes, you know, these videos showing Biden, obviously, loss for cheap fakes.

[SPEAKER_05]: And at one point, I think they did suggest that this was Russia disinformation.

[SPEAKER_05]: So, [SPEAKER_05]: I agree with you.

[SPEAKER_05]: It was like a I think it was like a cynical trick that they that they pulled and tried to pull again and I think that it was probably partly they're trying to pull it again with the with the cognitive decline that kind of took it off the table because people could see what their own eyes and they were able to evaluate and be like wait a minute I like I'm not going to believe you the next time you tell me something is Russian disinformation or disinformation writ large.

[SPEAKER_05]: I think that whole [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, let's turn back to Trump.

[SPEAKER_02]: Having covered both Trump terms, how does the brazen corruption of this second term compare to Trump's first term?

[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I do think it's like exponentially worse.

[SPEAKER_05]: And part of it, like, if you want to take into face value, a colleague of mine Ben protests was interviewing Eric Trump and Eric Trump said something about EC basically said that like during the first term, I'll read you the quotes that I'm not misquoting it.

[SPEAKER_05]: He said like during the first term, you know, we tried to like do things by the book.

[SPEAKER_05]: I'll read you the exact quote.

[SPEAKER_05]: He says, [SPEAKER_05]: In the first term, we did everything imaginable to avoid any appearance of impropriety, and frankly, we got crushed anyway.

[SPEAKER_05]: Our Trump said arguing that the presidency had caused his father quote, an absolute fortune.

[SPEAKER_05]: We can't just sit out in perpetuity, and I won't.

[SPEAKER_05]: He added, I'm not in government, I'm in private industry.

[SPEAKER_05]: So like, [SPEAKER_05]: they're basically admitting that like, you know, we did pay at least lip service to some of these conflict of interest was that I think by the way that there would be plenty of people who have valid argument that they didn't really pay lip service to it in the first term, but like, you know, they weren't as brazen.

[SPEAKER_05]: And this time around, [SPEAKER_05]: they're just that much more open.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I think like the good comp is like during the first term, there was the hotel, the Trump hotel in Washington.

[SPEAKER_05]: And I agree, like that was sort of unseemly.

[SPEAKER_05]: Wait, what it was unseemly?

[SPEAKER_05]: You know, they knew that there were people who had invested interest in sort of carrying favor with them with the trumps and that like if they came to Washington, they would stay at the Trump hotel.

[SPEAKER_05]: But at least in that case, you had like a service that was being provided.

[SPEAKER_05]: It may have been overpriced that the drinks may have been not as good or the BLT stake or whatever, the lobby might not have been as good as the prices that they were charging, but like you stayed in the hotel, you got a room, you got a bed, you were able to pay for a meal, fine.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like with the crypto stuff, it's like you're not even really getting anything.

[SPEAKER_05]: You're just putting money in the Trump family's pocket based on some idea of value, but really it's just [SPEAKER_05]: and we see that and we see that like extremely acutely just this week with Trump's part in of CZ the founder of Binance who had pled guilty to money laundering but and served time in prison but his company Binance had financed the deal with the Emirati sovereign wealth fund a $2 billion deal [SPEAKER_05]: using world liberty fine answer, which is the Trump family's crypto currency trading entity, and like there was no real reason to do that.

[SPEAKER_05]: Like they could have just as easily done it through their own stablecoin or their own crypto or you know, through traditional finance, but they did it and it did, you know, that certainly seemed to have covered favorite Trump.

[SPEAKER_05]: And now what do they get out of it?

[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, it's not, you know, I'm not, I'm not drawing a direct line, but it's not too hard to look [SPEAKER_05]: and then the pardon a few months later and be like maybe maybe that's what they got out of it.

[SPEAKER_02]: Trump recently gave a speech at the Israeli kinescent where he just openly flaunted the fact that he did the bidding of Mary Madeleine who gave him worth a hundred million dollars.

[SPEAKER_02]: He talked about moving the U.S.

embassy to Jerusalem to basically please her and he talked about how the fact that he asked her, you know, who you more loyal to Israel or America and he said that [SPEAKER_02]: one of the takeaways from that was someone who spent a lot of time challenging the dominant narratives or on Russia gate just to meet underscored what a waste of energy it was to chase this idea that Russian oligarchs were funding Trump and he was doing their bidding when he's openly admitting to do the bidding of different kinds of oligarchs who serve a different country and on that note I want to ask you about a pack how does a group like a pack whatever you think of them like whether you support them or not [SPEAKER_02]: How do they avoid registering as a foreign agent?

[SPEAKER_05]: And to hear the rest of the interview, please go to usefulidgetspodcast.com.

[SPEAKER_02]: And thanks again to Ken Vogel.

[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to hear my full conversation with him, go to our website usefulidgetspodcast.com where you get the extended version of this interview and a lot more bonus content.

[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks so much for tuning in to usefulidgets.

[SPEAKER_02]: We'll see you next time.

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[UNKNOWN]: You