Ben Cohen

No.

I'm white. I grew up in a family where my father was a college graduate. He went to school at night. He was able to buy a house based on a government program that provided money to buy a house for white people, but by federal regulation, it was not available to black people. They would not loan. This was about redlining. The government would not loan into areas that were mostly black.

And even if a black person wanted to buy a house in a white area, they said, oh no, you can't do that because then it'll be black. That's illegal, immoral, unfair. And, you know, so the... What year was that? I want to... What year? Well, I was born in 51, so... Let's say 50s. It was around there. That's when they did it.

Yes. Okay. It's a different America today, though. Well, it's... No. Well, the America today... has a lot to do with the America of the 1950s and before. So my parents were able to buy that house, and that's what helped them build wealth. That's where they got their equity. That's what allowed them to send me to a decent college.

That's what allowed them to be in that neighborhood that had good public schools. And... There's a lot of other people, say black people, that that housing program was not available to. They were not able to build that equity. They were not able to build that generational wealth. They were not able to go to decent public schools. And so they didn't get that education.

And that's part of what leads to the current situation where You know, if you look at the disparity in wealth between black people and white people, I mean, it's kind of huge. And, you know, I mean, the whole country was, you know, it goes back generations.

I'm not saying that they gave me money. I mean, you know, they were able to pay for college for me.

Not much.

That... What I'm getting to is the whole environment in which I was brought up, being able to go to really good public schools. And, you know, I go to low-income areas in places around our country, and the schools are shit.

So what are you saying? That they're high crime because they're run by a Democratic? Of course it is. Do you know since D.C. No, I don't. That is the logical fallacy. No, no. But do you know D.C. I want to talk about the logical fallacy.

It's the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo prop de hoc.

After it, therefore, because of it. That because something happens after something happened doesn't mean that it caused it.

Go to the next one. I want to know what your point is. Let's assume they're all Democratic.

Poor people are getting screwed. We shouldn't be in a country where you work 40 hours a week full time and you can't afford to have a decent life. That should be illegal.

I think he won because the bottom 50% of the population is getting screwed by both parties. Both parties? Both parties. Really? Yes, I do. Because of the way that our economy is structured, which means that virtually all the money goes to the top and virtually none of the money goes to the people on the bottom. Why though? Because of the laws, because of the laws and the regulations.

I think people were really unhappy with the status quo, and I think they voted for not the status quo. I actually believe that... that if voting for Bernie was an option, he would have won. Against Trump? Yeah, because they're both against the status quo. They're both against, well, I mean, they both say they're against corporations controlling the country.

I mean, I personally believe that it's in words only in terms of Trump, but I think in terms of Bernie, I think he genuinely would want, you know, would work on reducing corporate influence

I mean, you know, I mean, the whole the whole I mean, when we talk about capitalism, I mean, you know, capitalism ends up having a small number of people accumulate a huge amount of wealth and they and and then you have the Supreme Court saying that, well, money's the same as free speech and therefore we can't regulate spending in elections.

I had a reputation. You know how to split it down the side? I know how to split it.

And what we have in our country is a system of legalized bribery. And it used to be. that the corporations and the rich and the wealthy were influencing legislation and they were influencing who gets elected, and now they are who's getting elected. And, you know, I would rather see a representation of what the country actually is. I mean, the country is not just 100,000 really... 100,000?

Yeah, or I don't know, 10,000 really, really wealthy people. The country represents a very broad swath, and a representative democracy, that's what there ought to be running the country. But we have elections that are financed by millionaires, billionaires, and... We end up with a government that favors that class of people.

Bernie Sanders. No, that is absolutely, totally, 100, 1,000% incorrect. Well, I mean, he got very upset about it because... But even with him,

You know, people have lost the art of making a good banana split. We ought to call you in and you can train our people.

What? Ban. Because he he he wrote a book and he got he got a million dollars or whatever. I mean, but, you know, I mean, I was I was helping on Bernie's campaign.

Absolutely.

I think he would be good for an economy that works for all Americans instead of just the upper crust like you and me.

Absolutely I would have voted for Bernie. I totally would have voted for Bernie. I voted for Bernie when he was mayor, when he first ran for mayor of Burlington.

Yes, I am okay with that because I do not believe that we should have a country where... What, 0.1% of the population owns 90% of the wealth? You're part of it.

Oh, no.

You know, when I was working with Bernie, you know, he was saying billionaires should not exist. And, you know, that struck me as kind of weird. I mean, I said, why shouldn't billionaires exist? Why shouldn't we have billionaires? And then I realized that nobody needs that kind of money. And how can you...

accumulate that kind of wealth when you've got so many other people that are barely getting by. Why... Why shouldn't we have a system? You know, it is kind of peculiarly American. I don't believe that that kind of spread exists in a lot of other countries, in a lot of European countries.

I mean, there's free enterprise in any of the Scandinavian countries.

Hey, speaking of ice cream, do you got a spoon? I mean, this shit's melting. I'm good with it. I got you a spoon.

We got the chocolate fudge.

Well, you know, chocolate fudge brownie is interesting because... By the way, is it true that you can't taste flavors?

Texture. Is that serious? I'm a very texture-forward person.

Well, you know, I mean, I can kind of taste it, but not the way you can. Not the way normal people can.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Is it? Yeah. You're not taking the chocolate fudge brownie. Which one do you want me to try? I'll try this. No, I'll try this. I mean, the nice thing about the chocolate fudge brownie is that the brownies are made by the Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, a low-income area. And the bakery... is owned by a religious organization whose purpose... Oh, my God.

It's good shit, isn't it? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So the purpose of the bakery is to provide jobs and job training for people who... You know what? After this ice cream, I'm a socialist. We're shut out of it. There you go.

Watch. Second.

Mmm. Nicely done.

Well, you know, it's at exactly the right temperature. It's perfectly tempered.

It's in there.

I don't know about Tillamook. Tillamook. Okay, somebody brought Tillamook. Hey, do you know that chocolate chip cookie dough was invented by Ben and Jerry's? Seriously? Yeah. Seriously? Yeah, yeah. Ben, what a capitalist you are, though. No. You know, there's a social form of capitalism. There's a form of capitalism. And you did it.

I don't.

Ronald Reagan, sir. It was a Rose Garden ceremony. Dude, that's crazy. We were the U.S. Small Business People of the Year. Is that it? Is that the picture? Yeah, that's exactly it. Tell me about the experience. How cool was that? That happens to be an Italian waiter's jacket that I had to buy really quick the morning before. And, you know, it was a rose garden ceremony.

What, the current guy, he's talking about paving the rose garden. But anyhow... It was a Rose Garden ceremony. We show up there. Reagan and Bush are standing there, and Reagan says the only words that he's ever said to me, which is, which one is Jerry? That was it. Which one is Jerry?

No, I did not. No, as a matter of fact, we were thinking that whoever was supposed to vet who gets the award made a mistake in terms of giving... Right, that's exactly what it was. I remember it.

You know, actually, after that ceremony, you know, there was, you know, some kind of dinner and a talk. And, you know, so I'm up there giving a talk. And I'm talking about, you know, my obsession, which is how much money the country spends on the Pentagon and preparing to kill huge numbers of people. And... Alphonse D'Amato gets up after I spoke and talked about what an ingrate I was.

Who went up? Alphonse D'Amato was a Republican senator, I think. Yeah, put him up there. I think he got Alphonse D'Amato. Do you have the bit about him being corrupt? I don't know. I'm sure it's in here.

What did he do? What was the corruption? Probably removed him. I don't remember what his corruption was.

Yes.

senator.

I'm not very competitive. Not at all? Not very. I mean, if you want to see who can eat a pint fastest, I'll do that with you. I don't get ice cream headaches.

Maybe people who can't smell don't get ice cream headaches. I don't know.

Here, have this.

What do you think about them? I think Haagen-Dazs makes a very high-quality ice cream. I think Ben & Jerry's makes a very high-quality ice cream. You guys are number one, though.

People have to realize this, guys. What, you think? No, I've looked at you guys. I don't think we could be the number one.

Yeah, you're number one. Look at that.

I mean, I know that. Dude, you guys are number one.

You built the number one ice cream company in America. Well, that was in 2022. Maybe we're no longer number one.

I haven't heard that, but I think it makes a lot of sense. There you go. I think there's a lot of people that are working really, really hard, and they're not getting lucky.

You think just by watching YouTube videos you could make stuff as good as what we're eating now? No, no, I don't think so.

You've got one of those topped ones. Yes. What do you want me to do with it? Yeah, you're going to have to break it. All right, let's try to break it. You know, a lot of times people eat it with a metal spoon. It's easier to break.

You can dig underneath it.

You know, you're a good consumer. We would classify you as a heavy user, and we appreciate people like you.

You know, I think there's social democracies. I mean, I don't think socialism is opposed to capitalism. I think there's a way of doing capitalism that kind of cares about people, that has a better safety net, that is not so rapacious. I mean, what we have in the U.S. is unfettered capitalism. And what ends up happening when you have that is a tremendous spread between rich and poor.

Yeah, you're right. This is pretty good.

You know what? I think that one is even non-dairy. I can't believe it.

That chocolate fudge brownie doesn't have any dairy products in it. This doesn't have it? You didn't know it when you ate it, did you?

It's really good.

You want this back.

I think that would be a really good ad.

Those were all after my time.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I didn't realize there was an association with Bill Clinton. Monica Lewinsky was white, though. Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough was kind of like the last flavor during my reign.

Well, also New York super fudge chunk. Wait a minute. No, there was fish food. That was the very last flavor under my direction.

No plans on the books that I've seen.

Boy, there are opportunities. Perhaps Tillamook or Bluebell or Haagen-Dazs.

Who knows what the customers would be, but I... I wouldn't see that. Well, actually, my understanding is that Ben and Jerry's is nonpartisan. Stop it.

You should do one for Trump. You ought to come up with Trump insurance. Trump insurance.

Oh, Talenti. What is that? That's another one.

You know, I haven't really eaten it much.

It's another ice cream.

It is another brand that is owned by my parent. Oh, really?

You know, I guess maybe I reacted that way because, you know. It's a cousin. It's a brand that's owned by my parents, so I'm vaguely related to it. Dude, if I open it up and it pops. Brandon, can you open this up? Apparently you're not supposed to eat it. No.

It's nice to have staff, man. You have 1,700 of them.

Hey, speaking of ice cream, you got a spoon? Good shit, isn't it? I've never had dirty. Yeah, pass it over. This is ridiculous. After this ice cream, I'm a socialist. If voting for Bernie was an option, he would have won. I don't need that much money, I can tell you that. I'm part of it, but I'm against it. Ben, what a capitalist you are, though. You know, you're a good consumer.

He's 28 years old.

That's amazing.

Like I told you, I have no idea what direction this podcast is going to go. He lifts weights. You've got a video of this. We've got to send it to Lenti manufacturers. You did get it?

Send it to the guys who provided the packaging machine. Tell them. Do you almost not want me to get in there? It's like a... And now you've got a delamination of your safety tamper evidence seal. I need a code. What's the password, right?

You know, when Jerry and I started Ben & Jerry's, the spread between CEO pay and line-level workers' pay was 40 to 1. And we thought, that's outrageous. So we had a lower one. We came up with the 5 to 1 ratio. Yeah, that's interesting, by the way. And that's changed over time. So it's no longer 5 to 1 at Ben & Jerry's. No, but today...

All right, here.

A lot.

Well, in the early days, all we had was a homemade ice cream shop, and most of the people that we hired were scoopers. And some scoopers were like really personable people who would have a lot of conversations with the customers, but that would kind of slow down the line, and we couldn't satisfy our customers. Couldn't serve enough people.

So we had to fire people who engaged in too much conversation with the customer. I mean, you want to be friendly with your customer, but you don't want to take it too far. Did you ever have lazy employees? Lazy employees. We had employees that worked at one speed, and it was slow. They were really nice people. They were really good people.

You know, I would fire some of these.

Right. It's a horrible thing to do. You know, I mean, sometimes when, you know, Jerry and I knew that, you know, somebody needed to get fired, I would be the guy who did the firing. Seriously? Yeah. We would say, the monster is hungry. The monster must eat. And it was, you know, meant that that was a person that needed to be fired.

the salary ratio between CEOs and line-level employees is 400 to 1. And what? We're in a situation where... I don't know, what is it, 0.1% of the wealthiest people in the country own 90% of the wealth. Which you're a part of it. You're part of the 0.1%. I'm part of it, but I'm against it. What do you mean you're a part of it, but you're against it?

You guys literally would go in front of the face of the guy you're firing.

We were referring to me. I'm the firer. But sometimes... Sometimes, you know, it was college students and it would be a woman. You fired women? And she would start crying. And I would say, you know, you're a college student. This is just, you know, a scooping ice cream. This is a bullshit little job that you're doing to get through college. This is not a big thing. But they're emotional.

Yeah, people. You know, I've been fired from a few jobs, and I actually kind of like it. Where'd you get fired from? It's very freeing. Where'd you get fired from? I got fired from Ann's Coffee Park Diner.

Anne's husband. Anne's husband. Yeah. Shame on him. Yeah. I was a short order cook working in the back there. And, you know, you got your steam table and, you know, somebody... you know, a hot roast beef sandwich. So you open up the refrigerator, you get, you know, the pre-sliced slabs of roast beef out of the refrigerator. You dunk it in this lukewarm water to warm it up.

And, you know, you have your white bread on the platter and you kind of put it on it and put the gravy on top of it. And, you know, we were also doing prep work. And after the lunch rush... There wasn't as much money coming into the cash register, and Anne would turn off half the lights in the kitchen because she wanted to keep her expenses in line with the income.

And I was trying to explain to her that, you know, we're working with sharp knives back here. We'd like to be able to see what we're doing. And this went back and forth, and she would shut off the lights, and I'd turn them back on, and eventually I got fired.

You know, when Trump got elected and when Doge came into being, we were concerned that Doge might overlook the hugest source of waste in the federal budget, which happens to be in the Pentagon budget. you know, these other little slivers are pretty much small potatoes. I mean, you know, there was this big hubbub about USAID, but compared to the Pentagon...

Well, I am one of the, you know, I'm a wealthy person, but I'm against the system that creates such a spread between rich and poor. Why, though? Because poor people are getting screwed. But why, though?

I think USAID is about 5% of the Pentagon budget. The Pentagon represents about half of the federal discretionary budget. So we wanted to make sure that Elon... didn't ignore that and and so we started the doge versus blob.org uh campaign which is kind of on x and it is to uh encourage is this it There it is. It's the Doge, yeah. And you did this? This is you guys? This is us guys. Really?

Yeah, yeah. Sick. This is me and Ed Erickson. And, yeah, if you... So it's Doge. You know who Doge is. Of course. And there's the blob, which is another name for... the whole military-industrial complex, the Pentagon and the war profiteers. And as you can see, the blob has invaded the Capitol.

And if you scroll down, you can win Doge coins for coming up with these memes that refer to the various kinds of waste that are in the Pentagon budget. So there's the facts that slay. So here's the content, and the idea for the contest is to come up with a meme that talks about some of these ridiculous, wasteful items.

Yeah, now that's the small potatoes. You get into nuclear weapons, and we exploded one nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. It killed 100,000 people instantly. and then another 100,000 eventually died from radiation poisoning and sickness. Huge number of people with burns all over their body, amputations, blindness, deafness. That was one nuclear bomb. And today, the arsenal in the U.S., It's huge.

As a matter of fact, I have a little demonstration. Please, go for it. Can I do this? I'm going to show you the size of our nuclear arsenal.

These are BBs, right. I'm going to toss them in this bucket. So here's one BB. That represents... Let me just move this over here so I can... Here's one BB... That represents the bomb that blew up over Hiroshima. And now here's 15 BBs. That would be enough to blow up every major city in, say, Russia. And what I want to do now is show the amount of our total nuclear arsenal.

So that's the equivalent of 50,000 Hiroshima bombs. That is the current explosive capacity of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Not only that, the country is now preparing to spend another $2 trillion on a whole new generation of nuclear weapons. Now that is sick. It's immoral. It's crazy. It's irrational. And it is a huge waste of money and lives. It's unbelievable. And it is just an indicator.

It's a window into the general Pentagon war profiteer mentality that More is better. If one nuclear bomb is good, gobs more must be better. And what really slays me about it is the incredible waste of resources and the effect that it has on our spirits, our soul as a nation, that we're spending time 50% of our discretionary budget on preparing to kill gobs of people.

I mean, the Vatican came out with this statement that the arms race, even if the weapons are never used, kills the poor by causing them to starve. Our Pentagon budget... is $900 billion a year. One of the reasons I got into this is because you talk about a billion, nobody has any conception of how much a billion is. And Ben and Jerry's got up to a level of around $300 million before it got sold.

And I started to understand that, well, a billion is three times the business we were doing. And that amount of money is just unbelievable. And that's just one billion. You know how many years you'd have to live before you lived a billion seconds? plug that into your machine and try. It's about 30. So that's how much a billion is, 30 years of seconds.

And we take 900 billion and we use that preparing to kill people like you and me, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, In other countries who just had the bad luck of being born on some other side of some imaginary line when – I mean I think the US is the richest country in the history of the world.

I think we need to start to measure our strength in terms of how many people we can care for, how much we can improve the quality of life for people as opposed to killing people.

Profit.

I think a lot of it is driven by that. I think another part is driven by politicians who are deathly afraid of being called weak on defense. And a lot of this stuff is kind of complex. It's international relations. How do we know how many aircraft carriers we actually need, et cetera, et cetera.

So what ends up happening is that military strength becomes measured in terms of the size of the Pentagon budget. And politicians try to outdo each other from both parties. This is like the one bipartisan area of agreement over the years. You know, the Democrat says, I'm going to spend X amount on the Pentagon. Well, the Republican says, well, I'll spend a little more.

And then the Democrat says, well, I'll spend a little more. And therefore, they're the strongest on defense. You know, before this, I was doing a little prep work. I saw this quote by Eisenhower, Republican President Eisenhower. What was a four star general, five star general who said that. a country can bankrupt itself in the vain effort to achieve absolute security.

You can't achieve absolute security, but continuing to spend our money, I mean, when you think about how much the size of the deficit, so much of that is driven by... Pentagon expenditures, war expenditures. I mean, you know, what one of the I mean, the major thing that kind of brought me here is Trump's statement that he wants to denuclearize. He wants to work with Trump.

the leaders of Russia and I think now Iran and China to reduce nuclear weapons and that he wants to reduce our Pentagon budget very significantly. I mean he said 50 percent. That makes so much sense. I mean, all these countries, they want to help the people who live in their countries.

And when you're spending so much of your money on just preparing to kill other people and the weapons are so fucking expensive, you should excuse me. Yeah. It just saps everything you've got.

Exactly right. And, you know, the the example that he gave of those washers is really excellent because we all know what a washer costs. But then when you get into things like the F-35 program, a fighter bomber jet that is hugely flawed. You know, it's a little more complex to understand it, but it's the same pricing. It's the same overly inflated prices.

You know, that fighter program, that weapons system costs $1.5 trillion. And it doesn't work. I mean, it's in the shop over 50% of the time. But... What you have going on, the corruption in the Pentagon, is that the generals that are supervising these contracts with the weapons manufacturers, when they retire – They go to work for the weapons manufacturer.

And, you know, they're incentivized to look the other way at all this price gouging.

In terms of the Pentagon budget and in terms of nuclear weapons and in terms of the idea of solving our problems in ways other than killing huge numbers of people. I mean, Trump has said – I want to be clear. There's a shitload of things that I disagree with Trump on. But – There are some things that I do agree with him on.

And he has said that if he were president, there never would have been a war in Ukraine. Do you agree with him? I do. I think that the war in Ukraine was absurd. I think the U.S. provoked it. And by expanding NATO. And I think Russia was essentially saying, you know, the U.S. has a sphere of influence. It happens to be the entire world. Russia wants a little sphere of influence.

You know, don't put, you know, weapons aimed at us in this neighboring country.

You know, there's a very long list.

No.

Yeah.

I think so.

You know, in general, I think a big part of what I believe is that I think there's a real lack of I think there's a lack of honesty.

I don't know. You know, I just think there's a long list of things that he's lied about that I don't have off the tip of my tongue. And I think, you know, I'm... I believe strongly in racial justice, and I don't think that Trump does.

Yeah.

What? This was the first? Yeah. You don't remember that?

Martin Luther King.

Yeah.

Because he was fighting for justice and fighting for people who had been oppressed and screwed. And he was a really inspirational leader.

How is it?

No.

What can I say?

Well, listen, you're missing out, buddy. I was probably reading ice cream books.

But was there anything... I want to know why you're so... I mean, socialism is a word that gets used to refer to a lot of different things.

And... So I think the old or official definition of socialism is that the state owns all the means of production. I mean, I don't favor that.

Marginal tax rate, yeah.

Well, you know, if you had a marginal tax rate of 80% on the millionaires and above... you wouldn't have so many people with so much money that were influencing our elections and our legislation in order to make it better for their own selves. So, yeah, I think that it would certainly decrease the spread between rich and poor.

And I think, you know, I mean, you think about education, you think about child care, you think about health care. Yeah. These are things that, you know, especially things like Medicare for All, it needs to be, some things need to be done by the government.

Because I think both things are true. It doesn't work that way. You know, I mean, I think about my own business. You know, as Ben & Jerry's was getting larger and larger, I was saying, we're wasting all this money. You know, this thing is wrong, that thing is wrong. It's leaking over here. It's, you know, there's something that's not working right over there. I couldn't believe...

I don't think he is.

how much money was being wasted. Okay. And then I came to understand that, yeah, there's some waste in most anything that human beings do. But there's one tricky thing here.

Because I needed to make a profit.

Who's going to be against raising taxes to 80% marginal on incomes over several million dollars?

Why should I give it to you? How many?

There are some functions that government needs to perform. I don't disagree, but not as much money as you want us to give to you. Well, I mean, half the discretionary budget is going to the Pentagon. Let's cut that. You know, I'm not suggesting we totally eliminate all weapons.

You know, I think a lot of what happened is that people were voting for something different. You know, I mean, a lot of times you look at presidential elections and it's choosing between the least worst. And, you know, Trump... I don't regard him really as a Republican.

I don't regard him as a Democrat. I think he's kind of more of an independent. I agree. And I think that's what people want. I agree. They want someone who's not the status quo, not the norm. And the only choice they had was Trump.

We would classify you as a heavy user. We appreciate people like you.

Yeah. You know, I like that painting. I do too. Yeah. You know, what strikes me is Einstein. When you talk about logic, I mean, he said that it is not possible to simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. I think that is really, really true. I mean, the quote goes on to say that

the very energy and resources that are necessary for the prevention of war are actually greater than preparing for war. So if you're going to prevent it, you need to use those resources to prevent it. What? How did you do this? You got telepathy?

I can't.

From my mind to your screen. Man, I love it.

I think it is a genocide. I think it's awful, horrible. To a guy who's... who's getting killed, I don't think it matters whether it's in a gas chamber or because it was a bomb dropped on his head. I don't... I'm just hugely opposed to taking weapons and slaughtering people. It's absurd.

I mean, I'm also hugely opposed to what happened on October 7th with people coming in and slaughtering people in Israel, but... I totally don't believe that it justifies slaughtering an entire population.

I believe the hostages should be released. I do not believe that we should be slaughtering people.

I don't know.

I don't have.

I don't have a solution.

Well, I definitely agree that there are times when you need to make tough decisions as a leader. Do you have kids?

I'm not looking to... I wouldn't say... Return my kid or I'll slaughter thousands of people.

I wouldn't sacrifice my daughter.

I'm not okay with it. You know, I don't know what the solution to the problem is. That's why it's tough. Yeah, it's tough.

I think that there's a form of capitalism that works well. You know, we've always been a capitalistic country. My understanding is that when Reagan took office, the marginal tax rate on the highest level was like 80%.

Well, let me know when you're in town. I will. I didn't get to show you all of my toys. Oh, what is it? Yeah, tell me. What do you got? One of my toys. This is a limited edition. Ben and Jerry's ramp walker. There's no batteries. There's nothing to wind up. It waddles. Let me see if we can hear. I'll set it up for you here. Oh, excuse me. I'm moving.

Go on, guys.

Isn't that cool?

They don't go off. Get out of here. They know. Look at these guys. And it's low-tech. It's not like I've got to censor them. This is crazy.

No, no, no. Wow. You know, when these first came out 20 years ago, 25 years ago, people weren't that crazy about it. But now that everything is all high tech and everything. They like this. Yeah, it's retro. Can I have it? Can you have it? Baby, this is yours. It's got your name on it. Not only that, I'm giving you one that's totally unopened. Oh, you're amazing.

You know, eBay, you know, when your business goes down the tube, you sell that on eBay. You know, we'll get rid of the capital gains tax. Listen, you're amazing.

All right, here's my other toy. What, your pens don't do this?

I mean, you know, you go around selling insurance with this thing. But this one here talks about global military spending. Here's how much the U.S. spends. Here's how much China spends. Here's how much Russia spends. What, they got close-up lens on that fucking thing? Do you see it or no?

Well, whatever. But I mean, that's the idea. That's what kind of makes sense to me. Is to have it at 80%? Well, you know, what is it now?

I think that the system that has created... such disparity between rich and poor, and that's part of it. So, no, I don't think that works. I think a lot of people in this country are being left behind. I think 50% of the country is getting screwed economically. Why, though? Because of laws and regulations that favor wealth. Such as what? You're a rich man. What is there?

There's lower taxes on capital gains, right? But why, though? Those who don't work pay less taxes.

How many figures?

No, I'm eight figures.

I don't need that much money, I can tell you that. Give it away. I give a lot of it away. Give all of it away. Just keep a half a million of it.

I don't know. Because you shouldn't do it. You've earned it. Ben, you worked your ass off. You're a hero. Well, there's a lot of people that are working their ass off. The whole bottom 50% of the country is working their asses off and getting paid shit. What's the difference between them and you? What's the difference between them and me? You know, there's some luck involved.

There was a good idea at the right time.

I come across loads of people that are working really, really hard for really low wages. You know, so, yeah, I had an idea, and, yeah, maybe I'm good at making ice cream flavors, coming up with ice cream flavors. Somebody else is a really good roofer, and they work really hard roofing. Why shouldn't they get paid? You want a roofer to get paid $300 million, $326 million? I'm not saying that much.

All I'm saying is that, you know, what is the minimum wage in the country?

That should be illegal. That's a poverty wage. We shouldn't be in a country whereby you work 40 hours a week full time and you can't afford to have a decent life.

50.

Let me see. So my first one I think was 1998. So it's like every two years since then. So it's probably 13 if you include like midterms. I don't know.

Coming up on the show, a political veteran's guide to election night.

What makes this one special?

It probably is the closest race we've ever covered. If you look at the polls, both nationally and in the states, I just don't think we've ever had a race this close in this many important places in the final days. Usually it gets clearer by the end which way it's going, and it just isn't right now.

We think seven. There's really seven states that are really close and could go either way. It's Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina.

It did take me a minute. I've said them too many times. I mean, one way to think about it, as we do, is there's the blue wall states, they call them, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. And then there's what's kind of loosely called the Sun Belt, and that's North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada.

There is a theory that if Harris is going to win, she's going to win those blue wall states, whereas Trump has a better shot in those other four. But as I said, we're talking about a point either way, everywhere.

Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, there have been past elections where, you know, famously in 1992, James Carville said it was the economy, stupid, and everybody remembers that, right? And then there have been other elections where it was maybe about, you know, post-September 11th in Iraq or one issue really being dominant, right? And what is interesting about this election is there are so many.

So, yeah, it's the economy. It's inflation. But it's also immigration and border security. It's also abortion rights and women's health. It's also the wars in Israel and Ukraine. And you can kind of go on and on. And you could point to any one of those. And if you told me that one issue was the difference, I wouldn't be surprised.

If it's possible to be just as close— Really, the House is the one that's especially close because Republicans have a narrow majority. They're defending a lot of seats. The smartest election analysts really aren't picking a side. They're saying they could see Republicans ending up with a five-seat majority. They could see Democrats ending up with a five-seat majority or even a 10-seat majority.

Kind of frustratingly for us, a lot of the seats that are really competitive are in California and New York, where it takes them a really long time to count. You know, and so if we're all waiting around and we want to know the answer, and here's California saying, it'll be days before we count all these ballots, I think there'll be some frustration. So that's the House.

The Senate is a little different. Republicans do have the edge in the Senate, and it's just because of the map. This year, Democrats happen to be in the position of defending a whole bunch of tough seats, and Republicans aren't. So all Republicans need to do to capture the majority is win a couple seats, and they've got it.

What we wanted to do was pick counties that represented particular demographics. Younger people, older people, large black populations, white working class populations. The idea being if we look at these counties really closely, they might be a sign of how other counties with similar populations are going to vote.

So in other words, and I tell this story a lot, back in 2016, early in the night, some of our colleagues were looking at the Florida numbers coming in, including counties that Trump was supposed to win. And they're like, wow, he was supposed to win this county by 10 or 20 points. He's winning by 40. Like, what's going on here? Something's going on here.

The margins everywhere matter. So we tried to pick counties that would report pretty early in the evening, but would give us clues about what's going to happen later in the night.

Sure. So this is where Austin is, the University of Texas, which has more than 50,000 students. Obviously, it's a blue-leaning place, but it's the kind of place we're going to look at to see what Democratic turnout looks like, Democratic energy.

It might be a clue that other blue places, other college towns, other young places, places where Dems should rack up votes, are going to do really well.

So in 2020, Biden won this county by almost 50%. So, I mean, that's a lot, right? Dems have a big margin here. But in every place, the thing to think about is, is Harris outperforming Biden? Whatever it is, if it's a 10 point for whatever, it's a good sign for Democrats.

Sure. It's on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It's got a lot of senior communities there. So that's where more than a quarter of this population is older, over 65. So needless to say, it's the kind of place that might be indicative of how older voters are going. This is a case where Trump did really well in previous cycles, winning by big double-digit margins.

But we have been looking at the older vote carefully to see if Trump can keep those people or whether some of them might be shifting over to Harris a little bit. And so, again, this is a place where Trump's going to win, no question. But can he win by as much as he won in 2020?

So this is just north of Detroit, and it's a kind of suburban and exurban county that we spend a lot of time thinking about, right? All over the country, suburbs and exurbs seem to be where it's at. And this is one that has leaned toward Trump. For example, in 2016, he won by 12 points. In 2020, he won by eight points. And if you think about the difference there, 2016, Trump won Michigan. Right.

2020, he lost Michigan. Huh. I don't want to say that McComb was the difference, but it certainly made a difference. And this is a state that could be decided by less than a point overall.

It definitely would. If she lost any of these three blue wall states, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania, it just makes her job much harder. She really has to make it up elsewhere. So their strategy is to win these three states.

Pretty good.

Rested, ready. I haven't eaten too much yet.

Oh, boy. So I love Cheez-Its.

I wish I could say we would know quickly. I'm not sure. It could take days again. If people remember from 2020, they may have blocked it out of their minds. It wasn't until Saturday that the election was called for Joe Biden. That was the day Pennsylvania was called. And you remember, you know, that's four days after the election.

What happened last time was that pretty much everything was called by Tuesday and Wednesday. Right. And then we sat around waiting on Thursday and Friday. And then it wasn't until Saturday again where we knew the winner. Now, the twist here is that Trump declared victory days earlier, right? And honestly, I think he will do that tonight, most likely.

And that is my go-to, but usually more in the afternoon than morning.

In either scenario, he'll say that he won or is going to win, even if the races haven't been called. And we did learn a lot in 2020 about how to think about that, how to process it, how to cover it as a news organization. If Trump says he won— But these states haven't been called and they're still close.

We and most of the news media will make clear that even though Trump's saying it, it doesn't mean it's true.

In the count?

I think Pennsylvania is always a bet to hold up. There's a lot of fighting there about voting rules, counting rules, when to open ballots. There's always lawsuits in Pennsylvania. So I think they say that they've modified their procedures to speed things up a bit. But again, it took till Saturday last time.

The other states that have a real history of voting problems and controversies are Arizona and Wisconsin. And I think you'll see a lot of attention on both of those places as they count, too.

What's going through your mind right now? So there's this sort of hurry up and wait part now that we all sit around on and we watch feeds come in from voters and long lines and people saying anecdotal things about turnout, but we also always have to remember that almost none of it means anything.

It was the Saturday early afternoon, I believe.

2016?

2016. That was the morning after, Wednesday morning.

2012?

Oh. 2012, I think, was like 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Whole sections of my brain are devoted to this that should be devoted to other things.

So I don't want to get pinned down too much on one particular time. There's a world where we actually know by Wednesday. Last time, you know, 40-something states had been called by Wednesday. If that doesn't work, I could see it being Thursday. Last time was Saturday. Most experts I know don't think it'll take that long this time. So let's all cross our fingers.

So we do look at all the results as they come in, but even before that, we're luckily enough to subscribe to something called AP Votecast. Basically, AP has been polling thousands and thousands of people for days heading into this election, and then they supplement it with more interviews on election day. And they really try to get a sense of how people are voting, who they're voting for.

They also ask a whole bunch of questions about issues. And we get all that data in the evening, usually before we actually start hearing calls. So even before calls, we can say, wow, look at the suburbs. Look at how women turned out. Look at how Latino men shifted to the Republicans.

There's all these patterns we've been writing about for four years, and we're now going to find out what actually happened.

Yeah, Christmas is all good and fun, though. I can just say that election night is not always quite that good and fun. Fair enough. But it's still a good comparison. And then we're kind of in a holding pattern until the polls start to really close. And, you know, 7 and 7.30 p.m. are really the times we're watching when important states start to close.

Like you can't actually interpret what's going on in the morning and draw out some big conclusion about the night usually, unless there's something really crazy.

Exactly. And, you know, Georgia closing at 7 and North Carolina closing at 7.30, they both had this big early vote that gets reported early. So, in other words, we don't have to wait until the end of the night to see people who voted by mail or voted early. They should get dumped in pretty quick. And so we'll actually have a big chunk of votes to look at.

But what's challenging there and confusing sometimes is the early vote still tends to lean Democratic. Right. So it's possible big chunks of early votes come in in Georgia and you're like, oh, wow, Harris is ahead. But you have to wait for that Election Day vote to catch up, which is going to be more Republican.

Yeah, I would say patience and most importantly, not jumping to conclusions.

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

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His first day on the job, he wrote this letter to employees in which he said that he has a Sonos home system. He watches TV with his Sonos soundbar. And when his daughter was born, he brought another kind of Sonos portable speaker into the delivery room of the hospital. This is a guy who is such a fan of the company's products that he even has a tattoo of Sonos headphones.

So like he is permanently inked with his devotion to Sonos even before he was the CEO of Sonos.

Well, I think that's like the million dollar question for Sonos right now, right?

The first is that these apps that run our lives, they demand constant improvements and they can't have any disruptions. The best updates are the ones that you don't notice. And technology is at its best when it just works, right? When it has that magic, as Steve Jobs used to say. In this case, it just kind of stopped working.

And I think Sonos has sort of rethought its software development process throughout this time. Part of the issue here is that lots and lots and lots of people using Sonos products felt these changes at the same time. And if you had rolled them out in smaller chunks... You could have contained the damage and fixed these issues before they became issues for everyone.

I do listen to music at home. And if I had my choice of what we would listen to, it would probably be a lot of Taylor Swift. But I don't have a choice because I have a three and a half year old daughter. So what I've been listening to a lot of lately is the soundtrack to the movie Cars 2.

I am not a Sonos household. However, I have learned that basically everyone in my life belongs to a Sonos household.

Sonos is known as a premium home audio equipment company, and it really revolutionized home audio by creating this ecosystem of smart audio products that work seamlessly with each other. And in fact, when I talk to Sonos users, the company that often comes to mind is Apple.

Like, if you're an Apple user, if you have an iPhone, probably you have a MacBook or you have an iPad, and you want to be able to control all of it within that same ecosystem.

And people who own Sonos products don't just own one Sonos product. The average Sonos household owns three products. So maybe that's a speaker with a soundbar under the TV or a portable speaker that they can bring on the road or headphones. I mean, there are a lot of people who own, like, lots of Sonos products because they need speakers in each room of the house.

And when your three-and-a-half-year-old daughter is listening to Cars 2 in her bedroom, you might want to listen to Taylor Swift in another room.

Right.

Basically, everybody noticed right away, like the very first day, in part because it was pretty hard not to notice. Sonos users couldn't use basic features of their speakers. They couldn't access their own audio systems. It was almost as if these speakers had become like sleekly designed bricks.

Very, very expensive bricks. And what actually happened with the app kind of depends on the user. Some found that it was like missing essential features of the old app, like the ability to edit playlists on the fly or set alarms for when they should wake up in the morning. Some people found entire libraries of music were just suddenly inaccessible to them.

Speakers that vanished from their audio systems in the middle of a song. That basic promise of being able to control music in a room suddenly wasn't being fulfilled. And for most Sonos users, regardless of the experience they were having, the product basically just became worse overnight.

The chief product officer at the time defended it as courageous to do this, like because, you know, they were releasing this new app and it would have been easy to just keep going the way they were going. But they felt that this was like a necessary change that they had to make for the future of the company.

In a very, very big way. So the company has said that it has cost at least $100 million in revenue. And the company had to delay two product launches last year as it was dealing with the fallout of this botched app release and the bungled response to it. So that's $100 million in revenue.

Sonos released an app that was supposed to be their most extensive app redesign ever. And it kind of turned into their most expensive app redesign ever.

it was so buggy that it turned into one of the most disastrous software updates in the recent history of consumer technology, which I know sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but it's kind of not.

They replaced the CEO, Patrick Spence, with a guy named Tom Conrad, who was already on Sonos' board. But he's someone with extensive experience in product design, software, and music platforms, having been the chief technology officer of Pandora for 10 years. He's also something of a Sonos geek. He really, really cares about the product. In fact...

That's all for today, Sunday, June 1st. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Special thanks to Kelly Clark. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

and you can watch the interview as a video episode on Spotify enjoy

I believe, I mean, I want to defer to Global Tetrahedron CEO, Bryce Tetrader, who said we would boil it down to one omnivitamin that the CEO will be able to eat to gain immortality. I think that's probably the best way of handling it. We don't really have a second idea yet. I don't know what to do with a warehouse full of supplements, but we're going to figure it out.

It is a very silly thing, and I obviously never anticipated having to deal with this, but look, if you know a supplement guy, give me a call.

Oh, I'm not funny enough for that. But, like, look, the way the world's, I mean...

uh we're gonna have a world by january 2025 so um let's just let's pray we get there see how it goes and then if we get there um we'll have a very pretty and very nice website to show you with uh some of the most unhinged sentences you'll ever read great um any any final thoughts from either of you before we let you go i think that just to underscore the bottom line here is uh if i've ever seen a case of poetic justice this is it for alex jones

The supplement offer is real. If you know a guy, just give me a ring. Okay.

You know, in June, we saw it was for sale and we thought like, man, wouldn't it be funny if The Onion bought in for us? And it was just like a bit in our head. Trust me, we say, wouldn't it be funny all the time? But then I was like, but I think we can do this. Like, I knew the family's lawyers. I used to be a disinformation reporter. So I knew some of the family's lawyers and I gave them a ring.

I was like, what's the deal? Like, what's going on here? What's exactly the process here? And then I started to realize like, maybe we can actually do this. And I started to call around internally in the office and people in the larger Onion alumni group, which is like every great comedy writer in America. And we started NDA-ing people and being like, what would we do if we got this thing?

And their ideas were insane. They were incredible and like beautiful ideas.

Like even beyond the first initial joke, which I think everybody thinks, you know, this would be the funniest thing that ever happened. How do we sustain that?

Yeah, I mean, that's what we wanted it to be. We wanted people to wake up and be like, wait, I can get a push alert that's not the worst thing in the world. I can get a push alert that's like, oh my God, a nice thing happened on the planet. So we just wanted people to feel that way. This is Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion.

Yeah, I mean, it's obvious. It's trying to put on the affect of a real news organization.

He has tried to take these ideas that mass shootings are writ large false flags done by the government to take away your guns, that these victims of shootings aren't real, sometimes that they never existed, that they're actors or whatever, which is this double whammy of grief that these people in America, and really only America, have to go through right now.

They are the families of the victims of shootings, first have to deal with the most horrific thing that's ever happened to them, and then have to be visited by this wave of awfulness. And he managed to, for several years, legitimize himself. And what we can do as The Onion is bring it back to where it should be, which is farce and, like, lunacy.

And also, more importantly than anything else, we can build something on top of it.

Alex Jones is this is a guy who has spent his whole life trying to legitimize some pretty awful ideas through the veneer of the news. He's going to keep doing this like that's just the way it is. But we can interrupt him and also we can get one over on him. I think like

That's why we did it. Like, it has a lot of different reasons for doing it. You know, we took over this company seven, eight months ago now. And since then... The Onion, you took over, yeah. And what we've been able to do is bring back the newspaper and... We've been shocked by the response by it. We send you a physical newspaper in the mail once a month, and people love getting it.

It's really nice. We've been, like, really, like, blown away about the support. How many subscribers does The Onion have? We have, I would say now, two arenas full of people. Like, we have a lot of people.

Yeah, we're really excited. We have this moment where media is so balkanized and everybody has their own little cult armies. We're going to go after that. We're going to find a way in the onion's own way to tackle this really weird and incredibly siloed media environment that we have.

I think you'll see. They are building a universe right now where I think there's a world in which if you were in a coma yesterday and you were an InfoWars fan and you woke up in January, you'd be like, oh, it's a little bit different, but I can see it. I think that's what it is. And look, man, we have, I do want to say, like, ever since this news came out,

Every great comedy mind in the country has reached out to us asking how they can help and asking if they can write synonymously for us. And there is a wide open blank canvas here that a lot of comedy writers have wanted to play in this space, but only at the quality bar that The Onion can provide. So that's what we're going to do.

When most people read this news yesterday, they looked at their phone for the first time in a while, potentially, and was like, huh, something good happened? Something funny happened? That's what we wanted to do. And at the end of the day, that's the reaction we want to have from people. And also, we also get to build this world.

The Onion is the very best place at going at the heart of the absurdities of American life. And there's nothing more absurd than this.

Well, I think the most important thing here is the onion is the diametric opposite of InfoWars. InfoWars is trying as hard as possible to convince you that a fake thing is real. And we're trying as hard as possible to convince you a real thing is fake. That's basically the difference here. And I can tell you, you know, I used to be a disinformation reporter.

I was for the last decade of my life before I took this job. And there's only so many facts you can show people before that are inconvenient and might not help their life before they might slink off into news that feels better to them, news in quotes that feels better to them, but isn't actually true, you know?

The 6,000 word features I used to write about like cults that had websites, they were beautifully constructed and really good and well edited. And, you know, who knows what impact they made. But a joke that lands that's like a joke that's 10 words long that lands, that might have more outsized impact than anything else.

Yeah, we want to fight fear and like we want to show what's happening. And the only real way to get to them that way is to be funny. Like you can scold them all you want. You can do the hardest hitting feature of all time. But I'm here to tell you like the best way to get to people is to be like, isn't it kind of silly that you used to believe this?

Right. You know, starting with the end of the Cold War, there was a promise made to Russia that kind of in exchange for, I think it was taking down the wall in Germany, that Russia we're not going to expand NATO eastward. And I think it was James Baker, the Secretary of State that made that promise. And then we proceeded to expand it eastward. There was one tranche of countries

And Russia was up in arms and they objected in the most strenuous language. But we did it. And then we added more countries a bunch of years later. And Russia was up in arms, objected in the most strenuous language. And, you know, there might have been a few more. And then there was... a statement that Ukraine was going to become part of NATO. And Russia objected in the most strenuous language.

And I think about it a lot in terms of, you know, all these refugees, immigrants that are trying to get to the U.S. And why are they trying to get to the U.S.? A lot of times it's because the U.S. at some point in history overthrew or invaded their government or Well, I'll tell you what Smedley says here. Can I quote? Please. So he says, I spent 33 years and four months in active military service.

And then Russia started gathering some troops on the border and again said in the most strenuous language that we will not tolerate having Ukraine part of NATO. We want to negotiate. They sent overtures to the US. I think the US did not respond. We ignore you if we don't like you. We don't talk to you if we don't like you. And then they invaded.

And, you know, I don't think they anticipated that they were going to end up in a proxy war with the United States. And what's crazy about it, what drives me crazy is that This is war. War. I mean, we're, you know, I'm shooting my machine gun at you. You're dying. You're dead. Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides have died in this war. For what?

I mean, eventually the war is going to be over and there's going to be some settlement. And why can't we just skip to that stage?

I really do think that's what it's about. You know, that's what Smedley Butler came up with. I mean, you read the whole rest of his book, and he says at the end, you know, these anti-war protesters, they're really good people. But you're never going to stop the military industrial congressional complex until you take the profit out of it.

That's what's driving all this shit is the profit that these corporations are making on making weapons, which are more and more lethal.

Yeah. Which is bullshit. I'm not pro Putin. I'm not pro Zelensky. I'm pro peace. I'm pro ceasefire. I'm pro stop killing each other.

No.

No, my view hasn't changed, and Bernie's views certainly haven't changed. I've been listening to him for a long time. I tell you, it is the same freaking speech. People say you should change your speech. He says, when the country finally acts in a decent way, I'll change my speech.

Yeah, it really split, I guess, people. I mean, you're talking about people on the left. I guess we could talk about people on the left. I mean, anti-war people in general.

Yeah, I think there's people like that on the left, right, and center.

And during that period, I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. Butler wrote in 1955. Then he goes on, in short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for national city bank boys to collect revenues.

Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying. Right. So. So some of that group is, you know, behind Ukraine. Let's defend Ukraine. And some of that group is saying, no, we shouldn't be involved in this war. You know, I think the people who are saying, let's defend Ukraine, I can certainly understand it from their point of view.

And their point of view is that Russia made an unprovoked invasion and Russia therefore started this war and they're trying to take over this country and we should defend that country. Yeah. But people don't understand what led up to it.

I mean, as a matter of fact, with the Eisenhower Media Network, this group of retired admirals, generals, and colonels, we took out a full-page ad in the New York Times at the very beginning of that war.

calling for a ceasefire and the the headline of the of the ad was supposed to be the u.s provoked the war in ukraine and the new york times would not allow us to run it as an ad they would not allow us to use that headline why but it's an ad right it Doesn't seem right. But I mean, so that was on that thing.

Yeah. War fever? I mean, the reality is that you can kind of control what the population thinks by the information that you give to them. So, you know, the U.S., is propagandizing its own people. You know, every country does that. But You know, there's a lot of sins of omission in terms of the news that people get. And you never hear Russia's point of view. I mean, it's amazing to me.

You know, they wouldn't let us hear what Osama bin Laden was saying after, you know, 9-11. I noticed. I mean... They don't let us hear what the people in China are saying. I mean, you know, so I dug around. A friend of mine sent me, you know, a speech by the defense minister of China, and he's saying – We're not looking to be enemies with the U.S.

We're looking to develop our country and grow, and we can peacefully coexist together. The world is big enough for both of the U.S., but— And the explicit policy of the United States, if you read these, I mean, I don't know, what the hell is this ice cream guy doing reading these national security documents? I don't know. But anyhow, I read them. Yeah. It is the policy of the U.S.

to maintain hegemony. And I didn't know what that word meant. But it's the policy of the U.S. that if any country begins to develop economically or socially, you know, toward the level that the U.S. is at, that is that country is by definition an enemy. The policy of the U.S. is that we must have full spectrum dominance.

And why should five percent of the world control what's going on in the world?

I helped in the raping of a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 to 1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.

Right.

Well, originally, during the Cold War and after, there was the Center for Defense Information, which was a home for retired high-level military officers that were critical of the Pentagon. And that organization kind of fell on hard times and kind of twittered away. So

myself and a veteran, Danny Serson, decided to start up the Eisenhower Media Network as a home for higher level former military people to use their credibility on the issue of critiquing the Pentagon. Because what usually happens when you

critique the Pentagon is that you don't have the the credentials you know you say that well the Pentagon is doing this weird thing or that screwed up thing and you know and then the and then the Pentagon you know general gets up there in uniform with all his medals and stuff and says You know, those guys have no idea what they're talking about. I'm the military expert.

So the idea of Eisenhower Media Network is to have those military experts that can support a different point of view than what the Pentagon is putting out.

You know, those guys are in the media sometimes, but they're certainly not in the media, despite our efforts, as much as the former high-level military guys that are now being paid by weapons manufacturers. I mean, so they're brought on these TV shows, TV talk shows, as experts, And they're never identified as in the employ of essentially war profiteers. That's actually happened?

That's really... And it's not revealed.

Larry Wilkerson. He was a former assistant to Colin Powell. I remember him well. Matt Ho, Dennis Fritz was, he was the head of Space Force actually for a while. Are these older guys, younger guys? We have a range, I'm happy to say.

Yeah. I mean, especially for the guys with even more stars.

In China in 1927, I helped set it up so that Standard Oil went on its way unmillested. Looking back on it, I feel I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.

And you get paid by the corporations whose contracts you were supposedly supervising when you were in uniform.

Never. Never. I mean, the conflicts of interest that go on in terms of our government are, you know, would be illegal in a publicly held corporation.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Huh.

Well, they're driven by profit. Sometimes they're driven by politicians not wanting to appear so-called weak on defense. Right. And the only way we judge whether a politician is weak on defense or not is is how much money they are willing to give to the Pentagon.

So you have two politicians that are running for election, and usually they're trying to out-compete the other guy in terms of who's willing to raise the Pentagon budget, because I'm strong on defense. And and that's so this is like the one area of bipartisan agreement. Let's give more and more money to the Pentagon.

And, you know, there's this other aspect of so-called political engineering that, uh, you know, earlier, uh, you know, I don't know, back in the nineties, I guess, uh, you know, military contractors, uh, would these weapons manufacturers would deliberately spread out the jobs for a particular weapon system in as many congressional districts as possible. And so, you know, that that creates jobs.

And, you know, the politician from that area that that's what they you know, that gives them a lot of credit. Of course, I brought jobs to my district. And so. you know, for say the F 35, you know, it's probably made in over 400, uh, you know, congressional districts.

And, uh, you know, if you say some, you know, if you try to say this is a shitty airplane, which, you know, John McCain said it was the worst thing he ever saw. Uh, you can't stop it because they've politically engineered it. And, uh, so if you, uh, I don't know. That's kind of how it works.

I don't remember.

Well, the body did. Yeah. The body cop.

Uh, and, and, and there were a bunch that disagreed, uh, you know, I, I actually have my, my wife, uh, was born in Kyrgyzstan, uh, which is one of the countries that the U that, that the Soviet union had kind of taken over. Uh, she's never lived in Russia, but she's a Russian speaker.

And, uh, She lost some friends because of the stand that I took against that war in Ukraine. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I think for countries that live, you know, that are located around the borders of the Soviet Union, countries that had been invaded by the Soviet Union.

Right. They are really down on Russia. For sure. And and they're very down on on socialism and they're very down on and they and they believe, you know, they have a history. They've they've been invaded and they're scared that, you know, that they're going to get invaded.

Yeah.

And, you know, their feeling is, you know, if we just let Russia go and have its way with Ukraine, that, you know, they're going to be next. Of course.

and i i don't i don't think there's any truth to that i think you know clearly uh putin is not doing very well you know invading one country i don't think he's looking to go no invade another one he already runs the biggest country in the world so yeah no i uh i agree with that it's not you know praise of putin to note that there's no evidence he he wants territorial expansion at all

Yeah, very much.

That's interesting. Uh, cause a lot, I don't, I don't really remember any politicians being on our side.

Yeah.

Maybe because there was so much public kind of empathy for the people in Ukraine. And I think that a lot of it has to do with... what what information do people have yes the the only information people had is russia came in and and invaded with its army yes and they didn't hear what happened before what led up to it uh and they didn't think about uh you know which this ad that we ran did

What would the U.S. do if there were Russian missiles lined up along the Mexican border aimed at the U.S.? I mean, it is the same situation. Of course it is. And I've got no question that the U.S.

Yeah, but he told the truth.

I think that those actions that the U.S. has done over the years back in his time and pretty much continues to do, to essentially run the world in a way that benefits the elites in the United States,

Uh... I've just been following the issue over time since the fall of the, you know, since the end of the Cold War.

You know, so, yeah, so where do I get the information? Well, the stuff about the committee to expand NATO, that was in the mainstream press.

Yeah. And, you know, you think about, you know, most people. It's kind of a luxury to have the time to pay attention to an issue like this. I mean, most people are, you know, focused on the day to day, you know, just trying to get through the day. And, you know, the messages that you get are essentially the messages that the government wants you to get.

We were supposed to have freedom of the press, but I mean, even, even when there, I guess even when there was a free press, it, it was still very controlled. I mean, so I say there was a free press, not, not that free, uh, You know, there's the I think a lot of times the press is self censoring.

Yeah, I don't think you can. I mean, now, you know, with the with the Internet, I mean, you could say that there is free access, but. you really need to kind of dig. And, you know, you get a very different perspective if you read the news in the U.S. versus if you read the news in some other country in the world, you know, talking about the same situation. So we get a U.S.-centric view.

Yeah. Yeah.

ends up causing a lot of resentment, ends up being the cause of a lot of wars, ends up being the cause of a lot of immigration and people trying to flee countries that are economically or politically unlivable. And if you go back to the root causes, you find out that there were some great liberation struggles in these countries, and the U.S. was on the other side. Yes.

Yes, there are well-done, rigorous studies on that issue. You look at the line of what do regular old people in the country want, versus what does the country do, and they're not congruent very much. Then you look at the line of what do the elites want, what do the really wealthy people and corporations want, and what does the country do, and it's much more aligned.

Yeah, well, I was never really a fashion maven. But this is anti-fashion.

Uh... Do I want – well, I don't know. It's about standing up for what you believe in. I mean, I'm for a ceasefire. I'm for... You know, you would think most people would be in favor of a ceasefire. I mean, we don't want to keep on killing people. I'm not a Putin supporter. I'm not a Zelensky supporter. I'm a supporter of not... not killing each other and not using our resources to,

to have actual wars, to supply weapons for wars, or to settle our problems through that means. I mean, it just, why can't we cut to the chase and assume the war's over and have a negotiated settlement? Why do we have to kill a few hundred thousand mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters?

No. I think they've heard that we've been close, but they don't have the details.

I think, uh, most people involved in the process are not, uh, are, are playing little roles in the process. They're just trying to do their small part well. Yes. And, uh, They're not, you know, they're not looking at the bigger picture. Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

Yeah.

Larry Wilkerson, Jeff Sachs. Yes. I guess those are the two that come to mind.

It sounds like we're kind of headed toward war.

Well, there seems to be some kind of strange relationship between Israel and the U.S. where, I don't know, Israel now has the U.S., supplying weapons for its genocide and and what i'm told is that israel wants some concept of greater israel i mean i don't really know much about that uh do you think the us faces a threat from iran No, I don't. No, I think that's absurd.

I think, you know, Iran has a Pentagon budget. Well, not a Pentagon. Their military budget is like $7 billion. Our Pentagon budget is darn close to a trillion. So... I don't think that, I mean, what, is Iran going to invade the U.S.? I don't think so.

No. How about you?

Uh, it's more on the issue of, um, kind of the spirit and the soul of our country. You know, there was a Pope who said that even if the weapons are never used, the arms race kills the poor by causing them to starve. I'm amazed at how much money the United States has We have a shitload of money.

Yeah. We have enough money to solve health problems for people in our country and all over the world. We have enough to... And hunger in our country and all over the world. We have enough to get rid of lead poisoning. The gargantuan-ness of the amounts of money that we have, you can't fathom it. And we're choosing to spend it on...

creating more and better ways to kill more and more people it's such an incredible waste it's uh you know i i believe that we are all interconnected as we help others we actually help ourselves uh and All this money that's going into the Pentagon is sucking money out of things that people really want and need. It could be improving your libraries, your schools, your sports arenas.

It could be paying for college for your kids, trade school for your kids. You have a better car. I mean, what is it that, what do people want? It's not more weapons.

And our country needs to start measuring its strength by how many people it can help as opposed to how many people it can kill. And I would say it would actually make our country more secure.

right. I I've heard politicians say that, yeah, this is great, man. We're, we're, we're employing our people. We're, we're keeping our weapons production lines humming and we're degrading the, uh, military of our enemy, Russia. And it is such, uh, sacrilegious reasoning. Uh, You need to think about our spirit and our soul, what it means to be an American.

You know, right now, what it means to be American is that we are the world's largest arms exporter. We have the largest military in the world. We support the slaughter of people in Gaza. If somebody protests the slaughter of people in Gaza, we arrest them. What does our country stand for? I don't know. I mean, you know, people say the budget is a moral document.

See where you're spending your money and that's what your values are. It hurts me to say that the values of our country seem to be military domination. Well, that's it.

yeah i think that's really true uh the way a lot of people see it is you know this this little country ukraine got invaded by this big giant russia uh but i think what you need to understand is what provoked uh that war and how it could have been prevented um You know, at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. made promises to Russia that they're not going to expand NATO eastward.

well part of what got me uh interested in this issue is that you know you talk about these large numbers like uh 300 million uh 500 million a billion uh a hundred billion 800 billion. Nobody has any idea what the size of that is. It's just like more money than you could ever imagine.

And so when Ben & Jerry's was sold, it came up to a level of $300 million in sales. Wow. And so I started having a feeling for how much money that is. And then I realized that three times that, that's about a billion. And so I vaguely got a handle on what quantity that is. And, you know, a billion is... An unfathomably large number.

If you counted every second since you were born, you would be 32 years old before you'd lived a billion seconds. It is a lot of seconds. And that's just one billion. So the Pentagon budget is now a trillion, a thousand billion. You know, when you in Pentagon speak. Well, I don't know. It's a few aircraft carriers. It's another fighter jet, generation of fighter jets, whatever, whatever.

But in regular speak. Here's a good example. I wrote it down because I thought you might be asking. There was recently a fighter jet that fell off an aircraft carrier. So it was a $70 million fighter jet. So, you know, that sounds kind of dramatic that, you know, $70 million fighter jet fell off an aircraft carrier. But if you think about the Pentagon budget as a box of Cheerios,

that $70 billion would be one 10th of one cheerio, which is enough money. If you take it out of the Pentagon to build two new hospitals in West Virginia. So what's crumbs to the Pentagon.

Well, I think that the only lever that works is public opinion. So I'm in the process of starting up a campaign, which is called Common Sense Defense at the moment. We're going to get a flashier name later, but right now it's Common Sense Defense. That's pretty flashy. Thank you. Common sense defense. Yeah. Be a nice change. And and it is a campaign that's aimed just directly at the public.

We're not trying to lobby Congress. We're not trying to influence that. We're trying to change public opinion in terms of. um what we want our government to be spending its money on or at least not spending its money on excessive uh weapons uh yeah so yeah i believe i believe that the the thing that can change it and you know and this is from

my experience of my time going around lobbying on congress in on capitol hill uh about this issue uh you know i think that's hopeless uh i mean i think all we can do is we think it's hopeless to lobby the congress yeah you know hopeless for a guy who's not handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars

did what was your experience you actually went to washington i went to washington i talked to those politicians you know they smile and they say nice things and they take a picture and then they uh and then they just vote and rubber stamp whatever pentagon bill comes in because they don't want their opponent to call them weak on defense so there were none that you would trust I wouldn't say that.

And then we proceeded to expand NATO eastward. As a matter of fact... The government was not going to do that until the weapons manufacturers set up this committee to expand NATO, which was essentially the CEOs of the weapons manufacturers lobbying Congress to expand NATO. So, I mean, geez, if you're a weapons manufacturer and you expand NATO, they're going to buy a lot of your stuff, right?

You know, I think I think there's a guy, you know, there's there. No, I wouldn't say there's none. I mean, I think there's I don't know. Twenty, thirty.

Uh, I wasn't, I don't really know about that. I mean, I didn't, I wasn't conscious of that myself. I mean, I know that, uh, you know, for, I know, I know that for some Democrats, you know, anything that Trump supports, they don't. Yeah. Uh, but I'm not aware of that as being an issue with re related to the Ukraine war.

Yeah, I really do.

I'm mostly driven by... you know, just a concern for people. I mean, I don't, in terms of a spiritual belief, I mean, I don't practice a religion. I was born a Jew. I love Jesus Christ. I think the words that he said are

wonderful are are amazing uh and uh you know i'm i'm kind of distressed that uh a lot of organized christian religions are not really um i don't know abiding by the words of jesus christ uh i am too I'm friends with a guy named Shane Claiborne, who's a theologian and he, you know, a Christian. Well, he calls himself a red-letter Christian, and he's got a group called red-letter Christians.

There's other theologians.

Exactly. And, you know, he lives and works in an inner city, Philadelphia, in a really low-income area. And he's, you know, that's his work. He's working to help people there. But, yeah, I think if we could follow the words of Jesus Christ and take, you know, think about the Sermon on the Mount. you know, take his word seriously, we wouldn't be doing the stuff we're currently doing. No.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the same way that, you know, the United States says that, uh, what, here's our sphere of influence. Uh, you know, I remember learning about this in, uh, was it elementary school or middle school? Uh, that, uh, the Monroe doctrine, uh, uh, It's our divine right from God. To control our hemisphere. To control our hemisphere. And it sounded crazy to me then.

And, you know, I can see making sure that there's not enemies right on your borders. But in terms of controlling the whole hemisphere, I don't buy it. And the U.S. has now expanded its sphere of influence to include the entire world. I mean, it's amazing. We have military commands that cover every portion of the globe. And we have 800 military bases around the world.

You know, when I was growing up, you know, I heard we had a bunch of overseas bases. I figured, you know, that's cool. You know, every country must have overseas bases. And then, you know, I find out that the country who has the next most overseas bases has like five. I mean, it's the U.S., That is using its military power to control the world.

And the fact of the matter is that the United States is 5% of the world population. So having 5% dominate the world militarily, that doesn't sound democratic to me.

No, I think it's incredibly harmful to the United States. First of all, we're making a lot of enemies. People don't like us being the big bully on the hill telling all these other countries what to do. And it sucks a huge amount of money out of our country. It's stuff that can be used for things that people really want and need.

uh you know you could we could have more affordable housing we could we could make it so that p so that the american dream could actually still happen that people could afford a house uh that you can get a decent education And that you can get childcare, that it doesn't have to cost you so much money to go to college. I mean, these things can all be done.

And, you know, most other developed countries are providing that for their citizens. But the US chooses to spend. I mean, look at this. This is a chart of the federal discretionary budget. That's the amount of money that Congress has each year to allocate to the various departments. So the big red one on top. that gets over half, that's the Pentagon.

And these little slivers are like USAID, the education department, the health department, community development, whatever else the country does. But in terms of stuff that would actually be helpful to people living in their daily lives, it's all sucked out by the Pentagon. you know, Martin Luther King gave this speech and he talked about, uh,

the pentagon being this huge demonic sucking tube that sucks out the the lifeblood of things like housing schools you know you're you know everybody's school budget is always you know in the red or you know can't raise enough money gotta gotta get rid of teachers or whomever but i think that's when they shot him is when he said that the race stuff was fine

He was assassinated a year to the day after he made that speech.

that seems it seems a little bit crazy that weapons manufacturers would be allowed to dictate foreign policy because the conflict is so obvious well it's just money you know so they're lobbying they're uh they're they're giving political donations to the uh legislators legalized bribery and uh yeah it's definitely a conflict of interest

Yeah.

It's a little weird. Yeah. I mean, and they keep on justifying these huge expenditures by coming up with enemy after enemy after enemy. So, you know, first it was the Soviet Union. So the Soviet Union collapsed. And I mean, Gorbachev said at the time, we will deny you of an enemy.

And, you know, I assumed that the Pentagon budget was going to, you know, drop hugely because that was the whole justification for it. But what the pentagon did was that they came up with what was called the two war scenario so now instead of the pentagon budget being structured to uh defeat the soviet union

Well, I've been kind of inspired by this quote of his. I think he encapsulates what's been going on in terms of how our military has been used. You know, he's been there, done that.

Now what they said is it needs to be structured to fight two medium-sized wars in two different places at the same time. And what do you know, that's going to cost just as much as we were spending on preparing to fight the Soviet Union. Who are the wars going to be with? Well, I think at the time there was the Axis of Evil. What was that? Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba, probably another one.

Right, and they wanted to be our friend. I mean, I was walking on the Arbat in Moscow. People were joyful, and they were all wearing these pins that showed a U.S. flag crossed with a Soviet flag. They wanted to be friends. Why didn't that happen? Because our... Cold warriors who for their whole life, you know, fighting the Soviet Union, that's what they were about.

They wanted to continue the Cold War. They wanted to continue having Russia as this enemy.