Is It Illegal To Make Elon Musk Sad

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:45 Thomas: Welcome to Opening Arguments. This is episode 1058. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. That over there is real-life attorney, Matt Cameron. How you doing, Matt?

0:00:52 Matt: Am fantastic. I might just have a monopoly on good feelings today. Know, you I mean it when I say that I'm feeling good today because I've been listening to Neil Gorsuch's book for the last 24 hours, and I still feel feel good after listening to that.

0:00:57 Thomas: Wait, boy. Sorry, let me adjust my intro. That over there, is attorney and avid Gorsuch reader. You've been a book that he, I guess, wrote that sorry. I didn't even catch that. I really, that's over ruled.

0:01:13 Matt: Called overruled. There are two words, get it? Because we're ruling too much. There's too much law.

0:01:20 Matt: Yeah, it's not good. Yeah. I guy mean, is not clever or creative in

0:01:26 Thomas: That would be my first try at a name. And then I'm sure someone at a publishing place or something would be cool. Yeah, no, we're not using that, but it's like a good thought.

0:01:34 Matt: To give you an idea of the level of humor we're dealing with, did you know that it's illegal legal to sell mattresses without warning tags.

0:01:40 Thomas: Mean, I would assume it would be, otherwise they would, that would mean they would have been voluntarily putting 150 tags on their mattresses for all this time. Like, yeah, I would, I would imagine that it was regulations that probably led to that.

0:01:52 Matt: Of the dumbest, oldest law jokes. So I thought this thing is actually so much fun to read that it should actually be a lot awful book. Have you ever done one of those?

0:01:59 Thomas: Yo, I, I actually think we might have, but I don't remember what it was, but either way, we'll.

0:02:05 Matt: Time.

0:02:05 Thomas: Can't wait, it is so much work to make you do to read, even if the book was like 10 pages, I'd be like, that's unreasonable for to make you go through that. But how long is this freaking thing, okay?

0:02:16 Matt: It's seven hours and 27 minutes on Audible. That's all I know. So that's a lot. But yeah.

0:02:19 Thomas: That's A, that's Short -ish Book, it's not, it's like super short, but It's not

0:02:22 Matt: And it's not a legal treatise. It's just, it's a series of stories that he tells, of course, with the wrong facts, but we'll get into it.

0:02:22 Thomas: Oof Right, Mat, well, I can't wait to get into everybody's favorite, um, incredibly condescending Justice Gorsuch. Uh, this break, which of course you can avoid if you go to patreon.com/law, and ad free episodes and also a lot awful books. That would be where you would find that. So after this break, we'll get to it.

0:02:47 Matt: Do it. I do want to talk about Neil Gorsuch for a minute because he was just on Fox News threatening Joe Biden. And I thought maybe we should listen to that.

0:02:56 Thomas: Good, I was, I was hoping we would cover this. All right, let's play it. Wait.

0:03:00 Clip: The president has proposed now changes to the court, supported, it appears, by the vice president, who looks like she's going to be the Democratic nominee. How does the court feel about potential changes, term limits, ethics codes that are enforced by someone in ways that it isn't now? Shannon, you're not going to get into what is now a political issue during a presidential election year. I don't think that Would be helpful. I have one unthought. Thought. It is that the independent judiciary means, what does it mean to you as an American? It means that when you're unpopular you can get a fair hearing under the law and under the Constitution. If you're in the majority you don't need judges and juries to hear you and protect your rights. You're popular. It's there for the moments when, when the spotlight's on you, when the government's coming after you, and don't you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions, isn't that you're right as an American? And so I just say, be careful. Hey.

0:03:25 Matt: But no,

0:04:15 Thomas: Does it affect the fact that we want courts and judges to be mindful of like minority rights and stuff like that, if there's like term limits? How does that, I don't understand the connection between the rambling he did and the be careful part.

0:04:29 Matt: Then you're going to love his book. There's a lot of that.

0:04:31 Thomas: If you like not knowing what the hell he's talking about, try more of his words.

0:04:37 Matt: Yeah, no, it really, I don't understand it either. And let me just remind everybody what he's talking about are three proposals, very modest proposals that the Biden administration has put out on July 29th. And, he just wants to put out the idea, of course, he can't actually do any of those, but the idea of reforming a few things, just a few very simple things. The first is an amendment to the United States Constitution. No problem, right? That is to overrule the Supreme Court's immunity decision to make sure that the Constitution does not confer any immunity from federal criminal indictment, trial, conviction, or sentencing by virtue of previously serving as president. So just trying to undo what Roberts did there. That will be called the no one is above the law amendment. That's one of the things he's responding to here.

Other proposal was term limits in which the president would appoint a new justice every two years to serve for 18 years. I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but Neil Gorsuch obviously is. And the third one, the one that I think is really getting to him, is a binding enforceable code of conduct, which of course would also require an act of Congress. None of these things are going to happen, but they're nice ideas. And it's pretty modest. There's nothing too extreme about any of this.

But Fox own headline says, Supreme Court Justice Sends Chilling Warning to the Biden Administration. I can't even imagine what he's actually threatening here. Is he going to rule against the Biden administration? Because I feel like he's doing that a lot already.

0:04:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:05:50 Thomas: I the idea that this is in any way related to minority rights is just the funniest part to me, like all

0:05:55 Matt: Oh, and his book too. Because the counter -majoritarian idea is something that I I really support. I think that the Supreme Court should be taking careful looks at people who are not getting representation in society. But yeah, just to hide behind that the way he does. And

0:06:09 Thomas: They have done for the past couple years is explicitly the opposite of that. The only way his bullshit makes any sense is if the group he's talking about is white Christians and he thinks they're like, "Wow, they're not popular." So it's our job to make sure that the Voting rights Rights Act gets repealed and that religious clause no longer means anything. It's just the opposite of what he's saying.

0:06:14 Matt: Sure. Right? Absolutely.

0:06:31 Thomas: It's so disingenuous.

0:06:31 Matt: Yeah. And this is the guy who called COVID restrictions the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. This is somebody who consistently holds in favor of employers every time there's an employer-employer dispute, especially when he's a 10th Circuit justice. There was that case where he found that a truck driver who drove off with his truck who was freezing to death and should have just stayed there and frozen to death. Is somebody, again, at this point, I think it's safe to call an arch-conservative. From the last term I just checked, he was most in agreement with Clarence Thomas. That was the justice he was siding with the most and with Kavanaugh the year before that.

0:06:32 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Gross.

0:07:02 Matt: Yeah. Yeah I know. He also, I will point out, just the idea of a sitting Supreme Court justice going on Fox News to talk about anything to me is pretty distasteful. I went back and checked because I was curious. And Scalia did at one point in 2013 go on Fox. Thomas himself went on in 2019. But otherwise, that's the only justice I could find who went on Fox, it

0:07:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:24 Thomas: OK, I was going to ask you that because, like, I sort of just assume that was our new stupid normal, you I mean they do give the speeches at the Federalist Society, like that's just as bad, really. Like that's just as obviously partisan. Like those kind of things.

0:07:29 Matt: Might be. Sure.

0:07:36 Thomas: But it's actually not the case that they're going on Fox News all the time. Yeah.

0:07:40 Matt: Clarence Thomas also went on Sean Hannity's radio show. So I guess that counts. That's a Fox property. No, they're not that often. And I went back and looked just because I was curious. Because remember, we talked about this recently, about Alito doing the Wall Street Journal interview. Of course, very self-serving WSJ thing. And then Sotomayor, just to go from the other side, did 60 Minutes in 2013. Ginsburg did it in 2008. 60 Minuts, that's kind of the road. It's kind OF what you'd expect, right? If you're going to get somebody on the record as a sitting Supreme Court justice, I think 60 MinUTES is a pretty good place to go.

But Fox, I feel like you're just sending a message by going on Fox at all. All. Shouldn't be doing it. Of course, he's on a book tour right now. He gave an interview to the New York Times where he deflected and refused to respond to Kagan's support for ethics reform. But then of course he comes on Fox. He's like, well, I wouldn't want to talk about politics and goes on to threaten the Biden administration. So here we are. We'll have plenty more from Neil Gorsuch soon enough, pretty

0:08:09 Thomas: Crazy, somebody needs to educate these idiots about what, like, co-equal branches of government, independent, whatever, because, like, they seem to think that means they are unaccountable to anyone but God himself. That's what they seem to think, but that wouldn't be co -equal. That wouldn't be like and balances. That would just be, you get to be God. Written in the constitution are ways that the different branches check each other. Checks and balances, Matt, is what I thought it was.

0:08:39 Matt: Much.

0:08:53 Matt: It's almost like they don't want it to be checked and or balanced. One might think. That's Neil Gorsuch. We'll be getting back to him soon enough, I'm sure. But now we have to talk about some antitrust suits. And this is very convenient. We've got two different cases this week to talk About. And these were the top requests from patrons on patreon.com/law, asking us to look into these two cases. And I will say one of them is ridiculous, and one of them is pretty good.

0:09:16 Thomas: Right. We're going to have to guess. So one of of these is real and one of them is not. I'm gonna, I'm good. Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb and bet literally my entire family's lives and house and my cars and every possession I own that the Musk one is the not good one.

0:09:22 Matt: One of them involves Elon Musk and one of them involves Google. So wow, that's very good for your family. Yeah, good work.

0:09:39 Thomas: Did I just double my assets? Well,

0:09:42 Matt: Stupid. I just will say, and I'm not an antitrust expert. I went looking to see what some of them said. And I liked this quote a lot from the former FTC policy director David Balto. First of all, he called the entire lawsuit a hideous joke. So that's a good place to start. And he said it doesn't even get into the batter's box, let alone have to the chance strike out. So I think that's a good way to put it.

0:10:04 Thomas: Is of course, like, the announced that he's suing advertisers for not advertising on X. That I don't need you, you can get off, you can hang up, Matt. I'm not a lawyer, that's stupid. Actually, if it's not stupid, I think, Matt, we have a lot of people we could sue right now. Like, not being patrons for, for not advertising with us for, I mean, geez, that's wow.

0:10:10 Matt: Giving him money. Yeah. It's very stupid. If you let's get that list going. Yeah. But at

0:10:30 Thomas: That's going to take a lot of work to see that many people who don't advertise on our show.

0:10:33 Matt: The same time, if we started platforming actual Nazis, I think we might understand if people didn't want to advertise on the show. And that's of course what happened here. So let's just back up for the history for a minute here. We all know, of course, that Elon Musk acquired Twitter at the end of October, 2022. might remember that he bought it for about 38% over the share price because he wanted to pay $54.20. He really wanted that $4.20 in the share price.

0:10:56 Thomas: So good.

0:10:57 Matt: This is business genius, Elon Musk, $44 billion. And we all knew at the time when he did this, this is just kind of a hobby project. He just wanted to have some friends and run this thing.

0:11:06 Thomas: He believed that conservative voices were being shut down on, on the platform and he believed that there was a conspiracy going.

0:11:12 Matt: And he still does. And now he believes they're trying to shut down the platform because he's been promoting too many conservatives. Of course, we all remember that there was a huge shakeup at Twitter. This was back when it was still called Twitter. I'm just going to probably keep calling it Twitter throughout this conversation. Maybe I'll occasionally throw in an X, but

0:11:24 Thomas: Think we should all just get over it. It is the worst name in the world, but it's his stupid company and he's allowed to name his dumb company, whatever he wants. So that's why I actually just call it X at this point. We all know what it is. I'm tired. It's a, it's been, And how long has it been since you read? It's been like a year.

0:11:36 Matt: No, it's been a while. It

0:11:40 Thomas: It is the worst rebranding in the history of rebrandings.

0:11:40 Matt: Feels like 20, but hands down, absolutely.

0:11:44 Thomas: Did also want to add, my favorite thing that happens to people who are not as terminally online as perhaps you and I are, Matt, is whenever anyone complains about conservative censorship or any of that stuff, what someone will type below that thread the word "cisgender." And then the automatic, like, X, like, community notes thing comes up and says this is a slur word, you know, like yeah it's hate speech so just in case you're wondering what the actual truth behind that is

0:12:03 Matt: Right, right. It's hate speech, yeah. Of course, naturally. Wow. Yeah, that's a very good point. You might remember, of course, there was a huge shakeup when Musk took over and a lot of people were fired or left, including, unfortunately for them, their brand safety team. So the idea that protecting only Twitter's brand, but the brands of the advertisers to make sure that their stuff isn't popping up next to cat torture videos, we'll get to that in a second. Right. So the World Federation of Advertisers in 2019, after the Christchurch shooting, you might remember that was live streamed on Facebook, advertisers became very concerned that their content, understandably, might be featured next to things like that. So the World Federation of Advertisers set up a special sort of subgroup, a nonprofit called GARM, and that is the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. The New York Post calls a left -leaning shadow cartel, but is actually, of course, just something that's designed for brand safety. And of course, brand safety is pretty much the opposite of woke. We're looking out for things that might actually harm a brand and cause controversy.

Of course, he's styling this as some kind of woke mission. But this is pretty straightforward. It's pretty simple. No brand wants to have their stuff featured in anything that's going to lose them money. There And was an expose in 2017 that the WFA was also responding to in which there were all these screenshots of ads being being featured next to ISIS content, neo -Nazi content, stuff on YouTube and other places that just weren't being controlled well enough. So this is pretty straightforward.

It's not some kind of cartel. It'S not a monopoly. ItS just a bunch of advertisers sort of working together in their best interests to make sure that they're protecting their brands. And until recently, you might've seen there was a story last year that the autocomplete, once Twitter's safety stuff went away, the autoconplete for things like dog and cat would automatically recommend about animal torture videos,

0:12:12 Thomas: Oh god, oh my god

0:13:49 Matt: Right? And we've all seen, if you've been on X within the last couple of years, you've seen just the rise of just hate speech, just open hate speech. Just all kinds of stuff about the Jews and about racial minorities, about kinds of anti -queer stuff.

0:13:50 Thomas: Yeah the Somebody who used Twitter a decent amount, and it's now, like, occasionally still on X, the number one thing I notice is that while you can still follow people and get their tweets, and they might be, because they're people you follow, they might make good tweets, it might be interesting, if you click on the tweet to see what anyone has replied, that is now worthless, like, worthless, I can't even, it's, it's unreal, like, I didn't even know you could break a product that badly, it is worthless, it's so crazy, yeah

0:14:21 Matt: It's a wasteland. Point that, you, the Saudi government is one of the biggest investors, and it just makes you wonder if there's some kind of conspiracy to actually destroy this as a marketplace, place, because it's gotten so bad. And, of course, we all remember the glory days of Twitter when things were good. And we're pretty far from that now -ish, right? Yeah, it was never great.

0:14:40 Thomas: Ish still had problems but at least did, like, one of the things you want it to do yeah

0:14:46 Matt: But right. And it was actually a place where some really interesting people were getting together to talk about things, and also Donald Trump. The numbers, though, are pretty good for GARM. They're just the results they've achieved since 2019. They've been able to show that about 2019, that 6.2% of ads might have been run with questionable or bad content. And now they estimate it's somewhere around 1.7%. So that's a pretty good reduction in five years. Obviously, Garm was very concerned from beginning about Musk taking over Twitter. They knew that he had big plans to release the demons, obviously. And, you know, open whatever. And invite everybody back.

0:15:15 Thomas: Oh my god It's like Ghostbusters 1, he's The, I mean, I hate that that's the EPA guy, because it's the silliest, I actually watched that with the kids recently, I was like, my god, the, you could think someone from the EPA can come into your, like, business, and shut something off just by himself. But anyway, he's like, that's Elon Musk. There He's was the whole ghost trap that had all the just the nonsense and the demons and the KKK. And he's Like, what does this do? Oh, let's turn that off.

0:15:23 Matt: That's right. Yeah. So good. That's rad. And that's what happened. And they all came back. Um, you know, the WFA issued an open letter, uh, on Halloween at 2022, and they asked Twitter to keep its commitments because Twitter is a member of this alliance. And, you simple straightforward language, effectively removing harmful content from unsupported media is a challenging endeavor that requires consistent support, investment, and innovation. Brand safety is non -negotiable for advertisers. You might not be surprised to learn that he uses this non -negotiable against them pretty hard. He's like, this should be negotiable, I guess. I don't know. He claims this is the beginning of the collusion, the alleged antitrust. And this does not fit into any understanding of antitrust that anyone who understands the law has, but it's a novel theory, as we'll talk about.

0:16:27 Thomas: Sorry. I just want to clarify something. You said Twitter was a member. Now, did he leave it? Did Elon? Okay, when?

0:16:32 Matt: They They actually did. I do not know exactly when, but they did leave it and they rejoined it on July 1st. And they are still technically members, even though they are suing them. So I am not sure how that works.

0:16:40 Thomas: If you joined a club that said, here's our non-negotiable rules, like that's kind of on you, isn't it, like, joined the club, they can have those, it's not like a sinister thing. Oh,

0:16:44 Matt: They can. And no, this isn't Google. They're not Microsoft. They are just a bunch of people that are sort of agreeing to some basic standards to make sure they protect themselves. It's something much more insidious for him and, of course, for Jim Jordan, as we're going to talk about. So things 15th, 2023. You might You might remember that he quote tweeted an extremely anti-Semitic comment about how Jews have been pushing hatred against whites, and it's like a standard great replacement hate speech thing. And he responded, he quote -tweeted, and he said, you have said the actual truth. And this, of course, set off, understandably set off a firestorm at that point.

0:17:08 Thomas: Yeah, that's right, a not very ambiguous endorsement of what was said. I remember yeah, you

0:17:25 Matt: No, no. And then he went to war with the ADL, as you might remember. But around this time, there was this couple of days where he just lost advertisers, just bled them out. The estimate at the time was they were probably going to lose about $75 million in revenue like that week. And advertisers, including Coke, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Comcast, Amazon, Airbnb, like all the big guys, all began to pull out. And this is right ahead of holiday shopping season. And so Musk's response to this, of course, was to say that this was his dumbest tweet ever. And I don't think that's even true at this point, but maybe

0:17:57 Thomas: Know, the Olympics are on right now. I think that could be an event, event just to his, though it'd be his event, but it would be the different tweets, and I would, that would be very competitive is all I'm saying, like the who would get the gold medal of Elon Musk's dumbest tweet.

0:18:07 Matt: Would take a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that is qualifier for sure. So what happened, of course, at that point is very famously, well, let's just hear it. Let's play what he said at that point when he was asked about this.

0:18:21 Thomas: I listened to this whole interview, and it was the best.

0:18:23 Matt: Good.

0:18:23 Thomas: I

0:18:25 Clip: Lashed out at advertisers leaving the platform. I hope they stop. You hope? Don't advertise. You don't want them to advertise? No, what do you mean? If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmailing with money, go yourself. But go

0:18:46 Thomas: Don't want to stop it. It's the best.

0:18:48 Clip: Yourself.

0:18:48 Thomas: What

0:18:50 Clip: Is that clear? I hope it is. Well, you didn't

0:18:56 Thomas: A genius, the advertisers.

0:18:56 Matt: So you know who thought that was clear? It was the World Federation of Advertisers.

0:19:00 Thomas: Yeah. Well, they might to [bleep] themselves, we don't know. They could have also done that, man. How

0:19:00 Matt: So they took him up on it. I mean, not doing that. But they pulling out hard. And of true. That's true of me. If you've been on X within the last year or two, you've seen the quality of advertising they have right now. It's just all kinds of weird stuff, just really weird stuff. I haven't seen a normal ad on Twitter in quite a while. Again, they told them directly.

0:19:23 Thomas: Yeah. I, I, man, I struggle so much with Elon, because as dumb as he seems to be, it's always surprises me. I, like, you told them to not advertise. How, could how is this anyone's fault but yours? I, it takes money and time to put, put together a lawsuit like this. This isn't a free...

0:19:28 Matt: Yeah.

0:19:45 Matt: Maybe.

0:19:45 Thomas: Well, okay, Matt.

0:19:46 Matt: Maybe. Not that much time. Not this one.

0:19:49 Thomas: I mean, check your privilege.

0:19:50 Matt: It should.

0:19:51 Thomas: To have lawyers write a complaint takes a lot of money for a normal person. For Elon Musk, it's nothing. But I guess the point is, this isn't a tweet. It'd be one thing if he tweeted, ah, this is a monopoly. Okay, whatever. It's low effort. But to through this process and none of the people writing it for him were like, hey, just checking before we file this. You never just told them to stop advertising or anything very publicly, did you? Because that would undermine the entire case if you just told them to do that.

0:19:57 Matt: Yes, it does.

0:20:16 Matt: There's not like a video? Yeah. It apparently doesn't. And I'm just, I mentioned that because I don't think the suit is very good and it doesn't make a lot of sense, even to me as someone who doesn't specialize in antitrust. I know enough and I've done enough research at this point to understand what they're trying to do here. I should just mention, because this is going to play into the second story as well.

Sherman Act of 1890 is what controls the antitrust litigation and criminal its statute enforced by the Department of Justice. And it has two major sections or two different ways you can violate it. And I should just mention what those are before we go forward here. They're alleging violations of Section 1. Conveniently, the second story we're going to talk about are violations of section 2. So we get to hit the entire Sherman Act today. 1 violations are essentially just a conspiracy to restrain or restrict trade.

And I am completely at a loss after doing my best to read this complaint to understand how this applies to spending advertising dollars. Will just try to break this down for you so that we can... It's fun sometimes to take these things seriously, but I don't know.

0:21:11 Matt: I just don't know.

0:21:11 Thomas: But it's hard to do. It's

0:21:13 Matt: It is very hard to do. I will say that they were fueled by the House Judiciary Committee had a hearing on the 10th of July in which they brought in heavy hitters like Ben Shapiro to come in and testify before them to tell them about how bad Garm was and about how they were somehow silencing conservatives, even though places like the Daily Wire are making a lot of money. They're doing just fine with ads and everything else.

The House Judiciary Committee produced a report, which was uncreatively called Garm Harms. I feel like I could have done better than that. And let me just tell you about some of the concerns they had, because this did fuel some of the lawsuit before we get into some of it. As you might expect, they kind of came up with a rubric where they divide content into high, medium, and low risk to advertisers.

And they found at some point that a of different conservative sites, including the Daily Wire, are a global high risk because they were endorsing conspiracy theories and they were promoting disinformation. And maybe advertisers don't want to be associated with that. That. The House report makes all kinds of... Just the way that you'd expect a Jim Jordan -led effort to do. They just make all kinds out of nonsense. It's really hard to read.

Of the things that they make a big thing about is an early draft of the GARM rubric, basically, included something called dramatic presentation of disinformation, like when you really pump up disinformation in a fancy way. And an early graph, the one that actually ended up being used, gave the example of a sketch comedy show. And of course, Jim Jordan is jumping up and down and saying, we can't be criminalizing comedy or whatever. But obviously, they didn't go through with that. That wasn't actually in the final thing.

0:21:13 Thomas: Is what you're saying.

0:22:39 Thomas: You remind me, just what is their actual power? Because it strikes me as a professional, club certification, something that you can be a part of as an advertiser to like, or do they truly just, what, a report saying like, "Here's what we suggest," or do do they, does this GARM have the power to like, buy the push of a button, they're like, "Turn off all advertising money for for X right now," and then they they do like a big old, like, and then it just all goes away?

0:23:08 Matt: No. It is an agreement among a bunch of companies that going to abide by these standards. And they're going to say if it meet a certain threshold that you're not going to advertise on this platform. And it's, again, for their collective safety. But this is not some kind of thing where they can sue each other for not doing it or whatever. It's just sort of an informal agreement. GARM itself only has two employees, or I should say had. It actually shut down today, but we'll talk about that in a minute. And it does have a power to influence ads, obviously. I mean, that's a lot of what it's doing. It is not some shadowy cabal. It's just a group of corporate interests, some of the biggest companies in the world and trade associations that have agreed to do things a certain way and have basic standards so they keep themselves out of trouble. A basic floor for everything.

0:23:50 Thomas: Or is it like, hey, there's problematic content, like really to say the least, there's like violence, there's these awful videos and stuff rampant, and maybe the goal is, okay, any one advertiser pulling out is not really going to do much, is it that kind of thing where it's like, hey, if we band together and we say, well, if you don't fix this problem, problem a whole bunch of us are going to pull out of advertising? That kind of what it is? That strikes me as like, I of a boycotty type thing to do, but I don't see how that's like particularly, or anti, yeah, I don't know.

0:24:19 Matt: And it's just basic standards. And these are people they're not selling a product, they're buying things. They're buying ads in different places, and That does make it a little different from the usual antitrust kind of suit. There are a bunch of emails that the House Judiciary Committee made a big thing about, for example, that the head of it was celebrating at one point when Twitter's revenue was down because they're saying this is what happens when you don't comply with basic content standards, which is true. The market will punish you if you don't have basic floor. There's a lot of talk about the way they're pressuring Spotify to get Joe Rogan off when he was being really super super anti-vax.

0:24:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:51 Thomas: That happen, Matt? Just refresh us. Was Joe Rogan kicked off of Spotify?

0:24:55 Matt: Don't think he was. I don't think that's what happened. Yeah, somehow the shadowy cabal did not win that fight.

0:24:56 Thomas: Weird. They're like, "We're going to spot you, this, this one, we have absolute monopolistic power over this, but uh we'll let you have Joe Rogan, that's fine, we changed our mind, okay."

0:25:08 Matt: Very concerned that what they consider to be right -leaning sites like RealClearPolitics and The Daily Wire and The Blaze are, while left-lean sites that do journalism like BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post are not. Not. How that works. But they're allegeing violations of section one of the Sherman Act, which are about these sort of illegal agreements to restrain trade. The conduct of defendants and their co -conspirators is a naked restraint of trade without countervailing benefits to competition or consumers. In a competitive market, each social media platform would set the brand safety standards that are optimal for that platform. The advertisers would unilaterally select the platforms on which they advertise.

0:25:40 Thomas: Oh.

0:25:41 Matt: "Brand safety standards set by GARM should succeed or fail in the marketplace on their own merits and not through the coercive exercise of market power by advertisers acting collectively," et cetera, et cetera. This is where they're coming from, that somehow by working together, by trying to protect themselves, that they're actually damaging Twitter and they've lost them a bunch of money. So what Twitter is looking for in this lawsuit is to get their money back. Uh I guess they're saying there's some kind of First Amendment problem and they want to force them to run on this platform, you know, as a solution,

0:26:05 Thomas: A first amendment problem. Hey, there's a free speech problem, know the solution, you must advertise for things you don't want to advertise on, you know, yeah.

0:26:06 Matt: Yep. You must Speak with us, yeah, yeah.

0:26:14 Thomas: Sorry.

0:26:14 Matt: That's how this works. Uh And Linda Yaccarino, of course, released this kind of video where she almost looks like she's in a basement, tied to a chair somewhere. But

0:26:20 Thomas: Who's That, oh, is that the fake CEO?

0:26:21 Matt: Yeah, It's the CEO.

0:26:23 Thomas: Yeah. That

0:26:23 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, uh she also wrote an open letter to X users in which she's explaining why they're doing this and she, she says, "The consequence, perhaps the intent of this boycott, was to seek to deprive X's users, be they sports fans, gamers, journalists, activists, parents, or political leaders, of the global town square."

0:26:39 Thomas: Doesn't seem at all what it was to me to

0:26:40 Matt: No, it was to make sure they weren't advertising next to neo -Nazis. And maybe to say the global town square shouldn't include neo-Nazis, maybe. We cannot have them.

0:26:48 Thomas: Be fair, maybe, maybe she's assuming all their users are Nazis and they're just like, these advertisers are coming after you guys.

0:26:52 Matt: Yeah. Right. We've got to protect you. Act violations, though, there's three basic ways to prove these. And I just wanted to explain how they're trying to get them to do this. Asking the court to, they know they can't prove a per se violation. That would be obviously if you have like a contract to do price fixing or something that's just obviously monopolistic or abusing your power. If you can't show that, then you have to show there's an unreasonable restraint on trade. And you can start with what they call a quick look analysis, which is when the Supreme Court has found, when an observer with even a rudimentary understanding of economics could could conclude that the arrangement in question would have an anti -competitive effect on customers and the market. And of course, I don't think it passes a quick look. They sort of, in passing, ask them to just apply the quick look analysis, but they know they can't do that.

0:27:36 Thomas: Anti -competitive. Yeah. How would that? I'm trying to think what that would mean in this context. Because again, like you said, they're not selling a product. So

0:27:38 Matt: Yeah, right. They're selling themselves. They are selling the ads themselves and they are buying them.

0:27:47 Thomas: Yeah. Well, actually, the entity itself is really not selling anything, right? Because I Guess I don't know how that's structured or whatever, but the the entity of GARM, what, what even is it? Like,

0:27:52 Matt: Right. Selling anything. Right? It's a non -profit that's a wing of an advertising association. And they're also, I should say, X is also suing six major companies, including Unilever and Mars, that some of the biggest corporate holdings in the world, and sort of including them in all of this as well as part of the conspiracy. The idea is if you can't pass the quick list, excuse me, if it doesn't immediately look like something that is supposed to be a conspiracy or unreasonably restraining trade, you go on to what they call the rule of reason. And that's what case.

And that just looks at the nature and character of the activities. And you try to show that there's some kind of intention to establish an illegal monopoly. So the two claims that they're making here is that this is what is called a group boycott, which it is kind of a group boycott, but it's not the illegal kind. The illegal kind is when companies refuse to do business with somebody who is doing business with one of their competitors, obviously to shut them out of the marketplace.

That's not what this is. Obviously, they can advertise anywhere they want to. They are advertising lots of other places. They just are saying this is not an acceptable platform for our advertisers. That's all they're doing. The second allegation is that there's an illegal exchange of information for the purpose of being anti-competitive between the competitors. I guess they're talking about the emails and sort of the getting together to talk about where they're going to advertise. So, you know, again, this is nonsense.

I think it's really just being put out there to scare people that might want to speak out against the way that Twitter does things. I don't see how it's supposed to attract more advertisers, which we think is something that Twitter needs at this point. Here we are.

0:28:02 Thomas: Here's My question, if any of this were like, I am, I, I know it's hard to take this stuff seriously, but I'm trying to imagine situations I would take seriously, like if there's significant advertisers who said, hey, anything that has like any pro LGBT queer anything, we're gonna boy, you know, not spend advertising dollars, like, obviously, obviously I would have a problem with that. I don't know. I guess it could, you know, but individual advertisers already do that. By the way, there's already stuff like, remember the names of them, but there's like rating services for movies and for stuff that's like, how religion, you You know, how Christian friendly is this? And, you Know, it's, I'm sure there's some right wing religious version of this somewhere. Strikes me as like completely, especially because the things that they need to do to get back in the good graces of this organization and to theoretically enable the advertising again is what? Just don't have like horrible murder videos or something, like, it's got to be stuff that. Seems pretty reasonable.

0:29:56 Matt: Exactly.

0:30:18 Matt: Just regulate your content. That's all they're asking for. And

0:30:22 Thomas: Yeah. My question is, under the logic of this complaint, could an organization like GARM even exist? Like, I can't think of a way, like, logicof this were true, ifthe legal theory of this complainter were true wouldn't just that organization in any form that I can really think of, wouldn't it just be illegal? Like, it wouldn't be something you could even do?

0:30:43 Matt: Yeah. Kinds of trade organizations or ratings organizations, like you said, would be threatened if that were actually somehow a Sherman Act violation. Read one more thing just to try to clarify where they're coming from. Again, again, it's not clear. It doesn't make sense.

But just so we can get this out on the record, "action amongst competing advertisers to dictate brand safety standards to be applied by social media platforms shortcuts the competitive process and allows the collective views of a group of advertisers with market power to override the interests of consumers." It's such a weird thing to say, because I don't think the interests of consumers include being advertised to at all, personally. But I guess that's just my radical view about ads. I really don't understand this.

It doesn't make a lot of sense. And I can see why this actual expert antitrust is saying that it doesn't even get in to the beginning of something that can even strike out, that it's what the physicists might call not even wrong. Unfortunately, well, is breaking up.

They actually only have two full -time employees and they're discontinuing their activities because the WFA has essentially said, as of today, the day we're recording, in an email to members that the decision, he says it's not made lightly, but they have limited resources. They can't afford to continue to be sued like this. So they're just going to stop their operation, stop doing what they were doing, and just focus on defending themselves in this and other lawsuits, and

0:31:53 Thomas: Yikes.

0:31:54 Matt: They're going to be done with garb. Yeah. So, I mean, in that way, Elon Musk has already won just by suing.

0:31:58 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, geez, bury the lead. I didn't know that. Just won. That's winning, essentially.

0:32:01 Matt: As of a few hours ago, as a time of recording, yeah. And that's I also mentioned that Rumble also filed its own suit, Rumble, of course, being the video platform that will play pretty much anything, much worse than X, famously host Nazi content. So they have to defend themselves against this kind of stuff. I don't have that much sympathy for the largest advertisers in the world, but it's unfortunate because this is a good effort. This is something that should exist.

0:32:07 Thomas: Wow.

0:32:29 Thomas: Again, advertisers. It's a little it organization. Had two employees. Am folding hurts the advertiser's bottom line in any way, shape, or form, does it? Other than by extension, possibly. Yeah, exposing them to risk.

0:32:33 Matt: And necessarily, except for exposing them to risk. Yeah,

0:32:43 Thomas: But I guess What I'm saying is, like, I it is reasonable to feel bad for GARM. You know, it's like, if the thing GARM is focused on is trying to clean up some of this awful crap through the method of organizing advertisers' efforts a little bit, then that strikes me as a bad thing, like remember there were a lot of boycotts advertiser boycotTS of Fox News for a while because of different things. There's boycotts over companies because they're polluters, they're bad for climate, like all those kinds of efforts. It's, for one, I mean, those are all fine, right? I

0:32:44 Matt: Right, sure. Yeah, of course.

0:33:17 Thomas: Mean there is such a thing, I guess, as a boycott that would go against or some sort of collusion that would run afoul of this act, right. I mean there's got to be, yeah, go ahead.

0:33:25 Matt: There is. And if they had emails in which they were exchanging these ideas that maybe we should make sure we shut down Twitter because we want to promote Facebook or Blue Sky or whatever, right? We want to make sure that they're the dominant platform. That would be what's considered to be a group boycott under the Sherman Act precedents.

0:33:40 Thomas: Mm-hmm.

0:33:40 Matt: That's not this, not at all. Yeah.

0:33:42 Thomas: It already, they already said we're going to focus on, Boy, that's that's frustrating. Yeah. Goes to show how easy it is to use the legal system for bad purposes, even when you're completely wrong.

0:33:47 Matt: It's disappointing. Yeah. It To Literally See things Oblivion, that's right. No, that's did it. So that is, uh, not great news, uh,

0:34:01 Thomas: Yeah, on that depressing note, Matt, Matt. Let's take a little break and then we'll get to allegedly the last. Man, I did not know that. I was so excited, Matt. Innocent little me. I had like a balloon and a lollipop. I Was just like, hey, I'm excited for Matt to tell me why Elon Musk's thing is really stupid. And then you're like, oh, yeah, it's stupid, but also he won.

0:34:22 Matt: It worked. Yeah, I'm sorry.

0:34:23 Thomas: Great. Let's get on to possibly better news.

0:34:23 Matt: Literal Possibly.

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0:36:07 Thomas: Right. What can you tell us about this Google monopoly? I saw this headline as well. It's the ad engine of a bunch of things, right?

0:36:14 Matt: That's right. And this is actually the biggest antitrust decision, arguably, I think, since 2000, when a D.C. Circuit judge broke up Microsoft. Now, that didn't work out. They were trying to say that Windows and the browser were too integrated, and they tried to break them up into separate companies. That was reversed on appeal eventually.

But the important findings in that were upheld, and DOJ had to reach a settlement with Microsoft where they had to loosen up a little, make it easier for PC manufacturers to use other operating systems, which is kind of strange to think of in 2024, but they tried to give them a chance and required them to share some of their codes so that developers could not have that. They wouldn't have this chokehold on everything. The Microsoft case was about licensing, and this is about ad revenue.

And this is about section two of the Sherman Act. So let me explain very quickly before we go on about what that is. So section two is about when you hold an illegal monopoly. Now, Now, it is actually legal to have a monopoly, but the problem is, inevitably, when you use your influence and your dominance in the market to suppress everybody else, then you're committing a Sherman Act violation. Then you actually have an antitrust problem, and that's almost always what happens when you end up with a monopoly. So you have a special responsibility when you have something

0:37:02 Thomas: Oh, guess that makes sense. Like if you're the first to make some sort of product or you're like the only one making a specific thing, it couldn't be illegal. Like you got to make a new company to compete with you or something. I guess it does make sense. But if you were preventing any other company from even being able to enter the market, then that's a problem.

0:37:32 Matt: And that's inevitably what happens, usually, with these things. You might remember AT&T many years ago had to break up. They used to be this massive national conglomerate, and they did break up into these seven regional companies. It's that kind of thing. Again, it still works out about the same to these monopolies, but the Sherman Act has been around since 1890 with mixed results. But this was brought in 2022 by the Department of Justice. And it's interesting because they're bringing it not only on behalf of us as consumers, but on behalf of the federal government itself and saying this was actually causing issues for the federal government and for the U.S. Army, for example, in the way that their advertising was being affected.

There is a second suit, which we won't talk about right now, that actually involves Google's advertising technology and the way monopolize the market in that. But this was an absolutely massive lawsuit. I have to correct myself. DOJ and nearly every state attorney general sued in October, 2020 to to allege Sherman Act violations. So a massive case. It went to trial in September of 2023. It took nine weeks. There were petabytes of data. That's not even a unit of data I was familiar with. It was a nine-week bench trial in front of Judge Mehta and dozens of live witnesses, 3,500 exhibits. They didn't have the closing arguments until May of 2024. Judge Mehta notes in his decision that the lawyering has been first rate throughout, and I'm sure, because obviously, you can afford it.

Out of this 277-page decision, which is in many parts very technical and hard to read, I'll just give you kind of the highlights on how this works. The court reaches the following conclusion. Google is a monopolist and has acted as one to maintain its monopoly. It has violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act. It's pretty straightforward that even with all this technical stuff, what they did is by using the ad revenue payouts. And this is how they did it.

They made these deals with all of these different companies, including Apple, Mozilla, Samsung, Motorola, Sony, AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile. They just across the board, everywhere pretty much that you'd expect to find a web browser, they're making sure that Google was the default search engine. And they did that by rewarding these companies with percentages of ad revenue. And that came out to something like $26 billion just in 2021, the judge cites. He doesn't cite after that. But you can imagine,

0:37:46 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:22 Thomas: So under Trump presidency still.

0:39:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:39:39 Matt: It's just a lot of money. When we all use Google every day, we all know how it works. We all see the ads.

0:39:43 Thomas: Yeah. And from my memory, a lot of this is like even unknown to the consumer. Like you think you're searching. Like, oh, I'm using Siri or something. Thing. But really what's actually happening is it's powered by Google. It's using the same Google stuff. And I don't know if that's the correct example, but I, I do remember that was part of it, which is, it was kind of behind the, you know, on the backend and it was everything turned out. Every different search was pretty much just Google, even if you thought it wasn't.

0:40:06 Matt: And because Google was going out of its way to make sure that that's how it was, and that is a pretty clear antitrust problem, the court found that by 2020, 95% of all searches on mobile devices were through Google, which makes sense when you think about it. Yeah, that's pretty much where it's at.

0:40:17 Thomas: Wow. That's a monopoly, but There isn't really a reason that should happen. I mean, I guess you could say like, well, their search is just better, but it's not like they should be the only ones who have of access to the internet to organize it in a way, you know, there's not, I guess what I'm saying is that it doesn't seem like there's that good a prima facie reason why there should have to be any monopoly there.

0:40:41 Matt: Actually finds that Google has a very good product and that it's worked really hard to come up with this product, but that it is not fair at all.

0:40:43 Thomas: Yeah. They're like, we Googled it. Does Google have

0:40:47 Matt: Yeah, that's right.

0:40:47 Thomas: A good product?

0:40:49 Matt: That's right, it came right up. First answer. I will point out too, just as kind of a side note, this isn't something the court gets into, but just as a consumer, I think Google has been getting worse. I mean, it does seem to be... And this is the problem.

0:40:51 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. It is crap now. Yeah, the whole internet. I love it. The whole internet sucks now. It's ruined, completely ruined. We're near years away from it being worthless. I think that's tinfoil hat, but it's happening.

0:41:10 Matt: Yeah. We're also in danger of sounding really old, but I really miss the 90s internet. I miss it so much. This is born by data. I went looking because I just had this thought that Google sucks now. It's really bad in the way that it brings everything up. A German study. Going to link to this study, but it found that what what you think is true, that Google is now being overloaded.

0:41:33 Thomas: Thanks. I agree. There was a study that said what I think is true, everybody. Finally, Matt, I'm going to give me the link for that so I can just use it in every argument.

0:41:37 Matt: Best study ever. They found that Google is indeed being overloading with optimized but low quality content because everybody's just playing to the engine and they're allowing those results to come up first.

0:41:43 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, well, and AI makes it so easy to do that. Yeah yeah

0:41:54 Matt: Yes. Right. And that's as more and more AI is being incorporated and of course you're getting AI results and it's ugly. It's bad. And I do think that it makes sense if there's a better product that can be made that they should get a chance to to beat this because you know, this is what happens every time there's a monopoly, the product gets complacent. And that's why I'm worried about uh, thing with the media companies, right, as they can connect to conglomerate and we just end up with everything being a Disney Star Wars or Marvel production and that it, right, and that, that's, that's where things are going, um

0:42:18 Thomas: Yeah. Strikes me as a perfect thing that the, you know, the government could maybe do, like no reason why searching the vast internet is a thing that needs to be a product really, like couldn't there be like a government version that's like, all right, we're not going to be reliant on advertiser dollars to do this, we'll just do it using a little bit of tax money and the goal will be to make it useful, not to profit, if yeah

0:42:31 Matt: Right, that's a nice idea if you can keep it apart from the government yeah, if you, if you can make sure it's completely neutral and is not in any way susceptible to government influence. But I do like that. And like many things, it should just be public utilities, right? This is something that has to exist that we need. And I think a lot more things should be public utilities. One interesting thing from this is that DOJ was arguing that Google has about a 90% market share overall. I was telling you about the mobile devices before, but just in terms of searches everywhere. And Google was trying to make the argument, I think it's pretty creative, that Spotify, ChatGPT, TikTok, other places like that are actually competitors to Google because because there are other places to find information, and because they don't come up on Google searches. And that does make some sense. But

0:42:49 Thomas: Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. OK. That's interesting. Yeah

0:43:21 Matt: The Court ultimately found that in terms of the general search engine market, that Google has completely dominated it, that it's used its power to commit a Section 2 violation. Also found that you don't even have to find anti-competitive intent, that is just so obvious. The court had a note at the end here about the lengths to which Google goes to avoid creating a paper trail for regulators and litigants. And it is no wonder this case has lacked the kind of nakedly anti-competitive communication seen at Microsoft and other Section two cases, because he's saying they've gone out of their way to what he says. He took it to heart. Um,

0:43:22 Thomas: It's like the Trump approach with the mobsters where he's like I don't want no emails, no documents. Yeah because that did get I Zuckerberg in trouble, right? He had some bad emails in one of these in terms of like trying to buy up. Well, I don't know if he ever faced any consequences, but, but I think it was in, in emails that Facebook was trying to buy up all these competitors in order to basically not have to compete with them.

0:43:54 Matt: Yeah. Never email. Yeah. It's some. Yeah.

0:44:14 Matt: Guess Right. There must've been some findings at trial or some, some evidence to trial to suggest this, but he says specifically that it has trained its employees not to create bad evidence. Uh, but it doesn't matter at the end of the day, because he doesn't actually need what he calls a smoking gun proof of anti-competitive intent. It's just right there. You can see they've made these agreements. They're doing it out in public. And that's what's going on. So this is a major landmark ruling. Of course, it's not going to be going into effect anytime soon. And we haven't reached the remedies phase yet. So, this is just the finding of the Sherman Act violation.

And there's a remedies trial scheduled for September 4th. Kind of an open question. I was trying to figure out about what happens, because obviously Google's going to appeal this. And will this hold up the entire thing? Or do they have to wait for the remedies to actually have it appealed? It looks like there's some split of opinion on how that's going to work. But either way, this is not going to be going into effect anytime soon. We won't even know what it is. I can't even tell you what the effect is going to on the market yet, because we haven't gotten to the remedies phase.

0:44:21 Thomas: Wow. I can't help but imagine this remedies hearing being like a bunch of like being like, all right, so a cup with lemon and honey. Try that remedy. That's not working. OK. You know, just going through different. Yeah, Yeah, they're you tried turning it off and back on? That's what I would ever. It's like a like a Parks and Rec esque meeting where everyone gets to suggest how we ought to fix this little thing.

0:45:10 Matt: That's right. Yeah. Are still just open comment. Yeah, we'll see. Just as a ruling, as a historical thing, it's a big deal. This is one of the biggest of its kind in a very long time, and it deserves the coverage. But I can't say I understand all of it because it is 277 pages of extremely technical language, but I get the basic legal chest here, and I don't think that judgment is wrong at all from what I understand of the Sherman Act to say this, because this is clearly an intent to establish an absolutely dominant monopoly that will not let go. And it does seem like the government has to intervene at some point. So

0:45:56 Thomas: I always assume there's just eighteen hundred different levels of appeal that we're still yet to go through. Is that, you that work here? Is that any different than normal? Yeah.

0:46:02 Matt: Right. This could be held up for years potentially, and if I'm sure it's going going to have to be a Supreme Court case because this is a pretty novel thing all around. We've never really had anything exactly like this at this level, especially. And also depending on what the remedy is going to end up being and how controversial that's going to be. So right this is just kind of a statement. This is something that we can read and understand, but it doesn't mean anything until anything actually goes through, until we get a little further along in the process, as always. So we'll keep a watch.

0:46:31 Thomas: Right. Well, less bad news. Weirdly, the Google monopoly is less bad news than Elon Musk winning with the stupidest lawsuit anyone's ever heard of. Wow.

0:46:39 Matt: Yeah. Again, Again, pretty good lessons, actually, in what is not a violation of the Sherman Act, Section 1, and what is a violation of Sherman Act Section 2. I just provided in the same week. So I have to appreciate the news for doing that for us. Work.

0:46:50 Thomas: Yeah. So just to be clear, if companies hurt my feelings, that's not a violation. If a company creates a 95 % monopoly on search and uses it to get everybody out, That is a monopoly. So the first one, not a bad monopoly, but the second one it is. Okay. Be pretty clear.

0:47:06 Matt: We'll see. I mean, we have to litigate this, of course, this ridiculous case. And I meant to mention before that, of course, they filed this in the Northern District of Texas, because obviously that's where the most harm happened in the Northern District of Texas. But no, that was because that's where Reed O'Connor sits, the man who found the entire

0:47:20 Thomas: Wait, sorry. Who filed what? What are we on now? The other one was the government. So I was like, that would be weird.

0:47:22 Matt: Musk filed it intentionally to pull Judge Reed O'Connor, which he did. And this was one of the favorite Federalist Society judges who was the one who found that the entire Affordable Act was illegal, among many other stupid rulings. So who knows? I mean, he might just stretch this out for a while, he might take it a lot more seriously than anybody else would. I don't think it still has a chance in the end, even with the Fifth Circuit, but we'll see. Just have to keep a watch on this one as well. I also wanted to note that today, the day that we are recording on August 8th, 2024, is the 50th anniversary of Richard Nixon resigning from office. So that is something to celebrate also. And I have to say that he was kind of a prophet because as we were reminded in our opening quotes to the show, when the president does it, that means it's not illegal. He was way ahead of his time on that one, I got to say.

0:48:09 Thomas: Yeah. I know we've said it before, but the quote, it is literally the climax of the movie Frost/Nixon. Like, you got him to say something so absurd that you made a movie where that's the part. It's almost like it's a way better version of the "you can't handle the tree you know. I ordered the code red. Like, your "I ordered the code red" moment of your movie is now something that the Supreme Court was like, "Oh yeah, no, yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, that's reasonable, yeah, okay, when the president does it's not," yeah, yeah, that's right, crazy. Like, if you had a decision that was like, "Yeah, you did, he did order the code read, okay, yeah, he ordered the code red, that's good, that's case dismissed," you know, like

0:48:19 Matt: Right. Yeah. Great movie. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Fine. And

0:48:51 Thomas: What?

0:48:51 Matt: It's perfectly legal. Yeah, no, it's, but it is, it is strange to me now that Nixon is considered to Be one of The worst presidents ever. I mean, obviously, the way way things ended, he was. But we're talking about a guy that established OSHA and the EPA and made radical healthcare proposals. He raised the minimum wage by 40%. He opened a diplomacy with China. And he was actually completely faithful to his wife or whatever that's worth these days.

0:49:13 Thomas: Wow.

0:49:13 Matt: So it's just funny that people compare Nixon to Trump because Trump is just so much demonstrably worse. Didn't kill millions of people the way that George W. Bush did. So you've got that going for him, too.

0:49:19 Thomas: Yeah. He killed some of a lot of people though, right?

0:49:26 Matt: Yeah, definitely. I shouldn't say that, actually. Yeah. You're right. Certainly plenty of people. Hard to compare presidents because you always have to remember those kinds of facts.

0:49:28 Thomas: Yeah. It just goes to show that, like, the bar for your awful president has really gone a lot down. It used to be that your awful, evil president still did a bunch of presidency things that, like, could be maybe good sometimes. No more. You

0:49:46 Matt: Yeah. No. I'm not going to say anything else good about Nixon. I think Nixon was a great president. I am just saying, like you said, said, the relative comparison at this point, the bar is in hell. That's

0:49:56 Thomas: Heard it here, everybody, Matt is a huge fan of Marianne Williamson, thinks she could be the next Nixon, the a great American leader. That's someone meme, it. Matt Cameron says, Marianne Williamson is my pick for president. She could be as great as Nixon was 50 years ago to the day.

0:49:56 Matt: Right.

0:50:05 Matt: Nixon was Yes, that's right, these are things I believe. You got it. So yeah, no, I just wanted to close out on that because, you know, major moment in American history and just kind of where we're at now.

0:50:13 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:23 Thomas: All right. Well, when the president does it, it's not illegal, everybody. Unironically, pretty much. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks, Matt, for the breakdown there. And I am very excited once again for a lot of awful books on Gorsuch's book. We might have to get like a couple of them out of Matt having to read that. I feel so bad that you're having to go through that. Prayers for Matt, thoughts and prayers for Matt at this very tough time.

0:50:26 Matt: Don't forget it.

0:50:40 Matt: Whatever. You know, I would have read it anyway, I'm just that much of a a masochist so Yeah.

0:50:46 Thomas: Don't tell them that.

0:50:47 Matt: Now I get to do it for work

0:50:47 Thomas: I'm trying to juice up the sympathy. Yeah, I'm going to cut that. You're ruining it. You're just totally ruining this, Matt. Matt would have never put himself through this if not for you, the listener.

0:50:48 Matt: True. Enough, that's

0:51:00 Thomas: So everybody should be very thankful. All right. Well, thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for supporting on patreon.com/law and we'll see everybody Monday.

0:51:00 Matt: True, the Listeners Okay.

0:51:10 Clip: This podcast is a production of Opening Arguments Media, LLC, All Rights Reserved. It is produced and edited by Thomas Smith, who also provided the fabulous intro and outro music used with permission.

0:51:27 Thomas: I'm excited for Matt to tell me why Elon Musk's thing is really stupid.