The Golden Age of Scams

A. I. valuations make sports franchise valuations look like chump change and the disconnect between American voters and the tech billionaires with a batphone to the White House, has gotten scary. Yet the plugged-in MS-NOW host Stephanie Ruhle remains hopeful. Can we summon the power to say "no"? Who will expose the cruelest of scams, even and especially if they involve Tim Tebow? And what was Pablo talking about with Adam Silver at that party? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  When they said, "Do you think this administration has a corruption problem?" They don't, because they don't think it's a problem.

• 0:15Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:18Speaker 02

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• 1:14Pablo Torre?

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• 1:58Pablo Torre?

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• 2:22Speaker 01

  Did I ever tell you about the time when I went to the dermatologist and it was my husband's girlfriend? Okay, wait, are you ready for an amazing story? Like, are you?

• 2:31Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if I am, but please continue.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, okay. Many, many years ago, my oldest child had like a rash or something. And we lived in Tribeca. And I'm like, "How are we gonna find like a dermatologist, a pediatric dermatologist?" And I knew that my husband's college girlfriend, and like girlfriend for like a year or two, was a dermatologist in Tribeca. And I'm like, "Can you call her? Can you call her?" Because we would like see her on the street sometime. And he's like, "Yes." He calls her on the phone. He's like, "Sure, of course, we'll bring him in." So like, the next day, I'm at the dermatologist with my son. And while we're in the waiting room, I'm realizing that I have not been to a dermatologist in years. So we're in there, blah, blah, blah. And while I'm waiting, I say to the nurse, I'm like, "Oh, like, do you guys see adults here?" And she's like, "Yeah, totally." And I'm like, "Oh, great. Like, can I make an appointment next week?" At this point, I've never had a skin cancer check. And so I make an appointment. I come back the next week,

• 3:16Speaker 01

  and I roll up, and I'm sitting there, and I'm waiting. Clearly, the doctor said to her nurses, like, "That's my ex-boyfriend's wife. Like, what the F is she doing here, right?" And they walk in, and they're like, "Oh, are you here for like Botox or this, that?" I'm like, "No, no, no, skin cancer check." And they're like, "Skin cancer check?" And like, they walk out. Another one comes in. She's like, "Skin cancer check?" And I'm like, "Yeah." They like bring me a robe. They're like, "Take all your clothes off." And they're all looking at me like, "What?" And I'm like, "What?" So the poor doctor comes in, and she's like, "Skin cancer check?" And I'm like, "Yeah." Me not realizing, when you get a full-body skin cancer check, they're in there. I mean, next to the person who is delivering your baby, no one is ever in such an intimate place where their eyeballs are in your darkest crevasses, okay?

• 4:01Speaker 01

  And so I'm now like laying on my stomach, like spreading every inch of me. As I'm turned around, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, I am so sorry. Like, I didn't realize this was the exam. And I'm sure you wanna call all your girlfriends right now and be like, 'My ex-boyfriend's wife is whack, but you can't call them because of the Hippocratic oath, and you're a doctor. So you just have to take it to the grave that your ex-boyfriend's crazy-ass wife is buck-naked on a table getting an exam from you. You must think I'm crazy. I'm really sorry."

• 4:30Pablo Torre?

  I had not considered that Andy, your husband--

• 4:33Speaker 01

  My husband, yes, yes.

• 4:34Pablo Torre?

  That both Andy and the dermatologist in question would both have a similar intimacy with your body.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Totally, totally. And clearly, I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. Like, I get home, I tell him the story. And the saddest part of the story is--

• 4:47Pablo Torre?

  He was into it.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  Like, he was not into it.

• 5:12Pablo Torre?

  One of my favorite parts of my friendship with you, Stephanie Ruhl, and thank you for being here in person, back on the show again.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Is that you have no idea what I'm gonna say?

• 5:18Pablo Torre?

  I have no idea what you're gonna say, but inevitably, it involves you in a--

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Compromising position.

• 5:24Pablo Torre?

  In a compromising interpersonal dynamic, in which I learn a lot more than I bargained for.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:29Pablo Torre?

  And this happened not at the dermatologist's office in Tribeca--

• 5:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:33Pablo Torre?

  --most recently with us, but at The New York Times' 175th birthday party.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  The greatest, okay, the greatest. Like, how excited for you that you walk into a party? And you can tell them.

• 5:45Pablo Torre?

  So I should say that part of the joke of this evening, which we're gonna highlight with this photo of me standing next to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, standing next to the publisher of The New York Times, AG Selsbarger, standing next to a woman whose body is known to dermatologists throughout the Tribeca area-- apparently, Stephanie Ruhl-- is that this is the sort of Mad Lib that your life is like, by the way.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  It's my life every day, and it was so good to just suck you into it. Like, I walk in, and all of a sudden, my eyeballs, I see the three of you, and I'm like, "Poor Adam, who is the nicest..."

• 6:23Pablo Torre?

  I should say this, I should say this, as a disclaimer. I had only talked to Adam Silver in person once before this.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  No way. Are you serious?

• 6:33Pablo Torre?

  Once before this.

• 6:36Pablo Torre?

  It was at the Board of Governors' press conference--

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Are you lying?

• 6:41Pablo Torre?

  At which he was speaking for the first time about the punishment levied by his league--

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Wait, the week before? That was the first time you ever spoke to each other?

• 6:49Pablo Torre?

  Days earlier, actually.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  You're lying.

• 6:52Pablo Torre?

  I took the microphone, asked him a question about due diligence, incidentally, about how to make sure that the NBA and its teams are not being used by bad actors to effectively launder the images and reputations of such actors. And he gave, I would say, like, a considered answer about something that he had not been prepped for, I think, ahead of time at that presser. Anyhow, I walk into this event, which is in Tribeca--

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's overwhelming. I mean, it was a New York who's who.

• 7:21Pablo Torre?

  It was overwhelming to the point of, I walk into the elevator, and this is an episode, as always, about six degrees of Stephanie Ruhl. The person who is in the elevator is literally Kevin Bacon, the patron saint of--

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:37Pablo Torre?

  --of what a small world.

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:39Pablo Torre?

  And the doors open, and the first person I see is Adam Silver.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 7:44Pablo Torre?

  And the second person I see, out of the corner of my eye, moving at us like a lion, sizing up, "Am I gonna get to..." is you.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  It was amazing. It was amazing for me. My left eyeball is Adam. My right eyeball is you. And I'm like, "Oh, my goodness. You two must know each other." Like, clearly, you've been saying one another's names a lot over the last 18 months.

• 8:08Pablo Torre?

  A lot. And I reach out my hand, and he shakes it. And I, unfortunately, I don't think it's proper to share the contents of the conversation that I had with Adam, that you were there for, a bunch of it, by the way.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I was really happy to be there. But even that picture, one of the reasons that picture is so good, like, somehow, like, the depth of the picture-- Adam, who's a really tall guy--

• 8:30Pablo Torre?

  He's very tall.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Does not look tall in that picture. Like, you look by far like the biggest person there, and AG is just like, "Wow, look at this happening."

• 8:38Pablo Torre?

  Shout out to AG, feeling what all 5'10" of me is like in this frame.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Okay, but my point is, you literally, you look like 6'3" here.

• 8:48Pablo Torre?

  I think.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And there's Adam, who had to be psyched to see you.

• 8:51Pablo Torre?

  Well, and you. So I should say that part of what our relationship is like is that you know everyone?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Not everyone, but I know a lot of people.

• 9:00Pablo Torre?

  You know so many people in the world of sports ownership. You know the commissioner of the NBA better than I do. You are somebody who is constantly someone-- I'm asking, "Do you know this person?" And the answer is--

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 9:13Pablo Torre?

  "I was at a pool party, and I was doing a cannonball. And off in the distance was this billionaire."

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I happen to love cannonballs, and I like a pool party. I do know a lot of people. I've lived in New York City a long time.

• 9:26Pablo Torre?

  Well, also--

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I'm not a young woman.

• 9:27Pablo Torre?

  Well--

• 9:29Speaker 01

  I've lived here a long time.

• 9:30Pablo Torre?

  Could've fooled your dermatologist.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 9:32Pablo Torre?

  But here's one of the fun back-of-the-baseball card things I just gotta remind people of, beyond the fact that you host a show on MSNBC Now, that in its coverage of money, power, and politics is something that I personally enjoy and sometimes appear on. But your background before television, it involves the superlative. Stephanie Ruhl was the highest-producing credit derivatives salesperson in the United States.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  I was, I was.

• 9:58Pablo Torre?

  What the [__] does that mean?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, credit derivatives are basically a levered corporate bond. And when I was very, very young in my career, I was a young girl on a corporate bond sales desk. And the people who you sell corporate bonds to are huge money managers and insurance companies and hedge funds. And I met a couple of real nerdy guys who were kind of like originators of when credit derivatives began. They taught me how credit derivatives worked. And I went to these big corporate bond sales guys I worked for and I said, "I'm really a little person here and I don't have my own clients, but if you let me sell credit derivatives to your clients, you can get all that business." They let me do it. I ended up turning it into a business. We would all go out to nightclubs three nights a week and then in the morning we'd wake up and I'd be their salesperson.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  And as hard as people say, you know, "Oh, my gosh, it's really hard to be in a business that's all men." It's not always. It's sometimes great to be the only girl doing it.

• 10:52Pablo Torre?

  I think that I need to explain a couple of things, just like, so a bond is basically a contract for a loan.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 11:00Pablo Torre?

  And I think in that way, we're speaking now the language of what the [__] is happening in the American economy broadly.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  And this is the thing, okay? So let's, let's, let's fast forward to where we are now.

• 11:12Pablo Torre?

  Please.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And let's even compare the dot com bubble to where we are with AI. Because the funny thing is, when I first started in, in banking, I desperately wanted to work in equities, to sell stocks, because it was 1997, 1998, like the really exciting time for internet companies. When at the time, like, all you had to say was dot com at the end and you were like, hot, hot, hot. And now here we are, and I don't mean to be doom and gloom about the economy or the markets, because obviously the markets have been extraordinary, right? Trump just said yesterday to a groom of reporters,

• 11:45Speaker 04

  "You all have 401Ks. I don't have to know anything about you. Your 401K has doubled in a short period of time. It's doubled. You're twice as wealthy as you were a short time ago, every one of you. And that's because of me. Have a good time, everybody."

• 12:01Speaker 01

  But what's happening in the world of AI on some level is so reminiscent of dot com. And let's be clear, the internet was the future. But the internet wasn't ready to be the future in 1999. It was ready to be the future in 2005. So now here we are, okay? And when everyone says the stock market is booming,

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  I invite you to look under the hood, because...

• 12:23Pablo Torre?

  Let's spread it open.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  On a dermatologist's...

• 12:27Pablo Torre?

  Let's break out the white, thin white paper and lay the US economy right across it.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Okay, so here we are.

• 12:35Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  And if you actually look at the stock market, or if you actually speak to Fortune 500 CEOs that run businesses that are not connected to AI, they are struggling, okay? Go to a sporting goods store in Texas, look at a retailer, anywhere, look at tons of more traditional businesses, their stocks aren't booming. And think about your last two years. You've spent no time, no money on innovation, because you've had a war room focused on supply chain and, and the trade war. And so now here we are with AI. You now have these AI behemoths quietly delaying their IPOs, okay?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And, and they're saying, "We're gonna delay our IPO because, you know, things are moving too fast."

• 13:27Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, what's the term? It's uncertainty in the IPO market. For that reason, we're gonna just put it on pause.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  So going public is basically spreading it on that doctor's table. That is when every analyst is going to actually examine your financials. Not just say, "I'm buying into this AI whiffing a dream", but they're actually saying, "Explain your business model. How are you making money? How are you going to make money in the future? Because you don't necessarily have to be making money today, right? Like Amazon back in the day. But you need to lay out your case for if we invest in you now, how you're gonna grow in the future."

• 14:09Pablo Torre?

  So I gotta say that the very process of going public does have some sort of similarity to like discovery in a trial.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Not some comparison, it's a direct parallel.

• 14:21Pablo Torre?

  There are data rooms, there are documents, there is all of the stuff that companies fight to never let the public see, because it means that you get to see who we really are.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:34Pablo Torre?

  But you just described something that I've been wanting to do on the show for a while, which is talk about what kind of multiple AI companies have been getting? Because I launched into this when I was talking at first about sports team valuations.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 14:48Pablo Torre?

  Because with the Lakers, bought by a couple of guys that you are also familiar with in the world of business. Mark Walter, for instance, and Guggenheim Partners, Todd Bowley, who they bought...

• 14:57Speaker 01

  I know very well, yeah.

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  The Dodgers together, you know, these guys, I want to get to that in a second as well. But the whole point being, you know, 12 and a half billion for the Lakers was like 20X. And it's like, that's crazy, except also, that's what's happening in AI. Like the multiples.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  But AI to an even greater extent.

• 15:18Pablo Torre?

  And so that's why I wanted to have you explain this.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Because you could say the valuations on these teams are insane. And they're insane when you look at the number. But when you actually then understand the value of sports right now, when you think about how much people care, how they've figured out to monetize it, how they've up-premied the sports experience so the average fan can't afford to ever go to a game ever again, but, but they're monetizing it. So when you see that number, you're shocked and it's horrible.

• 15:45Pablo Torre?

  Because revenue is not nearly that big.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Correct. But sports teams are over here in that category. What's happening in this AI space is so reminiscent of dot com, of just like, "That's the future, let me jump on." And the scary thing about the financing is, all of these giant companies are now just investing in one another.

• 16:05Pablo Torre?

  It's the meme that I keep on thinking about that someone posted, where it's a surge protector plugged into itself?

• 16:10Speaker 01

  That's what it is.

• 16:11Pablo Torre?

  It's like, "Look at how protected we all are."

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yes. And so, listen, I do think AI is the future. I'm not wishing ill on any of these companies. But just the, "He's a Svengali genius", isn't enough when fidelity comes in and says, "Walk me through this, because you want me to buy this company."

• 16:31Pablo Torre?

  So OpenAI has postponed their IPO. That was gonna be a historic event. That is not happening anymore. Anthropic, obviously, led the charge in which they want the federal government to cooperate with them so that they can get antitrust exemptions, so they can figure out how to protect everyone?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Now they're saying, "I want you to regulate us." How do they really want to be regulated? Because if you look, they're just looking for regulations that are gonna protect them against getting sued. Or they're looking for regulations that will basically create a regulatory capture or a moat. So if you're the biggest AI company, if you're OpenAI, if you're Anthropic, you can afford to pay for these regulations, but no one else can. And I would liken that to, after the financial crisis in 2007, 2008, they said, "We gotta regulate these banks." And they regulated them in a way that if you were a small bank, if you were a community bank, if you were a mid-sized bank, you couldn't afford those regulations.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  But if you're JP Morgan, if you're the 800-pound gorilla, you might not like hiring another 500 compliance officers, but you can afford to in your sleep. But if you're this tiny little Midwestern community bank, you can't. And we saw those little businesses just get swallowed up in this regulatory capture. And so these behemoth AI companies are like, "Fine, regulate us." But the thing that I think is the most interesting or maybe inspiring is this. We talk all the time about power. And we assume that power is the wealthiest people on earth, the biggest businesses on earth. But look at what has happened in AI and these data centers, okay?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  All of these AI companies, they deeply understand business and they deeply understand communications. If they wanted to build data centers here, there, and everywhere, they knew that they needed to go to those towns, meet those communities, build a school, build a library, make their case to those communities. Instead, they're like, "I don't feel like doing that. I'm gonna write a big fat check to the White House. I'm gonna write a big fat check for the ballroom. I'm gonna sit next to Trump at the inauguration." There's a bunch of those tech leaders having lunch with him today.

• 18:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And they thought, "I'm gonna skip over winning over the American people, because I've got the bat phone to the White House," right? And up until just a few months ago, they thought that play was gonna work. And it seemed like it was. And by the way, if you talk to the president, it sounds like it would. I mean, even to this day, Trump is like, "If you don't want an AI center in your town, that means you want to be poor and you want the Chinese to win." But look what's happened. All across this country, people who love politics, hate politics, never are gonna vote, have said, "I don't understand AI," or more importantly, "I do not want this data center in my backyard." The fact that Greg Abbott, who two years ago was like, "This will be the home of data centers," currently has a moratorium on data centers in Texas.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yes, in Texas. And mind you, I have a strong feeling that that moratorium is gonna end after the midterms. But this should give the American people hope that power can mean many different things. And in all these communities, people have said, "No, no, no. I have the power to say, 'I don't want this here.'"

• 19:48Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is the thing that we are always reckoning with on this show, which is that sports, of course, gets shaped by politics, which uses sports for access to voters, for ways to launder its own image. We're talking in the same week that the Senate just passed the Protect College Sports Act, which is going to also head to the House after the recess is over, in which these elections can take place, in which we will see the reshaping, perhaps, of the electoral map and the power dynamic behind what is only describable as unprecedented corruption.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Correct, correct.

• 20:23Pablo Torre?

  When it comes to money going to White House from... The most esteemed leaders of business in the world.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  But maybe six months ago, I would have said like, this is a one way train. I don't know how it ends, but now here we are. We're 35 days away from the election. The president has a massive multi hundred million dollar war chest in his super pack that he could be writing these checks to these people running in the midterms. And it's diminishing. I don't, at this point, what are you gonna do? Give Ken Paxton running in Texas against James Talarico? You're gonna send him another, a quick 50 million dollars that he can pepper Texas with campaign ads? I don't know that just having the most money is making a difference. And I just think we're seeing it in how the American people are pushing back against

• 21:15Speaker 01

  data centers and lawmakers are responding.

• 21:18Pablo Torre?

  And this is where we have been deliberately speaking the language of money because we want to always follow the money on the show whenever possible. And also because I think that is a far more winning political strategy than anything else that I might personally care about when it comes to philosophy or ideology or anything else. This is a story about people, it seems, voters, who are recognizing how they are getting poorer as the people who are posting memes as if they're starring in Home Alone, pushing a hotel. Dan Scavino, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, also perhaps known as like guy posting memes.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  So Dan Scavino posted over the weekend, this shot of basically, I mean, it looked like he could have replaced himself with Leonardo DiCaprio in Great Gatsby, you know, just surrounded by glam girls popping champagne.

• 22:11Pablo Torre?

  Gold everywhere. It's Eric, I think it's Eric Trump behind, is that him?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  But it's just sort of like.

• 22:17Pablo Torre?

  Pushing it.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Read the room, bro. And listen, I don't, I don't disagree.

• 22:22Pablo Torre?

  Champagne.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  The wealthiest Americans have become exponentially wealthier in the last two years. The president and his family extraordinarily wealthy, which is why lots of wealthy people right now, while they don't necessarily like Donald Trump or support Donald Trump, the problem is millions of people in the United States and abroad are saying, I want to break the system. Because there's been lots of surprising elections in Europe, too, where we're seeing more extreme candidates win. And you're saying, oh, my God, what's happening to the electorate? Are people like really going extreme? People are not going extreme. There are senior citizens who are saying, I'm panicked. I can't afford to retire.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  I don't know if I'm gonna have healthcare coverage in the last quartile of my life. Or they're looking at young people getting out of school who cannot find jobs or who think, who can't even envision when they'll ever buy a home, or people in the mid level of their life who cannot afford to take their kids to a Steelers game. Take those three groups of people. Are they extreme when it comes to political motivations? No, but why would any of those three groups vote for the status quo?

• 23:31Pablo Torre?

  Beware the creep of communism. While, by the way, literally, the [bleep] head of the CCP is at the table with you.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  It's as though they are banking on the ignorance of the American voter.

• 23:43Pablo Torre?

  As always.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  So what you're saying, you're threatening, you're panicking the American voter, saying, if you don't vote with us.

• 23:50Pablo Torre?

  It's China.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Communism is coming.

• 23:52Pablo Torre?

  And it's all of these.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  While the people having dinner together lead the Chinese Communist Party.

• 23:58Pablo Torre?

  It's so.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  It is the new group of tech American oligarchs and politicians and some media personalities. And the threat is if you don't vote for us, communism is coming. It's not coming, it's popping champagne in the White House with you boys.

• 24:15Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I want to describe the table, which is not a metaphorical table, but a table with a photo that we will show. It's like a wedding and who's at the, who's at the table at the center? Who's table number one? It's Donald Trump, it's Melania, it's President Xi Jinping. It is his wife, it is good old Tim Apple, Tim Cook, still making it at the table. It's Jensen Huang, the head of Nvidia. You go around the list. I mean, it goes on, but also nearby is Sam Altman of OpenAI and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet slash Google. Elon Musk is there, of course. Jeff Bezos is there, of course. This is not vague.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  No, this is not vague. And listen, is it great to have business leaders working with the government? Absolutely. We don't want to have our business and our government having an adversarial relationship. But the disconnect between this group of people and the American people is so massive. And they're panicked, they're like, we have to protect the status quo because they're coming for us. And I guess I would argue, as somebody who deeply loves free markets, I love good capitalism.

• 25:25Pablo Torre?

  As someone who is the highest producing credit derivative salesperson in the United States.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  I know, I mean, that's a sexy career. The answer has to be, guys, somewhere in the middle. Because people who are saying, this system doesn't work for me. It's also why you're seeing Democrats who are incumbents, who are losing, even if they have a decent record in DC, just because people are going, nothing's happening in Washington. The current paradigm doesn't work for my life. I want something else. And many of those people voting aren't saying, I'm desperate to have the police defunded. I'd love for the borders to be open. They're not thinking about either of those things. And the American dream is no longer something you can contemplate, then American democracy falls into some level of fragility.

• 26:20Pablo Torre?

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• 27:54Pablo Torre?

  The story of this election and this administration, to me, and our time, frankly, is that we are living in the golden age of scams.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 28:02Pablo Torre?

  I don't know if there's a better, by the way, like little case study in this than when Scott Jennings from CNN, he goes on this podcast, The Fifth Column, which is not like a leftist or lefty thing. And they ask him point blank, do you think this administration has a corruption problem? Which is just like the most elementary question that describes what we're going through.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  Does Donald Trump and the Trump administration have a corruption problem?

• 28:28Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 28:33Pablo Torre?

  That's a very generic question. I mean, is there something pretty simple?

• 28:36Speaker 06

  The easiest possible way, if I get specific, pardons, pardon a finance guy, for instance, world liberty, financial coins, Russian guys paying for weddings, et cetera.

• 28:47Pablo Torre?

  Well, I think they paid him back, but I, but I.

• 28:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, because it was covered by the media, right?

• 28:52Pablo Torre?

  No, I don't think so.

• 28:53Speaker 06

  You think they were like, we'll get you next Tuesday. It became a news story and then Trump was like, they paid them back. I don't think it was gonna be, it was a gift.

• 29:01Pablo Torre?

  I mean, all of it, at a minimum.

• 29:04Speaker 06

  It's kind of gross, right? Like, there's some, there's some taint to it.

• 29:09Speaker 07

  I'll be candid with you. This is not my social world. I don't necessarily exist in that world.

• 29:16Speaker 06

  I'm generally, I'm generally, I'm just a, I'm just a son of a garbage man from Kentucky.

• 29:22Pablo Torre?

  Scott Jennings just can't bring himself to say the obvious thing. And so he's like ice skating through this, of course, unpersuasively. My point is, that guy Scott Jennings, these surrogates, these administration members, they're not fooling the American people anymore.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say, here's where I disagree with you. Ready for the question? When they said, do you think this administration has a corruption problem? They don't, because they don't think it's a problem. That's the issue. And they're doing it right in front of your face, and they don't think it's a problem. Look no further than Don Jr.'s wedding. Don Jr. is currently worth between $300 and $400 million. Yet despite that, the wedding celebration, despite that, he's still like, sure, let's have a Russian crony of Vladimir Putin pick up the tab for my wedding weekend to the tune of 150 grand.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  And you know, it had to stink to the high heavens, because even the president was like, I think he's paid him back.

• 30:31Pablo Torre?

  And this is where we gotta remind people that there is the money going in and the money going out. And there is also this power, which we've covered on this show in the Pardon Economy, in which the president literally has this superpower in which he can keep people from going to federal prison. And so what explains all of this? What's the end game? Is what I always think about, right? Like, what's the end game for all these people that are allegedly committing crimes and engaging in corruption and scamming the American people?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  What's the end game? Money, power, politics. They're using their political power that they currently have, and they're monetizing it. And that's why I think everyone is kidding themselves when they think, well, Republicans are turning on Trump. And we're gonna, you know, when, when John Cornyn loses his primary, or when Bill Cassidy loses his primary, Bill Cassidy, who is a doctor, was gonna be so mad when he lost his primary and so disappointed that he voted to confirm RFK, he's really gonna speak out.

• 31:30Pablo Torre?

  In Louisiana.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yes. And then when they don't, and we're all baffled, I don't know why we're baffled. Because the thing that's different in this administration than any previous time in modern politics is the money element. The people in and around Donald Trump's orbit, besides having political power, are now making tens of millions of dollars through all different ways. And so even if you're no longer going to be in office, you don't want to get off the money train, or you want to get on the money train. And so that's why we're seeing people still say nothing.

• 32:08Pablo Torre?

  Well, and we're seeing ways to make money, in the case of the president, reportedly more than $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency ventures. In his first year back in office, this is according to his official 2025 financial disclosures, that beyond that very basic fact, and thank God for the paper trail that even gives us that.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  As you say, that we know of.

• 32:30Pablo Torre?

  That we know of, because the whole idea of get on the fucking table, we're spreading it open. You're not actually seeing anything anymore, right? Because you're now dealing in the world of crypto. You're now dealing in the world of all of these secret ways to hide where the money's going. But what you do see at the White House, as we've talked about on the show before as well, is the Los Angeles Dodgers going to celebrate their World Series victory with the president, and Mark Walter breaking out the World Series ring for Donald Trump.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Because this is the world that we're currently living in. It's if you can't beat them, join them. And can you say, well, Donald Trump is gonna smooth things over for them? No, we absolutely cannot say that. But boy, oh, boy, if you are any person in these power spheres, it has made business and financial sense for you to cozy up to this president. Because you may not be in hot water today, but you could be tomorrow, and you want to have the people in power in your pocket, and Donald Trump is willing to do that.

• 33:34Pablo Torre?

  And in the case of Mark Walter, under a federal investigation currently, for all the things that have been alleged with self-dealing and Guggenheim Partners, his partner, when they bought the Dodgers together, was Todd Bowley. What is Todd Bowley's political sort of position right now with this whole thing?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Most of these guys, I don't think they have long-term political positions. I think all of them, no pun intended, play ball. And so I think it doesn't matter who's in the White House. Every person who's in a position of power wants to make sure they can be as close to power as possible if they need it. The difference now is that it's just so readily available with this administration. And an administration shouldn't be, we're the business administration, or we're the anti-business administration, right? So, so in the last administration, people would argue that Lena Kahn was anti-business. She was pure academics and she wasn't practical. And I'm not for against Lena Kahn, but I think in all of these examples, we should

• 34:36Speaker 01

  want strong, successful, prosperous businesses in the United States of America. At the same time, our, our biggest CEOs should not have a secret bat phone to call a president.

• 34:50Pablo Torre?

  I do think increasingly that I am like a Lena Kahn Democrat. And I say this in this way. I think that we're living in this golden age of scams, and the idea that there was a Biden nominee who was going to regulate all of these corporations, and therefore validate the continuing credibility of capitalism in the process.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Pablo, we, we keep simplifying it into like, are you pro-regulation or anti-regulation? And that's not the answer. The answer is good regulation, right? I don't necessarily think we need agencies on top of agencies. You could streamline our agencies, but what you can't do is do away with them, right? Like, the whole idea like, oh, maybe the way we're regulating crypto doesn't make sense, so let's get rid of it? No, that's not the answer. And I actually think that the answer is collaborative. You should bring in industry experts. You should have task forces. But what you shouldn't do is say, hey, industry insiders, why don't you guys write the regulation, give us a check, and we'll just do that thing? I actually think the answer is somewhere in the middle.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  I just pray to God that someday we could find that middle. And I think that politicians don't ever find the middle, because it doesn't make for a good political slogan.

• 36:16Speaker 03

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• 37:36Speaker 03

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• 38:06Speaker 03

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• 38:37Pablo Torre?

  The other thing I've been meaning to talk to you about, the other thing we often talk about, whether our audiences appreciate this or not.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  I hope you're gonna say faith.

• 38:46Pablo Torre?

  Is, is our Lord and Savior. Because I'm thinking about all of the costumes politicians wear and that scammers wear. And they wear the costume of sports, they wear the costume of religion.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  This one hurts me the most.

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  And this one brings us to the story of Life Surge, which we reported on earlier this week, and the alleged predatory financial classes that have extracted at times tens of thousands of dollars from financially desperate Christians.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  The poorest of the poor people.

• 39:12Pablo Torre?

  In many of these cases, who, by the way, were convinced to take out multiple credit cards at the same time to pay for these classes in which they would get rich, to take out a loan against the equity they had in their home.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  This one makes me the saddest.

• 39:27Pablo Torre?

  For those who don't know, that's about as fatal a blow as you could deal yourself, that you're gonna take out equity against the one thing that has value and it's your literal [BLEEP] house to pay for these classes.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  So let's just start with, like you, Jesus is my homeboy. So I'm gonna start with, I am a person of faith. There have always been scams. But when you see people get taken advantage of, who are participating under the guise of faith or at religious forums or conventions, and they're tying it together. Come to this faith convention, and while you're here, we're going to tell you, Jesus, he wants you to be successful. And the way you're going to be successful, right? God will love you more if you are a success, and you're gonna take these classes to become more successful. And if you don't have the money, you can have a Jesus plus credit card where you can pay for these classes.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Like, to me, did we not forget, like Blessed Are the Meek? When, when people turn to faith, oftentimes when they are desperate, when they are alone, and to take advantage of people in those moments. And the thing that's kind of amazing about these scams right now.

• 40:43Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  They've always existed, but now, thanks to the media, thanks to social media or cell phones everywhere, people are getting caught. Right? There have always been famous actors, famous athletes, famous people speaking at lots of these multi-marketing conventions, and nobody realized it. They're getting paid a giant check to speak at some cockamamie convention, and then they look the other way and nobody knows. Now, when they try to do it, everyone knows. And so, so I'm not sure if we're living in the golden age of scams. I think scams have always existed, but they're getting exposed, and I like that.

• 41:22Pablo Torre?

  The thing about the sort of faith-based scam in particular that reminds me of this administration to go big picture as well is that it is so antithetical to the religion that they are preaching to do the thing they are doing allegedly. And it reminds me of how bad an actor our president is when it comes to even plausibly giving a [BLEEP] about the God that they're all at these faith-based meetings praying to. He's not even really trying. He's never really tried.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Pablo, it's worse than that, okay? Like, if you think about the phrase, the term "family values" and how it's been co-opted, family values are about come as you are, right? They're about love thy neighbor. When you think about how the Pope has been villainized, right? The Pope was a boy from Chicago, okay? Who devoted most of his professional life to serving the poor in South America. And now he's one of the most important religious leaders on the planet.

• 42:32Pablo Torre?

  Talking about AI and writing about it in incredibly significant ways.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  And parts of our government are villainizing him. And I just think it's crazy and sad, all of these people who are seeking community and are doing it in terms of faith, because that's where their community lies, and they're being hustled and taken advantage of.

• 42:55Pablo Torre?

  This is also not something that breaks down super obviously along party lines, by the way. Like, the way that I've been thinking about this and explaining to people is that, and we should disclose this as well. I went to Catholic school K through 12, you know? That's how I learned about the world, was in high school at Regis by the Jesuits who taught me.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  To choose to live a life in service of others.

• 43:19Pablo Torre?

  And to make sure that you read what people who are not a part of the church also are thinking and finding out and researching. The idea of scholarship beyond just like, let's just not drink our own Kool-Aid. Make sure you go and study, right? Like, that's the very basic premise of why.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  But lack of studying, right? It's David Rubenstein from Carlyle talks about the dangers or the perils of aliteracy, a population that no longer reads, right? Just because we consume self-affirming media does not mean we are an educated country. And you need to understand those other than you to actually live in a well-rounded society, and I fear that we're not.

• 44:04Pablo Torre?

  Right. David Rubenstein, by the way, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. Which is a separate, a separate story. I don't even have time for at the moment. He just wrote a book as well about all of this. But to your point, Liz, my wife, grew up in the church, grew up Catholic, all that stuff, but in Boston. So guess what happened during her childhood? Massive sprawling [BLEEP] molestation scandal. In which, not to speak for her entirely, but that made her less enthusiastic about Catholicism. Totally understandable. We get married in the church because I am the son of two Filipino immigrants. And for us to do that, of course, Liz had to finish the sacraments.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Oh, she wasn't confirmed.

• 44:47Pablo Torre?

  She had pulled out of confirmation in, you know, grade school.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  Seven, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:53Pablo Torre?

  And so got confirmed as an adult.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  She must have really liked you.

• 44:57Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God. And so one of the things I had to reckon with was like, why am I making my future wife do this? And of course, it speaks to the reasons why I personally still have an affinity for the religion and for the faith and for the God that I grew up relying on, worshiping, that my parents passed on to me, that the Philippines itself. By the way, it is no small irony to me that Tim Tebow was born and raised in the Philippines. His parents, Baptist preachers, were missionaries over there, gave birth to Tim. But the Philippines, otherwise, is one of the most Catholic places on this planet.

• 45:38Pablo Torre?

  Like, that's the place where sometimes you'll see videos of people nailing their own hands into the cross for Easter.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  That level of Catholicism.

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  That intensity, often. Anyhow, for me, like, why do I bring up all this? It's because I am not trying to investigate, as has been alleged in numerous places online, that I'm gonna start targeting all the God-fearing people. It's the abuse and the scamming of this whole.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  So the reason it's the most upsetting is because in life, we're skeptical.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And the one place where you see people let their guard down and literally have faith is in a house of worship. So when people are scammed there, I think it's the cruelest.

• 46:33Pablo Torre?

  And my hope is that there is a version of being religious that is effectively not obvious to everybody that you, as a worshipper, might meet. There is the sort of Catholicism that is personal and more private and not ashamed, but just like not trying to convert everybody. And the thing that I'm running into is the particular blend of vulnerability around an evangelical, we want to convert people as our prime sort of like goal here. When combined with the scam, that part feels allegedly predatory

• 47:18Pablo Torre?

  beyond what can ever make sense to me.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  So if somebody loses all their money going to Vegas this weekend, buyer beware, you knew what you were getting into. But to me, to watch potential predatory financial scams tied to faith is truly awful. And to you sort of questioning the like, what does this look like and what does religion look like? One's relationship, like faith is the most personal thing. For so many people who don't necessarily have the benefit of parents or community or siblings or friends, it is that. And so it should, it really should be protected, that it should be the last place where people are targeted in terms of financial scams. Like, you know, there's the famous like, there's a special place in hell for women who don't help women.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, put that one over here. There's a special place in hell for those who are targeting people coming to religious institutions to find community. Like, you're a whole new level of bad news.

• 48:19Pablo Torre?

  And that's what brings us back to the top of this whole hierarchy of a country that is managing always the line between church and state, is being presided over by a president who is only pretending to care about any of that stuff, but not for the reason of wanting to make everything more Christian, but wanting to profit off of everything, period.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Then I would just turn and say, yes. Is Donald Trump the president of the United States? Is he the leader of the free world? Sure. But I'm just not going to be so doom and gloom. We can be the change makers. We have to choose to stand in the light. And people who want things to break are the ones convincing you that this place sucks and everything sucks and tune out. Don't tune out, tune in and choose to make this country what you want it to be. But have faith and stand up and don't just complain. Do something about it. Create the country you want to live in.

• 49:20Pablo Torre?

  Stephanie Ruhl, you have restored my faith for at least the next hour.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  I think you're making fun of me.

• 49:28Pablo Torre?

  No, I'm not. I think that you are somebody who is incredibly genuine about how this all can get better. And I want to agree.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Then you can choose to be part of it.

• 49:47Pablo Torre?

  Touche.

• 49:58Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. OK, you'd never overspend on food. What's your deal? What's his deal? He went to Metro and got $450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy A37 5G for free. And no activation fees. Free phone? Oh, sign me up. Get that more for your money feeling, only on Metro by T-Mobile.

• 50:47Speaker 05

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• 51:10Speaker 03

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