Pod Insights PBD Podcast Mafia States of America | Episode 4 - "Mob vs Government" About this episode In Episode 4 of Mafia States of America, Sammy Gravano and Michael Franzese expose the ties between organized crime and government. From Hoover and the Kennedys to bribes, unions, and corruption, nothing is off limits in this explosive sit-down.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of Valuetainment Media. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller “Your Next Five Moves” (Simon & Schuster) and a father of 2 boys and 2 girls. He currently resides in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:14 Speaker 02 Previously on Mafia States of America.
1:18 Patrick Bet-David? Was there names? Was there anything when you met with the feds?
1:20 Speaker 04 Yes. They asked me about a lot of stuff.
1:23 Patrick Bet-David? OK. And?
1:24 Speaker 04 I didn't tell them. We talked with them, but he didn't tell them.
1:28 Speaker 05 Sammy, you did this to his business, and that because of that you're a rat?
1:32 Speaker 04 A man is a piece of shit if you don't agree to it. If you don't agree to it, it's nothing.
1:37 Speaker 05 Why are they talking about me?
1:39 Patrick Bet-David? Either of you regret breaking the oath, or no? If you had to done it again, would you have done it the same exact way, if you were to report it with John?
1:47 Speaker 04 If I would have done it a second time around, what I should have done, I was in jail with John. I should have killed him in prison.
1:54 Patrick Bet-David? That's what you should have done?
1:55 Speaker 04 And did life without blood.
1:57 Speaker 06 There are a few people that are genetically inherently bad, evil. But most people are shaped that way by circumstances.
2:53 Speaker 02 Mob life is a paradox. These guys do it for the money, but the more money they make, the more the government wants them. They all want to be boss. But the more powerful they get, the more the government wants them. So you tell me, how do they win?
3:18 Speaker 04 When we were doing things, rigging, all kinds of things, the public, it didn't do anything.
3:27 Speaker 04 Nothing.
3:29 Speaker 04 I would see a woman, good-looking woman with a beautiful dress. We were getting kicked back from the garment industry. I blow the horn, she thinks I'm flirting with us. She smiles, I smile. I don't give a fuck about her. That dress, I make five dollars a dress. That's why I blow the horn, she thinks I'm flirting with her. I'm happy she's wearing that dress. But the people are like zombies, sometimes. Every time we would tax them in one way or another, raise the price of bread, we had the bread as options. Raise the price of construction, raise the price of this. They bitch and moan, but did nothing. It's the same thing right now with politicians.
4:12 Speaker 06 When I became US Attorney in 1983, they were the most powerful organized crime group in the country. And they were the only organized crime group that had become... Semi legitimate. They infiltrated our politics, they infiltrated our businesses. They infiltrated the church.
4:29 Patrick Bet-David? Church.
4:29 Speaker 06 Yeah, they had certain cardinals and bishops that they did business with.
4:34 Patrick Bet-David? Catholic church.
4:35 Speaker 06 Catholic church. I mean, the way they would run the garment industry is a little different the way it usually run. They have to do a lot of factoring, they have to do a lot of very, very sketchy loans just as part of their business because of accounts receivable. But now if they don't pay, then if it's a legitimate operation, you take them to court, they would break their legs. Or I had one guy, loan sharking guy, who got involved with them. He came from a very rich family. He was sort of a near to well, who had a trust. And he got in very deeply to Vito's brother-in-law, Julio Gazia. Gazia was a cruel, sadistic human being.
5:18 Speaker 06 And he got him to pay, he took his hand. They held one side of the hand on one side of the door, the other, and they crashed his hand over with the door, they just closed the door and said. When I tried the case, I let him show his hand to the entire jury. It was all caved in. That's how they collected money. It's sort of almost romantic when they say, oh, it was legal. Yeah, it's legal now to loan money at interest, at big interest, but the bank can't come in and crash you and bust up your hand or break your kneecaps or beat up your daughter, which they would do.
5:56 Patrick Bet-David? Does their business model work without that? Does their business model work without the violence?
6:03 Speaker 06 Some of it, yes, some of it, no. They never would have control of the garment industry if it wasn't ultimately for universally illegal tactics. So it was a smart thing they did. They focused on the garment industry because heavy gamblers. And always looking for a loan. Because of the nature of the business where you're producing the garments, you're selling, you don't get paid for your six months. So they go to the bank, then they gotta go to a factor, and in those days, there was only a limit you could get to, and then you gotta go to the mob. Plus, right near Madison Square Garden, I don't, I can't tell you how many of those
6:44 Speaker 06 guys I prosecuted for tax evasion, I prosecuted them to get them to testify against the mafia. I mean, they are massive gamblers, particularly sports gamblers. They're, you know, the, the joke is, and you go to Madison Square Garden to watch a college game, and the team is winning, and you should be really, really excited, and then all of a sudden, they're losing the point spread, and you can hear the crowd go, "Ah!" The team is winning by ten points, but they're supposed to win by fourteen. And nobody understands New York. New York is rooting for the point spread, they're not rooting for the, for the team. So they, they got a sense of that right away, and they realized, boy, we can move in on this.
7:26 Speaker 06 We, we start loaning them money at ridiculous rates of interest. We start taking their bets and getting them into us. And then one day, we visit them and say, "Look what you owe me. You can't pay this." "Well, you got a choice. We're not greedy. Give us half the business. We're your partner. You run it, you can still keep fifty percent. That's a nice living. You give us the other fifty percent, and you turn the business over to us. But we'll let you stay here and work." And they did. For the guys who wanted, the guys that didn't want to do it ended up in the, you know, in Pinocchio somewhere. That's the part that they leave out.
8:15 Speaker 05 Our criminality, I think, was a little different. We kinda... And I gotta be careful how I say this, because I don't want to say that we were good criminals, I'm not saying that. But we... We did things not to hurt the vast majority of people. I don't think we were pulling the wool over eyes of the whole country. You know, we did things within our sphere of influence.
8:37 Speaker 06 Organized crime by the 80s, let's say right before I started to get involved, had really become a massive illegal business. A multinational illegal business. Unlike other criminal groups, it had infiltrated into legitimate parts of life. I viewed it as, um... You have a lot of organized crime groups, Russian, Chinese, various other groups. But the mafia grew tentacles, like an octopus. So the tentacles were Las Vegas, the Teamsters Union, the garment industry in New York. You could not get a whore without picking a mafia business. And it turns out you paid about 30% more than you should pay.
9:21 Speaker 06 That was the mafia tax. The fish market was famous for being controlled by the mafia. The pornography bars on the west side, maybe 67 of them, all controlled by the mafia. Controlled for a lot of reasons. Cash, for laundering, but for extortion. Judge Jones had come in, dressed a little different, looking a little different. He'd pick up a guy. "Nice picture, we got Judge Jones." District Attorney so-and-so comes in, "Another nice picture, we got that one." Maybe we never use it. Maybe we get in front of him and somebody visits him and says, "Did I just show this to your wife and kids?" It was a great place for extortion. Or extortion of businessmen. A business guy comes in, he runs a big company, they want to move in and take half the company.
10:06 Speaker 06 They put the pictures on the table.
10:09 Patrick Bet-David? So what was easier to control back in the day? Local cops or federal? Mayors or governors?
10:15 Speaker 05 Local cops.
10:16 Patrick Bet-David? Local cops were easier.
10:18 Speaker 05 Patrick, I'm gonna tell you this. At the time, I had plenty of money, I had plenty of resources. I would have paid anything to anybody in the federal system to get my dad out of jail. I couldn't do it. There was no amount of money that I was able to pay to get my father out. And I offered, and it was out there. I offered it. It was hard with the feds. Couldn't do it.
10:41 Patrick Bet-David? Local was easier.
10:42 Speaker 05 Locals. Look, the locals, you know.
10:45 Speaker 04 You know where the locals were easier?
10:46 Speaker 05 Yeah.
10:47 Speaker 04 We grew up in the same, before, they do a different system.
10:50 Speaker 05 Yes.
10:51 Speaker 04 We grew up in the same neighborhood.
10:53 Patrick Bet-David? Got it.
10:53 Speaker 04 We would get, we would fight, we would go out with the same girls.
10:57 Patrick Bet-David? School together, sports.
10:58 Speaker 04 I went into the mom. He became a cop. We knew each other.
11:01 Speaker 05 We had neighbors that were cops. We had pizza on family that were cops.
11:04 Patrick Bet-David? So it was easier to do that?
11:05 Speaker 04 Yes. And then what they did, the cops were smart too. We came out of Bensonhurst. He became the cop. He couldn't work in Bensonhurst. He worked in the Bronx or where, or in Harlem or somewhere. They didn't want him there because a cop, even cops, I had cops who weren't on the table, who would say, whisper like, say, "Watch your back, bro." He didn't want no money, he didn't want nothing. We grew up together, so he had a little bit of feeling towards me. So it made it a little easier. Now, if he had a little bit of corrupt or he needed some money, that made me weak. So it was easier to deal with that. Now, feds, who the fuck knows where they come from? Alabama, Utah.
11:49 Speaker 04 They're coming from different states. They don't even know where we are. So how do you approach these people?
11:55 Patrick Bet-David? Meaning befriending them, building a relationship with them that made it harder like that? Was that a part of the strategy?
12:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, ten, of course.
12:02 Patrick Bet-David? And so at that point, they couldn't be bought. So there was no check that could buy the federal agents.
12:09 Speaker 04 And then they made a lot more money.
12:10 Speaker 05 Patrick, I, I offered millions. Couldn't do it.
12:13 Patrick Bet-David? Couldn't do anything to help your dad out? Okay.
12:17 Speaker 04 Some of them were bad. Scapa, senior had a guy who was cooperating on a snake. He had a couple of guys.
12:24 Patrick Bet-David? In some ways, that kind of shows credibility to them, doesn't it?
12:27 Speaker 05 No, because maybe they didn't have the juice to make it. Look, federal system is different. I mean, people are looking and watching all the time. I mean, they rat on each other, you know, they're after it. It's just different. People are scared, some of them, at that level. Maybe to do something with us, not with each other. Each other, don't have to worry. Or maybe to do something with us.
12:48 Speaker 04 See now, and then if you go back a little further, we had Hoover.
12:56 Speaker 04 Hoover was with the mafia. It's another fucking weird thing I'm gonna come out with that people are gonna, oh, you're crazy. He, they was with the mafia. There's history of it now.
13:06 Speaker 05 Yes, it's a fact.
13:07 Speaker 04 And a fact. And a little bit, he was afraid of the mafia that he was closet gay and he was afraid for it to come out. So, and they never, they helped him. And he abided by, this is a guy, as the director of the FBI for years, denounced there was no such thing. There was no such mafia.
13:30 Speaker 05 He wouldn't agree with it.
13:30 Speaker 04 Even one fucking, the, the, who was that guy who cooperated?
13:35 Speaker 05 Faraci.
13:35 Speaker 04 Faraci got out of the thing, that embarrassed him until he was puzzled. He's still denied it.
13:42 Patrick Bet-David? Is this because one of the members showed up with pictures of what they had of his?
13:46 Speaker 04 No, I don't think they, no. I don't really think they put pressure on him that way. He liked the horses, they would fix races, they'd give him the horses. He had no malice towards them. And with other little secrets like that, they held him, they never hurt him. They never tried to hurt him. So, and, and I don't think it was, from what I understand, big money is transplanted, that he had a relationship. Frank Costello took over the family right after Luciano went away. He took it over. Luciano put him there and he took it over, ran it, and he was like this with Hoover. Then he had another reason that Bobby Kennedy.
14:28 Speaker 04 He hated Bobby Kennedy and vice versa. So this is where this Kennedy, you go back to them. Bobby Kennedy had so many enemies. So was the mafia. Looks like a lot of those old, you know, cut off the head, the fish dies, all that shit.
14:44 Speaker 05 Bobby was the one that got his brother killed.
14:47 Patrick Bet-David? Oh, of cour- I mean, that's, yeah, that's, yeah.
14:50 Speaker 04 Without a doubt.
14:51 Speaker 05 And I will tell you this, Patrick. There is, uh, classified documents in the Kennedy assassination that I believe two years ago Trump was talking about, we wanted to release those classified documents. And then all of a sudden it stopped. I've heard this my whole life. I don't know why people would have to tell me something different. My father, just general conversation.
15:16 Speaker 04 I knew it all my life too.
15:17 Speaker 05 Yeah, general conversation. That we had a hand in killing Kennedy. Those classified documents will never be exposed because the fed- the government will never want to admit that the mob had a hand in killing the city president.
15:33 Patrick Bet-David? Why wouldn't they?
15:34 Speaker 05 Come on, the embarrassment?
15:35 Patrick Bet-David? But, but, but-
15:36 Speaker 05 To get to a city president?
15:38 Patrick Bet-David? But why wouldn't they?
15:38 Speaker 05 I'd rather say it was a lone maniac shooting.
15:40 Speaker 04 His wife, his wife.
15:41 Patrick Bet-David? Today, though, why wouldn't they matter today? I get that time.
15:44 Speaker 04 His wife. Bobby had so many, John wasn't disliked by the mob, mob at all. Bobby had so many enemies, whether it was half, whether it was the unions, whether it was the mafia in different states, powerful mafiosos, all over the place. Hoover hated him.
16:06 Speaker 05 That's right.
16:06 Speaker 04 So you don't know, I'm not saying a mafioso shot him on, from the grass, you know. Could have been CIA, it could have been the government. But it was such a group of people that he hurt, Bobby. And old Italian things, you cut off the head, the fish dies. He, his head was cut off, blown off, the fish died. They came to him one day and they said, uh, "We'd like to talk to you about the killing of President Kennedy. I'd like to know the information that you have on that." Me? Yeah.
16:52 Speaker 04 Are you joking? Is this like a joke? I said, "Bro,
17:00 Speaker 04 we don't shoot for a grassy knoll. Maybe you guys did that. Maybe the CIA did that. Close this meeting. Get those notes." And they left.
17:13 Speaker 04 They didn't even let me finish. And walked out.
17:17 Speaker 05 We have never discussed this. Ever.
17:19 Speaker 04 No.
17:20 Speaker 05 He comes from a different place than I came. He heard it all his life, he was involved. I heard it my whole life. Why would they make it up, our guys?
17:35 Patrick Bet-David? Who learned from you guys the most? Free enterprise, free market, or politicians and the government? Who took the most pages out of your playbook?
17:43 Speaker 04 Not learned, not learned. The government, I could learn more. But they used some of our evil ways and brought it to a whole nother level. Wow, this is good what they were doing. With the union. We were controlling unions. He could tell you, almost all of them in construction.
18:02 Speaker 05 You know, you call that, Perry, you call that a bully. When people that don't have power on their own use the power of government to take advantage of people with less power than them, they're bullies. And they're cowards, as far as I'm concerned. Because, look, we had a lot of strength on the street, we couldn't fight the government.
18:23 Speaker 04 No.
18:24 Speaker 05 It's like somebody recently said to me, "How do you fight somebody who won two world wars? Right? And controls the world, practically? How do you fight them? But they're bullies."
18:35 Speaker 04 And not only that, but they have companions.
18:41 Speaker 04 Big tech shuts people down.
18:45 Speaker 05 Oh, that's another issue.
18:46 Speaker 04 The news media takes one part, not the other. It's not like when I was a kid. You listen to the news media. You would say to yourself, wow, this guy said this. It was gospel. No, no, I don't even know who's telling the truth anymore. Who's lying? No, not every day is another weird story. This Fauci guy, he bouncing off the walls. A different story every other day. We lost a half a million people in this country. And nobody's doing nothing.
19:16 Speaker 05 And we don't even know what the truth relies. We don't know if this thing was created in Wuhan. Remember, this affected the whole world. Not only did it kill people, people are starving now. The businesses are destroyed.
19:26 Speaker 04 Everything is ruined.
19:27 Speaker 05 And they won't even tell us the truth. And I believe they know it. How could they not know? They know it.
19:33 Speaker 04 And you know what I say, Michael?
19:34 Speaker 05 So how is that? How is? How are we? How are we any worse than them?
19:38 Speaker 04 No, you're not even a pebble on their wrist. But you know what I say to that?
19:44 Speaker 05 Why?
19:44 Speaker 04 How can nobody say nothing about the teachers union shutting down all the schools? They are brainwashing our kids in schools. They're making white kids hate themselves because they're white. They're making black people say something to get them to do. And we don't, we don't say nothing.
20:05 Speaker 05 So how bad is it when two former mobsters that did what they did in their life are sitting here complaining about the government? And not that they're coming after us. They're coming, they're coming after everybody.
20:16 Patrick Bet-David? If I told you in 1983, okay, let's just say we meet somewhere and I say, guys, I got this newspaper from 2021. Casino is going to be everywhere. It's going to be a multi, multi, multi billionaire industry. Be patient, it's going to get legal. Uh, this whole loan sharking thing you're doing, Michael, that you're charging twenty-five percent per month? That's nothing. It's gonna become legal. You can do six hundred percent per year if you want to. It's payday loans. They're everywhere. Drugs, don't worry about it, guys. Drugs are gonna be legal. There's gonna be a lot of ways to make money with drugs. It's the direction we're going. This whole prostitution thing, OnlyFans, you know, we're gonna have stuff that's gonna be... There's so many ways to make money with that. Be patient with that. Uh, betting, don't worry about it. There's gonna be this thing one day called fantasy football, fantasy baseball.
20:59 Patrick Bet-David? It's gonna be multi-multi-billion dollar industries where presidents every year are gonna pick, in fantasy, a perfect bracket on who's gonna win the NCAA championship. Don't worry about it, guys. This thing's gonna be legal. If I would've told you that in nineteen eighty-one, what would you have said to me?
21:15 Speaker 04 Because I hated the government and I believed they were corrupt, I would've believed that.
21:18 Patrick Bet-David? Oh, so you would've believed that?
21:19 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
21:20 Patrick Bet-David? You wouldn't have believed it?
21:21 Speaker 04 I wouldn't think that it'd be possible because it's so hard to get so many multiple families, let alone fucking industries, with the media, confer with Big Tech, uh, with the Democratic Party, with this, with Hollywood. Could you get all those people on board? I would think, no. Would it happen? Do I think now? I think it happened.
21:47 Speaker 05 You know what? I believe it too, Pat. When OTB came into New York, when they started, when the state of New York took over the betting policy for the racetrack, I said, "This is the start of it." They finally seen, okay, it was almost like prohibition. People wanna gamble. You're not gonna stop them from gambling. Same with alcohol.
22:06 Patrick Bet-David? But now it's legal.
22:08 Speaker 05 It's legal.
22:08 Patrick Bet-David? My uncle in Iran was a bootlegger. He goes, "Oh, my gosh, he's a bootlegger." I was like, "Oh, that guy's a bootlegger." Guys do an Instagram commercial saying, "Buy my new tequila, buy my new this." People are becoming billionaires selling their tequila brands.
22:20 Speaker 05 Listen.
22:20 Patrick Bet-David? And they're professional legal bootleggers.
22:22 Speaker 05 I think there was a time when street guys, the mob... We really had it over the government. Prohibition is a perfect example. You could say whatever you want about gangsters. When gangsters are knocking around trying to make a dollar here, a dollar there, there's nothing there. When you put hundreds of millions of dollars in their pocket, they become an organization. Prohibition is what created the mob in this country. It's what made Cousin Osterbro in this country, because that's when the money came in.
22:50 Patrick Bet-David? What do you say to a Sammy or a Michael that says, "Look, you know, we were doing this, it was illegal then, but a lot of people are using our model today."
22:59 Speaker 05 They're half-right and half-wrong. Some of the things they were doing are legal today. Some of the things they're doing, they were doing are not illegal, it's not illegal to kill anybody.
23:10 Patrick Bet-David? Kay and Michael are walking, this is Godfather One.
23:12 Speaker 05 I think I know the one you're gonna talk about.
23:13 Patrick Bet-David? Yeah.
23:13 Speaker 05 In New Hampshire or Maine or wherever.
23:16 Patrick Bet-David? Their dog runs right by them and Michael says to Kay, "You know, Kay, my father is no different than any other powerful man. Any man with power, like a president or a senator." Kay says, "You know how naive you sound." Michael says, "Why?" Kay says, "Senators and presidents don't have people killed." Michael says, "Who's being naive, Kay?" Right? So, on the flip side of it, you know, Sammy says, "Look, I was in the army. If I go in the army and kill a bad guy, nineteen people, I'm a hero. I get a badge, I get to say Medal of Honor. What a great soldier, you know, I went and killed people for my country, right? So, that's what I did.
23:59 Patrick Bet-David? But on this end, I go do what I'm doing, I'm a criminal, right? So, what they're trying to say is politicians do the same thing as they're doing. So, they saw themselves as a form of a government, just like the US government did. Who is really being naive? Kay or Michael?
24:16 Speaker 06 It isn't a matter of being naive, it's a matter of being too romantic about what they're really like. Some of it's true, I mean, some of it is, they're doing the same tactics that happen in legitimate businesses. It is true that there's politicians, some, who get people killed, and maybe there are presidents who do it also. I would distinguish having people killed because they're terrorists and they're gonna come and kill 10 million people. That isn't what they're doing. I mean, if you're talking about presidents who get people killed in wars, it's a little bit different. I mean, did Roosevelt get people killed, or did he have to do it because Japan attacked Pearl Harbor?
24:59 Speaker 06 But there may be situations in which presidents have had people killed for political reasons. I don't know. There are people who think there were, people who think there weren't. There's surely a situation where politicians have done it. But they don't do it as part of the business. I mean, their business was, if we have to resort to it, we always have it there, which is what often made them successful. I mean, go right back to the beginning. They walked in on the little Italian guy running a bar or a candy store, and they said, "You're giving me 20% per week. Why am I doing that? I'm not making much money." Because if you don't, you're not gonna have the bar. And then the few that resisted, they smashed up the bar, burned the bar, beat up the guy, beat up his daughter, and then everybody complied.
25:44 Speaker 06 That really isn't the way government operates, except when it's a real aberration. That's the way they operate as a rule. So I think there's a big difference. I think they like to see themselves that way. Makes it easier on your conscience. But it's a very, it's a very different thing when you're totally devoted to crime, or you're totally devoted to something else, and some people commit crimes. I mean, you take a police department. I've prosecuted a lot of corrupt police officers. But the police department wasn't corrupt. The whole police department was a group of people that were corrupt. And then you have an opportunity to weed them out, and whatever else you think of the New York City Police Department today, with all the, of the charges, there's really no
26:29 Speaker 06 substantial corruption in the New York City Police Department anymore. Because that wasn't the main mission. Their main mission is to be corrupt, to be dishonest, to make money that way.
26:47 Patrick Bet-David? Why not legalize? Was it because you wanted to put it in their face? Was it because the money was easy to make? Was it the adrenaline? Was it the camaraderie? Was it the fact that? What was the reason why somebody didn't just say, "Guys, let's sit here and figure this thing out. Let's go become a political party. Let's have a vision of what this thing can be one day. Let's build something."
27:03 Speaker 04 That wasn't our mistake. But what he's saying is, with prohibition dead, and he's 1,000% right. And those piles of money that came in, that was used. They were bribing judges, senators, congressmen, cops, you name it. And that really showed them what time it is. And then, again, like everything else, they throw us out and they took all of us. It's a great idea. Why didn't we think of this?
27:33 Speaker 05 The same with anything. Same with gambling. People wanna gamble. You're not gonna stop them from gambling. So what does the government do? They capitalize on it. What is that big sports game? They capitalize on it because they can't stop it. The drug business, the same thing. People, look. Unfortunately, I had drugs in my family. And I say this. You can take a drug addict, Patrick, you can put him in the center of the Sahara Desert or the Pacific Ocean. They will find drugs if they want it. I've seen it. Witnessed it in my family. You're not gonna stop it. So what does the government do? They get involved in it. And what do they do? They tax people. They make money on it. They don't care about... I don't care what you say. They don't care about the health and the welfare of those people involved. They don't care.
28:12 Patrick Bet-David? I wanna read you a quote of what Abraham Lincoln once said. He said, "Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself where it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded on."
28:36 Speaker 05 Yeah, great wisdom. Great, great wisdom.
28:40 Patrick Bet-David? Do you think a part of McCarthyism and Rico kinda opened up the can of worms when now it's past the tipping point and they can kinda push the envelope a bit more?
28:49 Speaker 05 Yeah. Yeah, no question about it. I mean, you look at McCarthyism, which...
28:56 Speaker 06 I was very young, but my parents were very anti-communist. And, uh, kind of really, and one was a Democrat, one was a Republican. But they both kind of liked McCarthy originally. He was like, almost a hero. So I got, I had a great insight from them because they turned on him. And, um, I remember when they did. It's when he, when he did that thing with the, I've got the names of, like, I've forgotten the number. I have the names on this list of 230 Communist Party members in the State Department. And then it turned out he never produced a list. It reminds me of Adam Schiff, when he said he had direct evidence of President Trump dealing with the Russians. Where is it, Adam? It's, uh, four years now.
29:41 Speaker 06 We still don't have the direct evidence. He has a tragedy with McCarthy. He was right, and then he overdid it. Yes, the Communists had infiltrated the government. Yes, the Roosevelt administration, going back to the 30s, had very significant Communists advising him. And they gave him some bad advice. Just to give an example. We were, we were anti-Germany, anti-Japan. And then all of a sudden, Stalin and Hitler make a pact, and all Roosevelt's advisors are now advising the start of the war. Because they were more loyal to Stalin than they were to the US. When we go to Yalta, basically he caves into Stalin because he's getting sick and old and Churchill had a much healthier view of Stalin.
30:26 Speaker 06 We gotta use him. We gotta make Uncle Joe feel really good. And once we win the war, we double-cross him. For the good of humanity. Roosevelt really, I can control him. I can control him. Because his people were telling him that, because they had communist sympathies. Alja his, whatever. So he had a real thing. Probably at the beginning, he, then that power went to his head. Appears he became an alcoholic. And then he was accusing her. Anybody who said anything derogatory became a communist. Reporters, celebrities.
31:01 Patrick Bet-David? Would you call it essentially the first cancel culture that we experienced? It was a cancel culture type of an environment.
31:07 Speaker 06 It's very, very interesting, Patrick. Tremendous, tremendous analogy to today.
31:13 Patrick Bet-David? How concerned are you about how far this thing can go? Are we at a tipping point where there's no turning around?
31:19 Speaker 06 I'm very concerned about it. It's a little bit different because these, mostly these laws we're talking about had and have a good purpose. And have a history of being used for a good purpose. And then they begin to become abused when you go into maybe a second generation or a third generation of using them. And people that don't have the same moral constraints see the advantages they can get out of it. Whether you're talking about RICO, which would be one of the early, or the Patriot Act, or things like that. And right now, so we fast forward from 1981, 82, when they never used RICO, to now.
32:01 Speaker 06 Basically, it's all of this secret surveillance that they do. RICO is almost irrelevant to the things they use now. And I see all these lies to the FISA court. But no consequence to it. It means the next guy's gonna lie even more.
32:18 Patrick Bet-David? How do you view the government?
32:20 Speaker 05 It's very corrupt.
32:23 Patrick Bet-David? How do you view the government?
32:25 Speaker 05 Listen, you can't draw, you can't throw a blanket over the entire, everybody in the government, obviously. But the government is corrupt. There's no doubt about it. How do you beat a government that won two wars and prints its own money? Chas Palmiterius, I've forgotten the last part of it. They do basically what they want, Patrick.
32:46 Speaker 04 It's it's become a I I I personally believe this country is in a lot of trouble. I don't think we're gonna recover. I think it's reached a point where we're in a lot of trouble. I worry about my kids and my grandchildren. And you're talking, you know, to a guy that was a criminal at one time.
33:02 Patrick Bet-David? Going back to saying this government being corrupt. When has the government never been corrupt? I mean, historically, if you look at government, I can't think of any government I've ever read about.
33:12 Speaker 04 No.
33:12 Patrick Bet-David? That hasn't officially used their power to bully people, no?
33:15 Speaker 04 Kennedy's were were clearly the worst. They were caught with everything. I mean, it was ridiculous what they did and we did. But here's the difference. I agree with what he said. When we were had, when we doing all these things, I call it, we had our beak in it. In other words, we took a little bite of the pie. Like I said about that woman walking around with the dress. I give five dollars a dress. These people want thirty dollars or forty dollars out of that dress. So now a woman can't even go buy a dress. She's gotta go look for John's Bargain Store or something. That's the that's the difference. We we took pieces. I was in Paul's house during the garbage strike. I was sitting in his house.
33:58 Speaker 04 He sent for Jimmy Brown to run the union there. Clean up these things. You got garbage stacked up in front of hospitals, old age homes, schools. Clean that up. You could win with everything else. What are we, animals? It wasn't. He didn't want the whole pie. He was content on taking a piece and not hurting everybody. And I've heard it with my own two ears, two ears. So what he's saying is a hundred percent right. We all did it. I'm I did it as well. I don't wanna say I'm a good guy, but I do have children and grandchildren, just like he does.
34:40 Speaker 04 And I worry about that because they're so greedy. They want the whole pie. And they don't care who dies. You know, I'll say this. We've talked about people. I believe Mario Cuomo is the worst guy.
34:53 Patrick Bet-David? The father.
34:55 Speaker 05 Absolutely, not Mario, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
34:57 Patrick Bet-David? Chris Cuomo or Andrew?
34:58 Speaker 05 Governor Cuomo, no, Andrew.
35:00 Patrick Bet-David? Okay, Governor Cuomo.
35:00 Speaker 05 Mario was a pretty decent guy, yes, decent guy. He was a decent guy. I don't think his father would approve of him.
35:06 Patrick Bet-David? He's your era, right?
35:07 Speaker 05 Yes, yes. Yeah.
35:09 Patrick Bet-David? How did you guys view him?
35:11 Speaker 05 He was a legitimate mobster.
35:13 Patrick Bet-David? Did you ever deal with him? Did you have any dealings? Did the mob do business with him or no?
35:16 Speaker 05 I had some experience with him and Mito Esposito at the time.
35:20 Patrick Bet-David? Favors or no?
35:21 Speaker 05 Favor, yeah.
35:22 Patrick Bet-David? Favors?
35:23 Speaker 05 Yes.
35:23 Patrick Bet-David? So the mob helped Mario out?
35:27 Speaker 05 He wasn't an enemy, I'll put it that way. Now, I'm not saying...
35:30 Speaker 04 He helped everybody else.
35:30 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:31 Patrick Bet-David? But wait a minute, this, this is... What does that mean? You helped Mario out? Like, in what way? Was it helping him in an election? Was it helping him in a...
35:38 Speaker 05 Listen, you know, you, you, uh, you, you fund operations that they have, you know? You, you get a favor in return. Look, I can only tell you this. We... It wasn't easy to get licensed to be a wholesaler at the time of the gasoline business. We had, we needed political clout to do it. It wasn't easy to get it.
35:56 Patrick Bet-David? He helped?
35:57 Speaker 05 We had help. Mito Esposito, this guy, there was a couple of people that were favorable to us.
36:03 Patrick Bet-David? Many names were brought up. So I asked them, I said, "Who was easier to bribe?" You know, when you were a mobster? Was it the Republicans, the Democrats? Who was it? They said, "Not even close. It was always easier to bribe and buy, you know, Democrats." I said, "Give me names. Who, anybody that maybe you work with, they can talk about." And we started kind of going through a list of names. They spoke very favorably about Mario Cuomo, Governor Mario Cuomo.
36:26 Speaker 05 Yeah, I would too.
36:27 Patrick Bet-David? Yeah, and they, they said very good things. But they also said, "We had him in our pockets." And, you know, meaning the fact...
36:33 Speaker 05 They had him in their pocket somewhat because of his own, um... Of his own limitations in his thinking and somewhat because of his wife. So his wife's family, and I, I hate to say this because she's a lovely woman. I think Matilda is a, just a grand lady. But this is part of the Italian experience, had mafia connections.
36:56 Speaker 06 And the governor was always afraid that if he ran, they would be exploited. And I opposed Mario in the sense of my political philosophy was completely different than his, certainly at that point in my life, even though I endorsed him for governor. Well, I'll explain why later, because I needed the money for the city. I always thought Mario overdid it. I don't think, I know, I know and really can't quite describe in detail to you, it wouldn't be right, the details of it, and it's not nearly as serious as he thought it was. I mean, it's the kind of thing you could easily explain as had nothing to do with Matilda, had nothing to do with Mario.
37:37 Speaker 06 And it's the kind of thing that happened back in those days when you had to conduct a business and if you didn't play ball with them, they were victims, they weren't, they easily could have been interpreted that way, actually the way I interpreted it. He saw shadows about it. You know how sometimes people are more embarrassed about something than they should be? I always thought that was the case with Mario, largely because he was very ethical and a very good man.
38:02 Patrick Bet-David? Mario was.
38:03 Speaker 06 Yeah, very, very good man, and someone I respected greatly.
38:07 Speaker 04 I hate to get into Governor Cuomo, I will a little bit because he's Italian, I can't stand it.
38:13 Patrick Bet-David? You can't stand Governor Cuomo?
38:15 Speaker 04 No, I hate him. One, because he's Italian, I'm embarrassed to have somebody do what he did as an Italian.
38:22 Patrick Bet-David? Why is that?
38:23 Speaker 04 He killed 15,000 people by putting people with the coronavirus in with old people. I don't give a fuck, who tells me to do that? Whether it's Trump, the president, the vice president, you, him, I would never do it. And I'm a badass, I would never do it. So when he gets caught doing that, and if you look, there's money trail, there's all kinds of trails. He's gonna get slapped on a race and kill fifteen thousand.
38:52 Patrick Bet-David? I'm actually curious, how do you feel about that? Because you killed nineteen, you, the number that you hear about. Are you involved in nineteen? We, we, we, you clarified it last time, we did, yeah. So the nineteen that you were involved in, you get twenty something years, right? You hear the stories, your father fifty some, fifty-five years total. His number's forty, nobody knows the real number because Sonny doesn't seem like the type of person that would ever tell anybody what he did. But you see all these officials that get away with murder and, hey, it was a mistake, we shouldn't have done, how do you process it yourself?
39:22 Speaker 04 I don't care who gets away with anything. I'm not against, eh, eh, some person stole, like he says, well, with taxes didn't pay enough. I don't give a shit. It's none of my business, I don't care. But when you do things like that and you have no concern, it's not that I say, well, I did, I did a twenty year sentence. And this guy's not gonna do it too. I'm not even worried about my son. I'm beyond it, I'm, he's not, he's seventy, I'm seventy-six. But I think of my daughter, my son, my grandchildren, great-grandchildren who ain't even born.
39:51 Patrick Bet-David? Yeah.
39:52 Speaker 04 Are gonna deal with shit like this.
39:54 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked three hundred fifty thousand Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, thehousemajoritypact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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40:52 Speaker 02 Coming up, on Mafia States of America.
40:55 Patrick Bet-David? They say you want to test someone's character, you give it power.
40:58 Speaker 05 When you were in our life, if you abused your power, you didn't last. You got people in government that are 81 years old that have been abusing their power, okay, since the day they got in office.
41:10 Speaker 04 I did it with the teams, as he did it with the guests. We did these things, we're using our power with unions and so forth. And they're doing the same thing. It's not Michael Flay Chase or Sammy the Broke. It's the teachers union.
41:26 Speaker 06 I unfortunately believe that from roughly the time that the pandemic broke, there's been the worst, most damaging assault on our civil rights and our constitutional rights ever in the history of this country.
41:48 Speaker 08 Oh beautiful For spacious skies For amber waves of grain
42:01 Speaker 08 For purple mottled majesties Above the flooded plain
42:16 Speaker 08 America's weep America's got shades Of deep For we cry that we We gather For sea to shining sea Oh beautiful For heroes
42:50 Speaker 08 In liberated strife
42:56 Speaker 08 They mark that sound
43:01 Speaker 08 Country love Mercy morning light
43:16 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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