1118: Is Trump Afraid of Bad Bunny? (feat. Pablo Torre)

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Welcome to pod save america i'm tommy vitor happy super bowl sunday everyone special shout out to drake may christian gonzalez who i believe are loyal listeners today i want to talk with you guys about the merging of sports money and politics specifically the many ways that donald trump uses sports for political gain that includes the recent explosion of sports gambling the way it's overtaken professional leagues our culture and has even influenced political campaigns we are going to cover trump's relationship with the nfl and its billionaire owners we're going to explain his embrace of fifa and the world cup and the enormous pr value that donald trump gets from his friendship with ultimate fighting championship ceo dana white then we're going to explain why gambling especially sports gambling has become ubiquitous in this country and how the trump administration and the trump family are are profiting off of it and fighting against regulations that might protect consumers finally we're going to talk about riley gaines the former ncaa swimmer turned anti trans activist as listeners know republicans have weaponized the issue of trans athletes in sports but there are some very very important context that has been left out of this debate that i think will certainly make you rethink the motives of everyone pushing this narrative so my guest today for all of this is pablo torre pablo is an old school muckraker a great sports writer a podcast host who is best known today for his truly excellent show pablo torre finds out i really i just cannot recommend the show enough he does rigorous reporting deep dive investigations into real fraud wrongdoing like very important issues but then also just tons of fun stuff like his recent episode is talking with sir mix a lot of baby got back fame where else are you going to find that kind of range speaking of great content thank you for listening to this episode but if you want to help us grow what we're doing here at crooked media please consider becoming a subscriber it is truly the number one thing you can do to help us as a independent progressive media company we're trying to get bigger we're trying to do more we're trying to cover more issues we are creating a whole bunch of subscription content there's pod save america only friends which is basically like pod save america but behind a paywall so it's a little bit looser there's ad free episodes there's there's other great bonus stuff crooked dot com friends it'll tell you all the different ways you can subscribe we're grateful you know you don't have to but it really is the number one thing you could do to help us grow as a company and just do more and to push back on all the right wing crap that is out there in the media ecosystem so without further ado here's my conversation with pablo torre all right pablo i'm very excited to talk with you about how trump uses sports for propaganda value his connections with the leagues his friendships with these billionaire franchise owners how gambling is taking over our society and much much more but first i just think we need to establish whether trump knows ball now like you i am an investigative journalist at heart so i brought some receipts so i'm going to play a clip for you that pablo has not heard yet let's watch.

2:58

Also can we stop pretending donald trump knows ball it's like a weird thing.

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Where they're like man he loves sports he doesn't know anything about sports every time a team comes and visits the white house he's like and you must.

6:00

Be the guy who catches it's like look at these guys big guys black guys and tua tag ovalia the quarterback who is really he's been fantastic he's been when he's not injured he's great.

6:07

He'S gotta stay healthy okay so pablo that was comedian shane gillis for the folks at home that was comedian shane gillis at the espy awards that's espn's annual awards show then you heard president trump trying to pronounce the name of the miami dolphins quarterback pablo did trump nail to his name and does he.

6:27

No ball your thoughts there has never been a more obvious line read of a word you've never said or heard before than that i was once i was in i remember going when i was in high school we did the grapes of wrath and like weeks into the book one of my classmates was like so this guy tom joad and i was like okay so you just have been sleeping this entire time it reminds me of like trying to say mores we've never actually heard anyone say mores before but it's tonga vailoa and now clearly mangled there are lots of ways that trump reveals himself to not know anything about sports while wearing the costume of basically being a white guy who loves athletes which is not the same as sports knowledge by the way correct he is he is somebody who always will talk about that like kickoff rule he hates on truth social he's always talking about how they've like wussified the kickoff and stuff he has some go tos he's like that guy who has half a take and he won't stop giving the take and then when he meets whatever his aide i don't know who would do this for him tommy you could give me the white house expertise better than anyone i guess but like some kid had to be like so here's what you know here's what you got to know about tuathungavailoa he's injured a lot and his name is tuatonga vailua and trump's like got.

6:50

It yeah we got that yeah i mean someone just needed to write that out phonetically for him and have him practice it one time because it's it's a hard name when you look at it but right tongue of iowa it's not that hard when you say it a couple times he's correct about the concussion so we're going to we're going to give him medium ball nowhere we'll get into the history of trump in the nfl because in the nfl space he he probably has the the most actual knowledge but real quick same question for vice president jd vance so in august of twenty twenty five pablo i was watching fox news as i always do i saw this interview of jd vance live this was with will kane it was a softball interview and kane tried to end with some banter about the upcoming ohio state texas football game because jd vance pretends to be a buckeyes fan and will kane is a real longhorns fan let's watch i looked at the line yesterday and i think ohio state were twelve point dogs to texas your favorite i believe you're favored.

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By three you're at home you're number.

9:05

Two okay we're going to look okay.

9:07

I thought i we get somebody sent.

9:08

Me somebody sent me a lot that's.

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What i said because we're at we're.

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In columbus pablo would any real buckeyes fan think that number three ranked ohio state would be a twelve point underdog at home to texas who was number one but twelve points a lot of.

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Points i just feel like jd vance is secretly listening to the shins and writing in his live journal and doesn't want to perform masculinity anymore but he has to and he's bad at it and you knew it when he was at the donut counter by the way and he was like so let's talk about this donut it's like no that's where you talk about sports man just say some sports stuff get in the cab talk about sports go to any store talk about sports he cannot talk.

9:25

About sports and like there's probably a lot of people listening who don't like sports but for a lot of us it is a social glue that helps stick together uncomfortable situations right like my kid just went to a new school i'm meeting lots of new parents the thing that i've been able to connect with a bunch of the moms and dads about is sports the patriots the lakers we're in la like that's what we talk about it's a way to just briefly connect with someone and find some common ground and he like he just it's just an it's like a space alien talking about football and i.

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Should say that like my perspective as a guy who clearly did not play any professional sport of any kind let alone college sport of any kind is that sports has been the passport for me to connect to all sorts of people who are nothing like me and that's the magic of it so it's okay and in fact like i try to live my life and make this show that i make for people who don't like sports and the whole premise is you might actually like things that sports connects to and that's that's enough but it's the stolen valor tommy it's the stolen valor of we are the sportiest administration you've ever seen and it's those two guys and that offends me.

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It offends me too okay so this episode is dropping on super bowl sunday i will be cheering for the new england patriots who most of the country hates along with the fan base the patriots look they've brought me great joy over the last few decades of my life but sadly pablo politics has crept into my relationship with the patriots so most recently it's bob kraft the patriots owner he's buddies with donald trump kraft attended the melania documentary premiere at the soon to be shuttered kennedy center recently there's also on top of that the nfl leadership has embraced donald trump trump went to the super bowl last year nfl commissioner roger goodell like did an event at the white house a couple months ago how would you characterize in sort of broader terms trump's relationship with kind of the nfl and the business.

11:08

Of football he has always respected it as a country club he was not allowed into and so that is a that is a genuine thirst that we're seeing detecting in all of these relationships but again like self interest and a desire to be in the club does not mean that you love the game and it's interesting with belichick too by the way not to go right to belichick your boy tommy but remember that letter yeah and brady but like there was the he like there was the letter from they were like pen pals like literal pen pals at one point they were reading these things out in public brady of course is somebody who had in the early days when we were so innocent the the the maga hat in his locker and had to answer questions about it because that at that point was was glaring his relationship with sports though and football in particular is through the perspective of somebody who tried to buy the buffalo bills and couldn't and now because of that he decided to eventually be the president and so there is a take here that if only trump was an nfl owner and not the president we would be living very very different lives i think.

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People listening probably think you're kidding trump really was one of like the three final bidders for the bills in twenty fourteen in twenty sixteen he told the associated press that if he had purchased an nfl team he probably would not have run for president the quote was if i bought that team i wouldn't be doing what i'm doing god damn it buffalo.

13:12

It was jon bon jovi it was donald trump and the guys who actually bought the buffalo bills and either of the other two scenarios bon jovi and trump i'd like to roll the dice on i just like to see what would have happened at that point it has to be better than.

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What we're seeing right now yeah for the bills franchise for the fans for the for everybody for everybody trump was also the first sitting president to attend a super bowl he's not going to go this year he told the new york post that it was too far away which is crazy i mean like mar a lago is three hours away santa clara is like six like you can do it you got air force.

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Saudi arabia direct flight man you don't.

14:03

Get it yeah that's right an easy flight yeah he flew yeah flew to budapest for no reason he's also not attending the olympics opening ceremony this week i'm kind of i'm genuinely surprised by his absence at these events because i agree with you like i don't think trump really likes sports per se like i don't think he has espn on in the background i think he loves the stage provided to him by these events and these games and the pr value there's been some speculation that maybe he doesn't want to go because bad bunny is performing the halftime show is bad bunny that maybe he might get booed do you have a theory for why he's kind of skipping my theory.

14:06

Is that trump loves of course the attention i remember when i was at espn i actually interviewed donald trump because he was at that point just donald trump i was co hosting dan lebatard's radio show and donald trump at that point this is two thousand fifteen ish donald trump at that point was just a caller like he actually is a great sports radio call in guest and to be clear you don't need to know anything about sports to be great at that job donald trump actually i believe was calling into dan lebatard's radio show because he thought it was dan lebatard's television show on espn highly questionable and just never took the time to discern the difference and so he thought he's on television but anyway i remember asking him about and i remember he was telling us like tom brady should sue the nfl for two hundred fifty thousand dollars because of deflategate and all this stuff so he likes being sports adjacent but the thing that keeps happening when he shows up at games and this happened at the national championship game this happened at the us open this happens at all of these things is that he also because sports are fundamentally a populist exercise insofar as a lot of people are in a room together he does get booed mm and i think the risk of bad bunny being somebody who dares to say words in spanish plus a bunch of people in the bay area who might boo him i think that's enough for him to say i don't want to i don't want to look bad i think that's the only theory that i really can land on at that point yeah me.

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Too i mean the last super bowl that he attended was in new orleans so it's like southern super expensive event to get into so lots of rich people and he was sort of at the peak of his cultural cachet after the election so i think it made sense to go there there were still some scattered booze the bad bunny thing we should just dispense with this like there is this suggestion in the media that bad bunny was selected to perform at the halftime show as some sort of political statement by the nfl that is patently absurd like bad bunny is a massive artist and it is quite clear to me that the nfl is trying to reach out to his audience and try to get them to like football no it's like purely an economic.

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Decision yeah tony kornheiser of the late great washington post sports department used to quote don ulmeyer the former nbc executive to me all the time the answer to all your questions is money and this is this is the god the nfl worships they do not give a shit about politics i hate to break it to you even though they put and racism in the end zone they didn't really care about ending racism no what they're trying to do is expand their audience and so look the bad bunny thing reminds me because of his streaming numbers and because that is an audience a demographic that they're trying to export the nfl to and the way they're trying to export it to brazil and spain and all these other places all around the world they see the world as a risk board for roger goodell to conquer that's why they want access to it what's funny is that when like mike johnson is being interviewed and he's like i've never even heard of bad bunny at that point beyond just making fun of like what is on mike johnson's you know iphone i think you know what is it's the app covenant eyes i believe where he regulates his pornography with his older son but it's also i think a lack of recognition of the polling on this is very obvious there is a parallel to the minnesota stuff it's like that stuff is polling terribly and bad bunny in a parallel way is so deeply popular with normies that are just spanish speakers as well as just normal music fans and they don't get it like they should be so good trump's administration at this point at like sussing out popularity and weirdly the entity that is the best at it happens to be the nfl which is the last monocultural institution we have left and they're still like you know what we don't really get it it's like maybe trust the one thing that's popular anymore that's right.

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That'S right yeah the nfl is doing bad bunny then the republican sort of infrastructure is doing like their own halftime show with kid rock and it's like guys this is not going to work for you.

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Politicians going forward yeah i mean it's i think the clearest embodiment of the pendulum that swung twenty sixteen to twenty twenty when there was actual pressure that was being enacted upon sports and mainstream institutions that they responded to and now here we are with the pendulum swinging all the way back my first memory because i remember you know this is trump saying i remember talking about this on espn all the time trump saying get these sons of bitches off the field you know and it's one of his early indications that maybe this guy wasn't really here for the first amendment maybe not here for the constitution my reaction at the time is even more sort of acute now which is it's so quaint what kaepernick actually was doing he was kneeling and staying silent he was very silent almost problematically silent i remember people being like could you please talk more and no he was like this is what i'm gonna do he was recommended to do it actually by a vet a former member of the military who was like this is the most respectful way to do this and now when you look back it's like classic nonviolent as respectful as can be kneeling during the ceremony of the anthem which is its own fraught of course military industrial complex tradition but nonetheless it was the thing that kind of made sports go crazy and crazy in the sense of i can't believe we gotta deal with this this being the people who wanted him and us and me to stick to sports and then crazier when it came to what we can never we can never abide by wokeism ever again and it's just crazy that we watch what's happening again in minnesota and the version that these woke tards enacted upon them was they kneeled like that's that's the juxtaposition yeah yeah how.

22:25

Dare you politicize the anthem as we fly a squadron of f sixteen and b two bombers over the stadium there's.

24:24

Some stealth some stealth fighter jets you.

24:30

Know but so it's just it's not just the nfl that trump has sort of like found a marriage of convenience with when it comes to sports he has now fully embraced soccer especially the fifa world cup which will be in north america this year he's now very tight seemingly with fifa president gianni infantino who's his own ball of wax that we could get into but he infantino has gone all in on kissing trump's ass which folks have seen in the form of him creating the fifa peace prize so he could give it to trump to make his ego feel better about not getting the nobel peace prize but i think trump's closest relationship in the sports world is probably with ultimate fighting championship ceo dana white they've been buddies for like twenty some odd years white endorsed trump he spoke at the rnc he spoke at trump's election night rallies been very present and white has allowed ufc events to be used as just pure propaganda by trump so here's one example this is a clip of trump walking into a ufc event with dana white back in april of twenty.

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Twenty five and making the entrance right.

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Now.

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To a standing ovation the forty seventh president of the united states of.

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America flanked by ufc ceo dana white.

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And others donald j trump.

25:42

Is there.

25:49

Anybody else that has a walk in other than the fighter he had some music ken rock starts playing he had one at the ncaa tournament too he always gets a walk out it's like it's like a prerequisite for him coming give him the walkout people love it they do well and what he loves is mixed martial arts right i mean he talks about watching these fight nights when he is not in the building.

25:49

Very very subtle commentary there so trump's going to be hosting a ufc fight at the white house later this year pablo how important do you think this relationship between trump and the ufc was for him in terms of like reaching young males basically mma is such a.

26:16

Big part of the story that i think has gone underrated in mma by the way you get noted espn commentator and the dean of mma commentary and analysis joe rogan yep that's where he is right right so okay already you're like beginning to piece together what's happening here the manosphere such as it exists which is to say a bunch of dudes who are typically apolitical if not anti political which is to say all these comedians who you'll also see like ringside who have podcasts who have these demographics that are heavily male who basically are anti authority who also frankly just want to say words that they used to be able to say in high school and i went to an all boys catholic school i remember exactly what that felt like how edgy it felt they just want to say those things that's the main political platform i want to watch mixed martial arts and bro out and laugh at things that i'm not supposed to laugh at and trump's friendship with dana white who spoke at not one rnc and not two rncs but at least three while also claiming to be not political that's how he is mentally cognitively threading the needle of like no no no this is a culture thing this is like a sports thing but of course for trump whether he intended it this way or not it is the ultimate in political image laundering because he's just one of the guys he's one of the guys at the fight that you want to hang out with and dana white in terms of what his actual like compass is as a businessman as a human is abhorrent and i don't say that because i'm against the ufc or mma i'm here for the consensual concussions right i covered boxing love boxing i'm here for like the violence of football and all that stuff i'm not fainting onto a couch somewhere because of it i'm just saying that this is a guy who says that he is a first amendment absolutist much like a lot of the names that i've alluded to in this very sort of like answer that i'm giving you and at the same time he is somebody who will ardently ardently regulate the speech of people who dare to speak out against him and also this administration it's that perfect hypocrisy of you know the constitution for me but not for thee it's the total verifiable dishonesty of a guy who wants to cosplay as i'm here for free speech unless it threatens my business which is exactly what the ufc has been doing.

26:34

Yeah and i just i just don't think from a political perspective you can overstate the value of being a candidate like that walking into an arena getting universal cheers from the people in the room and the people at home are hearing you get fluffed for forty five seconds by the commentators because you're so great and you're just like them and you just love the fighting like i just look i'm very skeptical that donald trump goes home at night and watches ufc matches i think he probably has fox news on and just watches cable most of the time but like they're happy to sell that fiction because it's a symbiotic business relationship yeah i mean.

29:05

Look you alluded to the fifa stuff before this is all the same thing this is the equivalent of dana white constructing for him that golden spinning like pimp my ride trophy that gianni infantino did and he let him keep at the white house there is almost like an egyptian pharaoh dynamic it's like here's your gold here's your frankincense here is your myrrh here are your here here are the things you can be buried with and it's ufc walkouts and gold trophies and that's that's why he does it but the reason they do it is because it's good for business and it's bad unfortunately for the rest of.

29:40

Us yeah and i think honestly the biggest business of of them all is fifa in the world cup i mean that will be watched by multi billions of people around the world one quick thing on fifa before we get to gambling though i wanted to play this because it drove me crazy so last year fifa they did their world cup draw ceremony at the kennedy center in dc that's when everybody sort of figured out who they're going to be playing when trump attended and he said this at that ceremony when you look at.

30:20

What has happened to football in the united states again soccer in the united states we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a cut conflict with another thing that's called football but when you think about it shouldn't it really be called i mean this is football there's no question about we have to come up with another name for the yeah it really doesn't make sense when you think about it it's really football pablo how.

30:45

Is that not career ending imagine if imagine if barack obama said that six years of fox news coverage a decade.

31:11

It really is it really is yeah barack would have needed to wear like a matthew lesko question mark suit to get that level of just like what are i mean the the i've long said that the most un american position that you can have is to go against the nfl in twenty twenty six it reveals you ostensibly to be disconnected from the monoculture as a politician and what normal everyday americans like the most statistically right trump and that in the clip you just played is this enduring reminder that his performance of what it means to be a dude is unique no one else can do that i dare say that whatever he has in his credibility of like you know maybe and maybe here's a theory maybe it's just the relentless signaling of abject racism there's just no doubt that he's really still on the side of like you know the real america but my god like and he's also like doing a bad seinfeld unintentionally yeah i think he genuinely had that thought and was like this is a good take and it's what's the deal with football that that was the take yeah yeah you park.

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On a driveway you drive on a it's just so stupid yeah all right we're going to take a quick break but i have an exciting tour announcement love it or leave it it's coming to washington dc on april twenty third at the lincoln theater we know that you folks in dc have been through a lot you got trump goons taking over your city you got snow everywhere that's turning into concrete apparently you deserve a night of amazing world class comedy and i hope you get that but in the meantime go see john lovett i'm just kidding i'm reading this i didn't write this copy tickets are on sale now grab them at crooked dot com event.

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33:16

All right let's talk about gambling so sports gambling's been around for a long time right but until recently there was friction in the process back in the day you had to have a bookie you maybe had to drop off and pick up actual cash or you had to be at a casino or a town like you know somewhere in vegas or something like where gambling was legal then in twenty eighteen the supreme court passes there's a ruling that changes everything and suddenly a bunch of states are just bum rushing to legalize gambling and so now in a lot of places placing a bet is as easy as sending a text you can instantly place bets on your phone you can live bet you don't have to bet on the outcome of a game you can bet on like fractional events within the game i want to get to the event contracts piece of this in a second but can you help listeners sort of understand the impact of that explosion of sports betting and the kind of like head spinning way that it's been embraced by leagues that once banded essentially the.

36:12

First thing one of the first things that nba commissioner adam silver did when he took over in twenty fourteen as the head of this sport was write a it was a solo byline in the new york times an op ed that said we should legalize sports gambling and it was radical then and now in retrospect it looks like this turning point and i go back to that because in twenty fourteen up until that point the cardiff original mortal existential sin that you could do in sports was gambling pete rose is has been relegated until trump posthumously pardons him which is not a joke and an actual thing he has threatened to do he has been banished to baseball hell he cannot be in the hall of fame the black sock scandal all of this stuff it's just obviously a way to compromise the integrity of a product and a cultural heirloom that relies upon us trusting that what we're watching has competitive integrity that it is not fixed or manipulated but when that op ed was written and now to fast forward to what you just described which is the opening of the official floodgates it went from i'm going to get my guy my bookie to take my bet to here is a cheesecake factory thick menu of items right so it used to be like you know who's going to win or lose the point spread the outcome of games and now the institution of the prop bet means that you can bet on things as obscure as unders which is to say will obscure toronto raptor john tay porter hit the under underperform on the predicted total of rebounds in a given game which is a thing that is so specific as a micro bet that it only would be taken by people who were fixing the game and manipulating it in order to profit off of it because why would anyone have interest in it and of course that is actually what happened and that got johnte porter banned for life from the nba and started this whole federal investigation into it so it's just a radical expansion of what is bettable and therefore a radical expansion of what potential conflicts of interest in which players now have the ability or their specific proxies have the ability to profit off of things that don't even require you tommy to throw the game just suck for a period of time it's a remarkable and dangerous thing to institute yeah.

37:08

I mean you just have to fake an injury right and pull yourself out of a game before you hit eight points or whatever the over was yet i think what you're just just to double stamp this it's such an important point because look i think most people like have no problem with betting on the outcome of the super bowl right like that's fun who cares do it i have no problem i've bet on props i bet on like the over under on the national anthem but to your point like the cheesecake factory approach of the the number of things you can bet on and then you can parlay them together to create higher and higher odds and we are just not the numeracy in the united states is not so great and people don't realize that they are just going to get fleeced over and over and over again and at the same time like all the addictive kind of like data science used to make us all on our phones all of the time is being applied to these gambling sites and so like it just it feels like we are watching a generation especially of young men get addicted to these gambling apps at the same time they are like going deeper into debt and having mental health crisis and it's like a massive problem that's i think under discussed yeah.

39:32

And i want the science i want the research i think about this kind of like how i thought about the concussion crisis in the nfl in a weird way where it was like look i am tempted now to stop watching football but if you do the science diligently enough such that the participants have disclosure and they're told here are the risks here are the harms i think about how in europe if you buy cigarettes they put on the box like here are the faces of death right do you want this if you still want to sign up for consensual possible addiction cool go with god let's federally regulate it and we can make that work but i think what's happening is that it happened so quickly the legalization happened so quickly with this internet era cell phone casino in your pocket dynamic that people are still just catching up to what's actually scientifically on the table and so i am not saying we should ban federally gambling i am saying that we need to be very open and transparent about here's what's happening very often to men in america and we should tell them that this is what they're risking if this is what the science is suggesting yeah yeah there needs.

40:37

One more disclosure of the harms and then the more even more recent iteration of gambling involves something called event contracts so there are these companies kelshi and polymarket and basically these services now allow you to bet on outcomes even stuff like will a venezuelan dictator be deposed by the end of the month that is the thing that actually happened someone made a lot of money that person will probably be investigated but i guess we'll find out so these companies they're even more lightly regulated by the government or at least by this administration and they have hired folks like donald trump junior to be their advisors you did an amazing episode on all of this with a guy named james surwicki that i highly recommend if folks want to go deeper but can you just give us like the one on one on what the hell an event contract is and how this new form of gambling has exploded but is powered again by.

41:51

Sports how dare you call it gambling these are right sorry but but this is actually the legal question right so the cftc which ostensibly used to regulate commodity trading they have now decided that actually under this administration actually we have oversight over these event contracts and so an event contract in a prediction market like kalashi like polymarket is you can bet you can excuse me buy an event contract which is basically yes or no question will caroline levitt finish her press briefing in under sixty five minutes that was a real event contract there is also now evidence that you can watch of caroline levitt stopping short like seconds short of sixty five minutes exactly really weird and and that paid out right and so the donald trump junior part of it is really instructive because donald trump junior is on the board of both calc and polymarket which are these billion dollar prediction markets seems like a prediction market just how dare you this is just a guy who loves forecasting in this sort of like rigorous data driven way but it's interesting because realistically the prediction market as jim surowiecki wisdom of crowds that was his book in zero four told me it is an interesting and useful way to predict some things the election in twenty twenty four prediction markets were all over that there is value to that as an instrument of forecasting reality the donald trump junior thing though reminds us that there are networks of people with access to information and now take the john tay porter example from before a hyper specific micro bet that no one would have interest in except for people with inside information now there is not a cheesecake factory thick menu there is an infinite list of bet truly infinite list of bets you can bet on anything and in that way the question that not enough people are asking is who knows more about this than me and do they stand a profit if they have a person on the inside and so that's why carolyn levitt is not merely a funny coincidence but like a deeply disturbing hypothetical example if she in fact did share this information ahead of time and it's also something that is i would say destructive to the ability that we have as american citizens to trust in anything that we are witnessing right so what happened to sports we can't trust whether this has integrity is this person genuinely incompetent or are they fixing a game this is now true of anything happening in our administration and the only reason you should feel good about it i guess is if you think this administration is the type of administration to be so so buttoned up on not compromising principle in exchange for money in that case then maybe you trust their ability to take care of us in that way what i think is realistically happening is that they're doing the opposite and the people who are losing money are the retail investors and that is something that we're not even we haven't even begun to measure what they are winning and what the rest of.

42:38

Us are losing yeah i mean with these event contracts like you're not betting against the house there is another individual on the other side of that event contract so if the person you're betting against is in the special forces and know they're about to take out maduro they have insider information and they're about to clean your clock it is remarkable pablo i mean like i was thinking about back to my time in government recently and the number of kind of like sensitive meetings you end up in with like market sensitive information about you know the financial crisis or the bank bailout and then we see this email from a guy named peter mendelson who is then a top aide to tony blair where he is giving readouts of the eurozone debt crisis response to jeffrey epstein before they are public right and you're like holy shit like the like when i was in government the idea of talking about something like that it's just unheard of because i'm just like it's unethical it's wrong i'll go to jail but this guy's just forwarding emails but now the point you're making is that like now that you can just bet on anything with insider information it creates this whole new avenue of profit making and risk and just for folks to know like the cftc is just far less onerous of a regulator than the sec or bank regulators there's more discretion in how you comply it's smaller there's fewer staffers than the sec there's fewer enforcement actions generally it's why the crypto people love the cftc so it's just sort of like this is where they all want this to be housed all the industry folks because they think it'll be the wild wild west and at the same time like social media has decided that in the political space prediction markets are better than forecasting elections and polling and like there are some examples i think at the presidential level that you mentioned where prediction markets have been onto things but there's also instances at like you know senate races or lower level elections where you can kind of juice those markets with one or two big bets and kind of change the narrative around an election in a way that i think we just haven't.

46:00

Really explored yet no and i so two things the cftc i was just talking to somebody who used to work there today because i've been trying to understand this continue to understand this more and it's very disturbing how so many of the people not just responsible for enforcement at the cftc but we're like the true believers over there in terms of like let's regulate things civilly and let's make sure that we can deter market manipulation and all that stuff even if it doesn't rise to the level of criminality it seems very clear to a lot of former cftc employees that this is all happening and i was just listening to the head of the cftc now under this administration be so outwardly pro crypto pro prediction market stuff that it seems to be of a piece with the business dealings that we've been describing now this whole this whole episode the second thing that what you're just referring to is a prediction market because we are not numerate as as humans right none of us like we we are also people who like like to use these heuristics to guide our understanding of like what seems normal and so a prediction market to your point an election is a really good example of this like if you spend a lot of money to move a prediction market for any given race there is now an expectation that has changed if this applies now and which by the way can be better and more value added than just buying political ads right that's why you might do it is to change the narrative of like he's still in it right it's not over yet but the other thing that happens is when everything is bettable like this you can change the expectations for every governmental action including foreign invasions including whether we're going to prosecute an ice officer right it's just like we are the whole thing of like our perpetual numbness to horror humans are so good at normalizing insane conditions the pandemic taught us that just we all know it this is is that but on four loco it's it's it's just like we are turning to these fixable manipulatable markets to tell us whether we should expect something and people with money get to decide in an unregulated way that is a fucking nightmare yep and a lot of.

47:56

Innocent people are going to be the ones who get fleeced.

50:25

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50:36

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51:47

Finally i'm jumping around a little bit here but yeah the listeners of the show are probably well aware of how republicans you know led by trump have just demagogued the issue of trans athletes in sports the leading spokesperson for that effort has been a woman named riley gaines she was a swimmer at the university of kentucky and then in twenty twenty two she tied for fifth place against another transgender swimmer named leah thomas and so ever since riley gaines has made advocating against trans athletes her like life's work and you did a bunch of reporting on riley gaines that i think provides really important context that you don't hear very often because it shows kind of the evolution of her rhetoric and also how these attacks that she is making have become about much much more than sports fairness and have gone to a really cruel dishonest gross place so can you just like kind of walk us through what your episode on this was.

52:51

About yeah so the trans athlete issue has been one of the biggest political winners for this administration and it is rooted again in a lack of let alone numeracy but certainly honesty and reality and i say that because in general to zoom out quickly for a second there are so few trans athletes that exist so the president of the ncaa charlie baker was asked in congress how many of them are there and he said there are less than ten okay so the odds of you having a near fatal run in with ice is greater than your daughter competing in a meaningfully concerning way with a trans person but this issue was of course ran on it was advertised and it worked i've been hearing the term all over the place that this is an eighty twenty issue we win this eighty percent of the time the libs lose it and i would say that that is not inaccurate because no one really knows how to talk about this stuff because there is like this competitive equity concern and there is a scientific argument there which we should have again we should have the scientific argument are there advantages by going through male puberty yes can they be regulated through hormone suppression yes but and in that yes but there is a useful debate about rules the riley gaines story is not a debate about rules she would like you to think it is the republicans the trump administration which has her front and center dressed in all white as they're banning trans athletes by the president's pen would love you to think that this is about protecting women and girls it isn't this is a story if you go through the evolution of riley gaines the character of somebody who had to tie for fifth place with a trans female swimmer leah thomas who is really good at swimming and the issue is that riley gaines objections went from i have problems with the rules but i don't blame leah to a series of interviews on fox news with the daily wire with clay travis in which she was and you can hear this happen on tape i'm not just saying this as a matter of editorial interpretation you can hear her be prodded into taking a harder line on how mad she should be and so it's ramping up it's ramping up and what she ends up doing is alleging that lia thomas this swimmer she competed against is actually a predator who is committing a version of sexual assault this is a criminal concern is what riley gaines is arguing and parallel to the rhetoric being radicalized are according to the reporting we did with mother jones madison pauley an excellent reporter who helped us tell this story with documents are payments coming in from a range of conservative activists that are creating the riley gaines leadership center and they're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for her to be front and center on this winning political issue because it's working and it's getting so divorced from where it started and from what the evidence has ever suggested that riley gaines is arguing with simone biles who was i mean and i cannot stress this enough an actual victim of sexual violence sexual assault by larry nassar who committed the largest sexual assault scandal in american sports history this was the doctor of the usa women's gymnastics team michigan state and riley gaines is telling on twitter simone biles basically how dare you talk about your issue your trauma but dismiss mine and she posts parallel photos of leah thomas and larry nassar and the testimonies and stuff it's abhorrent and the kicker tommy and i'll speed it up because i'm just doing the whole episode for.

53:45

You now no no no it's really important context it really is the kicker.

57:51

Is this entire time riley gaines's teammates at the university of kentucky are watching this happen and we spoke to several of them on tape in fact in the episode we have one particular teammate who went on tape and the thing that riley gaines almost never talks about has never spoken words with her mouth about on camera despite all these interviews is is the fact that the person she has called in her book her best friend the person who was the head coach of their swim team at kentucky this guy lars jurgensen was himself somebody who sexually assaulted several of her teammates allegedly these are court cases these are documented these are alleged by those women and so not only is it the dishonesty of the rhetoric it's the actual substitution of real event happening over here let's get that out of here and replace it with this trumped up fake thing while ignoring the actual victims who i was on this team with and so one of the quotes from one of her teammates was basically how can i give a shit about riley gaines i'm paraphrasing here how can i give a shit about riley gaines talking about trans athletes when our head coach raped one of our teammates jesus like that's how on the nose some of this stuff is and that's the story that fox news does not want you.

57:56

To know about yeah and i just i think it's such important context because like a lot of your reporting i mean you're following the money here you are playing receipts and the evolution of her commentary on these issues and then you are getting at where look a lot of attacks on the lgbt community over decades have ended in this place which is the not remotely subtle suggestion that all gay lesbian or trans people are actually predators or after children or want to do harm to people in some way right this is like it always ends in a place that is not about fairness on the playing field that ends in a place that is a totally dishonest gross attack that is alleging that a crime was committed to where there is actually zero evidence and as you just said in fact it seems like riley gaines has been ignoring the crime committed by one of her.

59:26

Own friends well and you put it in those ways and it and it makes me also want to clarify there is a problem in locker rooms all across america when it comes to female athletes and the problem is the men who are around them it's not the trans athletes though that they say all these biological men it's them it's the dudes who are coaching yeah that is a concern very often and this is real and it should be reported on and it's very telling that that's not of a concern at all to these same people who are truly profiting off of a minority group that is so vanishingly small that no one wants to stand up for them yeah well well.

1:00:15

Said final question a dumb one a short one this has nothing to do with politics it's just something i saw the athletic has reported that ski jumpers at the olympics are injecting their penises with hyaluronic acid to fly farther the world anti doping agency is investigating is that real how does that work why would injecting your penis with something make you fly farther if you're a ski jumper this makes no sense to me.

1:01:01

How dare you question the wisdom of once again men this is real oh no no no like so we did a whole episode an investigation you you tommy have been traumatized by spygate deflate gate all the ways in which your patriots have obviously been exposed as rank cheaters that should not be rooted for by anybody in america with a conscience many are saying god damn it god damn it the the gate that we reported on was crotch gate because in ski jumping which is an olympic sport that's happening now and we did a whole deep dive into this part of the physics of ski ju is you emphasize how big your penis is for this reason they three d scan you in order to measure what your suit can be allowed to be how big your suit can be and because the edges are so small and therefore big people who have more fabric on the suit have a performance advantage and so it used to be back in my day the scandal was people were sewing there's a literal video we obtained of like people with a sewing machine creating a bigger crotch but these guys are like what if i told you that we could make the measurements actually reflect the size of our temporarily enormous penises and i gotta say i did not.

1:01:27

See that one coming pablo this is why everyone should listen to your show pablo torre finds out nobody has range like you cover the waterfront it is you don't have to like sports to enjoy the show it's amazing stories that come from sports it's deep dive investigations it's really fun romps about my former coach bill belichick who is seventy three and his twenty four maybe twenty five year old girlfriend now but who's counting but who's counting not bill not bill that's for goddamn sure so i highly recommend the show i highly i'm so grateful for you spending this hour with me to release on super bowl sunday this feels like the perfect way to lead into it so thank you again.

1:02:47

Anytime i can be your sports correspondent whenever you need i have a feeling that there'll be more penis related issues.

1:03:26

Amen amen aren't they all thanks buddy thanks dude thank you for listening to this episode and spending maybe part of your super bowl sunday with me and pablo quick programming note so we're going to be back on tuesday but it'll be out a little bit later than normal because we are going to be in australia or new zealand or somewhere where the time zone is so different it breaks my brain so things will be a little bit off but not that much off but a little bit off i just can't do math so i can't really explain it to you but just don't freak out if you don't see it in the morning it'll.

1:03:34

Come out if you want to listen to pod save america ad free and get access to exclusive podcasts go to cricket dot com friends to subscribe on supercast substack youtube or apple podcasts also please consider leaving us a review that helps boost this episode and everything we do here at crooked pod save america is a crooked media production our producer is saul rubin our associate producer is farah safari austin fisher is our senior producer reed churlin is our executive editor adrian hill is our head of news and politics the show is mixed and edited by andrew chadwick jordan kantor is our sound engineer with audio support from kyle seglin and charlotte landis matt de groat is our head of production naomi sengel is our executive assistant thanks to our digital team elijah cohn haley jones ben hefcoat mia kelman carol pelaviev david toles and ryan young our production staff is proudly unionized with the writers guild of america east.

1:04:04