 So is there political corruption? And to what extent does the Hunter Biden laptop prove or indicate or support the idea that there is political corruption in America? We know there's political corruption all over the world. We know there's political corruption in the third world countries. We know there's political corruption all over the place. But is there political corruption in the United States? And I think the only critical answer to that, given where we are today, is absolutely yes. But it's not old style kind of political corruption. It's not the kind of political corruption where suitcases filled with cash get transferred from person to person and get shuffled around. It's not the political corruption where people get into smoke filled back rooms and cut deals. This is political corruption that in some sense is far more visible. Everybody knows about it. It's everywhere. And while people complain about it, nobody actually cares. And nobody does anything about it. And nobody's prosecuted for it. It's political corruption in a sense is legal. So let's take Hunter Biden. So, you know, for what we know, and there's a lot we don't know, like the FBI has had the files for two years. I mean, I believe that, you know, a lot of this stuff is questionable in terms of its reality, but it's not obvious that it's illegal. The FBI has had the laptop for two years now. I don't think the FBI is so corrupt as they would not prosecute Hunter Biden. I know you guys think they are, but I don't. I think that if there's clear example of corruption, what is corruption mean? So take the Hunter Biden laptop. Hunter Biden laptop shows that Hunter Biden got a job, two issues. One is that he got a job on a big Ukrainian company for which he had no skill, no particular ability to contribute, no knowledge of the field. And yet he was on the board of directors and earned a substantial salary, if you will, income from his being on the board of directors. There's actually three issues around the laptop. We'll get to the third one as well. And OK, so he got this job because, you know, during this time when the Obama administration was warming up to Ukraine. And of course, this is a time I'll get to. I'll get to that, Luca. This is a time where the Obama administration is warming up to Ukraine. And of course, Biden is the vice president at the time. So the real issue here, it seems that there was some kind of exchange. Ukrainians gave Biden this lucrative position where he makes good money. And maybe maybe the the the the the Obama administration did a few things for Ukraine and maybe for this Ukrainian company more broadly for Ukraine. And and, you know, all this gets settled in in back rooms. Is that corruption? Is that corruption? You can take it to court and prove is that more than what happens pretty much every day, all day in our foreign relations. Or take the other flip side of this. I know some dealing with the Chinese, where the Chinese invest in projects of Hunter Biden is involved in or in an investment fund. And what they're asking for in emails, what it looks like is a meeting with Joe Biden. And this is after he's already out of power. He's already not vice president. Is that corruption? Clearly, it's quid pro quo. Clearly, they're getting something and something in return. But to what extent is this illegal? To what extent can anybody today go to jail? And again, to what extent is this done all the time? I'll give you an example. Not of Hunter Biden. Hillary Clinton gives a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar speech in front of Goldman Sachs partners. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, Hillary Clinton is a good speaker. Hillary Clinton, for some people, maybe has some interesting things to say. But two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I'm a better speaker than Hillary Clinton and I have a lot better things to say. Why is she getting two hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Goldman Sachs? Well, maybe just maybe I'm just speculating here. With anticipation that Hillary Clinton is about to run for president and will probably beat Donald Trump and will probably become president. And given that Goldman Sachs has just paid it two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, they will have access to her administration. They might be able to pick up a phone call and talk to her assistant or talk to her directly as president. Now, is this corruption? Yes. Is this prosecutable? Probably not. Is this something can be proven court? No. Is this something that's done every day? Yes. I'll give you one more example and then we'll go on. Because so far, I've only give you examples of Democrats. So I was just reading in preparation for my TV appearance. I was reading an article. It was published in the Wall Street Journal, but there were also articles in Rolling Stones, New York Times, across the political spectrum. You'll find this, except you won't find it on Fox, of course. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump. Jared Kushner, who is involved in many of the wheelings and dealings in the Middle East, including, by the way, very involved in lobbying Congress to approve one hundred and thirteen billion dollar arms deal to the Saudis. Which many Republicans objected to Saudis, after all, and these were very sophisticated arms. The same Jared Kushner has just launched a private equity fund. His first private equity fund. He's never had a private equity fund. He's a real estate developer. His family develops real estate. I don't know what Jared himself does. But Jared has started a private equity fund. Private equity fund. He is trying to raise seven billion dollars. Now, that's a big private equity fund, particularly on your first go. He can't get the money Americans are not giving him any money because he has no experience. He has no particular knowledge. Why? Why would you invest in Jared Kushner? He has no particular skill set. That is useful necessarily for private equity. Unless, of course, you're the Saudis. And Jared Kushner has been very, very good to you in the past. And who knows? Donald Trump might run again for president and get reelected. And Jared Kushner will still be his son-in-law. And the Saudis have written Jared Kushner a two billion dollar check. Two billion dollars. That is a lot of money for anybody, even the Saudis. Reports from Saudi deliberations suggest that many of the independent directors of the Saudi Investment Fund objected. Claiming that Jared Kushner was not qualified, was not skilled. This was the first time it's too much money to risk. And that the crown prince himself, the guy who had that journalist slaughtered, cut into pieces at the Turkish Embassy in the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Turkey, that guy, the guy who became very close friends with Jared Kushner, who helped make that into not a big deal in the United States. He insisted that the funds be provided to Jared Kushner. And Jared Kushner is not only is Jared Kushner getting two billion dollars. He's getting it at a pretty sweet fee structure. He's getting it at 1.25% annual fees, plus 20% of all profits. So Jared Kushner will be getting from the Saudis directly 25 million dollars a year for the life of the fund. And then 20% of any profits he generates. Now we'll see if he generates any profits. Call me skeptical, but that's the deal. Interesting, too, is at the same time, Steve Mnuchin. You remember Steve Mnuchin? Steve Mnuchin was the Treasury Secretary under Trump. Now Steve Mnuchin has a long history in finance, was a partner at Goldman Sachs, a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, has raised some private equity fund. He also raised the private equity fund. And he also asked the Saudis for money and surprise, surprise, the Saudis gave him money. They only gave him a billion. Jared got to Mnuchin, the finance guy, only got one. And he got worse terms than Jared. They're only paying him 1% fees, not one and a quarter percent fees. I don't know. Is this corruption? Is this what is it? Quid pro quo? Is it quid pro quo? Yeah, we all know it. Does anybody care? No. Is anybody prosecuted? No. Does this happen every day? Yes. Do you remember Willie Brown? Most of you don't know who Willie Brown is. Some of you who live in California probably know Willie Brown. Willie Brown entered politics a poor man. He became the speaker of the House of Representatives in the state of California, it's Democrat. Used to wear the nicest suits. Anybody wore. These are multiple thousand dollar suits. One of the things that Willie Brown became famous for is being the guy that Kamala Harris slept with in order to get a position in the Democratic Party. Willie Brown left politics. He then became mayor of San Francisco when he was termed limited out of the House of Representatives in California. He left politics a millionaire, a millionaire. So many politicians. Look at Obama's. Obama came into politics, became president of the United States. He was a university professor. He had no income. I mean, he had a small income. He did OK, but low middle class, maybe straight middle class. What did he just buy? A twenty million dollar home on Long Island or something? And that's just a fraction of his wealth. Where did they get twenty million dollars? Where does that money come from? How does that happen? It's, you know, the Bush family benefit from George Bush being president. And it seems to have gotten much, much, much, much worse. Every year, it seems to get worse. You know how rich Al Gore is? You think it's because the the the documentary made a lot of money? I think his father was very rich, but was his father a senator? How does this happen? What happens, you know, Scott says, some corruption is worse than us. Yeah, I mean, if you want to go left and right, then I think the Kushner corruption is much worse than a Hunter Biden corruption. Hunter Biden, you know, it didn't make any difference with Ukraine. Who cares about Ukraine in that context? Kushner selling out to the Saudis was the Saudi frontman in the Trump administration. Saudi Arabia, the number two funder of terrorism. Really? I mean, you guys want to pretend that all that only corruption on the left matters as usual, right? Only the left is bad. You can do that if you want, Scott. I'm not in the Iran book show here, which you'd all corruption. Equally. So how does this happen? Well, it happens. Inevitably, this is not an aberration. This is not strange. This is inevitable. This is cronyism. This is what it means. This is how it works. And why is cronyism inevitable? Because we live in a mixed economy because politicians have massive amounts of power. They determine. You know, the fate of whole industries, whole nations. It's truly stunning. Truly stunning how much government is involved in economy today, how much regulations and controls and tax loopholes they are. And and, you know, people. People need to survive business or need to survive. So business funds government. It funds politicians. It hands them the equivalent of suitcases of cash. You know, I knew I knew one of the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. I think for a while, he was the minority leader when the Republicans were a minority. He was a he was a tea party conservative, but not quite conservative enough. And he he was very, very prominent Republican Party. And I met him on several occasions. He knows me. He knows I ran. He's was quite friendly, useless, but friendly. And he lost his prime. He lost a Republican primary to somebody else. I know, funnily enough, a crazy religion, religionist, conservative, a little nuts, total who ultimately lost at the Democrat, right? Anyway, this is so when he lost, it took about a month, a month, one month before he got a job at a Wall Street firm. And I think his pay is like salary was over a million dollars. And then he had bonuses on top of that. Now, is this because of his skill in finance? No, is this because he's like super smart, like off the charts? Probably not a small guy, but probably not that smart in the context of this particular Wall Street firm. What skill set did he have? What was literally worth millions of dollars? Well, his contacts, his contacts in politics, his contacts in Washington, he had people in Washington and every investment bank needs people in Washington and they're willing to pay for people in Washington. Politicians become lobbyists. Politicians become partners in Wall Street. They become lawyers. The deal with big business and government because government is so involved in the economy and business is going to protect itself. So it's going to pay. It's going to hire anybody it needs to in order to protect itself and ultimately use the legal system, not just to protect itself, but to benefit themselves. And there's no way around it. You can lecture them businessmen all you all day long and they will still try to use the legal system when they can to benefit themselves at others' expense. And at the same time, politicians will get rich. You know, Obama didn't get rich because he got a suitcase of cash. He just gets, I don't know, 250,000, maybe a million dollars per speech again, not because he's that impressive, but because he has power. He has power. And who knows what favors he did whom when he was president that he was paid for later on. Again, I don't think he got the cash while he was president, but later on so that he could connect the two Biden, Obama. I mean, Bush and Trump were rich before they entered the presidency. So probably less of that, but the Trump family is benefiting. Kushner is benefiting. I'm sure the Bush family all benefited as long as government has power over business. Business will want a say and business will pay for a say. And by paying for a say, we will have corruption. As long as politicians give foreign aid, massive quantities of money to foreign aid, there will be corruption. Why are you giving X to this country and not Y to that country? As long as politicians are giving large arms deals and other deals and trade deals, do you think the trade deals are not affected with this? There will be corruption. The only way to get rid of corruption is to make, is to get government out of economics, is to get government out of having power over these decisions. Of having a foreign policy that is pro-U.S., period, having tariffs that are zero and therefore no favors to be given, having taxes, for example, corporate taxes that are zero or if you don't want zero, make them flat with no deductions, some really, really simple revenue tax or something like that, that doesn't allow for any loopholes or any deductions or anything that politicians can gain and businesses can gain. You want to get corruption out of politics, eliminate regulations or at least again, get them really, really small and really simple straightforward that anybody can read them, anybody can understand them so that there's no gaming of the system to be had. Limit government, limit government to its proper wall, protecting our individual rights, not violating them, protecting our lives, not squeezing us for more, squeezing us for another dime. Of course, some politicians are corrupt in a sense of suitcases and we've seen that, we've seen a number of politicians get caught with huge quantities of cash in their refrigerators. So we can continue to complain about Hunter Biden's laptop or Jared Kushner's, we deal with the Saudis but it's still gonna happen. Nothing's gonna change, nothing's gonna change until we actually have the guts, until we actually have the balls, until we actually have the courage to go back to the vision of the founding fathers of what this government is supposed to do and shrink it to size, limit its scope. We're not, we can't rely on the Supreme Court to do that. They don't understand. We can't rely on our politicians to do that. It is us, the people who have to change. It is you who have to go out there and educate your fellow Americans. We need a government that, we need a separation of state from economics. We need a state that does not get involved in economic decisions and therefore, is not involved in money and therefore, there's no reason to bribe them. There's no purpose of corrupting. How about we reduce foreign aid to zero? That would be nice, that would be good. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran book show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbookshow.com slash support, by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. 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