2 Men In Black and White: An Honest Conversation

Mark Hayes (00:02.157)
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another exciting edition of Tumant black and white and honest conversation. we are just a couple of guys with streaming capabilities, trying to look at the world through the lenses of the African-American and the white American communities. All right. Are we done yet? Donald Trump has now, bombed Iran and killed apparently or reportedly the Ayatollah. rock is this enough to make.

Americans stand up and say, what the hell are we doing and why?

BROCK GANELES (00:36.815)
doubt it because it's international and I don't think most people really care what goes on outside of their in essence, their four walls, right? We've seen them barely even care about what's going on with their neighbors. So I don't think that this is going to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Apparently MAGA is upset because Trump had kind of sold them on being a president of peace and now he

know, he's bombing Iran without reason. So now, mean, there'll be a lot of screaming, kicking and screaming in Washington of votes for war powers and Congress trying to argue that the president can't go to war without their authorization, but

Trump's already made Congress basically irrelevant. Like it's a little too late for them to fight for their turf. So, I mean, we did this with Maduro, right? We went into Venezuela and did the same thing. It didn't really move the needle much. You know, maybe Trump will lose a few more approval points, but I don't see this riling up and sending the American people to the streets because...

Mark Hayes (01:30.701)
Right.

BROCK GANELES (01:55.673)
the US is bombing Iran. What do you think?

Mark Hayes (01:59.505)
Yeah. Well, you know, refresh my memory, but wasn't the indiscriminate

Um, you know, flexing of American muscle all over the globe. The reason why nine 11 happened. I mean, the rest of the world was just annoyed at us. Now they did come to our aid and our defense. After 3000 plus Americans were brutally murdered on nine 11. But the fact of the matter is we had pissed off a large contingent in the middle East. And you know, we had those 20, um, Saudi.

hijackers that came in and I mean remember back to 9-11 remember how long we just felt like our lives did not belong to us anymore. You know we didn't want to fly. You know we didn't we barely wanted to go outside. We lived literally in fear which had never happened to America before. So I mean remind me like how is this not along those same lines?

BROCK GANELES (02:52.216)
Yeah, we looked in fear.

Mark Hayes (03:06.817)
Because I feel like we are less much safe, especially after the events of last night into today.

BROCK GANELES (03:16.184)
Yeah, I guess that that is maybe where the American people would kind of wake up to that Trump's lunacy is not good for them is if terrorist activity gets unleashed because of this. And you can't just go around the world killing people and not expect there to be any retribution. Certainly no other country is going to declare war on the U.S. and fight us head on. But.

Mark Hayes (03:29.6)
right.

BROCK GANELES (03:44.515)
You we've had a real quiet decade basically of terrorist activity. I mean, you kick the hornet's nest. I mean, how are you going to feel safe? Certainly abroad, right? And I remember how unsafe I felt in New York City, right? Going to the subways was scary. I didn't go into subways for a couple of years. I mean, it's only going to take one incident.

Mark Hayes (03:51.815)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Hayes (03:59.56)
Right. Right.

BROCK GANELES (04:10.956)
you know, really to scare the American public again and get us back in that mode.

Mark Hayes (04:15.542)
Yep, yep, then and then Let's talk about the ripple effect, right the economy people stop going out people stop going to Times Square People stop eating out people stop getting on planes People stop going to destinations Because we're concerned that anywhere. There's a large crowd there might be terrorist activity think about the ripple effect this is

the United States of America. And again, I've said it to you a thousand times. We will not recover the luster of this country in our lifetime. You and I got 2025, if we're lucky, left on the face of God's green earth. If we're lucky, we won't see the remedy to Donald Trump's maniacal activity in that time.

BROCK GANELES (05:07.95)
Yeah. So let's mark, let's peel this back a layer. Why did Trump want to bomb Iran? His generals weren't even, you know, allegedly weren't even for it, right? They leaked out that they were against it. Why do you think we just bombed Iran?

Mark Hayes (05:28.78)
The Epstein war, is that what we're calling this? Is this being called the Epstein bombings? That's what this is. This is all about wagging the dog. This is all about what's happening with those Epstein files. I just saw a headline. I didn't bother to click on it, but I was on social media last night. And it said, you know, reports are that the White House is a buzz that Donald Trump will step down as president to avoid criminal prosecution over the Epstein file.

Right now think about it. I don't know if it has any validity, but it makes sense It makes sense, right? He's he's racked up what? You know 10 billion dollars since he's been in president over the since he's been in the office over the last year He wants to go spend it. He wants to be able to freely spend the cash he's earned Right shaking down the world It would make sense to me that somebody went to him and said, know what?

But he doesn't have to worry about being prosecuted anyway because the Fox is watching the hen house. Pan Bondi's not going to charge him with anything. His own personal attorney is not going to charge him with anything. And Todd Blanch. Look, we know all the goods are out there. And this is all about reflecting from what's going on with those funds. mean, just think about the...

The cacophony of, crazy that was coming out of these files the last week. Every day it was something worse.

BROCK GANELES (07:05.764)
Okay. I see it a little differently. So, but I do think it comes back to the Epstein files, but I think it comes back in a slightly different way. Cause I've been trying to think about, okay, Donald Trump only does things that are in his interest, right? He's not fighting for democracy. He's not trying to free the Iranian people against the, you know, a,

Mark Hayes (07:12.188)
Okay.

Mark Hayes (07:17.29)
Bye.

BROCK GANELES (07:31.979)
authoritarian regime. loves authoritarians. If he cared about, you know, democracy, we'd be all in on Ukraine. So like, it's not about making life better for the people of Iran. So let's throw that fucking out the window, right? So what's in it for Trump?

Mark Hayes (07:47.146)
Mm-hmm.

BROCK GANELES (07:50.525)
A, think we're in this we're doing this bombing because Israel wants it. Saudi Arabia wants it. United Arab Emirates probably wants it as well. They're all either paying Trump one way or another or like I convinced Israel they have the goods on Trump relative to the Epstein files because, you know, highly likely that Israel's spy agencies had video cameras at Epstein's home and has

Mark Hayes (08:18.09)
Dead to right.

BROCK GANELES (08:20.814)
Trump doing some shit. So it's either money, so it gets back to the Epstein file. So I think we're fighting this war on behalf of Israel, right? We're bombing Israel's number one enemy. Netanyahu's wanted this war for decades.

He's been trying to take out Iran, right? It's because that's his number one goal, you know, kind of in essence in life. OK, so I think it's money plus concern about the Epstein files because Israel has compromise on Trump. I think they've hung that over his head the entire time he's been in public office in the same way that that Putin does. So that's where I think this comes around to Trump playing this hand both for personal

Mark Hayes (08:47.402)
Right. .

BROCK GANELES (09:08.102)
personal gain and personal economic gain and to take care of Israel so that Israel stays a good ally and keeps their mouths shut. But the other thing that I believe is I don't think Trump has any vision of walking into the sunset is spending his money. I don't think he plans on ever leaving leadership of America.

So I also think that this bombing of Iran is a play where the government is now is also going to blame Iran for rigging the 2020 election. Tulsi Gabbard is going to be on board with that. And it's going to be all a part of a voter suppression play and or a deflection of the elections play that because Trump is going to pull out any stop he can to not

Mark Hayes (09:51.936)
Wow. Wow.

BROCK GANELES (10:02.304)
allow Congress to be able to impeach him and or to get pushed out of office. So I think Trump's motives are even more sinister than you do.

Mark Hayes (10:15.024)
I, you know, it makes sense. I mean, I like the scenario. What I don't like is that why is he dictating? We don't have a monarchy here. How does he get to dictate when he, we have laws in place. That's it, you can always serve two terms.

BROCK GANELES (10:23.32)
So, yeah, go ahead.

Mark Hayes (10:40.072)
We have laws in place that say you cannot commit crimes indiscriminately while sitting in office and holding public office. We have laws in place that are supposed to protect, number one, the American people, but also, one, a, for democracy.

How did this guy become so...empowerful? Riddle me that badly.

BROCK GANELES (11:07.842)
Yeah. Why do we give him some, why does he have so much power now? Almost all presidents ignore the war powers act, but this is the most blatant. This is the most blatant one in my lifetime because usually they at least they're either reacting to a, you know,

Mark Hayes (11:15.952)
Right. Yeah.

BROCK GANELES (11:26.488)
some event and then they just go fire away before they get authority from Congress. mean, George Bush lied. At least George Bush had the courtesy to concoct a lie in advance, right? Trump is still trying out different lies as he goes along, right? They're literally out there now saying, there's going to be an imminent attack from Iran. Like they just came out with that one in the last 24 hours, right? But before that it was nuclear weapons, but

Mark Hayes (11:28.026)
Right. Right.

Mark Hayes (11:41.048)
Okay.

Mark Hayes (11:53.556)
Thank you.

BROCK GANELES (11:56.375)
then they realized, wait, we said we wiped out their nuclear weapons. So that that argument actually hurts us. So then they put that argument away. Right. And then he moved on to the next argument. Then it was about maybe, you know, for the good of the Iranian people. And then that doesn't really hold up because like, why didn't you do this a few weeks ago? And or why? How do you correlate that with not?

fighting harder for Ukraine. So all their different arguments crumbled away. So they're just all these different lies after the fact. But Trump really wanted this to happen. So he has to have a motivation. And it's usually worse than anything we could have ever expected from any other human being. Certainly.

by far from any other president. So he's got shitty motives and we know it's important to him. Epstein files never come out and he never loses power. So I'm just assuming everything he does is playing into one of those two outcomes. And I think this one is a little bit of both.

Mark Hayes (12:43.556)
Right. Right.

Mark Hayes (12:58.407)
Right, right. You know, I'm really sick of his narcissism. I'm really sick of his, you know, self-proclaimed aggrandizement and his, you know, shoving his impidity down the throats of American people, the American people. I just don't understand.

Why we can't rise up and say, know what? This is it. This is the last straw. You know what? I don't want my kids growing up in a country like this. I don't want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life because apparently it's actually because of a more rough who ships himself six to seven times a day and has to wear a diaper. It makes no sense that this guy is still controlling the Leavis of Power in

this in country.

BROCK GANELES (14:02.062)
feel like we just got played as Americans, right? Israel just coerced us into bombing Iran. So our troops are put at risk. I Netanyahu wanted this so bad. They're like, this is a joint operation. Like Israel, Netanyahu's celebrating this like a motherfucker, right? And we're just along doing the dirty work of bringing massive firepower in there.

Mark Hayes (14:05.414)
Right. Right.

BROCK GANELES (14:27.382)
and bombing the shit out of Iran. So Netanyahu played Trump. But the other part that pisses me off, right, is I see Schumer's out there now, we have to call the Senate back and the House has to come back and we have to vote on the War Powers Act after the fact of whether or not Congress authorizes this war. But Schumer's a fucking fraud, right?

Mark Hayes (14:45.657)
Okay.

Mark Hayes (14:52.692)
Right.

BROCK GANELES (14:53.604)
because Schumer's already told us that he cares that his number one concern as the minority leader in the Senate is Israel. Right. He stated that fact. So he's a part of this cabal.

Mark Hayes (15:06.486)
Right. Right.

BROCK GANELES (15:10.328)
that has allowed Israel to manipulate the United States. And you know, this is a place where I get in a lot of head-to-head battles with my Jewish friends who were, you know, ultra pro Israel. And I'm always like, no, as long as Netanyahu is in charge of Israel, that is a rogue country. He is their Donald Trump and he will take them to war. He will...

Mark Hayes (15:33.574)
Yeah.

BROCK GANELES (15:38.521)
fucking carpet bomb Gaza and commit war crimes. He doesn't care. And he's embarrassing and hurting the Israeli people in the same way that Trump is embarrassing and hurting the American people. And the two of them together with a lot of firepower in the middle East. Yeah, they're going to, a lot of, they're going to kill a lot of people and declare victory. But us as the American people have we won and

Mark Hayes (16:02.79)
No. Right.

BROCK GANELES (16:08.128)
Is Chuck Schumer the leader we want with that mentality that whatever is good for Israel is good for America? I don't think that holds anymore. I wish it did as a Jewish American. I wish we were in lockstep with Israel and I don't see how we can keep just playing their games when Netanyahu is their leader. So to me we have two absolute lunatic fools.

Mark Hayes (16:28.55)
Yeah Crazy like a fox yeah and I Mean like lotto bro played him like lotto and remember this is the problem with not having anyone anyone in that clown car

BROCK GANELES (16:35.925)
Actually, I can't call Netanyahu a fool. Netanyahu is really shrewd and smart. We have the fool. Yeah, crazy like a fox. Played Trump like a fiddle.

Mark Hayes (16:57.829)
that can you know see past 5 30 right these people they don't understand how to play the long game and they we're getting played because there's nobody in there smart enough to realize that we're getting played and you know you heard from the military community they're saying we don't know they don't even know if they have enough ammunition if this thing goes is protracted beyond a few days or beyond these assassination strikes

They have no idea if they have enough ammo. Okay, think about that. The American military machine may not have enough ammo to finish the job that they're starting. Think about that. Let that sink in. That should scare us all. Right.

BROCK GANELES (17:45.989)
First of all, with the budget that we have, that's almost incredible to hear that that's even a potential scenario. But triple lie, we'll just pull back, say the mission accomplished, we won, we're done, right? We'll never admit that we had a shortcoming. We'll just say, you know, we did our job and now it's up to whatever, the Iranian people to take it from here or whatever.

I swear, Mark, I didn't want to be talking about this today. You know, like this is like this is the classic Trump distraction, right? He's getting us all to talk about something. We can't not talk about it because we're putting American lives at risk. We're creating unrest that probably makes us less safe. And we're just spending the hundreds of millions, hundreds of billions of dollars in military.

Mark Hayes (18:35.301)
Mm-hmm.

Mark Hayes (18:41.893)
All right.

BROCK GANELES (18:43.402)
equipment to, to, know, to fight this war that really doesn't matter to us. That's not in the American national interest. And yet this is the topic of the day. And you know, everyone across the spectrum is talking about this and we're up in arms about how, you know, how egregious Trump is as a leader and how can we let this go on? But

We'll wake up tomorrow and nothing will have changed. I don't care if the Congress and Senate go back and vote against Trump's war powers or whatever. Same with the tariffs. He just steamrolled the Supreme Court. He's just going to ignore whatever they say. He doesn't have any respect for a single person in that entire 538, I think total people in the Congress. doesn't care. Does not.

Mark Hayes (19:15.363)
Nope.

Mark Hayes (19:38.744)
Right. Not at all.

BROCK GANELES (19:40.58)
All he worries about is that maybe they'll impeach him if there's the wrong balance. That's the absolute only thing he cares about from Congress.

Mark Hayes (19:47.054)
Well.

Right, All right, it's a Saturday. Get up out of here. You got a quick hit for me?

BROCK GANELES (19:59.431)
Mark, I had a few things to talk about, like the fact that Paramount, now the same guy, same family owns TikTok, CBS, Paramount, and CNN. So another news station is gonna move far to the right. And those CNN jobs are gonna get lost in a heartbeat, and Scott Jennings is probably gonna get his own show, and Abby Phillip will probably get fired, right? And that's the direction we're gonna go, and we have massive.

Mark Hayes (20:01.078)
You

BROCK GANELES (20:28.804)
media propaganda in in America. So like we are we are just marching down the road to that authoritarian playbook is just being played played to the hilt. So I don't know if that's a quick hit but just a frustration I needed to get out. What do you got for me?

Mark Hayes (20:39.073)
with our terrain.

Wow.

Mark Hayes (20:47.477)
It's sad. Yeah. there is video out of, your boy dancing down at, Mar-a-Lago. And if Azko, if Azko could fly, Mar-a-Lago would definitely be an airman. they got video of him dancing. the Trumpster. The Trumpster. What? Party. Dancing last night while the bombs were going off. And,

BROCK GANELES (21:03.94)
Who's dancing? Who's dancing in Mar-a-Lago? What do you mean he was dancing like last night, like in, today?

Mark Hayes (21:18.035)
This old gauche. Assless. Pathetic. Pathetically weak. I don't know bro, I'm ready to go abroad. I really gotta tell ya. I am tired of seeing it. There's gotta be a... The alternative has gotta be turn the TV off.

at this point anyway, right? Basically, we can't go there for straight arrows either. you know, it's just. Right.

BROCK GANELES (21:58.351)
Look, the only solace is we know that more and more Americans are turning away from Trump. It hasn't generated any change at all in what is going on in the country. But little by little, people are peeling away. And maybe there are some MAGA people that truly believed that Trump was going to keep us out of foreign wars and interventions because he said he was.

Mark Hayes (22:21.866)
Okay.

BROCK GANELES (22:26.924)
I don't know why the fuck they believe a word he says. He's a pathological liar, but there's some of them who, don't believe that he did anything with Epstein and B, thought that he was going to be a president for peace because he said so. So maybe there's even some more of them that get disillusioned and at least stay home from the polls and or put their guns down and, you know, stop being a part of his militias. Maybe.

Mark Hayes (22:38.995)
Okay.

BROCK GANELES (22:56.376)
That's the only positive I can see to come out of this whole thing. I'm not that hopeful that it'll actually happen.

Mark Hayes (23:03.382)
Well, let me ask you this. So why do people are pulling away from it? We're still going to steal the elections. It will matter. Unless, of course, we go out there and rip the doors off of, you know, the Capitol.

and pull him out and drag him down the street. That's the only way we get out of this. Because obviously...

BROCK GANELES (23:31.99)
maybe yeah I know maybe the anger level is percolating and we're moving in that direction I hope that's the direction we move which is greater anger not greater disillusionment and discouragement

Mark Hayes (23:46.305)
No. Right.

BROCK GANELES (23:53.657)
to where people lose the fight and we just can't let that happen because there's really no reason we haven't just stormed the Capitol and just absolutely shut down American society and life and business and just said this country is going absolutely nowhere till there's a change at the top. And then maybe business comes around because they're all losing their money and there's just...

a consensus comes that Trump can no longer be leader of this country.

Mark Hayes (24:25.353)
Yeah, how can this atmosphere be good for for for America? I'm stumped. You're the finance guy. Help me understand.

BROCK GANELES (24:35.63)
There's no fucking way. mean, the taxes are so none of them paying taxes. You know, they still feel they can navigate the economy. Our economy is so strong. We're seeing how strong it is that even though we have a demented indecil creating horrendous policy, know, the American GDP still kind of rolls around, but it's probably going to take a big economic downturn. But it's to really shake.

the business world. And I feel like it's coming, but it hasn't happened yet. So therefore they're still all tiptoeing around Trump not to get on his bad side because to get on his bad side, he'll target your company. Like we'll talk tomorrow or the next day about what went on with these AI companies, this anthropic that, you know, the department of defense didn't want to work with. I mean, or

Mark Hayes (25:27.409)
Yeah.

Mark Hayes (25:32.481)
Right Yeah, yeah, which is a joke Right

BROCK GANELES (25:32.741)
It's no surprise that Netflix didn't win the Paramount bid, right? Because the CEO, you know, has donated to the gerrymandering cause in California. So Trump's manipulating business. All this is a matter of time, we're racing against the clock, right? We're racing against so much authoritarianism that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks anymore because

we've stripped away our democracy and our right to have a say. So how fast can Trump get a militia in place and strip away all the levers of democracy before we as the people get motivated to actually, you know, generate some extreme action that gets him out of there. We're losing the race right now.

Mark Hayes (26:28.071)
Yeah, yeah, big time

Big time. Too many black and white and honest conversation. Please like and subscribe. Don't forget to tell your friends about it. You can find us wherever you get your favorite podcast. But you know, people that disengaged that they're going to sit here and allow just the, you know, basically arbitrary bombing of another nation state without

having any interest at all.

BROCK GANELES (27:08.46)
I worry that people are just too disengaged to care that we bombed Iran or they're so racist that they feel like, yeah, bomb Iran, fuck them, right? They're brown people, they're Muslims, you know, they're terrorists. I mean, you can actually make an argument that they are terrorists, right? They are terrorists. You know, they probably, so, you know, you can get yourself to justifying the bombing of Iran probably even easier than the Venezuela scenario.

Mark Hayes (27:14.339)
Right.

Right. They don't. They don't. Right. Yeah.

BROCK GANELES (27:36.879)
But I think most people are disengaged and what do they care what goes on in the Middle East? Doesn't doesn't affect their life? Well, I don't think yes. So this is to me like something that's more like the political class gets upset about maybe the business world. But anyone who is paying attention just looks at it and goes like, wow, you know, we're actually doing the dirty work for Israel here. Like, why? Why are we doing the dirty work for Israel?

Like we see what's in it for them, but like we're going to put our our troops at risk.

Mark Hayes (28:12.779)
What a job. All right, buddy.

BROCK GANELES (28:14.884)
You know, it's a frustrating time as Mark. All right, so you're hitting the road a little bit. You're be, we're gonna be around tomorrow to catch up.

Mark Hayes (28:20.223)
Yeah Yes, sir, let's do it

BROCK GANELES (28:27.532)
Okay, sounds good. Hey, we're also on Instagram at Two Men in Black and White. So we're put up a bunch of our shorts up on there. So we'll have people follow us on Instagram as well as catching us here when they can.

Mark Hayes (28:37.04)
Second, like it, subscribe, follow. Two men in black and white, an honest conversation. All right, buddy, peace.

BROCK GANELES (28:41.028)
All right, Mark, travel safe.