Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Crystal. Indeed, we do lots of
Speaker 1: big things that are breaking this morning and this week.
Speaker 1: Trump claiming he will be indicted on Tuesday. We don't
Speaker 1: actually know if that's going to happen. Both we will
Speaker 1: see and we will talk all about that and the
Speaker 1: particular case that may in charges that may be brought here.
Speaker 1: We also have a lawyer on to help us understand
Speaker 1: the legal intricacies of this one, because there's actually a
Speaker 1: lot of moving parts. We also have some political fallout already.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis put in a tough bind on this one,
Speaker 1: in particular because as Florida governor, he would have to
Speaker 1: be involved in extracising Trump, so awkward for him, and
Speaker 1: he hasn't said anything about it yet. We also have
Speaker 1: some updates in terms of the market credit Suite being
Speaker 1: acquired by UBS over the weekend. Will that calm fears.
Speaker 1: And also some really outrageous things that were said by
Speaker 1: Janet Yellen about exactly who is being backstopped here in
Speaker 1: terms of the banking sector. Also huge news internationally this
Speaker 1: morning as Putin and She are set to meet. This
Speaker 1: comes amid a report that the US is opposed to
Speaker 1: any potential Chinese brokered cease fire in this conflict. Kind
Speaker 1: of an outrageous dance there. And we're also looking back
Speaker 1: at twenty years later after the launch of the Iraq War,
Speaker 1: and we're going to look at you know, we looked
Speaker 1: at we look at a lot of villains from the
Speaker 1: Iraq War, Tobaca. We're actually going to look at some
Speaker 1: of the courageous heroes. Do a little bit of a
Speaker 1: different take on that. But before we get to any
Speaker 1: of that, thank you, guys to all of you for
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Speaker 1: you go, all right, So Donald Trump, is he going
Speaker 1: to get arrested or not? Kind of dropped a bomb
Speaker 1: on the people over the weekend, but it does. Really
Speaker 1: what we need to do is take a step back.
Speaker 1: We need to look at the initial claim that Trump
Speaker 1: has made, and then let's also look at what are
Speaker 1: these charges, because it has been now so long, I
Speaker 1: unfortunately and intimately familiar with this case, from the time
Speaker 1: that I covered the White House, the inns and the
Speaker 1: outs of the details of Stormy Daniels, of the payment
Speaker 1: that was made to silence her, and then the potential
Speaker 1: crime of the original investigations, and now the new one
Speaker 1: which appears to be facing some legal jeopardy for the
Speaker 1: former president. But first and foremost, let's put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. So Trump sent out an all
Speaker 1: caps statement quote, our nation is now third world and dying.
Speaker 1: The American dream is dead. The radical left anarchists have
Speaker 1: stolen our presidential camp election and with it, the heart
Speaker 1: of our country. American patriots are being arrested and held
Speaker 1: in captivity like animals, while criminals and leftist thugs are
Speaker 1: allowed to row in the streets. Okay, so that's the intro.
Speaker 1: Then page two. Now, illegal leaks from a corrupt and
Speaker 1: highly political Manhattan District Attorney's office, which has allowed new
Speaker 1: records to be set in violent crime and whose letter
Speaker 1: a leader is funded by George Soros, indicate with no
Speaker 1: crime being able to be proven, and based on an
Speaker 1: old and fully debunked by numerous other prosecutor's fairy tale,
Speaker 1: the far and away leading Republican candidate and former president
Speaker 1: of the United States of America will be arrested on
Speaker 1: Tuesday of next week protests take our nation back. So
Speaker 1: obviously the major headline is what he expects to be
Speaker 1: arrested on Tuesday in connection to this case by Alvin
Speaker 1: Bragg from the District Attorney's Office in the state of
Speaker 1: New York, considering the payment to Stormy Daniels, of which
Speaker 1: we have known that this investigation has been taking place
Speaker 1: for a while. So let's all travel back in time
Speaker 1: and let's try and forget that Michael Avenatti ever existed.
Speaker 1: Say who is Stormy Daniels. Stormy Daniels was a porn
Speaker 1: star throughout the nineteen nineties. She had a dalliance with Trump,
Speaker 1: of which both have effectively admitted to in Lake Tahoe.
Speaker 1: You can go and read some of the details for
Speaker 1: that if you would like elsewhere. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: get into what actually happened that day anyway, suffice to
Speaker 1: say that they were likely or allegedly intimate on this day.
Speaker 1: I believe it was in two thousand between the two
Speaker 1: and since then, Stormy Daniels, especially after President Trump announced
Speaker 1: his candidacy, wanted to come forward along with Karen McDougall
Speaker 1: and others who had had brief affairs with him, in
Speaker 1: order to basically embarrass him during the campaign. And he's
Speaker 1: trying to either get money for it from from tabloids
Speaker 1: like National Geographic or from Trump shellfire. Sorry, yeah, can
Speaker 1: you imagine? Can you imagine? Other there's certainly some nature
Speaker 1: going on it, all right, step back, now you can
Speaker 1: tell which one of those I actually read. So National Inquirer.
Speaker 1: There was an entire case around the way that that
Speaker 1: case was handled, about the payment, about the intimate relations
Speaker 1: between the National Inquirer and the safe of all their
Speaker 1: secret stories that they had, and the payoffs that they
Speaker 1: would kill. Yes, it was anyway interesting in its own
Speaker 1: right that we all learned aroun a lot about in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. The crux of it comes down to this,
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels was paid one hundred and thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: This money was paid by President Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen,
Speaker 1: who has since served some time in jail and turned
Speaker 1: against the foreign president and actually turned witness against him
Speaker 1: in this case. In it he admitted to paying her
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty thousand dollars. Now, where is the
Speaker 1: violation here, Well, there were multiple avenues of inquiry on this.
Speaker 1: Number one, was this a campaign finance violation because it
Speaker 1: was done in connection with the twenty sixteen campaign. This
Speaker 1: was alleged at the time the FFEC actually looked into it.
Speaker 1: This was the initial thought about the way that federal
Speaker 1: prosecutors would go after Trump while he was president. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the federal investigation, the FFC investigation went nowhere. Now the
Speaker 1: New York authorities are looking at this payment in which
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen was reimbursed this one hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars by the Trump organization itself, that reimbursement and then
Speaker 1: the subsequent cover up or possible misrecording or possible recording.
Speaker 1: It not in the way legally that they should have
Speaker 1: is at the crux of what we are looking at here,
Speaker 1: the one hundred and thirty thousand dollars hush money payment
Speaker 1: from twenty and sixteen. Let's goad and put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen for the New York Times. Actually
Speaker 1: a decent explainer inside the payoff to the porn star
Speaker 1: that could lead to Trump's indictment. The crux of the
Speaker 1: case is going to focus on article one seventy five
Speaker 1: of the New York Penal law of falsifying business records.
Speaker 1: A conviction of a felony version of bookkeeping fraud carries
Speaker 1: the sentence of up to four years. To prove that
Speaker 1: mister Trump committed that offense, prosecutors would seemingly need evidence
Speaker 1: showing he knowingly caused subordinates to make a false entry
Speaker 1: into his company's records quote with the will intent to defraud.
Speaker 1: For the action to be a felony rather than a misdemeanor,
Speaker 1: Prosecutors need to show that mister Trump falsified the business
Speaker 1: records with the intention of committing, aiding, or concealing a
Speaker 1: second crime, as in that they would have to prove it.
Speaker 1: The first first payment, the initial cover up was a crime,
Speaker 1: and that the knowledge of what they were doing was
Speaker 1: intentionally trying to cover up a crime to meet the
Speaker 1: felony statute. That is basically where we are at with
Speaker 1: the theory of the case. However, the prosecutor faces a
Speaker 1: wide array of challenges in this number one. It requires
Speaker 1: a very unique interpretation of this Article one seventy five law,
Speaker 1: which is not yet brought before New York State law.
Speaker 1: A judge could toss it out on that regard. Second
Speaker 1: of all, the intentionality in being able to prove We've
Speaker 1: talked a lot here in the past about defamation cases, Crystal.
Speaker 1: Part of the reason why they're so hard to prove
Speaker 1: is because you need to prove not only was somebody
Speaker 1: defaming someone, but that they were knowingly doing so at
Speaker 1: the time, that they knew what they were saying was
Speaker 1: not true, and that you have to have evidence to
Speaker 1: show that they knew exactly what they were saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was not true. So everything that I've read about
Speaker 1: this that we're going to have a lawyer in to
Speaker 1: break down. You know exactly what the charges are and
Speaker 1: what the president is and all of those things. But
Speaker 1: this is a novel application of the law. You have
Speaker 1: two pieces here. Number one basically business fraud because this
Speaker 1: payment was recorded as a quote unquote legal expense to
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen, when of course that wasn't really what it was.
Speaker 1: And then to make it a felony, it was in
Speaker 1: service of covering up a campaign finance violation. This is
Speaker 1: the idea, the theory, the legal theory here and obviously
Speaker 1: a campaign finance law there. First of all, you have
Speaker 1: to disclose what money, what benefit you're getting to your campaign.
Speaker 1: And second of all, there are limits on you know,
Speaker 1: how much you can receive and who you can receive
Speaker 1: it from. You can't get it directly from a business
Speaker 1: as one example. So the idea here is that the
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty thousand dollars hush money payment was
Speaker 1: really to benefit his campaign. Now, one thing that I
Speaker 1: will say, there's a lot of people who are saying
Speaker 1: and this is kind of legally shaky ground and a
Speaker 1: weaker case that some of the other things that are
Speaker 1: out there, for example, the Georgia Grand Jury, for example,
Speaker 1: the you know, the Merritt Garland Special prosecutor led investigation
Speaker 1: by Jack Smith looking at incitement and more specifically on
Speaker 1: you know, fake elector schemes, et cetera with regard to
Speaker 1: January sixth, And I think, frankly, also from a political perspective,
Speaker 1: like those are the things that people are more focused
Speaker 1: on at this point in time versus this old hush
Speaker 1: money allegation from years ago that we all had to
Speaker 1: like dig deep into the trenches of our memory to
Speaker 1: recall all the details of. However, I do think it's
Speaker 1: worth pointing out Michael Cohen did spend time in prison
Speaker 1: for this exact payment, and under now he ended up
Speaker 1: pleading guilty, and it was to charges of lying to
Speaker 1: Congress and to campaign finance violations with regard to this
Speaker 1: hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. So it's not like
Speaker 1: it's crazy to imagine that, you know, this payment was
Speaker 1: of course in service of his campaign, and he did
Speaker 1: plead guilty through those charges and spend time in prison.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm not one to give Michael Cohen
Speaker 1: like a ton of credit, but he did make a
Speaker 1: reasonable point, which is all the people are freaking out
Speaker 1: or ah, this is political etcetera, etcetera. He's like, where
Speaker 1: were you all when I was being prosecuted for the
Speaker 1: same shit nobody raised a single voice of protests from
Speaker 1: the right about him being found guilty of the same thing. Right.
Speaker 1: Part of the problem though, is that one of the
Speaker 1: charges that brought Michael Cohen down was actually perjury, so
Speaker 1: he actually relied on her. Oh so that was part
Speaker 1: of their issue, right, is that that actually was about
Speaker 1: the subsequent cover of the crime and not the initial
Speaker 1: payment itself. This is going to be it was both.
Speaker 1: It was line to Congress and it was the campaign finance, right. So,
Speaker 1: and that's actually part of the problem though, is that
Speaker 1: that was a federal charge, the campaign finance RD. That
Speaker 1: is not the charge actually being brought here or what
Speaker 1: would be brought here if an indictment ward would come.
Speaker 1: It would be a book caping keeping case. And actually
Speaker 1: there is some discussion about which supersedes which, and the
Speaker 1: fact that the FEDS decided not specifically to prosecute Trump
Speaker 1: for this payment on a campaign finance violation in conjunction
Speaker 1: with the FEC, that this is in a different almost
Speaker 1: legal entity entirely politically. I don't disagree. Actually, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a very reasonable case. But that is actually why the
Speaker 1: divergence of this and where the grounds on which he
Speaker 1: actually might be prosecuted and indicted and then ultimately convicted.
Speaker 1: If so, what that would come down to. Is it
Speaker 1: going to come down to the actual facts of the
Speaker 1: case itself or is this going to be political? And
Speaker 1: the other thing I think that I should note also
Speaker 1: is about the statue of limitations, because the statute of
Speaker 1: limitations in this case may also end up becoming something
Speaker 1: because book keeping fraud has a two year statue of
Speaker 1: limitations in the state of New York and a five
Speaker 1: year one as a felony, both of which normally would
Speaker 1: have expired for payments made to mister Cohen in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: but New York law extends the limits to cover periods
Speaker 1: when a defendant was continuously out of state, as he
Speaker 1: was while he was living in the White House or
Speaker 1: while he was at his home in Florida. In addition,
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, New York's statue of limitations was extended
Speaker 1: by more than a year. So with those dual extensions,
Speaker 1: we are at the expery limit, which is exactly why
Speaker 1: they're making the determination specifically on this case at this time.
Speaker 1: I mean, politically, let's zoom out to because let's also
Speaker 1: be real like nothing ever is actually done in terms
Speaker 1: of the law. Like, clearly there's political motivation on all this.
Speaker 1: Many of these people actually ran on convicting Trump, both
Speaker 1: from Letitia James to mister Bragg, Right, yeah, exactly, he
Speaker 1: literally ran He's like, you know, New York state law
Speaker 1: even was changed in order to help them. What was
Speaker 1: it released to tax returns? I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the only reasons we even have is tax returns. Anyway,
Speaker 1: these are all ridiculous fights from twenty eighteen or so
Speaker 1: that have since passed. But within the memory bank and
Speaker 1: also within the current political calculus of which we will
Speaker 1: talk quite a bit about in the fallout section. I
Speaker 1: kind of agree with you, Chrystl, which is that at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, if this is the first
Speaker 1: one that you're going to bring, it really does seem
Speaker 1: to me one of those where on the merits, this
Speaker 1: does not seem like a very difficult case for Trump
Speaker 1: actually to beat on the merits in court, especially on bookkeeping.
Speaker 1: Also with the novel interpretation of the law, the fact
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever been prosecuted like this, you can make
Speaker 1: a pretty clear case also in the media around you know,
Speaker 1: of course, diehard Democrats are going to be behind it,
Speaker 1: but diehard Republicans too. You know, this isn't like a
Speaker 1: smoking gun, dead to rights case in any interpretation I
Speaker 1: think of which we will also get into with Bradley Moss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the politics of it. The legal piece is
Speaker 1: less clear to me just because of my not lawyers.
Speaker 1: The politics part is clear to me, which is I
Speaker 1: think it's a tremendous gift to Trump that this is
Speaker 1: the first prosecution because I think it is the weakest
Speaker 1: of the cases. I think it's the case that people
Speaker 1: care the least about or the least and so I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: when I look at it, I'm sort of two minds.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, novel application of law, et cetera.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, like if you or I did
Speaker 1: some like rigged hush money payment in service of a campaign,
Speaker 1: we would get popped for it. So you know, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of two mindst. But in terms of the politics
Speaker 1: of it is I think pretty clear. And we'll get
Speaker 1: into this more. But you already see Republicans swarming to
Speaker 1: his defense. I think it also will take if there
Speaker 1: are indictments in some of the other cases, which seems
Speaker 1: fairly likely. You know, there's no time like the first time. Ye,
Speaker 1: the first time packs the greatest punch, And this happens
Speaker 1: to be the case that he has the most to
Speaker 1: work with in terms of spinning a public narrative, which
Speaker 1: you always already see him aggressively doing, and so I
Speaker 1: think it can also take some of the sting out
Speaker 1: of later charges that might be filed in some of
Speaker 1: the war clear cut and frankly more serious cases that
Speaker 1: he may be implicated in. So you know, that's kind
Speaker 1: of how I see this. I think it's very fortunate
Speaker 1: for him. I don't think it will certainly hurt him
Speaker 1: at all in the Republican primary. I think it may
Speaker 1: well help him in the Republican primary, and I don't
Speaker 1: know that it has an impact really on him even
Speaker 1: for a general election. The other piece here is, you know,
Speaker 1: he says, because of Leeks, we know I'm going to
Speaker 1: be indicted on Tuesday. Obviously I'm paraphrasing what he said
Speaker 1: in his own very trump like way, with a lot
Speaker 1: of misspellings, etc. We don't actually know that he is
Speaker 1: going to be indicted on Tuesday. In fact, it doesn't
Speaker 1: really look like he is going to be indicted on Tuesday.
Speaker 1: There's new reporting that there's some other witness they want
Speaker 1: to testify in from the grand jury, which may push
Speaker 1: the timeline out a bit. I think he's referring to
Speaker 1: there was a report, I believe with NBC News saying
Speaker 1: he could be indicted as soon as as early as
Speaker 1: this week. That doesn't mean a guarantee that it's going
Speaker 1: to be this week. It just means this is kind
Speaker 1: of coming to a close and it's going to happen soon.
Speaker 1: His own aid said that it's not like he had
Speaker 1: been given a heads up, Hey, this is coming Tuesday.
Speaker 1: So it's not at all clear that this is happening Tuesday.
Speaker 1: And if anything I would say is probably not happening tomorrow,
Speaker 1: it's probably, you know, maybe a week away, maybe a
Speaker 1: little more than that. Who knows. In old Trump in parlance,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens. Yeah, we've got a great guest
Speaker 1: standing by Bradley Moss. Let's get to it. Joining us
Speaker 1: now is national security lawyer Brad Moss. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the show. Brad, appreciate it absolutely. How you guys doing.
Speaker 1: We're great. So Brad, give us your breakdown of You've
Speaker 1: been following these cases in and out for a number
Speaker 1: of years. That's how we got to know each other.
Speaker 1: Your initial read of the potential Alvin Bragg indictment of
Speaker 1: former President Trump. Sure, so, I'm a little surprised this
Speaker 1: one's coming first. I was almost convinced the Fulton County
Speaker 1: one was going to be happening weeks ago. Fannie Wilson
Speaker 1: has clearly got some stuff that she's working through, and
Speaker 1: that's fine. But for the New York case, you know, look,
Speaker 1: we all remember this story. It came out a bunch
Speaker 1: of years ago. It was this whole thing about how
Speaker 1: he paid off Stormy Daniels in the final days in
Speaker 1: the twenty sixteen campaign, covered it up through payments do
Speaker 1: with a lawyer, and then later on his lawyer went
Speaker 1: to jail over it. It's a very interesting case because
Speaker 1: there's going to be some untested elements to it. There's
Speaker 1: going to be the issue of statue limitations. Normally we'd
Speaker 1: be long past that, but New York has a particular
Speaker 1: provision that allows the government to toll or extend the
Speaker 1: statue when someone has relocated continuously outside the state. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump did that. He lived in DC, and then he
Speaker 1: moved to Florida. There's going to be issues of venue.
Speaker 1: He's going to say, everybody in Manhattan hates me. You know.
Speaker 1: He's going to say, I can't get a fair trial here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'll be a nice argument. But if it didn't work
Speaker 1: with the January six ers on, you know, in DC,
Speaker 1: I don't really think it's going to work for a
Speaker 1: lifelong New Yorker getting tried in Manhattan, you know. And
Speaker 1: then the last part is he's going to claim that
Speaker 1: this is being overcharged. It should just be a misdemeanor
Speaker 1: of anything on falsecation of business records that the state.
Speaker 1: You know, campaign finance issue has never been tested. That's true,
Speaker 1: it's never been tested. But every crime that's been prosecuted
Speaker 1: under a particular statute at one time or another had
Speaker 1: never been tested. This will be the first. If this
Speaker 1: is in fact what happens, let me push you on
Speaker 1: that part a little bit. David French, certainly, who's now
Speaker 1: a New York Times columnist, certainly no fan of the
Speaker 1: former president. He's not with a piece that questions exactly
Speaker 1: that aspect. Here in his tweet about his new ed,
Speaker 1: he writes, untested legal theories should not be used to
Speaker 1: prosecute anyone, including and perhaps especially former presidents. I added that,
Speaker 1: perhaps especially for those who are just listening. What do
Speaker 1: you think of that particular argument, Brad All, Like I said, one,
Speaker 1: there's always going to be a first for every case,
Speaker 1: first for every type of criminal prosecution that's happened. Originally,
Speaker 1: there was always the first time for all of them.
Speaker 1: But here's the part that I really dislike about some
Speaker 1: of those comments, and I've seen the ones from David
Speaker 1: French and others. They keep referring to Donald Trump like
Speaker 1: he's special because he's a former president. He's not a
Speaker 1: president anymore, simple private citizen. He is not special. He's
Speaker 1: no different than you or me or anyone else who's
Speaker 1: an ordinary private citizen. At the moment. If he becomes president,
Speaker 1: he has all kinds of protections then, but until that time,
Speaker 1: he's just now ordinary average American citizen subject to criminal
Speaker 1: laws like everybody else. So, Brad, one discussion here is
Speaker 1: about that you alluded to, is that when you're a
Speaker 1: private citizen versus president, some of the treatment does actually change.
Speaker 1: So some reporting is indicated. One of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Trump does want to be president again for a variety
Speaker 1: of reasons, is actually it would receive legal protection. Can
Speaker 1: you go into some of the analysis on that. I
Speaker 1: know that you covered it quite a bit at the time.
Speaker 1: What legal protection does a form or does a current
Speaker 1: president actually have while he is in office, especially as
Speaker 1: it would relate to such crimes like this and perhaps
Speaker 1: even the Fulton County one. Sure. So it's nothing written
Speaker 1: in law, it's nothing written in regulation. It's a Department
Speaker 1: of Justice policy that the Justice Department at least would
Speaker 1: not indict a city president, not because they couldn't, but
Speaker 1: because of the constitutional ramifications, the disruption it would have
Speaker 1: to the chief of Executive's abilities to perform his duties.
Speaker 1: They said, we won't do it. That dates back to Nixon.
Speaker 1: That guidance was updated during Clinton's time and it's never
Speaker 1: been changed. That's one of the reasons Muller didn't do
Speaker 1: anything with respect to the obstruction angles that he thought
Speaker 1: he could have pursued, because he felt he did not
Speaker 1: have the authority to bring an indictment of a sitting president.
Speaker 1: It was up to anybody who was potentially up to
Speaker 1: the Attorney General or Congress Tom Peach. So if Trump
Speaker 1: gets re elected, he'll have protection from whatever is going
Speaker 1: on with the Special Council Probe any other federal investigations.
Speaker 1: But it's completely unclear what that would mean for Fulton
Speaker 1: County and what that would mean for Manhattan because either
Speaker 1: obviously neither of them report to the Justice Department. Those
Speaker 1: are local state entities, and there's no theory, is no president,
Speaker 1: there's no case law to look back at to say
Speaker 1: here's how it would work. We don't know because former
Speaker 1: presidents generally don't get prosecuted because they don't do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got it. Let me ask you about another piece that
Speaker 1: people have been questioning. Some analogies have been made to
Speaker 1: the John Edwards prosecution. There was kind of a similar dynamic.
Speaker 1: He had a mistress. I believe it was campaign funds
Speaker 1: that were used in a sort of similar cover up
Speaker 1: type of a fashion. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This was an analysis from Jonathan Turlie that was written
Speaker 1: in The Hill. He says it is extremely difficult to
Speaker 1: show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair
Speaker 1: was done for election purposes, as opposed to an array
Speaker 1: of obvious other reasons from protecting a celebrity's reputation to
Speaker 1: preserving a marriage that was demonstrated by the failed federal
Speaker 1: prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards on a much
Speaker 1: stronger charge of using campaign funds to cover up an affair.
Speaker 1: So basically what he's saying here is, you know, they
Speaker 1: would have to show in order for this to be
Speaker 1: a felony. As my understanding, you can correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. I'm not a lawyer, far from it. But
Speaker 1: for this to be felony charged, they have to basically
Speaker 1: show that the business fraud was in service of covering
Speaker 1: up this campaign finance violation. And to show that, you
Speaker 1: have to prove that this one hundred and thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars was really about the campaign and not about you know,
Speaker 1: protecting his reputation or preserving his marriage or whatever else
Speaker 1: they're going to argue in court. Sure, and that's a
Speaker 1: fair comparison for Turlion others to make. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: that something's going to be brought up in pre trial
Speaker 1: motions by the Trump legal team, you know, saying that
Speaker 1: this is you know, there's no basis for this, it's
Speaker 1: not you know, relevant as a matter of law. But
Speaker 1: here's things to remember One that was a federal case
Speaker 1: dealing with federal campaign finance. This is gonna be a
Speaker 1: state case based off New York state law, so they're
Speaker 1: not directly comparable. Two with Edwards, it was a mistrial.
Speaker 1: They could have retried it. They had reasons not to
Speaker 1: do so. Un understandably they did not, but they could
Speaker 1: have retried that case. Three, that was use of campaign
Speaker 1: funds in the Edwards case. This is use of private
Speaker 1: funds in the days before the election through a third party.
Speaker 1: It's unclear, and I'll give Alvin Bragg's got has work
Speaker 1: cut out for him if he brings this indictment. But
Speaker 1: it's unclear if the Edwards case would really have played
Speaker 1: out differently if it is based on New York state law.
Speaker 1: We just know, right, That's a great point. And then finally,
Speaker 1: really about in the talk of state versus federal. Initially
Speaker 1: federal prosecutors while Trump was president, from the FEC and
Speaker 1: others decided to go after Michael Cohen on this, but
Speaker 1: decided ultimately not to go after Trump. Will that factor
Speaker 1: in any way into the state case And is that
Speaker 1: an argument that the Trump lawyers can make. It's certainly
Speaker 1: something they can raise in the context of selective prosecution
Speaker 1: and things along those lines for a pre trial motion.
Speaker 1: But here's also to remember when the case against Michael
Speaker 1: Cohene was originally brought, Donald Trump was president. The Southern
Speaker 1: District of New York could not bring a case against
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. They had no authority to do so under
Speaker 1: that existing DJ guidance. The only thing that could have
Speaker 1: happened is they could have theoretically brought a case once
Speaker 1: Trump left office in twenty twenty one. We don't know
Speaker 1: for certain why didn't do it. Maybe they thought the
Speaker 1: case was weak, maybe they were worried about and in
Speaker 1: a number of fact it's been the thought January sixth
Speaker 1: was just going to take him down. Who knows, that's
Speaker 1: not despositive. One more last question for you, Brady, Sorry,
Speaker 1: what do you make of I mean, it's no surprise
Speaker 1: that Trump would argue this is politically motivated, But you know,
Speaker 1: what is your read of his claim that Bragg basically
Speaker 1: ran in order to try to bring these indictments and
Speaker 1: that you know, this prosecution wouldn't happen if it was
Speaker 1: a Democrat who was facing similar charges. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a tried and true method for him. He tried this
Speaker 1: in the Letitia James case is still ongoing against his corporation.
Speaker 1: He tried that and that simple litigation, saying she ran
Speaker 1: for the purpose of taking down Trump. The judge rejected
Speaker 1: the argument. And here's the best part for people like
Speaker 1: Alvin Bragg. They have a Supreme Court precedent they can
Speaker 1: point to in the context of no matter what I
Speaker 1: said on the campaign trail, it doesn't matter if I
Speaker 1: can point once I'm in office to a legitimate, independent
Speaker 1: reason for having pursued. It's a case involving Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and the original Muslim travel ban. That was how the
Speaker 1: government managed to get the third version that travel ban
Speaker 1: through the Supreme Court was by saying, we don't care
Speaker 1: what Trump said on the trail. All that mattered to
Speaker 1: us was what we did once he was in office
Speaker 1: and how we based it in facts once he was
Speaker 1: in office, and the Supreme Court went along with that. Gotcha.
Speaker 1: So from a political talking point, it may have some legs,
Speaker 1: but from a legal standpoint, perhaps not. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. No, got it? Well, Brad, That's why we appreciate.
Speaker 1: I know you've got your view, but you are fair
Speaker 1: in your judgment. You always have been and we'll continue
Speaker 1: to have you back on the show. Yeah, we appreciate it,
Speaker 1: man anytime. Okay, now that we've gone into the details
Speaker 1: of said case, we've talked with Brad a little bit
Speaker 1: about the actual legal mechanisms, both federal and state, the
Speaker 1: way that this could all go down. Let's get to
Speaker 1: the politics of which we alluded to a little bit
Speaker 1: in our previous eight block. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. A major fight is
Speaker 1: now currently brewing on if New York State prosecutors do
Speaker 1: issue an indictment towards Trump is what will Ron DeSantis do?
Speaker 1: Will honor the extradition requests of the State of New York,
Speaker 1: Will Trump willingly turn himself over in New York City?
Speaker 1: And will DeSantis come forward and denounce the political prosecution
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump. So here's what we have here. Send
Speaker 1: the National the Florida National Guard to mar A Lago.
Speaker 1: MAGA is demanding that DeSantis defy any Trump arrest by force.
Speaker 1: You have Jason Miller asking why potential presidential candidate Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis has yet to weigh in on the claim on
Speaker 1: True Social that he's being arrested, but many more are
Speaker 1: saying what exactly is he going to do? He says,
Speaker 1: here MAGA figure Mike Cernovich, who has really come out
Speaker 1: and he's actually been more of a pro Desantist type person,
Speaker 1: but says, quote, I will that DeSantis needs to come
Speaker 1: out and say I will not extradite a presidential candidate
Speaker 1: to a Soros DA who allows violent criminals to run
Speaker 1: free until there has been a proper legal review conducted
Speaker 1: under Florida law. If lawful, then extradition may occur, but
Speaker 1: not one day sooner. And yet he really hasn't come
Speaker 1: out and said anything. It spawned a trummendous push crystal
Speaker 1: by MAGA forces, both online and probably privately as well.
Speaker 1: This is confirming some reporting from inside the Trump apparatus
Speaker 1: that politically they see this as a massive gift to them.
Speaker 1: And what of you? And I said from day one,
Speaker 1: you're like an indictment only helps him in any primary.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the general at this point. I
Speaker 1: will not even try to speculate unwhere exactly that will
Speaker 1: get to. Purely within the Republican base. The persecution, however
Speaker 1: you may think is justified or not. The prosecution of
Speaker 1: former president is going to lead to a rallying of
Speaker 1: exactly what we saw after the mar A Lago raid.
Speaker 1: And the fact that Dessante has already waited so long
Speaker 1: to say anything, I actually think makes him look weak.
Speaker 1: So at this point he needs to keep his mouth
Speaker 1: shut forever, because if he comes out now and does
Speaker 1: try and condemn it in some mealy mouthed way the
Speaker 1: way he has previously in the past, I think you
Speaker 1: will look even weaker. He's made his choice. You made
Speaker 1: your choice. Now, Ron, meet Paul. Now you got to
Speaker 1: stick to it, putting Ron as a new moniker, the
Speaker 1: report that he needs putting with this viewers, this is
Speaker 1: quite a big cole that he's in because not only
Speaker 1: I mean, even if he wasn't the governor of the
Speaker 1: state that technically has to extradite Trump for this indictment,
Speaker 1: just being a presidential contender, Like, they're all under a
Speaker 1: lot of pressure to say something or not say something
Speaker 1: or whatever. A couple of them have come out really forcefully.
Speaker 1: Others of them are just keeping quiet, Nikki Haley among them.
Speaker 1: So even if it was just that landscape, it would
Speaker 1: be difficult, but it is. I mean, I can't help
Speaker 1: but laugh at what a bind he's in because he
Speaker 1: actually has to be involved in the mechanics of extra
Speaker 1: Trump from his date. So even if he says nothing like,
Speaker 1: they're not going to forgive him for being involved in
Speaker 1: this and in their words, you know, collaborating with this
Speaker 1: radical leftist George Soros funded whatever, whatever, whatever. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a tough one for him. This is a
Speaker 1: real pickle for him in terms of how he handles it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, I look politically, I think it's
Speaker 1: a nightmare for Ron DeSantis. But you know, as you said,
Speaker 1: even if he was the governor who had to decide
Speaker 1: on whether to honor the extradition request or not, he
Speaker 1: still is in the same political bind of do I
Speaker 1: condemn or do I not condemn? And when you don't,
Speaker 1: of course you are going to follow yourself in the crosshairs. Already,
Speaker 1: one of the candidates, viviak Ramaswami, is calling out Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis for not saying anything. In addition to Nikki Haley,
Speaker 1: he made a video that he put out on Twitter,
Speaker 1: which is now being praised by the Trump campaign. To
Speaker 1: be clear, let's take a listen to some of what
Speaker 1: he said today's announcement. I worry about for the same
Speaker 1: reason that I differentiate myself from Trump is that I
Speaker 1: think this takes us a step closer to a national divorce.
Speaker 1: I think that when you politicize the justice system itself
Speaker 1: to prosecute a political opponent of the party in power,
Speaker 1: the lead political opponent of the party in power, that
Speaker 1: is not one small step, but a giant leap towards
Speaker 1: a national divorce if they follow through it too. And
Speaker 1: so it's in some ways the same reason that I'm
Speaker 1: drawn into this race as a candidate running against Trump,
Speaker 1: that also draws me to be a hardliner against the
Speaker 1: possibility that Trump be indicted on mean, serial and politicized grounds.
Speaker 1: There you go. I don't really know why I speaking
Speaker 1: into his phone. I'm presuming a microphone. It's a little odd,
Speaker 1: but on the substence itself, calling out DeSantis on this
Speaker 1: is very smart politically. B you know, let's presume at
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, yes, technically Ramaswami is running
Speaker 1: against Trump, but you know, I think he's currently one
Speaker 1: percent of the polls. If you're angling for some sort
Speaker 1: of cabinet position or for some sort of inroads, you
Speaker 1: could guarantee you that Donald Trump has seen that video.
Speaker 1: And has been showing it to all his friends. Look,
Speaker 1: this guy's running against me, and even he's defending me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. It's one of those where currying favor with
Speaker 1: the former president the current candidate, bringing praise from the
Speaker 1: Trump campaign, drawing a contrast with Nikki Haley and with DeSantis.
Speaker 1: DeSantis himself, I mean the fact that he has stayed silent.
Speaker 1: Now he came out immediately after the mar A Lago
Speaker 1: raid and said something. So did Glenn Youngkin, so many
Speaker 1: so did so many of these others that Haley and
Speaker 1: that DeSantis here are not weighing in it or not
Speaker 1: condemning it just shows you too, how out of Because look,
Speaker 1: with the Republican base itself, even the ones who want
Speaker 1: to move on from Trump, they still think about him fondly.
Speaker 1: They still like Trump. They're just like, Okay, I like
Speaker 1: the guy, but maybe not you know that we need
Speaker 1: some new blood. The fact is is, like you have
Speaker 1: got to be on the side. And this is a
Speaker 1: tricky part. We can't really run against that person. You
Speaker 1: kind of have to run beyond that person. But in
Speaker 1: the zero sum situation like this, what do you do.
Speaker 1: He's made his choice now at this point. I really
Speaker 1: do believe that it's been two days since it's come out,
Speaker 1: hasn't said anything. I'm sorry, like at this point, if
Speaker 1: you do come out and try and condemn it, I
Speaker 1: just think he's gonna look weaker. I mean, for Vivic,
Speaker 1: this makes all the sense in the world because it's
Speaker 1: unlikely that he'll be the Republican nominee, but this, you know,
Speaker 1: it's good brand building for him potentially angling for a
Speaker 1: cabinet position, et cetera. But his video also shows how
Speaker 1: there are no good answers for Republican contenders against Trump
Speaker 1: in terms of this indictment or any of the other ones,
Speaker 1: because if you say nothing, you're going to get hit,
Speaker 1: and certainly if you're the governor who's charged with extraditing him,
Speaker 1: that's a very difficult position to be in. So you know,
Speaker 1: not defending him, you're going to take a hit. But
Speaker 1: if you come out and you you defend him and
Speaker 1: you basically bend the knee, you're also giving him power.
Speaker 1: So it's like either way, you lose and he's strengthened.
Speaker 1: So it's not like there are any good choices on
Speaker 1: the board game for any of these candidates to make
Speaker 1: you know, I think Ramaswami there makes the best one
Speaker 1: in terms of how he is situated. Is that going
Speaker 1: to help him win a Republican primary? No, I mean,
Speaker 1: none of this is helpful for the other candidates in
Speaker 1: the field in terms of winning a Republican primary, which
Speaker 1: is something that we've been saying all along because we
Speaker 1: saw it all play out with the mar A Lago
Speaker 1: raid where they are effectively forced to bend the knee
Speaker 1: defer to him, adopt his narrative, and then the whole
Speaker 1: political scene, in the whole Republican primary scene once again
Speaker 1: is about Donald Trump versus anything else that they may
Speaker 1: want to be talking about. You know, I think Nicky
Speaker 1: Haley is making a poor decision here too by staying quiet.
Speaker 1: I don't really understand that calculation, because probably even though
Speaker 1: neither move is a good move, the best thing you
Speaker 1: can do is at least say something tepidly like critical
Speaker 1: of it and try to move forward with your CAID paign.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's it only helps Trump this whole, especially
Speaker 1: this particular procest like the January sixth stuff, would be
Speaker 1: harder for Mike Pence to navigate, much harder. I agree,
Speaker 1: and I think some of the other candidates too, would
Speaker 1: have a harder time navigating that one, this one from
Speaker 1: their perspective, when you have even voices like David French saying,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some problems with this prosecution. This one
Speaker 1: is kind of a slam duck in terms of how
Speaker 1: the base is going to perceive it. That's really well said,
Speaker 1: and already that's how beginning to happen. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. So there
Speaker 1: have been multitude signs of which we have already showed
Speaker 1: you where Dysantis is showing signs of slipping in the polls.
Speaker 1: So you can see here in a graphic compiled by
Speaker 1: Nate Cohene, there is a big widening gap between Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis and between Trump. Before January fifteenth, they were roughly
Speaker 1: head to head in an average of the polling averages,
Speaker 1: Trump is not pulled ahead by more than ten points.
Speaker 1: At the same time, if you look at the multi
Speaker 1: candidate polling averages where you include others, Dysantis was roughly
Speaker 1: ten points behind Trump. But now the gap between them
Speaker 1: has widened significantly. And again this is why, and we
Speaker 1: can accept that polling is off that in many cases,
Speaker 1: but the tracking in the average within them is still
Speaker 1: useful to look at. So if it is wrong at
Speaker 1: the very least that it's wrong consistently, and in that
Speaker 1: consistent wrongness, Destantus is dropping, So you can presume that
Speaker 1: that is going to have some effect that we can
Speaker 1: see in some of these polls. And then buy and
Speaker 1: large two with Republican primary polls. They weren't perfect throughout
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, but they weren't even close to as long
Speaker 1: as wrong as a general election. The Polsters actually seem
Speaker 1: to be better off than normal, and they never underestimated
Speaker 1: any of Trump's strength in any of those primaries. If
Speaker 1: we'll remember, they had him way ahead in New Hampshire
Speaker 1: one New Hampshire, had him way ahead in Nevada, and
Speaker 1: South Carolina ended up winning both of those races Super
Speaker 1: Tuesday as well. They always did have John Kasik in
Speaker 1: very much striking distance of Trump in Ohio, same thing
Speaker 1: for Ted Cruz in Texas. So they were pretty much
Speaker 1: correct throughout twenty sixteen the last time we had a
Speaker 1: multi candidate field. Generally, presume that if you were right
Speaker 1: last time, that you could use it relatively the same
Speaker 1: methodology around I mean, the thing with these poles is
Speaker 1: in the Republican primary, they have been wildly divergent. Some
Speaker 1: of them have showed DeSantis a little up or it closed,
Speaker 1: some of them have shown like a total Trump blowout.
Speaker 1: The state poles have looked different than the national polls,
Speaker 1: so there has been a lot of variability between them.
Speaker 1: What Nate looks at here is he said, Okay, of
Speaker 1: all the polsters who would previously pulled in this race,
Speaker 1: how have their numbers shifted? And there were about twelve
Speaker 1: poles that had been done previously where they were doing
Speaker 1: a new round, a new updated version of them, and
Speaker 1: in every single one of those twelve poles, Trump was
Speaker 1: taking a larger lead. So rather than looking at the
Speaker 1: absolute number, okay, is the yup by five, is the
Speaker 1: yup by ten? Is the up by fifteen? What he
Speaker 1: looked at is, Okay, if you polled previously, we're assuming
Speaker 1: you're using basically the same methodology, what are you finding
Speaker 1: in the field. And every single one of them found
Speaker 1: that Trump was taking a larger lead and that DeSantis
Speaker 1: had kind of fallen off. And so I think it
Speaker 1: really demonstrates the perils of the strategy that he's engaged in.
Speaker 1: You know, for a while, I think it made sense
Speaker 1: for him to do his thing in Florida and be
Speaker 1: above the fray and not get into it. But now
Speaker 1: that Trump has fully joined the fight, and this shows
Speaker 1: with the indictment situation as well. The more that you're
Speaker 1: staying quiet reads as weakness, and the more that Trump
Speaker 1: is able to completely define you, define what you're about,
Speaker 1: define the narrative of this primary, define the issues that
Speaker 1: he wants people to focus on and things that he
Speaker 1: wants people to care about. And so you know, it's still,
Speaker 1: I guess, sort of early in the game, but at
Speaker 1: some point DeSantis is going to have to truly join
Speaker 1: this fight, and that is perilous as well. That's a
Speaker 1: perilous situation as well. Absolutely, all right, let's go to
Speaker 1: Mike Penspin continuing himself out in the sphere. So this
Speaker 1: is the perfect also illustration of the where you're really
Speaker 1: stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, you don't necessarily want to support Trump. You
Speaker 1: clearly are willing to rhetorically hit him a little bit,
Speaker 1: But on the other you still are mealy mouthed in
Speaker 1: attacking him. You appear weak and there's two clips here
Speaker 1: that we're going to show you kind of put together
Speaker 1: which kind of encapsulate all his problems. Let's get to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's effectively justifying or excusing the actions of
Speaker 1: people who were were calling for you to behaved. There
Speaker 1: was no excuse for the violence that took place at
Speaker 1: the Capitol on January sixth, And I'll never diminish it
Speaker 1: as long as I live. But I president's wrong. He's
Speaker 1: wrong that day, and I had actually hope that he
Speaker 1: would come around in time John, that he would see
Speaker 1: that the cadre of legal advisers that he surrounded himself
Speaker 1: with led him astray, But he hasn't done so, and
Speaker 1: it's a I think it's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: the country just wants a fresh start if that standard
Speaker 1: bear is the former president. If he is, then would
Speaker 1: you support him? Well, I think we'll have better choices,
Speaker 1: and I really trust Republican voters to sort it out.
Speaker 1: We still won't say it. It's like, well, I think
Speaker 1: we'll have better choices, but I trust Repolis voters to
Speaker 1: sew it out, and basically give himself an in of yeah, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I might still support him. These people, they don't have
Speaker 1: a real critique, and to the extent that they do,
Speaker 1: as we've always tried to point out, their critique is
Speaker 1: not politically popular. Their critique of Trump outside of January
Speaker 1: sixth is well, he doesn't want to fully privatize Social
Speaker 1: Security and he doesn't want to institute a national abortion ban.
Speaker 1: It's like okay, And then, you know, increasingly what we
Speaker 1: have seen with them is that they both have to
Speaker 1: walk the line of that the base and most Republicans
Speaker 1: feel that Trump is being politically persecuted, but then also
Speaker 1: trying to make the case against him while going after
Speaker 1: the liberal establishment. The whole point of being a Republican today, really,
Speaker 1: I really think is just whoever can piss off the
Speaker 1: liberal establishment more. Trump is the king of that. To
Speaker 1: the extent that DeSantis is number two, it's because he
Speaker 1: is not the second in the country. He's also good
Speaker 1: at that. He's the prince of it, if you will,
Speaker 1: But being prince doesn't make it, doesn't make the gang. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in terms of this potential indictment coming from the
Speaker 1: Manhattan DA, Pence has already come out and said it
Speaker 1: is politically charged and quote not what the American people
Speaker 1: want to see. So he is backing Trump on those
Speaker 1: particular charges. As I said before, I think if it
Speaker 1: was some of the January sixth charges, this would be
Speaker 1: more challenging for him to navigate. And I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what he would say there, but you know, he's
Speaker 1: trying to add it both ways. He's trying to go
Speaker 1: to the Gridiron dinner and like signal to them like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this was bad. January six was bad. But he's trying
Speaker 1: not to piss off the Republican base. And I think
Speaker 1: ultimately that gets you, like the eight percent of the
Speaker 1: polls that Mike Pence is out right now, yeah, well
Speaker 1: this is this is everything. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: you know, Speaker McCarthy, let's go and put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen. You can see here he's coming
Speaker 1: out and fully condemning the prosecution on Trump. And same thing.
Speaker 1: Here we go again, an outrageous abuse of power by
Speaker 1: a radical DA Let's file in criminals walkuse he pursues
Speaker 1: political vengeance against Trump. I am directing relevant committees to
Speaker 1: immediately investigate a federal funds are being used to subvert
Speaker 1: our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.
Speaker 1: And so what can we take away from this, which
Speaker 1: is that the people who have real ties into the
Speaker 1: electoral system, the path to political victory is clear. That's
Speaker 1: what McCarthy has always basically made that basic political calculus.
Speaker 1: As humiliating as it has been to him personally and
Speaker 1: for everybody else who wants to walk some sort of
Speaker 1: different line, I just don't believe that a different line exists, Crystal.
Speaker 1: If you are an aspiring Republican politician today, you have
Speaker 1: to be full throated against this. There is simply no
Speaker 1: other way to have any political opportunity. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: just so clear how Trump still dominates Republican politics, how
Speaker 1: he's still the leader of the party, how there is
Speaker 1: still such a compelling bond between him and a large
Speaker 1: portion of the Republican base. I mean, if you think
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to grab the narrative for
Speaker 1: your benefit in this Republican primary, well, this is the
Speaker 1: first of first of many legal dramas that are about
Speaker 1: to play out. We're going to see this cycle continue
Speaker 1: and continue and continue. So I just think it's a
Speaker 1: you know, really emblematic of some of the dynamics that
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, where yeah, they may be happy
Speaker 1: to run against him, even offer some sort of like
Speaker 1: passive aggressive, tepid, like mild critique of Trump. But when
Speaker 1: it actually comes to taking this guy head on, when
Speaker 1: it actually comes to making a case that's going to
Speaker 1: be compelling to a Republican base about why they should
Speaker 1: why they should drop the Donald and go with you,
Speaker 1: I just don't see it yet. I just don't see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a present reality now for basically some time. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go on to the banks, all right, so let's
Speaker 1: get to what is happening in the markets this morning.
Speaker 1: As we reported last week, there was a lot of
Speaker 1: turmoil because there were signs that Credit Suisse, which is
Speaker 1: a gigantic bank, was on the edge. They had put
Speaker 1: on a statement saying they were having some issues. They
Speaker 1: went to their biggest funder, which was like the Bank
Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia or something like that, and they were like,
Speaker 1: now we're good, We're not giving you any money. The
Speaker 1: market freaked out. Their stock was plummeting. It was causing
Speaker 1: all sorts of turmoil in terms of other banks around
Speaker 1: the world, including some of the ones based here. So
Speaker 1: the Swiss government, in this we reported last week, came
Speaker 1: in and said, all right, we're going to provide liquidity.
Speaker 1: We're basically you know here to backstop you. And over
Speaker 1: the weekend they were able to force through a deal
Speaker 1: for another gigantic bank, UBS, to buy Credit Suite. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put this up on the screen from Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: The headline is they're going to buy Credit Suite in
Speaker 1: a three point three billion dollar deal to try to
Speaker 1: end this crisis. The government is going to backstop some
Speaker 1: of the losses, so the Swiss taxpayer will be on
Speaker 1: the hook for some of this. UBS was not willing
Speaker 1: to do the deal without some provisions of that sort,
Speaker 1: and they say authorities pushed for deal amid worsening confidence crisis.
Speaker 1: So you know, right now, while we're recording this, it's
Speaker 1: eight forty am, so it's still very early to see
Speaker 1: whether this is sort of like demmed some of the
Speaker 1: chaos in the markets. There are some indications that ultimately
Speaker 1: it has, but you know, there's also a question saga
Speaker 1: of whether this banking issue was like totally separate from
Speaker 1: what happened here, or if they were somewhat related. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if we have the answer to that. Really,
Speaker 1: But in one way they might be linked, which is
Speaker 1: the type of depositors that credit sue relies on are
Speaker 1: similarly you know, really large and you know, very large deposits,
Speaker 1: potentially more flighty, just like Silicon Valley banks. So in
Speaker 1: that way they might be sort of related and potentially
Speaker 1: they had some of the similar interest rate risk that
Speaker 1: stressed their balance sheet in the same way as Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank. Yeah, it's very odd because the purchase price,
Speaker 1: you know, seems low for the amount of assets that
Speaker 1: are under management, but that may give us an a
Speaker 1: insight into actually how badly run credit squeeze clearly was
Speaker 1: this was one, you know, this is a it's difficult
Speaker 1: also to describe it because we've had such a crazy
Speaker 1: couple of weeks now with the Silicon Valley Bank crisis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is one of the biggest reorganizations of the
Speaker 1: global financial system since two thousand and eight, from the
Speaker 1: FDIC insurance basically being moved to unlimited to the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank savior than the signature bank you know, shut down,
Speaker 1: and same with the subsequent guarantee and now possible contagion
Speaker 1: that we are seeing in the Credit Suite situation. So
Speaker 1: the fact too that you had the Swiss government that
Speaker 1: stepped in and basically ordered UBS the UBS to come
Speaker 1: in and to buy it, and also to give them
Speaker 1: a credit line that other banks that were organized to
Speaker 1: make sure and keep it afloat shows you that too
Speaker 1: Big to Fail still not only rains but is now
Speaker 1: basically law of the global financial system, which is nuts.
Speaker 1: That's what we're supposed to prevent. And UBS with this acquisition,
Speaker 1: is going to be an absolute be human, I mean
Speaker 1: an absolute giant now with this acquisition. After the deal,
Speaker 1: Credit Suisse stock cratered sixty percent, So that's kind of
Speaker 1: where we are. You can see the different approach that
Speaker 1: regulators took, I mean in terms of Credit Suite. They
Speaker 1: tried to do a bailout just for this one bank,
Speaker 1: with the idea being Okay, this isn't about anybody else.
Speaker 1: This is just like sort of unique to Credit Suite,
Speaker 1: which we talked about last week. They've had all sorts
Speaker 1: of scandals and issues anyway, So I think that makes
Speaker 1: sense in this context. You know, our regulators and I'll
Speaker 1: get to this in a minute, they really bought into
Speaker 1: this idea that this could be this widespread crisis, and
Speaker 1: so they needed to provide liquidity across the entire sector
Speaker 1: and give you know, what amounts to a public bailout
Speaker 1: of all, especially mid size banks across the country, banks
Speaker 1: of a similar size to Silicon Valley Bank. So very
Speaker 1: different regulatory approaches here, but ultimately, you know, in both cases,
Speaker 1: taxpayers on the hook for some portion of it. Let's
Speaker 1: go and put this next piece up on the screen,
Speaker 1: because this was really interesting. Okay, So part of the
Speaker 1: FED response, as we covered last week, one part was
Speaker 1: backstopping the depositors, and we'll get to more on that
Speaker 1: in a moment. The other part was opening up some
Speaker 1: new lending facility and a lie allowing banks to use
Speaker 1: collateral that has seen its value collapse to use it
Speaker 1: at the original value, so to just pretend that those
Speaker 1: losses didn't actually happen. And you had a huge number
Speaker 1: of banks that took advantage of some of these crisis programs.
Speaker 1: So when I first read that, the headline here from
Speaker 1: CNBC is banks take advantage of FED crisis lending programs.
Speaker 1: When I first read this, I thought, oh, I guess
Speaker 1: there really was a huge problem and these banks were,
Speaker 1: you know, flocking to discount window into this new lending
Speaker 1: facility to make sure they have sufficient liquidity. The numbers
Speaker 1: here are quite astonishing. Borrowing total nearly one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty three billion dollars at the FED discount window. I
Speaker 1: believe that was a record over that period of time
Speaker 1: and a huge spike in terms of you know, what
Speaker 1: had been going on there previously. But when you dig
Speaker 1: into the numbers, it tells a little bit of a
Speaker 1: different story. Let's put this tweet thread up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So the TLDR here is that almost all of the
Speaker 1: money that was borrowed from the FED here went to
Speaker 1: just three banks, so most of it was out west.
Speaker 1: You can see in the first chart the overwhelming preponderance
Speaker 1: of the borrowing from the FED came from the San
Speaker 1: Francisco region and then a smaller portion from New York.
Speaker 1: And basically that's it. None of the other regions saw
Speaker 1: any borrowing really whatsoever. And this is from a guy.
Speaker 1: His name is Nick Timmyrrows. Maybe let's go with that Timmeyorrows.
Speaker 1: We'll just go with that Street Journal. I want to
Speaker 1: give him credit. He's with the Wall Street Journal. And
Speaker 1: this was really helpful. So if you look into this,
Speaker 1: he says, assuming most of the fifty five billion in
Speaker 1: New York, which was the totality of the New York
Speaker 1: lending is for Signature Bank, which we know just failed,
Speaker 1: that would mean the balance of funds for FDIC Bridge
Speaker 1: Banks accounts for eighty eight billion for Silicon Valley Bank
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, for their First Republic, which continues to
Speaker 1: be under pressure, said they borrowed up to one hundred
Speaker 1: and nine billion from the discout window. That suggests as
Speaker 1: much as one hundred and ninety sive of a billion
Speaker 1: of the two hundred and thirty three billion in San
Speaker 1: Francisco went to two institutions. It also suggests there may
Speaker 1: not have been large demands from many banks across the
Speaker 1: other ten fed districts in the Midwest and Eastern US,
Speaker 1: So again the overwhelming preponderance of this money, the bulk
Speaker 1: of this money went to just three banks, which in
Speaker 1: my opinion, kind of undermines the view that this was
Speaker 1: like a widespread immediate crisis where there were a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of banks, hundreds of banks some people had posited
Speaker 1: across the country that really needed to shore up their
Speaker 1: balance That's what Nick's point was. He said, if you
Speaker 1: look at this, it's very clear who needed money and
Speaker 1: who didn't. The contagion piece. I mean, look, we will
Speaker 1: never know at the end of the day. Right, maybe
Speaker 1: it would look crazier today than it would have at
Speaker 1: that time, but clearly after and the pretext through which
Speaker 1: it was done and then the extraordinary action was the
Speaker 1: idea that this was going to bass up the entire
Speaker 1: banking system. And in reality this is simply not the
Speaker 1: case here in the US. That's just not what the
Speaker 1: FED discount window borrowing shows us. It looks like you
Speaker 1: have troubled financial institutions, both of which who idiotically managed
Speaker 1: their bank balance sheets, on top of flighty customers in
Speaker 1: the tech industry, which specifically the most hard hit by
Speaker 1: increasing rates, and those two have basically coupled with, let's
Speaker 1: be honest, outrageous calls online for immediate bailouts unless you're
Speaker 1: gonna have total collapse, is what pressured Washington into doing
Speaker 1: this when you know it's not look and I think
Speaker 1: people may are misunderstanding. Nobody here ever said I don't Chris,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you didn't as well. I was like, I
Speaker 1: have never said that I don't sympathize with people who
Speaker 1: had deposits in the bank, like I very much am
Speaker 1: looking at small businesses and others saying, yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like an outrageous situation, terrible, the fact they wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to make payroll. I'm not saying even necessarily a
Speaker 1: normal FDIC process would have been enough, because in many
Speaker 1: of these places would have been gone under. All we
Speaker 1: are saying is an extraordinary precedent has now been set,
Speaker 1: one which strikes at the bedrock of the way that
Speaker 1: we think about private banks. So if we are going
Speaker 1: to strike at that bedrock, then we should also strike
Speaker 1: at the extraordinary bonuses profits and MILTI millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in bonuses, tax benefits and others that these people get.
Speaker 1: That's it. That really has been the position from day one.
Speaker 1: Everybody likes the bedrock. Nobody likes whenever you want to
Speaker 1: reform how these people actually make a ton of money
Speaker 1: based on all of our assets together. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just reasonable. It's just become incredibly clear that all the
Speaker 1: profits when times are good, the bank, managers, shareholders, they
Speaker 1: are all raking in the cash, and when times are bad,
Speaker 1: guess who's on the hook, especially when you're talking about
Speaker 1: I mean Silicon Valley Bank. We put some of the
Speaker 1: charts up on the screen last week. This was a
Speaker 1: weird bank, very unique, very unusual in the percent of
Speaker 1: deposits that it had that were uninsures, like ninety eight percent.
Speaker 1: That is not normal, Okay, that is really really strange
Speaker 1: and unusual that they were all concentrated in this one
Speaker 1: little clickish club group, you know, predominantly in the tech
Speaker 1: sector in Silicon Valley, hence the name. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of things and then of course their decision too.
Speaker 1: They were warned by regulators, they're warned by also their
Speaker 1: own implay that were like this risk management looks really bad.
Speaker 1: We have tons of interest rate risk here because of
Speaker 1: how our ballad sheet is overwhelming and held in these
Speaker 1: you know, long term treasuries that are losing value by
Speaker 1: the day. They were warned about that, and they thought
Speaker 1: that they could basically write it out. So this was
Speaker 1: a whole strange confluence of unusual circumstances that would not
Speaker 1: be reflected in many, if any other banks nationwide. You
Speaker 1: have signature which they were taken huge hit because they
Speaker 1: were you know, had really courted a lot of people
Speaker 1: who were involved in crypto, and when crypto lost its
Speaker 1: ass then guess what signature was in a really bad
Speaker 1: place too. And this other bank, First Republic, that still
Speaker 1: continues to struggle and is losing value stock market is
Speaker 1: you know, stock values falling and still struggling, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And they're the ones who are like barring like crazy
Speaker 1: at the FED discount window. They also had a similar
Speaker 1: tech heavy, wealthy, tech heavy clientele and a vast of
Speaker 1: uninsured deposits. So these are really unique, unusual circumstances. So
Speaker 1: it does not surprise me at all to look at
Speaker 1: the FED lending and find out that, oh, it's basically
Speaker 1: these three banks and that's it. Now, there are also
Speaker 1: questions because it's very clear that there was a lot
Speaker 1: of market like investor freak out last week in terms
Speaker 1: of stock market, which may continue into today. We'll find out.
Speaker 1: There's a real case to be made that because the
Speaker 1: FED took such overwhelming industry wide action, I mean, these
Speaker 1: investors they are also heard creatures that they took that
Speaker 1: as a signal. It's like, oh my goodness, there must
Speaker 1: be this massive issue across the economy. And they freaked
Speaker 1: out in terms of the markets. But all of the
Speaker 1: you know, capital flight and all of these other things
Speaker 1: that were posited, and that potentially there were hundreds of
Speaker 1: other banks on the brink of failure. Listen, maybe, but
Speaker 1: we have not seen evidence that that is the case,
Speaker 1: and we have seen some evidence in the other direction
Speaker 1: that this was a very speciific, unique set of circumstances
Speaker 1: that only really applied to a handful of banks in
Speaker 1: the country. I think that's what said, Okay, so at
Speaker 1: the same time, let's talk a little bit about the depositors.
Speaker 1: The other part of the government response was to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you're an uninsured depositor at Signature Bank, you're good.
Speaker 1: We're going to cover one hundred FDIC is going to
Speaker 1: cover one hundred percent of it. Hey, if you're an
Speaker 1: uninsured depositor at Silicon Valley Bank, your cash is also safe.
Speaker 1: The FDIC, backed by the US taxpayer, is going to
Speaker 1: cover one hundred percent of it. You're good. Now. This
Speaker 1: opened up a lot of questions about, Okay, so are
Speaker 1: you de facto guaranteeing one hundred percent of uninsured depositors
Speaker 1: across the industry, from small banks to medium sized banks
Speaker 1: to the largest banks. Is that basically what you're saying?
Speaker 1: And they Jeff Stein asked them this question right away,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't really give an answer. So Senator James Langford
Speaker 1: asked Jenne Allen Charger Secretary Janet Yellen this exact same question,
Speaker 1: and the response is pretty stunning. Take a lesson. Will
Speaker 1: the deposits in every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of
Speaker 1: their size, be fully insured? Now? Are they fully recovered?
Speaker 1: Every bank, every community bank in Oklahoma, regardless of the
Speaker 1: size of the deposit, Will they get the same treatment
Speaker 1: that SVBP just got or Signature bank just got. A
Speaker 1: bank only gets that treatment if a majority of the
Speaker 1: FDIC board, a super majority, a super majority of the
Speaker 1: FED Board, and I, in consultation with the President, determine
Speaker 1: that the failure to protect uninsured depositors would create systemic risk.
Speaker 1: All right, So let me interpret that for you. She says,
Speaker 1: banks only get that treatment if the FDIC Board and
Speaker 1: myself determine that the failure to protect those depositors would
Speaker 1: create systemic risk. That means basically, screw you to small banks. Okay.
Speaker 1: One of the problems that was posited here in very
Speaker 1: aggressive terms of why you had to backstop all the
Speaker 1: depositors at SVB and everywhere else was basically and this
Speaker 1: was a reasonable case to make. Okay, if you're a
Speaker 1: depositor and you have all of this money uninsured in
Speaker 1: SVB and you're looking around at a shaky banking financial system,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do. You're going to pull
Speaker 1: your cash. You're going to put it in the largest
Speaker 1: banks because you know they're too big to fail, and
Speaker 1: you know you'll be on more solid ground there. So
Speaker 1: they're saying there's going to be this huge capital flight
Speaker 1: of depositors from the mid size banks into the large banks.
Speaker 1: Well why doesn't that same reasoning apply then to small banks,
Speaker 1: because now you have basically they've said, okay, well the
Speaker 1: mid range of banks, I guess they're too big to
Speaker 1: fail as well, so we're going to backstop all of
Speaker 1: their depositors. So if you have a large deposit at
Speaker 1: a small bank, then why wouldn't you be thinking the
Speaker 1: exact same thing of I got to pull my cash
Speaker 1: and I got to move it up the food chain
Speaker 1: to one of these institutions that is going to be
Speaker 1: backstopped by the FED. Now I don't know because I
Speaker 1: don't have you know, those numbers aren't publicly available, whether
Speaker 1: that is actually happening or not, and there's some reason
Speaker 1: to believe that it may not be because bank deposits
Speaker 1: are really sticky. It's a pain and ass to move
Speaker 1: your money. You got all your auto pays set up,
Speaker 1: so people tend to just be like, yeah, we'll figure
Speaker 1: it out, It'll probably be okay. And by the way,
Speaker 1: the overwhelming majority of people, the mean bank account is
Speaker 1: only fifty three hundred dollars anyway, so they would be
Speaker 1: covered by the FDIC insurance. But this is a real
Speaker 1: screw you to small banks. This is saying we are
Speaker 1: going to give you special treatment if you are a
Speaker 1: certain size. We're going to give your depositors special treatment
Speaker 1: if you are of a certain size. And the small
Speaker 1: banks are incredibly angry about all of this, well as
Speaker 1: they should be, because really, as you interpreted it, what
Speaker 1: she is saying is that the Feds are now going
Speaker 1: to pick winners and losers in the banking stem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the two big to fail banks as they define it,
Speaker 1: not Congress, are the ones that now have unlimited deposit insurance.
Speaker 1: Credit Union, like he's saying of Tulsa. You're screwed. Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're not systemically risk. And that here's the other one.
Speaker 1: Who are the people most likely to use those small
Speaker 1: credit unions? Those are locals, small business owners, like real
Speaker 1: small like I'm talking like yeah, like you said, like
Speaker 1: a hardware store that's barely floating on a two percent thing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have like a wealthy PC that can float
Speaker 1: them a bridge loan if they get into a cash
Speaker 1: They have five guys who work there, you know, So
Speaker 1: they have five guys who work there. They're trying to
Speaker 1: make ends meet. Every once in a while they have
Speaker 1: to go through their banking system, and relationship is purely
Speaker 1: built on a guide that they know they're at the bank.
Speaker 1: If that bank goes down, that actually is devastating for
Speaker 1: the community. But it's not quote systemically risk for the
Speaker 1: entire global financial system ergo, it doesn't now qualify. So
Speaker 1: it's just simply not fair. This is giving the big
Speaker 1: guys the greatest gift they could ever have, which is
Speaker 1: the government saying our bank can literally never fail when
Speaker 1: all of the smaller banks, what's there incentive now sell
Speaker 1: you should just sell to you know, First Republic or
Speaker 1: any of these people sell to PNC, sell to JP
Speaker 1: Morgan Chase and having even more of a roll up
Speaker 1: in the finance. So that's exactly what you want to avoid.
Speaker 1: Credit unions in this way, are you know they specifically
Speaker 1: avoid much of the risk. I mean, that's why they
Speaker 1: don't fail as much, and now they're effectively being penalized
Speaker 1: for it by regulators. Yeah, right, yeah, I one hundred
Speaker 1: percent agree with all of that. It really is not right.
Speaker 1: There's another piece of this that has well before we
Speaker 1: get to this. One thing that really grows me on
Speaker 1: soager is I saw Silicon Valley Bank. They were actually
Speaker 1: like recruiting depositors based on the fact that the FDIC
Speaker 1: is backstopping all of their deposits. They were putting out
Speaker 1: you know missives that were saying, oh, you're there's no
Speaker 1: bank in the country that's safer than us at this point,
Speaker 1: right because we got the federal government guarantee. Like you know,
Speaker 1: these other people yours of mid range you might be
Speaker 1: betting on, Okay, are they going to decide we're systemically
Speaker 1: important or not? But we know one hundred percent that
Speaker 1: Janet Yellen and co. Have said that we are, So
Speaker 1: your deposits are absolutely safe in this bank. There is
Speaker 1: no safer bank in the entire country, which again demonstrates
Speaker 1: what incredible gift the public, driven by the government, has
Speaker 1: given those banks in particular, but any bank that is
Speaker 1: their size or larger in general. There's another piece here,
Speaker 1: which you know last week we talked about how the
Speaker 1: FED was just asleep at the switch, like these were
Speaker 1: obvious problems. There were tons of short sellers who saw
Speaker 1: that this was an issue for Silicon Valley Bank. It
Speaker 1: was not complex in order to understand, and yet they
Speaker 1: didn't intervene. They didn't do anything before the you know,
Speaker 1: the s hit the fan, so to speak. So let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. New York Times is
Speaker 1: reporting that actually, the FED did spot some problems at
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley Bank ahead of time. Now I read this,
Speaker 1: let me give you the details, then I'll tell you
Speaker 1: how I interpreted this. They say Silicon Valley banks risky
Speaker 1: practices were on the fed's radar for more than a year,
Speaker 1: an awareness that proved insufficient to stop the bank's demise.
Speaker 1: The FED repeatedly warned the bank that it had problems,
Speaker 1: according to a person familiar with the matter, in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, a FEDER review of the growing bank found
Speaker 1: serious weaknesses in how it was handling key risks. Supervisors
Speaker 1: at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, which the
Speaker 1: CEO of this bank, SAD on that board with that aside,
Speaker 1: issued six citations. Those warnings, known as Matters Requiring Attention
Speaker 1: and Matters Requiring Immediate Attention, flagged that the firm was
Speaker 1: doing a bad job of ensuring that it would have
Speaker 1: enough easy to tap cash on hand in the event
Speaker 1: of troubles, but the bank did not fix its vulnerabilities,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera. So I read this in two ways.
Speaker 1: First of all, I feel like it's an attempt at
Speaker 1: FED ass covering because they have come into a lot
Speaker 1: of scrutiny and a lot of criticism for their complete
Speaker 1: failure to see this coming and be able to deal
Speaker 1: with it before it became a complete crisis. But it
Speaker 1: also in some ways is even more embarrassing because it's
Speaker 1: like you knew that were issues, you issued your little
Speaker 1: like how we're sending you a warning, but they didn't
Speaker 1: actually do anything. And I think this speaks to a
Speaker 1: larger problem within FED and other banking supervision and regulation,
Speaker 1: which is effectively since the Greenspan era and in the
Speaker 1: era of market fundamentalism, neoliberalism, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: there was really this shift in philosophy where regulators were
Speaker 1: going to see their role as making sure the private
Speaker 1: sector had sufficient transparency and information for them to hold
Speaker 1: the banks accountable and do the due diligence than in
Speaker 1: previous eras in like the New Deal era, that the
Speaker 1: regulatory bodies did themselves well. For one thing, shareholders have
Speaker 1: a different set of incentives than the public does. That's
Speaker 1: one thing. They're more risk tolerant than the public is ultimately,
Speaker 1: But number two, the market is also not perfect, it
Speaker 1: turns out, and they can miss a lot of things
Speaker 1: as well. So the FED taking that hands off, laid
Speaker 1: back approach, sent them their little notices, but didn't actually
Speaker 1: intervene or do anything to stem the crisis before I
Speaker 1: became one. Yeah, And the fascinating thing is, let's put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen. I really enjoyed reading this,
Speaker 1: is that the crisis sparks new battle between small and
Speaker 1: large banks. The Independent Community Bankers Association of America, which
Speaker 1: represents the nation's smallest banks, is now coming to Congress
Speaker 1: to make the case that they should not have to
Speaker 1: pay for the rescue of bank depositors, and that the
Speaker 1: largest lenders instead deserve stricter oversight from regulators. The group
Speaker 1: entered in early Monday saying that Silicon Valley Bank and
Speaker 1: the nation's largest banks are not community banks, specifically pushing
Speaker 1: back against the idea that they are the ones who
Speaker 1: will now have to pay. The way that they would pay.
Speaker 1: As I've laid out before, is that the FDIC almost certainly,
Speaker 1: with this new guarantee, is going to raise the amount
Speaker 1: that all banks are going to have to pay into
Speaker 1: the FDIC system, something I'm totally fine with if you're
Speaker 1: JP Morgan Chase. But again, the likelihood is you almost certainly,
Speaker 1: and I the actual customers have said will be the
Speaker 1: ones who bear the brunt. But these independent community banks
Speaker 1: are like, we don't want to pass these fees onto
Speaker 1: our customers because we're charging them on a fair system.
Speaker 1: We're not doing anything risky. Why should we have to
Speaker 1: pay for this pretty fair point? If you ask me,
Speaker 1: and instead as yelling laid out, I'm in the business
Speaker 1: of saving the big ones, the little guys and all
Speaker 1: that you basically have no defense here. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: no insurance, that's right. Yeah, So the little guys are
Speaker 1: going to help subsidize fd I see insurance to cover
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the deposits at mid range and
Speaker 1: higher banks. They're like, how is this fair? This is insane,
Speaker 1: especially after Yellen came out and said directly like no,
Speaker 1: little guys, no, you're not part of this deal. Don't
Speaker 1: even think that you are. So yeah, I can see why,
Speaker 1: and I think justifiably. So they are absolutely outraged by
Speaker 1: the state of affairs, and they should be. And so
Speaker 1: it'll be a brewing fight. And look, if Congress really
Speaker 1: did its job, we would have real hearings on this.
Speaker 1: We have a real investigation. Yeah, we have a full
Speaker 1: report that was delivered to me. Your regulation. I just
Speaker 1: don't see any sand, any real path to that. So
Speaker 1: I really do feel for the little guys because they
Speaker 1: their prices or their customer fees and fdi C fees,
Speaker 1: regulatory screwt Ney, all that is going to go up
Speaker 1: and they didn't do anything. Yeah, nothing to deserve it.
Speaker 1: Warren and Katie Porter are sort of leading the charge
Speaker 1: to try to pass, you know, to reregulate because part
Speaker 1: of this story is obviously some of the rollback and regulation,
Speaker 1: and so that would be important. But I have to
Speaker 1: say there's a whole philosophical shift that has to happen
Speaker 1: in terms of regulators who are not only way too
Speaker 1: cozy with industry, but have this you know, odious philosophy
Speaker 1: that says basically like we don't we're not really the regulators.
Speaker 1: It's actually the private you know, the shareholders who need
Speaker 1: to hold these banks to account. So there's a whole
Speaker 1: philosophical shift that needs to happen as well. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of news with regard to Ukraine. Let's
Speaker 1: start with this piece gun and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. So what you're looking at here is Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin driving a car around the occupied city of Mario
Speaker 1: Pol that, of course Ukrainian city they you know, was
Speaker 1: really devastated by the Russian attack. My understanding here is
Speaker 1: there's some little banter between him and whoever his henchman
Speaker 1: is about like, you know, what's being reconstructed and how's
Speaker 1: the airport doing. Just like us, Crystal, you can drive
Speaker 1: a car, even drive it a Toyota. I mean, some
Speaker 1: of this is actually kind of hilarious to see because
Speaker 1: it's obviously very clearly staged. He like goes to somebody's
Speaker 1: apartment in the middle of the night. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: at three am, and it's like, oh, it's just a
Speaker 1: surprise visit. They have a whole buffet spread laid out
Speaker 1: for him, probably like caviar and champagne. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: got our friend Yegor to take a look at these,
Speaker 1: like tell me what they were saying and talking about whatever.
Speaker 1: And there was actually one of the videos in the background.
Speaker 1: You could fatally hear someone in the original post of
Speaker 1: the video say this is all fake when they first
Speaker 1: post it, and then they edited that out ultimately. But
Speaker 1: anyway he's trying to display. It's kind of a show
Speaker 1: of force, especially after let's put this next piece up
Speaker 1: on the screen. The International Criminal Court has issued an
Speaker 1: arrest warrant for Putin. Now, the ICC is kind of toothless,
Speaker 1: in part because we don't participate, so obviously none of
Speaker 1: our war criminals have been held to account by the ICC.
Speaker 1: No one expects Putin is actually going to be arrested
Speaker 1: and held accountable for alleged war crimes. But you know,
Speaker 1: this kind of a symbolic show. And one other thing
Speaker 1: just to keep in mind about the ICC, which has
Speaker 1: made it, you know, lose a lot of credibility. They
Speaker 1: have only ever tried Africans at this court, so any
Speaker 1: other war crimes or atrocities around the world have not
Speaker 1: been subject to ICC prosecution. So a symbolic move here.
Speaker 1: I saw a lot of Atlantic Council neo lives me
Speaker 1: like this is a strong move by the international community,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, look, international law is fake. The
Speaker 1: only law that can be enforced between states is violence.
Speaker 1: I don't wish that to be the case, but it
Speaker 1: is simply the truth. It's like whenever we have the
Speaker 1: World Trade Organization and then the great power sign up
Speaker 1: and not a single one of them actually bides by
Speaker 1: the WTO, and then the smaller nations tried to and
Speaker 1: they get screwed, and then they end up being just
Speaker 1: pawns of greater powers. Empire will always exist, it will
Speaker 1: simply exist in different forms. I'm sorry to say it.
Speaker 1: With the ICC, as you say, there's a reason that
Speaker 1: we don't support it or sign up to it because
Speaker 1: we don't want our soldiers, our generals, our presidents, and
Speaker 1: our leaders ever be subject to the same thing. Well, right,
Speaker 1: but actually leaders, well there have been past cases right
Speaker 1: where the ICC will look at generals and africanam and
Speaker 1: you know, the US military and others are like No,
Speaker 1: the ultimate decider of whether the US military did right
Speaker 1: or wrong will be the President of the United States
Speaker 1: and the universal what is it the UCMJ. I forget
Speaker 1: exactly what it stands for, but the Court of Military
Speaker 1: Justice instead of any ICC. There's another reason why we
Speaker 1: don't abide by it, for example, like the International Law
Speaker 1: of the Sea, because we're like, yeah, in de facto
Speaker 1: we agree, but in time of war, like we'll see,
Speaker 1: you know maybe and look all the country we lived
Speaker 1: in a world where leaders could consistently be held to
Speaker 1: account around the world for the atrocities and crimes that
Speaker 1: they commit. Sadly, we do not live in that world
Speaker 1: and we probably never will know. Sorry, the entire Wilsonian
Speaker 1: idea of all of this. I'm not saying a cooperation
Speaker 1: all that is not good. It certainly is in some cases.
Speaker 1: But as this shows, what is this and actually all
Speaker 1: that's really happened is that it's worsening tension, if possible
Speaker 1: between Washington and Moscow. Because now, what is Russia's message
Speaker 1: to its people and for the people who are supporting
Speaker 1: the war. This isn't a global NATO US led plot
Speaker 1: against US to constrain us, to prosecute us, to isolate US.
Speaker 1: So an ICC warrant based on that. Nobody here is
Speaker 1: defending the actions of the Russian military in Ukraine. But
Speaker 1: we're just simply pointing out that politically, since this isn't
Speaker 1: going to happen, what is the actual utility of this?
Speaker 1: Joe Biden came out and said, quote I think it's
Speaker 1: justified saying that the US is not even signed up
Speaker 1: for the ICC, but it makes a very strong quote
Speaker 1: quo point saying that Putin has clearly committed war crimes.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting too that this just passed with
Speaker 1: any real consternation, where the original declaration of Putin as
Speaker 1: a war criminal, even many people in Washington saw that
Speaker 1: as a point of no return, because it's like, Okay, now,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do about it? To negotiate
Speaker 1: with this? Remember this too, which is the way that
Speaker 1: we've boxed ourselves in basically post Rwanda and all that is,
Speaker 1: any time we see anything, you know, with Rowanda and Cosolo, like,
Speaker 1: we are going to go in and if we have
Speaker 1: the ability to try and stop it. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: then the follow up question is like, so does that
Speaker 1: mean that we can ever have proper relations with the
Speaker 1: Putin government? Ever? Again, that doesn't sound like a very
Speaker 1: good starting point for any sort of negotiations. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: wouldn't say that. It's not like we haven't called people
Speaker 1: war criminals in the past and then restored full relations
Speaker 1: whenever they happen to be useful, let's say, in a
Speaker 1: fight against communism. So it's not like the precedent there
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. But given like the neoliberal brain of here
Speaker 1: in Washington and specifically, we can't underestimate the view in
Speaker 1: Moscow of this as a point of no return of
Speaker 1: Moscow's relations with the international community. It's sets a bad precedent,
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, and we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: twenty year anniversary of the a Rock War invasion, something
Speaker 1: that Putin has invoked in terms of our own lawless
Speaker 1: behavior in justifying his own illegal invasion. Not that those
Speaker 1: things make any sense, but you know, he can also
Speaker 1: you can also look very clearly at all of the
Speaker 1: war criminals here that were involved in the Iraq War
Speaker 1: and the whorrors that that unfolded on the Rocky people
Speaker 1: and ultimately on the entire region. In some ways in
Speaker 1: the world, they are all like wealthier than ever. They
Speaker 1: were certainly never held to account. So you can imagine
Speaker 1: him using similar rhetoric around you know, exactly how consistent
Speaker 1: we are in our calling out of war crimes and atrocity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've told that story before, but you know, apparently George W.
Speaker 1: Bush would lecture Putin on democracy and Putin would just
Speaker 1: look at him, who he speaks perfect English. He'd be like,
Speaker 1: we do not want the same democracy as you have
Speaker 1: given Iraq, and everyone in the room was like the
Speaker 1: fair boy. They well, this is also really relevant, go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So we reported that China has been making some overtures. Obviously,
Speaker 1: they've been talking to Putin basically the whole time, and
Speaker 1: in fact she is in Moscow to meet for three
Speaker 1: days with you know, Putin and with other Russian leaders,
Speaker 1: so incredibly significant moment. But they've been making overtures not
Speaker 1: just to Putin but also to Zelenski, and Zelensky has
Speaker 1: been sort of open to that he says, you'll call him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're supposed to talk potentially next week. China also put
Speaker 1: out kind of rough outline of what they thought a
Speaker 1: peace deal might look like, which Zelenski was also kind
Speaker 1: of open to. Well, now we have this report from
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal that the US is trying to
Speaker 1: head off any potential proposals from Beijing for a ceasefire
Speaker 1: in Ukraine ahead of this Russia China summit. They say
Speaker 1: suspending fighting now would help solidify Russia's hold on Ukrainian territory.
Speaker 1: John Kirby said a ceasefire now is again effectively the
Speaker 1: ratification of Russian conquest. He said it would recognize Russia's
Speaker 1: territorial game means an occupation of Ukrainian territory, while giving
Speaker 1: Moscow a chance to entrench its positions and refresh its
Speaker 1: troops as Ukraine prepares for an anticipated spring offensive. Let
Speaker 1: me give you a little bit more of the details
Speaker 1: from this piece, and then we can react. And I
Speaker 1: have a lot to say about this. As Russia and
Speaker 1: China lay on the agenda for the Putinshi meeting, mister
Speaker 1: Kirby said the US wants to draw attention to any
Speaker 1: Chinese proposal for a ceasefire that would be one sided
Speaker 1: and reflect only the Russian perspective. He said he couldn't
Speaker 1: speak for Zelenski and whether he would accept that Chinese
Speaker 1: backed proposal, but quote, we certainly don't support calls for
Speaker 1: a ceasefire that would be called for by the PRC
Speaker 1: in a meeting in Moscow. They go on to say,
Speaker 1: mister Zelenski has taken a different approach with Beijing so far,
Speaker 1: commending the twelve point Chinese position paper on Ukraine. Mister Zelenski, however,
Speaker 1: stressed the Chinese paper's emphasis on territorial integrity, and his
Speaker 1: foreign minister said he also discussed the significance of the
Speaker 1: principle of territorial integrity in a phone call. So let
Speaker 1: me break this down for you. Ukraine, at least publicly
Speaker 1: has been sort of opened to these overtures. And remember
Speaker 1: how the US Biden's line is always nothing about Ukraine
Speaker 1: without Ukraine, except when it comes to China actually trying
Speaker 1: to do something useful here and potentially broke or receease fire.
Speaker 1: Oh no, we can't have that. Suddenly, the US feels
Speaker 1: emboldened to as certain their opinion that they want hostilities
Speaker 1: to continue. Lest we be embarrassed by the Chinese playing
Speaker 1: a significant role here as potential piece the Chinese do,
Speaker 1: we should be embarrassed. That's why the framing of our
Speaker 1: entire segment that for the last time we talked about this.
Speaker 1: It is a humiliation. It's an international humiliation. It also
Speaker 1: is the worst nightmare of the Nixonian strategy and the
Speaker 1: Kissingerian strategy of the nineteen seventies, where we recognized and look,
Speaker 1: the opening of China was a disaster for many reasons
Speaker 1: in the way that it was executed, but strategically it
Speaker 1: was a very smart idea. The idea was, China is
Speaker 1: a behemoth. It will grow inevitably, it will become one
Speaker 1: of the largest powers in East Asia. A linking up
Speaker 1: between our adversary at the time, the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: China would be a geopolitical disaster for the United States.
Speaker 1: We should do everything in our power to exploit the
Speaker 1: rift between Moscow and to Beijing, to draw relations between
Speaker 1: those two and to deny this power apparatus. That was
Speaker 1: the Kissingerian and Nixonian strategy, and it was fundamentally correct.
Speaker 1: Now again, we executed it in a very wrong way
Speaker 1: in terms of total neoliberalization, in terms of trade, etc.
Speaker 1: There was a way, absolutely, I think, to go back
Speaker 1: in time and to do it differently. Now we have
Speaker 1: actually forced the two powers together where they are now
Speaker 1: on the part where defining territorial integrity through invasion is
Speaker 1: a benefit to both of them China's case and want
Speaker 1: to take over Taiwan Putin's case in order to rescue
Speaker 1: former territory that was from the Soviet Union. And with
Speaker 1: these two powers, by driving them together, they are more
Speaker 1: powerful today individually and then together than almost in the
Speaker 1: times of the Soviet Union, and with China together, I
Speaker 1: mean just because of the sheer amount of China size.
Speaker 1: So then when we look at this and to be
Speaker 1: humiliated on the international stage, and furthermore to look at
Speaker 1: this and take a mac simone's position on the peace deal,
Speaker 1: it's a big mistake. Following in the footstep, or following
Speaker 1: and supporting the Ukrainians in this endeavor is the way
Speaker 1: that we should be. Really, if it was a nothing
Speaker 1: without Ukraine, nothing for Ukraine without Ukraine strategy, we'd been like, look,
Speaker 1: if mister Zelenski wants to entertain that opportunity, we are
Speaker 1: happy to back him up at the negotiating table. That's it,
Speaker 1: just say that he is the chief of Ukraine. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, because Zelensky, remember this, anytime anyone in
Speaker 1: the West says something like this, like Elon, he attacks
Speaker 1: them as Putin's ponds and all this. You know why
Speaker 1: he's not saying that about China because he knows China
Speaker 1: is on the precipice of giving Russia lethal and heavy weapons.
Speaker 1: And if he were to just reject it out right,
Speaker 1: Beijing could say we tried, but uh, Zelenski says, he's
Speaker 1: not interested Putin. Here's all the weapons that you could
Speaker 1: ever want or ever need and use in the Ukraine conflict.
Speaker 1: That is why he can see the grand picture for
Speaker 1: his own country. He needs to shore up support in
Speaker 1: the West for as much as humanly possible. And by
Speaker 1: the way, the way he cutting the right war the
Speaker 1: war right now is ridiculous. If there were any actual
Speaker 1: military strategises who weren't wholly co opted by Ukraine, they
Speaker 1: would look at his expenditure of ammunition in places like
Speaker 1: Backwood and say, you're an idiot. What are you doing.
Speaker 1: You have no industrial base, you're running out of ammo,
Speaker 1: you've got six month runway, and America's probably not going
Speaker 1: to give you anymore. What are you actually going about
Speaker 1: if you look at it almost like a balance sheet
Speaker 1: in the way that he is prosecuting the war, and
Speaker 1: then what the potential insertion of Chinese weapons would do
Speaker 1: to the Russian military, cause it would be a full
Speaker 1: fledged disaster. And maybe he can see that because if
Speaker 1: I can see it start sitting here, he has access
Speaker 1: to the real information. Probably just assumes that we will
Speaker 1: keep giving him everything he wants and say it's been
Speaker 1: the tradition since the war through Congress, since the war started,
Speaker 1: at least from the hundred Yeah, I mean, and that's
Speaker 1: another part that drives me nuts. Maybe this is something
Speaker 1: we could talk about as well tomorrow. But you know,
Speaker 1: his ammunition stock. He's acting like one of the Great
Speaker 1: powers in the middle of World War One. The difference
Speaker 1: is those great powers were actual great powers and had
Speaker 1: an industrial base to make more shells and can do money.
Speaker 1: Not only had an existing industrial base, but actually you know,
Speaker 1: spun up massive additional capacity, which you know, since we're
Speaker 1: their primary backer, like we're not spinning up additional capacity.
Speaker 1: So even our capacity is limited in terms of what
Speaker 1: we even could send them. But to go back to
Speaker 1: this report about China, I mean, there are a few
Speaker 1: things here, and I was talking to our friend Bronco
Speaker 1: about some of this and some of the lessons to
Speaker 1: take away from it. I mean, number one, the attitude
Speaker 1: towards the Chinese overtures here from the US government and
Speaker 1: their aligned media has been very dismissive, like, this isn't serious,
Speaker 1: it's not going to happen. Well, if it's not serious,
Speaker 1: then it's not going to happen. Why do you feel
Speaker 1: the need to come in over the top and say absolutely,
Speaker 1: no ceasefire. We're opposed to it. That's number one. Number Two,
Speaker 1: it really exposes and to me, this is the key point.
Speaker 1: How much of a lie this idea of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're just backing Ukraine and doing what they want. We
Speaker 1: are so involved, I mean, we are proxy combatants, and
Speaker 1: so it has always been the case. It's just they're
Speaker 1: actually showing it now when Zelensky has shown some public
Speaker 1: signs of wanting to actually entertain these overtures, and we
Speaker 1: are very much opposed to it because we basically don't
Speaker 1: want to be humiliated and may think that we have
Speaker 1: something to gain from this war in definitely continuing at
Speaker 1: great expense to Ukrainian civilians and the Ukrainian economy and
Speaker 1: the world economy as well. So those pieces I think
Speaker 1: are really clear here. It's just like this whole farce
Speaker 1: of oh, nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine has always been
Speaker 1: a lie. And then the other piece zooming out from
Speaker 1: this particular conflict, China obviously just played deal maker in
Speaker 1: the Middle East as well. Treta Parsi has been warning
Speaker 1: about since we get ourselves embroiled as combatants co combatants
Speaker 1: effectively in these various conflicts in Middle East. Of course
Speaker 1: he's referring to Yemen. It makes it so, of course
Speaker 1: no one is going to listen to us as a
Speaker 1: peacemaker and a deal maker. Now China is sort of
Speaker 1: like tacitly Backdrope, but they haven't shipped those heavy weapons yet.
Speaker 1: You know, they've talked about the limitless relationship, but they
Speaker 1: haven't gone all in and they've said some things that
Speaker 1: have been critical of Russia as well, So they've maintained
Speaker 1: more credibility on the international stage in this conflict as
Speaker 1: a potential deal maker, which I think is also why
Speaker 1: the US finds themselves in a really bad position here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now all of that well said, it's one of those
Speaker 1: where it looks geos like geo Is this even a word?
Speaker 1: Geostrategically probably not, that's like a bushism, but let's zoom out.
Speaker 1: I think it would be a disaster for American power
Speaker 1: and for American hegemony for something like this to happen.
Speaker 1: The Iraq Saudi thing or Iran Saudi thing, that's one
Speaker 1: thing that's you know, red, this is the most important
Speaker 1: thing going on in the globe. And if it were
Speaker 1: to come to a close with the US not literally
Speaker 1: at the center of the brokering process, that basically returns
Speaker 1: US to full blown tipolarity, which is a very unstable system.
Speaker 1: We would be it would be ironically, this is we're
Speaker 1: thinking of the Russia conflict in Ukraine through a US
Speaker 1: Hegemeni lens. This is all just eurosupremacy by disregarding the
Speaker 1: nation of the relations with the Global South, with India
Speaker 1: and with China, with Japan in South Korea, all of
Speaker 1: whom see the conflict very differently than the way that
Speaker 1: we do. So it's an ideological blind spot which would
Speaker 1: be a huge blow, I think to American power, and
Speaker 1: it would be an absolute humiliation of Joe Biden say
Speaker 1: something like this. I mean, I don't really care about
Speaker 1: American power. I just want the Lord to end because
Speaker 1: it's been devastating for them, and it's been pretty devastating
Speaker 1: for the world. Care about the American way of life,
Speaker 1: crystal all which is backed up by American power. I mean,
Speaker 1: we would be put in a multiple multipolar world. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of alarming if everyone wants to
Speaker 1: pay fifteen dollars a gallon for gas and for to
Speaker 1: never buy anything ever again for a cheap way, which
Speaker 1: is literally I'm not saying any oil and gas. Biden's
Speaker 1: green just green lit the Willow Project. Don't worry, We're
Speaker 1: going to be fine. It ain't going to make up
Speaker 1: any the loss of international control of the seas. Different
Speaker 1: debate for another day. All right, let's talk about imperialism
Speaker 1: with regard to the Iraq War. There have been a
Speaker 1: lot of retrospectives as yesterday was the twentieth anniversary of
Speaker 1: the Iraq War invasion. And by the way, I'm moderating
Speaker 1: a panel this week on Wednesday in partnership with the
Speaker 1: Quincy Institute. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. Guys.
Speaker 1: It's called bad news how the media marched just into
Speaker 1: war in Iraq and beyond. Some great panelists there. I
Speaker 1: hope you all will join us. There's a you can
Speaker 1: join in person or online, and we'll put the link
Speaker 1: in the description so you can check that out if
Speaker 1: that is interesting to you. But you know, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of retrospectives Sager about how, you know, the
Speaker 1: sort of the worst villains of leaving us up to
Speaker 1: that war, and understandably so. But you had a great idea,
Speaker 1: which is, why don't we take a look at some
Speaker 1: of the people who were actually correct and quite courageous
Speaker 1: in their descent, because it's easy to forget how hard
Speaker 1: it was to be a dissenter at that point. I
Speaker 1: mean there was you know, just post nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: if you question and the president and the direction he
Speaker 1: was taking in the country. You were considered un American, unpatriotic,
Speaker 1: you were just absolutely smeared. The media, from liberal to
Speaker 1: conservative media, all marching effectively in lockstep. With a very
Speaker 1: few exceptions. It was very difficult to be a dissenter
Speaker 1: at this time. So we wanted to take a look
Speaker 1: at a few of the people who took brave stands
Speaker 1: in that era. Started with a couple of politicians here,
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders in particular, and Barbara Lee. Let's take a
Speaker 1: look at that. So the matter is that our allies
Speaker 1: now in that region, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, those countries say,
Speaker 1: don't do it. It would cause chaos in the region.
Speaker 1: The truth of the matter is, in my view, the
Speaker 1: happiest guy in the world would be Osama bin Laden
Speaker 1: if the United States waged a unilateral invasion of Iraq,
Speaker 1: because he would have more recruits for terrorism against this
Speaker 1: country that he could have used saven change the world.
Speaker 1: Our deepest fear is now haunted us. Yet I am
Speaker 1: convinced that military action will not prevent further acts of
Speaker 1: international terrorism against the United States. This is a very
Speaker 1: complex and complicated matter. Now this resolution will pass, although
Speaker 1: we all know that the President can wage a war
Speaker 1: even without it. However difficult this vote may be, some
Speaker 1: of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country
Speaker 1: is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say,
Speaker 1: let's step back for a moment. Let's just pause, just
Speaker 1: for a minute and think through the implications of our
Speaker 1: actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.
Speaker 1: I don't oppose war in all circumstances, And when I
Speaker 1: look out over this crowd today, I know there is
Speaker 1: no shortage of patriots or patriotism. What I do oppose
Speaker 1: is a dumb war. US rushing headlong into a war
Speaker 1: unilaterally was a mistake, and may still be a mistake
Speaker 1: if it has happened. Then at that point, what the
Speaker 1: debate's really going to be about is what's our long
Speaker 1: term commitment there? How much is it going to cost,
Speaker 1: What does it mean for us to rebuild a rock?
Speaker 1: How do we stabilize and make sure that this country
Speaker 1: doesn't splinter into factions between the Shiahs and the Kurds
Speaker 1: and the Sunnis. And that's of course Barack Obama there
Speaker 1: at the end, a reminder that this war not only
Speaker 1: was a disaster, but completely reshape politics. That clip, that
Speaker 1: two thousand and two speech, which someone almost didn't record,
Speaker 1: it was a happenstance. It was on video that won
Speaker 1: him the presidency of two thousand and eight. And look,
Speaker 1: I have quibbles with many of those people and policy
Speaker 1: and all that that was a heroic stance to take
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, and unfortunately, not enough people
Speaker 1: did it. Not enough people stood up to President Bush
Speaker 1: to the unilateral monoculture that we were living in at
Speaker 1: the time, the O'Reillys and Fox and leading us to
Speaker 1: that war in Iraq. But it wasn't just them. MSNBC
Speaker 1: joined with them, CNN as well. The entire establishment was
Speaker 1: fully bought into this war. It became in vogue years
Speaker 1: later to turn against it. But for those who stood
Speaker 1: up at the time, they were on an island, and
Speaker 1: many of them suffered tremendous consequence. I actually remember Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlston talking about this, about how he initially was supported
Speaker 1: the war in Iraq and received a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: for the Bush White House to do so, and actually
Speaker 1: turned against it within about year six months to a
Speaker 1: year of the war and was frozen out completely by
Speaker 1: the Republican establishment at the time for daring to come
Speaker 1: out and speak we should forget, we shouldn't forget. It
Speaker 1: was really Donald Trump in twenty sixteen who broke the
Speaker 1: Iraq ceiling on the debate stage when he challenged President
Speaker 1: Jet Bush and said, and Jet Bush was like my
Speaker 1: brother kept us safe and Trump was like, no, he didn't.
Speaker 1: The Iraq War was the greatest disaster of all time,
Speaker 1: and that was it that finally made it okay for
Speaker 1: Republicans to admit it. That took what was a fifth
Speaker 1: fourteen years to get to that point. I mean, you
Speaker 1: could make a case that not only was Barack Obama PRESCO,
Speaker 1: but Donald Trump as well. So the extent that this
Speaker 1: c recha politics, I mean, cannot possibly be overstated. And
Speaker 1: to your point, Sager about MSNBC, which was kind of
Speaker 1: a different outlet at that point. In the early days
Speaker 1: of MSNBC, they were just trying to be like another CNN,
Speaker 1: and they hadn't landed on what would ultimately you know,
Speaker 1: Keith Olvervin then shows up and he's doing you know,
Speaker 1: Countdown and that's tremendously popular and it's liberal, and then
Speaker 1: they're sort of like, oh, this is the business model
Speaker 1: we want to lean into. This was before those days.
Speaker 1: And Phil Donahue was one of the few voices that
Speaker 1: was critical of the Iraq War and we also have
Speaker 1: so we have him and he ended up losing his job,
Speaker 1: where a memo was uncovered after the fact that explicitly
Speaker 1: stated that they wanted his show was the top rated
Speaker 1: show on the network, and they fired him because they
Speaker 1: wanted to get a pro war voice in there. They
Speaker 1: didn't want to be, you know, seen as traders or
Speaker 1: un American or whatever. So he gets fired over his
Speaker 1: here and we also have Michael Wore, who gave quite
Speaker 1: a stunning Oscar acceptance speech. Stories basically like played off
Speaker 1: the stage as well. To give you a sense of
Speaker 1: how fraught this was at the time, take a listen.
Speaker 1: At that time, half the political voice in this nation
Speaker 1: was silence, really, and I believe most people at that
Speaker 1: time opposed this war. Most people did, what are we
Speaker 1: why I'll come over there? And yet every metropolitan, every
Speaker 1: major metropolitan newspaper in this country supported the invasion of Iraq.
Speaker 1: Think about that for a minute, every major metropolitan This
Speaker 1: is what you can do with the politics of fear.
Speaker 1: The Bush took this whole nation and the whole media
Speaker 1: establishment by the ear and let it right into the sword. Amazing.
Speaker 1: In the land of free speech, free press, we live
Speaker 1: in a time where we have a man sending us
Speaker 1: to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fictition of
Speaker 1: duct tape or the fictitious of orange alerts. We are
Speaker 1: against this war. Mister Bush. Shame on you, mister Bush,
Speaker 1: Shame on you. At any time you've got the pup
Speaker 1: and they chuck you're kind of duck. For all the
Speaker 1: talk of Hollywood being liberal and all that at the
Speaker 1: time when it was in vogue, they were booing him
Speaker 1: while he was there on the stage. And then Phil Donahue,
Speaker 1: he literally lost his job, you know, we were doing
Speaker 1: some reading. He was replaced by a show called literally
Speaker 1: Countdown Iraq hosted by Lester Holt, who is now on
Speaker 1: the nightly news. Amazing that that is supposedly a trusted figure.
Speaker 1: And Donahue, I mean, you know, this was a real
Speaker 1: career blow to him. At the time, there were one,
Speaker 1: no internet shows that he was able to go out
Speaker 1: and start for himself. If you were taken off the cable,
Speaker 1: you were dead for a long time. And really the
Speaker 1: vindication of their views. So I thought it was important
Speaker 1: to pay homage to these people. It's never popular in
Speaker 1: the moment to speak out against that. The only thing
Speaker 1: I do think he's wrong about is, unfortunately, I think
Speaker 1: the majority of people did believe in the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: You can blame the media. You could blame Bush, and
Speaker 1: ultimately Bush is the one most responsible for pushing the propaganda.
Speaker 1: But the President had an extraordinary amount of trust by
Speaker 1: the American people at that time to quote, keep us safe.
Speaker 1: He blew it in Afghanistan, spent all of his political
Speaker 1: capital on Iraq. And it really wasn't until five when
Speaker 1: the deaths started crump really going up amongst American soldiers
Speaker 1: in the security situation became a total disaster. Did the
Speaker 1: American people really turn against it? Yeah? Well, I mean
Speaker 1: I was doing some reading in preparation for moderating this
Speaker 1: panel and refreshing my memory about some of the dynamics
Speaker 1: and some of the villains and all of that, and
Speaker 1: I found there was a fairness and accuracy in reporting.
Speaker 1: Analysis of two weeks of coverage in the lead up
Speaker 1: to the war, they found two hundred and twenty two
Speaker 1: of the two hundred and ninety seven current and retired
Speaker 1: officials that networks overwhelmingly relied on as guests were associated
Speaker 1: with governments that were back in the war. Four out
Speaker 1: of the two hundred ninety seven were critical. Four Wow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, of course, the American people that all they
Speaker 1: heard were voices that we have to do this, and
Speaker 1: they they were convinced. Nearly two thirds of the public
Speaker 1: thought Saddam Hussein and played a role in September eleventh attacks.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent believed he had WMD. So the propaganda was
Speaker 1: so thick and coming at you from effectively every single
Speaker 1: corner of the media, virtually without field. I mean, there
Speaker 1: are like a handful of reporters who were critical and
Speaker 1: skeptical of the case that was being made by the
Speaker 1: Bush administration. For Yeah, when you have that sort of
Speaker 1: force coming from the media at the American public, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're going to end up with majority of people saying, oh,
Speaker 1: we have to do I guess we have to do that. Literally,
Speaker 1: everyone I hear says we have to do this. The
Speaker 1: other part two is why the reason we played the
Speaker 1: lawmakers first is if anyone had the power to stop
Speaker 1: this war, it was Congress. Congress had the ability to
Speaker 1: question what was actually going on, to subpoena more. They
Speaker 1: had the ability to have the intelligence assessments, question those
Speaker 1: intelligence assessments with the CIA, with George Tenant, call them
Speaker 1: into back rooms, actually exert some pressure, deliver a real
Speaker 1: report to them as to whether they were going to
Speaker 1: vote for that authorization of military use of force against
Speaker 1: Iraq or not. They abdicated that responsibility harder, even more so,
Speaker 1: I would say, than the media. The media and they
Speaker 1: did not have access to that information. Congress actually did.
Speaker 1: They bought the Bush administration hook line and sinker, and look,
Speaker 1: it was a disaster. It was a disaster for all time.
Speaker 1: And you know, thousands of American soldiers are dead. Who
Speaker 1: nobody knows how many Iraqis are dead. It literally could
Speaker 1: be in the millions. Not to mention the destruction of Syria,
Speaker 1: the rise of isis the fact that we took our
Speaker 1: eye off the ball. It took us ten years and
Speaker 1: how many billions of dollars to eventually kill Bin Laden,
Speaker 1: which is what we wanted to do there in the
Speaker 1: first place, and then twenty years in Afghanistan. The entire
Speaker 1: thing was It's such a nightmare. I don't think I
Speaker 1: would be in politics if it wasn't for the Iraq War.
Speaker 1: You know, probably would probably would fulfill my parents' dreams
Speaker 1: and become an engineer. But I just remember I was
Speaker 1: looking at this and I was like, man, this is
Speaker 1: so wrong. And you know, just over the years, getting
Speaker 1: to know people who were maimed and killed in Iraq,
Speaker 1: and it's just man twenty years later. I can't even
Speaker 1: believe for what for what? All? Right, Tagar, what are
Speaker 1: you looking at? Well, believe me when I say this,
Speaker 1: I really would rather not talk about Lab league ever again.
Speaker 1: I wish that we could just come to the obvious consensus.
Speaker 1: It's the absolute most likely scenario for the origin of COVID.
Speaker 1: We'd ban gain a function research that alone would be
Speaker 1: a modest and reasonable victory. Prosecuting Fauci would be a
Speaker 1: tremendous plus. But given how the powerful get protected in
Speaker 1: this country, we all know that's just never going to happen,
Speaker 1: especially under this administration. But the media simply will not
Speaker 1: let it die. Ever since the Energy Department the FBI
Speaker 1: made it public that they believe COVID lead from the lab,
Speaker 1: they have gone into literal overdrive to try and push
Speaker 1: the bunk natural origin hypothesis, joined in part by the
Speaker 1: World Health Organization and by the CCP, the scientists also
Speaker 1: who helped cover up the Laby hypothesis in the first place.
Speaker 1: And it's all started this weekend with a new seemingly
Speaker 1: stunning story in the Atlantic, the strongest evidence yet an
Speaker 1: animals started the pandemic. Wow, I'm listening, Okay. A new
Speaker 1: analysis from China appears to link the pandemic's origin to
Speaker 1: raccoon dogs. Raccoon dogs? What first it was bat soup?
Speaker 1: Then panglins announce raccoon dogs? Okay, let's keep reading well.
Speaker 1: According to a new analysis, some data from Chinese CDC
Speaker 1: mysteriously was made public just a few weeks ago for
Speaker 1: only a few hours. This data included swabs of animals
Speaker 1: from the Wuhan wet market in late twenty nineteen. The
Speaker 1: data was then analyzed by three scientists who say that
Speaker 1: the samples collected in late twenty nineteen show the presence
Speaker 1: of stars Kobe two virus in a raccoon dog sample.
Speaker 1: There's just one big problem, though. The lead scientists on
Speaker 1: the paper is Christian Anderson, one of the scientists who
Speaker 1: first observed to Fauji that the virus was quote not
Speaker 1: consistent with evolutionary theory, and then acted as an apparatic
Speaker 1: to cover up any discussion of COVID being man made.
Speaker 1: He's sent since then has attempted to leverage this position
Speaker 1: to silence lab league evidence and is a major proponent
Speaker 1: and history with gain of function research. Next, the actual
Speaker 1: sample itself. Like I said, it was collected in late
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, but the timeline here is actually everything. Nobody
Speaker 1: has disputed that COVID nineteen may not have been president
Speaker 1: of the Wuhan wet market. The question is how did
Speaker 1: it get there via animals or by people who were
Speaker 1: infected at the lab and by those who they then infected,
Speaker 1: including some animals. The reason late twenty nineteen really doesn't
Speaker 1: matter is because we have reams of open source data
Speaker 1: to show us that COVID was already widespread throughout the
Speaker 1: city of Wuhan at the time that that sample was collected.
Speaker 1: As I've already previously laid out, geospatial analysis from Harvard
Speaker 1: and Boston University has found parking lot volume of all
Speaker 1: hospitals in Wuhan had the highest daily volume of cars
Speaker 1: in the parking lot in September and October over twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: long before the CCC perverse reported any cases of COVID,
Speaker 1: along with a massive spike in SARCH terms in the
Speaker 1: city of Wuhan for the Chinese version of Google for
Speaker 1: terms of cough and diarrhea. Not only that foreign athletes
Speaker 1: at the twenty nineteen World Military Games held in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: In October twenty nineteen reported COVID liked symptoms. Athletes remember
Speaker 1: that Wuhan looked pretty weird at the time. One says
Speaker 1: that he got his temperature taken to the airport. They
Speaker 1: also described in October the city of fifteen million looked
Speaker 1: like it was on lockdown. A Canadian athlete described this quote,
Speaker 1: I got very sick twelve days after we arrived, fever, chills, vomiting,
Speaker 1: insomnia on our flight home. Sixty Canadian athletes in the
Speaker 1: flight were put in isolation at the back of the
Speaker 1: plane for the twelve hour flight. We were sick with
Speaker 1: symptoms ranging from cough to diarrhea and in between. Later
Speaker 1: analysis by Italy, Brazil, Sweden, and France confirms they had
Speaker 1: patients within their borders who had COVID antibodies from before
Speaker 1: November twenty nineteen. In other words, by that time this
Speaker 1: raccoon dog sample was taken, COVID had leaked from the
Speaker 1: lab two months earlier. Almost certainly in September twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: Wuhan was likely already fully infected. Was literally any of
Speaker 1: this noted by the Atlantic No, They in fact, used
Speaker 1: the late twenty nineteen date as gospel, because that's when
Speaker 1: China says that they had the pandemic started, not when
Speaker 1: the actual pandemic had already begun. So we have scientists
Speaker 1: with the motive, We have a timeline that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: What about the data itself, that too is a real mystery.
Speaker 1: So Chinese data with animal swabs that supposedly show a
Speaker 1: wet market to origin just miraculously appeared in an open
Speaker 1: source database three years later and then mysteriously taken down
Speaker 1: after that. Why you think the Chinese just suddenly dropped
Speaker 1: their opsec or maybe they can see people like us
Speaker 1: talk about this and people like you who don't believe them,
Speaker 1: and they use their scientific allies to push this worse.
Speaker 1: The new raccoon dog theory is all the rage over
Speaker 1: at the World Health Organization, the who is buying this crap?
Speaker 1: Hook line and sinker. They are now calling on China
Speaker 1: to release the data that they just clearly released to
Speaker 1: try and show a raccoon dog origin of COVID. Now,
Speaker 1: if they do, it'll just confirm their previous findings. Let
Speaker 1: me repeat, this is a syop. There is only one
Speaker 1: set of data that needs to be released. The log
Speaker 1: of samples of the Wuhan lab that was taken down
Speaker 1: mysteriously in September twenty nineteen, when COVID likely leave from
Speaker 1: there in the first place. A record of employees and
Speaker 1: their causes of death illness records. We already know multiple
Speaker 1: researchers at the Wuhan lab we're deathly ill in November
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. Release that data when and how many of
Speaker 1: your employees were hospitalized with COVID like symptoms in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen the entire year. That's the data that we need,
Speaker 1: and we need to get our hands on. You see
Speaker 1: any of the WHO and the US government or the
Speaker 1: media asking for any of that, No, of course, if
Speaker 1: they don't, this is the whole ballgame, and really it
Speaker 1: would be the only smoking gun proof we would ever
Speaker 1: get to confirm a lab leak. But at this point,
Speaker 1: ask yourself, what other theory makes sense. Chinese people were
Speaker 1: eating raw dog meat at the Wuhan wet market with
Speaker 1: a side of bat soup. We just happen to find
Speaker 1: out about that right now, or it came from the
Speaker 1: unsafe bio lab a few miles away. It's comical at
Speaker 1: this point to consider the natural origin hypothesis. When we
Speaker 1: have so much data, so many points that point right
Speaker 1: to the lab, it won't stop the media from trying, apparently,
Speaker 1: or the who or those who don't already want to
Speaker 1: believe of course already uncritically passing along this report. It's
Speaker 1: the latest sye op. And next they're going to come
Speaker 1: up with a different animal to blame. So first it
Speaker 1: was the bat NASA raccoon dog. And if you want
Speaker 1: to hear my reaction to Sagres's monologue, become a premium
Speaker 1: subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. All right, Chris wal'
Speaker 1: wall to take a look at John Stewart just absolutely
Speaker 1: took Larry Summers to the woodshed over his terrible, terrible ideology,
Speaker 1: and it is glorious to behold. Now. It is hard
Speaker 1: to imagine a greater economic villain in modern American history
Speaker 1: than Larry Summers. He's like the final boss of neoliberalism.
Speaker 1: Basically at the scene of every great recent economic crime
Speaker 1: you can find Larry Summers. Start with NAFTA, which decimated
Speaker 1: American manufactur ke sturing permanent normal trade relations with China,
Speaker 1: which did even more to destimate American manufacturing, pushing shock
Speaker 1: doctrine on the former Soviet Union, helping to cause the
Speaker 1: financial crash, and then helping to craft the bank bailouance
Speaker 1: after the housing crash. Over the last thirty years, if
Speaker 1: there's a working person who is getting screwed, Larry Summers
Speaker 1: was probably involved in some way or another. So you
Speaker 1: might think, after this disastrous track record of having been
Speaker 1: remarkably consistently wrong in the most devastating ways, that people
Speaker 1: would maybe not put too much stock in what this
Speaker 1: guy has to say about current conditions. But boy, oh boy,
Speaker 1: would you be wrong, because being disastrously wrong in service
Speaker 1: of an elite friendly message is actually going to bolster
Speaker 1: your credentials in Washington. As a result, Larry's emerged as
Speaker 1: one of the leading advocates of the FED, crushing workers
Speaker 1: in service of fighting inflation whileing corporations to use the
Speaker 1: excuse of inflation to price gouge to their heart's content.
Speaker 1: And it is this morally reprehensible position that Stuart nails
Speaker 1: him on. Just take a listen. We'll basically happened to
Speaker 1: us as we had massive stimulus and an economy that
Speaker 1: could only produce so much. We had huge levels of demand,
Speaker 1: and those huge levels of demand kept pushing up prices
Speaker 1: and pushing up wages. But ultimately it was you put
Speaker 1: too much water in the bathtub. The bathtub overflows. You
Speaker 1: put too much demand into the economy, and you get
Speaker 1: high and rising prices. But the San Francisco feed says
Speaker 1: that is demand is maybe thirty to thirty five percent
Speaker 1: of the inflation. Wages are really around twenty percent of
Speaker 1: the inflation. There's a huge corporate profit aspect to it,
Speaker 1: there's a huge supply chain aspect to it, but our
Speaker 1: method for controlling it seems really much more focused on
Speaker 1: wages and employment. There's certain sicknesses you can have where
Speaker 1: there's a drug and has side effects and everybody hates
Speaker 1: the side effects, and no doctor wants their patient to
Speaker 1: suffer the side effects. But if you don't address the sickness,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a bigger problem down the road.
Speaker 1: But the stock market assets have gone up one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty percent, ceopay has gone up fifteen hundred percent. Workers'
Speaker 1: wages haven't gone up at all. I think you're misdiagnosing
Speaker 1: the sickness. Take your medicine people now. Sometimes John will
Speaker 1: play a rube in these interviews and do a kind
Speaker 1: of like I'm just a regular guy asking questions to stick.
Speaker 1: But here he really drops the act and he comes
Speaker 1: with the receipts, even as Summer's condescends to him with
Speaker 1: his bis analogies about the bathtub and about taking our medicine.
Speaker 1: Take a look at this chart from the Economic Policy Institute,
Speaker 1: which breaks down the factors that have in fact contributed
Speaker 1: to inflation. As John correctly notes, while unemployment is low,
Speaker 1: most of the workforce has actually seen a pay cut
Speaker 1: due to inflation. Here you can see that in past
Speaker 1: inflationary periods, wages were in fact the largest driving force
Speaker 1: of those price increases. That's the light blue bars that
Speaker 1: you see in this chart. That is not even close
Speaker 1: to the case right now. Corporate profits ie price gouging
Speaker 1: accounts for about fifty four percent of price rises. Non
Speaker 1: labor inputs ie supply chain issues account for about thirty
Speaker 1: eight percent. Labor cost a mere eight percent. So all
Speaker 1: this crap about workers having it too good it's garbage.
Speaker 1: Yet the primary mechanism we're using to fight inflation is
Speaker 1: a tool that is only able to impact that roughly
Speaker 1: eight percent of the issue which comes from labor costs,
Speaker 1: and actually it could make the supply chain issues get worse.
Speaker 1: So it is no wonder that thus far, crushing labor
Speaker 1: alone has not checked inflation, since wages only account for
Speaker 1: a tiny fraction of what is actually going on here.
Speaker 1: Another great part of this interview, Larry Summers asserts that
Speaker 1: this corporate profiteering isn't really price gouging, it's just the
Speaker 1: free market work in its magic. John checkmates him on
Speaker 1: this one too. Take a listen. The tools that we have, though,
Speaker 1: are basically saying to somebody, everyone's paying more for gas
Speaker 1: and groceries, and that's really hard. So here's what we're
Speaker 1: going to do. We're going to throw ten million of
Speaker 1: them out of work so that we all don't have
Speaker 1: to share that burden. Why aren't we attacking corporate profit
Speaker 1: in any way? Because that's been estimated to be thirty
Speaker 1: percent of inflation? Isn't it going to be on Apple TV? Correct?
Speaker 1: And I think Apple TV is worth about five times
Speaker 1: as much as exon think apples price. Since the stimulus began,
Speaker 1: Apple's value has gone up by about one point two
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. That's four thousand dollars for every American, just
Speaker 1: an increase in the value of apples. It just made
Speaker 1: my point for me. Do you feel that Apple is
Speaker 1: somehow gouging or doing something wrong? Yes, of course, and
Speaker 1: Exxon is and most let's talk about app Let's talk
Speaker 1: about Apple. Do you think, okay, Apple should just sell
Speaker 1: phones for less and not have enough phones? What would
Speaker 1: you have, Apple? What would you have Apple? Do you're
Speaker 1: saying to me, John? Market forces? Are market forces? And
Speaker 1: if demand goes up? Are you suggesting, young man, that
Speaker 1: apples should charge less than they could charge? Let me
Speaker 1: flip that on you. When there's a tightness in the
Speaker 1: labor market. What you're saying is the workers shouldn't do
Speaker 1: the same that the workers just following the same capitalistic
Speaker 1: principles that allow Apple to charge more for their phones,
Speaker 1: shouldn't charge more because wage inflation is driving inflation. What
Speaker 1: I'm saying, that's exactly what you're sacked. Now. The reason
Speaker 1: that moment is so perfect among others is because John
Speaker 1: exposes how one sided Larry's economic worldview is when it
Speaker 1: comes to corporations using the excuse of inflation to price gouge,
Speaker 1: He's all for it. In fact, he's shocked at the
Speaker 1: idea anyone would oppose such a thing. But when it
Speaker 1: comes to some small slice of the workforce getting a
Speaker 1: higher wage because of a tight labor market, well this
Speaker 1: must be stopped and we must use the blunt force
Speaker 1: instrument of the FED to make sure it happens. Now.
Speaker 1: We can see this contradiction in Larry's current stance on
Speaker 1: the Silicon Valley bailout as well. He's all free market,
Speaker 1: rah rah, what it means record breaking profits, But literally
Speaker 1: within an hour of svb's collapse, he was out calling
Speaker 1: for a very non free market bailout to protect the
Speaker 1: well healed vcs and their portfolio companies. Even went so
Speaker 1: far as to say, now's not the time for discussions
Speaker 1: of moral hazard. No, of course not, even though the
Speaker 1: government response is now greenlit reckless behavior from the entire
Speaker 1: banking sector with the promise that the US tax payer
Speaker 1: will backstop the risk and clean it up. No, now's
Speaker 1: not the time to talk about that moral hazard. Shocked
Speaker 1: to Learning had quite a different view when it came
Speaker 1: to helping students deal with their crushing debt burden. Larry
Speaker 1: Summers is the living, breathing embodiment socialism for the rich,
Speaker 1: rugged individualism for the poor. Right now, at this very moment,
Speaker 1: he is both at this time in favor of FED
Speaker 1: loosening to help bankers and wealthy depositors and FED tightening
Speaker 1: to hurt working people. Does it get any clearer than that?
Speaker 1: He is also the living, breathing embodiment of how the
Speaker 1: people with the most catastrophic records get treated as the
Speaker 1: most serious people in Washington. Yesterday, as we've noted in
Speaker 1: the show, was twenty years since the Iraq War invasion.
Speaker 1: Just take a look at where all the Iraq War
Speaker 1: fraudsters are now doing better than ever. As long as
Speaker 1: your disasters and lives are in service of the regime,
Speaker 1: you will be celebrated. You'll be showered with power and
Speaker 1: with riches. Kudos to John Stewart for at least giving
Speaker 1: us the satisfaction of watching this man's squirm, because trust me,
Speaker 1: Larry Summers is not finished trying to ruin your life,
Speaker 1: and like so many before him, Larry Summers dramatically And
Speaker 1: if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for watching today. As we said
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, if you want to
Speaker 1: have the Spotify video, go to Breakingpoints dot com and
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber. There you go. That's all you
Speaker 1: need to know. We'll see you tomorrow.