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 3: But enough with that, Let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: All right, Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. You know, Emily,
Speaker 1: in a normal election year, the news from last night
Speaker 1: would dominate today's cycle, but instead I think we'll just
Speaker 1: give it a passing mention. Joe Biden clinched the Democratic nomination,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination. Uncommitted, did extremely well
Speaker 1: in Washington State. We won't know how well until all
Speaker 1: the vote the mail in votes are counted Thursday. Looks
Speaker 1: like they're going to get delegates to go to the DNC.
Speaker 1: But otherwise, an anticlimactic contest came to its anti climax
Speaker 1: last night.
Speaker 4: I guess yeah, that's right, and more trouble for Biden.
Speaker 4: And actually here in Washington, d C. As Congress Robert
Speaker 4: Hurry Special counsel Robert Hurt testified in front of Congress.
Speaker 4: It was actually fairly explosive from both Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 4: Nobody was happy with Robert Hurry yesterday. We'll get to
Speaker 4: that in just a moment. We will cover some developments
Speaker 4: out of Israel, including an especially galling video that we
Speaker 4: will break down in just a bit. Here. The CPI
Speaker 4: numbers are out, Ryan, the inflation numbers are out that
Speaker 4: we're released yesterday. Some really I think depressing news.
Speaker 3: Soft Landing is getting bumpy.
Speaker 4: Soft He is getting bumpy. We're going to cover developments
Speaker 4: out of Haiti specifically, actually that not only has Ariel
Speaker 4: Andrie resigned as Soger and Crystal covered yesterday, but also
Speaker 4: now it looks.
Speaker 3: Like you're going to do a little invasion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it looks like just to help them out again,
Speaker 1: just to help them a little more help from us.
Speaker 3: It's all they need.
Speaker 4: So we'll talk about the Kenyan troops situation, have a
Speaker 4: full breakdown of that. We are going to be talking
Speaker 4: about Ukraine and some reports from French media that basically
Speaker 4: nobody's paying attention to here in the States. Actually a
Speaker 4: new Putin comment as well to cover and then, oh,
Speaker 4: my goodness, what happened with.
Speaker 3: Andrew Tate Man can't catch a break.
Speaker 4: Looks like one of his streamer friends actually caused his arrest.
Speaker 4: So we'll get to that in just a moment. Remember,
Speaker 4: if you go to breakingpoints dot com, there's twenty five
Speaker 4: percent off right now, breakingpoints dot com. It's an election.
Speaker 3: You not do that.
Speaker 4: It's a great deal.
Speaker 3: You got to do that great deal.
Speaker 4: All right. Let's start with the testimony yesterday of Special
Speaker 4: Counsel Robert Herr, who was appointed to look into whether
Speaker 4: Joe bo Biden had willfully retained classified documents at various
Speaker 4: properties from his garage to his basement. Obviously, this is
Speaker 4: this happened after Donald Trump was investigated for classified documents
Speaker 4: that were littered about Marlco. But let's start with Let's
Speaker 4: start with this quote, or this exchange between Republican Congressman
Speaker 4: Matt Gates and again Special Counsel Robert Hrr, who, by
Speaker 4: the way, it's worth mentioning, worked for Rod Rosenstein and
Speaker 4: was a lais on to Robert Mueller's special consul and
Speaker 4: investigation into Donald Trump, which put him off on the
Speaker 4: wrong foot with the sort of Trump allies right off
Speaker 4: the bat. Although he was a clerk for William Rynquist.
Speaker 4: He was actually appointed by Donald Trump to one of
Speaker 4: his positions in one of his positions in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: but then obviously ended up working for Rod Rosenstein and
Speaker 4: working with the Muller investigation. So people like Matt Gates
Speaker 4: right out of the gate. We're not happy with that.
Speaker 3: Gates out of the gate.
Speaker 4: Kates out of the gate. So here's Matt Gates, and
Speaker 4: I think this again, this exchange. We're starting with it
Speaker 4: because I think it really encapsulated the point that Republicans
Speaker 4: wanted to drive home yesterday during her testimony.
Speaker 5: February eighth, the White House question, mister President, why did
Speaker 5: you share classified information with your ghost writer? The president?
Speaker 5: I did not share classified information. I did not share it.
Speaker 5: I guarantee I did not. That's not true, is it,
Speaker 5: mister Herr.
Speaker 1: That is inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence
Speaker 1: in my report.
Speaker 3: Yes, so it's a lie.
Speaker 5: It's just what regular people would say, right, Yeah, all right.
Speaker 5: So the next one, and all the stuff that was
Speaker 5: in my home was in filing cabinets that were either
Speaker 5: locked or able to be locked. That wasn't true either, was.
Speaker 4: It that was inconsistent with the findings of our investigation?
Speaker 5: Another lie? People might say, right, because what you've put
Speaker 5: in your report was among the places mister Biden's lawyers
Speaker 5: kind of classified documents in the garage was a damaged
Speaker 5: open box. So here's what I'm what I'm understanding. Right,
Speaker 5: as mister Armstrong laid out, you find in your report
Speaker 5: that the elements of a federal criminal violation are met,
Speaker 5: but then you apply this senile cooperator theory that because
Speaker 5: Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator didn't go to the
Speaker 5: top floor, you don't think you can get a conviction.
Speaker 4: So, of course her famously declined to bring charges infamously,
Speaker 4: Perhaps I should say against Joe Biden on that question
Speaker 4: that Matt Gates was just getting at the willful retention
Speaker 4: of classified document. Robert Hurd declined to bring those charges
Speaker 4: because he said very similar echoed to James Comy's a
Speaker 4: treatment of Hillary Clinton back and I think this was
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen, saying that no jury would find beyond reasonable
Speaker 4: doubt that Biden was guilty of that crime because that
Speaker 4: question a wilful that Biden was I think this is
Speaker 4: the description of well intentioned elderly man. Robert Hurst said,
Speaker 4: a jury's not going to find him guilty of the
Speaker 4: wilful retention of documents. Democrats Ryan yesterday seized on that question.
Speaker 4: They are upset with her for they, as they see it,
Speaker 4: littering his report with pejoratives and basically being an agist
Speaker 4: against Joe Biden. Being unnecessarily cruel is one way to
Speaker 4: put it. Perhaps here's Jerry Nadler absolutely laying into Robert
Speaker 4: Hurry yesterday in.
Speaker 6: Short to borrow a phrase from the last administration represents
Speaker 6: the complete and total exoneration as an Ambiden And how
Speaker 6: does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained,
Speaker 6: and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida. We
Speaker 6: know that Trump deliberately took large amounts of classified information.
Speaker 3: From the White House.
Speaker 6: He has admitted as much, occasionally pretending that he classified
Speaker 6: this information without telling anyone on his way out the door.
Speaker 6: We know that he stored that information around Mari Laco
Speaker 6: and the craziest of places on the ballroom stage, spilled
Speaker 6: across the floor of an unlocked closet next to the toilet.
Speaker 6: We know that he showed classified military plans to an
Speaker 6: author interviewing him at Bedminster. Quote, as president, I could
Speaker 6: have declassified it, Trump says on an audio recording. Now
Speaker 6: I can't, you know, but this is still a secret,
Speaker 6: still a secret.
Speaker 4: Okay, bren What did you make of the dueling attacks
Speaker 4: on her from Republicans and Democrats.
Speaker 1: I think what it really showed is what the public
Speaker 1: deserves is a duel trial of both Trump and Biden
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 3: Like, I think we have earned that.
Speaker 1: They're both they're both charged with the same thing, you know,
Speaker 1: mishandling classified information. They've all they've both got it tossed
Speaker 1: about their their various properties. They're both clearly they both
Speaker 1: said things that are not true. Now Trump, uh like
Speaker 1: engaged in like a massive conspiracy to try to cover
Speaker 1: it up after he knew that they were going after
Speaker 1: these classified documents, whereas once Biden realized he'd screwed up,
Speaker 1: he basically just sit here, take take take everything. Like
Speaker 1: that's the key difference. But I think it would be
Speaker 1: a lot of fun for the public just to have
Speaker 1: them both tried in front of the same jury, and
Speaker 1: you'd have them cross examine each other. No, I don't
Speaker 1: want that instead of a debate, and it can be
Speaker 1: moderated by the Presidential Debate Commission.
Speaker 3: It's just bat all around, lovely.
Speaker 4: Chris Wallace is in the courtroom moderating them, and then.
Speaker 1: Frank Lunz can do a focus group with the jury afterwards.
Speaker 4: The jury. Yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Well, so on.
Speaker 3: The the whole thing in a diners.
Speaker 4: So again, it seems like they're both I mean, it
Speaker 4: doesn't seem they both had classified documents. Donald Trump obviously
Speaker 4: was hesitant to turn them over because he believed.
Speaker 1: That he can, and he told his groundskeeper to like
Speaker 1: destroy them and to flood the place, to try to
Speaker 1: destroy servers. Like just just clown car Cohen Brothers, although
Speaker 1: types of like cover up.
Speaker 4: Speaking of clown Car Coen Brothers, the Biden's ghost writer,
Speaker 4: they touched on this yesterday in the exchange with her
Speaker 4: immediately started deleting stuff from his notes that showed that
Speaker 4: Biden had been sharing classified information with him and properly
Speaker 4: information that had not been properly declassified. And so again
Speaker 4: that is another thing that her was approached by approached
Speaker 4: by Republicans about yesterday. Also sort of like Coen brothers
Speaker 4: as not quite on the level of the mar A
Speaker 4: Lago shenanigans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more run in the mill criminality. It only
Speaker 1: becomes criminal when classified information is involved, when you are
Speaker 1: challenged state power, when you're going against the federal goblin.
Speaker 1: Like if you're leaking about the federal government's crimes to
Speaker 1: the public as a public service, then you're going to
Speaker 1: get tried, and then you're going to get tortured and
Speaker 1: put into maximum security prison and put into isolation and
Speaker 1: driven insane, and even if you're an Australian citizen, they'll
Speaker 1: try to extradite you here to lock you up for that.
Speaker 1: But if you're just writing a memoir that nobody's going
Speaker 1: to read and it's just a grift to get paid
Speaker 1: off by you know this super rich publishing houses in
Speaker 1: New York, then it's basically like you can just do
Speaker 1: whatever you want.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But in news outlets including the Federalists, had transcripts
Speaker 4: obtained transcripts actually of her and Biden's full conversations on
Speaker 4: October eighth and ninth. So if those dates sound a
Speaker 4: little whild to this, because indeed it was October eighth
Speaker 4: and ninth, as Biden was dealing with the fallout from
Speaker 4: the October seventh attacks and the conversations between them. Should
Speaker 4: basically that hers description was apt the sort of Biden
Speaker 4: did actually at one point, and people might remember that
Speaker 4: angry press conference immediately after hers report dropped that called
Speaker 4: Biden a confused elderly man or well intentioned elderly man.
Speaker 4: Biden had that weird press conference from the White House
Speaker 4: that night. Biden actually blamed her for bringing up Bo
Speaker 4: Biden and was just absolutely incensed, sort of indignant that
Speaker 4: her had brought up Bo Biden. The testimony, if you
Speaker 4: read the transcripts, Biden is the one who brought up
Speaker 4: Bo Biden. So that entire exchange where Biden was again
Speaker 4: trying to prove how great his memory was and confused
Speaker 4: the presidents of Mexico in Egypt. Not only that he
Speaker 4: was actually remembering his conversation wrong, which again is totally fine.
Speaker 4: These are long conversations he went over the course of
Speaker 4: multiple days. Biden sat for these very long interviews, picking
Speaker 4: up some painful scabs over the last decade of his life,
Speaker 4: if not a little longer than that. But again, as
Speaker 4: he was sort of indignant about a report that his
Speaker 4: memory wasn't great. His memory was not so great.
Speaker 1: Speaking of people not having a good memory about their
Speaker 1: own memory, Democrats took the opportunity to put together a
Speaker 1: little greatest hits of Donald Trump isms and just played
Speaker 1: them at the hearing kind of for no reason at all.
Speaker 4: So well, here, for no reason, they're basically saying that
Speaker 4: Trump has his own memory lapses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so yeah, let's let's roll some Trump.
Speaker 4: Bold like up here.
Speaker 5: And it's called memory, and it's called other things.
Speaker 4: So you don't remember saying one of the best I
Speaker 4: don't remember that and Putin.
Speaker 3: You know, I have so little respect for Obama that
Speaker 3: he's starting to throw around the nuclear worter.
Speaker 4: You've heard that nuclear We have to win in November
Speaker 4: or we're not going to have Pennsylvania. Don't change the name.
Speaker 1: I talked to Putin a lot.
Speaker 3: Did you ask him that?
Speaker 4: I don't remember that, you know, I saw that this morning.
Speaker 5: I don't remember asking him that place.
Speaker 4: I have a good memory and all that stuff, like
Speaker 4: a great memory. For twenty years they were fighting ISIS.
Speaker 4: I feated ISIS in four weeks and we did with Obama.
Speaker 4: We want an election that everyone said couldn't be one.
Speaker 4: I'm not cognitively, and you know what what I am.
Speaker 4: You get in charge, You're gonna be the first weep.
Speaker 4: I know much. People you say, all right, Trump, you
Speaker 4: did a good job. Get the hell out of it.
Speaker 1: The Pennsylvania one, I don't get. How do maybe he's
Speaker 1: right about that? Like, how do we know?
Speaker 3: Maybe they will change the name, change the name because
Speaker 3: of whatever happens.
Speaker 4: I was curious what you made of that one as
Speaker 4: a as a what erstwhile Pennsylvania?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it would be sad if Trump's right
Speaker 3: and they changed the name. It's a good name. There's
Speaker 3: no way to know, no way to know. But we
Speaker 3: will know when.
Speaker 1: He's cognitively blah blah blah blah blah, and we'll and
Speaker 1: his people will tell.
Speaker 4: Him, well no right away and said Trump, get the
Speaker 4: hell out of here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, clearly not. Yeah. I'm surprised they didn't use the
Speaker 3: one where he called his wife Mercedes.
Speaker 4: Did he do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh I had missed that one. So again, this is
Speaker 4: I think it is both. It is clear that both
Speaker 4: of them will fully entertain classified documents, although that question
Speaker 4: of Wulfo of her will fall is hard to prove
Speaker 4: in front of a jury. And I think most importantly
Speaker 4: even Biden gets at this in his lengthy testimony to
Speaker 4: Robert Herr. The transcript of the testimony to Robert Herr.
Speaker 4: We wildly overclassified documents. And that's the point Biden sort
Speaker 4: of strives to make repeatedly in that conversation with her,
Speaker 4: and that's an entirely fair point. But then we get
Speaker 4: Ryan stuck in this ridiculous cycle. I mean, this might
Speaker 4: be one of the most ridiculous cycles of this election.
Speaker 4: We're going to talk about the inflation numbers in just
Speaker 4: a bit, but it is. The world feels like it's
Speaker 4: on fire, hot conflicts in Eastern Europe, hot conflict in
Speaker 4: the Middle East, people struggling here at home, and we
Speaker 4: are now in this doom loop about our elderly leaders
Speaker 4: retaining classified information, which again wildly overclassifying our information, some
Speaker 4: of it we know in both cases actually was probably
Speaker 4: legitimately classified. We have no evidence that this willfully retained
Speaker 4: classify information was used improperly by any foreign adversaries, that
Speaker 4: any other saw it that shouldn't have.
Speaker 3: There's some suspicion with some of the Trump stuff, with.
Speaker 4: The Trump stuff, that he may have retained.
Speaker 3: It for nuclear fleet stuff and other it's dice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's it's absolutely serious stuff, some of it,
Speaker 4: at least, I'm sure not all of it is. But
Speaker 4: all of that is to say, this is, of course
Speaker 4: what's happening when people leave office. There's actually, you know,
Speaker 4: interpretations of what was it called the National Archive Act
Speaker 4: or something like that National Archive Act that presidents can
Speaker 4: do this. And I'm not saying that's the correct interpretation,
Speaker 4: but this is just getting into a legal again doom
Speaker 4: spiral over our elderly leaders. Just you have Democrats pretending
Speaker 4: that it's not a problem when it's Joe Biden. You
Speaker 4: have Republicans pretending it's not a problem when it's Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: even though Matt Gates is clearly getting at whether the
Speaker 4: DOJ has a double standard is like such a side
Speaker 4: show the problems because it's just about one upping each
Speaker 4: other and the double standard, like it's so meta. It's
Speaker 4: like a double standard about a double standard when you
Speaker 4: get to Jerry and Nadler.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we can put up the final element here
Speaker 1: from this tweet from Byron York and people can pause
Speaker 1: this and read this exchange if they want to. But
Speaker 1: curious for your take on this, because I think everybody
Speaker 1: agrees for the most part. Paul's show, ninety plus percent
Speaker 1: of people would roughly say that, yeah, that Matt Gates
Speaker 1: is right, that the elevator doesn't go all the way
Speaker 1: to the top any anymore. However, separating all of that out,
Speaker 1: I think, but you know, bungling some of these dates here,
Speaker 1: to me is not the clean hit that people think
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: And what I mean is that I do this too,
Speaker 3: and I'm not senile like it.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to remember off the top of your
Speaker 1: head exactly what year things happened as far as I'm concerned, Like,
Speaker 1: did we start rising in twenty.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty twenty one? What year?
Speaker 4: Oh, I never remember?
Speaker 1: We jump over here twenty twenty two, probably maybe I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't don't.
Speaker 4: Proving your point live, I.
Speaker 3: Don't actually know, but we could.
Speaker 1: But if I was being interrogated and somebody had like
Speaker 1: calendars in front of me, like, oh, yeah, it was
Speaker 1: when this happened, and this happened, this happened, And that's
Speaker 1: sort of what he's doing. He's connecting things that happened
Speaker 1: at the same time he but he does remember that
Speaker 1: his son died on May thirtieth. Yes, and people people
Speaker 1: remember those dates that tragic events or celebratory events happened,
Speaker 1: but they often don't remember the year. Like I could
Speaker 1: tell you the day I got married. My wife doesn't
Speaker 1: watch this show, so I can admit that I'd have
Speaker 1: to think for a while and be like, what year
Speaker 1: was it?
Speaker 3: It was, it was a long time ago. I do
Speaker 3: remember the date, don't ask me.
Speaker 1: The day any So that like, Okay, I think he's
Speaker 1: right generally, but I think the specifics I don't think
Speaker 1: he got him there.
Speaker 4: So one point on that, though, I will say, is
Speaker 4: that when he's talking about twenty so, for instance, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: he's he missed. As Byron pointed out, that's when he's
Speaker 4: he's talking about whether he left the Senate in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: or he pinpoints twenty seventeen and then talks about it
Speaker 4: as broadly that era in which he left the Senate,
Speaker 4: And then he really does confuse the era between the
Speaker 4: sort of vice presidency and when he ends up actually running.
Speaker 1: For talking about senate because he was thinking about running
Speaker 1: for president twice and conflates them and.
Speaker 4: It's yeah, yeah, he does. So he talks about Obama
Speaker 4: obviously saying he doesn't think you should run a president
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen, and that era he then confuses with
Speaker 4: when he decided to run for president and the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty election cycle. So I totally understanding the same, Like
Speaker 4: pinpointing years, especially when you're as old as he is,
Speaker 4: becomes impossible.
Speaker 3: And he's also a liar, but he's a liar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And his staff and this is not just saying this,
Speaker 1: Like his the staff that I've talked to over the years,
Speaker 1: as well as books that have been written about him,
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that if he's cornered, he will
Speaker 1: just tell a straight up lie. And there's also like
Speaker 1: very the lies that he's told, like the time where
Speaker 1: he was he was going to bust Nelson Mandela.
Speaker 3: Out of prison.
Speaker 1: Yes, his involvement with the civil rights movement, which he
Speaker 1: when he dropped out of the presidential race he ended
Speaker 1: up like apologizing for some of that back in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight, and then still tells a lie today, Like
Speaker 1: he tells lies about things that he apologized for previously
Speaker 1: lying about. And then you add on top of that
Speaker 1: it being difficult to keep years together.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can imagine how a Jerry be like.
Speaker 4: I don't know, yeah, yeah, one hundred percent. Although yes,
Speaker 4: again that question of reasonable doubt and the willful retention,
Speaker 4: that's what this really comes down to, and that's where
Speaker 4: Republicans thought that they had and I think they did
Speaker 4: get a good clip with her yesterday saying when Matt
Speaker 4: Gates was saying, you know, reading Biden quotes about how
Speaker 4: he didn't do this, he didn't do this, and then
Speaker 4: going to her and her saying yes, that is inconsistent
Speaker 4: with findings based on my report, and Matt Gates being like, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's a lie. Again, though my broad takeaway from this
Speaker 4: this is just we are in the partisan doom spiral.
Speaker 4: So welcome to the thunder Dome twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, enjoy.
Speaker 4: Let's move on to Israel. Ryan in this I twenty
Speaker 4: four report about the UAE and the land bridge for Gaza.
Speaker 1: Aid right, So, if your behavior has managed to frustrate
Speaker 1: the United Arab Emirates, you've gone awfully far.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 1: Israel, because of the blockade of the Red Sea carried
Speaker 1: out by the Huthi's, has seen tremendous economic damage being
Speaker 1: done to its economy broadly, and so what they have
Speaker 1: been able to do is they teamed up with Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Speaker 1: UE and other Arab partners to create basically a land
Speaker 1: bridge that can help to keep goods flowing back and forth.
Speaker 1: The UAE is now saying that if Netanyahu doesn't start
Speaker 1: allowing in significant amounts of aid to Gaza, the UAE
Speaker 1: is going to pull out of this and bridge accord,
Speaker 1: which could collapse the entire thing. The Amiradis have been
Speaker 1: probably the most loyal Arab state to the Israelis over
Speaker 1: the last decade or so. They have less of a
Speaker 1: population to worry about than Saudi Arabia, who has been
Speaker 1: kind of the second most loyal to Israel over the say,
Speaker 1: the last ten decades. The leadership of the UAE was
Speaker 1: extremely tight with Jared Kushner and basically helped to broker
Speaker 1: the Abraham Accords across the entire region. To have them
Speaker 1: coming out this publicly and saying that if Israel doesn't
Speaker 1: change course, you know it's going to sever this crucial
Speaker 1: economic tie is something they really need to pay attention to.
Speaker 1: Mohammad Benzaiad, the head of the UAE, is in this
Speaker 1: article saying that he refused to meet with Netnyahu recently,
Speaker 1: which is and we had reported back in twenty seventeen
Speaker 1: that Kushner, net Nyahu, Mohammed Bin Sala when Mohammed Bin said,
Speaker 1: we're all texting each other on WhatsApp and like had
Speaker 1: this like real tight relationship that went around the state apparatus.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: And and was you know, one of the things that
Speaker 1: helped them, you know, build towards the Abraham Accords. That
Speaker 1: now MBZ wouldn't even meet with net Yahoo is uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I think shows you how far Israel's standing
Speaker 1: has fallen in the region in service of this starvation policy.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, what's what what's your what's your read
Speaker 1: on what type of pressure from around the world is
Speaker 1: going to have any influence on Israel's willingness or unwillingness
Speaker 1: to allow aid in.
Speaker 4: I think it's also just an incredible statement on how
Speaker 4: poorly the United States has handled diplomatically the situation. And
Speaker 4: then even like obviously the substance of the policy, which
Speaker 4: is another question, but if we're just talking about pure
Speaker 4: diplomacy and how the United States has sort of like
Speaker 4: to see itself as the leader but.
Speaker 3: These are our guys.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it's a I think a
Speaker 4: pretty damning.
Speaker 3: If we're losing the UE, we don't have anybody.
Speaker 4: It's a very damning indictment of how the Biden administration
Speaker 4: has broken these negotiations. You know, Israel is furious with Biden,
Speaker 4: and you know, well, we'll see what happens in that relationship.
Speaker 4: But obviously Nanna who went on Fox and Friends this
Speaker 4: week to kind of talk a little smack about Biden
Speaker 4: and now, yeah, to your point about the UAE slipping.
Speaker 1: Away, and let's talk about the context of this global
Speaker 1: revulsion at what Israel is doing when you put up
Speaker 1: this this new BBC investigation into something that we covered
Speaker 1: here previously on Breaking Points, which was the Israeli assault
Speaker 1: on Nasser Hospital. You know, we talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: one particular doctor, you know, who went missing for many
Speaker 1: days now a number of now about a dozen medical
Speaker 1: workers from NASA Hospital, according to the BBC, are still
Speaker 1: missing and their family are deeply concerned about their their
Speaker 1: well being. But the ones who have been released, you know,
Speaker 1: spoke to Three of them spoke to the BBC independently
Speaker 1: and told stories of their captivity. And the way that
Speaker 1: this type of journalism works where you don't have forensic evidence,
Speaker 1: you don't have video, you don't have photos, they actually do.
Speaker 1: The BBC has some video and photo from inside the
Speaker 1: hospital of pretty rough treatment of the of the medical staff,
Speaker 1: but not after they leave the hospital. The way you
Speaker 1: do that reporting is you try to talk. You try
Speaker 1: to reach people independently, so that you don't say, all right,
Speaker 1: you talk to one doctor and then you ask that doctor,
Speaker 1: you know, who else can we talk to? That's that's fine,
Speaker 1: like if that's all you can do, that's all you
Speaker 1: can do. But it's better to find them independently so
Speaker 1: that you know for certain that they didn't communicate with
Speaker 1: each other. And then you hear the stories they told
Speaker 1: where were you taken? How long were you there? Were
Speaker 1: the people look like you did this? What exactly did
Speaker 1: they do to you? And if you can pile up
Speaker 1: a bunch of different stories, uh, then you compare them,
Speaker 1: then you can then that is some level of corroboration.
Speaker 1: And that's what the BBC uh did here and it's
Speaker 1: report finding that the that the medical staff, including the doctors,
Speaker 1: were severe were severely beaten, were doused with cold water,
Speaker 1: where one of them had their hands broken. The the
Speaker 1: the kind of abuse that you can imagine coupled with
Speaker 1: harsh and harsh interrogations, and the uncertainty if you're going
Speaker 1: to wind up in a whether you're gonna wind up
Speaker 1: in a mass graver, you're ever going to see your
Speaker 1: your family again, and so uh. The State Departments Matt
Speaker 1: Miller was asked about this BBC report yesterday at the briefing.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to his response here.
Speaker 7: They've interviewed three doctors or three members of the staff
Speaker 7: at that hospital who've given like detailed accounts of the
Speaker 7: detention by Israeli authorities. They told the BBC there were humiliated, beaten,
Speaker 7: doused with cold water, forced to kneel in uncomfortable positions
Speaker 7: for hours. One was set upon by a dog. I'm wondering,
Speaker 7: is that is that a specific one of these specific
Speaker 7: cases that you would raise with the Israedy government.
Speaker 8: I have only seen the report. I don't know that
Speaker 8: if we have raised it, but I would expect that
Speaker 8: we would. Is the type of cases that we often
Speaker 8: raise with them to seek more information and to make clear,
Speaker 8: as we always have, that any detainee should be treated
Speaker 8: in strict compliance with international humanitarian law.
Speaker 7: Are you aware of any cases where as already troops
Speaker 7: have been disciplined for mistreating prisoners.
Speaker 8: I am aware of cases. I don't know specifically with
Speaker 8: respect to prisoners, but I know that we recently raised
Speaker 8: with them an incident where Israeli soldiers where were filming
Speaker 8: themselves inside a mosque inappropriately, and the Idea told us
Speaker 8: that they were investigating and if appropriate, there would be
Speaker 8: accountability and discipline.
Speaker 7: But that's the case where there's video evidence they the
Speaker 7: faces in the video.
Speaker 8: Yeah, correct, but correct, But it doesn't change what we
Speaker 8: think the standard ought to be, which is, if there
Speaker 8: are allegations that are substantiated, there ought to be accountability.
Speaker 8: That's true for the Israeli militaries, it should be for
Speaker 8: the United States military and a military anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: You notice it, and the reporter says, that's a case
Speaker 1: where they were doing it on video. I thought it
Speaker 1: was interesting that Miller said, if appropriate, there will be disciplined.
Speaker 1: So even in that case, Israel wouldn't commit to the
Speaker 1: State Department even privately, Okay, we will discipline these soldiers
Speaker 1: because you can imagine a scenario where the State Department says, look,
Speaker 1: there's a video going around to these soldiers put up
Speaker 1: themselves on TikTok of themselves, you know, desecrating this mosque.
Speaker 1: Here they are, and you could imagine a world in
Speaker 1: which you shared that with your partners, your allies, and
Speaker 1: the ally said, this is horrifying. We're going to find
Speaker 1: out exactly who these guys are and there's going to
Speaker 1: be disciplined. We apologize rather than you know, if we
Speaker 1: find something disturbing this video, we'll you know, at that point,
Speaker 1: will take action. But Emily, the part that really struck
Speaker 1: me from his response was I'm not sure if we
Speaker 1: have talked to Israel yet about this, but it is
Speaker 1: the type of.
Speaker 3: Thing that we do talk to them about.
Speaker 1: We're five months in and the pattern is so recognizable
Speaker 1: that you can say, oh yeah, doctors being beaten and
Speaker 1: having dogs set upon them. Yep, that sounds familiar. That's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing, the type of thing, that's the
Speaker 1: type of thing we often do talk to our Israeli
Speaker 1: friends about.
Speaker 4: And so the IDF has in the BBC story, they
Speaker 4: have said, quote, we emphasize that the hands of patients
Speaker 4: who were not suspective of involvement and terrorism were not tied.
Speaker 4: They deny some specific stuff, and then it looks like
Speaker 4: they declined to answer questions about other specific things. It
Speaker 4: was kind of an interesting response from the IDF.
Speaker 1: Right, there was some right, There was some patients. That's
Speaker 1: the other thing that makes this the reporting so credible.
Speaker 1: They said some patients did not have their hands tied, right, some.
Speaker 4: Right, and they said they don't perform They didn't answer
Speaker 4: questions about the doctor's cast. So that was one of
Speaker 4: the things I find interesting, just given that they were
Speaker 4: answering questions about others. You know, they were saying, for example,
Speaker 4: that they don't perform mock executions. The IDF does not
Speaker 4: perform mocks executions. They said it does not and has
Speaker 4: not carried out mock executions of detainees and rejects such claims,
Speaker 4: but then didn't answer the questions about the cast, and
Speaker 4: it denied other things. So it was sort of a
Speaker 4: mixed response from the IDEF, which is always interesting because
Speaker 4: a categorical denial is what would be most common, right, and.
Speaker 1: So then you're wondering, like, what did these medical personnel
Speaker 1: go through that they felt was a mock execution, yes,
Speaker 1: and the IDF and what is the IDF's definition here, Well,
Speaker 1: there's no paperwork, so it wasn't actually a mock execution.
Speaker 1: It was just we're threatening to put you up against
Speaker 1: the wall while you're blindfolded, and we might kill you.
Speaker 1: But they actually didn't even point their guns out. But
Speaker 1: if you're blindfolded, you don't know that.
Speaker 4: And we have this video that Eric Tohler and colleagues
Speaker 4: at the New York Times reported on. This is a voiceover,
Speaker 4: so we can go ahead and roll it whenever. But
Speaker 4: Eric Toller posted this to Twitter and said, these really
Speaker 4: military published a drone video of their strike on two people,
Speaker 4: one of which was carrying and quote RPG. We asked
Speaker 4: them and the Idea of admitted that it was actually
Speaker 4: a bicycle. So if you can stomach watching this video,
Speaker 4: what you are about to see is this gentleman not
Speaker 4: carrying an RPG but a bicycle.
Speaker 3: Having his life snuffed out. He apparently was on his
Speaker 3: way to pick up flower delivery and was bringing and
Speaker 3: they were bringing flower back to their back to their families.
Speaker 1: To me, when this video first circulated, it was always
Speaker 1: preposterous that this was an RPG. For people that weren't watching,
Speaker 1: It's two guys walking down the middle of a rubble
Speaker 1: strewn street and one of them has a long looking
Speaker 1: thing near his right hand.
Speaker 3: The reason we have footage of at is that there
Speaker 3: was a drone overhead. Those drones.
Speaker 1: If you've watched any video of Gaza or you've talked
Speaker 1: to people who've been in Gaza, make a buzzing sound.
Speaker 1: They know that there's a drone over top of them.
Speaker 1: If they are Hamas fighters with an RPG, they would
Speaker 1: not be sauntering casually down the middle of the street.
Speaker 4: This is Mark stired in Gaza City.
Speaker 1: It makes absolutely no sense that that would be an RPG.
Speaker 1: Is Israel not watching the telegram videos that Cassam Brigades
Speaker 1: are posting on a basically daily basis. The guys with
Speaker 1: the RPGs are crouched inside buildings, sneaking around looking for
Speaker 1: a window and launching them at tanks. They're not walking
Speaker 1: down the middle of the street.
Speaker 3: So this is what this was.
Speaker 1: Was a drone operator who found human beings and was
Speaker 1: looking for a kill.
Speaker 4: So the IDF claims that the route part of this.
Speaker 4: The reason this happened is that the route had been
Speaker 4: used to transfer ammunition to fighters that were then attacking
Speaker 4: the IDF. Their response, this is actually a statement from
Speaker 4: the Idea of quote of the New York Times. They say,
Speaker 4: during the several days leading up to the documented strike,
Speaker 4: armed terrorists used their routschurn in the video in order
Speaker 4: to transfer ammunition and attack IDEA forces. The strike took
Speaker 4: place after real time identification of the people as armed
Speaker 4: terrorists based on information gathered ahead of the strike. So actually,
Speaker 4: it sounds like they're standing by the contention, even though.
Speaker 3: They were wrong about the amycle.
Speaker 4: Classic RPG bicycle mix up tailors all this time. They
Speaker 4: they're standing by the contention that this was a combatant
Speaker 4: who was killed in that video.
Speaker 1: Well, they're saying that they genuinely thought it was, is
Speaker 1: what they're saying. It sounds like, yeah, because he was
Speaker 1: in an area that had previously been used for transporting weapons.
Speaker 3: But Gaz is a very small area. Everywhere is an
Speaker 3: area where there was recently fighting for the most part.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to highlight from
Speaker 4: the So, by the way, this is in the New
Speaker 4: York Times. It says the Idea of still defended the
Speaker 4: strike asserting that the two people were combatants without providing
Speaker 4: its evidence. So they're still standing.
Speaker 1: By Oh okay, so the well, it's there men in
Speaker 1: somewhere between like fifteen and sixty five. And that has
Speaker 1: become another disturbing part of this coverage that any that
Speaker 1: any man basically is considered to be a fair target.
Speaker 1: And as a dude, I kind of I reject that premise.
Speaker 4: The Times also notes that at one point in the
Speaker 4: video you can actually see the wheel of.
Speaker 3: The park can be so clearly a bike.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean there's another of the mounting problems
Speaker 4: for the IDEF. This is sort of a small potatoes
Speaker 4: compared to the whole the all of the problems for
Speaker 4: the IDEF, but this one is so clear, of all
Speaker 4: of the all of the deaths that are sadly stacking up,
Speaker 4: this one is so clear that it will be a
Speaker 4: problem for them going forward.
Speaker 3: And it's for them to not be able to say.
Speaker 1: We made a mistake. It looked from our perspective like
Speaker 1: it was an RPG.
Speaker 3: This is war.
Speaker 1: Things happen, you know, our sympathies are with the family,
Speaker 1: like that would be I think would not would not
Speaker 1: be sufficient because it was so obviously not an RPG,
Speaker 1: but it would be at least acknowledging the humanity of
Speaker 1: the person, and that the two people that you killed,
Speaker 1: the grief that you caused their loved ones, that they
Speaker 1: won't even do that raises a question of.
Speaker 3: Like what on earth would they ever acknowledge.
Speaker 4: I think that's a great point that actually gets at
Speaker 4: this entire conflict, that you know, the sort of propaganda efforts.
Speaker 4: We've talked about this many times, the propaganda efforts, which
Speaker 4: is what happens in war. Obviously Hamas is engaged in
Speaker 4: propaganda efforts. Obviously that's part of war, but the propaganda
Speaker 4: efforts on behalf of the IDF and some times, as
Speaker 4: you point out in that Matt Miller clip, it's difficult
Speaker 4: for the United States as an ally to even defend
Speaker 4: how bad some of the propaganda has been. But it
Speaker 4: is true that when you are attacked and you're engaging
Speaker 4: in war, there's going to be the fog of war
Speaker 4: that's actually tales all this time. And I think it
Speaker 4: would behoove is real to have more transparency about some
Speaker 4: of these things instead of the show of transparency which
Speaker 4: ultimately ends up to be just pure propaganda.
Speaker 3: So often, Yeah, stop doing these things.
Speaker 1: When you do them, apologize and actually not just for
Speaker 1: the bop the starvation.
Speaker 4: Don't just apologize for mistaking the RPG, taking a bike.
Speaker 3: For an Yeah, or you're going to lose the UAE.
Speaker 3: And that's like, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's what they don't understand or don't care about, it
Speaker 1: seems like.
Speaker 4: And the American like potentially support of the American people,
Speaker 4: which is absolutely crucial to their effort YEP, which is
Speaker 4: probably why you have not Yahoo going on Fox and Friends.
Speaker 1: Well, let's get back to the American people. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the American economy for a minute. So yesterday we
Speaker 1: had new inflation data which is shaking up people's thinking
Speaker 1: about what the Federal Reserve is going to do when
Speaker 1: it comes to interest rates going forward, which that has
Speaker 1: a just reverberates all throughout the rest of the economy.
Speaker 3: So we can put up this first element here.
Speaker 1: So consumer prices rose basically a little faster than they
Speaker 1: were expected zero point four percent in February, which was
Speaker 1: three point three point two percent rates slightly higher than expected.
Speaker 3: You know, year year over year.
Speaker 1: You saw rent and housing continue to be continue its
Speaker 1: surge you saw gas prices contributing to this inflation spike.
Speaker 3: Even if you take gas prices out, you started seeing this.
Speaker 1: And so over the last roughly year in wages, wage
Speaker 1: growth and particularly wage growth at the bottom, has been
Speaker 1: outpacing inflation. That's a good thing, like, that's the direction
Speaker 1: that you want to go. The several years before that,
Speaker 1: coming out of the pandemic, inflation was rising faster than wages.
Speaker 1: So basically you need several years of wages growing faster
Speaker 1: than inflation to catch back up. And so people aren't
Speaker 1: pulling prices down except eggs.
Speaker 4: Actually, well, I was saying. Also with high interest rates,
Speaker 4: you have a lot of people, especially in lower income brackets,
Speaker 4: who went into debt because they were laid off during
Speaker 4: the pandemic, so many service workers people in that position
Speaker 4: paying high interest rates. So not only does wage growth
Speaker 4: have to be steady for years, you then also have
Speaker 4: these high interest rates that are compounding the debt. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's making the debt worse and worse and a deeper
Speaker 4: and deeper hole to climb out of. So even if
Speaker 4: your wages are climbing, you still are going to have
Speaker 4: a steep hill ahead of you to get out of
Speaker 4: the debt.
Speaker 1: And one thing I think people aren't quite realizing when
Speaker 1: it comes to how rough this part of the economy
Speaker 1: feels like, is how kind of good it was in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And it's hard to say good in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty the same sentence, because you had the lockdowns, you
Speaker 1: had had the pandemic. It was it was a difficult
Speaker 1: time kind of socially and culturally. But when it came
Speaker 1: to finances, people were doing a lot better because you
Speaker 1: got all of these direct checks. You had this what
Speaker 1: they called the super doll the six hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: week in unemployment.
Speaker 3: You had you know, multiple checks rolling out.
Speaker 1: You had checks in March twenty twenty, you had checks
Speaker 1: again in December twenty twenty, then you had checks again.
Speaker 3: In February, March twenty twenty one. Just your bank account
Speaker 3: one day like this, don't do any work and boop,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, thousands of dollars in your bank account, like.
Speaker 4: Help to your business.
Speaker 1: And interest rates were down under three not a mortgage
Speaker 1: interest rates under three percent. And what that did is
Speaker 1: it allowed basically everybody had a home at the time
Speaker 1: refinanced and they so there their monthly nut went down
Speaker 1: and they a lot of people cashed out, so they
Speaker 1: had more cash in their pockets month to month. And
Speaker 1: you know, they had taken say, let's say ten fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars out and they did and either that padded
Speaker 1: their savings account for the you know, the problems that
Speaker 1: are you know that that always come up in life,
Speaker 1: or they did the thing that they needed to do
Speaker 1: for so long, you know, the you know, repair repaired
Speaker 1: the leaky bathtub, you know, got got the.
Speaker 3: House painted, whatever.
Speaker 1: And so to go from that to then prices spiking
Speaker 1: at nine percent back in twenty twenty one and then
Speaker 1: come coming down but not coming but not having enough
Speaker 1: time to recover is you know, sucks for sucks for
Speaker 1: this economy because you need more time for wages to
Speaker 1: outpace inflation. A year is not enough, like you need
Speaker 1: like five years actually, I mean to get back to
Speaker 1: a like humane economy, you would need like one hundred
Speaker 1: years of wages outpacing inflation.
Speaker 4: So let's put this next element up on the screen
Speaker 4: from Jason Furman because ryand I'm curious what you made
Speaker 4: of Jason Furman's analysis. He puts some of these numbers
Speaker 4: into Basically he was looking at core services, core goods,
Speaker 4: and what you're seeing, and this is important if you're
Speaker 4: watching this, You go back to about twenty ten, and
Speaker 4: the core goods prices are actually all the way to
Speaker 4: where they are around right now. They have this huge
Speaker 4: spike around twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and then
Speaker 4: they've dipped now down to where they were almost in
Speaker 4: like twenty fourteen, which is similar to where things were
Speaker 4: before the pandemic around twenty twenty. Core services spikes right
Speaker 4: around twenty twenty. It was on kind of a steady
Speaker 4: climb from twenty twelve, roughly around twenty ten twenty twelve,
Speaker 4: but then where it is now is so much higher
Speaker 4: than where it has been for core services. So that's
Speaker 4: things like shelter, and Furman specifically calls out shelter, So
Speaker 4: the cost of rent, the cost of housing, that is
Speaker 4: way higher than it has been in anyone's recent memory.
Speaker 4: And that is that's why some of this is so uneven.
Speaker 4: So when you're seeing Paul Krugman's analysis that actually everything's fine,
Speaker 4: it depends, I mean, it just really depends on who
Speaker 4: you are, what kind of life you live, if you
Speaker 4: if you own if you're in what your finances look like.
Speaker 4: This is a really really tough economy for a lot
Speaker 4: of people, and for many people specifically because of that
Speaker 4: core services mark that is not anywhere near where it
Speaker 4: used to be, right, and that is it is significantly higher.
Speaker 3: And there was this big debate is inflation transitory? Is it?
Speaker 3: Is it endemic?
Speaker 1: The transitory crowd looking at that core goods I think
Speaker 1: can argue, like from a cane's in old school perspective,
Speaker 1: was absolutely correct. That was obviously transitory, Like you had
Speaker 1: you had a stimulus, and you had you had some greedflation,
Speaker 1: and you had an opening up of the economy after
Speaker 1: the pandemic. The price of goods popped and then the
Speaker 1: price of goods came back down. That was to be
Speaker 1: expected and transitory. The services inflation is an endemic problem.
Speaker 1: That is that is going to need to be sorted out.
Speaker 1: You've also got uh home insurance, auto insurance, health insurance,
Speaker 1: those all those other costs you know that are just
Speaker 1: utilities that are just part of your something.
Speaker 3: Some utilities are in.
Speaker 1: Core goods that are just kind of part of daily
Speaker 1: life and they're just more expensive. And what that does
Speaker 1: is you know, you you just feel that by the
Speaker 1: middle of every month, it's that that amount of money
Speaker 1: is coming out of your paycheck, and your paycheck is
Speaker 1: just isn't going as as far as it used to.
Speaker 1: Even as you know, wages did grow for the last
Speaker 1: year faster, faster than inflation, but you need a lot
Speaker 1: more than that.
Speaker 4: So I actually want to play this clip of Gary Cohene,
Speaker 4: who is one of Trump's Goldman Boys, is on I
Speaker 4: think this is on CBS Face the Nation the week
Speaker 4: because I think he made a pretty good point in
Speaker 4: the context of why people are feeling as though the
Speaker 4: economy isn't great. So Biden is not polling very well
Speaker 4: in the economy again, despite people like Paul Krugman and
Speaker 4: many many others actually who have said, you know why,
Speaker 4: aren't this optimism or this pessimism that the public is
Speaker 4: experiencing is not backed up by data. The media is
Speaker 4: telling way too negative a story about the economy. Listen
Speaker 4: to Gary Khane here.
Speaker 9: Inflation has a compounding effect, meaning is you look at
Speaker 9: inflation year over year, you're adding up those numbers. You're
Speaker 9: not starting at zero every year. So if we had
Speaker 9: six percent inflation last year, seven percent inflation, and now
Speaker 9: we have four percent inflation. That's ten percent inflation. So
Speaker 9: if you take a basket of groceries at the beginning
Speaker 9: of twenty twenty, just a simple basic basket that cost
Speaker 9: one hundred dollars, it costs well over one hundred and
Speaker 9: twenty five dollars today because those four percent one year
Speaker 9: and seven percent one year and seven percent the next year,
Speaker 9: they add up the cumultive so there's a huge cumulative
Speaker 9: effect inflation.
Speaker 3: So when people are being told consumers, you're wrong inflations.
Speaker 4: Had no, they're right.
Speaker 3: They're completely right. Actually they're completely right.
Speaker 9: And what they're more right about is we at least
Speaker 9: finally have gotten to the position where wage growth is
Speaker 9: faster than inflation. But we had not been there till
Speaker 9: the last few months, so people were losing purchasing power
Speaker 9: and that's why people were angry. And then take on
Speaker 9: top of that the high interest rate environment where if
Speaker 9: you thought you might have been in a position to
Speaker 9: buy a house because you save money, you go out
Speaker 9: to get a mortgage at seven or eight percent, you
Speaker 9: can't afford a house.
Speaker 4: So Conor's non executive at IBM, after leading the Trump
Speaker 4: National Economic Council. But that is completely accurate.
Speaker 1: Ryan, Yeah, right, And as he says, wages finally were
Speaker 1: growing faster than inflation, which as somebody who you know
Speaker 1: advocated for robust government spending you know, throughout the Panda,
Speaker 1: throughout the pandemic, to see wages growing faster than inflation
Speaker 1: is extremely satisfying, vindicating.
Speaker 3: And to see.
Speaker 1: Unemployment below four percent, which is driving all of this
Speaker 1: labor militancy and could you know, is helping to reshape
Speaker 1: the political economy, giving more power to workers rather than bosses,
Speaker 1: like all of all of that is a good thing.
Speaker 1: But tying it in with the the UH, with the greedflation,
Speaker 1: which was these you know, corporations, you know, seeing the
Speaker 1: opportunity to raise prices and just taking profits and walking
Speaker 1: away with it. Plus the obvious inflation you were going
Speaker 1: to get from the supply chains and the open just
Speaker 1: the opening up of the economy after a pandemic, UH,
Speaker 1: you know, has left people you know, way behind. And
Speaker 1: he and you know, so often we economists and the
Speaker 1: news talk about inflation either in month to month terms
Speaker 1: or year over year terms.
Speaker 3: But he's right, like we're all we're all adults, Like
Speaker 3: we remember what it costs to go to the grocery
Speaker 3: store three or four years ago. Yeah, and we now
Speaker 3: know what it costs today.
Speaker 1: And as he's saying, one hundred dollars bag is now
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five dollars bag. And that's a
Speaker 1: that's a huge problem.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons I think we talk about it
Speaker 4: in that context is because, like this report, so this
Speaker 4: is the BLS data, that's what we're talking about. We
Speaker 4: started with the CNBC sterarisheet about that. They put out
Speaker 4: the monthly data, they put out the year over year
Speaker 4: data on inflation. And so that's what the media caused
Speaker 4: like the hook, and that's economists or in the weeds
Speaker 4: analyzing changes in specific aspects of the baskets on the
Speaker 4: month to month basis, because that's what's relevant every single month.
Speaker 3: When sometimes you get a bird, you get a bird
Speaker 3: flu and eggs are super expensive. But well that's not
Speaker 3: it's not a macroeconomic issue, right, that's all the birds
Speaker 3: got killed, right, right.
Speaker 4: But if you're just a consumer, if you're not a
Speaker 4: member of the media or an economist, so ninety nine
Speaker 4: percent of the population, the year over year is what
Speaker 4: really matters to you because you're comparing it to what
Speaker 4: you were paying before and what your wages were before,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, I mean it's it's obvious. That's how
Speaker 4: people think about it normally.
Speaker 1: And also, yes, and inflation for the most part, and
Speaker 1: price growth is pretty steady across everybody's everybody gets gas,
Speaker 1: everybody's got car insurance.
Speaker 3: I mean not everybody's car insurance, but a lot of
Speaker 3: people do not.
Speaker 1: I guess not everybody buys gasoline, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people do. Everybody eats, so everybody feels those price increases.
Speaker 1: You know, wage growth depends on the company you work,
Speaker 1: depends if you switch jobs, depends depends where you live, uh,
Speaker 1: depends on all sorts of other factors. And so for
Speaker 1: lots of people, you know, they're seeing significantly better wage
Speaker 1: growth than inflation over the last several years. For other
Speaker 1: people they're making less, they're not doing you know, for
Speaker 1: others they're right in the middle. There, we've got the
Speaker 1: we've got this trade publication, the COBC letter that actually
Speaker 1: dug even deeper into these numbers. If we can pull
Speaker 1: this up. They say they they dug in on super
Speaker 1: core inflation, and what they're what they found is even
Speaker 1: more disturbing than and so they say on a three
Speaker 1: month annualized basis, super core inflation jumped six point nine
Speaker 1: percent in February, which is huge. That's pushing back to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two levels. Core services less shelter inflation is
Speaker 1: a key metric that the FED follows, So in January
Speaker 1: the metric jumped zero point seven percent month over month,
Speaker 1: the biggest jumps in September twenty twenty two. In February
Speaker 1: is up another half point month over month after multiple
Speaker 1: increases in twenty three. They say, all while real wage
Speaker 1: growth is turning negative again and the fight against inflation
Speaker 1: is far from over.
Speaker 3: So inflation is one thing.
Speaker 1: If wages are going faster than inflation, if wages are
Speaker 1: losing purchasing power to inflation, that's that's when things turn
Speaker 1: deeply ugly again.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So a lot of positive signs, but also
Speaker 4: could potentially be some really negative stuff. And I mean
Speaker 4: there is really negative stuff if you're looking under the hood.
Speaker 4: But trends, of course, could continue to go into a
Speaker 4: frightening direction for a whole lot of people.
Speaker 1: Ryan, All right, let's move on to Haiti and let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's really going on over there.
Speaker 3: Let's put up this first element here.
Speaker 1: So the big news is that Kenya, which have been
Speaker 1: pressured by the United States to send a thousand police
Speaker 1: officers as basically an invasion force under the auspices of
Speaker 1: the United Nations, has now said that it's hitting pause
Speaker 1: on whether it's actually going to do that.
Speaker 3: As the de facto.
Speaker 1: Fake prime minister has said that he will resign his
Speaker 1: fake position once the United States and its allies has
Speaker 1: created a new fake government in Jamaica to take its place.
Speaker 1: The Kenyans are using this opportunity to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: I don't think so not so.
Speaker 3: Sure we're actually going to go along with this.
Speaker 1: So to back things up, in twenty twenty two, there
Speaker 1: was a extraordinarily contentious and contested and not very widely
Speaker 1: credited election in Kenya.
Speaker 3: We're president William rot To was elected.
Speaker 1: Since his election in the US was very clearly backing him,
Speaker 1: the entire way celebrated his very shady victory. Since then,
Speaker 1: Kenya has taken all sorts of odd international positions. If
Speaker 1: you look at that giant green board in the United
Speaker 1: Nations and you see the weird countries that are like
Speaker 1: siding with the United States and Israel in these like
Speaker 1: you know, two hundred and fifty to five votes, Kenya
Speaker 1: is always right there with them. Keny one of the
Speaker 1: only countries in the Quasi region that joined with the
Speaker 1: US in this operation Prosperity Guardian going after the going
Speaker 1: after the Houthis, and they're guard guarding the prosperity the
Speaker 1: Hoothies with their blockade of the Red Sea. And then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, Kenya is like, sure, we'll send
Speaker 1: troops to Haiti.
Speaker 3: That sounds like something we'd love to do.
Speaker 1: The Kenyan population obviously, is wildly against the idea that
Speaker 1: the Kenyans would go and occupy Haiti.
Speaker 4: Well, there's money in it for ken obviously.
Speaker 3: That's we're paying for it.
Speaker 1: Yes, So not only are we paying for that, yes,
Speaker 1: So the US on a State Department said yesterday that yes,
Speaker 1: it's they confirmed we're going to pick up the tab
Speaker 1: for this entire invasion and occupation, although we're hoping that
Speaker 1: the French and some others you know, kick in, the
Speaker 1: Canadians might kick in here and there. Meanwhile, we're also
Speaker 1: facilitating billions in World Bank loans to Kenya that are
Speaker 1: effectively facilitating kind of an ethnic cleansing campaign.
Speaker 3: That that that the Kenyan government is operating in rural parts,
Speaker 3: which which we'll talk about later in the show. This
Speaker 3: is about Haiti. We'll talk about Haiti here. Uh.
Speaker 1: The context of this is this US created government. So
Speaker 1: the US has been creating governments for Haiti, you know,
Speaker 1: for more than one hundred years. Sometimes they're just actual
Speaker 1: US governments they're occupying Haiti. Other times, Uh, they are
Speaker 1: US allied governments that we installed after a coup. Other times,
Speaker 1: the Haitians rise up managed for a while to have
Speaker 1: some type of self determination, which we then undermine and
Speaker 1: come in and replace.
Speaker 3: And we do this every five years or so, and.
Speaker 1: Then we keep wondering what's wrong with the Haitians, Why
Speaker 1: can't they get their act together, rather than saying maybe
Speaker 1: it's us who've been doing this for more than one
Speaker 1: hundred years and and continue to make things.
Speaker 3: Worse for them.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's us, but maybe not. So they're going to
Speaker 1: try again. So they met in Jamaica. Matt Miller said
Speaker 1: that the state's department spokesperson said that there were some
Speaker 1: Haitian civil society representatives who zoomed in to the meeting
Speaker 1: in Jamaica to form the new government. The condition for
Speaker 1: being part of this new government created by the US
Speaker 1: and its core group allies is that, well, a, you
Speaker 1: can't be any people that the United States doesn't like.
Speaker 1: We can get into that a minute, but you have
Speaker 1: to support Kenyon troops coming into your country. Then they
Speaker 1: come around and say, well, the Haitian government is requesting
Speaker 1: the international troops from Kenya to come occupy its country.
Speaker 1: Except okay, yes, we just made this government in Jamaica,
Speaker 1: and we insist that a condition for joining the government
Speaker 1: was that you agree with this policy ahead of time.
Speaker 1: It's like absolutely crazy making. Meanwhile, the actual power in
Speaker 1: Haiti is our man friend of the show, Jimmy Barbecue Shirazier.
Speaker 1: Let's roll a little bit of barbecue here. Go ahead,
Speaker 1: Emily Dusk, describe what people are seeing here.
Speaker 4: So you're seeing barbecue. You're seeing a barbecue saying that
Speaker 4: it's important to tell the international community to give Haiti
Speaker 4: a chance because what is happening in Haiti now, and
Speaker 4: he's speaking in French. We Haitians have to decide who
Speaker 4: is going to lead the country. So that's to the
Speaker 4: point Ryan just made, And what kind of model of
Speaker 4: government that we want. We are going to figure it
Speaker 4: out how to get Haiti out of the misery it
Speaker 4: is in now. If the international community, he continues, continues
Speaker 4: on the oh you are on now, it will plunge
Speaker 4: Haiti into further chaos. And again, we as soon as
Speaker 4: the assassination of juvenal moys happened, it was very clear
Speaker 4: that we would end up exactly where we're ending up
Speaker 4: with people. In fact, like Barbecue gangs basically control eighty
Speaker 4: percent of Haiti. That's the estimate. It's kind of impossible
Speaker 4: to get that estimate anyway, but that's a sessiment from
Speaker 4: the UN and other groups.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: And so here's the interesting question, is that still a gang?
Speaker 1: I wish we should interview our old libertarian buddy Robbi
Speaker 1: Suave about this, because a gang, what is a government
Speaker 1: except a gang that was successful in taking power and
Speaker 1: monopolizing violence.
Speaker 4: Because whoever is installed by the core group is going
Speaker 4: to have to negotiate with Barbecue. There's no other question
Speaker 4: about it. And I don't know you were in I
Speaker 4: found this sort of US fixation on Barbecue to be
Speaker 4: in some ways like incredibly distasteful because it's almost it's
Speaker 4: patronizing in a really gross way, like, oh, what a
Speaker 4: mess Haiti is. It's led by a man named Barbecue, right.
Speaker 1: And on TikTok and elsewhere, you're seeing this these claims
Speaker 1: that he's a cannibal, which you're like, is it twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four and you're still calling like, like Haitian figures
Speaker 1: like cannibals.
Speaker 4: The US backed de Valiers had plenty of WE backed
Speaker 4: the Devaliers had plenty of interests in voodoo and all
Speaker 4: of that. I mean, it's it's not like I'm not
Speaker 4: talking about cannibalism specifically, but the things that people are
Speaker 4: now finding to be very amusing about Haiti. It's just
Speaker 4: it is. It's grouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And hey, is Barbecue a rough dude.
Speaker 1: He's a rough dude, but he gets the name barbecue
Speaker 1: comes from the fact that his dad like sold barbecue
Speaker 1: chicken on the side of the road, right, Like that's
Speaker 1: like it's he's not called barbecue because he barbecues people
Speaker 1: and eats them.
Speaker 4: So, right, And you asked Matt Miller questions just yesterday
Speaker 4: at the State Department briefing and pushed him on this
Speaker 4: question of Haiti.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's watch that follow up on his point about
Speaker 1: the resignation of arryel on Ree after Moy's assassination. Henri
Speaker 1: was plausibly linked to it via phone calls and others,
Speaker 1: and was not in line to take power, But it
Speaker 1: was the US and the core Group that kind of
Speaker 1: recognized him and pressured Claude Joseph's power. He was seen
Speaker 1: as illegitimate at the time, called it the fact of
Speaker 1: Prime Minister. In retrospect, was it a mistake to have
Speaker 1: pushed Joseph aside or pushed anybody aside for Onrie, given
Speaker 1: that Onried now a couple of years later, is out
Speaker 1: after a failed.
Speaker 8: So ultimately that wasn't a decision for the United States,
Speaker 8: and what happens now is not a decision.
Speaker 7: For the United States.
Speaker 1: The US and the Core Group made the decision by
Speaker 1: recognizing it.
Speaker 8: We will continue our goal all along has been a
Speaker 8: transition to democracy and trying to achieve a stable security
Speaker 8: situation on the ground so that Haitian political leaders have
Speaker 8: the room to make the to make the tough choices
Speaker 8: they need to make.
Speaker 1: But then why endorset foreign inner mention of troops from
Speaker 1: outside of Haiti to come in like in twenty and
Speaker 1: four twenty ten, twenty twenty one, the State's Department, the
Speaker 1: Core group got their way when it came to who
Speaker 1: would form the Haitian government. That's setting aside the occupations
Speaker 1: and invasions of the past, what makes you confident that
Speaker 1: this time it's going to work so all the other times.
Speaker 8: So first of all, I'd say that the Multi National
Speaker 8: Security Support Mission will be there at the invitation of
Speaker 8: the Haitian government. That is a key prerequisite for their deployment.
Speaker 3: And it's what the guys just made that government age
Speaker 3: to make.
Speaker 8: But it's what the hold on. It's what the Kenyan
Speaker 8: government said in their statement. They have to have a
Speaker 8: government that has invited them with which they can collaborate,
Speaker 8: and it's why they're looking for the appointment of this
Speaker 8: Presidential Transition Council and ultimately a new Prime Minister and
Speaker 8: ultimately a new government. But when it comes to what
Speaker 8: just happened in Jamaica, again, this was a collaboration of
Speaker 8: CARACOM leaders, Haitian civil society, the United States, Canada, France, Mexico, Brazil,
Speaker 8: all of whom have an interest in seeing stability and
Speaker 8: all of whom have the same goal.
Speaker 4: That was actually kind of funny and in a really
Speaker 4: dark and twisted way where you're interrupting him to say,
Speaker 4: you guys made that decision, and where he says it
Speaker 4: was not the decision of the US to recognize Ario
Speaker 4: Henri or basically to back Onnrey, you were like, well,
Speaker 4: you recognized him, the core group recognized him.
Speaker 3: When he wasn't the Prime minister.
Speaker 4: No, he was in this like the cloud you mentioned
Speaker 4: Claude Joseph. There's a huge power struggle that people memory hold.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then he said, well that the Haitian the
Speaker 1: troops are there at the request of the Haitian government,
Speaker 1: the Haitian government that we just made in a hotel
Speaker 1: room yesterday zoom in Jamaica. Afterwards, I asked him a
Speaker 1: question that I think will be important down the road.
Speaker 1: I said, is there any particular Haitian that the US
Speaker 1: would not want to see come to power? And he said, no,
Speaker 1: that's again, that's that's for the Haitian people. And I
Speaker 1: have two people in mind, and let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: stuff you can't talk about on the normal, normal news program.
Speaker 1: When I asked question one is one is g Philippe,
Speaker 1: who is super controversial figure because he was involved in
Speaker 1: the two thousand and four coup. So this is a
Speaker 1: this was at a US stooge who helped overthrow Aristeid,
Speaker 1: but has since become something of a kind of revolutionary figure,
Speaker 1: and the US locked him up from twenty seventeen until
Speaker 1: just recently. He's now back in Haiti and is widely
Speaker 1: considered to be as a politician because he's served in
Speaker 1: the Senate before the US threw him in prison for
Speaker 1: drug smuggling. And the way you know he's probably innocent
Speaker 1: is that they actually convicted him of drug smuggling. Like
Speaker 1: if you're a real drug smuggler in Haiti, they're not
Speaker 1: going to touch you. Like that's just that's that's like
Speaker 1: how that works over there. So he's extremely popular, but
Speaker 1: the US hates him. The other one, though, Barbecue Barbecue,
Speaker 1: is the guy who's kind of running the show at
Speaker 1: this point. And we call him, we call him a
Speaker 1: gang leader, we call him a criminal, we call him
Speaker 1: a cannibal, and the cannibal.
Speaker 3: Thing is obviously absurd.
Speaker 1: Criminal sure, but like we said, what is a state
Speaker 1: and states sometimes are formed through revolution. You know, he
Speaker 1: calls himself the actual name, like he is the revolutionary
Speaker 1: forces of the G nine family and allies. So that's
Speaker 1: that's an alliance of basically nine gangs that have that
Speaker 1: have gotten together and they've made him kind of their
Speaker 1: their leader and their spokesperson. He basically had an alliance
Speaker 1: with juvenile moys who comes from outside of quarter of
Speaker 1: friends had the rural rural support. Yeah, and and Moy's
Speaker 1: Moyes's deal with UH with the G nine was basically,
Speaker 1: as long as you are keeping the peace in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: there's and there's peace and justice, then we're not going
Speaker 1: like then that's fine.
Speaker 3: Like then you're basically the government in this area. Uh.
Speaker 3: Barbecue is no.
Speaker 1: In his areas to have extremely low crime outside of
Speaker 1: Barbecue crime. Some of the other gangs not so much.
Speaker 1: Some of the other gangs take advantage of their situation,
Speaker 1: just the same way that police forces around the world,
Speaker 1: if they're corrupted, take advantage of their position to extract bribes, kickbacks,
Speaker 1: use extortion, blackmail, you use their monopoly on violence to
Speaker 1: you know, to enrich themselves. No reason to think that
Speaker 1: a quote unquote legitimate police force that the US installs,
Speaker 1: which troops, is.
Speaker 3: Going to do any differently.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the joke.
Speaker 1: So to me, I think you should. I think you
Speaker 1: should actually do what Matt Miller is saying, like, let
Speaker 1: the Haitian people work this out. And if that means
Speaker 1: that they get behind geth Philip and Barbecue. Why do
Speaker 1: we know so much better than them. If they need
Speaker 1: help with logistics, with financing, with credit, fine, but troops,
Speaker 1: they don't need troops.
Speaker 3: It's not need international troops.
Speaker 4: It's not even just this idea that we know better.
Speaker 4: It's this idea that Haiti is like a playground for
Speaker 4: us to control the hemisphere, which is obviously not a
Speaker 4: new thing at all. I mean, it goes throughout time,
Speaker 4: throughout the Cold War in particular. But one of the
Speaker 4: people who's been saying exactly what Barbecue is saying is
Speaker 4: someone that we had on the show. Biden appointed Daniel
Speaker 4: Foote a special envoy to Haiti right after the assassination
Speaker 4: of Jovenial Moys, which, by the way, a man was
Speaker 4: just convicted of. He was an ex DEA informant. The
Speaker 4: DEA claims he was not acting on behalf of the
Speaker 4: United States government. He and others identified themselves as DEA
Speaker 4: agents when they stormed Jovenil Moys's compound in all the
Speaker 4: way back during the assassination itself, Moys had the support
Speaker 4: of the United State. At the back of the United States,
Speaker 4: people questioned whether that was there were cracks in that foundation.
Speaker 4: He had sort of appointed Ril and Rai as a successor.
Speaker 4: Two days later he was assassinated by people purporting to
Speaker 4: be dee A agents. It's how insane and twisted the
Speaker 4: story is. But Daniel Foot has been saying exactly what
Speaker 4: Barbecue is saying that you need to let the people
Speaker 4: of Haiti determine who their next leader is and break
Speaker 4: the cycle of US control. And you know what, I
Speaker 4: think this is one of the least covered stories. We
Speaker 4: can put the next next element up on the screen.
Speaker 4: One of the main reasons, according to Foot, perhaps the
Speaker 4: chief reason this is he called it when he was
Speaker 4: in an interview with us here on this show. He said,
Speaker 4: the straw that broke the camel's back for him when
Speaker 4: he resigned just two months after he was appointed to
Speaker 4: that post, was that a huge priority of the Biden
Speaker 4: administration that he was representing in these negotiations with Haiti
Speaker 4: was the ability to deport Haitian migrants back to port
Speaker 4: All prints. Even in that picture, if you're watching this,
Speaker 4: you see a Haitian migrant. That's a picture that I
Speaker 4: took in Matamoros and the Haitian migrants there, every single
Speaker 4: one of them. They came from Argentina, Chile, Brazil. A
Speaker 4: lot of people know that by now, they do not.
Speaker 4: They all wanted to across the border legally because the
Speaker 4: last thing that they wanted was to go back to
Speaker 4: Portal Prince. Most of them hadn't lived there since the
Speaker 4: earthquake in twenty ten, some of them twenty fourteen, maybe
Speaker 4: the last five years. But the Biden administration, and this
Speaker 4: is from my perspective, I think Ryan and I disagree
Speaker 4: on this, but my perspective is that Joe Biden is
Speaker 4: too cowardly to actually make tough changes to our asylum policy.
Speaker 4: So what he does instead are these band aid policies
Speaker 4: that are just a patchwork that end up incentivizing the
Speaker 4: flow of people Haitians. Every single Haitian I talked to
Speaker 4: was an economic migrant. Doesn't mean their life was great
Speaker 4: in Chile or Argentina. It was they wanted a better
Speaker 4: life in the United States. They'll openly say that it's
Speaker 4: not qualify under our That does not qualify you for
Speaker 4: asylum under a law in the most for the most part,
Speaker 4: but you can get into the United States. You can
Speaker 4: get entry into the United States, make some money, maybe
Speaker 4: you get kicked out in two years. I've talked to
Speaker 4: Haitians at a shelter in Texas. I saw their papers physically,
Speaker 4: their hearings were two years done. The road is just
Speaker 4: an absolute abject disaster, and once again the Biden administration
Speaker 4: sees Haiti as a pawn. One of the reasons, according
Speaker 4: to Daniel Foot, that they were continuing to back Henri
Speaker 4: as he was not calling for elections. That was a
Speaker 4: huge part of the reason the back Henri was We're
Speaker 4: going to get onto this on ramp towards democracy. But
Speaker 4: even as Henri was not calling for elections, haven't been
Speaker 4: elections in Haiti since twenty sixteen. The last terms for
Speaker 4: people in their Senate expired last year. All through all
Speaker 4: of that, one of the reasons is that Ariel Henri,
Speaker 4: one of the top reasons, would accept migrant flights back
Speaker 4: to Port au Prince to in the tens of thousands.
Speaker 4: Tens of thousands. Horrible, Bryan, do you remember the stories,
Speaker 4: the horrible, heart wrenching stories of Haitians, like trying to
Speaker 4: get off the planes before they were in the air
Speaker 4: because they found out they were going to Port af Prince.
Speaker 4: That is the last thing they ever wanted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and reminded me of this nineteen ninety four famous
Speaker 1: Joe Biden quote where he said, if Haiti just quietly
Speaker 1: sunk into the Caribbean or rose up three hundred feet,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't matter a whole lot in terms of our interests.
Speaker 3: And so, yeah, Biden, I forgot that was a Biden quote. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's a Joe Biden quote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's just yeah, Haiti is just once again
Speaker 4: a pawn on the Great Chess Board. It's not the
Speaker 4: Cold War anymore, but Haiti is upon on the chess board.
Speaker 4: And the problem with this is it's again we were
Speaker 4: talking about doom spirals earlier in the show. This is
Speaker 4: a doom spiral. And that's one of the things that
Speaker 4: Daniel Foot he made this argument with us, he said,
Speaker 4: that is quote counterproductive, and it is because Portop Prince
Speaker 4: is in shambles right now, and you're going to send
Speaker 4: tens of thousands of people who desperately don't want to
Speaker 4: be there, who haven't lived there in years, back onto
Speaker 4: the streets. If you continue appointing your stooges to lead Haiti,
Speaker 4: you're going to continue into the cycle of despair. You're
Speaker 4: going to have more people leaving, You're going to have
Speaker 4: a completely destabilized region. Countries like on Duras and dr
Speaker 4: and other places are actually having their own border cross
Speaker 4: issues with Haitian migrants right now because people are fleeing
Speaker 4: in desperation. So it's not even productive. It's not constructive
Speaker 4: in the long term for stability in the region. But
Speaker 4: all that matters is the short term goals of whoever
Speaker 4: is in power here in the United States and Trump,
Speaker 4: by the way back Noys.
Speaker 1: As well, and exactly what foot warned about. We invited
Speaker 1: him onto the show today, he couldn't make it. He's
Speaker 1: actually going to be here tomorrow. I'm filling in for Crystal.
Speaker 1: So stick around tomorrow for the former envoy to Haiti,
Speaker 1: Daniel Foote, who resigned in protest, and he'll talk about
Speaker 1: his fired uptake on how things are unfolding. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of debacles, let's move on to the war in Ukraine
Speaker 1: and we can put up this first element here Russian
Speaker 1: President Vladimir Putin gave a fascinating interview which follows on
Speaker 1: his Tucker Carlson interview where he hinted that he was
Speaker 1: open strongly hinted that he was open to serious negotiations
Speaker 1: about bringing the war to an end.
Speaker 3: Now, in an interview that our.
Speaker 1: Friend of the show, Jegor Katkin, says that the Kremlin
Speaker 1: is kind of blasting all over to the world, which
Speaker 1: shows that this is not a gap. This was a
Speaker 1: very kind of calculated message that he is now sending out.
Speaker 1: He says Russia is ready for peace negotiations with Ukraine
Speaker 1: based on the realities that have developed on the ground,
Speaker 1: and the latter part of that is clearly an indication
Speaker 1: that he's saying, We're going to keep the territory that
Speaker 1: we have conquered, but we will, you know, reach an agreement,
Speaker 1: an enforceable agreement that will that would end this war.
Speaker 1: The question for Ukraine would have to be is this
Speaker 1: the best deal that they can get?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 3: And can they get a better deal if the.
Speaker 1: United let's let's say the United States aside that we
Speaker 1: are going to actually send hundreds of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: more for this war.
Speaker 3: Effort.
Speaker 1: Is there a world in which, with hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars, hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian lives, and several
Speaker 1: years of time, Ukraine can conquer back territory that Russia
Speaker 1: has seized and then go to the negotiating table having
Speaker 1: having reconquered this territory. Because if that is a possibility,
Speaker 1: you're going to have people within the Ukrainian government, You're
Speaker 1: going to say that, and the Ukrainian popularity is say
Speaker 1: we need to do this, you know, not one inch
Speaker 1: to the Russian invaders.
Speaker 3: But that's where we get to this new.
Speaker 1: Report in a French investigative magazine called Marianne, which is
Speaker 1: not getting picked up here in the United States at all,
Speaker 1: but they obtained a cash of intelligence documents basically that
Speaker 1: include the French assessment of the Ukrainian capabilities. We can
Speaker 1: put up this this article right here. People can go
Speaker 1: check it out. You could just click the English you
Speaker 1: just go ahead and click the English translate button and
Speaker 1: you can get the gist of it. But essentially, what
Speaker 1: they're saying is some of what we already know, and
Speaker 1: but they put it in starker terms that that we
Speaker 1: that that's some that some here in the US may
Speaker 1: realize are appropriate. First of all, it talks about the
Speaker 1: absolute depletion of manpower on on the Ukrainian side. That
Speaker 1: you know, Zelenski needs thirty thousand conscripts a month, he's
Speaker 1: getting he's he's getting less than half of that, Whereas
Speaker 1: Russia is able to pull in thirty thirty thousand volunteers
Speaker 1: every month. Russia is able to cycle in and out
Speaker 1: it's its reserves and its fresh recruits, with its with
Speaker 1: its veterans, whereas Ukraine is relying oftentimes on entire units
Speaker 1: that have three weeks of training. They say that in
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty three counter offensive that that was debilitating
Speaker 1: for the for the Ukrainian troops that they were that
Speaker 1: they were up against much better trained and equipped troops.
Speaker 3: And also defense is easier than offense.
Speaker 1: That and it also says that the Russians have gotten
Speaker 1: in sanely good at communications jamming. The Ukrainian reliance on
Speaker 1: drones then relies on communications, and if you can jam
Speaker 1: the communications between the drone operator and the drone, your
Speaker 1: drone is now just a flying rock.
Speaker 3: At that point.
Speaker 4: One of the big questions I think going forward to
Speaker 4: for people who want to continue the sort of neo
Speaker 4: conservative argument that this incentivizes Putin to just take back
Speaker 4: all of the former Soviet territory. If you concede one
Speaker 4: into the Dambas to Putin, he's next going to immediately
Speaker 4: invade what Finland, and then he's going to take Sweden,
Speaker 4: and he is going to reconquer Europe. One of the
Speaker 4: big questions I think for that is, if I'm Putin
Speaker 4: right now, is willing to sit down on the table
Speaker 4: and discuss these terms and ends up, let's just say, hypothetically,
Speaker 4: ends up getting some territory in the Dombas, and that
Speaker 4: comes after two years of grueling, bloody war where he
Speaker 4: loses hundreds of thousands of Russian men and reclaims some
Speaker 4: small amount of territory in the Dombas that was already
Speaker 4: in many cases contested, that was already a war zone
Speaker 4: in many cases, and he doesn't get to Kiev. That
Speaker 4: initial sort of that initial expedition that the Russian military
Speaker 4: took was stopped by Western forces, was stopped by it
Speaker 4: was halted by Ukraine, and then they get into this
Speaker 4: long stalemate for more than two years. Is that really
Speaker 4: granting Putin a permission slip to conquer the rest of Europe?
Speaker 4: Is that really your argument as to why we can't
Speaker 4: sit down and negotiate right now, because any negotiation would
Speaker 4: just give Putin license to take all of Ukraine and
Speaker 4: then take Poland and then take Fitland. That's really your
Speaker 4: argument at this point, that's really the only good, the
Speaker 4: only possible logic that you can cling to as a
Speaker 4: reason not to negotiate. But it's stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And let's say you're a diehard supporter of Ukraine
Speaker 1: and you believe that the invasion was fundamentally evil and
Speaker 1: needs to be rolled back.
Speaker 3: The question though, which it was?
Speaker 1: It was fundamentally evil, And let's say, but the question
Speaker 1: then becomes what is the risk and what is the
Speaker 1: cost of not entering into negotiations at this point? And
Speaker 1: the risk is losing further territory, and so yeah, the
Speaker 1: the Marianne Report has an entire section underneath the risk
Speaker 1: of a Russian breakthrough is real and they talk about how,
Speaker 1: you know, in mid February, Ukraine abandoned the city of Avdivka.
Speaker 1: We covered that here. That was a huge it was
Speaker 1: a huge collapse. But what they they but they zero
Speaker 1: in on kind of the how of that happened. One
Speaker 1: was that the kind of Russian advance had found innovative
Speaker 1: ways to target the Ukrainian positions and was able to
Speaker 1: break through despite them sending an elite brigade, the third
Speaker 1: as of aerosol brigade to kind of buttress that their
Speaker 1: their line, and the line collapsed. The line collapsed anyway,
Speaker 1: they write, the decision to retreat by the Ukrainian armed
Speaker 1: forces was a surprise its suddenness and lack of preparation,
Speaker 1: fearing that this choice was more endured than decided by
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian command, which was suggesting a possible onset of
Speaker 1: quote disarray. In other words, it wasn't It's not obvious
Speaker 1: that the Ukrainian military command ordered a retreat so much
Speaker 1: as that the troops just said we're out of here,
Speaker 1: and the Ukrainian command was then forced to accept that retreat.
Speaker 3: That goes on the Ukrainian and this is key.
Speaker 1: The Ukrainian armed forces have tactically shown that they do
Speaker 1: not possess the human and material capabilities to hold a
Speaker 1: sector of the front that is subjected to the assailant's effort.
Speaker 1: The Ukrainian failure in Avdivka shows that despite the emergency
Speaker 1: deployment of an elite brigade, KIV is not capable of
Speaker 1: locally restoring a sector of the front that collapses. So
Speaker 1: what does that mean, Like, if the Ukrainians are not
Speaker 1: capable of holding a sector of a front that is
Speaker 1: specifically targeted by the Russians, that means a breakthrough is
Speaker 1: is either imminent or possible, and that gives the Putin's
Speaker 1: serious leverage and negotiations because if you have shown that
Speaker 1: you cannot, even with your elite brigade, maintain your line,
Speaker 1: you're you're at risk of complete collapse.
Speaker 4: He so Putin also in an interview with State media,
Speaker 4: since I mean, I guess it's ahead of the election,
Speaker 4: is how it's being framed, Like I'm on Artie right now, Yeah.
Speaker 3: After he jailed and killed navalney.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he has a subheading or Artie has a subheading
Speaker 4: here that says Russia ready for nuclear war. The quote
Speaker 4: from Putin is for us, the Ukraine conflict is a
Speaker 4: matter of life and death. For them, it's a matter
Speaker 4: of improving their tactical position globally and in Europe. He
Speaker 4: said that put An insisted that Russia is if the
Speaker 4: US tries to quote play chicken, Moscow is prepared to
Speaker 4: use nuclear weapons and considers its arsenal quote more advanced
Speaker 4: than anyone else's. He also, I mean, he had some
Speaker 4: other comments about the war. Putin said, for example, that
Speaker 4: when Macrone said the West should have quote no red
Speaker 4: lines when it comes to Russia, Putin replied, that is
Speaker 4: Western politicians fantasizing and riling themselves up. So when he says,
Speaker 4: and this is very clear, it should have been very
Speaker 4: close since the beginning. For US, the Ukraine conflict is
Speaker 4: a matter of life and death, and for them, for
Speaker 4: the West, it's a matter of improving their tactical position
Speaker 4: globally and in Europe. He has more men available to
Speaker 4: him to fight this war than Ukraine does. The Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal report that Ukraine is essentially plucking war age
Speaker 4: men off the street, not even not even actually war
Speaker 4: age men, people that are considered older than you would
Speaker 4: consider war age men off the streets, military age men
Speaker 4: off the streets because they can't locate men. They don't
Speaker 4: have enough people to fight the way there was.
Speaker 1: Did you see the viral video of like thirty four
Speaker 1: Ukrainians who were trying to sneak into Romania and they
Speaker 1: were caught at the border, and the Ukrainian border guards
Speaker 1: are just like beating the hell out of them, and
Speaker 1: they're going to take them and then they're going to
Speaker 1: push them to the front, to the front lines where
Speaker 1: they're going to have to fight and get killed. And
Speaker 1: that's what it means to continue this war. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you're you're at bayonet point, marching people to a front
Speaker 1: that they are not willingly signing up to go.
Speaker 3: And fight on.
Speaker 4: Well. And one thing that so the neo conservative crowd
Speaker 4: or the foreign policy establishment is argued over the course
Speaker 4: of the last two years is that, you know, Boris
Speaker 4: Johnson wasn't scuttling any real talks or the US. You
Speaker 4: know too, what Israel had said wasn't scuttling any real
Speaker 4: talks because Putin had not been serious about actually negotiating
Speaker 4: on serious terms. That when Putin was saying he was
Speaker 4: ready to negotiate with the United States and with the
Speaker 4: West and Zelensky, he wasn't actually serious about that. You know,
Speaker 4: whether or not that's a good excuse not to sit
Speaker 4: down with him as a different debate, but at this point, Ryan,
Speaker 4: I think it's hard to dismiss Putin's overtures here as unserious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also I found this Marianne report from the
Speaker 1: Twitter account of our nobertrand which I recommend everybody follow
Speaker 1: if you're not he's on Twitter, he's at r n
Speaker 1: A U d b E r t r A N
Speaker 1: d uh Off. He's often finding and then translating, you know,
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff from around around the world.
Speaker 3: So I h highly recommend that one. Again. Let's just
Speaker 3: read this Putin quote one more time.
Speaker 1: Russia is ready for peace negotiations with Ukraine based on
Speaker 1: the realities that have developed on the ground. Now, this
Speaker 1: has been a pretty dark show, so let's finish with
Speaker 1: something light and fun. Yes, Andrew Tate back in prison.
Speaker 4: Yes, light and fun, although I don't know that it
Speaker 4: actually is let in front Ryan because the allegations against
Speaker 4: Andrew taite.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, the allegations against him less. Look, it's not fun,
Speaker 3: not like the fact that he's locked up fun.
Speaker 4: Well, the way he ended up getting locked up again,
Speaker 4: that is deeply fun. This story is I was going
Speaker 4: to say unbelievable, was actually perfectly believable. How this transpired
Speaker 4: just yesterday. We can put this first hair sheet up
Speaker 4: on the screen. This is from USA Today. I was
Speaker 4: just going to read the top part of the USA
Speaker 4: Today report. Influencer Andrew Tatan's brother Tristan Tate were detained
Speaker 4: in Romania on a British arrest warrant and could be
Speaker 4: extradited later on. Multiple outlets reported the brothers were detained
Speaker 4: Monday evening. So okay, this actually broke Monday evening for
Speaker 4: up to twenty four hours. Well, the Booker's Court of
Speaker 4: Appeal decided whether or not to execute the warrants. That's
Speaker 4: according to the Tate spokesperson. Now, the court decided Tuesday
Speaker 4: then to grant the extradition request, but only after Romanian
Speaker 4: Romanian legal press are finished. According to the AP. The
Speaker 4: court order also ordered them to be released immediately. The
Speaker 4: two brothers, as many people remember, were indicted by Romanian
Speaker 4: officials in June of twenty twenty three on charges of rape,
Speaker 4: human trafficking and forming a criminal criminal gang to exploit women.
Speaker 4: They were released from house arrest August twenty twenty three
Speaker 4: while awaiting a trial. Now it's since been I don't
Speaker 4: know if confirmed is that might be too strong of
Speaker 4: a word, but the legal team for some of Andrew
Speaker 4: Tates's accusers have said that a live stream by one
Speaker 4: of Andrew Tate's influencer friends directly triggered NBC News even
Speaker 4: confirmed this with the legal team directly triggered his arrest.
Speaker 4: And let's just roll this clip F three.
Speaker 3: This is we'll jump to F three first.
Speaker 4: Yes, so if you watch, well, actually even we can
Speaker 4: just put F two up.
Speaker 3: Control room's choice. Yeah, deals true, there's choice, whichever one's.
Speaker 4: We'll just start here with F two and then we'll
Speaker 4: move to F three.
Speaker 5: Fortunately, I don't think many people in Romania understand, but
Speaker 5: in the West and the countries are owned by.
Speaker 3: The safeness in which are certain couple of things or
Speaker 3: put on a.
Speaker 4: Dresser and go to jail.
Speaker 9: And I'm happy to make my choice, which is every
Speaker 9: single time my soul was not for sale, neither or
Speaker 9: my principles. We are a lot of men, We're very
Speaker 9: innocent men, and in time, everybody's going to see that,
Speaker 9: and we're very excited to finish the judicial.
Speaker 4: Process in there on. Ever, so that was Andrew Jaate
Speaker 4: and his brother Tristan Tate rebudding the allegations in similar
Speaker 4: terms as they have for the last year or so
Speaker 4: after this whole situation transpired. But F three that we
Speaker 4: we've previewed, we've kept you in suspense long enough. F
Speaker 4: three is what led to, according to actually the legal
Speaker 4: teams of his accusers, what led to Andrew Tate's arrest.
Speaker 4: Let's roll this.
Speaker 10: Andrew had hit me up. He said, Hey, I'm going
Speaker 10: to be uh leaving Romania soon and probably never coming back.
Speaker 10: If you want to come over and do a week
Speaker 10: of long streams and content before I leave, I think
Speaker 10: it'll be big. And it's never it's I'm sorry, he said,
Speaker 10: it's not. It's basically now or never, So you know,
Speaker 10: you know, and this is just I told you guys
Speaker 10: this year. You know it's a week of content, right
Speaker 10: and again guys, it might be the last time we
Speaker 10: ever do this, so it's kind of like we got
Speaker 10: to take advantage of it now because he bro it's
Speaker 10: it's it's just it's basically like, yeah, it's like that.
Speaker 4: So he was arrested on suspicion that he was about
Speaker 4: to flee Romania because again said he was about to
Speaker 4: flavor me. Uh that is do you think do you
Speaker 4: think it's in trouble?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Pro tip I guess, you know, be a little
Speaker 3: bit more discreet about your your getaway plan.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean that's so that was Aiden
Speaker 4: Ross obviously popular Andrew tain ally but yeah, yeah, formerly
Speaker 4: popular to be formally popular. But it does seem like
Speaker 4: incredibly almost unbelievably stupid to read that on air. But
Speaker 4: it's also just I feel like part of the part
Speaker 4: of the gig is not scripting things. So you're popular, right,
Speaker 4: you just you just aren't necessarily thinking things through like
Speaker 4: highly produced shows where you have your own mug break
Speaker 4: it's a mug but you know not that we actually
Speaker 4: don't have any scripts on this show. That's that's a
Speaker 4: little inside baseball. We don't we did.
Speaker 3: We think people can probably tell that we don't have scripts.
Speaker 4: I think it's probably not a secret to anybody that
Speaker 4: we don't have scripts. But all that is to say,
Speaker 4: that's sort of the draw for Ross is that nothing
Speaker 4: is scripted. But of course when you're not scripting, you're
Speaker 4: thinking things out, sometimes you do accidentally read out your friends.
Speaker 4: I will not do that to you, Ryan.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it if you for me. Remember if I'm
Speaker 3: ever fleeing Romania.
Speaker 1: The last time it seemed like Reda Thurnberg's beef with
Speaker 1: him online had seemed to had gotten him arrested. Turned
Speaker 1: out that maybe that wasn't totally true, although it was
Speaker 1: fun to believe. This one though, does actually seem to
Speaker 1: be the reason he got pinched.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the law firm that's representing for British women, that's
Speaker 4: a civil suit by the way, The law firm that's
Speaker 4: representing them is called the Q Law said that this
Speaker 4: is what they have information that this is they believe
Speaker 4: this is what triggered the arrest. But they also said
Speaker 4: though it's a separate these are new allegations. Apparently he's
Speaker 4: being arrested on charges or on new allegations, fleeing suspicion
Speaker 4: and potentially fleeing new allegations fleeing romania amid new allegations
Speaker 4: that could be criminal because again that's those four women.
Speaker 4: Are we you a civil suit against Andrew Tait? So
Speaker 4: more to come on this story for sure. Maybe stay
Speaker 4: tuned to the Influencer Universe, the Andrew Tate Influencer Universe
Speaker 4: for any breaking up dates about was whereabouts.
Speaker 1: Bronds you that's South Florida couple that they did the
Speaker 1: true crime series about where they're they were dentists and
Speaker 1: they did you follow this one? They killed the guy
Speaker 1: in Tallahassee who was their son in law over a
Speaker 1: custody dispute. And then on the phone, we're like talking
Speaker 1: about on like a prison flowing phone, We're like talking
Speaker 1: about fleeing to Vietnam where there's no extradition, and then
Speaker 1: the grandma got arrested, like in line at the airport
Speaker 1: on our way to Vietnam. Don't don't talk to your
Speaker 1: streamer friends or on a prison phone about your plans
Speaker 1: to flee.
Speaker 4: The prison phone seems even somehow dumber than the influencer.
Speaker 4: You just assume your influencer friend's not going to read
Speaker 4: your text on air. But that's also not a great dist.
Speaker 3: And you're on the prison phone, it's like this call
Speaker 3: is being monitored. Yes, so cool.
Speaker 1: Anyway, So I'm going to Vietnam because I don't think
Speaker 1: they have extradition with the United States according to my
Speaker 1: Google search, and then also used tour for your Google
Speaker 1: search when you're searching does the United States have an
Speaker 1: extradition treaty with X?
Speaker 3: Because that might get in trouble too.
Speaker 4: Yes, that's just generally These are pro tips from Ryan
Speaker 4: Grim who apparently has never fled.
Speaker 3: Never fled the law, well not yet anyway.
Speaker 4: We don't need to get into that, all right. That
Speaker 4: does it for us on today's edition of Counterpoints Rain.
Speaker 4: You'll be back here with Sager tomorrow for a Bro Show.
Speaker 1: Bro Show tomorrow morning Breakingpoints dot Com. Remember, you get
Speaker 1: your twenty five percent off discount that's been going on
Speaker 1: a while, but we can't tell you how long it's
Speaker 1: gonna last, so you better snap that sucker up.
Speaker 4: And we could probably preview here. We have some interesting
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Speaker 3: Been kicking around this Friday show. Yeah, and if you
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Speaker 3: subscriber there, that just encourage us to encourages us to
Speaker 3: bring you more, including a Friday show.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so stay tuned for more information on that. Stay
Speaker 4: tuned for Ryan and Sager back here with the Bro
Speaker 4: Show tomorrow, and we will be back with Counterpoints next Wednesday.
Speaker 4: Hope everyone has a great week.
Speaker 3: All I see you later.
Speaker 8: M