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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Thursday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed,
Speaker 1: we do lots of interesting stories this morning. We have
Speaker 1: a blowback on Capitol Hill from Republicans about that release
Speaker 1: of January six tapes. On Tucker Carlston Show. We also
Speaker 1: have some new text messages Tucker explaining exactly how he
Speaker 1: feels about Donald Trump in reality, very different from the
Speaker 1: picture he puts forward on his show. So we'll break
Speaker 1: that down for you. New budget battles. As the debt
Speaker 1: ceiling deadline comes closer and closer, Biden putting out his
Speaker 1: budget plans, House Republicans starting to come coalesce around their
Speaker 1: package of cuts that they are trying to demand, so
Speaker 1: we've got all of that for you. We also have
Speaker 1: new shots fired between Elon Musk at Twitter and the FTC.
Speaker 1: They are demanding all sorts of information, including the journalists
Speaker 1: and information about the journalists he interacted with and what
Speaker 1: exactly they had access to. Noam Chomsky out with a
Speaker 1: new ed warning about AI and chat GPT. And we
Speaker 1: also have a look at the House hearings on COVID
Speaker 1: and what was said there. But soccer first, we have
Speaker 1: a big announcement, big announcement here that we have been
Speaker 1: working on for literally years now at this point, so
Speaker 1: we will now have the full show video with time
Speaker 1: stamps on our Spotify Premium podcast. So what that means
Speaker 1: is our premium subscribers who have connected the full show
Speaker 1: their ability to watch it to their Spotify account. You
Speaker 1: no longer can just listen to it. You can also
Speaker 1: watch it inside of the Spotify app, as you can
Speaker 1: with many podcasts. So we've been working on that for
Speaker 1: a long time. Technologically it was actually it's far more
Speaker 1: difficult that it might sound to actually pull off. Thank
Speaker 1: you to our friends over at Supercast at Spotify and
Speaker 1: to our team here who has been ground testing it.
Speaker 1: It looks fantastic, It works fantastic, so enjoy and you
Speaker 1: can also listen at three point five speed. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: you get listen at whatever speed you desire. And it
Speaker 1: looks I have to say it was. It looks really great.
Speaker 1: It looks really nice, and Griffin was just showing us
Speaker 1: this morning. It actually has like the time codes, so
Speaker 1: you can easily sort of jump around and if there
Speaker 1: are certain segments you want to listen to and other
Speaker 1: things you want to skip past, it makes it easy
Speaker 1: to do that. So really excited about that. If you
Speaker 1: aren't premium subscriber, go ahead and become one so that
Speaker 1: you can have access to that as well, because it
Speaker 1: is very cool feature. It's an awesome thing. All right.
Speaker 1: Let's start with Fox News. So we have been covering
Speaker 1: quite a bit here, I know Emily did as well,
Speaker 1: the release of the Tucker Carlson footage from January sixth.
Speaker 1: It's actually kicked up quite a storm here Washington. A
Speaker 1: lot of GOP senators actually getting very upset with Fox
Speaker 1: and Tucker, specifically editorial coverage of that, all converging around
Speaker 1: the singular idea that the Capitol Police did nothing wrong
Speaker 1: on January sixth, Mitch McConnell, underscoring met let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to Abe by speak of a party to give
Speaker 1: access to touch approves of this situat My concern is
Speaker 1: how it was depicted, which is a different issue. Clearly,
Speaker 1: the chief of the Capitol Police, in my view, correctly
Speaker 1: describes what most of us witness firsthand on January sixth.
Speaker 1: So that's my reaction to it. It was a mistake,
Speaker 1: in my view for Fox News to depict this in
Speaker 1: a way that's completely at variance with what our chief
Speaker 1: law enforcement official here at the Capital thingcts. This is
Speaker 1: the interesting thing. So everybody's converging around the Capitol Police
Speaker 1: as if they didn't do anything particularly wrong that day.
Speaker 1: So let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: The Capitol Police chief letter. I'll read some of it
Speaker 1: to you in full. He says, quote A false allegation
Speaker 1: is that our officers helped the riders and acted as quote,
Speaker 1: tour guides. This is outrageous and false. The department stands
Speaker 1: by the officers in the video that was shown last night.
Speaker 1: I don't have to remind you how outnumbered our officers
Speaker 1: were on January sixth, Those officers did their best to
Speaker 1: use de escalation tactics to try to talk to rioters
Speaker 1: into getting each other to leave the building. The program
Speaker 1: conveniently cherry picked from the cammer moments of the forty
Speaker 1: one thousand hours of the video and commentary fails to
Speaker 1: provide context about the chaos and violence. So let's all
Speaker 1: just have a little bit of a reminder of what
Speaker 1: exactly that footage showed. It showed Capitol police officers, not
Speaker 1: if I mean effectively escorting and just following around the
Speaker 1: QAnon Chaman and look, Christal, I think we can sympathize
Speaker 1: with people who may want to quote, de escalate a conflict.
Speaker 1: That's certainly what I would advise as opposed to sorry,
Speaker 1: violence when you are outnumbered. But there there's a fine
Speaker 1: line between de escalation and straight up opening doors for someone,
Speaker 1: including to the floor of the United States Senate, like yes,
Speaker 1: that is where I just really have no idea how
Speaker 1: they can defend the conduct of these officers. For you
Speaker 1: could say, hey, you know one thing, listen, man, you
Speaker 1: know it would be better for you if you just
Speaker 1: left right now. That's one thing, But there's a whole
Speaker 1: other thing to literally basically follow somebody around seven people
Speaker 1: at one point one person, crazy person with like a
Speaker 1: weird sharpened spear. Why would you want to let that
Speaker 1: person onto the floor of the Senate. And then while
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, just so you know, like this is
Speaker 1: a really holy place, and you know, it was like, what,
Speaker 1: that's not Dschal, That's just odd. It's odd behavior, very
Speaker 1: odd behavior. If I may be permitted to have a
Speaker 1: nuanced view on this, there's two pieces. First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of what Tucker showed was like
Speaker 1: trying to cherry pick the calmest moments from January sixth
Speaker 1: and present a portrait that is at odds with reality.
Speaker 1: And so I sympathize with Republican senator and others who
Speaker 1: were like, this is bullshit. We also with our own
Speaker 1: eyes that parts of this day were extremely violent. A
Speaker 1: lot of people were injured, there were a lot of scuffles,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of fighting, all of that stuff. So,
Speaker 1: you know, don't give us just your sanitized, propaganda filled
Speaker 1: version that accords with the narrative that you have been
Speaker 1: trying to spin on your program, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: we'll get to in a moment. You know, he clearly
Speaker 1: put is happy to put lies out on his program
Speaker 1: that are wildly at odds with what he believes with
Speaker 1: So that's one piece. The piece though, that you're honing
Speaker 1: in on, though I think the explanation of the Capitol
Speaker 1: believes here, it just makes absolutely no sense. I mean
Speaker 1: and de escalatory tex You're leading him around, You're trying
Speaker 1: locked doors, like helping him to find the chamber he
Speaker 1: was How is that a de escalatory tactic? How is
Speaker 1: that like talk trying to talk him out of do it?
Speaker 1: There is none of that evident on the tape. And
Speaker 1: right in the wake of January sixth, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of I think very reasonable questions about how the
Speaker 1: hell this was allowed to happen, about failures of law
Speaker 1: enforcement on that day, including by the way, there were
Speaker 1: media questions, there were political questions, I believe, from both
Speaker 1: sides of the aisle, and there was an entire investigation
Speaker 1: done by the Capitol Police where they put some of
Speaker 1: their own people on leave because they did not conduct
Speaker 1: themselves in the way that they would want them to
Speaker 1: on that day. So even the Capitol Police previously did
Speaker 1: not agree with this assessment that it was all well
Speaker 1: and good on that day. And we'll get to some
Speaker 1: of that in a moment. Let's just put this next
Speaker 1: piece up on the screen, because this is the part
Speaker 1: I'm sympathetic to. Here's they say GOP senators were buke
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlsons narrative that January six was largely peaceful. Tillis said,
Speaker 1: it's bullshit, Kramer said, just a lia Graham said, I'm
Speaker 1: not interested in whitewashing January six, and Romney said trying
Speaker 1: to normalize that behavior is dangerous and disgusting. And those pieces,
Speaker 1: I actually am totally sympathetic too, because I do think
Speaker 1: he overall presented this very like selective, whitewashed version of
Speaker 1: what actually occurred on that day, and I think that's fine.
Speaker 1: But what I was saying was that and this is
Speaker 1: what I put out yesterday. The tell me in the
Speaker 1: freak out is that everyone is attacking the editorial position
Speaker 1: instead of trying to explain the actions of the Capitol
Speaker 1: Police in escorting the QAnon shaman around the Capital, right.
Speaker 1: And it's like you can listen every by definition, all
Speaker 1: editorial coverage of January sixth by any news network is
Speaker 1: going to be editorial. It is going to be cherry picked.
Speaker 1: The Washington Post literally won a Pulitzer Prize by quote
Speaker 1: cherry picking the video to be like reconstructing the attacks.
Speaker 1: So did the New York Times. They've have these highly
Speaker 1: produced documentaries, and I think that's fine. So at this point,
Speaker 1: now it's been over what it's been several years, you
Speaker 1: can at this point you can watch any footage to
Speaker 1: reinforce any narrative that you want to on this one.
Speaker 1: Let's take the editorial aside. Let's take the footage that
Speaker 1: we had not seen before and just say, hey, that's
Speaker 1: pretty weird. What was going on with that? And for
Speaker 1: some reason there is just been coalescing around the actions
Speaker 1: of the Capitol Police, when in reality, as you said,
Speaker 1: in the early days, there was broad recognition that this
Speaker 1: was a failure of tremendous proportions. I saw Joe Biden
Speaker 1: staffer or whatever put out a tweet yesterday being like,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, January sixth was just as bad as
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. Let's think about nine to eleven. Imagine
Speaker 1: if we did not have the takeaway that the FBI
Speaker 1: and the CIA had colossally failed at their jobs by
Speaker 1: allowing nine to eleven to happen. You can both venerate
Speaker 1: first responders, yes, and the violence and the victims, and
Speaker 1: also say, hey, structurally, this was a massive screw up. Now,
Speaker 1: unfortunately we didn't go full bore in terms of the
Speaker 1: intelligence community, but in this case, in the very early days,
Speaker 1: put us up there on the screen. As you alluded to,
Speaker 1: the Capitol Police suspended six of its officers and investigated
Speaker 1: dozens more after the Capital riots, and as this New
Speaker 1: York Times report is highlighting, there were several efforts after
Speaker 1: in the days to talk about how the force was
Speaker 1: in crisis, about how at one point the gear that
Speaker 1: they needed crystal was literally on a bus that was
Speaker 1: somewhere that was locked. They didn't have a rapid response plan.
Speaker 1: It was one of the greatest intelligence failures of all time.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why so many people are willing
Speaker 1: to believe a lot of theories that this was like
Speaker 1: a full blown false flag, because you're like, hey, you
Speaker 1: guys literally had FBI informants planted in the Proud Boys
Speaker 1: and the othkeepers, probably in the crowd. At the very least,
Speaker 1: we know there was some uniform on uniform. Uh, there
Speaker 1: were some undercover police officers that have been come out
Speaker 1: and test and given affidavits in court. How could you
Speaker 1: possibly not know and have given the Capitol Police heads up?
Speaker 1: Secondary like why was there an order given to the
Speaker 1: Capitol Police to not necessarily like use the full scope
Speaker 1: of law enforcement response? And the National Guard? Why was
Speaker 1: a National Guard not on call? Why were they called
Speaker 1: in you know, hours later? It was a complete and
Speaker 1: total mess. Initially there were actually some questions about this,
Speaker 1: but then eventually it all came down to, well, they
Speaker 1: were heroes, can't question anything, and oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: let's give them a ton more money in funding. I mean,
Speaker 1: the most likely explanation for the failures is in confidence.
Speaker 1: That's usually the common explanation for things that we have
Speaker 1: trouble understanding or explaining. I think they just failed in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways. They failed to prepare. And I'm
Speaker 1: not just talking about the US Capitol Police here or
Speaker 1: responsible for you know, the response on that day, but
Speaker 1: I'm talking about you know, law enforcement FBI leading up
Speaker 1: to the events of this day, when there was all
Speaker 1: kinds of intel out there and chatter public chatter about
Speaker 1: what they were planning to do on January sixth. I
Speaker 1: think a very logical explanation is, listen, it's no secret
Speaker 1: that law enforcement tends to be more right leaning, and
Speaker 1: they were more sympathetic to the cause, and so they
Speaker 1: in their own minds downplayed the potential risks of what
Speaker 1: could happen on January sixth. And you know, there were
Speaker 1: a couple signs of that. First of all, as we
Speaker 1: said before, there were and we'll play this in just
Speaker 1: a second. You know, right afterwards, videos emerged of some
Speaker 1: of the Capitol Police officers little literally opening appearing to
Speaker 1: open the barricade for protesters to go through, which fits
Speaker 1: then with this video of them like shepherding the QAnon
Speaker 1: shaman around and showing him exactly where he wants to go.
Speaker 1: One potential explanation is they were ideologically sympathetic and that
Speaker 1: was a barrier to them effectively doing their job in
Speaker 1: the way that we would want them to. And there
Speaker 1: was actually even one Capitol police officer put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen who was found guilty of obstruction with
Speaker 1: regards to January sixth case. Basically, what this guy was
Speaker 1: doing is the day after the attack, I'm reading from
Speaker 1: this article here. A Facebook friend of this former Capitol
Speaker 1: police officer with whom he'd never exchanged messages before, posted
Speaker 1: some images on Facebook of himself inside the Capitol during
Speaker 1: the attack, so he took it on himself. This dude
Speaker 1: then to message this guy who'd never talked to you
Speaker 1: before but he was friends with on Facebook, and rather
Speaker 1: than forwarding that information to the authorities, which you might
Speaker 1: expect someone in law enforcement to do, he instead instead
Speaker 1: sent the rioter a private message with advice about how
Speaker 1: to avoid being caught. He said, quote, I'm a Capitol
Speaker 1: Police officer who agrees with your political stance. Take down
Speaker 1: the part about being in the building. They're currently investigating
Speaker 1: and everyone, everyone who was in the building is going
Speaker 1: to be charged, he wrote, just looking out. So you know,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of signs that potentially one explanation here
Speaker 1: is that they were ideologically sympathetic, and so they failed
Speaker 1: to prepare in advance, not just the Capitol Police, but
Speaker 1: the FBI, who we know had infiltrators within some of
Speaker 1: these groups. They didn't take it seriously. They were too
Speaker 1: distracted with their other like elaborate designing plots for Gretchen
Speaker 1: Whitmer and Agent provocateurs and Black Lives Matter protests and
Speaker 1: all of those things to actually effectively prepare for what
Speaker 1: was a very dangerous situation. And then on the day
Speaker 1: of as we said before, at the time people were
Speaker 1: allowed and the Capitol Police themselves were investigating whether their
Speaker 1: people actually responded in the way that they were supposed to. Now,
Speaker 1: the reason that this all turned is because I think
Speaker 1: there were a couple things that happened. First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, this was at a time when Democrats were
Speaker 1: all freaked out about what defund the police had done
Speaker 1: to their standing with voters, so they were skittish about
Speaker 1: like critiquing law enforcement whatsoever. Republicans usually reliably back up
Speaker 1: law enforcement kind of no matter what, no matter whether
Speaker 1: they were good, bad, and different, honest line, whatever. And
Speaker 1: Democrats decided that the simple narrative that they wanted to
Speaker 1: go with on January sixth, because they thought it would
Speaker 1: be the most sympathetic to the American public, is these
Speaker 1: people were heroes, the Capitol Police officers in every single instance,
Speaker 1: and the people on the other side are the clear villains.
Speaker 1: And so they went with that Disney version of events,
Speaker 1: which obviously obscured some key reasons why the response failed
Speaker 1: so devastatingly on that day. Yeah, and I think that's
Speaker 1: a very important thing to underscore, which is you can
Speaker 1: what's his name with Eugene Goodman, right, he was one
Speaker 1: of those who escorted the senators. Sure, absolutely a heroic act.
Speaker 1: But at the same time of the famous video, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and put it up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: we have Capitol police officers here literally shown opening the
Speaker 1: gates for protesters. I mean, there is literally no zero,
Speaker 1: zero innocent explanation for this. You could see the guy
Speaker 1: waving people in from the crowd. How can you possibly
Speaker 1: claim that that wasn't one of the greatest failures of
Speaker 1: all I mean, imagine also if these people had been
Speaker 1: more violent, they could have burned this thing to the ground,
Speaker 1: like eighteen twelve. It's one of those where you initially
Speaker 1: had a little bit of criticism. Some Republicans were like, hey,
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, why did you not call in the National
Speaker 1: Guard because you apparently had some level of chain of command.
Speaker 1: And then everybody just quashed it and we decided to
Speaker 1: move on. And then the jan six Committee, which was
Speaker 1: supposed to get to the bottom of this type of stuff,
Speaker 1: just ignored it completely. And of course here's the worst part.
Speaker 1: Put this up there after everything. Because of this narrative,
Speaker 1: the Capitol Police received two point one billion dollars in
Speaker 1: July of twenty twenty one in quote emergency funding to
Speaker 1: avoid furloughs, to pay for overtime, to pay for training,
Speaker 1: when in reality, on that day, if you have one
Speaker 1: hundred more police officers, maybe with the proper riot gear,
Speaker 1: the entire thing goes completely differently. And we are talking
Speaker 1: here about billions upon billions that have now been given
Speaker 1: to this incompetent agency, which clearly failed dramatically. Nobody was
Speaker 1: ever fired at the very top. There was never any
Speaker 1: real screen. They didn't even have a real commission, Like look,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to say about the nine to eleven commission,
Speaker 1: but it did at least recommend some changes to the
Speaker 1: way that intelligence sharing and the way that the US
Speaker 1: intelligence community would operate with respect to terrorist threats, because
Speaker 1: we all acknowledge, you know, Biparson fashion, like this is
Speaker 1: one of the greatest law enforcement and intelligence failures literally
Speaker 1: of all times. So let's try to make sure that
Speaker 1: we avoid it. And unfortunately we also gave them a
Speaker 1: ton of money and not enough oversight. But in this case,
Speaker 1: we didn't even do the oversight. We just gave them
Speaker 1: more money. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, And the
Speaker 1: last thing I want to say about this too is
Speaker 1: the QAnon shaman dude. I think his name is what
Speaker 1: Jessin Chansley is at. Yes, I mean they clearly because
Speaker 1: he was like the most visible symbol of the day,
Speaker 1: which he you know, took upon himself and listen, he's
Speaker 1: responsible for his own actions and no one here is
Speaker 1: saying otherwise. However, I do think it's outrageous that they
Speaker 1: didn't have access to this footage when he was considering
Speaker 1: mounting a defense. Now he pled guilty very quickly. Maybe
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have made a difference, but it could have
Speaker 1: potentially made a difference in terms of sentencing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I try to stand up for people's rights regardless of
Speaker 1: whether I agree with them politically or not, and I
Speaker 1: think it would be really inconsistent if we didn't do
Speaker 1: so here and say he deserved to have access to
Speaker 1: this footage, his defense deserve to have access to this footage,
Speaker 1: and potentially things may have gone somewhat different for him.
Speaker 1: And there's a lot of other defendants who actually requested
Speaker 1: who the judge denied access to this footage and sentenced
Speaker 1: them and did not even allow the jury or even
Speaker 1: their own attorneys to be able to present any of
Speaker 1: this to try and strike a different deal. As you said,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no way you cannot defend that because
Speaker 1: if that flat I mean, listen, what did he end
Speaker 1: up getting four years? I think, yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: this comes out, you know, and it went to trial
Speaker 1: in Northern Virginia, jury probably would have convicted him. Anyways,
Speaker 1: that said, you know, you have no idea what it
Speaker 1: could have gone differently. So anyway, like you said, he
Speaker 1: pled guilty. He is a grown man at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. Nobody asked him to take a shirt
Speaker 1: off draw weird pentagrams on it stormcap Yah. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying the man is innocent, but you know,
Speaker 1: the whole point of trial, and you know, especially in
Speaker 1: our judicial system, is to try, you know, innocent. You're
Speaker 1: innocent before proven guilty, and you're supposed to be able
Speaker 1: to give in the best possible chance at providing a defense.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it was fair that they withheld it. Anyway.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next part here inside of the
Speaker 1: ongoing one point six billion dollar lawsuit for Dominion voting
Speaker 1: Systems versus Fox News, of which Fox has a very
Speaker 1: serious chance of suffering reputation, not only just reputational damage
Speaker 1: now at this point through the discovery process, but they
Speaker 1: may have to pay, and pay big time. So let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up there on the screen. Interesting
Speaker 1: exchange between Tucker Carlson and I believe it's one of
Speaker 1: his producers. This is on January fourth. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: we are very very close to be able to ignore
Speaker 1: Trump most nights. I truly cannot wait. I want nothing more.
Speaker 1: It feels very close. I imagine things will start around
Speaker 1: mid February. That's from an unknown probably likely somebody works
Speaker 1: on the show. He says, quote, I hate him passionately.
Speaker 1: I blew up at Peter today, Peter Navarro in frustration.
Speaker 1: I actually like Peter, but I can't handle much more
Speaker 1: of this. Put the next one up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: which I actually found this one to be funnier, he
Speaker 1: says Tucker Carlton. It really explains why the left wins
Speaker 1: so much. They have Mark Elliots and lawyers from every
Speaker 1: other major law firm. We have Lynnwood and Sydney Powell,
Speaker 1: that's the last four years. We've got a lot to
Speaker 1: show for it, because admitting what a disaster it's been
Speaker 1: is too tough to die out because we're all pretending
Speaker 1: we've got a lot to show for it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there isn't really an upside to Trump. So that's something
Speaker 1: that he put. You know, I'm curious for Crystal because
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily read it the same way. I think
Speaker 1: that while Tucker has always played defense for Trump, he
Speaker 1: has not necessarily defended him. He has always positioned himself.
Speaker 1: And look, this is more of a content way that
Speaker 1: a lot of people in Fox are, which is if
Speaker 1: you don't have someone that you want to one hundred
Speaker 1: percent defend, what you do is you just attack all
Speaker 1: of their enemies and you focus on the enemy specifically.
Speaker 1: And you know in private, I know, you know, based
Speaker 1: on the reporting and all that, what came out from
Speaker 1: Syria where he basically convinced Trump not to bomb Iran,
Speaker 1: he was one of the major forces on that. He
Speaker 1: also part of the reason why he would reserve his fire,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, was because he maintained a decent
Speaker 1: relationship with Trump, and every once in a while Trump
Speaker 1: would actually listen to him. For example, COVID he was
Speaker 1: one of those people who traveled to Florida and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you need to take this seriously. I am not defending him.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, from what I have understood his
Speaker 1: position positionality with Trump is that Trump was like a
Speaker 1: figure who he didn't necessarily like, didn't necessarily want to defend,
Speaker 1: and so would attack the enemies instead. Because also that
Speaker 1: makes what good ratings whenever you're dealing with audience. So
Speaker 1: I'm curious what you think. I mean, I don't doubt
Speaker 1: that that's what he tells himself, but it's also cope,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, ultimately, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: your position visa VI the audience, especially as like an
Speaker 1: analyst an opinion journalist as he is, is to tell
Speaker 1: them what you really think. And obviously he was not
Speaker 1: telling them what he really thought and very much misled
Speaker 1: the audience, if not outright lied to the audience about
Speaker 1: his actual views of the situation. In that, I don't
Speaker 1: think he's unique. I mean, there were, you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of elite Republicans and journalists who had some similar
Speaker 1: rationale about like, oh well, if I work in the administration,
Speaker 1: and I do his dirty work for him, then I'll
Speaker 1: be able to like influence him a little bit, or
Speaker 1: you know, this is what I have to do in
Speaker 1: order to keep my job, et cetera, et cetera. You know,
Speaker 1: Tucker's a wealthy guy. He would be fine if his
Speaker 1: ratings fell. He'd be fine if he was out of
Speaker 1: a job at Fox. And so I think it's shameful,
Speaker 1: like that's the basic deal you make with your audience,
Speaker 1: that you're going to be straightforward with them, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think there's always a question people's minds
Speaker 1: when they're watching cable doos, whether it's Fox or other
Speaker 1: outlets of like do these people really believe what they're
Speaker 1: selling the public? And in this instance, and in the
Speaker 1: instance of a lot of Sean Hannity and laur Ingram
Speaker 1: based on some of the texts that came out about
Speaker 1: them too, the answer is plainly no. I think it's
Speaker 1: actually a sad tale because it's one of those where
Speaker 1: that is a perfect illustration of how, whenever you want
Speaker 1: to maintain influence inside of the system, many times you
Speaker 1: really can't say exactly what you think. And the reason,
Speaker 1: as you said, I mean there's no question, like, look,
Speaker 1: Fox could fire him tomorrow, he'd have one of the
Speaker 1: most popular podcasts of all time. I have no doubt
Speaker 1: about that whatsoever. I think it'd be completely fine in
Speaker 1: an independent media environment. As you said, I don't think
Speaker 1: it particularly cares even about money at this point. So
Speaker 1: what is the point of the game, And I mean
Speaker 1: most of them like the influence that Fox gives them
Speaker 1: to influence policy, to have their actual opinions influence the
Speaker 1: political process. The speakers race Ukraine, COVID. I laid out
Speaker 1: some of those examples, but unfortunately, and one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that you and I decided to do this, and
Speaker 1: increasingly the more that we have done this have probably
Speaker 1: the less least amount not even influenced, but even contact
Speaker 1: with the system, is that when you say what you
Speaker 1: think that hurts you inside of the system because they
Speaker 1: don't they don't, they don't even appreciate it. They actively
Speaker 1: punish people, and so it's difficult, you know, it really
Speaker 1: is is like when you're inside of this, it is
Speaker 1: a game in which saying you know, I look, I
Speaker 1: always try to tell people exactly what I think, and
Speaker 1: it has cost me a lot personal relationships professional relationships
Speaker 1: and all that. You know, with the knowledge, I think
Speaker 1: that obviously you're going to hold me accountable. But also,
Speaker 1: you know, many of the people watching this show are
Speaker 1: they would I think they would know if you're pulling
Speaker 1: your punch, yes, And I think that's that's what the
Speaker 1: unfortunate part of it. Yeah, well, what you see zooming
Speaker 1: out from Tucker and looking at the entirety of the
Speaker 1: Fox text message revelations, which are pretty devastating to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, any like a reasonable person looking at that
Speaker 1: would be like, Okay, you all are completely manipulative, like
Speaker 1: just selling us what we want to hear. They are
Speaker 1: suffering deeply from audience capture, and you know, the road
Speaker 1: to hell is paved with this sort of rationalization of like, well,
Speaker 1: I got to back them up on this thing because
Speaker 1: then I'll maintain my influence. I got to go along
Speaker 1: with this other thing because I'll maintain my influence. And
Speaker 1: that's never been more clear than with a figure like Trump,
Speaker 1: who's just going to keep pushing and pushing and pushing
Speaker 1: and pushing the envelope until you find yourself like, you know,
Speaker 1: pretending that January sixth was actually totally fine or pretending
Speaker 1: like going along with stop the steal when you privately
Speaker 1: are like Sydney Pal's insane and she's a lunatic, and
Speaker 1: this is all complete nonsense, Like he's just going to
Speaker 1: keep pushing you to a more and more ridiculous spot.
Speaker 1: But since you justified all these other steps along the road,
Speaker 1: you're going to keep justifying the further steps down the road,
Speaker 1: even though now you've just gone like wildly away from
Speaker 1: what you actually think. And to give you an example
Speaker 1: that you know is on like the liberal side of things,
Speaker 1: it reminds me in a small way of Elizabeth Warren
Speaker 1: in the last presidential primary, where you know, she came
Speaker 1: into her political power a deep critique of Joe Biden
Speaker 1: on economic issues and specifically on bankruptcy law. But when
Speaker 1: she was actually up on the stage, rather than saying
Speaker 1: what she really at least at one point believed and
Speaker 1: had said very clearly and powerfully before she held her fire,
Speaker 1: why because she wanted to maintain her influence. Remember she said,
Speaker 1: I'm just a player in the game. That was her
Speaker 1: whole thing was like, well, I can't really say what
Speaker 1: I actually think about this guy because he may well win.
Speaker 1: I want to be vice president or maybe Treasury secretary.
Speaker 1: I want to get invited to the White House. I
Speaker 1: want to keep being a player in the game. And
Speaker 1: so she ultimately really compromised like a key part of
Speaker 1: what she claimed to believe previously and what she built
Speaker 1: her entire career on, out of a justification of, well,
Speaker 1: I got to play nice because I need to be
Speaker 1: a player inside the game. So I think we've seen
Speaker 1: this play out so many times in Washington. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a particularly stark example where the guy that
Speaker 1: you've been propping up for years behind the scenes, You're
Speaker 1: not just like I don't know about this guy, You're like,
Speaker 1: I hate him passionately. Right. It's a particularly stark example,
Speaker 1: but I think you can find a million such examples
Speaker 1: at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and throughout the DC ecosystem,
Speaker 1: where people rationalize and justify morally indefensible positions insert because
Speaker 1: they tell themselves they're so important that they need to
Speaker 1: maintain their influences. I thought that too, you know, I
Speaker 1: saw a lot of mainstream media people be like, this
Speaker 1: is how little Fox thinks of its audience. I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: we're going to pretend that you don't think just as
Speaker 1: little of yours. I'm like, let me ask you behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, behind a glass of whiskey, like you really
Speaker 1: believed in Russiagate the whole time, Like you really think
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is up there and that he has a
Speaker 1: stutter that miraculously appeared when you were seventy nine years old, Like,
Speaker 1: give me a break. So look, I think it's a
Speaker 1: systemic problem all of that. So yeah, anyway, that's what
Speaker 1: it is. And I've never been happier just to be
Speaker 1: able to do this show. We've already we've cut those
Speaker 1: times the sale. Yeah, we're good, We're free, and it
Speaker 1: is a good thing, all right. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: what is going on with the debt sailing. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of things that are converging right at the moment.
Speaker 1: On the one side, you have Joe Biden putting out
Speaker 1: his budget. Now this is not directly about the debt ceiling,
Speaker 1: but it is kind of him positioning himself and creating
Speaker 1: the messaging he wants about his vision for the country
Speaker 1: versus the ground that the Republicans are staking out. So
Speaker 1: in that way you can sort of see these as
Speaker 1: you know, two separate positions on the debt ceiling, even
Speaker 1: though that's not quite directly the case. All right, let's
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. In terms of what
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is proposing. We have some new details this
Speaker 1: morning I can share with you as well. This is
Speaker 1: the New York Times. They say he set to detail
Speaker 1: three trillion dollars in measures to reduce the deficits. This
Speaker 1: is primarily the deficit reduction part of this is primarily
Speaker 1: about taxes on the wealthy and large corporation, so they
Speaker 1: say is expected to announce a new tax on households
Speaker 1: worth more than one hundred million dollars woud apply to
Speaker 1: both their earned income and unrealized gains in the value
Speaker 1: of their liquid assets like stock, So this is kind
Speaker 1: of a well tax. He will also call for the
Speaker 1: quadrupling of attacks on stock buybacks that was approved as
Speaker 1: part of a sweeping tax healthcare and climate Billy signed
Speaker 1: last year. So I'm actually going to go deep on
Speaker 1: stock buybacks in my monologue today, if you guys are
Speaker 1: interested in such things. The original tax that he levied,
Speaker 1: I love the way they phrased this was one percent.
Speaker 1: It did absolutely nothing in terms of like curtailing stock buybacks.
Speaker 1: So when they're like, he's quadrupling a tax on stock
Speaker 1: buybacks from one percent to four percent, So wow, that's incredible,
Speaker 1: they should just be banned outright. Moving on, they also
Speaker 1: said that it will increase an expansion of an investment
Speaker 1: tax on high earners, which would be directed to the
Speaker 1: Medicare Trust. Mind, they say that that plus the proposed
Speaker 1: savings from additional Medicare negotiations on prescription drugs, would reduce
Speaker 1: deficits by about nine hundred billion dollars on net and soccer.
Speaker 1: There's additional reporting this month from the Washington Post. I
Speaker 1: think Jeff Stein was involved in that that they're going
Speaker 1: to in the budget propose some of the pieces that
Speaker 1: were initially in build back better, including the expanded child
Speaker 1: tax credit, some moves on paid family leave, some moves
Speaker 1: on childcare, and some moves on universal pre K, along
Speaker 1: with this set of tax hikes on the wealthy effectively
Speaker 1: in order to so that's sort of their proposal is
Speaker 1: an expanded social safety net plus these tax cuts or
Speaker 1: tax hikes on the wealthy in order to pay for it. Right,
Speaker 1: And I think I know Counterpoints covered this yesterday too,
Speaker 1: but it bears repeating, listen, this budget is totally fake.
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen. There has not been an act.
Speaker 1: It's a messaging BUDGDGET. That's all that has passed Congress.
Speaker 1: I want to say since two thousand and not maybe
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, the last time that the president
Speaker 1: delivered a budget. They held hearings on the budget and
Speaker 1: then they passed it in full. Our budgeting system is
Speaker 1: a gigantic mass, basically been dead since the days of Obama.
Speaker 1: So I think people should understand how this is basically
Speaker 1: a campaign. That's exactly right. It's a messaging document staking
Speaker 1: out his position, which is high taxes on the rich,
Speaker 1: expand the social safety net. The Republican position heading into
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling showdown is quite different. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. So this is also
Speaker 1: the New York Times. They say House GOP prepares to
Speaker 1: slash federal programs in coming budget showdown, with social Security
Speaker 1: and medicare off the table. Conservatives are focusing on a
Speaker 1: wide range of smaller programs as a clash with Biden
Speaker 1: and Democrats looms. So they have taken off the table
Speaker 1: after initially sort of like some of them were flirting
Speaker 1: with it, but they have now taken off the tables
Speaker 1: are security and Medicare. I think Trump was probably very
Speaker 1: influential on that, as well as honestly Biden in the
Speaker 1: State of the Union, who when they all freak down, Oh,
Speaker 1: of course, we don't cut Social Security Medicare, even though
Speaker 1: we've been trying to do that for decades and decades
Speaker 1: and decades, they kind of back themselves into a corner
Speaker 1: on that one. So those have been put off the table.
Speaker 1: And they also don't want to really cut the defense
Speaker 1: budget other than some like minor line item for a
Speaker 1: like diversity initiative, which basically amounts to next to nothing
Speaker 1: in terms of the actual amount of money you would save.
Speaker 1: So since they put those big pieces on the table
Speaker 1: off the table, that means that they have to deeply
Speaker 1: slash basically everything else. What they are talking about here
Speaker 1: in this article. In particular, they say it includes a
Speaker 1: forty five percent cut to for and aid, adding work
Speaker 1: requirements for food Stamp and Medicaid beneficiaries, forty three percent
Speaker 1: cut to housing programs, including phasing out Section eight. All
Speaker 1: together cutting the FBI's counter intelligence budget by nearly half.
Speaker 1: I think I could probably get behind that piece of
Speaker 1: it and eliminating Obamacare expansions to Medicaid to save tens
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars. Nearly forty states have accepted that
Speaker 1: Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. About twelve million
Speaker 1: people benefit from that. So what they're proposing here is
Speaker 1: effectively cutting healthcare for twelve million Americans, among a lot
Speaker 1: of other cuts. So that's the position that they've found
Speaker 1: themselves at. And we've been talking about Listen, if you're
Speaker 1: taking entitlements and defense off the table, like the math
Speaker 1: doesn't really work out, you basically have to kill the
Speaker 1: entire rest of the federal budget in order for this
Speaker 1: to come together with the math that they want, right.
Speaker 1: I think it's important for people to understand that too,
Speaker 1: which is like, if you really do want to get
Speaker 1: serious about it and you don't want to cut defense, like,
Speaker 1: there's really no way to do it without impacting a
Speaker 1: lot of American programs which are actually broadly popular amongst Republicans.
Speaker 1: There's a reason that forty how many states voted for
Speaker 1: Republicans a lot more than four or yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: less than ten or a lot more than ten. You
Speaker 1: tend that haven't expanded Medicaid, and that's because it's actually
Speaker 1: very popular, especially in the South, with a lot of
Speaker 1: governors who have quietly kind of used it for expansion.
Speaker 1: I would just say that, and it does not necessarily
Speaker 1: fit within the spirit of don't touch Social Security and
Speaker 1: Medicare because Medicaid is also used increasingly also by a
Speaker 1: lot of Republican voters. So that's one that I would know.
Speaker 1: And it's popular too, by the way. Yeah, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: healthcare is popular. Don't know why. It's exactly difficult for
Speaker 1: people to get their minds around that broadly in terms
Speaker 1: of the budget too. Even with the GOP one, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing as a messaging campaign document. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean anything like much of this is not going to happen.
Speaker 1: I increasingly looking at these two documents, I'm curious what
Speaker 1: you think. I think we're just going right back to seaquestration.
Speaker 1: There is no for people who don't know what sequestration is.
Speaker 1: It basically is off the board percentage cuts against It's
Speaker 1: like a haircut across the federal government, including with the
Speaker 1: defense budget. And it's one of the ways that they
Speaker 1: were able to square it during the Obama years, and
Speaker 1: it's because there was just no there was no agreement
Speaker 1: on anything. All they could agree to fund the government
Speaker 1: was basically haircutting all of federal spending. And when you
Speaker 1: do that, it broadly impacts all programs across the board.
Speaker 1: So I don't see a way that we get through
Speaker 1: all of this without just going right back towards it.
Speaker 1: And by the way, sequestration was very unpopular. People in
Speaker 1: the military hated it, people domestic programs hate Republicans hated it,
Speaker 1: Democrats hated it, And that's part of the reason why
Speaker 1: I was the only compromise. I don't know, I genuinely
Speaker 1: don't know how it gets resolved. And the deadline is
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's the summer, so this is not
Speaker 1: far away. And the Republican caucus, obviously in the House,
Speaker 1: they have a very small majority, so it's not just
Speaker 1: getting agreement with the Democrats, who you know, are disgusted
Speaker 1: with the idea of taking the country's economy hostage to
Speaker 1: force any spending cuts through. So that's the you know,
Speaker 1: that's the big barrier. But even within their own caucus,
Speaker 1: this is an initial sort of like high level plan,
Speaker 1: but when you actually get to the nitty gritty and
Speaker 1: people start realizing like, oh, this is going to hurt
Speaker 1: this project in my district. This is going to hurt
Speaker 1: this program in my district. My constituents are going to
Speaker 1: be furious if they lose their healthcare and they start
Speaker 1: blaming me. That becomes very dicey as well. And then
Speaker 1: you have some hardliners in the Republican Caucus who are like,
Speaker 1: I'm not voting for a debts only increased period period,
Speaker 1: end of story. I don't care how, I'm just not
Speaker 1: doing it, period. So I genuinely we do not know
Speaker 1: how this is going to be resolved, and that's why
Speaker 1: we're continuing to focus on it, because it's this thing
Speaker 1: that's sort of hanging out there as a real threat
Speaker 1: to the economy and a major political like blow up
Speaker 1: in the near future, and there is no clear resolutions. No,
Speaker 1: there isn't a clear resolution. That's an important point for
Speaker 1: everybody to understand too, which is that we could very
Speaker 1: certainly get to some sort of debt breach. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I don't think it will matter is
Speaker 1: that just think about it, you know, you may eventually
Speaker 1: What would happen is and also McCarthy shot himself in
Speaker 1: the foot with the motion to vacate. All the Democrats
Speaker 1: would need to do is force a vote onto the
Speaker 1: floor through some legislative chicanery, and then you could get
Speaker 1: some moderate Republicans to join the Dems to push through
Speaker 1: a debt sealing package. The only question is whether Hakim
Speaker 1: Jefferies would let the Democrats do that. But I do
Speaker 1: think that if we came down to some showdown and
Speaker 1: he had only ten Republicans doing the holdout, I think
Speaker 1: there are enough Dems who are like, look, we're not
Speaker 1: going to crash the economy, let's just pass. So you
Speaker 1: think there'll be some sort of a like what do
Speaker 1: they call that from a legally blonde what's the petition? Oh,
Speaker 1: discharge petition? Yes, well, discharge petition is a little bit different.
Speaker 1: I think discharge petition is through a committee, but it
Speaker 1: is similar principle in terms of given the rules that
Speaker 1: McCarthy set forward. If people don't know the history of
Speaker 1: the original debt ceiling fight, this happened all the time.
Speaker 1: Bayiner would go to Pelosi and be like, listen, I
Speaker 1: can't pass this thing without you, so I'm going to
Speaker 1: bring it to the floor, you bring, you bringing some
Speaker 1: of your people in far left. Yeah, right. Problem is
Speaker 1: but that's the issue is because they made it so
Speaker 1: easy to toss McCarthy. If he does make a deal
Speaker 1: with them, he will know that that's the end of
Speaker 1: his speakers. It's possible, and that's why it's so that's
Speaker 1: why the positions are so hardened, and it's so difficult
Speaker 1: to see the way that they get out of this.
Speaker 1: The Republicans are clearly going to they're either really actually
Speaker 1: serious and comfortable with breaching the debt ceiling and whatever
Speaker 1: fallout may occur from that, or they're going to great
Speaker 1: lengths to bluff in that regard. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this last piece up on the screen, because they have gone.
Speaker 1: They have taken what they describe as an step on
Speaker 1: preparing for federal default. And basically what they're doing here
Speaker 1: is something called debt prioritization, where they're taking all of
Speaker 1: the hour running millions of payments that the federal government
Speaker 1: puts out and they're trying to say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: we'll keep paying these ones if we breach the debt ceiling,
Speaker 1: but not those ones. And they're trying to come up
Speaker 1: with like what does that whole process look like ultimately,
Speaker 1: because they want to either signal like we're serious, we're
Speaker 1: not worried about going breaching the debt ceiling, We've got
Speaker 1: a plan in place, or because they want to bluff
Speaker 1: and want to convince everybody that they're actually serious and
Speaker 1: try to force cuts that way. Well, it's one of
Speaker 1: those where this is a big fight. One of the
Speaker 1: things that in the previous era they realize is that
Speaker 1: if you give the executive the authority, because they have
Speaker 1: incoming revenue, they could distribute it the way that they
Speaker 1: would want to. This would be a way for Congress
Speaker 1: to bigfoot the Treasury Department say no, if we go
Speaker 1: into default, you're going to spend money exactly the way
Speaker 1: that we want to. We won't let you support social programs.
Speaker 1: You have to only do like debt payoffs or whatever,
Speaker 1: which have to be a giveaway to Wall Street. Which
Speaker 1: is funny, yeah, but huge giveaway to Wall Street. I
Speaker 1: mean it would if they go forward with it would
Speaker 1: be huge political It would be a disaster for the
Speaker 1: economy and no one should cheer for it. It would
Speaker 1: be a political gift to Democrats because they can say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're paying off the like wealthy bondholders, but you're letting
Speaker 1: kids go hungry and like stripping people's healthcare. How is
Speaker 1: that going to look for the Republican Party? So in
Speaker 1: any case, it's a mess. I don't know how it's
Speaker 1: going to be resolved, and everybody's sort of like staking
Speaker 1: out their positions right now. Yeah, good luck. Okay, have
Speaker 1: a little bit of elon Twitter government news which is
Speaker 1: quite interesting. And I'm not one hundred percent sure what
Speaker 1: to make of all of this, so just put the
Speaker 1: facts upon the screen for you. Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this on up from the Wall Street Journal, the FTC,
Speaker 1: that's the Federal Trade Commission, led by Lena Khan. Their
Speaker 1: Twitter investigation sought Elon Musk's internal communications, including journalists names.
Speaker 1: Documents obtained by a House panel shed light on the
Speaker 1: probe into Twitter's compliance with a settlement. Let me go
Speaker 1: and read a little bit of this to you. They say.
Speaker 1: They demanded Twitter turnover internal communications related to owner Elon Musk,
Speaker 1: as well as detailed info about layoffs, citing concerns that
Speaker 1: staff reductions could compromise the company's ability to protect users.
Speaker 1: Documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal show they go
Speaker 1: on to say in twelve letters sent to Twitter and lawyers,
Speaker 1: the FTC asked the company to identify all journalists granted
Speaker 1: access to company records and provide info about the launch
Speaker 1: of the revamped Twitter Blue subscription service. They're also seeking
Speaker 1: to depose mister Musk in connection with the probe. Now,
Speaker 1: the core of what they say are their concerns here
Speaker 1: are whether Twitter is holding up their end of the
Speaker 1: agreement that they have already with the FDC, because there's
Speaker 1: already a consent order in place with regards to keeping
Speaker 1: users information private. I'm somewhat sympathetic to that end, especially
Speaker 1: given that, I mean, Twitter has been a shit show,
Speaker 1: like keeps crashing, having problems. Listen, it's easy forget that
Speaker 1: Twitter has long had a lot of technical issues, but
Speaker 1: they have definitely accelerated in the Elon Musk era. So
Speaker 1: I think it's reasonable for the FTC to be, like,
Speaker 1: you holding up your end of the deal here, are
Speaker 1: you actually protecting users privacy in the way that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to. However, the part that is very, very troubling
Speaker 1: from a First Amendment perspective is them demanding the names
Speaker 1: of journalists who were given access to Twitter information and
Speaker 1: also you know, wanting to know the specifics of those
Speaker 1: communications and exactly what was provided. So that was actually
Speaker 1: my take. So the more I read into it, I
Speaker 1: was like, is this a political persecution of Elon? Like
Speaker 1: what's happening here? It's actually kind of complicated. So, as
Speaker 1: you alluded to, there is a consent degree and the
Speaker 1: reason why is that back in twenty eleven, there was
Speaker 1: a consent order between FTC and Twitter that barred it
Speaker 1: from misrepresenting how its individual's contact information would be stored.
Speaker 1: So they did not disclose that they for years had
Speaker 1: actually fed information including phone numbers and email addresses. This
Speaker 1: is before any time that Twitter was taken over by Elon.
Speaker 1: Those were used ostensibly for account security purposes two factor authentication.
Speaker 1: They were using that data without our consent and feeding
Speaker 1: it into their advertising tools, so linking our phone numbers
Speaker 1: with stuff that we had signed up before on our
Speaker 1: iPhone so they could better serve us ads. They had
Speaker 1: actually had to pay one hundred and fifty million dollar fine,
Speaker 1: and between twenty and thirteen and twenty nineteen, Twitter had
Speaker 1: told users that it was collecting their information only to
Speaker 1: enable multi factor authentication measures on their accounts. According to
Speaker 1: the DOJ complaint, the company did not notify any users.
Speaker 1: Actually remember this because I never was notified either that
Speaker 1: this information would be used to help sell ads. So
Speaker 1: this is called a deceptive behavior tactic that affected up
Speaker 1: to one hundred and forty million people, and it was
Speaker 1: directly admitted to by then Chief Privacy offer officer over
Speaker 1: at Twitter. Actually, what this really underscores to me is,
Speaker 1: like I said, at first, I was like, I feel
Speaker 1: like this is BS, They're just going after Elon. But
Speaker 1: when I read into it, this is actually part of
Speaker 1: the mess that he bought. And I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: that he understood that there was this consent degree which
Speaker 1: they were operating under, where the DOJ basically has the
Speaker 1: right with the FTC to come in and slap you
Speaker 1: with massive fines if you are not abiding by that
Speaker 1: same system. It also calls into the question with Twitter
Speaker 1: Blue and some of the other personal data, he basically
Speaker 1: is going to have to prove that all of the
Speaker 1: info that we willingly provide to Twitter is properly disclosed
Speaker 1: to us how that info is used. And the only
Speaker 1: reason why I think it's possibly he could be in
Speaker 1: trouble is there's just not a lot of employees working
Speaker 1: on this stuff. They may not even even known when
Speaker 1: they bought the company. Yeah, that this is kind of
Speaker 1: the stuff that you have to disclose, and this is
Speaker 1: the legal nightmare that you walk into with a lot
Speaker 1: of these social media companies. And clearly like the layoffs
Speaker 1: have been very aggressive and also very haphazard. There was
Speaker 1: a whole exchange that unfolded on Twitter that I'm sure
Speaker 1: some of you saw, where there was a guy it
Speaker 1: was like, hey, am I still an employer or not?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know. I didn't get any notification, but
Speaker 1: I don't have an email. There was a kind of
Speaker 1: an ugly back and forth. Ultimately Elon had to end
Speaker 1: up apologizing this guy. And I don't think you should
Speaker 1: have apologized. Well, I think he was worried about a lawsuit.
Speaker 1: It was one hundred percent worried about a lawsuit because
Speaker 1: he was you know, he was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: whether what he said about this man was true or not,
Speaker 1: but it was very ugly and so he ultimately had
Speaker 1: to apologize and was like he's considering coming back to
Speaker 1: work for us. So anyway, it's just a sign that
Speaker 1: the layoffs were done in a very brute force like
Speaker 1: kind of a way, and so it's not crazy to
Speaker 1: think that some of the people who were in charge
Speaker 1: of overseeing the implementation of this consent decree may no
Speaker 1: longer be there. Let's return those to the journalist's question.
Speaker 1: I think this is probably the single most one. It
Speaker 1: is not in the and we've done quite a bit
Speaker 1: of defense here for Lenacon. It is not in the
Speaker 1: business of the United States government to say, quote, why
Speaker 1: the FTC needs to know the identity of journalists who
Speaker 1: are engaging with Twitter. As their lawyer says, there is
Speaker 1: no logical reason why the FTC, on the basis of
Speaker 1: user privacy, needs to analyze all of Twitter's personnel decisions.
Speaker 1: And there's no logical reason why they need every single
Speaker 1: internal Twitter communication about Elon Musk. So this is where
Speaker 1: a government overstep almost certainly could be one, and with
Speaker 1: the journalist one where I'm sorry, I don't care who
Speaker 1: you are, what administration, whether good work you have done,
Speaker 1: it is not in your business to be subpoenaing and
Speaker 1: looking at the private communications to Twitter and its journalists,
Speaker 1: because that actually would look like retribution for publishing the
Speaker 1: Twitter files. There was also no violating a consent degree.
Speaker 1: Crystal is one thing. Yeah, journalist communications is a whole
Speaker 1: other pie. Hundred percent agree. And there's another piece here,
Speaker 1: which is, of course the media angle, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: the brave defenders of the First Amendment. Many outlets just
Speaker 1: left out that part right of all of this, like
Speaker 1: they just didn't mention that, Like, oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: they asked for all of these details about the journalists
Speaker 1: they were communicating with, they just left that out, not
Speaker 1: to mention that. So, I mean, basically no mainstream outlets
Speaker 1: actually covered any of the revelations from the Twitter files anyway,
Speaker 1: and so which was disgraceful and insane. Given that Twitter
Speaker 1: is really important, there's a lot of interest in it.
Speaker 1: What happened there previously is really important. What's happening there
Speaker 1: currently is really important, especially in terms of like elite
Speaker 1: shaping of national opinion. So a lot of media failures here,
Speaker 1: very clear, and a lot of media hypocrisy here. Very cool.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely put the next one up there too,
Speaker 1: please on the screen, which is that actually that suffered
Speaker 1: after a basically a shutdown of the website for a
Speaker 1: while where you basically could not link out to different websites.
Speaker 1: Elon said, quote, a small API change had massive ramifications.
Speaker 1: The code stack is extremely brittle for no good reason,
Speaker 1: will ultimately need a complete rewrite. So he's blaming basically
Speaker 1: the previous engineers at Twitter. It's actually, I mean, certainly possible.
Speaker 1: Maybe from what I have heard, it's not even just Twitter,
Speaker 1: but many of the most important systems. Remember we found
Speaker 1: out with the no tam thing with the FAA, where
Speaker 1: they're like, a single code change can bring down the
Speaker 1: entire thing. People were like, you would be shocked at
Speaker 1: how many massive corporate, multi billion dollar corporations are architecture
Speaker 1: this way where literally just one guy accidentally presses one
Speaker 1: thing in the entire site can shut down. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, who knows whether it has somebody to do
Speaker 1: with the layoffs or with the code stack, but that
Speaker 1: probably does not help because if the code sack is
Speaker 1: so brittle, if they don't have as many employees who
Speaker 1: are working on maintaining the databases and the security, that
Speaker 1: also could lead to problems for you privacy wise, if
Speaker 1: you're vulnerable for sure attack to you know, like a yes,
Speaker 1: some sort of phishing attack or a data breach or
Speaker 1: anything like that that would really be a devastating blow
Speaker 1: to it and zooming out from Twitter. This is a
Speaker 1: this Remember we used to talk to Gigisone who actually
Speaker 1: her nomination just just got new blown up by Joe Manchin.
Speaker 1: But anyway, she used to talk to us about how,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the penalties on companies for like keeping
Speaker 1: their systems so insecure that people's private, private data can
Speaker 1: be breached all the time, Like it's very low. I
Speaker 1: am very much in favor of there being a lot
Speaker 1: more penalties and a lot more scrutiny over the way
Speaker 1: that companies protect their data. So in that way, I'm sympathetic.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the journalists piece absolutely not. And it's shameful
Speaker 1: that the media just ultimately goes along with it and
Speaker 1: doesn't say anything. One last piece because I look this
Speaker 1: up about the ounages on Twitter under Elon, because as
Speaker 1: I said before, like Twitter has I think it's probably
Speaker 1: true that Twitter's technology has always been in his word, brittle,
Speaker 1: because there have been certainly outages in the past, but
Speaker 1: they seem to have escalated during the Elon era when
Speaker 1: they have had so many layoffs. You had on January
Speaker 1: twenty third, Android users couldn't load new tweets or post them.
Speaker 1: February eighth, error message told users they were over the
Speaker 1: daily limit for sending tweets for a while. On February fifteenth,
Speaker 1: tweets just stop loading. On February eighteen, the timeline broke,
Speaker 1: replies its beard. On March one, the timeline stopped working,
Speaker 1: and then you had this configuration change leading to these
Speaker 1: issues on Monday. Yeah, exactly correct. So anyway, it could
Speaker 1: be a big problem for Elon and the top line
Speaker 1: one on the journalism front is if you actually stand
Speaker 1: for the First Amendment, this is something you're supposed to
Speaker 1: speak out against. But of course, because it's Matt Tayebe
Speaker 1: and Barry Wise involved, they're like, oh no, we you know,
Speaker 1: we're not just going to keep one of us. We're
Speaker 1: just going to keep our power. We're not employed by
Speaker 1: the New York Times, so they don't count bullshit. They
Speaker 1: would they would have a five alarm fire if that
Speaker 1: ever happened to them, fair, especially if it happened under
Speaker 1: the Trump administration. Imagine. Okay, so this is really really fascinating.
Speaker 1: So an op ed in the New York Times. You know,
Speaker 1: we've been trying to closely follow what's going on with AI,
Speaker 1: what's going on with chat GPT, bang, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: So Nom Chomsky, in conjunction with two others wrote an
Speaker 1: op ed for The New York Times about their view
Speaker 1: of these large language models, including Google's Barred and Microsoft's Sydney.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this up on the screen from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. The headline here is Noam Chomsky
Speaker 1: the false promise of chat GPT, and their view is essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of sensationless headlines about chat
Speaker 1: GPT and about what all of this means for the future,
Speaker 1: and people even sort of, you know, insinuating that they're
Speaker 1: not sentient, but they're getting close to having that sort
Speaker 1: of human reasoning and understanding that's much more complex and
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated than anything we've seen before. And these
Speaker 1: three are really pumping the brakes on that notion. Now.
Speaker 1: Nom Chomsky, being a linguist, a language expert, looking at
Speaker 1: the ways that what chat GPT is doing is fundamentally
Speaker 1: different from the way that humans speak and reason and
Speaker 1: the way that human you know, even morality works. Let
Speaker 1: me read you a little bit of this so you
Speaker 1: can get a sense of it. It's very thought provoking. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't know what I think about all of these things,
Speaker 1: so that's why I just want to put all the
Speaker 1: views on the table as we sort of sort through
Speaker 1: what is what and what it means for the future.
Speaker 1: They say open AI's Chat, GPT, Google's Bard, and Microsoft
Speaker 1: Sydney are marvels of machine learning. Roughly speaking, they take
Speaker 1: huge amounts of data, search for patterns in it, and
Speaker 1: become increasingly proficient and generating statistically probable outputs such as
Speaker 1: seemingly human like language and thought. These programs have been
Speaker 1: hailed as the first glimmers on the horizon of artificial
Speaker 1: general intelligence, that long prophecied moment when mechanical minds surpass
Speaker 1: human brains not only quantitatively in terms of processing speed
Speaker 1: and memory, but also qualitatively in terms of intellectual insight,
Speaker 1: artistic creativity, and every other distinctively human faculty. And that's
Speaker 1: the part they really push back on on the piece
Speaker 1: they go on that day may come, but it's done,
Speaker 1: is not yet breaking. Contrary to what can be read
Speaker 1: in hyperbolic headlines and reckoned by injudicious investments, the is
Speaker 1: this borgesian I don't know what that word is. I
Speaker 1: think I look that way. I believe that is a
Speaker 1: reference to a philosopher, Okay, the American Argentinian writer Jorge
Speaker 1: Luis Borgess. Okay, I'm probably saying it or Jessean revelation
Speaker 1: will go with of understanding has not and will not,
Speaker 1: and we submit cannot occur if machine learning programs like
Speaker 1: chat GPT continue to dominate the field of AI. However
Speaker 1: useful these programs might be in some narrow domains, we
Speaker 1: know from the science of linguistics and the philosophy of
Speaker 1: knowledge that they differ profoundly from how humans reason and
Speaker 1: use language. These differences place significant limitations on what these
Speaker 1: programs can do. Encoding the with ineradicable defects. They talk
Speaker 1: about a number of areas where they see them as
Speaker 1: really deficient and you know, not even close to approximating
Speaker 1: what a human mind can do. One of them is
Speaker 1: on morality, and you can see this in some of
Speaker 1: the fights over like you know, they're framed as like
Speaker 1: always chat, GPT, woke or whatever. But the deeper level
Speaker 1: question is any morality is programmed in by humans? Exactly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I actually thought there was a really poignant part
Speaker 1: where he says, quote, the human mind is not like
Speaker 1: chat GPT and his ILK, a lumbering statistical engine for
Speaker 1: pattern matching, gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data and
Speaker 1: extrapolating the most likely conversational response. On the contrary, the
Speaker 1: human mind is a surprisingly efficient and even elegant system
Speaker 1: that operates with small amounts of information. It seeks not
Speaker 1: to infer brute correlations amongst data points, but to create explanations.
Speaker 1: He points to how a young child acquiring a language
Speaker 1: is developing unconsciously, automatically and speedily from actually minuscule amounts
Speaker 1: of data from grammar and a stupendously faciphisticated system of
Speaker 1: logical principles and parameter So, I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure exactly which of these areas that I fall onto,
Speaker 1: but yeah, one quote I found especially important from Chonsky
Speaker 1: was this quote, the human mind is not like chatch
Speaker 1: ebt and its ILK, a lumbering statistical engine or pattern matching,
Speaker 1: gorging on hundreds of terabytes of data extrapolating the most
Speaker 1: likely conversational response or most probable answer to a scientific question.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, the human mind is surprisingly efficient and
Speaker 1: even elegant system that operates with small amounts of information.
Speaker 1: It seeks not to infer brute correlations amongst data points,
Speaker 1: but to create explanations. So I actually thought it was
Speaker 1: a really interesting piece the way that he lays it out.
Speaker 1: And I'm of two minds. On the one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: I believe very much in technology, very much in the
Speaker 1: ability for technological innovation to surprise us. And sometimes I
Speaker 1: think it's difficult for people to even conceive of what
Speaker 1: it would look like in the future. You know the
Speaker 1: famous Henry four quote where he's like, if I'd ask
Speaker 1: people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,
Speaker 1: because they couldn't even conceive of like what a combustible
Speaker 1: automobile would look like. On the other we should also
Speaker 1: have some hubris about like, oh, our human mind, which
Speaker 1: has evolved over millions of years through selective evolution, and
Speaker 1: you know, in a very complex process across billions and
Speaker 1: billions of people that have lived now throughout the world,
Speaker 1: can be so easily replicated through a statistical pattern recognition regime.
Speaker 1: I actually thought he was correct, which is, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think in some areas like rote data computer programming things
Speaker 1: that are completely linear that don't require as much creativity. Totally.
Speaker 1: I think he's right. Those those are the ones where
Speaker 1: it will be most effective. But in terms of like
Speaker 1: a full scale takeover, well, I'm not so sure. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, you could take up matrix point of
Speaker 1: view where our humanity and our like you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote efficiency actually keeps us away from operation at the
Speaker 1: most efficient level, which would enable us to have takeover.
Speaker 1: So I really don't know which way I stand on it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I was reminded as I was reading this
Speaker 1: of Derek Thompson front of the show interviewed Kevin Bruce
Speaker 1: of The New York Times, who is the one who
Speaker 1: had that really bizarre like Sydney conversation where the chat
Speaker 1: GPT being Microsoft thing starts professing its love and everyone's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what is going on here? So anyway,
Speaker 1: Derek was interviewing Kevin and he asked him this question,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a really good one, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, with the self driving cars, it has turned
Speaker 1: out to be very very, very very difficult. Yes, to
Speaker 1: get the last pieces, you can get it like ninety
Speaker 1: five percent of the way there, But then there are
Speaker 1: parts of driving that effectively require in the moment human
Speaker 1: judgment of ambiguous situations and novel situations. And so he
Speaker 1: asked him, do you have kind of the same similar
Speaker 1: type problem with chat GPT where you can get like
Speaker 1: a lot, you can do some things that are really
Speaker 1: impressive and get a lot of the way there, but
Speaker 1: there's this last ten percent that is just an almost
Speaker 1: unsolvable problem. And it seems to me that that's kind
Speaker 1: of what Chomsky is laying out here. And it's not like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you keep going, you know, what's the new version
Speaker 1: of it's going to be like chat GPT four whatever
Speaker 1: that's coming out. As long as you are using this
Speaker 1: basic model of just taking in all of this these
Speaker 1: inputs and then using a probability to predict what the
Speaker 1: next like thing for the chat bot to say would be,
Speaker 1: there's going to be hard limitations and you will never
Speaker 1: get all of the way there. There will always be
Speaker 1: a limit to how far you're able to go, even
Speaker 1: as you improve it and improve it and improve it.
Speaker 1: And that seems correct to me. Now, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I think that even with what they've designed here, it
Speaker 1: could be potentially revolutionary you don't have to get all
Speaker 1: of the way there for it's still to be a
Speaker 1: revolutionary technology. And I mean that in both the positive
Speaker 1: and negative sense. One really clear implication to me is
Speaker 1: with regard to the industry of journalism, where if you
Speaker 1: have chat GPT able to do a decent job, a
Speaker 1: you know, ninety ninety five percent decent job of aggregating
Speaker 1: all of the information about a news story that's out
Speaker 1: there and putting it on the search results rather than
Speaker 1: people having to click through. Well, that one innovation in
Speaker 1: and of itself completely upends the business model of journalism.
Speaker 1: So I guess I see both the limitations, but I
Speaker 1: also think that even as it exists now, it could
Speaker 1: be potentially transformational in certain space. So I actually think
Speaker 1: the perfect analogy is self driving. As you said, So,
Speaker 1: I've been in a Tesla that was going full self driving,
Speaker 1: and look, I'm gonna be honest, like it was a mess.
Speaker 1: And the reason why is it was not able to compute.
Speaker 1: And this is I'm talking on city streets, not a highway,
Speaker 1: so we're talking like it didn't know, for example, that
Speaker 1: one lane is closed during rush hour, so it goes
Speaker 1: you into that lane. People are park there during this time,
Speaker 1: and so then it has to wait to move over.
Speaker 1: And then in terms of turning left, it didn't read properly.
Speaker 1: But there were a bunch of different lights here in
Speaker 1: Washington area. We have these ridiculous systems, and so it
Speaker 1: reads one as a green light, which is beyond the green. Now, look,
Speaker 1: these are all problems that maybe can be solved, but
Speaker 1: also what you said was important. That doesn't mean though,
Speaker 1: that the car can't still drive itself for hours on
Speaker 1: the highway. That's pretty nice. That's actually a huge change
Speaker 1: to the driving experience. So if you're driving five hours
Speaker 1: and you only have to drive, and you're driving almost
Speaker 1: entirely on a highway, you're only actually driving for let's
Speaker 1: say ten percent of that time. That revolutionizes the road trip.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that it changes your daily commute in
Speaker 1: the city. So that's one of those where you can
Speaker 1: actually still go very far. The technology is very impressive,
Speaker 1: but you're not one hundred percent of the way. I
Speaker 1: no longer have to look at my car type thing,
Speaker 1: which was the original promise. So I actually probably just
Speaker 1: more need to calibrate your expectations. So one projection in
Speaker 1: terms of upending the workforce is like lawyers, who a
Speaker 1: lot of what their work is doing is like taking
Speaker 1: some previous document that they use for some previous situation,
Speaker 1: going through it, inserting in just like the new company
Speaker 1: name or the new language into this already pre prepared document.
Speaker 1: An AI could probably do that pre effectively, but even
Speaker 1: within that, you're still going to have instances where it's
Speaker 1: a little complex. You got to actually rework this paragraph
Speaker 1: a lot. It doesn't quite make sense because this company
Speaker 1: was different from this company, and their situation is a
Speaker 1: little bit different in ways that are nuanced and complicated
Speaker 1: and that an AI isn't really prepared to be able
Speaker 1: to handle. In the same way that you know, the
Speaker 1: self driving thing falls apart when there's a sign that
Speaker 1: just got put up that day of like, well if
Speaker 1: you drive in this lane, you know you're gonna get
Speaker 1: a tay or whatever. So I think it will still
Speaker 1: require a human being to then go in and look
Speaker 1: at like, Okay, well did they get everything? Did they
Speaker 1: Does this make sense? Et cetera. But even just the
Speaker 1: simple fact of automating all of that early grunt work, well,
Speaker 1: that's going to profoundly change the legal profession because instead
Speaker 1: of all of those hours that they spend typically going
Speaker 1: through and like reworking these documents, ninety percent of that
Speaker 1: done by the AI, and then you're just coming in
Speaker 1: after the fact and doing like an edit job. So
Speaker 1: that's as best as I can figure these things out.
Speaker 1: That's how I see it right now. But I could
Speaker 1: be totally wrong about any of this and what it
Speaker 1: means and where it's going. Well, that's why it's fun.
Speaker 1: It's fun to be on the phone. That's why it's fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's like nineteen ninety five and you're
Speaker 1: like eighty Internet. What is Internet? Yeah, there's actually some
Speaker 1: why I recommend people go and watch. There's all these
Speaker 1: documentaries from the nineties about how people thought the Internet
Speaker 1: was going to be, and there was this two parallels.
Speaker 1: There was like web Internet and then the Information Super
Speaker 1: Highway about how you would use your TV to like
Speaker 1: stream devices and they were onto something. But the idea
Speaker 1: was that the TV would be like hooked up to
Speaker 1: the dial up and there would anyway. It's really fascinating
Speaker 1: that's how Bill Gates actually thought that the Internet was
Speaker 1: going to go. So people should go back and watch,
Speaker 1: you know how as wrong as they were, you could
Speaker 1: see how you know it was a reasonable idea at
Speaker 1: the time. All right, let's go move on, doctor Fauci.
Speaker 1: More lab league stuff happening both on Capitol Hill and
Speaker 1: in terms of the fallout from that new Energy Department report.
Speaker 1: The first, most importantly doctor Fauci in retirement, but of
Speaker 1: course going back to his old home over on CNN,
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper, to his credit, actually asked Fauci about the
Speaker 1: Energy Department finding that it almost certainly was a lab leak.
Speaker 1: I guess with low confidence, but the FBI says it
Speaker 1: with moderate confidence, and Fauci really tries to wiggle his
Speaker 1: way out of this one. Let's take a listen. Are
Speaker 1: the FBI and Energy Department right about the lab leak? Well,
Speaker 1: it's very tough to tell that, Anderson, because they're talking
Speaker 1: about information that they have that we don't have privy to,
Speaker 1: so we don't really know. They have made opinions on
Speaker 1: low confidence from the Department of Energy and moderate confidence
Speaker 1: I believe from the FBI. So I don't think there's
Speaker 1: a really correct and verifiable answer to your question. It's
Speaker 1: just still remains unknown. How important is to figure it out? Well,
Speaker 1: it is, Anderson, because you want to make sure that
Speaker 1: whichever of those alternatives it is, that we do whatever
Speaker 1: we can to prevent it from happening in the future,
Speaker 1: because we have had outbreaks before. I mean, we had
Speaker 1: saws COVID one, which was clearly shown to go from
Speaker 1: a bat to a civic cat to a human. And
Speaker 1: if there's a possibility, which there is certainly we haven't
Speaker 1: ruled it out of they're being lablik. There are things
Speaker 1: that you can do to prevent the recurrence of these things.
Speaker 1: For example, the data showing that it might be a
Speaker 1: natural occurrence would make you want to be very careful
Speaker 1: about the animal human interface and make sure that we
Speaker 1: have strict regulation of bringing animals into wet markets. If
Speaker 1: it turns out to be a lablik, you want to
Speaker 1: be very much more stringent in the controls of the
Speaker 1: experiments that you allow to be done. So it is
Speaker 1: relevant to understand whether or not we ever will know. Anderson,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure, just a complete weasel and still pushing
Speaker 1: the natural origin hype. That is what drives me mad.
Speaker 1: I mean, still the Chinese still are not pushing wet market.
Speaker 1: He's the last man on earth. Who believes in the West.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's what we have said for a long time.
Speaker 1: If there is even a possibility that is either of
Speaker 1: these things, you should be doing the things that he says,
Speaker 1: putting in the controls, putting in the regulations, because you
Speaker 1: know it's possible it came from natural love, and you
Speaker 1: know it's possible it came That's really all you need
Speaker 1: to know. And so for me, the part of the
Speaker 1: end where he's like, we just may never know, We
Speaker 1: won't know because of you, that's the giveaway of like,
Speaker 1: he doesn't want anyone to do anything until you have
Speaker 1: one hundred percent proven that it is, you know, definitively
Speaker 1: smoking gun, that it came out of a lab. And
Speaker 1: so that's now his dodge because it's now too far
Speaker 1: down the road where you can't just say no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I was in a lab leak, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So now he's got to say, well, we just may
Speaker 1: never know, and if we do find out, then of
Speaker 1: course we should do something. But we probably we had
Speaker 1: one chance at a smoking gun, and it was January
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty when he decided to cover up the
Speaker 1: lab leak. That was it that's the only chance that
Speaker 1: we ever had, because if he had not used his
Speaker 1: influence to prompt that investigation and that paper to cover
Speaker 1: up the lab leak, then the US government might have
Speaker 1: been able to get some of the early intelligence coming
Speaker 1: out of China done the original research. At this point,
Speaker 1: the Chinese have totally muddied the waters. They've covered it up.
Speaker 1: Now they're going after Elon and anybody else who wants
Speaker 1: to talk about Lab leak and lo and behold, gain
Speaker 1: of function research is chugging right along here in the
Speaker 1: United States. We are spending more on gain of function
Speaker 1: research today as a country, both from private and public sector,
Speaker 1: than we did before the pandemic, and not a single
Speaker 1: new safety mechanism that has been put into place because
Speaker 1: of the actions of this man. That is why I'm
Speaker 1: mean watching that it's maddening. And also what really pisses
Speaker 1: me off too is Anderson and the people who happened
Speaker 1: to interview him, they such a softball way of like
Speaker 1: are they right? Are they not ask him about the paper,
Speaker 1: ask about the email, ask asking why originally at all? Yes,
Speaker 1: like the original call, you said this. Then May of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, you went on National geographic and said there's
Speaker 1: no chance of a lab leak. Now you're saying it's open.
Speaker 1: What changed, doctor Fauci. This is what That's what an
Speaker 1: actual interview with this man would look like. They let
Speaker 1: him skate completely, and you know, a lot of it
Speaker 1: is actually really coming to the four because over on
Speaker 1: the House side, the Republicans have started a new committee
Speaker 1: and this is the second part here, but this committee
Speaker 1: to investigate the lab leak and the possible origins of
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen already kicking off with a huge bang because
Speaker 1: they interviewed yesterday doctor Robert Redfield, the former CDC director
Speaker 1: under Donald Trump, who was outrageously smeared under the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and who has maintained that it was a lab
Speaker 1: leak from the very beginning. And he outlined to the
Speaker 1: committee the specific problems with gain of function and exactly
Speaker 1: how he believes that COVID nineteen was unleashed upon the world.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen to what he said. So one
Speaker 1: other path of questioning for you, doctor Rifflin. Proponents of
Speaker 1: this research claimant may result in vaccines or maybe even
Speaker 1: stop a pandemic. Doctor Redfield has gained function, created any
Speaker 1: life saving vaccines or therapeutics. To your knowledge not to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, has Gain of Function stopped a pandemic? In
Speaker 1: your opinion? Now, in the contrary, I think it probably
Speaker 1: caused the greatest pandemic or world of scene. Do you
Speaker 1: find any tangible benefits to Gain of function recent search
Speaker 1: at this time? I personally don't, but I do want
Speaker 1: to stress I think the men and women that supported
Speaker 1: are people of good faith because they truly believe it's
Speaker 1: going to lead to a potential benefit. I disagree with
Speaker 1: that assessment. Where's that line? Wow? Former CDC director says
Speaker 1: that Gain of Function research at the Wuon Lab caused
Speaker 1: the greatest pandemic that the world has seen in one
Speaker 1: hundred years. This is madness, and it is completely ignored
Speaker 1: outside of either right wing media or people here on
Speaker 1: the show. You know, I even look back, I forgot
Speaker 1: how badly that they smeared Redford. They called him an apparatic.
Speaker 1: Of course, because it was twenty twenty. They decided to
Speaker 1: call him a racist because apparently black employees at the
Speaker 1: CEC weren't advancing enough. Because that's what matters most when
Speaker 1: they're in the middle of a goddamn pandemic, and it's like,
Speaker 1: when I look back at how they treated this man,
Speaker 1: and also how his initial response with the Sanjay Gooped
Speaker 1: interview two years ago. Now at this point he says, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it came out of the WU Lab. Same thing, racist,
Speaker 1: a Trump apparatric. He's a legitimate virologist, epidemiologist and scientist.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying he did a great job during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but at the very least he was privy to the
Speaker 1: intelligence and he has maintained it now from the beginning.
Speaker 1: And it's like I read the Washington Post and you
Speaker 1: get these joker virologists who come out of nowhere from
Speaker 1: some random ass university who happened to be funded by
Speaker 1: the NIH and they're like, hey, it's still probably on
Speaker 1: natural origin. He was the CDC director, he was literally there.
Speaker 1: You cannot tell me that he doesn't have more of
Speaker 1: an authority. Where's his op ed in any of these papers?
Speaker 1: When it comes to gain a function, it seems like
Speaker 1: there was a pretty basic question here which I literally
Speaker 1: haven't heard anyone asked until this moment, which is what
Speaker 1: are we getting out of this? Right? Has this stopped anything?
Speaker 1: What are we getting Okay, cost benefit, Let's do the analysis.
Speaker 1: The cost is it potentially caused millions of people to
Speaker 1: die worldwide and the unleash the worst pandemic you know
Speaker 1: in the history of modern world, or however he phrased it. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the cost. Okay. The benefit apparently nothing nothing, no benefit,
Speaker 1: nothing provable, nothing clear. What are we doing here? Like,
Speaker 1: it's so basic And even even if you are still
Speaker 1: like on the fence, maybe it was one maybe Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that's fair, given that you have multiple different assessments,
Speaker 1: different groups that are saying that's that's fair. But clearly
Speaker 1: the risk here is absolutely immense, and based on what
Speaker 1: he's saying, the benefit is a bunch of scientists whose
Speaker 1: careers have been made by it. Yeah, that's effectively the benefit. Well,
Speaker 1: and a ton of money. That's really what it is
Speaker 1: is money. There is billions of dollars flowing out of
Speaker 1: the NIH from the NGOs, the Global Virum Project into
Speaker 1: labs across this country and across the world that is
Speaker 1: funding exactly this type of research, and there's no congressional scrutiny.
Speaker 1: The former CDC director is laughed out of the room.
Speaker 1: People are going to call this a right wing hearing.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, he's literally the goddamn CDC director. No coverage,
Speaker 1: you know, where is he on? And have him on
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper's show. Let him and doctor Fauci appear on
Speaker 1: a joint panel, two former public health officials. They will
Speaker 1: never do, and of course it would. Yeah, listen, by
Speaker 1: the way, doctor Fauci, You're welcome here on the show anytime.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll take us up on that invitation. But
Speaker 1: this is so important, I think for people to understand,
Speaker 1: and it was a very very important moment from that hearing.
Speaker 1: And of course I didn't see a single, not one
Speaker 1: scrap of coverage of that from anybody in the mainstream press.
Speaker 1: And that's the most insane part to me. Amazing, all right,
Speaker 1: Tiger were looking at well. Tucker Carlson has gotten quite
Speaker 1: a bit of attention recently for his release of previously
Speaker 1: unseen and bizarre January six footage which shows Capitol police
Speaker 1: officers escorting this so called QAnon shaman around. And while
Speaker 1: I believe that is an important story, there might be
Speaker 1: an even more important one that most are ignoring. His
Speaker 1: new litmus test for candidates in the GOP primary specifically
Speaker 1: on Ukraine. Let's take a listen to the questionnaire that
Speaker 1: he is sent to current and prospective candidates. But we've
Speaker 1: written a questionnaire for Republicans who may decide to jump
Speaker 1: into the race for president in twenty twenty four. It's
Speaker 1: a very simple questionnaire. Here are the questions. First, is
Speaker 1: opposing Russia in Ukraine a vital American national strategic interest?
Speaker 1: Is it really important or not? And if so why? Two?
Speaker 1: What specifically is our objective in Ukraine? And how we
Speaker 1: know when we've achieved it? What's our goal? And how
Speaker 1: are we going to know when we've won? If we
Speaker 1: don't know that, we should slow down? Three? What is
Speaker 1: the limit of funding in material military equipment you would
Speaker 1: be willing to send to the government of Ukraine. We're
Speaker 1: sending fighter geest. Should we send nukes? Four? Should the
Speaker 1: United States support regime change in Russia? Everyone hates Putin?
Speaker 1: Should we kill him? Is that a good idea? What
Speaker 1: happens next? Five? Given that Russia's economy and currency are
Speaker 1: stronger than they were before the war, do you still
Speaker 1: believe that US sanctions have been effective? Everyone assumes that
Speaker 1: sanctions work. Do they? And finally, do you believe if
Speaker 1: the United States faces the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
Speaker 1: Really simple, what are the stakes here? So we sent
Speaker 1: these questions to people who have announced or seemed like
Speaker 1: they might announce, Donald Trump, Nikki Hayley, Vivik Ramaswami, Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Glenn Youngkin, Christian and
Speaker 1: New Christinom, Greg Abbott, Chris Christy, Asa Hutchinson, and John Bolton.
Speaker 1: We sent these questions with respect. We sincerely want to know.
Speaker 1: We sincerely believe the public has right to know their
Speaker 1: position on the biggest issue in the world right now,
Speaker 1: which is will there be a third World War? And
Speaker 1: we said we'll give you on Monday to reply. That
Speaker 1: seemed fair and at that point we'll let you know
Speaker 1: what they say. Okay, So to review, is opposing Russia
Speaker 1: and Ukraine to our strategic interest? And why? What is
Speaker 1: our objective in Ukraine? How do we know when we've won?
Speaker 1: What is the limit of funding and material of what
Speaker 1: you're willing to send to Ukraine? Should the United States
Speaker 1: support regime change in Russia? Do you believe that sanctions
Speaker 1: have been effective against Russia? And do you believe the
Speaker 1: United States faces the risk of nuclear war with Russia.
Speaker 1: Reasonable questions. No matter what you think of Tucker and
Speaker 1: important ones, Will we get real answers? Probably not, And
Speaker 1: his questions here are important for two obvious reasons, one
Speaker 1: being that he's probably the most popular commentator on all
Speaker 1: of Fox and if any, probably holds the most sway
Speaker 1: with Republican primary voters. Two, every candidate, either in the
Speaker 1: race or who looks like they might jump in, has
Speaker 1: been weasling their way through answers on Ukraine with no specifics. Trump,
Speaker 1: for instance, has claimed for nearly a month that he
Speaker 1: could bring peace in Ukraine in twenty four hours. But,
Speaker 1: as he said a seapack, he cannot tell us how.
Speaker 1: He said this also an interview. Take a listen. Before
Speaker 1: I even arrive at the Oval Office, I will have
Speaker 1: the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled. It will
Speaker 1: be settled quickly. Go I will get the problem solved,
Speaker 1: and I will get it solved in rapid order, and
Speaker 1: it will take me no longer than one day. I
Speaker 1: know exactly what to say to each of them. I
Speaker 1: got along with very well with him. It really has
Speaker 1: to be done from the office of the president, and
Speaker 1: you have to get them both in a room, and
Speaker 1: there are things you can say to each one of
Speaker 1: them which I won't reveal now, which WI we'll guarantee
Speaker 1: that this war will end immediately. So basically it moounts
Speaker 1: to trust me. I'll figure it out, but I can't
Speaker 1: tell you. Given the fact that Trump actually sent Javelin
Speaker 1: missiles to Ukraine and escalated the conflict in Afghanistan after
Speaker 1: he promised to pull out in twenty seventeen, hired John
Speaker 1: Bolton and Mike Pompeo. At this point, that's well trodden
Speaker 1: ground with all things Trump. Who knows, you'll find out
Speaker 1: when you find out the thing is Trump at least
Speaker 1: has rhetorically opposed increase aid to Ukraine, He's called for
Speaker 1: peace in the conflict, and he's generally seemed skeptical of
Speaker 1: the US paying the vast majority of the weapons cost
Speaker 1: while the Europeans sent a fraction. Sadly, he might be
Speaker 1: the most specific candidate right now on Ukraine, So then
Speaker 1: let's look at the rest of the field. The obvious
Speaker 1: and really only real contender against Trump is Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: who recently made waves on Ukraine after Biden's latest visit
Speaker 1: to Kiev. Let's take a listen to exactly what he said. Well,
Speaker 1: they have effectively a blank check policy with no clear
Speaker 1: strategic objective identified, and these things can can escalate. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's in our interest to be getting
Speaker 1: into proxy war with China, getting involved over things like
Speaker 1: the border lands or over crimea. So I think it
Speaker 1: would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective
Speaker 1: that they're trying to achieve. But just saying it's an
Speaker 1: open ended blank check that is not acceptable. So main takeaways.
Speaker 1: Desanta says a quote blank check policy with no strategic
Speaker 1: objective identified, and the US has no interest in getting
Speaker 1: in a proxy war with Russia by all counts. That
Speaker 1: is America first type rhetoric. But he also has an
Speaker 1: interesting pass on Ukraine, as previous journalists have identified desantas
Speaker 1: wanted to send weapons to Ukraine when he was a congressman,
Speaker 1: saying of Obama, quote, we in Congress have been urging
Speaker 1: the president. I've been or urging him to provide arms
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. They want to fight the good fight. They're
Speaker 1: not asking us to fight it for them. The President
Speaker 1: has steadfastly refused. I think that's a mistake. He also
Speaker 1: said in December twenty seventeen, he was quote of the
Speaker 1: Reagan school that's tough on Russia while in a Fox
Speaker 1: and Friends interview, and he said Russia is a third
Speaker 1: rate military power. Though now now here's the thing. People
Speaker 1: can change their minds. That's completely fine, But Desanta's has
Speaker 1: also been all over the place on Ukraine. Even recently.
Speaker 1: In a recent interview with the Times of London, DeSantis
Speaker 1: lost his cool when he was pressed on the actual
Speaker 1: difference is that he would have from Joe Biden on
Speaker 1: his policy in Ukraine. The interviewer writes, quote, I ask
Speaker 1: about Ukraine. He says that there's a critique of Biden.
Speaker 1: I think I'm sympathetic to it in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's in our policy just to do whatever Zelenski wants,
Speaker 1: or do we have a concrete idea of what we're
Speaker 1: trying to achieve exactly? He adds quote when I ask
Speaker 1: him how it should be handled. Differently, he refers to
Speaker 1: Biden quote being weak on the world stage and failing
Speaker 1: at deterrence. But as that is not answering how it
Speaker 1: should be handled, I ask again, he does not have
Speaker 1: anything to add perhaps you should cover some other ground.
Speaker 1: I think I've said enough, so no specifics. Apparently very
Speaker 1: testy at being pressed. I guess fair enough. You're only
Speaker 1: a governor, you're not even an official candidate. But things
Speaker 1: need to get specific fast. On the other ones, it's
Speaker 1: not too hard. Nikki Haley and Pike Bompeo, they have
Speaker 1: been trying to have their cake and eat it too. Haley,
Speaker 1: of course, refuses to criticized Trump. She's not kicking sideway,
Speaker 1: She's only kicking forward. Probably the dumbest lines I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: But on Ukraine, her stance is actually pretty unambiguous. She
Speaker 1: has criticized Biden for not being tough enough on Russia,
Speaker 1: not expanding Russian sanctions, and in a most recent interview
Speaker 1: told Barry Weiss from The Free Press quote, I think
Speaker 1: it's up to us to tell people standing with Ukraine
Speaker 1: is standing for America. Pompeo, also, who despite serving as
Speaker 1: Trump's Secretary of State, has decided he somehow can differentiate
Speaker 1: himself from him, has also been dropping veiled hints at
Speaker 1: his differences from Trump on Ukraine. Two days ago, he
Speaker 1: tweeted quote, Vladimir Putin should not be underestimated he wants
Speaker 1: to do the American people harm, which is why helping
Speaker 1: Ukraine is in our interest. He failed to mention anything
Speaker 1: about Ukraine at Seapack, as did Haley, but also has
Speaker 1: only been criticizing Biden first not sending enough aid to
Speaker 1: the country. All of this is interesting and how it
Speaker 1: maps onto the primary and to some extent, whether Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson view will prevail in the primary or the GOP
Speaker 1: establishment view. Almost all polling data that we have available
Speaker 1: to us tells us the Republican primary electorate in particular
Speaker 1: is turning fast against aid for Ukraine, with independence joining them.
Speaker 1: Only Democrats remain steadfast. But as we have learned through
Speaker 1: the Trump years, rhetoric does not mean anything. Being specific
Speaker 1: and locking people into answers is what matters, and then
Speaker 1: whether they actually do any of that, which matters even more.
Speaker 1: For now, we're in wait and see mode. So I
Speaker 1: don't think anybody's going to actually answer this question here.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Crystal,
Speaker 1: what are you taking a look at? Well? Once upon
Speaker 1: a time, America was a land where it generally seemed
Speaker 1: like a rising tide could lift all boats. When American
Speaker 1: corporations thrive, they were able to invest in their workforce,
Speaker 1: creating a stable middle class, and they were able to
Speaker 1: invest in innovation, which created dynamism and more, thriving in
Speaker 1: a virtuous circle. In that time, business leaders and politicians
Speaker 1: they had healthy debates about exactly who corporations were meant
Speaker 1: to serve the nation, the community, their shareholders, their workers,
Speaker 1: But pretty much no one took the view so that
Speaker 1: they should be run by the executive class for the
Speaker 1: sole benefit of the executive class. Today, however, this perverse
Speaker 1: conception of corporations is destroying the health and vitality of
Speaker 1: our entire economy, creating bubbles based on fakery, robbing employees
Speaker 1: of fair compensation for their labor. In fact, new numbers
Speaker 1: underscore just how extreme and radical this modern form of
Speaker 1: corporation has actually become. Take a look at this as
Speaker 1: from rolth Nader. He says stunning figure. The White House's
Speaker 1: National Economic Council reports that major corporations are spending about
Speaker 1: ninety percent of their earnings on stock buybacks and dividends.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent what's left for investment, not much unless these
Speaker 1: corporations are taking on debt, he says. Now, stock buybacks
Speaker 1: are exactly what they sound like. It's when a corporation
Speaker 1: buys back their own stock, it has the predictable impact
Speaker 1: of at least temporarily goosing that company's stock price. So,
Speaker 1: rather than investing in innovation or expansion or their workforce,
Speaker 1: our largest companies are all funneling almost all of their
Speaker 1: cash right now into the pockets of wealthy shareholders and critically,
Speaker 1: their own executives, who derive most of their compensation from
Speaker 1: their stockholdings. It is a blatant CEO money grap Now.
Speaker 1: I know the discussion on stock buybacks it can sound
Speaker 1: kind of wonky, but it is hard to overstate just
Speaker 1: what a damaging effect their near takeover of the marketplace
Speaker 1: has had on our entire nation. First of all, this
Speaker 1: stock buybacks make the stock market completely fake. In fact,
Speaker 1: they were deemed illegal market manipulation repeatedly in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and again in nineteen seventy three. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until the market radicals grab power under the Reagan
Speaker 1: administration that they were even allowed and legalized over the
Speaker 1: past nine years, stock buybacks have come to completely dominate
Speaker 1: public markets. Corporations plowed and eye popping three point eight
Speaker 1: trillion dollars into buying their own stocks. That was more
Speaker 1: than any other type of investor combine. Think about that.
Speaker 1: The stock market it's supposed to theoretically reflect some underlying value.
Speaker 1: Instead it increasingly reflects just how much financial rigging corporations
Speaker 1: are willing to do. Second, stock buybacks reward financial engineering
Speaker 1: over actual productivity and innovation. Trump's massive corporate tax be
Speaker 1: guess they were theoretically supposed to unleash corporate research and
Speaker 1: productivity enhancements, expansions, jobs, employee pay raises, etc. Instead they
Speaker 1: unleashed a flood of stock buybacks. In fact, in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: after the massive giveaway went into effect, only forty three
Speaker 1: percent of S and P five hundred companies recorded any
Speaker 1: research and development expenses at all. The majority of companies
Speaker 1: spent not a single penny on new innovation, and you
Speaker 1: can see why it's a sick incentive structure. Why take
Speaker 1: a risk on building something new when you can just
Speaker 1: reward yourself and service the stockholders by artificially goosing your
Speaker 1: own stock price and a compelling example of exactly this,
Speaker 1: journalist Ronafarujar chronicles how Apple stock performed far better in
Speaker 1: years that stock buybacks were done than in the year
Speaker 1: that they revolutionized music with the release of the Apple iPod.
Speaker 1: So if short term shareholder profits are all that matter,
Speaker 1: Apple is duty bound to engage in market manipulation, not
Speaker 1: to invent new products. Third, stock buybacks and rich executives
Speaker 1: and wealthy shareholders had the expensive workers fueling world historic inequality,
Speaker 1: and the legalization of stock buybacks. Combined with other ruggan
Speaker 1: eero radical reforms, things like crushing union, slashing taxes on
Speaker 1: the rich, and no holds barred free trade, they have
Speaker 1: combined to create a second, more extreme Gilded Age. If
Speaker 1: you want to know why it feels like our whole
Speaker 1: society is coming unglued right now, this is a great
Speaker 1: place to start the hunt for both the causes and
Speaker 1: the culprits. Our national understanding of corporations has actually gone
Speaker 1: through a few different evolutions over the course of our
Speaker 1: nation's history. In the early days of our Republic, the
Speaker 1: founding fathers had quite a complex relationship with corporations. Now,
Speaker 1: on the one hand, the early American project was effectively
Speaker 1: based on for profit corporations like the Virginia Company. Some
Speaker 1: of our early experiments in democracy and agitation for revolution.
Speaker 1: They were actually inspired by rights of representation that were
Speaker 1: granted not by a constitution, but by corporate charters those
Speaker 1: governed the colonies. On the other the founders were, of course,
Speaker 1: deeply skeptical of concentrations of power. In his book We
Speaker 1: the Corporations, How American Businesses Won their Civil Rights, Adam
Speaker 1: Winkler writes about Sir William Blackstone of England, one of
Speaker 1: the most influential thinkers in corporations, whose writing on corporations
Speaker 1: is still cited regularly by our own Supreme Court. Blackstone
Speaker 1: explained that the enemies must serve a dual public and
Speaker 1: private purpose. They were not, as conceived of now, simply
Speaker 1: for profit entities meant to enrich their owners. Instead, they
Speaker 1: must be quote for the advantage of the public, or
Speaker 1: else their charter would be completely denied. Now our founders too,
Speaker 1: believed that corporations must serve some public interest. According to
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, many early stock certificates bore an image a
Speaker 1: factory a car canal, representing the purpose of the corporation
Speaker 1: that issued them. It was a reminder that the financial
Speaker 1: instrument was being put to productive use. Early corporations were
Speaker 1: chartered for a specific tasks. They building a canal. They
Speaker 1: had charters of limited duration, lasting either ten or forty years,
Speaker 1: and they were frequently terminated upon the completion of that
Speaker 1: specific task that they were chartered for. Now, after the
Speaker 1: Civil War, corporate advocates they used the courts to claim
Speaker 1: greater and greater power for themselves. In fact, in a
Speaker 1: disgusting turn of events, at the same time that the
Speaker 1: rights of black people under the Fourteenth Amendment being stripped
Speaker 1: away and the Jim Crow regime architected, corporations were using
Speaker 1: the Fourteenth Amendment to great effect, grabbing for themselves new
Speaker 1: and unprecedented rights. Again for Adam Lan Winkler quote between
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight, when the Amendment was ratified. In nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: when a scholar sent out to identify every Fourteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: case heard by the Supreme Court, the justices decided twenty
Speaker 1: eight cases dealing with the rights of African Americans and
Speaker 1: in astonishing three hundred and twelve cases dealing with the
Speaker 1: rights of corporations. Now, this brave new world of corporate
Speaker 1: rights led to the first Gilded Age and Robber Baron era,
Speaker 1: which allowed wealth inequality to skyrocket to previously unimaginable heights
Speaker 1: before being checked by the fallout of the Great Depression
Speaker 1: and FDR's New Deal era. The Reagan era would see
Speaker 1: corporate rule on s steroids, as he and all the
Speaker 1: administrations after him embraced new radical views on the role
Speaker 1: of corporations, now seen as exclusively meant to increase short
Speaker 1: term shareholder value. Was under this new extreme philosophy that
Speaker 1: buybacks would be legalized and come to mistasticize into the
Speaker 1: economy eating menace that they are today. And in Washington,
Speaker 1: in spite of these shocking figures cited here by Ralph Nader,
Speaker 1: there seems to be little interest in change, in a
Speaker 1: sign of how timid and unequal to the task our
Speaker 1: current political leadership is. Rather than take the obvious step
Speaker 1: of just banning stock buybacks altogether, President Biden passed a
Speaker 1: measly one percent tax on stock buybacks. It's had precisely
Speaker 1: the impact you would expect, which is absolutely nothing at all.
Speaker 1: He's now saying that companies which seek chips ACKed subsidies
Speaker 1: must forego stock buybacks for a period of five years,
Speaker 1: the limited reform impacting a small number of companies, and
Speaker 1: in his boldest stance, Bind's new budget calls for a
Speaker 1: still pitdling four percent tax on stock buybacks, which is
Speaker 1: also unlikely to do really much of anything at all.
Speaker 1: Buybacks should be banned period end of According to Adam
Speaker 1: Winkler at the founding of the Republic, Thomas Jefferson warrant
Speaker 1: of quote the aristocracy of our money and corporations, which
Speaker 1: dare already to challenge our government to a trial of
Speaker 1: strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Speaker 1: Our government is no longer challenged by moneyed corporations today.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, they're quite comfortable with rule by corporate power.
Speaker 1: That ninety percent number stunned me. And if you want
Speaker 1: to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium
Speaker 1: subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. So we have been
Speaker 1: tracking mass protests that have swept across the nation of
Speaker 1: Israel in response to current Prime Minister Netanyahu's attacks on
Speaker 1: the independent judiciary there. It's a fairly complex situation, so
Speaker 1: we wanted to get in an expert who has been
Speaker 1: following this closely to break down exactly what is happening.
Speaker 1: So we're happy to welcome back to the show, Ken Roth.
Speaker 1: He is the former executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Speaker 1: Great to see you, Ken, good diseaser, good to be back,
Speaker 1: thank you. So just to set up a little bit
Speaker 1: of the context here, let's go and put this element
Speaker 1: up on the screen to give you a sense of
Speaker 1: how widespread these protests have become axios. Reporting that they
Speaker 1: have actually spread to the Israeli military, which is in
Speaker 1: Maya is quite extraordinary. So can you just start with
Speaker 1: the basics here, Ken, of what Netanyahoo is trying to
Speaker 1: do and why there has been such resistance to it. Okay, well, Christal,
Speaker 1: maybe a good place to begin is to explain, you know,
Speaker 1: this may be too basic, but you know, why do
Speaker 1: you care about an independent judiciary? And you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's there's a temptation in a democracy to think, oh,
Speaker 1: democracy means elections, Democracy means majority rule, and obviously that's
Speaker 1: an essential element of democracy, but that's not sufficient. Democracy
Speaker 1: also means that the majority is limited by your rights.
Speaker 1: You know, the government can't do anything, They can't censor you,
Speaker 1: they can't throw you in prison. There's certain things they
Speaker 1: can't do, and we depend on an independent judiciary to
Speaker 1: uphold those rights. We also depend on an and in
Speaker 1: judiciary to make sure that government officials are subject to
Speaker 1: the law. That means the rule of law. So you
Speaker 1: can't have you know, a president or prime minister steal
Speaker 1: or you know, can meet crimes. They too are subject
Speaker 1: to the law. So these are essential elements of democracy,
Speaker 1: and that's why people are so exercised about what n'tagna
Speaker 1: who is now trying to do. He you know, he
Speaker 1: leads a very far right coalition, including you know, people
Speaker 1: who were considered you know, just beyond the pale a
Speaker 1: few months ago, and now our ministers. So this is
Speaker 1: an extreme government. Natagnaho was desperate to put it together
Speaker 1: because he himself is trying to avoid corruption charges and
Speaker 1: he thought the best way to do that would be
Speaker 1: to become prime minister. Again, that meant he had to
Speaker 1: have a majority in the Knesset, and he now has
Speaker 1: a majority of sixty four seats in the one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty member Knesset. So that's the badrop. Now he
Speaker 1: is proposing in this bill to take two important steps
Speaker 1: that would undermine the ability of the judiciary to ensure
Speaker 1: that the government respects rights and abides by the rule
Speaker 1: of law. One is that he's proposing that the Kannesse,
Speaker 1: the parliament in Israel, could simply overturn any court rule
Speaker 1: by a simple one vote majority. And so you can
Speaker 1: imagine court saying, no, you can't pass this law because
Speaker 1: that would be undermining freedom of expression, or you can't
Speaker 1: pass that law because that would be discrimination, and the
Speaker 1: canessset would say tough, We're just going to vote, you know,
Speaker 1: it could be sixty one to fifty nine, and we're
Speaker 1: going to overturn your ruling. So that is basically destroying
Speaker 1: the concept of judicial review. It's saying that the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court does not have the power to enforce rights or
Speaker 1: to uphold the rule of law. And then on top
Speaker 1: of that, Natanya who is trying to change the way
Speaker 1: that judges are selected for the Screme Court. Currently there's
Speaker 1: a committee of nine that proposes appointments, and five of
Speaker 1: those nine people are not members of the government, so
Speaker 1: there's a good degree of independence here. They're either a
Speaker 1: judges or members of our associations. And this is a
Speaker 1: way to again ensure that the government just doesn't stack
Speaker 1: the court with people who are going to then vote
Speaker 1: in favor of the government. Nowtayah who wants to change that.
Speaker 1: He wants to have his appointees make up a majority
Speaker 1: of this appointing committee so that he can gradually change
Speaker 1: the composition of the court to one that would be
Speaker 1: more attuned to what he's trying to do. Yep, so Ken,
Speaker 1: how does this map onto US relations I understand that
Speaker 1: it has disrupted the visit of Secretary of Austin. How
Speaker 1: is the Biden administration reacting to this and how is
Speaker 1: this going to change the foreign political situation vis a
Speaker 1: the our relationships in the world's relationship with Israel. Well,
Speaker 1: what everybody is worried about is that, you know, if
Speaker 1: in fact, you have this far right Natanyahu government, unfettered
Speaker 1: by the rule of law, unscrutinized by an independent Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: it could do whatever it wants. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: the things that people are worried about within Israel proper,
Speaker 1: They're worried that, you know, an increasingly religious religious government
Speaker 1: is going to start imposing its views on what still
Speaker 1: is you know, a significantly secular Jewish population in Israel,
Speaker 1: People who don't want to abide by the you know,
Speaker 1: the strict requirements of ultra Orthodoxy, and they're worried that
Speaker 1: this somehow might be imposed. And so you can imagine
Speaker 1: what this would be, you know, say for same sex marriage,
Speaker 1: where the Court currently has been very positive on that.
Speaker 1: It has said, for example, there was a law on
Speaker 1: surrogacy and they it was originally passed so only single
Speaker 1: women could be surrogates, and they said, you know, no,
Speaker 1: it could be it could be a single man who
Speaker 1: wants to bring in a who wants to have a child.
Speaker 1: It could be the same sex couple. You know, this
Speaker 1: is an example of how the Court is upholding you know,
Speaker 1: kind of basic rights, and they've been very good about
Speaker 1: upholding freedom of expression, freedom of the media. Suddenly that
Speaker 1: could all be out the window. You would have, you know,
Speaker 1: a government that could censor the media, that could start,
Speaker 1: you know, undercutting basic rights for Israelis. Now, the big
Speaker 1: fear is what happens in the occupied territories, right and
Speaker 1: you know, we've already seen elements of this extreme government.
Speaker 1: They have declared nine illegal outposts suddenly legal. These are
Speaker 1: you know, settlements that are not even authorized by the
Speaker 1: Israeli government. It's worth noting that settlements themselves are illegal.
Speaker 1: They violate what is known as Article forty nine of
Speaker 1: the Fourth Shiva conn which prohibits an occupying power from
Speaker 1: transferring its population to occupied territory. So the settlements are
Speaker 1: clearly illegal. That basically are war crimes. The government is
Speaker 1: going ahead and legalizing, you know, declaring that it approves
Speaker 1: of morales. Now, even the existing Supreme Court has not
Speaker 1: been willing to sort of address the issue. It's trying
Speaker 1: to duct the issue, so it's never declared, you know,
Speaker 1: whether they're legal or illegal because you know, frankly, to
Speaker 1: do that, it would have to declare them illegal if
Speaker 1: it was at all honest, So it just ducks the issue.
Speaker 1: But the fear is that Natanyahu now could try to
Speaker 1: annex broad parts of the West Bank. It could you know,
Speaker 1: just kind of expand Israel's boundaries into the occupied territory,
Speaker 1: and that there'd be no court to stop that. So
Speaker 1: these are the kinds of things that would have, you know,
Speaker 1: a dramatic impact on Israel's standing in the world and
Speaker 1: certainly on US Israeli relations where you know, the United
Speaker 1: States in fact, just recently Anthony Blincoln and Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: you know, tried to gociate a six month pause in
Speaker 1: these kinds of actions, and within days Natanyahu had flouted
Speaker 1: it by preceding that this plan with respect to these
Speaker 1: nine out posts. So you know, this is a government
Speaker 1: that needs to be scrutinized. You need an independence screen court.
Speaker 1: And if that is gone, who knows where it's going
Speaker 1: to go. We're already seeing you know that American Jews
Speaker 1: are increasingly unhappy with this government, and I anticipate that
Speaker 1: the US government as a whole is going to be
Speaker 1: increasingly unhappy if it continues in this direction. Well, and
Speaker 1: there has also been fallout in the US Israel relationship
Speaker 1: over comments that were made by the Israeli finance minister.
Speaker 1: He called up for a Palestinian village in the West
Speaker 1: Bank to be quote wiped out. Can you talk to
Speaker 1: tell explain that situation and explain what the US response
Speaker 1: has been and what you think that it should be. Yes,
Speaker 1: the finance minister is a man by the name of
Speaker 1: bezal Lal Smote Ridge, and he was talking about the
Speaker 1: Palestinian village of Huara, and this was the site initially
Speaker 1: of a place where Palestinian gunmen murdered to Israeli brothers
Speaker 1: from a nearby settlement who were driving through this Palestinian town.
Speaker 1: In revenge, settlers rampaged through this town of Huara, you know,
Speaker 1: set buildings on fire, destroyed large parts of the town.
Speaker 1: And the Finance minister, when asked about this, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than condemning the violence, saying, you know, yes, the
Speaker 1: initial killings were wrong, but so is this rampage by settlers,
Speaker 1: which I should say, this rampage happened, you know, under
Speaker 1: the watchful eyes of the Israelian military, which did nothing
Speaker 1: to stop the settlers. But the finance minister, rather than
Speaker 1: say this is horrible, we don't take law into our
Speaker 1: own hands, he said they should have wiped out the village.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is a minister advocating lawlesses. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, under pressure Natagnan, who is kind of you know,
Speaker 1: repudiated that a little bit. But this, this finance minister
Speaker 1: is supposed to be coming to the United States to
Speaker 1: sell Israeli bonds. And it's not clear at this point
Speaker 1: whether the US government is going to give him visa,
Speaker 1: whether he's going to be allowed to come. He's already's
Speaker 1: already clear that he's not going to get any official meetings.
Speaker 1: But this is the kind of extremism that now populates
Speaker 1: the senior positions of the Natenna government, and it highlights
Speaker 1: all the more why we need an independent Israeli Supreme
Speaker 1: Court if these people are just not going to run rampant.
Speaker 1: You know, another person who is like this is a
Speaker 1: guy by the name of Gitamar ben Gevier, who leads
Speaker 1: what's known as the Jewish Power Party. This is a
Speaker 1: member of N'atagnana, who's coalition and it's part of the government,
Speaker 1: and he's already been convicted, criminally convicted of supporting a
Speaker 1: terrorist group and of racist incitement. And that he's in
Speaker 1: the government, he's got a seat in the Knesset, part
Speaker 1: in Netaannaho's majority. So this is what we're dealing with
Speaker 1: it and you know what this is. You know, frankly,
Speaker 1: many people think this is really about behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: is Netagnaho trying to avoid prison because, as I mentioned,
Speaker 1: net Taya, who is facing criminal charges for corruption the
Speaker 1: cases proceeding, and one thing that people fear if he
Speaker 1: pushes through this, you know, this undermining of the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court's independence, is that he could then get his majority
Speaker 1: in the Knissese to pass a law saying, for example,
Speaker 1: you can't convict a sitting prime minister, or a sitting
Speaker 1: prime minister can't be removed momus or something like that.
Speaker 1: The existing Supreme Court would probably say no way that,
Speaker 1: you know, that's wrong, and might overturn it. But if
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court has been eviscerated, if the Canessic can
Speaker 1: just overturn the Supreme Court's ruling by one vote, none
Speaker 1: of this means anything Netagna, who then has his get
Speaker 1: out of jail card forever. This lastly, just to to
Speaker 1: sort of circle back to where we started this, where
Speaker 1: we're talking about how these protests have even rocked the
Speaker 1: Israeli military, which is quite extraordinary. You know, how widespread
Speaker 1: is your sense that these protests actually are. You know,
Speaker 1: where is the population of Israel with regards to what
Speaker 1: Netna who is trying to do with regards to judiciary
Speaker 1: and does he care I mean that will that pressure
Speaker 1: caused him to change course? Well, there have been huge demonstrations,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of people, which in a
Speaker 1: small country like Israel, like I saw a calculation that
Speaker 1: said that would be as if you know, eight million
Speaker 1: people took to the streets of that states. So these
Speaker 1: are really big strations. Now does Natagna who care? You know,
Speaker 1: if if somehow these demonstrations, you know, forced a member
Speaker 1: of his coalition to step down and he suddenly lost power,
Speaker 1: yes he would care about that. But this is a
Speaker 1: really far right coalition. You know, they to determine to
Speaker 1: go ahead, and it's not clear you know what domestically
Speaker 1: can stops. You know, that's where pressure from the United
Speaker 1: States matters so much. And you know, the US government
Speaker 1: has a terrible record of criticizing Israel. I mean, just recently,
Speaker 1: the UN Security Council was considering a resolution condemning the
Speaker 1: legal settlements, and the US State Department negotiated so that
Speaker 1: it could be turned into a mere presidential statement, which
Speaker 1: is non binding, because they just always try to soften
Speaker 1: criticism of Israel and didn't want to have to, you know,
Speaker 1: veto the embarrassment of vetoing a resolution of the Security Council. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, the Biden administration has been horrible about criticizing Israel.
Speaker 1: Now they're becoming a bit more outspoken about this effort
Speaker 1: to undermine the judiciary. But this is you know, really
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg, because you know, of
Speaker 1: course what goes on day today is very severe repression
Speaker 1: in the West Bank, East Drool, Slim and Gaza, and
Speaker 1: that barely gets mentioned from the Biden administration. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think that's all really well said. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking some time to lay all of this out
Speaker 1: for us, because it's extraordinarily important. Thank you so much, Ken,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. That's a pleasure man, really good segment,
Speaker 1: so in depth. You're not going to see that anywhere else,
Speaker 1: so really appreciate it very thorough man. Thank you guys
Speaker 1: so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Enjoy the
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