Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 1: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody,
Speaker 1: Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: When do we have Crystal? Indeed, we do lots of
Speaker 1: big stories breaking this morning. We are still on Trump
Speaker 1: indictment watch. That could come potentially at any time, so
Speaker 1: we will keep an eye on that. Also, this comes
Speaker 1: as he just had his first official big rally. It
Speaker 1: was in an unusual notable place, Waco, Texas. We'll dig
Speaker 1: into all of that. We're also going to dig into
Speaker 1: the debate over banning TikTok, some interesting reactions, some interesting
Speaker 1: videos to show you from the congressional hearings around that
Speaker 1: Putin is announcing that he is moving tactical nukes into Belarus.
Speaker 1: What will that mean? What are the dangers there? Also
Speaker 1: the US with new airstrikes in Syria. What the hell
Speaker 1: are we even doing in Syria at this point? Great question.
Speaker 1: We can dive into that as well. And a new
Speaker 1: report about all of the grifters from the US who
Speaker 1: have flocked to Ukraine, including one Malcolm Nance. Also very
Speaker 1: excited to talk to Tim Urban on the show today.
Speaker 1: He's out with a book called What's Our Problem that
Speaker 1: has gotten a lot of attention that I know many
Speaker 1: of you have been really interested in as well. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: the show, Sagawater and to tell the people why you're
Speaker 1: not in the studio today. Yes, that's right, Today's kind
Speaker 1: of a promotion day for breaking Points Crystals on Russell
Speaker 1: Brand's show. I'm going on the Flagrant podcast. So I'm
Speaker 1: here in New York City. I can offer a little
Speaker 1: bit of eyewitness accounts about the security situation in midtown
Speaker 1: Manhattan whenever we talk about the possible Trump indictment block
Speaker 1: and all of that. So I'm on the ground for
Speaker 1: you folks. But more importantly, Crystal and I are getting
Speaker 1: out there and making sure that people can hear the
Speaker 1: awesome news about what we're doing here and bringing people
Speaker 1: the news. There you go. I'm sure it's going to
Speaker 1: be a great podcast. I can't wait to watch it myself.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news here. Big Trump
Speaker 1: rally over the weekend, as I said, happening in Waco, Texas,
Speaker 1: at the same time that we're right in the middle
Speaker 1: of the thirtieth anniversary of the Siege of Waco. So
Speaker 1: a lot of people drawing the parallels with Trump trying
Speaker 1: to make a point about government overreach and persecution, just
Speaker 1: as of course it was outrageous government overreach and persecution
Speaker 1: thirty years ago. Some pretty wild sounds coming out of
Speaker 1: that rally. That's start with potentially the wildest moment, which
Speaker 1: was Ted Nugent calling Zelensky some names. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to that. I want my money back. I did
Speaker 1: not authorize any money to Ukraine to some homosexual weight weirdo.
Speaker 1: I want my money back. What you think of that one, Sagar? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm against a lot of additional
Speaker 1: a t Ukraine. I'm definitely skeptical of Celenski, but in
Speaker 1: terms of ad hominem attacks and all that, it doesn't
Speaker 1: seem like this one, is it. If anything, Ten, I
Speaker 1: think you're not doing the skeptical case for Ukraine aid
Speaker 1: any favors by acting as well. Yes, fair, Yeah, And
Speaker 1: also it's such a throwback to like, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago or thirty years ago, to just be like
Speaker 1: call people gay as some sort of a slur. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that was Ted Nugent. How things got kicked off. But
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people were watching the rally
Speaker 1: speech from Trump himself to see exactly what he would
Speaker 1: say about his own potential prosecution and indictment and also
Speaker 1: about his potential opponent here, Ron DeSantis. Let's take a
Speaker 1: listen to Trump going in on DeSantis, and also the
Speaker 1: crowd reaction, which was interesting as well. Take a listen.
Speaker 1: When a man comes to me, tears in his eyes.
Speaker 1: He said, almost nothing in the palls, and he's fighting
Speaker 1: somebody that said forty two and he's got almost thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars in the bank. He said, almost nothing. He's
Speaker 1: got no cash. And I said, I can't give you
Speaker 1: an endorsement. There's no way you can win. You're dead.
Speaker 1: But he fought a little bit, like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty who certainly know Jim Jordan that I can tell you.
Speaker 1: He fought a little bit, just a little bit on
Speaker 1: impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoaks number two, meaning on television.
Speaker 1: Because I didn't know him very well, but I saw him.
Speaker 1: So he came and he really wanted I said, you
Speaker 1: can't win. Can you how he can win? Sir? If
Speaker 1: you endorse me, I'll win. Please, please, sir, endorse me.
Speaker 1: I said, let's give it a shot. Ron and I
Speaker 1: endorsed him, and he became like a rocket ship. Within
Speaker 1: one day, the race was over. He got denomination. Now
Speaker 1: he's been telling this story about Rond de Santis for
Speaker 1: a while. Now it seems to get more and more
Speaker 1: over the top every time he tells that the tears
Speaker 1: were streaming from his eyes. The crowd is kind of quiet.
Speaker 1: They did chuckle like, kind of in spite of themselves
Speaker 1: at one point when he was talking about the whole
Speaker 1: endorsement situation. Certainly not the same as the way he
Speaker 1: would get the crowd going with his attacks on Hillary.
Speaker 1: But you know, they stand there and they listen to it,
Speaker 1: and I think it shows once again, Sager, that while
Speaker 1: he is out there, you know, saying whatever he wants
Speaker 1: about Rond de Santis, DeSantis is kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: take a little jab here or there, but really not
Speaker 1: anywhere near in the fight the way the Trump is well,
Speaker 1: didn't you hear, Crystal is silly season. It's a ficial
Speaker 1: and that's what this is. Look I mean, in terms
Speaker 1: of the crowd reaction, Ron DeSantis is still viewed fondly
Speaker 1: amongst many Republicans. Nobody hates Rond de Santis, even in
Speaker 1: the way that many people came to hate Ted Cruz. However,
Speaker 1: that came after a prolonged battle. Wei should also remember
Speaker 1: Ted did come in second in the GOP primary, and
Speaker 1: there was a significant amount of overlap between Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: voters and Trump voters that ultimately sealed the deal for
Speaker 1: Trump with the primary, and of course all of them
Speaker 1: showed up to vote for him in twenty sixteen. So
Speaker 1: I would not take a lot of this crowd reaction.
Speaker 1: The fact that they didn't boo is probable and are
Speaker 1: really just willing to sit there and let kind of
Speaker 1: Trump air his grievances. I think that is still a
Speaker 1: potent symbol. And look, we can just all we need
Speaker 1: to do is state take a step back, look at
Speaker 1: the polling. GOP. National polling across the board has been
Speaker 1: terrible for Ron DeSantis. DeSantis's allies are out, you know,
Speaker 1: with recent like head to head poles which show him
Speaker 1: either tied in some of the early states. I actually
Speaker 1: find that kind of nefarious for a couple of reasons,
Speaker 1: which is, since when did can we imagine this was
Speaker 1: going to be a head to head race? Like you
Speaker 1: can't say, well, head to head, you know, I'm tied
Speaker 1: with this person, but okay, that's great, but you know,
Speaker 1: head to head, Ted Cruz would have beat Trump in
Speaker 1: Iowa and in New Hampshire, but it wasn't head to
Speaker 1: head because there are multiple other candidates in the race,
Speaker 1: and there are already multiple other candidates here in the race.
Speaker 1: So look, the strategy is working. He's locking his people down.
Speaker 1: Overall GOP national polls are not very good for Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: the fact that people are willing to sit through them,
Speaker 1: and you know, you can't deny from Trump's position, the
Speaker 1: reason that he's doing this is to show what the
Speaker 1: power dynamic is. He's like, no, you serve me, not
Speaker 1: the other way around. You can't be my successor if
Speaker 1: I'm the one who's in the race and I'm the
Speaker 1: one who anointed you. I've told you in the audience
Speaker 1: before I interviewed Trump right after the twenty eighteen elections,
Speaker 1: was one of the first people to actually interview him
Speaker 1: about his midterm performance, the very first, even though it
Speaker 1: was a disaster for him, of course, but guess what,
Speaker 1: even then in twenty eighteen, he said, look at this guy,
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis, he was nothing. I endorsed him. He shot up.
Speaker 1: This has been deep in his mind now for years.
Speaker 1: So I mean that was almost four or five years ago. Well,
Speaker 1: you're one hundred percent correct that it's all about the
Speaker 1: power dynamic. I mean to show him you know, the
Speaker 1: way that Trump paints it as DeSantis is practically they're
Speaker 1: groveling with tears streaming down his face, and he knows
Speaker 1: he's nothing without me. It's an absolute sort of like
Speaker 1: alpha power move. And DeSantis basically has decided and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure this is even the wrong choice to effectively
Speaker 1: take it. And you know, I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about this saga because like, okay, what would be a
Speaker 1: better strategy for him? And I'm not sure that there
Speaker 1: is one, because it's not like DeSantis can compete with
Speaker 1: Trump on this terrain. It's not like everybody who tried
Speaker 1: to get down in the mud with Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen ended up just getting instantly obliterated. So probably his
Speaker 1: best option is what he's doing, which is to kind
Speaker 1: of stay quiet, to kind of, you know, take a
Speaker 1: little bit of a job to show he's just not
Speaker 1: completely getting rolled over by this dude, and that he
Speaker 1: is taking notice and that he has some ability to
Speaker 1: punch back, but to hope that some other circumstance takes
Speaker 1: Trump down, that he has nothing to do with and
Speaker 1: that he's basically their second in line. If that does happen,
Speaker 1: that probably is his best play, And I think what
Speaker 1: you bring up with Ted Cruz is a really good point. Now,
Speaker 1: I do think Ron DeSantis is in a better position
Speaker 1: than Ted Cruz ever was. But it's easy to forget
Speaker 1: how much of a darling Ted Cruz was with the
Speaker 1: Republican base during the Tea Party era. I mean, he
Speaker 1: also had his own national brand and identity and you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of warm feelings among a lot of Republican voters,
Speaker 1: and ultimately it really didn't matter once Trump decided to
Speaker 1: light into him. It was basically all over. While DeSantis
Speaker 1: and his allies may be citing a few new poles
Speaker 1: one out of Iowa, one out of New Hampshire, Trump
Speaker 1: but the rally had his own favorite poll that he
Speaker 1: decided to tout. This was literally a Twitter poll by
Speaker 1: a Twitter user named I Kid You not Cat turned
Speaker 1: two that Trump cites favorably. At this rally tagalism. You'll
Speaker 1: see some numbers that are incredible. You'll see some numbers
Speaker 1: that we just had one today sixteen Trump and I
Speaker 1: think nineteen to shake themonius. Yeah, we were at sixty
Speaker 1: nine and one today. Classic there, classic move, citing a
Speaker 1: literal Twitter poll as evidence of his dominance in the race. Amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a little too much emphasis there from Trump on the
Speaker 1: sixty nine. I mean, look, with Trump, he'll take my
Speaker 1: favorite thing. When he was in office, he'd be like
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of Republican support Trump, thank you. And
Speaker 1: it would come from a poll that showed him at
Speaker 1: like thirty two percent approval, but with ninety percent with Trump, listen,
Speaker 1: I mean, no matter what the numbers are. I've also
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about it too. I got a
Speaker 1: very thoughtful message from somebody who's been watching the show
Speaker 1: for a long time, Chrisonally. He said, you and Crystal
Speaker 1: were big advocates for Bernie Sanders to go after Joe
Speaker 1: Biden in two thousand and sixty or twenty twenty in
Speaker 1: the primary, So why are you not saying the same
Speaker 1: thing about DeSantis. Well, I think it's important to note
Speaker 1: that Joe Biden never had the level of approval amongst
Speaker 1: a Democratic base, and still doesn't that Donald Trump exactly.
Speaker 1: That still doesn't that Donald Trump did in terms of
Speaker 1: his beloved nature, and so that's why I think it
Speaker 1: would backfire. In fact, one of the things that we
Speaker 1: really identified at that time was that there was an
Speaker 1: opening for a critique against Biden in the primary with
Speaker 1: a certain subset of voters that could have resonated in
Speaker 1: some of those early states that Bernie explicitly chose not
Speaker 1: to take, whereas in this case with DeSantis, there is
Speaker 1: not the similar opening lane of Republicans who want to
Speaker 1: hear a criticism of Trump. And mainly the reason is
Speaker 1: that many Republicans conflate any criticism of Trump. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not saying this is a correct thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think it should be this way, but they
Speaker 1: conflate that with going soft being a tool of the left,
Speaker 1: part of the reason why people hate Liz Cheney and
Speaker 1: really any tepic criticism of Trump whatsoever. So it's one
Speaker 1: of those where he is in just such a pickle
Speaker 1: that I agree with you, he's probably doing the best
Speaker 1: thing he possibly can. But that just illustrates to me
Speaker 1: where as long as Trump is in the race, like,
Speaker 1: it's just not going to happen, and I can't imagine
Speaker 1: to try to subject myself to all of this. I mean,
Speaker 1: this answer is a young man. He's like forty forty
Speaker 1: three years old, his small children. It's like, why would
Speaker 1: you want to go through this? Yeah. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's a great segue into the next piece. But before
Speaker 1: we get to it, I did want to ask you, sar,
Speaker 1: what'd you think of the choice of Waco, Texas for
Speaker 1: this rally? Oh? Very smart actually, because you know, obviously
Speaker 1: we cover we had David Thibodeau on the show, The
Speaker 1: Waco Survivor. The segment did incredibly well, and it's not
Speaker 1: a surprise. There's still quite a bit of organic, I
Speaker 1: would say, interest in what happened at Waco, and especially
Speaker 1: with the rise of the Internet and the ability for
Speaker 1: a newer generation people like us whose lives weren't defined
Speaker 1: by Waco as a seminal political event, to kind of
Speaker 1: re examine it in the cold light of day, and
Speaker 1: everybody's like, this was a complete disaster. So I think
Speaker 1: it was a smart move, especially you know, politically, trying
Speaker 1: to conflate it with January six and look at government overreach,
Speaker 1: which is something that the base feels especially passionate about.
Speaker 1: Let me spend a second there too, which is a
Speaker 1: lot of people talked about. They're like, why is Trump
Speaker 1: talking about January six when clearly, you know, MAGA stopped
Speaker 1: the steal and all that was such a disaster for
Speaker 1: him in the mid terms. I actually agree with that,
Speaker 1: but that's general election analysis, that's not primary analysis. That's
Speaker 1: right amongst the primary, amongst the base, people who watch
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson every single night, amongst the Fox News dads,
Speaker 1: they are obsessed with January six, with the political persecution
Speaker 1: and all that. So it's an easy way for him
Speaker 1: to again conflate the entire Republican movement and persecution of
Speaker 1: them and himself as a bulwark against the left and
Speaker 1: elevate him once again over Ron DeSantis. Well, this is
Speaker 1: the thing that Trump does so effectively and has always
Speaker 1: done so effectively. He defines and selects the landscape of
Speaker 1: issues that he wants to make central to a political
Speaker 1: campaign and forces people to pick a side, to be
Speaker 1: on one side or the other. And with regards to
Speaker 1: the midterms, which yeah, we're you know, really ended up
Speaker 1: being kind of a disaster for Trump and the candidates
Speaker 1: that he endorsed, But in terms of the Republican primaries
Speaker 1: leading into those midterms, Stop the Deal was one of
Speaker 1: the key issues, if not the key issue. He managed
Speaker 1: to make it the central dividing line in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party and it's one that is very difficult for candidates
Speaker 1: like Ronda Santis who want to maintain elite donor support
Speaker 1: to try to navigate. So it's another for him. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it will be horrible for him in the
Speaker 1: general election. I think it's horrible for the country, But
Speaker 1: in terms of a Republican primary electorate, this is an
Speaker 1: issue that's very beneficial to him. So you can see
Speaker 1: the way that he's sort of already setting the table
Speaker 1: with his position on Ukraine, which again Rond Dea Santis
Speaker 1: has struggled to navigate. He sounded very different depending on
Speaker 1: the day and depending on the interview, even though I
Speaker 1: think if you look at his comments in totality, I
Speaker 1: don't think they're directly contradictory of one another, but clearly
Speaker 1: the tone was different with Tucker Carlson versus when he
Speaker 1: was sitting with Piers Morgan, and it becomes clear that
Speaker 1: you know, he's leaving himself some wiggle room and looking
Speaker 1: kind of like a typical politician trying to navigate Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So that's been a difficult one for him. The other
Speaker 1: one that I think is so intelligent, and that is
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways going back to classic Trump
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, is him leaning into social Security and Medicare
Speaker 1: and very much like which side are you on on
Speaker 1: that one? That's another really challenging one for Ronda Santis,
Speaker 1: but also basically every other potential Republican contender in the field.
Speaker 1: And then when you throw stop the Steel into that
Speaker 1: mix again, that's a difficult one. That's going to be
Speaker 1: a difficult one for Mike Pence, that's going to be
Speaker 1: a difficult one with for Nikki Haley. That's going to
Speaker 1: be a difficult one for Ronda Santis because this is
Speaker 1: an issue where they're going to try to have it
Speaker 1: both ways. They're going to try to do some version
Speaker 1: of the what you always call the high browse stop
Speaker 1: the steal, and that is not going to be acceptable
Speaker 1: to the base. And Trump is not going to let
Speaker 1: that slide. So I think the landscape of issues that
Speaker 1: he is laid out is making it very difficult for
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis and all of these other contenders to try
Speaker 1: to navigate. Yeah, I think you're right on that, Crystal,
Speaker 1: all right, So let's get to it's not just us
Speaker 1: that have some questions about whether Ronda Santis will be
Speaker 1: able to ultimately succeed in this Republican primary, and whether
Speaker 1: there's really any move on the chessboard that he could
Speaker 1: make that would enable his victory without some extra exogynous
Speaker 1: event occurring to effectively take Trump out of the running gun.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. This is a report
Speaker 1: from NBC News. The headline here is Ron DeSantis's donors
Speaker 1: and allies question if he's ready for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: They say, at a recent gathering of sixteen prominent Republicans,
Speaker 1: a number of DeSantis supporters discussed if he should run
Speaker 1: against Trump or wait until twenty twenty eight. Let me
Speaker 1: read a bit of this report because I think it
Speaker 1: is quite stunning. One of the individuals strategists they interviewed
Speaker 1: for this had I thought a really great quote. He said,
Speaker 1: DeSantis is doing a book tour, he's barnstorming the country,
Speaker 1: and his polls are going down. Meanwhile, Trump's potentially under
Speaker 1: indictment and Trump's going up. It's just not a good
Speaker 1: look for DeSantis. The piece begins by saying, Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: maybe missing his moment. A number of the Florida governor's
Speaker 1: donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggests he
Speaker 1: might not be ready for a brutal fight against Trump.
Speaker 1: Some feel he needs to accelerate his timeline to run
Speaker 1: for the GUP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump
Speaker 1: if sees to have any chance of thwarting the president's
Speaker 1: former president's momentum. Others believe DeSantis should just stude step
Speaker 1: Trump altogether and wait until twenty twenty eight to run.
Speaker 1: This was based on some reporting they did at this
Speaker 1: Sunday luncheon following a Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 1: So this was in Florida. This was again not a
Speaker 1: bunch of Trump backers. These are DeSantis people, or at
Speaker 1: least Desanti's friendly. One attendee, you know, describe them as
Speaker 1: a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump's skeptics, and they
Speaker 1: were all discussing misgivings about the governor standing for the future.
Speaker 1: They liked him, many of them might even support him.
Speaker 1: The person who was at the event set of DeSantis,
Speaker 1: but they thought on ballots his long term future was
Speaker 1: better without him trying to take Trump head on. He
Speaker 1: will get scarred up by Trump, the person added. They
Speaker 1: also mentioned this conservative billionaire shipping Goods Magnet Richard Julian
Speaker 1: and his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth who's five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in combined contributions, ranked them among the most generous donors
Speaker 1: to DeSantis' previous campaign, and they said a purpose person
Speaker 1: with familiar with their strategy said on spending, they are
Speaker 1: pumping the brakes. The polling really made different people pause.
Speaker 1: And you know, this all comes after DeSantis has sounded
Speaker 1: different notes on Ukraine, really in particular stumbling and delay,
Speaker 1: how he reacted to Trump's indictment, and just I think
Speaker 1: also the increasingly apparent landscape where because Trump is dominating
Speaker 1: the news so much, and because these various indictments are
Speaker 1: likely to come down and really make him the focal
Speaker 1: point of the party once again, it just makes the
Speaker 1: landscape damn near impossible for anyone to try to navigate
Speaker 1: and get ahead of him in the polls. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very difficult. I thought that the Ukraine thing that he
Speaker 1: did was a massive mistake because he tried to have
Speaker 1: it both ways, you know, to Tucker Carlston territorial dispute.
Speaker 1: He takes the heat for it. The donors come out
Speaker 1: and actually get upset with him. And then immediately does
Speaker 1: an about face with Piers Morgan and now is like, oh,
Speaker 1: Putin is a war criminal. He must be held to account. Now,
Speaker 1: as you said, technically on paper, he didn't reverse anything
Speaker 1: that he said. They're not intellectually inconsistent that said, this
Speaker 1: is about tonal and rhetoric comparison. Rhetorically, Clearly it was
Speaker 1: a backtrack, and he actually accused the mainstream media of
Speaker 1: distorting some of his comments. So it's like, well, which
Speaker 1: way is it, Governor. Did you say it was a
Speaker 1: territory or dispute. Are you skeptical of a to Ukraine
Speaker 1: or do you think that we should take a more
Speaker 1: hawkish position towards Russia. Obviously this is a donor backed pressure,
Speaker 1: and this ultimately shows you why Trump has always been
Speaker 1: able to be successful in the first place. Like, yes,
Speaker 1: he might be do the bidding of the donors inadvertently
Speaker 1: whenever he allows the tax cuts and all of that
Speaker 1: to go through, but on issues, whenever he diverts from them,
Speaker 1: he's just going to say whatever he thinks. And you know,
Speaker 1: I have no idea how much of that pressure or
Speaker 1: whatever actually does come to Mayor, but this seemed quite
Speaker 1: obvious of a pressure campaign, and it's also one where
Speaker 1: if he can't stand his ground on Ukraine, then you know,
Speaker 1: how are you going to stand your ground on many
Speaker 1: of the other fights that you're going to have to
Speaker 1: now navigate where the base feels very differently than mainstream
Speaker 1: public opinion. Overall, I thought it was political disaster the
Speaker 1: way that he handled himself there and actually gave a
Speaker 1: great gift to the Trump campaign, who is smacking him
Speaker 1: over the head with Ukraine, for sure, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: And do I think that Ukraine will be the number
Speaker 1: one issue for Republican primary voters, No, I do not.
Speaker 1: Most voters don't vote on foreign policy. But do I
Speaker 1: think that this whole episode gives off an incredible stench
Speaker 1: of like politician with his finger in the wind, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out the right answer of where he should
Speaker 1: be rather than what he actually thinks. Yes, absolutely, and
Speaker 1: so in that way, I do think it is damaging
Speaker 1: to him, even though you know, again, I don't think
Speaker 1: that Republican primary voters, I don't want to pretend they're
Speaker 1: following all the ins and outs of how Ron DeSantis
Speaker 1: like navigated Ukraine. In a couple of different interviews, but again,
Speaker 1: this is we're talking about an elite donor set that
Speaker 1: he's going to be very dependent on if and when
Speaker 1: he runs for president. They're certainly paying close attention to
Speaker 1: this and clearly have a lot of nervousness around not
Speaker 1: just the Ukraine answers, but also and you picked up
Speaker 1: on this right away to Sager that there was such
Speaker 1: a delay in how he responded to potential Trump indictment
Speaker 1: that it took him days and days before even said
Speaker 1: a word about it, and then when he did say
Speaker 1: something about it, he once again tried to have it
Speaker 1: both ways, tried to take a shot at Trump over
Speaker 1: you know, hush money to porn stars, which the base
Speaker 1: did not take kindly too, in which there's a big
Speaker 1: backlash online over, but also then going after you know
Speaker 1: the quote unquote George Soros back da. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's just an increasing realization this landscape is
Speaker 1: going to be very difficult, and like we've been saying
Speaker 1: the whole time, the indictments again might be bad for
Speaker 1: Trump in a general election, but in terms of the
Speaker 1: Republican base, it's just like when mar A Lago was raided.
Speaker 1: It forces people to come out and defend him. It
Speaker 1: sort of strengthens his hand within the Republican Party. And
Speaker 1: this potential indictment that we may or may not get
Speaker 1: this week is likely to be just the first of
Speaker 1: a number of potential indictments here. Let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about what might happen this week
Speaker 1: now as a refresher. The indictment we're talking about right
Speaker 1: now has to do with the hush money payments to
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels leading up to the twenty sixteen campaign. The
Speaker 1: allegation here potentially is that there was both a business fraud,
Speaker 1: which would be typically a misdemeanor where the payments were
Speaker 1: misclassified in terms of his record keeping, but also the
Speaker 1: way that they're potentially interpreting this as a felony is
Speaker 1: that this was in service of campaign finance fraud, and
Speaker 1: so that is the legal theory that they may be
Speaker 1: pursuing with this grand jury in Manhattan. Trump, of course,
Speaker 1: at his rally, reacted to these potential indictments. Let's take
Speaker 1: a listen to what he had to say. The new
Speaker 1: weapon being used by out of control, unhinged Democrats to
Speaker 1: cheat on election is criminally investigating a candidate bad publicity
Speaker 1: and all you get bad publicity. It's the craziest thing.
Speaker 1: I got bad publicity, and my poll numbers have gone
Speaker 1: through the roof. Would you explain this to me? Explain
Speaker 1: that to me, Dan, mister congressman, you got to explain
Speaker 1: it to me because nobody else has ever heard of it.
Speaker 1: But you know what, it gets so much publicity that
Speaker 1: the case actually gets adjudicated in the press and people
Speaker 1: see it's bullshit, and they go and they say it's unfair.
Speaker 1: Also worth noting he had preprinted signs that plaggards that
Speaker 1: those fans were holding up that said winch hunt on it.
Speaker 1: So he clearly is leaning into this fite zager. Yeah
Speaker 1: he is. I mean, and again this is probably one
Speaker 1: of the most potent things that he has in further
Speaker 1: Republican base because they view him so tightly as a
Speaker 1: representative of them, and any persecution of him is one
Speaker 1: that is by definition and de facto persecution of them.
Speaker 1: So that's actually why the snowball nature of many of
Speaker 1: the law enforcement investigations and the fact that they appear
Speaker 1: again appear to be starting with this hush money bookkeeping
Speaker 1: scheme about to a porn star. It just seems like
Speaker 1: a major mistake because narratively, what you would have wanted
Speaker 1: to start with is the Fulton County case about stop
Speaker 1: the steal, or a federal case about stop the steal,
Speaker 1: or the secret document. Now, obviously with the classified documents,
Speaker 1: that one went a little bit out the window after
Speaker 1: Joe Biden himself had classified documents themselves. So the best
Speaker 1: one they really had was Fulton County and January sixth.
Speaker 1: Starting with the bookkeeping one, it's going to snowball now
Speaker 1: all into one thing where people aren't necessarily going to
Speaker 1: parse the details of every single prosecution investigation and all that. So, look,
Speaker 1: we don't know. Again, it's Monday. We don't yet have
Speaker 1: an indication whether the grand jury is going to meet
Speaker 1: and Trump will be indicted tomorrow. As I said, I'm
Speaker 1: here in Manhattan, and there is quite a bit of
Speaker 1: security in Midtown, including Secret Service. Nobody actually quite knows
Speaker 1: what's going on. Specifically it's around the Peninsula Hotel, but
Speaker 1: the entire block is blocked off. Their garbage trucks everywhere,
Speaker 1: their Secret Service detail, their dogs ypds out in full foursome.
Speaker 1: You know, all things certainly smell of Trump. Why he
Speaker 1: would though he would be staying at a hotel and
Speaker 1: not at his own house. I don't certainly know, but
Speaker 1: it's one of those where there's quite a bit of speculation.
Speaker 1: Here in Manhattan. There is security, I know, down at
Speaker 1: the courthouse and elsewhere in preparation for any type of indictment.
Speaker 1: So at the very least people in the city appear
Speaker 1: to be preparing or very authorities here in Manhattan are
Speaker 1: preparing for something. And apparently I look this up, the
Speaker 1: grand jury typically meets on Monday, so today would be
Speaker 1: one of the typical meeting days Wednesday and Thursday. Last
Speaker 1: week we're reported they canceled the Wednesday and Thursday meetings.
Speaker 1: They didn't come in, and they didn't meet, So potentially
Speaker 1: there could be something happening today, but no one knows.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that I just think it's really
Speaker 1: important to throw out there is we've been taking as
Speaker 1: kind of like a you know, a done deal that
Speaker 1: Trump is going to be indicted by this grand jury,
Speaker 1: and it's likely that he is, but I just want
Speaker 1: to say that there's no guarant You're still talking about
Speaker 1: human beings who have been presented with certain evidence in
Speaker 1: a case and will be making up their minds whether
Speaker 1: or not to indict him. So it's not like this process. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's controlled. The process is controlled by Alvin Bragg, but
Speaker 1: it's still dependent on regular citizens of New York to
Speaker 1: ultimately make the decision here. And I just want to
Speaker 1: put out there that there are absolutely no guarantees that
Speaker 1: they will decide that they should indict him. President former
Speaker 1: President Trump, also reacting on true social as he does,
Speaker 1: put this up on the screen. This was apparently a
Speaker 1: late night post where he's warning of death and destruction
Speaker 1: if he gets arrested. Let me read you the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and says what kind of person can charge another person,
Speaker 1: in this case, a former president in the US who
Speaker 1: got more votes than any's sitting president in history and
Speaker 1: leading candidate by far for the Republican Party nomination with
Speaker 1: a crime when it is known by all that no
Speaker 1: crime has been committed, and also known that potential death
Speaker 1: and destruction in such a false charge could be catastrophic
Speaker 1: for our country. And who would do such a thing?
Speaker 1: Only a degenerate psychopath that truly hates the USA and saga.
Speaker 1: This reminded me of after the mar A Lago raid,
Speaker 1: Trump made some similar comments, basically threatening, you know, nice
Speaker 1: country you got there. If I'm indicted, it's all going
Speaker 1: to go to hell. Yeah, I mean this is vintage Trump.
Speaker 1: He's never been above using it. He quite literally already
Speaker 1: did it. So it's one of those people should probably
Speaker 1: take it seriously. In terms of how people will react, though,
Speaker 1: that's the real open question. I have no idea. As
Speaker 1: we actually previously showed, not a lot of people showed
Speaker 1: up to the planned protest outside of the Manhattan DA's office,
Speaker 1: even though that was called or at least stoked a
Speaker 1: bit by Trump and some of his allies. So whether
Speaker 1: they will and will heed the call and whether they
Speaker 1: view it even as a fruitful exercise for protest is
Speaker 1: actually one where we really don't know the answer to
Speaker 1: that question yet. Yes, so will there actually be death
Speaker 1: and destruction? I guess We're just going to have to
Speaker 1: wait and find out another great day. I'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: We'll see what happens as they as the Trump always said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's talk a little bit about TikTok. I
Speaker 1: know that there was a lot going on over the weekend.
Speaker 1: We covered previously how the TikTok CEO appeared before Congress.
Speaker 1: At this point, we will show you some of his comments,
Speaker 1: but more interestingly what happened is that there was effectively
Speaker 1: unanimous a position on the committee itself around national security
Speaker 1: issues surrounding TikTok. Overall, the hearing is regarded as a
Speaker 1: massive disgrace for the TikTok CEO. It didn't handle himself
Speaker 1: particularly well. Also as a disgrace tough many members of Congress,
Speaker 1: which we will absolutely get to. The major debate though,
Speaker 1: happening right now, has been sparked by Representative AOC who
Speaker 1: posted her first TikTok ever over the weekend in when
Speaker 1: she came out against banning TikTok. Wants to make sure
Speaker 1: that we showed all of you and broke down some
Speaker 1: of what she said. Let's take a listen. The United
Speaker 1: States has never before banned a social media company from existence,
Speaker 1: from operating in our borders, and this is an app
Speaker 1: that has over one hundred and fifty million Americans on it.
Speaker 1: Some of the arguments about banning TikTok have come with
Speaker 1: respect to discussions around Chinese surveillance and utilization of data
Speaker 1: that is tracked and the enormous amount of tracking on
Speaker 1: US citizens and data that is harvested by TikTok, and
Speaker 1: they say, because of this egregious amount of data harvesting,
Speaker 1: we should ban this app. However, that doesn't really address
Speaker 1: the core of the issue, which is the fact that
Speaker 1: major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of
Speaker 1: deeply personal data about you that you don't know about
Speaker 1: without really any significant regulation whatsoever. So I think this
Speaker 1: is important. I want to spend some time on this. Christal.
Speaker 1: I know you and I have talked about this a lot,
Speaker 1: but people, obviously there's a lot of renewed interests in this.
Speaker 1: So part of the reason why I want to take
Speaker 1: this seriously our own James Lee actually did a fantastic
Speaker 1: segment over the weekend about this as well. The reason
Speaker 1: why I think conflating data privacy with this issue is that, yes,
Speaker 1: it is certainly true that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple
Speaker 1: are cynically using the TikTok national security issue to push
Speaker 1: their own business. That said, that does not mean that
Speaker 1: we should disregard the core issue at hand. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, Facebook, Google, Apple, all of these
Speaker 1: companies are subject to US law, to the US judicial system.
Speaker 1: If we have a problem with that, we can change it.
Speaker 1: We can actually change the way that they conduct business.
Speaker 1: I and you have both advocated for changing those laws.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons actually why TikTok is so exceptional
Speaker 1: is that they are not subject to US control and
Speaker 1: are stead directly subject to the Chinese authoritarian system in
Speaker 1: which they directly have to do whatever the Chinese government
Speaker 1: tells them to do. We also know at this point
Speaker 1: that TikTok, owned by Bike Dance CEO Xiang Ziming, has
Speaker 1: directly made company decisions at the behest of the CCP
Speaker 1: and so called government controlled actions. Now, the national security
Speaker 1: case on this is that you're going to have an
Speaker 1: app with one hundred and fifty million Americans being used
Speaker 1: that is not subject to any democratic, small d democratic control.
Speaker 1: And yes, let me just stop there and let me
Speaker 1: I want to hear what you have to say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean to be honest with you. I actually found
Speaker 1: some of the questions that James Lee raise, which I
Speaker 1: do want everybody to go and watch because he did
Speaker 1: a fantastic job on that video, I found them persuasive.
Speaker 1: And I also found Glenn Greenwall did a show on
Speaker 1: this last week that I thought also raised some really
Speaker 1: important questions. A couple of things that they brought up is,
Speaker 1: as you were indicating Sager and as AOC also mentioned, Okay,
Speaker 1: if your concern is data privacy, then why are you
Speaker 1: focused on justice one app when Meta in particular collects
Speaker 1: way more data than TikTok does. So the data privacy
Speaker 1: concerns are hard to take seriously when you haven't seen
Speaker 1: a serious effort by Congress to deal with this in
Speaker 1: any real way in terms of, you know, all of
Speaker 1: social media. So that's number one. One of the points
Speaker 1: that Glenn raised that I thought was also worth considering
Speaker 1: is the fact that you know, we know from the
Speaker 1: Twitter files the way that government control and government interface
Speaker 1: with Twitter in particular, but all American social media companies
Speaker 1: has not been a good thing. So it's not an
Speaker 1: accident that the one app that they don't actually have
Speaker 1: sort of direct control over and hold onto is the
Speaker 1: one that they are going after to ban. So I
Speaker 1: think that's noteworthy, and I also think that, you know,
Speaker 1: it's also worth considering that this is just a truly
Speaker 1: extraordinary act. You are talking about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million users on this platform, is the most popular platform
Speaker 1: among teenagers in the country. So the extraordinary nature of
Speaker 1: this act, I think should also not be understated. And
Speaker 1: you also have a lot of people who are very
Speaker 1: self interested, not just the executives at Google and Facebook
Speaker 1: and other places, but also many of these members of
Speaker 1: Congress have stuck in these companies that they stand to
Speaker 1: personally benefit from banning TikTok. So I did actually think
Speaker 1: that a number of those concerns were, you know, significant
Speaker 1: and worth consideration. I think that those are all incredibly
Speaker 1: valid points, And unlike a Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, I
Speaker 1: would not say that that's not true. I think they're
Speaker 1: all actually completely true. That doesn't yet absolve and part
Speaker 1: of what I would say is, Okay, we run our country.
Speaker 1: We have small d democratic input. We can vote for candidates,
Speaker 1: and yes, this is incredibly hard. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: government is incorrupt in our political system, isn't there That said,
Speaker 1: we can have some small de democratic control over the FBI.
Speaker 1: We quite literally have a Congress which is holding hearings
Speaker 1: about this. There are no such hearings in China. Secondly,
Speaker 1: and whenever it comes to this issue around data privacy
Speaker 1: and the self interested in nature, again, I want to
Speaker 1: say that that is one hundred percent true. But I
Speaker 1: also want to inject a secondary issue to this, which
Speaker 1: I don't think that AOC James or Glenn has address,
Speaker 1: which is about reciprocity. Look, at the end of the day, Facebook, Google, Apple, well, okay,
Speaker 1: not Apple, but Facebook, Google, and US social media companies
Speaker 1: are banned in China specifically because China does not want
Speaker 1: any US backed company to have any market share in
Speaker 1: their country whatsoever without total authoritarian control, because they believe
Speaker 1: that it would be used as a US cultural psyop
Speaker 1: to turn their population right. So in that can we
Speaker 1: then allow their major platform in our This is a
Speaker 1: basic this is fairness, But I think cannot allow this
Speaker 1: company to operate in the United States when they ban
Speaker 1: OUR companies from operation. So I think that argument cuts
Speaker 1: both ways. Because when China or Iran or other authoritarian
Speaker 1: regimes block American social media companies, we interpret that as
Speaker 1: their authoritarian despots. So when we do the same with
Speaker 1: their social media platforms, shouldn't we examine whether our behavior
Speaker 1: is similarly authoritarian and despotic. So I don't think that
Speaker 1: that argument. I don't buy that argument because I'm not
Speaker 1: looking to replicate the authoritarian tendencies of you know, a
Speaker 1: country like China. The other thing, in terms of the
Speaker 1: data privacy issues that I think is worth raising as
Speaker 1: well is if we're concerned, and I think we rightly should.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone should take the CEO as a
Speaker 1: word that like, oh, it's all stored in Houston and
Speaker 1: don't worry about it, like they don't have any acts.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone should really buy into that. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I want to be clear about that. But the
Speaker 1: data that we're talking about that's being collected, A lot
Speaker 1: of this data, if not all of this data, is
Speaker 1: widely available for sale. So if China wants that data,
Speaker 1: like they've already got access to it in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, that ship has already sort of sailed. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to get caught up in a sort
Speaker 1: of anti China hysteria. I think it is worth you know,
Speaker 1: I have been in support of some of the efforts
Speaker 1: that we have taken in order to make ourselves more
Speaker 1: economically independent and less dependent on China. I think some
Speaker 1: of the things we've done, especially with chips manufacturing, makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. This one just to be Frank,
Speaker 1: I still have some major, major question marks about whether
Speaker 1: or not this represents a dramatic overreach. And you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it's because my spider senses go up. When you
Speaker 1: have such overwhelming sentiment from both parties and so very
Speaker 1: few voices of dissent, and you got the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: you know, aligning with you know, almost every Republican in
Speaker 1: support of banning this thing. I start to I start
Speaker 1: to wonder what the underlying agenda is, and I do
Speaker 1: think part of it has to do with national security,
Speaker 1: state wanting control over social media platforms, and also personal
Speaker 1: sort of financial investment in some of the companies that
Speaker 1: really stand to benefit from banning TikTok. As we've discussed before,
Speaker 1: all of these social media companies are basically desperate to
Speaker 1: replicate TikTok success. We see very clearly with YouTube, which
Speaker 1: of course is owned by Google, where they're trying to
Speaker 1: do YouTube shorts and they're trying to compete, and they're
Speaker 1: leaning ward to their algorithm versus what people choose to
Speaker 1: select as their preferences on YouTube. This is all complete
Speaker 1: replication of what TikTok has done and the kind of
Speaker 1: magic that has made TikTok so appealing to teenagers. So
Speaker 1: I guess that's what I'll say is I have the
Speaker 1: amount of questions I have about this direction have dramatically increased.
Speaker 1: I think those are all fair, and I actually I
Speaker 1: find myself uncomfortable being on the side of the establishment,
Speaker 1: I guess for once. And but here's the thing I
Speaker 1: will remind people, this was not a popular position three
Speaker 1: and a half years ago. It might have been one
Speaker 1: of the maybe like me and like three Matt Stoller
Speaker 1: and like two others once we were talking about it. Actually,
Speaker 1: the entire Republican establishment was against banning TikTok for this
Speaker 1: reason because Wall Street had significant had a significant investors
Speaker 1: inside of the Bike Dance Corporation. The Biden administration also
Speaker 1: dragged its feet. If you can go back, you can
Speaker 1: actually go pull the receipts if people want. I've been
Speaker 1: doing monologues about this for over three years. I remember
Speaker 1: doing monologues when they had like thirty million users, and
Speaker 1: I was like, guys, this is reaching escape velocity. You've
Speaker 1: got to nip this problem in the bud before it
Speaker 1: becomes a problem. And I also want to say this too,
Speaker 1: about what you were saying at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I respect national sovereignty. If Iran and China want to
Speaker 1: ban Facebook and Google, I don't actually think that's authoritarian,
Speaker 1: even though they are doing it for authoritarian purposes. As
Speaker 1: we also noticed whenever Twitter, for example, removed Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: many other democratic countries like Germany and France were like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't be taken heads of state off platforms, and
Speaker 1: if you do, you're going to be subject to our regulation.
Speaker 1: All countries have the ability to conduct national sovereignty, which
Speaker 1: is why I think that our national sovereignty should be respected.
Speaker 1: The talking point around why should we act like China
Speaker 1: has actually one that a lot of libertarian at libertarian
Speaker 1: activists and lobbyists for TikTok have been using here for
Speaker 1: quite some time. So look, yes, it is true that
Speaker 1: data privacy in the United States is a disaster. It
Speaker 1: is certainly true also that these companies are not acting
Speaker 1: in good faith in that there's a lot of shenanigans
Speaker 1: in corruption and all that going on. It is also true,
Speaker 1: certainly that the FBI and all of those want something
Speaker 1: under their control. But at the same time, we don't
Speaker 1: have no we don't have no role to play here.
Speaker 1: We live in a democratic country, we actually can have
Speaker 1: input on this. I would view this actually as a
Speaker 1: victory for information and for democracy because the press, the press,
Speaker 1: the people, and many of the politicians actually the ones
Speaker 1: who caught up the least. It's really open source press
Speaker 1: reporting and pressure from the outside which brought this issue
Speaker 1: really to bear. And look, let's also take a step
Speaker 1: and look as you alluded to to the actual TikTok
Speaker 1: CEO's testimony here where he did himself no favors with
Speaker 1: some of his disastrous answers. Let's take a listen to one.
Speaker 1: Bite Dens is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government,
Speaker 1: is a private company. Mister Chu, has Bite Dance spied
Speaker 1: on Americans at the direction of the Chinese Communist Party. No,
Speaker 1: has Fit Dance spied on American citizens. I don't think
Speaker 1: they're spying, is the right way to describe it. This
Speaker 1: is committed to be very transparent without users about what
Speaker 1: we collect. I don't think what we collect. I don't
Speaker 1: believe what we collect is more than most. The problem
Speaker 1: here is you're trying to give the impression that you're
Speaker 1: going to move away from Beijing and the Communist Party
Speaker 1: you're trying to give the impression that you're a good actor,
Speaker 1: but the commitments that we would seek to achieve those
Speaker 1: goals are not being made today. I have seen no
Speaker 1: evidence that the Chinese government has access to that data.
Speaker 1: They have never asked us. We have not provided well
Speaker 1: in a way I've asked that. I find that actually preposterous.
Speaker 1: TikTok access to the home Wi Fi network has Fit
Speaker 1: Dance spied on American citizens. I don't think they're spying,
Speaker 1: is the right way to describe it. The only phase
Speaker 1: data that you get that we collect is when you
Speaker 1: use the filters. You have sunglasses on your face. We
Speaker 1: need to know where your eyes are. How do you
Speaker 1: need to know what the ads are if you're not
Speaker 1: seeing if they're dilated American data stort on American soil
Speaker 1: by an American company, overseen by American personnel. We call
Speaker 1: this initiative Project Texas. Please rename your project. Texas is
Speaker 1: not the appropriate name. We stand for freedom and transparency
Speaker 1: and we don't want your project. You damn well know
Speaker 1: that you cannot protect the data and security of this
Speaker 1: committee or the one hundred and fifty million users of
Speaker 1: your app because it is an extension of the CCP
Speaker 1: from the data it collects to the contented controls. TikTok
Speaker 1: is a grave threat of foreign influence in American life.
Speaker 1: So what I like about that mashup is, first of all,
Speaker 1: does TikTok connect to the home Wi Fi? These people,
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to say about this, some
Speaker 1: of these boomers in Congress. I know many of our
Speaker 1: boomera audis will get mad. I'm sorry, people, a lot
Speaker 1: of you gotta go. We can't be having this in
Speaker 1: some of the top representatives of Congress where you have
Speaker 1: an immense about responsibility. It's just like the Facebook hearing
Speaker 1: where they're like, mister Zuckerberg, how do you make money?
Speaker 1: I will never get over that one that said I
Speaker 1: don't think spying is the right word. Obviously ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: also think I should explain to people because it's not
Speaker 1: ultimately clear. TikTok is a subsidiary company of Byte Dance,
Speaker 1: the Chinese holding company. Mister Chu is a Singaporean citizen
Speaker 1: who was hired specifically because he's not Chinese. Before that,
Speaker 1: they add an American who actually quit his job because
Speaker 1: of the national security concerns. He used to work over
Speaker 1: at Disney. Mister Chu was used and is a puppet of,
Speaker 1: basically of Xiang Xiuming, the CEO and the major success
Speaker 1: holder of Byte Dance. By Dance itself is subject once
Speaker 1: again completely and totally to CCP authoritarian control. Xiang has
Speaker 1: already had to take many apps off of the Chinese
Speaker 1: App Store and apologize to the CCP for quote not
Speaker 1: upholding socialist core values, and of course those aren't actual
Speaker 1: socialist values, those are the CCP values. He also has
Speaker 1: held actual CCP ping thought trainings inside of bytenance. All
Speaker 1: I'm trying to say is that clearly it is directly
Speaker 1: controlled by the Chinese government. Ask Jack Ma how it
Speaker 1: worked out for him when he got a little bit
Speaker 1: too big for his breches and he's basically thrown into prison.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important for people to look at
Speaker 1: this hearing as much of his disaster as it was
Speaker 1: really on all sides, especially with some of these some
Speaker 1: of these representatives not literally knowing how the Wi fi works.
Speaker 1: And that is where I do want to validate something
Speaker 1: that AOC did say. You do have to make the
Speaker 1: case for people. It has to be cogent, and you
Speaker 1: can't be having clips of Congressman saying, does TikTok connect
Speaker 1: to the home Wi Fi and steal your data? I
Speaker 1: think a genuine case. I've tried to make it here
Speaker 1: many times, you know, laying out all the case here.
Speaker 1: I think Biden does owe that. Ultimately, I think he
Speaker 1: failed by allowing this amount of market penetration in the
Speaker 1: first place. But if you're going to allow that, a
Speaker 1: very cogent important case needs to be made, because the
Speaker 1: one thing she is correct about is that a lot
Speaker 1: of people use the app. Half the country literally is
Speaker 1: using this app. So at that point, now you do
Speaker 1: owe it because there is an act. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: almost many people who voted, just so we are aware. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think those are great points. I mean I would
Speaker 1: say that really this app reached escape velocity during the
Speaker 1: Trump administration when these discussions first started and Trump started
Speaker 1: trying to you know, force a sale or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it ended up coming to nothing. But there's a reason
Speaker 1: why Biden has pushed this, kicked this to Congress rather
Speaker 1: than claiming the authority to take action himself, and it's
Speaker 1: because he knows that this is likely to be devastatingly
Speaker 1: unpopular with young voters, and look, a lot of young
Speaker 1: people don't show up to vote, but some of them do,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them vote for the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1: So he also wants to shift blame for this if
Speaker 1: they do end up banning TikTok in a bipartisan direction,
Speaker 1: so that he doesn't completely shoulder the blame, because I
Speaker 1: do think, you know, for a lot of young people,
Speaker 1: and I have some insight into this with how much
Speaker 1: my daughter, how much time my daughter spends on this
Speaker 1: app this is a really like kind of a central
Speaker 1: part of their life. This is really important to them.
Speaker 1: It's where they express themselves creatively, it's their entertainment, it's
Speaker 1: all of that. And so if you and one fell
Speaker 1: swoop ban it, especially without really laying out a case
Speaker 1: that they believe in, buy into, accept and are willing
Speaker 1: to go along with, then you're going to face some
Speaker 1: huge political blowback. And as much as he's trying to
Speaker 1: shift the onus in a bipartisan direction, he's president of
Speaker 1: the United States, so I think and from a political perspective,
Speaker 1: he's still going to really get the blame here if
Speaker 1: they do decide to go forward with banning TikTok completely.
Speaker 1: I've been very annoyed with the way that they've handled it.
Speaker 1: They've been dragging their feet. It's been several years now.
Speaker 1: He's been doing these fake reviews and try to negotiate.
Speaker 1: You know. Another thing I want to say is, I
Speaker 1: know that we covered in our previous show. I think
Speaker 1: about a week ago about how the Biden administration told
Speaker 1: them either for sale or ban. And what did I say?
Speaker 1: I said, a for sale is never going to happen.
Speaker 1: And behold, the Chinese regulators came out and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: We're like, we're not going to approve that deal. There's
Speaker 1: no way we're to talk to me sold because that's
Speaker 1: valuable IP for bike Dance. That's one of the crown
Speaker 1: jewels of the Chinese technology empire. Why would they let
Speaker 1: it go. That'd be like imagine if China said, hey, Facebook,
Speaker 1: you've got to sell Oculus. America would be like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not going to happen. You know, we're not going
Speaker 1: to have No Justice Department, regulators or whatever would approve
Speaker 1: that deal again for the same reason. So I think
Speaker 1: a ban is ultimately an inevitability. Personally, I think it's
Speaker 1: a good thing. I do think though, and I think, Look,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of young people who watch the show.
Speaker 1: Let's continue to raise this issues and to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I know, frankly a lot of them are skeptical. Maybe
Speaker 1: you should be, Maybe you should be. Hopefully we can
Speaker 1: either convince you or we can show you that a
Speaker 1: real debate can and should be had here, and that's
Speaker 1: certainly not happening elsewhere. I think that's important. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the last thing I'll say is, you know, I am
Speaker 1: in the skeptical camp for sure, just because I do
Speaker 1: think it is an extraordinary act, and I continue to
Speaker 1: be unpersuaded that the data privacy concerns here are significantly
Speaker 1: different than those with regards to other social media companies.
Speaker 1: But to broaden out, we really have to have some
Speaker 1: sort of a wider ranging reform of social media companies
Speaker 1: so that you are dealing with the Metas of the world,
Speaker 1: you are dealing with the twitters of the world, you
Speaker 1: are dealing with YouTube and all the rest. Because this
Speaker 1: sort of piecemeal approach is not going to be any
Speaker 1: sort of panacea even if we do resolve whatever issues
Speaker 1: people have with TikTok. All right, let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: talk about Siria some extraordinary things happening. Over the last
Speaker 1: couple of days, an American contractor, as we'll have other
Speaker 1: several US service members were wounded in an apparent drone
Speaker 1: attack on a US base in Eastern Seria. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up there on the screen. So
Speaker 1: some of the details are a little bit scant, but
Speaker 1: the initial indications that are coming out of this incident
Speaker 1: are really trouble and the Pentagon has to answer a
Speaker 1: lot of questions. So as I said, the Pentagon is
Speaker 1: blaming Iranian back to militias and said that it was
Speaker 1: a quote iranianne or a drone of Iranian origin, whatever
Speaker 1: that means. Obviously, Eastern Syria is a hotly contested territory.
Speaker 1: You've got Iranian backed militias, you've got Islamic militias, you've
Speaker 1: got US backed militias. It's basically a free fire zone.
Speaker 1: It has been now since the beginning of the civil War.
Speaker 1: Occasionally Israeli strikes will happen in the region against Hesbola.
Speaker 1: It's absolute madness going on there. And of course the
Speaker 1: question arises, like why is American, Why are American troops
Speaker 1: even there? Who are these contractors? What are we doing.
Speaker 1: Much of it is currently being conducted under the US
Speaker 1: Anti ISIS mission. So yes, there have been some limited
Speaker 1: number of air strikes and operations against ISIS in the
Speaker 1: last couple of months, but it's one that very much
Speaker 1: flies under the radar until as we all saw during
Speaker 1: the Niger attack, the US service members just end up
Speaker 1: dead in a part of the world that we barely
Speaker 1: even knew that we were still operating in. What is
Speaker 1: especially insane about this attack, Crystal, is that the Basis
Speaker 1: anti air defense the air defense system was not working
Speaker 1: properly and apparently failed, which is what the Pentagon is saying.
Speaker 1: And not only that, not only did it fail, it
Speaker 1: appears that the Iranian militias knew that it was failing
Speaker 1: and specifically choose that time to conduct an attack. So
Speaker 1: not only do we have our guys stationed in eastern
Speaker 1: Syria for a reason that nobody has ever voted for
Speaker 1: or made a case to the American public. By the way,
Speaker 1: we're not at war with Syria, and then also we're
Speaker 1: not even protecting them properly, and now a US contractor
Speaker 1: is dead and several service members are wounded. On top
Speaker 1: of that, more attacks were then conducted over the course
Speaker 1: of the next several days. Let's put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen where you can actually see a number
Speaker 1: of drone attacks and swarms happened all across of Syria
Speaker 1: in eastern Syria, specifically against other US bases, which actually
Speaker 1: raises the question how many American service members are inside
Speaker 1: of Syria. This was a major topic of discussion during
Speaker 1: the Trump administration when Trump ordered to pull out from Syria.
Speaker 1: That's ultimately why Secretary Mattis quit the administration in the
Speaker 1: first place. And the case that he often was making
Speaker 1: there as many skeptics, people like myself were also saying,
Speaker 1: was Licksen, if you don't get out, then we're never
Speaker 1: gonna leave. And it's been five years since that happened,
Speaker 1: and now we just had a service member or a
Speaker 1: contractor was killed. There several services members who were wounded,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, now we are being drawn
Speaker 1: further into this conflict. Let's throw this up there, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration conducting retaliatory air strikes in Syria in response
Speaker 1: to this attack, escalating tension with the Iranian regime as
Speaker 1: well over this. As if we don't have more problems
Speaker 1: going on elsewhere, in the world. This is just you know,
Speaker 1: like a vintage story I think outside of the Forever War. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that is exactly correct. Where it reminds you
Speaker 1: number one, of all of these conflicts that we have
Speaker 1: service members engaged in that the American public has had
Speaker 1: no ability to debate that there was never any congressional
Speaker 1: authorization for number two that you know, this is all
Speaker 1: fine and good until you have some major conflict as
Speaker 1: we have basically right now with you know, an advers
Speaker 1: and a significant adversary and a significant power player in
Speaker 1: terms of the region. You know, this leads us into
Speaker 1: sort of direct conflict with Iran, which can have all
Speaker 1: sorts of spiraling diplomatic consequences that can end in disaster.
Speaker 1: You know. The reporting suggests that there's more than nine
Speaker 1: hundred actual service members in Syria remaining and hundreds more contractors.
Speaker 1: We don't even know what number that is. So there
Speaker 1: continues to be potential for disaster here. As evidence by this,
Speaker 1: this is also not the first time that President Biden
Speaker 1: has carried on strikes within Syria. There were strikes in
Speaker 1: February and June of twenty twenty one. There were strikes
Speaker 1: in August of twenty twenty two and now this latest round.
Speaker 1: So I think it has all the elements of total
Speaker 1: lack of transparency, total lack of accountability, and a very
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous and fraud situation that the American people have
Speaker 1: really had no insight into or say over. Yes, And
Speaker 1: I also think it's important for people to understand American
Speaker 1: the US Congress never authorized any troops inside of Syria.
Speaker 1: All of this is being done under the auspices of
Speaker 1: Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the US backed mission to
Speaker 1: support Iraqi security forces against ISIS inside of Iraq. Obama
Speaker 1: and President Trump expanded an Inherent Resolve to secret mission
Speaker 1: of at one point thousands of American service members inside
Speaker 1: of Syria. Syria, Look, we do not recognize any government
Speaker 1: outside of Syria. The Aside regime clearly is remains in
Speaker 1: power throughout the country. This is the sovereign nation which
Speaker 1: US forces are stationed on without the explicit permission and
Speaker 1: in fact the protests of the government who is in
Speaker 1: control in that region. We are basically doing so in
Speaker 1: occupation of at least you know, the limited bases in
Speaker 1: other territory that we have with no legitimacy from Congress
Speaker 1: or from the nation whose territory that we are operating on.
Speaker 1: This is again part of the problem with the congressional
Speaker 1: abdication of responsibility and the authorization of the use of
Speaker 1: military force that we saw in Afghanistan and in Iraq,
Speaker 1: where all of these missions, like in Niger and in
Speaker 1: Somalia and you know, God who knows where Mali many
Speaker 1: of these other places are all done without any actual
Speaker 1: government approval. In many cases, members of Congress, even those
Speaker 1: on the Armed Services Committee and others, have no idea
Speaker 1: what these troops are doing there. And look, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: does the Biden administration even know what's going on? Like
Speaker 1: would do they know what they're doing there? It really
Speaker 1: is just run outside of the Pentagon on complete autopilot,
Speaker 1: and then the world just wakes up, as we did
Speaker 1: in Niger when somebody dies. So look, unfortunately, just like
Speaker 1: in that situation, most likely what will happen is the
Speaker 1: Pentagon will cover it up, They'll try and act tough,
Speaker 1: the Biden administration will give any answers, and the troop
Speaker 1: presidence will just continue. You know, you covered that Niger
Speaker 1: attack there at the time. This seems very similar where
Speaker 1: what the hell is going on here. We have people
Speaker 1: in far flung places. Air defense doesn't even work properly.
Speaker 1: A man is dead, like you can't just you can't
Speaker 1: whitewash something like this, and yet they do it all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, I think that's all well said. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's also talk about Vladimir Putin. This is important international news.
Speaker 1: So President Putin, let's go and put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen, speaking in a long interview, saying that
Speaker 1: they will station tactical nuclear weapons inside Belarus. So this
Speaker 1: isn't an immediate action that President Putin says that the
Speaker 1: Russians will undertake. But what they're doing is they're going
Speaker 1: to be building a new tactical nuclear missile base inside
Speaker 1: of Belarus. The reason why this is important is obviously
Speaker 1: Belarus is not inside of Russia and is its own
Speaker 1: independent country, of course, allied very strongly with the Putin regime.
Speaker 1: The tactical nuclear weapon issue also is not one that
Speaker 1: has been raised in quite some time. Crystal Putin actually
Speaker 1: kind of dropped the tactical nuclear weapon threats a couple
Speaker 1: of months ago, trying to tone down the temperature, saying, no,
Speaker 1: we would never do that. That's not something that's under
Speaker 1: consideration after significant amounts of leaks and intimations by President
Speaker 1: former President Mediaevet that tactical nuclear weapons were under consider
Speaker 1: eration inside of Ukraine. So clearly, this is once again
Speaker 1: trying to up the ante, trying and trying to raise
Speaker 1: the stakes ahead of a so called and possible spring
Speaker 1: offensive by both the Russians and by the Ukrainians, and
Speaker 1: of course ongoing Ukrainian fighting happening right now inside of Bagmut.
Speaker 1: But overall, with the strategic picture, it's something that is
Speaker 1: a bit of a nightmare for the Ukrainians and they
Speaker 1: are recognizing as such. Let's put this next one up
Speaker 1: there on the screen please, as you can see, what
Speaker 1: they are calling for is an emergency UN Security Council
Speaker 1: session over the nuclear weapons deployment. First of all, it
Speaker 1: would be a violation of the Nuclear non Proliferation Treaty.
Speaker 1: It also would be one that has done explicitly kind
Speaker 1: of marching tactical nuclear weapons westward outside of the Russian border.
Speaker 1: Of course, the US and NATO has its own nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons bases which they have long complained about the Russians
Speaker 1: and the Chinese, and this is something that they are
Speaker 1: basically trying to mimic that strategy of like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: if you can do it, so can we. Encirclement is
Speaker 1: something that the Ukrainians probably fear the most, and there's
Speaker 1: been some speculation of these growing ties between Belarus and
Speaker 1: Russia militarily that Belarus would even authorize operations from the
Speaker 1: north in a future type of Spring offensive to draw
Speaker 1: pressure away from the Spring offense if that's happening in
Speaker 1: eastern Ukraine. So overall, obviously it's a troubling strategic situation
Speaker 1: to be facing right now, no doubt about it. And
Speaker 1: to underscore some of what you were saying there, This
Speaker 1: was Putin's justification entirely was like, well the US does it,
Speaker 1: so why can't we? Said, we're doing what they have
Speaker 1: been doing for decades, stationing these tactical nukes in certain
Speaker 1: Allied countries, preparing the launch platforms and training their crews.
Speaker 1: We are going to do the same thing. And I
Speaker 1: think it also exposes one of the sort of media
Speaker 1: tropes that has been put out there to convince Americans
Speaker 1: that there is no threat of further escalation potential nuclear conflict,
Speaker 1: which was this idea that Russia hasn't you know, they've
Speaker 1: drawn all these red lines and we've gone ahead and
Speaker 1: sent them tanks and done all these other things. They
Speaker 1: haven't actually escalated. Well, I think this is definitely an escalation,
Speaker 1: and they point directly to the fact that Britain decided
Speaker 1: recently to provide Ukraine with armor piercing rounds that contain
Speaker 1: depleted uranium. This move. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of
Speaker 1: the uranium enrichment process. It's needed to create nuclear weapons. Now,
Speaker 1: we're not at risk of any sort of like nuclear
Speaker 1: explosion from these from this ammunition, but the rounds can
Speaker 1: emit low levels of radiation and the UNS Nuclear Watchdog
Speaker 1: has warned of the possible dangers of exposure. So that
Speaker 1: is what they're pointing to as the reason for making
Speaker 1: this move right now. And also, as you indicated, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys are doing it, so why can't we as well?
Speaker 1: Of course, this reminds all of us what a dangerous
Speaker 1: game is being played right now, with potential ramifications that
Speaker 1: go far beyond Ukraine, and why it is so critical
Speaker 1: to get this war resolved by diplomatic means as soon
Speaker 1: as it is possibly feasible to do so. I also
Speaker 1: I don't think it is an accident that this happened
Speaker 1: right after the meeting between President Putin and Shishingping. Let's
Speaker 1: go and put this up there on the screen from
Speaker 1: the Financial Times about the tightening embrace between China and
Speaker 1: Russia looking to try and build this bulwark against the West.
Speaker 1: China also obviously complains about this with respect to US
Speaker 1: bases in Japan and in South Korea, also pointing to
Speaker 1: them as attempts to encircle them. So the point b
Speaker 1: that the alliance or seeming alliance growing between the two could,
Speaker 1: and this is only could in bolden either to take
Speaker 1: more aggressive action. Now, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: a deployment is a deployment. It is not one with
Speaker 1: means that they're actually being used. That said, it is
Speaker 1: not usually a good thing whenever you start moving the
Speaker 1: tactical nuclear weapons around and specifically closer to a hot war,
Speaker 1: the largest war inside of Europe ever since World War Two.
Speaker 1: I think that you put all of that together and
Speaker 1: you do see it's a serious problem here with respect
Speaker 1: to the strategic grand situation, because if China starts having
Speaker 1: lethal weapons flow towards Russia, specifically, if this call between
Speaker 1: Zelensky and she doesn't happen. And if Zelensky ends up
Speaker 1: rejecting the Chinese peace plan outright, it will give them
Speaker 1: the easiest diplomatic cover that they've ever had to start
Speaker 1: helping the Russians even more so in a military capacity.
Speaker 1: This too could set the stage for either a Grand
Speaker 1: Spring offensive which goes well or goes badly, and both, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: are disasters. A Russian Spring offensive that goes well, obviously,
Speaker 1: that's a bloodbath through the Ukrainians, and that's one in
Speaker 1: which guarantees the war even more and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: even more so will be killed on both sides, of course.
Speaker 1: But then if it goes badly, that could also make
Speaker 1: them feel as if they are having their backs against
Speaker 1: the corner and they must then reach for the tactical
Speaker 1: nuclear weapon to save their territory, specifically in some sort
Speaker 1: of runaway Ukrainian scenario where you know they looks like
Speaker 1: they may be able to take crimea. Now, neither of those,
Speaker 1: by the way, is all that likely. Most likely is
Speaker 1: a stalemate, but it just shows you that the risk
Speaker 1: in both cases is ones that we have to watch,
Speaker 1: and that risk in those cases in one which always
Speaker 1: results in a lot of death. Yeah, and thus could
Speaker 1: even broil the Brigger conflict. That's exactly right and thus
Speaker 1: far in terms of how the Biden administration has treated
Speaker 1: this conflict. Basically, whatever happens on the battlefield is a
Speaker 1: justification for US shipping even more aid and escalating even
Speaker 1: further than we already have. If Ukraine is on the
Speaker 1: backfoot and they're not doing well, it's, oh, we've got
Speaker 1: to strength in Ukraine's hand to hopefully ultimately get them
Speaker 1: in a better position for the negotiating table. If Russia
Speaker 1: is on the back foot, then it's, oh, Ukraine can
Speaker 1: actually win. Let's go ahead and build them up as
Speaker 1: much as we can so that we can actually end
Speaker 1: this war with a Russian defeat. And if it's a stalemate,
Speaker 1: then it's still we got to strengthen the Ukrainian position
Speaker 1: here to get them to the negotiating table. Of course,
Speaker 1: all of those roads lead to further escalation rather than
Speaker 1: actually getting anyone to the negotiating table, not that I'm
Speaker 1: claiming that would be an easy feat whatsoever. But you know,
Speaker 1: General Millie, the Rand Corporation, lots of mainstream individuals acknowledging
Speaker 1: this has to end in a diplomatic resolution, and that
Speaker 1: the sooner we can get there, the better it will
Speaker 1: be for everyone, but in particular for the Ukrainian people
Speaker 1: themselves and avoid you know, further loss of unnecessary life
Speaker 1: and economic devastation. So with all of that as backdrop,
Speaker 1: let's get to this story from the New York Times.
Speaker 1: This is quite extraordinary. Let's go and put it up
Speaker 1: on the screen here. You got to read this whole
Speaker 1: report because I'm only going to be able to touch
Speaker 1: on some of the high level details here. But their
Speaker 1: headline is stolen valor. The US volunteers in Ukraine, who lie,
Speaker 1: waste and bicker, people who would not be allowed anywhere
Speaker 1: near the battlefield in a US led war, are active
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian front with ready access to American weapons.
Speaker 1: So basically what happened here is Zelensky understandably was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: anyone around the world, please who is able to fight,
Speaker 1: please come and help us. And so there were thousands
Speaker 1: of Americans who responded to this call. The New York
Speaker 1: Times puts it this way. They say they rush to
Speaker 1: Ukraine by the thousands, many of them Americans, who promised
Speaker 1: to bring military experience, money or supplies to the battleground
Speaker 1: of a righteous war. Hometown newspapers hailed their commitment. Donors
Speaker 1: backed them with millions of dollars. Now, after a year
Speaker 1: of combat, many of these homespun groups of volunteers are
Speaker 1: fighting with themselves and undermining the war efforts. Some have
Speaker 1: wasted money or stolen valor others have cloaked themselves in
Speaker 1: charity while also trying to profit off the war records show.
Speaker 1: One of the individuals that they highlight here is Malcolm Nance,
Speaker 1: who became an absolute resistant superstar over on MSNBC during Russiagate.
Speaker 1: And he was one of these people who, you know,
Speaker 1: when the Ukraine War started, he said, all right, I'm
Speaker 1: signing up. I'm going to go over there and I'm
Speaker 1: going to fight this. You know, I'm going to fight
Speaker 1: in this war personally. So they say that when he
Speaker 1: arrived he made a plan to try to bring order
Speaker 1: and discipline to this legion of fighters that had been,
Speaker 1: you know, beset by infighting and chaos, and you know,
Speaker 1: had been lying about their military records and all these
Speaker 1: other issues. Instead, they say he became enmeshed in the chaos. Today,
Speaker 1: he's involved in a messy, distracting power struggle, one that
Speaker 1: it will surprise no one to learn, plays down often
Speaker 1: on Twitter, where Malcolm Nance taunted one former ally as
Speaker 1: fat and an associate of a verified con artist. One
Speaker 1: of the things that they point to here, Sager, which
Speaker 1: will also be a familiar pattern for those who followed
Speaker 1: his work on Russia Gate, is he will use his
Speaker 1: counterintelligence background to throw out all sorts of allegations about
Speaker 1: people that you know are totally at least unproven. He
Speaker 1: branded one person as a potential Russian spy, offering no evidence.
Speaker 1: This individual, of course, denied the allegations. He defended himself
Speaker 1: saying that as a member of the Legion with an
Speaker 1: intelligence background, he developed concerns that he felt an obligation
Speaker 1: to report this to Ukrainian counterintelligence. He has now left
Speaker 1: Ukraine potentially was forced down, but we'll just say left Ukraine,
Speaker 1: but continues fundraising with a new group of allies. And
Speaker 1: a number of these new allies are proven liars who
Speaker 1: have lied about their military experience, lied about their past
Speaker 1: work experience, etc. So a lot of shady dealings going
Speaker 1: on here that they're tracking the times. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is so disgusting. I mean when you read this with Malcolm,
Speaker 1: I mean clearly got himself embroiled. Now he's raising money,
Speaker 1: the denouncing other people. And you know what bothers me
Speaker 1: the most is, Look, there are a lot of well
Speaker 1: meeting people here in this country, around the world, who
Speaker 1: care a lot about Ukraine, who gave their hard earned
Speaker 1: money to these people with the belief that they were
Speaker 1: supporting people who are going to Ukraine to selflessly give
Speaker 1: their lives and to support those military forces. And if
Speaker 1: that's the case, these people are the worst of society
Speaker 1: because and I guess allegedly I should say for the lawyers,
Speaker 1: they took their hard earned money, are embezzling it, in
Speaker 1: some cases wasting it, and in the worst cases, Crystal,
Speaker 1: they are drawing resources from the Ukrainian military, who has
Speaker 1: to deal with these morons who are like, who are you?
Speaker 1: Why are you showing up here? In some cases they
Speaker 1: had to kick them out for fighting with each other.
Speaker 1: Now many of them are squabbling online. All of them
Speaker 1: we well healed by donors. There's also a secondary part
Speaker 1: of this where if you read this, our producer Griffin
Speaker 1: made a joke this morning that this should be made
Speaker 1: into a movie. It really should be made into a movie,
Speaker 1: The Grifters of Ukraine. But one of the ones that
Speaker 1: bothered me the most was a guy who showed up
Speaker 1: there who said, I've been shooting rifles all my life,
Speaker 1: no formal training, never been in the military, shows up there,
Speaker 1: starts uh fighting other American militia members, basically saying that
Speaker 1: they were delivered brand new American service weapons basically out
Speaker 1: of a crate. When he was pressed, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know where they came from. I think we
Speaker 1: all know where they came from. Okay, so we're talking
Speaker 1: here about unvetted, untrained yahoos from the US not saying
Speaker 1: they aren't brave like you certainly are. To be going
Speaker 1: into an active war zone with US provided and paid
Speaker 1: weapons and ammunition in their hands and throwing them at
Speaker 1: the Russians. Does that sound responsible to you? That's not responsible.
Speaker 1: And many of them, that's many of them aligning with
Speaker 1: these you know, far right, potentially Nazi Nazi ideology battalions.
Speaker 1: The jude you're talking about, this guy James Vasquez had
Speaker 1: said he deployed to Kuwait, said he deployed and a
Speaker 1: rock all a lie. He left the army Reserve, not
Speaker 1: as a sergeant, as he claimed, but as a private
Speaker 1: first class, one of the army's lowest ranks. Still, they
Speaker 1: say he had easy access to weapons, including American rifles.
Speaker 1: Where did they come from? Quote, I'm not exactly sure,
Speaker 1: mister Vasquez said in a text message. The rifles, he added,
Speaker 1: were brand new out of the box, and we have plenty.
Speaker 1: He also tweeted that he should not have to worry
Speaker 1: about international rules of war while he's in Ukraine. He
Speaker 1: admitted to misrepresenting his military record for decades. He acknowledged
Speaker 1: being kicked out of the army, but wouldn't talk about why. Quote.
Speaker 1: I had to tell a million lines to get ahead.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was going to come to this.
Speaker 1: And if you read through, that's like the beginning of
Speaker 1: the article. If you read through all the way to
Speaker 1: the end, you'll find Malcolm Nance defending him and saying
Speaker 1: he's not a fake, he's the real deal. But these
Speaker 1: are individuals who would never make it on, you know,
Speaker 1: into the US mid This guy was actively kicked out
Speaker 1: of the army, and yet in the context of the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian conflict, he's got access to apparently whatever weapons he wants.
Speaker 1: So it also speaks to a lot of questions that
Speaker 1: we have raised about, Okay, we're shipping all of this
Speaker 1: lethal aid quote unquote over there, where's it going, who's
Speaker 1: getting their hands on it? Well, we know one person
Speaker 1: who got their hands on it, mister James Vasquez, who's
Speaker 1: been lying about everything. And let's not forget this. The
Speaker 1: Biden administration has assured us we have no indications of
Speaker 1: misuse of American funds that have been sent to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: You're looking at direct evidence right there. You got some
Speaker 1: crazy guy who barely served in the military. He's over
Speaker 1: there with his hands on brand new weapons, saying Crystal,
Speaker 1: he doesn't need to abide by the international What did
Speaker 1: you say, the international rule war? So wait, are you
Speaker 1: saying you're going to commit war crimes with US provided weapons?
Speaker 1: Because that doesn't sound great. Is that something that you
Speaker 1: want your hands on. Nobody here is defending the Russians.
Speaker 1: Nobody is saying that you know, they don't deserve to
Speaker 1: be beaten or or any of that. But you got
Speaker 1: to be responsible with the aid and the weapons that
Speaker 1: you were providing to people. And over and over again
Speaker 1: they have assured us that any questions about a to
Speaker 1: Ukraine are treasonous. They say that they're unfounded that the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian military here can be trusted. I mean, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: you can't be trusted. These are the type of people
Speaker 1: that you're willing to put weapons in the hands of.
Speaker 1: This is crazy, I mean, and as they find out,
Speaker 1: because they're kicking many of them out for having crazy
Speaker 1: behavior or for big grifters. Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty shocking report. Kudos to the Time for
Speaker 1: doing a good job on this one. For once, I
Speaker 1: knew the guy Thomas gibbonson f He's a straight shooter.
Speaker 1: He's actually was a US Marine himself. He did a
Speaker 1: lot of great work in Afghanistan. So I'll read anything
Speaker 1: that guy writes. He's a fantastic reporter. Okay, Christal, what
Speaker 1: are you taking a look at? Last week I discussed
Speaker 1: how the environmental goals of the ESG investing criteria have
Speaker 1: amounted to nothing more than greenwashing. It's an attempt to
Speaker 1: put an environmentally friendly sheine on standard bottom line capitalism.
Speaker 1: But a shocking report that came out pretty recently puts
Speaker 1: a finer point on the extent of this scam. One
Speaker 1: of the methods that corporations use to signal their green
Speaker 1: ambitions and meet zero pledges is carbon offsets. Now, the
Speaker 1: idea here is pretty simple. If a bit morally tortured
Speaker 1: corporations can figure out how large their carbon footprint is
Speaker 1: and then by credits that represent an equal amount of
Speaker 1: carbon taken out of the atmosphere. Now, this is usually
Speaker 1: done through tree planting or forest preservation. If an airline,
Speaker 1: for example, is viewing jet fuel producing CO two in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, they can clean their conscience, signal their virtue
Speaker 1: to customers, and make good on governmental emissions regulations, all
Speaker 1: by paying a company that will certify they have planted
Speaker 1: enough trees or saved enough trees to make up for
Speaker 1: that airline CO two emissions. Now, on its face, the
Speaker 1: concept already sounds kind of sketchy and misleading at best.
Speaker 1: For example, Shell just delivered a shipment of seventy thousand
Speaker 1: tons of liquefied natural gas to Taiwan in a deal
Speaker 1: that they had the gall to celebrate as greenhouse gas neutral.
Speaker 1: How can they get away with this preposterous claim while
Speaker 1: they justify it based on the idea that they purchased
Speaker 1: enough carbon offsets to make up for the one hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety thousand tons of CO two emissions that this
Speaker 1: amount of LNG will create. Here's some Shell big oil
Speaker 1: corporate propaganda that explains the concept nature can be used
Speaker 1: to compensate for emissions that cannot be avoided. Most cars
Speaker 1: still rely on traditional fossil fuels, for example gasoline or diesel,
Speaker 1: and it takes time to replace them. Adoption of electric
Speaker 1: cars is on the rise, but for many people they
Speaker 1: are currently too expensive or impractic. Car Still, people and
Speaker 1: organizations may want to take responsibility for the emissions produced
Speaker 1: from driving the vehicles by efficient use and with the
Speaker 1: help of nature. By investing in forestry projects that store
Speaker 1: and capture CO two carbon credits can be created and
Speaker 1: used to compensate for the emissions from the use of
Speaker 1: fossil fuel vehicles. So Shell is arguing, basically, we don't
Speaker 1: need to change what we're doing at all. We can
Speaker 1: just invest in a force in Kenya and poof net zero.
Speaker 1: The idea of a giant shipment of fossil fuels ever
Speaker 1: being labeled zero emissions as a course insulting on its face,
Speaker 1: but a recent Bombshell report from the Guardian and a
Speaker 1: consortion of other journalist shows just how much folly is
Speaker 1: truly involved here, because apparently the whole carbon offset business
Speaker 1: is just one gigantic scam at best. At best, these
Speaker 1: offsets do nothing. At worst, they are actively making warming
Speaker 1: worse by pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible
Speaker 1: consumers and complicit governments. Here's the Guardian. The headline sort
Speaker 1: of says it all. Revealed more than ninety percent of
Speaker 1: rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless. Analysis shows
Speaker 1: investigation into VERA carbon standard finds most are phantom credits
Speaker 1: and may worsen global heating. Now, the article goes on
Speaker 1: to note that credits from this one company are used
Speaker 1: by Disney, Shell, Gucci and dozens of other corporations. In fact,
Speaker 1: VERA is a giant in the space, making up three
Speaker 1: quarters of total voluntary offsets certified in what is now
Speaker 1: a two billion dollar market. So this is big business,
Speaker 1: and it's a terrible situation for those who actually care
Speaker 1: about dealing with the climate crisis and not just confusing
Speaker 1: consumers with corporate virtue signaling. In order to analyze Vera's
Speaker 1: claims here, the Guardian, along with their partners, relied on
Speaker 1: two different groups of scientists and a team of journalists
Speaker 1: who further analyze the results those scientists found. They found
Speaker 1: that in quote thirty two projects where it was possible
Speaker 1: to compare Vera's claims with the study finding baseline scenarios
Speaker 1: of force loss appear to be overstated by about four
Speaker 1: hundred percent. Three projects in Madagascar did achieve excellent results
Speaker 1: and have a significant impact on the figures. If those
Speaker 1: projects are not included, the average inflation is about nine
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty percent. Vera, of course disputes the results
Speaker 1: and offered a different methodology which they claim showed much
Speaker 1: more significant carbon benefit. But what the multiple research teams
Speaker 1: here show is that the amount of force actually saved
Speaker 1: by Vera's projects is wildly less than what they estimated
Speaker 1: in planning their projects and selling credits. It makes sense,
Speaker 1: of course, VERA and other similar companies have an incentive
Speaker 1: to cut owners and do their projects as cheaply as possible.
Speaker 1: Companies buying the offsets want the most greenwashing for the
Speaker 1: cheapest costs, so they certainly don't want to rock the
Speaker 1: boat here, and we all want to get a product
Speaker 1: with little label or promotion telling us that our purchases
Speaker 1: are actually good for the world, not just contributing to
Speaker 1: a glut of planet killing crap. We feel better checking
Speaker 1: the little box when buying our airline ticket that claims,
Speaker 1: for a small price, we can offset the carbon generated
Speaker 1: by our weekend getaway, and governments which knowe that climate
Speaker 1: action is popular, are similarly disincentivized from digging too deeply
Speaker 1: to expose that the whole thing is actually a farce.
Speaker 1: It is one giant self licking ice cream cone. In fact,
Speaker 1: in our own country, California has the most significant state
Speaker 1: administered carbon offset program. Now. The idea is that homeowners
Speaker 1: and large landowners alike can be issued carbon credits for
Speaker 1: preserving trees they would have otherwise cut down. Then those
Speaker 1: credits can be sold to private business as carbon offsets
Speaker 1: to help meet their state mandated emission reduction goals. But
Speaker 1: like other carbon office systems, the whole thing is easy
Speaker 1: to gain by claiming you were going to cut down
Speaker 1: trees that you actually never really intended to cut down,
Speaker 1: And sure enough, new satellite data shows that the decade
Speaker 1: old program has accomplished literally nothing. According to this data,
Speaker 1: Dimber companies, they're not logging any less, and the offset
Speaker 1: project forests don't look any different from a carbon perspective
Speaker 1: than areas that are not part of these offset projects.
Speaker 1: One way logging companies appear to gain the system is
Speaker 1: by claiming that forests they own which have effectively worthless trees,
Speaker 1: are part of the offset program. These trees are not
Speaker 1: valuable on the market, so the companies were not likely
Speaker 1: to cut them down anyway. Meanwhile, they continue logging the
Speaker 1: areas that do have market valuable species. This has the
Speaker 1: perverse effect of actually subsidizing the operations of logging companies.
Speaker 1: That's obviously the polar opposite of what a green movement
Speaker 1: would actually want. As one expert told the New York
Speaker 1: Times quote, the most basic problem with carbon offsets is
Speaker 1: that you're trading a known amount of emissions with an
Speaker 1: uncertain amount of emission reductions. But there's also the whole
Speaker 1: trading approach of companies being able to buy their way
Speaker 1: out of their responsibility to reduce their own emissions. This
Speaker 1: scheme is part of how corporate America seems to confuse
Speaker 1: and undermine our politics, tricking affluent consumers into thinking their
Speaker 1: choices are noble and tricking voters into thinking that the
Speaker 1: masters of the universe are actually good guys driven by
Speaker 1: real concern for the planet. In such a landscape, forceful
Speaker 1: government action isn't necessary, of course, it's a clean conscience
Speaker 1: for sale with zero challenging choices. Who wouldn't want to
Speaker 1: put the blinders on and pretend that it's all exactly
Speaker 1: as advertised? And if you want to hear my reaction
Speaker 1: to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot com. Super excited to be joined by the creator
Speaker 1: of a really popular blog called weight but Why, and
Speaker 1: also the author of a new book that we both
Speaker 1: just read. Let's put this up on the screen. The
Speaker 1: book is called What's Our Problem? A self help book
Speaker 1: for societies. Tim Urban joins us. Now, great to have you, Tim,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. Yeah, that's right. So you
Speaker 1: lay out in this book in alternative way of seeing politics,
Speaker 1: where yes, you have a left right spectrum, but there's
Speaker 1: another dynamic playing out that you describe as the difference
Speaker 1: between sort of higher mind approach to politics versus a
Speaker 1: more primitive mindset. Just explain the general thesis of the book. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, if you think about how how
Speaker 1: language works, like when we have a term for something
Speaker 1: or even better like a framework, then we than our thoughts. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we have more thoughts about it. We can
Speaker 1: we have more conversations about it, we can refer to it,
Speaker 1: we can develop nuance around it. But if you don't
Speaker 1: have a term for something, and if you don't have
Speaker 1: the right framework, then that she limits our thinking. And
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of what's been happening
Speaker 1: with our politics is we have this one dimensional horizontal
Speaker 1: spectrum left, center, right, you know, far right and far
Speaker 1: left right, that's it. And and so that's very limiting,
Speaker 1: and I think it actually leads to people saying stuff
Speaker 1: they're not really They're trying to say something and they're
Speaker 1: saying something else. So they'll say something like, you know,
Speaker 1: we need more people in the center, and maybe they
Speaker 1: do mean that horizontally, but that's not really what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. I'm not saying we need more people that
Speaker 1: are halfway between the right and the left position on
Speaker 1: tax cuts. That's not what they're saying. What they're trying
Speaker 1: to say is we need more people who are open
Speaker 1: to open minded and who are open to you know,
Speaker 1: who are down to really debate their ideas and who
Speaker 1: might change their mind about it, and who get into
Speaker 1: the nuance and who aren't dogmatic, and who don't you know,
Speaker 1: who don't form their opinions via kind of a checklist.
Speaker 1: And so that to me, center is not the word.
Speaker 1: That's just another position on the horizontal axis. It sometimes
Speaker 1: correlates with what I'm talking about, but it's a different thing.
Speaker 1: So I said, okay, let's make a second axis. Let's
Speaker 1: just like make it a square instead of a line,
Speaker 1: and the vertical dimension I'll call it the latter. And
Speaker 1: so you have kind of high wrong thinking, high wrong
Speaker 1: politics and low wrong you know politics, low wrong thinking.
Speaker 1: And again there's nothing novel here. Everyone knows what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. It's just that we don't we we we don't.
Speaker 1: We don't really like have the frame so so high
Speaker 1: wrong politics to me, and this again is a this
Speaker 1: is a subset of kind of the broader concept of
Speaker 1: high wrong thinking. It's concerned with, uh, you know, moving
Speaker 1: towards a more perfect union, you know, as Abe lincos
Speaker 1: in right. It's like it's actually that's really what's going on.
Speaker 1: They're really you know, and there's heated debates. It's like people,
Speaker 1: it's not saying that a lot of people mistake you know,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying hig wrong. It's for stability and for
Speaker 1: being nice and for being no, no no, no, people get angry.
Speaker 1: They they're heated. They can hate the other side. They
Speaker 1: can hate people who disagree with them, but uh, they
Speaker 1: attack ideas, they don't attack people. They're not tribal about it.
Speaker 1: They don't think that we are the good, righteous people
Speaker 1: who agree with each other on everything and you are
Speaker 1: the bat They they they're all over the place. And
Speaker 1: any individual you know, if you have individual thinking, you're
Speaker 1: going to have true and you know a bunch of
Speaker 1: individuals truly independent thinking, you're gonna they're gonna be all
Speaker 1: over the place with the reviews, right, and that's what
Speaker 1: you're right and and they're you know, if they apply
Speaker 1: you know, a moral judgment, they apply it consistently. So
Speaker 1: if they think that, you know, drones in Afghanistan are bad,
Speaker 1: they're not going to change that view. And it's a
Speaker 1: different president in office, they're not going to change their
Speaker 1: review on executive overreach or on you know, anything else.
Speaker 1: When there's a different president in office, right, because it's
Speaker 1: just that that's not how grown up thinkers do things. Right.
Speaker 1: It's so it's kind of consistent. It's it's open minded,
Speaker 1: it's willing to change your mind. There's the core value
Speaker 1: is truth, you know, trying to actually figure out what's true,
Speaker 1: and then they try to achieve what they want via persuasion. Right,
Speaker 1: they will argue and they will try to attack ideas,
Speaker 1: and you know, you don't attack people if you're trying
Speaker 1: to persuade them. You attack the ideas and you try
Speaker 1: to show why it's wrong. And so that's what they
Speaker 1: call high roaring politics, and it's to me, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of grown up politics. It's what like any reasonable
Speaker 1: it's how this it's how reasonable grown ups behave in
Speaker 1: every other arena. It's just if only they behaved that
Speaker 1: way in this arena too, Right, So that idea is
Speaker 1: like nuanced, open to different, open to having their mind change.
Speaker 1: If they have a principle, they try to apply it consistently,
Speaker 1: not just be like weirdo partisan cheerleaders. So then what
Speaker 1: is the what are some of the qualities that are
Speaker 1: characterized by the lower rung thinking that you lay on
Speaker 1: in the book yeah. I think I call it political
Speaker 1: Disney World because like I think of Disney movies. You know,
Speaker 1: there is villains, there's you know, symbol goods, Scar bad right,
Speaker 1: Aladdin good to far bad right, and it's it's these
Speaker 1: you know, it's like this binary code of ones and zeros, right,
Speaker 1: and there's and and and and and so again. That's
Speaker 1: great for kids. You don't expect grown ups to be
Speaker 1: thinking like why why would grown ups be thinking that way?
Speaker 1: That's not No one in the right mind thinks that's
Speaker 1: how the real world is where that's how people are.
Speaker 1: There's not good good people and the bad people with
Speaker 1: the good ideas and the bad idea. It's just not
Speaker 1: how anything works, especially a complicated society's incredibly complicated political environment. Right,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be like that, but politics is
Speaker 1: one of those topics that drags our mind into this,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of primitive zone where we were not
Speaker 1: thinking straight and we we we're not acting like ourselves almost,
Speaker 1: And so you have all these people that are totally
Speaker 1: normal and great and in other areas really believe that
Speaker 1: they are on the good team of righteous heroes fighting
Speaker 1: for they have all the answers. There's their team is
Speaker 1: right about everything, and the other team is wrong about everything,
Speaker 1: and every problem in the society is because the other
Speaker 1: bad not just wrong but bad evil team is it's
Speaker 1: their fault. And and they they abide, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's you. They abide by a checklist. So it's, uh,
Speaker 1: it's that if that someone who's really mired in political
Speaker 1: disney world or low wrung politics tells you their position
Speaker 1: on guns boom, you know their position on climate change,
Speaker 1: you know their position on on you know whatever, Russia
Speaker 1: and Ukraine. You know their position on abortion and taxes
Speaker 1: and social justice and every single other thing right, And
Speaker 1: so it's, uh, that's not thinking, right, that's that's that's
Speaker 1: the no. If you have ten independent thinkers, there's no
Speaker 1: way they're going to happen to agree on ten separate issues.
Speaker 1: It's only if you have this checklist that is kind
Speaker 1: of the tribe's approved checklist of ideas, that you're going
Speaker 1: to have that. And so to me, when I look
Speaker 1: at the problems, it's like there's two tiers of problems.
Speaker 1: One you could say there's the horizontal disagreements. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know what is the left and the right doing what
Speaker 1: are they doing. Someone you know, someone is more on
Speaker 1: track with each policy probably than others. What's happening there,
Speaker 1: But to me, that is dwarfed by the much bigger
Speaker 1: dispute going on, which is between kind of like sanity
Speaker 1: and just acting like reasonable grown ups and politics who
Speaker 1: can actually move things forward and actually make positive change.
Speaker 1: It's a positive some game and this other game that's
Speaker 1: going on, this crazy tribal game that that has huge hostility,
Speaker 1: by the way, not just to each other, but to
Speaker 1: the high run game that the low rung game hates
Speaker 1: the high rung game. You know, it gets called you know,
Speaker 1: they call them all kinds of you know, enlightened centrists,
Speaker 1: spineless centrists. They say that you're giving you know, the
Speaker 1: other that you know, dangerous ideas a platform you know,
Speaker 1: you know, debate. Is this negative thing? Don so So Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, this is the framework that I basically then
Speaker 1: built built this book around. Yeah, you are reciting all
Speaker 1: the criticisms of our show there, Tim, So we're every
Speaker 1: one of those. Yes. One of the things I actually
Speaker 1: like about the book and some of the infographics, which
Speaker 1: are fantastic, by the way, I recommend everybody going to
Speaker 1: follow Tim on Twitter and read weight at y dot
Speaker 1: com because the infographics that you put together are really
Speaker 1: easily digestible and they kind of narrow home this point.
Speaker 1: One of them being the media. You have the famous
Speaker 1: dog and the raccoon headlines that you have side by
Speaker 1: side that I have even pulled up in front of
Speaker 1: me just because I love it so much. Can you
Speaker 1: can you lay out them media role in this both
Speaker 1: not only how they handle it, but then how that
Speaker 1: is then digested and used, as you said by low
Speaker 1: wrong thinkers. Yeah, so there's been a seismic shift in
Speaker 1: our environment. If you take any animal and you you
Speaker 1: take their nature and you change the environment, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see different behavior. Right, that's same nature is going to
Speaker 1: output different people. So humans are no different. Human nature
Speaker 1: is not different than it was ten twenty one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. What changes is the environment and then
Speaker 1: our behavior changes. And one of the major elements of
Speaker 1: a modern democracy's environment is their media landscape. And and
Speaker 1: there's been a seismic shift to that that has obviously
Speaker 1: massive consequences of all kinds. And the shift is that
Speaker 1: there used to be three broadcast national news channels, and
Speaker 1: they weren't news channels, by the way, they were CBS, NBC, ABC,
Speaker 1: they you know, and they did a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: and they have Flower of News twice a day or something, right,
Speaker 1: and and so I mean, it's just it's not that
Speaker 1: those were better people running those stations. And I don't
Speaker 1: think they don't really think these there's any any of
Speaker 1: this story is about better or worse people. It's that
Speaker 1: they had incentives, right if they if one of them,
Speaker 1: if NBC starts to get known for being really biased
Speaker 1: towards the left or right and really kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll rush to a story and tell it
Speaker 1: with no journalistic integrity, and like they'll just like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're wrong all the time and they don't apologize, and
Speaker 1: the other two aren't like that that. You know, NBC
Speaker 1: would become the laughing stock, right, everyone saying, oh, you
Speaker 1: know the kind of person who watches NBC, you would
Speaker 1: become a joke. Right, So they don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: They all want to try to fight with each other.
Speaker 1: Who could be more professional, right, who can see who
Speaker 1: can be more accurate and and have and and you
Speaker 1: can never tell the the political leaning of the anchors.
Speaker 1: That was a huge thing, right. It was like they
Speaker 1: were all famously secretive about it because that's not professional
Speaker 1: for a newsperson. Why would it okay? So that environment
Speaker 1: and they also had thirty minutes a day, right, so
Speaker 1: they would I need to that's not much time. You
Speaker 1: got to really what's really important today in the news.
Speaker 1: Now that changes. You have cable TV, so then you
Speaker 1: have at CNN, you have MSNBC, you have Fox News.
Speaker 1: You have all these just spring up in the eighties
Speaker 1: and nineties really mid nineties for MSNBC and Fox News
Speaker 1: pretty recent. And then you have of course the Internet, right,
Speaker 1: and you have you know, a Drudge Report, and you
Speaker 1: have Huffington Post, and you have Brightbart and you have
Speaker 1: all these these things pop up in a million political
Speaker 1: blogs and it's a totally different game. So you realize
Speaker 1: is if you're not, if you're not, you don't have
Speaker 1: the burden of being broadcasting to the whole country, and
Speaker 1: you can narrow cast. And really, you know, Fox News
Speaker 1: kind of was a pioneer here and a lot of
Speaker 1: others copied it. You know, if you can, if you
Speaker 1: can narrow cast and say, you don't screw the other half,
Speaker 1: if we can just we don't have to seem objective.
Speaker 1: Let's just really confirm theless cater to one tribe. There
Speaker 1: are these tribes, let's just be the news for that tribe.
Speaker 1: Totally does narrow casting and it's and it's tribal media
Speaker 1: kind of right, it's it's specifically is trying to say
Speaker 1: the incentives totally ship. Now your audience becomes very quickly.
Speaker 1: You know, they're people who want professional neutrality, they're long gone.
Speaker 1: Your audience becomes these people who are addicted to this game,
Speaker 1: this tribal war, that that that that they're they're in
Speaker 1: political Disney world. And so now the incentives become accuracy,
Speaker 1: not as much like neutrality, definitely not right. The accurate
Speaker 1: incentives become tell these people why they're right and they're good,
Speaker 1: and why those other people are so bad? How awful
Speaker 1: are those other people done? Yeah, so what's that going
Speaker 1: to do to? You know that? And that? How's that?
Speaker 1: Of course that's going to have a massive effect on behavior.
Speaker 1: So what's happening is you go from news that was
Speaker 1: kind of informing I wrung politics to news that is like,
Speaker 1: uh like is just stoking low rung politics, that is
Speaker 1: just completely igniting low rung politics and tim you go
Speaker 1: through in the book your analysis of the version of
Speaker 1: low rung politics that happens on the right, but you
Speaker 1: spend the bulk of the book going over what you
Speaker 1: describe as social justice fundamentalism. And I'm curious, since you
Speaker 1: started this book, you know, a number of years ago,
Speaker 1: if you think the landscape of what you call social
Speaker 1: justice fundamentalism you might call it woke, is cancel culture
Speaker 1: like it has a lot of different words to describe,
Speaker 1: which I think is part of why you spend such
Speaker 1: a long time teasing out your specific definition here. Do
Speaker 1: you think that landscape has changed? And do you also
Speaker 1: see you mentioned this a little bit in the book,
Speaker 1: but in the reaction to that social justice fundamentalism, I
Speaker 1: see some of those same authoritarian tactics and low run
Speaker 1: thinking being deployed in terms of you know, book bands
Speaker 1: or constraining curriculums and constraining protests, those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if you feel like the landscape has
Speaker 1: shifted since you first started writing the book. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: so I created this term social justice fundamentalism because it's,
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, the same thing with needing
Speaker 1: of artical access, like you need more labels because right
Speaker 1: now it's either you like social justice or you don't.
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, you know, Martin Luther King was
Speaker 1: classic social justice activists, right, I don't know how many
Speaker 1: many people who think he was bad or don't like him. Right. So,
Speaker 1: like women's suffrage and emancipation, and the gay rights movement
Speaker 1: and civil rights movement, these are all like what I
Speaker 1: would call liberal social justice and liberal meaning like lowercase L.
Speaker 1: Like they are trying to make the country more liberal. Right,
Speaker 1: they say that the liberal promises in the Constitution are great,
Speaker 1: and we're not doing so great at them. Let's do better, Right,
Speaker 1: Let's break the laws that are illiberal to show how
Speaker 1: illiberal they are so we can make things more liberal.
Speaker 1: Let's use liberal tools like free speech and voting and
Speaker 1: protest and three assembly, you know, use the liberal tools
Speaker 1: to make this country better. Social justice fundamentalism to me
Speaker 1: is the polar opposite. It's not like it's all those
Speaker 1: are the really far left, you know, extra social justice people. No, no,
Speaker 1: those are. It's the exact opposite philosophy, which is that
Speaker 1: it's not that liberalism is as good, but we need
Speaker 1: to do we need more of it. It's that liberalism
Speaker 1: is the problem. It's it's it stems from you know,
Speaker 1: stems from Marxism and you know neo Marxist ideologies. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the idea there is that that liberalism is inherently
Speaker 1: oppressive and that you need something much more revolutionary than
Speaker 1: using free speech to fix bad policies or fix bad laws.
Speaker 1: You need to overthrow the order. And you know, as
Speaker 1: Audre Lord says, you can't use the master's tools to
Speaker 1: fix the master's house. So free speech is not going
Speaker 1: to be your friend. That's part of that's what they
Speaker 1: want you to do. Free speech has to be shut down, right.
Speaker 1: Liberalist's part of liberalism. So the whole, the Master's house
Speaker 1: and all the tools in it are need to be overthrown.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, and then and then so you
Speaker 1: see that authoritarianism, which is illiberal, right, coming through in
Speaker 1: the tactics. Instead of persuasion, it's will get you said.
Speaker 1: You know, if someone says something you don't like, and
Speaker 1: you're a liberal social justice activist, you'll say, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: why that's wrong. I'm gonna show everyone. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna use use free speech to show why that's wrong.
Speaker 1: But the social justice fundamentalists would say, is we need
Speaker 1: to cancel that person who to punish them so that
Speaker 1: no one else argues that again, which is again that's
Speaker 1: if you think liberalism is bad, this is this is
Speaker 1: how you behave So anyway, the landscape, I've noticed huge
Speaker 1: changes since I started, which is at the beginning, I
Speaker 1: think people didn't even see any difference here. They I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people on the left thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, what we today call awokeness, it wasn't called
Speaker 1: that back then, is purely good? Is this is our
Speaker 1: today's version of the civil rights movement. And then I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people start to say, something's up here,
Speaker 1: something's wrong right, this is not these people are are
Speaker 1: not doing it right anymore or something, And they started
Speaker 1: to maybe have those conversations in private, and I think
Speaker 1: that we are just starting, and I'm not sure even
Speaker 1: there yet, getting to a place where and I think
Speaker 1: some people are starting to feel okay, maybe saying this
Speaker 1: more publicly, maybe actually changing the policy at their company
Speaker 1: that is that has been created by social justice fundamentalism.
Speaker 1: But then you see you mentioned the right, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think what I see it as is I don't
Speaker 1: see the problem as social justice fundamentalism, and I don't
Speaker 1: see the problem as Trump. You know, I think Trump
Speaker 1: is a demogogue, right. I think he is a classic
Speaker 1: kind of there's always demagogue people who want to be
Speaker 1: president and kind of use use lies and and basically
Speaker 1: play on people's worst instincts and and you know, kind
Speaker 1: of the dictator mentality. There's always those people. But why
Speaker 1: is Trump rising up now? Right? And why is social
Speaker 1: justice fund that? There's always ideologies that are illiberal that
Speaker 1: want to shut down liberalism, but they can't usually, So
Speaker 1: what's going on? And so I see a bigger trend
Speaker 1: going on, kind of this downward spiral of the country
Speaker 1: has been in and I think the media is part
Speaker 1: of it. I think there's a lot of things that
Speaker 1: go into it, you know. It just we've become more
Speaker 1: we've lost kind of the foreign threat in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, so there's not that uniting force up there
Speaker 1: kind of on the patriotic level. And also the parties
Speaker 1: have aligned so that there's not progresses and conservatives within
Speaker 1: each part like there used to be. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of so now you just have this one concentrated
Speaker 1: tribal divide, right, there's nothing that's diffusing it above or below.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things you can point to, but
Speaker 1: I think that, yeah, when I'm not surprised when I
Speaker 1: see then the right maybe acting more authoritarian or maybe
Speaker 1: doing overreach of their own because to me, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a whirlpool. We're all caught it and the
Speaker 1: whole thing is caught in it right now, and so
Speaker 1: you're not socially you may maybe you'll get maybe wokeness
Speaker 1: goes on the decline, we say you have you passed
Speaker 1: peak woke Maybe we have. Maybe it goes something else.
Speaker 1: Another movement is going to crop up and it's going
Speaker 1: to be it's going to be bad. And then another demagogue,
Speaker 1: maybe it's on the left this time. Who knows, another
Speaker 1: demogogue is going to is going to rise to power.
Speaker 1: So until we fix this bigger problem and understand what
Speaker 1: it is, this is not the last of it. Yeah really,
Speaker 1: well said well tam Oh, go ahead. I was just
Speaker 1: going to say the book is great. I think people
Speaker 1: should you know, read it. There were pieces of it
Speaker 1: I really agreed with. There are pieces of it I
Speaker 1: disagreed with, but all of it I think made me
Speaker 1: a sharper thinker on these issues. So I really appreciate
Speaker 1: your time, Tim, and I hope people will check out
Speaker 1: the book. Thank you Tim. Guys, Yeah, our pleasure man.
Speaker 1: Fantastic interview. Thank you guys so much for watching. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Reminder, we got the premium show for
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Speaker 1: I will be back in the studio, our beautiful, beautiful
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Speaker 1: See you all tomorrow.