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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have, Crystal and Dee, we do less
Speaker 1: interesting stories we are following this morning. Trump has not
Speaker 1: been indicted yet and doesn't look like he's going to
Speaker 1: be indicted today. But we'll give you an update about
Speaker 1: everything we know there to the extent that we know
Speaker 1: anything there. We also have some new indicators about how
Speaker 1: Ronda Santis is bearing in all of this. More Trump response,
Speaker 1: more mag response, more poll numbers, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Also huge decision made by the Fed yesterday about what
Speaker 1: they're going to do with interest rates, and crazy day
Speaker 1: in the stock market too, as Drome Pal and Treasury
Speaker 1: Secretary Janet Yellen seemed to be at odds in what
Speaker 1: they were laying out in terms of the economy. So
Speaker 1: we'll dig into some of those details. It's really quite interesting.
Speaker 1: We also have some details of that meeting between Putin
Speaker 1: and she, what came out of that, what does it
Speaker 1: mean for us? And a crazy story. So we followed
Speaker 1: this when it initially broke. Rolling Stone had this gigantic
Speaker 1: piece about this journalist whose home was rated by the FB,
Speaker 1: and they really tried to make it seem like this
Speaker 1: had to do directly with his work. You especially were
Speaker 1: immediately skeptical and actually, I don't know that you said
Speaker 1: it on air because you don't want to just like
Speaker 1: casually accuse someone of having kiddy porn. But that is
Speaker 1: in fact ended up happening. I've seen enough of these
Speaker 1: because the way that they rolled up on him was
Speaker 1: over the So anyway it turns out Rolling Stone, it
Speaker 1: seems like new at the time time that was likely
Speaker 1: the real reason. They had a source who said that
Speaker 1: was likely the real reason that he was rated. But
Speaker 1: the editor of Rolling Stone was like, buddies with this
Speaker 1: dude and strip that out of the piece. Huge blow
Speaker 1: up over there. Incredible reporting about exactly went down quite
Speaker 1: an astonishing story. So we'll get into all of that,
Speaker 1: and really excited to talk to our guest today, David Thibodeau,
Speaker 1: a survivor of Waco. This comes as there's a new
Speaker 1: Netflix documentary about everything that went down there. I mean,
Speaker 1: an crazy, atrocious seminal moment in terms of American history
Speaker 1: and American politics. So really looking forward to that as well.
Speaker 1: Me too. I read his book. We're going to recommend
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, it's a fantastic I also read
Speaker 1: his book. I'm Taber's recommendation. Yeah, great book. Also, as
Speaker 1: a reminder to everybody, you can go ahead and watch
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Speaker 1: You can also continue to watch it on YouTube as
Speaker 1: we will email you guys the link every day. So
Speaker 1: there you go with Crystal, what is going on with Trump?
Speaker 1: All Right? Well, I don't really know what's going on
Speaker 1: with Trump. But here's what we can tell you based
Speaker 1: on the reporting that is out there. This is from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. They say Trump is at mar
Speaker 1: al Lago with magical thinking and a purp walk fixation.
Speaker 1: Those who've spent time with Trump in recent days says
Speaker 1: often appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential
Speaker 1: legal woes. I don't know if any of this is accurate,
Speaker 1: and I don't think anybody except Donald Trump himself could
Speaker 1: know whether any of this is accurate, because this is
Speaker 1: all based on the musings people are around him, taking
Speaker 1: in what he's saying, taking in whatever his mood is, etc.
Speaker 1: But let me just tell you what they say here.
Speaker 1: They say behind closed doors. Former president has told friends
Speaker 1: and associates he welcomes the idea of being paraded by
Speaker 1: the authorities doing that purp walk before a throng of
Speaker 1: reporters and news cameras. He's used openly about whether he
Speaker 1: should smile for the assembled media's Pon wondered how the
Speaker 1: public would react. Said to have described the potential spectacle
Speaker 1: as a fun experience. No one, they say, is really sure,
Speaker 1: whether it's remarks of bravado or genuine resignation about what
Speaker 1: lies ahead. If he is truly looking forward to it,
Speaker 1: though he might be disappointed, there's no expectation that we
Speaker 1: will actually do a purp walk. They're likely to coordinate this.
Speaker 1: The indication is if he is indicted, which continues to
Speaker 1: be an if not a certainty, he is expected to
Speaker 1: surrender himself, they will likely coordinate with secret Service kind
Speaker 1: of bring him in secretly, so there probably will not
Speaker 1: be the purp walk. To the apparent and disappointment of
Speaker 1: Trump himself. They have a quote here from one person
Speaker 1: who spoke to Trump over the weekend. They said he
Speaker 1: wants to be defiant and to show the world that
Speaker 1: if they can try to do this to him, they
Speaker 1: can do it to anyone. What do you make of
Speaker 1: those saga. I think it's actually the smartest move that
Speaker 1: he could make, because what they're pointing out is that
Speaker 1: mister Trump is not focused on the particulars. It's like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: now this is all being tried in the court of
Speaker 1: public opinion. He is literally one of the most recognizable
Speaker 1: figures on the planet. I did find funny the idea
Speaker 1: that they might mug shot him. The entire purpose of
Speaker 1: mug shot is to have an official photograph of somebody
Speaker 1: in the event that they like go missing or something.
Speaker 1: You're like, he probably is one of the most photo Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I wouldn't be eventure to say he's probably
Speaker 1: the most photograph person literally on the entire planet. Obama
Speaker 1: was before him, so you know, there's no expectation as
Speaker 1: to why that would have changed. No, I actually think
Speaker 1: it would be the correct strategy. It would be one
Speaker 1: defiance making it into a show, and let's be honest, like,
Speaker 1: this is what he is the best at. He's the
Speaker 1: master of PR like showing you that he's being persecuted,
Speaker 1: whether he says something or not, like an image of
Speaker 1: him smiling. It's almost like, you know, you think back
Speaker 1: to like the John Gotties and all those other people,
Speaker 1: the way that they were able to weaponize PR and
Speaker 1: then have real impacts on the legal system. I'm looking
Speaker 1: at it basically in the exact same way. So this
Speaker 1: look many of his advisors like he needs to be
Speaker 1: more focused on the law. I'm like, I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: because of a you're gonna have good lawyers. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about Trump, but we'll see you will have
Speaker 1: lawyers that can make a competent case at the very
Speaker 1: least on that. What you need to do is try
Speaker 1: and put an exert as much public pressure as possible.
Speaker 1: And this is exactly the way that anybody would do it.
Speaker 1: And he is, look, perhaps one of the greatest showmen
Speaker 1: of all time, So give people a show. My instinct
Speaker 1: is that the purp walk and all the visible the mugshot,
Speaker 1: if he gets handcuffed, like all of that stuff, I
Speaker 1: think that benefits him definitely with the Republican base, no question,
Speaker 1: general electorate. I don't know. I think I have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I in my instinct is it probably cuts in the
Speaker 1: other direction with the general electorate, because you know, there's
Speaker 1: a real normy instinct of just like you know, you
Speaker 1: get arrested, you get indicted, you're handcuffed, your purp walked
Speaker 1: like you did something wrong. So terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: down the road, I think it is maybe not the
Speaker 1: best call. But in terms of this moment right now,
Speaker 1: I see his thinking. I'll also say that remember this,
Speaker 1: all of this speculation really ramped up when he put
Speaker 1: out that true social saying that he thought he would
Speaker 1: be arrested on Tuesday. Now he was not arrested on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and there was reporting at the time. This is just
Speaker 1: like he doesn't really have any inside information. He's just
Speaker 1: putting this out there. I think that was also a
Speaker 1: very smart and savvy move because number one, it cuts
Speaker 1: out the element of surprise in terms of you know,
Speaker 1: the DA and whatever they want to accomplish here. And
Speaker 1: number two, it gives his people the time to come
Speaker 1: up with what their talking points are, you know, marshal
Speaker 1: their own public defense before the DA and others can
Speaker 1: really say anything because they haven't indicted him yet, so
Speaker 1: they can't make their case yet. It makes it an
Speaker 1: asymmetric situation because he and his side of this can
Speaker 1: fully come out and make their case against the indictment
Speaker 1: and say this is a witch hunt, this is political
Speaker 1: Alvin Bragg is, you know, connected with George Soros and
Speaker 1: all of this stuff before the other side really has
Speaker 1: an ability to respond. So, you know, in hindsight, I
Speaker 1: think that was actually a very clever strategic political move.
Speaker 1: Not only that, now the media is one hundred percent
Speaker 1: fully focused and with Trump, I mean one of the
Speaker 1: things with Trump is he at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: what he loves most is attention, and you can't deny, Like, look,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about Trump. Everybody has talked about Trump,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those where like he he is
Speaker 1: a former president. If he gets arrested, it literally would
Speaker 1: be one of the most insane moments in American history,
Speaker 1: you know, So I did some reading historical knowledge. One
Speaker 1: only one former president has ever been arrested, although he
Speaker 1: was not indicet. It was former Ulysses S. Grant and
Speaker 1: it was like a municipal thing having to do with
Speaker 1: like horses or something like that here in DC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a DC cop who like didn't know
Speaker 1: who he was. So that is that is literally the
Speaker 1: only time that a former president has ever technically I've
Speaker 1: been arrested, and even then it wasn't thrown in jail
Speaker 1: or anything. I'll get the details for everybody, but the
Speaker 1: point is that it's never happened, not even Nixon. So
Speaker 1: it would be a landmark event no matter what. And
Speaker 1: that's why we're forced to cover what's going on here
Speaker 1: and with the grand jury. As you said, it's literally
Speaker 1: like kremlinology. We're like, what's happening. Yeah, okay, Well they're
Speaker 1: not meeting yesterday. That means it wouldn't have happen yesterday.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it can happen today if they do convene.
Speaker 1: Even if they do convene, they may not necessarily issue
Speaker 1: an indictment. We have no idea. Well, I do think
Speaker 1: that that's an important note, is there's an active assumption
Speaker 1: now that of course the grand jury will indict, which
Speaker 1: they probably will, but it's not a guarantee. So I
Speaker 1: do think that's important to put out there, is like,
Speaker 1: you know, they are human beings who get to make
Speaker 1: a decision, have minds of their own, et cetera. So
Speaker 1: it's not one hundred percent guaranteed that things are going
Speaker 1: to go the way that we expect them to go.
Speaker 1: Put this next piece up on the screen, and I
Speaker 1: have an update on this as well. So this was
Speaker 1: reporting originally from Insider, This Politico tear sheet we have
Speaker 1: here Trump grand jury called off for Wednesday. They were
Speaker 1: told to stay home yesterday on standby for today. Insider
Speaker 1: had an updated report that it has also been called
Speaker 1: off for today. Now, this grand jury typically meets on Monday,
Speaker 1: Wednesday and Thursday, so today would be the last day
Speaker 1: that they would be expected to meet this week, so
Speaker 1: they have also been called off for today. That likely
Speaker 1: means we're not going to see an indictment anytime this week, right,
Speaker 1: and it gets pushed into next week. So that's as
Speaker 1: far as we know about, you know, potential timing here,
Speaker 1: That is what we can tell you. Yeah, I truly
Speaker 1: have no idea. I was telling you I will be
Speaker 1: in New York City tomorrow and over the weekend up
Speaker 1: until Monday, so if anything does pop off, I'll try
Speaker 1: to go down there to the courthouse. Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 1: That timing works out for me too. I'm going to
Speaker 1: be doing the Flagrant podcast shout out to Andrew Schultz
Speaker 1: on Monday, so yet any time before that, we'll see
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, we're gonna be all over the place.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna you'll be doing that. You'll be doing that
Speaker 1: with Andrew Schultz, and I'm gonna be on with Russell Brand.
Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, little shameless plug here. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: getting a little bit of a sense of how the
Speaker 1: American people feel about this potential indictment, and quite frankly,
Speaker 1: this is not surprising to me at all. Put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen from Reuters. Basically, they feel like
Speaker 1: there's probably something to this charge, like they believe the
Speaker 1: hush money story, but they also fail think that the
Speaker 1: potential prosecution is politically motivated, which you know, kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense to me, is a common sense position. Let
Speaker 1: me give you some of the specific numbers here. They
Speaker 1: say about half of Americans believe in New York investigation
Speaker 1: into whether Trump paid hush money to a porn star
Speaker 1: is politically motivated. A large majority find the allegations believable, though,
Speaker 1: according to a Reuter's IPSOS opinion poll, That two day poll,
Speaker 1: which ended on Tuesday, found fifty four percent of respondents,
Speaker 1: including eighty percent of the President's fellow Republicans and thirty
Speaker 1: two percent of Democrats, thought that politics was driving the
Speaker 1: criminal case. So even a third of Democrats ay as
Speaker 1: kind of politically motivated. Seventy percent of respondents, including half
Speaker 1: of Republicans, say it was believable that Trump, during his
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen presidential campaign, paid the adult film actress Stormy
Speaker 1: Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter, and
Speaker 1: sixty two percent of respondents, so a healthy majority, including
Speaker 1: a third of Republicans, that it was also believable that
Speaker 1: Trump falsified business record and committed fraud. So make of
Speaker 1: that which you will. People tend to think, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: probably some politics involved. They also tend to think, yeah,
Speaker 1: he probably did the stuff that he's accused of. So
Speaker 1: what does that mean. I have no idea. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I again, think about it on importance. It's one of
Speaker 1: those where like, no Republican voter was ever like, you know, Trump,
Speaker 1: that's a real stand up family guy. That's somebody who
Speaker 1: percent That's who we're voting for. That's never ever been
Speaker 1: the case. Even the evangelicals who backed him were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we think he's personally a scumbag. They're like, which, we
Speaker 1: just think he's gonna do what we wanted to do justice,
Speaker 1: which he did. Yeah, we want those square. They made
Speaker 1: a deal with the devil and they won. So one
Speaker 1: of those where I would look at this in terms
Speaker 1: of political import and again you look, trying to judge
Speaker 1: general electorate to this point is nearly impossible. We do
Speaker 1: have very good evidence from the last midterm election cycle
Speaker 1: that stopped this deal was probably the most potent general
Speaker 1: election weapon against Trump. So I do think indicting him
Speaker 1: on some be like bookkeeping fraud on a long time
Speaker 1: payment to a porn star which was his own money,
Speaker 1: and then not recording it properly is not even close
Speaker 1: to the level of political import for most people, as
Speaker 1: opposed to I don't know, you know, calling the Georgia
Speaker 1: Secretary of State and potentially trying to get him to
Speaker 1: be signing me x number of votes that one people
Speaker 1: do care a lot about. And we've already had a
Speaker 1: run of this twenty sixteen access Hollywood. He's dead. There's
Speaker 1: no way can survive. Everybody denounced him. He wins, so
Speaker 1: most people didn't care, or at the very least a
Speaker 1: lot of Republicans didn't care. Don't forget, he did win
Speaker 1: some fifty four percent of white women in the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen election and actually increased is margined with white women
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty election, So there is no evidence
Speaker 1: in any of this stuff actually matters ye to female
Speaker 1: voters and others. To the extent that suburban voters were
Speaker 1: turned off was because they're pissed off about stop Steel
Speaker 1: and probably on Roe versus Wade. So as usual things
Speaker 1: of actually important to people usually are what they vote
Speaker 1: on and influence their political decisions. Trump as a lecturius
Speaker 1: shady dude is just baked into the dah. It's one
Speaker 1: of those notions across the board. I mean, what I
Speaker 1: will say is I think that for people who are
Speaker 1: you know, Trump has his loyalists, that none of these
Speaker 1: prosecutions are going to matter for if anything, it'll just
Speaker 1: strengthen their commitment to him. We're already seeing that in
Speaker 1: the polls, and we'll talk in a minute about Ron
Speaker 1: de Santis. For people who are you know, more on
Speaker 1: the opposed to Trump's side, which is a majority of
Speaker 1: Americans based on the polling, I don't know that they.
Speaker 1: I think there may be a sense of just like,
Speaker 1: you know, this guy deserves to be popped for something,
Speaker 1: and so even if the particular details of these allegations
Speaker 1: are kind of like baked into the cake, et cetera,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that a majority of those folks
Speaker 1: do support the prosecution just in that sense of like, listen,
Speaker 1: this guy has gotten away with so much crap. He
Speaker 1: deserves to be popped with something. Now you should be
Speaker 1: thinking about the individual, specific specifics of the case. So
Speaker 1: I'm not saying put that all to the side, but
Speaker 1: I think that may be the sense among a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans. It's certainly possible. It could be like the
Speaker 1: OJ thing, you know where OJ technically what it is?
Speaker 1: What was he like pulling memorabili or whatever out of
Speaker 1: our lights house? Al Capone popped on cash fraud? Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knows, We'll see. Maybe bookkeeping fraud is what does it.
Speaker 1: Although I think there's a little bit of a difference
Speaker 1: between well j al caponents. I have a feeling you asked,
Speaker 1: I have a feeling this is not the end of
Speaker 1: the indictments. I think old Donnie will wriggle his way
Speaker 1: out of this bit one one and probably all of them.
Speaker 1: I'm just being honest again, let me, I just want
Speaker 1: to put it out there. This none of this is guaranteed.
Speaker 1: They still have they have to persuade the grand jury
Speaker 1: to indict and to accept the legal theory that they
Speaker 1: are offering here and again, you know, they always famously
Speaker 1: feel like you can indict a ham sandwich in front
Speaker 1: of a grand jury. That is very likely the case.
Speaker 1: And this is Manhattan grand jury, which is very you know,
Speaker 1: probably Drump skeptical or anti actively anti Trump. But I
Speaker 1: just want to put out there that there are no guarantees.
Speaker 1: So we we genuinely do have to just wait and
Speaker 1: see what unfolds because all of the speculation up to
Speaker 1: this point could end up being incorrect. You just don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we know. Maybe we're playing right into Trump's hands. Giving
Speaker 1: me the attention on the next month. Speaking of Trump,
Speaker 1: DeSantis and so much more, the primary between the two
Speaker 1: is heating up, if you will. But let's put the
Speaker 1: war of words aside, which we will talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about, in which Ryan Amiley did a fantastic job
Speaker 1: of discussing yesterday. How is DeSantis doing in the polls.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: Yet another poll showing mamath that Trump is not only
Speaker 1: leading DeSantis continuing to gain in a potential presidential primary.
Speaker 1: Trump is up forty one to twenty seven over Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: As Nate Cone writes, quote, this is the longest long
Speaker 1: term trend from a high quality poll in this race.
Speaker 1: Since December, Trump has gained fifteen points while DeSantis has
Speaker 1: lost twelve points. So basically directly drawing from Desanta's support,
Speaker 1: and I think it's important to remember what was December exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: that was immediately after the Stop the Steal losses in November,
Speaker 1: and it shows you that a lot of GOP primary voters,
Speaker 1: it seems, have shorter memories whenever it comes to stop
Speaker 1: the steal and the political impact and are beginning to
Speaker 1: be reminded why they liked Trump in the first place.
Speaker 1: The longer and more that Trump makes it a direct
Speaker 1: contrast with Ron DeSantis and blasting him, and DeSantis is
Speaker 1: very wishy washy in his critiques of Trump. You know,
Speaker 1: even then, you know, the whole like I can't even
Speaker 1: spell to sanctimonious, which I'm going to say is sanctimonious
Speaker 1: whenever you're a Harvard and Yale educated lawyer. Is one
Speaker 1: of those very weak attacks. The quote it's silly season
Speaker 1: was a ludicrous response. And then I do think though
Speaker 1: his only good comeback was you can call me whatever
Speaker 1: you want as long as you call me a winner.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be stuck to that. That would be
Speaker 1: the best one. But many of his other kind of
Speaker 1: perries of Trump attacks really just did not seem all
Speaker 1: that politically effective. Let's go and put the next one
Speaker 1: here up on the screen. Morning consult another high quality
Speaker 1: poll showing the exact same thing. March nineteenth poll shows
Speaker 1: Trump at fifty four percent DeSantis is twenty six percent,
Speaker 1: a similar but at the same time it shows the
Speaker 1: similar decline because January second, twenty two, twenty three, it
Speaker 1: had Trump at forty five and DeSantis at thirty four,
Speaker 1: a similar drop in the amount of support for Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis by eight points. So everywhere you look, every primary poll,
Speaker 1: and again you can say that the poles are wrong,
Speaker 1: but within each pole, the consistency of the movement is
Speaker 1: generally what people are looking at, and you see that
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis is suffering. So in general, Crystal, I don't
Speaker 1: think we can but take away from this that the
Speaker 1: longer DeSantis holes his fire and he's out of the race,
Speaker 1: the longer then that he is going to suffer in
Speaker 1: these polls. Similarly, the more that he's doing his pushback
Speaker 1: and trying to draw the contrast, I am just not
Speaker 1: buying it. So I continue to see in this Piers
Speaker 1: Morgan interview that I went through, I tried to read it.
Speaker 1: By the way, Piers, please just release the whole goddamn thing.
Speaker 1: Instead of all these mishmash articles sensationalism. I just want
Speaker 1: to read the transcript anyway, So I read what's the
Speaker 1: fundamental critique, and it comes back to one that they've
Speaker 1: telegraphed for a long time. I handled COVID better than Trump.
Speaker 1: I simply do not believe that this will have any
Speaker 1: actual resonance with the base for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 1: Number One, the reason that Trump has actually said this
Speaker 1: because I think he's correct. The reason Desantas was able
Speaker 1: to do what he did is because we live in
Speaker 1: a federalist system. The president has enormous delegation and authority
Speaker 1: to all the governors. Hence why California did something different
Speaker 1: than Florida, which did something, than Georgia, which did something
Speaker 1: from Indiana. State governors were the ones who were able
Speaker 1: to set their COVID policy. Number one. Number two, they're like,
Speaker 1: he didn't fire Fauci. Now, listen, I care a lot
Speaker 1: about that. I definitely think Trump made a mistake, etc.
Speaker 1: Are we really going to be voting for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four based on a personnel decision from four years ago? Okay,
Speaker 1: I just don't believe that. By the way, again, I
Speaker 1: wish that would be the case. I just there's no
Speaker 1: evidence that people actually vote on that. Third. This was
Speaker 1: implicit in Theatus critique. He said, well, I think I
Speaker 1: will have people who are fully aligned with me whenever
Speaker 1: they're in office. Here's the deal. I would love for
Speaker 1: voters to pay attention to the fact that Trump hired
Speaker 1: Gary Cohene, to the fact that Trump hired deminution John Bolden.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of that. I made that case all
Speaker 1: throughout twenty twenty and I genuinely believe Trump would suffer
Speaker 1: for not delivering on many of the policy priorities that
Speaker 1: he said he would do in twenty sixteen. Guess what, guys,
Speaker 1: who won ten million more votes. He only lost by
Speaker 1: thirty thousand votes. There's no evidence of voters care about
Speaker 1: the personnel decisions. There is no evidence that they're going
Speaker 1: to vote on COVID policy from three and a half
Speaker 1: years ago. When Trump can say correctly that he was
Speaker 1: anti lockdown during the whole thing, and then you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of the personnel charge, I just don't see it.
Speaker 1: So anyway, his best case was I don't have as
Speaker 1: much drama. Okay, I think that's a good one. Again, though,
Speaker 1: he looked at the base, not necessarily general election. At
Speaker 1: the base likes a drama. So I just am ticking
Speaker 1: off every single critique that he's making, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this seems very online. It's like an online critique of Trump, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I do think is correct, but is
Speaker 1: not one that's necessarily going to resonate with a lot
Speaker 1: of voters who guess what they just like whenever he
Speaker 1: pisses off Mika Prasinski. That's what they've always loved about it.
Speaker 1: It's also it's kind of a wine track type of critique.
Speaker 1: I mean, it does remind me a little bit of
Speaker 1: the Elizabeth Warren campaign that was very like wonky in
Speaker 1: the weeds and all these policy papers and whatever. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it's exactly analogous, but specifically the
Speaker 1: personnel critique. People care about how the personnel translates into
Speaker 1: like what it means for their life, But are they
Speaker 1: actually thinking about who's like, you know, Secretary of the
Speaker 1: Treasury or whatever. You No, they want to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: do I have a job? You gotta put foot on,
Speaker 1: food on my table, et cetera. This is another example too,
Speaker 1: of asymmetric warfare. We were talking about this with regard
Speaker 1: to him getting in front of the indictment and spinning
Speaker 1: it in his direction at a time before the indictment drops,
Speaker 1: so the other side can't really marshal their forces fully
Speaker 1: and defend whatever may be in the indictment. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: he's going all in saying this is ridiculous, this is political,
Speaker 1: et cetera. It's the same deal here. DeSantis is lobbing
Speaker 1: some like tepid, sort of passive aggressive critiques at Trump,
Speaker 1: will barely even say his name, and meanwhile Trump is
Speaker 1: going all in. I mean, the things that are the
Speaker 1: most headline grabbing are like what we covered earlier in
Speaker 1: the week where he insinuates he's like a gay groomer. Okay,
Speaker 1: but he also unloaded on his policy record in Florida
Speaker 1: in a way that was frankly much more effective than
Speaker 1: any democratic critique I have seen of DeSantis so far.
Speaker 1: Just to give you a little taste of that, this
Speaker 1: was a long truth social He talked about how Florida
Speaker 1: ranks among the worst in the country on education. He
Speaker 1: hit him on crime, and Florida does actually have a
Speaker 1: like crime has spiked there, So that's a vulnerability for DeSantis,
Speaker 1: hit him on affordability and went after him on his
Speaker 1: handling of COVID. It was funny because it almost did
Speaker 1: look like a democratic attack. He was like, they were
Speaker 1: worth you know x, they were near the bottom and
Speaker 1: terms of COVID deaths and COVID infection rates, and yeah,
Speaker 1: eventually he opened the state after he had shut it down,
Speaker 1: but that was because of what I was able to do.
Speaker 1: And he said that he was an average governor, but
Speaker 1: the best by far in the country in one category
Speaker 1: public relations, where he easily ranks number one. But it
Speaker 1: is all a miarage. Just look at the facts and figures.
Speaker 1: They don't lie, and we don't want Ron as our president.
Speaker 1: So going in on the policy case too, we actually
Speaker 1: have that B six guys, let's go and put that
Speaker 1: up on the screen, please, just so people can see
Speaker 1: exactly as Crystal lays it out. It is a very
Speaker 1: lengthy paragraph here that you can see where Ron, the
Speaker 1: sanctimonious disciple of Paul Ryan, big lockdown governor, says quote
Speaker 1: that his profile is all a mirage and we don't
Speaker 1: want Ron as our president. As you said, this basically
Speaker 1: almost reads like a Charlie christad in terms of the
Speaker 1: worst for the total number of cases. How other Republicans
Speaker 1: actually did much better than Ron because I allowed them freedom.
Speaker 1: They never closed their states. He talks about how the
Speaker 1: country's number thirty nine in help and safety, number fifty
Speaker 1: in affordability, number thirty in education and childcare. Hardly greatness
Speaker 1: there of course, and easy Perry is okay, Then why
Speaker 1: do you live there? Dude? Like, why do you like?
Speaker 1: He actually has the answer there, he says, And I
Speaker 1: thought this was kind of a clever too. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: it's amazing what ocean and sunshine will do. Surprise, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: people want to move to the state because it has
Speaker 1: beautiful weather. But that was going on long before you
Speaker 1: were there, dude. And he also called him Rob in
Speaker 1: a press release. Actually I love that Meatball, Rob Trump
Speaker 1: nieces Drop. Well, okay, we can keep to sanctimonies because
Speaker 1: I do actually think it's a decent line of attack.
Speaker 1: But Meatball is so okay, can we talk about sanctimonious
Speaker 1: because I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I
Speaker 1: actually think it's a I actually think it's a clever nickname.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a friend of the show. I
Speaker 1: don't know if he wants this out there or not,
Speaker 1: so I won't say who his name is, but we
Speaker 1: were he was making the case, and I think this
Speaker 1: is true that like DeSantis's whole pitch is I'm Trump
Speaker 1: without the drama, and by labeling him to sanctimonious, whenever
Speaker 1: he tries to lean into that like I'm above the
Speaker 1: fray thing instead of reading as above the fray, now
Speaker 1: it's implanted in people's head is like, oh, you're sanctimonius,
Speaker 1: your snobby. You think you're better than us, That's why
Speaker 1: you're acting this way, and so it really undercuts it
Speaker 1: goes after his strength. Yes, and that's why I actually
Speaker 1: think it's an underrated nickname in my personal opinion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I absolutely one agree with the sanctimonious. I think it's correct.
Speaker 1: As I said, you can't pretend that you don't know
Speaker 1: how to spell to sanctimonious because the quote has too
Speaker 1: many vowels. Whenever you literally are an Ivy League educated lawyer,
Speaker 1: like stop. It reminds me of that that viral clip
Speaker 1: of his biography where he's like, I was raised in Florida,
Speaker 1: but culturally I was raised in Ohio and Pennsylvania It's like, dude,
Speaker 1: just shut up, Like this is the most transparent, ridiculous,
Speaker 1: like attempt to be like I'm a normal dude. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anything else. That tough piece from Selena Zuto is really
Speaker 1: in that regard. We can talk about that. Save all
Speaker 1: of that for another day. Let's get to the second bar.
Speaker 1: Maga Maga absolutely escalating its war against Ron DeSantis. It's
Speaker 1: just full scale now at this point, with all of
Speaker 1: their allies. Go and put Donald Trump Junior there up
Speaker 1: on the screen. So here's what he said. Quote. Just
Speaker 1: as radical Dems are indicting Trump and destroying the fabric
Speaker 1: of our nation with their police state tactics, DeSantis pathetically
Speaker 1: runs to the liberal media on orders from his rhino
Speaker 1: establishment owners to attack my father. He is exposing himself
Speaker 1: as one hundred percent controlled opposition. Let's go next to
Speaker 1: Jason Miller, who currently works for the Trump campaign. He says,
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis has finally shown his true colors, an establishment,
Speaker 1: never Trumper who despises the magabase and was faking it
Speaker 1: the entire time. Similarly, also Mike Cernovici, we cited here
Speaker 1: a couple times on the show, and again to note
Speaker 1: he is somebody who is pro Ron DeSantis does not
Speaker 1: necessarily want to see Trump, but thinks that the way
Speaker 1: Desantas is handling himself is not wise. Let's put his
Speaker 1: up there, he says, I'm quote looking forward to the
Speaker 1: big brains explaining to me that this is actually brilliant
Speaker 1: timing for a full attack on Trump. So I think
Speaker 1: if you put all of these together, what you really
Speaker 1: have is kind of a horseshoe effect of people who
Speaker 1: were maga and don't want Trump to be the nominee,
Speaker 1: and we're pro DeSantis but think he's not doing well.
Speaker 1: On top of what I have seen is a major
Speaker 1: escalation of MAGA like forces online who are really willing
Speaker 1: to take the gloves off against DeSantis. I've seen like
Speaker 1: Gavin Wax, who is the I believe he works for
Speaker 1: the New York Republican Club, Raheem cassam As. I've mentioned
Speaker 1: war room people like Steve Bannon and others who are
Speaker 1: one hundred percent with Trump to some extent, Like you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily say that that wouldn't be the case, but
Speaker 1: the fact that they're willing to do it so early
Speaker 1: is I think a problem for DeSantis. Also in terms
Speaker 1: of DeSantis's calendar. So from what I've asked and read around,
Speaker 1: here's what I hear. I hear he's waiting for the
Speaker 1: Florida legislature session to end so he can be like,
Speaker 1: look at all of these things that I've done. I
Speaker 1: think that's stupid for a number of reasons. As we've
Speaker 1: already seen now in the polling that we just covered,
Speaker 1: he's sinking like a rock whenever he's getting attacked too,
Speaker 1: You're not actually gonna do anything in the Florida legislature.
Speaker 1: That's all that like big of a deal. For example,
Speaker 1: whenever he was asked by the reporters about his Trump
Speaker 1: with Trump's attacks on him, he was at an event
Speaker 1: banning central bank digital currency. Now listen, I actually think
Speaker 1: that's important on a policy level. I also do not
Speaker 1: think that a single voter is like, you know what,
Speaker 1: we need to ban CBDC, Like I just don't go
Speaker 1: to the diner where all those people said, right, it's
Speaker 1: one of those where if you go to the diner
Speaker 1: where all those Florida boomers said they were going to
Speaker 1: vote for Trump and not DeSantis, when Fox News was
Speaker 1: trying to get them to say that they would vote
Speaker 1: for Ron DeSantis, like, ask them what a CBDC is.
Speaker 1: They have no idea. And now again I'm not saying
Speaker 1: it isn't important, but you can't say, look, I'm the
Speaker 1: only governor who ran on CBBC. It was kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing with the soros Da attack, the saurus it. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: he's correct on the policy. He did remove sorous Da,
Speaker 1: but like, that's not what this was about. It was
Speaker 1: about Trump. It's not about violent crime spiking in New York. Like,
Speaker 1: sure we can talk about that if you do become
Speaker 1: the nominee. That would be a great line of attack
Speaker 1: about why you're a good governor. That's not what the
Speaker 1: base wants to hear about right now. Yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: one of those where I continue to see him almost
Speaker 1: coming a bit too much to online vibes. And then
Speaker 1: the biggest one, which actually broke last night Crystal, is
Speaker 1: about him distancing himself from his previous comments on Ukraine.
Speaker 1: So that came out and he said, actually Putin is
Speaker 1: a war criminal. He said my territorial dispute line was
Speaker 1: mischaracterized by Tucker Carlson. Tucker actually attacked him later that night,
Speaker 1: making fun of anybody who gives into the war criminal line.
Speaker 1: And then what he did say was he's like, well,
Speaker 1: it was mischaracterized as a war criminal, and he cited
Speaker 1: that John McCain gas station line. Now to be fair,
Speaker 1: actually the gas station line is good. I thinkally a
Speaker 1: gas station with a bunch of nuclears. I have used
Speaker 1: that line before because I do think it is accurate.
Speaker 1: That said if you were I'm not a Republican politician,
Speaker 1: and if I want, I would never do that if
Speaker 1: I was somebody who was running on some sort of
Speaker 1: restraint position, simply because I know that where it would
Speaker 1: come from. He did himself no favors by borrowing the
Speaker 1: line and started very much kind of Look what I've
Speaker 1: always seen with him is he wants to have it
Speaker 1: both ways. He wants to be maga in some cases,
Speaker 1: and then he wants to be the guy who can
Speaker 1: hobnob with Ken Griffin and all these other billionaire donors.
Speaker 1: Apparently Reid Hoffman now wants to back his campaign, which
Speaker 1: is nuts. One of the largest Democratic donors is opening
Speaker 1: some financing spaces. Puck News Teddy over there. So look,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. He's in a tough position, especially with Ukraine,
Speaker 1: because that's what the donor class really probably hated him
Speaker 1: the most for. And I don't think he's politically playing
Speaker 1: this right, I really don't. The Ukraine thing is really
Speaker 1: fascinating to me because it shows you that all of
Speaker 1: the elite freakout over his original comments that got to him.
Speaker 1: It definitely got to him. And because I think his
Speaker 1: campaign number one, if you just look at the polling,
Speaker 1: the one thing that's really consistent is Trump wins a
Speaker 1: large majority of non college educated DeSantis is more popular
Speaker 1: among college educated voters. Those would be the type that
Speaker 1: even within the Republican coalition, would be more likely to
Speaker 1: be pro Ukraine, pro Ukraine aid. And then also, you know,
Speaker 1: he's got to look at okay, well where's my financing,
Speaker 1: where's my funding coming from? And I do not doubt
Speaker 1: that there were a number of donors who were upset
Speaker 1: with the original tenor of the comments to Tucker Carlson.
Speaker 1: So I think that's really very interesting and very telling.
Speaker 1: I also think that the extreme pushback from a number
Speaker 1: of figures both like you know, Mega Adjacent and actually
Speaker 1: Maga over the incredibly tepid criticism that he lovies at
Speaker 1: Trump is also really telling because again, Trump is going
Speaker 1: in on this guy like dropping I mean all the
Speaker 1: data he can about floors it's actually a terrible place.
Speaker 1: And he's an average governor and he's it's all a mirage.
Speaker 1: And by the way, he might be a gay grumer.
Speaker 1: I mean, no holds barred from Trump. DeSantis says, these
Speaker 1: like little tiny, passive aggressive won't even is named jabs,
Speaker 1: and they're like, how dare you attack Donald Trump during
Speaker 1: his hour of need? Right? And I mean they're able
Speaker 1: to do that because I think the Republican base is
Speaker 1: ultrasensitive to any criticism of Trump because they feel like
Speaker 1: all of it is unfair and all of it is
Speaker 1: coming from the liberal media. So it makes it very
Speaker 1: difficult to lay a glove on Trump whatsoever, even if
Speaker 1: in the most mild, tepid way. And meanwhile, it's just
Speaker 1: again baked into the cake that you expect Trump to go,
Speaker 1: like to another level that you can and even imagine
Speaker 1: when it comes to his attacks on Ron DeSantis. So
Speaker 1: it is not an even playing field in terms of
Speaker 1: the critiques you're allowed to levy one against another. And
Speaker 1: you know, I've been trying to think about we've been
Speaker 1: covering this as like DeSantis is making a bunch of mistakes,
Speaker 1: and I do think that he's not playing his hand
Speaker 1: in the best way possible. I also don't know that
Speaker 1: there really is a winning hand here, because the bottom
Speaker 1: line is that Trump still is the leader of this party,
Speaker 1: and the majority of Republicans still really like Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And you know what, guys, he is maddening and I
Speaker 1: got all kinds of issues with him. He is an
Speaker 1: extraordinary politician when he's on his game, and you can
Speaker 1: see it. I mean, he is on his game lately.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that there is a way that
Speaker 1: you play this hand that you end up beating Trump
Speaker 1: in this cycle. Now, listen, let me put the caveats
Speaker 1: out there. It's early. There are all kinds of things
Speaker 1: that could happen. The man is likely to be indeted
Speaker 1: next week. He's likely to face other indictments down the road.
Speaker 1: We don't know what's going to be revealed. We think
Speaker 1: we know everything about these cases, we may not, and
Speaker 1: so things can definitely change. It is a long road
Speaker 1: to the nomination. I do want to put all of
Speaker 1: that out there. But the way things stand today, I
Speaker 1: think no matter what Ronda Santist did, I think it
Speaker 1: is very, very difficult to unset Donald Trump from winning
Speaker 1: the nomination. Definitely agree co sign everything he said. All right, guys,
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve had an absolutely momentous decision to make yesterday
Speaker 1: about whether or not to raise rates and by how much.
Speaker 1: This of course comes on the heels of the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley Bank and Signature Bank and really industry wide bank
Speaker 1: bailout that occurred. So on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: you had this series of bank failures and market fallout
Speaker 1: because in part because of the actions that the Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve had been taking in hiking interest rates. You also,
Speaker 1: in the response to that situation, had the FED basically
Speaker 1: going in the polar opposite direction of hiking rates in
Speaker 1: order to save you know, wealthy depositors. They're like, okay,
Speaker 1: well we got we got actually ease money to make
Speaker 1: sure these people are okay. So there was a big
Speaker 1: question mark about what the Fed would do, and they
Speaker 1: made their decision yesterday. Let's put this up on the screen.
Speaker 1: They decided to continue hiking interest rates, but rather than
Speaker 1: going for you know, halfpoint or more like they have
Speaker 1: in recent times. Gun put this tear sheet up on
Speaker 1: the screen. CNBC they decided to hike rates by a
Speaker 1: quarter percentage point, and there was this shift in language.
Speaker 1: You know, people read into everything that your own pal
Speaker 1: says very very closely, and I'll tell you more about
Speaker 1: that in just a minute. But there was a change
Speaker 1: in language too about how far they're going to go
Speaker 1: in terms of hiking rates, and they indicated that increases
Speaker 1: are coming to an end. So that is what we
Speaker 1: found out yesterday. I mean, I'll just say it. I
Speaker 1: think it's a mistake. I think given the fact that
Speaker 1: number one, you know, you had this banking issue. Number two,
Speaker 1: you went out of your way to ease monetary conditions
Speaker 1: when it came to these specific depositors and the specific
Speaker 1: group of banks. But you're continuing on the other side
Speaker 1: to hike rates, which could cause more fallout not only
Speaker 1: for banks but for ordinary people as well, at a
Speaker 1: time when what you've been doing hasn't really worked all
Speaker 1: that way to curb inflation. I think it would have
Speaker 1: made a lot of sense to say, you know what,
Speaker 1: we're going to wait and see what happens and what
Speaker 1: conditions ultimately settle in Well, I think I also agree
Speaker 1: with you that it was a mistake, but more so
Speaker 1: I think that it shows how ideological things are. Absolutely
Speaker 1: that I think is actually the greatest danger where look,
Speaker 1: this is almost like discount vulgarism. They're like, no matter
Speaker 1: how much we have to do, we will raise, raise, raised,
Speaker 1: until we see that unemployment rate go down and we
Speaker 1: go up, sorry, go up, and as long as that
Speaker 1: is the soul metric, like oh, bank collapses okay, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sheer chaos and mortgage markets and home prices
Speaker 1: and all that, okay, making it unable for businesses to
Speaker 1: borrow or for people to obtain credit, not even cheap,
Speaker 1: but like at a normal rate at like something that
Speaker 1: would be considered fair market value, and the ability to
Speaker 1: expand your capital. It's just they are making sure that
Speaker 1: the damage that they're willing to reak is just one
Speaker 1: of those where ideologically, until they see that rate go up,
Speaker 1: they are just not going to hit pause on the brakes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge mistake. Yeah. No, I mean
Speaker 1: that they have this like tough guy mentality of like
Speaker 1: we got to show them that we're to stick to
Speaker 1: our guns and we're going to keep going even though
Speaker 1: things are already breaking. So there's another piece here, just
Speaker 1: to highlight this what they call a quandary. Put this
Speaker 1: next piece up on the screen. This was before the
Speaker 1: FED announced their decision, but it highlights the conundrum that
Speaker 1: they were facing. They say, banks are running scared. Is
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve about to make things worse? The quandary,
Speaker 1: they say, highlights the multiple and conflicting issues facing the FED.
Speaker 1: With key sectors of the economy growing strong, inflation still
Speaker 1: more than double the fed's target rate of two percent,
Speaker 1: central Bank is keenly aware that any sign it is
Speaker 1: relenting in the battle against inflation could give rise to
Speaker 1: another wave of price increases. At the same time, lifting
Speaker 1: the federal funds rate could now magnify other lenders, the
Speaker 1: same kind of problems that led panic depositors to yanked
Speaker 1: their money out of Silicon Valley banks. So that was
Speaker 1: the basic decision. Again, I think it was a mistake,
Speaker 1: and just to reiterate what we've talked about here a lot,
Speaker 1: because I think it's a really key point. Wage inflation,
Speaker 1: which is basically the only thing that the FED can
Speaker 1: really deal with here, is a minuscule part of overall
Speaker 1: what has contributed to overall inflation. A large percentage has
Speaker 1: been corporate price gouging, and another large percentage has been
Speaker 1: continued supply chain issues, none of which the FED has
Speaker 1: any control over whatsoever. So as they continue this like
Speaker 1: death march of interest rate hikes, you know, consequences be damned.
Speaker 1: Just keep in mind that the tool that they're using
Speaker 1: here is actually very poorly suited to deal with the
Speaker 1: real problem that does, of course, have huge negative impacts
Speaker 1: on every working person in the entire country. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's the big takeaway is that, Look, we
Speaker 1: just have a far less control than I think any
Speaker 1: of us would want on how any of this is
Speaker 1: actually run and on the major impact it can have
Speaker 1: on our lives. Housing is the one that you know,
Speaker 1: you just can't underestimate. Yeah, how big of a deal
Speaker 1: it is. And I see it everywhere in terms of
Speaker 1: you know, houses with thirty forty days of signs up there,
Speaker 1: and I guess I think that's fine. But it's not
Speaker 1: like the price is dropped to make it most affordable either,
Speaker 1: that's it. And with the mortgage rates you know, six
Speaker 1: seven percent, like good luck, you know to a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are out there. Yeah. Absolutely, there is
Speaker 1: some movement on the legislative front that we wanted to
Speaker 1: bring you, which is kind of encouraging. Put this up
Speaker 1: on the screen. It's a bipartisan bill between two very
Speaker 1: unlikely bedfellows here, US Centator Rick Scott, who is a
Speaker 1: real fiscal hawk and a Democrat of course, Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 1: They have unveiled a bipartisan Fed oversight bill. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest with you, I genuinely don't know how
Speaker 1: impactful this would actually be if it was passed. But
Speaker 1: the fact that you have the two sides at least
Speaker 1: finding some common ground and trying to work together, I
Speaker 1: take as a good sign, and potentially this would have it.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it wouldn't. I'm just saying I don't know.
Speaker 1: So the details here are that the legislation would establish
Speaker 1: a presidentially appointed, Senate confirmed Inspector General at the FED
Speaker 1: like every other major government agency. That's according to a
Speaker 1: joint release with Scott and with Warren. Warren said this
Speaker 1: month's banking upheavals have underscored the urgent need for a
Speaker 1: truly independent inspector General to hold FED officials accountable for
Speaker 1: any lapses or wrongdoing. Now this comes as there are
Speaker 1: a million questions about how the FED was so asleep
Speaker 1: at the switch that they let this all unfold at
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley Bank, where, by the way, the CEO of
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley Bank was sitting on the San Francisco FED board,
Speaker 1: which is not a great look in terms of the
Speaker 1: optics of this situation. But there's reporting now that the
Speaker 1: FED knew there were problems with SVB and that they
Speaker 1: had huge interest rate exposure. Actually for years they've been
Speaker 1: warning about this, but they didn't They would just like
Speaker 1: send in a notice, but they didn't actually do anything
Speaker 1: until this was a total crisis that required what is
Speaker 1: effectively a revolutionary remake of the banking system that even
Speaker 1: they are still trying to figure out what exactly means.
Speaker 1: So we'll get to that in a moment. So the
Speaker 1: idea here is, let's bring in an independent inspector General
Speaker 1: who can watch over what the FED is doing here
Speaker 1: so that we can hope to have more teeth in
Speaker 1: terms of our regulatory bodies if we face a similar
Speaker 1: situation in the future. Yeah, I think look with the
Speaker 1: actual legislation, as you said, in terms of an inspector
Speaker 1: General and all that. Still, though the checks that actual
Speaker 1: Congress would ever be able to exert on an independent
Speaker 1: FED and make it we're democratic. It just doesn't really exist,
Speaker 1: given the fact that you renominate them on a very
Speaker 1: limited basis for ten year terms. Then even the way
Speaker 1: that the entire federal Reserve governors are run from the
Speaker 1: system itself, it designed basically to not have any democratic input.
Speaker 1: So there's not a lot you can do. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's only
Speaker 1: like an inch in the right direction. Yeah, we'll leave
Speaker 1: this discussion for another day, but I do want to
Speaker 1: throw out there we take as this bedrock assumption that
Speaker 1: the FED has to be totally independent of politics. That
Speaker 1: has not been the case throughout all of history, and
Speaker 1: there's a real debate to be had there. So we'll
Speaker 1: save that one for another day. But this was also
Speaker 1: really quite extraordinary and to the point about how even
Speaker 1: the people who crafted this bailout don't exactly know what
Speaker 1: it means. You had FED shared Jerome pal and Churgery
Speaker 1: Secretary Janet Yellen giving what appeared to be sort of
Speaker 1: conflicting statements about what exactly is going to happen with
Speaker 1: depositors because You'll remember a key part of this bailout
Speaker 1: was that the Signature and Silicon Valley Bank depositors were
Speaker 1: going to be ensured. The entirety of their deposits were
Speaker 1: going to be backstopped, regardless of how much it's over
Speaker 1: that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars limit. So Jeff
Speaker 1: Stine at the washing Post right away picked up on, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: does this mean that basically you are backstopping all depositors
Speaker 1: in all institutions across the country. And Yellen really hedged,
Speaker 1: But that was kind of the working assumption. Will continues
Speaker 1: to be a real question of what exactly they mean
Speaker 1: and if they intend to change the deposit insurance system
Speaker 1: or if they really are just you know, backstopping the
Speaker 1: depositors at the institutions of their choosing. So let's put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen. This next piece you had
Speaker 1: Jerome pal on Wednesday. This is a different part. Sorry.
Speaker 1: There's also a legislative push to ensure big deposits that
Speaker 1: they're contemplating on Capitol Hill that has to do with
Speaker 1: this two hundred fifty thousand dollars limit. So there is
Speaker 1: some effort at changing this from a legislative perspective. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much ground it is gained. So this
Speaker 1: is from Bloomberg. You can see that they their headline
Speaker 1: here says differing Pal and Yellen messages were a lot
Speaker 1: for the stock market to digest. One analyst said it
Speaker 1: was astounding how they were giving contradictory comments seemingly at
Speaker 1: the same time, and all of this is sort of like,
Speaker 1: you know, they keep it vague, so to say it
Speaker 1: was directly contradictory is not exactly accurate. But clearly the
Speaker 1: market read these comments as being contradictory. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you what they said. Here. You had Jerome Pal telling
Speaker 1: reporters about these deposits. You've seen that we have the
Speaker 1: tools to protect depositors when there's a threat of serious
Speaker 1: harm to the economy or the financial system, and we're
Speaker 1: prepared to use those tools. And I think depositors should
Speaker 1: assume that their deposits are safe. So that's Jerome Pal.
Speaker 1: Depositors should assume their deposits are safe. So that sounds
Speaker 1: like all right, I guess they are just basically backstopping
Speaker 1: the entire deposit system. At the same time, you had
Speaker 1: Janet Yellen on Capitol Hill talking to senators and saying
Speaker 1: that blanket deposit insurance is quote, not something we have
Speaker 1: looked at or are considering in any way. So seems
Speaker 1: to be that they're not exactly on the same page here,
Speaker 1: or at least not you know, totally putting out a
Speaker 1: similar message and put this chart that we have on
Speaker 1: the which shows you that the markets were reacting in
Speaker 1: real time to these comments. So you've got at the
Speaker 1: peak there. That's when Pale is saying basically like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well probably you know, we've got the tools, we know
Speaker 1: how to use them. You read into that what you will,
Speaker 1: but I think your deposits are safe. And then you
Speaker 1: see the dip when Yellen says, now we're not actually
Speaker 1: even considering doing anything with regard to deposit insurance. Now.
Speaker 1: The reality is, in terms of an actual policy change,
Speaker 1: you would require legislative action of the type that you
Speaker 1: know they're starting to consider. But they really got to
Speaker 1: figure out what they're messaging is on all of this.
Speaker 1: Because the fact that you have these two incredibly powerful officials,
Speaker 1: even they don't seem to really know what this bailout
Speaker 1: means and what they're prepared to do. It's pretty extraordinary. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean the disconcerting nature of it is just the
Speaker 1: fact that they're both in public giving completely contradictory answers
Speaker 1: when they're actually both supposed to coordinate, and again the
Speaker 1: entire point of their powers that they're like, these are
Speaker 1: the big boys in the room, the adults. They're supposed
Speaker 1: to be the hands on the global economy making sure
Speaker 1: that things are all working. Instead, they literally prompted market
Speaker 1: sell off, right, And then well it's like, well which
Speaker 1: one what are we supposed to do? Is the bank
Speaker 1: safe or not? And it's like such a basic question.
Speaker 1: It also kicks back to our previous discussion about why
Speaker 1: it's important for Congress to get involved here. Yeah, Congress
Speaker 1: is the one they're supposed to send the messages correct
Speaker 1: around how the banking system will be ensured, what the
Speaker 1: actual dollar figure is, if it's stabilizing, into what extent
Speaker 1: regulators will have an input. It should be set from
Speaker 1: the democratic process, not from the holy heads of Janet
Speaker 1: Yellen and your own power. Again illustrating the problems with
Speaker 1: the system. Yeah, I mean, you really get a sense
Speaker 1: these people are just like up there freelancing and haven't
Speaker 1: really even they haven't really wrapped their heads around what
Speaker 1: this means, what they're willing to do, and where it's
Speaker 1: all going. So yeah, there is no There is no
Speaker 1: substitute for having a legislative body that actually passes bills
Speaker 1: and regulates the banking system. There is just no other
Speaker 1: answer than that one. Yeah, there you go. All right,
Speaker 1: let's move on to the next one. Here important meeting
Speaker 1: pressions Shishing Ping and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where they
Speaker 1: made not necessarily policy inroads, but have pledged to themselves
Speaker 1: a new world order. There was one clip in particular.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put it up there on the
Speaker 1: screen and I'll read some of the subtitles where Putin
Speaker 1: is speaking and says, already two thirds of the trade
Speaker 1: turnover between our countries is carried out in rubles and
Speaker 1: Chinese yuan, so we are for the use of Chinese
Speaker 1: yuan in settlements between Russia and the countries of Asia,
Speaker 1: Africa and Latin America. One of the reasons why that's
Speaker 1: so important is he says that already with the two
Speaker 1: thirds of tradeover between the two it's talking about replacing
Speaker 1: the dollar as the de facto the de facto currency
Speaker 1: for a trade actions, which is one of the things
Speaker 1: that undergirds really the entire global financial system. Russian sanctions,
Speaker 1: of course, have made that nearly impossible. They've been trying
Speaker 1: to price some of these deals in different currencies. His
Speaker 1: acceptance of Chinese wand in that matter is both one
Speaker 1: where he's kind of adopting a more Chinese global financial system,
Speaker 1: but also his acquiescence. So again further of the two
Speaker 1: things coming together. Let's put the next one up there
Speaker 1: on the screen. Associated press writing from Moscow, Putin welcomes China.
Speaker 1: She to the Kremlin amid Ukraine fighting. There was some
Speaker 1: outrageous ceremonies in these great halls with they're honestly fun
Speaker 1: to watch, like whatever you watch dictators going to greet
Speaker 1: each other, with the giant hauls and the music and
Speaker 1: the pomp and the circumstances. It is all a little
Speaker 1: bit ridiculous, but it's not like the consequences are not immense.
Speaker 1: Putin really just laid the red carpet out for she.
Speaker 1: China has made colossal leaps a development, he says. It
Speaker 1: is causing genuine interest all around the world, and we
Speaker 1: feel a little bit envious. He said, as smiled, he said,
Speaker 1: we will discuss all these issues, including your initiatives that
Speaker 1: we highly respect. Our cooperation of the international arena undoubtedly
Speaker 1: helps strengthen the basic principles of the global order and multipolarity.
Speaker 1: So the major takeaway from the two meetings is that
Speaker 1: they are pushing and in some ways is correct the
Speaker 1: idea of a shift to a multipolar global system, to
Speaker 1: trying to remove any US power in the region, especially
Speaker 1: in terms of finance. And then Ukraine is like almost
Speaker 1: a secondary part of that because multipolarity then means that
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a US, NATO, Western led order.
Speaker 1: For the way that we think about border states and
Speaker 1: transactions to see etc. Is put aside. Then that opens
Speaker 1: the door for why it would be okay for someone
Speaker 1: like Russia to invade Ukraine, and why it would be
Speaker 1: okay for China to invade Taiwan. I think though, when
Speaker 1: you put those things together, our insistence on and this
Speaker 1: is borrowing from doctor Tree to Parsi, of not playing
Speaker 1: the peacemaker, not even playing the peacemaker, but not showing
Speaker 1: any inroads to peace, not seeing as a fair broker
Speaker 1: or arbiter in the global financial system, representing the interests
Speaker 1: of the Indians, of the Global South, of the Vietnamese,
Speaker 1: of Brazil and all those other countries re see the
Speaker 1: conflict very differently and instead being completely wedded to the
Speaker 1: NATO centric euroview of the world declining and cultural relevance declining,
Speaker 1: especially in GDP, and also declining in terms of its
Speaker 1: share of global public opinion. That is where has left
Speaker 1: the Chinese opening for it to come in and have
Speaker 1: this role. So I think it's a disaster, as I've
Speaker 1: said before, largely because it was the greatest fear of
Speaker 1: the Nixon administration, of the teaming up between the great
Speaker 1: power of the Soviet Union and then the secondary power
Speaker 1: of China. Now that has flipped as evidence of why
Speaker 1: Putin is literally willing to accept payments in Chinese want
Speaker 1: that said, I mean, it still doesn't make the fear
Speaker 1: of what that type of system looks like in terms
Speaker 1: of any ability to play peace maker or even to
Speaker 1: exert influence go down. So Trita Parsy made this point
Speaker 1: in New York Times op ed, let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen after he was here
Speaker 1: on the show. I thought he did an excellent job here,
Speaker 1: And there's a good quote which was pulled out. The
Speaker 1: greatest threat to our own security and reputation is if
Speaker 1: we stand in the way of a world where others
Speaker 1: have a stake in peace. I think he is exactly
Speaker 1: right here. I would also note that Chinahawks like Albert
Speaker 1: Kolby and others have also come out and talked about
Speaker 1: the danger of this, largely using the same rhetoric. So
Speaker 1: I think this is one of those places where people
Speaker 1: who are on the right and left and who are
Speaker 1: skeptical of this, like us total wedded view to NATO,
Speaker 1: to Europe and to the being basically a co combatant
Speaker 1: in the Ukraine conflict, are both seeing this as a
Speaker 1: disaster for whichever respective foreign policy you want. If you
Speaker 1: want a progressive like less intervention as FORIGN policy is
Speaker 1: a disaster. And if you want to try and if
Speaker 1: you believe that Asia is the global rising, where the
Speaker 1: GDP will be, where the center of power will be,
Speaker 1: this is also a disaster because it gives them even
Speaker 1: more power in the Rea and also lets the two
Speaker 1: team up for the quote new world order which they're
Speaker 1: so desperate for. Christ Yeah, well, in which in some
Speaker 1: ways has already arrived. I mean, you know that's there
Speaker 1: to the extent that you can stop it. I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: that's what people are Look, let's all be real here,
Speaker 1: like it is the global power, or it is the
Speaker 1: power in the Asia Pacific, and all US policy is
Speaker 1: geared towards making sure that you try and quote contain
Speaker 1: that for US interests, specifically US allies like South Korea, Japan,
Speaker 1: and Vietnam. I think that one indicator that we are
Speaker 1: already shifting to that multipolar world is the fact that, yes,
Speaker 1: we did a great job of like getting Europe on
Speaker 1: our side with regards to Ukraine. Rest of the world.
Speaker 1: Global South was like, hey, we're just gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: stay out of this, and we don't see this the
Speaker 1: way that y'all see this, and have really gone out
Speaker 1: of their way to maintain a sort of non alignment
Speaker 1: with regards to this conflict and see the conflict in
Speaker 1: totally different terms than the way that it is framed here.
Speaker 1: We got a taste of that when the new Brazilian president,
Speaker 1: new and former Brazilian president Lula was in town and
Speaker 1: laid out the way that he viewed this and he
Speaker 1: actively said I want to stay neutral so that I
Speaker 1: could potentially play a role as a peacemaker and be
Speaker 1: part of the diplomatic process here. I think the real
Speaker 1: shot across the boll with regard to China in this
Speaker 1: was obviously the deal that they were able to strike
Speaker 1: between Saudi in Iran. That was extraordinary. So yeah, there
Speaker 1: was not a lot to read going back to the
Speaker 1: specifics of this meeting in terms of the tea leaves
Speaker 1: of how they're thinking about the Ukrainian crisis and what
Speaker 1: role they may play there. There still continues to be
Speaker 1: reporting that she is expected to speak with Selenski. They
Speaker 1: put out that previous peace plan, but there was not
Speaker 1: a lot that was said about Ukraine publicly in terms
Speaker 1: of this meeting. There were a couple things I wanted
Speaker 1: to highlight from the report that we put up earlier.
Speaker 1: One thing, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson for China told reporters
Speaker 1: that China will quote uphold its objective and fair position
Speaker 1: on the Ukrainian crisis and play a constructive role in
Speaker 1: promoting peace talks, whatever that means, just to give you
Speaker 1: their line. But the other thing that I thought was
Speaker 1: really interesting is there have been all these reports in
Speaker 1: the US press that our intelligence officials believe China is
Speaker 1: contemplating sending lethal aid to Russia in support of their
Speaker 1: war in Ukraine. There was this line in this season.
Speaker 1: I've noted this in a couple places now that I
Speaker 1: think is really important to highlight for you. They say, quote,
Speaker 1: US officials have picked up indications China is considering supplying
Speaker 1: Russia with weapons for its fight in Ukraine, but have
Speaker 1: seen no evidence they've actually done so. So I just
Speaker 1: want to put a little pin in that that I
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily take their word for it that they're totally
Speaker 1: convinced that China is going to send these weapons. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, they're very interested in saying, Okay, China is
Speaker 1: on side of the bad guys here and so and
Speaker 1: there are opponent but the evidence that they're actually planning
Speaker 1: to send the weapons seems to be a little bit
Speaker 1: loosey goosey, in my opinion. I agree with you. I also, though,
Speaker 1: would dispute though that we've quote got in Europe on
Speaker 1: our side. That may be rhetorically, but actually the NATO
Speaker 1: Secretary General just revealed yesterday only nine of the countries
Speaker 1: or nine of the some thirty or whatever countries they're
Speaker 1: inside of NATO even meet the two percent GDP alliance
Speaker 1: or two percent GDP spending. Germany has pledged it, however,
Speaker 1: they have still not gotten there. France is also pledging it.
Speaker 1: They have not gotten there. Britain is the only one
Speaker 1: that's there. In terms of their match of our at Ukraine,
Speaker 1: it is currently still at the one fifteenth level. If
Speaker 1: you look at the total EU, it is still less
Speaker 1: than the United States. The only countries which do meet
Speaker 1: the percent GDP target are countries like Estonia, which is
Speaker 1: the size of like Rhode Island. So you know, I
Speaker 1: love that too. When everyone's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Estonia and the Latvian countries are standing up, I'm like,
Speaker 1: they are literally smaller than neighborhoods in the United States.
Speaker 1: Like I'm sorry. In absolute terms, that means nothing. And
Speaker 1: whenever you look at the way the Europeans continue, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, to take us for a ride in NATO,
Speaker 1: it's like we are basically riding not only Ukraine, but
Speaker 1: all of them a blank check. Remember when the Germans
Speaker 1: wouldn't send those Leopard tanks unless we sent our weapons
Speaker 1: systems specifically, because they're like, no, we need to be
Speaker 1: protected by the US nuclear umbrella. There you go, That's
Speaker 1: what it's all about. And guess what even the Ukrainians
Speaker 1: are like. They're not sending us all the aid that
Speaker 1: they promised while we are expediting our patriot missile systems
Speaker 1: to them. So it continues to be totally one hundred
Speaker 1: percent US led and the State Department coming out and
Speaker 1: trashing the Chinese plan is not representative of global public
Speaker 1: opinion and that is going to be a blow to
Speaker 1: the US should it try and make inroads, specifically diplomatic
Speaker 1: ones all throughout the Asia Pacific. We've talked about this before.
Speaker 1: I talked about it with Treata Parsi. I can guarantee
Speaker 1: you in New Delhi they are pissed at the way
Speaker 1: that they have been treated on Ukraine. This is the
Speaker 1: world's largest democracy outside of China, one of the most
Speaker 1: populous nations in the world. GDP exploding, and if you
Speaker 1: have any hopes of maintaining power in the Asia Pacific,
Speaker 1: you of course the India to be one of your
Speaker 1: closest allies. I'm not just saying this because I'm Indian,
Speaker 1: saying like I can read how these people are, how
Speaker 1: these people are behaving. Not only that the Japanese and
Speaker 1: the South Koreans. South Korea actually, especially Japan's Prime Minister
Speaker 1: kind of been wishy washing on Ukraine, but the US
Speaker 1: has been forcing him. He was just in Ukraine also
Speaker 1: as kind of a show that while Putin has hosting X,
Speaker 1: the Japanese PM is in Ukraine, but South Korea has
Speaker 1: been You can go and read this. They have been
Speaker 1: backfilling all the defense capabilities that the US has stopped paying,
Speaker 1: largely because of Russian sanctions. They've also long been buying
Speaker 1: Iranian oil. In other words, they're in it for themselves.
Speaker 1: And you know, why shouldn't any nation be that. Vietnam
Speaker 1: as well Taiwan if you care about Taiwan. Taiwan behind
Speaker 1: the scenes is pissed about many of the weapons that
Speaker 1: are going to Ukraine. A lot of their weapons buys
Speaker 1: have been cannibalized in terms of what can be sent
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. So there's a lot of reason for people
Speaker 1: in Asia to be skeptical of the US ability to
Speaker 1: quote walk and chew gum at the same time, mostly
Speaker 1: because we've literally haven't done that since World War Two.
Speaker 1: So there's anyway I think you can look at this
Speaker 1: in two different lenses. I would say it's a disaster, really,
Speaker 1: and either one that you want. Even if you are
Speaker 1: one of these neoliberals who wants to support Ukraine and
Speaker 1: all this like, you have to admit that the nightmare
Speaker 1: of the uniting of two nuclear powers being in total
Speaker 1: lockstep and forging larger diplomatic relations in the interest of
Speaker 1: conquest is not good for global peace. So at a
Speaker 1: very basic level you would want to try and prevent this. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: Washington has decided that Kiev is more important than any
Speaker 1: of this, and who knows, you know. I hope that
Speaker 1: we don't pay the price, but unfortunately we probably will.
Speaker 1: I thought Doctor Parsi summed up the dynamic well. In
Speaker 1: sort of like the conclusion of his piece, he says,
Speaker 1: in tomorrow's world, we should not worry if some roads
Speaker 1: to peace go through Beijing, New Delhi or Brasilia, so
Speaker 1: long as all roads to war do not go through Washington,
Speaker 1: which gets at this point. When we make ourselves effectively
Speaker 1: co combatants in a conflict, then of course it's going
Speaker 1: to make it very difficult to serve as an honest
Speaker 1: broker in terms of fostering any sort of diplomacy and
Speaker 1: trying to achieve any kind of peace. And that's why
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, China is better positioned here
Speaker 1: to actually do something with regards to this conflict. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course they are. I've always thought that the Indians
Speaker 1: were too, and the resilience because they're looking at this
Speaker 1: like they have interest with both countries and both sides
Speaker 1: and could play some sort of broker if anything. Really,
Speaker 1: what the US should do is be calling New Delhi
Speaker 1: and being like, listen, we need you to do it.
Speaker 1: We need We don't want you to do it because
Speaker 1: if you don't step up, if Lula doesn't step up.
Speaker 1: But instead, whenever it're on the phone to New Delhi,
Speaker 1: they're like, maybe, can you please stop buying Russian oil?
Speaker 1: And they're like, no, we're not going to start. Why
Speaker 1: don't we just move on past that? Why don't we
Speaker 1: get to the next place. But we're not interested in peace,
Speaker 1: And as long as that is the starting conversation with
Speaker 1: our Asian Pacific allies, they're going to continue to laugh
Speaker 1: at us, laugh all the way to the bank with
Speaker 1: their Russian oil and then also consider us unworthy and
Speaker 1: untrustworthy allies and honestly, can you blame them? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: really can. All right, let's go into the next block,
Speaker 1: because I think this story is absolutely extraordinary and reveals
Speaker 1: how much personal relationships corrupt important journalism. Put this tear
Speaker 1: sheet up on the screen from NPR. This is quite
Speaker 1: a report. So their headline is the FBI rated a
Speaker 1: notable journalist home. Rolling Stone did not tell readers why,
Speaker 1: and as I set up at the beginning of the show,
Speaker 1: we should actually covered this when it happened, because it
Speaker 1: was a crazy story. Rolling Stone got the scoop that
Speaker 1: this very well known national security reporter had the FBI
Speaker 1: raid his apartment building, and in the piece they really
Speaker 1: led you to believe that the reason probably had to
Speaker 1: do with his work so catered out he may have
Speaker 1: had some classified documents on some of his devices. Obviously
Speaker 1: that's a huge deal because you're talking about, Okay, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration is rolling up on this important journalist, like
Speaker 1: what is going on here, Sager behind the scenes. His
Speaker 1: spidy senses immediately went up just because of the way
Speaker 1: this all went down, and also because some of the details,
Speaker 1: like for example, his employer ABC News didn't defend him. Okay,
Speaker 1: that was the real red flag. His publisher immediately drops
Speaker 1: his book deal. And because of the show of force here,
Speaker 1: we didn't say it publicly because you don't want to
Speaker 1: just casually accuse someone having kiddy porn. But you were like, mmm,
Speaker 1: this kind of sounds like we may have. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was that it was ABC not defending him. But also
Speaker 1: whenever they're like they seized a lot of his servers.
Speaker 1: I unfortunately, as I've said before, used to cover a
Speaker 1: lot of DOJ prosecutions, so I've read a lot of indictments.
Speaker 1: I know what the raids look like whenever they go in,
Speaker 1: like against a terrorist. And unfortunately, I've also had to
Speaker 1: cover some cases where the FBI will storm in and
Speaker 1: take somebody's servers because they suspect them of being involved
Speaker 1: in the distribution of child pornography. And this looked like
Speaker 1: an open and shut child porn case like them all.
Speaker 1: As I was reading the deal again, I cannot save
Speaker 1: that up on the air. Yeah, because we're not like
Speaker 1: child We're not going to flow some groom around me
Speaker 1: anything about it. I was like, yeah, it really does
Speaker 1: look like child porn, but you know, you never know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lo and behold, it was child porn. So there you go.
Speaker 1: So the reporter on the story, a woman named Tatiana Siegel,
Speaker 1: who now has left Rolling Stone. It looks like because
Speaker 1: of this whole situation, she actually had the story. She
Speaker 1: had a source that said it looks like there was
Speaker 1: a child sexual material that they were going after. She
Speaker 1: had lines in the piece to indicate that, and there
Speaker 1: was immediately a tension between her and Rolling Stone editor
Speaker 1: and chief Noah Shackman, by the way, she says, and
Speaker 1: I think colleagues around her said that normally he wouldn't
Speaker 1: get involved in editing her pieces to this level, but
Speaker 1: he right away is involved. Then she had a family
Speaker 1: emergency that pulled her off right before the piece is
Speaker 1: set to publish. That sort of pulled her off of it,
Speaker 1: and he's like, don't worry, I got it. He stripped
Speaker 1: down any of the language indicating that this was anything
Speaker 1: other than having to do with his work. James Gordon Meek,
Speaker 1: by the way, is the name of the reporter, his
Speaker 1: work as a national security reporter, and again really splants
Speaker 1: the piece towards making you think like, oh, it's because
Speaker 1: he's got classified documents or something like that. Well, lo
Speaker 1: and behold Shackman has multiple connections to this guy, a
Speaker 1: sort of personal professional relationship, you know, very like clubby
Speaker 1: kind of a situation. There. Also, Shackman's lawyer had called
Speaker 1: him directly, and this was another personal friend of Sorry
Speaker 1: James Gordon Meek's lawyer called Shackman. This was another personal
Speaker 1: friend and personal connection here. And so it sure looks
Speaker 1: like they sandbagged this piece and pulled out the most
Speaker 1: critical part of the reporting in order to cover for
Speaker 1: this dude. And another outlet ultimately started really reporting this
Speaker 1: out and ended up getting the scope, so they lost
Speaker 1: really the story and they did some subsequent reporting, But
Speaker 1: just quite extraordinary to see the way that they apparently
Speaker 1: covered for this guy, especially given what he is accused
Speaker 1: of because of personal and professional relationships. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you're telling me Rolling Stone magazine would publish it a
Speaker 1: factual era I would never have look. As I said
Speaker 1: at the time, I was like, it's certainly extraordinary. The
Speaker 1: guy's done some important work. It would be in violation
Speaker 1: of a twenty twenty one Justice Department rule that says
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to raid and seize the materials
Speaker 1: of journalists. I was like, it has to be clearly.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, on the one hand, it was like
Speaker 1: it could have been something that genuinely was a violation
Speaker 1: national security related. On the other again, looking at the case,
Speaker 1: I was like, it does look a lot like how
Speaker 1: the FBI acts whenever they do a childborn raid. But
Speaker 1: the fact that they didn't put that in there, even
Speaker 1: though they had a direct source, and and if you
Speaker 1: look at all the details, Crystal, he didn't put a
Speaker 1: photo of the guy, right, he was like, no, let's
Speaker 1: put a photo of the FBI and not of the
Speaker 1: photo of the reporter. He's basically covering him for him
Speaker 1: from day one, and then it comes out later on
Speaker 1: that it was child porn related the entire time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, you can't do that. You're basically stoking conspiracy
Speaker 1: like conspiracy connections, maybe even rightfully, right if you don't
Speaker 1: know the details. And they never intimated that they had
Speaker 1: any idea what the connection was. When they actually did so,
Speaker 1: it was a huge disservice not only to their readers
Speaker 1: but to everybody, and rightfully, I think exploited people's fears
Speaker 1: about press freedom who were on alert, people like us,
Speaker 1: when if you know, if we had known or if
Speaker 1: others had known, it would have been a totally different story. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And just to give you some of the horrifying details
Speaker 1: of the type of individual that he was covering for.
Speaker 1: On February first, the Justice Department unveiled criminal charges against
Speaker 1: Mek related to images of child sexual abuse, among other accusations.
Speaker 1: Authorities say Meek shared a video showing the rape of
Speaker 1: an infant. That's who you're covering for. He and I
Speaker 1: is wrongdoing, not guilty, et cetera. He's sitting in federal
Speaker 1: potastudy right now, a waiting trial. That's who you covered for. Disgusting.
Speaker 1: I don't even have words for that one. Yeah. Look
Speaker 1: And also another thing I know from covering a lot
Speaker 1: of those cases, they only raide your house if not
Speaker 1: only do you have a lot of that material, but
Speaker 1: you're one of those people, one of those sick freaks
Speaker 1: who like sells it on the dark web, like they
Speaker 1: only really their strategy, I think correct, is they go
Speaker 1: after people who have some of the most heinous material,
Speaker 1: people also who are distributors. A lot of these freaks
Speaker 1: they like traded amongst each other and they like sell it,
Speaker 1: you know, and they get connected with brokers and stuff
Speaker 1: in Eastern Europe and also it's repulsive sick system and anyway,
Speaker 1: those are the top targets for the FBI, So that
Speaker 1: was another reason why looking at it, I was like, man,
Speaker 1: they really only raid your house and they make you
Speaker 1: a top priority if they identify you as like high
Speaker 1: up in the distribution ring of material like this, So
Speaker 1: whatever app look allegedly all of that, although if convicted,
Speaker 1: he'll rotten jail for the rest of his life, rightfully,
Speaker 1: so in data All right, sorry, what are you looking
Speaker 1: at it? Well? One of the most important First Amendment
Speaker 1: cases in the country is one that you may not
Speaker 1: have ever heard of. It's the case of Douglas Mackie.
Speaker 1: He's a former right wing Twitter user charged by the
Speaker 1: Biden DOJ just merely days after assuming office in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. That is going to trial as we speak.
Speaker 1: The details of the case are staggering in their importance
Speaker 1: to setting a precedent on limits of online speech, how
Speaker 1: to interpret satire, and if convicted, will make speaking online
Speaker 1: a much more dangerous endeavor. Let's review. Mackie was charged
Speaker 1: exactly one week into the Biden presidency. The Biden DOJ
Speaker 1: alleges to Macki, through his Twitter account of fifty eight
Speaker 1: thousand followers, conspired with to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to
Speaker 1: encourage supporters of Hillary Clinton to vote via text or
Speaker 1: social media. The one tweet that the government seems fixated
Speaker 1: on is a November one, twenty sixteen, tweet, in which
Speaker 1: Mackie tweeted an image directed at black voters with instructions
Speaker 1: on how to allegedly vote for Hillary by text. The
Speaker 1: government alleges that some forty nine hundred people eventually call
Speaker 1: the phone number, and thus are charging Mackie with depriving
Speaker 1: individuals of their right to vote. But what is Mackie's
Speaker 1: side of the story. Basically, it amounts to being a
Speaker 1: young male on the internet. Mackie was a Middlebury College
Speaker 1: trained economist who was bored at his job. He had
Speaker 1: an anonymous Twitter account which he spent way too much
Speaker 1: time on, and the trial reveals he was basically obsessed
Speaker 1: with going viral. Key to the case, though, is his messages.
Speaker 1: He consistently described the images that he was spreading his means,
Speaker 1: and that he and other friends laughed at tricking quote
Speaker 1: dopey liberals. Mackie's defense has maintained from the beginning, it
Speaker 1: is quote highly unlikely that memes actually fooled any voters,
Speaker 1: and that even if they did, any harm is quote
Speaker 1: far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas,
Speaker 1: where consumers can assess the value of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary,
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Obviously, to me, Mackie's defense is correct. Shit
Speaker 1: postings should not be illegal. By this definition. The TikTok
Speaker 1: trolls who signed up hundreds of thousands of people to
Speaker 1: attend a Trump rally in Oklahoma in the middle of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty should also be guilty of election interference. Obviously,
Speaker 1: that would be insane. As long as we have pseudonymity
Speaker 1: on the Internet, we will have pranks that, yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: have real world consequences. But having the full force of
Speaker 1: the federal government go after you for it, especially in
Speaker 1: this case years later in defense of Hillary, is chilling
Speaker 1: to free speech. Unfortunately, the judge did not agree. He
Speaker 1: allowed the case to proceed, and the judge wrote that
Speaker 1: Mackie's indictment does not violate the First Amendment because although
Speaker 1: the case does involve false utterances, it also is at
Speaker 1: its core about conspiracy and injury, not about speech. Thus,
Speaker 1: the judge effectively disregarded the first amendment of jehos into prosecution,
Speaker 1: allowing it to go forward in a jury trial. The
Speaker 1: trial itself actually began yesterday, and given that it's being
Speaker 1: held in Manhattan, good luck to any Trump supporting guy
Speaker 1: with a jury there. But that is part of the problem.
Speaker 1: Who he supports and who he was tweeting about really
Speaker 1: should not matter at all. At the end of the day, people,
Speaker 1: we are talking about a freaking Twitter account with fifty
Speaker 1: eight thousand followers that may and again may, because there
Speaker 1: is no way to prove how many people took this seriously,
Speaker 1: may have confused five thousand people. Furthermore, beyond speech protection,
Speaker 1: if you are so stupid to believe that US law
Speaker 1: miraculously changed and you think you can vote by texts,
Speaker 1: would you really have dragged yourself to a voting booth
Speaker 1: on the day in first place, Or maybe they knew
Speaker 1: it was a joke and texted obscenities to that number. Literally,
Speaker 1: there is no way to know the actual harm here
Speaker 1: at most is five thousand people. Frankly, is nothing amongst
Speaker 1: the one hundred and thirty nine billion people who voted
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, and the consequences of conviction are immense,
Speaker 1: but actually even greater in their impact than one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty nine people, because thirty nine million people, because
Speaker 1: it would affect almost anyone who uses the internet. People
Speaker 1: say stuff on the Internet they don't mean all the time.
Speaker 1: If the government wins this case, it will pay the
Speaker 1: way for direct government standards of quote election disinformation, which
Speaker 1: not only they can take down, but they can throw
Speaker 1: you in federal prison for this means everything, including jokes
Speaker 1: which may may again discourage voting, can get you indicted.
Speaker 1: People joke and say, seriously all the time, it's not
Speaker 1: even worth voting because the same thing happens all the
Speaker 1: time with that qualify. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic,
Speaker 1: think of the Twitter files and what Matt Tyee discovered.
Speaker 1: FBI agents whose salaries we are paying, we're spending their
Speaker 1: time flagging moronic and tiny Twitter accounts joking, including one
Speaker 1: who said I am a ballot counter in my state.
Speaker 1: If you're not wearing a mask, I'm not counting your vote,
Speaker 1: saying that every negative comment on the post you would
Speaker 1: add another vote for the Democratic Party. Another example is
Speaker 1: a low follower user who tweeted out quote I want
Speaker 1: to remind Republicans to vote tomorrow, then included the wrong date. Again.
Speaker 1: This was flagged by FBI agents who wanted Twitter to
Speaker 1: take it down. It had three retweets. Under the standard
Speaker 1: though of potential market conviction, they could claim anyone who
Speaker 1: saw that tweet and misinterpreted it could have had their
Speaker 1: civil rights violated. That too, is what angers me. This
Speaker 1: whole proceeding is making a mockery of civil rights law.
Speaker 1: The law was written into place to stop literal KKK
Speaker 1: terrorists from standing in the door of the courthouse and
Speaker 1: to dismantle Jim Crow not to go after shit posting
Speaker 1: economists board at work who are posting memes. The long
Speaker 1: arm of the federal government is disregarding humor to directly
Speaker 1: target those who dared to go after the anointed Hillary Clinton. Worse,
Speaker 1: it perpetuates something that Democrats cannot accept. Hillary loss, fair
Speaker 1: and square, guys, she just sucked. Get over it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't Doug Douglas Mackie's fault, and it wasn't Russia's. It
Speaker 1: was a cold blood that ran through her veins and
Speaker 1: the reek of corruption which people all over this country
Speaker 1: can smell that's what did her in. Nothing else, especially
Speaker 1: not means I mean, can you even believe this case? No?
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com, Bristol,
Speaker 1: what are you taking a look at? Well, guys. President
Speaker 1: Biden issue the first veto of his presidency this week,
Speaker 1: blocking legislation that would have blocked the ability of retirement
Speaker 1: funds to consider so called ESG in their investment decision.
Speaker 1: So ESG, if you don't know, stands for environmental, social
Speaker 1: and governance. It has become a real focus of the
Speaker 1: right as more investment funds and companies pledged to consider
Speaker 1: these factors in their decision making. It's part of a
Speaker 1: new push for what's called stakeholder capitalism over the post
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies focus on shareholder capitalism. So shareholder capitalism was
Speaker 1: actually a radical notion when it was introduced. It's the
Speaker 1: philosophy that public corporations should be run solely for the
Speaker 1: benefit of shareholder return. In theory, stakeholder capitalism is meant
Speaker 1: to return to older traditions of public corporations which considered
Speaker 1: a wide range of interest from different stakeholders, not only
Speaker 1: investor return. So if done well, I think that could
Speaker 1: be an improvement from the short term profit driven status quo.
Speaker 1: But it completely fails an execution. These efforts have amounted
Speaker 1: to little more than corporate virtue signaling, identity posturing, and greenwashing.
Speaker 1: They're an attempt to convince legislators and the public they
Speaker 1: don't need more regulation, they don't need higher taxes, they
Speaker 1: don't really need for the government to govern at all.
Speaker 1: Corporate American partnership with Wall Street, we got this, guys.
Speaker 1: We believe in good things too, So just let us
Speaker 1: handle the details of how to make the world a
Speaker 1: better place here. But for a lot of conservatives, ESG
Speaker 1: isn't just another capitalist virtue signal. It's an actual attempt
Speaker 1: to remake the world through diversity initiatives and green investments. Now,
Speaker 1: in order to stealman this worldview, I want to play
Speaker 1: a bit a presdential contender Vivek Ramaswami's recent interview with
Speaker 1: Jordan Peterson. Now, vivec really became a fixture in conservative
Speaker 1: media through his critique of ESG. He's been a true
Speaker 1: thought leader in this space, and he's done more than
Speaker 1: just critique. He also started Strive Fund. It's made large
Speaker 1: investments in large public companies with the intent of pushing
Speaker 1: them off of any ESG goals and back to the
Speaker 1: profit maximizing shareholder value. Here's how Vivek describes the birth
Speaker 1: of ESG. Take a listen. What this whole game is
Speaker 1: about is using private power, using capital markets to accomplish
Speaker 1: through the back door what government could not get done
Speaker 1: through the front door under the constitution. So the essence
Speaker 1: of the ESG movement is what it does is it
Speaker 1: uses the money of everyday citizens Americans, but Canadians too,
Speaker 1: Australians and Western Europeans. It uses the money of everyday
Speaker 1: citizens to invest in companies and to vote their shares
Speaker 1: in ways that advance one sided progressive agendas, environmental and
Speaker 1: social agendas that most of those people do not agree with,
Speaker 1: that most of those people did not know were actually
Speaker 1: being advanced with their own money, and which don't advance
Speaker 1: the financial best interests of most people whose money's actually used.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean to think about yourself saving
Speaker 1: and a tirement account or a four toh one K
Speaker 1: account or a brokerage account. You think that the person
Speaker 1: who's managing that money is exclusively looking after your best
Speaker 1: financial interests, it turns out they're not. They're also looking
Speaker 1: after advancing these other environmental and social goals. Who are
Speaker 1: these institutions their asset management firms like black Rock or
Speaker 1: State Street or Vanguard or Investco or countless others that
Speaker 1: have signed a pledge to say that they're going to
Speaker 1: align all of their underlying companies with the goals of
Speaker 1: the Paris Climate accordance, with net zero standards by twenty fifty,
Speaker 1: with modern diversity, equity and inclusion standards. And those three
Speaker 1: or four firms alone manage about twenty trillion dollars, maybe
Speaker 1: even a little bit more. That's more than the US
Speaker 1: GDP right now in the hands of three to four
Speaker 1: financial institutions. So Vivek defines their ESG as quote using
Speaker 1: capital markets to accomplish through the back door what government
Speaker 1: could not get done through the front door under the constitution.
Speaker 1: Goes on to talk, as you heard about the power
Speaker 1: money held by just a handful of institutions. And on
Speaker 1: this point I actually completely agree, because while corporations in
Speaker 1: Wall Street may pay lift service to a goal that
Speaker 1: I support, which is dealing with the climate right. I
Speaker 1: am under no illusion that these are actually my allies
Speaker 1: on this or any other issue. The answer to the
Speaker 1: problem of corporateocracy lies in checking corporate power through unions,
Speaker 1: through trustbusting, regulation, taxation, getting money out of politics. But
Speaker 1: these are not actually Vivek's preferred solutions. Instead, he established
Speaker 1: an anti ESG fund, which seeks to use the very
Speaker 1: same tactics that he objects to when deployed by ESG types,
Speaker 1: to try to coerce corporations into behaving in the way
Speaker 1: he wants them to behave. So it's not so much
Speaker 1: that he opposes corporate power, just corporate power being used
Speaker 1: for things that he doesn't like. In addition, Vivek asserts
Speaker 1: that the public does not support the goals of ESG,
Speaker 1: hence the notion repeated by others that this is forcing
Speaker 1: changes on the American public that they do not want.
Speaker 1: So let's examine that now. On social justice, I think
Speaker 1: it really depends on what you mean how you ask
Speaker 1: the question. Majorities of Americans of all races do say
Speaker 1: systemic racism is real. Even among white Americans, only twenty
Speaker 1: nine percent disagreed with that statement, But if you ask
Speaker 1: about some of the goofy so oh it's racist stuff
Speaker 1: that's pushed by DEI consultants, I could easily imagine very
Speaker 1: different responses here. However, when it comes to environmental concerns,
Speaker 1: the polling is actually a lot more clear. Polls consistently
Speaker 1: show large majorities of Americans, including a majority of Republicans,
Speaker 1: support transitioning away from fossil fuels. Even voters in famously
Speaker 1: pro coal West Virginia support making this transition and using
Speaker 1: federal dollars to do so so. In this particular survey,
Speaker 1: they found West Virginians are supporting green energy spending by
Speaker 1: the federal government by a fifteen point margin, so it's
Speaker 1: not even particularly close. So when Viveck and others claim
Speaker 1: that capital is sneaking in an agenda they can't win
Speaker 1: through democratic means, they actually have the failure of democracy
Speaker 1: completely backwards. The public has seen their desires blocked by
Speaker 1: anti democratic means from achieving the clean energy policies they
Speaker 1: would like to see enact it now, the reason Congress
Speaker 1: hasn't done more has nothing to do with public will
Speaker 1: and everything to do again with big money. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people making a lot of money off
Speaker 1: of maintaining the current fossil fuel based ECONO, Big Oil
Speaker 1: Coke Network and others have flooded the campaign coffers of
Speaker 1: key legislators to try to prevent the action that the
Speaker 1: public actually desires. But while Vivek uses the language of
Speaker 1: democracy to explain his opposition to ESG, there's no sign
Speaker 1: he's actually interested in making legislatives more responsive to the people,
Speaker 1: at least not on issues where he disagrees with that
Speaker 1: majority sentiment. In fact, he's quite derisive about the activists
Speaker 1: and citizens who are concerned about the climate crisis and
Speaker 1: think it worthy of action. He dismisses them in a
Speaker 1: monoloth in this monolith, in this interview, in others, as
Speaker 1: quote climatists who have foolishly adopted concern for the environment
Speaker 1: as a sort of pseudo religion because their lives are
Speaker 1: otherwise devoid of meaning. Now, listen, I don't doubt that
Speaker 1: people find deep satisfaction in doing work or activism that
Speaker 1: they find meaningful. There's nothing nefarious about that. But there's
Speaker 1: also a much simpler story here. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are just genuinely concerned by the mountain of evidence that
Speaker 1: the climate crisis is bringing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires,
Speaker 1: and now the results will be quite bad if we
Speaker 1: don't deal with that. In fact, they are already quite bad,
Speaker 1: and that increasingly we actually have the tools to be
Speaker 1: able to tackle that crisis. So the truth is, while
Speaker 1: the VEC has a clever intellectual pitch that he makes here,
Speaker 1: what he's doing is not really anything new. He opposes
Speaker 1: action on climate by business, and he opposes action on
Speaker 1: climate by the government. All the rhetorical nods to corporate
Speaker 1: powered democracy can get in the way of seeing that
Speaker 1: he has the same position as every other climate dey
Speaker 1: are out there. Opposing ESG is appealing because it has
Speaker 1: the esthetics of being against the system, sticking it to
Speaker 1: corporate America. But in reality his efforts they're a giant
Speaker 1: gift to big oil, to the coke network, to quite
Speaker 1: a few by the way of those Davos elites that
Speaker 1: he rails against. Joe Biden just greenlit the Giant Willow
Speaker 1: project for Connaco Phillips. Is he an anti establishment renegade
Speaker 1: taking on the system. I hardly think so. There's another
Speaker 1: part of this interview though, that I think is important
Speaker 1: on the social justice piece of ESG. Listen to the
Speaker 1: vex's telling of the birth of the ESG movement and
Speaker 1: its alliance with what he and Peterson describe as the
Speaker 1: radical left. Take a lesson. The left actually had a
Speaker 1: point in this country. Occupy Wall Street was born. And
Speaker 1: what they said is, look, if you're going to play
Speaker 1: that crony capitalist game, then you know what we're going
Speaker 1: to play our game. We're just going to take money
Speaker 1: from your wealthy, corporate fat cat pockets and redistribute it
Speaker 1: to poor people to help poor people, because that's what
Speaker 1: we on the far left want to do on the
Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street movement. But right around that time, there
Speaker 1: was a fissure in the left wing movement in this
Speaker 1: country where there was the birth of this new let's
Speaker 1: call it the woke left. Barack Obama had just been
Speaker 1: elected the first black president the United States. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of cultural currents in the US that said, well,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, there, the real problem isn't quite economic
Speaker 1: injustice or poverty. It's really racial injustice and misogyny and bigotry.
Speaker 1: And by the way, climate change. And this is post
Speaker 1: al Gore's inconvenient truth This actually presented the opportunity of
Speaker 1: a generation for Wall Street to say that no, no no, no, okay, guys,
Speaker 1: we'll make a deal with you. We will use our
Speaker 1: corporate power, use our money, really your money, to applaud
Speaker 1: diversity and inclusion, to put token minorities on corporate boards,
Speaker 1: to muse about this racially disparate impact of climate change
Speaker 1: from the mountaintops of Davos, after flying there in a
Speaker 1: private jet. We'll do all of these things, but we
Speaker 1: don't do it for free. We expect the new left
Speaker 1: to look the other way when it comes to leaving
Speaker 1: our corporate power intact. And so they defanged Occupy Wall Street.
Speaker 1: Most people don't even remember what Occupy Wall Street is.
Speaker 1: It went by the wayside, and that's how the birth
Speaker 1: of this new what I've sometimes called woke industrial or
Speaker 1: est industrial complex was born, where Wall Street said that
Speaker 1: you know what, if you can't beat us, join us.
Speaker 1: This is a nice story, but it's not remotely what happened.
Speaker 1: Even Jordan Peterson expresses some skepticism of this fairy tale.
Speaker 1: First of all, the Occupy movement, it didn't just go
Speaker 1: by the wayside. Key organizers from Occupy were involved in
Speaker 1: drafting and supporting Bernie Sanders for president. You might recall
Speaker 1: that Bernie carried a strong message about the ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent versus the millionaires and billionaires, and would have been
Speaker 1: president had he not had the nomination stolen by the
Speaker 1: Democratic establishment led by Hillary Clinton. It was not Bernie
Speaker 1: and the Occupy offshoots that abandoned the bank and class
Speaker 1: focused critique of power. It was Hillary Clinton and the
Speaker 1: neoliberals who relentlessly club Bernie and his supporters as quote
Speaker 1: unquote class reductionists. Remember when she harangued the left because
Speaker 1: breaking up the big banks wouldn't end sexism and racism.
Speaker 1: So there is in fact an unholy alliance here, but
Speaker 1: it's the polar opposite of what Vivec postulates. Neoliberals led
Speaker 1: by Hillary Clinton, who had long been in bed with
Speaker 1: Wall Street and corporate America. This was nothing new invented
Speaker 1: the ungodly counterproductive politics of personal identity and virtue signaling,
Speaker 1: and that is the context in which ESG emerges as
Speaker 1: a way for corporations to signal to gullible, confused, mostly
Speaker 1: affluent liberals that they are actually the good guys here,
Speaker 1: and as a way for Hillary Clinton to try to
Speaker 1: claim progressive cred even as her record was regressive and terrible.
Speaker 1: The actual left was smeared relentlessly with this toxic mode
Speaker 1: of politics, I can promise you that, and many did
Speaker 1: ultimately submit to it. Even Bernie made sure to include
Speaker 1: a lot more language of the identity politics left in
Speaker 1: his twenty twenty four run, even though of course his
Speaker 1: core policy commitments did remain the same. The irony ofs
Speaker 1: Vivek admits that funds like Blackrock are hypocritical in their
Speaker 1: stated environmentalism, so he, on the one hand, will acknowledge
Speaker 1: they aren't even really doing the thing that they claim
Speaker 1: to be doing. But on the other hand, he posits
Speaker 1: that ESG represents some fundamental restructuring of the economy that
Speaker 1: must be stopped at all costs, again not by checking
Speaker 1: corporate power, but by backing the corporations which support his
Speaker 1: preferred ideology and forcing other ESG backing corporations to abandon
Speaker 1: their fake goals. Now, this confusion could stem from his
Speaker 1: misunderstanding of the history here. If this is truly a
Speaker 1: left align movement, maybe it would have had some teeth.
Speaker 1: Since it's just warmed over neoliberalism. It definitely doesn't. It's
Speaker 1: just standard cutthroat capitalism with a new fake label on
Speaker 1: top of it. So if you want the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: status quota continue, don't worry. Fellis studies have consistently found
Speaker 1: ESG portfolios they actually have worse environmental records than non
Speaker 1: ESG companies. That's how fake this whole thing is. There
Speaker 1: are new numbers out though, that show that forty three
Speaker 1: thousand Somalians died due to a drought caused by famine
Speaker 1: last year, a majority of them children under five. Now, look,
Speaker 1: the climate skeptics worry that the transition from fossil fuels
Speaker 1: to renewables could impose a terrible cost in the world
Speaker 1: in terms of food prices and energy prices, especially among
Speaker 1: the global South. Those are real fears, and they are,
Speaker 1: by the way, something that climate activists concern themselves with
Speaker 1: a great deal. But the cost of doing nothing, they're
Speaker 1: already here, and they're being borne overwhelmingly by the poorest
Speaker 1: nations and the poorest people. So if you think just
Speaker 1: staying the course or doubling down on fossil fuels is
Speaker 1: the way to go, look, honestly, I think you're wrong,
Speaker 1: but it is a democracy, Go out and make your case,
Speaker 1: but don't try to hide behind tortured arguments about corporate
Speaker 1: power and the woke left. They're really just a smoke
Speaker 1: screen for opposition to all climate action wherever it comes from. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I sort of miss the old days when people just
Speaker 1: be upfront in their climate denihilism, because at least that
Speaker 1: was honest, and that, to me is the irony. I
Speaker 1: also have an ESG critique, which is that it is
Speaker 1: all Sager fake And if you want to hear my
Speaker 1: reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at
Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot com. Joining us now is David Thibodeau. He's
Speaker 1: a survivor of the Way Go stand off. He's also
Speaker 1: the author of a survivor's story, Let's go and put
Speaker 1: this up there on the screen Waco, a survivor story,
Speaker 1: which was later made into that excellent TV mini series.
Speaker 1: It's a book that I have read Crystal as well.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic, thrown incredibly detailed. It is not biased really
Speaker 1: in any way, and just goes through who David Thibodeau is,
Speaker 1: the story of his interactions with David Koresh and then
Speaker 1: a step by step account of exactly what happened during
Speaker 1: that siege. David, we found out you were a fan
Speaker 1: of the show, I said, we got to get this
Speaker 1: guy on. So thank you very much for joining us.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. It's such a pleasure in the honor
Speaker 1: to be here. Really, I really am a big fan
Speaker 1: of the show, Absolutely so, David. One of the things
Speaker 1: I thought was really important about your book is it
Speaker 1: was a dispassionate view and a step by step case
Speaker 1: not only of what happened at the compound the events
Speaker 1: that led up to it, but eventually many of the
Speaker 1: dismantling the mainstream media's coverage of the FBI, the ATF
Speaker 1: and the actions that they took on the initial raid.
Speaker 1: A lot of this is also coming under scrutiny now.
Speaker 1: Were in the thirty year anniversary. There's a new Netflix documentary.
Speaker 1: You and I were talking a little bit before this,
Speaker 1: the three of us about some of the inaccuracies and
Speaker 1: others broadly, though thirty years later, people my age, you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't grow up with Waco. It's kind of a
Speaker 1: distant memory. Can you just describe for people what happened
Speaker 1: to you and to the branch Davidians on that day
Speaker 1: while you were inside the compound. The events that lead
Speaker 1: led up to it, what eventually led to the standoff, Yeah, sure, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the first day this actually started, I had
Speaker 1: been there for a year living on the property, and
Speaker 1: we took all the little houses down there, a bunch
Speaker 1: of little houses. We built that big house. And the
Speaker 1: course of the year that I was there, Cresh had
Speaker 1: met someone named Henry McMahon who was a licensed firearm dealer,
Speaker 1: and Henry kind of showed him the ropes and a
Speaker 1: couple of the guys the ropes of the gun business.
Speaker 1: They started going to, you know, all kinds of gun
Speaker 1: shows and finding out that they could make quite a
Speaker 1: good profit, especially at the time Congress was passing a
Speaker 1: bill that was going to make certain munition very valuable.
Speaker 1: So they started to get into the business of things.
Speaker 1: And before a couple of people that had firearms, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't a huge deal that it kind of became
Speaker 1: that last year, so it ramped up pretty quickly. But
Speaker 1: you know, living there, we would see helicopters fly around
Speaker 1: the building, and we'd see people taking pictures of us
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So, you know, we knew that
Speaker 1: something something was afoot. Then these two guys claiming that
Speaker 1: they were college students. The two or three guys moved
Speaker 1: in across the street. They started, you know, they didn't
Speaker 1: move in in a furniture or anything. They moved in
Speaker 1: equipment cases, right, things like that. So, yeah, they were
Speaker 1: in their mid thirties. They seemed to have you know,
Speaker 1: the hat Serengetti sunglasses, they had really nice SUVs. It
Speaker 1: didn't really fit the mold of a bunch of college
Speaker 1: guys living next door. So pretty suspicious. But to me,
Speaker 1: I just want to get right to The Waco Tribune
Speaker 1: Herald did a series called the Sinful Messiah Series. It
Speaker 1: was an investigative journalism, that's what they called it, anyway,
Speaker 1: And they put that out the day before the BATF
Speaker 1: four two raid the building with the helicopters in the
Speaker 1: back and the two cattle trailers with the seventy five agents.
Speaker 1: And you know, how irresponsible for them to put that
Speaker 1: article out, And just the fact they didn't work with
Speaker 1: the with the authorities at all and just did that
Speaker 1: out of their own arrogance really shows that some of
Speaker 1: the journals at that time definitely have blood on their hands,
Speaker 1: as well as the commanders at the ATF who planned
Speaker 1: this raid. They lost the element of surprise. They should
Speaker 1: have stopped right there. Frankly, if they thought David was
Speaker 1: such a criminal, they had so much evidence against them.
Speaker 1: I don't understand why they didn't just get him jogging
Speaker 1: in front of their surveillance house, or David had taken
Speaker 1: them to a firing range and shot with them. So
Speaker 1: they kept saying how they were scared that Kresh was
Speaker 1: going to shoot them at any minute, but they hung
Speaker 1: out and they went off site with David. So that
Speaker 1: didn't really make a lot of sense to me. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole thing could have been avoided, should have been avoided,
Speaker 1: and David should have had his time in court. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit more about David, because I
Speaker 1: certainly don't want to whitewash. I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: man who was sleeping with very young girls. But what
Speaker 1: they came in on was actually firearms charges, so I
Speaker 1: think it's important to note here as well. But you know,
Speaker 1: you obviously found him to be incredibly compelling enough to
Speaker 1: completely upend your life and you know, swear off sex
Speaker 1: and go live in this compound. What was it that
Speaker 1: you found so compelling, especially given and your mom, you know,
Speaker 1: seems to be a real force. She was like completely
Speaker 1: opposed to this, and you were close to her, like
Speaker 1: what led you to this place? And swear sex. I
Speaker 1: was trying to be a little more spiritual for that
Speaker 1: couple of years. So let's say that at least you're honest.
Speaker 1: But you know, my mother is very much a oh boy,
Speaker 1: my mother is very much a goddess culture individual. So
Speaker 1: you know, I knew when it came to scripture, she
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be down at all with anything. And
Speaker 1: it could have been you know, it could have been
Speaker 1: any preacher whatsoever. She just wasn't going to be done
Speaker 1: with that. So I just tried to keep her out
Speaker 1: of the equation as much as possible. And I just
Speaker 1: wanted to know what the Bible really said because I
Speaker 1: am stupidly curious like that. I would watch the TV
Speaker 1: preachers on Sunday and knew that they were just about
Speaker 1: the money. That that obviously wasn't anything to me. My
Speaker 1: father's a history teacher, I retired, so to me, the
Speaker 1: history of the Scripture, Okay, so much blood is so
Speaker 1: much violence, different ways of thought the battles, the that
Speaker 1: have happened over the centuries over this book. Some people
Speaker 1: faced the lions in the Roman Colosseum and died as Christians.
Speaker 1: Early on, there were I mean just just so much
Speaker 1: passion over this book. Why what is it? You know,
Speaker 1: at the time we used to swear on the Bible
Speaker 1: in court or in school, we had to say there
Speaker 1: was a time when you said that the Pledge of
Speaker 1: allegiance every day and these things had reverence, and I
Speaker 1: just wondered about I wanted to know what it really said.
Speaker 1: And this guy made it come alive. David Koresh when
Speaker 1: he gave a study from Genesis to Revelation is if
Speaker 1: he lived it. That's That's the simplest, best way I
Speaker 1: can describe it. And so it was fascinating to see.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating to watch, and you just wanted to
Speaker 1: learn more. The more I learned, the more I wanted
Speaker 1: to learn, and the more I became involved. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: I am again I encourage people to read the book.
Speaker 1: Is a very detailed acount that goes into it. And
Speaker 1: to me, you know, again, as Chrystl said, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to co sign. You know, certainly think that a
Speaker 1: lot of what was going on, which you are honest
Speaker 1: also about in the book, was absolutely should be condemned.
Speaker 1: But if we take a step back and look at
Speaker 1: this just from a law enforcement respective, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I want to focus on, is the actions
Speaker 1: of the ATF in the initial raid. They lay out
Speaker 1: a case in which they were being fired on by
Speaker 1: fifty caliber weapons. They were being fired on with automatic
Speaker 1: weapons that you guys had one point six million rounds
Speaker 1: of ammunition, that the branch Davidians unequivocally were the ones
Speaker 1: who fought, who fired first. You lay out and break
Speaker 1: down many of these claims in your book. Can you
Speaker 1: just go through some of the initial claims on the
Speaker 1: first ones as to why violence occurred on the day
Speaker 1: of the initial raid in February, Sure, Rake before when
Speaker 1: we could hear the helicopters in the background, and there
Speaker 1: were a bunch of doors were slamming, and I could
Speaker 1: hear I could hear all these things going on, and
Speaker 1: David give him to the top of the stairs. I
Speaker 1: was in the cafeteria and there heard a couple guys
Speaker 1: with him, and he says, they're coming, They're on their way.
Speaker 1: Don't anybody do anything stupid, I'm going to go try
Speaker 1: to talk to him. So he went to the front
Speaker 1: and everybody that was at the front door tells me
Speaker 1: the same story, Jamie Cassillo to Greg. A lot of
Speaker 1: these people told me the same story. And that was
Speaker 1: the day went to the door. He had it in
Speaker 1: his hand, he said, hold on, there's women and children here,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. And the door flew back in
Speaker 1: his hand from the velocity of bullets hitting it. Kerry Jones,
Speaker 1: who was his father in law, seventy year old man
Speaker 1: got hit in the stomach and went down screaming, and
Speaker 1: that's when some of the people started firing back. Now,
Speaker 1: we did a lot of research for the book, and
Speaker 1: I learned actually a lot of things I didn't know
Speaker 1: from just being a witness and being there, from the
Speaker 1: research we had done. And you know, one of the
Speaker 1: things was that some of the trial testimony in San
Speaker 1: Antonio indicated that some of the first shots were fired.
Speaker 1: One guy said he was reaching for his firearm and
Speaker 1: it went off, and he believed he was the one
Speaker 1: that fired the first shot one atf agent. That testimony
Speaker 1: was recanted later when it came to for him his
Speaker 1: testimony in front of Congress. That happened a couple times
Speaker 1: where their testimonies were recanted. The team that went to
Speaker 1: suppress quote unquote the dogs or shoot the dogs because
Speaker 1: we had five Alaskan Malamutes and penned up area. They
Speaker 1: shot the dogs first thing and just murdered them. Some
Speaker 1: of the trial testimony indicated that those were the first
Speaker 1: shots being shot at the dogs. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: issues that I have and in one of the books
Speaker 1: that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna name the name
Speaker 1: of the book because I don't want you to buy
Speaker 1: it because it's complete property. Well, it's propaganda. He names
Speaker 1: the ATF agent that was supposed to go at the
Speaker 1: dogs with a fire extinguisher, as if to suppress the
Speaker 1: dogs with the fire extinguisher. That's something they put in
Speaker 1: their movie Ambush at Waco, which I found to be
Speaker 1: a propaganda film completely. It was one of the first
Speaker 1: movies to come out. Even the writer of that movie
Speaker 1: has disowned it and apologized to the survivors because he
Speaker 1: was just giving all of the information from the ATFN
Speaker 1: wrote that film. Long story short, In that film, they
Speaker 1: show an agent going at the dogs with the fire extinguisher.
Speaker 1: They didn't have fire extinguishers. They shot the dogs first thing.
Speaker 1: So for them to continue to perpetrate this propaganda thirty
Speaker 1: years later personally very offensive. Yeah. Well, I mean putting
Speaker 1: David Krush aside. You're talking about seventy six branch Davidians,
Speaker 1: including twenty five children, two pregnant women, who were all
Speaker 1: killed here. And I think the point that you make
Speaker 1: about how this was avoidable. I mean every accounting that
Speaker 1: I've watched of this, the ones that are you know,
Speaker 1: seem to be more accurate and fair. The ones that
Speaker 1: are less fair. I'm just watching the whole time going
Speaker 1: what the hell are you fitting? Like? Why are you
Speaker 1: doing this? You know there are scores of completely innocent
Speaker 1: people in this building. What are you doing? So? I
Speaker 1: guess that's my question to you. Why do you think
Speaker 1: that they move forward with this plan? Why didn't they
Speaker 1: just arrest David when he was out jogging or try
Speaker 1: to go about that. I mean, they brought in tanks
Speaker 1: and hal it was insane. Why do they do this?
Speaker 1: Speaking as someone who is in that building instead with
Speaker 1: David for a couple of years, everyone who' survived that
Speaker 1: will tell you it's a spiritual thing. They will tell
Speaker 1: you that David really did have some kind of message,
Speaker 1: that he did have some kind of understanding, and as
Speaker 1: crazy as they made him out to be, I understand
Speaker 1: all that. Man. If I were on the outside, I
Speaker 1: would have been the first person saying those people are nuts.
Speaker 1: I really would have. But I was there, so I
Speaker 1: saw this different side. You know, I look at it
Speaker 1: as a spiritual thing. But it's also the incredible arrogance
Speaker 1: of the ATF and the FBI during the course of
Speaker 1: the fifty one day stiege that helped make the Bible
Speaker 1: come alive, because when you're reading the scripture, the people
Speaker 1: have God to contrite and humble and it's the forces
Speaker 1: of bad I hate to use these terms of the
Speaker 1: forces of Babylon, if you will, or the forces of
Speaker 1: power very arrogant, and that's how we view these people
Speaker 1: all the way through, Like they would get on the
Speaker 1: tanks and moon us and flip us off. And you know,
Speaker 1: there are periods of time during the siege where people
Speaker 1: would exit the building and a flash bangrenade would be
Speaker 1: thrown at them. It seemed like they were always trying
Speaker 1: to get us to shoot at them. Somehow they were
Speaker 1: always trying to make a you know, be aggressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was crazy to me, you know, reading as you
Speaker 1: said as Chrys was laying out, I mean not only
Speaker 1: like the perimeter, the destruction of property, using the tanks,
Speaker 1: playing the music, the level of torture, and again, like
Speaker 1: let's be honest, David did renag on his deal in
Speaker 1: order to get everybody out of the compound and let
Speaker 1: this thing go on. So like, I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: there wasn't blame on both sides, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: like you don't import use tanks, insert gas into a building.
Speaker 1: That was another one there, David, which we have to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about as well, which is that
Speaker 1: the ATF, the FBI, and all others maintained that the
Speaker 1: Branch Davidians are the ones who committed a tragic mass
Speaker 1: suicide and set fire to the building. What evidence is
Speaker 1: there for and against that? Sure, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to speak to what you said there about David. There
Speaker 1: were huge mistakes made on both sides. You know, David
Speaker 1: had his periods of time where he was arrogant, he
Speaker 1: was angry and obviously was not thinking clearly. While they
Speaker 1: had the speaker system going twenty four to seven. You
Speaker 1: got a bunch of people, you say, religious fanatics, and
Speaker 1: you're going to keep speaker system on them and play
Speaker 1: at twenty four to seven to make them crazier. That
Speaker 1: makes no sense to me whatsoever. Like they're gonna make
Speaker 1: like people are gonna make rational decisions under those circumstances.
Speaker 1: It's just not going to happen. But I would like
Speaker 1: to talk about the CS gas that they use. CS
Speaker 1: gas is it's banned under the Amnesty International Geneva Convention.
Speaker 1: We can't use it against we can't use it against
Speaker 1: foreign forces. It's a riot control agent. In the in
Speaker 1: the actual manufacturer's booklet, it says only to be used outdoors,
Speaker 1: never indoors. It's especially it could be harmful to children,
Speaker 1: older people with smaller respiratory tracks. This is the gas
Speaker 1: that they chose to use, a gas that is banned internationally.
Speaker 1: Not only that, but the delivery method when you're using
Speaker 1: the ferret rounds. Myth of the csgas is methylene chloride,
Speaker 1: which is one of the ingredients that's used in paint thinner,
Speaker 1: something that is actually mildly flammable. So they were using
Speaker 1: the csgas thing it's not flammable whatsoever. But the amount
Speaker 1: that they used was absolutely incredible. I think it was
Speaker 1: four hundred or three hundred and eighty eight ferret rounds
Speaker 1: before they exhausted their supply. And this is supposed to
Speaker 1: be over two days. They exhausted their supply by ten am,
Speaker 1: and then they started to use the tanks to come
Speaker 1: in take out sections of the building and spray the
Speaker 1: gas in. Now, when they took out the sections of
Speaker 1: the building, they created these huge holes in the building.
Speaker 1: If you talk to anyone that is a firefighter or
Speaker 1: a fire marshal, that's an oxygen flow system. If you
Speaker 1: look at an aerial of the building, you can see
Speaker 1: the tanks have made a fire break around it. There
Speaker 1: is nothing that will burn around that building. I can't
Speaker 1: say that's a coincidence, man. I mean, you know, when
Speaker 1: you put it all together, it looks pretty in a
Speaker 1: fair to me. Yeah, unbelievable. Well, David, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking some time to talk to us. We
Speaker 1: really recommend people read the whole book, yes, because I
Speaker 1: do think it comes across as very unvarnished both you know,
Speaker 1: your own self reflection about your journey to that compound
Speaker 1: what happened on that day, the ways that the official
Speaker 1: narrative are just you know, it was just completely false
Speaker 1: in certain respects. So thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: some time with us. Thank you David, thank you for
Speaker 1: having me. I really appreciate your time today. It's our
Speaker 1: pleasure absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. Reminder you can watch the full show
Speaker 1: on Spotify for premium members Breakingpoints dot Com to go
Speaker 1: ahead and sign up. We've got we're on standby this
Speaker 1: weekend just in case, you know, I never know, in
Speaker 1: some sort of indictment and all that, we're always on
Speaker 1: top of it for everybody. Otherwise, we will see you
Speaker 1: all on Monday. As I said, I'm going to be
Speaker 1: in New York City, but I'll be coming in remote.
Speaker 1: Crystal's going on Russell Brand, I'm going on the Andrew
Speaker 1: Sheltz Show. So we're all going to have a hell
Speaker 1: of a lot of fun. All right, We'll see you later.
Speaker 1: APO