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Speaker 1: Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today
Speaker 1: when we have Crystal Indeed, we do lots of new
Speaker 1: developments this morning, lots of or it's coming out of
Speaker 1: Russia about the response of their domestic population to that
Speaker 1: mobilization announced by Putin. And also we have a domestic
Speaker 1: response here more aid that is going through, so we'll
Speaker 1: break all of those details down for you. We also
Speaker 1: have a new look at a potential recession a little
Speaker 1: bit more of a global look. Something interesting is happening.
Speaker 1: Every single currency around the world almost literally has fallen
Speaker 1: against the dollar. That'll make it very difficult for a
Speaker 1: lot of countries to repay their debts. And there's a
Speaker 1: particularly interesting situation unfolding in the UK that will break
Speaker 1: down for you. There also new strikes developing, including food
Speaker 1: service workers at San Francisco Airport almost all uniformly on strikes,
Speaker 1: so passengers there, you know, without any sort of food
Speaker 1: accommodations as workers protest over working conditions, in particular understaffing.
Speaker 1: So we'll break that down for you. New developments in
Speaker 1: that investigation into Matt Gates, the Department of Justice now
Speaker 1: saying they do not have enough to charge him. So
Speaker 1: that seems to be the end of that, and we
Speaker 1: will talk to you about, you know, the media coverage
Speaker 1: of that, what all unfolded and one exactly it all means.
Speaker 1: We've also got a big ole I screw up. I
Speaker 1: think it's fair to say for the New York Times,
Speaker 1: definitely some Troe Biden propaganda, straight propaganda. Yeah, bad enough
Speaker 1: that a lot of people are taking notice, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: many people taking notice. A few subtweets out there that
Speaker 1: were notable. Also, I think fingers crossed, we're going to
Speaker 1: have great friend of the show, Glenn Greenwald on to
Speaker 1: talk about Edward Snowden being granted Russian citizenship. If we
Speaker 1: can't get Glenn, then we'll just cover it ourselves. But
Speaker 1: I think he's going to be able to join us
Speaker 1: in the show this morning, which we are very excited about.
Speaker 1: So before we get to any of that, however, a
Speaker 1: couple of announcements are usual too. First of all, live show,
Speaker 1: Live show, October fifteenth. Buy tickets. We're coming. I don't
Speaker 1: have much more we can sell it. It's going to
Speaker 1: be an amazing show. As always, We've got some great
Speaker 1: stuff planned. We learned some things from Atlanta. I think
Speaker 1: people are really going to enjoy it. So links are
Speaker 1: the tickets are on sale and the link is in
Speaker 1: the description Number two. Counterpoints they did a phenomenal job
Speaker 1: on Friday, And as a basically reward for expansion and more,
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Speaker 1: helps fund our expansion, helps fund Counterpoints and many of
Speaker 1: the other partners and other people that we're going to
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Speaker 1: and continue growing. So with that, let's get to the show. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so we're trying to sort through all of the reports
Speaker 1: that are coming out of Russia and figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what's going on there, which, as we've said a million times,
Speaker 1: whether it's Russia or Run or other place, it's very
Speaker 1: hard to really have a sense of what's going on there.
Speaker 1: But you're getting increasing media reports and social media videos
Speaker 1: coming out that shows a huge response reaction against the
Speaker 1: mobilization and also increasingly violent response in reaction against the mobilization.
Speaker 1: Let's go ahead and put this first piece up on
Speaker 1: the screen from the Wall Street Journal. They say Russian
Speaker 1: military recruitment centers are being attacked amid mobilization pushback. They
Speaker 1: also say lines remain at the border as fighting age
Speaker 1: men look to leave, and amid reports some are turned back.
Speaker 1: The lead of the story says resistance against Russia's mobilization
Speaker 1: for its war in Ukraine took an increasingly violent turn.
Speaker 1: On Monday, two recruitment centers came under attack. Borders remain
Speaker 1: clogged with fighting edged men who were fighting age men
Speaker 1: who were trying to leave amid reports some are turning back.
Speaker 1: Reports multiplied over the weekend that Russian border guards were
Speaker 1: turning back some men who were seeking to leave the
Speaker 1: country citing laws on mobilization. Again, these are sort of
Speaker 1: unconfirmed reports at this point, but they say those reports
Speaker 1: are escalating. They also say that some actually a Russian
Speaker 1: state news agency is reporting that Russian citizens who are
Speaker 1: subject to that mobilization order were stopped on the border
Speaker 1: with Russia and Kazakhstan. They were told they needed to
Speaker 1: seek permission from the Military Registration and Listman office before
Speaker 1: they could cross the borders. So a lot that is
Speaker 1: going on there. They also say they had one analyst
Speaker 1: here who was sort of making a prediction about whether
Speaker 1: they're going to keep the borders open or not. And
Speaker 1: basically what he said is, look, if it takes several days,
Speaker 1: it's going to be tolerated. They're going to let people leave,
Speaker 1: because the idea is basically, okay, we'll let the troublemakers
Speaker 1: go and leave the others who are more obedient, more quiet,
Speaker 1: more passive. But if it continues this flight of military
Speaker 1: age men out of the country for a longer time,
Speaker 1: then the question of closing the borders will arise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they're in a tough spot. And actually, I
Speaker 1: think this really does just show you how these the
Speaker 1: amount of descent. You can't cover up everything in the
Speaker 1: age of the internet, like photos are just going to
Speaker 1: leak out. We have several things that we're going to
Speaker 1: be playing for everyone throughout this show, and for those
Speaker 1: who are just listening, will do a good job of
Speaker 1: describing them. But every place a border crossing that you look,
Speaker 1: you're looking at multi hour way times, like we're going
Speaker 1: to show you one a little bit later with Georgia
Speaker 1: Kazakhstan is a twelve hour line. It usually takes thirty
Speaker 1: minutes to cross right into Kazakhstan. So almost every border
Speaker 1: crossing they're both being searched to make sure that they're
Speaker 1: not subject to them mobilization order, and then even then
Speaker 1: there's mega long lines. And clearly whenever this is every
Speaker 1: time we have seen that, you know, any Russian state regime,
Speaker 1: you know, regardless of ideology, if you have mass fleeing,
Speaker 1: they will only tolerate it to a certain point, and
Speaker 1: if it starts to look like a threat to the
Speaker 1: regime or a threat to their war effort, they're going
Speaker 1: to cut that off, which is going to lead to
Speaker 1: even more descent Crystal and already you know the stuff
Speaker 1: that is leading. And now I don't want to pretend
Speaker 1: that the entire Russian population is against this. Probably plenty
Speaker 1: of compliant Russians, people are happy. There were definitely some
Speaker 1: mobilizations and rallies to support the mobilization line. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to pretend that those don't exist. But the point
Speaker 1: is is that, you know, a critical level of descent
Speaker 1: does not actually have to be that high to cause
Speaker 1: some serious social strife. That's true. I think that's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to highlight here. Yeah, and what it seems,
Speaker 1: what seems to be happening is you still have you've
Speaker 1: had really broad support within Russia for this war. You know,
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly the population basically, you know, buys the Krumlin line.
Speaker 1: They believe that the Ukrainians are or under siege and
Speaker 1: that this is a noble thing to come and liberate them.
Speaker 1: It seems that the majority of Russians have sort of
Speaker 1: bought into that view of the war. But that's very
Speaker 1: different saying like oh sure I support this idea in abstract.
Speaker 1: That's very different than like I am willing to go
Speaker 1: and fight and die for this cause, or I am
Speaker 1: willing to send my son to go and fight and
Speaker 1: die for this cause. So I think domestically, it's very
Speaker 1: easy for you to imagine a similar response here in
Speaker 1: the US, where citizens might buy largely into the government propaganda,
Speaker 1: but then when it comes to their doorstep, they have
Speaker 1: a feeling of like, Okay, that's terrible for the Ukrainians,
Speaker 1: but why is this really my problem? And so I
Speaker 1: think that is some of the sentiment that you're seeing,
Speaker 1: even as we covered yesterday, in some of the you know,
Speaker 1: far flow more remote regions of Russia where the citizenry
Speaker 1: is largely supportive of the Krumlin, largely supportive of Putin,
Speaker 1: when it comes to their day to day and what
Speaker 1: it means for their lives to send their men over
Speaker 1: into this war becomes a very very different deal. And
Speaker 1: so you know, we're getting increasing reports of this has
Speaker 1: really become quite a trend, these attacks on military enlistment centers,
Speaker 1: I think, and it's kind of hard to get accurate counts,
Speaker 1: and the numbers have been a little bit all over
Speaker 1: the place, but I think since September twenty first, that's
Speaker 1: when Putin announced this mobilization. You've had something like twelve
Speaker 1: attacks on these enlistment recruitment centers. We have a vo
Speaker 1: of let's go ahead and put this up. This was
Speaker 1: a shooting actually, so actual violence in a recruitment center.
Speaker 1: And this is a you know, sort of more remote
Speaker 1: region of Russia. Actually, yeah, we didn't show the shooting.
Speaker 1: We just showed people fleeing and the person who was
Speaker 1: shot there is reportedly in critical condition. This is in
Speaker 1: southeastern Siberia, so you see, you know, actual violence. The
Speaker 1: reports are that the individual who did this was was
Speaker 1: upset because one of his friends, who he did not
Speaker 1: think should be mobilized, was subjected to the draft and
Speaker 1: he was apparently, you know, really beside himself about that.
Speaker 1: We've got another one we can show you here. Let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and show this vio. This is somebody who
Speaker 1: barricaded the door of the military enlistment office and then
Speaker 1: threw at least five malotav cocktails into the building. So
Speaker 1: this was, you know, a violent protest action. And again
Speaker 1: this appears to be occurring with increasing regularity at these
Speaker 1: enlistment offices. We have. We can show you some protests
Speaker 1: that have been unfolding in Dagistan. That's you know, a
Speaker 1: border region of Russia, southern tip of Russia near the
Speaker 1: Georgia and Azerbaijan border, and you can see, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's kind of hard to tell everything that's going on here,
Speaker 1: but clearly chaos, resistance, clashes with police. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of women involved here. Dagistan is a largely Muslim population.
Speaker 1: So those are a few of the videos that we
Speaker 1: see coming out. And I will tell you this morning,
Speaker 1: of course, everything and you see on social media like
Speaker 1: you should take with a grain of salt, you should
Speaker 1: be skeptical of it. But there are a few things
Speaker 1: that are noteworthy this morning of new you know, new draftees,
Speaker 1: new conscripts who are basically about to be sent to
Speaker 1: the front lines right now with little retraining. Who are
Speaker 1: you know, sort of stunned at the lack of equipment
Speaker 1: that they've been given. You know that they really have
Speaker 1: basically been given like a gun and a uniform and
Speaker 1: sent out there. So again this is all just social
Speaker 1: media reports, unconfirmed, but an interesting potential window into what's happening,
Speaker 1: and just you know, for openness, like a lot of
Speaker 1: what we're flagging to you comes from our friend Diegor
Speaker 1: Kotkin in Moscow and in Russia's we's vetting some of
Speaker 1: the video, you know, as opposed to whatever's not real.
Speaker 1: But you know, of course, always take everything with a
Speaker 1: grain of salt, and you know, we're trying to present
Speaker 1: the biggest, most nuanced picture here, which is that obviously
Speaker 1: multifacet One of the things that strikes me is I
Speaker 1: don't really understand why the Russians are like the same
Speaker 1: over the last hundred years. Like World War One, troops
Speaker 1: get drafted. It's a chaos. They get sent to the
Speaker 1: front line with no supplies. World War two just get drafted,
Speaker 1: get scripted, they get sent to the front line with
Speaker 1: no supplies. Twenty twenty two they get drafted, disastrous war.
Speaker 1: They get sent to the front line with no supplies.
Speaker 1: It's like and the same strategy. It's like across ideology,
Speaker 1: across kingdoms, you know, like Kingdom's socialism and nowt this
Speaker 1: it's the exact same story. I genuinely think it's totally nuts.
Speaker 1: But let's gohe and put this next one up there
Speaker 1: on the screen. A very stark admission from President Putin
Speaker 1: admitting mobilization errors publicly. He says, quote there are cases
Speaker 1: when the decree has been violated, all the errors will
Speaker 1: be corrected. And that is because there are a lot
Speaker 1: of social media reports in Russia on their own social
Speaker 1: media networks about people with no military experience who are
Speaker 1: either too old or disabled, who are getting called up
Speaker 1: incorrectly and so a quote unquote partial mobilization. A lot
Speaker 1: of these edge cases you would see like an old man,
Speaker 1: you know, with gray hair. We even pointed out some
Speaker 1: of them, and some of the people who are fleeing,
Speaker 1: people who are literally disabled, and then there's videos of
Speaker 1: them having to say goodbye to their parents, like having
Speaker 1: to report to the mobilization center. Those are the ones
Speaker 1: like really tugging at the heartstrings for a president Putin
Speaker 1: to admit an error publicly in Russia, that's a I mean, right,
Speaker 1: that shows you to the level of like social consternation
Speaker 1: that this has now risen to well, because if they
Speaker 1: aren't strictly adhering to the criteria that they laid out,
Speaker 1: which we should be clear that criteria is not actually
Speaker 1: in the mobilization order, but the way the Putin present
Speaker 1: that this has been presented as it's only going to
Speaker 1: be people with who they call reservists, but these are
Speaker 1: basically people with any sort of prior military experience. Between
Speaker 1: these ages, you know that they set these criteria, and
Speaker 1: then if you personally know or are a person who
Speaker 1: does not fall in that criteria and you're getting drafted,
Speaker 1: well that's terrifying forever because then number one, you have
Speaker 1: in your face like they lied about what this is.
Speaker 1: And number two then you say, oh, no one is safe,
Speaker 1: no one is exempt from this thing. Anyone could be
Speaker 1: drafted at a moment's notice. So you could see how
Speaker 1: this would be tremendously destabilizing for the entire country, where
Speaker 1: then you really feel like anyone, any man I know
Speaker 1: in my life is basically at risk. Now. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's another way to describe it. It really is
Speaker 1: just totally nuts about what's happening. Let's put the next
Speaker 1: one up there. This is from the Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: is the pedestrian line at the Russian Georgian border, and
Speaker 1: the voice on the video can be heard saying that
Speaker 1: the waiting time is now nine hours, nine hours in
Speaker 1: order to cross in the Russian Georgian border. As I said,
Speaker 1: the Kazakh border time now is twelve hours, So it's
Speaker 1: just chaos inside of Russia. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who I think rightfully, as you point out the decree,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're trying to only call up people with
Speaker 1: military experience, but it doesn't say that also partial mobilization.
Speaker 1: All of the military analysts that we've quoted in all
Speaker 1: here do not expect this to quote unquote turn the tide.
Speaker 1: Maybe it will, but maybe it won't. Yeah, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, well then you're looking at full mobilism. It's like,
Speaker 1: so you're gonna fully draft people inside that just phase
Speaker 1: one is the question. I mean, it's a reasonable question too.
Speaker 1: Not like I said, it has happened many times in
Speaker 1: Russian history. So if you if your grandfather, your great
Speaker 1: grandfather died in the Second World War, which odds are
Speaker 1: like the majority of Russian men who were born sometime
Speaker 1: to be like twenty or something years old probably did
Speaker 1: die in the Second World Like you have deep Like
Speaker 1: I generally avoid mental health language like trauma all societally,
Speaker 1: but I think when like seventy percent of kids who
Speaker 1: are born between a couple of years do get killed,
Speaker 1: that does leave some sort of like generational mark. Everybody
Speaker 1: has a relative who was killed in the Second World War,
Speaker 1: either you know, a mom or grandma, sister, something like that,
Speaker 1: or a great great grandfather, an uncle, a photo like
Speaker 1: these are not things they just get long forgotten. So
Speaker 1: that plus Afghanistan long long scar I think on society
Speaker 1: in Russia, and this is hearkening back to that, and
Speaker 1: it's it puts Putin in a dangerous place where he's
Speaker 1: betting his regime and his legacy, all of it on
Speaker 1: that he's willing to risk the most social strife that
Speaker 1: we've seen in Russia for what over a decade since
Speaker 1: the protest in like two thousand, I think twenty fourteen
Speaker 1: or so. This is the most that the world has been,
Speaker 1: you know, antagonistic towards Russia. So he's really got problems
Speaker 1: on all sides in Russian society. Yeah. And I mean
Speaker 1: one thing we definitely know is that he really didn't
Speaker 1: want to take this step. Yeah. I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: it wasn't taken from the beginning. That's why this was
Speaker 1: soft pedaled as oh, this is totally not a war,
Speaker 1: it's just this little special military operation. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep like inaugurating Ferris Wheels and we'll
Speaker 1: just go about life as usual. So it's a sign
Speaker 1: of you know, how few options he felt he had,
Speaker 1: that he went forward with this because likely had some
Speaker 1: awareness of the likely backlash that would be attendant here.
Speaker 1: And you also have you know, we focused almost solely
Speaker 1: on the new conscripts. You also have people who signed
Speaker 1: up for short term tours who thought they would be
Speaker 1: you know, out in the field for four to six months.
Speaker 1: All of those contracts have now been extended. So so
Speaker 1: it's the stop losh policy as well. I mean that's
Speaker 1: also some of you. You think you're like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: I can go serve for six months and earn some
Speaker 1: extra cash, and then you're stuck there indefinitely. So I
Speaker 1: mean that's a major societal stressor as well. I also
Speaker 1: think it's important to take note of these numbers. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's going to take a significant amount of
Speaker 1: time even to obtain the three hundred thousand number that
Speaker 1: they put out there, but keep in mind the original
Speaker 1: force that had been masked at Ukraine's borders that was
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety thousand troops roughly, so when you're
Speaker 1: talking about three hundred thousand bodies, and again they didn't
Speaker 1: limit themselves actually to that number. And if you're just
Speaker 1: just quote unquote talking about three hundred thousand bodies, that's
Speaker 1: a huge, huge increase in the forces that they have
Speaker 1: there on the ground. So, you know, it is it
Speaker 1: does seem really like they're just using these guys as
Speaker 1: cannon fodder. That's a desperate move that they're you know,
Speaker 1: out of options and basically losing. And so back to
Speaker 1: against a wall. Putin took this tremendous domestic political risk
Speaker 1: to really really sort of destroy this separation between the
Speaker 1: war and civilian life that he had worked so hard
Speaker 1: to maintain. I really feel terrible for them. You know,
Speaker 1: people we are protesting this seriously have some major, major courage,
Speaker 1: and look, you know, we're going to see how it
Speaker 1: works out. But I feel really terrible for a lot
Speaker 1: young Russians who you know, I can't imagine having to
Speaker 1: be put in this position, and also the Ukrainians, you know,
Speaker 1: having to look at this and just be like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: like it's not just ending it, It's going to get
Speaker 1: a lot worse. And that's always what war ends up being.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the next one. This is a crazy story,
Speaker 1: so i'd deep into this and let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put this up there on the screen. So it leaked
Speaker 1: out yesterday that the new funding bill for Congress has
Speaker 1: snuck in more than twelve billion dollars more in Ukraine
Speaker 1: related aid. Now, the reason why this whole story is
Speaker 1: convoluted is that right now we're actually on the verge
Speaker 1: of a government shutdown at the end of the week.
Speaker 1: A lot most of the people I spoke to don't
Speaker 1: expect any actual shutdown to happen. But the new legislation
Speaker 1: wasn't released actually until yesterday night, Crystal, And it's a
Speaker 1: funding package to basically avert the government shutdown and push
Speaker 1: it out through December sixteenth. Why December sixteenth, because they
Speaker 1: like to push it out until after the election so
Speaker 1: they can all go home and they can campaign for reelection. Now,
Speaker 1: what's happening, though, is that this is normal stuff, right.
Speaker 1: They need to put disaster relief funding like DEA funding. Actually,
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer got fooled into like trying to appropriate new
Speaker 1: money to a drug that literally doesn't exist. So that's funny.
Speaker 1: We could do a whole story on that later. That
Speaker 1: one it's called rainbow fen at all. It's a hilarious
Speaker 1: story in its own right. So we can continue down
Speaker 1: the line of all of these normal government functions that
Speaker 1: have to be funded, etc. And then twelve billion dollar
Speaker 1: check for Ukraine snuck in. There absolutely no debate, nothing,
Speaker 1: and no even real clarity right now as to what
Speaker 1: type of aid that this actually is. What we know bankcheck.
Speaker 1: This is like I said, I have dug as deep
Speaker 1: as I can. It's effectively a blank check to the administration.
Speaker 1: And the crazy thing about these types of aid that
Speaker 1: we continue to give the president is it is literally
Speaker 1: up to his sole discretionary authority. So we have certain
Speaker 1: types of aid that we are giving to Ukraine. There's
Speaker 1: humanitarian aid, there's military aid, and then there's economic aid. Economically,
Speaker 1: we've basically eliminated their debt and backstopped their entire financial
Speaker 1: system in Central Bank. Humanitarian we continue to give a
Speaker 1: majority of the humanitarian aid to Ukraine, and also you
Speaker 1: know refugee camps all that I generally don't have a
Speaker 1: problem with that. It's the military aid where I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is crazy because it has no restrictions whatsoever. Right now,
Speaker 1: We still don't even know the dollar amount of the
Speaker 1: actual military aid of this twelve billion that we're being spent,
Speaker 1: and it continues to be completely up to the Biden
Speaker 1: administration as to what type of quote unquote offensive weapons
Speaker 1: that we're going to be giving. It literally lies with
Speaker 1: him as to whether Ukraine gets basically anything that the
Speaker 1: US military has its hands on. Oh, you want to
Speaker 1: strike into Crimea, that's up to Biden. And this is
Speaker 1: why I think it's so dangerous, which is that in
Speaker 1: a way we have such a broken system because if
Speaker 1: it were up to Congress, let's be honest, they probably
Speaker 1: would give them even more offensive weapons. There's no debate whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And it just shows you how broken the system is.
Speaker 1: To imagine that Biden's eighty year old heart is the
Speaker 1: only thing that gets to decide like how he feels
Speaker 1: that day as to what type of weapons system gets
Speaker 1: shipped to Ukraine and possibly could escalate the conflict there.
Speaker 1: It's just a nuts way in order to run this thing.
Speaker 1: Zero absolutely zero like review. There's no Rand Paul inspector General.
Speaker 1: Remember when Rand Paul was like, look, I'm not even
Speaker 1: going to vote against this eight just have an Inspector
Speaker 1: General to track where it goes. Nope, can't even have that,
Speaker 1: no question, people acted like that was a crazy idea.
Speaker 1: I mean it's been over six months now, you know,
Speaker 1: remember that CBS News report that we covered about how
Speaker 1: only thirty percent or whatever of the weapons were reaching
Speaker 1: the front line in the beginnings of the war. They're like, oh,
Speaker 1: so they eventually took that report down because they're like, well,
Speaker 1: now apparently it's more I'm like, yeah, but in the
Speaker 1: first couple of months, I would still like to know
Speaker 1: what happened to the other seven, right, so where did
Speaker 1: it all go? And Okay, so let's do a follow
Speaker 1: up report, like, Okay, what's the percentage? We've seen precious
Speaker 1: little reporting on that front. I don't think it's an
Speaker 1: accident that these funding bills. I mean every single time
Speaker 1: we've had another funding package, and I really have completely
Speaker 1: lost count of how many there have been. At this point,
Speaker 1: it is so hard to even find news reports about them.
Speaker 1: These are significant. I mean, I can't think of anything
Speaker 1: more important for the public to know about and debate
Speaker 1: the details of, because, as you're pointing to Sager, the
Speaker 1: details here really really matter, which is something the administration
Speaker 1: you know, fortunately, has seemed to understand and they've been
Speaker 1: reluctant to give Zelenski everything last thing that he wants.
Speaker 1: But again, we're just wishing and hoping that Biden continues
Speaker 1: to exercise some kind of restraint in terms of the
Speaker 1: longer range missiles here. And there's a reason why it
Speaker 1: is not covered extensively and not subject to public debate,
Speaker 1: which is that, you know, the public is not super
Speaker 1: keen at this point. We cover that polling on continuing
Speaker 1: to send this amount of a this amount of weapons,
Speaker 1: especially when you compare to you know, our European allies
Speaker 1: and the amounts that they are sending. So the way
Speaker 1: that they get around that, rather than actually covering it
Speaker 1: and having a debate and you know, treating it like
Speaker 1: an active piece of democracy, which it should be, is
Speaker 1: just to kind of bury the news and hope nobody
Speaker 1: really notices, which has basically worked so far. Absolutely, let
Speaker 1: me just read people what it sounds like in the law.
Speaker 1: This is the law. This will be the law of
Speaker 1: the land. If this thing passes for any additional amount
Speaker 1: of operation and maintenance army A six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: four million dollars will remain available until September thirtieth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, to respond to the situation in Ukraine and
Speaker 1: for related expenses. That's it. That's six hundred million, and
Speaker 1: it's paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. Yeah, just like that. Wow.
Speaker 1: My personal favorite is it's like on the Space Force,
Speaker 1: they're like a piece of appropriations to the Space Force
Speaker 1: for Ukraine related eight and I'm like, wait, hold on,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on with the Space Force. I'm like,
Speaker 1: satellite type stuff that we don't know about. Again, zero transparency,
Speaker 1: zero release to the general public. And you can go
Speaker 1: through and you can read, I mean through every single
Speaker 1: one of these things. As I said, even you know
Speaker 1: to me having read through it, it's still not clear
Speaker 1: on the missiles the way it reads for missile related procurement.
Speaker 1: For missile related procurement four one hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: million to be available to the Department of Defense until
Speaker 1: September twenty third, twenty twenty five, pushing it out several years.
Speaker 1: Basically like, here's this pot of money, spend it however
Speaker 1: you want, however you see fit. I think it's very
Speaker 1: important for people to really understand the dramatic amount of
Speaker 1: power that they were just handing the executive branch in
Speaker 1: this situation, and it's dangerous and no debate. I mean,
Speaker 1: in terms of overall aid, the twelve billion alone is
Speaker 1: more than every single country on Earth has given to Ukraine,
Speaker 1: including the combined European Union to the only country that
Speaker 1: even comes close is the UK. In terms of military aid,
Speaker 1: the new military appropriations, if they do reach six billion
Speaker 1: or so, which is just half of this, will also
Speaker 1: be more than every single So the supplemental twelve billion
Speaker 1: to the forty four that we've already appropriated is like
Speaker 1: I believe, seven to ten times larger than every single
Speaker 1: other entity, not just country, entity that exists. That's outrageous.
Speaker 1: We covered that polar about from the concerned veterans of America.
Speaker 1: Americans are fine sending money to you, especially humanitarian aid. Okay,
Speaker 1: like you can't like Americans are completely fine shipping money
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. They just want the Europeans to step up.
Speaker 1: The only counter I've heard is like, yeah, but percent
Speaker 1: GDP Estonia's Estonia is like this big, all right, It's
Speaker 1: smaller than a national park on the East coast. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean like to say that percent GDP is what matters,
Speaker 1: and not overall, especially when overall is such a massive,
Speaker 1: a massive overlay compared to every single other nation. I
Speaker 1: just think it's totally outrageous. In order to argue this,
Speaker 1: I get that the Europeans are dealing with energy crisis
Speaker 1: and all that, but they're the ones who have to
Speaker 1: deal with this. It's their border, not ours. Well, let
Speaker 1: me also say that, you know, at least with the
Speaker 1: military aid, you can say, will the Ukrainians have deployed
Speaker 1: it effectively? I mean, it really was put up or
Speaker 1: shut up time for Zelenski. He put up. They had
Speaker 1: a you know, a very effective offensive action. That's why
Speaker 1: Putin is on his back foot now. I think that
Speaker 1: we are in a very dangerous in a certain way
Speaker 1: situation now as well, where the risk of some sort
Speaker 1: of use of nuclear weapon tactical quote unquote or some
Speaker 1: sort of a test has probably never been higher because
Speaker 1: he is so stressed and is you know, backed into
Speaker 1: such a corner. But the piece that we also have
Speaker 1: never really assessed whether this worked the way it was intended,
Speaker 1: whether it's accomplishing our goals, whether it's hobbling our populations,
Speaker 1: is the economic sanctions. I mean, again, you talk about
Speaker 1: areas where there has been precious little journalism. Producer James
Speaker 1: did send us a story this morning that was really good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was about the effectiveness or lack thereof of these
Speaker 1: sanctions from foreign affairs and basically they say, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the initial expectations of these sanctions did
Speaker 1: not pan out. And yes, this is you know, stressed
Speaker 1: the Russian economy, there's no doubt about it. But it's
Speaker 1: having massive boomerang effects, especially in the Global South, and
Speaker 1: so it has not had the impact that was laid out,
Speaker 1: and it's come at tremendous sacrifice, you know, of our population,
Speaker 1: the European populations, but again most of all with reverberating
Speaker 1: effects in the Global South. So there's never been a
Speaker 1: reassessment of like, okay, or we did this work out,
Speaker 1: are we doing the right things? Are we accomplishing our goals.
Speaker 1: It's just been full steam ahead, no looking back. And
Speaker 1: that's another area where there was no debate. It was
Speaker 1: done extraordinarily suddenly and there quickly yes, and there continues
Speaker 1: to be no debate over you know, now this is
Speaker 1: just the status quo. And that's the problem always with
Speaker 1: sanctions is once they're in place, they almost never get
Speaker 1: rolled back because no one ever goes back and said,
Speaker 1: then it's the status quo. It just is what it is,
Speaker 1: and no one wants to like go soft on the
Speaker 1: bad guy country, and so they just stay in place indefinitely,
Speaker 1: even if they are backfiring, even if they are not
Speaker 1: accomplishing your goals, even if they are hurting your own population.
Speaker 1: It's another area where there has just been absolutely no discussion,
Speaker 1: absolutely no debate, and next to no journalism on the subject. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very unfortunate. Okay, all right, guys, next piece we wanted
Speaker 1: to take a look at here. This is really interesting
Speaker 1: digging into some of the economic numbers. Let's go and
Speaker 1: put this first piece up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: what really sort of sparked this conversation for us anyway,
Speaker 1: every single major currency this is from Joe Wisenthal, is
Speaker 1: lower against the dollar today except the ones that haven't
Speaker 1: started trading yet. So I don't want to get too
Speaker 1: much in the weeds here so that eyes glaze over.
Speaker 1: But effectively, what is going on is because our Federal
Speaker 1: Reserve is hiking interest rates, that is causing massive ripple
Speaker 1: effects throughout the world economy. And in particular this is
Speaker 1: a problem for countries that have a lot of dollar
Speaker 1: denominated debt or that rely on a lot of imports
Speaker 1: from around the world. Because the dollar continues to be
Speaker 1: the global reserve currency, it continues to like forty per
Speaker 1: percent of the world's transactions are done in dollars, So
Speaker 1: when the Federal Reserve increases their rate, it usually increases
Speaker 1: interests rights throughout our economy. That tends to make the
Speaker 1: dollars stronger. That attracts investment capital from investors abroad. Seeing
Speaker 1: high returns of bonds and interest rate not necessarily bad
Speaker 1: thing for us, but for the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: now it costs them more to do basically anything. And
Speaker 1: again this is especially a problem for places that have
Speaker 1: a lot of dollars nominated debt or that have to
Speaker 1: import things like food, like basic or fuel basic items.
Speaker 1: Now everything is more expensive, and this becomes an issue
Speaker 1: for us as well, because obviously the economy is incredibly
Speaker 1: globally integrated, so it's not like we're this little island
Speaker 1: and we can protect ourselves from what's going on around
Speaker 1: the world. So that's why this is something to really
Speaker 1: pay attention to. As reading an article and there was
Speaker 1: an economist here who put it this way. Central banks,
Speaker 1: of course have purely domestic mandates. However, because economies are
Speaker 1: more interdependent than they have ever been and so closer
Speaker 1: cooperation is needed, I don't think central banks can have
Speaker 1: the luxury of not thinking about what is happening abroad.
Speaker 1: This has been particularly a dramatic story in the UK.
Speaker 1: Let's go and put this piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: You've got the Bank of England saying they won't hesitate
Speaker 1: to hike rates because they are very nearly in crisis
Speaker 1: after the pound fell to a historic low against the dollar.
Speaker 1: Now they have something that is a little bit different
Speaker 1: going on there, because not only do they have the
Speaker 1: impact of our federal Reserve Bank hiking rates, but their
Speaker 1: issue seems to be more directly related to the domestic
Speaker 1: political situation there, which is that the new prime minister
Speaker 1: announced this massive package of tax cuts, largely for the
Speaker 1: rich and for corporations, including such populous moves as lifting
Speaker 1: the cap on banker bonuses. Sounds like what the UK needs.
Speaker 1: It really is a total threat back kind of policy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's quite astonishing when you read the details here.
Speaker 1: But I think Liz trust kind of expected the market
Speaker 1: to be like, yay tax cuts, and there was instead
Speaker 1: essentially a meltdown because they worried so much about the
Speaker 1: financial position of the country with you know, taking so
Speaker 1: much revenue out of the budget with these huge tax cuts.
Speaker 1: So that's a big part of the story of why
Speaker 1: they're having such an issue, right Yeah, And actually it's
Speaker 1: going to have major problems for them on inflation because
Speaker 1: part of the thing is that a strong pound made
Speaker 1: it so that imports were less expensive. Whenever the pound
Speaker 1: is cheaper in regard to the dollar, than the imports
Speaker 1: become more expensive, which means that British companies are going
Speaker 1: to have to raise prices to compensate for higher costs,
Speaker 1: which puts pressure on inflation, which is already at the
Speaker 1: forty year high in Britain. So they have some serious
Speaker 1: economic troubles. It's related, like you said, to the fiscal policy.
Speaker 1: But the fact is is that all currencies globally are
Speaker 1: having problems with regards to the dollar and the strong
Speaker 1: dollar as it is, it's not necessarily this is why
Speaker 1: as complicated for her my perspective, not a bad thing
Speaker 1: because it makes well, it makes it it helps us
Speaker 1: with inflation, and it's no accent that even as inflation
Speaker 1: continues to bite here, we actually have low inflation compared
Speaker 1: to a lot of other nations because the strong dollar
Speaker 1: means when we are importing goods, they're lower cheaper for us,
Speaker 1: and that helps keep our own inflation in check. The
Speaker 1: risk is that you have blowback from you know, it
Speaker 1: relates very much to the monologue you gave yesterday's Soccer
Speaker 1: about how when you have countries where their population is
Speaker 1: stressed out because of food prices or fuel prices, or
Speaker 1: housing prices or whatever it is, you are more likely
Speaker 1: to have a lot of instability, a lot of chaos.
Speaker 1: And you know, these things don't just stay in one place.
Speaker 1: If you have you know, if you have a country
Speaker 1: collapse and you have massive migrant flows, guess what, that
Speaker 1: can really have a big impact on your politics and
Speaker 1: your economy and everything else here at home. And because
Speaker 1: the economy is so interconnected, you know, the problems over
Speaker 1: and other places don't necessarily stay in those places. So
Speaker 1: it is a compon located story. Liz Trust is a
Speaker 1: fool in my opinion, she really is coming back to
Speaker 1: full back to thatcher and she just misunderstands like the
Speaker 1: European moment. If you look at what just happened in Italy, Sweden,
Speaker 1: what's happening in the Czech Republic, Salachia, everything we've pointed to,
Speaker 1: it's clear what's going on. You have major economic stress
Speaker 1: and that is leading to like massive social turmoil. She's
Speaker 1: instead just pivoting back to like Thatcher right. I believe
Speaker 1: it's the first tax cut in the U case, it's
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two, and at the same time has forty
Speaker 1: year high inflation and also what a massive energy prices
Speaker 1: which are a result of a foreign conflict. So she's
Speaker 1: digging down to kind of like to what she was
Speaker 1: raised in. I guess, but there's no real answer. I
Speaker 1: was seeing Ross Dout that talk about this yesterday. She
Speaker 1: is setting the stage for probably an eventual labor victory
Speaker 1: and then for the rerise of UKIP style populism which
Speaker 1: led to Brexit, and that's going to leave the content
Speaker 1: of the island in chaos for no reason. Whenever she
Speaker 1: could just be like a four forward looking thinker, and
Speaker 1: instead it's like we've seen a reversion past the gains
Speaker 1: that I thought we had seen with Teresa May and
Speaker 1: with Boris Johnson's governments. I mean, I cannot imagine anything
Speaker 1: more tone deaf than lifting the cap on banker bonus.
Speaker 1: Energy prices are so high for like small businesses and
Speaker 1: pubs in the UK, which are all needing either closing
Speaker 1: or on the verge of laying people off. Like you
Speaker 1: found this yesterday. This underscore is like how tone deaf
Speaker 1: this is? Put us up there, which is that in
Speaker 1: the UK, most people's mortgages reset every two to five years,
Speaker 1: So that means one point four million homeowners in Britain
Speaker 1: are soon going to see a massive monthly payment spike,
Speaker 1: which they did not expect at all. Crystal, I don't
Speaker 1: really know why fixed rate mortgages zone exist in the UK.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question kind of in its own right,
Speaker 1: but that's just the system that they have over there.
Speaker 1: So when you have a reset every two to five years,
Speaker 1: well I don't think anybody thinks that rates are going
Speaker 1: to come down two years from now. That means a
Speaker 1: huge portion of the UK public is about to pay
Speaker 1: a ton more in mortgages and in energy costs to
Speaker 1: heat set homes. Like the fixed costs that these people
Speaker 1: have are going to go up by like twenty thirty percent.
Speaker 1: That's crazy when you also consider, I mean, think about
Speaker 1: how much of their income already goes to taxes, So like,
Speaker 1: their disposable income just took a huge haircut for events
Speaker 1: that are totally out of their control, right out to
Speaker 1: the government. And the answer from the government is, how
Speaker 1: about we cut taxes for the wealthy? How love that?
Speaker 1: Would that help you out? That feels good? So crazy,
Speaker 1: Let's make sure those bankers are getting what they deserve.
Speaker 1: I'm all right, it really is wild. I mean, when
Speaker 1: I dug into the details of yesterday, I was actually
Speaker 1: shocked because it did feel like such a throwback. I mean,
Speaker 1: then again, it's not all that different from what Trump
Speaker 1: did when he was in office with the Paul Ryan
Speaker 1: suite of tax cuts, but it is pretty wild to
Speaker 1: look at. And you know, you've had markets that are
Speaker 1: really in turmoil around the world, and typically, you know,
Speaker 1: usually in any country, there's sort of like a double
Speaker 1: edged sword, like when their currency is strong, it's good
Speaker 1: for some groups and bad for other groups, and when
Speaker 1: it's weak, it's you know, vice versa. Typically, when you
Speaker 1: currency is weak, you can sort of offset the problem
Speaker 1: because oh then your exports are more in demand because
Speaker 1: they're comparatively inexpensive, and so you can sort of like
Speaker 1: make up for it by shipping more goods around the world.
Speaker 1: But because you have either recession or mounting fears of
Speaker 1: recession in a lot of quarters of the globe, you
Speaker 1: also have decreased demand in a lot of places. So
Speaker 1: that's not really helping them out at this point. So
Speaker 1: in any case, it's just another sort of sign of
Speaker 1: the procarity of the global financial system and of you know,
Speaker 1: with a lot of potential ramifications for our own economy
Speaker 1: here at home. And I'm going to take a look
Speaker 1: at more of that in my monologue today. And a
Speaker 1: lot of new signs that the FED policy is really
Speaker 1: going too far, too fast and could cause a severe
Speaker 1: recession here at home, so we're going to take a
Speaker 1: look at that as well. At the same time, continues
Speaker 1: to be mounting, you know, worker protests and worker strikes.
Speaker 1: This one was really quite interesting to me. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up on the screen. You've got
Speaker 1: a thousand fast food workers that have started an open
Speaker 1: ended strike at San Francisco International Airport in protest of
Speaker 1: understaffing travelers. They say should plan to bring their own food.
Speaker 1: This is a statement from the union that represents these
Speaker 1: workers as workers are on strike at virtually every food
Speaker 1: and beverage outlet within the airport. I saw some video
Speaker 1: that the union shared of, you know, true to their word,
Speaker 1: almost everything shut down. The few locations that still had
Speaker 1: food and workers you know, available to serve customers, there
Speaker 1: were massive lines of people waiting. At the same time,
Speaker 1: you've got other labor protests. These are mostly with flight
Speaker 1: attendants that have spread to twenty one other airports. Those
Speaker 1: are starting today and overall. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys remember this from last year. We covered it quite
Speaker 1: extensively at the time, we had what was called strike Tober,
Speaker 1: where you had a bunch of labor unrest. It was
Speaker 1: really the beginning of this sort of like new wave
Speaker 1: of unionization and grassroots mobilization that has continued through to
Speaker 1: this year. Looks like we're facing another significant uptick in
Speaker 1: strikes coming into the fall. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this report up from the Guardian. They say thousands of
Speaker 1: workers around the US are going on strike or threatening
Speaker 1: to do so heading into October, amid a recent surge
Speaker 1: of labor action activity in America in just one month
Speaker 1: before crucial mid term elections. Let me give you in
Speaker 1: the numbers year, because you know, it's one thing to
Speaker 1: anecdotally like something high profile, Oh my god, a thousand
Speaker 1: workers on strike at the airport. But according to the
Speaker 1: Labor Action Tracker that's kept by Cornell University, strikes in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two have significantly outpaced strikes in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: So in the first six months of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: we've had one hundred and eighty strikes that have involved
Speaker 1: seventy eight thousand workers. That compares to in the first
Speaker 1: six months of last year one hundred and two strikes
Speaker 1: involving just twenty six thousand, five hundred workers seventy eight
Speaker 1: thousand workers versus twenty six thousand, five hundred workers, And
Speaker 1: strikes appear to be escalating as we head into the fall.
Speaker 1: So it truly is a new era, the most sort
Speaker 1: of active era of both labor organizing, worker protests and
Speaker 1: worker strikes that I have experienced in my lifetime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually crazy. And you know, producer James sent us
Speaker 1: this morning that twenty one more airports are going to
Speaker 1: be going on strike crystals. So these are protests, not
Speaker 1: necessarily strikes, and it's mostly the flight attendant attendants who
Speaker 1: are protesting there. So yeah, I mean there continues to be.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't blame them if, like, if the
Speaker 1: traveler experience at the airports is at all representative what
Speaker 1: the worker experiences. Can you imagine, Like it's one thing
Speaker 1: when you have to go there for the flight and
Speaker 1: experience the chaos when you're there working every single day
Speaker 1: and you know, dealing with like people who are stressed
Speaker 1: and harried, and then you're understaffed and you're underpaid. It's
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's a nightmare scenario. It really does also
Speaker 1: just expose like how big the problem is at very
Speaker 1: st ructural level, which is that we have a pilot
Speaker 1: shortage which is basically fake, like it's a financial scheme
Speaker 1: of our own making from bailing out the airlines, force
Speaker 1: retirements early and then licensure problems. I've just noticed this
Speaker 1: at every step, So pilot shortage flight attendants as well.
Speaker 1: You know, these people are getting treated terribly, like in
Speaker 1: many cases, their schedules get changed, they're understaffing, it's either
Speaker 1: causing them toy overwork, underpaid they're completely neglected whenever their
Speaker 1: conditions are being considered. Then you also consider like the
Speaker 1: people we already have a labor shortage in terms of
Speaker 1: people working, fast food and all that. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've ever been in an airport, like people who are
Speaker 1: working or who are trying to get fast food or
Speaker 1: food you know, on time or whatever at the airport,
Speaker 1: or if you've ever been in a Starbucks line in
Speaker 1: an airport at like airport bring out the best in
Speaker 1: humanity when you watch people lined up. There's like an
Speaker 1: hour long line at Starbucks at six am. I'm not
Speaker 1: speaking from personal experience, of course, there are some very
Speaker 1: frayed emotions in the crowd, especially like I got to
Speaker 1: that's my flight in thirty minutes? Is my caramel machiato
Speaker 1: going to be ready on time? Like I've seen literally
Speaker 1: people like crazy outbursts. So I don't blame these people
Speaker 1: at all. So it just underscores to me about like
Speaker 1: how much of critical parts of our society neglected, financialized
Speaker 1: and in chaos for no reasons, like multifaceted reasons that
Speaker 1: mostly have to do with greed of industry. And then
Speaker 1: where's Pete Boodage edge? You know, at the same time,
Speaker 1: like our transportation secretary is like out fundraising while our
Speaker 1: airports are literally in chaos. The twenty one people, you know,
Speaker 1: twenty one airports. You have labor protests that are being
Speaker 1: planned even in London. You know, it's not just us,
Speaker 1: like the whole industry is in chaos. I've fown you know,
Speaker 1: a decent amount over the last two years, and it's
Speaker 1: just a complete like that you can just feel that
Speaker 1: things are not right and they should even though passenger
Speaker 1: crystal are basically the same, but passenger numbers back. It's
Speaker 1: just the airports, the TSA lines and everything else is
Speaker 1: complete care total mass. Yeah, it's something that the rail
Speaker 1: rotors have been scoring. Which is that And by the way,
Speaker 1: you know, in spite of the mission accomplish rhetoric, still
Speaker 1: very much a possibility of railroad workers going on strike
Speaker 1: because the tentative agreement that was struck doesn't provide a
Speaker 1: whole lot more to them. It's not really that much
Speaker 1: more of an improvement. And what they're saying is like, yes, look,
Speaker 1: this is about us in our quality of life, being
Speaker 1: able to see our families, being able to go to
Speaker 1: doctor's appointments, being able to get sick and not be
Speaker 1: penalized for it and all of those things. But there's
Speaker 1: also deeper issue here of like the reason we are
Speaker 1: so overburdened is because these companies in search of profit
Speaker 1: have really stripped things down to the bare bones. That's
Speaker 1: a problem for us. But in all of this, you know,
Speaker 1: ara of talk of supply chain breakdowns, like that's the
Speaker 1: problem for the country as a whole. These are the
Speaker 1: companies that are really making the supply chain so brittle
Speaker 1: and so fragile and fragile and so ultimately dysfunctional. Like
Speaker 1: that's what it comes down to. And then you see
Speaker 1: the workers who are getting the short end of the
Speaker 1: stick here. And so even though they you know, they
Speaker 1: they strip their staff like it's like thirty percent over
Speaker 1: the past decade or something crazy like that, and then
Speaker 1: they just expect all the other workers to pick up
Speaker 1: the slack. That's how this thing is running with like
Speaker 1: you know, bubble gum and shoe string effectively to keep
Speaker 1: it going. A critical, critical, critical part of our infrastructure
Speaker 1: that farmers depend on for getting their products to market,
Speaker 1: that you know, wastewater treatment facilities to pand on to
Speaker 1: get the chemicals they need that regular consumers depend on,
Speaker 1: that regular computers depend on, and we've left it to
Speaker 1: the whims of this company, these companies, and so ultimately
Speaker 1: the workers again they're fighting for themselves, but they're also
Speaker 1: finding to say, like, this is a problem for all
Speaker 1: of us. And I think that comes through especially when
Speaker 1: you see these essential workers who really carry the weight
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, kept the country running, and they're saying, look, guys,
Speaker 1: we're not in a good position here for us personally,
Speaker 1: and that means that the whole country isn't a bad
Speaker 1: position ultimately. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly the right
Speaker 1: way to put it. And yeah, it just demonstrates to
Speaker 1: me like it's all in chaos for no particular reason,
Speaker 1: and for all of the national politics like oh, you know,
Speaker 1: January sixth, et cetera, Like this is the biggest story
Speaker 1: and always has really over the last year. It really
Speaker 1: is very ignored. Basically by that, I mean it takes
Speaker 1: the railway guys almost going on strike for people to
Speaker 1: take notice and have three minutes of airtime, but like
Speaker 1: that right, and to give it extremely skewed coverage too,
Speaker 1: by the way, to cover it late and very poorly Okay,
Speaker 1: let's move on. This is an important story and one
Speaker 1: that we covered pretty extensively at the time, so I
Speaker 1: think it's important for people to get it an update
Speaker 1: which really is contra to the mainstream narrative. And let's
Speaker 1: put this up there on the screen from the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Career prosecutors at the Department of Justice have recommended to
Speaker 1: leadership no charges for Matt Gates in the sex trafficking probe.
Speaker 1: So you'll all remember, in November twenty twenty one, the
Speaker 1: story broke from the New York Times based on sources
Speaker 1: within the DOJ, the Gates was under investigation for sex trafficking,
Speaker 1: specifically of a seventeen year old girl. Now, the way
Speaker 1: that the theory was is that Gates had had sex
Speaker 1: with a seventeen year old girl who was part of
Speaker 1: a group of other girls who Gates and his scummy
Speaker 1: friend like Joel Greenberg, who also happened to be some
Speaker 1: sort of like tax official I think in Seminole County
Speaker 1: in Florida, had taken these women on a vacation to
Speaker 1: the Bahamas. Now, the reason that that would be sex
Speaker 1: trafficking is that if you transport anybody who's under the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen, across state lines and out of the
Speaker 1: country for any purpose basically, and you have sex with them.
Speaker 1: That is basically sex trafficking. Now, Now, according to what
Speaker 1: we know from the facts available at this point, the
Speaker 1: girl was actually eighteen years old when that happened, that
Speaker 1: tripped to the Bahamas. That's what set off ring alarm rings.
Speaker 1: So they were like, oh, well, what if this girl
Speaker 1: was seventeen and had traveled under cross state lines prior
Speaker 1: to that. That was part of the investigation. Well, what
Speaker 1: the investigators now say is that they've been a unable
Speaker 1: to determine if any of that actually happened, but b
Speaker 1: that two of the main witnesses who are they relying
Speaker 1: on in the case are said to be unreliable, specifically
Speaker 1: this mister Greenberg. Greenberg apparently had been flipped by the
Speaker 1: FEDS to provide information on Matt Gates, but his credibility
Speaker 1: is the main charge on which this would rest if
Speaker 1: they were to go forward with the prosecution against him. Additionally,
Speaker 1: you'll also remember this the rays all came to light
Speaker 1: was not only the leak about Gates exactly, It's about blackmails.
Speaker 1: So let's go and put this next one up there
Speaker 1: on the screen, and Gates to the fair was ridiculed
Speaker 1: about this. It seems that he was correct, which is
Speaker 1: that there was At the same time, there was a
Speaker 1: man named Stephen Alford, who was a real estate developer,
Speaker 1: who went to Don Gates, the father of Matt Gates,
Speaker 1: and said, you need to pay me twenty five million
Speaker 1: dollars or I'm going to expose your on as a
Speaker 1: sex trafficker, because mister Alford had somehow gleaned that Gates
Speaker 1: was under investigation for sex trafficking. Now this was that
Speaker 1: he could provide a pardon. He was claiming that he
Speaker 1: could get a pardon from President Trump. I don't know
Speaker 1: why some real random real estate developer will be able
Speaker 1: to a party, and it seems like Jaments might have
Speaker 1: a better connect whatever. All right, anyway, he came to
Speaker 1: him and said, pay me twenty five million or I'm
Speaker 1: going to expose you and I can get a missing
Speaker 1: FBI agent. That also he also said he had information
Speaker 1: based on that missing FBI He was going to use
Speaker 1: the twenty five million not for himself but to rescue
Speaker 1: this guy. And Ron anyway, very confusing. It does turn
Speaker 1: out to be true. He was prosecuted. He was convicted
Speaker 1: of blackmailing Don Gates, and he has been sentenced last
Speaker 1: week to five years in prison for the attempted extortion
Speaker 1: of the congressman. And so, you know, I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of Matt Gates over here, but it does
Speaker 1: look crystal like he was completely railroaded by the FBI
Speaker 1: and the DOJ who leaked selectively salacious details of the
Speaker 1: case against him, basically tried him in the court of
Speaker 1: public opinion. And you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: like he's not getting prosecuted because the people who were
Speaker 1: alleging all of these like heinous things against him clearly
Speaker 1: also have an axe grind and were themselves untrustworthy. Now,
Speaker 1: could the congressman have avoid of all this by not
Speaker 1: frequently going to parties with hanging out bookers and early
Speaker 1: girls in his mid thirties and he's a member of Congress, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he definitely could have. You know, it's a scumbag behavior.
Speaker 1: But his body here, his good buddy here. Joel Greenberg
Speaker 1: was indicted on sex trafficking of a child and financially
Speaker 1: supporting people in exchange for sex, at least of one
Speaker 1: of whom was an underage girl, and he's the one
Speaker 1: who flipped. And the reason that they say he's not
Speaker 1: credible is because he basically like admits to being a liar.
Speaker 1: So and then the other person they said that this
Speaker 1: would rely on is the girl I guess now woman herself,
Speaker 1: and for reasons they don't get into, they say that
Speaker 1: she also had credibility issues. So one thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that the leaks about this came out
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration and now it's the Biden administration
Speaker 1: that actually is like, we're not going to try. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it became a cause celeb amongst
Speaker 1: all these congressmens. So Nancy Pelosi had alluded to it.
Speaker 1: It's look, Gates is obviously an odious guy, right, and
Speaker 1: I think we can everyone, even as supporters, can admit.
Speaker 1: And I actually think that relates to potentially why because
Speaker 1: you see this with you see this with people who
Speaker 1: are real assholes, which Gates he is. If we have
Speaker 1: personal experience in that regard people, I would not be
Speaker 1: surprised if it was actually people who are sort of
Speaker 1: in his circle who are yeah, they hate I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a very unlikable person. So you often see anytime
Speaker 1: there's a chance to like stick the knife in somebody
Speaker 1: like that, that's when you get these kind of like
Speaker 1: leaks and like, you know, people trying to basically take
Speaker 1: you down. So it wouldn't surprise me if I'm not
Speaker 1: justifying that. I'm just saying, like, when I look at
Speaker 1: the fact that the leaks actually came out of the
Speaker 1: Trump administration DOJ, it wouldn't surprise me if it was
Speaker 1: actually people who know him and hate him, who are
Speaker 1: in those generals certainly true. So I mean, and I
Speaker 1: just I think we should underscore that though, which is
Speaker 1: put this up there, which is that you know, the
Speaker 1: reporting on this came from the Times. It was leaks
Speaker 1: from the highest levels of the DOJ, all to reporters
Speaker 1: who had Russiagate leaks and more. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is the issue with selective leaks out of the Department
Speaker 1: of Justice against their political app no matter what it
Speaker 1: comes from and for who, and people do deserve due process,
Speaker 1: being you know, odious and annoying and every other adjective
Speaker 1: I can think of, on top of participating and leccherous
Speaker 1: behavior unbecoming of a public official. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, that is not illegal, and it was made
Speaker 1: to be. He was made out to be a literal
Speaker 1: sex trafficker such that his own colleagues like Eric Swallwell
Speaker 1: and Nancy Pelosi and others were frequently attacking him as such.
Speaker 1: Now you could call him a scumbag. I think that's
Speaker 1: probably fair. And then you know what all the in
Speaker 1: terms of the details that have come out and this,
Speaker 1: but it is important and it is wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: the way that I think that he was treated on this.
Speaker 1: As much as it pains me to say it, but
Speaker 1: that's look, people need to be treated equally in our system.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the media given the leaks, because
Speaker 1: to me, that's actually the bigger issue than I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're a journalist in your hand of this story,
Speaker 1: I think it's the journalists fault. I think it's the leakers.
Speaker 1: I blame the DJ I do not blame them. I
Speaker 1: mean reported ultimately about him being a subject to like investigating.
Speaker 1: That's true, was accurate, and if you're given that story,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can like sit on it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: to me, it's the it's the that is really the
Speaker 1: problem here. Yeah, I completely agree. I do think it
Speaker 1: was wrong. What they did to him. All right, let's
Speaker 1: move on. New York Times are speaking of the New
Speaker 1: York Times. This is an important story because it actually
Speaker 1: just demonstrates how propaganda gets recycled, used by the people
Speaker 1: of power and everybody gland hands each other. So there
Speaker 1: was an interesting story in the New York Times on
Speaker 1: the front page of the paper yesterday. Let's put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. The title Factory jobs are
Speaker 1: booming like it's the nineteen seventies. Sub quote, US manufacturing
Speaker 1: is experiencing rebound. Companies are adding workers amid high consumer
Speaker 1: demand for products. Now the lead of the story makes
Speaker 1: it seem like there's some major transformation of the US economy,
Speaker 1: he said. Quote. Ever since American manufacturing entered a long
Speaker 1: stretch of automation, every recession has led to losses, but
Speaker 1: the recovery has been different. American manufacturers have now added
Speaker 1: enough jobs to regain all that they shed and then some.
Speaker 1: So when he says that factory jobs are booming, really
Speaker 1: what they're saying, Crystal is after the artificial recession of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty induced by COVID lockdowns, that all of the
Speaker 1: jobs that were artificially lost as a result of lockdown
Speaker 1: are now back to pre pandemic levels. Now, it's not
Speaker 1: a boom. If you revert to the baseline, that would
Speaker 1: be like saying that we've been booming because gas prices
Speaker 1: are back to twenty nineteen levels. It's like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's the goal. That's what you want in order to
Speaker 1: normalize post crisis. So they write this whole long story
Speaker 1: and by the way, that's a fine story too that
Speaker 1: you could use the headline factory jobs return to twenty
Speaker 1: and twenty levels. Everyone would be like, Okay, well, that's
Speaker 1: not though, what they're claiming. They're claiming some massive remaking.
Speaker 1: They are claiming that the spike that we see if
Speaker 1: you cut it off at the right point, is the
Speaker 1: same as a boom of US manufacturing since the nineteen seventies. Now,
Speaker 1: they correctly point out that the reason that factory jobs
Speaker 1: quote unquote are coming back as after the artificial recession
Speaker 1: of twenty two is Yes, consumer demand exists, supply chain problems,
Speaker 1: all of that, but to cast it as some sort
Speaker 1: of massive transformation of the US economy is just completely incorrect.
Speaker 1: And yet this is being seized on by the administration
Speaker 1: and pushed out as propaganda for how they're like the
Speaker 1: greatest people to ever hold in the Oval Office, White
Speaker 1: House Chief of Staff Ron claim, immediately, let's put this
Speaker 1: up there. Quote he says, of the story, not an accident,
Speaker 1: not happenstance, the consequence of a Biden Harris economic plan,
Speaker 1: with quote made in America at its heart. Now, look again,
Speaker 1: you could claim we recovered, we're doing well, we have
Speaker 1: more ground to make, But again, the story and the
Speaker 1: way it's cast just completely belie the facts on the ground.
Speaker 1: And our friend Jeff Stein, in a bit of a subtweet,
Speaker 1: put this out and I won't speak on his behalf.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say this. This is all he tweeted.
Speaker 1: He tweeted out the actual US manufacturing graph since the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. I mean, for those who are just listening,
Speaker 1: you can see that from nineteen forty to twenty twenty
Speaker 1: that we have seen a massive drop off from the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies to nineteen eighties period. Now compare the boom
Speaker 1: for those who are watching, of the precipitous increase from
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy baseline to where things ended in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, and then take a look once again, and
Speaker 1: how we have just renormalized to a twenty twenty baseline
Speaker 1: after the terrible year of the COVID pandemic. It's just
Speaker 1: plain as day to describe like some sort of quote boom,
Speaker 1: when in reality the precipitous dropped from nineteen eighty to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, which at twenty twenty two remains the real
Speaker 1: manufacturing story. I just don't think you can describe this
Speaker 1: as anything else than complete propaganda crystal for the White
Speaker 1: House on behalf of the New York Times, like basically
Speaker 1: rewriting economic history. It's completely It's just wrong. It's a
Speaker 1: wrong story. There's a lot you can look into with
Speaker 1: this graph too. I mean way that graph is a
Speaker 1: story of America. It really is. The way that it
Speaker 1: falls off a cliff after PNTR. Yeah, well, for those
Speaker 1: who don't know, pntr's permanent normal trade relations with China
Speaker 1: basically allowed you know, lower tariffs on China, allowed Chinese
Speaker 1: entry into the WTO and effectively destroyed the American manufacturing
Speaker 1: all industry, especially cars and soveral others. Yep, And I
Speaker 1: mean it's not the only story. There's also is the
Speaker 1: story of like you know, automation where you need fewer
Speaker 1: workers to do the amount of work. Like, that's part
Speaker 1: of it, and after these trade deals are another part
Speaker 1: of it. But when you look at this graph, that
Speaker 1: year two thousand really does seem to stand out in
Speaker 1: terms of the massive decimation of you know, of the
Speaker 1: factories of America. And then you know that leads to
Speaker 1: then you've got the financial crash that creates another massive
Speaker 1: drop off in the graph year and then low and hold,
Speaker 1: you get you know, trump Ism, and you get like
Speaker 1: a lot of chaos in our political system, and you know,
Speaker 1: anyone looking like neutral observer looking from the outside, it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear what happened here. But yeah, to paint the
Speaker 1: return of the factory jobs that had just like gone
Speaker 1: away during the pandemic as some sort of massive reimagining
Speaker 1: of the economy is just really quite farcical. The Biden
Speaker 1: administration has done a few things that I think will
Speaker 1: overall be beneficial. I think, you know, provisions that they
Speaker 1: put into place of like the government has to they
Speaker 1: sort of harden some of the rules about the government
Speaker 1: having to buy products that are made in America. There
Speaker 1: are some provisions I think in the inflation reduction act
Speaker 1: that might be useful the Chipsacks, certainly specifically with regards
Speaker 1: to semiconductors, hopefully is going to pay off and be useful.
Speaker 1: But to claim mission accomplished victory here is really quite
Speaker 1: quite something. And for the New York Times to frame
Speaker 1: it in this way as like booming like the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: while in the nineteen seventies you had like thousands of persons.
Speaker 1: So there it's up at nineteen and now it's down
Speaker 1: at thirteen. I mean, this is yeah, it's quite something,
Speaker 1: quite something. I mean it Look, you could again say
Speaker 1: we've come back to baseline. You could say a lot
Speaker 1: of things. We also, if this happened under Trump, it'd
Speaker 1: be like economy returns. Just it's just complete bs. They
Speaker 1: could have reported the entire story without the frame that
Speaker 1: they needed to overreach, and ultimately that's what they did.
Speaker 1: Anybody who knows, you know, anybody who can read a
Speaker 1: chart and knows that it's completely farcical and ridiculous. But
Speaker 1: I thought it was important that we pointed out a
Speaker 1: because the discussion of why manufacturer dropped in the US
Speaker 1: and where we actually are is a very important story.
Speaker 1: I would love for us to boom like the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventies and go all the way back up. That would
Speaker 1: require like a trillion dollar investment, completely rechanging our trade laws,
Speaker 1: changing our form pot Like, Yeah, there's so much that
Speaker 1: it would need, real industrial policy on a nationwide scale,
Speaker 1: not just specific to one little industry. We are like
Speaker 1: barely dipping our toes in any of that at this point. Correct, All, right,
Speaker 1: talk what are you looking at? Well, if you were
Speaker 1: to ask me what I love most about this job,
Speaker 1: at a basic level, it's really just helping people fill
Speaker 1: in the blanks to fundamental truths that they obviously know
Speaker 1: to be true. Washington is corrupt, The media is biased.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things that we all know, but
Speaker 1: that those who don't live or work here have very
Speaker 1: trouble finding specific examples. If those who don't believe those
Speaker 1: things have actually ever had to confront them, it would
Speaker 1: be game over for them today. It's about the media
Speaker 1: and the subject that I've covered before, the perverse, disgusting,
Speaker 1: and common practice of so called flagship journalists in this
Speaker 1: country not only cozying up to people in power, but
Speaker 1: actively covering for them. One of the open secrets in
Speaker 1: Washington over the last forty years was the friendship and
Speaker 1: relationship between NPR Supreme Court reporter Nina Tottenberg and the
Speaker 1: now late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Totenberg worked at NPR
Speaker 1: and has worked there since nineteen seventy five. Over the years,
Speaker 1: she's broken some of the biggest scoops in the history
Speaker 1: of the Supreme Court. The story that Ronald Reagan was
Speaker 1: going to appoint Justice William Renquist's chief Justice. She broke
Speaker 1: the story that one of Reagan's appointees and smitted to
Speaker 1: smoking weed in the nineteen sixties, big deal at the time.
Speaker 1: The biggest story of all was Clarence Thomas and Anita
Speaker 1: Hill in the nineteen nineties. She's considered a massive star,
Speaker 1: an icon, yet beneath it was an open secret as
Speaker 1: she was breaking big stories, she was good friends with
Speaker 1: the people that she covered that burst to the four.
Speaker 1: In the year two thousand, Totenberg's wedding was literally presided
Speaker 1: over Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Everyone thought it was weird,
Speaker 1: but her defender said, hey, if you call that into
Speaker 1: question her journalistic ethics, you're a sexist. Even then, it
Speaker 1: was a potent attack, so official Washington just moved on
Speaker 1: at least until now, twenty two years later, Totenberg is
Speaker 1: nearly eighty years old, Ginsburg is dead, and now some
Speaker 1: people are finally willing to say, yeah, you know, that
Speaker 1: was all pretty messed up. And what's even crazier is
Speaker 1: she has no shame about the whole situation. She recently
Speaker 1: published a book called Dinners with Ruth, in which she
Speaker 1: goes through her forty year friendship with the late justice
Speaker 1: openly admits, as the Politico editor Michael Schaeffer writes, that
Speaker 1: she had inside knowledge about Ginsburg's health that she did
Speaker 1: not report to the nation. Totenberg revealed that during the
Speaker 1: COVID lockdown, the only place that RBG would go to
Speaker 1: break quarantine was Totenberg's house for a weekly Saturday dinner.
Speaker 1: In the July twenty twenty she was so weak she
Speaker 1: could not even climb upstairs. She could not make it
Speaker 1: through a meal without falling asleep, and she had to
Speaker 1: wear gloves to cover up massive bruises on her hands
Speaker 1: as a result of IV's that she needed. Totenberg writes
Speaker 1: that RBG openly acknowledged her own mortality and thought she
Speaker 1: was going to die near the end, and all of
Speaker 1: this is a painful memory one friend of another. The problem, though,
Speaker 1: is during that period she did not report one word
Speaker 1: of these things she knew to be true, so when
Speaker 1: she died. When RBG died, the world was shocked. Nobody
Speaker 1: knew how sick she really was, except for her medical
Speaker 1: team and her closest friend, who just so happened to
Speaker 1: be the country's premier Supreme Court reporter. If Totenberg wanted
Speaker 1: to just be her friend, that's fine, then resigned from
Speaker 1: your job and focus on that. Yet she continues then
Speaker 1: and now to maintain she did absolutely nothing wrong. There
Speaker 1: was nothing untoward about her relationship with RBG. When we
Speaker 1: now know that she sat on one of the biggest
Speaker 1: stories in the political world, it gets worse. Her own
Speaker 1: personal conduct is one matter. The bigger problem was NPR
Speaker 1: knew about it for forty years and didn't say anything
Speaker 1: till RBG was dead, The outlet finally acknowledged in September
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. They probably should have revealed the friendship earlier,
Speaker 1: where it was never once even disclosed though to NPR
Speaker 1: listeners or readers, and also was well known to those
Speaker 1: on the inside in the newsroom. Again, this was not
Speaker 1: reckoned with once until RBG was actually gone. The story
Speaker 1: and the impact of the insider connection was then revealed.
Speaker 1: What I found most funny was the reaction of one
Speaker 1: PR's NPR listener. He put two and two together when
Speaker 1: Toberg finally did fess up to her friendship with Ginsburg,
Speaker 1: and he wrote in quote, the story about her long
Speaker 1: friendship with RBG makes me very uncomfortable. As far as
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. Both women practice their professions with integrity in
Speaker 1: old time value that is being questioned these days. The
Speaker 1: thing is, though, how much of this social incestuousness exists
Speaker 1: in DC? Yes? How much? Indeed? The truth is Topberg
Speaker 1: style relationships between political reporters and the people they cover
Speaker 1: is probably exactly the same today, probably just less bipartisan
Speaker 1: and skewed a little bit more towards Democrats. All of this,
Speaker 1: I guess, would be okay if people would just admit
Speaker 1: it be an issue, though, remains one that plagued Totenberg.
Speaker 1: The DC press want us to believe they're just calling
Speaker 1: balls and strikes. Anyone with the brain, though, knows this
Speaker 1: complete and total bs despite readings of evidence to the contrary,
Speaker 1: they will scream it at you. Until they're blue in
Speaker 1: the face. I guess the only silver lining is that
Speaker 1: because of the Internet, people finally have alternatives. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to end by pointing to how this problem
Speaker 1: has not been fixed at all, and if anything at
Speaker 1: an institutional level is really getting worse. Because I am
Speaker 1: a former member, I pay attention to the White House
Speaker 1: Correspondence Association, so I took interest when they announced that
Speaker 1: because Katelyn Collins is headed to the Mornings on CNN
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty four, Politico's Eugene Daniels will helm the
Speaker 1: organization well insider Washington News. I guess unless you know
Speaker 1: like I do, that Daniels has long been awoke and
Speaker 1: anning force at Politico. Who is going to head up
Speaker 1: the WACA in the middle of what I'm sure is
Speaker 1: to be a pretty consequential election, whichever way it goes.
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast reported that Daniels frequently clashed with his
Speaker 1: friend of our show, Tara Palmery when she was over
Speaker 1: there because he wanted quote more social justice issues to
Speaker 1: be at the forefront of their coverage. Worse, Daniels is
Speaker 1: apparently known inside the political newsroom for quote friendly coverage
Speaker 1: and intimate relationships with the Vice President, Kamala Harris and
Speaker 1: those around her. If you peruse the byeline, you see
Speaker 1: all sorts of hay geographic treatment of one of the
Speaker 1: worst politicians in Washington. This type of personal advocacy journalism,
Speaker 1: it's just Nina Totenberg syndrome by another name, insider treatment,
Speaker 1: letting bias bleed, supposedly straight news coverage, and all of
Speaker 1: us are just supposed to say it's totally fine. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm here to say it's actually not fine. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's blatantly corrupt, and not only that anyone cares. When
Speaker 1: the eventual death of the mainstream media does come, we
Speaker 1: will look back on the people like this and will
Speaker 1: know exactly why it happened. I thought it was important
Speaker 1: to also a point to the future. Is Eugene Daniels
Speaker 1: give me the new and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today
Speaker 1: at Breakingpoints dot com. Christl what do you take a
Speaker 1: look at? Well, guys, there's a pretty wild moment on
Speaker 1: CNBC the other day. As a wortant professor of finance,
Speaker 1: Jeremy Siegel absolutely lost it over FED Reserve Chair Jerome
Speaker 1: Palsley's press conference and the total unwillingness of the business
Speaker 1: press to question his actions at all. Take a listen,
Speaker 1: I think, honest week, we're giving him too much of
Speaker 1: a you know, oh good, he's standing against inflation. We're
Speaker 1: giving him too much freight. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: fad has just you know, Exico the last two years
Speaker 1: one of the biggest policy mistakes in the one hundred
Speaker 1: and ten year history of the FED, by staying so
Speaker 1: easy when everything was booming and pointing to my god,
Speaker 1: inflation is going to be a terrible problem. And now,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we did goof badly there, which he's never
Speaker 1: really admitted. I mean, he's still blamed some things on
Speaker 1: Ukraine and you know, pooting supplies even though oil is
Speaker 1: waged but low that level, way beyond that. And now
Speaker 1: we're we're saying, oh my god, he's the god that's
Speaker 1: going to stop inflation, and he's going to crush the
Speaker 1: wages which have not kept, which have fallen behind inflation
Speaker 1: by three four five percent. You can have cost push
Speaker 1: inflation when you're lagging inflation. You can't blame wages for inflation.
Speaker 1: When they're two, three, four or five percent behind inflation.
Speaker 1: I mean, why is he putting the burden on the
Speaker 1: on these working people, I employed people. That's I mean,
Speaker 1: what is every other commodity price is going down? The
Speaker 1: Fed chair gave you no indication the other day that
Speaker 1: they're stopping anytime soon. Hey, and that's what and that's
Speaker 1: what was That's why the sock market best practice week.
Speaker 1: He gave no indication that. I mean, if he would
Speaker 1: have just said I see some favorable sign like housing
Speaker 1: prices are not rising and actually they're falling, or some
Speaker 1: little saying that our powercies are working, he admitted, you
Speaker 1: know there's long legs. Well, if he keeps as tight
Speaker 1: as he is, looked at every market indicator, the dour,
Speaker 1: the commodities, real rates, the money sup why everything is
Speaker 1: showing one of the tightest feds or intentions of FEDS
Speaker 1: that we've ever had. So he says and that he
Speaker 1: and he says it worked with the lag. Well, if
Speaker 1: he stays this way through twenty twenty three, you can
Speaker 1: you know, they make sure that there's a major recession
Speaker 1: on the other side. Celebrate clipped down for you. But
Speaker 1: the TLDR is this Siegel is absolutely convinced that without
Speaker 1: dramatically changing course, the FED will trigger a severe recession
Speaker 1: and absolutely destroy working class people. He believes they are
Speaker 1: making the mistake of a century and is desperately attempting
Speaker 1: to sound the alarm. So let's start with the first
Speaker 1: part of what the professor says when he complains that
Speaker 1: everyone is treating Jerome Palell like he's some kind of god,
Speaker 1: not even questioning whether he's charting the right course. And
Speaker 1: another part of his appearance, Seagle also blows his top
Speaker 1: or the fact that not a single reporter bother to
Speaker 1: ask him a tough question. Certainly, no one asks about
Speaker 1: whether regular people might be hurt by Palle's attempts to
Speaker 1: crush their wages and spike unemployment. This in spite of
Speaker 1: the fact that, according to Segel, the FED just executed
Speaker 1: one of the worst mistakes in the one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten year history of the FED. This deferential posture from
Speaker 1: supposed journalist comes from two places. Basically, first, there's an
Speaker 1: ugly bipartisan consensus now which has taken hold of Washington,
Speaker 1: that it's those pesky workers, and there are wages that
Speaker 1: are primarily to blame for inflation, and that the only
Speaker 1: answer is for pal to go full Vulcar and tank
Speaker 1: the economy. Now, this benefit corporate America, which is irritated
Speaker 1: by the fact that right now, with the labor market tight,
Speaker 1: orkers have started to organize to strike and in general
Speaker 1: to demand better conditions. Ken Klippenstein reports that some executives
Speaker 1: are outright admitting that they hope FED policy will discipline
Speaker 1: workers into accepting the shitty deals that they've had to
Speaker 1: put up with for decades. When real estate CEO openly
Speaker 1: admitted that quote, a recession could be good for the
Speaker 1: commercial real estate business if it comes with the level
Speaker 1: of unemployment that puts employers back in the driver's seat
Speaker 1: and allows them to get all their employees back into
Speaker 1: the office. Second, there's an even uglier trend to just
Speaker 1: accept the pronouncements of the FED as if they are
Speaker 1: being handed down from on high. In this view, the
Speaker 1: FED policy makers are just quants analyzing data and calling
Speaker 1: balls and strikes. This is absurd. Monetary policy is just
Speaker 1: as subject to politics, ideological capture, and just human beings
Speaker 1: making big mistakes as any other body. They should be questioned,
Speaker 1: They should be questioned vigorously and the public should feel
Speaker 1: empowered to have an opinion on FED policy, since few
Speaker 1: things more directly impact their lives. But the language around
Speaker 1: monetary policy has been made intentionally opaque and confusing to
Speaker 1: keep that rogue element the people from feeling like they
Speaker 1: understand enough in order to have a say, Which brings
Speaker 1: me to another piece of the professor's commentary here, where
Speaker 1: he absolutely trashes the idea that wages are to blame
Speaker 1: for inflation. Let's listen to that part. We're saying, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, he's the god that's going to stop inflation,
Speaker 1: and he's going to crush the wages which have not
Speaker 1: kept which have fallen behind inflation by three four five percent.
Speaker 1: You can have cost push inflation when you're lagging inflation.
Speaker 1: You can't blame wages for inflation when they're two three
Speaker 1: four five percent behind inflation. I mean, he said, why
Speaker 1: is he putting the burden on the on these working people?
Speaker 1: They employed people, that's I mean, and every other commodity
Speaker 1: price is going down. Here he explodes a gigantic Washington
Speaker 1: myth that the real problem with inflation is that costs
Speaker 1: her up translation, workers are earning too much. This is nonsense. Yes,
Speaker 1: wages have gone up, not nearly enough to keep up
Speaker 1: with the cost of inflation. It's not the workers so
Speaker 1: need to be disciplined. It's the corporations which have used
Speaker 1: inflation as an excuse to jack up their prices and
Speaker 1: gain massive profit margins. When you account for inflation, real
Speaker 1: wages have declined. They have gone down every single month
Speaker 1: since April of twenty twenty one. Let me show you
Speaker 1: what wages look like this year. That top blue line
Speaker 1: you see there, that's prices. They have gone up and
Speaker 1: up wages before inflation, what economists would call nominal wages.
Speaker 1: They go up as well, but not nearly as fast
Speaker 1: as prices. That leaves real wages that would be the
Speaker 1: dark red line that you see there, actually going down
Speaker 1: once you consider rising prices. Average workers have gotten a
Speaker 1: pay cut every single month for more than a year. So,
Speaker 1: as a professor asked, how does it make any sense
Speaker 1: to blame wages for inflation when wages have done nothing
Speaker 1: ultimately but decline. Another key part of Seagull's argument here
Speaker 1: is that the Fed is admitting that what they are
Speaker 1: doing will take a while to fully hit, but they
Speaker 1: are still fully moving full steam ahead anyway. Knowing that
Speaker 1: they could easily overshoot and trigger an absolute catastrophe. Here's
Speaker 1: that portion he admitted, you know, there's long legs. Well,
Speaker 1: if he keeps as tight as he looked at every
Speaker 1: market indicator, the dour, the commodities, real rates, the money's
Speaker 1: why everything is showing one of the tightest feds or
Speaker 1: intentions of FEDS that we've ever had. So he says so,
Speaker 1: and he says it worked with the lag. Well, if
Speaker 1: he stays this way through twenty twenty three, you can,
Speaker 1: you know, babe, make sure that there's a major recession
Speaker 1: on the other side, a major recession on the other side.
Speaker 1: Here's a few of the indicators that Siegull mentions that
Speaker 1: he implores Pal to take a look at. He points
Speaker 1: to the Dow, which fell massively on Friday continued its
Speaker 1: slide on Monday as well. It's not just the US markets,
Speaker 1: though global markets also plunged, as Pal showed no sign
Speaker 1: whatsoever easing up on the Fed's aggressive moves, Siegel mentions
Speaker 1: commodities and hero can take a look at the oil markets,
Speaker 1: where prices have continued to fall down to a nine
Speaker 1: month low. Now, of course, it's a very good thing
Speaker 1: if it translates to what you pay at the pump.
Speaker 1: But as we know, oil prices and gas prices at
Speaker 1: the pump don't move in anything close to lockstep. Siegel's
Speaker 1: point is that if your goal is a soft landing
Speaker 1: to carbon inflation without triggering a recession, the warning lights
Speaker 1: are flashing red that you are already overshooting the mark,
Speaker 1: and yet the FED is just continuing aggressively in the
Speaker 1: same direction. Another portion of the interview, he talks about
Speaker 1: housing market downturn. The fact that you have now millions
Speaker 1: of new workers and jobs with GDP actually going down,
Speaker 1: all signs that the hawkash FED policy is really starting
Speaker 1: to bite, and that it may already be too late
Speaker 1: to avoid the major recession that the press professor is
Speaker 1: urgently warning about. This appearance was so remarkable to me
Speaker 1: because the words of warning being sounded here are so
Speaker 1: incredibly rare to be heard anywhere, or at least those
Speaker 1: voices of ascent so rarely really get a hearing. We
Speaker 1: would all do well to listen. Pretty remarkable moment there
Speaker 1: on CNBC is a long man, and if you want
Speaker 1: to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium
Speaker 1: subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot Com. Joining us now is
Speaker 1: great friend, very special friend, the original friend, perhaps the
Speaker 1: best friend of the show. Glenn Greenwald, It's great to
Speaker 1: see you, sir. Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. I accept all of those titles. I think
Speaker 1: they're all appropriate, and I appreciate the magation. Well to
Speaker 1: see your face and be the subject of your mockery again,
Speaker 1: Glenn oways, real, mush, it's been it's been far, far
Speaker 1: too long. One of the reasons we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to you, Glenn, on top of just checking in in general,
Speaker 1: let's put this up there on the screen. President Putin
Speaker 1: yesterday granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden. Now, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot made of this by the US media as
Speaker 1: some evidence that snowed In himself is like further a trader,
Speaker 1: as if he himself should be pushed to the front
Speaker 1: line by Putin. What did you make of this move?
Speaker 1: And and then the general treatment by the Western media
Speaker 1: of this obvious stunt by Putin. So first of all,
Speaker 1: just look at the framing of this, Like Putin grants
Speaker 1: citizenship to Snowden. This happens all the time. Whenever the
Speaker 1: US media wants you to hate a particular country, they
Speaker 1: start personalizing everything to the leader. When we wanted to
Speaker 1: invade a rocket ceas being Rock did this, Orrock did that,
Speaker 1: everything was Saddam did the same. With the war in Yugoslavia,
Speaker 1: it was no longer Servia does this, it was Melosovich
Speaker 1: does this. They always personalize it on a particular leader,
Speaker 1: as though now Putin is sitting in the immigration office
Speaker 1: as an immigration clerk reviewing Snowden's application for citizenship and
Speaker 1: stamping it approved. Of course it's done in the name
Speaker 1: of Putin. So many documents are signed by Joe Biden
Speaker 1: that he wouldn't have the capability to even read, let
Speaker 1: alone analyze and process. But that's already the framing. Snowden
Speaker 1: has lived in Russia for nine years now. He lives
Speaker 1: there with his American wife and their two young toddlers.
Speaker 1: And the reason they're of course, is because the US
Speaker 1: government has made clear that if he steps one inch
Speaker 1: outside of Russia, they will arrest him and prosecute him
Speaker 1: and imprison him for the rest of his life under
Speaker 1: the Espionage Act of nineteen seventeen. So all this is
Speaker 1: is the natural byproduct of living in a country for
Speaker 1: a long enough time. I've lived in Brazil seventeen years.
Speaker 1: I'm eligible for citizenship with my family. And yet the
Speaker 1: American media tried to depict this as some cunning move
Speaker 1: on the part of Putin and wors some sinister evidence
Speaker 1: that it means snowed In all along was a Russian spy.
Speaker 1: I want to pick back up on Stone, but first
Speaker 1: I actually want to ask you more about that point
Speaker 1: about like personalizing the governments, because I think that's interesting
Speaker 1: because I actually try to when we're covering Russia talk
Speaker 1: about the Kremlin or talk about Putin versus Russia as
Speaker 1: a whole, because when you're dealing with the basically authoritarian system,
Speaker 1: I sort of want to intentionally separate, separate out the
Speaker 1: ordinary citizens who may or may not support what's going on,
Speaker 1: or may or may not understand what's going on, versus
Speaker 1: the leadership, like the elites who are actually, you know,
Speaker 1: running the show. Do you think there's an argument for
Speaker 1: that or like how do you see those things in
Speaker 1: the language there and its importance? Yeah, I mean, for sure,
Speaker 1: Russia is an authoritarian and an autocratic regime. A lot
Speaker 1: of countries in the world are, but it's also a
Speaker 1: complex country of seventy million people or so. It has
Speaker 1: all kinds of different power centers and factions and competing interests.
Speaker 1: The same is true. You know of almost any country
Speaker 1: that you talk about where there's this extremely exaggerated attempt
Speaker 1: to depict it as this like totalitarian regime, when maybe
Speaker 1: North Korea and a handful of other small countries really
Speaker 1: are appropriately characterized that way. There's all kinds of interest
Speaker 1: In Russia, there's lots of divided public opinions. Putin does
Speaker 1: have a lot of support, as does the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's because of our propagandized media. Surely that is
Speaker 1: part of it. But I think it's just so overly
Speaker 1: simplified the way that the Western media ends up talking
Speaker 1: about the entries that we're supposed to hate. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's true, very important. I wanted to get your
Speaker 1: response to what Snowden himself tweeted. In response. He said,
Speaker 1: after years of separation from our parents, my wife and
Speaker 1: I have no desire to be separated from our sons.
Speaker 1: After two years of waiting, nearly ten years of exile,
Speaker 1: a little stability will make a difference. For my family.
Speaker 1: I pray for privacy for them and for us all
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is the key point in
Speaker 1: Crystal is Let's go back and just remember because before
Speaker 1: this obsession with Russia completely consumed American discourse in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: every major media outlet fought to publish and report on
Speaker 1: the Snowden documents, and virtually every major media outlet throughout
Speaker 1: the West did so. Obviously the Guardian in the Washington
Speaker 1: Post when a pullets are for it, but the New
Speaker 1: York Times fought for those documents. I remember getting badgered
Speaker 1: by all their reporters for access to the archive. Globo
Speaker 1: and Brazil, Lamond in France, Elmlundo in Spain. All over
Speaker 1: the Western world, people were competing to be able to
Speaker 1: report these documents because they revealed an incredibly newsworthy story,
Speaker 1: which was especially here in the United States. Many of
Speaker 1: the spying programs that were instituted that were on terror
Speaker 1: then and then increased radically under the Obama administration were
Speaker 1: found by courts to be unconstitutional and illegal. So what
Speaker 1: American would be so surf like in their mentality as
Speaker 1: to believe that that's not a positive thing. And yet
Speaker 1: in response to that, the US government has done nothing
Speaker 1: but try to imprison Snowden for eight years. And as
Speaker 1: he says, he has a family, an American wife, American children.
Speaker 1: He's always said he wanted to come back to the
Speaker 1: United States, and so yes, he does need stability because
Speaker 1: he can't leave that country, and citizenship is a way
Speaker 1: that gives him and his family that stability into trying
Speaker 1: to depict it as something nefarious on his part, when
Speaker 1: in reality the fault lies with the Obama administration that
Speaker 1: went after whistleblowers using this one hundred year old repressive
Speaker 1: statute more than any other administration in history. I think
Speaker 1: is really misguided. And Glenn, when you pointed out on
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, which I thought was completely crazy, was
Speaker 1: that they described Snowden as just an intelligence leaker, which
Speaker 1: was floated by Matt Taibi, but also described him as
Speaker 1: quote who considers himself a whistleblower. And as you pointed
Speaker 1: out that, it's especially weird because they shared that Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize for helping report on some of the Snowden documents
Speaker 1: at the time and considered it worthy not that long
Speaker 1: ago in twenty fourteen. I mean, the Washington Post could
Speaker 1: not keep enough praise on themselves and their courage for
Speaker 1: the work they did on Snowden documents, when in reality,
Speaker 1: the Washington Post was too scared to even allow the
Speaker 1: reporters to go visit Snowden in Hong Kong. The way
Speaker 1: more poortrass than I did. The story kind of fell
Speaker 1: into their lap. He never chose to work with them,
Speaker 1: but they exploited those documents to their benefit. And the
Speaker 1: amazing thing is Sager. Two years afterward, when the New
Speaker 1: York Time is calling for Snowden to be pardon, the
Speaker 1: Washington Post editorialized against a pardon for their own source,
Speaker 1: advocating of their own source be in prison. And their
Speaker 1: argument was that Snowden's documents weren't just about domestic spying,
Speaker 1: but also spying in other countries. But let's remember, all
Speaker 1: of the choices that were made about which Snowden documents
Speaker 1: would be concealed and which ones would be published weren't
Speaker 1: made by Snowden, but were made by the newspapers with
Speaker 1: whom he worked. And the Washington Post did more than
Speaker 1: any other media outlet, way more than I did, in
Speaker 1: publishing documents about how the US is spying another countries,
Speaker 1: So it was they who revealed those secrets, not Snowden,
Speaker 1: and then turned around and used their own behavior as
Speaker 1: a way of arguing that he shouldn't get a pardon.
Speaker 1: Where do you think that this ideological positioning of the
Speaker 1: Washington Post comes from. Does it represent a break with
Speaker 1: past traditions or a continuation of a long tradition that
Speaker 1: perhaps was temporarily broken so that they could mask in
Speaker 1: the limeline of prizes from reporting on the certain documents.
Speaker 1: So I've never been somebody who thought that the corporate
Speaker 1: media is quote unquote liberal, nor did I ever think
Speaker 1: they were conservative. I believe the ideology of the corporate
Speaker 1: media is pro establishment, and in particular, they're particularly deferential
Speaker 1: when it comes to the US security state and all
Speaker 1: the stories that we've seen over the last twenty years
Speaker 1: that receive so much criticism, from the Iraq War to
Speaker 1: Russia Gate to the two thousand and eight financial prices.
Speaker 1: We're all about these media outlets being completely subservient to
Speaker 1: ruling elite power centers, and the reason why media outlets
Speaker 1: dislike Snowden and Assonge and so many people like them,
Speaker 1: even though those people are the ones enabling journalists to
Speaker 1: do the job they claim they're there to do. Is
Speaker 1: because their sources inside the CIA and the FBI and
Speaker 1: the Justice Department in the White House hates Snowden massage
Speaker 1: and therefore they just reflect reflexively those same biases. That
Speaker 1: is what these media outlets are for, right, And I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the future here for Snowden? And just by the
Speaker 1: Biden administration, I saw I don't know if he saw
Speaker 1: this yesterday, Glenn, but the White House referred all questions
Speaker 1: on Sowe citizen to the DOJ, indicating that the prosecution,
Speaker 1: the current policy continues under this administration, which was considered
Speaker 1: I mean extreme even at the time under the Obama
Speaker 1: administration when they were also in charge. You know, let
Speaker 1: me just use your question, Stager to make two points
Speaker 1: that are actually related. One is that this whole idea
Speaker 1: of Snowden being in Russia and the way they used
Speaker 1: that to suggest he was a Russian spy. Let's remember
Speaker 1: that he didn't choose in the first instance to go
Speaker 1: to Moscow. He went to Hong Kong, and he was
Speaker 1: there when he contacted us. And at the time. You
Speaker 1: can go back and read the same stories from the
Speaker 1: same outlets we're accusing him of being a Chinese spy.
Speaker 1: Why if he were a Russian spy, would he have
Speaker 1: gone and to Hong Kong and called us there instead
Speaker 1: of to Moscow in the first instance. But the more
Speaker 1: important point is when he left Hong Kong, he was
Speaker 1: trying to get everybody knows to Ecuador and Bolivia, where
Speaker 1: he was going to ask for and receive asylum the way.
Speaker 1: Ecuador had given asylum to a songe and he had
Speaker 1: to transit through Moscow on his way to Havana, and
Speaker 1: the Obama administration, led by Joe Biden, did everything possible
Speaker 1: to block him from leaving Moscow. Ben Rhoades Boasted bragged
Speaker 1: in his own book about he called the Cubans and said,
Speaker 1: if you want us to lift this embargo, if you
Speaker 1: want to have better relations with us, you better not
Speaker 1: do anything to help Edward Snowden get out of Moscow,
Speaker 1: because if you do, there'll be no political space to
Speaker 1: do it. The reason he's in Russia isn't because he
Speaker 1: chose to be. It's because the Obama administration forced him
Speaker 1: to be precisely so that they could turn around and
Speaker 1: get morons to think, oh well, if he's in Russia,
Speaker 1: he must be a Kremlin spy. And that is the problem.
Speaker 1: Is it was the Trump administration considering actively pardoning snowd in.
Speaker 1: I think it was one of Trump's more cowardly moves
Speaker 1: not to have done that. The reason he didn't was
Speaker 1: because the second impeachment trial was hanging over his head
Speaker 1: and Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham made clear and Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 1: if you pardon Snowden, we're going to vote for your
Speaker 1: own impeachment. But he didn't. And now the Biden administration
Speaker 1: was a part of the Obama administration, is continuing this
Speaker 1: repressive attack on whistleblowers that led to Snowen not being
Speaker 1: able to come back to the United States in the
Speaker 1: first place. I had never heard that before, Glenn, that
Speaker 1: there was a threat from Rubio and Graham and some
Speaker 1: of the more like hawkish pro security state Republicans to
Speaker 1: potentially vote to convict Trump in that impeachment hearing over Snowden.
Speaker 1: Is there just explain that a little bit more to me,
Speaker 1: because that's a new piece of information for me. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously I was somebody who was working very
Speaker 1: actively both publicly advocating, but also in private doing everything
Speaker 1: it could to secure a part in for both Massage
Speaker 1: and Snowden, snowed In being my sores and as Songe
Speaker 1: being someone I regarded as heroic, And there was real
Speaker 1: movement inside the Trump administration to give particularly Snowden a pardon.
Speaker 1: It came much closer to Snowden than they did to Assange.
Speaker 1: And if you think about it, why would they have
Speaker 1: initiated an impeachment proceeding against a president who within a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks was on his way out. And the reason, Crystal,
Speaker 1: was that they were very afraid that on his way out,
Speaker 1: Trump was going to do a bunch of stuff, including
Speaker 1: not just giving pardons to Snowden and Orssange, but also
Speaker 1: declassify all kinds of documents he had been threatening to
Speaker 1: declassify about the CIA, about the Kennedy assassination. And the
Speaker 1: only leverage they had against Trump doing what they considered
Speaker 1: crazy stuff on his way out was the second impeachment trial,
Speaker 1: and they explicitly communicated to Trump multiple Republican kind of
Speaker 1: hawk as senators did that if you do what we
Speaker 1: know you're thinking about doing what Ram Paul and Matt
Speaker 1: Gates and others were encouraging him to do, which was
Speaker 1: part in Snowden, that will severely jeopardize your chances of
Speaker 1: getting out of this impeachment trial with an acquittal. And
Speaker 1: that was the kind of sword of damoclets hanging over
Speaker 1: his head during that transition. Does that relate to the
Speaker 1: documents that he then takes tomorrow lago? Because there's some
Speaker 1: reporting that the documents that he took there were you know,
Speaker 1: related to Russiagate. They were things that you know, he
Speaker 1: had flirted with declassifying before but didn't for whatever reason.
Speaker 1: Do you know if there's a connect there. What I
Speaker 1: know for sure is that Trump was threatening to declassify
Speaker 1: all those documents were writing to Russigate because Trump believes,
Speaker 1: I think with a lot of validity, that there were
Speaker 1: crimes committed, or at least ethical transgressions committed during the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen election to create and manufacture Rushigate. It came
Speaker 1: out of the CIA, And I don't know exactly which
Speaker 1: documents he took. Nobody really knows exactly which documents he took,
Speaker 1: but it certainly seems to align with everything I knew
Speaker 1: at the time, which was that Trump wanted those documents
Speaker 1: public had the power to declassify them, and now his
Speaker 1: defenses that he did. I'm not saying that those were
Speaker 1: the only doctor you mean, Seetoki probably took a bunch
Speaker 1: being Trump just kind of did it all recklessly. But
Speaker 1: I would think there's certainly a relationship between his belief
Speaker 1: that documents were being hidden that should be seen and
Speaker 1: his decision to remove a lot of documents out of
Speaker 1: the White House tomorrow. Largro Yeah, that corresponds with some
Speaker 1: of the reporting that Ken Klippenstein, for example, has been doing. Well.
Speaker 1: We covered a lot more ground than I even expected
Speaker 1: us to get to a lot of interesting revelations there, Glenn.
Speaker 1: It's I'm genuinely great to see you. Thank you, Jemin sir,
Speaker 1: thank you. Yeah, I con grat send your success. Always
Speaker 1: have me to come back anytime. Absolutely, thanks very much
Speaker 1: you guys. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate it. As we said, tickets around sale
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