Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
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Speaker 1: Breakingpoints dot Com. Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday. We have
Speaker 1: an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have Crystal? Indeed,
Speaker 1: we do lots of big stories breaking this morning. And also,
Speaker 1: by the way, guys, nice to be back home. Everybody happy,
Speaker 1: lovely Thanksgiving. So mass protests all across China. We will
Speaker 1: tell you everything we know about that and what the
Speaker 1: fallout from that could ultimately be. This is mostly around
Speaker 1: their continued insane COVID zero authoritarian policies, so we will
Speaker 1: break that down for you. Also, all the latest about
Speaker 1: Trump's dinner companions, Nick Fuentes, Kanye West, Ando Milo, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, it's the whole thing. We have to talk
Speaker 1: about it. And also interestingly who is saying anything about
Speaker 1: it on the Republican side, who is not. That's maybe
Speaker 1: the most revealing part of all of this. Trump doing
Speaker 1: insane shit at this point is no real surprise. Also,
Speaker 1: the very latest out of Ukraine where winter is setting
Speaker 1: in and blackouts are roiling that country. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very disturbing and distressing situation there. We also
Speaker 1: have some news with regards to Venezuela and oil. This
Speaker 1: one has been a long time coming. What is that
Speaker 1: going to mean in terms of your price at the pump?
Speaker 1: And we also got a little fun Taylor Lorenz updates
Speaker 1: for you. Her reaction to everything going on in China
Speaker 1: is really quite something. We also have our own little
Speaker 1: news about FIFA and little issue with FIFA coming directly
Speaker 1: from us. But before we get to any of that
Speaker 1: live show, live show, put it up there on the screen, guys.
Speaker 1: That's right, December sixth and December seventh, New York City
Speaker 1: and Boston. As we said, we really want to sell
Speaker 1: those theaters out, so we've got tickets down in the description.
Speaker 1: We've got that fun meet and greet schedule with all
Speaker 1: our VIPs and our lifetime members who are currently having
Speaker 1: their tickets reimbursed. Just to get a reminder, we will
Speaker 1: reimburse the full cost of those tickets for our lifetime members.
Speaker 1: That reimbursement will come after the show. But go and
Speaker 1: buy those tickets. We're excited and we've got some good plans. Marshall,
Speaker 1: Kyle will be in the house. We've got some multimedia,
Speaker 1: et cetera. So it's gonna be totally different than Boston.
Speaker 1: So then what was the right Atlanta and Chicaga. He's
Speaker 1: all blent together. He's all blent together. But with that,
Speaker 1: let's get to the show. And with China. Some really
Speaker 1: just remarkable stuff coming out of China that was sparked,
Speaker 1: it seems by a fire in Jinjan. So let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. Protests have
Speaker 1: erupted now across the entire country, but appear to have
Speaker 1: originated over anger of what happened in I. Apologies for
Speaker 1: my pronunciation throughout this entire show, Urimki, I do not
Speaker 1: speak fluent Turkic. Apologies for that. Now, there was the
Speaker 1: fire engine Jang's Capital in an apartment building after fourteen
Speaker 1: people were killed and appeared to have difficulty exiting the building.
Speaker 1: The reason why this connects to the COVID lockdowns is
Speaker 1: that across Chinese social media we chat and elsewhere, there
Speaker 1: were videos circulating and immediate speculation that and I did
Speaker 1: not even know to the extent of what zero COVID
Speaker 1: means there beyond the insanity that we did. Christal, if
Speaker 1: you are living on an apartment block where there's somebody
Speaker 1: that tested posit for COVID, not only do they lock
Speaker 1: you down, they actually put barricades up in the staircases
Speaker 1: and to prevent you from actually leaving the apartment. So
Speaker 1: whenever a fire breaks out in a shoddily constructed apartment building,
Speaker 1: people die because they literally can't get out. And of
Speaker 1: course it's a very crowded country anyway, this hit a
Speaker 1: nerve across the entire country, sparking protests really, you know,
Speaker 1: both in some of the major cities in Beijing, Beijing
Speaker 1: and in Shanghai. It has been some of the major
Speaker 1: areas of protest. Shanghai in particular. The reason why it
Speaker 1: matters is because the protesters were actually gathering on a
Speaker 1: street called Rimky Street, which is named after the capital
Speaker 1: in Jinjang is kind of like a one China policy
Speaker 1: and protesters gathered there, shouting and the lockdown just widespread anger,
Speaker 1: even some Chinese citizens speaking to Western journalists on the street.
Speaker 1: I think it's important here that we parse exactly what's
Speaker 1: going on. Is this like an uprising against Chinese socialism? No,
Speaker 1: this really is an uprising against zero COVID. Also, because
Speaker 1: it's China, we have very limited view into how widespread
Speaker 1: these are, what they are, the level of support they
Speaker 1: have within the domestic populace. What we can say is
Speaker 1: that some several thousand people do appear who have had
Speaker 1: completely enough with being locked down and an ongoing commitment
Speaker 1: by the CCP to zero COVID. They have not issued
Speaker 1: any public statement either against for or listening to the
Speaker 1: protesters as of yet so far, and we're going to
Speaker 1: go into a little bit into what their expected response
Speaker 1: will be. Yeah, and so as always when we cover
Speaker 1: international protests, especially in countries that are repressive and where
Speaker 1: we don't have, you know, total freedom of the press,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to tell exactly, like you said, how widespread,
Speaker 1: how significant, how much of the population supports the sentiment,
Speaker 1: what does it mean, How much of a threat does
Speaker 1: it really represent for the government in power? So all
Speaker 1: of those caveats on the table. Financial Times has a
Speaker 1: piece out this morning talking about what makes these protests different,
Speaker 1: because it's not like there's been zero protests in China,
Speaker 1: but typically it's been limited to a single local issue,
Speaker 1: so maybe like working conditions at one factory. What makes
Speaker 1: this different is that you have a sort of uniting
Speaker 1: national cause and you have protests that are spreading across regions,
Speaker 1: you know, all the way across China, and that's what
Speaker 1: really makes this quite significant and quite different than what
Speaker 1: we have ultimately seen in the past. By the way,
Speaker 1: some of these protests have already borne fruit. You had
Speaker 1: some places where people heard that there were COVID lockdowns
Speaker 1: that were coming into place, they protested, they went to
Speaker 1: their local government, and some of those things got rolled back.
Speaker 1: So it shows you that even in an authoritarian country,
Speaker 1: you still have to worry about the social contract that
Speaker 1: you have with your domestic populace. And right now that
Speaker 1: seems to be very very afraid. The other contexts here,
Speaker 1: and we can put this next piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: Why now, why did this spark of the apartment fire
Speaker 1: and the deaths there from people who are trapped inside
Speaker 1: because of zero COVID. Why is this really touching such
Speaker 1: a nerve across country the country, And it really is
Speaker 1: because you now have another surge of COVID cases. So
Speaker 1: people are looking again at like, my god, we're going
Speaker 1: to go back to these incredibly stringent authoritarian restrictions and
Speaker 1: total total lockdown. And so I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the important context of why right now they say that,
Speaker 1: you know, confrontations have already erupted in a few locations.
Speaker 1: Had at a fox con plant in central China that
Speaker 1: makes the world's iPhones, there were confrontations there, and then
Speaker 1: it is spread across the country. Part of the issue
Speaker 1: here at Sager, as we've covered before, only forty percent
Speaker 1: of Chinese citizens over the age of eighty have received
Speaker 1: a booster shot, and the vaccines, the Sinovac made in
Speaker 1: China vaccine less effective than some of the international mRNA vaccines.
Speaker 1: But as like a matter of national pride, they don't
Speaker 1: want to go to the international market. They don't have
Speaker 1: the levels of natural immunity that other countries around the
Speaker 1: world do, and so they really are in this sort
Speaker 1: of disastrous situation because of choices they've made all the
Speaker 1: way along that if they did totally open up. They
Speaker 1: have a very vulnerable elderly population that could be hit
Speaker 1: really hard and die in large numbers if they did
Speaker 1: just say like, ah, we just got to open the
Speaker 1: game kind of played itself on multiple levels. They were
Speaker 1: committed to zero cod even in the face of omicron
Speaker 1: where it's effectively impossible to do so they've had been
Speaker 1: the effective case now there for a year before that,
Speaker 1: they were still committed to total lockdown. They didn't encourage
Speaker 1: mass vaccine uptake. Also, it appears that a lot of
Speaker 1: the Chinese population, because they actually believed the CCP, were like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get vaccinated. I don't need protection
Speaker 1: because the Chinese government has got this. So now they're
Speaker 1: dealing with a variant what one thousand times more at
Speaker 1: this point, I don't even know what variant is circulating.
Speaker 1: But the point is is that it's nearly impossible to
Speaker 1: circumvent this in any way. And what they point to
Speaker 1: is that at this point, given the fact that you
Speaker 1: have vaccine scheduling that takes like a month or so
Speaker 1: out from that period, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: You can't just, you know, in the face of surging infections,
Speaker 1: especially with omicron, it's going to go much faster than
Speaker 1: any of your capacity to mass vaccinate the population. Almost
Speaker 1: two thirds you were saying the elderly and of people
Speaker 1: sixty plus have not taken the vaccine or even a booster.
Speaker 1: And look, you know, we've always said on the show,
Speaker 1: it's like, look, if you were in a vulnerable population,
Speaker 1: you should consider it. And over there they're actually giving
Speaker 1: them the option, which is you should stay home and
Speaker 1: stay locked down. But that is having massive impacts on
Speaker 1: the total society. I do also think it's important let's
Speaker 1: take this out of COVID, because at this point I
Speaker 1: don't even know if this is about COVID anymore. I think,
Speaker 1: and what I have read so far, is that the
Speaker 1: oppression is the point zero. COVID is the opportunity for
Speaker 1: the CCP to install cameras in every house that they
Speaker 1: want to, in every shop, to have QR codes, to
Speaker 1: keep total and complete track of every single Chinese citizen
Speaker 1: wherever they are, what they're doing, their access to work.
Speaker 1: It has become like the worst of the authoritarian nightmares
Speaker 1: that we could even dream of here in the US.
Speaker 1: And look in China, there has long been a social
Speaker 1: contract which is you accept like deep political repression, but
Speaker 1: we make you rich in the process. And so the
Speaker 1: problem though, is that zero COVID is now really implicating
Speaker 1: that trade off at a very basic level, because people
Speaker 1: are not getting rich. They're not only curtailing their social life.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are suffering economically also. You know,
Speaker 1: we remember the Shanghai lockdowns just a couple of months ago.
Speaker 1: People were going without food straight up. I mean they
Speaker 1: were literally unable to get food. So the most basic
Speaker 1: elements of Chinese society are beginning to chafe, but no
Speaker 1: signs yet the CCP is like willing to give in
Speaker 1: in any way. And the indications are that these protests
Speaker 1: really are among a broad swath of groups. It's students,
Speaker 1: it's laborers, it's all kinds of people who are participating
Speaker 1: in these protests. And I think what you said makes
Speaker 1: a lot of sense just in light of the fact,
Speaker 1: you know, our experience here, which you never want to
Speaker 1: project onto the rest of the world, but seems to
Speaker 1: be sort of a global phenomenon. Is COVID was just
Speaker 1: an accelerant. Yeah, like the trends that were already in place,
Speaker 1: you know, the breakdowns in the social contract that we're
Speaker 1: already starting to come apart. COVID was an accelerant, and
Speaker 1: COVID revealed a lot, and so I can imagine in
Speaker 1: that context it was also obviously an accelerant of the
Speaker 1: surveillance state, an accelerant of this sort of like brutal
Speaker 1: police state crackdown. And so while the core issue here,
Speaker 1: I mean, they definitely are chanting about COVID, they're talking
Speaker 1: about COVID zero. That clearly is the impetus the apartment fire,
Speaker 1: which they you know, appears those deaths were caused by
Speaker 1: zero COVID lockdown procedures. That is definitely the spark. But
Speaker 1: I do think that that is the sort of like
Speaker 1: deeper level concern that has to be you know, the
Speaker 1: most the most concerning for the regime and power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's go. We have a montage of photos videos
Speaker 1: from across the entire country. So these are all photos
Speaker 1: that we've been able to gather. This one is in
Speaker 1: Shanghai in particular, and while you're watching, what you can
Speaker 1: see there is the police, you know, just basically in
Speaker 1: a line trying to keep away. Everyone is showing blank
Speaker 1: pieces of paper both as a protest against censorship and
Speaker 1: against the lockdown. It's become, at least in the last
Speaker 1: couple of days, one of the universal ways that people
Speaker 1: are showing their discontent. While we play those photos, I'll
Speaker 1: just list off some of the cities. There's ten confirmed
Speaker 1: cities across the entire country Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, chang Dou,
Speaker 1: all massive cities, tens of millions of people who live there,
Speaker 1: all having widespread protests, or several other cities where this
Speaker 1: has gone ahead and broke down. Now, what we also
Speaker 1: see crystal is that the Beijing government is asking universities
Speaker 1: to send students home quote as soon as possible to
Speaker 1: quell further dissent on campuses. This is a long standing
Speaker 1: fear that universities represent kind of the you know, the
Speaker 1: epicenter of protests, especially with the scar of Tianum and Square.
Speaker 1: So right now you have Shingwa and Peking universities, some
Speaker 1: of the most prestigious universities in the entire country, who
Speaker 1: have hundreds of protests, who actually stag staging peaceful demonstrations
Speaker 1: there on campus. They are doing their best to empty
Speaker 1: those universities as soon as possible. And I just want
Speaker 1: to again caveat, which is at this point with China,
Speaker 1: we just do not have a lot of good information
Speaker 1: except in the massive urban centers where there are of
Speaker 1: course Westerners who are living outside of that. To what
Speaker 1: extent this is a phenomenon in the rest of rural China,
Speaker 1: where information and all that is very tightly controlled, it's
Speaker 1: pure speculation. We just genuinely have no idea. Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: and I mean the context, as we've also covered here, is,
Speaker 1: of course, she just appointed himself president for life. You know,
Speaker 1: appointed a bunch of really hardline loyalists, including as premier
Speaker 1: of the country. So the number two person was the
Speaker 1: dude who was in charge of the most stringent Shanghai
Speaker 1: lockdown procedures. And so you know, for a while at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic, like we were looking at
Speaker 1: envy at some of their cities which had been able
Speaker 1: to open up because they had had these incredibly strict,
Speaker 1: onerous lockdown procedures in the places where you had hotspots,
Speaker 1: and that's when you had a variant that was somewhat
Speaker 1: more containable. Now, so it was like, okay, well, we
Speaker 1: can sort of like force a minority of the population
Speaker 1: to have to deal with these horrific like this horrific
Speaker 1: temporary lifestyle so that the rest of the country can
Speaker 1: open up and do whatever we want now. Because the
Speaker 1: variants are so hard to contain, and because they are
Speaker 1: so infectious, you now have a bulk of the population
Speaker 1: that is potentially subject to these lockdown procedures. So I
Speaker 1: think that's part of what has flipped, as well, as
Speaker 1: you can no longer look at it as like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just contain the problem over here and the rest
Speaker 1: of us can go on living our lives. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: nobody can go on living their lives. We are all
Speaker 1: a day or an hour or a week away from
Speaker 1: being locked into our apartments again and worrying about whether
Speaker 1: we have enough food teat right, especially more than two
Speaker 1: years later. So let's get to that part. What is
Speaker 1: China going to do? Is an interesting tweet from a
Speaker 1: guy who lived in China for thirty years. Put it
Speaker 1: up there on the screen, David Moser. He's a sinologist.
Speaker 1: He says, quote, I have lived in China for thirty years.
Speaker 1: I have never seen such brazenly open, sustained expression of rage.
Speaker 1: We Chat is exploding with protest videos and furious fiturell
Speaker 1: civil disobedience is becoming rampant. This is a serious test
Speaker 1: of CCP governance, and of course the question comes, what
Speaker 1: are they going to do. Well, so far, they've done
Speaker 1: what they mostly do best, which is using force against
Speaker 1: these lockdown protesters. Let's go ahead and put this one
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. You can actually see this
Speaker 1: video and shows a man you know, standing in front
Speaker 1: of a police car basically you know, the van being
Speaker 1: used to press and harassed protesters. And across the entire
Speaker 1: country you're seeing mass you know, arrests. Here, you're seeing
Speaker 1: a violent takedown of I think he was an older man.
Speaker 1: It's a difficult to tell, but you can see very
Speaker 1: forcibly restrained. This is something that you had seen all
Speaker 1: across China being drug off to god knows where and
Speaker 1: for what exactly will happen to him, which is really
Speaker 1: the scariest point about all of this, and unfortunately it
Speaker 1: really confirms Schieshi Ping's central governance and the way that
Speaker 1: he has handled almost all protests. So let's go put
Speaker 1: the next one up there. I thought it was important
Speaker 1: to highlight this, which is look, she really was tested
Speaker 1: the first time with mass protests in Hong Kong after
Speaker 1: the pass of that Hong Kong Special Law, which effectively
Speaker 1: gave the CCP more control and their ability to govern
Speaker 1: Hong Kong, you know, with outside of the whole one country,
Speaker 1: two systems, the crackdown that happened on Hong Kong throughout
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen and then beginning of COVID and leading to
Speaker 1: effectively a full scale crackdown not only a rest of
Speaker 1: anybody in the press, but any protesters in the street,
Speaker 1: moving the military in. There's a lot of theory crystal
Speaker 1: that if COVID had not happened, that they would have
Speaker 1: done a Tiannaman level a takeover of Hong Kong, because
Speaker 1: I mean, I actually remember covering it with you at
Speaker 1: the time. Remember all those photos of convoys of military
Speaker 1: and police moving from all across the country towards Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: That is a central lesson for Shishingping. And he can
Speaker 1: take away from it and say, hey, it worked. It
Speaker 1: was painful. We got criticized in the press in the
Speaker 1: West elsewhere, but at the end of the day, we
Speaker 1: took Hong Kong and now we fully and tightly control
Speaker 1: it under the boot and unfortunately, this is a lesson
Speaker 1: that he has internalized for a long time from his youth.
Speaker 1: Let's put this final one up there, because I think
Speaker 1: this is important. I remember reading it at the time.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to highlight. It's called Sheshingping's Tianeman
Speaker 1: Family Lessons, and he says one of the things that
Speaker 1: he learned from his father quote is that the party
Speaker 1: comes first, and that his experience of Tiannaman and Square
Speaker 1: where really of protests in general, is that he sees
Speaker 1: protests as quote chaos. He says, quote she sees the
Speaker 1: student protest as chaos, similar to the destruction of the
Speaker 1: Cultural Revolution. The Gi family suffered terribly during Mao Zedong's
Speaker 1: campaign and the resulting political turmoil. His father was kidnapped
Speaker 1: by Red guars and forcibly brought to Xian, where he
Speaker 1: was subjected to struggle sessions and later incarcerated in the capitol.
Speaker 1: Shishingping was even berated for his father's supposed failings as
Speaker 1: a class enemy. So the scars of the Cultural Revolution
Speaker 1: and of such an immense fear of chaos is effectively
Speaker 1: what led to the Tanaman Square massacre in the first place.
Speaker 1: It was the lesson that g has internalized for Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, I do think, you know, given everything that
Speaker 1: we see right now, the CCP always reaches for more oppression,
Speaker 1: for more control, and all at the liberty of use
Speaker 1: of force that they have a complete monopoly on in
Speaker 1: their country. I mean, the next Chief Executive of Hong
Speaker 1: Kong that they appointed as literally a cop who yes
Speaker 1: the charge with cracking down on the protester, just to
Speaker 1: give you a sense, and so the visit there is
Speaker 1: incredibly symbolically significant. I mean, it's a victory lap. It's
Speaker 1: a show to the international community of look, this is
Speaker 1: what we did, and we really don't care what you
Speaker 1: had to say about it. And so, you know, I
Speaker 1: think China is in a very tough place. The Chinese
Speaker 1: government is in a very tough place about how exactly
Speaker 1: they get out of COVID zero, how exactly they move forward,
Speaker 1: just because of what they have done up to this point,
Speaker 1: allowing people to believe they could rely on the zero
Speaker 1: COVID policies that they don't have to get vaccinated, leaning
Speaker 1: almost exclusively on a sinovac vaccine that is less effective.
Speaker 1: And so now you're in this situation where they're sort
Speaker 1: of damned if they do and damned if they don't,
Speaker 1: and the population obviously getting extraordinarily restless. So listen, Obviously,
Speaker 1: China is an incredibly significant global player. The Biden administration
Speaker 1: has been, you know, following sort of in the footsteps
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration, reorienting our relationship towards China. These
Speaker 1: things have incredible glade global significance, and so that's why
Speaker 1: we're going to keep keeping an eye on to. I
Speaker 1: have no choice to could have massive implications. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: don't forget you know, countries that feel under the gun
Speaker 1: often do crazy and erroneous things. Just to ask Ukraine
Speaker 1: for what that looks like. Another important point that Matt
Speaker 1: Stoler has continued to make is that the Chinese government
Speaker 1: is set up for economic growth. They have not had
Speaker 1: an economic downturn since nineteen seventy six. The modern CCP
Speaker 1: is built on the back of eight percent annualized massive
Speaker 1: industrial growth. Well COVID the supply chain resulting global inflation
Speaker 1: and COVID lockdowns and COVID zero in particular, that's not happening.
Speaker 1: So for the very first time, their social contract is failing.
Speaker 1: What would they choose. Unfortunately, history tells us almost certainly
Speaker 1: they will choose oppression and violence, and that could, of
Speaker 1: course have major geopolitical implications. Well, and she has signaled
Speaker 1: as much that they're shifting from that extraordinary growth phase
Speaker 1: into a phase of sort of you know, certainly power consolidation,
Speaker 1: loyalty consolidation, and you know, moving forward with their Chinese
Speaker 1: nationalist project. So they were already moving in this direction,
Speaker 1: and COVID has certainly accelerated it. So we will see
Speaker 1: where we go from here. All right, turning to our
Speaker 1: own lovely domestic politics here. You've probably been following this.
Speaker 1: You know, Kanye has decided he's going to run for
Speaker 1: president twenty twenty four. He's been hanging out with Milo Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: He's been hanging out with this holocaust denier, right wing
Speaker 1: white supremacist dude called Nick Fuentes, and he made a
Speaker 1: trip down to mar A Lago to visit President Trump,
Speaker 1: former President Trump, where he apparently asked him to be
Speaker 1: his vice presidential running mate. Okay, and afterwards he dropped
Speaker 1: this little video which revealed it was not just Kanye
Speaker 1: and Trump who was having dinner that anti semitic white
Speaker 1: nationalist dude. Nick Fuentes was also at the table. Let's
Speaker 1: take a listen to the video that Kanye You put out.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that Trump was most perturbed about
Speaker 1: me asking him to be my vice president. I think
Speaker 1: that was like lower on the list of things that
Speaker 1: caught him off guard. It was the fact that I
Speaker 1: walked in with intelligence. So Trump is really impressed with
Speaker 1: Nick Fuentes. And Nick Fuentes unlike so many of the
Speaker 1: lawyers and so many people that he was left with
Speaker 1: on his twenty twenty campaign, He's actually a loyalist. When
Speaker 1: he didn't know what the lawyers is, You'll still have
Speaker 1: your lawyer list, and when all the lawyers said forget it,
Speaker 1: Trump's done. They're a loyalists running up in the White House, right.
Speaker 1: And my question would be, why, when you had the chance,
Speaker 1: did you not free the January six ers. And I
Speaker 1: came to him as someone who loves Trump, and I said,
Speaker 1: go and get Corey back, Go and get these people
Speaker 1: that the media tried to cancel and told you to
Speaker 1: step away from. He basically gives me this would be
Speaker 1: mob esque kind of story talking to some kid from
Speaker 1: the South Side of Chicago trying to sound Moby or whatever.
Speaker 1: He goes into the story about all that he went
Speaker 1: through to get Alice Johnson out of jail and how
Speaker 1: he didn't do it for Kim, but he did it
Speaker 1: for me. But then he goes on to say that
Speaker 1: Kim is it. You could tell her I said that,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, like, that's the mother of my children.
Speaker 1: Since we know and all the Christians in America that
Speaker 1: love Trump know that Trump is a conservative, We're going
Speaker 1: to demand that you hold all policies directly to the Bible.
Speaker 1: When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table,
Speaker 1: telling me I was going to lose. I mean, has
Speaker 1: that ever worked for anyone in history? Telling me, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: hol on, Trump, you're talking to ya. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot to say about this. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 1: let's not forget Kanye ran for president last time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: missed the ballot deadlines. I mean, immediately launches and is
Speaker 1: having public meltdowns. I mean, this is a man who
Speaker 1: clearly has entreated mount to illness, which is an important
Speaker 1: context for this whole story. So there's that he got
Speaker 1: I think sixty thousand votes, not a really strong showing ultimately,
Speaker 1: but you know, he's been a sort of Trump hangarund
Speaker 1: there was a big White House visit. He's been a
Speaker 1: fan of Trump's all that stuff. He's been embraced by
Speaker 1: a lot of right wing figures because of that, even
Speaker 1: as lately he's been just going all in on this
Speaker 1: anti Semitic it's, you know, going into every like stereotypical
Speaker 1: trope about the Jewish people that you possibly could. So
Speaker 1: there's been a bit of a distancing there. So already
Speaker 1: just Kanye going to Mara a Lago is already not
Speaker 1: advisable at this point. Right then you add into the
Speaker 1: mix Nick Fuentes, and this turns into obviously people going like,
Speaker 1: what the hell are you thinking about here? Former President Trump,
Speaker 1: who has just announced his reelect. So, as he does,
Speaker 1: he takes a truth Social to try to lie and
Speaker 1: clean this thing up as best he can. Let's go
Speaker 1: ahead and put this up on the screen. This is
Speaker 1: his first statement. There were a number of statements. I'll
Speaker 1: read you two of them that Trump put down on
Speaker 1: truth Social. Here's the first one. He says, Yay formerly
Speaker 1: known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning
Speaker 1: some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with
Speaker 1: his business. We also discussed to a lesser extent politics,
Speaker 1: where I told him he should definitely not run for president.
Speaker 1: Quote any voters you may have should vote for Trump. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we got along great. He expressed no anti Semitism, and
Speaker 1: I appreciated all of the nice things he said about
Speaker 1: me on Tucker Carlson. Why wouldn't I agree to me? Also, Kama,
Speaker 1: I didn't know Nick Quette. Okay, So this one, you know,
Speaker 1: isn't really passing muster. He's still spinning. He's still trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what's the best way, like out of
Speaker 1: this Jim that I've created for myself. So here's another
Speaker 1: one of the statements he put out on True Social
Speaker 1: He says, so I help a seriously troubled man who
Speaker 1: just happens to be black yay, Kanye West Okay, who
Speaker 1: has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else,
Speaker 1: who has always been good to me, by allowing his
Speaker 1: request for a meeting at mar A Lago alone so
Speaker 1: that I can give him very much needed advice, which
Speaker 1: you put in quotes. For some reason, he shows up
Speaker 1: with three people, two of which I didn't know. The
Speaker 1: other a political person who I haven't seen in years.
Speaker 1: I told him, don't run for office, a total waste
Speaker 1: of time, can't win. Fake news went crazy, So Sager,
Speaker 1: that is the story. Yeah, there's a couple of things
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, with Kanye and the re emergence
Speaker 1: of Milo and Nick, I just find it incredible that
Speaker 1: they are so willing to latch onto and obviously mentally
Speaker 1: ill and the crazy person not only in distress, but
Speaker 1: just for the two minutes of fame that they both
Speaker 1: like so desperately crave. And it's also especially ironic that
Speaker 1: it's like the moment that a canceled black artist is
Speaker 1: who comes into prominence, like, oh yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: We're going to latch ourselves onto them for notoriety. So
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, it's actually a huge victory
Speaker 1: for the two of them, who all they really care
Speaker 1: about is getting people to even say their name and
Speaker 1: to pay attention to them. And sure in the first place,
Speaker 1: and I mean in many ways they have succeeded, so
Speaker 1: congresulations relegated to the sidelines for quite a while now
Speaker 1: after like whybe you only would have didn't recognize him
Speaker 1: in that I was like, oh my god, that it's
Speaker 1: only until someone was like that's my I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, that is my life. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: watching with Kyle and I was like, wait, does that
Speaker 1: knit He's like, no, that's Milo. Anyway, for those of
Speaker 1: you who are just listening and not watching, Milo is
Speaker 1: standing there ill a whole time in the video. He's
Speaker 1: his campaign with Kanye, right, he's his campaign manager apparently.
Speaker 1: And this dude, you know, the last time we saw
Speaker 1: him he was doing an unpaid internship for Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 1: That was there was only a couple of months the
Speaker 1: recent foray into politics. For that he was no longer
Speaker 1: gay and he was Christians. Wait, he was actually on
Speaker 1: YouTube like selling these like Christian chotchkes on like some
Speaker 1: Catholic channel. That was where I'd seen him before. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean these Mileo cares about nothing other than attention.
Speaker 1: I think Nick is the same way. Really, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know as much as the control. I mean, all
Speaker 1: these guys they're excellent at what they do, which is
Speaker 1: that they say outrageous things. They get people to pay
Speaker 1: attention and the reviews that reaction or to fuel even
Speaker 1: more trolling against said people in order to draw eyeballs
Speaker 1: toward the screen. That's I guess fine. The point is, though,
Speaker 1: and I think Richard Hanania put this best. I'll just
Speaker 1: read it quote. One reason Milo and Nick Wentez will
Speaker 1: never recapture the magic of twenty sixteen is because they
Speaker 1: used to freak normal liberals out and it was fun.
Speaker 1: Now liberals are so hysterical the normal g causes them
Speaker 1: to melt down. You don't actually need censored performance artists
Speaker 1: to do so. They simply have no role. I think
Speaker 1: there deeply is something to that, and beyond that, I
Speaker 1: find it tired and boring, like in a lot of
Speaker 1: the ways that they were able to freak out and
Speaker 1: latch onto. You know, the so called Trump movement was
Speaker 1: because it generally was dissonant to beat pro Trump in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and in twenty sixteen, it's no longer dissonant
Speaker 1: to do so. Trump is the gop man. Yeah, president
Speaker 1: of the United States. Many people have reconciled themselves to it.
Speaker 1: So it's like, what value add are you giving to
Speaker 1: the conversation. And then you know, of course they're abhorrent
Speaker 1: in particular, you know what they say just about Jews
Speaker 1: and the statement even that Milo put out. There's a
Speaker 1: more recent one that actually just came out this morning.
Speaker 1: I'll read it directly. This is from GAB. Of course
Speaker 1: it's horrific and abhorrent, but he says this quote. Nick
Speaker 1: and Ye didn't discredit the Trump twenty twenty four campaign.
Speaker 1: Trump did that by himself by having his most boring,
Speaker 1: low energy announcement in history. He did it by continuing
Speaker 1: to quote suck the boots of the Jewish powers that
Speaker 1: bee who hate Jesus Christ, hate our country, and see
Speaker 1: us all as disposable cattle according to their quote Holy Book.
Speaker 1: So I don't think it's literally like reading something from
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. Yeah. Whatever. Twintes has said of his
Speaker 1: opposition to LGBTQ wrights, he's referred to it as the
Speaker 1: bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed that is dismantling
Speaker 1: our civilization. So does they know we're not like you know,
Speaker 1: this is very clear cut. It's not like borderline type
Speaker 1: of rhetoric here. What I know with both of them
Speaker 1: is they just want attention. It's very clear they are trolls.
Speaker 1: They are obviously always trying to say outrageous things. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying they don't actually necessarily believe them, but what
Speaker 1: they have both calculated and always wanted was for people
Speaker 1: to see them as the flashpoints so that they themselves
Speaker 1: could be elevated to the top of said movements and
Speaker 1: hold people to the standards that they want for the
Speaker 1: entire party. I think what's fascinating really about this is
Speaker 1: that they were able and are still only to really
Speaker 1: get the like most grifting of like most grifting, like
Speaker 1: mentally ill person to latch onto in order to do so.
Speaker 1: It actually shows a level of deep desperation whenever you're
Speaker 1: willing to do that. And the reason why is because
Speaker 1: beyond the censorship, and I don't support censorship. But what's
Speaker 1: clear is that the world is even much of like
Speaker 1: the online right has looked, moved very very far past
Speaker 1: these figures. It wasn't just them getting deleted off of
Speaker 1: Twitter and off of social media, it was that people
Speaker 1: looked at them and were like, yeah, you're beyond and crazy.
Speaker 1: You're boring now, like you're doing the same shtick that
Speaker 1: you've been doing now for several years. So that's anyway,
Speaker 1: I think the greatest, the greatest victory against these two
Speaker 1: individuals is to just really not talk about them or
Speaker 1: give them the attention in this case, we have to.
Speaker 1: I mean they met with the foreign president of the
Speaker 1: United States. That again, you know, to take it even
Speaker 1: up with Trump. It's like, people were like, I can't
Speaker 1: believe that Nick Fuente has got into mar A Lago.
Speaker 1: I'm like, really, yeah, honestly, I was like, I'm literally
Speaker 1: not shocked by that at all. But people, what kind
Speaker 1: of process does he have in place? None? Guess what, guys.
Speaker 1: I literally when I was in the Oval office, I
Speaker 1: remember this there at one point where like seven people
Speaker 1: while I was interviewing Trump just floating in and out
Speaker 1: of there. Yea. And that's just actually not supposed to
Speaker 1: work at all. You're really not supposed to have so
Speaker 1: many people who are allowed in and out. That is
Speaker 1: the level of chaos and the ability for Remember that
Speaker 1: the Mike Lindell and Overstock CEO who are doing all
Speaker 1: this insane stop to steal stuff, and they like snuck
Speaker 1: into the Woodhouse, walk into the over yeah, and the
Speaker 1: White House Council walks and He's like, who are you?
Speaker 1: He's like, what are you doing here? Yeah? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: White House count he was like on his way home
Speaker 1: for the night and then someone calls him urgently, like
Speaker 1: you have to get in here. That fucking insane people
Speaker 1: are like talking to the president talking back. I see.
Speaker 1: Note this is not surprising to me at all. Everyone's like,
Speaker 1: I'm shocked and outraged by President Trump, not actual politicians,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. I'm like, really, because this actually
Speaker 1: seems incredibly standard for him. I'm not saying it's a
Speaker 1: good thing. Yeah, really, how could you be shocked by
Speaker 1: this at this point? I mean honestly, Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: saw Steve Bannon with some kind of cope that was
Speaker 1: like he needs who's around him to make sure things
Speaker 1: like this down. How I'm like, this is the way
Speaker 1: he intentionally runs. He's a former president of the United States.
Speaker 1: He's a big boy. He can make his own decisions,
Speaker 1: as he clearly did about who he's having dinner with.
Speaker 1: So I mean again, and this is a common tactic
Speaker 1: with him, whenever he does something that his acolytes don't like.
Speaker 1: It's not his fault, it's Jared Kushner, it's somebody around him,
Speaker 1: it's the staff failed him. Whatever. No, no, no, this
Speaker 1: is one hundred percent on him. That he even taken
Speaker 1: the meeting with Kanye at this point, why, like, what
Speaker 1: do you hope to accomplish there? And then letting Nick
Speaker 1: fuent As in the door. I just don't even know.
Speaker 1: So maybe the most interesting part of this story to
Speaker 1: me is how the Republican Party is responding to this,
Speaker 1: and especially some of the people who are you knowing
Speaker 1: that they're going to challenge him in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: There's of course been all sorts of conversation which I
Speaker 1: think is legitimate that Trump is significantly weakened by the
Speaker 1: midterm election results where a bunch of his candidates went
Speaker 1: up in flames where it close ties to him, and
Speaker 1: especially the further you went in on the stop to
Speaker 1: steal nonsense, there was just a really direct correlation to like,
Speaker 1: the further in the that you went on that the
Speaker 1: worst you ultimately performed. So there's this huge reckoning. At
Speaker 1: the same time, you of course have Ron DeSantis, who
Speaker 1: you know, cleans up in Florida. Florida goes a totally
Speaker 1: different direction than the entire rest of the country. DeSantis
Speaker 1: is re elected by you know, double digits easily, no problem.
Speaker 1: So you have this moment where a lot of people
Speaker 1: are saying, oh, Trump looks kind of weak, the announcement
Speaker 1: wasn't all that exciting, and maybe someone could ultimately challenge him. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you have a big mess up here from Trump
Speaker 1: that people all across, you know, on both sides of
Speaker 1: Aisle are condemning. So what are these people going to
Speaker 1: ultimately say? Let's go ahead and put this Maggie Hamberman
Speaker 1: tweet up on the screen. So here's basically the run down.
Speaker 1: Chris Christy, who has criticized Trump directly before, also criticized
Speaker 1: him here for meeting with Fuentes and Kanye Mike Pompeo
Speaker 1: said something about anti Semitism being bad, so a little
Speaker 1: passive aggressive subtweet, but did not actually name Trump and
Speaker 1: basically everyone else except for Asa Hutchinson, who's the governor
Speaker 1: of Arkansas who's apparently posturing like he's gonna run for
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. He did say something as well, but
Speaker 1: all of the other potential twenty twenty four Republican candidates,
Speaker 1: most notably, she says, the one who's governor of the
Speaker 1: state where the dinner took place, that would be Ron
Speaker 1: de Santas, have stayed quiet. Let me give you the
Speaker 1: comments from Pompeo and from Chris Christie, and then we
Speaker 1: could talk about all of this. Go ahead and put
Speaker 1: Pompeo up on the screen. This is old Trump subtweet
Speaker 1: anti Semitism is a cancer. As Secretary, I fought to
Speaker 1: ban funding for anti Semitic groups that pushed BDS. Okay,
Speaker 1: we stand with the Jewish people in the fight against
Speaker 1: the world's oldest bigotry. So you know, happy to go
Speaker 1: against people who are protesting for Palestinian human rights, but
Speaker 1: unable to call out and overt Holocaust. And I are
Speaker 1: like Nick Fuentes when he meets with President Trump. Got it.
Speaker 1: And then you've got Chris Christy, who he's had a
Speaker 1: few things. Let's put this up on the screen. This
Speaker 1: is on Twitter. He says, this is just awful, unacceptable
Speaker 1: conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former president
Speaker 1: and current candidate. He links to New York Times article
Speaker 1: where he is also quoted, and he said this is
Speaker 1: just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Trump,
Speaker 1: which combined with his past poor judgment, make him an
Speaker 1: untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. He also said, and I think this is accurate.
Speaker 1: He can't stand not having attention all the time, and
Speaker 1: so having someone show up at his club, even if
Speaker 1: you believe that he didn't know who Nick Fuentes was
Speaker 1: and want to sit with him, feeds the hunger he
Speaker 1: feels for the attention he's missing since he left the presidency.
Speaker 1: And I do think that there is I think there
Speaker 1: is a lot to that. Yeah, I think for me
Speaker 1: this just crystallizes something. Trump is obviously just going to
Speaker 1: be the nominee at this point, like if you can't
Speaker 1: and look, they're actually making I think the correct decision
Speaker 1: from a political point of view, what is the lesson access?
Speaker 1: Hollywood doesn't stick, Charlottesville, doesn't stay, any of the innumerable
Speaker 1: so called contraceiencies. If you do speak out against him,
Speaker 1: you politically will suffer and you will have no benefit
Speaker 1: to that. Now, the fact is is that Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: the fact that Mike Pompeo wants to run against Trump
Speaker 1: and can't even say his name on something he disagrees with,
Speaker 1: good luck running against a man and winning in the presidency.
Speaker 1: Like to what this really underscored to me was, Yep,
Speaker 1: Trump is still the absolute leader of the GOP, not
Speaker 1: a single major elected official has said a word about this.
Speaker 1: If you were to ask him about the specifics, they'd
Speaker 1: be like, yes, I think he's abhorrent. You know this,
Speaker 1: I don't support that, etc. But they know that if
Speaker 1: they criticize Trump, he'll criticize them, that it'll hurt them electorally,
Speaker 1: possibly in a primary or in the future. And it
Speaker 1: just shows me like, how are you supposed to run
Speaker 1: against a man? What case can you prosecute against the man?
Speaker 1: And I'm of two minds on this because I do
Speaker 1: think that the midterm elections have shown us. I'm like, hmm, well,
Speaker 1: some you know, trump maga extremism clearly is deeply repellent
Speaker 1: to a lot of independent voters. Yep. That said, uh,
Speaker 1: those are not Republicans, right, So that people who are
Speaker 1: Republicans they actually love Trump. So are those people actually
Speaker 1: going to be affected by this. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence to tell us that they will be, that
Speaker 1: they probably will stick by him, that they will look
Speaker 1: at this as like a media persecution, or that they
Speaker 1: will believe Trump about I hardly knew the guy, right
Speaker 1: his most famous statement, even whenever it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: Michael Cohen or people will work for him. Right for
Speaker 1: the twenty five years, I barely knew the guy on
Speaker 1: this one, Like maybe he did, maybe didn't. I personally
Speaker 1: think he probably knew exactly who he was. I think
Speaker 1: he probably just loved getting his ass kicked, you know,
Speaker 1: and all my experience covering him and seeing at the
Speaker 1: White House, like the thing that he responded and loved
Speaker 1: to the most was just people sucking up to him.
Speaker 1: And you know, you remember that cabinet meeting which was
Speaker 1: on TV where he made every member of his cabinet
Speaker 1: go around and say how proud it were to work
Speaker 1: for him, and everyone's like, what is the North Korea level? Right?
Speaker 1: So anyway, I think again to underscore from a GOP
Speaker 1: point of view, Trump is still the leader of the GOP.
Speaker 1: If you literally can't criticize and this is people are like,
Speaker 1: if you can't criticize him for this, I'm like, that's
Speaker 1: the point. You really can't criticize him. I mean, not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent agree with you, Ron DeSantis politically, like
Speaker 1: put morally aside. Politically, he made the right decision by
Speaker 1: not saying anything. Yes, but think about what that says.
Speaker 1: Here's Trump supposedly at his weakest, right, yeap, Supposedly he's down.
Speaker 1: He's almost like, now's the time when if you can't
Speaker 1: say anything about this, Now, how's this going to work
Speaker 1: for you? Like? What is your plan? Yeah? I think
Speaker 1: DeSantis has played his cards smartly in Florida again politically.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about whether I agree with what he's
Speaker 1: done or not, but played his cards very wisely politically.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, he's sort of done everything he
Speaker 1: needs to do to position himself as the Trump alternative.
Speaker 1: Has he positioned himself as someone who can actually take
Speaker 1: out Trump? No, and this incident shows you exactly why. Now, look,
Speaker 1: anything can happen. You know, Trump ends up in prison,
Speaker 1: does that change the dynaw all those things? As of today,
Speaker 1: there is just no denying he continues to be the
Speaker 1: undisputed leader of the Republican Party. The base likes the sky,
Speaker 1: and if you can't come out and give an explicit
Speaker 1: reason why they should go in another direction, they're not
Speaker 1: going to go in another direction. So I mean, just
Speaker 1: like Chris Christy here does the right thing, right, does
Speaker 1: the full on condemination, he did the right thing at
Speaker 1: the Republican Jewish Coalition too, Like at least he's out
Speaker 1: there actually saying Trump's name and making some kind of
Speaker 1: a case. Does anyone think that Chris Christie has a
Speaker 1: shot in hell of being the Republican nominee? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: he doesn't. And the same thing will happen to Ron
Speaker 1: DeSantis or whoever it is the minute they start going
Speaker 1: directly at Trump, It's going to be the same, the
Speaker 1: same calculus, the same situation. So yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: a very revealing episode ultimately. Absolutely All right, let's move
Speaker 1: on to Ukraine. Some really terrible stuff for Ukraine happening
Speaker 1: right now. Let's put this satellite image up on the screen.
Speaker 1: This was taken just five days ago, so for those
Speaker 1: who are just listening, this is a satellite view of Europe,
Speaker 1: and you can see street lights and other lights shining
Speaker 1: across the entire continent from Russia, even in Turkey, down
Speaker 1: below Bulgaria, Romania, and there's just a massive black hole
Speaker 1: in the middle of it. Some of that is the
Speaker 1: Black Sea, the other is Ukraine itself, which just shows
Speaker 1: a massive power blackout basically across the entire country. And
Speaker 1: this was really a result of in moving Russian missile barrages.
Speaker 1: Across the country, directly targeting power and water station. So
Speaker 1: let's go to the next one up there on the screen,
Speaker 1: which is that really what the Russians have pivoted towards
Speaker 1: is waging war on the ability of the Ukrainian populace
Speaker 1: to continue to support the war efforts. So they have
Speaker 1: now caused outages in Kiev and lev Eve, in several
Speaker 1: other major cities, even in the former city of Kharkiv,
Speaker 1: which remember, according to Russia, is technically Russia denying power
Speaker 1: to their own supposed citizens. Half of Moldova, whose grid
Speaker 1: is tied to Ukraine, also lost power. So more than
Speaker 1: one hundred missiles and drones in the last two weeks
Speaker 1: have actually rained down across the country, is striking power facilities,
Speaker 1: water facilities, leaving much of Kiev in the dark for
Speaker 1: several days. And you know, again, just to remind everyone,
Speaker 1: the weather over there has already turned. It's snowing this morning.
Speaker 1: It is a high of thirty four degrees basically from now,
Speaker 1: basically November fifteenth, I believe, up until February, the average
Speaker 1: high in Ukraine is thirty five degrees, So it's freezing cold,
Speaker 1: and you have millions of people without any access to power.
Speaker 1: You have stories there of people in hospitals having to
Speaker 1: perform like open heart surgery literally by flashlight from their
Speaker 1: phone in nightmare. It is complete nightmare. And again it's
Speaker 1: a long and tried and true strategy of militaries that
Speaker 1: are trying to wage wars, especially from position of weakness,
Speaker 1: but with some firepower, which you try and deny the
Speaker 1: enemy and it's civilian population the capacity to continue to
Speaker 1: support the war effort. And unfortunately that is in full
Speaker 1: swing right now. We are in the middle of the
Speaker 1: muddy season or as they say in Russian Rasputitsa, which
Speaker 1: famously dogged the Nazis in the invasion of Russia back
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties. Basically the frontline is ground to
Speaker 1: a halt. There are videos coming out from the front
Speaker 1: line and from all across Ukraine of Russian soldiers literally
Speaker 1: trying to drag tanks by hand like through the mud.
Speaker 1: It's a disaster. It's just really not going to be possible.
Speaker 1: The only time to resume fighting is when the ground
Speaker 1: has become so frozen solid that it can be moved
Speaker 1: at and at that point it's like minus ten degrees
Speaker 1: and with wind chill and people are literally buried in
Speaker 1: the snow. So it's a very bad situation. Likely the
Speaker 1: fighting season has relatively stalled at this point. There's been
Speaker 1: some limited battles and there probably will be throughout the time.
Speaker 1: But I think this is a preview of what the
Speaker 1: next three to four months of rush to strategy are
Speaker 1: going to deny, deny to the enemy, make it miserable
Speaker 1: as possible to get through the winter, and is working
Speaker 1: so far. That's exactly right. According to Ukrainian intelligence reports,
Speaker 1: Moscow is running low on precision cruise missiles, but they
Speaker 1: think they have enough in their arsenal to carry out
Speaker 1: attacks of a similar scale three or four more times.
Speaker 1: So I thought there there was a quote here from
Speaker 1: the US Ambassador to the UN who was talking about
Speaker 1: you know, they're basically weaponizing winter. They say Putin's motive
Speaker 1: could not be more clear and cold blooded. He is
Speaker 1: clearly clearly weaponizing winter to inflict immense suffering on the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian people. He's decided if he can't see Ukraine by force,
Speaker 1: he will freeze the country into submission. So that is
Speaker 1: the calculus here, is to try to hold the lines
Speaker 1: where they are, to try to inflict as much suffering
Speaker 1: as possible on the Ukrainian people. And this has come
Speaker 1: you know, this is caused real problems for them already.
Speaker 1: You have rolling blackouts instituted across the country for everyone
Speaker 1: four to twelve hours a day without power. That's how
Speaker 1: you end up with an image like the one that
Speaker 1: we ultimately saw. Zelenski has announced a national drive that
Speaker 1: he's calling points of invincibility where they have He's trying
Speaker 1: to set up thousands of makeshift centers so when people
Speaker 1: do lose power, they have somewhere they can go that
Speaker 1: has heat, that has water, that has phone service, that
Speaker 1: has internet service, to try to protect the population that way,
Speaker 1: because there's just no way that you can guarantee that
Speaker 1: you're not going to be without electricity during the cold
Speaker 1: winter months for some significant period of time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Let's move on now to my personal favorite,
Speaker 1: this new accusation by European diplomats. Let's put this up
Speaker 1: there on the screen from Politico Europe. Quote. Europe is
Speaker 1: accusing the US of profiting from the war. EU officials
Speaker 1: attacking Joe Biden over sky high gas prices, weapons sales
Speaker 1: and trade as Vladimir Putin's war threatens to destroy Russian unity.
Speaker 1: Here's a direct quote from a top European diplomat quote.
Speaker 1: The fact is is, if you look at it soberly,
Speaker 1: the country that is profiting most from this war is
Speaker 1: the US, because they are selling more gas at higher
Speaker 1: prices and because they are selling more weapons. Now, I
Speaker 1: would just want to say, Crystal, nothing is stopping them
Speaker 1: from selling weapons to Ukraine. Also, nothing stopped them from
Speaker 1: building more nuclear power plants across their country. Nobody forced
Speaker 1: them to take their nuclear power plants offline. You're not
Speaker 1: the ones. We're not the ones who forced you to
Speaker 1: make yourself heavily reliant on Russian gas. So when then
Speaker 1: you voluntarily cut yourself off from Russian gas and have
Speaker 1: to buy it from US, that's your fault, not ours.
Speaker 1: I do think it is revealing, though, that the long
Speaker 1: standing prediction not necessarily coming fully to fruit, that European
Speaker 1: gas prices, energy crisis and more would fracture. The kind
Speaker 1: of Western resolve is starting to come at some point
Speaker 1: because the US, by definition, by not being reliant on
Speaker 1: Russian gas, is of course going to fare better. And
Speaker 1: then when we are going to supply ninety some percent
Speaker 1: of the arms going in Ukraine. Of course, our weapon,
Speaker 1: our defense snfactors are going again German defense contractors. You
Speaker 1: guys are welcome to profit from the war too, you
Speaker 1: sell it. I would love for that to happen. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a lot to unpack here, ultimately, because at the
Speaker 1: beginning I was sympathetic to their position because if you
Speaker 1: think of it from their perspective, France and Germany in particular,
Speaker 1: they didn't want to take approach to this war that
Speaker 1: the US and the UK ultimately did. And of course
Speaker 1: we're driving the train. So we're the ones who, you know,
Speaker 1: dispatched Boris Johnson to say, like, we don't want to
Speaker 1: peace steal. We're the ones who say we want to
Speaker 1: push Poodin out of power. Were the ones who lead
Speaker 1: the charge in terms of the sanctions. Knowing that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a little tough for our population, no doubt about.
Speaker 1: I don't want to downsell it, but it's nothing compared
Speaker 1: to the vulnerability and the price hikes and the incredible,
Speaker 1: you know, costs that the European countries have had to bear,
Speaker 1: especially some of the poorer European countries. You only talk
Speaker 1: a lot about Germany. Obviously they're very vulnerable, but you know,
Speaker 1: there's basically like a bidding war and competition for energy
Speaker 1: reserves in Europe right now, and so the wealthy countries
Speaker 1: are much better positions. So I am sympathetic to that
Speaker 1: piece that we basically have been driving this train, you know,
Speaker 1: putting diplomacy off the table, although there have been some
Speaker 1: more encouraging signs that maybe the Biden administration is considering
Speaker 1: that potentially there is a point in time, and that
Speaker 1: point in time maybe coming where we push our Ukrainian
Speaker 1: friends to at least come to the table and try
Speaker 1: to come to some sort of diplomatic resolution. So I'm
Speaker 1: sympathetic to that part. But then when you really read
Speaker 1: into this piece, it seems like what they're really pissed
Speaker 1: off about is actually the Inflation Reduction Act, Like that's
Speaker 1: why it wasn't actually really anything Russia did that is
Speaker 1: causing this tension right now, Like why is this coming
Speaker 1: right now at this point? It's actually because the US
Speaker 1: took some really good steps in terms of our own
Speaker 1: domestic green manufacturing case abilities and especially with regards to
Speaker 1: electric vehicles, and they are very very upset about that.
Speaker 1: Because they're worried about that undermining. I get it, we're
Speaker 1: worried about undermining their own industrial base, their own electric
Speaker 1: vehicle manufacturing capacity, and especially all the component parts all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. So this is sort of being framed
Speaker 1: as part of their beef with the US about how
Speaker 1: we're profiting off of the war, and you know, we're
Speaker 1: leading the charge in those pieces I think are just
Speaker 1: like justified and there's some legitimate critique there, but yeah,
Speaker 1: what they're really upset about right now and why it's
Speaker 1: coming to a flashpoint, is because they're mad about the
Speaker 1: inflation production. What they are mad about is that our
Speaker 1: EV subsidies basically require our EV credits to go to
Speaker 1: companies that build stuff in America. There's made in America provisions.
Speaker 1: Crazy concept. I know that a country would want critical
Speaker 1: supplies to be made in its own country, And they're like, no,
Speaker 1: that is a egregious affront because it might undermine reciving protectionism,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Time they have their own protection. Do you
Speaker 1: want to know what the most protectionist places on earth?
Speaker 1: It's called Germany, the largest economy in Europe, and try
Speaker 1: and buy Mercedes Benz parts factories and other and build it.
Speaker 1: Not just in Mexico, try building it like in France
Speaker 1: or somewhere in a neighboring country. The German government would
Speaker 1: freak out. They look at them rightfully as national assets.
Speaker 1: That's great, it's a cool car. I want cool cars here.
Speaker 1: I want more than one just American company that actually
Speaker 1: makes stuff. So I only support these subsidies. And the
Speaker 1: point is is that they're mad that we are not
Speaker 1: completely reliant on them for a so called fake free
Speaker 1: trading system. They're mad that we're trying to build stuff
Speaker 1: here in the US. And really what they're mad about,
Speaker 1: I think is that their own just fundamental strategic flaws
Speaker 1: are coming to light. And I just look. Let us
Speaker 1: again go over how much money we have given to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: Total government aid by the United States Ukraine is fifty
Speaker 1: two point three billion dollars. The vast majority of that
Speaker 1: is military aid. The EU countries and EU institutions in
Speaker 1: total only reach twenty nine point two billion if you
Speaker 1: stratify it to military aid. The vast majority of the aid,
Speaker 1: some twenty seven billion so far that has been appropriated,
Speaker 1: has come from the United States. No other country in
Speaker 1: Europe even comes close, except for the UK, which is
Speaker 1: currently allocated four billion pounds, so you consider that the
Speaker 1: only other country that even comes close to US is
Speaker 1: still five hundred percent less than what we have given
Speaker 1: to Ukraine. Just the audacity to say that we're quote
Speaker 1: that we are the ones who are quote profiting, when
Speaker 1: you're the ones who are not spending any of your
Speaker 1: own money on this actual contin You know, this is
Speaker 1: the issue too, Crystal. They can be in the driver's
Speaker 1: seat if they want to. Germany is a rich country.
Speaker 1: It's one of the richest countries in the world. So
Speaker 1: is France, so is the UK. These are massive titanic
Speaker 1: economic powers which if you combine them, sure they may
Speaker 1: not punch above the US weight, but they actually, you know,
Speaker 1: share a land with the with Ukraine and with Russia.
Speaker 1: They are welcome to do that if they want to.
Speaker 1: They just don't. And it's like it shows you that
Speaker 1: they are willing to offload all their responsibility onto Ustin.
Speaker 1: I honestly can't blame it for that because like clearly
Speaker 1: they don't like Biden administration has been willing to spend whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they might do the same thing. Don't complain
Speaker 1: about it. I don't blame them. I don't blame them
Speaker 1: for that position. I don't blame them for spending you know,
Speaker 1: less money as a percentage your GDP on supplying weapons.
Speaker 1: I don't blame them for any of that, because, like
Speaker 1: I said, I think at the beginning it was very
Speaker 1: clear there was a France and Germany wanted a somewhat
Speaker 1: different approach, and ultimately our approaches what winds out. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't then go and complain like Lucky he's making
Speaker 1: too much money. I mean, yeah, I agree with you,
Speaker 1: but you've made a choice about how you want to
Speaker 1: approach this. Yeah, but I do think when you read
Speaker 1: into this, the piece that they're really smarting over is
Speaker 1: the Inflation Reduction Act and the fact that after years,
Speaker 1: decades of the US being all free trade all the time,
Speaker 1: you finally have the tiniest glimmer through you know, the
Speaker 1: Inflation Reduction Act is what they're concerned about. Also the
Speaker 1: Chips Act. But these little glimmer of industrial policy of awareness,
Speaker 1: especially post COVID, that hey, guess what you need to
Speaker 1: have some of these critical supply lines here, even companies,
Speaker 1: you know, even without tax incentives, realizing that this was
Speaker 1: bad for business when you have this massive supply chain breakdown,
Speaker 1: worries about their future in terms of being able to
Speaker 1: manufacture in China and what that's going to look like
Speaker 1: in the future. So you have some of this happening
Speaker 1: organically as well, but it seems like that's really the
Speaker 1: flashpoint here. And the other piece that is ongoing is,
Speaker 1: remember they agreed that they're going to try to set
Speaker 1: this oil price cap on Russian oil. Well, you have
Speaker 1: the European embargo on Russian oil that is set to
Speaker 1: come into effect here very shortly, in just amount of
Speaker 1: days I think is December fifth is ultimately the day.
Speaker 1: And then separately, they're trying to institute this oil price
Speaker 1: cap to try to keep Russia from profiting to the
Speaker 1: extent that they have been off of their oil sales.
Speaker 1: Having a very hard time coming up with what the
Speaker 1: dollar amount there should be. Some people are floating like
Speaker 1: sixty five or seventy dollars a barrel. A lot of
Speaker 1: your p and diplomats are floating that. But then that
Speaker 1: is still way above the actual production costs for Russia.
Speaker 1: So Russia would still be profiting there. But then they're
Speaker 1: worried if they said it lower than maybe Russia won't
Speaker 1: produce or so you have an issue with oil prices.
Speaker 1: So this is and then the supper concern is like
Speaker 1: it's not clear that this is going to work at
Speaker 1: all anyway. So that's the other piece that's going on here. Hey,
Speaker 1: you guys can have cheap gas anytime you want, buy
Speaker 1: from Russia. That's what the Indians and the Chinese are doing.
Speaker 1: You're the ones choosing not to, so it's your fault, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, So we have another piece of very significant
Speaker 1: oil news. This is something that has been a long
Speaker 1: time coming, and we've been tracking closely here. Biden administration
Speaker 1: has taken a very different approach towards relations with Venezuela
Speaker 1: than the Trump administration did when they tried to have
Speaker 1: that whole fake coup one Guido thing. I mean, listen,
Speaker 1: I don't want to oversell it here. The Biden administration
Speaker 1: is still out there pretending that one Guido is the
Speaker 1: legitimate leader of Venezuela. But we do now have a
Speaker 1: deal in terms of Chevron being able to pump oil
Speaker 1: in Venezuela. Let's go ahead and put this up on
Speaker 1: the screen. US gives Chevron the go ahead to pump
Speaker 1: oil in Venezuela again. The Treasury Department on Saturday said
Speaker 1: they would allow them to resume pumping oil from Venezuela's
Speaker 1: oil fields. This license is not going to allow the
Speaker 1: state owned oil company in Venezuela to benefit, but it
Speaker 1: does signal, they say, in opening for other oil companies
Speaker 1: to potentially resume their business in the South American country.
Speaker 1: Two years after the Trump administration cracked down on companies
Speaker 1: activities there in an effort to put pressure and oust
Speaker 1: the Maduro government. They came to a deal here to
Speaker 1: basically require the Maduro government is negotiating now with the opposition.
Speaker 1: There are some negotiations over humanitarianism, you also had, so
Speaker 1: they returned to political negotiations in Mexico. Those have been
Speaker 1: suspended for more than a year. They signed a rare
Speaker 1: humanitarian agreement that seeks to free up Venezuela and funds
Speaker 1: that were frozen abroad for health, infrastructure, and education. And
Speaker 1: that is around estimated to be around three billion dollars
Speaker 1: and that's going to be administered by the UN. So,
Speaker 1: you know, the Biden administration reportedly run plane in particular
Speaker 1: chief of staff became sort of obsessed with gas prices
Speaker 1: and what they meant in terms of politics. That's why
Speaker 1: you had all these big releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
Speaker 1: this ongoing attempt to try to come to some deal
Speaker 1: with Venezuela where you could start getting oil flowing there
Speaker 1: again to increase overall global production, and that is now
Speaker 1: bearing fruit here. Yeah, it's interesting. Let's go put the
Speaker 1: next one up there on the screen, because the oil
Speaker 1: market's actually changing pretty significantly right now. We're actually looking
Speaker 1: like we're going to have decent supply and there is
Speaker 1: unfortunately we can demand. Some of that week in demand
Speaker 1: comes from just like winter and less usage. A lot
Speaker 1: of it comes from zero COVID. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: it comes from recession severe. So it's not always a
Speaker 1: good thing whenever demand for oil goes down, but whenever
Speaker 1: you have more supply and a little bit less demand,
Speaker 1: then you're seeing more equalizing in the range of price.
Speaker 1: As wrong as China especially remains committed to zero COVID,
Speaker 1: you're not going to see as high gas as if
Speaker 1: their economy open. I really actually can't imagine what the
Speaker 1: midterms might have looked like without zero COVID. We really
Speaker 1: could have had gas more than a dollar more per
Speaker 1: gallon across the country, which really could have impacted things
Speaker 1: on a major level. More so, you know, everyone talks
Speaker 1: about the strategic reserve, the global market is so much
Speaker 1: more important than that line in terms of where national
Speaker 1: gas prices are. Right now, let's put this up there
Speaker 1: on the screen. We've got a map. So three dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty five cents dropped a little bit this morning
Speaker 1: to three dollars and fifty four cents across the country.
Speaker 1: I was just in Texas for Thanksgiving. Very cheap gas there,
Speaker 1: two eighty eight a gallon, some of the cheapest in
Speaker 1: the entire country. The American Southwest, anything near the refineries
Speaker 1: in generally cheaper. Still quite expensive out in California. But
Speaker 1: California right now is still the really one of the
Speaker 1: only states with five dollars gas on average, and here
Speaker 1: on the East Coast it looks to be, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty normalizing around like less than four dollars a gallon.
Speaker 1: None of this is ideal, necessarily, but we should remember
Speaker 1: that a year ago, before the invasion of Ukraine, and
Speaker 1: still in the midst of some like COVID craziness, it
Speaker 1: was three dollars and thirty nine cents, So that was
Speaker 1: definitely higher than it was in the middle of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: but to equal eyes back to where things were before
Speaker 1: the Russian invasion, and if we continue to see like
Speaker 1: a downward, downward move in price, actually think that's pretty
Speaker 1: significant on for the Biden administration Venezuela part. You know,
Speaker 1: if they can really get oil pumping and flowing there
Speaker 1: would only increase the amount of supply, especially with weak demand,
Speaker 1: and hopefully help the economic situation. So I supported of
Speaker 1: suported since day one. I hope they continue to pursue
Speaker 1: creative diplomacy to get cheaper oil for Americans anywhere. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I mean they've been like the sanctions that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration imposed have also been contributing to I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it's the sole cause, but contributing to unnecessary suffering
Speaker 1: of the Venezuelan people, which is important to keep in
Speaker 1: mind as well. Compare the prices now three dollars and
Speaker 1: fifty four cents a month ago, it was about three
Speaker 1: seventy five, so you can see there's been a sort
Speaker 1: of consistent downward ticking of the gas prices. I think
Speaker 1: that trajectory is almost as important as anything in terms
Speaker 1: of how people feel about gas prices, because it's like like, Okay,
Speaker 1: am I getting squeezed more and more and more? Am
Speaker 1: I getting? You know? Can I see the light at
Speaker 1: the end of the tunnel? Here? California is the only
Speaker 1: state at least as of yesterday, that had gas averages
Speaker 1: over five dollars gallon. I mean, that's not a great
Speaker 1: place to be, but it is significantly better than where
Speaker 1: things have ultimately been. So yeah, the economic picture right now,
Speaker 1: it also it looks like inflation, the very last numbers
Speaker 1: we got overall inflation seems to be on the wane.
Speaker 1: Potentially the Federal Reserve will take note of that and
Speaker 1: maybe they will stop hiking interest rates to the extent
Speaker 1: that they have. There's still going to be a lot
Speaker 1: of pain over the Christmas holiday season, as you know,
Speaker 1: people's wages have really been cut into buy inflation as
Speaker 1: prices and food prices and shelter costs and housing costs
Speaker 1: in general continue to go up and rise. So there's
Speaker 1: going to be a real squeeze on people. And also
Speaker 1: the end of the pandemic era programs that really help
Speaker 1: support people and give them a tiny bit of cushion.
Speaker 1: There are so many numbers that show that bank accounts,
Speaker 1: especially of the poorest percentage of Americans, have really been
Speaker 1: sort of blood dry. But at least the Venezuela thing
Speaker 1: seems like a little bit of a good news. How
Speaker 1: much will it affect oil prices and ultimately gas prices
Speaker 1: at the pump? Anyone's guest, but absolutely moving them bright direction, right,
Speaker 1: all right, let's end fun media segment. The gift that
Speaker 1: keeps on giving. The Taylor Lorenz of The Washington didn't
Speaker 1: resist this one couldn't resist because it's also actually deeply
Speaker 1: revealing of like a true insanity that runs through a
Speaker 1: very over representative group and yet powerful one that exists
Speaker 1: in American media. So Taylor has taken to Twitter to
Speaker 1: actually defend China's zero COVID policy with outright actual misinformation
Speaker 1: and just revealing what the end state for a lot
Speaker 1: of these branch covidians really is. So let's put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. So she replies to a
Speaker 1: tweet that talks about a Chinese business consultant talking justifying
Speaker 1: zero COVID by saying that in ten years, the West
Speaker 1: will be brought to its knees because of long COVID,
Speaker 1: which will decimate most its labor force. She says, quote tbh,
Speaker 1: He's right. Millions of people in the Western world are
Speaker 1: becoming permanently disabled and chronically ill with an incurable conditions
Speaker 1: that destroys their ability to live a normal life, and
Speaker 1: our leaders and majority of media are simply ignoring it
Speaker 1: and misleading people about the risk. Secondary in a response
Speaker 1: officially to the zero COVID protests, here's what she says. Quote,
Speaker 1: there is no quote lasting natural immunity to COVID. You
Speaker 1: can get COVID over and over and over again because
Speaker 1: there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane. Also,
Speaker 1: choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people as
Speaker 1: the US is doing isn't a critical flaw. And you
Speaker 1: know when you look and you think deeply about that.
Speaker 1: First on the long standing natural immunity. Now, it is
Speaker 1: from what I have read and what I have seen,
Speaker 1: it is true that your natural immunity can wane and
Speaker 1: that you can get COVID again. However, and as I
Speaker 1: understand it, the severity of the actual disease decreases over
Speaker 1: time as you continue to get it, and one of
Speaker 1: the whole theories around it is that constantly evolving COVID,
Speaker 1: through natural immunity and through going through the population, is
Speaker 1: eventually becomes much more like the common cold in the
Speaker 1: way that people can live with it. So let's put
Speaker 1: that aside on the outright medical misinformation secondary though, what's
Speaker 1: the alternative What she's defending here is zero COVID total
Speaker 1: lockdown policy where people in Xinjang literally burn to death
Speaker 1: because they're holed up in their houses and can't leave
Speaker 1: or unable to get food. Like the idea that we're
Speaker 1: quote choosing to kill off millions of vulnerable people is ludicrous.
Speaker 1: Vulnerable people can get a booster shot anytime that they want.
Speaker 1: They are also and we should, you know, pursue policies
Speaker 1: that make it so that not as many people get
Speaker 1: diabetes and not as many people are obese here in
Speaker 1: the US. But something tells me that she would say
Speaker 1: that that was ablest, so I don't even think she
Speaker 1: actually supports any policy on that. Regardless, there is this
Speaker 1: deep and unhealthy strain with this, you know, this idea
Speaker 1: that millions of people are being permanently disabled. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence of that zero on long COVID. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to say long COVID is totally fake. So I think
Speaker 1: most of the people who claim to have it is
Speaker 1: totally fake. And what I see in general is like
Speaker 1: a neurosis that is manifesting itself online amongst people who
Speaker 1: can totally work from home and are you know, basically
Speaker 1: take givers like her. I saw another woman who was like,
Speaker 1: I finally got it. I got She was looking at
Speaker 1: as a moral failing on her part that by getting COVID.
Speaker 1: She was like, I skipped everything for the last several
Speaker 1: years and I still got it. I'm like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the point is it can happen. So don't skip everything,
Speaker 1: right if you're really afraid, you know, really afraid, Okay,
Speaker 1: you know, you can consider your booster. You could consider
Speaker 1: wearing a mask. Yeah, go to an event, wear a mask.
Speaker 1: But even then, you know, as we have proven and
Speaker 1: basically shown at this point, if you exist in our
Speaker 1: society today and as China's showing us right now, zero
Speaker 1: COVID doesn't even work. Yeah, So what's the point. There
Speaker 1: are two big things I want to say about there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot I could say, but there are two
Speaker 1: big things I want to say. First of all, in
Speaker 1: that first tweet that she put up, where she says,
Speaker 1: like a majority of the media are just ignoring long
Speaker 1: COVID and you know, the risks of the population. I
Speaker 1: find it so funny. And I see this not just
Speaker 1: from Taylor, but I see it from other people who
Speaker 1: have a similar like like COVID lockdown forever kind of mentality.
Speaker 1: They are disproportionately represented. The media was so late to
Speaker 1: where the most of the population was in terms of
Speaker 1: how they were actually living their lives. I mean, we're
Speaker 1: still having this year like how to be safe. It's
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving when you know, I mean some Tinese liver people
Speaker 1: are very concerned about that. If you have like underlying
Speaker 1: health risks and whatever, yeah you worry about it and
Speaker 1: be careful and safe and all that stuff. But the
Speaker 1: media was much much later. They were much more on
Speaker 1: the side of the like Taylor lorenzs of the world
Speaker 1: than they were of the way that most of the
Speaker 1: American population was ultimately living. And I have always thought
Speaker 1: that what has made the COVID procedure conversation difficult is
Speaker 1: that you have two competing values. You have the idea
Speaker 1: of like health, and we're in it together and we
Speaker 1: have to like do things to protect each other. And
Speaker 1: then you have the idea of liberty and freedom and
Speaker 1: so like, these are competing values. And I understand how
Speaker 1: people can come down in different places about how heavily
Speaker 1: away different things, what they value in their own lives,
Speaker 1: how what they think makes sense as a national policy.
Speaker 1: And I think we have worked through that in a
Speaker 1: not always optimal way, but we have worked through that
Speaker 1: together as a country. I do not find it to
Speaker 1: be an acceptable point on the spectrum to be where
Speaker 1: Taylor Lorenzo is here of being like, what China is
Speaker 1: doing is actually the right policy. I mean, she says,
Speaker 1: because she's quote tweeting a Washington Post tweet here where
Speaker 1: they describe the Beijing's COVID zero strategy as having a
Speaker 1: critical flaw because you know, you have these insane lockdowns,
Speaker 1: and she's like, no, it's not a critical flaw. Actually,
Speaker 1: she's actively advocating for insane authoritarian crackdown lockdown procedures of
Speaker 1: the type that people in China are now rebelling against
Speaker 1: after watching some of their you know, some of their
Speaker 1: fellow citizens die in an apartment fire because they literally
Speaker 1: couldn't get out of their apartment. So it's revealing to
Speaker 1: me that that is like, actually, where you are in
Speaker 1: the spectrum, you are on full authoritarian And again, there
Speaker 1: are many places on that spectrum balancing like safety and freedom.
Speaker 1: There are many places on that spectrum that I think
Speaker 1: are acceptable answers. Full authoritarianism is not one of them.
Speaker 1: That's just my perspective. Should go without saying. You would
Speaker 1: think in the United States. But here we are today, folks, Crystal,
Speaker 1: what are you taking a look at today? I want
Speaker 1: to unravel a little political mystery. How is it that
Speaker 1: our political class managed to pass literally one of the
Speaker 1: most successful programs in history, a government program which was efficient,
Speaker 1: wildly popular, and insanely impactful, and then they let it
Speaker 1: die almost as soon as it had begun. I'm talking
Speaker 1: here about the Expanded Child Tax Credit. Was passed as
Speaker 1: part of the American Rescue Program at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the Biden administration, and then in July of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: three hundred dollars checks started to flow to millions of families.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of children in the country were eligible for
Speaker 1: these payments, and the benefit was immediate and it was obvious.
Speaker 1: Childhood poverty plummeted by forty percent, lifting three point six
Speaker 1: million kids above the poverty line. Food insecurity fell by millions.
Speaker 1: The lies we've been told for decades about lazy parents
Speaker 1: just looking for a hand down so they can stop working,
Speaker 1: those were all exposed as ugly myths. Studies found those
Speaker 1: who benefited did not drop out of the workforce, as
Speaker 1: conservatives had predicted, Although I personally believe that working less
Speaker 1: so you can invest more time in raising your kids
Speaker 1: is a noble and worthwhile choice, one which supposedly pro
Speaker 1: family conservatives should support more than anyone. But maybe even
Speaker 1: more powerful than the statistics are the anecdotes about what
Speaker 1: these payments meant to struggling families. New York Times just
Speaker 1: interviewed several beneficiaries, and it really breaks your heart to
Speaker 1: think about how this little shred of relief which meant
Speaker 1: so much to these families was ripped away so quickly
Speaker 1: and so cruelly. One dad said that with the child
Speaker 1: tax credit, it mostly went to help with bills, but
Speaker 1: it also enabled some small, previously impossible, little luxuries. In particular,
Speaker 1: he said he was able to take his kids to
Speaker 1: Walmart for some new clothes so that it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: teased about their thrift store wardrobe. He was also able
Speaker 1: to take them to a state park for a night,
Speaker 1: where they made s'mores and they slept in a borrowed tent.
Speaker 1: Of that trip, he said, I saw a happiness in
Speaker 1: my wife and kids that I hadn't seen in a
Speaker 1: long time. I felt like father of the Year. Another
Speaker 1: story showed why scaling back work is in the horrible
Speaker 1: sin that some have portrayed it. As with child tax credit.
Speaker 1: One mom was able to briefly quit her night job
Speaker 1: so she could take her girls to their cheerleading classes.
Speaker 1: She told the Times quote, my kids always want me
Speaker 1: to be there. They looked so happy. But now, after
Speaker 1: less than a year, that credit is dead. Mom is
Speaker 1: back at the night job, and one of the girls
Speaker 1: dropped cheerleading Altogether. There are no more state park trips
Speaker 1: or new Walmart clothes in the budget. Just like that,
Speaker 1: millions of kids, our most precious resource and most sacred responsibility,
Speaker 1: are plunged back into the stress and uncertainty of poverty, lights,
Speaker 1: cut off, housing insecurity, not having enough to eat. The
Speaker 1: whole thing. It doesn't make any sense I mean on
Speaker 1: a theoretical political level, Yeah, I know what happened. Joe
Speaker 1: Manchin decided to kill Build Back Better. That was where
Speaker 1: Biden and Bernie and planned to extend this credit. Mansions
Speaker 1: viewed a bunch of evidence free nonsense about how parents
Speaker 1: were using the credit to buy drugs as part of
Speaker 1: his justification for killing the whole Build Back Better effort.
Speaker 1: Sustained high inflation than strengthened Mansion's hand made Democrats go
Speaker 1: wobbly on all social programs, so we ended up with
Speaker 1: the so called Inflation Reduction Act. That bill cut most
Speaker 1: of the social spending from Build Back Better, instead settling
Speaker 1: for a slice of the green manufacturing agenda. Republicans, a
Speaker 1: few of whom had previously floated some version of their
Speaker 1: own child tax credit, while they've now turned fully to
Speaker 1: their old deficit reduction talk, and they're more likely to
Speaker 1: talk about cutting social Security than they are cutting families
Speaker 1: a break. But on a deeper level, it really doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. The program worked, It was extremely popular
Speaker 1: across the political spectrum. How could it be dead and
Speaker 1: gone just like that? Seventy percent of voters in these
Speaker 1: midterm elections said they supported the expanded child tax credit.
Speaker 1: Only twenty percent opposed it. It was especially important for
Speaker 1: the multi racial working class that both parties claimed to
Speaker 1: want to represent. Now Polster Stan Greenberg. He found that
Speaker 1: hitting Republicans on their opposition to the child tax credit
Speaker 1: was even more impactful than hitting them on abortion rights
Speaker 1: for a bunch of crucial voting blocks that includes black
Speaker 1: and Latino voters, along with gen z and millennial voters.
Speaker 1: It was one of the top three issues for the
Speaker 1: white working class as well. The Democrats they didn't run
Speaker 1: on the child tax credit. They didn't run on the
Speaker 1: fact that they passed it. They didn't attack Republicans for
Speaker 1: blocking it. There was no mass rebellion among those who
Speaker 1: had benefited from it once it was stripped away, so
Speaker 1: clear plans from Democrats who try to reinstate it now
Speaker 1: in the lame Dock session. The abandonment of this transformational
Speaker 1: program is a clear sign of the dysfunction in our democracy.
Speaker 1: A program that works, a program that's popular among seventy
Speaker 1: percent of the public, should be invincible, It should be
Speaker 1: impossible to kill. But the voters who benefited most from
Speaker 1: the program are also most likely to be politically disaffected
Speaker 1: and disenfranchised, the poor children themselves. Of course, they don't
Speaker 1: get a vote. They don't have an army of lobbyists,
Speaker 1: they don't make political contributions, they don't organize fundraisers. Their
Speaker 1: parents they may have a vote, but they are statistically
Speaker 1: likely to be non voters, too busy struggling to get
Speaker 1: by to protest, and too poor to donate to political candidates. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the voices which are loudest in they are the political class.
Speaker 1: While they're all singing the same song about how all
Speaker 1: this spending on the poor in the working class was
Speaker 1: causing inflation, that how we need the Fed to hike rates,
Speaker 1: to discipline labor, to fully bleed out the meager savings
Speaker 1: accounts of workers. And so Democrats, who are more enraptured
Speaker 1: with and concerned at this point by their affluent suburban voters,
Speaker 1: they went all in on abortion in January sixth instead,
Speaker 1: as Stan Greenberg put it, quote, I think the main
Speaker 1: reason is that Democratic elected leaders see their political base
Speaker 1: as increasingly college educated women voters in better educated suburbs
Speaker 1: and economically dynamic metropolitan areas. And they believe their diverse
Speaker 1: base of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are motivated
Speaker 1: by identity politics more than economic issues. Listen. Politically, the
Speaker 1: strategy worked well enough in the short term. At least
Speaker 1: it was good enough to at least keep the Senate
Speaker 1: keep the losses in the House to a minimum. But
Speaker 1: morally it's a catastrophe, and it leads Democrats politically vulnerable
Speaker 1: to any Republican who isn't a psycho election denying freak.
Speaker 1: The story doesn't have to end this way, though, is
Speaker 1: another disaster for American democracy, another instance of the political
Speaker 1: class abandoning the working class and the poor. A number
Speaker 1: of progressive lawmakers signed on to a letter suggesting they
Speaker 1: will refuse to extend a number of corporate tax breaks
Speaker 1: in the lame duck session unless they re up some
Speaker 1: version of the expanded child tax credit. Now with Republicans
Speaker 1: set to control the House, this is realistically the last
Speaker 1: chance for the expand child tax credit for a very
Speaker 1: long time, The last chance for millions of kids to
Speaker 1: get their new set of clothes from Walmart, their tripped
Speaker 1: to the state park, their cheerleading classes, and their mom
Speaker 1: at home instead of at the night shift. The last
Speaker 1: chance for millions to go to bed with enough food
Speaker 1: in their bellies and a home with heat in the
Speaker 1: cold winter months. These children, they might be powerless, but
Speaker 1: they are counting on you. Please come through. And I
Speaker 1: saw center Michael Bennett, who is more of a centrist type.
Speaker 1: And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,
Speaker 1: become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints dot com. All right, saga,
Speaker 1: we're looking at well. As a journalist, it's expected you
Speaker 1: are going to get things wrong. That is built into
Speaker 1: the profession. It's why news organizations are not individuals. They
Speaker 1: have editors, standards processes in place which determine how and
Speaker 1: what information gets printed in their paper, how much they
Speaker 1: vet information before they publish it, and at least allegedly
Speaker 1: check facts with parties involved before going to print. Perhaps
Speaker 1: no organization on Earth has more of a responsibility on
Speaker 1: this front than the Associated Press or the AP for short,
Speaker 1: one of the oldest news organizations in America, which holds
Speaker 1: an old and vaunted responsibility for gathering and pushing it
Speaker 1: out in a timely manner, the most basic facts in
Speaker 1: major situations. They're more conservative than mainstream media in almost
Speaker 1: every way, their Elections Bureau being one of the last
Speaker 1: to call races and frequently at missing some of the
Speaker 1: most deranged and woke think pieces at the Washington Post
Speaker 1: and The New York Times. Their most basic function is
Speaker 1: information in its purest form, X happened? Why presidents said this?
Speaker 1: Than those of us in Washington can ste with it
Speaker 1: what we will. Its information is so trusted. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: their account was actually hacked and false tweets were aired
Speaker 1: saying President Obama had been attacked at the White House,
Speaker 1: plunging the global stock market and sending Marcus into chaos
Speaker 1: for a few minutes. That is the power of their information,
Speaker 1: and as anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Spider
Speaker 1: Man can tell you, with great power comes great responsibility.
Speaker 1: That's why this monologue is important, not to applaud the
Speaker 1: AP for making a mistake and then putting processes in
Speaker 1: place to fix it, but instead an ongoing cover up
Speaker 1: of massive, globally important story that they bear total responsibility for.
Speaker 1: As you can all remember, on the night of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's announcement for president, we also had to lead with
Speaker 1: an important story. A Russian missile had landed in Poland,
Speaker 1: killing two civilians, but it was according to the Associated Press,
Speaker 1: that was the story. It was a massive importance. It
Speaker 1: could have indicated an attack by Russia on a NATO country,
Speaker 1: precipitate World War three. The story was immediately seized on
Speaker 1: by President Zelenski of Ukraine to call for NATO intervention
Speaker 1: in his war. Kremlin accounts disputed the story were dismissed
Speaker 1: in chaotic hours long environment. It was only several hours later,
Speaker 1: when the world was waiting with baited breath, did we
Speaker 1: learn the truth. Actually, these weren't Russian missiles at all.
Speaker 1: Actually there were Ukrainian air defense missiles that landed in Poland,
Speaker 1: killing two civilians. That truth, of course, paints a very
Speaker 1: different situation, a much more gray area that doesn't bear
Speaker 1: the consequences of possibly massive escalation and a planet changing war.
Speaker 1: So well, of course, the AP was not only incorrect.
Speaker 1: They got played by someone in the intelligence community, a
Speaker 1: so called senior US official. How why who was this official?
Speaker 1: Was he truly so important that, based on his word alone,
Speaker 1: you're willing to scare the entire world? Clearly the APE
Speaker 1: needed to answer some questions, and immediately they produced their
Speaker 1: fall guy, James Laporta. He's the reporter who received the
Speaker 1: tip and was then fired. It's clean and easy, but
Speaker 1: it's not so fast. The APE spun the firing of
Speaker 1: the reporter as justice, because it was his fault that
Speaker 1: he left quote the impression that the story sourcing had
Speaker 1: been approved, yet leaked slack messages were that it just
Speaker 1: shows you from inside the AP newsroom very different story,
Speaker 1: one that cast out on the entire organization, from route
Speaker 1: to branch. Here's how the terrible saga played out. On
Speaker 1: Tuesday afternoon and one thirty two pm Eastern Standard Time,
Speaker 1: Laporta posted slack. He said senior US official previously vetted
Speaker 1: by the Vice president of AP News and Investigations Division,
Speaker 1: had told him that Russian missiles had crossed into Maldova
Speaker 1: and into Poland. Immediately, the head of AP Europe applied
Speaker 1: with the question can we send out a coveted and
Speaker 1: official AP news report with that information and do we
Speaker 1: need confirmation from another source, to which that reporter replied,
Speaker 1: quote that call is above my pay grade. When an
Speaker 1: editor followed up and asked for a story, Laporta couldn't
Speaker 1: because he literally was at the doctor's office. He said,
Speaker 1: all he knew is what he had passed along. Ten
Speaker 1: minutes after that message, a news alert was then sent
Speaker 1: by the deputy head of the European AP Desk, reading
Speaker 1: quote Russian missiles crossed into Poland, killing two. According to
Speaker 1: a senior US official, the damage at that point was
Speaker 1: done and the entire world was on edge. Only twenty
Speaker 1: four hours later, after the Polish government announced its conclusions,
Speaker 1: did the AP actually retract the story? And then the
Speaker 1: blame game began in earnest how could this happen? Well,
Speaker 1: looking at the slack transcript, we can actually surmise something obvious.
Speaker 1: This is not the story of a single reporter screwing up.
Speaker 1: This is a systematic failure top to bottom that indicts
Speaker 1: all their coverage in the past and in the future. Again,
Speaker 1: let's review, Laporta was at the doctor's office. He receives
Speaker 1: his false tip from some sort of senior intelligence official,
Speaker 1: not just any official, an official previously vetted and trusted
Speaker 1: by a senior vice president of the Associated Press for
Speaker 1: determining trustworthiness, Meaning that we should all be asking the question,
Speaker 1: Hold on a second, how many other alerts and how
Speaker 1: many other stories quoted this guy have we been misled before? Further,
Speaker 1: this shoddy information was enough for the editors in the
Speaker 1: chat to get excited enough to push an alert to
Speaker 1: the entire world who according to them, they believe that
Speaker 1: Laporta had actually cleared his tip with the vice president,
Speaker 1: not just the source in the past, hence why they
Speaker 1: are blaming him. But you read the transcript, his intent
Speaker 1: is actually clear. I think it reveals that the central
Speaker 1: news organization, which can impact markets and instantly change geopolitics,
Speaker 1: has terrible editorial standards. It is something that has plagued
Speaker 1: journalism on a mass scale since the arrival of Donald
Speaker 1: Trump and Russiagate. Russiagate and Trump brought record ratings to
Speaker 1: news organizations and power to intel agencies to get journalists
Speaker 1: even more so, to believe literally everything that they told them.
Speaker 1: It eroded long standing editorial practices at some of the
Speaker 1: most important journalistic institutions, and it made it so that
Speaker 1: in the middle of a crisis, random dudes on Twitter
Speaker 1: second guessing the AP report based upon photos from the
Speaker 1: scene gave us more accurate information in real time than
Speaker 1: the AP did. Let this be an important lesson for
Speaker 1: all of us. With the erosion of standards, it literally
Speaker 1: is a free for all out there. The only person
Speaker 1: that you can trust is yourself, not to be not
Speaker 1: to know what is right in the moment, but to
Speaker 1: be skeptical of everything that you see in an ongoing
Speaker 1: and chaotic situation. I think it's crazy, you know. At first, Crystal,
Speaker 1: I was like, Wow, I can't believe it. And if
Speaker 1: you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become
Speaker 1: a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: it was really fun to be back here at the desk.
Speaker 1: Shout out to all of our premium members. Also, don't
Speaker 1: forget live show. We've got the tickets on sale down
Speaker 1: the description of all of our videos. We really appreciate
Speaker 1: to come and see you guys in New York and
Speaker 1: in Boston is going to be a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Special thank you to all the Premium members out there
Speaker 1: for supporting our work and the show. You guys are
Speaker 1: just the people that we think about every single day.
Speaker 1: How we can help your experience, how we can continue
Speaker 1: to grow. Counterpoints is going to continue back here on
Speaker 1: the show this week. We're going to full normal scheduling.
Speaker 1: So with all that, we'll see you tomorrow. Love you guys,
Speaker 1: See you Tomorrow shot Keep to keep p