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 New Year, Welcome
Speaker 1: to Breaking Points. We have an amazing show for everybody today.
Speaker 1: What do we have Bristol? Indeed we do have your
Speaker 1: New year, beautiful people out there. Is great to be
Speaker 1: back and we will be back fully in the studio
Speaker 1: next week, which we are very excited for. Okay, in
Speaker 1: the show today, there's actually a lot happening in Washington today.
Speaker 1: There's a big battle for Speaker of the House. Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy has the most votes, but he doesn't have enough
Speaker 1: votes and it is totally unclear. Like a lot of
Speaker 1: times in Washington, there's suspense, but it's kind of faked
Speaker 1: suspense this time, literally no one knows what is going
Speaker 1: to happen, so we'll break all of that down for you.
Speaker 1: We also have some updates on one of those new
Speaker 1: members of Congress, George Santos. I've been sort of obsessed
Speaker 1: with the story. This dude lied about literally everything in
Speaker 1: his life. Now he is under a brand new investigation,
Speaker 1: so we'll bring you those details. We also have, at
Speaker 1: long last, after many years of anticipation and speculation, Trump
Speaker 1: tax returns will tell you what's in there and the
Speaker 1: way that the media has spun this, which is very
Speaker 1: interesting as well. We've got big Epstein news and we
Speaker 1: have a major fail from CNN that they started the
Speaker 1: year with. I've also got a report from the Billionaire
Speaker 1: and Boss Class Sager is taking a look at the
Speaker 1: total debacle from Southwest Airlines and Mayor Pete's failures with
Speaker 1: regards to that. But before we get to any of that,
Speaker 1: Saga Live Show, Live Show, go ahead and put it
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. Austin, Texas, February third, we
Speaker 1: are coming to the Paramount Theater. The tickets are actually
Speaker 1: almost sold out, so I highly recommend that you go
Speaker 1: ahead and grab them. I was just in Austin for
Speaker 1: New Years. I took a little drive by of the theater.
Speaker 1: It's a stunningly beautiful venue. I met some of you
Speaker 1: beautiful people as well in Austin, Texas, and I can
Speaker 1: tell you, Crystal, we've got some awesome fans that are
Speaker 1: on the ground there already. Many of them were mentioning
Speaker 1: and talking about how excited they were for the live show.
Speaker 1: So go ahead and join those people, Texas people and others.
Speaker 1: Is just just going to be the last one for a
Speaker 1: little while, and tickets are scarcely available now. Highly recommend
Speaker 1: that you come. We have a great show planned for
Speaker 1: you all. But with that, let's get to actually a
Speaker 1: shocking development in Washington, some genuinely suspenseful and possibly history
Speaker 1: making news. Yes indeed. Okay, So today there's expected to
Speaker 1: be a vote on Speaker of the House and Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy Republicans are taking control of the House. Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: has long been seen as the leading candidate. He needs
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighteen votes, and since Republicans only took
Speaker 1: the House by a very slim margin, he can only
Speaker 1: afford to lose four votes. So remember that four votes,
Speaker 1: that's the number that he can lose. Fortunately for him,
Speaker 1: there are five members of the Republican caucus who are
Speaker 1: calling themselves never Kevin. They have vowed to never vote
Speaker 1: for Kevin McCarthy. In so far they do not seem
Speaker 1: to be budging. Let's go ahead and put this tear
Speaker 1: sheet up on the screen from roll Call that breaks
Speaker 1: all of this down. So the headline there it says
Speaker 1: speaker race headed toward dramatic floor election. Here's the lead
Speaker 1: that they wrote out here. They say, whether or not
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker under the incoming House Republican majority,
Speaker 1: the January third floor election to determine who will take
Speaker 1: the gavel from Pelosi is poised to be the most
Speaker 1: dramatic in a century. A small faction of never Kevin
Speaker 1: Republicans is threatening to ensure McCarthy has denied the two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen votes needed to win the speaker's election,
Speaker 1: but a larger group of Republicans who have played to
Speaker 1: vote for only Kevin are making clear they will not
Speaker 1: support any other returning members of Congress for the role.
Speaker 1: The two positions are seemingly irreconcilable, and members on both
Speaker 1: sides of the standoff predict the speaker's election will require
Speaker 1: multiple ballots for the first time since nineteen twenty three.
Speaker 1: So you see the problem here. You've got Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 1: He's got a pretty hard group that says they will
Speaker 1: only vote for him. But meanwhile you have this other
Speaker 1: smaller contingent that says they will absolutely never vote for him.
Speaker 1: There is no one as of this morning who has
Speaker 1: the two hundred and eighteen votes needed, and so is
Speaker 1: a It's very uncertain how this is ultimately all going
Speaker 1: to unfold. You've actually had Sager a couple of moderate
Speaker 1: Republicans who have said floated that they may be willing
Speaker 1: to work with Democrats to get a kind of consensus
Speaker 1: candidate to get to that two hundred and eighteen vote threshold.
Speaker 1: One person who's been floated for that is Fred Upton,
Speaker 1: who is a moderate Republican. He's actually he's out the
Speaker 1: House after the session. Now, there's nothing in the law
Speaker 1: that says that the Speaker of the House has to
Speaker 1: be a sitting member of Congress. That's just the way
Speaker 1: it's been traditionally done. So that's one potential alternative out there.
Speaker 1: It's just a very up in the air right now
Speaker 1: how it all goes. And the last thing I'll add
Speaker 1: that I'm interested in your take is McCarthy has been
Speaker 1: really trying to appease this group of five. Hard knows
Speaker 1: there's a larger group. There's an additional nine who have
Speaker 1: sent a letter saying that they're very concerned. The whipcount
Speaker 1: this morning suggests that there may be about eighteen members
Speaker 1: of the Republican Caucus who are right now no votes.
Speaker 1: He's made some changes to the rules to try to
Speaker 1: win over these folks, and so far it just hasn't
Speaker 1: worked out. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. Le's go ahead and
Speaker 1: put that one on the screen, the letter of the
Speaker 1: so called nine. So what you can see here we
Speaker 1: have Representative Scott Perry, Paul Gosar, Andy Agalis, Ana Paulina
Speaker 1: Luna from Florida, Ali Crane, Chip Roy Dan, Bishop Andy Harris,
Speaker 1: Andrew Clyde so On. The reason why those names are
Speaker 1: important is they do generally run the gamut. I guess
Speaker 1: the one thing that unites all of them as being
Speaker 1: quote unquote anti establishment, but you can read that in
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways. That can mean tea Party Republican.
Speaker 1: That can also mean somebody who really just wants to
Speaker 1: make the headlines. The reason why I think that this
Speaker 1: is the most important is that the lack of certainty
Speaker 1: opens up all kinds of insane and interesting possibilities. We
Speaker 1: should remember the last time that the speakership was actually
Speaker 1: in question was when John Bayner actually resigned the House.
Speaker 1: Absolutely nobody predicted that it would be Paul Ryan, and
Speaker 1: it was Paul Ryan. That shows us that out of
Speaker 1: this could emerge somebody who really many Americans may not
Speaker 1: have ever heard of. I guess Paul Ryan was a
Speaker 1: little bit more well established. The fred Upton category is
Speaker 1: very much in there. I believe it would be one
Speaker 1: of the first or one of the only times in
Speaker 1: American history that somebody who's not currently serving in the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives would be the speaker. We should reiterate
Speaker 1: that as well. I've heard previously calls from MAGA Republicans
Speaker 1: to actually make Trump the Speaker of the House. That's
Speaker 1: one way that they wanted to I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: it would put him in the official line of succession
Speaker 1: since he's a pride of It's citizen. Right now, I
Speaker 1: want to underscore just for everyone that the chaos of
Speaker 1: the situation, the very fast moving negotiations that are happening
Speaker 1: mean that Kevin McCarthy very well could be the Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House. In fact, probably, I don't know, he's
Speaker 1: got the better spec I wouldn't say more likely, not,
Speaker 1: he's got the best shot of any person who is
Speaker 1: currently in the government right now. But as we have
Speaker 1: all learned through and we really have to reach back
Speaker 1: through very long ago in our history second, third, fourth, fifth, ten, twelfth,
Speaker 1: and all of those types of ballots, things can go
Speaker 1: in a crazy and very unexpected direction. It's a really
Speaker 1: fun for me because this is showing us the crumbling
Speaker 1: of the party infrastructure at the very top of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. People should not think that this is only
Speaker 1: a MAGA like a MAGA revolt against Kevin McCarthy. This
Speaker 1: is long standing, basically party crumbling at the top for
Speaker 1: the GOP. And personally, I'm enjoying the chaos. Crystal, Yeah, same.
Speaker 1: I mean, McCarthy was in line for the speakership before,
Speaker 1: and he kind of blew himself up that time because
Speaker 1: he admitted that the Benghazi hearings were just an attempt
Speaker 1: at like political attack on Hillary Clinton, and so that
Speaker 1: kind of sank his bid last time around. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a sense from that seems fairly justifiable to
Speaker 1: be that the dude doesn't really stand for anything. He's
Speaker 1: just a climber. You can't really trust him, and so
Speaker 1: that's why you see a fairly broad ideological array against him.
Speaker 1: And then you also have the complicating factor of you know,
Speaker 1: you have some of the hard maga folks in Congress
Speaker 1: who are against McCarthy, but of course McCarthy himself was
Speaker 1: actually endorsed by Trump. So that's led to this whole
Speaker 1: falling out between Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and
Speaker 1: Matt Gates being on the other side of Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green and MTG really forcefully making the case for McCarthy.
Speaker 1: So it's it has been a very interesting spectacle to
Speaker 1: watch unfold, and the lines are not entirely clear or
Speaker 1: consistent in the way that they've been drawn between these
Speaker 1: two camps. You have some other names that have been
Speaker 1: mentioned besides bred Upden, another person that was mentioned is
Speaker 1: Steve Scalise as a potential you know, if McCarthy fails
Speaker 1: and it looks like there's no way to get him
Speaker 1: across the finish line, maybe they put Scalise up as
Speaker 1: a potential consensus pick, but it's incredibly hard to say
Speaker 1: what happens. The other question is how hard are these
Speaker 1: never Kevin votes. Ultimately, are they just posturing so that
Speaker 1: they can get more concessions out of the rule making process.
Speaker 1: The thing that they really wanted was to make it
Speaker 1: easier to basically depose the speaker if they were unhappy
Speaker 1: with them. They've effectively already won that rule change, but
Speaker 1: then there's questions over whether the rest of the caucus
Speaker 1: will accept that rule change and vote for it, And
Speaker 1: the rule change vote happens after the speaker vote, so
Speaker 1: just a lot of uncertainty in this. There was a
Speaker 1: good threat from one of the reporters at Politico's Playbook
Speaker 1: laying out the difficulty of the math problem. And I
Speaker 1: want to take the time to go through this because
Speaker 1: I think it's a good explanation of exactly where things
Speaker 1: stand for McCarthy right now. Let's go ahead and put
Speaker 1: this up on the screen, so they say, here, News
Speaker 1: and Playbook, McCarthy's math problem is actually worse than it seems.
Speaker 1: It's not just the five hard known number Kevin earns
Speaker 1: and nine fence sitters who pay the rule changes as
Speaker 1: not good enough. One told me some undecideds won't support
Speaker 1: him even if he gives them everything they ask. That's
Speaker 1: a huge problem for McCarthy, something McCarthy allies have worried
Speaker 1: about for weeks, that some of these members are not
Speaker 1: really winnable because of the long held animosity they've had
Speaker 1: for the GOP leader. He quote. They say, the problem
Speaker 1: is people don't trust Kevin McCarthy and a number won't
Speaker 1: vote for him. This undecided lawmaker told me the list
Speaker 1: of demands that we offered was not for guaranteed support,
Speaker 1: but rather the kinds of things that might move some
Speaker 1: of his detractors out there. In the first part, you know,
Speaker 1: they offer this list of demands, but they didn't even say, like,
Speaker 1: if you give me these demands, if you can see,
Speaker 1: then we're all going to vote for you. So that
Speaker 1: puts them in a difficult position. Let's go ahead to
Speaker 1: the next screen. They say, this is why McCarthy dodge
Speaker 1: questions last night about whether it's concession on the motion
Speaker 1: of vacate got them the votes. That's the motion that
Speaker 1: would make it easier basically to depose the speaker. It
Speaker 1: didn't even if he goes down to a one person trigger,
Speaker 1: he may not get there if this well placed source
Speaker 1: is right. Three other signs of problems for McCarthy. One,
Speaker 1: the undecideds are already preparing to deflect blame to him
Speaker 1: if he goes down. He'd like it to be our problem.
Speaker 1: It's his problem. The real question should be why is
Speaker 1: he dragging the country in the confer through this. Two
Speaker 1: anti McCarthy members are already talking to GOP centrists about
Speaker 1: a unity candidate. You have to be responsible and say, well,
Speaker 1: if he's not going to get the votes, what alternatives
Speaker 1: are out there? There's no agreement. Centris continue to be
Speaker 1: McCarthy's strongest supporters, but the fact that convos between Conservatism
Speaker 1: motterates are happening are notable. Three. A small subset of
Speaker 1: Parthy backers are privately wary of this fight. He plans
Speaker 1: to wait this week to get the gavel with multiple votes,
Speaker 1: distancing from distracting from the GOP takeover. The more ballots
Speaker 1: he calls up, the more he could lose his own
Speaker 1: base of support. And the last quote they have here
Speaker 1: is that we're supposed to be hitting the round running here,
Speaker 1: but instead it's just a big belly fluff. Believe me,
Speaker 1: it's not just members of the Freedom of Concress who
Speaker 1: are aggravated, so t Saber. One of the key points
Speaker 1: there is it's not you know, you have these different
Speaker 1: ideological factions in the Republican Party, but they're not completely
Speaker 1: at odds. And this is what's really dangerous for McCarthy.
Speaker 1: If you have the hard right members in conversations with
Speaker 1: the centrist members who are just interested in sort of
Speaker 1: getting through this vote and getting someone as a consensus
Speaker 1: pick in you know, up to two hundred and eighteen
Speaker 1: votes to take the speaker's gavel. Well that's how you
Speaker 1: could very clearly end up with someone other than Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 1: because you know, if you and unite those factions together
Speaker 1: behind someone, then you end up in a completely different situation.
Speaker 1: So hard to see how this is all going to
Speaker 1: go down, But certainly, as of this morning, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: is not really particularly close to having the two uordter
Speaker 1: in eighteen votes that he would need to actually become speaker. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I really did not think it would come this close
Speaker 1: down to the wire. I really believe that some of
Speaker 1: those concessions from Kevin McCarthy on the rule changes and others.
Speaker 1: We're really talking about the motion to vacate, the ability
Speaker 1: to just bring legislation to the floor with is fifteen
Speaker 1: or so members, which itself would be a huge blow
Speaker 1: to McCarthy and would already stop his speakership or would
Speaker 1: really humble his speakership. Now it doesn't even seem like
Speaker 1: that's enough. I want to just underscore to everybody how
Speaker 1: historical this is. If Kevin McCarthy fails on the first ballot,
Speaker 1: it will be the first time since the Congress of
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty three, in exactly one hundred years, that the
Speaker 1: majority party has not had a nominee on the very
Speaker 1: first ballot. Now, what happens here is that, all right now,
Speaker 1: the math still can change. We should remember that given
Speaker 1: absentees voting present, you don't necessarily need to hit two eighteen.
Speaker 1: There have actually been a couple of instances six specifically,
Speaker 1: where they have had speakers elected with less than two
Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen voids votes, which is exactly a majority
Speaker 1: plus one. There have actually been fourteen instances where it
Speaker 1: took multiple ballots to choose a new speaker. Thirteen of
Speaker 1: them were before the Civil War. So this would be
Speaker 1: the first time in one hundred years that it would
Speaker 1: take more than one ballot possibly to elect a new speaker.
Speaker 1: It would be really the first one since the Civil
Speaker 1: War post Civil War era, and the last time that
Speaker 1: it took a long time in order to get a
Speaker 1: speaker Crystal was eighteen fifty five over the course of
Speaker 1: two months, with one hundred and thirty three ballots to
Speaker 1: elect a speaker during that Congress. Oh my god, that's insane.
Speaker 1: I didn't know about that. That's amazing. Well, last thing
Speaker 1: I'll say here, guys is Hunter Points is going to
Speaker 1: be moving to Wednesdays, so they're going to have a
Speaker 1: show for you tomorrow to break all of this down.
Speaker 1: Ryan knows way more about like congressional procedure and inside
Speaker 1: baseball stuff and basically anyone, so he'll be able to
Speaker 1: break all of us down really well. It'll be great
Speaker 1: to have Emily's perspective also on these different ideological factions
Speaker 1: and what they are saying and what they're thinking. She's
Speaker 1: also very well sourced within the Republican Caucus, so definitely
Speaker 1: check that out to see how this all ultimately unfolds.
Speaker 1: We'll be watching it very closely. All right. So one
Speaker 1: of these new members who is about to be sworn
Speaker 1: in on the Republican side is a fellow by the
Speaker 1: name at least we think this is his name of
Speaker 1: George Santos. I have been sort of obsessed with the
Speaker 1: story because I just find it fascinating the pathological nature
Speaker 1: of this man and how he literally lied about seemingly
Speaker 1: everything in his life. He's lied at different times about
Speaker 1: his religion, about his race. He claimed he was black
Speaker 1: on Twitter at one point to deflect criticism that he
Speaker 1: might be racist. He lied about it how his mother died.
Speaker 1: He lied about his grandparents being Holocaust survivors. He lied
Speaker 1: about his education, He lied about his work history, lied
Speaker 1: about his business history. He would make up random anecdotes, like,
Speaker 1: for example, that he had employees who were murdered in
Speaker 1: the Pulse nightclub shooting. So this man, every day there
Speaker 1: seems to be more about just how much he fabricated
Speaker 1: about his life and about his resume. Tulci Gabbard actually
Speaker 1: had an interview with him. He went on Fox News.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he probably thought, Okay, this is the place
Speaker 1: where I'm going to get the best most softball. Hearing
Speaker 1: I don't think he got what he really bargained for.
Speaker 1: Take a listen to the way that she'd grilled him.
Speaker 1: The reality is is that I remain committed to doing
Speaker 1: everything I set forward in my campaign. I'm not a fraud.
Speaker 1: I'm not a fake. I didn't materialize from thin air
Speaker 1: if I were one of those in New York's third District.
Speaker 1: Right now, now that the election is over and I'm
Speaker 1: finding out all of these lies that you've told, not
Speaker 1: just one little lie or one little embellishment, these are
Speaker 1: blatant lies. My question is do you have no shame?
Speaker 1: Do you have no shit? And the people who are
Speaker 1: now you're asking to trust you to go and be
Speaker 1: their voice for them, their families and their kids in Washington,
Speaker 1: paulsy I can say the same thing about the Democrats
Speaker 1: and the party. Look at Joe Biden. Joe Biden has
Speaker 1: been lying to the American people for forty years. He's
Speaker 1: a president of the United States. Democrats resoundedly support him.
Speaker 1: Do they have no shame? This? This is not about
Speaker 1: Democratic Party though, this is I think one of the
Speaker 1: biggest concerns Congressman elect is that you don't really seem
Speaker 1: to be taking this seriously, You've apologized, you said you've
Speaker 1: made mistakes, but you've outright a lie is not an
Speaker 1: embellishment on a resume. You said you worked at Goldman,
Speaker 1: Sachs and City Group, but they've said, we've got no
Speaker 1: record of this guy working for us. You've said you've
Speaker 1: gone to and graduated from these universities, but they've said, well,
Speaker 1: we've got no record of that. These are blatant lies,
Speaker 1: and it calls into question how your constituents of the
Speaker 1: American people can believe anything that you may say when
Speaker 1: you are standing on the floor of the House of
Speaker 1: Representatives supposedly fighting for them. That's the real issue here. Well, look,
Speaker 1: and I agree with what you're saying. And as I stated,
Speaker 1: and I continue, we can debate my resume and how
Speaker 1: I worked with firms such as gold Is this debate
Speaker 1: or is it just false? It is a debatable. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's not false at all. It's it's debatable. I can
Speaker 1: I can sit down and explain to you what you
Speaker 1: can do in private equity in capitol intro via servicing
Speaker 1: limited partners and general partners, and we can have this
Speaker 1: discussion that's going to go way above the American people's head.
Speaker 1: But that's not what I campaigned on. I campaigned on
Speaker 1: delivering results for the American people by lowrianslation. I can
Speaker 1: sit down and if you want to have that discussion,
Speaker 1: I'd be glad to Tolcy to explain that to you
Speaker 1: and make sure that we settled the score. So, I mean,
Speaker 1: there's really no defense of just all of the fabrications
Speaker 1: and some of the things that he said. I mean,
Speaker 1: he did cop to like resume embellishment. Come on, dude,
Speaker 1: you literally made up your entire life story that is
Speaker 1: not resume embellishment. And then one of my favorite excuses
Speaker 1: he gave Sager is he had claimed that he was
Speaker 1: a proud Jewish American and it turns out he's not
Speaker 1: Jewish at all, but he claimed he was, like, oh well,
Speaker 1: I was just saying I was jew dash Ish, like
Speaker 1: I'm down with the Jewish community or something like this.
Speaker 1: So ridiculous. The latest live that came out is apparently
Speaker 1: some teenager that he was in a relationship with. He
Speaker 1: had just made up all kinds of stories to this
Speaker 1: guy too. He actually told this dude that he had
Speaker 1: bought him tickets to Hawaii. It turned out the tickets
Speaker 1: were fake. I mean again, clearly this is someone who
Speaker 1: has some sort of a pathological issue in terms of lyne.
Speaker 1: And then the latest development this morning is that it's
Speaker 1: not just US authorities who are now looking into this guy,
Speaker 1: but there's an allegation, it appears to be confirmed by
Speaker 1: the records, that he engaged in chech fraud in Brazil,
Speaker 1: that he went into a clothing store bought some seven
Speaker 1: hundred dollars worth of clothes using a stolen checkbook. And
Speaker 1: let's go and put this piece up on the screen.
Speaker 1: So Brazilian authorities say that they are now reviving that
Speaker 1: fraud case against George Santos. This happened quite a while
Speaker 1: I was back in two thousand and eight. What they
Speaker 1: say here in the New York Times that they intend
Speaker 1: to revive those fraud charges and are seeking his formal response.
Speaker 1: They had sort of dropped them before because they just
Speaker 1: couldn't find him, but now he's turned up, he's been located,
Speaker 1: so they are going after him again for this the
Speaker 1: next piece, let's go and put this next part up
Speaker 1: on the screen. Here is the very latest in terms
Speaker 1: of updates from this guy. Because it's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to keep track of everything. There's now allegations that he
Speaker 1: was selling access to his swearing in, which could be
Speaker 1: an ethics violation. In the House, we had Jamie Comer,
Speaker 1: a key Republican congressman, predicting that the House Ethics Committee
Speaker 1: will in fact look into Santos and his conduct. You've
Speaker 1: had people digging into his campaign finance reports, and he
Speaker 1: spent tens of thousands of dollars on air travel, eleven
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to rent a house that he claimed was
Speaker 1: for staff, but neighbors say they saw Santos himself living there.
Speaker 1: You also had his press secretary resign. You have a
Speaker 1: Democratic congressman introducing what's called the Santos Act to make
Speaker 1: it actually illegal to lie about your credentials when you
Speaker 1: are running for office, and you have three new probes.
Speaker 1: Put this last piece up on the screen, including and
Speaker 1: this is probably the most significant part, federal prosecutors opening
Speaker 1: an investigation into him over his campaign spending, because one
Speaker 1: of the biggest questions is, you know, this guy went
Speaker 1: from broke and getting kicked out of his apartments and claiming,
Speaker 1: you know, fairly low level of income to personally contributing
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand dollars to his own campaign. His business
Speaker 1: history has never added up. He's never really been able
Speaker 1: to explain what he does or where he may have
Speaker 1: come into so much money. So it sure looks like
Speaker 1: there could be some campaign finance violations here. If you
Speaker 1: had wealthy donors who effectively, you know, funneled him this
Speaker 1: cash to put into his campaign, that would be wildly,
Speaker 1: wildly illegal. And then just last thing, Soger, the way
Speaker 1: this ties into the Speaker the Speaker fight today is
Speaker 1: Santos is a yes for Kevin McCarthy. So McCarthy hasn't
Speaker 1: wanted to say anything about him because he needs every
Speaker 1: vote he can get at this point in order to
Speaker 1: take the Speaker's gavel, and with a Republican majority so
Speaker 1: incredibly slim, of course, everyone there is very interested in
Speaker 1: holding onto every vote they possibly can, even if one
Speaker 1: of those votes is someone who you know, you barely
Speaker 1: know that he's telling you the truth about his own name.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they need his vote and they needed bad. Look,
Speaker 1: the Santos thing, that pivot was humiliating. Whenever he was
Speaker 1: talking about Joe Biden and the Democrats. It's like you
Speaker 1: have literally lied about almost every single thing that you
Speaker 1: have said whenever you ran for public office. And the
Speaker 1: insane part is that there's really nothing they can do
Speaker 1: about it. Right now, his sign has actually been held
Speaker 1: up in the House of Representatives. They've installed the placard
Speaker 1: outside of his office. He will will be the congressman
Speaker 1: from New York of this district, which is insane when
Speaker 1: you think about it, especially just the level of the
Speaker 1: really just the level of narcissism. But what's also really
Speaker 1: we're discovering is that it very likely could have been
Speaker 1: paved with some serious either campaign finance or straight up
Speaker 1: just illegal activities. The number one question is where did
Speaker 1: this man get all of his money? Whose money is it.
Speaker 1: He's apparently has a net worth of several million dollars
Speaker 1: or at least connections to wealthy donors that are there.
Speaker 1: And the unraveling of this I think will be one
Speaker 1: of the really just the great stories in modern American politics,
Speaker 1: because this is just this is like the fire festival
Speaker 1: of Congressman. There's just he really reminds me of him.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, if you ever watched those
Speaker 1: interviews with I forget his name, Billy, he just got
Speaker 1: out of prison. I've always been fascinated with those kind
Speaker 1: of pathological liar type, the tender swindler. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: what he was pulling with that guy in terms of
Speaker 1: one of the guys he was maybe dating, who knows,
Speaker 1: in terms of his own sexual orientation, but in terms
Speaker 1: of whatever he was pulling, it is just a complete
Speaker 1: pathology of you know, every once in a while, these
Speaker 1: people do exist. And the really crazy part is not
Speaker 1: that only exists, but they succeed in our society. So
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that says about us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the reason why Sager is questioning whether even you know,
Speaker 1: the way he portrayed his sexuality is accurate is because
Speaker 1: he apparently had a seven year secret marriage to a
Speaker 1: woman he appears to at least be by. Because there
Speaker 1: are you know, men who come out or at least
Speaker 1: one man who's come out now and said he had
Speaker 1: a romantic relationship with him. I don't I mean, I
Speaker 1: just don't know at this point. But the other piece
Speaker 1: of it that's really fascinating to me is, you know,
Speaker 1: Santos just told everyone exactly what they wanted to hear.
Speaker 1: So he portrayed himself in his congressional campaign as this,
Speaker 1: you know, trail blazing. He said, he is the American
Speaker 1: Dream and you know, really push forward this idea entity
Speaker 1: that would be inspiring to people and maybe win over
Speaker 1: some liberal voters because this was a swing district. He
Speaker 1: was not really actually expected to win in this New
Speaker 1: York district mostly Long Island and part of Queens And
Speaker 1: so he, I'm sure, told wealthy donors what they wanted
Speaker 1: to hear. He told the Republican Jewish Coalition what they
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. He told people on Twitter what they
Speaker 1: wanted to hear, what was convenient for them. And so
Speaker 1: I also think in a way it's a sort of
Speaker 1: profound indictment of identity and personality driven politics, because you
Speaker 1: shouldn't be able to get away with winning congressional office
Speaker 1: just based on your own personal bio and narrative. It
Speaker 1: should be about what you're going to do and what
Speaker 1: you believe in and what you ultimately stand for. And
Speaker 1: he sort of figured out that, no, the thing that
Speaker 1: really matters is that I have the right story to tell,
Speaker 1: and that you know, he probably lied to some donors
Speaker 1: to get him the funnel on these hundreds of thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of dollars as well to to get him across
Speaker 1: the finish line. So you know, I'm fascinated him and
Speaker 1: his psychological profile. I personally feel guilty when I even,
Speaker 1: like get something a little bit wrong on the show
Speaker 1: or whatever. So to imagine crafting this whole inventive life
Speaker 1: story is just beyond my capability to imagine being able
Speaker 1: to do that. But then I also think there's like
Speaker 1: an indictment of our mode of politics here as well,
Speaker 1: that this dude was able to slip through and win
Speaker 1: enough votes to become a member of Congress. Oh. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the main metastora to me. I'm like, the fact
Speaker 1: is that he fooled everybody and it really just wasn't
Speaker 1: that hard. He's one of the most transparent frads you know,
Speaker 1: in modern history, especially given the fact that the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party apparently didn't even do any basic opposition research and
Speaker 1: even the Republican Party. Mean, when you want to run
Speaker 1: a background check on somebody after they've secured the primary,
Speaker 1: it was one of the a you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of drunk private investigator could have easily uncovered this in
Speaker 1: a matter of hours, and yet you know, it took
Speaker 1: all the way until he officially won, and now he's
Speaker 1: going to be a congressman in the House. I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, crazy stuff has happened. It's the people's House. Apparently,
Speaker 1: there were some Republicans who before the election had made
Speaker 1: some comments like they didn't want to touch this guy
Speaker 1: with a ten foot poll, that they had some real
Speaker 1: questions about the way he was portraying his business background,
Speaker 1: but they just didn't sort of like dig really deeply
Speaker 1: because again, they didn't really expect him to win, and also, frankly,
Speaker 1: they didn't really care if he did win, then they
Speaker 1: get his vote, and that was you know, what they
Speaker 1: were ultimately post interested in. So they certainly weren't interested
Speaker 1: in blowing the lid off this guy. And then the
Speaker 1: Democrats the d tric You'll Love this their briefing book,
Speaker 1: they did do opposition research on him, and the thing
Speaker 1: that their briefing book really pointed out and that the
Speaker 1: Democratic cannot really ran on with some like comedy made
Speaker 1: about January sixth, So that's what they leaned into something
Speaker 1: he said about January sixth. They just went with the
Speaker 1: like January sixth was bad line of attack and just
Speaker 1: completely missed the fact that everything about this man was
Speaker 1: a total and complete lie, and like a simple Google
Speaker 1: search or a single phone call could have revealed that
Speaker 1: he was an utter and complete fraud. So just an
Speaker 1: amazing story. It actually fits well with our next segment
Speaker 1: here about Trump taxes, about who exactly Donald Trump is,
Speaker 1: how did he make his money? What exactly do his
Speaker 1: tax returns show us? There are two kind of attack vectors. One,
Speaker 1: which I think was totally legitimate, was Trump, by his
Speaker 1: own admission, gained the tax code to effectively pay very
Speaker 1: little in taxes despite having a multi billion dollar net worth.
Speaker 1: Two was one which really became the main vector of
Speaker 1: attack twenty seventeen onwards that one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: Trump was hiding his tax returns was because it showed
Speaker 1: some purported connection to the Russian government. So we'll play
Speaker 1: you the first one, which shows you that Trump very
Speaker 1: clearly lied to the American people during the presidential debate,
Speaker 1: and then the second one, which shows you that the
Speaker 1: media obviously lied. Let's start with the first one. I
Speaker 1: know that you pay a lot of other taxes, but
Speaker 1: I'm asking you the specific question, is it true that
Speaker 1: you paid seven hundred and fifty dollars in federal income taxes.
Speaker 1: Each of those two years, I paid millions of dollars
Speaker 1: in taxes, millions of dollars of income tax And let
Speaker 1: me just tell you, there was a story in one
Speaker 1: of the papers that I paid thirty eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: One year, I paid twenty seven million tax terms. I went.
Speaker 1: You'll see it as soon as it's finished. You'll see it,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to do. Go to the
Speaker 1: Board of Elections. There's one hundred and eighteen page or
Speaker 1: so report that says everything I have, every bank I have,
Speaker 1: I'm totally under leveraged because the assets are extremely good,
Speaker 1: and we have a very I built our I'm answering
Speaker 1: you a specific question, which, let me tell you, I
Speaker 1: understand all of that. I understand all No, mister President,
Speaker 1: I'm asking you a question. Will you tell us how
Speaker 1: much you paid in federal income taxes in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: and twenty seven millions of dollars? You paid millions of
Speaker 1: dollars of dollars, seven millions of dollars, and you'll get
Speaker 1: to see it. Well, Crystal, it turns out actually he
Speaker 1: only paid seven hundred and fifty dollars that year, just
Speaker 1: a little bit of a shocker. Also, it does show
Speaker 1: us very clearly, and I want to make this much
Speaker 1: less about Trump and his lying. This is how the
Speaker 1: tax code is written for the super rich. That means
Speaker 1: that you're, like average working class person in payroll taxes,
Speaker 1: is paying more than many of the people who are
Speaker 1: on the Forbes four hundred list. Let that sink in.
Speaker 1: So I think it's a much more of a meta commentary,
Speaker 1: and it is hilarious because now that we do have
Speaker 1: his tax returns, we can see clearly that he did
Speaker 1: lie about that. And actually the major medgastory of the
Speaker 1: tax returns from Donald Trump is that these people in
Speaker 1: the real estate business are pulling all kinds of insane
Speaker 1: shenanigan's which he also enabled for himself in the Tax
Speaker 1: Cuts and Jobs Act, that enable them to just ride
Speaker 1: off outrageous sums of money. Put twenty twenty aside, because
Speaker 1: that showed genuine losses at the Trump organization. Makes sense.
Speaker 1: During hotels in normal boom years, which of his own admission,
Speaker 1: the economy was doing well, he was not paying even
Speaker 1: close to the amount that the average American citizen pays
Speaker 1: in income taxes or in taxes in general. To the government.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely disgusting that you can get away with as
Speaker 1: wealthy of a person as he is, paying seven hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars or paying zero dollars in certain tax years,
Speaker 1: or even like less than a million dollars, considering how
Speaker 1: much he supposedly is earning and how wealthy he supposedly is.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very hard to tell because there are
Speaker 1: so many loopholes in so many ways that you can
Speaker 1: engineer your income if you're as a wealthy as he is,
Speaker 1: to make it a peer as if you're taking losses,
Speaker 1: or make it a peer as if you're not earning
Speaker 1: much in a given year. It's very hard to tell
Speaker 1: ultimately how successful his businesses were during this period, how
Speaker 1: much he really made, did he really lose money, all
Speaker 1: of those things. One analyst that I read said that,
Speaker 1: you know, his taxes are extraordinarily complicated. He has this
Speaker 1: whole complex web of you know, companies and offshore entities
Speaker 1: and all of these tax planning devices. And this analyst said,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to tell whether or not he was
Speaker 1: a poor businessman or whether he's basically like you know,
Speaker 1: conning the tax code. Because each of these entities would
Speaker 1: make a very small profit, and it was sort of
Speaker 1: precisely calculated so that you would pay the minimal of taxes.
Speaker 1: So there's certainly some red flags here in terms of
Speaker 1: potential tax fraud, but nothing that is definitive. And this
Speaker 1: gets to your other metapoint about the tax code and
Speaker 1: about the problem with the IRS that we've been covering
Speaker 1: for quite a while. They are much more likely to
Speaker 1: go after, you know, a waitress who is not recording
Speaker 1: all of her cash tips for audit then someone like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump who creates this entire complex web of entities
Speaker 1: in order to minimize their tax burden, because that requires
Speaker 1: so much more resources, because they have so many you know,
Speaker 1: well paid lawyers behind them to fight you tooth and nail,
Speaker 1: and so ultimately the IRS, which has been stripped of
Speaker 1: funding time and time again over the years and is
Speaker 1: operating at bare bones. Instead of going after the wealthy,
Speaker 1: they go after the you know, lower paid, working class
Speaker 1: person because it's the lowest hanging fruit. And then, as
Speaker 1: you point out to sober Like, just the fact that
Speaker 1: the tax code even enables this type of behavior is
Speaker 1: utterly disgusting. And Donald Trump is far from the only
Speaker 1: plutocrat who engages in these types of very questionable tax
Speaker 1: planning behaviors. Yes, and that is the point that the
Speaker 1: Democrats probably should have been talking about for the last
Speaker 1: five years. Instead, this is what people on MSNBC were
Speaker 1: hearing during the Trump years about Trump's taxes. This single
Speaker 1: source close to Dolgiamac has told me that the Trump
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co signers,
Speaker 1: that's how he was able to obtain those loans, and
Speaker 1: that the co signers are Russian oligarchs. But really, really,
Speaker 1: actually no, it turns out that's actually not true at all.
Speaker 1: We have just now gotten all of the Trump tax returns.
Speaker 1: Now the House Financial Services Committee wais and means and
Speaker 1: all theirs have their information. Actually, you know, somebody said
Speaker 1: this Crystal, that this is going to start a precedent
Speaker 1: where Congress will have access to the tax returns going
Speaker 1: back all the way for every precedent, And I was like, great,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. You know, if the president doesn't want, let
Speaker 1: Congress release it, I don't care. That should be public
Speaker 1: record for everybody. In fact, they really should just pass
Speaker 1: a law that you have to basically disclose. I would
Speaker 1: say not even five years. I would say over the
Speaker 1: last twenty years before you become president, specifically to make
Speaker 1: sure that we don't have to go through all of
Speaker 1: these shenanigans. And I think, really, if we will put
Speaker 1: the last part up here on the screen, the meta
Speaker 1: takeaway is exactly what we've laid out here. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: engaged in the exact same tax planning as every rich
Speaker 1: person and mega rich person in America. He has links
Speaker 1: to several finance foreign foreign accounts, and others, all of
Speaker 1: which linked to various LLCs designed specifically to lower his
Speaker 1: taxable donations, including charitable donations and others strategically placed to
Speaker 1: make sure that the tax burden is as little as
Speaker 1: humanly possible. And that the real takeaway here should be
Speaker 1: that the irs, which right now you know, has all
Speaker 1: these uh has all of these rules about reporting VENMO
Speaker 1: transactions over six hundred dollars and others, that they're continued,
Speaker 1: you know, really persecution of poorer people and going after them. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: you know, the unit which is charged with going after
Speaker 1: some of the ten wealthiest Americans has been far less
Speaker 1: effective and far far less active in the last decade.
Speaker 1: I think that is a genuine crime, and it just
Speaker 1: shows us that we got to get out of this
Speaker 1: hole funding the irs or not, and try and focus
Speaker 1: on boosting the exact entities within the organization and the
Speaker 1: government which go after the super rich, who of course
Speaker 1: are avoiding you know, beyond the fact that what they
Speaker 1: legally owe is already very low. They don't even pay that.
Speaker 1: It's hundreds of millions of dollars of which are going
Speaker 1: unpaid in taxes and instead, you know, people's Venmo transactions
Speaker 1: are the ones that are being looked at. Robber Soccer.
Speaker 1: Was it the Pandora papers that were relieved that revealed
Speaker 1: all of the tax cheating behavior of the world's richest,
Speaker 1: And in the analysis of those papers, they said, basically,
Speaker 1: there aren't a lot of US persons here because the
Speaker 1: US tax code is set up such that you can basically,
Speaker 1: you know, hide your assets using all of these tax
Speaker 1: loopholes and oh, zero dollars in taxes, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to engage in the same like offshoring behavior that
Speaker 1: the world's other oligarchs engage in to cheat their own
Speaker 1: country's taxes. So you know, it's an enforcement issue because
Speaker 1: you do have a lot of wealthy people who are
Speaker 1: tax cheats and just expect that they can get away
Speaker 1: with it or let most get a slap on the wrist.
Speaker 1: And it's also a tax code issue that there are
Speaker 1: so many loopholes available to them to basically pay zero
Speaker 1: dollars in taxes. And given the level of inequality in
Speaker 1: the country in particular, it's just disgusting that we continue
Speaker 1: to persist in that regime when we supposedly have a
Speaker 1: progressives actually taxation system. In reality, when it comes to
Speaker 1: the wealthiest of the wealthy, that is just so far
Speaker 1: from the case. Oh, it's a complete lie, a complete
Speaker 1: and a total lie. And it fits very well and
Speaker 1: neatly with our next story, the Jeffrey Epstein saga. So
Speaker 1: we have some very interesting and new information. I've always
Speaker 1: thought that the Virgin Islands could be one of the
Speaker 1: areas where their prosecutors and their team very much wanted
Speaker 1: to try and get to the bottom of this. And
Speaker 1: a new filing in the US Attorney's Office is devastating
Speaker 1: for one of the major financial institutions in the country.
Speaker 1: Let's put this up there on the screen. Epstein's sex
Speaker 1: trafficking was aided by JP Morgan This is according to
Speaker 1: a new lawsuit from the US Virgin Islands Attorney General's
Speaker 1: Office that was filed in the Southern District of Manhattan
Speaker 1: on Tuesday. Essentially, what they are alleging is that JP
Speaker 1: Morgan failed to report Epstein's suspicious activities and actually provided
Speaker 1: the financier with services reserved for high wealth clients, even
Speaker 1: after a two thousand and eight conviction for soliciting a
Speaker 1: minor for prostitution in Palm Beach, Florida. They specifically say
Speaker 1: that they have information which has revealed that JP Morgan knowingly,
Speaker 1: negligently and unlawfully provided and pulled the levers through which
Speaker 1: recruiters and victims were paid, and was indispensable to the
Speaker 1: operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise. So why
Speaker 1: does all of this matter? We should go back and
Speaker 1: remember a New York Financial Services Department find of JP Morgan,
Speaker 1: of Deutsche Bank and of other financial institutions, which showed
Speaker 1: specifically that the banks were involved in a collusion process
Speaker 1: to go after Epstein's business and specifically facilitated his own
Speaker 1: transactions from the United States to Eastern Europe. Presumably and
Speaker 1: in many cases towards women who are using used for
Speaker 1: sex trafficking purposes. Why does that matter because Epstein himself
Speaker 1: and his network in organizedation, we're pulling all sorts of
Speaker 1: financial chicanery that if you or I tried to pull
Speaker 1: a crystal, we would be automatically reported to the FBI.
Speaker 1: And in fact, one of those, my personal favorite example
Speaker 1: from the Financial Services Department complaint was when they would
Speaker 1: say how much cash can we withdraw without triggering the Feds?
Speaker 1: By the way, just asking that question, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: call the FEDS, and they engage in regular behavior where
Speaker 1: they would try and withdraw as much cash as possible
Speaker 1: without triggering an automatic regulatory informing to federal authorities. This
Speaker 1: is just the tip of the iceberg. What Thes Virgin
Speaker 1: Islands is doing here is revealing it at the major
Speaker 1: meta financial institutional level, of which remember, we have no
Speaker 1: transparency outside of that financial services fine that happened for
Speaker 1: Deutsche Bank, and I think it was in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: We have no more clarity because of the Glade Maxwell
Speaker 1: trial focused on crimes and I'm not saying these weren't valid,
Speaker 1: but on things that happened in so far limited in
Speaker 1: scope and so long time ago. The actual architect of
Speaker 1: all of the power networks, the people like Leon Black,
Speaker 1: the billionaires, the Wall Street, the financial institutions, all of
Speaker 1: it remains outside of public records. So this is a
Speaker 1: very important case that's happening here. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: Glen Maxwell trial. I think it's pretty clear was engineered
Speaker 1: to protect as many powerful people as possible while still
Speaker 1: putting her in prison because the public was just not
Speaker 1: going to accept her ultimately going through going free. So
Speaker 1: when you look at this pattern with these financial institutions,
Speaker 1: keep in mind like maybe before he was a convicted
Speaker 1: sex offender, maybe you could sort of turn a blind
Speaker 1: eye and make up some innocent reason for these strange transactions.
Speaker 1: But they continue to do business with him and seek
Speaker 1: out business with him after he's a convicted sex offender.
Speaker 1: And these are sophisticated institutions, You don't think that they
Speaker 1: don't know what suspicious financial transactions look like, what they
Speaker 1: are supposed to report under the law in terms of
Speaker 1: suspicial suspicious financial transactions. So it really is, you know, disgusting.
Speaker 1: All they cared about ultimately was the money. And then
Speaker 1: the next twist in this story is this Attorney General
Speaker 1: for the Virgin Islands who's been seems to be pretty
Speaker 1: dogged in her pursuit of accountability and exposing the enablers
Speaker 1: of the Jeffrey Epstein sex crimes ring. She was fired
Speaker 1: from her job for filing this lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase.
Speaker 1: Go and put this piece up on the screen here.
Speaker 1: She was fired days after suing JP Morgan Chase over
Speaker 1: the Jeffrey Epstein ties. And it says in the article.
Speaker 1: I mean they out and out acknowledged that this was
Speaker 1: the reason for her dismissal. They didn't even try to
Speaker 1: make up like, oh, no, it had something to do
Speaker 1: with her other conduct and it really had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with Epstein. No, they were like, no, this caught
Speaker 1: us off guard, and so we relieved her of her duties.
Speaker 1: So even from the grave, this man is still being protected.
Speaker 1: But more to the point, all of the powerful people
Speaker 1: who were caught up in this, or who enabled this
Speaker 1: and chose to look the other way, or were active participants,
Speaker 1: they continued to be protected at the highest levels. Yes,
Speaker 1: I want to underscore again that Denise George, the Attorney
Speaker 1: general here who was fired, has been really courageous on
Speaker 1: this investigation for years. Now, let's go and put this
Speaker 1: up there on the screen. It's a news item from
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, but it shows you that
Speaker 1: in an initial lawsuit that she actually filed, they alleged
Speaker 1: that to Epstein was trafficking girls as young as twelve
Speaker 1: years old to the US Virgin Islands on the property
Speaker 1: and the island that he privately owned. This was part
Speaker 1: of a hundred million dollars settlement with the Epstein estate
Speaker 1: that the Virgin Islands actually just came to with the
Speaker 1: Epstein estate to claw back quote, more than eighty million
Speaker 1: dollars in economic development tax benefits that Epstein and co
Speaker 1: defendants had fraudulently obtained from US Virgin Islands and other
Speaker 1: authorities to actually use to then fund his sex trafficking enterprise.
Speaker 1: I also want to read a quote from the lawsuit
Speaker 1: that she filed before she was fired. These decisions were
Speaker 1: advocated and approved at the senior levels of JP Morgan,
Speaker 1: who facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised
Speaker 1: suspicious of and were impact part of a criminal enterprise
Speaker 1: whose currency was a sexual servitude of dozens of women
Speaker 1: and girls in and beyond the US Virgin Islands. This
Speaker 1: lawsuit is again the tip of the iceberg, and if
Speaker 1: it actually was allowed to proceed, we would have gotten
Speaker 1: financial statements, subpoenas, possibly as senior JP Morgan, executives, account managers,
Speaker 1: some of the other sophisticated financial ship canry that Epstein
Speaker 1: and all of his coacherie were involved in. I mean,
Speaker 1: I still have so many questions. If we'll all remember
Speaker 1: Leon Black, who was the head of the Apollo Group,
Speaker 1: he was one of the richest men in the United States,
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful people on Wall Street, and
Speaker 1: he paid him some hundred million dollars for quote tax advice.
Speaker 1: And the way that he paid him that one hundred
Speaker 1: million was through the shell corporation that owned his private
Speaker 1: jet to jeffreyepp I mean this, and then Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: I mean Bill Gates's own divorce, as Melinda Gates has
Speaker 1: now come out and said, was because she was understanding
Speaker 1: the level of his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, not just
Speaker 1: some one chance meeting. We're talking about behind closed doors,
Speaker 1: even allegedly in some cases complaining about his marriage. And
Speaker 1: you know, he's known to have been involved in affairs
Speaker 1: also while he was married, so some of the world's
Speaker 1: richest and most powerful men aren't snared in this, and
Speaker 1: none of it yet has come to light. And he's
Speaker 1: been dead. I'll just say dead. We'll say for the
Speaker 1: circumstances for later for several years now. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just completely crazy. This was one of the only chances
Speaker 1: that we really had. And now she's been fired, and
Speaker 1: you know, I'll let you surmise about why exactly that
Speaker 1: would happen. Yeah, very well said Okay. Now finally we
Speaker 1: couldn't help but cover this the New Year. It was
Speaker 1: rang in. For some reason, many of the cable news
Speaker 1: networks believe that people want to watch them while they
Speaker 1: are ringing in the New Year. And I guess, if
Speaker 1: you're at least going to go to the trouble of
Speaker 1: doing a New Years show, should you not then engage
Speaker 1: in a countdown, you know, and actually with the revelry,
Speaker 1: the ball drop, or if you don't have the ball drop,
Speaker 1: some sort of big celebration of the moment instead. CNN's
Speaker 1: Don Lemon actually did not ring in the New Year
Speaker 1: at all. They forgot the countdown, presumably because of the
Speaker 1: time zone difference, because they were in New Orleans. They
Speaker 1: had music that was going on and completely dig not
Speaker 1: acknowledge the change of the new year in any way.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen. That's how we started. That's how
Speaker 1: we started. Already put his countdown, so miss missed the countdown.
Speaker 1: And as you said, Crystal, they're not even allowed to
Speaker 1: drink anymore, so he can't even blame being wasted. He
Speaker 1: was just straight up bad at his job. You know,
Speaker 1: I think we need to end these cable news once.
Speaker 1: We need to have one maybe two. Personally, I watched
Speaker 1: the Miley and Dolly Parton show. It was in fun.
Speaker 1: I enjoyed it. You know, Miley and Dolly, they're entertainers,
Speaker 1: so they're exactly the people who I want to ring
Speaker 1: the new year in with. Why would anyone want to
Speaker 1: watch CNN's don Lemon do this? And I guess the
Speaker 1: only previous time was with Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin
Speaker 1: is when they were getting completely wasted on the air
Speaker 1: and people were like, Okay, well, you know this is
Speaker 1: at least kind of amusing and fun. But he wasn't
Speaker 1: even drunk. He had was completely sober, and he was
Speaker 1: completely unable to ring in the New year. I think
Speaker 1: it's a metaphor for CNN and for the future of
Speaker 1: that network, hopefully in this year. Or maybe I'm just
Speaker 1: projecting one of my New Year's resolutions onto them. I hope. So,
Speaker 1: I hope. So it's like you had one job, one
Speaker 1: job to let people know when it does midnight, do
Speaker 1: a little countdown. That's it. That's the whole reason that
Speaker 1: people were there, and you failed at it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I would love to fully blame Don Lemon, but I
Speaker 1: can't because I really think this is more of a
Speaker 1: like you should have our producer telling you we need
Speaker 1: to throw to the countdown now, and it's possible. Listen,
Speaker 1: having been any suitor that it was like loud and
Speaker 1: you didn't hear whatever. But what an incredible fuck up
Speaker 1: that you missed the midnight countdown on New Year's Eve.
Speaker 1: So perfect way, perfect way for CNN to ultimately ring
Speaker 1: in the New Year. I don't know that Dolly parton
Speaker 1: Miley So do they do that every year? They do it?
Speaker 1: It was on pack. I'm a huge Dolly fan, so
Speaker 1: that I might I might be willing to watch. So
Speaker 1: you're looking at a chord. Also, I was staying in
Speaker 1: an airbnb with my friends. Literally, you know, it's every
Speaker 1: classic Airbnb has, like Roku TV or whatever, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, peacock, and then it was I've seen
Speaker 1: the day before. It was like Miley and Dolly part
Speaker 1: and I was like, that looks fun. Uh, this will
Speaker 1: be anting one. They did a great job. So shout
Speaker 1: out to Miley and to Dolly Parton for helping me
Speaker 1: personally ring in the New year. Yeah. So Kyle hadn't
Speaker 1: watched Game of Thrones, so I've been rewatching Game of
Speaker 1: Thrones with him. So we watched two Game of Thrones episodes.
Speaker 1: The second one got us to twelve oh one, and
Speaker 1: then I was I was out. I was actually shocked.
Speaker 1: I've made it. I made it to midnight, to be
Speaker 1: honest with you. So there you go. It's proud of
Speaker 1: myself for that. Well that's how the two of us
Speaker 1: ring in the New year. I can't say I last
Speaker 1: said too far long after twelve, but that was largely
Speaker 1: because of activities that were partook in earlier in the
Speaker 1: earlier anyway, it was a it was a fun time.
Speaker 1: Shout out again to the city of Austin for treating
Speaker 1: me very very well. And may we have more, many
Speaker 1: more CNN failures to come in twenty twenty three. Well, everyone,
Speaker 1: as you can see, I'm on the road. It's been
Speaker 1: a nightmare, not only for me, but for millions of
Speaker 1: others with the travel cancelations and the chaos and the skies.
Speaker 1: But what did our Secretary of Transportation, Pete Boudajet promise
Speaker 1: before the holidays? Take a listen, do you think this
Speaker 1: issue will be sorted in time for the holidays. I
Speaker 1: think it's going to get better by the holidays. We're
Speaker 1: really pressing the airlines to deliver better service despite Secretary
Speaker 1: Boutajet's promises. That's actually not what happened at all. Instead,
Speaker 1: there was a complete meltdown in the skies. Let's go
Speaker 1: and put this up there on the screen. Most of
Speaker 1: it attributable to Southwest Airlines, which canceled at one point
Speaker 1: fifty percent of all flights globally eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: all flights in the United States, stranding millions of passengers
Speaker 1: at airports, causing chaos, luggage losing it. People I personally
Speaker 1: know had to drive hours across the country in order
Speaker 1: to see their families and loved ones. I personally witnessed
Speaker 1: this at Austin Airport. Even days after, when I was
Speaker 1: in town for New Year's I saw hundreds of bags
Speaker 1: that were still stranded at the airport waiting to be
Speaker 1: picked up by Southwest passengers. None of this should have happened,
Speaker 1: and all of it was completely preventable. The Secretary of
Speaker 1: Transportation completely failed in readiness conditions for the airlines ahead
Speaker 1: of the holidays. There was no audit that was completed
Speaker 1: of Southwest Airlines, there were no fines and others that
Speaker 1: were levied. On top of that, Southwest, the company itself
Speaker 1: is now the portrait of corporate greed. On December seventh,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, put this up there on the screen.
Speaker 1: They went ahead and issued a dividend to all stockholders
Speaker 1: and announced that they had no signs of slow down
Speaker 1: and travel demand and that they were well prepared for
Speaker 1: the holiday season. The CEO of Southwest specifically said that
Speaker 1: on his earnings call with stock investors, and literally only
Speaker 1: days later during the holidays, they have one of the
Speaker 1: greatest meltdowns of travel in modern American history. They used
Speaker 1: none of the pandemic relief money which was given to
Speaker 1: them to not only keep their staff on but to
Speaker 1: reinvest in their business. Presumably they have a high enough
Speaker 1: profit in order to pay about dividend, but they don't
Speaker 1: have a high enough profit to actually make sure that
Speaker 1: their staffing system is not antiquated. They didn't pour any
Speaker 1: of the money into customer service. Very clearly, they were
Speaker 1: not covering hotels and others because they claimed that the
Speaker 1: cancelation was due to weather, even though the weather affected
Speaker 1: every other airline in the country, and somehow they were
Speaker 1: the only ones who had a complete and a total meltdown.
Speaker 1: There's a real class element to all of this as well.
Speaker 1: It's really middle class and lower middle class people who
Speaker 1: were visiting families and taking advantages of the cheaper and
Speaker 1: the discount airlines as well as the free check bag policy.
Speaker 1: Who are the ones who are most affected by this
Speaker 1: business Travelers and others with status and others usually fly
Speaker 1: the big three carriers, So when you consider that it's
Speaker 1: that group of which needs air travel every once in
Speaker 1: a while and really only at the holidays, but saves
Speaker 1: up over a long period of time, they're the ones
Speaker 1: who are the completely and totally just destroyed by this.
Speaker 1: Many of them had to just cancel their flight completely.
Speaker 1: Many just didn't go. Some had to spend one hundred
Speaker 1: of dollars potentially in savings to rent a car. This
Speaker 1: caused just havoc and wreaked it across everyone, and I
Speaker 1: think it's really important for people to understand just how
Speaker 1: terrible it was for a lot of path I was lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, none of my flights were canceled, but several
Speaker 1: hour delays were experienced, not necessarily due to weather, all
Speaker 1: many cases due to let's just say, incompetence on the
Speaker 1: part of crew planning and many of these other things.
Speaker 1: But just seeing some of this, you know, firsthand, people
Speaker 1: at hours lines and having you know, personal friends and
Speaker 1: others that were really affected by this, it's not it's
Speaker 1: ruining because it takes away precious time that in many
Speaker 1: cases people save up for the entire year. They plan
Speaker 1: their vacation time, they plan everything around the ability to
Speaker 1: make sure they can get to their destination. And Southwest
Speaker 1: itself actually bills itself as a family friendly airline with
Speaker 1: the free check bags, the low prices and all of that,
Speaker 1: and this is this is what they give their customers
Speaker 1: in the middle of the only real time that most
Speaker 1: Americans need them to actually function. It wasn't the weather.
Speaker 1: It was their piss poor planning. It was their piss
Speaker 1: poor business really, because they invested rather more in their
Speaker 1: stock price than in their actual infrastructure, and a lot
Speaker 1: of people paid the price on this. It's really just
Speaker 1: not right. And if you want to hear my reaction
Speaker 1: to Cyber's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints
Speaker 1: dot Com. Crystal taking a look at well, I have
Speaker 1: another little dispatch from the billionaire and boss class. It
Speaker 1: appears they're getting a little upset. They feel like the
Speaker 1: peasants are getting a little uppity. They're complaining a bit
Speaker 1: about their rations, their lo and behold, demanding that they
Speaker 1: actually get paid for the work that they do. Crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: I know. Let me start with this first place, first piece.
Speaker 1: This is the billionaire founder of home Depot put this
Speaker 1: up on the screen, a guy named Bernie Marcus and
Speaker 1: in a new interview it was with the Financial Times.
Speaker 1: This is the New York Post write up of it.
Speaker 1: He says that socialism killed motivation to work and that
Speaker 1: nobody gives a damn. Let me give you some of
Speaker 1: the specifics here he said, quote, I'm worried about capitalism.
Speaker 1: Thanks to socialism, nobody works, nobody gives a damn, Just
Speaker 1: give it to me, send me money. I don't want
Speaker 1: to work. I'm too lazy, I'm too fat, I'm too stupid.
Speaker 1: He goes on to list what he claims are some
Speaker 1: of the obstacles to entrepreneurial success in the US today.
Speaker 1: They include human resource executives, government bureaucrats, regulators, socialists, Harvard graduates, nbas, Harvard,
Speaker 1: MBA's lawyers, accounts, Joe Biden, the media, and quote the
Speaker 1: woke people. So he's claiming that people don't want to
Speaker 1: work anymore, and it's socialism to blame, which is weird
Speaker 1: because we don't have socialism, and you know, communism was
Speaker 1: crushed and defeated. It's not really an ongoing project really
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world. You have Joe Biden, who's a
Speaker 1: total neoliberal centrist who is very pro capitalism, running the country.
Speaker 1: So hard to see exactly what he is talking about there,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the billionaire and the boss class
Speaker 1: are getting increasingly frustrated. Because there was this other piece
Speaker 1: in the Wall Street Journal that certainly caught my attention.
Speaker 1: Put this up on the screen. They have this headline,
Speaker 1: your coworkers are less ambitious bosses adjust to the new order.
Speaker 1: The tweet that they sent out with this article had
Speaker 1: an even more rege inducing headline, which was Bosses all
Speaker 1: over the US are asked the same question, where have
Speaker 1: all the go getters gone? And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of sort of delightfully rage inducing quotes in here of
Speaker 1: managers who are shocked in dismay that their workers might
Speaker 1: actually expect to be fairly compensated for their labor. I
Speaker 1: love this anecdote in particular from this company's z Digital.
Speaker 1: They talked to one of the managers who said, since
Speaker 1: the onset of the pandemic, several employees have asked for
Speaker 1: more pay when managers ask that they do more work.
Speaker 1: It's not like that. It was not like that before
Speaker 1: COVID at all. So imagine the audacity of workers wanting
Speaker 1: to get paid for the work that they are ultimately doing.
Speaker 1: You know, outside of the sort of rage inducing boss
Speaker 1: class quotes that are in this piece and the assumption
Speaker 1: that you know, it's a bad thing for workers to
Speaker 1: be actually asked to be compensated for their work. There
Speaker 1: were some really interesting statistics about the way that the
Speaker 1: pandemic has changed people's relationship to their workplace. Now this
Speaker 1: is focused on white collar workers, but we've of course
Speaker 1: been tracking here the way that blue collar workers have
Speaker 1: been standing up for themselves as well. Service workers. You
Speaker 1: think about the Starbucks workers, warehouse workers at Amazon, and
Speaker 1: other places. So this is really kind of a reckoning
Speaker 1: that's happening at every level of wage earning society. But
Speaker 1: they had some statistics here that showed it was not
Speaker 1: just a phenomenon among millennials and gen z. This really
Speaker 1: crosses generational barriers, where people after the pandemic reoriented their
Speaker 1: life priorities. They say that thirty six percents say that
Speaker 1: now that their overall career ambitions have waned over the
Speaker 1: past three years, you've got forty percent who say that
Speaker 1: work has become less important to them in the past
Speaker 1: three years. An American Bar Association survey of about two
Speaker 1: thousand members said that forty four percent of young lawyers
Speaker 1: said they would lead their jobs for a greater ability
Speaker 1: to work remotely elsewhere. And you ask yourself why you've
Speaker 1: had this reckoning. I mean, for white collar workers, I
Speaker 1: think many of them were forced to work remotely during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, and they kind of got used to and
Speaker 1: enjoyed being around their family, having something in their life
Speaker 1: other than just whatever their job ultimately entails. But then
Speaker 1: you also have this other interesting number here in this survey,
Speaker 1: where you have sixty percent of people who say that
Speaker 1: they are pessimistic about people's ability to achieve the American dream.
Speaker 1: So there's also a sense of let's say I get
Speaker 1: in there and grind. Let's say I get in there
Speaker 1: and take on the extra hours and work the overtime
Speaker 1: and ask for the extra shifts and all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I have no confidence that that's going to lead me anywhere,
Speaker 1: because increasingly, in our capitalist system, those paths to solid
Speaker 1: middle class prosperity have been closed. So to go back
Speaker 1: to our billionaire friend here at the beginning who says,
Speaker 1: the problem with workers being lazy and not having that
Speaker 1: get up and oh and you just want to get
Speaker 1: all handed to them, it's not socialism. It's actually the
Speaker 1: mode of capitalism that we have that funnels so much
Speaker 1: wealth to Bernie Marcus and others and forecloses the ability
Speaker 1: of people lower down the chain to be able to
Speaker 1: work and rise up the ladder. So a lot of workers,
Speaker 1: white collar workers included, are saying, screw it. If working
Speaker 1: hard isn't going to get me anywhere. You know what,
Speaker 1: I have hobbies and passions and interests that make me
Speaker 1: who I am that I can find fulfillment in and
Speaker 1: ultimately this path of the grind set and working hoping
Speaker 1: to climb up the ladder, it's uncertain, it's unfulfilling, and
Speaker 1: I'm ultimately choosing a different path. So Sager, I've seen
Speaker 1: a number of these that there was also and if
Speaker 1: you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become
Speaker 1: a premium subscriber today at Breakingpoints dot com. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for watching bearing with us while we're
Speaker 1: on the road. We'll be back fully in the studio
Speaker 1: next week. Counterpoints will be in the studio tomorrow. They've
Speaker 1: got a great show planned for you all that we
Speaker 1: cover all the speakership, some of the breaking news, etc.
Speaker 1: We'll have another show for you guys on Thursday, a
Speaker 1: couple of extra segments as well, and we love you all.
Speaker 1: Thanks for bearing with us in the holiday season. God
Speaker 1: bless you all, and Happy New Year.