Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/28/21: Billionaire Tax, Labor Action, Media Psyop, Tiktok, Baldwin, Food Inflation, Injustice System, Assange Case, and More!

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting stories this morning. Actually, some brand new big breaking news on that reconciliation bill, Biden to make some big announcements. Apparently today we'll bring you those details and also just the insane back and forth on trying to generate any revenue, raise taxes on any of the top 1%, apparently is off the table for some people in the Democratic Party. Some developments on the strikes that we've been following, including the Secretary of Labor joining a picket of Kellogg's workers, so we'll talk about that. Quite an interesting development in the fight to combat misinformation. A couple of billionaires have teamed up, along with the

lady who destroyed the Iowa caucuses, to, quote unquote, fight misinformation. Some interesting details there. Quite an explosive exchange between the CEO of TikTok and Ted Cruz. We've got those details. Alec Baldwin and that fatal, tragic shooting on set. There's some more revelations there about the live rounds involved, how much they've confiscated from the set, whether charges are still a possibility. Lots of interesting details there. Also, guys, this week, you've got yesterday, Steven Donziger sent to prison for six months.

Total insanity. And at the same time, you have Julian Assange, the U.S. government still on appeal, trying to extradite him to the U.S. where he could face more than a hundred year sentence, all for the crime of doing journalism. We have Julian's brother here, Gabriel Shipton, to talk to us about exactly what is happening this week and the toll that it's taken on Julian, the toll that it's taken on their family. So really grateful for his time this morning. But we wanted to start with that big Biden announcement this morning. He is, all right, take all of this with a grain of salt. This just happened, so we don't even have an element. He is supposedly revealing a new framework for the reconciliation build back better bill. It's supposed to be in the $1.75 trillion range.

And according to The Washington Post, and this is the part you should be very skeptical of, it's, quote, expected to win support of all Democrats. Let me read you the lead here. President Biden plans to announce Thursday, that's today, a revised framework for his social spending plan that he expects will gain the support of all Democrats, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation, marking a potential breakthrough after months of lengthy negotiations and stalled talks, the White House plans to detail specific policies it expects to pass Congress after weeks of whittling down Biden's agenda.

According to one of the people, Democrats on Capitol Hill were preparing written details of the revamp proposal for release on Thursday. So not a lot of detail of what is going to be in and what is going to be out. But I can tell you, Sagar, there's been a lot of focus on what Manchin and Sinema will expect in this bill. I think the press is kind of missing the fact that progressives are not on board with where things are today. I mean, first of all, you had the mantra from the beginning, no climate, no deal. Well, all of the key climate provisions have been stripped down at this point. And then you even lose Senator Sanders' top priority that he said he will not support this

bill without is expansion of Medicare. That's reportedly been taken off the table. Even paid leave, which is like, again, one of these policies Democrats have been campaigning on forever that has like 80 percent support that apparently is stripped down so you're really left with next to nothing and I can tell you um you know within the progressive caucus as things stand today they are not going to vote for this bill and I know that they don't you know they don't have a real reputation for drawing a hard line and sticking to it. But this thing has gotten watered down so far and is so pathetic and so far from any of the principles that they lay down to start with that even this progressive caucus, I think, is prepared to vote this thing down. So we'll see what Biden has to say. Politically, it would be doing Biden

a favor by voting this thing down. It's a total mess. Nobody knows what's in it. Nobody really cares. It doesn't even have a popular provision like Obamacare did around the preconditions of age 26. To your point, broke this morning that Bernie Sanders apparently has told House progressives that he backs their position against moving against that infrastructure bill until the larger economic package. Everything is moving very quickly. That's why we don't have some of this stuff made as elements. But the key provisions and the key things is this,

which is that over the last two days, we saw two things happen. We saw that Kyrsten Sinema had come out and said, I'm not going to raise taxes on any individual and any corporation. And so then there came this very harebrained cockamamie idea around taxing unrealized capital gains, but for billionaires only, only affecting the top 1,000. So then let's put this tweet up there on the screen. Senator Joe Manchin then came out and was like, yeah, no, actually, we're not going to do that. So that tax is all but dead. Now, in that scenario, I don't know how they're possibly going to raise any revenue. And this is why I'm

personally mystified as to how Biden has the gall to even go out and talk about this. Because from this position right now, Crystal, the only tax which has currently survived any of this and has any idea is what Joe Manchin is floating called a patriot tax, which is basically that corporations have to pay a minimum of 15%. So no exemptions. By the way, I 100% support that. That's actually not a terrible idea once from Mr. Manchin. But there's no way that you can get the $1.7 trillion from any of that. And to raise some of their revenue, remember that bank proposal, which I talked about, the $600 thing? Well, they said $10,000. But when you do that, according to the IRS, it's going to drop the amount of revenue.

They may have to resuscitate the $600 proposal in order to try and meet their revenue figures. They're not resuscitating anything. Really what it is here is I have no idea how they're going to possibly raise this amount of revenue. And I personally think this entire thing is a total joke because this cockamamie billionaire tax thing is a possibly unconstitutional, which we will get to, and would almost certainly be challenged in court for years and years and years. And so very likely would never even be implemented, even if it ever were to survive the current conservative Supreme Court. But two, and we were talking about this yesterday, I am mystified. There is a very easy way to tax, not just, by the way, billionaires are not the

only people who need their taxes raised. There are a lot of people who are worth $10 million or more who've been getting off scot-free for a long time, hedge fund guys all over Wall Street. We could close the carried interest loophole tomorrow. That's $180 billion. The step-up basis is hundreds of billions over several years. And you know, Clifford Asness, that's $180 billion. The step-up basis is hundreds of billions over several years. And you know, Clifford Asness, that billionaire who I've clashed with, to his credit, even in that Wall Street Journal piece, he goes, look, I'm

going to be honest, the step-up basis, I can't defend that one. Nobody can. It's a total joke that you're telling me you get to buy something for $1,000. We shouldn't say nobody can. Claire McCaskill can. People who are paid to. No, that's right. I'm sorry. People who are paid to defend it.

He's actually a billionaire. He's telling you he can't do it. I mean, it is truly pathetic. So first you have what is, you know, an improvement over the current situation, but not nearly far enough, which is we're going to raise the marginal tax rate on corporations and on wealthy individuals. So that was kind of the—after they'd already discarded, well, we're not really going to go after billionaire wealth. We're not going to do the step-up basis. We're not going to go after carried interest. We'll just increase the top marginal tax rates. Kyrsten Sinema said, oh no, we can't possibly do that. Okay, so we scrapped that.

So then they come up with, look, I mean, I effectively support anything that's going to tax the very wealthy because the playing field is so ridiculously uneven right now. But let's be honest, the billionaire tax they came up with, first of all, it only hits a very small number of people, like literal billionaires, a thousand people, effectively, that would be impacted by this thing. And second of all, it is extremely complicated when, as you're pointing out, there's some obvious low-hanging fruit here, which would generate much more revenue. But never, it doesn't really matter at this point, because now the billionaire tax is also to end, because Joe Manchin, who they're apparently not

a single billionaire that lives in West Virginia, but he's going to bat for them anyway. Wait, is the governor a billionaire? I thought about that. I was thinking about that too. I guess it depends on the accounting. Right, okay. It depends on the accounting. So he might be standing up for the interests of Jim Justice. You're right about that, the governor a billionaire? I thought about that. I was thinking about that, too. I guess it depends on the accounting. Right, okay. It depends on the accounting. So he might be standing up for the interests of Jim Justice. You're right about that. The governor of West Virginia.

Who doesn't even like him. So there you go. Yeah. So there you go. So Manchin rules that out. By the way, you also have, we have to put this in here, Elon Musk was very upset about the idea of a billionaire tax. Elon Musk, this is from Judd Lagoon,

who is worth $229 billion, richest man in the world right now, and made $36 billion in one day this week. He had this sort of, you know, he responded to somebody's suggestion that, oh, they start with the billionaires, but next thing you know, they're going to come for you. And Elon was like, yeah, that's right.

They're going to come for you next. This isn't just about, that's right. They're going to come for you next. This isn't just about me. So the dude who, I think he paid $0 in taxes in 2018 and has been exposed as using this, what do they call it, buy, borrow, die. Yes, yeah. He's using that scheme, which the step-up basis is what enables that scheme. Exactly. So that's how he avoids paying effectively any taxes at all.

So he thinks he should continue to be completely untaxed. There is a potential constitutional challenge with this. Let's put this up on the screen. All of this is effectively a moot point now, though, because I think this thing is dead anyway. And to go back to the original point, which is that Biden claims he's going to have some framework today that he expects all Democrats to get on board with. Well, not only do you have progressives led by Bernie Sanders, very unhappy with the social programs that have been stripped down of here. But you also had Bernie yesterday telling reporters that he doesn't think there's going to be a deal this week because, quote, every sensible revenue option seems to be destroyed. And every progressive option, he says, has been sabotaged. 100 percent correct.

The last thing that they're now floating that you mentioned is the corporate minimum tax. Let's throw the CNBC tear sheet up on the screen. So that is facing, of course, massive opposition from business lobbying giants. We're talking the Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce. They're coming out vehemently opposed to this 15 percent minimum corporate tax. So how are they going to raise the revenue? What's going to be left in this thing? It's just utterly pathetic at this point. You're going to be left with like, OK, Biden's going to announce the reconciliation bill is like a stick of chewing

gum and, you know, a free pass to the gym once a year. That's what it's going to end up being. It's ridiculous. And I do think that the press is kind of missing a little bit of how much progressives are unhappy with where things are. And just to give you one more example of that, Rashida Tlaib tweeted last night, I am not going to sell out my district for a bill that was written by the fossil fuel industry, championed by two dumb senators who bowed down to big pharma and corporate polluters. So that's where things stand right now. We'll see, Crystal. I really do believe that politically they would be better off if this thing died. I don't think that that will likely be the case. It's going to be some hobnob. But as we've been pointing out, there are very easy, I am very, very supportive of taxing the ultra wealthy, who I believe are a massive drag on the US economy,

our social spending, so much more. And I'm not talking necessarily about transformative entrepreneurs. I am talking really about like inheritors of wealth who do nothing, like literally nothing. Well, that's the thing is that people like to focus on like, you know, Bezos and Musk. They're very rich men, but most billionaires are just like moving money around. We covered. And not even creating anything. And by the way, I think Bezos and Musk should also pay a whole lot more in taxes. Absolutely. And this is the, everybody always glosses over, we covered one of my favorite things we did on Rising, was calculating how you became a billionaire in the year 2020. Guess what?

It's hedge funds. That's it. It's just financial engineering completely at the expense of you and me grifting off of pensions and Robin Hood, you know, buying front-running trades, high frequency, all kinds of stuff. That's how you actually make it in America today. Those people are paying nothing effectively over this. The carried interest loophole, which benefits many of them, they're not closing that at the behest of the interest. Step-up basis is another one. Again, we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. You really believe Jim Walton's kids should be able to sell his assets for zero tax? You want to go ahead and tell me that one? Like, this is what I'm actually talking about. Or even the Vanderbilt family under these types of things. I mean, yeah,

like Anderson Cooper's great, okay? I think he probably needs to pay some tax. And under these scenarios, they are not touching any of that. So that's actually overwhelmingly popular and just, in my opinion. So we have that. Also, they could easily change the capital gains rate and not have it affect any middle class or even millionaires and just cap it. So the way that we have a progressive income tax, we could have the same thing on capital gains. If your net worth is over $10 million and that's the way that you mostly survive, we could tax you at 35%. Easily. We could easily do these things. Do you hear anyone talking about it? All of the actual sensible ways in order to equalize our tax system and make it so that the rich would actually pay more, but in a sustainable

fashion, have been chipped away. We have these fake little cockamamie schemes which live and die and which are actually not well considered at all. The only decent thing I've heard so far is this 15% whatever patriotic tax. But I think the whole thing is a mess. And again, to pay for what? That is the, who at home can tell you what is in this goddamn bill?

No one. No one in this town could tell you at this point. I can barely tell you. Yeah, I mean, we know the list of things that keep getting left on the cutting room floor. And, I mean, one of the most revealing things that we have covered recently is when the Pandora Papers came out. And there were very few U.S. billionaires among them because it's like they don't have to shelter their income. Because they pay like 4%.

They can just use the loopholes that are readily available to them and pay effectively no taxes or very, very low taxes, much lower of a rate than you, hardworking person, certainly if you're a wage earner, are paying. And that is truly insane. And by the way, all of these things that we're talking about, closing the carried interest, step-up basis, increasing the top marginal tax rate, all of these things are wildly popular. Bipartisan support for lifting taxes on the very rich. So it is 100% a provable fact that this bill is being written and crafted to cater to corporate interest and the donor class. It has nothing to do with what the American people actually want at this point because they've already stripped out the most popular provisions in the whole thing are gone. Negotiating prescription drug prices, that is one of the top, not only most popular, but also top priorities of the American people gone because of big pharma.

Paid family leave. Okay. Also, hugely, huge high support. Okay. Something that every other developed nation does in the world. Nope. Can't do that either. Massive bipartisan support for that.

Expanding Medicare. All of these things are so popular. The American people have been asking for them for years and years and years. Democrats routinely campaign on them. And then ultimately nothing happens. So we'll see what Biden has to say in his framework today. But I wouldn't get your hopes up here. First of all, just at the price tag, 1.75 trillion, there's only so much you can do with that to start with. Second of all, how is it going to be paid for? And third of all, just at the price tag, 1.75 trillion. There's only so much you can do with that to start with. Second of all, how is it going to be paid for? And third of all, the idea that all Democrats are going to support this, I find incredibly wishful thinking on the part of the White House, which, you know, it's also very clear.

They don't actually care about any of the details of this bill. They just want a checkbox. They just want to win. And you know that because what Biden's top priority reportedly was, was free community college. And that's already been kicked to the curb. So he clearly doesn't care about anything here except like, let me just get a perfunctory checkbox so we can move forward. There you go. Thank you, Joe Biden. On the other hand, we do have some good news for you today, which is some movement in terms, especially of public opinion on labor unions. And one sort of promising thing that the Biden administration did here, I don't want to give him too much credit because Biden said he was going to be the most pro-union president in history. So he set that bar for himself and he is a long way from meeting that. However, let's throw this tweet up on the screen. His labor secretary, Marty Walsh, he did join a picket line in Pennsylvania of Kellogg Strikers

yesterday. Here he says, he's quote tweeting a Stephen Greenhouse tweet. Stephen says, in our nation's history, it's been very rare for a secretary of labor to go to a picket line to show their support. But labor secretary Marty Walsh plans to go to the Kellogg Strikers picket line in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Wednesday. That was yesterday's show of support, and he did, in fact, go. And Walsh says, I grew up in a working class family. I'm the son of immigrants and a proud second generation laborer. I have always stood with America's working people and will continue to do so as your Secretary of Labor. See you there. He later posted a photo of himself alongside the workers. And this is significant.

It is a major change from, of course, it's different from anything that Republicans ever do, but it's also a big shift from, say, the Clinton era 90s. Big shift, yeah. When Democrats were happy to either actively throw unions under the bus, which many of them did, or to just allow them to wither on the vine because they weren't the cool demographic of, you know, up-and-coming white-collar yuppies that the Democratic Party was going after at this point. And you can also see, you know, partly this is politicians responding to where the public is at this point.

There's a new survey out from Data for Progress that finds overwhelming support, and we can put this up on the screen, for recent worker strikes. 74% approval of those recent worker strikes, everything that we've been covering, John Deere and Kellogg's and earlier on Nabisco, that includes 60% of Republicans. So a strong majority of Republicans. Here's the partisan breakdown there. You've got independents support at 72 percent, Republicans 60 percent, Democrats at the highest level of 87 percent. So there's a little bit of a partisan divide here, but pretty strong, overwhelming public approval for these workers who are taking matters into their own hands and demanding more from their employers. This tracks alongside with something else we've mentioned to you before, which is the highest level of support for unions since 1965. You have

68 percent of Americans now saying that they approve of unions. That is a huge spike from during the Great Recession when that favorability bottomed out at 48 percent, which as a bottoming out is actually not all that bad. Joe Biden would love to have those approval ratings right now. But a spike from 48% to 68%, quite significant. And you see it showing up in support for these striking workers. That's really the interesting part here, which is that beneath all of the culture war surface, there is a huge revolution happening in labor. Not just like organized labor, but the workforce in general. And you see there is so much grassroots support.

I try to track it in terms of our popular culture. People were sending me on Instagram like text chains of bosses who were saying, hey, you have to do clopening or something like that. And the worker just texting back like, no, I'm done. I'm not coming. They go, wait, hold on a second. They're like, let's talk. Don't quit. We can talk tomorrow. Whereas before it just would have been, all right. Yeah. Okay. Thanks, sir. And the guy, the guy's like begging the employee in the text,

be like, please. And he's like, screw you. I'm done with you. And you can just see people can feel very willing to go tell their bosses to screw off because there's a huge amount. I mean, I saw a sign of McDonald's. I believe it was in Pennsylvania somewhere. And it just says, we hire on the spot. That was on the sign. And they're paying like $15 an hour. Yeah.

They're like, we will hire you within 60 minutes. Just walk in here. Walk in here. Fill out the application. We'll hire you right now. In that type of environment, why should people put up with this stuff? I saw a similar sign that was like, we'll pay you today. Yeah. It's like cash. Here's some cash. Please take it. All of these, I think, are highly positive developments. And the reason why it's not getting enough coverage,

it's almost a 100% blue collar phenomenon. Almost entirely. 100%. The white collar workforce is going back to work. In many cases, they never stopped working or they're working remotely completely. Their wages are relatively stagnant. They're getting holiday bonuses or whatever. But the mobility of the labor is all within blue-collar work, not requiring a college degree. And that's why you don't hear a goddamn thing about it. Blue collar work to include the service industry. That's right. Yeah. And it is pretty fascinating.

And again, you see the public full support. Total polar opposite of the totally polarized sectarian conflict that you'll hear all day, every day reflected in every single cable news segment, no matter which channel you happen to be turned to. This is a really different phenomenon and a really different portrait of America that's happening here. And it gives me a lot of hope because at the same time that you see, you know, the reconciliation, like it's just so depressing, right? It's like the most depressing thing ever when you can't even get the most basic popular things that people vote for time and time again, when you can't even get those passed. And yet you see workers taking matters into their own hands and having an impact not just within their own communities and what they're able to win from

their employers and the improvements they're able to win from their employers and the improvements they're able to make. But you do see there having to be some political response. And, you know, you can see, too, I mean, Republicans will take note that it will not be nearly so safe for them to engage in the union bust, the overt union busting tactics that they've been engaged in comfortably now for decades. So there is a little, a bit of a turning point here in terms of the labor movement and the possibility that they could seize the day. And again, if you're someone who believes in a multiracial working class politics, this is the most hopeful thing that you could possibly see. It transcends partisan divides. It transcends,

it does transcend education divides because we saw, you know, college-educated teachers. We see nurses and healthcare workers involved as well. It certainly transcends geographic divides. This is a truly coast-to-coast, blue state, red state phenomenon, and you love to see it. There's one other piece here, update on the John Deere strike that we wanted to bring you from our friend Ken Klippenstein, who gets the best material. He gets the greatest leaks ever. So you will recall, as a little bit of setup here, that in order to break the strike, John Deere brought in their white-collar office workers to try to work on the factory floor. And within hours of the first day

of them doing that, there was an ambulance rush to the scene. It turns out there was a trash, somebody, you know, crashed a tractor. Like, these people are also being put in a horrible position, albeit, I will say, they could band together and refuse to work as well. But now, put that tweet back up for one more second. John Deere is basically banning the writing down of these accident reports. They've declared them confidential, following tractor crash by non-union worker per be more going on there in terms of accidents. Of course, we don't want anyone to actually get hurt. And the fact that they're putting people in this position is horrific. But Ken also got some great quotes here from some of the office workers who have been thrown into this situation. One of them said, we're soft desk jockeys getting thrown into hard labor with little training. Another employee

complaining about the lack of training put it more bluntly, we are going to get killed. So they are in an unconscionable position. I mean, again, they could band together. They could say we're not doing this. And a lot of them have expressed that they actually feel a lot of solidarity with blue collar workers. Not only that, if you wanted to design and engineer a program to make your white-collar workers feel solidarity with the blue-collar workers, put them into their jobs and be like, how's this going for you? How does it feel to do this work? How does this feel on your body?

Imagine losing every weekend. Imagine the overtime that they ask you to do. Imagine coming in at this lower tier and not even having the solidarity that you should have with your brothers and sisters. So there you go. And there's one more update from Jonah Furman, which just goes to show the lengths John Deere is. They said they would not be cutting 10,000 workers

off of their healthcare as they had previously planned to do. But the members who actually called UnitedHealthcare were told they were being cut off at midnight. And that was 16 hours ago. So it just shows like they're trying to win this PR war, but their actions tell a very different story. And maybe we should just keep highlighting

how these people continue to treat their employees. Indeed. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe.

So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. All right. Interesting one here on the disinformation front. This is amazing. So let's put this up there on the screen. I almost couldn't believe it whenever I read it. It is amazing.

Which is that Reid Hoffman, the billionaire behind LinkedIn, and George Soros are starting a new media firm It is amazing. Reid Hoffman actually has already been caught funding disinformation by Democrats in the state of Alabama to which he had to apologize for. Well, they have teamed up with Tara McGowan, so you Bernie people might remember. She was the person who ran the nonprofit called Acronym, which built that horrible app that was used by the Democrats. The shadow app. The literal shadow app in Iowa, which led to that total and complete cluster. And, by the way, very conveniently, she and her associates all supported Pete. That's right. And this all seemed to really benefit Pete. Who ended up winning the Iowa caucuses.

Weird. What a coincidence. All of that on the table. So, well, they are all teaming up together to start a site to combat disinformation. And it's called Good Information, Inc. That's not a joke. To fund and scale businesses that cut through echo chambers with fact-based reporting. As part of its mission, it plans to invest in local news companies. Now, that sounds terrible. And actually what's even worse is that they have went ahead and they are acquiring some

different brands. And so Courier Newsroom was one of those that they went ahead and acquired. It's a local news group with a quote, progressive perspective. That was run by Tara. Run by Tara. So basically Soros and Hoffman by Tara's little group and now she gets to run it. But I'm really concerned about this, Crystal, because this is exactly one of those things where in the name of combating disinformation, you are going to have these billionaires who are absolutely not acting in bad faith, working with a literal democratic operative, and they could be infiltrating local news sites to try and turn them into propaganda. And Reid Hoffman has already done this.

He has already funded fake news projects in Alabama, spreading disinformation, posing as local news sites. And again, he had to apologize for this in the past. So can you think of anything worse to combat disinformation? Like, if you were going to come up with a project to prove the points we've been making about how all of this is just about having control over the dialogue and about a power grab and wanting a different set of billionaires to be the ones in control of who gets to say what within the political narrative. Like you could not come up with a project that more perfectly proves that point. And just to go in even a little bit deeper on, so Courier Newsroom, which was a Tara McGowan project, their whole thing, what they did is they set up these quote unquote local news sites that are meant to look like, oh, it's just a local blog giving me local information, whatever. And it's literal, like expressly, this was the whole plan of the project, literal political propaganda.

There's one in Virginia right now. If you go to it, every single article is about how terrible Glenn Youngkin is and how great Terry McAuliffe is. So the lead right now is if we do have Glenn Youngkin as the governor of Virginia, then we'll be just like Texas, referring to the Texas abortion law. Here's another one. How can Virginia spark small business growth, Terry McAuliffe asks owners. Here's one on education. Here's why Glenn Youngkin's embrace of the school choice movement has some worried. Every single article is just political propaganda that they're very like pathetically trying to disguise as just, we're

just your local news source. So Courier Newsroom is actual misinformation. Right. Like it is actual propaganda misinformation. And this isn't just me like looking at it and putting a spin on it. Vice News got their hand on the memo explaining what Courier Newsroom was all about and what their goals were. And it was all about, I mean, Tara McGowan is a Democratic Party operative. That's who she is. Which is fine. Which is fine. But like the idea that you're going to be this neutral arbiter of fact and fiction in the political dialogue is insane. So their whole

pitch on Courier Newsroom was, here's the voters we're going to reach. Here's how many we're going to be able to persuade. No accident that the first local news quote unquote groups that they set up were all in swing states. It was when Virginia was having elections. That's when this thing ultimately launched. So again, the thing that they acquired to start their good information, anti-misinformation group is literal misinformation. Like you just literally can't make it up. Not to mention the other part of this that really gets me is the Iowa caucuses were a shameful, embarrassing failure that undermined everyone's faith in democracy, period. And they should have, yeah. Like we never, we literally never got an accurate count of what the caucus results were. We never did. They just gave up. They're like, well, this is close enough and we're going to give it to Pete. So she was intimately involved in that dramatic, embarrassing,

terrible for the country failure and is effectively being rewarded. I mean, there is no failing in the Democratic Party so long as you serve their interests. That's ultimately the bottom line here. I would love to know how much, you know, she would ultimately, her career newsroom thing, which is like, I don't think has had much of an impact, how much that was acquired for. I'm sure this is a for-profit entity that they're starting. So yeah, you just fail up within the Democratic Party ecosystem so long as you serve the centers of power that exist within that. And if you worry about misinformation on Facebook, what's even worse about this is that they use these legitimizing sites and they try to pressure Facebook in order to make them like a trusted source of information so they can go and fact check different stuff, right?

So it has a good veneer. Then Facebook will give it the green light, referential treatment, and its algorithm. And now you have fake news under the guise of combating misinformation spreading like wildfire and being shared by, you know, I make fun of right-wing boomers a lot here on the show. Left-wing boomers being like, oh, my God, can you believe this? Share on Facebook. The white moms. Share on Facebook to some group or whatever and, you know, sending it to your nephew even though though he's like, grandma, please stop sending me this stuff. It's completely not true. And just, just again, so you know, this is not my like left wing bitter about Iowa take here.

This is from Salon. Okay. Salon wrote an affiliate of acronym courier newsroom has set up what appear to be local news sites, but are actually propaganda efforts aimed at creating content to be shared on social media to boost moderate read conservative democrats so that was their whole project fake news was literally their project and now they're taking that and buying it and turning it into like we're the good guys we're good information we're going to tell you what's true and what's false. Wow. Really, really pathetic. Okay. Speaking of good information, possibly bad. See what I did there. Okay. So you guys might remember back in the day, I did a lot of these segments on TikTok and how TikTok, the Chinese run company, which, you know,

a lot of teenagers are using now currently, one of the most popular social media apps in the United States, currently beating Instagram by Facebook's own data. Teens spend three times more time on TikTok than they do on Instagram. Well, they were going on a big hiring spree of all of these Republicans, and I found that interesting. One of them, his name was Michael Beckerman, a former Republican staffer, worked at the Internet Association. This man has previously posed for magazine covers, in which he was, like, drinking and having all these multi-thousand dollar products, just to give you an idea of who this individual is. Hired gun of the extreme, kind of a clown.

Well, he appeared recently, and he's the first TikTok official ever to appear before the United States Congress. He's the head of public policy. He was pressed repeatedly by Ted Cruz. Do you share information with Beijing? Basic question, something that TikTok has denied repeatedly. But remember, this is before Congress, and this is under oath. And just take a listen to see how this went. Is Beijing ByteDance Technology a, quote, other affiliate of our corporate group as your privacy policy defines that term? Senator, as I pointed out before, my answer is the same.

Yes or no? You didn't answer. Senator, I appreciate your trying with gotcha questions. It's not a gotcha question. I'm asking about your policy. I'm just trying to be truthful and accurate about the connection between... Are you willing to answer this question, yes or no? Senator, I answered the question. You have not answered the question. Is it another affiliate, yes or no? Senator, I stated a number of times that that entity is a domestic entity within China for licenses there.

And apples are red. You stated something that is not the question I asked. Is it another affiliate as defined under your privacy policy? Yes or no? Senator, I am here under oath. Are you going to answer the question? I answer the question. Or were you instructed not to answer this question? No, Senator. So you're just not refusing to answer it because you don't want to? Senator, it is not affiliated with TikTok. That's your question. That is the answer. So your answer, I want to be clear because you're under oath. Your answer is that Beijing ByteDance technology is not

a, quote, other affiliate of our corporate group as your privacy policy uses that term. This is a legal question with consequence. Senator, I understand the question. As I pointed out, TikTok is not available in China. That is an entity that is for purposes of a license of a business in China that is not affiliated with TikTok. So for the record, you're refusing to answer the question. I believe I answered your question, Senator. Yes or no. Tell me which one it is. Just give me one word, yes or no. Senator, I answered the question. You're not willing to say yes or no? It was not a yes or no question. I want to be precise. Is this company another affiliate as defined in your privacy policy? That is binary. There's not a maybe. It's yes or no. Senator, the way I answered,

I'm not aware that that is the answer to the question. Okay, so you're refusing to answer the question. That does not give this committee any confidence that that TikTok is doing anything other than participating in Chinese propaganda and espionage on America. Senator, that's not accurate. And again, I would I would point you to if it were if it were not accurate, you would answer the questions and you have dodged the questions more than any witness. This is very important, Crystal. And look, I know it's Ted Cruz and I cringe too whenever he talks. So I'm sorry. But this is very important because what they get to, TikTok likes to say, we do not share any information with the Chinese government. The reason that Beckerman will not say that as defined under their privacy policy, that ByteDance, the corporation which owns TikTok, which is here in the United States, is because if they admit to the fact that they share data with ByteDance, who owns them, by the way, then they are admitting which ByteDance,

which is a CCP-controlled company, this is not me saying that, their CEO has apologized publicly before to the CCP for not treading the party line. Their own company holds doctrination sessions where they go over CCP ideology in their headquarters. All of this is a matter of public record. The reason he won't say that is because if he admits that they do share that data, then you are de facto quasi admitting that you are sharing your information with the Chinese government. Now, maybe you're cool with that, like maybe. And I think a lot of people probably are, if you were going to be honest. But the fact that they can't answer that TikTok is still even available in the US even though he said he was going to ban it because he tried to do some like

force sell it to Microsoft or something instead of just banning it and then they just sort of stopped talking about it yeah and then they were like oh well we screwed this up legally never seen that before from the Trump administration and then they just kind of like moved on quietly from all of that

I think this is the perfect example of how you can, these people, number one, get away with it. Two, the problem is, is that, is Ted Cruz a good faith actor? No. Like, let's all be honest. This is all just becomes culture war over the Senate, over China. And I guess, I mean, I appreciate it because at least he got an answer from him under oath. But are you really going to see this elevated to a case where there might actually be some action? No. If anything, I think this probably makes it harder for the Biden administration to even try and do anything about it because then it looks like they're allied with Ted Cruz. And I think it's part of the problem, really, whenever we talk so much about

this issue. And look, if you really do care about data privacy, and I'm not saying U.S. corporations are great actors here, okay? But at least here the FBI needs to pretend to try and get a warrant before they try and get your data from Facebook or Google. Over there, there's no such thing. Do you really want a foreign adversary to have access to the data and preferences of your children and you? There are 80 million Americans who use TikTok every single day and spend over, what, like an hour a day on the app.

There's a lot of data in terms of what they know about you. They know you better than you probably know yourself. That's the whole point of the algorithm. So I want to make sure I understand the issue correctly. So they have a thing in their privacy policy that effectively says like, we can share data with our affiliates. That's right. And so what he's questioning him on is, is ByteDance one of your affiliates? Yes. Because if the answer is yes, then they share data. That means they share data with them. And that's why he's doing everything he can to avoid answering that question. And the CCP, I think they

have a seat on the board and own a stake in Paita. They're intimately involved. Well, it's complicated. So in terms of the seat and the board and all that, they don't even need that because the company cannot exist without a license. So they grant the license. And you can't get the license unless you're in compliance with CCP doctrine and ideology. The thing that I guess that I take away most from this is like, God, these tech CEOs just lie through their teeth routinely. Yeah, they do. All the time.

Routinely. Yeah. Before Congress. Before Congress on major issues of importance. I mean, Zuckerberg and the Facebook executives routinely lied about how their platform works, especially with regards to that elites are treated differently than the masses on their platform. They lied about knowing, like, we now know that they are aware that Instagram causes a lot of harm to teenage girls and really, like, destroys their self-confidence and creates, you know, eating disorders and all these issues. Like, they studied that, they knew that, and then

they were like, no, we don't know. It could be. Who knows? We know with Amazon, like, we know that they said that, oh, no, we don't use third-party seller data at all to reverse it, to engineer our own products. We don't favor our stuff in the algorithm. Like, they just will routinely misrepresent or outright lie, or this guy was, you know, trying to dodge the question altogether, they just are completely not straightforward about their business practices. And Congress doesn't do anything, or sorry, the government doesn't do anything about it. Doesn't do anything about it. Yeah. And, you know, with the TikTok and China, I just sort of feel like all our data is already so

for sale to the highest bidder in every aspect of our life, like whether it's the federal government spying on us, whether it's corporations and the way that they, you know, package and sell your data, whether it's like these Israeli firms that can literally, you know, infect your. Yeah, they can infect your phone without you even like clicking on a bad link or a bad email or anything like that. It just feels like there's absolutely no privacy left whatsoever. And then you have places like the New York Times that are effectively cheering on this direction where they're like, oh, now we need to go after encrypted apps because there's unfettered conversations. Remember that term? Happening on these encrypted apps as well. So it's really disturbing. I mean, just everything that you do and say can be taken and used and, you know, sort of weaponized against you personally, whether it's to manipulate you or get you to buy a product

or whatever it ultimately is. So that's what's sort of really depressing about it. I find, yeah. Yeah, but the last thing I'll say is like, you know, we have this fiction in America that the way that these businesses get ahead and the way they succeed is they create a great product and they compete in a marketplace and the cream rises to the top. And so the best products, the best companies succeed. And what a lot of this actually reveals, and this is a Stoller point as well, is it's not free and open competition. It's a lot of like, how can I cheat and get away with it? How can I rig the marketplace so that I'm the only actor who can possibly succeed? And if you talk to CEOs who are honest, they'll tell you that is the CEO training. It's not how to compete in an open and fair marketplace. It's how to rig that marketplace.

And effectively, that sort of competition is for suckers and losers. Yeah, that's true. The real winners are the ones who rig it to their advantage and make sure that they can dominate the marketplace and effectively establish a monopoly. And so it's no surprise then that when that ethos of cheating and lawbreaking is rife throughout corporate America, it's like the beating heart of corporate America, that you have CEO after CEO come before Congress and just blatantly lie or dodge or obfuscate. Yeah, no, it's all very true. I think there's a book, The Surveillance Economy. I forget exactly who wrote it. It gets to much of what you're talking about. I recommend people go and check it out. But this really just shows the conundrum and the absolute just weakness of the US state, which is that you have this app,

which is controlled by the CCP, which is now one of the most popular ones in the US. Our president at the time, idiotic president, tried to do something about it, but did it so foolishly and so terribly that everybody just accepts that this is the case. They can lie before Congress or at least de facto admit that they are controlled by a foreign adversary and nobody will do anything about it. That is just, you know, that's America to me, the story. Yeah. Okay, let's move on. Baldwin, this is really stunning. So we were tracking this case very closely.

We know there's a lot of public interest, and there's also some very gross people who are trying to make jokes or whatever. Look, like a young woman died here, and that's actually the real story. And the more that comes out from the sheriff's office down in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, the more questions that are raised. Sheriff Mendoza of Santa Fe County gave a press conference yesterday. He revealed a couple of stunning things, I'll say just at the top. Number one, they are not ruling out charges for Alec Baldwin. Number two, they have recovered spent casings and the projectile that they believe to have been a live round, which was inserted inside of a revolver, which was what shot and recovered from the shoulder of Mr. Souza. The projectile was recovered by medical personnel where he was being treated and turned over to the sheriff's office as evidence. We regard this specific spent casing and recovered projectile to be the live round that was fired from the revolver by Mr. Baldwin. We have recovered what we believe to be possible additional live rounds on set. All the previous mentioned items, along with other items of evidence,

will be submitted to the FBI Crime Lab in Quantico, Virginia for analysis. What really sticks out to me there, Crystal, we have recovered other live rounds from the set. And so you and I were speaking before, and we know that the policy on these sets is supposed to be not only do you never have a weapon with live ammunition, you never have live ammunition on the set, period. So not only was there live ammunition inside of this revolver,

and actually some fans of the show were explaining to me there's no way this could have been, I think it's no longer accidental discharge is the term, it's negligent discharge, because it's a revolver. You have to cock a gun. You have to like physiologically get this thing to fire. And when you, again, just think about the mechanics. So you have this gun, which is sitting there. That means that somebody opened the gun,

placed it live around inside of the gun, closed the gun, gave the gun to Alec Baldwin. And then he, in the process, I mean, I would assume, maybe he has no training with firearms whatsoever. And again, I'm not a gun guy, so I don't know everything exactly. But you have to cock the gun and fire the gun. And at no point does anybody check the gun itself and the actual chambers in which the rounds were inserted. The more you think about the chain of custody and the fact that there were all these live ammunition apparently on the set, this live round, which ended up killing this woman and injuring another person, how the hell does all of this happen? It just seems to be an extraordinary

series of events here, which have no conceivable explanation, and also why the sheriff is not ruling out charges necessarily against Alec Baldwin. Yes, against Alec Baldwin or anyone else who was ultimately involved. And that's the key question is, how and why were there live rounds on the set at all? And right now, no one is saying what they have found or what they understand in that regard. I was reading there was an inventory list filed by detectives at the Santa Fe Sheriff's Department that showed, according to court documents, this is from CNN, they confiscated from the scene as evidence a fanny pack with ammunition, two ammo boxes with ammo, and also loose ammo from a tray. Like, what? I mean, again, I read an opinion piece from someone who's, they call them armors, who's in charge of the gun safety on the set. And they're supposed to be the ones ensuring that the guns are safe, that they don't have live rounds in them, handing them ultimately to whatever actor or person is going to use them. And they said that the only instance

where you would ever have live ammo on a set is in these rare cases where you're maybe like filming a gun safety video for educational purposes. You have to license these guns. You have to register. There's a whole protocol involved to make sure that this never, ever happens. So not only did you have this live round, fired from the revolver, killing the cinematographer, and wounding another individual. But you apparently had other significant amounts of other live ammo just laying around the set. Why? How did this happen? And then the other thing you layer on top of this is that we know that the working conditions were not good. You had six individuals who had just quit. Some of the reports were that

they were overworked, that they were tired, they weren't being booked hotel rooms, they were having to drive long distances. So you potentially have some of the people who are involved, and this is a little more speculative, but you potentially have some of the people who were supposed to be involved in safety who are exhausted and not at their best, too. So you add that to the mix, but there are some significant missing pieces here right now because none of it adds up. The biggest question is why was there live ammo on the set at all in the first place? And right now, no one is saying. And here's the other thing. Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, she's the armorer. She has already told investigators under oath, no live ammo is ever kept on set. That's according to her. So either she's lying or somebody else brought some gun, some ammo onto the set. She also is very green. So this is only her second

film serving as armorer. And on the last one, which was her first time doing this, apparently her father also worked in this capacity and was well-known, et cetera. So she sort of came up in the culture. But reportedly, on that first film, first of all, she was reluctant to take it because she wasn't sure that she was ready. And then there were apparently some issues with her handling of the guns on that set. Again, reportedly, that was a movie that had Nicolas Cage. One report said that she fired a weapon close range to him.

He was really mad because she didn't warn. She just like fired at the ground, hurt his ears. So there were issues there as well where people felt that she was sort of too casual and not taking enough precautions with the firearms. But again, these are all reports and who knows who's trying to throw whom under the bus here. Ultimately, there's a ton of unanswered questions. And I still think we don't have anywhere close to a clear picture of how this horrific tragedy ultimately could have unfolded. I still, you know, the more I read about it, it's crazy. Among the 600 items of evidence that were recovered, there were 500 rounds of ammunition, some of which were believed to be live rounds, which 500 rounds of ammunition. Now look, maybe some of them were blanks, like all of that. I don't know. Like in terms of the terminology and all of that, it's very unclear.

But there's a lot of focus too on that assistant director, Dave Halls, who handed the gun to Alec Baldwin and apparently said cold gun whenever that happened. And what I also find very suspicious is that Halls, the assistant director, could only remember seeing, quote, three rounds, apparently is what he called detectives, and that he should have checked all of them. But he also said he couldn't recall if Gutierrez-Reed had spun the drum of the gun, according to that affidavit, which has been signed by the detective.

So clearly there are a couple individuals here who are under the gun, so to speak, in terms of their investigation. Ms. Gutierrez-Reed, did she do her job? She says there was no live ammo on set. Well, they've recovered a lot of live ammo on set. Not necessarily she brought it there. We'll see. Dave Halls, he's the guy who actually handed the gun. Apparently, he was also responsible for some sort of gun safety.

Previous film people who have been interviewed said there's no reason for an assistant director to even hand an actor a gun. Right. So it's already highly unusual that he's even involved in the entire chain of custody. And then also, look, Alec Baldwin is not being let off of the hook here. What did he know? Did he know about negligence? Did he know about, remember, there have been reports of previous accidental negligent discharges that had happened on set,

so maybe there was some other screwery going on, but something clearly went very, very wrong here, and it resulted in the death of the young woman. Yeah, the last thing I'll say on the charges, this is from the district attorney, who says, you know, we don't know how those live rounds got there, and I think that will probably end up being the linchpin for whether a decision is made about charges. She says that what they would consider as involuntary manslaughter charges pending the outcome, though those are uncommon in the state of New Mexico. And she explained some of the legal jargon here that effectively you'd have to show some sort of criminal negligence

for involuntary manslaughter charges to ultimately be filed. So we'll see where the investigation goes. But according to her, that question of how these live rounds ended up on the set and one of them in that gun, that is the linchpin, in her words, for whether or not charges will ultimately be filed. Yeah, we'll keep you guys updated. Wow, you guys must really like listening to our voices. While I know this is annoying, instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called

The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Sagar in your daily lives. Take care, guys. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, it's time for one of my favorite segments here on Breaking Points, inflation. Now, for the life of me, I cannot understand why so many people online are ideologically committed one way or the other to the idea that there is hyperinflation in our economy due to government spending during the pandemic. But here we are. And to be fair, we do need to acknowledge the basic truth that prices are rising all across the U.S. economy

to the detriment of the working class. Inflation, as we have covered here earlier in the week, is now the number one concern, along with COVID, that voters have when it comes to judging the Biden administration. And when something reaches that level of political salience, I am cautioning everyone, ignore convenient explanations, ignore culture war grifters, pause, actually try to figure out what the hell is going on. I'll tell you why that's so important. Ask yourself if the people who are making hay about inflation actually care about it, and more importantly, have they diagnosed the problem correctly so they can fix it for you and your family. There are a whole lot of people here in

DC salivating at the idea that the public will once again believe their lies that government spending is going to lead to a large increase in consumer prices. It's a perfect excuse to slash and burn services, and worse, it's the perfect excuse to do nothing in the middle of the next crisis. Now, some aspects of inflation you've already heard here discussed ad nauseum. Semiconductors, cars, globalization, over-reliance on trade with China. But today I want to focus in on and explain the rise in prices that arguably matters the most to every single American, their grocery store bill, how much they pay at a restaurant, or when they order a cup of coffee. Food is something we all need. An increase there is a major tax on every single one of us.

It is often the category most pointed to as evidence that inflation is here to stay. So let's investigate. Food is a market. It probably shouldn't be, in my opinion, but to feed 8 billion people on the planet, nearly every aspect of the agricultural and culinary market is commoditized. This is important to understand because it means that food itself is a business. And when it's a business, it is important to understand because it means that food itself is a business. And when it's a business, it is subject to the same business dynamics that other things that we've discussed like semiconductors or cars are. The food on your plate or what you order at a restaurant is a product of all of the different inputs. Think about it.

To grow food, you need land, you need fertilizer, you need chemicals, you need machinery, you need personnel, you need truck drivers. So since it's a business, if you were to see an increase in price in one of those inputs, you would see a price in the overall price of food. And lo and behold, that is exactly what's happening. Right now, there is an energy crisis, not here, but in Europe. Now, Europe is heavily reliant on natural gas. Natural gas prices have skyrocketed, and that means food is becoming more expensive. Why? Because natural gas is the key feedstock

for the production of the most common artificial fertilizers, such as urea and ammonium nitrate. Now, why, might you ask, is Europe in such an energy crisis? Well, that is because of European energy reliance on Chinese coal. And right now, there is a big coal shortage in China. China is actually rationing coal, not because they don't have enough, but because they have too much demand. Chinese manufacturing is roaring to life to make all of the cheap stuff that Americans are buying online, which means that to come at the exact same moment, they have a massive shortage of mined coal. Now, you may not know this. It takes a while to mine coal, which means there are rolling blackouts in China, and they are gobbling up all the coal that they can use, and they're not exporting any of it. But that's not all that's going on with food. You may not know this, but last year,

on top of being a plague year, was also a drought year. About 10% of the United States is currently in what they call, quote, exceptional drought. The most severe designation, which is characterized by, quote, widespread crop and pasture losses, shortages in reservoirs, streams, and wells, amounting to a water emergency. The rest of the country ain't doing so hot either. We have 44% of the entire country affected by some level of drought and an additional 13% in some sort of water shortage. What about coffee? That's another food type category. Everybody realizes the price goes up. Well, that's connected to drought too, but not one here at home. In Brazil. Brazil provides more coffee to the United States than any other country in the world. They've had a severe drought this year too.

On top of that, political protests in Colombia and the supply chain crisis have pushed coffee price up 43%. Some of you may have seen this viral New York Times story, and I actually think they did a pretty good job. Let's put it up there on the screen. Thanksgiving is going to be more expensive, mostly because of turkey. Now, why is turkey going to be more expensive? Well, because turkeys are fed corn. And why is corn more expensive? Because of two things. China needs a ton of corn in order to feed all of these new hogs so that it can keep up with an explosion in domestic hog production. And South America needs corn because of that drought that I just mentioned. All of this has led to an increase in the price of corn by 50%. And I have bad news for all of you.

Turkey is not the only factory farm meat that eats corn. Pretty much everything eats corn. So are you beginning to understand what's happening here? The price of food is increasing because of a confluence of terrible events. If I were to point to a single thing that is causing inflation in food today, it is globalization and a lack of resiliency in the American agricultural system. Why should a coal shortage in China screw Europe, which should in turn screw our fertilizer prices, which leads to you paying more for food? Why should a drought in turn screw our fertilizer prices, which leads to you paying more for food?

Why should a drought in Brazil spike our corn prices and then screw up our Thanksgiving? The weakness of our system today is one that was sold to us on the myth of convenience. It has pretty much nothing to do with government spending and a whole lot more to do with the people who designed our system to be fragile but cheap. So when you see someone talking about food inflation, ask them what they want to do about it. If the answer is it make more America resilient, then they are clowns and they don't know what the hell they're talking about. You know, it's interesting, Crystal, when you start to go down the food chain. I mean, I hate the idea that food is a business, but it's a business, right?

And so like all businesses. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform

or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, it's a banner week for the Biden administration committing and also permitting grave crimes of injustice with huge implications for the future of our democracy. This is really about all of us here, guys. In the same week, they are continuing the prosecution of Julian Assange, while also allowing Steven Donziger to be jailed in what is effectively a corporate prosecution. First, let's start with Assange. We're going to be talking to Julian's brother, Gabriel Shipton, shortly about the U.S. government's ongoing appeal as they seek to extradite Julian so that he can be

tried for the crime of doing journalism. Now, the U.S. government, of course, has been out to destroy Assange ever since he and WikiLeaks revealed war crimes being committed and covered up by our government. It all started with this video and warning that this is extremely graphic. This is collateral murder, and it showed U.S. soldiers indiscriminately killing civilians, casually celebrating it like it was a video game. Those targeted included two Reuters journalists who were killed, also two children who were wounded. Now, the official line from the army was that the dead were largely insurgents and that the Reuters employees were killed in the crossfire. Even after a Reuters FOIA request, however, the government refused to release the video of the incident. Assange exposed their lies, showing that what actually occurred

was mass murder. The soldiers involved, they were never tried for their crimes. The leadership that lied to the public over this and many other incidents, not to mention lying us into that war in the first place, we all know they never face consequences. Instead, it's Assange, the guy who revealed the truth, who has had his life systematically destroyed. The Obama administration, they engaged in aggressive surveillance of Assange, but they didn't prosecute him because they couldn't figure out how to do it without criminalizing all of journalism. The Trump DOJ, they had no such qualms.

Led by Bill Barr, they decided to prosecute Assange, and they've been seeking his extradition from the UK ever since. This was after the Trump CIA, by the way, considered and discarded plots to assassinate Assange. The Biden DOJ under Merrick Garland, they have decided to continue that Trump prosecution, and they're even taking it a step further. After a court in the UK denied the U.S. government's extradition request, they decided to continue to press the case, filing an appeal which is being argued in court right now.

Now, if Assange is found guilty ultimately in the U.S., he could face a 175-year sentence. Gabe Shipton, again, is going to give us all the details of what is happening right now with that appeal. This is the gravest threat to press freedom in the world. And the U.S. media, so smug, so self-righteous over Trump's press insults, they have barely a word to say about any of this. It's almost like they don't actually care about press freedom, but only their own power and access. But that is not the only grave injustice being committed this week by the U.S. government. Not even close. We've previously brought you the story of Stephen Donziger. Donziger is that human rights lawyer who's been prosecuted for the crime of winning a landmark case against Chevron for their atrocities against the indigenous people of Ecuador. Let me just give a little refresher

of the outlines of his story. Donziger won a $9.5 billion judgment against Chevron on behalf of his clients, Ecuadorians, whose lives had been destroyed and in some cases ended, thanks to that oil giant's wanton disregard for the law and for human life. Instead of expressing contrition, paying up, and reforming their ways, the company decided they would not pay a cent of that judgment and would instead seek to make an example out of Donziger so that no lawyer would ever want to come after them again. Chevron found a few friendly judges and sought in their own words to, quote, demonize Donziger. Frankly, it's worked. On a bogus contempt of court charge, they have gotten him disbarred. They have kept him in home confinement for more than two years. The case was

so flimsy that U.S. prosecutors with the Southern District of New York, they refused to take it up. Instead, in an extraordinarily likely illegal maneuver, the court brought in Chevron-connected prosecutors to continue this crusade. Now, this is not just my interpretation of events either. Both the UN and Amnesty International have called on Donziger to be released as his prosecution and lengthy home confinement violates international law against arbitrary detention. The UN demanded Donziger be paid reparations for his illegal treatment. Instead, the latest Chevron-connected judge sentenced him to an additional six months in prison. That is on top of the years that he

has already served. In a lengthy diatribe at sentencing, that judge, Judge Preska, said of Donziger that, quote, it seems that only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill in him any respect for the law. This week, Donziger's appeal was denied, and yesterday he was sent to a federal prison to serve out his six-month term. All of this for a trivial contempt of court charge for which no lawyer has ever spent a single day in prison. They have ruined this man's life. They've denied him of his freedom for years now, right as his son was growing up, stripped him of his livelihood. Just compare that, for example, to the sweetheart deal pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein got down in Florida, 13 months on

work release, relaxing at his Palm Beach office. But of course, Epstein was connected to the powerful. Donziger was challenging the powerful. Just as in the case of Assange, it is not the people who committed the crimes, who killed the civilians, who polluted the rainforest, who gave people cancer. They're not the ones who are held accountable. Instead, it's those working to expose those crimes and bring actual justice. And let's not leave it vague as to who is responsible right now in this moment. It is Joe Biden and it is Attorney General Merrick Garland. They could end this nightmare for Julian Assange and Steven Donziger today. Please call Merrick Garland.

I'll put the phone number in the description. Demand Donziger's release. Demand the charges against Assange be dropped. Demand actual justice. And with Gabe Shipton about to join us, I also want to say, please don't forget that aside from the societal injustice here, these are real human beings. They have families. They have people who love them, people who miss them dearly. The pain that has been caused to these people is a reprehensible

moral outrage in and of itself. But it truly is a crime against all of us, all of us who depend on a free press, who want to live in a society where the powerful actually face accountability for their crimes, where you don't have a two-tiered system of justice, where the justice system is not just another arm of our corporatocracy. And shame on the media for relentlessly carrying water for the powerful by consistently ignoring all of their greatest crimes. And look, it all really came to a head this week with both Assange and Donziger. Donziger posted, joining us now, we have Julian Assange's brother, Gabriel Shipton, here to give us an update. Great to see you, Gabriel. Good to see you, Gabriel.

Yes, good to be here. Yeah, thanks for taking the time. I know this is an extraordinarily difficult week for you and your family. Could you just bring us up to speed with what is happening this week in the courtroom? And in particular, there's a question of why Julian wasn't present himself for the proceedings. Could you clear that piece up for us too? Sure. So in January this year, Julian won his extradition hearing. The magistrate rejected the extradition requested by the US prosecutors. US prosecution... This was still during the Trump period. And now we have the appeal hearing,

which is two days, 27th, 28th. The appeal hearing is based on, you know, some assurances that have been given by the US prosecutors that Julian won't be held under SAMS or go to ADX Florence, Colorado prison, and that he'll be able to serve his sentence in Australia once he's convicted. But all these assurances have caveats to them. At any time, if Julian's seen as communicating national security secrets

or any sort of risk like that. He can be put straight into SANS or moved to prison instantly. And serving his time in Australia will only come once he has gone through the entire court process. So potentially two years more of the extradition proceedings in the UK, and then up to 10 years, you know, all the way to the Supreme Court in the US. So he could potentially be 62 by the time he's serving his sentence back in Australia. Wow. And so with the developments here that he could be up to 62, Gabriel, what are the different avenues on which this might end? Do you have any hope, in other words, outside of the U.S. government dropping this case? Well, I guess that is the simplest, easiest way, if the Biden administration just

lets this go. Other than that, you know, it's this extradition battle that just keeps going and going. And Julian, he's in his third year of prison. You know, I saw him over the court video yesterday for the first time in almost a year. I left for him in October 2020, just before the prison went into a COVID lockdown. And, you know And I was shocked.

It looked like he'd aged like five years. I was just taken aback at his appearance and his manner in that small room that he was in at Belmarsh Prison. I think it's important for people to understand, too, as you're laying out, the reason extradition was denied to start with was not because they rejected the U.S. government's case writ large. They said that they were worried about Julian's mental health and that he would be at extreme risk of suicide. So in light of that, you know, what are you seeing in terms of his mental health and what are his attorneys arguing with regards to his mental health? Well, so in this next, in this next, in this current appeal, there, there's some weighting of evidence, of psychiatric evidence that the U that the US prosecutors have, you know,

are appealing the weighting given to it by the judge. But I think, you know, the thing is this case is just last week there was a coalition of 25 press freedom organisations, you know, made up of the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Freedom of the Press Foundation, who all called on this case to be dropped, called, you know, sent a letter to Merrick Garland

and said this is, you know, a massive threat to press freedom. So it's sort of just bizarre that this case is still going on in a court in the UK, and we're talking about, you know, Julian's mental health, and we're talking about, you know, prison conditions in the US. So, you know, I think it's just really, really bizarre that, you know, everybody knows this case is a huge threat to press freedom, but it continues on. So, you know, the only thing that we can sort of conclude is that it's a punishment by process to Julian. You know, he's on remand. He's innocent. He hasn't been convicted of anything.

And he's been in jail now for coming up to three years. Have you had any interactions directly with the Biden administration? Have they said anything that has either given you hope or been discouraging? I think, you know, what's very interesting about the Biden administration is what they haven't been saying. They haven't been supporting this case at all. They are sort of, you know, every time they're asked about it, it gets deflected to the DOJ. So, you know, the line is, you know, under this administration, the DOJ is independent and makes their own independent decisions.

You know, Blinken was asked about it in Paris. He deflected to the DOJ. Jen Psaki has been asked multiple times about this case. And it gets deflected, which is a very big change of position. Under the Trump administration, you know, you had people like Mike Pompeo, when he was head of the CIA, coming out and saying, you know, a war on WikiLeaks, declaring WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence agency, which allowed them to sort of treat WikiLeaks as, say, they would, the Iranian intelligence agency or the Russian intelligence agency, you know, they were able to make plans and put together plans, you know, without congressional oversight to, you know,

I assume you've seen the Yahoo News story where those plans, you know, came out over 30 sources confirming plans from within the CIA to kidnap Julian, to murder Julian. I think, you know, what we've seen with this case now is, you know, those plans, they still exist, but they're sort of being put in place through this veil of legality in a judicial way. Julian was taken from his refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, which was exactly what the CIA had planned to do. They wanted to kidnap him, but now they've done it. They've managed to do it judicially.

I think that's really well said i know gabriel that you and your father have also been working on a film um tracking your struggle to free julian let's take a look at a little bit of that can we talk about your contact with julian through his childhood it's part of the story it isn't part of the story. It isn't part of the story. The story is that, you know, I'm attempting in my own modest way to get Julian out of the ship. Julian Assange is the hero of our time. He was the darling of the left. All of a sudden, he's a puppet of Russia. My name is John Shipton, I'm Julian Assange's father. WikiLeaks found that Julian Assange has been arrested.

One of the most notorious and controversial figures in custody. Assange will remain behind bars until that extradition hearing which has been set down for the end of February. Freedom! I urge the Department of Justice to drop the charges. The maximum jail sentence of 175 years. Because he published the truth. How does it feel to be the father of such a controversial figure,

somebody who's well known around the world? Was that him on the phone before? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you talking about on a kind of regular basis? If Julian is extradited to the United States to face these charges, he will be the first, but not the last. What are your worst fears? That it just collapses under the strain.

It looks as though what jailers do for a living is seen to be a criminal act. So tell us a little bit more about the film and then also, Gabriel, if you would, for people who care about this case, which frankly I think everyone should, everyone who cares about press freedom, but also who has compassion for the pain that your family has suffered here, what do you want them to do today? So the film's premiering next week at the Sydney Film Festival in Australia. You know, I think we're trying to tell the personal side. There's the story behind the headlines. You know, everybody knows Julian,

you know, how they read about him in the newspapers side. There's the story behind the headlines. Everybody knows Julian, how they read about him in the newspapers or through that lens. So we're just trying to tell a human side to the story that really hasn't been told before. What I usually get people to do, I think, and has been quite successful is contact their representatives, you know, put together localised petitions, district petitions, get people together, sign on that, you know, to take to your Congress people that you care about this case, you

care about the repercussions for press freedoms and the First Amendment that this case poses. Direct action is always, you know, always good. You can go to assangedefense.org. There are protests happening across the United States all the time. And, you know, there's nothing like direct action, getting out on the streets and, you know, letting your voice be heard. Yeah, well, we will have links down there in the description on the film. Crystal and I, you know, wish the best, and we hope and encourage people to get involved here.

So thank you, Gabriel. We really appreciate you joining us. We'll be watching closely, Gabriel. Thank you so much. We're so grateful. Appreciate that. Thank you. Bye. All right, thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We have some big announcements coming here from the studio on Monday. I'm really excited to debut some of the stuff that we have been working on. We are ramping things up to the next level.

A special thank you to all of the Lifetime members, monthly, yearly, all of those who made this possible. And if you can help us continue it even more so that we can continue to ramp everything up here. We have some really awesome developments I can't wait to share. There's a link down in the description to become a premium member. Thank you guys

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to bring you the best show possible. Segments like Gabe Shipton or many of the stuff that we covered here on the show you're never going to see that once on corporate media.

Guys, we love you. We're so grateful for you. We're going to have some content for you over the weekend too including our continued partnership with Daily Poster. That's going to post tomorrow. It's going to post tomorrow. So check that out. Let us know what you've been thinking about those segments. They do such great work, original journalism. And so we want to support those outlets that are out there actually doing the work and telling the

truth, which is, you know, it's a low bar, but it's a really important one. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you back here with a full show on Monday. See you Monday. See you Monday. Thanks for listening to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people to the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show,

go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsager.com. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son,

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