Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/31/22: Pelosi Attack, Midterm Forecast, Twitter Shakeup, Obama Returns, Online Censorship, & More!

Episode Date: October 31, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the Pelosi attack, midterm polls, Ukraine grain deal, Twitter shakeup, Brazil elections, Obama's return, UFO report, & government censorship online!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Ken Klippenstein: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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premium member today at BreakingPoints.com. Your hard-earned money is going to help us build for the midterms and the upcoming presidential election so we can provide unparalleled coverage of what is sure to be one of the most pivotal moments in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big news breaking this morning. First of all, we have some brand new details about that horrific hammer attack on Paul Pelosi. We'll break all of that down for you. We also have some new numbers about the midterm election showing that Republican messaging does seem to be taking a toll, landing a little bit more effectively with voters than Democratic messaging or lack thereof, perhaps, is really landing. We also have new developments out of Ukraine, especially with regards to that

grain deal that Russia and Ukraine had struck that was allowing at least some grain to be exported out of the country. That has changed. We also have new reports of attacks throughout the country this morning. So we'll break all of that down for you. Big news with regards to Elon Musk and Twitter, even some new developments this morning about what some of Musk's first moves might be. And we have the results out of that big presidential election down in Brazil. Lula will be the next president. What does that mean? How close was it? Why are the polls right or wrong? What does it all mean?

We'll get into all of that. And plus, very excited to have Ken Klippenstein here in the studio. Dude just has gotten some crazy scoops lately. And this one I think you all are going to be very, very interested in. You remember that whole misinformation governance board thing that supposedly was dismantled? Well, they still decided to do the same thing. They're just not calling it that. And the details of exactly what they are working with tech companies to censor are quite chilling.

So he will break all of that down for you in an exclusive for us. But we wanted to start with the new details of that attack on Paul Pelosi. That's right. So lots of questions around that attack. Emily and Ryan did a great job in a snap reaction on Friday. So let's start with the details. We want to start at the very beginning because I know there's still quite a bit of speculation, questions about details that were erroneously reported and such. And we'll start at the very beginning with the San Francisco Police Department. Here was their initial response as to what

happened in that attack on Paul Pelosi. Let's take a listen. At approximately 2.27 this morning, San Francisco police officers were dispatched to the residence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi regarding an a priority well-being check. When the officers arrived on scene, they encountered an adult male and Mr. Pelosi's husband, Paul. Our officers observed Mr. Pelosi and the suspect both holding a hammer. The suspect pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently assaulted him with it. Our officers immediately tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took him into custody, requested emergency backup, and rendered medical aid. The suspect has been identified as 42-year-old David Depepe. The motive for this attack is still being determined. Mr. Depepe will be booked at the

San Francisco County Jail on the following charges, attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary, and several other additional felonies. So important stuff. A, getting charged with attempted burglary, attempted homicide. B, that there was a phone call and a wellness check. There were a lot of questions as to why exactly this was a response as a wellness check and then the suspect's name, David DePapp. Now, in terms of how Paul Pelosi is right now, let's put this up there on the screen. This was a dear colleague letter sent by Speaker Pelosi to all of her house colleagues yesterday. I'll read it in full. She says, Dear Colleague, Yesterday morning, a violent man broke into our family home,

demanded to confront me, and brutally attacked my husband, Paul, our children, grandfather, our grandchildren, and I are heartbroken and traumatized by the life-threatening attack on our pop. We are grateful for the quick response of law enforcement. Please know the outpouring of prayers. We are comforted by the book of Isaiah. Do not fear. I am with you. Do not be dismayed or I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous hand. We thank you and pray for the continued safety and well-being of our family. Now, the Pelosi family also previously had said that Paul Pelosi had undergone brain surgery.

However, his doctors and others saying that he's expected to make a full recovery, 81 years old. Now to question of the attack itself. Let's put this up there. This was one of the major details with a lot of questions. Politico erroneously reported and said, quote, officers arrived at the house, knocked on the front door and were led inside by an unknown person where they discovered DePap and Pelosi struggling for the hammer. And after they instructed them to drop the weapon, DePapp took the hammer and, quote, violently attacked Pelosi. So there were a lot of questions there as to who is this unnamed third person? Why was the third person also in the house? However, now in an interview, let's put this up there on the screen, details getting clarified, quote, San Francisco PD telling NBC that they were just two people in the Pelosi home at the time of the attack, not three as had previously been reported, and that neither the suspect nor Paul Pelosi knew each other prior to the attack. NBC also said that they had confirmed, quote, zip ties were found on the scene. So that was a follow up on a report about the zip ties as well. As to how exactly and why this was dispatched as a, quote,

wellness check. There were a lot of questions as to why this was a wellness check and why didn't Paul Pelosi call 911. Let's fill the next one up there. Essentially what happened, and according, this is again according to Pelosi, and some of the initial details and all that were a little bit unclear. What happened is that Pelosi told this guy, David DePapp, that he wanted to go in to use the bathroom. So while he was in the bathroom, secretly called 911 and then left 911 on speaker, essentially, and while he put the phone in his pocket and then went back and was like, hey, what are you trying to do to me? What are you doing? Why are you here? The 911 call operator listens to this and was like, something fishy and weird is going on here right now, Crystal.

And she then dispatches it as a, quote, high priority wellness check. That's why it was called in as a wellness check and not necessarily as a confirmed attack. So lots of details. Right. And it seems like this is also the reason why in the 911 call there was a report that this was someone he knew that was a friend. And it was also sort of contradictory because it was like they don't know each other, but he says he's a friend. It seems like that confusion may also have come from the fact that essentially what they're saying happened with Paul Pelosi is he was able to dial 911,

but wasn't able to say to them like, oh my God, I'm under attack, help me. He's just able to put it on speakerphone so that they can hear the events unfolding and he's trying to communicate with his attacker in a way where the 911 dispatcher understands like oh shit there's something going on we got to go help this guy so um originally for those who have a healthy skepticism of official narratives including me i would say that the uh the question, big question marks were this report that there was another person at the house was like, hmm, why?

Who? What's going on there? The 911 call where the attacker was referred to as a friend. The fact that it was dispatched as a wellness check. And then there was also

another erroneous report that the two men were in their underwear. And there are all also another erroneous report that the two men were in their underwear. And there are all kinds of salacious conspiracies out there that this was a gay lover that attacked him. There was a report that Elon Musk, we'll get to that, shared from this sort of like, you know, rag that puts out all kinds of crazy stuff all the time that was to that effect. At this point, it seems like those conspiracy theories are much more sort of like cope from conservatives who don't want to acknowledge that there was anything ideologically about this guy that may have, you know, mixed with his mental illness to lead to this kind of attack. Because one by one, each of those pieces is at least being debunked by the San Francisco Police Department. And, you know, it seems like I continue,

look, I'm open to the idea that there was something else going on here that, you know, is more than has been told or more than meets the eye, et cetera, et cetera. But probably the most likely explanation is that you had a guy who's a drug addict, who is mentally ill, who has fallen down a million different

internet conspiracy theory rabbit holes and ended up in this, like, deranged state. Now, the question I still have is, like, where the hell was the security? I mean, that's what's most surprising to me is, like, I can't— I am shocked that it would be this easy to gain entry to the Pelosi home. But that's basically, you know, that's what we know this morning. I'm very open to asking questions, as everybody knows. That's why I've spent a lot of time actually putting all these details together. Like, here's the things that were reported that a

lot of people were picking up on, including me. I was like, hey, this is very strange. This is very odd. And I think it does stem from the unbelievable nature of, you know, the idea that you could break into a person's home who's worth over $100 million in a $6 million house in a violent city where crime is way up and that they don't have any security. I mean, listen, you know, any normal dad who has a ring alarm has better security, apparently, than these people. So that's a little odd. There's no security camera footage. You know, allegedly, you know, the sliding glass door was broken or at least at some part. Yeah, there were pictures of that.

Right. And it's like, well, you know, if you break my door, same thing. Like, I'm just a guy who can order stuff on Amazon. Like, that's going to dispatch a 911 call. So how exactly does that work? So anyway, I remain incredulous and really, like, stunned that it's even possible for, like, a violent break-in or something like this to happen to people who have extraordinary high net worth and third in line to the presidency. Although I guess you should generally always bet on incompetence in some of these situations. In terms of the reports, look, again, I'm sympathetic. And stuff coming out on this, I was like, this whole thing just doesn't add up. However, according to the police, and that's a very strong caveat, you know, many of these things are no longer there.

I think, and you brought this up this morning, at the end of the day, the body camera footage actually will tell us a lot. Yes. It'll tell us everything, you know, exactly whether that detail is true. Did he start attacking him when they got there? Did he attack him before? What the position they found themselves in? Who broke the door? Some people said the police broke the door.? What the position they found themselves in? Who broke the door? Some people said the police broke the door.

Some people said that it was David DePop that broke the door. Also, questions remain about Mr. DePop himself. We're about to get to, as well, his own craziness and mental conspiracy, combined with, obviously, a penchant for going down internet rabbit holes. Put that together, I think it's a sad attack. At the end of the day, look, I don't wish the man ill. He's 81 years old. That's a tough time to get attacked with a hammer and have to recover from the hospital. I would say so. At the least. I mean, the just derangement of attacking an 80-year-old man with a hammer is, I mean, it really is. And,

you know, it's not uncommon for in the wake of any of these sorts of events, whether it's a shooting or a crime or an attack like this, for some of the details to be a little garbled in the beginning. Right. And so probably the most likely explanation for why some of these pieces were kind of head-scratching is that, listen, again, I remain open to the idea if the body camera footage comes out and it shows some other things were going on, I wouldn't be shocked by that. But to me, at this point, Occam's razor of what likely happened is that they let their guard down with security,

which is hard to wrap your head around, but certainly possible. Nancy, I guess, was out of town. So the Secret Service detail that normally accompanies her wouldn't have been present and that this dude you know was a toxic combination of like deranged mentally ill and then fueled by these uh right-wing conspiracy theories and we also should say like there's an incentive part of the people who are propagating these conspiracy theories and really latched on to them well it's because they don't want to acknowledge that any of the people who were propagating these conspiracy theories and really latched onto them, well, it's because they don't want to acknowledge that any of the ideological parts that came from

the right may have had anything to do with this attack. The thing that always drives me crazy about these incidents, and we have just like, you know, every time it's the same thing, everybody goes to the internet, looks at what their social media history is. This guy was a prolific writer. He previously had been more of like, you know, sort of left-wing fringe lunatic, seems to have made a change. Apparently, reportedly, Gamergate shifted him to the right.

Now he was all in on QAnon. He wanted Trump to pick Tulsi Gabbard as his vice presidential nominee. He was into, you know, the obsession with like the pedophilia that comes out of QAnon. Epstein stuff certainly is true, but there are parts of that they think that politicians are like eating babies and all this sort of stuff. He went down every internet rabbit hole. You combine that with the mental illness. And I think that seems like the most likely explanation for what ultimately happened here. I mean, we have some of the details about what exactly he was writing. Let's go ahead and put this next up on the screen.

They haven't been able to totally verify that these writings were him, but he seems to be the only person by this name living in California. It seems like it goes back to him. You know, he was in on like anti-Semitic conspiracy theories suggesting there had been no mass gassing of prisoners at Auschwitz. He reposted a video lecture defending Adolf Hitler. Like I said before, he was, you know, picking vice presidential candidates for Donald Trump. He also had, though, things that weren't political at all. Things like, you know, he was like imagining there were fairies that he had produced using an artificial intelligence imaging

system. He was tracking culture war issues, talking about Alex Jones's $1 billion defamation judgment. So those are the sorts of, you know, political content that he was apparently interested in. And then, of course, the report from the scene is that he was saying, where's Nancy? And that's why people are drawing this conclusion that his ideology connected to the attack. Although we should be clear, the police haven't said that they have, they have not asserted a motive yet. So I think that's important. Well, I mean, look, I mean, does it, is the motive belied by the fact that she's a speaker? Of course, like it has to be part of the reason from what we've seen right now. I mean, look, it's also San Francisco. It's not a crazy idea to have a crazy person breaking your house

as a homeless drug dealer. Yeah, but when you're running around with a hammer and these kind of postings and you're saying, where's Nancy? I mean, there's a pretty logical conclusion to come to. Can you put two and two together? Yeah, I think so. I mean, just in general, this like disgusting dash by everybody to go and see like what somebody used to watch and then blame it on that person as to their motive for the attack, I generally think is insane. Like, you know, look, people are crazy in this country. There's like 330 million people. Like, it's not always about ideology. It's not Bernie Sanders' fault that James Hodgkinson, like, shot up a bunch of congressmen just because he happens to like Bernie. Like, it's not... It reminds me of the Gabby Giffords shooting where this guy, there was an ideological component

combined with mental illness. And, you know, all of these things, like, there was an ideological component combined with mental illness. And, you know, all of these things, like, there's a real human desire to understand how someone could do this thing. And the truth of the matter is, you're never really going to get what leads a person to attack an 80-year-old man with a hammer. Like, you're never really going to be able to wrap your head around it. Now, some of these attacks that we've seen were much more like clearly idealized. They write a whole manifesto and they lay out like, I'm a white supremacist and I want to start a race war. And mental illness may be a factor there, but it's actually less of a factor than they've convinced themselves that they're some like warrior for their race or whatever ideological nonsense that they've fed themselves on. And then there's instances like this where, you know, the mental illness combines with the ideological inclination to lead to this like hate fueled attack.

And you really can't separate the two. And it sort of irritates me when people want to latch on to just exclusively one explanation or the other because it's convenient for whatever their particular hobby horse or narrative ultimately is. That's a good segue. Let's go ahead and jump ahead to 888, guys. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Elon finding himself in a little trouble. He's actually deleted his tweet since then. Let's put this image up there, please. Hillary Clinton tweeting out, the Republican Party, its mouthpieces are now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking but not surprising

that the violence is a result. As citizens, we must hold them accountable for their words and the actions that follow with a link specifically to this Mr. Depep. Elon replied with a link to smoobserved.com. I don't really know how to describe it, like a rumor tabloid-ish type site out of San Francisco. Just to give you a sense of their credibility, they had apparently reported previously that Hillary Clinton was really dead and her body double was debating Trump. So that's the type of content that they tried. That's the type of content.

Anyway, he says, quote, there is a tiny possibility there might be more to the story than meets the eye, with a link to a now-deleted tweet and to a website which has effectively been nuked by all of the traffic. Now, the allegation essentially was that Pelosi was, quote, drunk and that these were two gay lovers in some sort of lover's quarrel that had gone back to a bar, knew each other, and that something went wrong. Unfortunately for them, they linked to many of the details, which have now, again, according to the police, have now come out and said to be wrong. I think all of this does underscore a discussion that we were just having now, Crystal, which is that everybody is in a mad dash to say, no, the other side is wrong.

It's like, yeah, I mean, I don't know why it is not just comforting to say that people are crazy. John Hinckley was just crazy. I mean, is it Jodie Foster's fault that he shot Ronald Reagan? No. I mean, one of the Manson family or whatever, when they should take a shot at Gerald Ford, that one, there might be somebody at fault, but they happen to work over at the CIA. But the point is, is that I'm not in the business generally of blaming folks. And actually, you may disagree. I actually thought that Michael Schellenberger did a decent job, aside from his own editorial musings, of who exactly this gentleman is. It gives me a pretty good insight.

But yeah, I do disagree with it. Put it up there on the screen. Michael Schallenberger says, the media portraying the suspect in the attack as a man fundamentally driven by right-wing ideology. It is obvious to anyone who looks what drove Depepe with violence was drug-induced paranoid psychosis. Neighbors described Depepe as a homeless drug addict with politics that was until recently left-wing, but of a secondary importance to his psychotic and paranoid behavior. DePop lived with a notorious local nudist colony in Berkeley, complete with a BLM sign in the window, LGBT flag, and emblazoned with a marijuana symbol hanging from a tree. He says, quote, what I know about the family is that they're very radical activists. He's quoting somebody who knows the family and was friends with them.

I mean, it comes away to me like he's a crazy person, a Castro nudist. I don't think he's left or right wing. I think he's just nuts. But here's the thing, okay? Schellenberger is doing the exact same thing that everyone else is doing. Well, he visited the house, at least. He visited the house that this dude lived in years ago.

Right. I mean, he hasn't even been there. Well, it was also the FBI visited the house as well. Hasn't even been there in years. So he's drawing all these ago. I mean, he hasn't even been there. Also, the FBI visited the house as well. Hasn't even been there in years. So he's drawing all these conclusions and oh, lo and behold, he uses all of the pieces that he gathers to feed his own

hobby horse of, that's why we need to be tough on crime. That's why we need to lock up drug users. That's why this has nothing to do with ideology. He does. His conclusion is, we've got to restore consequences for crimes resulting from addiction, both of which can be viewed as cries for help. Had laws against both been enforced, then we may not have ended up in this situation. So he uses all of this to fuel

his own hobby horse of it's the crime is the problem. California is out of control and completely ignores that you can't ignore that there is an ideological component here. I mean, you don't show up at the Speaker of the House's mansion without having some sort of, like, political ideological agenda. So to say he's just crazy and there's no ideological piece, I think, is also dishonest. Like, I think you have to acknowledge that the prevalence of these conspiracy theories, QAnon in particular, but a bunch of other ones that have become increasingly mainstream on the right, was a toxic combination with this dude's mental illness and helped to result in this attack ultimately. Yeah, I think that's fair. Look, I will defend the man. He does not believe in mass incarceration for drugs. He believes in,

quote, consequences as in getting people treatment. So I think that people should engage with his work and read his book because personally he's actually had a very big impact on the way that I think about that. However, we can put all of that aside, and I will say that you cannot separate the two. It is clearly multifaceted. That being said, what I think and what annoys me is, let's put this on the screen, is the immediate attack by the Ben Collins of the world,

who's like some, quote, disinformation specialist, says this is completely false. He was obsessed with the cabal, had standard anti-war lefty posts in 07, and then insane screeds about pedophiles. This is the picture of radicalization. What is wrong about there, though? Because I don't think that this is the picture of radicalization. I think that crazy people are fueled and attracted to crazy theories

and that those abound happen to be on the Internet. Are they being mainstreamed on the right? Like, no, I don't think QAnon is mainstream on the right. I think that a portion of our public is nuts and that they like to believe that— The president is, like, retweeting or retruthing Q drops now. Yeah. It's not mainstream on the right. He's the leader of the Republican Party.

I don't think that that's mainstream. I think that Trump being a moron and retweeting, like, 15 posts— Trump is the Republican Party. So you can't say, retweeting like 15 posts. Trump is the Republican Party. So you can't say like he, I mean, he is the Republican Party. I mean, are we all responsible for things that we retweet? He's reposting Q drops and flirting with society and posts like videos and whatever. I mean, you have to say that it is increasingly mainstream within the Republican Party. I just don't disagree.

I mean, look, we have reams of polling data to tell us that at best 15% or whatever of the Republican base even is interested in somewhat in QAnon. So I don't think it's mainstream. I think that the fact that Trump is a moron retweets a bunch of stuff that people say nice things about him doesn't mean that it is mainstream. And again, like, I'm just going to come back and say that I don't think James Hodgkinson or Bernie Sanders should be responsible for James Hodgkinson for liking a few Bernie tweets and then shooting a bunch of Republican congressmen. Liking a few Bernie tweets. And I'm not saying. Well, it's more than that. I'm actually.

By the way, I do want to be clear. Okay. Nothing that I'm saying here is like, that's why we need to crack down on this speech. And there is always a danger in this. All I'm saying is that people who are dabbling in this and fueling it and who freaking know better need to have some thoughts about their own like personal responsibility like Elon Musk as people who are powerful and have big platforms. Like, do I think Elon should be censored or banished or fined or put in prison or whatever for posting this like nonsense conspiracy article? No. Do I

think that he personally, as someone who, you know, he may not think of himself as a media figure, but he really is one of the most influential media figures on the planet. Like, you wouldn't have posted that nonsense.

No, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have posted that nonsense and we're much less power. We have much less influence. All I'm saying is that, like, to pretend like the ideology has nothing to do with this and that this is totally separate from anything that's going on on the right and, you know, it's just like this guy's just crazy and that's that. I don't think that that's honest either.

And I do think that, you know, people who have big platforms and have a lot of power should take that with a measure of responsibility that we try to do here at Breaking Point. I think that's absolutely fair, and you're correct, which is that really what it is is that for people who know better, and we all know who we're talking about here, who traffic and who flirt with this, it's a good reminder that, you know, people take some of the things, I mean, we take it seriously because we look at it as a job in which we know that people give in trust in us,

and so we go out of our way to make sure, like, look, even if I personally may believe something to be true, like, I'm just not going to say it unless there is at least decent evidence or I'm not going to outright traffic and speculation without at least laying out, like, here are the facts and the thought patterns that led me to get there. And I'm not going to just post some random ass website to one of the richest person in the world. So I'm not defending the tweet. I'm glad he deleted it. I guess there are two different planes on which we're fighting. Yes.

Yeah. Well, and I was going to say, I mean, with regards to that blog and the early questions about some of these weird details. Like, we were talking amongst each other about, like, hmm. Wow, it's weird. Maybe that's weird. Maybe. What happened? We didn't just, like, then take that and run with it.

And just, like, you know, without—we waited. Okay, what are the details? What is it starting to look like know without we waited just okay what are the details what is it starting to look like and we'll continue to reassess we're just trying to lay out for you like the actual facts as we know them based on the reports that we have that are even remotely confirmed so yeah to just like run with some rumor mill is it is irresponsible do i think he deserves to be again like penalized for it or whatever no but you know it'd be it'd be better if people were a little more responsible with their platforms that's all i'm saying let's go with that i like it okay let's talk about the midterms new cbs news

battleground tracker let's put this up on the screen um their headline here is republicans head into final week with lead in seats. Voters feel things are out of control. CBS News Battleground tracker poll. They are looking specifically at House seats here. And the way that they sketch this out is they have like a range of possibilities. The most likely possibility, according to their polling, is that Republicans win a majority and do so relatively comfortably, but not with the like sort of massive landslide that we expected early on. Democrats narrowly holding onto the House is still in the range of possibilities, but looking increasingly less likely. Let's go ahead and put

some of the details here up on the screen. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up, which is interesting. Nation is really divided about what is at stake, which is a bigger concern. To be honest with you, this surprised me a little bit. You have a majority, 56 percent, saying that they are more worried about a functioning democracy, about the nation remaining a functioning democracy, than they are a strong economy. So 56 percent to 44 percent. If you dig into those numbers, you find that Republicans are more likely to say they're interested in the strong economy and they are more likely to support Republican candidates. And Democrats are more likely to say we're interested in functioning democracy. And people who say that that is their primary concern are more likely to support Democrats.

Digging even further into these numbers, there are additional troubling signs for the Democratic Party. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. So they asked, okay, depending on who controls Congress, what do you think is going to happen with gas prices? Which was kind of a clever question, actually. Great question. 53% of majority of Americans believe that if Democrats keep control of Congress, gas prices are going to go up. Whereas only 21 percent say the same for Republicans. On do you think that they're going to go down, only 15 percent say that they think that Democrats will bring gas prices down, whereas 45 percent, not a majority, but a healthy plurality, think that Republicans will

bring down gas prices. And about a third say that neither one of these are going to have any kind of an impact. Not a good sign for Democrats. You also have crime rising to be a top two or three issue. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Republicans continue to have a significant advantage on which party makes you feel safer with regards to violent crime. And perhaps most damning of all, which to me, Sagar, really showed that the Republican messaging is landing. Go ahead and put this last piece up on the screen. When you ask voters, what do you think Democrats will actually do if they take control of Congress? Well, the first one, OK, this one is what Democrats have been overwhelmingly messaging on. Eighty four percent say, OK, they're going to pass a national right to abortion law. So the Democratic messaging there is landing. Everything else, not so great.

59% say they're going to open the U.S.-Mexico border. 53% say they're going to cut police funding. And only 51%, so a bare majority, says they will increase Social Security benefits. And over on the other side, Democrats have started to message a little bit about Republicans planning to cut Social Security. The numbers bear out that that isn't really landing with people. There aren't huge majorities that believe that that is the case if Republicans take control. Another fascinating one is that voters do not feel like the Democrats have a clear plan for what they're going to do if they maintain power. More voters actually believe that than what Republicans are going to do. So I guess it's interesting. The Democratic messaging has worked. People are like, okay, we know what they're going to do. Abortion, got it. We care, yeah, but we also care about a

whole lot of other stuff, and we don't know what you're going to do about it, which makes sense whenever you've been the party in power for two years. I think this is a catastrophic poll, and actually, I just continue to come back to this one. Feel things in the U.S. today are out of control, 79%, 21% under control. It's actually quite simple. Like that is not good for the people who are uniformly in power everywhere. Their margin, you know, put to the Republicans in a 12 seat advantage. Look, there's a lot of noise in the polls coming out today. You and I were just talking. The New York Times had a slew of polls that were actually quite good for all the Democratic candidates. I just have no idea.

There's no way to know. On average, though, the New York Times missed was about five points, given the fact that they have all the Democrats up by six. I'm like, wow, that seems like a basic 50-50 toss-up. To me, I mean, I'm looking at this, the whole bigger concern of functioning democracy and a strong economy. On one hand, you could be somewhat heartened about that. But people look at that very differently, right? So if you were to ask a hardcore MAGA person about functioning democracy, they'd be like, yeah, that means we need audits.

You know, that means we need election integrity. So people are going to look at that in a very different way. These questions don't strike at the heart of like, what are people going to vote on come November? That is a good point, too, because so Democrats and you might have the numbers right there. Democrats had the edge with voters said who said their number one priority is a functioning democracy. But and it was significant. It was like two thirds to one third. It's 63-29.

And then Republicans, though, had an even larger edge among voters who said the economy's number one. So even though you had more people saying, actually, I care most about a functioning democracy, the fact that you had a larger proportion of the strong economy people going like all in with Republicans ultimately is a problem for Democrats. I mean, it all sort of underscores what we've been saying for a while that, you know, the issues that these parties decide to focus on, it does matter. Democrats have overwhelmingly been running ads on abortion, abortion, abortion, so much so that Bernie Sanders has been sounding the alarm bells,

along with Stan Greenberg and others, saying, guys, the economy is really important. People are saying this is the number one issue. You have to have some message on that. I'm talking about President Obama on the campaign trail. He tried to do a little bit of that. But you can't do it if you don't have something affirmative and really concrete that you're like, if we get power, we are going to do X. They don't have that at all. And so what you can see here is if they had done 60% abortion ads rather than like 90% abortion ads and 40%, here's how we're going to deliver economically for you and your family, it would have made a difference because you can see the way the Republican ad messaging is working.

You can see that the Democratic ad messaging is working. The things they are talking about are landing with voters. It's just Democrats went all in on one issue that is probably not going to be enough for people ultimately when they're very concerned about the economy and 79% say the country's out of control. I just have no idea. This truly is one of those elections where anything is possible. Is it possible that these New York Times polls, which we'll do a whole segment on tomorrow, is that the actual picture? That really Republican enthusiasm and Democratic voter malcontent is just completely underpriced? Certainly possible.

If you were to bet on every fundamental, though, you would say no way. Yeah. And so, I don't know. You know, do I believe in magic? Like, not really. Well, the Times article, which we've really previewed hard here now at this point. Right, almost previewed a little too hard. One of the things they point out is that you have more voters who say they would like Republicans to take control of the Senate, but they like the Democratic candidate in their state better.

And that gets down to that question of, like, does candidate quality really matter? Is it going to make a difference? I tend to be skeptical that it—I think it makes a little bit of a difference. I tend to be skeptical that it is oftentimes the determining factor, especially in an era of such hard partisanship. But ultimately, I mean, it really is very hard to say how people are going to process everything that's going on and what these, you know, two very uninspiring parties are offering to the extent that they're offering anything. One thing that CBS News pointed out is if in the most hopeful scenario for Democrats, so for Democrats to really defy the odds, both historically and in terms of what the

polls say at this point, and hold on to the House, it would take a huge surge in young voters that is not being picked up in the polls, that isn't at this point reflected even the early turnout data. So that's what it would really take. I mean, if you wanted to construct a theory of the case, you could say, hey, student loan debt relief, you know, potentially descheduling marijuana and, you know, overturning the federal convictions for marijuana possession. Maybe that was enough of an impetus to young voters. Maybe Roe versus Wade, which, you know, young voters are looking at this and going like, oh my God, we're going backwards. Where is the country going? This

is an issue that is, you know, really important and impactful for that generation. Maybe that's enough to sort of spur them to the polls in a way that pollsters aren't ultimately expecting. That's the kind of theory you would have to lean into if you expected Democrats at this point to be able to maintain control. Yeah, I think that's correct. Look, again, everything is up in the air. I genuinely have no idea where things are going. The fundamentals all do look good for the Republican Party on all of these issue by issue. I continue to remember that under the Trump, under Trump in 2020, everybody was like, yeah, but look at the polls. Yeah, but look at the polls. The best approximator for his eventual success or near success at the polls coming only 40,000 votes shy was I trust Trump on the economy, of which he was at 50-50. Here on the down ballot, we're looking at 80-20.

So that's just such a strong, reliable indicator over time that I'm like cut out much of the noise and you can bet on that same. Look, high crime, high inflation, party in power. It's like, I just can't get away from those three things. No, I agree with you. I agree with you. We also have now an update from Nate Silver's 538 forecast, which people watch very closely. And he did have the race for the Senate as high as Democrats with like a 71% chance of taking the Senate. This is back when Fetterman had double digit leads and everything, you know, it was in the wake of Roe versus Wade being overturned. And there were a few special elections

that went Democrats way. And it really, you know, and Biden passed a couple of bills and it felt like there was some momentum. Gas prices were going down. Biden's approval rating was going up. Well, now things have eroded enough for Democrats. Let's put this up on the screen, that it is 50-50.

To be precise, it is 49 instances out of 100 Republicans win and 51 out of 100 Democrats win. So technically it's 49-51, but I think you could pretty closely approximate that as a real coin flip. And in a way, it's even worse for Democrats than a coin flip because you see which direction the trend line is in. They've only been sort of, you know, Republicans have only been eating into their lead, eating into their lead, eating into their lead. So it would not be surprising at all if next week it says actually it's like 55% in favor of the Republicans or it's 60% in favor of the Republicans. That's the direction that they're heading. Betting markets, same thing. Odds are now in the betting markets, put this up on the screen, that the GOP will take the Senate. They are slightly favored for

the first time in two months. So that's kind of where the prognosticators or the smart money or potentially the stupid money is at this point in the cycle. Yeah. I mean, again, you keep looking at everything. We look at the markets. By the way, betting markets this point in the cycle. Yeah, I mean, again, you keep looking at everything. We look at the markets. By the way, betting markets are not in any way indicative. But at least something is on the line, and they can tell us a little bit about what's going on. The Nate Silver piece, it's interesting.

Whenever you look at exactly what's weighted and what's not, the other point that we should always remember, Crystal, which is that if the Republicans, let's say some crazy stuff, because let's always remember, let's say Fetterman does win, very possible. But then what if Cortez Masto loses in Nevada? Now you're at a wash. And then what if you have a pickup in just one other place that nobody is really paying attention to? Maybe Herschel Walker does get over 50, right? I mean, it's one of those things where you can get to Senate control and not necessarily do it in a way that maybe we've been guilty of covering by focusing only on Pennsylvania and more. We could have upsets far outside of that norm and not really consider or

know why. Frequent, usually what happens is when you have races that are true toss-ups and right on the bubble, it's usually not the case that like some go for the Democrats and some go for the Republicans. It's usually they all fall in one direction. Right. So, you know, I think these are on such a knife's edge, all of the Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona. I think Mark Kelly has potentially a little bit more breathing room than these other seats. But these are all so incredibly close. I don't know. My expectation is they're all going to either fall on one side of the line or the other side of the line. It's unlikely that you're going to have a real sort of like all over the map kind of result just because I don't think that's the way our politics typically work. The national mood, the national winds tends to drive everything across the country.

And there's a little bit of candidate differentiation, a little bit of whatever's going on locally, but it's much more about whatever the national mood is. Yeah, I think you're probably correct. I mean, it's just, you know, I keep coming and I'm like pulling all the battleground numbers from elsewhere. And like, you know, many people got it so wrong in 2020 and in 2016. It's just very difficult

to keep that out of your mind and not round things the way that they are. But who knows? I don't know. Yeah, I mean, and we'll get to this in the Brazil block,

but ultimately the polls there, which were wildly off in the first round, they were pretty close on the money. Yeah, they were dead on this time. Interesting, right? Yeah, very interesting. So again,

just another variable to throw in to say, like, everybody's guessing at this point. And there truly is a lot of suspense about what the outcome will be, especially in the Senate. Let's get to the very latest out of Ukraine. A lot of eyes on the fact that that grain deal, which we covered, which, you know, Ukraine, breadbasket of the region, potentially the world, their grain shipments being shut down was devastation for their economy, but also real problem for food prices and for hunger, especially in developing nations. Well, that deal, which was already sort of crumbling and a lot of the grain

shipments reportedly not being allowed through, has now officially been killed by Russia. And this seems to be in retaliation for a drone attack on their Black Sea flagship that was damaged in Crimea. Let's go ahead and put this Wall Street Journal report up on the screen. So Russia blames Ukraine, UK for a collapse of grain deal, of course. UK denies Moscow's claim that British experts aided that attack that I just referenced on Russian Black Sea Fleet based at Port of Sevastopol. They say they announced, Russia announced they would suspend participation in the grain export agreement Saturday. In response to that drone attack, Moscow said it damaged one minesweeper. Others say that it damaged much more than that, including

the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Admiral Makarov, I'm going to go with. On Sunday, you know, they had some very over-the-top rhetoric. As per usual, Russia's foreign ministry spokeswoman wrote on her Telegram messaging channel that the grain deal was thwarted by Zelensky and his terrorists, who are led by British specialists. They need more deaths. The Kiev regime rests on this hellish throne, money, weapons, and death. The UK has denied any cooperation in the attack. I mean, I would not be shocked whatsoever if the UK was involved in the attack, so I have no idea either way. But it underscores both, you know, the fact that this war is really causing a lot of problems for the world, obviously the heaviest toll overwhelmingly on

the people of Ukraine. But there have been tremendously devastating follow-on consequences for people everywhere. This is only going to exacerbate the rise in food prices. And also the fact that, you know, Russia really treats Crimea as kind of a different deal than the rest of Ukraine. This was territory that everyone had in all but name essentially ceded to Russia years ago. And there had been a lot of sensitivity about striking in Crimea early on. And now there's sort of like an increasing willingness to strike in Ukraine. We played, I mean, in Crimea last week, we played for you, Nancy Pelosi, saying that the U.S. is committed to helping Ukraine militarily take back this territory as well.

Right. And, you know, you have to consider also wheat futures actually went up by 8 percent just this morning based on the news of the pullout. Moscow is saying that shipments are going to become, quote, much riskier without it. And that's a complicated one because originally they had the port mined and, you know, all of that. Now then they were guaranteeing safe passage. Now they're claiming the Ukrainians, which possibly did, used the Green Deal to circumvent basically Russian export deals and all that and get that bomb over to the Russian side to bring it over to the bridge. That's ultimately what they were claiming. Yeah. As to what happened. That they used the Green Deal to facilitate their attack on that Crimean Bridge.

Right. Which is, again, if that's possible, you know, big problem on the Ukrainian front. It could even be, you know, elements of Ukrainian intelligence as part of the issue. Nobody really knows what exactly happened there. The point is, is that they have enough of a pretext to pull out. Turkey, the U.S., the U.N., and Ukraine are, quote, moving ahead with it. But it does have a lot of uncertainty for merchant shipping and for wheat. And we should remember, you know, we're not the

ones who rely on this. It really is developing countries, Africa, India, elsewhere, that rely on so many of the grain shipments that were coming in. And with a subpar harvest, apparently, over the year on top of the turmoil, it actually just leads to an increase in price, which what did we see with natural gas? Ultimately, the Europeans figured it out, which is they had to sacrifice like 10% of their national GDP. But that's what rich countries can do. They have a lot of reserve and they're like, okay, we're going to take a haircut on the entire German economy, but we'll figure it out. Bangladesh does not have that luxury, which is why they have rolling blackouts. Thailand does not have that luxury.

Pakistan, India, many of these other countries, Africa in particular right now, is really under notice actually in terms of their relationship with Russia, with China and elsewhere. It's the rest of the globe that rely very much on these institutions. They don't have the ability to take a 10% haircut.

And when they do, well, that's when you see like famine, starvation, total collapse. And that's part of the issue. Chaos. Right. Yeah. And you add to that another exacerbating factor, which is that with our Federal Reserve moves to increase interest rates, that's causing the dollar to strengthen. And also countries that have dollar denominated debt, it's making it much more difficult for them. So that's an additional strain on their finances to be able to service that debt, which is many of these countries are in that situation, which is why a lot of people are sounding the alarm about potential defaults and bankruptcies and all kinds of currency

collapse and all kinds of potential issues in the developing world. So they're really not in a healthy fiscal position to be able to weather this kind of storm, which is why this is ultimately so troubling. There are also reports coming out this morning, more missiles striking across Ukraine in the sort of continued attacks that we've seen from Russia on Ukrainian infrastructure causing problems for their ability to provide electricity. You know, we already have blackouts, rolling blackouts across Ukraine as well. And so they're sort of continuing that direction of their attacks. Okay, let's move on to the next part, which is really fascinating. Put this on the screen. Liz Truss apparently had her phone hacked by the Russians throughout her short, very short tenure as the PM.

Allegedly, Crystal, included text messages and discussions between Truss and foreign officials, including the most sensitive negotiations, discussions, and thoughts about the war in Ukraine. Apparently, that hack went ahead during the, quote, summer Tory leadership campaign. So basically, while she was pressing forward, here's the crazy thing. The news of the hack was discovered, but was then covered up by some of the people in government. That's why what we just showed you, there is now a call in the government to open an investigation as to whether her phone was hacked while she was the foreign secretary, possibly while she was even the PM, and that whether the details of that breach were then hid from the public and worse from parliament and the rest of

the people in her party. It really does remind me of, you know, the WikiLeaks fallout scandal from 2009 when it turned out like we were tapping Angela Merkel's phones. I mean, all these foreign leaders should probably be under the impression that they are hacked. Right. At this point, from what I've, you know, read and understand about Pegasus, Pegasus 2 in particular, like, as long as they have your phone number, you're a goner. There ain't a damn thing. Apparently Apple has lockdown mode. Even that, I'm like, how much of this is all just theater? Who knows whether it's true or not? I mean, yet another conservative party scandal, basically, in the making because

the allegation or the reporting is that this hack, which completely compromised her phone and potentially allowed the Russians to access all kinds of sensitive conversations about what their plans were with regard to the war, et cetera, et cetera. But this actually happened under Boris Johnson's leadership when she was foreign secretary. So it's taken all of this time where they were hiding and suppressing this information for this news ultimately to come out. So, yeah, that's the very latest in terms of the sort of like unfolding Tory party drama that is going on in the UK. Yeah. I mean, it also highlights too, just like there's a lot of infrastructure that people in our government, you know,

having interacted with people at the highest level in the White House and all that, they don't take any real precautions. Like, here's the truth. They really don't. At best, they have signal on their phones. The boomers don't even have signal on their phones. They're just using straight up iMessage. How secure is that? I don't know. There's no real bet. You know, there were all those discussions about whether Trump's phone was hacked. I wouldn't put it past for a second. You know, many people were saying at the White House in particular that they did a micro-nave analysis or something. there were all these governments that had basically launched right near the White House complex. Do we really have trust that we have enough jamming equipment to make it all happen? We like to think that all these technologies exist. I'm just not so sure whenever I see things like this. Why was it that easy to

get into the hack into the foreign secretary of the second most powerful nation in the world? I mean, you know, why should we be any different too here in the U.S.? How many are hacked and we don't even know about it? That's the real question. Yeah, right. I mean, we reported on, what is it called? It's Pegasus. Yeah, Pegasus. That's the one created by Mossad, but the Saudis bought it. All kinds of different countries, but Mexico, I think as well, lots of different nations and, you know, other actors around the world. And it doesn't even require, you know, oftentimes to get hacked, you have to like click on something. That was Pegasus 1. Yeah. This one doesn't even require that. They don't need anything.

They just need your phone number and that's it. You're done. Right. And so even if you change your phone number, like if you're a state actor, presumably, you know, at that level, getting somebody's phone number, especially if you have a quasi legit reason, like, you know, the Russian government has a reason to have Liz trust his phone number in case they want to call her. Well, that means they can also hack her if they want to. So this is the perils of our digital age here, people.

Modern age. Maybe they had it all figured out a long time ago. Another good segue here, speaking of our modern age. Speaking of our modern age and the problems that face it, Elon Musk taking control of Twitter. Let's put this up there on the screen. Lots of questions originally about content moderation. I thought it was kind of hilarious that one of the very first things that he announces is that Twitter will be forming a content moderation council

with widely diverse viewpoints. No major content decisions or account reinstatements will happen before that council convenes. So essentially, Elon takes control of Twitter and then institutes, the exact same policy that Mark Zuckerberg has over at Facebook by picking it to some fake oversight board. I guess the only redeeming thing that you could say is that this oversight board might actually have ideological diversity, but even then, you know,

trying to create quasi governmental institutions and essentially what are private companies just always seems ridiculous. At the end of the day, it's up to suck whether Trump gets banned or not. I think, you know, look, I'm not saying it should be this way, but I'm saying under current law and all this, stop trying to insulate yourself. You bought the platform. You own it now. You have to own all the problems.

You know, there's an interesting story. Bob Iger, who was the chairman of Disney, back in like 2017, Disney almost bought Twitter. They were at like near the closing final. And at the last minute, Iger just called Jack Dorsey. He's like, you know what? I They were at like near the closing final. Yeah. And, uh, at the last minute, Iger just called him, uh, Jack Dorsey. He's like, you know what? I just don't want to deal with this because what he realized is that this $1 billion business would become a massive headache for him that he would have to litigate what gets banned and what doesn't

and content moderation, which would then go on to affect the overall, you know, that could then have spillover effects on people boycotting the lion King. And he was like, you know what? Easily. And he was right. I thought he made the right call. So anyway, the point is, is that at the end of the day, this is always going to remain complicated. Now, news out of the actual newsroom itself, let's put this up there, which is that Elon has said to have ordered job cuts across Twitter. It's actually unclear the level, Originally, some had said there were going to be 75%. Layoffs are going to be beginning pretty much as soon as possible. Rumors obviously going around. The fact of the matter was,

whether Elon took it over or not, a lot of people were getting fired at Twitter regardless. That was based on that leaked document that came out. Parag Agarwal essentially had no choice either, given the state of their business. Advertising rates are going to record lows. It was funny, you know, whenever he went ahead and fired the CEO, Agarwal and Vijay Agade, who, you know, I've had my own issues and troubles with here on the show. Well, it turns out that originally they were set to have these massive severance packages to the tune of over $100 million total. However, let's put this up there. Apparently, Elon fired them, not just, he didn't fire them in the way that they would have had to to get their paid their severance packages. He fired

them for quote, for cause, which legally gives him some ground to argue that he doesn't then need to pay them out nearly $100 million in severance to the total group. They don't get their little golden parachutes. But don't worry, everyone. It's not like they hadn't been getting paid fantastically well. Vajayagade, the chief censor who everyone can remember from the Joe Rogan podcast, she was getting paid like $17 million a year. Agarwal himself also, multimillionaire many times over.

So all these people are fine. I do not cry for them. For the lowly engineers, I feel somewhat bad. However, really what we're seeing is that, A, they were probably going to lose their job anyway. But this morning, really only in the last 24 hours, some interesting news is broken that we don't have an element for. And I'm curious your thoughts on this, which is that at the very least, they are considering charging verified users $4.99 a month, basically to keep access to their verified badge. Yeah. One report from The Verge this morning is they are considering $20 a month to charge.

It is a lot. What, 400,000 verified users, something like that? Oh, I think it's more than that. It's a lot more than that, 400,000 verified users. I think it might even honestly be like over a million. Anyway, so the point is, is that why? Why would they consider that? I actually think it's a very elegant solution, which gets at what is the actual value of Twitter. On many other social media platforms, Instagram, others, there is, I think, a decent case for somebody who doesn't have a real following to make them. I had an Instagram account far before I was ever in this job, you know,

in order to keep up with friends. Same with Facebook. Same with even TikTok to a certain extent. On Twitter, the value creation is amongst those like 1% of users who tweet all the time. And then everybody follows those people for information. Well, then the value to accounts like Your or Mine, which has hundreds of thousands of followers, would be the access to this audience. You know, at this point, what do we really use Twitter? What real value does Twitter have for us? Frankly, not that much beyond, you know, getting myself in trouble. But at best, what is it? An efficient way for me or you to promote breaking points, our live shows, an announcement, right?

So the value creation there is like we use their platform to have access to all these people. It used to be they would place ads. But now, really what it would be is like, no, we're going to have to charge you like any enterprise software, essentially. You need to pay us to have that priority access to your people. First of all, it is actually only 360,000 who are verified. Only about 0.2%, they say, of Twitter's monetizable daily active users are verified. So at least in terms of active users, only 360,000 accounts are verified. This is according to CNET is where I'm getting this information.

So it's a smaller number than I would have expected as well. I would say millions. There's a lot to say about this. First of all, at this point, my main value that I get on Twitter isn't even from my own tweeting or promotion of what we do. It's more from just being able to source stories. Yeah, absolutely. And take a pulse of what at least the super online people are obsessing over. You know, it can be useful to see, like, what the topics of conversation are, see what other smart people are saying about various issues.

It's actually very helpful with breaking news because you get information faster on Twitter than you do on other platforms. None of that actually has to do with me having a blue checkmark by my name. Like, that I can all get access to without having the blue check mark. So that's one piece. Bigger picture, what I've been thinking about is the fact that, you know, last weekend, I think Ryan and Emily covered this. Immediately after Elon buys Twitter and he's had all this rhetoric about free speech, et cetera, he immediately puts out this like letter to advertisers is basically like, no, no, no, I'm really not going to change. It's going to be fine. You can still advertise here. It's still going to be all good, which was a reminder to me that, you know, ultimately,

if you're trying to turn a profit, the business is structured in a certain way, has certain incentives, like the content moderation policy that comes out of these platforms. It doesn't just like fall from the ether or even from the whims of these individual billionaires who, you know, ultimately they have the decision-making power, but it comes out of the business model and the incentives that are inherent to that business model. Advertisers are worried about, just like on YouTube when they had an apocalypse, about like having their ad placed next to some crazy like conspiracy theorist or white nationalist or whatever. And so that leads these platforms to be more cautious and more censorious than they should be if your real concern wasn't profit, but it was the functioning of a healthy and vibrant society

and democracy. Those two things are sort of always going to be at odds and at tension. And so to me, when I saw Elon immediately put out this like letter to advertisers, it was just a reminder of the fact that like the business model is what it is. And as long as it's in the business of being, you know, a public company and caring first and foremost about profit, you probably only expect so much of a change to what the content moderation policies are, which is why, you know, the model of having all of our sort of like, he calls it the digital town square. I think it's absolutely right about that. Subject to the whims of profit versus making decisions about what would be best for the country, why that is always going to lead to an inferior outcome no matter who is in charge.

I totally agree, which is part of why I would want some sort of recurring revenue. That being said, it's still not that hard. So I just went ahead and did some back of the napkin math, like even 360,000 at 20, you're only talking about, and I know this sounds silly, hundreds of millions, but that's not enough in order to justify a $44 billion purchase. And you're right that the way, so if you wanted to have different incentives and not end up with basically the same content moderation policy with maybe a few tweaks around the edges, you let Trump back on or you let Kanye back on or whatever, you would have to change the business model. You would have to make it, I mean, these are things we thought about a lot when we set up this business and it is analogous in a lot of ways. You have to have it, your revenue dependent

on something else. Like if you had people who were willing to pay for the service and they're more interested in the quality of the service than like whether advertisers are going to be comfortable, well, that changes the incentives and it might ultimately change what the content moderation policy is that makes sense. So I don't think that, you know, charging people for the blue checkmark is probably sufficient to really change what the ultimate incentives are. But moving in that direction, it would also really change,

if you leaned into it being a, like, paid subscription service, I mean, that would really change what Twitter ultimately is. I think it would have to be enterprise change. So it's free for most people, but you charge. Here's the other thing. It'd be a very elegant solution.

AP and Reuters, all right, you guys need to pay. You need to pay a hell of a lot of money now in order to distribute. Guess what? I think they would pay it. I really do. I mean, at the end of the day, that's where the people are. That's where people go for news. It's basically the best news platform that has ever existed on planet Earth. Charge them the hell of a lot of money to do it. Dare them. I mean, honestly, I think they fold and they pay. They could pay, frankly, millions of dollars in order to do so just because they understand. However, some of the value is based on everybody being there. But I think the flaw from the beginning was that at the end of the day, you know, the vast majority, people like us, you know, in the top 1% or whatever of Twitter users, both from a posting and a follower

perspective, like we are creating the vast majority of the, quote, value on said platform. Even though whatever value is for us, clearly people don't follow us for no reason, right? For some reason that they're doing. Well, that's worth something to us. I think it's an elegant solution to try and put a dollar amount on that.

I like where their head is at, at least from that example. Because as you and I have found out, a subscription business is anti-fragile in many ways. Doesn't matter. Because as you and I have found out, a subscription business is anti-fragile in many ways. It doesn't matter. You know, cancellations are what they are, but relative churn is not that low. And you have money coming in through the door. If you lock it in to a certain extent, it's much more reliable. Some of the most, you know, why do you think software as a service businesses are worth many, many multiples over? That's why.

Advertising platforms really only work at a tremendous scale, which is essentially monopoly. Google, Facebook, even Snapchat to a certain extent. You can see they may be booming, but if ad rates go down by 40%, your stock goes off of a cliff. Anyway, I'm mostly just musing here. I think it's interesting. You know, full disclosure, I know some of the people who are involved in making these decisions. I haven't spoken to them about it or whatever, but I don't want anybody to think I'm shilling on behalf of my friends. It does make sense, though, that we all kind of think about things similarly.

So, it's cool. Yeah, and I guess it's also worth saying, remember they tried that thing of like, what did they call it? Twitter blue. The power user or the… Super follow. Super follow. Super follow. It's like a tipping function. Yeah, where it's like, or you can pay to get like special tweets from the people you really

care about. That didn't really, that didn't pan out. It's not enough value. You got to get something real. I mean, you and I see this, which is that like our premium subs in terms of the way that we charge, like A, you're paying to support our work. Number one, at the core, you have to believe in the mission. That's what you're doing.

And we're actually far more upfront than most people. We're like, here, here's what your money is getting spent on. You know, we did our one year anniversary thing where we were like, Hey, everybody, here's what we say. Here's what cameras that we bought. Here's the people though. Here's exactly how much money that we doled out on X, Y, and Z. Nice desk. They're sitting here. The point being that we had, I think, a much more explicit value than most people who were like, Hey, if you just like my work, throw us something. In our experience, you can't do that. You have to be very upfront and really give people a reason as to what they're doing and why and what they want to buy into.

Right. And also, you premium subscribers can tell us that we're wrong, but it seems like what people are really paying for is their belief in what you're doing. I mean, we do a lot to make sure the premium experience is, you know, it's ad-free. You get it early. We do the AMA. Like we do a lot to make it special and give you perks. But I think at core, people are just paying for, we support the project and we want to be part of building it together. So there isn't quite an analogous thing going on on Twitter. And then there's the other piece of like, you know, we get our content on YouTube

is monetized through their ad revenue and content on the podcasting platforms is monetized in a similar way through like arm's length ad revenue there as well. But we also obviously our like primary goal isn't can't how much profit can we suck out of our audience. Whereas if you're a public company, that's definitely going to be your thing. So even if you have enough subscription revenue where you don't, you know, it's a good, profitable business without even really worrying about the advertisers, they're still going to worry about the advertisers because they want to be able to juice it as much as possible. So anyway, I don't envy Elon's task at this point. I think he stepped into quite a complex and difficult situation,

both from a business perspective and also trying to square his purported stated values with, you know, the reality of what you have to do when you run any of these platforms. And, you know, bottom line, I don't think we should be counting on Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or any other plutocrat for our quote unquote free speech,, as our friend Igor told me, how free is your speech when you're dependent on a billionaire for it? Not very free, ultimately. Let's move on. This is a hilarious reaction, which is that you're not going to find a nice discussion like we just had about incentives and what it all means. Over on cable, they're losing their minds over MSNBC at

these prospects. Let's take a listen. The distinction that a lot of people miss and that I think sometimes Elon Musk himself misses is that the First Amendment protects against government censorship. It does not it does not mean that that private enterprises like Twitter cannot moderate, cannot have guardrails, as you say, cannot have safeguards? Now, that's right. Look, the First Amendment safeguards us against government coming in to ban and punish our speech, particularly on ideological grounds. I think that's a very good thing. We could see how that power would be misused. If Donald Trump had had the power to punish and throw journalists in jail. I think there's every reason to believe

he would have used it. He threatened people. He had them thrown out of rallies. And so we don't want to afford government with that power. When it comes to a social media platform that, as Elon says, is trying to create an environment for public discourse, a place where people of different ideological persuasions can come together and can reason. In order to do that, you need to create some parameters. We've learned that. Speech in Twitter is not the same as a town square. It's algorithmically driven.

We've seen that falsehoods travel faster than the truth on Twitter, that polarization can be stoked, that it's a weaponization of human nature. Weaponization of human nature from so-called, you know, weaponization, why the first man, I just never understand how you can't square the idea that powerful entities in general should not be able to control your speech. Right. If you can recognize it in the government, why would you want that in a corporation? Right. And that applies to algorithm too.

It applies to everything. She's not wrong to point out that some of the most pernicious parts of these platforms is the way that the algorithm suppresses some, elevates other. There are active choices being made about who gets heard and who doesn't get heard. Like, that is all extremely pernicious. But ultimately, I read her longer op-ed. I don't know to talk about it. She and many others like her who, you know, want to justify more censorship on these platforms than, you know, would make, than is permissible under the First Amendment. They reach for this very libertarian argument, basically like, well, there are companies that can do what they want. It's totally different. And it's like, well, if you acknowledge that this is really important for speech and this is the digital town square, then of course you should have the same First Amendment principles ultimately apply here. Now, it might

not be like constitutionally mandated when you're talking about a public company, but that doesn't mean that the norms and what we should be striving for shouldn't be the same. I completely agree. That is what we should be striving for. And, you know, at the end of the day, if Elon was actually able to accomplish that, I think it would be awesome. I just don't have a lot of faith. I just think it's going to be such a titanic task. So I always have to balance it on like, on the one hand, look, he tried to back out of this for a reason, which is that it's not a good business decision. On the other, maybe it'd be a net social good. And then I have to separate with my schadenfreude of watching these folks, the Ben Collins in and them of the world

on television just losing it at this prospect and i've seen so many funny you know just up to like oh my gosh the idea misinformation uh propagating i'm like they're like what the world's richest man propagating misinformation i'm like what if i told you that a lot of these billionaires are full of shit and are just like the rest of us? Right. They're just as fallible. So it's like, oh, well, this one is bad. No. How about we just say, in general, fallibility is part of the human condition. Let's just make it so that people have the ability to be fallible, whether you are the richest man or not the richest man in the world.

Well, that's a thing that's been funny to me. It's like, oh, my God. Now a billionaire controls our speech. It's like, what world do you think you're living in? Because that is the world we live in. Like, I would like to change that. It'd be great to have more partners in wanting to change that.

But I guess that's why the Elon Twitter story, I just have never been as invested in it as a lot of other people. Because on one side, you have people who are having that free, oh my God, a billionaire is gonna control our speech. When you're like, they already do. On the other side, you have people who like having that free, oh, my God, a billionaire is going to control our speech. And you're like, they already do. On the other side, you have people who, like, you know, are big Elon stans and they think he's going to, like, ride to the rescue and provide this, you know, private billionaire solution to what is ultimately a collective societal problem.

And obviously, I don't buy into that either. I've always just sort of had a wait and see and skeptical approach to this because, as I said before, the incentives of the company are what they are, whether it's Elon or anybody else who is at the helm. That is the model. It exists like that for a reason. Same reason like cable news is the trash that it is because of its business model. Those incentives are not really changing. So I'm skeptical that there's going to be massive transformational impacts, but I mostly have just a wait-and-see attitude. I think that's correct. Okay. Big news coming out of Brazil. You will remember we covered the first round of voting there in their presidential election.

We had Glenn Greenwald on to break that down. Lula was the top vote-getter but failed to avoid a runoff against current president Jair Bolsonaro. So we now have the results. They do a much better job voting and counting than we do, apparently. They have results. So quickly. So fast. Like in hours, 90 percent. From like incredibly remote regions and everything. It's amazing. Anyway, Lula was victorious. So leftist leader. Let's go and put this up on the screen. He was the former president. Then there was this crazy corruption scandal. He is thrown into prison. That is then

overturned and he's allowed to run for president again. And now he will be the next president. He won by about a point and a half. I looked, Sagar, at the average of polls as best I could find sorting through Portuguese language websites. It looks like the polls were more or less accurate. They may have given Lula a bit more of an edge than he ultimately ended up with. But a point and a half, I think the final average that I saw had it at about two points, although some of the last polls that came in had Lula with a larger margin of victory than he ultimately was able to obtain. When he was president previously, he was really well known for it was sort of boom times in Brazil. The country grew remarkably fast. There was a massive reduction in poverty. His signature program was called Bolsa Família, where people were given cash in exchange for making sure their kids were getting to school.

And I think that also like getting them to the doctor, public health clinics were built as well. But he had a bit of a pragmatic approach. So he's a leftist, but he had kind of a pragmatic approach. So capital didn't like totally freak out about him. And he had a decent working relationship with a lot of countries around the world. When he left office, his approval rating was like 83% overwhelmingly popular. And of course, sort of laid low by this ginned up in some ways like manufactured corruption scandal that again was ultimately overturned through some of Glenn Greenwald's reporting and he's allowed to run for president again. So quite a remarkable turn here.

Bolsonaro during his time, first of all, he really opened up the Amazon rainforest to logging and, you know, really had a negative impact in terms of the climate. But I think probably the biggest thing he became known for was his very, I guess, laissez-faire approach to the coronavirus crisis, very skeptical of the vaccines. In the early days, it was weird. I will never understand. And looking at how close the result is, it's pretty clear. It's kind of like Trump. It's like he just did a little bit. He could have won the election easily.

Could have. Just semi-competence. It's like the cultural backlash was so strong that he still almost got 50% of the vote. Well, Bolsonaro, I mean, they had, in Brazil, they had really horrific COVID death rates because of his mismanagement of the crisis. I remember. And also, he wouldn't take it seriously. Anyway, I mean, I think the point is obvious, which is that he literally, all he had to do was be even somewhat more competent, slightly, by not even minimizing the virus necessarily, but just trying to show leadership at that time. And he probably would have been fine. Could have easily won the election.

So there's a couple other things to say here. First of all, in the run-up to the election, there were a lot of similar rhetoric from Bolsonaro that we heard from Trump in the run-up to our election, casting doubt on whether the votes would be free and fair. On Election Day yesterday, go ahead and put this next piece up, there were reports of federal highway police blocking roads and keeping voters from getting to the polls. Ultimately, you know, I think some of this was going on, in fact, and there's a lot of reporting about how this plan was was hatched in October 19th meeting involving the Bolsonaro presidential campaign. Clearly, it was not enough to keep Lula

from being victorious here. There's a big question over whether Bolsonaro would accept these results. Last I checked this morning, he has not officially conceded, but a lot of his allies and people around him have acknowledged Lula as the rightful victor. We haven't seen, we've seen some fringe voices, but mostly the people who are allied with him are accepting the results. It might partly be because other than at the presidential level, the results were actually quite good for Bolsonaro's party. They're going to have majorities in both of the legislative chambers. Some key governorships were also won. So they may have been like, you know what? This was good for, may not have been good for you, dude, but it was good for us. So we're going to accept the results. Well said. Our President

Biden put out a statement extremely quickly after the results were called. Congratulating Lula, our colleague Ryan Grimm says, you know, this is a signal to Brazilian elite not to try anything funny. A truly strange moment, the U.S. working against a potential right-wing coup in South America. And you had other world leaders quickly follow suit and try to make sure, you know, it's clear we think Lula won, this is free and fair, we're backing him, and, you know, see him as the next rightful president of Brazil. The other thing, Sagar, that I wanted to point out, which is, you know, in terms of what this is going to mean for the future of Brazil, the future of the world, he is going to be constrained by the fact that he doesn't have, you know,

majorities to back him up in the legislature. So the sort of sweeping programs he was able to institute the first time around may not be possible. And he was kind of vague about exactly what his economic plans were this time around to start with. The other piece is, this will be interesting for the Ukraine war because Lula has been seen in the past as kind of, you know, someone who was good in diplomacy, good at making deals between countries that had some sticking points and had some issues. He has been a critic of U.S. and NATO policy with regards to Ukraine. He's been a critic of Zelensky himself. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen. So he's been advocating for

Biden to push more aggressively for talks and negotiations. He says the U.S. has a lot of political clout. Biden could have avoided the Russia war, not incited it. He could have participated more. Biden could have taken a plane to Moscow to talk to Putin. This is the kind of attitude you expect from a leader. He also said about Zelensky, he was critical of the international community celebration of Zelensky since the war began, began saying, you are encouraging this guy. And then he thinks he is the cherry on your cake. We should be having a serious conversation. OK, you were a nice comedian, but let us not make war for you to show up on TV. And interestingly enough, this morning, there are reports that Biden lost his temper with Zelensky in a phone call because we just approved more aid. And Zelensky's already like, all right, here's what else I need.

And apparently there's a little bit of patience wearing thin there. Oh, it's interesting. I mean, I think Brazil is one of the largest economies in the world, 11th largest. It looks like slightly less than Russia. And given the sanctions against Russia, probably going to be up there. But I mean, that puts it up there with South Korea in terms of its standing. It's possible. I mean, it's changed a lot. I think that's really what it could, my takeaway from, and Glenn, I'm leaning on Glenn's analysis as he lives there, is he was like, look, the country's totally different. You know, Bolsonaroismo controls

some of the top levels of government up and down, House and Senate. Lula may be in charge, but he's much more beholden to the corrupt centrist faction, given who he ran with his vice presidential candidate. And the original promises of Lula in control of Brazil, A, the world has changed. The economic opportunity has changed a lot. So it could be a very different Lula that leads this country. I don't know. Look, I'm not from Brazil.

I barely know. You know, from a cursory level. But what it means for us and its ability to broker all of that, I'm relatively skeptical, to be honest. I just don't think that they have the power, the whole BRICS identity and nation and all that doesn't exist anymore. For people who don't know what I'm talking about, it was like, what was it? Brazil, India, Brazil, Russia, India, China. It was called the BRIC countries. It was a completely ridiculous misnomer. Yeah. It was like 07. Everybody was like, bet on the BRIC countries. It was a completely ridiculous misnomer. Global power.

It was like 07. Everybody was like, bet on the BRICS index. And we found out how that worked out. I think the point being that in terms of their ability to any broker any real change to the global consensus, I just don't see it right now. It's possible. But they have their own problems too. They had historic drought from what I read. It really crippled their economy.

The coronavirus has smacked them hard. There's a lot of things trending in the opposite direction than the last time we was in power. I mean, the whole world is in a more difficult place economically, and Brazil is certainly suffering from that as well. I mean, this is a part of a larger trend of South Americans electing leftist leaders. You had Bloomberg pointing out leftist governments in Latin America quickly congratulating Lula. Brazil now joins Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela in electing a leftist leader. So there is, I mean, this is part of a larger trend that is going on in South America, which is also always interesting to note as well.

Yeah. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, former President Obama is back. He is out on the campaign trail trying to help Democrats as their midterm hopes seem to be fading. He's on a five-state tour in the swing states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada. Now, I watched some of this over the weekend, and there is just no denying it. Putting aside partisanship and ideology, Obama is an extraordinary political talent. Just take a listen to a bit of his speech in Milwaukee going after Senator Ron Johnson. Some of you here are on Social Security. Some of your parents are on Social Security. Some of your grandparents are on Social Security. You know why they have Social Security? Because they worked for it.

They worked hard jobs for it. They have chapped hands for it. They have long hours and sore backs and bad knees to get that Social Security. And if Ron Johnson does not understand that, if he understands giving tax breaks for private planes more than he understands making sure that seniors who've worked all their lives are able to retire with dignity and respect, he's not the person who's thinking about you and knows you and sees you,

and he should not be your senator from wisconsin i mean the message he's sending is pretty clear. If you're related to him, if you donate to his campaign, you get a deal. If you're not, you're out of luck and you're on your own. Now, there's a lot to say about this speech and not just the oratory talent of former President Obama, but also the messaging was a lot better than what Democrats have mostly been running with for when he leaned into the economy. He spent most of his speech on the topic. He started with the economic news, acknowledging how hard inflation has been on working families,

eviscerating Republicans for their obsession with cutting taxes on the rich and destroying Social Security. When he did get to abortion, he was also way more effective than what I've frankly been hearing from Democrats lately. He reminded voters that Justice Thomas also put gay marriage, contraception, even interracial marriage on the table.

Now, Obama's not offering anything different, of course, just a lot better packaging. But that was the real trick and talent of Obama to start with. His ability to paper over the fact that his politics were the same dead-end ideology of Reagan and Clinton. He wrapped up the dying carcass of neoliberalism in a glorious new package and

somehow managed to make people feel inspired by it right up until the point where they unwrapped that package and found it was the same old bankrupt ideology inside. Now Democrats have been trying to pull off that same trick ever since then. Think of all the pale Obama imitators, people like Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, all propped up by the media, not because of their ideas or because they represented anything new and different, but because they thought that with enough hype, maybe, just maybe, they could pull off that trick of Obama again, wrapping the husk of neoliberalism in a pretty new bow that could be sold to the American people once again. At this point, though, after the financial crisis, the bailouts, the

Gilded Age, inequality, the destruction of our industrial core, I'm not sure even a once-in-a-generation political talent like Obama could pull this off, let alone the talentless pretender hacks who have come after him. Then there's our current president. So for the midterms, Biden is basically going back to the basement strategy, which won him the presidency to start with. The thought is, I guess, make the election about anything other than yourself and maybe you will stand a chance. While Obama is out barnstorming key swing states, Biden is going to Florida to provide Charlie Crist with some backup in his doomed run against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. He's also doing some low-key Zoom events that don't generate much attention and don't require him to miss nap time, I guess. The one exception is Pennsylvania, where Biden believes he still has the Scranton Joe touch. Now, it's no accident that in picking Biden, the American people actually reach for

someone who predates the Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama era. Biden still does have some of the muscle memory of the New Deal era, when Democrats were closely tied to unions, had a more collective social democratic impulse. And given the options, frankly, the American people could have made a much worse choice. Biden might lack the rhetorical skills, but he's actually a better president than Obama on policy, way better on antitrust, way better on China and trade, way better on unions. And he's actually taken a few tentative steps towards rebuilding an American industrial policy. But it all has the feel of too little, too late. Maybe back in the Obama era, a starter industrial policy and an incremental shift away from neoliberalism, maybe that would have sufficed. Or perhaps, if Biden had the talent of Obama,

he could be selling his modestly better economic policy as some grand new vision. But the policy isn't bold enough, or material enough, and the messenger is getting less persuasive by the day. And the one remaining feather in Biden's cap that he beat Trump and is therefore an effective bulwark against Republican governance is in danger of collapsing with a midterm shellacking, leaving not just the party's prospects, but Biden's own position as head of that party in severe jeopardy. As a former senior advisor to Harry Reid told the Financial Times, quote, if it's as bad as some people expect, there's going to be a lot of chaos in the party. There are going to be demands from many different quarters for a complete change in the leadership, citing the gerontocracy that we currently have. And the really sad thing is Biden's gerontocracy has a lot more to recommend it than the Obama pretenders that are what counts as a Democratic bench. Obama famously implores people, don't boo vote. Well, Americans have been voting. They've been voting in record numbers. They've made it as clear as they possibly can that with

their votes, they would like to repudiate the ideology which both major parties continue to represent. Even during the Obama era, yes, they re-elected the president over cartoon plutocrat Mitt Romney. But Dems suffered massive losses across the country in state houses and governor's mansions. They lost the House, they lost the Senate, and they helped to usher in ultimately the Trump era. Obama couldn't rescue Democrats while he was president. He couldn't rescue Hillary Clinton, and he can't rescue Joe Biden. These days, Obama's talents just serve as a reminder of what might

have been if the pretty rhetoric had been matched with the commitment to the people rather than to building his own brand. And mostly going down the Obama nostalgia. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, so how are we looking at? Well, it's been a while since I've done a monologue here on Breaking Points about UFOs. Some have mistaken that for me losing interest, which is absolutely not the case. More, I try to jump in until it's an area where I'm not just a casual observer, but I can actually add some real value. Something we know quite well on

this show, how does the mainstream media spin things on behalf of powerful people inside of the Pentagon? How does real power in Washington work, and for what purpose? So, for the completely new to the subject, let's go back to the beginning. In 2017, the New York Times published an extraordinary story featuring three videos which report to show objects observed by U.S. aircraft in the previous decade or so, moving in such a manner that the laws of physics do not explain. Those objects were moving at extraordinary rates of speed with no visible means of propulsion. Since that time, an intense debate has erupted as to whether these videos are real and show either some error on the aircraft observational systems,

mistaken views by the pilots, perhaps it's just a mystery in general. Is it an alien space object? Public pressure since 2017 built up as more and more pilots like Commander David Fravor and Ryan Graves came forward to describe their experiences in the air viewing these extraordinary objects, and more videos began to leak out from the Pentagon to journalists like Jeremy Corbell. Eventually, public pressure crested enough for Congress to require the Pentagon to deliver them the first report of its kind in June of 2021. And that report was actually shocking on multiple levels. The report was scant and only nine pages. But if you read carefully, you found that the U.S. government had to admit that in at least 18 known instances, UFOs demonstrated advanced technology

for which they ruled out conventional explanations or equipment failure. They had zero information to indicate that these objects were human technology, and at least they say that a review of internal intelligence found that these objects were not part of a secret U.S. government program. Now pay attention to how I phrase that, because at the time, despite having their hands forced by Congress to report to the public what was known about UFOs, the media and the Pentagon actually tried their best to spin that report. The Times, Washington Post, and CNN all said report, quote, found no evidence of alien space technology. But they also didn't find any evidence that it wasn't either. And they didn't find any evidence or some secret spy program, of course. This result of one of the most pernicious relationship that exists in Washington, journalists cozying up to power.

I'm not even saying the media is biased against the UFO topic, any more so than on any other topic. More so, it's the Pentagon that has a very vested interest in not telling the public everything that they know about UFOs. And journalists want to keep their coziness to power. So when the Pentagon says jump, they say how high. That's how you end up with that coverage. Lucky for us, some members

of Congress were not fooled. After reams of video and observational evidence by credible pilots who have observed extraordinary phenomena, several members wrote a specific provision of the new defense bill, which actually requires the Pentagon to compile the following. Number one, all reported UFOs-related events that occurred in a one-year period. Number two, all reported events that were not reported in the previous June 2021 report, and an analysis of data and intel through each reported event. They also require the Pentagon to identify any incidents that may indicate foreign technology and update Congress on what exactly the military is going to get up to date data on any future events. In short, Congress is demanding a lot more. The deadline for that report

actually is today, and they had until today to give it to them. Whether or not they even did remains an open question. As of this writing, we have not yet been able to read it, as some of it is classified and we still don't even know if an unclassified version is coming. And yet, 18 months after the spin job on the original report for the New York Times, they have jumped right back into action and clearly planted leak by the Pentagon to shape the public's perception of the report before it is even made public. Headline, many military UFO reports are just foreign spying or airborne trash. Oh, do tell. Government officials believe that surveillance operations by foreign powers and weather balloons or other airborne clatter explain most recent incidents of unidentified aerial phenomena, government speak, for UFOs, as well as many episodes in the past years. If you keep reading, you actually learn something quite alarming. One, some of the UFO sightings in recent years are actually Chinese spy drones, which aren't that advanced, but nonetheless are spying on sensitive U.S. military technology

and installations. And two, that in some cases, military analysts are claiming airborne trash or weather balloons explain some incidents. Yet, once again, what does the headline say? Many reports are just foreign spying or trash. But what about the ones that aren't explained by that and continue to not be? This is part of the problem with discussing the subject. People look at you like a whack job for taking it seriously. Of course, most sightings are going to have conventional explanations. Most people do not dispute that. The interest lies in the ones that seem extraordinary and to date have no explanation conventionally. Those are the ones that we are all interested in. Yet, the Times, basically publishing Pentagon propaganda, says again, well, we don't have the data to say for sure.

But the default assumption should be that if we did, could it even be easily explained? All of this was done ahead of the report's actual release. What does it actually say? We don't know. We only know what the Times has told us, which is clearly based on a planted leak, including quotes from Pentagon officials. We can really only come away with one conclusion. The Pentagon is doing its best to make sure that we lose interest in this subject and we stop asking questions. Why can we only speculate? Perhaps it is mundane as they just simply don't want to do the extra work.

Perhaps they don't want to admit that they're so incompetent they're unable to keep the Chinese from spying on us on our own soil. Perhaps it is literally aliens. There is literally only one way to know. Keep pressing for information until they tell us. It's our government and it's not the other way around. For too long, they have continued to try and keep us in the dark. And I think it's an amazing story, actually. You read it and you're like, many objects. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So joining us now in studio,

we have our great friend Ken Klippenstein, who is an investigative reporter for The Intercept. Great to see you, my friend. Great to be with you guys. You got a big ol' scoop this morning. A lot to unpack here, and it's quite explosive, actually. Let's go ahead and put the element we have up on the screen. The article that's out this morning is titled Truth Cops Leaked Documents Outline DHS's Plans to Police

Disinformation. Some of the key takeaways here that you have, Ken, are that even though DHS said that they shuttered their quote unquoteunquote disinformation governance board. What you have found is that underlying work is still going on. You also found some of the specifics about what they're targeting here on the origins of COVID-19, efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines, racial justice, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, and also the nature of U.S. support to Ukraine. So just to start with, what are your sources here? What's the information that you were able to gather? And give us the big picture of what the government is up to here. Yeah, so this came from sources that I have within DHS, FBI, and also court records that are coming out from an investigation by, I think it was the Missouri Attorney General looking at these things. And under discovery, they're able to release some of the primary source documents that they're

getting. And then just, you know, the kind of big strategy assessments that they tend to put out that nobody reads because so much of it is so boring. But if you can, you know, stay awake for long enough, you can find some really interesting details in them. Interesting. Okay, so talk to us about this portal. You said that Facebook has created a special portal for DHS and government partners to report disinformation directly. Do we have an indication that's still in existence? Like the takeaway for me from the story was they fired, you know, the Nina Jankowicz lady, but they essentially just renamed it and are keeping the entire project alive and actually keeping it going even far past that. Yeah, that was essentially my interest in doing this story is I saw this huge end zone dance on the part of, you know, civil libertarian types that the Disinformation Governance Board,

you know, very Orwellian title that people can get around and see how crazy this is, celebrating that it was shut down. And I very quickly, almost instantly was hearing from sources within DHS that that's not the case. Like that, that Disinformation Governance board was an attempt to sort of centralize and formalize at a leadership and headquarters level what was going on. But that was still going on at the component level of all of the different child agencies that are within DHS.

So this story is an attempt to try to sketch out, okay, so what does that mean? What does it look like? Because there's so much speculation and sort of guessing as to what it is. And there's very little in the way of just what are the facts of what's happening? How are they doing this? And what is their authority? So lay that out for us. How does this actually, like, what are the interactions between DHS officials and these tech platforms?

What sorts of content are they flagging as potentially problematic? Because they have these disclaimers in their emails like, of course we're not telling you to censor. We're just saying you might want to look into this. Give me like a specific example of how this might all unfold. Yeah. So they've been having biweekly meetings as recently as summer. That's as recently as I'm able to get proof. Doesn't mean that it's not still happening. I assume it still is. Between these DHS sub-agencies, kind of taking point is CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, but also FBI and other agencies are meeting with these social media companies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. And what's interesting about it is just like you said, their rationale for it is, you know, we're not actually telling them what to do. We're just recommending it. Just making suggestions.

Right. And it's so disingenuous because it's like, these companies are lobbying the federal government on different things. You think they're going to want to alienate the guys that they're trying very hard to ingratiate themselves to, to get certain forms of treatment. And so that's the kind of like hands length that they try to pull themselves at is we're not mandating it. We're just recommending it. But when you look at the documents that we found, there's no indication that the social media companies are saying, whoa, we're not doing this. We're putting a red line here. They've gone ahead with it. I mean, the crazy one to me is Afghanistan. Like, you know, the fact that things that are outright just politically bad for the Biden administration are being included in terms of recommendations. So do we know, does anything

happen as a result of this? What does the data suggest? Did Facebook ultimately take action? Do they describe the type of action? What does the interplay look like on behalf of the tech companies as to the actual effect of these policies? Well, on the public side, sometimes you're able to see when they literally just take a post down as they did with the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was some bizarre thing where it was like they froze the post. They didn't take it down. They're so clever about these things. They try to do things where they're not actually taking down. For example, I have a source in Google who was describing to me, they didn't actually make it so you can't find it.

They just made it so that the search results put it so far down that realistically you're not going to see it. So then they say, well, we're not actually censoring it. You can still go to it. We're just in effect going to make it so no one can find it. That's honestly crazier. It's almost crazier than deleting. Same with Twitter. So there's always, I think there is

a lot of awareness on their part that we don't want to go so far that it's going to be completely naked and try to give ourselves some deniability in terms of saying, you know, we're putting recommendations out there. We're throttling traffic to it. We're not taking it down. So they really like to operate in the gray, I think. had taken that approach with the Hunter Biden story, it probably wouldn't have blown up into the big national example of censorship that it ended up being because they went much further than let's just suppress this in the algorithm. Let's make it so this isn't the first thing that's showing up. Like, you know, now people in their Twitter feed, unless they select to have it just

by time, they're just getting the tweets that Twitter thinks that they will like or wants them to like and see. So ultimately, if they had gone about it in a savvier way, I mean, that's what's so nefarious about this. People wouldn't have even been able to really say exactly what was going on here. One of the other things that you uncover is the Hunter Biden censorship incident, as notorious as it ultimately is here, the people who are involved in that are still involved in this project. Right. And so the FBI has something called the Foreign Influence Task Force, which the Department of Homeland Security does as well. And it's almost exactly the same name. I think it's the Countering Foreign Interference Task Force. And so what that

gives you a sense of is the burgeoning nature of these authorities. It just keeps growing. And if you look at it, a lot of it starts in 2018 under the Trump administration. So a little more complicated than people think. That's not to say that Trump liked it. He actually fired his CISA director, I think, Brian Krebs. And so, you know, he was against it, but he didn't have the kind of bureaucratic knowledge to say to be able to stop a lot of these things. And then it, you know, continues to proliferate under the Biden administration. I think that the origin of this all is the 2016 election disinformation, Russian election disinformation. Not that it starts then, but that's sort of when the concerns begin. And then by 2018, come midterms, I think DHS is trying to position itself as, hey, you know that problem you guys have.

We can help with it. Let us handle this. So then in 2018, it's the midterm elections. And by 2020 with coronavirus, then they have a really strong case. And I've looked at polling handle this. So then in 2018, it's the midterm elections. And by 2020 with coronavirus, then they have a really strong case. And I've looked at polling on this. It does suggest that there's surprisingly large amounts of public support for, frankly, censorship of, you know, would they consider COVID disinformation? I think that they can sense that there's an opening for them there to, you know, take

advantage of that and say, hey, let us have a role in communicating with these social media platforms. I mean, it seems to me, and you tell me if this timeline is inaccurate, but you first start in the early days of social media. You've got like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, and there's an effort to find people who are sympathizers spreading their propaganda or beheading videos or whatever. Like that's the first step. Then you have the Russian efforts, whatever they amounted to in the 2016 election. And then, you know, that's a further step of, okay, we got to see who's

sharing this Russian content and what impact is that having? Well, now this seems to have gone even a further step where there's no even artifice of this has to do with foreign actors. Like we're talking about American citizens talking to other American citizens without even any sort of tie to potential international terrorism, which seems to be where these programs really originally had their origins. Exactly. And that's where DHS had its origin. It's a, you know, counter-terror post 9-11 department. And if you look at some of the documents that I referenced in the story, I was given the quadrennial review for DHS that kind of sketches out the next four years, what the next four years are going to look like and what their kind of big picture strategy is. And they're perfectly open in this draft document about that, okay, well, war and terror is sort of ramping down. We're going to change our focus essentially to domestic American affairs. And what's interesting about that shift from foreign to domestic is that

I tried very hard to find anything in the way of a documentary or legal basis saying, okay, now we're authorized to do this. It doesn't exist as far as I can tell. It was just a gradual shift that is happening at the sub-White House level, at the administrative level in both the Trump and Biden administrations. And I wonder how much people even know that it's happening. It's like they've taken advantage of this. And then, as I said before, Trump tried to stop it. They disbanded the disinformation board. But so much of this happens at the level that people like me who have sources and are talking to people can find out that it's happening. But there's no way for the public to know that these things are still going on.

Not at all. Yeah. And one of the ones that broke out to me at the very end of the story is about a Twitter account that has like 56 followers. And that is specifically flagged by a government official sent to Twitter. And Twitter is like, we will escalate this. Thank you. A guy who's literally 56 followers. Like how is that, in what way?

Who says in his bio, like, this is a parody account. And by the, something about like weed stores or something like this. Yeah, it says, hoes be mad. This is a parody account. And why are they spending any time under a banner image of Blucifer,

a demonic horse featured at the entrance of Denver Airport. You have to have something better to do than this. You're not the only ones that think that this is outrageous. FBI agents I interviewed during when all that was happening, who themselves were tasked with things like

tracking foreign spies, they were outraged that they were put into these temporary units to monitor these social media accounts. And they were telling me, yeah, it's clear my boss doesn't have any idea what irony is on the internet or what sarcasm is.

Because my job now is just tracking CommieKid69 posts something and we're supposed to respond like it's some national security crisis. So they were very irritated by it as well. And my understanding is there were a lot of FBI agents that were taken from their normal responsibilities and assigned to this kind of stuff. Well, I said to you it's like dystopian police state meets Keystone Cops.

Exactly. But the fact that it in some ways is like absurd doesn't take away from the fact that it's really, really disturbing because effectively what you have is a worst of all worlds where, you know, we covered extensively on the show Elon Musk and Twitter and billionaires control these platforms is allowed and what type of speech is not allowed, again, with zero transparency, zero ability to have democratic pushback. And so that's why, you know, reporting like yours that at least gives us a little bit of a window into what's happening here is ultimately so essential, Ken. Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do. Just give, because I realized there was no attempt to sort of give a comprehensive picture of like, what's out there? What are we able to find, what the heck's going on. And in the absence of that, people are going to just guess.

I mean, if you're really worried about disinformation, I tend to think darkness is where that stuff thrives when people aren't candid about what the heck is going on. I mean, my view has always been, like, if you are going to accept the slings and arrows of a democracy, You have to accept that sometimes there's going to be things that are crazy conspiracy theories. There's going to be things that are inaccurate, and you have to have enough faith in the citizenry that they can handle that, that they can process that, that they can move forward, that they can find accurate information. But, you know, clearly, like, we've been under this attempt at censorship since basically 2016. And I don't know if you guys know this, but there are a lot of conspiracy theories that are out there still thriving. So I'm not sure that this has really worked out for us.

Very unfortunate. Ken, thank you so much. Congratulations. Great reporting. Thank you. Great to be with you guys. Nice job, Ken. Really appreciate you guys watching.

Seriously, it means a lot. Thank you for all premium subscribers. You help us support people like Ken in order to bring it to all of you with his extraordinary reporting and doing awesome segments for us with The Intercept and many of the other partners. So thank you all so much. We will see you all tomorrow. We're going to have a great show. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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