Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/4/22: Russia-Ukraine War, Energy Crisis, Housing Market, Midterm Races, NFL Scandal, Crypto Scheme, Lab Leak, & More!

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover Russia's nuclear convoy, Europe's difficult winter, gas prices rising, housing market, Nevada races, Herschel Walker, NFL concussion coverup, crypto scams, lab leak, & the lack of resistance to the Ukraine war!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/Chicago Tickets: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets Branko Marcetic: https://twitter.com/BMarchetich  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. trustworthy mainstream by becoming a Breaking Points 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 Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. A lot of big stories to get to this morning.

We are continuing to closely, closely follow the Russia war in Ukraine and the possibility of a nuclear attack. Seems like something we should all be paying a lot of attention to and something the media should have been paying attention to all the way along. So we'll dig into all of that. In addition, we have new developments with regarding the emerging energy crisis in Europe in particular and gas prices here at home also set to continue going up. So we'll take a look at that. We also have some other new indicators about the economy digging into the housing market, digging into the job market, which is showing signs of slowing exactly what the Fed intended for it to do, even though the U.N. is warning that if the Fed and other central banks around the world continue hiking interest rates, they could trigger a severe

recession. So we'll talk about that. Boy, do we have some news for you about the midterms. We've got some polls out in Nevada, but the big story this morning is what the hell is going on in Georgia. Some major family drama from Herschel Walker after story came out alleging that he had paid for an abortion for a girlfriend a while back. So we'll get into all of that. It is an ugly story, but, you know, very relevant for what's going to happen

with the midterms ultimately. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and then the last thing we're going to take a look at, you guys are probably aware of this story from the NFL. Quarterback who had appeared to suffer a concussion was allowed back in a game, and then four days later he's on the field again, suffers what appears to be a fairly severe brain injury.

I mean, the videos of this are horrific, raising all kinds of questions about what the hell is going on in the NFL, how this man was allowed to back in the game to start with and then to play four days later. So we'll break all of that down for you. But great guest on as well, Bronco Marsetic, to talk about the war in Ukraine and the media's failures. With that regard, before we get to any of that, though, live show. Number one, live show. Put it up there on the screen. That's right. We've got the tickets on sale. We've got some awesome production that's happening right now that we're planning a lot of audience participation. It is going to be a real experience. It's going to be

good vibes only. If the world is going to end, we're at least going to do it on our own terms. And then number two, counterpoints. Man, they did such a fantastic job on Friday. I'm excited to see what they're going to do tomorrow. They're having their special Wednesday. I guess we should have made a special actually Wednesday counterpoints tomorrow because Ryan and Emily are going to be out on Friday, but they always do a fantastic job. And we've got the discount going on right now, 10% off on the annual membership. It really does help us out so much in terms of hiring, in terms of producing. And we are going to have some news on the hiring front very soon for everybody. Yes, indeed. Introducing the new crew member here to The Breaking Point, seen made entirely possible by all of you. It just means so much that you're able to fund us so that we can pay two salaries on top of all the contractors and so many people who support this show. So once again, I just want to say thank you to all those premium members who are out there. Super excited to make that announcement.

Imminently, we actually just informed him yesterday that we wanted to bring him on board. Some of you will actually know. Some of them will know. We'll just leave it at that for now. But very excited. I think he's going to be a phenomenal addition to the team. James is also excited both to get the help, but also, you know, the two of them are already sort of like mind melding. So it's going to be great. It's going to be good. All right. Let's get to the news. Ukraine, obviously, we have to keep

all of our eyes on what's happening with the nuclear posture in Russia. Now, one of the cautions that the U.S. military, the administration, and others have said is that we will take Putin seriously if we begin to see movement of actual nuclear assets inside of Russia. So something that we all need to become familiar with is something called the 12th Directorate. It is the division of the Russian military, which is responsible for nuclear weapons. They have a variety of different assets on the land. One of them is trains in terms of the mobile movement of the supposed missiles that they, if possible, were to be deployed, would be deployed by this division. So all eyes exactly

on that. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This was breaking out of the Times of London in the UK that says Putin orders the nuclear military train to the Ukrainian front line. Now, I want to be very clear here. This is sourced specifically to defense sources in the UK, has not been yet confirmed by the Pentagon. So I went ahead and checked. Last night, Crystal, there was a Defense Department briefing. A senior administration official on background was actually asked at the Pentagon, the highest level, Mr. It was either the Secretary of Defense or it was the Pentagon Press Secretary. I'm not sure which it was because it was technically on background. But I read through

the text and he just said, quote, I have no information for you on that. Not denying it, not confirming it either. So that is at the highest level from the United States. Again, has not been yet confirmed or addressed at the highest level in the UK. This is purely sourced here. It is also citing defense analysts, which are based in Poland, who said that the train was spotted in central Russia and linked to the 12th Main Directorate of the Russian Ministry of Defense, responsible for nuclear munitions, their storage, maintenance, transport, and issuance to units. So why does this matter? All eyes are going to be on this train, on this 12th Directorate, because it would presage any potential nuclear strike. Now, of course, the Russians also have the capability to do this completely out of the blue if they want. I mean, they're a great power military at the nuclear level.

In particular, they have submarines that are capable of this. They have cruise missiles, hypersonics, and all of that. Their belief here is that because the 12th Directorate also has the responsibility over the so-called tactical nuclear weapons, that given the type of strike that anybody would expect if the unthinkable were to happen, it would probably be under their purview because of their responsibility for handling these so-called tactical nukes. And I think we should again revisit this for everybody who's on the show

because something that we said yesterday was that a tactical nuke can be as small as, and I just want to emphasize this, as small as included in an artillery shell that takes out a single unit. But that's not what it's limited to, and that's why I think the entire thing is a misnomer. It can also be 100 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. That also falls within the realm of a quote-unquote tactical nuclear weapon, which is exactly why this is so dangerous in the first place. And just to reiterate the explanation for those who may not have heard yesterday, part of the reason why I think this is so dangerous in the first place. And, you know, just to reiterate the explanation for those who may not have heard yesterday, part of the reason why I think this is so important is that there is no such thing as a quote unquote tactical nuke, because even if a tactical quote

unquote nuclear weapon is used just to take out an arch, you know, our city block with an artillery shell, or even, you know, the a hundred ton level, or sorry, not a hundred ton. When I say a hundred times more powerful than the Moab bomb, remember that one at the 100-ton level, or sorry, not 100-ton, when I say 100 times more powerful than the Moab bomb, remember that one, the mother of all bombs that we dropped on Afghanistan under Trump? Such an event is just so, so, like, groundbreaking in terms of what it means for the situation that it would automatically result in a change in the overall strategic posture. Thus, it doesn't have any tactical case for its use. It only has the ability to strategically push the situation in a totally different direction, either outright war

with Russia between NATO, the United States and Russia, or full, you know, basically blank check to the Ukrainians, you guys get anything that you could possibly want, or, you know, actual capitulation by the Ukrainian state after a horrific strike. All of those things would change the picture dramatically. The bottom line is there is no one on Earth who can promise you that in the event of a quote-unquote tactical nuclear strike that you do not enter a chain of never-ending escalation that results in all-out nuclear war. That's right.

That's why we are so skeptical of this idea that there is, in fact, a thing that is just quote-unquote a tactical nuclear weapon. we are so skeptical of this idea that there is in fact a thing that is just, quote unquote, a tactical nuclear weapon. Because ultimately, okay, the chain of escalation may take a little bit longer, but you're still in a situation where, okay, then what does the US and NATO do? Okay, what does Russia do in response to that? Okay, then what do we do in response to that? And as I said, there is no one, even the people who would argue that, yes, there is a tactical nuclear weapon and yes, we can keep the escalation chain from going. There is no one who can guarantee you that. That's why this is such an important and frankly terrifying red line. I mean, listen, with regard

to this nuclear train situation, obviously Putin is right now in the business of trying very hard to persuade the West that he is very serious about the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons to defend what he now considers his territory, even though they can't even agree on exactly where those territorial lines are. I mean, think about how insane that is. Right now, and we're going to get to this in a minute, but right now in Russia, they literally don't know where the borders of their own country are. Like, that's how crazy this whole situation is. And then you're threatening to use nuclear weapons to defend borders that you have not even defined and that your own people don't know where they are.

That's the level of insanity and, like, a terrifying situation that we're facing down right now. Now, to the people who would say, like,, you can't just like, you know, you shouldn't appease this guy and you can't give in to these nuclear threats because then ultimately, you know, everybody will want a nuclear weapon because you see the way they serve as deterrence. Yeah, they do. That's called reality. I mean, we would be handling this situation very differently if Russia was not a nuclear armed state. That's just the reality of the situation. So you can either live with that reality and deal with it

and do everything you can to avoid devastating World War III, or you can sort of like put the blinders on, as we've been doing, as the media has been doing, as the Biden administration has been doing, and continue to sleepwalk into an ever-escalating crisis that ends in a terrifying, terrifying situation. I agree, and we will hold, I'm going to table some of my thoughts on that, you know, for when we talk about Elon Musk, but to get and

again, show you the insanity of why this is so dangerous is the ambiguity of the situation on the ground. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen because split screen at the same time said train is moving, by the way, also it could be an exercise, you know, as you said, in order to bluff, in order to scare analysts and in order to scare the military, also, it could be an exercise, you know, as you said, in order to bluff, in order to scare analysts, and in order to scare the military. We have ongoing Ukrainian gains in the north and in the south, both in the northeast and in the south. The full-fledged fall, essentially, of Lyman pushing on the Kursan front line. There were some reports there that the Russians had fallen back, but they don't appear to be true. But there is heavy, heavy fighting

in that region. And of course, the reason that matters is it was just annexed there by the Kremlin. Now, the next one is even more important. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, which is that they have acknowledged that forces have broken through in the Kyrsten region. Now, again, they haven't said necessarily that they've fallen back, that it's been a catastrophic loss. But this coming after the defeat in Lyman, after the humiliating success from a couple of weeks ago, is just day after day after day of bad actual military news for the Kremlin on the ground, which is also leading them to beclown themselves. So finally, this is a great point from Michael Brennan Daugherty, let's put this up there, which is that the Kremlin says, we are going to continue to consult the populations of these regions when referring to the regions that are partially controlled by the Ukrainian

military. And as he points out, we've annexed these regions, but we don't really know what their borders are. They might be smaller. It's not exactly a message of strength. And that's why, you know, look, I will savage Western policymakers here all day. But these people are the ones who are putting us in such a dangerous position. You are issuing nuclear threats over ground you do not control, where all the territory is fluid. You have proven yourself incapable of even holding this against a third-rate military when you're supposedly great power. I mean, they are the architects of their own nightmare scenario. Nobody asked you to do this. Nobody asked you to annex these people.

And your saber-rattling is putting us, all of us, in a dangerous position, including your own population. I mean, you know, if I was in Russia, if the mobilization hadn't, I'd be like, I am getting the hell out of here. There is no future for Russia in the modern sense. You know, Richard Hanania, a friend of the show, wrote a fantastic piece that I can't stop thinking about, which is that the promise of the Russian and the Chinese projects was they will not have liberal democracy, but they will be able to guarantee certain things like health care and all that health care, a strong economy. And as long as you subserve, obviously your rights to the authoritarian state.

The Ukraine situation has basically said that promise of Russia is over. I mean, no matter what happens after this with the Putin regime, with the survival, even of some of the hardliners, this will be an economic backwater for decades. There's just no getting around that. China also, you know, not to make this too philosophical, but like their zero COVID idiocy is actually destroying their economy and possibly will crash the global economy. And they don't care because they would rather have authoritarianism and control people rather than have prosperity for their middle class and also throw people into camps. And I think the point that he was making is he's like, look, at the end of the day, you

know, in longevity, like what you're looking in terms of the long market, you really can't bet on these types of states in the interim. So I think that Putin is proving this, and Putin is proving this prospect, but, and this is the caution, which is that in that chaos and in the demise possibly over the long term, there's a hell of a lot of risk whenever you control the world's largest nuclear arsenal. I mean, there's part of the Chinese model that has worked phenomenally in terms of- Oh, over time. Absolutely. Yeah, in terms of growing their middle class, in terms of having a strong state hand, in terms of industrial policy. I mean, a lot of what they have done has been extraordinarily successful.

But, yeah, you see the cost of that right now with the zero COVID lockdowns and the, like, you know, just blatant authoritarianism that is rampant right now. With regards to Russia, I mean, it's just really hard to wrap your head around the situation that they have put themselves into. And yeah, like all the Western antagonisms that we've gone over and NATO expansion after we said we wouldn't and inviting Ukraine to join when that was clearly a red line for them, all of those things, ultimately, Putin and his cronies are the ones that made this decision and have continued to make horrific decisions for themselves and their own population and their future prospects. So right now, I do feel like that is best summed up in the insanity of saying you're going to defend your borders with nuclear weapons, but also that you don't know where those borders are. Like that says it all right there. There was a piece yesterday that people in this Lyman area that Ukrainians just took back, they were like, wait, we were in Russia? This was supposedly part of the new Russian territory. They didn't know. They didn't even know that they were in it.

They had no interest. They're like, wait, we were Russian? Right. For a minute? What? I mean, they just, they had no idea. So, I mean, that just tells you how, like, absolutely farcical this whole situation is. But even as it's, you know, kind of funny to laugh at, it's obviously deadly serious. And this whole nuclear train situation just shows you Putin is trying very, very, very hard to convince the West that he may well use tactical nuclear weapons because he's kind of out of other options. And I think we have to take that seriously, even as so much of what they have done has ended up being quite clownish and ultimately bad for their own population. I mean, the number of people who, the number of military age men who are fleeing the country or trying to

flee the country, there's all kinds of reports of businesses and farms that basically can't operate because you had people receiving conscription subpoenas at work. And so they stopped coming to work or they, you know, they see their friends getting served these subpoenas and they, you know, decide, okay, I got to make a break for it and get out of here altogether. So this is having catastrophic ramifications in the Russian economy. And it's just, it's just astonishing to watch, honestly. Yeah, it really is. And, you know, I'll end with this, which is that I was actually reading as much as I could about what we know

about the makeup of the Russian nuclear force and their nuclear arsenal is actually much more heavily weighted, Crystal, towards these tactical nuclear weapons. It's much more a part of their nuclear doctrine. So of the 7,454 nuclear warheads that we know about within the Russian arsenal, 1,800 of them are actually non-strategic tactical nuclear weapons. To compare that to the United States, we have 5,700 nuclear weapons, only 230 of ours are so-called battlefield

tactical nuclear weapons. It's a total difference in battlefield ideology and also why I think that it is worth taking it seriously, which is when you have so much of a makeup of your force, clearly it is part of your application of force in your doctrine to have so many weapons that these are weapons not just of a last resort but to be reached for in the middle of any such conflict for things to go to a very bad place. So look, that's the best that we can say for right now. All we know is that according to people in the UK, defense analysts and others, the train is moving. The Pentagon has not yet denied it. From what we know about that, absolutely nothing could be a threat, could be real. It's ambiguous as the lines on the ground are being redrawn. And I just underscore again, the absolute insanity of we're going to defend our territory, but we don't know what territory is, where that territory is. It is the single most irresponsible action of a state since the Cuban Missile Crisis. It's just absolutely insane. All right, let's go ahead and move on to the next one on Elon Musk. Man, Elon poking the bear and

making a lot of people have their masks off. Now, I'm not going to defend Elon's proposal necessarily, but let's start with this. We'll put it up there on the screen. Nor the wisdom of using a Twitter poll to do, like, foreign diplomacy. Anyway, here's Elon, out of the blue, tweets this. Ukraine-Russia peace, colon, redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is the will of the people. Number two, Crimea, formerly part of Russia as it has been since 1783 until Khrushchev's mistake.

Number four, water supply to Crimea assured. Number five, Ukraine remains neutral. He follows up, quote, this is highly likely to be the outcome in the end, just a question of how many die before then. Also says, quote, also worth noting if a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war. Now, look, there are a couple of things that you could say about this,

which I would say you can critique in good faith. Number one, the idea of any free and fair election in these regions after Russia has occupied it and depopulated it of any pro-Ukrainian forces. Even if the election was free and fair, all these pro-Ukrainians are either dead or they're in Poland or in the eastern part of the country. Like you can't have a quote unquote free and fair election after you forcibly removed the part of the population that would have voted for it. Now, again, it's not to say that many of these people don't want to be a part of Russia. If you had held this a couple of years ago, I'm relatively certain they probably would have chosen to be Russian.

Well, and that actually shows you that the person who is most responsible for, like, screwing up their chance at true independence or joining Russia is Putin. I mean, because he's made it basically, he has made it impossible to have the type of referendums that could be potentially respected internationally. But so that I think is probably the most objectionable part of it. But number two, when he says Crimea, formerly part of Russia, as it's been since 1783, look, I'm not going to use the term Khrushchev's mistake. That's literally a Russian term. So they can call it what I don't give a damn about Khrushchev, former Soviet Union, whatever. I'm going to look at this and say, well, Russia's controlled us since 2013.

The world basically accepted it. They were let back into the G7. It was a de facto acknowledgement by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, even if nobody ever did it in part. And basically everybody just learned to live with it. So maybe we just never formally recognize it, but also certain sanctions that are in place over that come away if you withdraw and keep your forces in Crimea. I mean, that's where the Ukrainians need to get real. And that's actually why I wanted to do this is it shows to me how emboldened the Ukrainians are, at the very least publicly, to say that their most maximalist aims are the only things that they will accept. Because they ridiculed him for suggesting this, of which if you said this in 2015, everyone would be like, yeah, it's true.

You know, I mean, Obama said this in 2014 or in 2016 in his famous interview with Jeffrey Goldberg. And guess what? It's like that was just a generally part of the accepted consensus. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I don't think it's just or right. But, you know, when the downside is nuclear war, then this is one that the international community had already accepted and has no reason to quote unquote backtrack on it, especially in a bitter negotiation. I just want to emphasize that again. Yeah. This is not supposed to make anybody happy. This is supposed to avoid nuclear confrontation. Right. So let's say that there are many, many problems. The spirit of it though

is, hey guys, let's try and settle this before millions of people die and we possibly have nuclear Armageddon. And for this crystal, he was vilified by the Ukrainians to a degree, which frankly, I find repulsive. Let's put this up there on the screen. A Ukrainian ambassador to Germany responded immediately. The only outcome is that now no Ukrainian will ever buy your fucking Tesla crap. So good luck to you, Elon. And he also says, quote, fuck off is my very diplomatic reply to you. Now, first of all, you're a Ukrainian ambassador to Germany. You should probably direct that ire to the largest country in Europe, which has only given you $0.23 billion in aid. And yet you're savaging a person who literally provided you free internet and enabled your country to mobilize against Russia in the Battle of Kiev by providing you his infrastructure through his own goodwill.

Nobody said Elon had to give you free internet. He actually did. And let's even take all of that out of it. If the Ukrainians are going to suggest that anybody who proposes any sort of bitter peace is pro-Russia, then they are manipulating our own domestic politics in terms of trying to advocate for something that may be in our interest and may be contrary to their most maximalist interests. And Zelensky also jumped in.

So let's go and put this next part up there on the screen. And this is actually the one I found the worst. He tweets, quote, Which Elon Musk do you like more? One who supports Ukraine or one who supports Russia? Saying that you want a bitter diplomatic solution is not supporting Russia. What did we just spend an entire thing doing? Be like, the Russians are irresponsible.

Their brinksmanship, nuclear saber-rattling is threatening global security and millions of people. It's not to say that you support them in order to try and deal in exactly what you said earlier with the reality that these crazy people also do have nuclear weapons and the ability to wipe us off the face of the globe. And in that face, we must at times do things that are terrible. You know, I was thinking a lot

about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I think a lot of people forget this. There was a quid pro quo in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We gave up Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Not a lot of people forget this. There was a quid pro quo in the Cuban missile crisis. We gave up Jupiter missiles in Turkey. Not a lot of people know that because not a lot of people know that because it wasn't really declassified until 40 years later. But here's the truth, folks. They took those missiles out of Cuba. And then a little bit while later, as we communicated to Khrushchev and said, look, we can't say this publicly, but behind the scenes, those missiles, they're gone. I mean,

is that appeasement? Did John F. Kennedy, whose father, by the way, is the chief appeaser, who himself advocated for war with Hitler and the Nazi regime, wrote a famous book, did he, quote unquote, learn and repeat Chamberlain's mistake by avoiding nuclear war? Right. No. I mean, that's the reality. And because, and I think this, I've been really thinking this, Kennedy lost his brother in World War II. Joseph P. Kennedy II was blown up over England. Kennedy himself suffered horrific back injury.

He had men who died in his arms after PT 109. He understood the reality of actual war. And I think that the people who are saber rattling and talking online about, oh, I'd be happy to go and to die, you know, if I had to, you have no idea what it means. I mean, you know, Dan Carlin said this on his podcast. I think it's so important, which is that whenever you're a couple decades removed from conflicts, you like to look at things in macro trends. You're like, well, and he specifically said this in his Mongol episode, where he said, look, you know, now, 700 years later, we're like, wow.

But when the Mongols conquered China, it united them all under one thing. And then there was a global currency. And that was awesome for global trade. And he's like, yeah, but you know, like 10 million people died. And he's like, and we all just kind of forget that. And he's like, you can't just, you can't just, you know, move on past the mountain of skulls that somebody literally saw and the ground that was so wet with human fat

that it was like muddy for months. This is real. This is real, okay? And so it's like, yeah i mean it's true genghis khan and the the mongol empire created a current the first currency union and paper currency but you know a lot of people had to die um in order for that to happen i think that we are almost just so removed from what the reality of conflict is crystal that we are getting to this point where we have unhinged discourse and we have the inability to assess our own interests in this conflict. Yeah, I mean, even like Elon's Twitter diplomacy here is kind of a sign of that.

That this all just, to so many people, it just feels like a game. It feels like something you could like put it on a Twitter poll on and like come to some sort of a like crowdfunded consensus rather than the reality of what this is. And then I almost really I don't blame the Ukrainians for the response. I really blame the U.S. for the Ukrainian response because we have allowed them to imagine that they could achieve this maximalist end. That's true. I mean, that's that's the reality. If we had put pressure on them from the beginning of like, no, there's going to be a ceasefire. No, we're going to have a peace deal. No, you are going to have to give up some of your territory. Their language would be a lot different here. And ultimately, you know, this sort of maximalist idea of we're going to reclaim all of the territory, which, you know, is unlikely to be the outcome ultimately if this war is ever going to end. This also creates an

obstacle with the Ukrainian people to peace because then when, you know, if Zelensky ever did sit down at a negotiating table and you have to make these sorts of bitter, hard, terrible concessions, well, the population is going to say, what the hell? You told us we were going to have it all back. You know, this isn't something that we can stomach. This isn't something that we can, you know, that we can ultimately accept. So I really sort of blame the U.S. posture here of pretending like we're hands off, like we're just letting the Ukrainians do their thing, when in reality the Ukrainians are doing exactly what we want them to do in terms of continuing this war indefinitely. And listen,

I always put the caveats on here. It's not like Putin is in. He has created so many barriers to ever being able to get to a ceasefire, let alone some sort of negotiated peace. There is no doubt about it. I mean, at this moment, the idea of any sort of like working on a peace deal, and I think this is part of why Elon was mocked as well. It seems preposterous. I don't deny that whatsoever, given the actions that the Russian state has just taken here. But ultimately, you're going to have to find a way to get to that place so that this doesn't continue indefinitely and continue to risk escalation and ultimately nuclear war. I mean, there's just no other way to say this. The longer this goes on, the more likely we are to have some sort of nuclear weapon deployed. That's just reality. So we can all do everything we can,

even if it seems as a long shot to try to push for that negotiated settlement and that ceasefire to be put into place. Or we can just like sort of close our eyes and hope for the best, which is basically what we've been doing up to this point. I've been thinking long and hard about this one. And I think I realize why the way that we speak is just so contrary to how a lot of other people think about this conflict. Because I think that you and I are coming at this and have from the beginning with a dispassionate view of what is in America's interests. And the foreign policy elite does not care about America's interests or they do, but they are willing to subordinate them to a point and risk them while supporting Ukrainian

interests. And I think that their ability to compartmentalize this is the disconnect, because I think we have to acknowledge a couple of basic things, which the honest hawks will say, which is that here's the truth. Ukraine's most maximalist aims are actually contrary to the interests of the United States. Might be crazy to think, but Ukraine's most maximalist aim is to recover Crimea. Well, that would almost certainly push us into an outright war with Russia. So at a certain point on the line, things cross where Ukraine's interests are here and America's interests are here. They diverge. The difference is that they are willing to push things plug, quote unquote, and try and force negotiation

right now rather than ever get to the point where we have Armageddon in the first place. And the only way that I can reconcile why somebody would be willing to do that is if they care so much about the security of Ukraine, like in the longest term. I actually don't. I read it a little bit differently. I actually think it comes from arrogance and hubris of the type that we've seen routinely from the foreign policy establishment. I mean, in our lifetime, but also for generations before we came along. I mean, they thought they could go in and remake the Middle East. They thought they could go into Afghanistan and prop up this government.

I mean, how did that work out? They thought that they could turn Iraq into a democracy and, you know, not really, and disband the army and that this was all go fine. I mean, the level of hubris that has been demonstrated by the foreign policy establishment and cheered on by a military industrial complex that, of course, profits off of each and every one of these conflicts, I really think that is driving the flawed thinking that has led us to ultimately this place. And, you know, they said pretty clearly at the start, like, Putin has to go. I mean, they effectively came out and said, our policy here is regime

change. Think of the arrogance of that. Think of the hubris of that, given everything that we've learned. And again, I mean, sometimes I feel like we're repeating ourselves, but I also feel like we kind of have to repeat ourselves. You don't know what comes after Putin. Let's say you get, like, careful what you wish for. Let's say you get your wish. Let's say there's a, you know, popular revolt and Putin is pushed out. It's just as likely you get someone who's more like Ramzan Kadyrov than that you get, you know, a Navalny in there. Okay? someone who's more like Ramzan Kadyrov than that you get, you know, a Navalny in there. Okay. So,

and, and the societal chaos and fallout from such an inaction is also something to be very, you know, wary of and very concerned about, not just for the people in Russia, who we should care a lot about the ordinary citizens, you know, who are suffering right now in Russia, but also for world stability and what happens next. And, you know, what this, we're going to destabilize the nuclear power. Like, what are you thinking about? But I honestly think that's where it comes from. It's from this arrogance of thinking they can just remake the world and shape it however they want and put in place the people that they think are going to be, are going to work better with them and do the things they wanted to do. Putin himself is a cautionary tale there because he's the guy we wanted in there because we thought, you know, he'd open the place up in the way we wanted to Western capital.

And, you know, lo and behold, look, it turns out he wasn't such a great guy after all, wasn't such a great partner after all, because we skipped the building of the democratic institutions in favor of pushing the like economic shock doctrine that we wanted to be able to profit off of. So to me, that's where the disconnect ultimately comes from. And I can't tell you how frustrated I'm getting just watching this media narrative unfold that says the only the only position you are allowed to take is one that says the only position you are allowed to take is one that says Ukrainian maximal victory. The total absence, we're going to talk to Branko Marsetic about this today,

the total absence of any sort of genuine peace movement that isn't seeking to take Russia's side or seeking to take the Ukrainian side, even though the Ukrainian cause, I mean, that is the just cause. There is no doubt about it. But it's just looking to say, how do we end this conflict without putting everyone's lives in danger? And I even object to the idea that that's like in America's interest. Yes,

obviously, it's in America's interest. It's in the world's interest. It's ultimately in Ukraine's interest, because if there's a nuclear weapon deployed and we end, I mean, they're the ones who are going to face the fallout first. So even this idea that, you know, ultimately there's this big split between what would be good for the U.S. and what would be good for the rest of the world or what would be good for Ukraine, I think the entire world has a very vested interest in keeping us from ending up a nuclear war. I think it's all well said. I agree with you. I feel deeply frustrated about it as well. Yes. Okay, let's go ahead and move on here, and we'll talk about energy, because this is something that we also have to pay a lot of attention to and intertwines directly with the war.

Some major warnings that we wanted to bring everyone, which could change the strategic situation. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that current indications say that Europe could have one of the coldest winters on record, warning, adding that less wind and rain will actually dramatically hit renewable power on the continent, especially as it tries to wean itself off of Russian gas. So when you have less wind power and less wind and rain, as they're saying here, The European Weather Forecasting Agency is saying early indications for November and December are a period of high pressure over Western Europe, which is likely to bring colder spells, less wind and rainfall, reducing the generation of renewable power of which they were really banking on, even in its limited capacity,

to show up for them as they wean themselves off of natural gas. And of course, the reason why that matters is A, it is going to drive up the price of natural gas dramatically on the continent. Right now, they had actually planned right now and said, we should be okay if things stay standard because they'd stockpiled enough natural gas. They paid astronomically high rates to the UAE and to others. And they had secured global stockpiles at the expense, by the way, of developing nations like Pakistan, Thailand, and many of these other people who are burning coal like nobody's business to keep their countries afloat right now. Put that aside. So they thought they had enough LNG to get them through the winter as long as renewable power

showed up at the traditional rate. However, if you have that lack of wind and particular cold, which is going to increase the amount of heat, that would mean that they don't actually have enough stockpile, which could force a crisis in the middle of the winter. They're also pointing to the fact that the hurricanes that we're seeing in our region, any sort, the problem is that we don't have a robust and resilient network right now that is able to supply the entire global economy, including the richest nations, the US and Europe, which are willing to pay very, very high rates.

But with that drop in supply and Europe's own vulnerability right now, they would essentially be forced to rationing if they did have another major shock, like some sort of hurricane. If something takes out a Freeport, I mean, we had that explosion at the Texas Freeport just a couple of months ago, took that port offline for three months. I mean, the price of gas in Europe went up by 1700% overnight. So we are really one real problem

away from an actual crisis. And also I would be remiss if I didn't mention, Crystal, the Nord Stream pipeline that just happened. I don't know who did it, who sabotaged it. But if it was Russia, I think they were making it clear that in this scenario, we're like, hey, right when you are the most vulnerable, maybe that Norway pipeline just gets snipped and gets blown up in the middle of this. Oh, we can't prove that it was us. And in that scenario, I mean, they're in serious trouble because that is their major supplier of natural gas when it will be one of the only power sources that they have available to them in the winter. Whether it was Russia or not, there's no doubt that Europeans are thinking very hard about that possibility. Yeah, and they should. Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, this is where, so in terms of the renewable energy situation in Europe, like Europe is not a very sunny place. So solar is, in most of Europe, is not a really great solution. And then when you have, okay, a winter that's going to have less wind and less rain, that means wind is obviously not going to be ideal and hydropower also is going to take a hit. Yes. So this is where it comes back to, you know, poor decision-making regarding nuclear, you know, that has been going on for years and years that left, you know, if you look at Germany in particular, and their previous chancellor ends up like involved with basically Russian gas companies,

he's the one who pushed forward this idea of we're going to move off of nuclear. And so that really is kind of the most promising renewable energy for the European continent. And the fact that that hasn't been developed or kept online to the extent that it should have been has really created a massive problem for them. And at the same time, let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. There's a lot of disunity in the EU over exactly what the hell they're going to do. And, you know, there's a lot of complicated details here about this, like, gas price cap that they're trying to put on. Basically, the bottom line is, as we predicted from the beginning,

they can't come to any sort of agreement on how to do this. And, you know, the other concern here is it's not just, you know, global South countries outside of Europe that are in a difficult position. It's that the wealthier nations in Europe are basically like doing what they need to do and bidding up at astronomical prices. But there are poorer nations in Europe that are also like, hey, guys, we're kind of getting screwed here and we're left out. You know, we're we're left high and dry while you guys are making sure that your populations are secure. So it's also a problem within Europe of how to deal with this. I completely agree. It really is crazy.

And just to point out the specifics, they're talking about countries like the Czech Republic, which we've already talked about here, has had massive energy price skyrockets. And they have the opposition who was basically pro-Russia or at the very least anti-sanction coming out and gaining in the polls as thousands of people have taken to the streets. And just to be clear, I mean, what the European Union is asking is that the entire bloc cut power by 5%, which that's a hell of a lot of power whenever you rely on it, especially for industrial capacity, which is where the first cuts that we saw in Germany hit, the first cuts that we saw in France. It's not just households. It really is industry, which keeps their entire economy going. And they cannot agree to what the quote unquote price cap would be. And at the same

time, the Russians are like, listen, if you have an actual price cap, we will stop selling you gas whatsoever. So they also can't bank on that because if the Russians do 100% cut them off and it is a very cold winter, they're kind of screwed basically no matter what. I mean, I just think all around, it's a bad situation. It's possible that they can get themselves out of it if they are willing to basically pay hundreds of billions of dollars for as much gas in the global market as possible. But, you know, that kind of screws us too. I mean, that means all of our energy bills are going to be sky high. We heat a lot of natural gas in the middle of the winter. In this country, I think it's like 40% or something of our power comes from natural

gas. And worse, really, is these developing nations. I mean, Pakistan was trying to buy a five-year contract on LNG. They've been pivoting to LNG off of coal and off of other, like, bioenergy, essentially. They can't fill it, so they're just going coal. I mean, many, many poor countries all across Asia with, you know, hundreds of millions of people in their own right are basically not either going to have rolling blackouts or they're going to be burning, you know, filthy coal and spilling, sputing into the environment. And I think at this point that 5% cutback is basically like a best case scenario. There was another report from the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris, that said if the EU gets cut off completely from any Russian gas, they would need to cut use by 13 percent over the winter.

And I don't even know if that takes into account these sort of like dire new forecasts. And according to them, you know, that cutback would have to come largely from consumer behavior. They say like turning down thermostats, adjusting boiler temperatures, as well as industrial and utility conservation. So, you know, it's the wealthier countries in Europe, obviously, are in a better position to, you know, sort of weather the storm ultimately, but it's going to be very difficult times. And I think, you know, we've talked about this for a while now. That's why this offensive from Zelensky was so critical at this point,

because you are going to have populations in Europe that are suffering because of this war that are saying, hey, you know, why are we continuing this? Why don't we push for a negotiated settlement that get frustrated with, you know, the continued posture of the of the West and wanting to push this war forward indefinitely. So that's why this is so important to keep an eye on, both because of the human suffering, but also because of what it ultimately means for these population support, continued support for the Ukrainian cause. Yeah. At the same time, we have some gas price news here at home as well related to this. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Oil prices are soon very likely returning to $100 per barrel as we talked about that historic cut that OPEC Plus is considering right now. The reason why it's important to consider OPEC's decisions is that they have essentially become addicted to the price of $100 per barrel. It is funding. I mean, the Saudis are, they are throwing parties in Riyadh.

I can't even imagine the amount of money. You know, I used to live in Qatar back when gas was $4 or $5 a gallon. Those people were rolling in cash like nobody has ever seen before. $100 a barrel. And that's, you know, when gas, I think it was a similar price around then. Just the wealth that it generated,

even in a short period that they are printing from this, is just unparalleled. So even though these are supposed allies and all of that, they are very committed to the $100 price per barrel because it essentially floats their entire, not only their whole economy, it gives them the reserves in order to last for years and years and years. The royal family, very committed to this. And, you know, I mean, look, in the middle of high inflation and more, they're going to grab whatever profit that they possibly can. On top of the fact that our own oil drillers here at home are still paying back those investors. That's something that we covered many, many times. Well, and also politically, the Saudis are happy to stick it to Joe Biden. Oh, they love it.

That's right. That's like, you know, a silver lining for them as well. Like they get to cause gas prices here to spike and create domestic political troubles for a party and a president that they ultimately hate. actually kicking in in December. So at the very same time that OPEC is considering cutting its production in order to maintain the $100 barrel price level, you're going to see an artificial reduction in oil supply from availability of Russian crude to the European market in December. Those two things specifically are what could vault gas prices back up again on top of weather issues that we already have here in the U.S. I touched on this a little bit yesterday, but I think it's worth teasing out. And, you know, we shouldn't forget our friends out in California, a huge portion of our audience is in California. Let's go and put

this up there on the screen. California right now is seeing a catastrophic rise in gas prices. California is up 55 cents a gallon just in a single week. The entire West Coast averaging between 30 to 50 cents all within a week. And actually, the average price of gas right now in California is $6.40 a gallon just across the state, which means, I mean, if you're living in Los Angeles County or one of those major populated areas or one of those famous ones that's like in the middle of the mountains, you're paying for some seriously high gas. But put aside just California, state of Washington, $5.30. Oregon, $5.45. Nevada, $5.50. Arizona, $4.50. Alaska, $5.40. I mean, many of the western states, Idaho is $4.40. Everybody is just getting hammered. Kind of as you move over

to the East Coast and particularly into the South, you're going to have the cheapest availability of gas, obviously, because that's close to the refineries and there's not a lot of costs. But the reason why I just want to emphasize is that the Western United States, for a variety of supply reasons, does not have high inventory of gas. So when you have very, very low inventory and you have high demand and you already are seeing a reduction in release from the SPR and now potential shocks of oil to the global market, you are just going to be in a situation where you are paying historically, historically high prices. People sending me messages, Crystal, from Costco in California

being like, thank you, Costco, for only $6 a gallon of gas. I'm like, I cannot even imagine. Here in Virginia, let's see where we're at. So you and I are in D.C. right now, but the price in Virginia where we live is $3.30. So not nearly as bad as our friend. Literally double. Sounds pretty good compared to six. Can you imagine? One of the analysts, the head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy, which we rely on that site, says there are a lot of refinery issues in the West, including six refineries that are either undergoing planned or unplanned maintenance.

That's caused gasoline supply on the West Coast to drop to its lowest level in a decade and has caused wholesale gas prices to skyrocket. So that's one of the more significant issues that's contributing to the low inventory there that is causing all of the problems. But as you said, you know, there's a clear political fallout here as well. Obviously, there are many things going on with our domestic political situation, including the Dobbs decision overturning Roe versus Wade. That clearly has been sort of a pivot point in terms of the midterm landscape. But if you track gas prices, Biden's approval rating tracks pretty closely inversely related with gas prices. So as gas prices went down, Biden's approval started to tick up. As gas prices now are going back up, lo and behold, Democratic prospects with midterms

are not looking as rosy as they did just a short while ago. So I do think this is one of the most important indicators that you could look at in terms of politics as well, because it has such a hit on people's budgets and also takes such a psychological toll on people when they see those prices going up and up and up. And they wonder, you know, they're increasing, like, where is it going to stop? How am I going to be able to deal with this? How am I going to be able to afford to get to work? How am I going to be able to afford to put gas in the car and still put groceries on the table? So it is a major like reality issue and it is also a major political issue for the party in power. Yeah, I completely agree. And look, it's just in general, no matter who you want to blame to deny the effect, I think is crazy. Yeah. Look, Joe Biden, in a way, he kind of peaked

too early. He had lower gas prices and dobs in June, and now, this is the time, I mean, we have a ream of statistical evidence to say nobody cares about elections until, nobody even cares about presidential elections until three weeks before, which is nuts for us in the political world. Yeah, we already

care about that. We're two years out in advance. Most people are going about their lives, and then three weeks weeks before they're like, yeah, I'm going to vote for like maybe this guy, maybe that guy. On midterms, some evidence actually shows people don't really care until a week before. So whatever that week environment is, I mean, remember like those late effects of like the Comey letter that the Hillary people like to blame or before that, you know, Hurricane Sandy, whenever Obama came and gave Chris Christie a hug. Republicans are so mad about that. Or, look, I mean, are we going to deny that the crash of 2008,

which happened days before the fallout of the crash, didn't have a massive impact on the election? I mean, I think it both, not to relitigate all these things, Obama was going to win that election anyway. Right, but to a degree. Yeah, exactly. And I think the same thing with like the Romney situation. He was probably going to win that election anyway.

But the Hug and the Sandy situation probably just like put it over the top. Yeah, anyway, we won't relitigate every election. And on the other hand, we're going to get to the midterms here in a minute. And Republicans are doing everything they can to try to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. So we'll break all of that down for you in a moment. It's just, I mean, it continues to be the case that when you look at the macros, you're like, oh my God, Democrats are going to get pummeled. And then you dig into these races, Herschel Walker, I'm looking at you and it's like, maybe they're going to actually hold on. I don't know. Let's talk a little bit more about the economy because this spells up more sort of democratic woes in terms of some of the shifts that are happening right now.

First of all, we have been taking a close look at the housing market. Socrates did a fantastic monologue on that yesterday. And there is new news there, which, again, was kind of a predictable outcome of the Federal Reserve policy. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. From the Wall Street Journal, they say homebuilders are offering to sell homes in bulk at discount to investors. As mortgage rates hit a 15-year high and individual buyers back away, builders look to unload both planned and completed homes. So we really, at this point, have a worst of all worlds in terms of regular people and the housing market. So prices like sticker prices have come down somewhat on houses, but that has been coupled with such a massive spike in mortgage rates that these homes are wildly less affordable than they used to be.

And I do encourage you to go through, listen to Sagar's monologue yesterday because he goes through some of the numbers. It's hard to wrap your head around just how much of a difference it makes in terms of your monthly mortgage costs, the difference between, you know, a 3% mortgage rate and a 7% mortgage rate. It like doubles the amount that you're paying month to month. So this has put these houses wildly out of reach of most American regular consumers. So at the same time, you have these home builders who were starting to like ramp up before the Fed started to hike interest rates, starting to ramp up, more building, which is something we really desperately need because we are short in terms of housing stock. And now their costs to finance these projects are going up.

They don't have the individual buyers because they can't afford the mortgage interest rates as they are now. So they're pulling back from these projects. And then the inventory that they already have, since they can't get individual buyers because of the mortgage rates, they're offloading them at a discount,

oftentimes to these companies that want to buy up a bunch of single family homes and then rent them to you at a profit. So they want to be like America's landlord. This is, again, something we have sort of been predicting from the beginning. The only people this market is good for is those who have massive amounts of cash or ability to get, you know, financing at decent rates who can snatch up all of these houses. And they're saying they're selling them for 15 and 20% discounts.

So they're getting a great deal to be able to profit in the future. So if you're a renter, you're getting screwed because rents are going up. If you're a homeowner, you're getting screwed because prices are going down. And with mortgage rates so high, if you want to move, you can't

because you're terrified of what that mortgage interest rate is going to be. If you're a prospective buyer, you can forget about it because of the mortgage interest rates. Really, the only ones that benefit from this are permanent capital yet again. Other piece that I wanted to point to here, just to underscore the part about how home prices are falling, just not the affordability of homes. Let's put this next piece from Bloomberg up on the screen. This is kind of a scary headline. U.S. home prices now posting biggest monthly drops since 2009. What was going on in 2009? Cities facing steepest corrections include San Francisco

inventory levels stayed relatively flat, according to one data provider. So you are seeing home prices pull back, which of course, you know, if you're a homeowner and you see your value of your home go down, that means your overall wealth is going down. They're stuck in their homes if they want to move because of these mortgage rates being so high and people can't buy in now because it is so unaffordable. It really is a worst of all world situation. And to underscore what I said yesterday, yeah, you can cheer, but the home price index only fell by 0.98%. Yeah. So if the home price, so home price goes down 1% and mortgage rate goes up a hundred percent, who's coming out on top? Are you going to be able to afford a house? This is why all this cheer, like I just fundamentally do not believe just also from an

like literal equity perspective. I don't mean in like the diverse sense that the U.S. government will ever let houses drop, housing prices drop by more than like 20%. Because then you would just- Homeowners are too powerful. Exactly. They're the most powerful people in the world. Like they have more, all the money, you know, one third or something, I think of the cash. Some 68% of Americans have at least some home equity, disproportionately higher amongst elder folks. I'm certain that if those people are at that affected, that something will happen. So my point is, is that you can't, for you to wish that the price keeps going down to be equal to the increase in your average monthly mortgage,

you would have to wish for essentially a 50% or almost 100% reduction. That's just not going to happen. So my point is just like, okay, let's say they slide 10. Again, you're still out of a hell of a lot of money if you're still trying to afford something. And the other problem is this will be the situation for years to come. Already, the Fed is like, we are not even considering lowering rates till 2024.

We're not even considerate for another year and a half or so. And then let's say they do lower it by a point, 100 basis points. So you're still way higher than you were previously. Now, I think there's a lot of critiques of a zero interest rate environment. I think it bubbles and so many assets, et cetera. But the point is not to punish the people who won't be as affected and who didn't accumulate tens of billions of dollars of wealth during that interim period. They were just kind of skating by, you know, riding a little bit of the benefit, but they weren't reaping nearly as much of the benefit as everybody else.

You have to have some sort of rebalancing that happens. I mean, this situation with housing being so unaffordable, I mean, it really is kind of a powder keg because this is a crucial part of this is the way you build stable middle class wealth for yourself and for your kids for the future. It'd be great if there were other pathways, but this is basically the pathway. And you are for effectively, you know, now two generations, millennials and Gen Z, shutting that off. That is a powder keg kind of environment. It's not only a problem here, it's a problem overseas as well and a lot of other places. It's part of what's going on in the UK right now as well. But, you know, I don't think I really had looked closely at the numbers before of just how quickly things become unaffordable with mortgage prices going up.

And so I really, you know, I always looked at housing prices in terms of like, oh, what is the actual cost? $300,000, $400,000, whatever. But it really has so much more to do with what that mortgage interest rate is that you were able to lock in and what your monthly payment then is going to be, whether you can afford it or not. So that has been a lesson for me throughout all of this, that the price really has very little to do ultimately with how affordable the housing stock is. And there are a lot of metrics that say basically housing has never been less affordable for your average American than it is now. That is an absolute disaster. And I think it's really

important to underscore this was the intent, like This was the Fed's intent, was to cause exactly this situation and to try to effectively crash the housing market. But again, if part of your issue here is a supply issue, by increasing the rates, and that's what this Wall Street Journal piece really points out, you're also causing additional supply issues. So exactly the problem that spiked inflation to start with, you're actually exacerbating by increasing these rates as well. So it's an ugly situation. I want to get to the other piece of this,

which, you know, the other goal of Fed policy was basically to, like, lower wages and slow down the labor market. You know, there was lots of angst in the corporate world about the quote-unquote tight labor market. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. It looks like those policies are just starting to bite. They say, this is from the New York Times, less turnover, smaller raises, hot job market might be losing its sizzle, unemployment is still low, and hiring is strong, but there are signs the frenzy, turnover, and rapid wage growth are abating. Let me read you a few of the facts that they have in here. They say Americans in July quit their jobs at the lowest rate in more than a year.

That's a sign that the period known as the Great Resignation might be nearing its end. Wage growth, which soared as companies competed for workers, has also slowed, particularly in industries like dining and travel, where the job market was particularly hot last year. Now, one clarification on that point, what they call nominal wages, yeah, those grew. They did not grow as fast as inflation did. So on a real level, in terms of what you're able to buy, wages have been going down. I think it's really important to keep that in mind. But even that nominal wage growth is now slowing. You have them saying that more broadly, many companies around the country saying they're finding it less arduous to attract and retain employees. Many are pairing their hiring plans, partly because the pool of available

workers has grown as more people come up the economy's sidelines. And then you have, you know, some companies being a little bit too direct here and basically cheering for this situation and companies being able to gain what they call the upper hand again. This is the chief financial officer at Expedia who told investors, quote, not that I wish ill on any people out there from a layoff perspective or whatever else. But I think there could be an opportunity for us to ramp some of that hiring over the coming months. You had another chief economist at ZipRecruiter say workers and job seekers are feeling just a little bit less bold, a little more concerned about the future availability of jobs, a little bit more concerned about the stability of their own jobs. All of this, again, is the goal of the Fed and also will, you know, make it much more difficult for the grassroots labor movement that we have

covered in depth here to continue to notch gains and organize new workplaces as they've been doing. Yeah, no, I think that's correct, Crystal, unfortunately, which is that the tightening of the labor market that we have, or yeah, the tightening that we had, which enabled some of this is just getting eroded, which is the explicit goal of raising interest rates, of increasing unemployment. And I just see a confluence of crazy factors, almost like we had in the Great Depression. At that time, we had not only chaos here at home and international chaos abroad, including the prospect of war, annexation, and all of that. We also had insane fiscal policy by the heads of the four largest central banks, which contributed to prolonging the crisis. And

I just think that we cannot get away from how ideology in the moment is possibly ruining and accelerating some of these social trends, which A, that we thought were very beneficial, and B, can reverse really on a dime. It doesn't take too long for people to get in some desperate straits. You know, having read some histories of the Great Depression, 1929 was a great year. By 1933, you had Hoovervilles, you had debt collectors being shot in the middle of cornfields, you had literal uprisings where people would hold hostage, you know, foreclosure events, near communist revolutions. Like, it got real bad real quick. And I just don't think that people can underestimate

like how quickly this, you know, veneer of our economy, like we got a taste of it in 2008, but it could be so much worse, especially when you add global conflagration up on top. That is so true. And by the way, it's not, we're not the only ones who are sounding the alarm here. The UN is now saying,

hey, yo, slow your roll here, guys. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. The UN is calling on the Fed and other central banks to halt interest rate increases. A UN agency warns further policy tightening risks a global economic downturn. And the really important thing to understand here is that it's not just the Fed tightening. You have wealthy economy central banks around the world that are tightening at the same time. These effects can compound very quickly. There is a lag between when interest rates are hiked and when you see the fallout economically. So in the same way that we had this massive supply chain shock because of the pandemic and also exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, they're saying all of these banks tightening at once could have a similar compounding,

disastrous fallout effect that, you know, first and foremost is going to devastate the global South and poorer countries. But, you know, we're all connected going to devastate the global south and poor countries. But, you know, we're all connected here. So it's not like we're insulated from the fallout from global economic turmoil. One of the things, one of the quotes here that you have from the guy who was in charge of the team that wrote the report, he says, do you try to solve a supply side problem with a demand side solution? We think that's a very dangerous approach. Now, to take that out of like econ speak here, you know, the reason we ended up with this

inflation was all of these supply shocks. Raising interest rates doesn't deal with that whatsoever. This is something, you know, Elizabeth Warren, to her credit, when she asked her own pal, like, hey, does raising interest rates, is that going to help with gas prices? He's like, no. Is that going to help with food prices and supply issues? No. So then what's the point of the policy? Ultimately, you know, that's what they're pointing to here as well. They say, rather than increase rates, which will do little to ease shortages of energy and food, policymakers should focus on measures that target price spikes directly, including price caps funded by one-off taxes on the unusually large profits being made by many energy companies. So that is the, you know, there's a particular issue here that we covered when we were talking about how the dollar is so strong relative to every currency around the world. This really can trigger sort of cascading effects, especially for poor nations

that have a lot of debt that is dollar denominated. In a lot of ways, because our currency is so strong and theirs are weak, that means their imports are much more expensive for them. That fuels their inflation. That makes it more difficult for them to service their debts and can trigger these cascading effects that lead to the global severe recession that the UN is warning about here. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty interesting in order to watch it all play out. I think the UN warning will probably fall on deaf ears. All of the European banks are all signaling they're only going to continue to hike, including us, all eyes on the next inflation report.

I don't think that, I think it's still going to be bad. And I'll tell you, it's the same reason that it was bad last month. You can have gas prices already have flatlined and are now starting to go up. So that's not going to benefit the inflation top line. And guess what? Shelter prices take six to eight months to lag in an economy. And I think they're just going to continue to go up, which means that the top line number is going to be high. And it's not like food has gotten cheaper. Anybody who's been to the grocery store can tell you that right now. Yes, indeed. All right, let's take a look

at the domestic political situation. We're going to bury the lead here a little bit because we're going to start with Nevada, which is a state that I think we haven't covered enough. Very interesting political dynamics there. But I think the candidates maybe are a little bit less colorful is why we and a lot of media

hasn't dug into this race as much. But let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is a good article from the New York Times. They say Democrats' troubles in Nevada are a microcosm of nationwide headwinds. Inflation and a rocky economy are bolstering Republicans in their races against incumbent Democrats, motivating an electorate that simply wants change, as one GOP consultant says. So we're looking in particular here at the Senate race, but there are other Democratic incumbents in the House and also the governor that are in trouble. In fact, all three of the Democratic representatives in Nevada are actually in danger of losing their elections. That's the kind of

situation that they're facing there. And what they're pointing to is the fact that, you know, Nevada of maybe of every state was hit the hardest by the pandemic and the, you know, shutdown policies that are associated with Democrats. So bad. The state economy is really dependent on Las Vegas and the service industry. So this was a massive hit. You have continued issues with housing affordability there as well. And so what one Republican consultant that they quoted here said, who's involved, by the way, in the campaign for, is he say Adam Blacksalt? Is that how you say the dude's last name? The Republican Senate candidate.

So he is biased, but I actually think this is probably a pretty fair assessment. He says this is the purest example of a referendum election you have more than anywhere else in the country. Frustrations over inflation, he said, created an electorate that simply wants change. So, you know, in Nevada, it's actually a very interesting state because you have a really heavily unionized population.

The unions are very powerful. They have the Culinary Workers Union. We talked a lot about that, especially on Rising during the Democratic primaries and caucuses there. It's a much more, Democrats actually there have a much more working class base than they do in states, say like Virginia, where they're much more heavily on these sort of like white affluent liberal suburbs. And that different base is all because of both what industry is there and also the fact that it's this heavily unionized state. But then that runs into, you know, working class people getting hit hard by the economy and the fact that you have a large Latino electorate that has been

shifting some to the right and increasingly identifying as Republicans, even as Democrats continue to win them. They've also obviously lost margin there. That spells trouble for Democrats. And the last thing I'll say here, let's go and put the polling up on the screen. The polling out of Nevada basically the whole time has shown these races to be very close. This is the very latest poll that we have out of the state. It shows the Republican for the Senate, Laxalt, leading by two points. That is within the margin of error. But we've consistently, the last few polls we've gotten out of the state, have shown him with an edge over the Democratic incumbent, albeit a narrow edge. And then you see you go down the list.

For governor, the Republican also has a small edge. For lieutenant governor, the Republican has a significant edge. For secretary of state, the Republican has a significant edge. For attorney general, the Republican has a significant edge. For Attorney General, the Republican has a small edge. And then, as I mentioned, all three of the Democratic incumbent members of Congress are in basically toss-up districts that could truly go either way. This is a state where the polls have been pretty accurate, which I think is part of why it has shown this tighter race all the way through. They basically got it right in 2020. Very different from what we saw, you know, in the industrial Midwestern states.

So I do think that the polls out in the state are more likely to be presenting an accurate picture of what's happening. And this is a sleeper, which most people in the country or most people in the national press are really just not paying attention to at all. And look, if they lose that seat to a Republican, it would be a game changer because then that means that Fetterman Oz could go one way and even Georgia, and it would still change the balance of power. So to have that scenario where you could have an upset. Also, I think the fact, as you're pointing out, that Nevada was actually pretty on the money and does show the Republican so-called winning, we should then transpose that onto states where the misses have been very, very high, like Pennsylvania and like Georgia, and say, okay, maybe it's a lot closer there than it shows. I mean, even today,

new poll out of the Philly Inquirer came out this morning, Crystal, and they're like, Fetterman is 46, Oz is 40, except Oz is closing the gap in said poll. Fetterman's favorabilities have gone up, and I'm like, or unfavorability has gone up with attack ads. It's like, well, if the biased poll is 46-40, what is it actually? To me, toss up.

That's how I'm reading Pennsylvania at this point. I think you should. We were always skeptical of the polls that had Fetterman up by like 12 points right like this is pennsylvania fetterman is not going to win by 12 points i am now skeptical of the polls that says he has a six-point lead i think it i think that state is a genuine toss-up at this point um i think nevada probably more accurately reflects the actual state of you know how all of these races are going to unfold, which is basically

it's a toss up. But if you had to say the Republican has an edge. Now, there's some interesting backstory in Nevada as well. Harry Reid obviously really built out the Democratic Party machine in the state, including, you know, the ties directly with unions and all of those sorts of things. He is, of course, passed away. And you had a Bernie Sanders aligned takeover of the Democratic Party in the state. I don't know if you guys remember this, but they won elections to basically run the Democratic Party in the state. And the establishment Democrats were so upset about this that they effectively sabotaged and blew up the state party apparatus. Now, my understanding is that they sort of like made amends and come back together. But I'm sure there was damage that was

done to this Democratic Party machine that was built by Harry Reid when the establishment Democrats just decided like, we don't like you, so we're going to blow the whole thing up. So that also is, you know, another sort of issue that lurks in the background there. Now, on the other side, I would say that part of why Democrats have been able to do as well in Nevada as they have is because you do have this very strong union presence. Even as Republicans have won over some union members, union membership is still one of the strongest determinant of Democratic voting. So the fact that these are people who are organized around their material interests, that is, you know, inherently a benefit for Democrats there. And, you know, that's something that they've been able to rely on in elections past. So to the extent that this thing is close, I think if they if you didn't have that union presence, I think this would be a wipe out in favor of the Republicans. But the fact that they do have, you know, well organized union presence and in this very strong and helps to deliver votes for Democrats ultimately in this state could be what saves them in the end if they are in fact saved.

I think you're right. I mean, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Nevada. You can just look at polls over time. My limited understanding, as you said, is that Dems always have somewhat of a shot given that Las Vegas base of union organizing and the disproportionate influence it wields. It is semi-conservative, has shown us many times with upsets in the past. It's a populous state. It is a populous state. I guess it's the best way to look at it. It's a strange place. It's fascinating to read the history of Harry Reid.

Yeah, it is fascinating. And all that. It's very unique. Yeah, very unique going back basically since its history. We'll watch it closely because I think there's a lot of national wins that can be told from out of that state and what exactly will happen. Indeed. Okay. So this is the one everyone was talking about today, which is what the hell is going on with Hershel Walker and his

campaign and his family and all the rest is not a pretty thing to talk about, but very relevant in terms of who's ultimately going to control the Senate. Okay. So it all started with this report from the Daily Beast. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So Hershel Walker, who is ultimately going to control the Senate. Okay, so it all started with this report from the Daily Beast. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So Herschel Walker, who is very pro-life and says he doesn't believe in exceptions, and, you know, unlike some Republicans who have sort of walked back from their abortion positions in the general election, he has been all in. Daily Beast reporting pro-life Herschel Walker paid for his girlfriend's abortion. But wait, there's more. They have quite a bit of evidence to support this allegation. Let's go ahead and put this next piece

up on the screen. The woman who they did not name, you know, to protect her privacy, they say she supported these claims with a $575 receipt from an abortion clinic, plus a get well card from Walker that they actually have pictured in the piece with his like, you know, very clearly his signature signed on the card. And a bank deposit receipt that included an image of a signed $700 personal check that came from Walker. So you've got the receipt from the abortion clinic, the get well card that came right after the abortion, and the bank deposit receipt that is for the rough amount that the abortion cost directly from Herschel Walker. So pretty hard, I would say, to deny that one.

It seems like the facts are fairly clear here. Also important to keep in mind, Herschel Walker has been caught in, like, so many lies at this point, I cannot keep track of all of them. They were obviously the ones about his kids that he denied even to his own campaign staff, or his, until he got caught red-handed. Now he's trying to say, oh, I just wanted to protect them,

that's why I wasn't talking about them. That was not the story at the time. In fact, his own campaign staff was leaking to the Daily Beast about how they didn't know whether he was lying, that he was a pathological liar, that they couldn't trust anything that he said, that they sat down with him after the first revelation and were like, Herschel, dude, are there any more? And he's like, absolutely not. And then that very day they get new evidence that in fact, there are more kids. He's lied about his bio. I mean, you could go on and on. There's clearly a difficult relationship with the truth. So anyway, that is the context for his flat out denial. Let's go and put this up on the screen.

Walker says this is a flat out lie. I deny this in the strongest possible terms. It's a repugnant hatchet job from a Democrat activist disguised as a reporter. He's obsessively attacked my family. He's harassed friends of mine, asking if I father their children. He's called my children secret because I didn't want to use them as campaign props in a political campaign. That's what I was talking about before. Now they're using an anonymous source to further slander me. They'll do anything to hold onto power.

It's disgusting gutter politics. I won't take it anymore. I'm planning to sue the Daily Beast for this defamatory lie. It will be filed tomorrow morning. Just a little bit more on his response, because I thought this was interesting. He kind of tried to imply that the reason they're going after him is because he's black. Let's go ahead and put this piece up on the screen. So this reporter says she was at a Herschel Walker event when the story broke, and his immediate response was, that's a lie, the Daily Beast. They said that about my kids also.

They lied. No, they didn't anyway. So I don't take anything that seriously, and I think that right now I ask this question, would they be doing that if I was white? Okay? So already a lot of drama here. However.

This takes the cake. Yes. The story goes so much further than this. So Herschel Walker, you guys may be aware of. He has actually quite prominent son, Christian Walker, who has been Herschel's probably most prominent campaign surrogate, who himself is like outspoken, right wing conservative, you know, really like a podcast called Uncancellable. Let's just put it exactly. And, you know, loves to own the libs and like he's down for the cause. Right. So Christian has been really outspoken in favor of his father's campaign. Something about this story and the

denial triggered a total 180 from Christian Walker with regards to his father. So let's put this up on the screen. He says every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office because we all knew some of his fasts, every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public while simultaneously lying about it. I'm done. Christian continued. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. I know my mom and I would really appreciate if my father, Herschel Walker, stopped lying and making a mockery of us. You are not a family man when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over six times in six months running from your violence. I don't care

about someone who has had a bad past and takes accountability, but how dare you lie and act as though you're some moral Christian upright man. You've lived a life of destroying other people's lives. How dare you? So his son, who has been very unspoken in favor of him, completely turning on him in a scathing fashion. And that's where things stand right now. Yeah, and so while you and I are on the air, he actually put out a new video. I haven't, you know, obviously we're doing the show, but he just says, I've stayed silent for nearly two years. My whole life has been lied about publicly.

I did one campaign event, then said I don't want any more involvement. Don't you dare test my authenticity. And he's giving out his full story. One campaign event then said, I don't want any more involvement. Don't you dare test my authenticity. And he's giving out his full story. He says, I've spoken to nearly all the people who have attacked me and told them I didn't want to be involved. Now they're blaming me for everything I'm not responsible for. It's disgusting. So, look, when your own son is going scorched earth against you and causing you, calling you an adulterer and confirming that the story is effectively true. I mean, you're just seeing a massive, massive mess.

I think it very links neatly with the story we're about to talk about next, which is, in a way, I feel bad for Herschel Walker. It seems clear to me that he's just not all there. Whatever's left, he's taken very impulsive decisions in his life. He's ruined a lot of his family, and he was a flawed candidate basically from the beginning, which was obvious to just about anybody every time he opens his mouth. So I typically, as you guys know, I don't put a lot of stock into candidate quality except in extreme circumstances, and this is an extreme circumstance. I think it is extreme. You know, when you have, you know, there have been obviously prominent, coming out in this manner and just guns blazing, saying, you're an adulterer, you're a liar, you threatened us with violence, you've ruined all of our lives,

we all begged you not to run. I mean, that's, I think that's a very, very difficult thing to ultimately overcome. And, you know, this is a race, very difficult thing to ultimately overcome. And, you know, this is a race. Georgia's another state like Nevada where the polling has actually been quite accurate. In fact, I think the polling going into the last two Senate runoffs actually understated Democratic support by a little bit, like maybe a point or two. So when you look at this race and you see polling that has the neck and neck true toss up Raphael Warnock, maybe with a little bit of an edge, and then you see these, this, you know, this just disaster for, uh, for Herschel Walker and frankly for his family. It's, it, this is going to be, I think, a difficult for Republicans to be able to, to

pull off. Um, you know, I'm seeing them being a little more hopeful about Oz now. Oz had his own story come out yesterday about puppies. Yeah, about dogs. We'll do a segment on that. We're going to have to cover that one because some of these allegations are horrifying. And I do, I mean, obviously it's no accident that these types of stories come out in October, a couple of weeks before an election. That's exactly when you would time an oppo dump to try to, you know, really land with the electorate before people start voting and go to the polls. But that doesn't mean that the allegations are false or untrue or unworthy of reporting on, ultimately, even if, you know, they are sort of coming from one side of the political spectrum.

So in any case, I think this makes it a lot more difficult for Republicans to pick up the state of Georgia. When we were down in Atlanta, I actually predicted Republicans would win this seat. I am changing that prediction. I now think this is going to be a very difficult situation but they're going to need to look to states like Nevada and Pennsylvania. Even if they just pick up those two, then they'll be able to get the one point, the one seat margin that they ultimately need here. I think you're absolutely correct about that. All right. Let's talk about the NFL. So I used to be a big NFL fan and watcher, Washington, long time suffering Washington sports fan. But now I hardly watch at all. But you actually, Sagar, picked up on this story,

which is I'm quite shocked and disturbed by the whole situation. So quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, Tua Tungavailoa, he was in a game on September 29th, it was a Sunday, against Buffalo. And he was hit and he falls back and he gets up and you can see him shaking his head and then he stumbles. Clear indication that there's been a head injury here. So let's go ahead and take a look at that. I'm going to explain it as this is happening. So you see him fall back, hit his head on the turf. He stands up here. He's shaking his head.

He's trying to run back, and then he stumbles down to his knees. Now, this is in his teammates sort of like grab him to hold him up there. You can tell he's really sort of like lost motor control in that moment. Again, clear sign of a head injury, which is why immediately personnel run onto the field and they take him off to be evaluated. However, in spite of the fact that he's had a clear sign of this gross motor issues, clear sign of a concussion,

he is brought back in after halftime and continues the game. Now, already this is a problem because... Huge red flag. Yes. You know, they have these concussion protocols. And one of the things they point to is this gross motor instability. If you demonstrate that, it's supposed to be what they call a no-go. However, within the concussion protocol, they had this loophole where if your team doctor, who is kind of incentivized to get the guys back on the field so the team can win because ultimately that's all they really care about.

If the team doctor and an independent neurologist evaluate you and say you're good to go, then you can override even those no-go symptoms that are a clear sign. Anyone, you don't need a medical degree to look at this video and say, this guy had a head injury. Then it gets so much worse because after that Sunday game, Tua's team, the Miami Dolphins, is then set to play in this Thursday night game. And even before the game, you have Chris Nowinski, who's an advocate for concussion care. He tweeted, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. If Tua takes the field tonight, it is a massive step back for concussion care. He tweeted, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. If Tua takes the field tonight, it is a massive step back for concussion care in the NFL. If he has a second concussion

that destroys his season or career, everyone involved will be sued and should lose their jobs, coaches included. We all saw it. He's talking about that concussion from the last game. Even they must know this isn't right. And sure enough, the last game, even they must know this isn't right. And sure enough, during this game, the worst possible thing happens.

Tua, let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Tua drops back. He is sacked. He takes a hard hit on the back of the helmet. And what you see here with his hands in these unnatural positioning, they call this the fencing response. He hits his head in the same exact place where he had had trauma previously. And now he has this very clear, serious brain injury. When you have that fencing response, I went deep on this, by the way, guys, that indicates that you have probably suffered brain stem injury. He's on the field for 12 minutes.

They stabilize him. They take him off. They examine him. They say, yes, he has a concussion. And by the way, then after a few hours, they put him on the plane to fly back home with his teammates. But the whole thing, to watch it unfold, and I want you to understand why this is so incredibly serious. Because, look, concussions are serious in any event. But the real issue here is when you do not allow the brain to heal.

If you allow the brain to heal, it goes back to more or less normal energy levels, and you're able to sustain another injury and be able to recover in a normal fashion. However, if you do not allow the brain to heal, you can have something called second impact syndrome. Number one, if the brain is still injured, then you are much more likely to get another concussion. And number two, even if it is a minor brain injury, it can have compounding effects where it can literally go so far as to putting your life in danger. It can be fatal and it can also cause severe lasting brain injury, which we don't know is something that Tua could still suffer here. So that's why it is so great.

No way to know. And I think the real culprit here are the doctors who cleared him and the incentives and the pressures within the NFL at the team level and all of that that allowed this guy to put himself in danger. I mean, I also want to be clear. He probably wanted to play, but also, you know, whenever you're in that altered state of mind and more... Well, the players have to be protected from themselves, too. Right. Sometimes they may have to, and that's exactly the point of all these regulations. After all the discussion of, you know, of, uh, of CTE and more, you know, my friend, Andrew Huberman put out a very useful

thread on this and what he talked about, he himself is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford medicine. What he says is that there is no way to immediately assess the connection of a concussion or TBI in the hours or even days after it happens. You need one to five days to determine all of the consequences of the head hit. So to have somebody just be like, yeah, you're good to go, like clear you so-called within minutes, that goes against everything that is known, at least with, again, this is a professor at Stanford Medicine, and saying assessment needs to begin immediately, but determining that somebody is, quote, safe to play, needs days of monitoring to decide that accurately. So the fact is, is that whatever their so-called protocol was is not rooted in any actual medicine as a person who understands and studies concussions would understand it. Now comes, though, the prediction by Nowinski, which is that the suing, the downfall of the NFL, and the team. Now we are beginning to

see at least the signs of a concerted cover-up. Let's put this up there on the screen. That so-called independent neurotrauma consultant who evaluated Tua was fired yesterday. That's why we're covering it now today. And it's a little bit complicated because the person was employed with the NFLPA, so like the Players Association, and the way that their concussion protocol has it, that the NFL Players Association said it had the right to dismiss the consultant. So the consultant himself didn't necessarily work for the team, but the team and the NFL and also the Players Association is trying to point the finger at him for saying he's the one who screwed up. They're kind of making him the call guy.

Exactly. He is, clearly. Because did the coach say, hey, we really need him? Like, okay, even him. I mean, look, if I walk into a hospital with a brain injury, are they going to take my declaration that I'm ready to walk out of there seriously? No, of course not. That's standard. And so did they listen to pressure from him?

Then the real decision, which is to play him in the second game after the short week, after already suffering a problem. And I personally feel sick watching that. Oh, it's the hands. Of the hands. I've been around people who have had seizures before, personally feel sick watching that. Oh, it's a hand. Of the hands. I've been around people who've had seizures before and I've watched that. So like immediately,

like when you see that and you know, or if you ever watch UFC and you see a guy get knocked out cold, something like that, it is, it's sickening

to kind of see it. And, you know, the entire country is really riveted and fixated on the story because I think it just shows you that a lot of these guys

will go to the ultimate ends of pushing these people, you know, basically for our amusement. And I'm sure they're getting paid, but putting them in immense harm's way. It is profit above everything else. It is profit. That's ultimately what it is. Yeah. And they just want to obscure the reality. I mean, they should just be clear with us. They're like, yeah, look, our players, let's be real here. They're going to suffer a lot of brain damage. They get paid a hell of a lot of money. The issue comes from people who are in the pipeline, you know, high school players and college players, guys who have no chance of ever going into the NFL. The person who actually told me about the story himself is a friend of mine.

He himself suffered a concussion while he was a college player. A bad college a bad concussion and his coaches were like hey we need he wasn't even on scholarship and he had no chance of playing in the nfl and that they wanted him to keep playing he's like no i'm quitting i have to save my brain well good for him yeah but i mean yeah i mean these guys are warriors they're trained to you know part of their training is like to be fearless and play through it and this is the culture in the locker room is like hey man you good right like get back out there we need your. And this is the culture in the locker room is like, hey, man, you good, right? Like, get back out there. We need your ass. So that is the culture. That's why you have to have these protocols in place to protect these players. It's also important to keep in mind. I mean, you hear about the stars who were multimillionaires who play long careers with Brett

Favre's of the world, you know, but most of these guys, their careers in the NFL are very short, talking about a couple of years for most of these guys. Now, I, again, I haven't, I don't follow football closely, but in watching the analysis of what happened here, some of the commentators were saying, you know, the knock on Tua has been that he can't stay healthy. So he has in his head already, like, I got to prove them wrong that I can stay healthy and I can stay on the field. So then he has this added pressure of, I gotta be good, I gotta get back out there. That's why you have to protect these players. Because look, the NFL just settled not too long ago,

a billion dollar class action lawsuit over exactly this issue that they knew they were causing these head injuries and long-term trauma. Because again, when you really start to have an issue, it's not from the concussion. It's from not allowing the concussion to heal before the player is once again put at risk. That's really where the issue comes in. And so you had all these players alleging like they knew what the science was. They knew what

the problems were. And they still push us back on the field. You're talking, I mean, Junior Seau is an example. He killed himself, and afterwards they analyzed his brain. Guess what? CTE. Yeah, and Aaron Hernandez, too, is like, I was talking with our guys before we came on the air. People should go listen to the Boston Globe podcast on Aaron. I mean, he already had a troubled childhood and his own personal problems, but maybe he was always going to be screwed up,

but it seems clear as hell that the CTE did a real number on his brain at the very least. I'm not going to say it blaming for his murder, but look, you know, his suicide and the way that all went down, I mean, he was clearly off his rocker. And when they analyzed his brain, it was like, what? They said he had a brain of like an 80 year old man. And he was like in his twenties when he died. You know, I was also thinking about, Joe Rogan was talking about this recently with regards to the Brett Favre story. And he, you know, given his own experience in the fighting world, I thought it was a fantastic point. He's like, you know this Brett Favre thing?

He's like, that guy got knocked around for 20 years. He's like, people just make stupid decisions when they have that amount of brain damage. They're impulsive. They do dumb things. They don't think clearly. So it's not just the consequences of right now, like can he play?

Can he not play? Can his brain heal? Yeah. These are lifelong for all the people who are involved. And so the research says if you have a concussion,

it takes your brain about two to four weeks to heal. That's a long time. They held Tua out of a game for like 10 minutes before they sent him back in. Right. And then four days later,

he's on the field again. So that's how long it takes. So even after your symptoms abate, you still have weeks of recovery where you need to rest and not be back in a violent sport before you should really be allowed back on the field. Now, if you then suffer a second concussion during that period,

this is going to create an immense amount of trauma within the brain. Now you're talking about months for the brain to heal. Two to four months you're talking about then for the brain to heal. This man should not be back on the field again this season. I mean, that's what the science says, is that even if he's not symptomatic, even if he's saying he feels fine, his brain is going to take months to heal from this trauma. And again, when you see that, what they call the fencing response, that indicates there is severe trauma and especially that impacts the brain stem. So this is a serious, serious issue that needs to

be dealt with. And from the NFL, let's be real, the only reason they care about this is because this has been a big issue for their business. They had to pay that billion-dollar settlement. So they fired the neurologist. The other thing they did is they put out, and I think we have something on this, they put out new concussion guidelines. NFL's concussion protocol under scrutiny after Tunga Vailoa is hit hard again.

The NFL said its concussion protocols were followed when Tua Tunga Vailoa hit his head on Sunday. That in and of itself, massive red flag. If that is the case, that is a huge red flag. On Thursday, the quarterback left the field on a stretcher after a second head hit. What they ultimately did to tighten up these protocols is they said that previously there was this loophole. If a player demonstrated gross motor instability, that was considered a no-go symptom, but it could be overruled by this supposedly independent neurologist and the team doctor. And oh,

by the way, the team doctor gets the final say. And again, the team doctor oftentimes incentivized just to get these guys back on the field at any and all costs. So they have now said, no, we are closing that loophole. If there is gross motor instability that is witnessed, then we are not going to allow the player back onto the field during the game. And again, I think the only reason they care about this is because they are worried about the bottom line. Because the other issue is the future of the sport. I mean, you know, already I think this has started to be the case where more and more middle class parents look at this and they're like, I'm not putting my kid in the sport. I wouldn't let my I mean, personally, I wouldn't let my son play football, not knowing what we know about the brain injury. And so you saw this with boxing, where it gradually stops being this like middle class sport and starts being a lower class,

working class sport. And, you know, that has major implications in terms of like the profitability of the game and how much purchase it has within American political culture. So this is the other thing that they ultimately worry about here. So, you know, they don't really care about these players, their health, their future. I think they've demonstrated this many, many times over. But they are worried about the bottom line and what incidents like this could ultimately do to them there. Yeah. Also, the coach said that he was relieved it was, quote, only a concussion. Can you believe that?

Only a traumatic brain injury. And the coach ultimately has the final say. I mean, you see your player stumbling around. Again, it did not take—and this is the other thing. Oh, and we didn't even mention. There's so much to this story. They lied and said this man had a back injury. When he's holding his head, stumbling and falling, and doesn't know where he is,

anyone can look at that and say, that's not a back, he's not holding his back, that wasn't the problem, it was his head. They continue to lie about that, by the way, and say, oh no, it was a back injury in the first game. Come on, come on. So I do lay a lot of the blame here at the feet of the coach who, even if the doctors came back and said,

no, no, we think he's good, could have said, you know what, we need to arrest this guy. This is not right, this is not okay. Very true. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, got a bit of bombshell celebrity finance crypto news yesterday. So Kim Kardashian has agreed to settle with the SEC for over a million dollars after failing to disclose she was being paid to promote a now basically dead crypto token.

It was called Ethereum Max. By the way, in spite of the name, Ethereum Max has no relationship to Ethereum. The intentionally confusing naming kind of shows you what a scam it was from the jump. All right, here is the Instagram post that Kim posted that created all of the ire among financial regulators. She writes, are you guys into crypto? This is not financial advice, but sharing what my friends just told me about the Ethereum Max token. A few minutes ago, Ethereum Max burned $400 trillion in tokens, literally 50% of their admin wallet, giving back to the entire Emacs community. She then included a bunch of hashtags, including one that indicated this was an ad. But that bare bones disclosure apparently did not impress the SEC. Here's what Chair Gary Gensler told CNBC. Congress passed a law many decades ago called the Securities Act, and it was to protect the public. And part of that law said that if you

tout a stock, you need to disclose not only that you're getting paid, but also the amount, so the source and the nature of those payments. And so this was to protect the public when folks, and this law was passed in the 1930s. We brought these types of cases over the decades, but even in the last five years with regard to crypto, it's really important that the public understand if somebody is touting a crypto security token, that are they getting paid and how much are they getting paid? And we brought a case a number of years ago, I think four years ago against Floyd Mayweather, against DJ Khalid, Steve Seagal, an actor, and others over the years. So this is,

unfortunately, it's another time that we brought a case. So basically what happened here is Kardashian and a bunch of other celebrities too, by the way, including NBA player Paul Pierce, boxing champ Floyd Mayweather Jr., they all got paid a bunch of cash. In Kardashian's case, I think it was 250k to tout this Ethereum max thing and to talk it up. According to a different class action lawsuit, their plugs artificially boosted the price and left ordinary investors holding the bag when the whole thing promptly lost 97% of its total value. In other words, looks like a classic pump and dump kind of a scheme. Now, Kardashian, as I've indicated, far from the only offender here in terms of crypto and also NFT promotions. You had Reese Witherspoon

backing some cringy girl boss NFT thing. Matt Damon recorded a Super Bowl crypto ad trying to persuade viewers that investing in crypto will lead to historic greatness for them. Gwyneth Paltrow taking time off from selling vagina candles to sell bored ape NFTs. I could go on and on here. For celebrities, getting a cash payday for promoting these schemes was quick and easy. For those who were behind the coins and NFTs, well, the whole ecosystem is just built on hype and selling a story anyway. So who better to push that story than the celebrities our society has become so incredibly invested in? The government clearly wants to make an example out of Kim Kardashian here. In addition to Gensler

making the media rounds and placing stories in top newspapers, the SEC even filmed this little video, very highly produced to use the occasion of the Kardashian fine to warn investors about falling for crypto schemes that are touted by influencers. Good. They should do more of that. They should make it absolutely clear to celebrities that their shameless crypto and NFT scam shilling comes with a cost. Because unfortunately, this problem is actually way bigger than we might like to imagine. According to Morning Consult, a full 20% of American adults saw Kim's little Ethereum Max Instagram post. That is shocking to me. 19% of those who said they saw the ad then went and invested in this scam. That is so disturbing on so many levels and demonstrates

that Kim's million dollar fine is frankly nothing compared to the damage that she ultimately cost. And again, this is a currency that promptly pursued to lose 97% of its value once the fairy tale of wealth and glamour instantly fell apart. What's more, 45% of current crypto owners say they would be more likely to invest in a cryptocurrency if they saw

a celebrity endorsement for it. Guys, please, for the love of God, don't do that. These people do not care about you. They don't give a shit if you lose everything. They're just cashing in on our celebrity-obsessed culture and could give a damn about the wreckage that they ultimately leave behind. As crypto critic and himself Hollywood guy Ben McKenzie writes, the Hollywoodization of crypto is a moral disaster. And for celebrities fans who likely have far less money to lose, it's potentially a financial one as well.

These rich and famous entertainers might as well be pushing payday loans or seating their audience at a rigged blackjack table. Well said. But fully considering the case of Kardashian is also to realize how much scamming behavior

is apparently perfectly legal in this realm. Point that Andrew Ross Sorkin actually made in his interview with Gensler. How does that differ, for example, from others who make similar posts who may own, in fact, different cryptos or other securities and promoting them? I'm thinking of Michael Saylor from MicroStrategies, who has a huge stake in this, has been out promoting on online and elsewhere. Or you can even talk about an Elon Musk who's talked about Dogecoin. They may not be being paid specifically cash to promote those things, but they have such a large investment in them that they have even more at stake, frankly.

Now, Gensler didn't really answer that question, but it's clear the crackdown should go a lot further because the whole sector is rife with fraud, with rug pulls, with pump and dumps, and just regular people being sold a pack of lives. Honestly, Kardashian is just the tip of the iceberg here. The whole thing makes me so sad. people being sold a pack of lives. Honestly, Kardashian is just the tip of the iceberg here. The whole thing makes me so sad. After 2008 was clear, the traditional banking system had failed the world. It was clear the regulators had either been asleep at the switch or actively complicit in the whole catastrophic debacle. One response to that was demanding that Congress shut down the casino, return banking to being boring and stable by reinstituting the regulations which served us

well for decades following the Great Depression. In other words, have the government step in with stronger laws and real enforcement. The other response was to give up on government altogether, and that instinct is embodied by the radical libertarian dream of crypto. And honestly, I was pretty sympathetic to it and the idealism that is at its core, creating a currency that could be important for dissidents or for citizens living under repressive regimes or which have been hit by cruel and unfair sanctions. I genuinely understand that appeal. But the reality is they have just recreated all the problems of the skeeziest, scummiest

parts of our financial system with many fewer avenues for accountability and enforcement from the government. All of the pitfalls, none of the U.S. government backing or backstops. Ultimately, it is too perfect that this hollow answer to the core problems of our society would be pumped up by the hollowest and most vapid creatures among us. And Sagar, this is really a live issue. Part of why you see people as sams... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, so what are we looking at? Well, there's been so much going on in the world, it literally feels dizzying. Of course, taking the tension off many, many topics. But if we proceed under the hope that I maintain there will be no nuclear Armageddon, then it is still important to pay attention to the other big stories that mattered in the before times. The biggest before Ukraine was COVID, the COVID pandemic. The embrace in this country of a new regime of censorship of social control, unprecedented elite consensus about what

everyone should do with their own bodies. I've always said it's impossible to decouple policy that followed from the pandemic from the debate about where COVID came from in the first place. The authoritarianism and corruption that stopped legitimate inquiry into whether COVID came from in the first place. The authoritarianism and corruption that stopped legitimate inquiry into whether COVID leaked from the lab was a microcosm of exactly what went wrong with the debate in the first place. Developments this week prove exactly why, more than two years later, the inability of the media or elite to ever have an honest conversation with America leaves us more vulnerable today than ever before. And that latest development in the lab leak story is unbelievable. Unbelievable. Dr.

Fauci, in the waning months of his tenure as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is giving out a grant for research on bat coronaviruses. If that grant of research wasn't bad enough, the person who was awarded the grant is none other than Peter Daszak, who is the head of EcoHealth Alliance. If you are not familiar, let's take a trip back down memory lane. Peter Daszak and the EcoHealth Alliance are the organization which received a grant from Dr. Fauci and the NIAID before the COVID-19 pandemic. It served as a cutout for funding of something called gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That type of research effectively

involves brewing up new types of viruses in the lab for the purpose of trying to predict future pandemics that might arise naturally and then creating vaccines or antidotes to those viruses. The research was actually barred by the Obama administration for being too risky in 2014. It was though violated and eventually reversed by Dr. Fauci under Donald Trump. The key to that story is that Fauci's funding of gain-of-function research at the lab and the role of Dr. Peter Daszak was a major point of vulnerability in the opening days of the pandemic when emails revealed that the initial reaction by those who looked at the emerging coronavirus in January of 2020 was COVID-19 almost certainly came from a lab. As I have shown here before with government

documents since released in the span of just two weeks, a full-blown cover-up ensued. Dr. Fauci, working with others who relied on him for grant money, actively got a false article published which declared that COVID did not leak from the Wuhan lab, setting the scientific consensus. That paper served as the justification for a now infamous letter published by The Lancet in February 2020, which, quote, strongly condemned any rumors or conspiracy theorists, so-called, who believed that COVID came from the lab. From there, the position became doctrine, and it was impossible to question. Twitter accounts any rumors or conspiracy theorists, so-called, who believed that COVID came from the lab. From there, the position became doctrine, and it was impossible to question. Twitter accounts were suspended for suggesting it. YouTube accounts were disabled. Full-scale censorship at the

highest level of our government. And then the facts began to come out. The first crack in the establishment's armor was Dazak himself, who might be one of the most corrupt figures in this story, other than Fauci. Dazak was appointed as a member one of the most corrupt figures in this story, other than Fauci. Dazak was appointed as a member of the World Health Organization's task force responsible for investigating whether COVID leaked from the lab in the first place. Miraculously, guess what they found? It didn't. The justification? Well, he had no access to the data, but he took the Chinese word for it. Seriously, that's what he said when he was pressed. Let's take a listen. We met with them. We said, do you audit the lab?

And they said, annually. Did you audit it after the outbreak? Yes. Was anything found? No. Do you test your staff? Yes. But you're just taking their word for it.

Well, what else can we do? From there, things really began to spiral. The former CDC director, Robert Redfield, told Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN he believed from the beginning COVID leaked from the Wuhan lab, that he had seen evidence to back that up and that he was retaliated against by the bureaucracy from believing it.

From there, reams of evidence began to pour out that I've covered here before. Research showing sickness coming out of the lab in November, 2019. Athletes getting sick in China. Search data for symptoms of COVID. The fact that the structure of the virus itself has always looked to be lab-made.

At this point, even the scientific community and the medical journal, The Lancet, have retracted its declaration that there is no way COVID came from the lab and at least admit today, it is just as likely that it did, just as likely that it didn't. Given the amount of evidence to show a full-scale cover-up by the Chinese, starting in September 2019 onward, I have no doubt that it did leak from the lab.

But okay, let's say we don't know. That's just conjecture on my part. Let's say there's only a 50% chance. 50% is pretty damn high for a virus that killed millions of people, and worse, a virus created with research possibly funded by the United States. If the risk is that high, then maybe we just shouldn't do that research at all anymore. That's the problem with what has occurred. After everything, after the exposure of Daszak as a liar and a Chinese stooge, as himself active in the cover-up campaign to save his own ass and Fauci. Fauci still on his way out gives him a U.S. government grant to research bat coronaviruses in Southeast Asia.

Have we learned nothing, people? Studying these viruses and engineering them may have started this whole damn thing. You're going to fund the same guy who literally funded the Wuhan lab? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills watching this all unfold. And also the lack of media reaction. At the very least, it has to be a story that Fauci rewards a longtime controversial ally a grant on the way out. But nothing, the lack of media inquiry on this shows how complicit these people are in perhaps one of the greatest cover-ups in American history. And one which way they will look back on, will not be kind to principal figures that I've mentioned here today. I only pray the same lab leak doesn't happen again. But since literally the exact same players are involved, why should

we be so optimistic? I guess we'll wear a mask that should do the trick. I mean, Crystal, Peter Daszak, look, again. I have no words. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. One thing we've been talking here a lot about is the media coverage of Russia's war in Ukraine and how they have not laid out any of the downsides of our strategy whatsoever and how important it is to ultimately push for peace. One of the voices who have been sounding the alarm is Bronco Marsetic. He joins us now. He's a writer for Jacobin and also author of the book, Yesterday's Man, The Case Against Joe Biden. Great

to see you, Bronco. Thanks for having me. Good to see you, sir. I wanted to put this polling up on the screen first. We've mentioned this a few times in the show, but I think it's important to break it down. This is from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. They're one of the only outlets that's been interested in, like, how the American public feels about diplomacy. And you have nearly half of voters who say the U.S. should be doing more diplomatically to help end the war in Ukraine. And yet this view is not heard anywhere practically in the media. What did you make of these polling results? I mean, to me, it illustrated the really stark divide between the discourse in the mainstream press, not just the mainstream press, really, really all media and a discourse, particularly

on social media, compared to what is that ordinary people, ordinary American people actually believe, that the majority of the U.S. public believes. And this is not just the United States. I mean, there was a poll in Germany that showed most Germans, you know, who are really feeling pretty harshly the economic blowback of the sanctions. They want more diplomacy to try and end the war. This is also the prevailing opinion in most of the rest of the world in the global south you know there was this uh reuters report not too long ago that quoted a an

african diplomat who said you know i'm paraphrasing here but he said this this idea that we're we're hearing from the west that the war must simply just go on and on and on and there shouldn't be any diplomatic engagement to end it. It's completely bizarre to us. We don't understand it at all. You know, you can look at some of the other countries, you know, countries like Turkey or, say, Mexico, who have, you know, attempted to try and broker some sort of peace agreement.

Turkey apparently successfully had brokered an agreement in March until a culmin combination of the Bucha massacre and Boris Johnson's surprise trip to Kyiv scuttled that. You've also got Mexico, you know, AMLO, the Mexican president, who's a left-wing president, he put forward his own peace deal to the UN not too long ago. You know, I mean, it was unsuccessful,

but still it shows that there is largely a push in much of the world to end this because we have to remember obviously the people who are feeling the effects and the horror of this war of britain's invasion first and foremost are ukrainians of course um but it's not just ukrainians that are suffering the economic blowback of the war of the sanctions being felt around the world really really brutally you know there's food shortages there's political instability um and we're seeing some of that creeping into western europe as well uh and well not just western europe all of europe uh there is a tremendous amount of fear uh for what's gonna happen uh during the winter that's coming that's gonna seems to be especially uh brutal um you've

seen protests there was a protest uh some a month or two ago in prague i think about 70 000 people were protesting you know calling for the end of sanctions uh there was uh recently protests in moldova uh hungary uh has come under a pretty pretty uh intense uh political strain because of this as well there's been a lot lot of unhappiness by the general population because of the effect of the sanctions. So there's a lot going on here that I think we have to think about. We have to think about this in a much broader way than just, you know, in terms of kind of pushing for a war that may be years long

or even never ending. You know, something I wonder about is when I was a kid, we invaded Iraq, and there were thousands of people in the streets kind of protesting against it. Right now, we're probably closer to a nuclear strike. I'm not saying it's very likely, but closer than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don't really see any domestic strife about that at all. Why do you think it is? Is that a media thing?

Like people don't understand it or people just think it's too abstract? Like where are we in that process? You know, I don't know. I think it's a combination of things. I have found myself over this weekend in the incredibly surreal position where, you know, I always thought growing up that if the world ever came close to nuclear wars, it did in the early 60s, that the hardest thing would be to pressure those in power to step back, to de-escalate, to try and find some way out of the crisis that brought us back from the break

and didn't lead to nuclear annihilation. I'm finding that the most difficult thing at the moment is trying to convince people, you know, people who are politically engaged, who are politically active, who are educated, who are intelligent people, trying to convince them to, one, to care about this issue and to understand the danger that we are in right now, number one. And then number two, to actually oppose it, to say that, yes, the Russian invasion is horrific and illegal and reckless and stupid and morally wrong and so many other things. Yes, absolutely, Ukraine deserves to take back the territory that was seized from it. are we really willing to make that a more important cause than stopping the annihilation of vast swaths of the human race

in a nuclear war? Because you have to remember, if nuclear war starts, things can very quickly escalate, you know, beyond just the countries that are involved, number one. You know, if it's US and Russia, that's going to suddenly involve the nato states missiles are going to be flying all over the place we're talking canada we're talking western europe eastern europe and i have to remind people as well that that

when we're talking about nuclear war uh the country that's going to get hit first is ukraine itself what is the use of any military victory and even any land reclamation that gets back if the country is wiped off the map? What does it matter anymore? These things are not being discussed at all. And I'm surprised, honestly, at some of the pushback I've gotten to this. I always thought that trying to avoid nuclear war was the most uncontroversial possible thing one could talk about. And yet I'm finding suddenly in this political climate that we're stuck in at the moment that it is apparently not considered such a simple thing anymore. Yeah. What would a different approach ultimately look like?

I mean, from the beginning of this, I was always advocating for the United States to negotiate with Russia over its demands over NATO, you know, which it's not the only cause of the war, but that is a big part of what started this, the Russian long-simming resentment over NATO expansion and various kind of slights in the fronts that the Russian leadership saw for the United States. I think that diplomacy on that subject early on could have stopped it.

I think that diplomatic engagement throughout from uh uh from the West not just by the by Russia and Ukraine because you have to remember I mean the US is a huge party to this conflict I mean the US is not just sending unprecedented amounts of military aid to Ukraine but it's also uh been involved in war planning with the ukrainian government it's been involved in giving them intelligence and other support that has allowed them to sink uh you know the the russian flagship and the black seeds allowed them to kill russian generals so the us is heavily involved in this and again a lot of this war is as as as we saw in the lead-up it's it's a lot of us to do with uh putin's resentment towards the west um and so uh and then the us in particular and so the us need to step in i think and and not just say oh

this is a course for ukrainians we we have nothing to do with this i think the us really has to come in and engage with us and i i wish you know at the moment uh i'm surprised at the the the lack of movement around the world. It's not just that the U.S. is not really, well, doesn't seem to want to engage beyond just sort of threats as an attempt to deterrence. But, you know, I mean, what about China? What about the many, many countries that would be affected by a nuclear exchange?

Why are they not, why is there not a mass call for some sort of deescalation? You know, where is the peace movement? You know, there used to be a robust peace movement through the Cold War to demonstrate the public unwillingness to go to the places that we are in right now. All of that seems to be gone. I wish that the people, you know,

were more active and more outspoken about this to demonstrate that, no, you know, nuclear war is not worth anything. I think that is all extraordinarily well said. And there's literally no issue that is more important than the fact that it has been. I mean, the position you're advocating, which is like the mainstream position in American society, the fact that it's totally absent from the media conversation,

the fact that there was never any discussion or debate about the potential downsides of the strategy that the U.S. was employing. I mean, this may turn out to be one of the most devastating mistakes in the history of the country. I hope not in the history of mankind. Find out. Bronco, great to see you. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.

Thank you, guys. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've got the Chicago show. The tickets are on sale, folks. Go ahead and buy them as we're really excited. We're going to be there in 11 days. 11 days.

Feels right around the corner. I feel like Atlanta was yesterday. Apparently, it was like two and a half weeks ago. It's going to be super fun. Very excited about that. It's going to be super fun. Very excited about that. It's going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Buy your tickets. The link is in the description.

Also, we've got the CounterPoints show debuting tomorrow because of an off-day schedule this week. So I'm really looking forward to see what they do with the show. It's a lot of fun to celebrate their launch and also the hiring of our new person. Continue our expansion. We've got the discount going on right now. 10% off. Link also in the description for that. You guys know the drill. You'll see Ryan and Emily tomorrow. You'll see us on Thursday.

We've got content, partners, so much more enabled by all of you. Thank you very much. We'll see you all next time. This is an iHeart Podcast.