Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/7/21: Debt Crisis Looms, Biden Approval Sinks, Gain of Function, Havana Syndrome, Jon Stewart, Striketober, Biden Caves to China, India Walton, and More!

Episode Date: October 7, 2021

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/id1570045623Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXlMerch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Jonah Furman’s Substack: https://whogetsthebird.substack.com/India Walton’s Campaign: https://www.indiawalton.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know. Some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around.

And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The voices and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media.

CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am

right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Some truly dire poll results if you are Joe Biden and the Democrats. Some of the worst numbers, frankly, that we've seen yet. We'll dig into those. And look, it's one poll. It's a little bit of an outlier at this point, but it kind of tracks with some of where the trends have been. So anyway, we'll get into what you should know about that. Very troubling news about expansion of gain-of-function research. And seems to be no sort of rethinking of the type of dangerous activities that scientists have been engaged in that maybe sparked this first pandemic. So we'll bring you the details of that.

Also, a great debunking of the latest deep state plot conspiracy theory that has been foisted upon us by the media, this whole Havana syndrome thing. Turns out there was an earlier report that said it was probably just crickets that people were hearing when they got these mysterious brain injuries, not microwave lasers from Russians. But there's a new report that has just been FOIA'd from high level sort of government advisors. So we'll talk to you about that. Jon Stewart's new show making Dennis McDonough, who's the head of the VA, very uncomfortable in an interview. Pretty interesting to watch. So we'll get into that. But we wanted to start this morning with the very latest in Washington, D.C. And frankly, pretty big surprise as far as I'm concerned. We've been telling you how one of the many crises that we're

facing is they're heading quickly to the debt ceiling limit. The debt ceiling is a totally stupid and arbitrary thing. However, if you default on your debt, that is a very real and very consequential and extraordinarily damaging thing. So we were at this impasse. McConnell and the Republicans have long said, look, Democrats, we're not going to help you out of your bind. Democrats didn't want to use the most obvious tool, which is the reconciliation process, where they don't need the Republican help because they didn't want to put a specific number on how much they're increasing the debt, which I think is a silly concern, but that's their sort of political concern about it.

They kind of ruled out minting the coin, although I think that's still on the table. So it was very unclear how this was ultimately all going to play out. Couple things just changed. Number one, Democrats had a pretty credible threat that they might actually change some of the filibuster rules to allow the debt ceiling suspension or increase to pass on a party line vote. That's one thing. The other thing that happened, let's throw this up on the screen, is a bunch of Wall Street dudes and CEOs from Citibank, Raytheon, NASDAQ, Deloitte, JP Morgan, Intel, AARP, and I don't actually know, what is Nardot Realtor? I don't know what that is. But anyway, a bunch of Wall Street execs and CEOs and those sorts of folks started freaking out, came to town and probably put some pressure on Republicans.

This is a constituency that Republicans tend to listen to. And lo and behold, again, to my surprise, Mitch McConnell actually blinked. He didn't say we're going to help you indefinitely suspend the debt ceiling or lift it a profound amount. But he did say that he will basically go along with Democrats lifting the debt ceiling for a short period of time. That would give us a couple months with the idea being, look, this takes your concerns about reconciliation taking too long off the table. Now you've got a little bit more time. You can go through the reconciliation process. You no longer need us. Let's throw this next piece up on the screen here so people can see it. So you've got the filibuster threat, which was the other aspect of this.

So you've got the Wall Street kind of starting to freak out. And then you had Dems pretty credibly threatening, hey, we may change the filibuster. Coons, who's a top Biden ally in the Senate, said that the likelihood of Dees using a filibuster carve out to deal with the debt limit is, quote, very strong if the GOP continues to block the bill. He says, my hope is that after today's vote, Republicans will rethink their approach. And apparently McConnell had met with both Sinema and Manchin. They're the two holdouts on the filibuster shortly before he ultimately caved and gave Democrats a little bit of breathing room, let's put this last tweet up on the screen.

You can see some of the information there. So apparently this is from Manu Raju at CNN. McConnell told his colleagues he is concerned about pressure on Manchin and Sinema to gut the filibuster in order to raise the debt ceiling. I am told he pointed to this as a reason why he is floating short-term increase in order to ease pressure on and push Democrats to use reconciliation. So Wall Street's starting to freak out. Democrats credibly threaten, hey, we might actually blow up the filibuster over this. You're pushing Manchin and Sinema to a place where they may actually go

along with at least reform on this one issue. And so you see McConnell come in and surprise, I think, almost all observers, including his own caucus, by giving Democrats this little bit of breathing room. Not even, what, five hours before McConnell said that, Mitt Romney came out and was like, yeah, we're going to filibuster the debt ceiling. Yeah, they were hard-line. Everybody was ready to go. They viewed it very much as causing chaos with the Biden administration, trying to force, you know, just general problems for the Democrats when they move through reconciliation. I can't help but think, Crystal, that those CEOs may have had one of the bigger hidden hands in all of this.

Because during actually that meeting with Biden, that time, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes apparently looked straight at the press and says, why is Senator McConnell giving a strategic victory to China by blocking the effort to resolve the debt limit? Now, I would love if Raytheon's CEO actually cared about strategic competition with China, cares a lot more about state of the economy, arms, all of that. That being said, I do think that this had a pretty significant impact. All these guys here in Washington, that always moves the table. Business roundtables are the biggest lobby here in the D.C. area. They have the ability to have pull. And I think that what happened here, and it's fascinating because I actually didn't think they would blink. And I

guess in some ways we do have to give some credit to Biden and Schumer and all those people, a very, very incredibly small amount, for saying that their idiotic strategy eventually did work just because the other fella, you know, they were eyeball to eyeball and the other fella did blink in this particular case. I think the reason for the blink was that it started to become real. People were like, hey, are you actually going to default on the debt? Because the CEOs, all these people in Washington were like, you can't do that. You're really going to screw us over. And all of our employees, plus the federal government, I thought, you know, McConnell just simply wouldn't care and he'd be willing to. But I forgot that the one thing he might care more than Republican advantage is for big business. So, you know, I guess it's a win

for America. Well, in fairness, I mean, this happened, I think, a little faster than either of us. I thought it would come all the way down to the wire. There'd be some last minute whatever to keep us from actually going over the cliff. But you were calling all along, hey, the one thing they might respond to is, you said the stock market, but effectively like business. And so McConnell didn't wait for the stock market to actually crash. It was enough that these CEOs and Raytheon and Wall Street and whatever were like, listen, this is a real thing and we're not happy about this. So he's giving Democrats a little bit of wiggle room here. But this is far from over. First of all, the deal has been floated.

It hasn't actually been totally locked in exactly how this is going to work, how long, what the mechanics are. All of those pieces still have to be ironed out between Democrats and Republicans. The other thing is, this is a brief reprieve. It's a sort of stay of execution. It's not like this whole battle and tension and friction and impasse is actually over. It's just kicked down the road. So are Democrats now going to start the process of reconciliation? The parliamentarians said they could do a separate track so they don't have to use – go back and start from scratch with the big reconciliation process that they've already commenced. They could do a separate track that's basically just lifting the debt ceiling. Are they going to get over their political concerns now that they have the time to do it? Or are they going to let this go down to the wire again and hope that McConnell in this game of chicken once again blinks?

But I think we can also say, which is an important piece of information, that these credible threats around the filibuster do actually hold at least some sway with McConnell. I wouldn't say just some. I would say it's probably 50-50. It was probably filibuster and CEO. And you put that together and the business community pressure, that's what ultimately I think pushed him over the edge. And it also is very telling that he had just met with Manchin and Sinema, who of course publicly have both been extremely hard line. Nope, our position is our position. We don't want to change the filibuster whatsoever. They said something to him in that meeting that made him a little bit nervous that their public position could be changed.

If you had a situation like this where, you know, I think they might have felt like they could go to their constituencies and say, listen, we aren't going to let the American, you know, we're not going to let a default occur. So we've been backed into a corner. Yes, we would like to keep the filibuster in place, but we're going to do this little carve out. That would give them a kind of out from their previously very clearly publicly stated position. Yeah, absolutely. I still think we should just mint the coin

so we just never do this ever again. But, you know, that's me personally. Hashtag mint the coin. Hashtag mint the coin. Get over it. It's an obvious answer. It's a stupid problem. It's a stupid problem. It's a stupid solution.

But it is legal. It doesn't lead to inflation. It's a just-in-counting gimmick. And I do think once you kind of break the seal on minting the coin, this thing is done. Because once you do it once and there's no real political consequence, which there's not going to be, then everybody just does it as a matter of course. People will say, what? A coin? And then they're going to move on with their daily lives. Right. Yeah. I mean, like, that was weird. Anyway, back to, like, whether my kids can go to school

and whether I have a job or not, the things that I actually really care about. So I think that we put this together. Now we have two months, breathing room, all of that. That actually, I think, is probably bad, if I were to say, for any of the hopes around negotiations with the reconciliation bill. Because a lot of the pressure that Democratic leadership had on Manchin, they were like, we've got to fix this, we've got to fix this. Because it was like three crises. It was government spending, it was debt ceiling, and it was reconciliation. All together combined with the fake deadline on the infrastructure bill. But now we're going to have to have, we've got Manchin and his document,

which he claims, you know, like his demands. Everybody's throwing out numbers. And again, I think the coverage of this is so silly because it's like, well, would you accept 1.5 instead of 1.8? I'm like, what does that mean? What is actually? What are we talking about? Is it 1.5?

Listen, if it was 1.5 trillion of literally free money to everybody, okay, that's one thing. The other side is like programs, means testing. He wants means testing on child tax credit. He wants lack of expansion. That's the actual debate that we're having. And that's what we're seeing on Capitol Hill right now. Yeah, and it's been interesting to watch the evolution of Bernie Sanders' attitude towards these folks, at least the way he's talking about

them publicly. Because when I interviewed him, he was very, very careful to not say anything that might be critical of Manchin or Sinema. The most he would say is like, look, we have people with a lot of different views in this caucus and we got to get them all on board. But clearly he was trying to play that role of the diplomat, not wanting to rock the boat, not wanting to piss people off. Yesterday, the gloves officially came off. Senator Sanders in like a 15 minute press conference just kind of went at both Sinema and Manchin. I think Manchin in particular, because he's been making these extremely obnoxious comments about like, I don't want to have people to have an entitlement mentality.

When, I mean, what a freaking hypocrite. Like, just look at the entitlement mentality that his daughter has who got her gig through her dad and got a fake MBA because her daddy was governor and then got a multimillion-dollar golden parachute as she's price-gouging people on EpiPens. So you are in no position to lecture about an entitlement mentality. Senator Sanders had a few things to say about that as well. Here's a little bit of a taste of what he said. The senator and I believe that we should be the only major country on earth not to guarantee paid family and medical leave, and that working mothers should not be able to stay home with a child who is sick. Our work is not entitled to be able to do that. He had a whole long riff about Manchin.

He also had some choice comments about Kyrsten Sinema. So he's clearly done sort of being the nice guy publicly, putting some more pressure on, feels like a little bit of vintage Bernie there. But, you know, as far as where these negotiations are, very hard to say, and how long they'll last and where they'll ultimately end up and if anything, even ultimately gets through. Because as you were pointing out, the time pressure is now effectively off. There are no more real hard deadlines in the near term. So you're going to have these ongoing negotiations. I saw the latest thing Manchin put out, like, hey, progressives,

you're going to have to pick arbitrarily among these three things. It was like child tax credit, affordable child care, and paid family leave. Why? And who says you get to call all of the shots? The media conversation has been really obnoxious and stupid, fixating just on the price tag rather than on the substance of the programs, as you're pointing out. And I think it's very unclear today where we're ultimately going to end up. No, I think that's exactly what it is. And, you know, Bernie actually made a pretty good point where he said, he's like, look, I could say I'm not going to vote for this unless Medicare for all is in the bill. He goes, but I'm not going to do that because most of the caucus doesn't agree with me.

And I was like, hmm, you know, in terms of the demands that you make, I mean, it's two ways. You could say, well, he probably should do that. I know there's a large commentariat out there that believes that. But also he was saying, like, look, I'm trying to be pragmatic. He's like, you're not being pragmatic in terms of where the rest of the caucus tends to be. And I thought that was actually a pretty excellent point in terms of how, I would say, Sinema in particular has handled herself throughout these negotiations. It's just, no, it's more of a vibe.

It has way less to do with the actual policy. Manchin, to his credit, has a whole, you know, two-page document, one of which has nothing to do with Congress. But look, you know, the guy's a boomer. That's how it goes. It was like about Fed, right? Yeah, it was like end quantitative easing. And it's like, yeah, Chuck Schumer's going to get right on that. It's like, what are you talking about? But you're right. At least Manchin, there's a sense that he's engaged in the debate.

Sinema is just being obstinate and won't respond to any questions, won't engage with her constituents, nothing. So it's impossible to know what she even wants or is for. And as I keep pointing out, they don't like to talk about the individual programs because the individual programs are very popular. And even with all of this, you know, there's now a sort of hardened partisanship around this and it's gotten a lot of negative press, social welfare spending, and we're going to get to that. Even with all of that, it continues to pull really well. And if you pull the individual pieces, they pull even better than the package as a whole. So it's hard to understand if you don't really get that the Masters Cinema and Mansion are serving, have nothing to do with their constituents, have nothing to do with public opinion, and everything to do with the pressure that they're getting from corporate donors and the well-paid gigs that

they would like to get after they exit the Senate. So there you go. Okay, let's get to the polling element of this. We previewed a little bit of that. Things are not good for Joe Biden and for the Democrats coming up in the midterm elections. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is the most stark that we've seen it so far. Do you approve of Joe Biden? Overall, 38% yes, 53% no. Just to give people context, that's a Trump-level number in terms of disapproval

and approval, in terms of the hard disapproval and the hard approval there. So amongst independents, it's 32-60. Then you look at other critical demographics, white college, 50-45. That's not nearly high enough for where it needs to be. Consider the new constituency of the Democratic Party and especially of the swing vote with Suburban. White non-college is at 23-69. He won over 30% of white non-college educated voters in the election. So in a deficit there already. And again, actually a critical group. And the Hispanic number underwater there at 42-51. So you've got three distinct constituencies, white college-educated voters, white non-college-educated voters, and Hispanics, all of which you are either underwater or not even close to the level that you actually need to be. And increasingly, it just seems like we're headed for another type of Obamacare situation,

Crystal, because the reconciliation package, they polled it in this Quinnipiac poll. It says 62% of Americans support the bipartisan infrastructure bill, 57% support the $3.5 trillion only spending bill. But again, it reminds me of the Obamacare thing. The White House at the time would always say, well, see, when you take Obama's name out of it, it's popular. And it's like, yeah, but Obama's name is on it. And in a hardened cultural political environment, it's going to be one of those things where who benefited most, for example, from like Medicare expansion, Medicaid expansion. It was red states. It was like poor people in red states. And a lot of those people still voted Republican because they're culturally conservative, watch Fox, whatever. And you shouldn't blame them. It's more about the lack

of the ability to actually reach them. But you have to consider this in a hardened cultural, political environment. And I think that's exactly what's happening here. The White House has foolishly, I think, let the conversation be, well, 1.7, 1.9. That means nothing to people. A $200 million program could mean everything to people if it meant you're going to be able to get dental work or not. Right. Like, hey, your kid who's been suffering for like 13 years might actually be able to go like get braces like that. That's how that's Biden seems to be every once in a while. The rare times when he speaks and he's lucid, he will pivot more in this direction.

Sanders is definitely one who speaks this way. Nobody else speaks in terms of what's actually in this thing. So I do think it is a political disaster right now because everybody at home is worried about COVID. They don't particularly care about this bill whatsoever because they don't know what's in it. And they also get on top of that all this BS Washington gridlock. So it's a disaster. Part of the reason why they don't know what's in it is because Democrats made a strategic choice. Joe Biden in particular made a strategic choice.

Rather than ditching the filibuster and passing these programs individually. Which is what we used to do. So that there's an individual debate. Hey, are you for paid family medical leave? That's true. Like, there's an individual debate. Hey, are you for paid family medical leave? That's true. Like that's massively popular. And then you got to put people like mansion and cinema, you put them in the spotlight. That makes it much more difficult to, then you got to actually talk about the programs and it actually puts Republicans in a tougher position because again, some of these

things are what the prescription drug reform, 80% support, but nobody's getting pressured over that because there's so many things piled into one bill. So part of the reason why there isn't energy, why there isn't pressure on Republicans or Manchin or Sinema to pass these incredibly popular provisions is because it all gets lumped together and then the media can just say, well, three and a half trillion, oh, that's a lot of money. What if we did $2 trillion? And what if we did $1.5 trillion instead? And you keep from having to get into the details. People don't realize what, because they're busy and living lives, and this whole process has been extraordinarily complicated, even for us to follow, like all the ins and outs of it, is so inside Beltway. And you can't help but talk about the process,

because the process is so integral to whether any of this actually happens or not. So people don't necessarily have a great grasp of how they might benefit, what's at stake, what pieces are on the chopping block, any of that. So there's a strategic failure there in terms of failing to actually get the point across about what these programs are and how they would benefit majority working class, middle class people. And you also just have a country that doesn't feel great about where we are. And some of that's Biden's fault. Some of it's just, you know, the trajectory of COVID, etc. But one of the things in this poll is about three quarters of Americans say they're either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the way things are going in the nation today. And so if people don't feel good

about their job prospects, they don't feel good about COVID, they don't feel good about the situation with their kids at school or all of those things, then it's going to reflect on the president. And some of this definitely is his fault because he had that window at the beginning. He had a honeymoon period where people felt pretty good about him. He had some momentum behind him. And then he allowed his program to get completely bogged down. He made a series of tactical and strategic errors, which have led to this very, very unpopular situation. And again, caveats. This is one poll. It is a bit of an outlier. Okay. So his actual approval rating is probably a little better than where we are. But there's no doubt that he's not in a great place.

And I would rather have Trump type numbers, even though they were a little lower on the approval rating, because the people that approved of Trump really loved that guy. Loved him, yeah. The people who approve of Biden, they're like, he's fine. Two thirds of the people who voted for him did so explicitly. They said the number one reason was that he wasn't Trump. Yeah. Most people who voted for Trump were like, I love Trump.

I love this guy. So when you're thinking about a midterm election, which are historically already extraordinarily difficult for the party in power, and you've got a group of—you're already underwater, and then the people who do support you are kind of like, nah, he's fine, I guess. He's doing OK. That's a really bad situation to be in. You would rather have the super like slightly lower numbers, but super energized, hardcore enthusiasm because those people are going to turn up. Those people are going to organize. Those people are going to do the work.

So I think that's a problem. The other thing that was to me very interesting in this poll is Biden's strength in the Democratic primary, in the general election, was that people kind of had some warm fuzzies about this guy. You know, they overlooked some glaring faults and some potential, you know, decline. He's not a young man anymore, safe to say, because they felt like this is a good guy. You know, he's generally well-intentioned. I think he cares about me. Those numbers have also fallen really dramatically. So the percent that say he cares about average Americans, just back in April, it was 58%. Now it's 49%.

That's a significant decline. The percent that says that he's honest back in April, it was 58%. Now it's 49%. That's a significant decline. The percent that says that he's honest back in April, it was a majority. It was 51% to 42%. Now he's underwater on are you honest. It was 44% yes, 50% no. Do you have good leadership skills? Used to be he had good numbers here. 52% said yes, 44% said no.

And again, just in April. Now you've got 41% saying yes and 56% saying no. So you've got a reversal of all these numbers that used to be pretty solid for him and were even better for him at the beginning of his administration. April was already a few months in. Very solid for him and allowed him to kind of get away with some things. People no longer have that halo around them or those warm fuzzies. And that's a big problem. And that was one of the things that kept Obama in office and got him reelected was that people just kind of liked him. The Republican attacks, the demonization of him, obviously it worked with a core base, but people generally thought like, I kind of like this guy, enjoy listening to him. Obviously, it worked with a core base, but people generally thought, like, I kind of like

this guy, enjoy listening to him. He's kind of funny, like he's got a good vibe to him. And so they forgave some of the things that they weren't happy with and ultimately put him back in office. Biden losing an edge on these personal characteristics, maybe it shouldn't matter, but it does matter a lot. Oh, it matters incredibly because you're right. Most people who voted for Obama, a lot of people in 2012 were like, my personal situation is not improved whatsoever. The economy, still not great. Not great.

Actually, the country seems even more on the cultural decline and everything is bad. Romney, I don't really like. That guy seems pretty heartless. Obama, well, his heart seems to be in the right place. Yeah, he certainly seems like a good dude. Yeah, that was basically it. And remember, I mean, he won, but he didn't win by all as much as he did in 2008.

And frankly, it seems even more eminently beatable. And like I said, I just keep looking at Obamacare and I keep looking at what's happening with Biden. And it just seems more clear what's happening. Josh Kroschauer tweeted this. Let's put this up there on the screen. It's a screenshot from Politico's morning playbook, morning consult poll. The Dems, who are hoping that $300 per child checks that the government has been putting out to families would be a winner, fewer than half of respondents gave congressional Democrats

credit. Fewer gave Joe Biden credit. Half of registered voters supported the payments. Only 35% wanted to make them permanent. So this is what happens when the culture war actually runs into real policy, which is that I would bet you, if you were to ask people, did this personally make a difference in your life? People would be like, oh yeah, absolutely. They're like, but what about the Democrats who passed them? I go, I can't stand them. They want to X, Y, Z, whatever. And again, I'm not criticizing. I'm giving you an example of how difficult it is in order to enact policy and any policy in an incredibly fractious political age. And especially with the political choices, like you said, that Biden administration has made

over the last couple of months and letting it devolve into this morass. It just seems very clear that even their signature legislative achievement is just going to run into the buzzsaw of most people are like, I do not have confidence in this man. And I do not have confidence in this party in order to not even deliver, do anything of which I can understand. 1.9, 1.2, 2.8. That doesn't mean anything to people.

And frankly, it shouldn't. I don't think it 2.8. That doesn't mean anything to people. And frankly, it shouldn't. I don't think it should. Right. And again, that's partly the fault of incredibly shitty, like, worthless media. But it is also the fault of Democrats who have chosen this tactical direction of lumping a whole bunch of things together and then passing them all as one through the reconciliation process rather than nuking the filibuster and passing them one by one so that you have a debate about the individual provisions. Because that's the real thing that stands out here is that people don't even, a lot of people don't even realize it was Democrats that did this for

them, right? They don't get that this was a signature priority of the Democratic caucus. And I don't blame them for that because these things were all lumped together and it wasn't- COVID. It was crazy. Right. It hasn't been like a central focus of we did this and Republicans are going to take it away. There hasn't been effective messaging around that. And you're kind of in the same place with the reconciliation bill. The one thing I dissent from on your comparison to Obamacare is the reconciliation bill is actually a lot more popular than Obamacare was. By the time Obamacare actually passed.

Yeah, it was probably in the 40s, right? We've got two more months, Crystal. Yeah, that's true. Run through the partisan buzzsaw, it was pretty split and fairly unpopular. I mean, here you have a significant margin. You've got, where are those numbers? 57%. 57% in support and only 40 percent against.

So you've got a 17-point advantage for this bill. That's pretty good in such a partisan environment. So it is popular. It's just that a couple things. I mean, Obama got the health insurers. They wanted Obamacare. So that helped get that thing through because, yeah, I mean, it mattered to the corporate Democrats that corporate America was for it.

And now you have corporate America against the reconciliation bill. So it really has nothing to do with whether it's publicly supported or not. There we go, folks. That's politics today. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to BreakingPoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. Okay, we have to get to another extremely troubling bit of news. This was flagged for us by friend of the show, Josh Rogin. So let's

go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is WSU Insider. What it shows is that WSU is to lead $125 million USAID project to detect emerging viruses. Now, this is important because USAID is a branch of the State Department. It's the International Development Agency of the U.S. State Department, which greenlights aid-granting projects all across the world. Africa, Ebola, all of that. This is within the USAID Discovery and Exploration of Emerging Pathosins, or so-called DEEP-VZN Project. VZN standing for Viral Zoonoses. For all of those virologists out there, I'm sorry

for my pronunciation. Now, why does this matter? Now, you might remember that detect emerging viruses is code for gain of function research. And actually, when you lead and read even deeper within this press release, they are announcing this grant to dig up 8,000 to 12,000 novel viruses all over the world, including those like SARS-CoV-2, aka coronavirus, including in China. So essentially, we have learned nothing. The $100,000 grant or whatever to EcoHealth Alliance for gain-of-function research, I think it was $200,000. This is $125 million for digging up 8,000 to 12,000 novel viruses all over the world in order to protect us against them because they're going to go out discover the virus so supposedly create a cure although how the hell did that work

out this time and then uh we'll all be safer or so they say there's no oversight on this crystal there's no congressional outcry from what i tell, he's the only person who even flagged this thing. And here you have a university literally bragging about it. I mean, you know. Yeah, I think that's the part that- It's out in the open. Really shows you that nothing has been learned is that, first of all, yeah, this barely got noticed. Totally unnoticed. Second of all, they're proud of it.

Yeah. They're like, Washington, this is a big coup for Washington State. I'm like, go, whatever their mascot is. Okay. You know? And, you know, I've long said, like, look, it's not definitive that it leaked from the lab, but evidence continues to mount. And even if you're not sure, it's clearly a possibility that it leaked from the lab. And we know that lab leaks occur all the time.

So the fact that, like, I don't even think we need to know definitively that it came from the lab for there to be a major rethinking of safety in science. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. And I haven't seen any of that in science. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something. And I haven't seen any of that conversation publicly. I don't see it happening within, well, I see it in some corners of the scientific community, but clearly not enough to break through to mainstream press coverage. Like, this should be a major topic of conversation for the public, for members of Congress, so that we can come to some idea and some consensus about what is actually safe moving forward, given the lessons that we've learned from this entire experience. And none of that has obviously occurred. This is just terrifying, the more that

you learn about the details. Let me read this quote. The project will focus on finding previously unknown pathogens from three viral families, have large potential for viral spillover from animals to humans. Coronaviruses, the family that includes SARS-CoV-2, such as Ebola virus, para, I can't pronounce this one, paramoxy viruses, which include viruses that cause measles and Nipah. So Ebola, one of the deadliest viruses known to man, measles, one of the worst plagues that humanity ever had to suffer under, and now coronavirus, the worst pandemic

that we've had in about 100 years. The goals are ambitious, they say, to collect 800,000 samples in five years of the project, most of which will come to wildlife, then detect whether viruses from the families are present in the samples. When they are found, the researchers will determine the zoonotic potential of the virus or the ability to transfer from animals to humans. And all of this, like I said, they are digging up, doing research on, screening and sequencing

now the genomes of the ones that are going to pose the most risk to animals and human health. What's the safety protocol? Do we have any oversight of this whatsoever? Why is the Biden administration greenlighting a $125 million grant to this project? I think what this goes to show is that the fact that this was moved through the bureaucracy, and I'm not saying I blame Biden or whatever for explicitly being like, go out and fund this. Somewhere up the chain, somebody has to check a box. And the fact that somebody in the State Department, somebody at the White House, the National Security Council, someone, somewhere, this is how bureaucracy works, had to look at this and just say, okay,

that he did not even enter their head. Hey, where they got this deadly pandemic, you know, right now, mounting evidence. I mean, in fact, if you were to look at both sides of the scale and say natural origin versus lab leak origin, it's overwhelmingly on the lab leak side. And you don't even think, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this. And here's the worst part. Congress is so, they are so, heads are so far up, you know where, they're following about reconciliation. They're, you know, January 6th, they're still issuing subpoenas. Every day I read about subpoenas being issued to Steve Bannon. I'm like, oh, yeah, you're going to crack the case. I cracked the case.

Trump said we're going to go down to the Capitol, and they did it. The end of the story. You need more of a commission? It's over. There were also some feds involved. Maybe get to the bottom of that one. Down here in this one, we should be having a serious, robust oversight commission. There are, from what I can tell, three people in Congress who are actually concerned about this.

The only one I respect in any way is Mike Gallagher, who is the congressman from Wisconsin. He is not taking much more of a partisan view of this and is actually trying to get to and block gain-of-function research. Rand Paul, we all know why Rand Paul is doing what he's doing. That doesn't mean I respect – I don't respect it in terms of questioning Fauci and more. But everybody else in Congress, they just want to go after Fauci. That's it for pandemic restriction. And okay, like I get it. I also can't stand Fauci.

But now you're in the realm of partisan politics. Nobody's having a serious discussion about whether this is okay or not. It's increasingly clear where I think coronavirus came from, how it came about, and the government, the U.S. government had a very big role in how all that came to play. We were the leaders and pushers and funders of gain-of-function research. And now they're doing the exact same thing, Crystal, $125 million grant to this project, including in China. I would love to know if the Wuhan lab is going to be a recipient. I wouldn't even put it past him at this point to funnel money back to the lab. Be like, oh, Dr. Xi, she's a great virologist. What are you talking about?

We're bat lady. She's the bat lady. If you question it, they'd be like, you're racist. Yeah, you're a racist. She calls herself the bat lady, by the way, not me. Yeah. It's just a really depressing state of failure in the country that, you know, there's no way that you could expect. Like, I don't even want to call for congressional panels to discuss scientific protocols and safety or anything.

Because it'd just be some obnoxious shit show of like, I'm going to own Fauci. I'm going to defend Fauci. That's right. And then, you know, you don't ultimately get anywhere. So while they were telling us that the Wuhan lab leak was the conspiracy theory. That's a good transition. They were actually, I was workshopping that in my head while you were talking. This is the conspiracy theory the media was feeding us about how all of these diplomats around the world, first in Cuba, had been targeted by Russian microwave rays. And they

heard this strange sound. And then they came down with these bizarre symptoms. And there were cases of it popping up all over the world. And the media is reporting this seemingly insane story, straight faced. They've got senior government officials who are giving them the details on all of this. And I've long been pretty skeptical of the whole Russian microwave ray theory that was being pushed in the media because obviously, you know, they have their agenda and they have their own CIA handlers that they like to uncritically do stenography for. So there had been an indicator before. And by the way, Glenn Greenwald covered this amazingly. You should check out his video on it because he breaks it all down incredibly. But there had been some indications before that the sound that they heard, that they

said was associated with these microwave rays, that what it actually was was crickets, okay? So there's a new evidence to back up the idea that this was not, in fact, Russian rays. It was crickets. Let's throw this New York Post tear sheet up there on the screen. Havana syndrome culprits may be crickets, scientists say. This is all thanks to a FOIA request from BuzzFeed News. There's a group, an advisory group called Jason that they describe, BuzzFeed describes as an elite scientific board that has reviewed U.S. national security concerns since the Cold War. They looked into, um, this report of the microwave rays and they analyzed the sound and they did the whole thing. confirmed that it sounds like crickets. They even identified the very specific type of cricket that was emitting this noise as they're doing their mating signals. Anyone who lives in a

rural area has certainly heard of similar form of sort of buzzing type of noise. And the interesting thing here, too, is that the State Department has had this report for a couple of years. Yes. And yet they continue to feed the media this idea that it was probably Russian microwave rays. And even just recently, on Tuesday, U.S. House of Representatives voted 427 to 0 to pass a Havana Act bill compensating CIA and State Department personnel affected by these incidents. News reports have widely blamed Russian spies randomly targeting CIA and State

Department personnel with microwave weapons and attributed this view to senior U.S. officials. Again, while they had this report and knew that the sound was crickets and that Jason also said that while they can't rule out some other cause going on in terms of the physical effects, which, you know, were real and people were feeling real symptoms and real problems from all of this, but they point to psychogenic effects. Mass psychology, in the report they say, can also trigger neurological injuries in people. Jason believes such psychogenic effects may serve to explain important components of the reported injuries. So this whole wild conspiracy theory about Russian spies targeting diplomats with microwave rays,

and here's the sound that accompanied it, totally bunk. And they've known it for years. And yet they continue to feed their media allies that this was Russian spies. Take a listen to one MSNBC report on exactly this thing. The mystery, who or what caused American officials living in these Havana homes and several hotels to suffer headaches, dizziness, and some serious brain injuries similar to a concussion. Last year, Cuban investigators told us they would never allow their territory to be used that way.

But now Russia is the leading suspect, NBC News has learned, according to three U.S. officials and two others briefed on the investigation. Evidence, they say, backed up by highly secret communications intercepts collected during a lengthy and ongoing investigation involving the fbi cia and other agencies u.s officials also tell nbc news investigators now believe the americans were deliberately targeted and that was never updated that you know i mean in fairness that report was from early on you know when there was something going on we didn't know but they never updated to be like hey by the way we figured it out and it was crickets. So pretty much all of this just shows that the people inside the government are crazy because they literally believe they're being, have microwaves being shot at their heads secretly in Havana and in Russia.

With a technology that we have no understanding of or awareness of. Right, with an unknown technology and that, oh, also it's Russia for because reasons. Yes, of course it is. It's Russia. And now Congress is voting aid to the victims when in November of 2018, that same report said at least eight of the 21, so, you know, a decent chunk, are very likely crickets. They also said it was, quote, highly unlikely that it was microwaves. So what's happening here? I think it really just comes down to some of these people are human beings. I bet serving as a diplomat in Havana or Russia is probably pretty stressful. It's a very stressful job. You're constantly getting tailed by the FSB or whoever the Cuban secret police is.

Same in China. I've talked with some of the people who've served abroad. They really do surveil everything you do. Your house is known to be bugged. Your car is definitely bugged. People follow you even with your family when you're at the mall or whatever. It's a stressful situation, so I don't want to downplay that. But then, you know, one guy starts getting headaches and you're like, oh my god, you know, this is just like Russia in 1962. And then next thing you know, Havana syndrome is a thing.

And the media part is the most galling of this because it goes to show that they'll just print anything that they believe, anything the intel community tells them is true. It goes to show that they didn't press for anything. This is where I always get it. We see leaked documents all the time. All the time. Leaked assessments, State Department. Remember Afghanistan? Everything the people ever printed was leaked.

If the media wants to go out and get to the bottom of it, they usually can. It's usually pretty hard in order to hide, especially this. This is an internal, in order to hide, you know, especially this. This is an internal, you know, eventually they released it by FOIA, so it shows it wasn't even that classified. Yeah, BuzzFeed was able to FOIA it.

So if they were able to FOIA it and get it in three years, that means somebody would have leaked it to you two years ago, obviously. They just didn't care. They were like, oh, well, the Intel guys, who aren't willing to put their names on this, are telling us it's Havana syndrome. And so then they created this whole thing.

I mean, they had these spooks on TV talking about how it was a classic hallmark of Russian attacks. They had people writing long profiles of the victims. They had people coming out. The State Department was freaking out. I mean, at one point they were saying the Trump administration had to like confront Russia over the Havana syndrome stuff. Yeah, of course. And it's all just like a fake. It's totally nuts. And that's, I think, the part that galls me the most is that they knew it at the time. They had a report from people saying that it was not microwaves, and they still pushed it because it served an agenda.

That's actually the worst and most nefarious part of all of this. Yeah, this report is from several years ago. So they've had this information. November 2018. And how many more times have we heard, oh, there's another incidence of Havana syndrome. Oh, we've got another one over here, another incidence of Havana syndrome. Because, yeah, it was convenient.

It was, you know, suited the deep state agenda. The media reports it uncritically whether they believe it or not. They have no interest in being like, this whole Russian microwave story sounds a little bit strange. me of another explanation here? It really is. I mean, I don't want to laugh because I'm sure the people, like you said, who actually suffered from it, like, I don't want to diminish they probably had very real symptoms that they experienced as, you know, incredibly painful and incredibly significant. But it's the media's job to ask questions. It's the media's job to be skeptical. And when it comes to something that doesn't suit their agenda, something like the Wuhan Lab Week, they're extremely skeptical, right? They're skeptical to the point of saying you can't even talk about that because that's a conspiracy theory. This is a wild conspiracy theory, and they bought it and propagated it hook, line, and sinker, even though the State Department, Deep State, knew better for years now. So there you go. And then, as I said, Congress comes through and passes funding for the victims of

Havana syndrome. That's fine. People need, you know, medical care. I'm all for that. But you're ready for this transition. They have not gotten their act together to provide funding for the medical care of our men and women who served overseas and have become catastrophically ill from exposure to burn pits, something that Jon Stewart has been highlighting now for years, for years. He's done such a good job on this. He's done such a good job. He's been relentless. He's had success moving Congress before with compensation for 9-11 victims, so still hoping that he may have some success here. He just launched his new show. It's called The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV. I watched the first episode. You know, it's interesting that I'm going to show you a little

bit of it. He spent the entire hour-long episode focused on this one very heavy and very emotional subject of burn pits. He does a little bit just to give you a subject of Burn Pits. He does a little bit, just to give you a sense of the overall show, and he kind of told people, like, this is not the daily show. This is going to be a little different. He described it as more complete.

It's definitely heavier. It's not all comedy, certainly. It's actually very light touch with the comedy. He does a little bit of a bit at the beginning, and then he brings in these victims, these men and women who have served and are suffering catastrophic health consequences. And he talks to them and they share their experiences and what they think that Congress and the VA ultimately owes them. Then he goes and interviews Dennis McDonough, who is effectively a longtime political operative who, remember when he got nominated? We both criticized him. Yeah, because he has no experience that would recommend him for this incredibly important positionminute interview on this one issue of why aren't you

giving people what they need, compensating them for the wounds and the injuries and the cancer and all the things that they've suffered from exposure to these toxic burn pits. It gets pretty uncomfortable. Take a listen to a little bit of that interview. I'm really trying to understand what's the bar you're looking for, because to not be able to articulate that clearly really troubles me. And by the way, I don't doubt your empathy and I don't doubt your care. I really don't. And that's why I'm here talking to you. The beauty is I don't really give a shit. As you should. So I don't really care what you think, if I'm doing a good job or not. I care what the vets think.

We've got, I should show you this. Give me Isaiah's fourth thing. This is from the panel we did with some veterans. I just want you to listen to Isaiah James, who is an infantryman who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a healthy kid when I went into the Army. I could run five miles like it was nothing. Now I can barely breathe at night and have to use a breathing machine and go through breathing treatments and all these things. And the United States military and the government doesn't give a damn about us once we're out.

Once you're out, they do not care. If another country was doing to our veterans what we allow to be done to our veterans, we'd be at war already. You know, that's hard to hear. Clearly, you would agree with his sentiments, I think, to some extent. I agree with all of his sentiment, each and every bit of it. Right. And so you're asking a very logical question, which is, okay, so do you need, like, you know, three papers from five researchers, or what is it? Right. And I don't know the answer to that.

But if you don't know the answer, how do you know when you found it? I guess I'm trying to figure out, as the executive, you could do this in the stroke of a pen. I wish I could, but I can't. You know, I've asked for that. I've asked. My point is, I still can't understand what this bar is that you talk about that's a statute. Because if I look at the statute. I wish it were like a puzzle.

I keep asking the same series of questions. Okay, so we got all these pieces, and just tell me where to put them, and then let's figure out which piece we're missing, and then we'll build that. Right. You know, I'm looking at all the options available to me, especially on, as I said to you earlier, the most difficult cases. So effectively, you can see there, McDonough has no answers. No, he's completely, I don't know why he sat like that.

Also, where do you get off cursing? Look, I get mad about this. It's not that I'm opposed to cursing or whatever, but it's like you're trying to appear tough when you're the guy standing in the way of a lot of vets actually getting the checks and the medical care that they deserve sometime after, how long has it been? 15 years?

20 years? I mean, 2003 was a long time ago, okay? And it actually goes back to the original Gulf War. Right. Is when they started doing this disposal and incineration in these burn pits. And the things that you're, I mean, it's everything from, you know, human feces and blood and, I mean, chemicals, everything you can imagine. Ammo dump, everything, right. Lit on fire with jet fuel. You know that, and this is something else that Stuart knows this issue inside and out.

And so he presses him, what are you talking about? You need more evidence. We know that this chemical is toxic and causes cancer. We know that this other chemical is toxic and causes cancer. We know these people were exposed to those chemicals. What more research do you need? Because tell us so we can get it for you. Like, let's do it, right? If the problem is we need more research, then fine, let's do it. But Stewart keeps coming back to, we have the research. We know the impact of these toxic chemicals. And you can see in that clip, McDonough is very vague. Oh, well, it's like a puzzle piece and we just got to put it together. That doesn't mean anything.

That's just you like word salad-ing to get out of what is clearly an uncomfortable moment where you've been put on the spot. And the whole thing is like that. Totally vague, totally dodging, zero answers. And what I appreciate about Stewart here is because he's so famous, first of all, he can get the interview. He can get attention to it. They would never give that to anybody else. Right. Next of all, because he's Jon Stewart, he's able to get this deal from Apple TV to do a show that is very, very intense and very serious and with a to actually hold people with power to account something that you never see from the journalists in this town.

Rarest thing in the world. I've respected him for many years on 9-11 victims. He would always have these panels of firefighters on The Daily Show who are calling out Mitch McConnell and others for holding up aid to 9-11 victims. And one of the things he points out here is that the chemicals in burn pits are the exact same chemicals in Agent Orange and the same ones that cause health issues for 9-11 cleanup workers. So think about that. The U.S. government has already created a program and recognized the danger of these chemicals in the Agent Orange case and in the 9-11 cleanup case. So even to mount the scientific link, if it's the same chemical, why do we have to reprove it? Reprove it. Again, we've already proved it twice. We accept 9-11

cleanup workers deserve money from the fund. Agent Orange people, same thing. Why not this one? And it's all just about delaying. Dennis McDonough cannot even answer at what point the scientific link is enough. And that's the thing. Stewart is a multimillionaire. He could easily raise enough money in order to fund whatever research is needed. He goes, oh, you need five studies? I'll get you five double blind within two years, however long it takes. But the reason they're not answering is because it's just bureaucratic morass and nobody actually cares. Could he actually do it with a stroke of a pen? Probably yes. He claims he can't. And yet, you know, Stewart has pretty compelling evidence that the VA secretary, if he really wants to, could. And if he can't, who do you work for? Joe Biden. Why can't you go to Joe Biden and say, look, Mr. President, I know you're a busy man. You've got COVID, blah,

blah, blah. We've got these, Biden likes to think of himself as a big vets guy. Every president does. Yeah. But then do something about it. And they are. And it's like you said, eternal credit to Jon Stewart actually leveraging his celebrity to help people. There are a lot of 9-11 firefighters, cops, cleanup workers who owe their ability to pay their bills to him.

And we should, I hope I'm saying the same thing about burn pick victims and the same thing. I did not know about it until he raised it to my attention. And the more I read about it, I said, this is horrible.

It's atrocious. And if Congress can muster the political will to provide funding for the victims of Havana syndrome, then what's keeping you? What is holding you back? Certainly you didn't have all the research to back up Havana syndrome, in fact. So this idea, we need 10 more studies,

we need 18 more studies. We need 18 more studies. We need to know more of a link. This is ridiculous. If you cared about these veterans, if you actually cared about these servicemen and women, after they've served, after they've done their, after you've sent them overseas in these ridiculous, endless wars that you spend endless amounts of money on, and then that's the bottom line. When they come home, when they're injured, when they have brain injuries,

when they have emotional injuries, when they have cancer because they were exposed to these toxic burn pits day in and day out, suddenly, sorry, we can't do anything. Our hands are tied. It's a puzzle piece. We just can't fit it together. We don't have the money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I think Stewart does a very effective job.

If you only watch one part of the show, watch that interview with Dennis McDonough, because it's about 15 minutes long and Stewart thoroughly in a very nice but forceful way exposes how full of shit they are ultimately. Absolutely. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. Well, I know this is annoying. Instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues

that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, folks, fall is in the air and striketober has arrived. Grab your pumpkin spice latte and head over to a picket line because a nationwide wave of strikes is truly roiling workplaces across the entire country. You got workers from Hollywood to Bardstown, Kentucky, who have authorized strikes

and walked off of job sites. It's part of what I previously described as a low-key, uncoordinated general strike. Workers who were crushed and abused and sickened during the pandemic, they are just not going to accept all the crap that they've been forced to accept for years and years. They saw the way that billionaires got richer and more powerful than ever as their lives were casually put at risk to make sure that the chicken nuggets stayed stocked and the garbage stayed picked up. Called essential, but treated as disposable. You can see why workers might feel emboldened right now, too. A tight labor market is actually giving them the best leverage that they have had in decades.

In fact, Goldman Sachs sent a panicked memo to investors warning that wages for the working class jumped up a, quote, eye-popping 6% in the third quarter. Now, that is a very modest sum, all things considered, but it is a dramatic figure given the 40-year history of completely stagnant wages in this country. Businesses are actually having to compete a little bit for workers. They're having to increase wages. They're having to increase benefits in order to win their labor. That gives workers a lot more confidence to take more militant action in and out of the workplace. Even so, going on strike is a profoundly courageous act and a last resort taken when all other options are exhausted.

So what is the latest on this strike wave? Well, as we covered just a couple days ago, the massive union representing film crews and other production workers just voted to authorize a strike. And the margin was overwhelming, with some 98% of workers voting to walk out if near-term negotiations do not get them what they want. That would be a first in IATSE's 128-year history. From makeup to sets to editing to lighting to food services, these are the folks who do the real work of making Hollywood and our entertainment industry complex go, while stars and executives rake in millions. Now, a few things here fueled worker anger. First of all, they have longstanding complaints about wages, about hours, about the availability of breaks. Second, production

timelines have been ramped up to a blistering pace to make up for lost time during COVID. And finally, streaming services were granted concessions when the industry was just getting off the ground. Now that services like Netflix and Amazon Prime are fully mature, there is no reason why workers on those productions shouldn't be treated the same as anyone else. So that's the IATSE strike authorization. But even more has happened just in the last 48 hours. According to labor reporter Jonah Fuhrman, 4,000 more workers have gone on strike in just the last few days across four different unions. So we've got 1,400 Kellogg workers. They launched strikes at plants in Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee over things like terrible schedules, low wages, and a two-tier system that breaks the solidarity of the shop floor and consigns some workers to second class citizenship. You have 2,000 telecom workers on strike in California over unfair labor practices.

At issue are similar things, health care costs, wages, and the company's increasing reliance on contractors. You've got 400 hospital workers who walked out in Oregon. Their concerns range from understaffing and low wages to an outsourcing threat and insufficient COVID protections. Finally, 100 bus drivers went on strike in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Among their demands are paid overtime, sick leave, and living wages. Again, that is all just in the last two days. These 4,000 workers joined thousands who are already out on strike. From steel workers and miners to teachers, even symphony musicians, these workers are everywhere across the country. They work in blue-collar, white-collar, and service sector jobs, and they are united in one thing,

their courageous willingness to risk their livelihood in solidarity with their brothers and sisters and in defense of their own worth and dignity. So Jonah Furman, he tracks every strike authorization picket and union election at his sub stack. It's called Who Gets the Bird. I am a subscriber. You should definitely be a subscriber as well. He's doing a great job there. But when you add it all up, we are truly looking at a tidal wave of working class revolt from coast to coast. And yet, have you heard a word of any of this from corporate media? Of course not. They disappeared their labor reporters years ago. They have contempt and disdain for the working class to start with. After all, some of these workers

might have voted for Trump or even failed to get vaxxed. And there's no cheap partisan angle or dramatic Russia spy collusion novel angle. But even more to the point, black, white, and brown workers fighting together in solidarity, it goes against their core narrative, the core narrative that these people are selling day in and day out. We are supposed to hate each other. We're supposed to be inches from a civil war. We're supposed to understand that the greatest threat to our lives is the Trump supporter or the AOC supporter the next town over. We're supposed to listen to the experts, and the experts are telling workers to shut up and get back to work. But these striking workers have actually identified the real proximate source of needless

struggle in their lives. It's their corporate bosses who have raked in cash while keeping their workers in poverty. Or, for the public sector workers, it's a corrupt political system that would starve bus drivers and cut school budgets in order to build another bomb. Or, for the public sector workers, it's a corrupt political system that would starve bus drivers and cut school budgets in order to build another bomb. Or for the hospital workers, a healthcare system that puts executive and corporate profits over health every single day. Profit, corruption, and greed of an overclass happy to set workers upon each other to keep themselves unscathed. In other words, these strikes tell a dangerous truth that the media just can't stand. That even with the deck stacked and the game rigged and the politicians bought and the media captured, the people still have power. And it looks like this fall, they intend

to use it. And Sagar, you know, I was kind of watching these little indications and going like, is it just that there's a little bit more? One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now.

Enjoy. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, if there is a single thing Donald Trump did in office, which will resonate beyond the ages, it was his recognition that the U.S. economic relationship with China was untenable. For all of his buffoonery and poorly executed actual deals with that nation, to his credit, he never actually buckled in his belief that China systematically abused the global financial system, the openness of the U.S. economy, to buy off American elites and to take millions of our best manufacturing jobs. When Trump declared a trade war with China, the entire political

establishment said that he was a madman. But it was one of the few areas of politics where a vast majority of the American people were united behind him. It's exactly for that reason that I watched with great interest what Joe Biden would do while he was in office. Biden's problems with China are not a secret. Obviously, he voted for NAFTA enthusiastically. He voted for permanent normal trade relations with China and Chinese entrance into the WTO. During his tenure as VP under Obama,

perhaps the most disgraceful time of US policy towards China. Biden bragged about spending more time with Xi Jinping than any other world leader. And of course, he literally kicked off his campaign for president saying, come on, man, to the idea that China was eating our lunch whenever it came to the economy. Biden never answered the question of whether he would rescind Trump's tariffs or not during the campaign. He never could quite admit that the orange man actually did get quite a few things right while he was in office. And Biden is now trying to have it both ways. He is trying to both get the headline that he's tough on China, that he's following through on the Trump policy. But if you look closely enough, he just did the bidding of corporate America to get them off the hook in a big way.

This all starts with a recent speech by the U.S. Trade Representative Catherine Tai, in which she declared the administration would not immediately remove the Trump tariffs on China and would actually require Beijing to uphold its commitments in a trade deal that was negotiated under Trump. Okay, so far so good, right? No, because while the Biden administration got the New York Times headline that they wanted, buried within the speech and within the actual policy of the government was a little noticed but dramatically important provision. in a move that would offer some relief to businesses that import Chinese products, the administration said that it would reestablish an expired process that gives companies a reprieve by excluding them from tariffs. Furthermore, these exclusions at the sole discretion of the priorities of the Biden administration. So immediately after the speech by Catherine Tai, the U.S. submitted public comments on its plans to

change the administrative procedure in which they said that they would extend exclusions on tariffs to 549 different import product categories. Now, I actually went and read all of those product categories that they submitted, and some of them are not so great. Number three on the list is radiation therapy systems. Next caught my eye was water filtration system. Next, automated data processing storage units. Next, electric motors, pipe brackets for aluminum, x-ray tables, various types of metal, including steel brackets, digital video cameras, and a lot, lot more. In other words, here's what happened. The Biden administration said they're going to keep tariffs, but after massive pressure from big business, they revived the provision of a law

which grants exemptions out like candy. Now, those exemptions are determined by them, as long as they follow the rules which they wrote. Do you follow? The whole point of these tariffs was simple, to reduce US supply dependency on China for its most critical goods. Who remembers April 2020 when we literally couldn't get our own ventilators or personal protective equipment, or when we found out we literally make nothing here that we actually need to survive during a deadly pandemic? It should have been a wake-up call. Remember though, a whole lot of people on Wall Street and in C-suites have made billions of dollars by keeping us less safe here at home by buying subpar products from China, then crowding out any competitors. Then they also make it so you have no other option to buy anything else.

These terrorist exemptions and the dark process behind who gets them is none other than a multi-billion dollar giveaway to corporate America. And make no mistake, those in Beijing know exactly what this means. They have been salivating and pressuring the highest levels of business here in America to open up a single front within the trade war for years, to get some exemption status somewhere, get the government to buckle. Under Trump, they did not. But this here will be two things. It will be a lobbying bonanza to get your company included in this exemption. And two, it's going to show the Chinese a return to business as usual. Remember, they got where they are today by exploiting systems just like this in the World Trade

Organization, where they are technically rules, but if you know which ones you cannot follow and which ones you can contest in court or get an exemption, within 20 years, you become a regional economic hegemon and a global competitor of the United States. A real extension of these tariffs would have forced these American companies to seek permanent supply chains outside of China, set up new business relationships. It would have kept us safer. And yes, I will not lie to you, prices would go up slightly. But you should think of it not in the short term, but in the long. Is it worth being wholly reliant on your main competitor on the global stage in your time of most desperate need? Almost any red-blooded American would say, hell no. That is why the Biden team has chosen

this route. They wanted the headline. They wanted America behind them in a trade war. But don't let them get away with this giveaway. For that matter, don't let whoever comes next get away with it either. This is a game that we are going to play now and we'll be playing for decades to come. And it's amazing, Crystal, because you have to have the wherewithal to know what the exemptions are. Joining us now is the Democratic nominee for mayor of Buffalo, New York, India Walton. Great to see you, India. Welcome. Good to see you, India. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Great to see you as well. Of course. So I gave people a little bit of a preview. You won the nomination. You defeated the incumbent Democratic mayor, Byron Brown. He

has not given up. First, he sort of tried to do a kind of bogus third party thing and get himself back on the ballot. That got tossed out by the courts. Now he's running a write-in campaign. Just bring us up to speed about where the campaign stands today. Sure. So we've always run a very vigorous campaign with a robust field game. Even during the primary, when we were pretty much being ignored, we knew that our key to victory was going to be voter contact, talking to everyday folks, working class people of Buffalo. So we've continued to do that. But we've also really stepped up our fundraising and our paid media game. My opponent is being well-funded by members of the GOP and far right. So we're really just melding the strategy of organizers who are on doors and on phones and having relational organizing relationships with constituents and voters,

but also marrying that with traditional path to victory, including paid media, sending mail pieces and other things that get the general electorate more energized. Yeah. I mean, Crystal updated me on your situation in India, and I was pretty fascinated by it. We have a New York Times story. We can put that up there on the screen. I mean, you won the Democratic primary, but the person that you beat isn't giving up. How did you win the Democratic primary?

Why do you think that this person did not get the number of votes that you did, that you ultimately prevailed? And then what does it say about his decision not to continue or to continue in the race? Yeah, I think that we won the primary because the voters of Buffalo are largely disappointed with the leadership that's been displayed. You know, this is a person my opponent has been in office for 16 years. And I think that there have been some positive changes to Buffalo. But by and large, there are a lot of working class people, people of color, people who live in poor and marginalized communities who have not seen the material conditions of their lives change, who want something different. strategy, along with his failure to engage the electorate period over the course of the last 10, 12 years, feeling entitled to the office of mayor as if he doesn't have to answer to the people who elected him was really a perfect storm to propel us to victory. And I'm proud of the work that we've done. I'm proud that we've been able to shine a national spotlight on Buffalo in a positive way that

centers people, that focuses care, compassion, and our solidarity economy and our mutual aid networks that have cropped up. And I'm looking forward to bringing home the victory in November. India, who has been backing your opponent? What has the Democratic Party done? Because the reporting has been there's been a bit of a divide. Just break down, you know, have they gotten in fully behind you? Are they fundraising for you? Are they organizing for you? What has been the response?

Well, you know, I wasn't the Democratic Party nominee for the primary. My opponent was. But after I won the primary, a lot of Democrats kind of fell in line, right? The vote blew no matter who folks came along. I do have the support of the Erie County Democratic Committee, of our chairman locally. However, we've not seen the flood of support that we've expected from local and statewide Democrats. And that's OK. Right. I think that this campaign and I as a candidate, I'm largely unknown. So I understand the reluctance that some people might have. Also in Buffalo, we have a culture of retribution and, you know, quid pro quo that precludes a lot of people from being able to be vocal supporters

before they know what the entire lay of the land is. So I get it, but that's not going to deter us. We have established our own apparatus outside of the established party that we are very proud of, but I'm even more proud to be the bridge that brings sort of the outside contingency of more activist groups right along with the more corporate Democrats locally to make sure that we're on the same page. And that means that we are prioritizing working class, poor people, brown people, women, children, the elderly and the most vulnerable in our society who really is traditionally in the last since since I've been a Democrat, which is all my life, the people we purport to support.

And I think that this campaign is going to send a very loud message that this is where we are and where we're going. Let me ask you about one specific example that I found kind of perplexing, and maybe you can help explain why this is going on. So Kathy Hochul is now governor of New York. She has made prioritizing women and elevating women. It's something she talks about a lot. And my understanding is you'd be the first woman mayor of Buffalo and certainly the first black woman mayor of Buffalo. And yet Kathy Hochul has not supported you. Have you had conversations with her? Why are they afraid to wade in in support of you are the Democratic nominee

for the seat now? What is the reluctance? Where does that come from? I think that both in western New York and in New York State, our established Democrats have a tendency to do what's politically expedient. I've had interactions with Governor Hochul. I've not had any sit down conversations about what I believe in, what my agenda is or how we can work together. However, I think that some decisions that she's made recently speaks to things that I want to champion on a municipal level, and no matter what, we'll be able to work together. But again, I think that the governor's placed in a very precarious position where we have very well-established Democrats who are entrenched in a system that doesn't allow space for people like me traditionally. So I understand the reluctance of a lot of very established Democrats for getting involved in the race. And I'm willing to be patient, and I'm going to work with people whenever they decide to come along and not put the pressure on

whether they support me or not. Because I know that my base of support is coming from voters, is coming from people, is coming from workers, is coming from mothers and fathers and sons and daughters of my community. And that's where I count on my support coming from. And people who are in position can come along whenever they want to, but I'm not dependent on that to get us across the finish line. I'm really dependent upon and accountable to the people. And I think that it's important for me to allow my supporters to know that this is not politics as usual. And it doesn't matter to me whether I have the support of the governor or the state party chair or any of the other big names in New York Democratic politics,

but that I have the support of the people whom I am going to serve as mayor of Buffalo. One of the reasons I want to talk to you, India, is I saw a recent interview you gave where you said, quote, a lot of people of progressivism is that, a problem with progressivism is we are not very inclusive if folks are not woke enough. It struck me, given the fact that you're running not only in a town with a lot of working class people of color, but a lot of working class white people as well, some places that the democratic socialist movement has failed pretty miserably, I would say, in the last couple of years. How are you trying to overcome that? What's your personal philosophy? You know, I thank you for that question. And I describe myself as a bridge, right? I've lived in so many different stages of life from being a poor child to a high school dropout to then being a working class registered nurse to then becoming a nonprofit executive and living more in the professional realm.

I understand all of the parts of that sort of project, the professional trajectory. And I think that I'm able to relate to so many different people across class, race, gender, socioeconomic status and educational attainment, that it makes me an attractive person not to only be able to lead this movement forward, but to act as that bridge that is able to bring opposing sides of opinion together. We have to create a big tent. We have to allow people the space and room and the love and care to grow and have a better understanding of what it is that we want. And at the end of the day, what brings us all together is that we want the same things. We want a quality education for our children. We want safe, affordable housing for

everyone. We want health access to health care for everyone. And that is bigger than any of the small things that we can point to that makes us not work together. So I'm proud to not only be involved in this local and now national movement, but also like be at the center of it and be a person that holds the line and says like, hey, like we're not going to cancel and dismiss people because I don't believe the exact same things that we do. We're going to call them in and not call them out and figure out how we work together. Why do you think that we've seen an erosion of working class support, certainly white working class support. Also, you had a significant little bit of African-American, but more among Latinos, support moving to the right and away

from the Democratic Party. Now you have a Democratic Party leaning very heavily on effectively white college-educated suburban voters when this is supposed to be the party that people are supposed to be the party that is really fighting for and focused on the multiracial working class. Why do you think that that is? Where do you think that they went wrong? I think that we've been sold a myth of rugged individualism and bootstrapping this right. We've been told that if you go to college, if you do all the right things, you know, pull up your pants and follow the law, that you'll be OK. And now we are starting to come to the awakening as a community, as a nation, that that is not true, that there are systems that have been put in place to keep a certain demographic of folks impoverished. And that doesn't only mean black and brown people. It's across class lines, right?

We've seen monumental strikes happening across the country. Right now in Buffalo and western New York, we're having one of the largest healthcare strikes in history. We see Kellogg on strike. We're seeing the organization of Starbucks baristas to try and join a union. So I think that we are really amplifying this message of a class struggle that transcends race, color, gender, creed, right? And we're saying the workers are actually the ones who have the power and should be exercising that to get the things that we so desperately want and need from our local, state, and federal government. Yeah. Well, it's been great talking to you, India. We really appreciate you stopping by, following your story with a lot of interest here on the show, and we appreciate it. So thank you. Thank you, India. We appreciate the time. Thank you so much. Our pleasure. Absolutely. Thanks, everybody, for watching. We really

appreciate it. It's been a banner week here. We continue to deal with the demonetization, and we just want to make it clear it's not that we care. We want to tell you so that you understand exactly where our incentives are. It will always be on exactly what and how we want to cover something. That's why premium subscribers matter. It's the only way that we pay our bills and we keep our lights on here at the show. You guys are amazing. We love you. Remember,

we have new partnership with Daily Poster. We're going to have a brand new segment for you tomorrow from them. Of course, Saroda and his team there

always doing incredible reporting, following the money, exposing stories that nobody else is looking at. He's got a great one we want to talk to him about. The Sackler family,

of course, they're sort of like the primary villains behind the opioid crisis. Ways that Congress is working to try to let them off the hook. So he's going to talk about that. Tune in for that. We'll have additional content for you over the show, guys. We really appreciate it. To help other people find the show, go ahead and leave us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps other people find the show. As always, a special thank you to Supercast for powering our premium membership. If you want to find out more, go to crystalandsauger.com. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones,

the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.