Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/15/21: Great Resignation, Red Wave, Christie vs Trump, UFOs, MSNBC Spin, Project Veritas, Atrocity Coverup, Saudi Schemes, and More!

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Krystal and Saagar cover the Great Resignation, the possibility of a 2022 red wave, GOP debates about the future of the party, UFO acknowledgements by the deep state, MSNBC gaslighting on inflation, FBI's raid of Project Veritas, drone strike atrocities covered up, Saudi Arabian influence with Ken Klippenstein, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Ken’s Reporting: https://theintercept.com/2021/11/11/inflation-saudi-arabia-biden-mbs-oil/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Lots of interesting stories to get to this morning. The terrible, terrible, terrible poll numbers for Joe Biden and the administration writ large heading into the midterms keep coming in. I keep sort of feeling like, well, we probably covered enough polls. And then another one comes in that's like, oh, my God, well, we got to talk about this one. So we'll bring you all the latest there. There's a new war of words over on the GOP side between Donald Trump and Chris Christie. The very latest there. We'll bring you up to speed.

The latest high-ranking official to acknowledge the possibility of extraterrestrial encounters here on Earth. We will give you the details of that and also some rather colorful remarks that Jeff Bezos made about space as well, which you definitely don't want to miss. Stephanie Rule over at MSNBC has some quite interesting things to say about inflation and what is going on there. We've got Ken Clevenstein in the studio to talk about his latest breaking news with regards to maybe one of the primary reasons why gas prices are increasing. Might not be exactly what you think, but we wanted to start

with some stunning new jobs numbers. Bottom line here, guys, is the great resignation continues. We had record-breaking numbers. Previously, we just had another month that broke the record yet again. Let's put Heather Long's tweet there up on the screen. She's got this news. She says, Justin, a record 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs in September 2021. So far this year, 34.5 million Americans have quit. Millions more than anything we have ever seen before. The next closest was 2019 when 31.7 million quit January through September.

So millions more than that previous record. The great resignation is picking up speed. She references a Washington Post article here that has some of the stunning details. First of all, just wrap your head around the fact that that number, 4.4 million Americans, is 3% of the workforce. That's incredible. That quit in one month. Yeah. And that comes on the heels of another month when 2.9% of the workforce quit their jobs.

So look, there are obviously a variety of factors at play. And I think right now, economists and analysts are still trying to figure out exactly everything that is going on. But from that Washington Post piece, let me just read you what their speculation, what the numbers seem to indicate is going on here. They say a number of factors have led to the churn. The September data came during a period when coronavirus cases were spiking, creating childcare and safety pressures for many employees as they rethought their daily routines. Many other workers, meanwhile, were lured to other jobs because of better pay and benefits as employers became desperate to fill

openings. And a strong stock market combined with stimulus checks and other benefits have helped pad worker savings, making it easier for them to cut loose or retire rather than hold on to a job that they no longer want. Once again, biggest increases in resignations coming in lower paid jobs. You're talking about entertainment and recreation. You're talking about education. You're talking about health services. So it's either people who are in the service sector and were earning relatively low wages, or they were on the front lines, whether as teachers, whether as nurses, and really put

out and put at risk. So we continue to just see a massive churn and upheaval within the labor market that's pretty fascinating to watch. Absolutely. And it's not being covered really properly. And I mean, obviously, The Washington Post, New York Times and them are writing it up, but the general media is not paying attention. And the reason why is 100 percent almost entirely blue collar phenomenon's especially concentrated in, I mean, nurses is in the category where we're seeing quite a bit of turnover, healthcare space, not even necessarily at the higher levels, but nursing home aides.

That's one of the highest quit rates that we see. I think the major one is that the inability of how rapid the market is changing, labor markets specifically, and the inability of a lot of the employers in order to catch up. And so they are just getting smacked across the face. We saw that happen with that McDonald's story that we covered. I mean, these workers were fighting for like $9.45 an hour. I mean, it was like nothing. They wanted a 75 cent raise. Can we please have a 75 cent raise? And then they all quit. And now they're all making, you know, 12, 13, 14, 15 or something dollars per hour. And it was just the inability of the

McDonald's person, whoever the franchise owner was, in order to catch up. That is what's happening all across of what we see is that people are not adjusting the wages fast enough in order to keep up with where the demand is. And you're seeing repeatedly also the willingness of mid-career officials willing to resign and go and move ahead. That is something you almost never see. Churn in the labor market happens at the very beginning, obviously, and then it happens all the way over at the top. And the mid-career employees, the fact that they are the ones who are willing after maybe 10 years in a job, 12 years with all the disruption, or maybe they go unemployment and now they're back in, now there's a reopening. They're the ones who just had a whole long, big think. But we also have to think about,

on the other two tail ends, the front and the back, the back end specifically, where retirement is just starting to look a lot more enticing, a lot earlier to a lot of people. So I actually talked to a friend of mine who's a nurse this weekend about the staffing shortage at our local hospital. And I was asking her what's going on because she said, you know, they're so understaffed that they have something like nine or 10 rooms they're not even using because they can't staff. And she said part of it is because now the COVID cases that are coming in are really severe. So they require more hands-on care. So you have to have a lower ratio. But the other thing that she said is going on, to your point, is that

people who can retire, they are going and doing it. They're done. I mean, this has been a horrific year now going on two years for them, and they've had it. They're tired of putting their lives over. They're tired of the understaffing, the long hours, all of those things. And so a lot of people are saying, hey, if I've got the out, I'm going to take it. Of course, we've been tracking here labor upheaval in all sorts of ways, the walkouts, the strikes, the authorization of strikes, all of the people who are considering joining unions, the Starbucks and Buffalo that are in a union election right now. So you see this manifest in all sorts of ways. There was another nugget here, though, that also indicates it's not just that you have a tight labor market and so people are taking the opportunity to jump jobs to higher paying levels. It's not just that you've had frontline workers whose lives have been

put at risk and are exhausted from that. And so they're looking to look industries and careers. I think that's a big part of it, too. The numbers in this Washington Post report, according to the job site ZipRecruiter, about 55 percent of people who were looking for new jobs said they want a job where they can work from home. And 85 percent of those people said it was either workplace safety concerns or child care, family care needs that were driving their decisions. And there was another opinion piece from Henry Olson, who I don't normally always agree with, but we can throw this tear sheet up on the screen, who said, you know, it might be that people are sort of really rethinking their orientation to the workforce writ large. And they were forced to during COVID. They were forced to change the way that they were living,

the way that they were balancing things. And they may have just changed some of their values about where they want to live, how much they want to orient their life around work versus around their family. And some people may be saying, hey, if we can make it work with a one-earner household the way that we were basically forced to during COVID, maybe we're going to stick to that for a while. And I certainly see this, you know, some of the moms that I talk to out where I live, which is, you know, pretty rural America, where lives are still very much disrupted

because even though kids are back in school, you constantly have this threat of your kids having close contact with somebody who had COVID and then being out for two weeks. So things are still really in churn. And there's just a real reassessment of how people want to spend their hours right now. I think there should be. I don't think there's anything wrong with it whatsoever. And I think that what Henry points to is that a lot of people in D.C. just simply are not willing

to point out the quite obvious, the fact that there's only two thirds of men in America right now are even looking for work. And the number for women is like 56% who are looking for work, which means millions, and I mean tens of millions of people have simply dropped out of the labor force. Now, you know, you can try to demonize that or you can say, well, what's actually going on here? And the more that you look at it, as Henry points to, there's a pretty convenient explanation, which is that maybe Americans are deciding that the single earner model is actually fine. And what you can actually see is that it really does fulfill some of the prophecy of what Elizabeth Warren wrote decades ago in The Two Income Trap. Where she talks about how whenever you have two workers in both households may enter that, that it can drive the price of goods.

And you can make it so you can actually get trapped to the point where families have to have two incomes in order to make their life work when a single one would work better. Now, look, obviously there's a lot of criticism of that, you know, mostly from the, you know, the feminist, the feminist people who say like, oh, that's terrible because you shouldn't disproportionately, it is going to be women. But I mean, like I just said, right, you could see 56% of women and two thirds of men. Now, obviously there is a gap, but that's not even close to the one we were seeing in the 1950s. So the changing around about who exactly the single earner is has actually happened. And then really what it is is that you can see, as you said, whenever it comes to the actual assessment of what people want in their day-to-day lives,

it's just changed dramatically. That's one of the reasons why we see such a massive churn that's happening in the housing market. There's a lot of elderly folks in particular who are right on that edge of retirement who said, screw it, I'm out. I don't need to live in the city or anything. I want to go live near my grandkids. These are the things that really put things into perspective. Let's put this up there on the screen around the retirements to this point.

Most of the 5 million people who have exited the labor force since the start of the pandemic are over the age of 55. So that's 3.4 million, reflecting 1.5 million early and natural retirements that likely will not reverse. That's a really important figure. We used to work until age 63, 64, 65 sometimes at the latest. And what you're seeing is you combine that with increased worker power, and it really is just changing everything. It's always fun whenever we see like how, you know, businesses are like, what do I do?

It's like, well, you gotta pay people more. We have this here from Business Insider. It was a hilarious one found by our producer, James. A Florida restaurant chain says boosting pay and offering better benefits helped end its labor shortage. Would you look at that? Imagine that. Huh.

Shocking. Puerto Tropical. Amazing. Caribbean food chain. Yeah, they were having trouble with understaffed stores, which, by the way, they said really was badly hurting them because those stores had something like a third less in terms of revenue coming in. I've seen it many places where they just shut places down or the restaurants down. Yeah, you see the long lines, you see how other people are waiting, the drive-throughs

going out the parking lot. You say, forget it, I'll go somewhere else. And so they've been able to fix that. Lo and behold, you pay people a little more money and you're going to be able to fix your staffing shortage. So you love to see restaurants and other chains that realize that. This is another interesting piece of data here that Jeff Stein, Fred of the show, offered up, which he said, you know, you have to balance. It's so weird with the economy right now because we're about to cover some of the polls. 70% of the country says the economy is not good. Yes.

70%. So things are going poorly in a lot of ways. Obviously, increasing prices both at the pump and at the grocery store, cutting into middle income Americans wages significantly and working class Americans. That is a real phenomenon. The supply chain disruptions, the chaos that entails, just the sense of uncertainty of where things are ultimately headed. But let's go ahead and throw Jeff Stein's tweet up on the screen. He's OK, we don't have that. But what he says is what one read of what's happening with the economy broadly is that the hot labor market is giving working class bottom of distribution real gains, quitting, striking. But the price is real wage declines for the electorally potent middle class due to inflation exacerbated by supply shocks. So he has a chart in this tweet

that shows the lower you are on the income spectrum, actually the larger your increase in wages have been net of inflation. When you get to the middle income reaches of the income spectrum, that's where the increase in wages have not actually been enough to overcome the increase in prices. So based on aggregate data, of course the experience is going to be different for every family. But based on the aggregate data, writ large, lower class people are getting wage increases that are large enough to overcome the inflation increases that are also hitting their pocketbooks. So interesting data there. I think that's also important, but then that's actually what explains the 70% figure, which is that 70% of the economy is not all the

way at the bottom of the labor market. And so they are annoyed. And look, I get it. I was telling you, I went to a store recently and they were like, we're closing from one to two so workers can have a lunch break. And I was like, what? I was like, this is America. You're supposed to be able to shop 24 seven. I'm joking. Look, I do this. So I'm like, hey, this is America. You're supposed to be able to shop 24-7. I'm joking. Look, I do this, so I'm like, hey, this is good. Have your lunch break, whatever. But that type of stuff, it just gets annoying. As you said, you go to a drive-thru and it's taking forever.

You're like, why? Then you pull up and there's like two people inside of the Starbucks. You're like, oh, I understand what's happening here. You have that type of churn. Unless you go to Buffalo where they hired 45 people. Yes, unless you're actually in Buffalo where they're trying to break the union. In a union-busting effort, yes. All of that does combine for a general sense of everything is chaotic. It's not working properly.

And I also think that many Americans are just simply not aware of this phenomenon. I think a lot of people got used to the fact that they can be served 24-7 for a very, very low price. And there has been a very large cost in that. And as I said, the media is not doing a very good job of explaining to you about what's really happening. Both on inflation, you know, they're not telling you about the proper supply shocks, about the port of LA, about the shipping containers, about, you know, nitrogen prices skyrocketing because of a coal shortage in China, because of droughts in Montana, because of a drought in Brazil, which is causing your coffee price. All they see is the price actually go up. So it's of a drought in Brazil, which is causing your coffee price.

All they see is the price actually go up. So it's both a lack of understanding, a sense of chaos everywhere, and a real, look, and real enduring problem in terms of our gas prices, our food prices that are going up, and the fact that there is just chaos everywhere. That's really what's solidifying it. Well, and to transition to our next segment, the administration seeming like they don't really have a grip on the situation, which is leading to an overall lack of confidence that things are going to improve anytime in the near term. And it fuels that sense of chaos and uncertainty. Let's go ahead and put the Washington Post-point edge on generic congressional preference. So they now have a 10-point edge. The Biden administration, if you dig into these numbers, they are underwater on every issue, including COVID, which COVID had been the one thing they were holding on to. Now only 47%, I think it is, approve of the Biden administration on COVID.

As I said before, 70% of Americans rate the economy negatively. More than 6 in 10 Americans say that Biden has not accomplished much, including 70% of independents. I cannot possibly stress to you how devastating these numbers truly are. Democrats, in order to hold control of the House, they need to have probably a five point lead on the generic ballot. Instead, they have a 10 point deficit. This is not just wave territory. This is like utter catastrophe territory. And especially when you add to that the fact that with redistricting, the Republican Party has already redistricted themselves enough safe seats that they could win control of the House without doing anything.

Right. If they just had the same performance they did last time, because of redistricting, they win control of the House. So these numbers are dire. Look, we still have a while before the midterms. Things can change. Republican Party is very adept at shooting themselves in the face and the foot and everywhere else. And we're going to talk about that in a minute. But these numbers are extraordinarily bad. Let's put Kyle Kondik's tweet up on the screen. In these states, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, key swing states. It's thirty three percent.

Most of these are states that Biden won last time. Let that one sink in. And now only a third of the people there think he's doing a good job. And I really think that that number about how six and 10, including 70 percent of independents, feel like he hasn't done anything. 70 percent say the economy is not going well and, you know, headed in the wrong direction. Like, you don't need to reach for culture war, CRT. Like, you can understand the waves we just saw in Virginia and New Jersey just by looking at those few numbers. That's all you need to see. Yeah.

I mean, and, you know, Josh Kroschauer had that tweet. I believe that's where the confusion was. Please put that one up there. It's the ABC News, yes. And so what you can see is that Republicans have a 51% advantage there on the congressional generic ballot compared to Democrats, 41%.

And within that early midterm vote preference, they have yet never seen, as you can actually see whenever it's tracked, that amount of disconnect there. Except back in 2018, whenever it was the Democrats previewing the blue wave of 2018, it looks almost similar to the height of George W. Bush's unpopularity during the war in Iraq, which I did not think I would get to see a president get, what did he call it that time? A shellacking or something like that. That's what George W. Bush said. I don't remember what

his term was. A thumping. That's what it was. It was a thumping. God, I don't miss that. So President Bush suffered a midterm loss like that. President Obama, obviously. But this still does not look comparable to the red wave of 2010. This is bigger in terms of the generic ballot advantage. Once again, we are a year away, so let's not get too ahead of ourselves. But you dig down, none of these are trends which are going to reverse quickly. Half of Americans overall blame Biden for fast-rising inflation. Six in 10 say he has not accomplished much after 10 months in office, including 71% of independents. And in general, 38%, as you said, rate the economy not just negatively, but in poor condition.

So having the reversals here that he would need to see, he would need to see a drop in food price, a drop in gas price, which we'll talk about in Ken Klipp's scene, very unlikely that we'll see that anytime soon. He would need to see the supply chain crisis disappear overnight. Well, it took 40 years to get here. I think it's going to take a little bit longer than a year to crawl out of that hole. All of these are macro trends, which are betting against him. Same thing went on the coronavirus pandemic. And actually, coronavirus approval for Biden for a long time basically tracked along deaths and cases. If the deaths and cases

are going up, then his approval rating would go down. Whenever they're starting to go down, as they are now, we're already suddenly seeing his handling of the coronavirus pandemic go down. And I again think that it all ties to the fact that it just feels chaotic. Nothing is the same. I was telling you, I went to New York City earlier this weekend or on the weekend. It's a totally different world in terms of how they handle COVID. I was listening to a podcast. I can't remember who said it. And they were saying, you know, it's like every city has its own vibe for how they handle COVID.

I was in San Francisco. That's one way. Then you're in L.A. That's another way. Chicago is another thing. Down in Texas, Florida, Miami. It's like I've traveled enough now to the point where every single one has its own strange way of handling it. Customs around masking, the rules inside of which businesses even voluntarily will want this. And that is just chaotic. It's chaos.

And so when you have that level of chaos, it just makes you feel like, man, are they ever going to get a handle on this? It's kind of just exploded across. And it's like we've been in this 18 months. What exactly is the plan? And I think that's the problem. No seeming plan when it comes to COVID. Obviously, the congressional thing, dead. Dead on arrival.

Even if they pass it at this point, nobody cares. Well, that's the thing is, you know, Democrats are going to hold on to a couple numbers in these polls, which do say that the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better plan are popular, way more popular than the Democrats are. The plans are way more popular than Joe Biden. The Lord knows Kamala Harris. Either one of them are or their administration's handling of these issues or whatever. However, we we all know that at this point, these things have been stripped down to bare bones so that when they do pass, it's not like Americans are really going to particularly know. They just won't care around the margins a little bit. Might you know, if you if you're one of those people who helps you get child care, helps your kid to go to preschool or whatever. I mean, those things are not going to get fully implemented for a while either. So it's not like this is going to rescue Democrats. It's too little, too late. That's the bottom line. It's way too little. And they should have done

at the beginning of the administration when they had political capital, when they had that goodwill, when they could keep the momentum going instead of waiting around to get Mitch McConnell on board with your infrastructure plan. They should have just done it. And at this point, you know, it's hard to see what is ultimately going to save them. And just to underscore once again how bad these numbers are right now, the Tea Party wave, when I ran for Congress and got obliterated, Republicans had a three-point edge on the generic ballot. Three points. Yes. Now it's 10.

Like, that's angry. That's why we're trying to underscore, like, the magnitude of what this looks like. This is why we're like, oh, well, we definitely have to cover this because the numbers are just horrific. They're eye-popping. And look, polls can be outliers, margin of error. It's early. Factor all of those things in. But the difference between three points and the Tea Party wave in 2010, and by the way, redistricting has made the landscape worse for Democrats and realignment has made the landscape worse for Democrats in terms of how much

of a hill they have to climb and how much they have to win the popular vote by in order to win the House. So, yeah, it's dire for them. Very, very dire. Okay, let's go ahead and move in here for the GOP. As you said, do never underestimate the GOP's ability in order to shoot itself in the foot. There's been a little squabble, which I find very, very interesting around the future of the Republican Party. I kind of try to track these 2024 trends and all of that. And the one you might have seen in cable news, which actually is worth delving a little bit into, is the current spat between Chris Christie and Donald Trump. So you guys will recall,

Chris Christie was the first establishment Republican, or sorry, the second, I believe, after Jeff Sessions, when he dropped out of the Republican primary in 2016 and shocked America whenever he endorsed Trump. I mean, it was truly like a speechless moment for a lot of people. He also blew up Marco Rubio on his way out. Blew up Marco Rubio. Watch that moment. Suicide bombed Marco Rubio on his way out. Then gets nuked in the New Hampshire primary. And then what?

He endorses Donald Trump. It's a landmark moment. Ultimately, it doesn't end up working out for him. Trump kind of emasculates him, even in the video, whenever Christie endorsed him. Christie never ended up getting a high-profile position within the Trump administration. I think he wanted to be attorney general, and Trump would just never give it to him. Kushner had bad blood. He killed that, yeah. He killed the transition. This is all ancient history at this point. give it to him. Kushner had bad blood. He killed that, yeah. He killed the transition. This is all ancient history at this point. But Christie backed him.

He prepped him for the debate. Remember that? Remember he even got COVID prepping Trump? He almost died. He nearly died, yeah. He actually writes about that in his book. But Christie has decided that he wants to even possibly challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination. I'll say at the top, I don't think any of this has a chance in hell to work out. But that being said, the spat itself is interesting.

So we'll put this on the screen. What happened is, is that Chris Christie gave a speech and basically said, look, we need to move on from this election fraud stuff. Trump went ahead and blasted him in a statement saying that, you know, saying that, you know, we cannot move past the election fraud. Winning campaigns are campaigns that look forward and not backwards, is what Christie had originally said at the Republican-Jewish coalition meeting in Las Vegas on Sunday. What I found interesting is that even at that meeting, there was silence whenever he made that. There was a lot of, you know, discomfort among some of the attendees because they knew that it was a direct shot

against Trump himself. Trump obviously took notice of that. He said Chris Christie, who made a speech in Las Vegas, was massacred by his statements. The Republicans have to move on. Everybody remembers Christie left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating, a record low, and they don't want to hear any of this from him. Christie then responds in an Axios interview which just aired, which again I found very interesting. Let's take a listen. Elections for Republicans need to be about the future, not the grievances of the past. Donald Trump put out a statement saying you've gotten absolutely massacred. Yeah, well, look, I've made the conscious decision, Mike, that I want to spend my time combating the policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and trying to help Republicans win governorships and the House and the Senate in 2022. This is not an argument that I'll walk away from.

And then he went for it. He said, everybody remembers that Chris left New Jersey with a less than 9% approval rating. What do you make of him saying you had a less than 9% approval rating. What do you make of him saying you had a less than 9% approval rating? Michael, look, I'm not going to get into a back and forth with Donald Trump, but what I will say is this. When I ran for re-election in 2013, I got 60% of the vote. When he ran for re-election, he lost to Joe Biden. I'm happy to have that comparison stand up because that's the one that really matters. Oh, a little bit of a parting shot there from Chris Christie. And again, you know, man,

it's difficult to parse this one, Crystal. I mean, he did supplicate himself before Trump for like five straight years. And it's like after he loses, then he's willing to call him out. But the fact is, Chris Christie was one of the most popular GOP politicians in this country for years. Everybody thinks he missed his shot by not running against Obama back in 2012. And then in the post-Trump age, he very much sees the election fraud stuff, kind of like I do as well, as just an absolute noose around the neck of the party. Because it's one of those things where, look, will the Republicans win just because of discontent back in 2022? Absolutely. But when you bring this back to the fore, and you really are going to convince your entire base that the election was stolen, and not just that. I mean, you and I have seen this repeatedly, which is attempts by Republican politicians to say, yeah, but what he really meant is that big tech and the media. I'm like, no, no, no, he doesn't mean that.

He doesn't mean any of that. And what he means and what the people who believe him say is that the Dominion Venezuelans literally used bamboo ballots from China to steal the election. They believe that. And look, for the people who believe it, they trust him a lot. I wish it was otherwise, but that's just the truth. And I'm not going to patronize them by saying, no, no, no, what they really mean is this. I know what they mean. They're incorrect and it's okay. You know, hope they would listen to this show. But really what it is is that you can see how that level of noxiousness, that just leads people to either exit the electoral system or just vote against you because they can't stand that stuff. It will remain a huge problem for the Republicans that so many people in the beltway just want to look past. And just because they do well in 2022 based upon

an oppositional message does not mean that you can run affirmatively on a case that the election was completely stolen and that you will win again. It has dangerous consequences both for your own chances, as we saw in Georgia, whenever people were like, Republicans were like, oh, well, what's the point? Why should I even come out? That's a great point. But we have seen that repeatedly. Trump himself came forward and was trying to pull the same stuff possibly in Virginia, you know, if the results went the other way. These are not good results for your actual own base. And if you make it the centerpiece, as Trump himself is making this the defining issue of his

campaign and of loyalty to him, whether you think the election was stolen or not, well, it's just going to create an albatross around your neck going forward. So, you know, it's just one of these things where Christie is not the right messenger, but he is directionally correct that you cannot be the person who makes this the only defining thing about what makes you Republican. And I'm not saying that. Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is saying that. If you don't agree with that, then that's fine. But that doesn't actually make you Republican.

And that's part of the problem, which is that if that's all there is, then, you know, it's going to be very difficult to win national elections in the future. Yeah, I mean, in terms of electoral calculus, if Christie actually wants to win a Republican nomination, this is not going to work out. It's obviously not going to work. Is he correct that this is a major problem for the Republican Party? I think we've had proof of that over the past couple years. And you pointed to it. When Trump was very involved, very visible, they went on to lose two seats in Georgia that they had no business losing. I remember at the time when we saw on election

night that those two were going to a runoff. Oh, forget about it. Because the history in Georgia, first of all, I mean, Democrats have long struggled to win the state, number one. Number two, the history in Georgia is in these runoff elections, Republicans always routinely outperform whatever they did in the general election in November. That was the longstanding trend. It took a whole onslaught of Trump and his whole tribe of crazy people. Lin Wood. Yeah, and all those people. TBT.

Whose names I want to, you know, consign to the dustbin of my memory. All of them had to come together to get the GOP to lose those very winnable seats and hand control the Senate over to the Democrats in California, you saw how because Larry Elder was more closely tied to Trumpism, in the end, there was a huge wave for Democrats ultimately that led Gavin Newsom to easily survive what was truly perilous waters for him at one point. In contrast, in Virginia, Trump stayed away. He stayed quiet. Youngkin was able to walk that very narrow line of not pissing off the Trump base so much that they wouldn't vote for him, but not really affirming

the president, just sort of dog whistling towards the, oh, we're worried about election security, et cetera, et cetera, but not enough to turn off independent voters. I think if Trump had showed up in the state of Virginia, I think you can- I also think he would have lost. I think he would have lost. I mean, if he had been more visible even, I mean, one of the biggest favors that's been done for the Republican Party and for Trump and his personal favorability with the country at this point is that all the social media giants kicked him off the platform. Getting to the platform is the best thing that ever happened to him. Totally. It totally is. And it's the best thing that's happened in the Republican Party

because he's so much quieter. And so people kind of forget how like insane and delusional, obnoxious and just divisive and toxic he is to the country. They've sort of forgotten, you know, some of the edge has been taken off of that. But yeah, I mean, when you get to 2024, if he's the GOP nominee, that's all going to be front off of that. But yeah, I mean, when you get to 2024, if he's the GOP nominee, that's all going to be front and center again. Of course, on the other hand, Democrats are going to run like either Joe Biden's carcass, Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg. And so they're equally screwed. So that's kind of where things stand right now. Yes. And just to give you guys an update how this all works out. Oh, I did not mention this. Chris Christie actually even has

mentioned he might run even if Trump runs again. So put that tweet on the screen in which he said that, you know, following the path of basis claims is not going to work and that he would be a productive voice for the party going forward, even if Trump does run again. But to give you an idea of how this is all manifesting on a policy level, we mentioned this in our last show, put this Trump statement up there on the screen. He is now saying that he is willing to field primary challengers against the House Republicans who voted for the infrastructure bill and the Bannon contempt and impeachment charge, including Mace, McKinley, and Smith there in the House of Representatives. I mean, just amazing, which is that, yeah, if you voted for an infrastructure bill, especially these Northeastern Republicans, which has a 70% approval rating amongst Republicans in their district, then you're not a real Republican.

Hmm. Yeah. That's really going to work out well for democracy. A very similar infrastructure bill that was proposed under Trump. Exactly. And, you know, it's like if you're going to set the standard that no dollar is legitimate if you vote to spend for it under a Democrat, then you're just a complete moron and you just destroyed the U.S. Congress, which is what the Tea Party did and what many of these people said that they were moving on from. But, you know, what goes around comes around, and it's all just a cynical culture war. Do you think that Christie is just posturing for like a more highly paid media gig or sell books?

He's a millionaire already. He's a multimillionaire. I think his wife works on Wall Street. There's never enough for them. They always want more. Maybe you're right. I don't know. I think he likes being relevant. I think he likes being on TV. I think that he probably legitimately believes that in his mind, he's probably like, I'm the one who endorsed Trump from the beginning. So it's most legitimate for me. You know, I had a connection to the Republican base for years, which is true. He's a very high name ID, all of that. But look, it's a farce.

He failed in the 2016 campaign. He would utterly fall on his face in a Republican campaign in 2024. That being said, I do think the voice, you know, it's not bad. I think it is important for people to hear this stuff. In a lot of ways, Trump took his lane. Yeah, he did. He was the bombastic. He was the brash asshole.

And then Trump was more of a brash asshole. And Christie kind of looked small next to Trump in the debate stage. He wasn't as big of a personality as Trump ultimately was. Because, I mean, remember, Christie made his name yelling at teachers at town halls. That was like his thing. But, look, his politics to me are terrible. But I always thought he was very politically talented. Oh, he was.

And he was actually a smart guy. I've seen him speak back in 2015, 2014 and more. I think I remember I went to a conference once where he was at. I was blown away by it. He's very talented. His grasp of the policy details and more. Look, I'm a nerd. That stuff doesn't actually resonate with people.

But I remember thinking. He's got the charisma to back it up. Exactly. Like when he took out Marco Rubio. Exactly right. Like I said, I would watch that same, that moment on repeat all day, every day. Because he just thoroughly exposed that man in that moment.

He really exposed him for being extraordinarily shallow, like overly prepped by his consultants, had his talking point. And he couldn't do anything other than repeat his talking points. And Christie called him out on that. So if it wasn't for the—I think if Christie had run back in 2012— I think he might have won, honestly. —when there was a whole effort from GOP elites to recruit him in,

and a lot of money was behind him, he decided to take a pass. I think if Christie ends up being the Republican nominee instead of Romney, I think he had a better shot at winning that matchup against Obama, because Romney was just such a character. He's so awkward, like, you know, all of his weird sayings, like, the trees are the right height, and binders full, all that stuff. Christie was a more formidable opponent, but he just missed his window. Now the party is Trump's, and that's that. Yeah, that's right. And Christie was, you know, in many ways. He was a lot more liberal on a lot of the culture war politics, kind of in the same way that Trump was. He was bombastic, anti-political correctness in a very New Jersey type way, foreshadowing the Trump wave. He had a high number of Hispanic voters who backed him in the state of New Jersey. He was quite a competent governor. I mean, you know, from a basic competence standpoint. And he's actually a pretty smart guy. He really did have all of it going for him. But I do think he just nuked his chances by tying himself to Trump and being embarrassed on

the national stage now for five years. That being said, it's an interesting development. We'll continue to track it. Yeah, the media is going to love him. Okay, speaking for interesting developments, you guys know I'm a sucker for the UFO stories. Everyone's like, why don't you cover UFOs more? It's like, well, we follow the news. And when the news arrives and we will explain it to you. I do have to say I'm a bit disconcerted that this is coming from the top spy chief herself. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Avril Haines, who is a director of national intelligence, she oversees all of the 16 US spy agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, was speaking at an event here in D.C. called Our Future in Space. Now, during that, and actually this just shows you how far we've come, she was

actually asked about UFOs, something that you would never have seen the DNI asked in the past. And what was really stunning is that she at least opened the door saying that it was possible, and again, possible, that the strange encounters the intelligence community simply does not understand could be extraterrestrial life. She even hesitated to use the word extraterrestrially, but I can't even believe that this is coming out of the mouth of the top intelligence official in D.C. That being said, what is a very common theme here on our show? Do not trust a word these people say.

So for me, I'm very conflicted. I do not believe. I'm deeply skeptical of the deep state. What lesson did we learn over the last five or six years? There are two ways of looking at it. I've spoken with people in the UFO community. Number one is she was dragged here kicking and screaming, the intelligence community, because of efforts from within Congress or from within Pentagon in order to release the videos

and put some of the information out there in the public. The public is demanding so much answers. It forced the intel community to put out that report. You guys remember that report. They talk about having several instances unexplained by anything that we know in terms of technology that we have, that other nations have, and specifically actually ruled out the conventional, you know, wind, weather balloon explanation saying this is a totally unexplained aerial phenomena and encounter that happened on our satellites.

The other one is that this is a total psyop. I mean, listen, I just don't think that they're competent enough in order to pull that off. I don't think it's the 1960s anymore. And the idea of the PSYOP is basically like to get themselves more funding. Right. And I've talked about this. If you understand the funding mechanisms, they have the highest military budget of all time right now. The Congress is about to pass it in the next couple of months in the NDAA. I mean, Biden- All they have to do is say like Iran or China and they get billions more dollars. Exactly. I pointed this out. It seems elaborate for that. The time for a PSYOP was 2013 during sequestration when the military budget was cut by like 10%

or something like that. That was the time to start conjuring up some psyops. Maybe that's when they started conjuring it up and it's now just come to fruition. Now, Sagar. All right. See, I don't have my head deep enough into this space. I tend to fall amongst the first category of what I said. I think that the intel community was dragged here kicking and screaming. They never want to talk about this, but because of the disclosures of the people inside the military who are pushing out these videos to journalists like Jeremy Corbell and others, they are made it so that the intel community chief herself has to acknowledge the possibility of extraterrestrial life. We have the full video of what exactly she said, so you guys can take a listen for yourselves.

And the main issues that Congress and others have been concerned about are basically safety of flight concerns and counterintelligence issues. But of course, there's always the question of, is there something else that we simply do not understand that might come extraterrestrially? Yeah, you can see that little bit of a hesitation there. Kind of stumbles there, yeah, too. Like I said, look, I mean, we have gone through many of the quote-unquote conventional explanations. The military themselves says that's not true. Now, should you trust the military? No. But they also said it's not a top-secret government program. It's like, well, if it was a top-secret government program, then they would have said so. I can tell you from speaking with people who are close to the intel and close to some of the stuff that's

going out there, even the people who are the senators and them who are charged here do not have any indication that this is some sort of secret program. They are generally mystified. The people who are the Pentagon are actually loathe to admit that they have no idea what the hell is going on with these encounters. There are a number of videos that are inside the Pentagon, inside the intelligence community, photos and others that have just simply not come out because people are afraid of, you know, if you leak it, that's, you know, violating the law and they can go after you and a lot of this stuff. It's not as tightly held as it was held before, kind of within the intranet of the CIA and the DIA and many of these other organizations, but there's still a

trackability there, which would make it so that you're going to federal prison if you were to leak that to a journalist. And you put that together, the information that we do have and more indicates that there is more inside the intelligence community. We saw John Brennan, former CIA director, get pressed on this by Tyler Cowen, and he also had to admit about some of the intelligence saying, look, we simply don't have no idea what it is. And I still think that that very short document that they put out there was an extraordinary document in which they had to admit that by their own analysis, that the conventional earthly explanations made absolutely no sense in order to explain some of the flight that was observed by some of our airships, or some of our airplanes,

all usually out in the middle of nowhere, Seeing things move at a high rate of speed, which is just not known in human technology. Another point that argues against the idea that this is a PSYOP is that that report was spun to the media as proof that it wasn't extraterrestrial. That's right. That's right. When there was actually no, it just was like, well, we can't explain it. We didn't prove that it is extraterrestrial. We just can't explain it. It was like we didn't prove that it is extraterrestrial we just can't explain it it was like finds no proof that it is extraterrestrial it's like okay but it didn't find any proof that it wasn't also but that that way that it was spun to the media i think would also indicate that it's not ultimately a scion but who the hell knows

our friend jeff bezos was at the same forum yes he made some interesting comments as well that i picked up on so he says he does not see us lasting much longer on Earth. He claimed that Earth might one day become a vacation destination that you would visit just like our national parks, that all manufacturing would be in outer space with workers permitted occasional visits back to the surface of the Earth. Very generous of him. He dreams of floating space cities that contain rivers, forests, and wildlife. No word on how his ego is faring since, you know, they kind of, Congress didn't give him all the billions that he wanted for his project. This is always my problem with Bezos.

I would love that if that were to be true. I would love it if that were his actual aim. He also, as I covered in our last show, is the guy who held up the moon landing for over a year because his company did not win a contract. Yeah, dude, you're setting us back. That's your goal. You're actually standing in the way. You literally dealt the biggest blow to the American space program in years

by suing and holding up SpaceX for being able to begin work on the lunar lander. I didn't know this, but apparently Musk had even chided him at the time, being like, he likes lawsuits more than he likes going to space, which I think is true. He wants to go to space and have all of this technology as long as he is the platform through which all of this would happen. That is why, I mean, think about it. He built Amazon, which is the platform for most of online retail. And if you think the next most lucrative opportunity in the world is building the rockets that are going to take you back and forth from future space colonies to Earth and more and bring back minerals or whatever,

the mining on asteroids and all of that, then logically you would want to own that platform too. So this vision of Bezos, something I fully want and buy into, is not what I want Bezos to be in charge of. I don't want any. I like this planet. I'm kind of attached to it. I'm out.

Put me on the next ship. I enjoy this one. I enjoy being here and not just visiting it occasionally from some Amazon-owned city in the sky. So I would personally like to try to save the one that we're on first before we have to resort to whatever sort of hellscape Jeff Bezos has planned for us. You know what's cooler than hiking Yellowstone? Hiking Mars. So that's something that I would get into. Prove it, Sagar.

Well, I'd be happy to. Elon, if you're listening, send me up there. All right, let's move on to the next and final one. As you guys know, we've been talking a lot about here in inflation on the show. And I actually think, you know, I'm very proud of the way that we talk about it because it is in a way one of the ones that were most criticized for, for talking previously. And it's because we simply are willing. I really do believe, you know, in terms of the space on this, the only ones willing to acknowledge the reality of the prices are going up and it's extraordinarily detrimental to ordinary working

class people. And at the same time, are not going to gaslight you into thinking that it's only because of government spending. Almost 95% of the people who are talking about inflation are doing so because it serves their ideological interests that government spending is the reason why that we're here in the first place. You know, it's interesting before I even get to the Stephanie Ruhle clip. My friend Joe Weisenthal at Bloomberg News put out a great piece where he rightfully acknowledged that the Trump administration's spending on the Paycheck Protection Program and other government stimulus, which kept supply chains and businesses intact throughout the pandemic, arguably did more to go against inflation than anything that we're even seeing right now, which is those abilities in order to preserve supply chain, preserve business, and more, and not cause even more

disruption during the reopening phase of our economy, actually tamped down future inflation that we would have seen today through more supply chain disruption. So that's one thing. I'll just put that out on the table. One thing you are not going to see us do is what MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle did, which is basically say, actually, inflation is totally fine. And these people, you know, they have plenty of money anyways. Let's take a listen. And the dirty little secret here, Willie, while nobody likes to pay more, on average, we have the money to do so. Household savings hit a record high over the pandemic. We didn't really have anywhere to go out and spend. And as we said a moment ago, we're expecting retail sales this holiday season to

break records for those who own their homes. The value of our homes are up. And while the stock market isn't the economy, you got over half of American households with some investment in the markets and the markets have hit record highs. So we need to put all of this in perspective. This time last year, when you and I were talking, Willie, nobody had a vaccine. Now, 200 million Americans do. And we're seeing this push of demand and that's pushing up pricing. There it is. It's the final the of, actually, it's completely fine. No, it's not fine. You can both acknowledge that household savings are high.

You can acknowledge that record demand is there because we had a pandemic and people were inside and their consumption habits have dramatically changed. And you can also say, as we repeatedly, that ordinary people are getting slammed by gas prices, food prices, and more. So trying to go out there and justify it, I saw an NBC News op-ed basically say the exact same thing. They were like, actually, inflation is good. It's like, okay, everyone calm down. Nothing is good about people having to pay more for ordinary goods. Right. Well, she's also, I mean, she just rolls out the hits, this lady. Yes, she really does. And what I appreciate about Stephanie Ruhle is she doesn't try to be anything other than just totally aligned with Wall Street. Yes. So that's one of the things

that I like about her is the mask is never on. It's just always out there, which I genuinely appreciate. She's also the one who said that a big part of the problem was that the Biden administration wanted to create high-paying jobs and that high-paying jobs fuel inflation. Okay. The problem right now is not that people are earning more money. Yes. That is not a problem. That is a good thing.

That is a genuinely good thing. We should be happy about that. We should be happy if people were able to save a little bit more. We should be happy if they're able to get a raise right now because the labor market is saying. We should be very happy about those things and we should encourage them to continue in that direction. The problem is that, okay, we've got a little more money over here, some people, limited amount, and that's from, you know, a situation where you've had wages

stagnant for 40 years, all right, so you get a little bit of a break there. The problem isn't that. The problem is that over here, you had this incredibly fragile supply chain that fell apart when we had a crisis. You've got monopolies. I mean, all the things that we've been tracking. You've got monopolies. You've got offshoring to China. So the minute that there's a hiccup with shipping containers and going into and coming out of China, then you've got cascading impacts. You've got climate change that's fueling droughts that are increasing the inputs for all sorts of things from coffee beans to the corn that our cows and our other animals need to consume that's raising meat prices. So those are the issues. The problem is not the people doing a little bit better with their paycheck checks and their stimulus

checks. And I love these. I love those comments from her, too, about the high paying jobs. I'm like, how much are you making over there at MSNBC? Are you fueling inflation? Stephanie Rule, are you the problem? And we'll recall, I worked my butt off. I don't live on Park Avenue, but I live pretty darn close. I live pretty darn close. OK, well, are you fueling inflation by paying probably, what, $10 million for like a shoebox apartment in New York City? One could argue that. One could argue a lot of things about people who are as wealthy as her and are spending a lot of money on different things and driving prices up for the rest of us. I don't think she thinks often about the people who are, you know, maybe drive her around or give her coffee or something

who are getting slammed by the rising price of gas. Or even a cup of coffee these days is like 40% more than it was before the pandemic. These are real things that hurt real people. And that's, again, you can acknowledge truths while also just having a bit more compassion and maybe messaging around what's going on. I saw this at the White House. They're doing their damnedest in order to destroy themselves over there. I just can't believe it. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, talking about gas prices, basically expressing no plan whatsoever. And it's like, well, if you take the long view, this is why we need renewable energy. Listen, sure, but maybe don't take the long view when people are hurting right now. Just take a listen to what she said. Just to be clear, I know that's been a criticism, so that's why I said that, not an accurate one. Look, our view is that the rise in gas prices over the long term makes an even stronger case for doubling down our investment and our focus on clean energy options so that we are not relying on the fluctuations and OPEC and their willingness to put more supply and meet the demand in the market.

I wouldn't even disagree with a single word of that, Crystal. But, you know, it's just the way that the way that the act is internalized. And I can tell you, I saw that thing all over conservative media is the reason why is people just want to hear you say, I am, you know, we are doing everything we can in order to do it. This, this, and this. The president feels that this is hurting average Americans every single day. And this is all he thinks about at the very top. And we think it makes the case for X, Y, and Z. If you're not willing to say the first part, they should tune you out. And that's what's happening, which is that people, we pointed at the poll and began this,

that Americans generally feel that the Biden administration is not doing anything about the things that really matter to their lives. And gas is at the very, very top of that agenda. I mean, listen, she's 100% correct that our dependence on oil is a problem, and it's a problem for everybody. Especially foreign oil. Yes, exactly. But I mean, as we know, the oil we create here, it just goes into a global commodities market. The fact that we're dependent on, we're never going to be as big of a producer as OPEC and have control of the market. We're going to talk to Ken Klippenstein about exactly what is going on there and how we may be being punished right now by Saudi for Biden not wanting to meet with MBS. So we'll get into a little bit more specifics of the oil market. But this is actually a common problem for sort of climate change policy, is that when

people feel like they're under stress today, telling me 30 years in the future you have a solution is not really that fulfilling right then in the moment when you're like, yeah, but I got to fill up my tank this afternoon and be able to do that and pay for the groceries and get to my job. And what you're telling me about your plans, good. That's great. I hope that helps my kids 20, 30 years from now. But that's not helping me get through this particular week. And so I do think it is kind of even worse than I thought with the Biden administration because the one thing he had going for him was some pretty decent instincts around what people really cared about, what they don't care about.

This sense of his ability to kind of emotionally connect with the middle class. And any of that is just, seems pretty far gone. Really terrible. And both optics in terms of the way that they're handling this. And if this is the tactic, you should not be surprised by the red wave in 2022 whatsoever.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, as we often say here on Breaking Points, principles only matter if you're willing to apply them to people that you don't particularly like that much. Right-wingers are for free speech until it's the stuff that they don't like. And the leftists are for free speech until someone says they don't like. Tale as old as time in the terms of our politics today. But one theme that the national press hammered home to us daily under Trump was this. They, in particular, are indispensable.

How many times under Trump did we hear about assault on the free press? How enemy of the people was dangerous? How journalism is the true and greatest pursuit in America? How any of the criticism of media falls in the category of an attack on the institution of the press itself? I, like many of you, rolled my eyes at that rhetoric at the time because I knew what you all know. When they say the media and the press are essential, what they really mean is that only the corporate media itself is to be protected and is essential.

Shows like this one, people in the gray zone, people like Julian Assange or James O'Keefe of Project Veritas, they don't qualify under their definition of the real press. Thus, if they are attacked, then we don't qualify. But as we have been trying to say now for some time, the law is the law, and it is applied equally. If a standard is set against even people in the independent sphere, it will not be long before the government comes knocking at the door of the New York Times. People used to understand this. It's why the ACLU stood up for the KKK, and it's why the New York Times and others spoke out for Fox News a decade ago when Obama spied on Fox. But today, the culture

war and Trump has rotted the brains of the press, and they are silent cows. That brings us to the case I want to draw attention to, that of the FBI raid on the house of Project Veritas founder, James O'Keefe. So let's put this up there on the screen. The story began last week when news of the raid broke in which the FBI executed a search warrant on O'Keefe's home early in the morning in connection to a stolen diary belonging to Joe Biden's daughter, Ashley. FBI did not offer cause as to why they were there. They executed the search warrant early in the morning, but O'Keefe's explanation is very important.

Per Project Veritas, they are the ones who turned over the stolen diary to the FBI in keeping with ethical standards concerning stolen material. Now, once again, that is their side of the story. But does it even matter? Perhaps you do hate James O'Keefe and you think he's an unethical scumbag. He is still a person who does acts of journalism.

Secret records are sketchy. I would never do it. And he's been caught too many times selectively editing some of his secret recordings. That being said, he has obtained and published important information like that of ABC News anchor Amy Robach admitting her network covered up a story about Jeffrey Epstein. So committing acts of journalism from time to time is enough for me to classify him under the law as a journalist. And importantly, it should qualify him in the eyes of the FBI and the DOJ. But right now, the lawman is the Biden administration, and it appears that Joe Biden, Merrick Garland, and the Department of Justice is ignoring the press freedom directive that they themselves published just six short months ago, when they announced they would not

use compulsory process to obtain reporters' information. They got patted on the back, and the press hailed them as heroes for doing that. And yet, just six months later, in an investigation that concerns pilfered material from the president's daughter, then that little announcement goes right out the window. They break into his house at 6 a.m. in the morning. This should be rightfully condemned from all sides if you really believe in press freedom. The New York Times should be running editorials decrying it. And yet, what happened instead? One of the consequences of Russiagate is that the corporate press became stenographers for the intelligence community. And lo and behold, we warned on this show that it would have far

reaching consequences. Sure enough, when it came time to write about the O'Keefe case, that's what happened. The New York Times did journalism by publishing internal Project Veritas conversations around the legal lines that they had to adhere to when they were secretly recording others and trying to produce their journalism. Immediately, the question rose. Well, how did the New York Times get that information? And hey, you know, now come to think of it, how were they the very first people to know about that raid? Well, per Project Veritas' lawyers, the information the New York Times published could only have come from one source, from the FBI itself, which means that the FBI was leaking privileged communications between

Project Veritas and its lawyers to bolster the case that they leaked the information to the New York Times to get it out there in the public. Just think about that. It's an outrageous breach by the FBI. They broke their own policy on journalists to raid O'Keefe's house. They seized his cell phones, which has the list of confidential sources that Project Veritas communicates with. They tipped off the New York Times to the raid. And then when O'Keefe complained, they leaked his communication with his lawyers to the paper of record. Nary a peep yet from the actual New York Times itself as to whether this constitutes an attack on press freedom or not. So I guess it's on me to say it.

This is completely crazy. And let's frame it in the worst possible terms that I can. The Department of Justice is persecuting a journalist, breaking their own internal protocols, and establishing a dangerous precedent to investigate a crime against the president's daughter. I think I can safely say that if Trump or anyone in the Trump administration did anything similar against some liberal activist who was involved in something similar with Ivanka Trump, that the media would be absolutely losing their minds. And that's the thing. They should have if he did that. And they should do it now because they like the Biden administration and

they hate James O'Keefe. He showed them up and he's even gone after them in the past. They will sit silently when he's persecuted by the Biden administration. As I said in the beginning, principles do not mean anything if you don't apply them to the people that you don't like. And I don't expect the media to say anything. But for all of you, you should know what the government is doing in your name against an organization which has committed journalism in the past, even if you don't like it. You should be outraged about it. And you should think about this the next time that you see Jim Acosta or somebody else from the corporate press sanctimoniously talking about their commitment to freedom of the press. And ultimately, that's really what it comes down to, Crystal.

When we learn about this, and you and I know this, we are automatically, when we see a project. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, of course, we've been tracking the lies, the cover up and the ultimate lack of any accountability for a drone strike that murdered most of an Afghan family in the waning days of our in-state occupation there in Afghanistan. You all probably remember how all that went down. The Biden administration, under media pressure for their withdrawal and wanting to project power, they drone-striked what turned out to be a worker for an American charity and most of his family, including children. The military taught brass. They initially lied and said that they had gotten the ISIS-K militants. Go USA,

we got the bad guys. After an extensive investigation by the New York Times, however, they were forced to admit that those ISIS-K militants were actually babies. The Pentagon promised that they would conduct an investigation. I can put the results of that up on the screen. After allowing enough time for public outrage to die down, they then released the results of that investigation, saying that the murdering of those babies was, quote, not unreasonable. No one would be punished and no accountability would ultimately be had. Well, we are now getting a fresh look at just how routinely civilians have been killed in those crimes covered up by the Pentagon in their operations in another country, Syria.

This is thanks to another New York Times report, and here is that report. The headline is, how the U.S. hit an airstrike that killed dozens of civilians in Syria. In it, they describe a U.S. attack perpetrated by a highly classified unit known as Task Force 9. Task Force 9 was effectively given carte blanche to operate in Syria under the Trump administration, and they operated independently of the other units that were involved in that ultimately illegal war. In March of 2019, that group, Task Force Nine, dropped two massive bombs on an ISIS camp known to contain tens of thousands of women and children. In this particular incident, Air Force analysts, unaffiliated with Task Force Nine, were totally stunned by the attack. Those uniformed personnel were watching a group of women and children from the camera of a circling drone, and they

instantly believed when the bombs were dropped that a war crime had been committed. Who dropped that? A confused analyst typed on a secure chat system being used by those monitoring that drone. Two people who reviewed the chat log were called. Another responded, we just dropped on 50 women and children. Actually, the number of dead turned out to be 80. This would rank as one of the largest civilian massacres that we know about in our illegal war in Syria. A legal officer reported it as a suspected war crime triggering an investigation. Yet, according to the Times, all investigations and reports on the incident were so sanitized that the final analysis did not even include a mention of the

strike and the area where it occurred was bulldozed. Confronted with the Times reporting, U.S. Central Command was forced to acknowledge the strike for the very first time, but they claimed the airstrikes were justified. They said the bombs killed 16 militants and four civilians, that they could not say whether or not the women and children who were killed were civilians since, quote, women and children in the Islamic State sometimes took up arms. Now, the Times goes on to suggest that such indiscriminate killings and cover-ups were likely routine. But it's not just civilian drone strike casualties that the Pentagon covers up. ABC News just released a documentary showing the Pentagon's lies and cover-ups when it came to a deadly ISIS ambush of Green Berets in Niger. Now, you might remember this attack in

2017 because a lot of the public was shocked to learn that U.S. forces were engaged in comment on the ground in Niger at all, let alone the half dozen African nations where we have operations. Do you remember a public debate about the utility of this war? Do you remember your members of Congress voting for this war? Of course not. Presidents now routinely engage in illegal wars around the globe under the flimsiest of legal rationales with zero consequences. Now, this was in Africa. It started under Obama and it continued under Trump and now under Joe Biden. In this new doc, ABC exposes an elaborate cover-up with regards to exactly how and why these Green Berets were killed. Effectively, the U.S. military sought to blame the dead, saying that the slain

soldiers went on a rogue and unauthorized mission. In reality, the mission came straight from leadership. The autopsy report was where it really started clicking that something didn't add up. What they were being told and what we were being told were two different things. Because they know their mission went horribly wrong. And it was going to be a lot of fingers to point and to blame. They spent months and months and months trying to formulate a damn story that they thought would protect their ass. The team inaccurately portrayed the first of three total missions on 3 and 4 October. It's all about the club. It's all about circling the wagons around the senior leadership.

The army let me down. They let my son down. And then they lied about it. You put all of these stories together and you don't get a picture of rogue soldiers, but a rogue Pentagon acting with few rules and even less accountability. Get this, in Syria, the civilian murders were so flagrant and common that even the CIA was uncomfortable. Agents on the ground reported 10 separate incidents to the Department of Defense's Inspector General, in which they said that that classified group, Task Force 9, hit targets even though they knew that civilians

would be killed. Ten war crimes so blatant that even the CIA ghouls thought that they went too far. Now, these crimes and illegal wars and reckless risking of American lives, this is all being perpetrated in your name. Yet somehow the only consequences are ever for those like Julian Assange or Chelsea Manning, other whistleblowers who dare to expose the truth. Gee, I wonder why so many Americans have lost faith in our institutions. These reports, this one from the New York Times, it's length that you guys really should take the time to read it because they detail this particular attack. Joining us now, we have Ken Klippenstein. He is investigative reporter for The Intercept with a great news scoop. Great to see you, Ken. Good to be with you. Welcome to the studio. Yeah, well, having you.

All right. Go ahead and throw this chair sheet up on the screen of Ken's latest reporting here alongside Ryan Grimm. The main driver of inflation is a murderous maniac in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia is withholding oil production because Biden will not meet with Mohammed bin Salman after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the president suggested. So just take us through the story. What is the retaliation and how does it relate to gas prices? So the idea for the story originated in my reading of the business press who are kind of admirably frank about how the world works because they have to make investment decisions based on it. They're writing for other investors. And so I'm reading Financial Times and they're saying just very bluntly that Saudi Arabia's decision not to increase oil production is having

a huge effect on the cost of oil internationally. And I'm thinking, well, oil undergirds everything because that's how you ship goods across the ocean and in ships. That's how you move things via truck. That's how you build things. So this gets factored into everything in ways that we don't even think about. So I'm thinking, well, this must be at least a component of the inflation and of the gas price increase that we're seeing. So I start poking around, and I start to find all kinds of evidence not really focused on by the media in a sort of way that would frame it so the public

would understand how important this is, but kind of peripherally talking about, you know, MBS's decision potentially being political. President Biden gave a talk at a CNN town hall a couple of weeks ago where he said that this is owing, he attributes the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman's decision not to increase production to his decision not to meet with him personally. And I was amazed that that didn't get more coverage because this is a huge, perhaps the central issue, you know, facing families, facing people today, facing the global economy right now. And there's hardly any discussion of it outside of the business press.

No, I couldn't agree with you more. One of the things you've called for, I've called for specifically, is I'm like, you need to drag this king over here and be like, hey, what's going on? You know, you need to start pumping. We give you guys a lot of money. We sell you a lot of weapons. I mean, you know. Which there's precedent for.

Right, yeah. President Trump did very adeptly. Exactly right. Not just in the 2018 run up to the midterm elections when he ordered him to increase production, but in 2020 last year when he told him to cut production because it was hurting domestic U.S. shale and fracking production. So perhaps not something I agree with, but he, again, he was very deft at going about this. He got together with some representatives and started crafting legislation that would pull the U.S. military

out of Saudi. Guess what happens? Within two weeks, MBS obliges and he cuts production. So why aren't the Biden administration doing more about this? I mean, why are they not exerting more pressure on Saudi Arabia? Why is Congress not getting involved? I mean, is it just a question of Saudi money in Washington and influence?

Well, that's the unfortunate thing. So as I was saying off camera, that I feel sort of vindicated not chasing after the Steele dossier, not because I don't want to be critical of the president, but because I just thought it was a lot of innuendo and it seems sort of thin. And something I focused on instead was Gulf influence. And what I found over the last four years is that this is very bipartisan in

nature. I'm not saying it's exactly the same. I do think Trump represents a departure from the sort of intensity of that relationship between the Gulf and Washington. But it's something that's affected both parties. And for that reason, they don't like to talk about it because you open up that door, you're going to find skeletons that implicate both parties. So I think that that is a big reason that they don't want to talk about this. Because if the, you know, I think American people understood the influence that they're able to exert this foreign government, they might have attitudes about what, you know, what the heck we're doing there with military forces that exist, the amount of arms that we sell them, that President Biden, who, you know, in that meeting with the Crown Prince, does represent

a departure from the norm, but still is going to sell them 500 million in weapons, or at least wants to right now. Oh, yeah. Since Congress is trying to fight them. So clearly, this is something that is going to make both parties not look great, and that it tends to be when the public doesn't get to hear a whole lot about these kind of things, when it makes both parties look bad. Well, and let's not forget that the Supreme Court has just paved the way

for foreign actors to have more influence in our politics, allowing money to back interest groups from foreign governments. I wanted to get your reaction to a quote you have here from Trita Parsi, who, of course, is a friend of our show. By the way, that was the FEC, not the Supreme Court, that made that decision, who said that he sees these actions from Saudi and MBS as part of a broader Saudi strategy to favor the GOP as MBS calculates that a Republican president will reinvest in the idea of dominating the Middle East militarily,

which makes the relationship with Saudi Arabia critical once more. What did you think of his comments? Yeah, I think that's important because whatever you think about the Iranian regime, and there's plenty of criticisms you can make about it, Trita makes them himself, a relationship like that becomes a sort of pressure release valve where the more that you're able to go to them potentially as a broker, international broker, someone that you can work with, the less you have to rely on the Saudis, not just regionally, but for oil as well. And so those two things are connected. And I wish that there was more cognizance of that. Yeah, I mean, it makes the most sense in the world. I mean, at this point, whenever we're seeing, what else can we see outside of the Saudi regime, like signs that this would confirm that MBS is simply just upset that Biden won't show him the deference

that he deserves after he ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Are we going to see more pushback from Riyadh against the Biden administration whenever they just issue empty calls? What else can we look for, different signs of the future? The debate kind of quietly going on in Washington right now is how to respond to this. And so there's talk about tapping the strategic oil reserve, which I think just kind of kicks the football and doesn't really address the problem. There's other talk of getting tougher with him, as Trump did, which to his credit, he knew how to wield power in certain respects. And in this regard, we have a lot of leverage and there's a whole lot of, I think, illusions about the nature of the relationship. So if you look at the amount of Gulf money sloshing around these think tanks, I think that

that plays a role when these think tanks push a narrative that suggests, you'll hear this again and again when you talk about getting tough on Saudi. They say, well, if we're tough on them, they might drive them into the arms of the Russians. They might drive them into the arms of the Chinese. The thing is we have set up a system there that they are dependent on, not just military, but we run a lot of their technology. We run a lot of the trappings of a developed society that they developed very recently, and they are dependent on us for it. It's not easy. I was talking to a senior Senate aide who I quote in the story who told me that for us to pull out in another state like Russia to go in there and to kind of set themselves up and be able to run the society, that would take 10 years at the very least.

And that's what some of the smarter analysts said, I think, will tell you. So to think that MBS can just do that on a whim is very unrealistic. And I think that there's a political motive behind why some of these quote unquote experts say that we can't get tough on them, which is that they're getting money from these guys. So do you buy into the notion that Trita's laying out here that effectively MBS has decided they want to put their thumb on the scales to try to help Republicans win? I think so, yeah.

And I think the nature of the relationship, I'll give you an example. There was just indicted a top fundraiser for the Trump administration who was a senior advisor to his campaign, Tom Barrack. Yes. A billionaire. How often do you see a billionaire get indicted? Yeah, it's crazy. For unregistered foreign lobbying on behalf of the UAE. And the evidence laid out, of course, this is alleged.

He's still, people deserve a fair trial. But if you look at the allegations of DOJ, it looks pretty damning. And it looks, it seems to evince, you know, a pay-to-play relationship on the, where, you know, the UAE gives him money. And then he influenced peddles on behalf of the Trump administration. And there was all sorts of stuff like that going on. To give you an example, in 2017, I had a story about the gifts that they were showering on Trump when he visited Riyadh as his first foreign trip, which in itself was a huge and dramatic departure from what normally a president visits either Mexico or Canada. Or the UK.

Yeah, that going back years and years and years. This was a huge coup politically for MBS internationally at a time that he's trying to prop up his legitimacy as a leader to have him come visit so I find out under a Freedom of Information Act request that they had showered him in all these crazy gifts it was kind of funny because I mean they do do that but what we ended up finding a few weeks ago was that a lot of those gifts they're supposed to be given to the federal government like the National Archives yeah exactly to prevent them from exerting undue influence a lot of those gifts they can't find they don't know what happened to them.

Perfect. That's the perfect Trump story. Perfect Trump story, which, of course, to bring this full circle with the media critique, because you point out that they went chasing Steele dossier and got obsessed with Russia when this was the real major influence peddling scheme. Of course, they picked up your reporting, and New York Times felt free to use it without giving you your proper due when you wrote the story like three years before they did. use it without giving you your proper due when you wrote the story like three years

before they did but we always give you the proper due here. Ken, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your analysis and reporting here. Great to be with you guys.

Our pleasure. Thanks, Ken. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. If you can help us out, support the show,

all of that premium link is down there in the description. We have big plans coming, some original reporting and more that we're working on. Can't wait to unveil it all to you. Very exciting. Thanks for your support.

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