Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/21/22: DOJ Special Counsel, GOP Infighting, Twitter Chaos, Dem House Battles, Ticketmaster Monopoly, Fed Policy & MORE!

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about the DOJ's Trump special counsel, 2024 GOP primary battles, Elon's Twitter chaos, Democrat's infighting, Ticketmaster, World Cup corruption & 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/Guest (Teddy Schleifer): https://puck.news/author/theodore-schleifer/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A lot of big political news this morning, especially regarding our former president, Trump. First of all, a special counsel announced to investigate whether he committed any crimes and is going to be indicted. We'll get into all of that.

Also, he has been allowed back on Twitter. Now, he's saying he's not going to go back on Twitter. We'll see if he can really hold out on that one. A little skeptical. So what could that mean for 2024? We also have new details about the new Democratic leadership in the House. Looks a lot like the old Democratic leadership in the House. At the same time, apparently the Department of Justice under the Biden administration

is actually investigating Live Nation as the parent company of Ticketmaster. This comes, of course, after the whole Taylor Swift debacle, but apparently the investigation predates that. So we'll get into all of that as well. And a pretty remarkable moment on CNBC, as you had a gigantic investor melting down over the Fed's actions and telling them they need to stop. So we will talk about all of that. But before we get to any of that, live show. Live show. We are coming to New York and to Boston. That's right.

Links are going to be down in the description. We've got a great show planned for all of you. Back-to-back shows in New York and in Boston. Lots of people buying tickets. We're going to have some fun guests in the crowd. A little teaser for those who come. You might recognize a few faces. That being said, go ahead and buy those tickets.

They've been selling quite well. We really like to have sold-out shows, back-to-back nights. We really appreciate you guys coming. We have learned a lot of lessons from Atlanta and from Chicago and how we can fuse kind of the best of both worlds. And I think the premiums in particular will really enjoy it. Reminder to the Lifetime members, you guys can go and buy VIP tickets. We will reimburse you. Just forward us this receipt.

Reimbursement will come two weeks or so after the show. Yep, should be a fun time. We try to make it very participatory, so the audience is engaging, answering questions, getting involved, all that good stuff. So, please come if you are able. We would love to see your beautiful faces there. All right. Let's get into what is the very latest with former President Trump. So, now that he has announced officially he is running once again, third time around, for President of the United States, Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced that he has announced officially he is running once again, third time around, for President of the United States, Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced that he is appointing a special counsel in order to investigate whether Trump should be indicted for any of the potential crimes that he has committed. Here's a little bit of what Merrick Garland had to say.

Based on recent developments, including the former president's announcement that he is a candidate for president in the next election and the sitting president's stated intention to be a candidate as well, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint a special counsel. The investigation into whether any person or entity unlawfully interfered with the transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election or with the certification of electoral college vote held on or about January 6th. This does not include prosecutions that are currently pending in the District of Columbia or future investigations and prosecutions of individuals for offenses committed while they were physically present on the Capitol grounds on January 6th. The special counsel will also conduct the investigation involving classified documents

and other presidential records, as well as the possible obstruction of that investigation. So I know we are all well-schooled at this point in what a special counsel is after the whole Mueller situation, but just as a reminder, Justice Department regulations allow for them to appoint a special counsel in extraordinary circumstances, specifically when there may be conflict of interest. Of course, Merrick Garland pointing here to the fact that Trump is running for election now, so there could be seen as a political conflict of interest. I think this is also an attempt to make it appear like there's more of an arm's length distance. Is anyone going to really buy that? Of course not. I mean,

you know, it's a very tricky, complicated situation when you have the current administration investigating the prior administration and you have the two of them set to go head to head in a presidential contest once again. So there is no doubt about it. This is very politically fraught. Merrick Garland clearly feeling that and having planned in advance for the eventuality of Trump running once again. What he's saying here is that what this special counsel will look into is both the situation with the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and also the like fake electors schemes. So those are the two pieces that they will be taking a look at. The person that he has appointed in particular is a dude by the name of

Jack Smith. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen a little bit about his bio. New York Times dug into his very interesting, actually, career. So he ran for a while the Department of Justice's public integrity section. And as you go down the list of cases that he's involved, was involved with, some of them very famous. So he was involved with trying John Edwards unsuccessfully on campaign finance violations. He was involved in the Bob McDonald, I don't know if you guys remember that one, the former governor of Virginia, again, campaign finance violations. He was actually found guilty and then the Supreme Court overturned it. He's sort of been criticized in both directions of being too aggressive in the case of John Edwards in particular, but then also being not aggressive enough,

letting, you know, in the opinion of some, letting some politicians off the hook right after he came into that leadership role at DOJ's public integrity section. He also was involved in trying people for war crimes at the Hague. That was a significant part of his career as well. In fact, I think that's what he is doing most recently. So, you know, in terms of they interviewed a few people who know him and are familiar with his work, what they said sort of consistently is that he moves cases, he gets things done. One person said there's no mystery here. He's a hardworking, smart person who knows how to move cases. That's who he is. He comes in and gets things done. And so I guess, Sagar, you know, to the extent we can read the tea leaves here, it seems like the idea is this is someone who moves things along quickly. He's

not going to dilly-dally. And, you know, time is kind of the essence as we are already, 2024 is already upon us. Yeah, I mean, it's just deja vu. It's like every single election. First, what, we had the Comey investigation into Hillary Clinton. Then we had to deal with the Mueller investigation and what that ended up being. Now we're dealing with this one. On this one, I just don't know. And I also don't even know if his background matters as much as Mueller's did necessarily.

Because on this one, a lot of the facts are actually quite clear. There was classified information. It was held at Mar-a-Lago. And as you and I have pointed out here, in some cases, the way that you read the law, it doesn't even necessarily matter what the motivation was. That being said, we're beginning— Right, or whether the documents were technically classified, even whether the documents were technically classified or not, and then the exact classification scheme through which they went.

Right now, apparently, this was from the Washington Post last week, investigators believe that it was Trump's ego, not money, as Trump's motive on classified papers. Surprise, surprise. Yeah, I know, shocker. Not predicted that from the beginning. However, as we pointed out, your motivation for committing this violation does not actually necessarily matter. And then that leads to the question then of possible indictment. What exactly and how the clear cut the facts are, whether they have cooperators inside of Trump's team. We seem to have some indication of that, whether that even if you do have the fall woman in this case of Trump's lawyer who had certified or told the FBI that these documents had been returned, if Trump then, they have evidence and, you know, it may not be all that hard to prove given the level of surveillance or whatever they had the former president under to prove that he actually tried to knowingly circumvent that. This seems to be a very, very clear cut case based upon the fact that we know them right now. I mean, there could be things, you know, happening that we have no idea.

But I haven't yet seen the, like, hagiographic effort to point Jack Smith as the new Robert Mueller. Maybe they learned their lesson. Maybe the Washington Post won't release a graphic novel on the history of Jack Smith. Although, arguably, you know, he has a much easier case before him whenever he's looking into Donald Trump this time. I think that's right. I mean, yeah, that's the thing is, like, last time with Russiagate, there really was no there there. I mean, here, there is obviously there there. Anybody else, this is an open and shut case.

There's not even a debate. They're indicted. They're probably already in prison, right? It's just because of the political complexity of this being the former president who is once again running for the office as president of the United States. And so, you know, clearly Merrick Garland here, again, this is an attempt to have an arm's length distance. Does this make it more or less likely that Trump gets indicted? I mean, I still would probably bet on Trump ending up being indicted. And this is an attempt to make it as sort of like clean an indictment as possible.

But we'll ultimately see. I mean, these are people who are very Merrick Garland tends to be very risk averse. The Department of Justice in general tends to be very risk averse, you know, very nervous about doing anything that has this sort of like overt direct political overtones. They understand what the Republicans are going to say about this. That is direct political weaponization of the Department of Justice. So, you know, do those things scare them off of a case that is like there is obviously a case for an indictment here? Ultimately, we'll see President, former President Trump already reacting to the appointment of the special counsel. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. Before we begin, I want to address

the appalling announcement today by the egregiously corrupt Biden administration and their weaponized Department of Justice. Would you like me to talk about that, Larry? Would you like me to talk about that? This horrendous abuse of power is the latest in a long series of witch hunts. It started a long time ago. I thought the investigation with the document hoax was dying or dead or over. And the investigation into January 6th in my very peaceful and patriotic speech, remember, peaceful and patriatically, was dead, especially after the record-setting 40-point loss of Liz Cheney in the great state of Wyoming. I thought it was dead. I thought that put the final nail in the coffin, only to find out that the corrupt and highly political Justice Department just

appointed a super radical left special counsel, better referred to as a special prosecutor, to start the process all over again. We thought it was just about dead. Felt a lot more like Trump there than his announcement speech, right? That's the Trump that we know well from our years covering the man. Yeah. I mean, you know, in a lot of ways, you could see then that the word special counsel has now become so overtly politicized with a lot. I'm not saying necessarily they would have ever believed it. But given what happened with Russiagate, a lot of the credibility for anybody who is even remotely skeptical is going to exist, you know, given the fallout from that investigation. The Trump team, from what I've seen, says that they will not cooperate at all with the special counsel.

That's an interesting lesson because Trump long thought that if he just cooperated with Mueller, the whole thing would go away. And then he was like, no, now, you know, the witch hunt. That's why he ended up firing a couple of lawyers who he had working for him, Ty Cobb, you know, others who had a different strategy. And they ultimately regretted ever having cooperated with Mueller and his team at all. So this time you're going to see a much more confrontational approach. Again, though, the facts are just inherently different. Like with Russiagate, like it wasn't true. With this one, it seemed, I mean, by his own admission, it was kind of true. It really only comes to a matter of how you interpret classification law, of which

the Trump administration argued that even though Trump could tweet that something has been declassified, unless it has gone through a formal declassification process. It is not regarded as declassified by the government. So look, I don't know, you know, on the justice department and all of that, they have very little credibility. I think with the eyes of a lot of people who are Republicans already, given what this is, you know, given the cult of personality aspect, I really don't know how exactly this one's going to play out. I mean, I personally, I think you probably agree, is just like, I just want speed. Like, the long and the drawn out, like, Mueller's looking into this, Mueller's looking into that. Like, this person has been called as a witness.

That and all that. It just, it was so bad for the country. So, like, I would just rather it come to a, let's get it in court. Yeah. Let's put the facts in, go to it before a judge, and the Americans can make up their mind well ahead of 2024. Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, I wish they would have done it before the midterms, before he announced. I mean, I know it would have been probably difficult given the timeline, but that would have ultimately been better even if they were concerned about how it might play

into the midterms. Ultimately, Trump wasn't on the ballot in the midterms, at least not technically, so a lot of people did vote with him in mind. The other question, and we can move on to the next part now, is, is he going to have the unanimous cover from Republican Party elites that he did in the Mueller investigation? And this isn't so much a question of, like we're saying, there's a lot more there there with this one, but it's also a question of his perceived weakness in the party at this point. And to underscore that, there were a whole lot of Republicans at this, what is it called, Republican Jewish coalition meeting who were, you know, they weren't ruling out 2024. Some of them were overtly critical of Trump or throwing in little jabs or a little sort of like passive aggressive comments here. So let me give you a few of the highlights here. One that won't be a surprise. Chris Christie,

of course, has been a Trump critic for a while now. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. We keep losing and losing and losing. And the fact of the matter is the reason we're losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else. And I understand and believe in so many of the policies that were able to be accomplished during those four years. I mourn what more could have been done. And let's remember this, everything that has happened in the last two years is because we lost that election. So, Christy, sort of similar to Ron DeSantis, look at the scoreboard. You're tired of losing. Donald Trump is to blame. Again, not that much a surprise coming from him of some perceived weakness with Donald Trump. Cruz is, of course, continued to be a Trump ally.

And when he was asked about 2024, he said whether he would consider it, he says, you can consider whatever you like. There will be plenty of time to discuss 2024 presidential. I get that that is a lot of fun in the media to do. There will be plenty of time for that. So Ted Cruz also not closing the door. Nikki Haley, probably the most overt in hinting at her 2024 ambitions. Let's take a listen to what she had to say. Now that the midterms are over, I'll look at it in a serious way. And I'll get more to say soon. If my family and I decide to continue our life of service, we will put a thousand percent into it and we'll finish it.

For now, I'll say this. I've won tough primaries and tough general elections. I've been the underdog every single time. When people underestimate me, it's always fun. But I've never lost an election and I'm not going to start now. I know Nikki Haley, personal favorite of yours, Sagar. She's just so wooden. I mean, she's a horrific politician. Yes, she is. Just on a very baseline level.

She is the definition of, like, total donor-created. Like, there is no organic interest in Nikki Haley running for anything at this point. Absolutely. Because she's got some funder telling her that they'll back her. She's like, I'm going to run. His name is Paul Singer, just for the record. So anyway, so these guys, all of, you know, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz. Cruz is different because he has a legitimate base of support, I think, within the Republican Party.

But Christie, and first of all, with Chris Christie, are we just going to forget he was the first, like, real person to endorse Donald Trump in the 2020 election? Or in the 2016 election? Even put that aside, he doesn't have any credibility, you know, with a lot of the Trump base. Christie's problem was basically, like, he lost the New Hampshire primary. Like, he had no organic level of support. You could argue more so as, like, a Marco Rubio figure than you could from Chris Christie, given how far back that he ended up finishing in that. So with Christie, the idea that he could mount a serious challenge to Trump, not going to happen. Nikki Haley is the same. I mean,

first of all, like, what is your critique of the man? You worked for him and then you kissed, you know, like kissed his ass for years while he was in office. Then she criticized, do you remember this whole thing? She criticized him after January 6th in the Atlantic, and then she tried to call him to apologize. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. And then she personally had to come out and kind of refute her own comments, and now she's in this weird gray space.

It's like, I'm sorry. The only person who has any credibility with the Republican base, and has a chance, and by the way, you guys know our position, I think it's a small chance, is Ron DeSantis. He talked about it a little bit, but something I'm noticing with all these candidates, Christie aside, none of them are willing to just call the man out. So if you have been following Mike Pompeo's feed recently, he'll be like, we need candidates, which are winners, not losers. And I'm like, just say it,

say it or don't Because this, you know, cryptic sub, that is weakness. Like you're just trying to criticize Trump without being criticized by Trump himself. DeSantis, to his credit, got shots fired at him. And he's like, look, it's all noise. Blamed it on the cable media, you know, cable corporate media. And then was like, at the end of the day, look at the scoreboard. I personally still thought that was weak. I think he should have just said, look at the scoreboard. Any of this trying to avoid a squabble with Trump, if you're going to beat him, how exactly do you expect that to happen? All of this veiled criticism, again, Christie aside, because I will at least give him credit. I don't think he has a credible shot of doing it, but he was like, look, it's Trump. Trump is the

reason this is happening. If that's your theory, advance it. Stick by it. You know, you have no real, nobody's going to respect you in trying to, like, run this two-face campaign where you love Trump but you want to move past him. I mean, and no one, like, it's very transparent. Yeah. It's, like, very transparent. You're trying to walk this line and do this little dance of, like, not directly saying that the problem is Donald Trump but thinking you're going to be to be able to like put up some smoke signals to get people to back you. I just, I have never understood how that's ultimately going to work out. It's one thing in this preliminary phase when you're not head to head to, you know, sort of make the passive aggressive comment to do the equivalent of the subtweet. But ultimately you're going to have to go head to head with this

guy. You're going to have to have a theory of the case. You're going to have to tell, like explain to his supporters and something that they, you know, understand and appreciate why they should move on from somebody that they still continue to really like and support. So let's go and put this Wall Street Journal recap up on the screen. DeSantis, others draw distinctions with Trump in 2024 GOP nomination race. They go through. Trump also addressed the crowd via satellite from Florida and received a standing ovation, by the way. But they say the event at the Venetian resort served as the first major platform for others seeking to capitalize on a growing appetite for someone else.

They've got the whole list of names here. Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, New Hampshire Governor Chris DeNunu, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, some huddled privately with donors. DeSantis, of course, garnering the greatest excitement, had a primetime speaking slot on Saturday. And they also say that, you know, basically these party leaders and would-be contenders walking a very fine line, trying to highlight Mr. Trump's shortcomings without alienating his supporters. They credited the former president's accomplishments, many highlighting his decision to relocate the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. And they made other unmistakable attempts to draw a contrast, but very few took the line of Christie and like directly actually went after him. Yeah. And look, that's the major takeaway, which is at the end of the day, outside of Chris Christie, no credible candidate was willing to challenge Donald Trump in a head to head matchup, actually call him out from the stage.

How long are we going to keep up this charade? Yes. Stop trying to play with people. DeSantis. And then this is why, like, I've seen the DeSantis camp likes to think that you can attack Trump on covid and like covid lockdowns. And I just think that is a farce. He locked down the country. First of all, we live in a federalist country. The reason DeSantis was able to do what he wanted in Florida is because governors got to run their states however they wanted. Yeah, it didn't come from the federal government. Trump was criticizing lockdowns in, what, April and in May? It didn't work. You know, Gavin Newsom, he doesn't need to listen to Trump. That's the whole point of having states which are independent relatively from the federal government, so that you have that. Second, they're like,

well, he didn't fire Fauci fast enough. I mean, look, I don't even disagree with that point. But it's been two years. When we look at the preference and the COVID in terms of its ranking, how people vote, it's not there. There was a big prediction by a lot of Republicans in this election of which, you know, I was somewhat of a part of like people are going to remember lockdowns. No, they don't actually care at all. The difference between Virginia and even now, only one year, totally different universe away from school closures. Now it's all about abortion. It's about the economy, about pressing issues ahead of us right now. So anyway, all this critique that they think that they have against the man, I just don't see it. I don't see any evidence right now to actually back that up electorally in terms of the way that people have voted. And I continue to think that ultimately, if Trump is in fact indicted, that I mean, you don't think that all of these people, with maybe the exception of Chris Christie, who we already said, like, I don't think that he really has a shot at credibility with the base at this point, even though I do think he's a very politically talented person. But just like he missed his moment back in 2012, a decade ago. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, if he is indicted, which I do think is still fairly likely, I think all of these people will rally around him once again. I mean, they're going to defend him on this. Like, they almost have to. There's no way the base would accept you if you didn't do that. I mean, they would just, you know, totally reject out of hand anyone who was like, yes, I think he should be indicted. And yes, I think that this is all justified. So I think it's going to be very tricky for anyone to supplant him at this point. You know, the time when he was

weakest was right after January 6th. Maybe they had a shot right then if everybody got on board and everybody sort of like with one unified front tried to do something. They didn't do that. And the other thing that they're going to face is much like 2016, they're going to have a divided field. I mean, you know, I know that they would, there's a group that would love if it was just Trump versus DeSantis. Number one, it's not even totally clear that DeSantis is going to run, by the way. And number two, there are going to be other challengers for that, you know, to divide up that anti-Trump vote to the extent it even exists within the GOP base. That makes it a much trickier situation as well. And there was a, Mike Pence was out, you know, he's doing his media

rounds because he wrote his book and he is, you know, putting out the trial balloons for his own presidential campaign as well. And I thought there was a very revealing moment where even after everything, after January 6th, after having people running around the Capitol calling for Mike Pence to be hung and Trump's not saying a damn word about it, he still has a really hard time directly criticizing former President Trump. Take a listen to this. Candidates that were focused on relitigating the 2020 election did not fare as well. And we had some surprising and disappointing results. You stopped short of saying that the former president is unfit to serve again. But his former defense secretary, Mark Esper, says he's unfit for office.

Another former defense secretary, Jim Mattis, says Trump has no moral compass. Bill Barr, the attorney general, he has neither the temperament nor the persuasive powers. Judge Liddick, somebody you admire, I know. Trump and his apologists are a clear and present danger to American democracy. Is he fit to serve as president of the United States for another four years? I really do believe that's a decision for the American people. And President Trump has now announced his intention to seek re-election. Don't you think your opinion matters to the American people? I mean, and how about this? The fact that you may run, are you sending that message without saying it?

Well, I'll keep you posted on whether I'm going to run or not. But I do think we'll have better choices. But what I won't do is I won't join those that want to dismiss the four years of our administration and all that we accomplished for the American people. I mean, listen, it's an unenviable task because I get the calculation he's making there. The minute you say something like Trump's unfit for office, your own hopes and aspirations of winning over the GOP base are done. But this is so incredibly weak. After everything, you still can't just make a direct critique of this dude.

It's kind of pathetic. Yeah, that's what I believe too. I mean, look, if you're gonna take him on, then do it. And if you're not, then retire. Write the book, ride into the sunset. You cannot have it both ways. And I don't know why people are so deluded as to think that they really can. Again, the only person who has perhaps even a shot is Ron DeSantis.

I still think it would probably tarnish his reputation and it probably wouldn't work. But, you know, maybe. The rest of them, I'm like, you guys are living in a genuine fantasy. And that is true weakness. Like, look, if you can't criticize the man, then you shouldn't be running against him. I think it's very clear. And if you do want to criticize,

okay, prosecute your case. I don't think it's going to work, but prosecute it and let's see. You know, Pence, this also shows how political, you know, the man is. Like, if you really, it's such a messiah complex. And on this one, what, the messiah complex is missing? It's like, come on, dude.

Like, which one is it? Right? So that's why I get really annoyed. Totally agree. Okay. Let's move on to Twitter. Uh, and speaking of Trump news, got some major one on Saturday night. Let's put it up there on the screen. Oh boy. So Elon put out a tweet saying, should I reinstate former president Trump? Uh, 51.8% voted. Yes. I also, I actually voted yes. How many votes did it get, by the way? So it got 15,085,000 votes. No got 48%. It was actually quite close in terms of everybody who did. I abstained from the Twitter poll, personally.

People said, Elon ended up responding, Vox Populi, Vox Dei, says the people have spoken. Trump will be reinstated. So brought him back by decree. Not only that, but based on a Twitter poll. A lot of people were asking, by the way, and I think this is a fair question. Just, what was it, days ago? He was like, we will have a moderation council.

We will have an independent of left and right. And then it all came down to a Twitter poll. I actually support more the Twitter poll than some fake experts. But anyway, so what happened to that? That is true. And he also, he made some other decisions too, what he let Kathy Griffin back on and Babylon B and Jordan Peterson. Yes. But then not Trump, but then Trump an hour later. So I was like, oh, okay. Right. So I guess that the content moderation, because he was very clear. He was like, I'm not going to make any content moderation decisions until we have our council and he's like ah what the hell let's let him back on if i had to guess i think so many of the big advertisers who were gonna leave have just left anyway at

this point so he's like screw it i'm just gonna bring back trump he's like this one of the whole reasons i bought the platform in the first place so all right we'll see how it happens but the problem is is trump even gonna come back or not right now uh actually at that republican jewish event that we were just talking about, he was asked whether he will return to Twitter now that Elon is going to reinstate his account. Here's what he had to say. What do you think about Elon Musk buying Twitter? And if you are reinstated, will we see you back on Twitter again?

Well, I like that he bought it. I've always liked him. I got along with him very well during my days as president. And I got to know him pretty well. But I do like him. I've always really, you I got along with him very well during my days as president and I got to know him pretty well. But I do like him. I've always really, you know, he's a he's a character and I tend to like characters, but he's smart. He did put up a poll and I hear it's very overwhelming, very strong. But I have something called Trump. If you look, it's Trump owned, but it's it's really fantastic. Truth Social and Truth Social is is through the roof. It's doing phenomenally well.

The press hates to talk about it, but it's doing phenomenally well. I think engagement is much better than it is with Twitter. Truth Social has been very, very powerful, very, very strong. And I'll be saying that, but I hear we're getting a big vote to also go back on Twitter. I don't see it because I don't see any reason for it. Well, just so we're all clear, Truth Social is not doing very well. Just remember that they literally lost all their top executives and they had big problems. But from a business perspective, they are being invested. I was going to say currently under SEC investigation for going public by SPAC. There's a lot to be said just on the business side of Twitter and truth or truth. Sorry in itself. That said, what do we know about Trump? What is his universal orientation?

It is attention, but secondary to that is money. So this is the ultimate contest between Trump's twin loves. Now, personally, I think he loves attention more and he might come back. That said, if he does come back to Twitter, it would nuke any use case for truth in the first place. So if he does come back, my belief is that what he will do is link his Truth Social and Twitter account such that all truths appear on the Truth Social platform first and are then like screenshotted or put out on Twitter itself. At this point, given that he has nearly a billion dollars invested in truth and he has like real financial capital and all that behind it, and also just a lot of the MAGA faithful who were there in the first place already followed him to Truth. Yeah.

I'm just not so sure that he does return given the massive amount of monetary investment. I just think it would be such an admission that the entire mission statement behind Truth Social kind of was a farce in the first place. The moment that Elon bought Twitter, he essentially nuked the use case for Gab, for Truth, for Parler, for so many of these other, Mastodon, this current lib project out there, many of the so-called decentralized networks. The central value proposition they had to a user was, this is uncensored. And it's like, well, look, it remains to be seen what exactly Elon is going to do. I guess I'll save my commentary on that for the next part of this segment because I think it's completely ridiculous really what he's gone ahead and invented. But on the Trump one, the Trump one on his face, I don't see him coming back anytime soon. Although it could be totally wrong.

I'm curious what you think. I don't know. I was more inclined to think he would be able to resist the attention because, I mean, he just does not. And we know previously he was like complaining about how the things that he does over on True Social and like his little statements that he puts out and whatever that they don't get as much media attention. And so I don't know that he'll be able to resist. I mean, he was the poster in chief. Twitter was really where he would do his greatest work at owning the libs and triggering the media. And I think if he is going to, you know, I mean, he's running for president again. I think if he's going to garner the media attention that he loves, the outrage, panic cycle 24 hours a day, I think he's probably going to have to come back over to Twitter.

So ultimately, I suspect he'll show back up, but I don't know. I mean, like you said, you do have a sort of competition between the love of attention and the money here going on, and it's hard to know what went out in his mind. But I still think, I thought Richard Hanania made a good point about how Twitter also kept him a little bit more, I mean, Twitter is not real life, but Twitter is a little bit closer to real life than truth is ultimately. And it kept him a little bit more in touch with what like normal human beings actually think about things. So I think it would probably be a benefit to him and his political positioning if he did come back over. Obviously, you know, like I'm not excited to have Trump back on Twitter, but I do think it was the right decision.

And we've spoken about that a lot of times on this program, ultimately. And now is the time that makes sense to do it, too. Now that he's announced that he's running for president again, like, you're really going to keep one of the two major parties, like, major potential nominees off of the central elite-dominated platform. I don't think that's really sustainable, especially when you consider some of the people who are allowed to be on Twitter. Like, it never made any sense. Absolutely correct. And also, now that I'm talking with you, I think there's a possible third way. It could be that the Trump account just becomes a more traditional campaign account where they tweet out links for fundraising and all that, and his actual musings are then left

to Truth Social. To Truth. So he'll, like personal opinions on Truth, but use the Trump Twitter account like they have right now, like the GOP war room where they tweet out clips of Biden, that type of stuff. The Trump account used to be a mix of those two and now could just be that one. Again, look, I have no clue how it will all go, but he hasn't come back so far. I do think that is somewhat of an indication. His son, Trump Jr., has been posting memes saying, I think he still sticks with truth, but who knows? So him also keeping it, I think it will come down to a whim decision. At the end of the day, if he suffers from an attention perspective when he's running for president, I do think he will ultimately return. But I think there's interesting ways that he could try and work around that. So

it could be on a timescale too. I could very much see us getting just out of the blue, some kind of 2am Trump tweet about whatever, the special counsel, the witch hunt, who knows, the stolen election. It could be anything. So I don't know. I have a hard time imagining him being disciplined enough to stay away from his favorite platform. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's go to the next part. I just love this story so much. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So we got a late Friday pronouncement. This was from CBS News.

They said, given the news that some 75% of existing employees at Twitter were ultimately going to resign and didn't sign Elon's, quote, hardcore pledge, that they would be suspending all Twitter activity due to, quote, uncertainty under Elon Musk's leadership. So what they said is that the ultimatum and the fallout, they said that their anxiety and enlightened uncertainty around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution, CBS News is pausing its activity on social media as it continues to monitor the platform. Now, there's a lot of questions on that. What does that even mean? Because nothing that was going on at Twitter in terms of the reduction in force had really anything to do with the ability for you to distribute stories on social media. Like, what exactly was the uncertainty that it wouldn't be there?

Well, if it's not there, then just don't tweet anymore. If it's there, why not just keep tweeting? Because that's your job. I can very much understand if you're telling your journalists, do not DM anything that's private. Oh, sure. Don't be corresponding with sources. Like, I think there's a real risk of, you know, heightened hacking risk and heightened security risk. But if you're just using it to like send out your

stories, what is what's the risk? What's the uncertainty? I mean, sure, maybe it crashes, maybe it goes down. It's possible when you have this like skeleton crew running the whole thing. But I think it would be wise to advise your journalists. And for any of you out there, I think it also would be wise to like delete some of your DM conversation, anything that you wouldn't want to be be hacked or private information. I think that is wise and probably was always wise because DMs were never encrypted. Correct. But outside of that, I don't really get it.

It seems like a virtue signal. Yeah, and then that's exactly what it turned out to be because literally 48 hours later, let's put this up there, they tweet out, After pausing for the weekend to assess the security concerns, CBS and stations is resuming its activity on Twitter as we continue to monitor the situation. Thank goodness. First of all, monitor the situation. Again, what does that mean?

Security concerns. As you said, okay, there's an argument, I guess, to be made. You know, frankly, if you're a journalist or security, if you don't have secure comms anywhere, that's a huge problem. You know, Instagram DMs, Twitter DMs, Facebook messages, any of these places. The very least used signal. But, I mean, a real news organization like this will have their own set-up system for corresponding with confidential sources. Yeah, look, if you really want to be secure, use ProtonMail and use Signal. Like, that's basically all I use, especially Signal.

In private communications communications for this exact reason, especially when talking about something sensitive regarding sources and others. Those are the only people that I, there's the only place I'll correspond with anybody on. So, okay, I think that's a fine time actually to remind everyone like why you should be doing that. But it was complete and total virtue signaling. And it just belied like this real crazy panic that happened, you know, on Friday after the news or Thursday night, uh, by the way, shout out to counterpoints because they had breaking news coverage on that, the mass firing that was happening at Twitter. Everybody's like,

oh my God, Twitter's dying and all that. Guess what guys, it's been like 72 hours and Twitter is fine. Uh, it's actually, it turns out it was working completely fine. It says something interesting that you could fire 88% of employees whenever you take something over, and the platform still works, which is kind of crazy. Maybe it'll break, and we'll find out something new. I don't know yet. Listen, I'm not a tech expert. I think there is certainly a decent case to be made that,

okay, the platform can continue just sort of like on momentum for a while, but next time something breaks, next time there's an issue, do they have the staff in place to be able to deal with that? I mean, they're talking about their entire teams that are missing at this point. Basically, the people that stayed by reports are people who are worried about their immigration status and need the job to be able to stay in the country. Yeah, I mean, really, I think the rest of the staff was like, all right, good luck with what you're doing there and your whole hardcore pledge. I think I'm going to go take the three-month severance and see if greener pastures exist. It is like, you know, it is wild the way that he has just careened from one idea to the next. It has been truly chaotic and insane, especially when you consider that he at least purports to

believe Twitter is actually really important, that it is the digital town square. And that's why I care about this ultimately, because I think these social media platforms, they are sort of, they are natural monopolies. Like the value from them comes in the fact that everybody is there. That's why things like Gab and Parler and True Social or whatever were always going to be sort of a sideshow to the main event. And so it does matter the quality of the platform, the quality of the tools. It matters whether it can persist into the future and what that all ultimately looks like. And the level of just sort of like throwing everything against the wall and careening from one decision and then totally doing a U-turn in the completely opposite way is not a great way to run a company.

Yeah, and I will say the thing that actually pissed me off the most is actually somehow getting the least amount of attention. When he said, quote, new Twitter policy is freedom of speech but not freedom of reach. Yeah. Negative hate tweets will be maxed, de-boosted, and demonetized. No ads or other revenue. You won't find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different than the rest of the internet. I mean, look, as I have said from the beginning, what does negative and hate tweet even mean? Who decides? What's hateful? What's negative? You ask one person on the left,

they're going to say this is hateful. You ask one person on the right, they're going to say that is hateful. What qualifies as negative? It's all in the eyes of the beholder and it should not be up to some sort of centralized decision-making authority. I know it's uncomfortable. Whether it's Elon or anyone else. Yes, anyone. Exactly. Who knows how exactly this is going to be enforced? And can you even enforce it given the amount of staff that you have? It's actually cheaper and easier in the long run to just say all tweets get equal treatment as long as they are abided by the First Amendment. I mean, and Twitter's use policy or whatever it's called,

users' terms of service, where they're like, you can't dock someone. Okay, that's fine. Just let it all float free. It's easier to moderate. But, and this is what he's getting to, at the end of the day, this is an admission that ad revenue

is still king at Twitter. They have to care about ads and what gets served and what's not because that is the major revenue line. It's also, frankly, an admission that the initial Twitter blue rollout was a total failure. They say it will come out sometime at the end of November. By the way, you and I are losing our check marks. What a cry. I'm devastated. I could care less. Twitter check mark or not. The point is that they are admitting essentially here that they really do not have any real subscription plan in the

interim and that their content moderation policy is going to effectively be downstream of that. I will say I saw a little bit of good news, which is that there was a leaked document saying that the secondary thing that they are working on is called Blue for Enterprise. So maybe they heard our ideas about charging companies and others. We'll see. But that's not nearly as much in discussion as the actual Twitter blue verification rollout, which, you know, look, I want to see initial numbers and revenue. It's a private company, so we'll never know fully what it is. According to Elon right now, they say that there's more users on the platform than any time before. But there's no way to know.

And also, why does that matter if you have no advertisers? That's it. I mean, okay, that's fine. But they're all tweeting about how the platform is about to tank and go under. And the whole thing is a chaotic mess. But it doesn't matter much from a revenue perspective. This has always been the challenge with Twitter and with other companies, too. I mean, the whole idea with these tech companies was in the beginning, a lot of them was like, oh, if you get the users, then we'll

figure out the business model later. And with Twitter, especially if many of the advertisers have fled at this point, the fact that you have more users on the platform for free doesn't actually help you in terms of your business model. And going back to what you were saying about using the algorithm to suppress whatever, you know, he deems hate speech to be, this is in a lot of ways the most pernicious form of censorship, because at least with the bans, you know, President Trump has been banned. There can be a public debate and discussion about that. There can be some pressure placed on the company. But, you know, it's very hard to determine what's being suppressed and what's not being suppressed.

We see it on YouTube all the time where it's a total black box. I mean, we feel like, okay, this content didn't do well even though we thought it would. Is that because it's suppressed? Is it because people just aren't interested? Why did this segment blow up when it's unexpected? You know, maybe people just had an interest in it we didn't expect. Or maybe YouTube, like, pumped the shit out of it. You can't.

There's no way to know. And you end up sounding like a crazy person talking about like shadow banning and suppression and all of these things. And since there's zero transparency around how any of this is done, it ends up being actually a lot more nefarious and pernicious in my opinion than just the obvious things like the outright bans where at least you can tell and say definitively what's going on. Such a great point. Like, recently, I feel like we've been losing our minds. We're like, we've been getting like 2,000 to 3,000 new subscribers a month on our YouTube channel, when we previously were getting tens of thousands a month. You and I have been doing this for a long time. I mean, we know what it should look like. And then all of a sudden, just boom, overnight. Is it because of us? I don't know.

Is it because of broader market conditions? I tend to Is it because of us? I don't know. Is it because of broader market conditions? I tend to suspect so. But we don't know. We know nothing about controversial content, what's getting served. We can see our click. So it's like, OK, the click-through remains the same. Video is not getting served. Why?

You know, for what reason? Right. You know, it's like, do people's user preferences change? It's like one of those things where, like you said, you genuinely feel like you're losing your mind. And that's a huge problem with, quote, shadow banning what is negative, what's not. And he needs to release, at the very least, a guide. He's like, this is the exact criteria of which we will analyze. But even then, I mean, it's all, the edge cases are where it always matters,

and especially high profile in the realm of politics. So we'll see. But I'm very disappointed in that decision. At the same time, we're more in domestic political news, so as was covered by CounterPoints last week. That wasn't us that covered it, it was CounterPoints. I get the segments all merged and confused. Nancy Pelosi is remaining in the House, but she will no longer be the leader of the Dem House caucus. And she is putting forward her own handpicked successor, no surprise there, Hakeem Jeffries. In fact, the top three leadership positions in the House, they have basically

handpicked and assured that there will be no dissent in this whole process. Nancy Pelosi decided this is who she wants to be. Her successor is a total, like, classic corporate shill who's been at total war with the left. And now they're bragging about the fact that there is going to be no debate or discussion around this whatsoever. Let's go and put this up on the screen from Politico. Dems get in array on future leadership after Pelosi departs. They say here House Democrats are increasingly likely to elect their troika of top leaders, good word there, for the next Congress without any major confrontation, ensuring a show of unity as they enter the minority. They go on to say they quietly defuse several potential conflicts, can't have any conflict, God forbid, that could have divided their members. Pramila Jayapal, I'll get to that in a minute, who'd been eyeing a slot for the

number two, announced Friday she was running for reelection as chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. And they have some quotes here that just are, to me, amazing. Jerry Connolly says, you know, with the current leadership moving to the side, actually having some certainty and clarity about the next team is, I think, something reassuring for the caucus. They talk about how they, like, feel like they're the adults in the room because they don't have any dissent. It's like, God, you all have such contempt for democracy, number one. Number two, you're idiots if you think that the public cares at all whether, like, what your little leadership battles and fights are. And number three, Pramila Jayapal is the biggest fool in the world.

I am sorry. This woman has been throwing her own caucus and progressives under the bus with the foolish idea, which was always a fantasy, that maybe she was going to get some leadership position. And then she just meekly goes to the side. I mean, to give you one example, you had her calling this like progressive caucus call to endorse Chantel Brown over Nina Turner and to actually throw in on that race on the side of a

corporate Democrat over an actual progressive, much to the chagrin of some of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They could have just stayed out. She did that instead. And then most recently, this whole freaking Ukraine progressive letter fiasco, which was all at the feet of Pramila Jayapal, who, you know, the letter gets released. Immediately, once she gets pushed back, and I'm sure some calls from Pelosi or whoever, she starts back, let me explain. I didn't really mean anything about that whole diplomacy, like wanting to actually see the war to come to a close. That didn't mean anything. And then ultimately retracts the whole thing, throws the staff under the bus all again because she thought she had some shot at leadership here. And then the minute they're

like, no, you don't. She just meekly goes away. And she's not the only one. Squad member Jamal Bowman says he will support Hakeem Jeffries. Let's go and put this up on the screen. On the possibility that both of the Dem leaders in Congress will be New Yorkers, that would be Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. He said, quote, that's pretty gangster. Keep in mind that he actually, Hakeem Jeffries, actually sided with Elliot Engel over Jamal Bowman in that primary. I mean, Pelosi has obviously been at war with the left of the caucus. Hakeem Jeffries is, if anything, more adversarial. This dude's top ally in Congress is literally Josh Gottheimer, to give you a sense of like where he positions himself in the caucus.

And yet not a word of dissent from the supposed firebrands within the Democratic caucus. I mean, look, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene and those people are freaking crazy, but I have to be jealous of the fact that they are willing to piss off their own leadership and be adversarial. What is the difference between electing a squad member and electing a regular rank and file Democrat at this point when they're completely unwilling to go against and be adversarial and piss people off in leadership. It's just, to me, it's utterly pathetic. Yeah, I completely agree. As you said, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, Matt Gaetz won't even say that he'll vote for Kevin McCarthy on the floor.

He's like, no, unless I absolutely have to, I will not do it. I'm going to mount a protest vote. You had Thomas Massey and others basically licking their chops, saying they're going to do this. Andy Biggs ran against Kevin McCarthy. Yeah. And Kevin McCarthy, he respected him basically he respected him, basically, for it. He's like, okay, I'll work with you guys after I lost.

And here's the thing. You guys have some real power. Kevin McCarthy is going to be Speaker of the House, ultimately. Like, they're going to fold, but guess what? They're going to extract their pound of flesh. Yes. They got Marjorie back on the committees. They're going to get committee chairmanships,

whatever little rule changes they want. They're going to get something to enhance their position within the caucus and to be able to consolidate more power. These people who just immediately are like, oh, Hakeem Jeffries, that's gangster. That's amazing. That's great. Even though he's against everything we claim to stand for and has been like shitting on us relentlessly for years, we're just going to immediately bend the knee. Pathetic is the only word that I can come up with to use it. And actually, New York Magazine had a piece here on Hakeem Jeffries. They call him Speaker of the Establishment. I think we have this, put this up on the screen. And it's just all about, I mean, they say Hakeem Jeffries becoming House Democrats

next leader is not necessarily a sign of progress. Yeah, you think they go through, you know, some of his wars on the left. But ultimately, you know, the big conclusion here for anybody, regardless of their ideological view, is this is an attempt for the 80-somethings in leadership, like the old people in leadership, to doubt Hakeem Jeffries will just basically be doing her bidding of whatever she tells him to do. And, you know, this is their play to sort of preserve their status quo positioning within the Democratic Party and positioning of the Democratic Party indefinitely into the future. So this is why I get pissed off when people are like, we need generational change. It's like, what does that mean? Let's talk about ideology. Let's talk about tactics at the very least. Just passing the torch to someone who is younger than you, but ultimately just as corrupt as you is not really progress. Oh yeah. I mean, and here in this situation, this is like when Putin was not president of Russia. You know what I mean? Like,

Hakeem Jeffries really is our Medvedev of the era. It's like, That's a great analogy. Immediately, that's what I thought of. I was like, this is just as fake as when Putin was no longer running. Like, who do you think is going to be whipping the votes?

Who do you think has been raising all the money? Who do you think is going to be, you know, here's the question. Whenever they do a major fundraiser,

are they going to call Hakeem Jeffries or are they going to call Nancy Pelosi? They're going to call Nancy. And as long as she's in Congress, that's just how it's going to be unless she actually retires.

So, we have it very clear here. He's basically the front man, you know, for Jim Clyburn, who, by the way, loves him. You know, he's like his chosen protege. Not a surprise. Same with Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, all these guys basically groomed him for power. And now he will be the person at the top. And, you know, there's zero ideological change. He's lockstep with the Biden administration on this. And you can expect basically nothing. As you said, you almost can't blame them for doing that. That's very standard for people who are in power. But for the so-called dissidents and people who want some sort of change within the caucus, that doesn't exist at all. And they're not willing

to do anything to try and get even somewhat a 5% different outcome in the House of Representatives. Nope. They're just, they're so afraid of their own shadow. They're so afraid of someone like saying something mean about them on cable news. It's just sad. I mean, honestly, like, is it too much to ask for to have one, one bomb thrower, one real dissident in the House Democratic caucus? Apparently, I mean, I guess ultimately respect to Pelosi because she got them all to completely bend the knee and just go along with whatever succession plan they've put up ultimately. So there you go. Congratulations. Congrats. All right. Let's move on.

A story near and dear to my heart. Ticketmaster, after the fracas, that's a good word for it, of what happened with the Taylor Swift sale. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Well, it turns out we're not the only ones who took notice. The Department of Justice is investigating Ticket Master's parent company, which recently combined in 2010 with the promoter Live Nation. This can get a little bit complicated to understand, but it's a bit simple. Ticket Master obviously is the place that sells the tickets. Live Nation is the promoter which puts on 40,000 events around the world, sold 485 million tickets through Ticketmaster, according to its own company support. It is one of the music industry's largest powers for management, for the personal

representatives who actually negotiate the business deals on behalf of the artists, and it has over 100 managers who are working with more than 450 artists. Why does that matter? Because it's vertically integrated, as in they're the ones who work with the artists, they it has over 100 managers who are working with more than 450 artists. Why does that matter? Because it's vertically integrated, as in they're the ones who work with the artists, they're the ones who put on the shows, do the promotion, and then use Ticketmaster to then sell, presumably rolling up the fees and getting as much of a profit as possible and gouging us and all of us even more so for the fake fees at the end whenever you go ahead and check out.

The reason why it's really in the public consciousness right now is the fallout from what happened at the Taylor Swift sale. So there's been a slight update since we went ahead and did that segment. It's actually much worse, which is that after all of the slowdown with the pre-sale, where effectively people were stranded for hours online as to whether they were going to be able to get these tickets or not, then there was a Capital One pre-s and that, too, was a massive failure. Tickets were then supposed to go on sale to the general public.

But then they pulled that out at the last minute with some absurd and insane statement where they said that given preexisting inventory from the sale, that tickets would no longer be available. Which means that the presale itself was the real sale. That was it. And the Gen Pop had no chance to actually buy any tickets to these actual shows, meaning all of us who were not able to get tickets to the show now have to go on StubHub and look at ones which are going for like $3,000, $4,000 a seat.

I'm sorry, Taylor, it's not going to happen. Love you, but that's just too much for me. And, like, you have all these cases of fans who really, you know, look, everybody knows it's kind of a crapshoot whenever you want to go to a concert, especially of somebody of this caliber. They're expecting to pay some money. But they do not expect to be treated so terribly by the company. And then even for those who were lucky enough to get the

tickets, they were paying hundreds of dollars in fees, so-called convenience fees. So you can get it on my phone in the year 2022. It's totally absurd. The same thing happened when I bought Blink-182 tickets. I paid over $150 in fees for like four tickets. And it's just one of those things where you just eat it. And by the way, I hate to say it, guess who's selling our tickets for our shows, our live shows? We have no choice. They never, there was no ask, nothing. Given the venue, you get the deal, you get paid out your sum, and that's it. Whoever your, is your audience is coming? I don't know. We have no idea. We have no data, nothing. Ticketmaster gets to sell it. They get to charge our fans, you know, people who we love and respect and hold so dear, they get to charge them convenience fees.

There's nothing that we can do about it. Yep. And look, if Pearl Jam couldn't win this contest, if Taylor Swift is at the whims of these people, what are people like us supposed to do? Well, and of course, proud to be partnered with Bad Solar, who's been doing amazing work on this. We had him on Crystal Conference last week, too, to explain all of this and to break it all down. And just to give you a

little bit more of the backstory. So this merger was approved, I think, under the Obama administration between Live Nation and Ticketmaster. It was controversial at the time because people could see like, oh, this could really, you know, this could become a behemoth that just has complete control over the entire industry. And so when the merger was approved over significant opposition, by the way, what the Justice Department decided to do is they required them to sell some parts of the business, but they also required them to reach a legal settlement where Live Nation was not allowed to threaten concert venues with losing access to the artists that it promotes as part of its services. So what they're saying is basically like, okay, if you decide not to use Ticketmaster, you're not allowed to then punish these venues by saying, well, you're not going to get to have access to any of these tours and any of these artists

that we work with. Well, guess what? They didn't follow that agreement. In late 2019, there was an investigation. The Justice Department found that Live Nation had repeatedly violated this part of the decree. They then extended the terms of the settlement by five years to 2025. They adjusted some of the language to make it more clear of like, you're not allowed to bully and cajole and threaten and withhold other artists and other tours from these venues if they decide not to use your services. But just to give you one window into the type of abusive behavior that they have engaged in, and not just abusive, but outright illegal, that's one of the things that the Justice Department is reportedly looking into. And, you

know, this is one of the areas, like I got a lot of criticisms of, you know, this is one of the areas like I got a lot of criticisms of the Biden administration. This is one area where they have been genuinely better than Trump, certainly wildly better than the Obama administration, than the Clinton administration, the Bush administration. I mean, it has been decades since we had an administration that was remotely serious about actual antitrust. And so this effort to investigate Ticketmaster is part of that. You know, another, they successfully persuaded a judge to block Penguin Random House's purchase of Simon & Schuster.

They've had pushed some other cases that they've been unsuccessful at. But overall, they've tried to take a different approach to antitrust that isn't just on this question of whether or not consumers are getting lower prices. It used to be very, very narrow and very, very limited. The Justice Department was very lax about what mergers they let go through. And so it's going to take a while to sort of reorient all of antitrust law back to how it should have been to start with. But this is a really important

step in that direction. Yeah. And Taylor Swift actually put out a statement. Let's go and put it up there on the screen. I'll go ahead and read it. And she says, well, it goes without saying I'm extremely protective of my fans. We've been doing this for decades. I've brought so many elements of my career in-house. I've done this specifically to improve the quality of the experience by doing it myself with my team who care as much about my fans as I do. It's really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse. There are a multitude of reasons why people have such a hard time trying to get tickets.

I'm trying to figure out how the situation could be improved. I'm not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them multiple times if they could handle this kind of demand, and we were reassured that they could. It is truly amazing 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they had to go through several bear attacks to get them. And to those who didn't, all I can say is my hope is to provide more opportunities for us to get together and sing these songs. Thanks for wanting to be there. So, a couple of veiled threats there.

Number one, bringing in-house after she took on both Apple and Spotify, which we'll recall, you know, she's, you know, re-recording her albums. She's kind of been a pioneer in the music industry, trying to like use her position to try and make it better for artists, like all the way down. So this could be an opportunity, like truly taking on the power of Ticketmaster. But I think the fact is she didn't name them for a reason, guys.

Like they're still very powerful. And, you know, at the end of the day, she's still, she's not saying like, oh, I've got extra tickets or I'm going to be doing, it's like, well, she's like, well, for those who got tickets, it's great. I'll see you all there. For everybody else, I hope we can do something in the future.

It's like, all right. I mean, I guess that's nice. It's good to see that you're pissed off. Will you actually speak out against the company? We'll see. Overall, very, very positive development. Our brief foray into live events has really taught us that, Crystal. Just, like, how little power that you have whenever you're putting on

this show. Like, we're the ones ultimately who are putting butts in seats and we can do nothing, you know, in taking on the people who sell the tickets. You know, it's all pre-negotiated,

like all this other stuff. And to the extent that you have any power, it's only somebody like her. And even whenever they colossally screw up her sale of tickets, she cannot name them

in her statement. I think that shows you everything about where the power lies. Yeah, I wish she would sue them, honestly. Oh, it'd be great. Yeah, it'd be good for the industry. She at least has the money to get the good lawyers and actually make a case. Well, especially if she got an assurance in writing, like, we can do this. We will be able to handle the—but probably they had their butts covered because they know how.

They always do. I mean, this is the other problem when you have a monopoly is like you have no incentive to keep your system up to date. You have no incentive to make it a good customer experience. You have no incentive to do anything for anyone because you're a monopolist. You can do whatever the hell you want and just gouge the hell out of people. And even Taylor Swift is like, you know, subject to his mercy to your whims and the failures of your platform.

So it's not an accident that you had this level of failure on the Ticketmaster platform. It comes directly out of the result of them being a monopoly. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And then final segment here, really interesting, actually, appearance by a billionaire investor, Barry Sternlich on CNBC. It's very rare to see this level of truth dropped first by a billionaire, second on CNBC. It's very rare to see this level of truth dropped, first by a billionaire, second on CNBC, and third, about the Federal Reserve. And I thought it was an important segment, so we wanted to highlight it. Let's take a listen. Have you heard any of these people recognize the impact of U.S. rates on the global economies and

how countries that can't afford higher rates have to raise rates and put the U.K.'s in a recession? And have they ever talked to you about a $32 trillion deficit? This is not Paul Volcker. We did not have a $32 trillion deficit when Volcker took rates to 20%. The biggest pain will be the U.S. government. The U.S. government will have to sell paper from now to the end of tomorrow, forcing rates higher because there'll be no buyers. I mean, this is self-inflicted suicide. This is a terrible idea. It's a terrible, and it's not necessary. The economy is slowing on its own. Just look at the savings rates. Look at consumer debt. Look at the rollover in rents and the CPI. What are they looking at? I mean, he's not wrong. Everything he said is correct.

Actually, on that debt piece, it's something that's been highlighted to a lot of Washington insiders. Paying down our debt just became enormously more expensive, which just means that hitting the debt ceiling, it's going currently trying to correct. As he also said, look, yes, this is why the economy is weird and possibly why I think the Democrats didn't actually get totally blown out. The unemployment rate is still low, but the saving rate is very high. It's one of those economies where it's kind of weird. You know, stuff is way too expensive. People do feel dystopian about it, but they're not fully unemployed. So there's, you know, nuggets there for everybody, and they're looking at it through a very different lens and possibly causing real problems. And also, I think what I'm glad he highlighted was the aspect of global contagion, which is that

it doesn't necessarily have to start here. It can start elsewhere. Ask everybody in 2010 how the Eurozone crisis ended up affecting our markets or a Chinese recession. You never know how these things are going to work in a globalized world. And we've laid this out before, but just as a reminder, as the Fed increases interest rates, it has the impact of strengthening the dollar, making it much, much, much more expensive for countries around the world that have dollar denominated debt to be able to pay that back. So when he talks about fears of global contagion, that's what we're talking about. We're also talking about the fact that you have multiple central banks around the world all taking similar actions. And, you know, the result of that is very hard to predict.

I mean, nobody really knows exactly what the impact of that will ultimately be. And he goes on to talk about the fact that, you know, he says, OK, look at all of these indicators. It's worked. You did your thing. Like the economy is slowing down. The savings rates are down. Inflation, even in the last indicator, seemed to be coming down as well. And meanwhile, you're really putting at risk global contagion and really screwing workers over and, you know, having a catastrophic impact on the labor market. So there's a lot to be said there. I mean, I hope that the Fed is paying close attention to the fact that inflation did tick down. I hope they walk back from these extremely aggressive rate hikes that they've been taking because they really are playing with fire here in terms of all of your

livelihoods. Yeah. All right, Saga, what are you looking at? Well, here's a good question for everyone. What do you do when you're faced with a contradiction? The initial impulse is usually to deflect. But in my limited career here, I've learned that even when it sucks, the best thing to do is just simply admit it. Try and explain what led to your decision, but as we all know with elites in our society today, that is almost never the option that they take. They lash out and attack or worse, and in a more recent strain of Western commentary, they then attack themselves.

This was of course the tactic pursued by the FIFA president Gianni Infantino at a recent press conference in Qatar, where he was asked to square the World Cup in Qatar with Qatar's treatment of gays in its society, its horrific abuse of migrant laborers to even pull the event off in the first place, and the whimsical decision through which they just decided to ban alcohol at the last minute in stadiums. Let's take a listen. I'm European. Actually, I am European. Not just I feel European. I think for what we Europeans have been doing in the last 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologizing for the next 3,000 years

before starting to give moral lessons to people. Today, I have very strong feelings. I can tell you that. Today, I feel Qatari. Today, I feel Arab. Today, I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled.

Today I feel a migrant worker. Uh, interesting tactic. Before adopting the insane and odd today I feel X to try and project some sense of inclusion, the FIFA president tries to try whataboutism his way just off straight facts. That his organization took untold bribes

to overlook Qatar's backward society. It took extraordinary steps to make this event work, even when it was clear that it shouldn't be there in the first place and is covering for the country when it violates an explicit agreement that was made for fans of soccer or of football traveling there from across the world. Let's break it down, shall we, with the most important part. Why is the World Cup in Qatar at all? The answer is simple that anyone with a brain can tell you.

Money. It's not speculation. Thanks to our Department of Justice, we know for a fact, multiple board members of FIFA accepted millions of dollars in bribes to award Qatar with the World Cup. Two of them can't even deny it because, remarkably, we have it on tape. If you are really still wondering, on FIFA's own website, they actually literally named the officials who took bribes for awarding Qatar over the United States World Cup. So at this point, I know that's an old scandal. It does remain important to understand, though, that Qatar never once was

awarded the World Cup on any sense of merit. It was money, fruit, and branch that has infused this farce from day one. Ever since the board members delivered on their corrupt bargain, they have been having to work overtime to defend it. First and most obvious, why is the World Cup being held right now? It doesn't take a genius to figure out how hot it gets in the Middle East in the summer. Qatar's initial promise was that they would spend lavishly, and I'm not kidding, on mobile flying air conditioners, which would somehow totally work in an open-air stadium whenever it's 150 degrees outside. After just three years, they basically had to admit that wasn't going to happen,

and it required them to go on hundreds of millions of dollars influence and spending spree across Europe to get leagues and teams and officials to agree to move their schedules to the winter just so they could make it tolerable. More so, the Qataris are in some sense the dog that caught the car. Now what? Well, now they actually had to host the thing. And this is where some of the worst of this has materialized. The country to date has spent some $220 billion on getting ready for the World Cup, from building a new airport to totally

redesigning its entire infrastructure. At one point in 2017, the country's economic minister admitted they were spending half a billion a week on infrastructure just to get ready for the Cup. And of course, who's going to build all that infrastructure? It ain't the Qataris. I think we all know that. It was the pre-existing, essentially slave migrant laborers who would. Laborers predominantly from India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, and many other third world countries. They were shipped in, effectively confined to labor camps. They had no protections or rights. They worked hours on end in the heat with no recourse. I have seen their treatment firsthand when I lived there. It is something shocking to

the Western conscience. Men living in squalor, their passports seized, transferring back their meager earnings so their families can eat. In many cases, a lifetime facing ailments. Also, these monstrous stadiums can arise in the desert, never to be used again. Nobody really knows how many of them have straight up died building these stadiums. The minimum is 6,500, but it could be tens of thousands more. That cutoff, though, was in 2020, before another sprint of building was even happening in Qatar. Qatar has the gall to try and allay that criticism by erecting pictures of migrant laborers in some sort of monument on the side of their stadiums, as if that is not just a glaring reminder that they actually don't do anything themselves, and those that do help them are treated as third-class citizens in their own country.

And then finally is the illustration of hypocrisy. Having lived in Qatar, again, let me tell you something any high-rolling concierge in Las Vegas knows. Some of the hardest-partying degenerates in the world are the princes of the Gulf Arab states. And yet, when nearly one million fans are on their way to the World Cup the princes of the Gulf Arab states. And yet, when nearly one million fans are on their way to the World Cup, Qatar at the last minute decided to renege on its promise alcohol would be available for fans in stadiums. You could say, oh, well, fair enough, I guess, except for this little detail. You can still get alcohol in the stadium. You just have to be able to afford a ticket in the luxury suite that costs

at a minimum $20,000. Now let me ask you, where in the stadium will the little Qatari princelings be? Where are they going to be watching and sitting? You can bet they're going to be sipping on Dom Perignon champagne while normal fans who came in from around the world are subject now to Islamic theocratic rules they don't believe in while they're being violated by the very people who set the rules in that country. From day one, this has been a farce. On a personal level, it is somewhat cathartic. The first time I ever understood what it's like to live without freedom of speech is Qatar. My last two years of high school, I saw injustice around me in the treatment of these migrant workers and in the sheer arrogance through which the Qatari royal family conducts itself and comports itself. And I could say nothing

because they would literally throw me out of the country. To date, they have relied on people who have been there and seen their barbarism up close to keep their mouths shut because they can just buy people off. Lucky for me, I don't care if I ever set foot there again. And the people who pay my salary are those who stand against everything that they do. So let the games begin, I guess. I hope Team USA isn't as big of a disappointment as they normally are. But when you see the ground they play on, try to remember it is infused with blood, corruption, and maybe, maybe, let's just never let this happen again. And look, Crystal, I've seen some criticisms of, I know I use pointed language and I use it for people are like, oh, you didn't say that.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, in a matter of weeks, we have raced through the most stunning unmasking of the billionaire class that perhaps the world has ever witnessed. Elizabeth Holmes, the con woman at the center of the Theranos heist, which fleeced scores of elites and earned her girl boss billionaire acclaim, sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding her fancy, very serious investors. Elon Musk, richest man on the planet and supposed super genius, bringing Twitter to the brink of collapse through hubris and chaos in a matter of mere weeks. And Sam Bankman-Fried, the golden boy of crypto, supposedly, and darling of the media and elite class, revealed to be an outright fraudster. Bernie Madoff in millennial tech bro casual attire. What's more, the unmasking of these

billionaires has effectively served to unmask the entire elite class. The journalists, especially in the business press, who uncritically accepted these billionaires as geniuses, as innovators, as prophets, who vouched for them to the masses, affirming that their slot at the top of the meritocracy was more than earned. The investors and the bankers who were tricked by the whole ruse, who lent them money, invested in their scams, allowed their supposed expertise and credentialing to serve as a marker of seriousness and of legitimacy. We were told that we were actually lucky that these geniuses had decided to devote their lives to world-changing good instead of just living thoughtlessly in the lap of luxury that they certainly deserve. But it's not enough to see the fakery and to see the distance between the legend and the reality of who these people actually are. It's really essential that we understand their myths and their ideology because they are

actually just the logical endpoint of the myths and the ideology that our entire society tells. We crafted and molded and shaped these people into what they are. And it's also essential we understand that that ideology which permeates our society and is brought to its radical conclusion by people like Sam Bankman Freed and people like Elon Musk, that it is in fact an existential threat to democracy, to freedom, and to self-governance. Let me explain here because fortunately for us, SBF, Musk, and others have made it extremely easy to understand what that ideology is because they've laid it out in disturbing, excruciating detail through their cult-like philosophy called effective altruism. Now, this philosophy was funded in large

part by SBF himself and has quite a significant following among the lords and would-be lords of Silicon Valley. Musk has said effective altruism closely matches his own philosophy. He's reportedly working with a philanthropic advisor who is tied into the community and frequently espouses views which sound a whole lot like the core tenets of the movement. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskowitz, he is an adherent as well, and the money backing the movement is now into the tens, possibly hundreds, of billions of dollars, reflecting its popularity among a subset of the very, very, very wealthy. So, what is effective altruism?

It all sounds sort of benign to start with. The basic concept is you should devote your life to doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people and that this end justifies many means. In the implementation of philosophy, though, you can see how it gets real bad, real fast. They believe, for example, that it is not only okay, but actually the most noble use of your life to try to amass as large a fortune as possible in order to give to charitable causes. Now, this is obviously very convenient for the billionaire and aspiring billionaire class. Not only is it okay that they have incomprehensible levels of

wealth while people around the world struggle and starve, it's actually good. It's actually noble. And since the ends justifies the means, the mandate to seek wealth could lead to justifying, for example, stealing billions in customer funds out of FTX brokerage accounts to add to your own personal bank account. After all, Sam Bankman Freed, as one of the world's leading effective altruists, would know better than those peasants how to use funds in the best long-term interest of humanity. So a few billion dollars of theft now is nothing in the grand scheme of humanity. Now, a particularly odd subset of effective altruists, including SBF, follow a belief in something called long-termism. Now, again, sounds kind of benign. The concept is that after amassing your grand fortune, you should deploy it to do the greatest good, not in the present, but when mapped out over a million years. Now, this also gets real bad real fast in actual practice.

That calculus means that adherents focus on efforts like reducing by a tiny fraction the theoretical possible fate of AI, artificial intelligence, destroying all of humanity instead of, for example, maybe alleviating famine or dealing with war or even climate change in the present day. So it not only justifies but congratulates today's billionaire philosopher kings for ignoring present day misery to keep their eyes on the prize of potential, possible, future societal collapse a million years in the future. And it bestows upon this group a profit-like ability to foresee what the risk to humanity might be over that absurdly long time frame. Lo and behold, a bunch of tech bros with world-historic egos and narcissism decided the most important threat to humanity happened to be in their sphere of expertise, AI, artificial intelligence, thereby once again putting themselves right at the center of the universe. You can hear echoes of this philosophy in Musk's Twitter takeover and his casual approach to the chaos and destruction there. As Fast Company noted, Musk's tweeted rationale for buying Twitter was, quote,

because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, I did it to try and help humanity, whom I love. They go on to speculate that it may have been long-termism, which would lead Musk to be able to casually fire thousands of people without guilt. After all, their present pain is nothing when compared to the grand sweep of a million years of possible human future potential. More than a decade ago, Stanford Social Innovation Review said of effective altruism that it was an, quote, elitist philosophy, which amounted to little more than charitable imperialism, whereby my cause is just and yours is, to one degree or another, a waste of precious resources. Now, all of this sounds kind of esoteric,

sounds a little fringe, sounds pretty radical, sounds pretty awful. But in fact, it's really pretty American. It's as American as apple pie. The latest spin on a view so commonplace as to be baked into our social fabric, a new story for us to tell about why evil acts are actually good, why servitude from the masses at the hands of a great leader is actually just, and very, very conveniently, why billionaires should not really be taxed at all. After all, our national mythology for 40 years now has told us we live in a meritocracy where the best and the most innovative. They rise to the top and they deserve the rich rewards that they earn because they are in fact superior to the masses. And if there's truth to that mythology, that our overclass

deserves their riches, deserves their esteem, then it follows logically that we should defer to them on all human affairs, really. Which problems we should tackle, what resources should be devoted to them, which causes and people are worthy of time and attention, which people are just grist for the mill of their gloriousness. This is, after all, basically how we run our political system today. Sure, everybody gets a vote, but the real influence comes from the people who are able to buy access and lobbyists and funnel millions to political candidates and buy media coverage for their pet causes. The only way we allow this system to persist is because at bottom, our society is built on a lie that these people are actually better, that they are actually smarter, that they do actually know what's better for our interests than the common folk.

If Bill Gates says big pharma gets to keep their vaccine patents, well, then who are we to doubt him ultimately? If Sam Bankman Freed wants to pick winners and losers in Democratic Party primaries, well, he can. If Elon Musk wants to haphazardly careen the digital public square off a cliff, well, who are we to stop him? And if Jeff Bezos wants to literally buy the Washington Post, why would we ever tell him no? Effective altruism is one more way of justifying why we should put our faith in the whims and the calculations of billionaires rather than lean into democracy, heavily tax their wealth, and allow citizens collectively to determine as special masters of the universe, and provides a pseudo-moral justification for ignoring many harms and atrocities of the day from famine to war to the climate crisis. It apparently can also be used to justify mass fraud to the tune of millions of dollars. And if that sounds familiar, it's because these elitist authoritarian impulses have literally

been with us since the founding of the republic. But seldom have we had such a front row seat to just how catastrophic it is when those forces win and the billionaires really get their way. Take a good hard look right now because these emperors who we were told to put blind faith in have no clothes. Really has been a pretty stunning stretch. Not a good little period here for billionaires. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Teddy Schleifer. He is a reporter over at Puck News and has been doing some excellent work on big tech. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Teddy wrote this

fantastic piece called Inside the SBF Blast Radius, which is really like the fallout from all of the millions of dollars that SBF, Sam Bankman Freed, was kind of pumping into the lobbying ecosystem, nonprofits, and much more. He tracks billionaires and how they try to control our political system over at Puck, and we're excited to have him on the show. So, Teddy, thanks for joining us. Welcome, Teddy. Thanks, guys. So, give us a little bit of a rundown. SBF, there's been a lot of discussion, I think, online about his attempts to influence the political realm. Give us the actual details and fill in the color for the audience who might be familiar with that.

Sure. So the big question, I guess, to set the context here is how much he has spent. The honest answer is we don't know how much he's spent on politics, but the guesstimate I'll say is about $100 million. That includes money that Sam has spent on his own super PAC that he started last year, which is $40 million. He spent $20 million on this lobbying group, at least $20 million on this lobbying group to battle pandemics. He wanted to set up a pandemic kind of agency within in the state of California and also in Congress to try to push for more money for pandemic funding. This doesn't include the money spent on media, right, on funding newsrooms, which is kind of weird and certainly unusual. So we're looking at, you know, this is a guy who, A, was doing a lot

in Washington in a very short amount of time. I mean, you guys know this doesn't happen every day that someone shows up and starts throwing tens of millions of dollars around. And also he was talking like he was going to be doing this for decades, right? I know some of his aides who have described a 50-year campaign for kind of influence and access and agenda setting. So this guy was going to be around for a while. Obviously, now he's not. But two weeks ago, he was going to be around for 50 years. Interesting. And how more specifically was he deploying his funding? I mean, I followed pretty closely how he was playing in some Democratic Party primaries in particular. So give us some

specifics there. Sure. So his super PAC, which meant $40 million, basically all during the primaries, was backing candidates that he said were pro-pandemic prevention. There was some overlap with candidates who could be considered pro-crypto. But if you take him at his word, he was looking at democratic primaries where a candidate was more pro-prudential than another. Probably the biggest example of this was the $15 million he spent or so in this random race in Oregon, democratic primary with this guy named Carrick Flynn, uh, who got creamed by, you know, 15, 20 points. Um, and that was a situation where he had, you know, the same money really backfired, you could argue.

I mean, this guy, Carrick Flynn, was running in his district outside of Oregon. Like the number one thing that voters probably knew about him was that he was tied to this, you know, sketchy Bahamas crypto guy. So, you know, $40 million is a lot to spend in primaries. And then there was all the money he's spending on kind of traditional lobbying, right?

Having, you know, tons of people on retainer, doing the whole access peddling. That's just kind of blocking and tackling in Washington. So there was a lot in elections and there was a lot on lobbying too. Yeah, I think, yeah, that's so interesting. I mean, look, really what it comes down to and what a lot of people have heard about is this attempt to try and influence the SEC. To what extent do you think that that is true? By my estimation, he wasn't necessarily, as you said, even deploying his cash all that effectively, but we can't deny, like he had high level meetings with major senior Democratic Party officials, has had meetings in his company in the past

with regulators. What regulatory aim did he really have in mind, to the extent that you can talk about it? Yeah, I mean, look, there's kind of two tracks here, right? There's all the stuff he's doing politically and philanthropically, which Sam and his aides, you know, say is totally independent from the crypto stuff. And in fact, they kind of bristle up the idea that this is like some like smokescreen for crypto regulation. But indisputably, at the same time Sam was doing that, there was this other track which was trying to get, you know, the SEC to not regulate crypto and to have it primarily be regulated by the CFTC.

And Sam was at the forefront of that as well. And like, it's kind of hard to know like where one of those missions ends and where the other begins because in just normal like day-to-day human interaction, right? If you have a relationship with someone in Congress from one of those tracks, right? And then it's not like, oh, but, you know, it doesn't, you know, have secondary benefits on the other track, right? So there are people, for instance, that Sam donated to under the pretenses of pandemic prevention, who just so happened to also be, you know, people who would vote on a crypto regulation bill. Right. So, like, it's hard to disentangle the two. Clearly, I can tell you that a lot of people in Washington knew who Sam

Bank and Freed was very quickly. Yep. And so what has the reaction been among those folks who were taking the meetings, taking the cash, you know, putting them in front of committees to hear what he had to say about crypto regulation? What has their reaction been now that the mask has been ripped off? Yeah, I mean, you kind of said it well. I mean, I wasn't asking what you guys would guess it would be. Silence. That would be my guess. Look, look, look, there's a lot uh there are some people kind of hounding congressman

over like 5800 donations i mean you guys know how the game works i mean that's not that's not that's like that's not kind of irrelevant to me and like whatever they'll donate to charity and if you're some senator right or congressman you know who someone's saying what are you doing with 20 2900 hours like it's just that's easy to do. I mean, I think it's the broader reaction in kind of the Democratic Party, big money world. It's almost like some people are treating this like a tragedy, you know? Like there was this death.

There was this death that's happened, you know? Where, you know, there was going to be this guy who was going to spend all this money and all those good causes and, you know, or good causes to them, right? And now he's no longer with us and it's time for the funeral. I mean, or good causes to them. Right. Um, and now he's no longer with us and it's time for the funeral. I mean, there's a little bit of that. Um, um, and that's, and that's like, uh, it's almost like what you, it's almost like the amazing meal you could have

had that you're not going to get to have rather than like the meal you're eating at the right net right now and not, you know, be taken away from you right now. Like there's not that much money that's being, uh, ripped from their cold dead hands right now. There's not that much money that's being ripped from their cold, dead hands right now. It's kind of the, what would this person be doing in 20 years? Was this the next George Soros sort of question? Right. I heard the same. Do you have a sense of how this might impact Democrats in particular, but I guess both parties in terms of how they view crypto? Because there really was this sort of battle going on in Capitol Hill. Head of the SEC has been taking a more aggressive approach.

You know, we covered here some of the things that were more for show, but also meant to send a signal to the industry, like coming after Kim Kardashian for like taking money from one of these crypto fraud scams, essentially, and other celebrities as well. The SEC is seen as having a lot more teeth and the, what was it, the F, which one did they want it to be actually regulated by that had a lot less teeth? The federal. CFTC. The CFTC. CFTC, there we go. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. No, that's the CFTC. Commodities. Commodities, that's the one that they say as being. Some letters, who knows. Yeah, all the bad stuff. So anyway, that's the one that they saw as being more toothless. It seems like that argument is not going to carry as much water now that Sam is gone.

Like, do you think that we're going to see some more aggressive approach to the crypto industry? Do you think that for Democrats in particular, they're just going to be like sort of skeptical of this whole industry as a whole? What do you think the approach is going to be now? Yeah, look, I mean, obviously, Sam himself will not be in the picture. So just starting with that, right? I mean, the kind of I would argue, you know, the lead, you know, the number one lobbyist in the country on this was Sam Bankman Freed. And, you know, he is now out of the picture. Now, like, could someone else fill that gap? Sure.

But to the broader question you're asking about whether or not there is now going to be this kind of chill on this industry, you're right. Not everything was warm and fuzzy six months ago either. But clearly, there was a company that seems to be pretty good evidence

at least was allegedly defrauding people. And could this have happened with a bank? Banks are very, very heavily regulated. Could someone have a hedge fund which they take money from customer deposits and invest in other stuff? Let's see where the facts ultimately fall here, but, but clearly this is going to ramp up, you know,

at least like trepidation around crypto. Um, and again, they weren't, I think they were arguably a stalemate in Washington already. Um, now you have like the number one poster child for this industry, like, absolutely, you know, crying into scandal and that's not good for me. No shit. That's not, that's not, that's not good for, I mean, no shit. That's not good for the industry. Yeah, and let alone the contagion, which is at Genesis, at BlockFi, at Gemini, Coinbase, all right now.

So they're going to be in some trouble. Teddy, keep it up, man. Keep sending us your stuff as well. You do excellent work over there at Puck. Big fans over here at Breaking Points, and we appreciate it. So thank you. You bet. Bye, man. Keep sending us your stuff as well. You do excellent work over there at Puck. Big fans over here at Breaking Points, and we appreciate it. So thank you. You bet.

Bye, guys. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Don't forget, live show. Tickets down there in the description, although it is Ticketmaster. Nothing we could do about that one, folks.

Wish that we could. For the premium subscribers, we appreciate you guys so much. We wish everybody happy holidays and all that, and we'll see you all tomorrow. Love you guys. See you tomorrow. This is an iHeart Podcast.