Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/28/22: Chinese Protests, Trump's Anti-Semite Meeting, Ukraine Blackouts, EU v. USA Infighting, Venezuelan Oil, Taylor Lorenz & MORE!

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Chinese protests, Xi's response, Trump and Kanye, Ukraine blackouts, War Profiteering, Venezuelan oil, Taylor Lorenz, the Child Tax Credit, and a scandal at AP News. 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. coverage 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. Lots of big stories breaking this morning. And also, by the way, guys, nice to be back. Hope everybody had a lovely Thanksgiving. So mass protests all across China. We will tell you everything we know about that and what the fallout from that could ultimately be. This is mostly around their continued insane COVID zero authoritarian policies. So we will break that down for you. Also, all the latest about Trump's dinner companions, Nick Fuentes, Kanye West, and Milo. Oh my God. It's a whole thing. We have to talk about it. And also, interestingly, who is saying anything about it on the Republican side? Who is not?

That's maybe the most revealing part of all of this. Trump doing insane shit at this point is no real surprise. Also, the very latest out of Ukraine, where winter is setting in and blackouts are roiling that country. It is, you know, it's a very disturbing and distressing situation there. We also have some news with regards to Venezuela and oil. This one has been a long time coming. What is that going to mean in terms of your price at the pump? And we also got a little fun Taylor Lorenz update for you.

Her reaction to everything going on in China is really quite something. We also have our own little news about FIFA. We had a little episode with that. Yeah, a little issue with FIFA coming directly from us. But before we get to any of that, live show. Live show. Put it up there on the screen, guys. That's right, December 6th and December 7th, New York City and Boston.

As we said, really want to sell those theaters out, so we've got tickets down in the description. We've got that fun meet-and-greet scheduled with all our VIPs and our Lifetime members who are currently having their tickets reimbursed. Just again, a reminder, we will reimburse the full cost of those tickets for our lifetime members. That reimbursement will come after the show. But go ahead and buy those tickets. We're excited. And we've got some good plans. Marshall, Kyle will be in the house. We've got some multimedia, et cetera. So it's going to be totally different than Boston. So then, what was the original? Atlanta. Atlanta and Chicago. These all blend together.

These all blend together. These all blend together. But with that, let's get to the show and with China. Some really just remarkable stuff coming out of China that was sparked, it seems, by a fire in Xinjiang. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. Protests have erupted now across the entire country, but appear to have originated over anger of what happened in, and I apologize for my pronunciation throughout this entire show, Urimki. I do not speak fluent Turkic. Apologies for that. Now, there was the fire in Xinjiang's capital in an apartment building after 14 people were killed and appeared to have difficulty exiting the building. The reason why this connects to the

COVID lockdowns is that across Chinese social media, WeChat, and elsewhere, there were videos circulating and immediate speculation that, and I did not even know to the extent of what zero COVID means there beyond the insanity that we did. Crystal, if you are living on an apartment block where there's somebody who's tested positive for COVID, not only do they lock you down, they actually put barricades up in the staircases to prevent you from actually leaving the apartment. So whenever a fire breaks out in a shoddily constructed apartment building, people die because they literally can't get out. And of course, it's a very crowded country. Anyway, this hit a nerve across the entire country, sparking protests really both in some of the major cities in Beijing.

Beijing and in Shanghai has been some of the major areas of protest. Shanghai in particular, the reason why it matters is because the protesters were actually gathering on a street called Rimki Street, which is named after the capital in Xinjiang. It's kind of like a one China policy. And protesters gathered there shouting, end the lockdown, just widespread anger. Even some Chinese citizens speaking to Western journalists on the street. I think it's important here that we parse what exactly what's going on. Is this like an uprising against Chinese socialism? No, this really is an uprising against zero COVID. Also because it's China, we have very limited view into how widespread these are,

what they are, the level of support they have within the domestic populace. What we can say is that some several thousand people do appear to have had completely enough with being locked down and an ongoing commitment by the CCP to zero COVID. They have not issued any public statement either against, for, or listening to the protesters as of yet so far. And we're going to go into a little bit into what their expected response will be. Yeah. And so as always, when we cover international protests, especially in countries that are repressive and where you don't have total freedom of the press, it's very hard to tell exactly, like you said, how widespread, how significant, how much of the population supports the sentiment, what does it mean, how much of the population supports the sentiment, what does

it mean, how much of a threat does it really represent for the government in power? So all of those caveats on the table. Financial Times has a piece out this morning talking about what makes these protests different, because it's not like there's been zero protest in China, but typically it's been limited to a single local issue. So maybe like working conditions at one factory. What makes this different is that you have a sort of uniting national cause and you have protests that are spreading across regions, you know, all the way across China. And that's what really makes this quite significant and quite different than what we have ultimately seen in the past. By the way, some of these protests have already borne fruit. You had some places where people heard that there were COVID lockdowns that were coming into place. They protested, they went to their local government,

and some of those things got rolled back. So it shows you that even in an authoritarian country, you still have to worry about the social contract that you have with your domestic populace. And right now, that seems to be very, very frayed. The other context here, and we can put this next piece up on the screen, why now? Why did this spark of the apartment fire and the deaths there from people who are trapped inside because of zero COVID? Why is this really touching such a nerve across the country? And it really is because you now have another surge of COVID cases. So people are looking again at like, my God, we're going to go back to these incredibly stringent authoritarian restrictions and total, total lockdown. And so I think that's part of the important context of why right now they say that, you know,

confrontations have already erupted in a few locations. You had at a Foxconn plant in central China that makes the world's iPhones. There were confrontations there, and then it has spread across the country. Part of the issue here, Sagar, as we've covered before, only 40 percent of Chinese citizens over the age of 80 have received a booster shot. And the vaccines, the Sinovac made in China vaccine, less effective than some of the international mRNA vaccines, but as like a matter of national pride, they don't want to go to the international market. They don't have the levels of natural immunity that other countries around the world do. And so they really are in this sort of disastrous situation because of choices they've made all the way along, that if they did totally open up, they have a very vulnerable elderly population that could be hit really hard and die in large numbers if they did just say like,

ah, we just got to open the gates. China played itself on multiple levels. They were committed to zero COVID even in the face of Omicron where it's effectively impossible to do so. They've had an effective case now there for a year. Now, before that, they were still committed to total lockdown. They didn't encourage mass vaccine uptake. Also, it appears that a lot of the Chinese population, because they actually believed the CCP, were like, I'm not going to get vaccinated. I don't need protection because the Chinese government has got this. So now they're dealing with a variant, what, 1,000 times more. At this point, I don't even know what variant is circulating. But the point is, is that it's nearly impossible

to circumvent this in any way. And what they point to is that at this point, given the fact that you have vaccine scheduling that takes like a month or so out from that period, what are you going to do? You can't just, you know, in the face of surging infections, especially with Omicron, it's going to go much faster than any of your capacity to mass vaccinate the population. Almost two-thirds, like you were saying, the elderly and of people 60 plus have not taken the vaccine or even a booster. And look, we've always said on the show, it's like, look, if you are in a vulnerable population, you should consider it. And over there, they're actually giving them the option, which is you should stay home and stay locked down. But that is having massive impacts on the total society. I do also think it's important. Let's take this out of

COVID. Because at this point, I don't even know if this is about COVID anymore. I think and what I have read so far is that the oppression is the point. Zero COVID is the opportunity for the CCP to install cameras in every house that they want to, in every shop, to have QR codes, to keep total and complete track of every single Chinese citizen, wherever they are, what they're doing, their access to work. It has become like the worst of the authoritarian nightmares that we could even dream of here in the US. And look, in China, there has long been a social contract, which is you accept like deep political repression, but we make you rich in the process. And so the problem, though, is that zero COVID is now really implicating that tradeoff at a very basic level because people are not getting rich.

They're not only curtailing their social life. A lot of people are suffering economically. Also, we covered, remember, the Shanghai lockdowns just a couple of months ago? People were going without food, straight up. I mean, they were literally unable to get food. So the most basic elements of Chinese society are beginning to chafe, but no signs yet the CCP is willing to give in in any way. And the indications are that these protests really are among a broad swath of groups. It's students, it's laborers, it's all kinds of people who are participating in these protests.

And I think what you said makes a lot of sense just in light of the fact, you know, our experience here, which you never want to project onto the rest of the world, but seems to be sort of a global phenomenon, is COVID was just an accelerant. Yeah. Like the trends that were already in place, you know, the breakdowns in the social contract that were already starting to come apart, COVID was an accelerant and COVID revealed a lot. And so I can imagine in that context, it was also obviously an accelerant of the surveillance state, an accelerant of this sort of like brutal police state crackdown. And so while the core issue here, I mean, they definitely are chanting about COVID, they're talking about COVID zero, like that clearly is the impetus, the apartment fire, which they, you know, it appears

those deaths were caused by zero COVID lockdown procedures. That is definitely the spark. But I do think that that is the sort of like deeper level concern that has to be, you know, the most concerning for the regime in power. Yeah. So let's go. We have a montage of photos, videos from across the entire country. So these are all photos that we've been able to gather. This one is in Shanghai in particular. And while you're watching, what you can see there is that police, you know, just basically in a line trying to keep people away. Everyone is showing blank pieces of paper, both as a protest against censorship and against the lockdown. It's become, at least in the last couple of days, one of the universal ways that people are showing their discontent.

While we play those photos, I'll just list off some of the cities. There's 10 confirmed cities across the entire country. Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan, Chengdu, all massive cities, tens of millions of people who live there, all having widespread protests. There are several other cities where this has gone ahead and broke down. Now, what we also see, Crystal, is that the Beijing government is asking universities to send students home, quote, as soon as possible to quell further dissent on campuses. This is a longstanding fear that universities represent kind of the, you know, the epicenter of protest, especially with the scar of Tiananmen Square.

So right now you have Tsinghua and Peking universities, some of the most prestigious universities in the entire country, who have hundreds of protests who are actually staging peaceful demonstrations there on campus. They are doing their best to empty those universities as soon as possible. And I just want to, again, caveat, which is at this point with China, we just do not have a lot of good information except in the massive urban centers where there are, of course, Westerners who are living outside of that. To what extent this is a phenomenon in the rest of rural China where information and all that is very tightly controlled, it's pure speculation. We just genuinely have no idea. Yeah, that's right.

And I mean, the context, as we've also covered here, is of course Xi just appointed himself president for life. You know, appointed a bunch of really hardline loyalists, including as premier of the country. So the number two person was the dude who was in charge of the most stringent Shanghai lockdown procedures. And so, you know, for a while at the beginning of the pandemic, we were looking at envy at some of their cities, which had been able to open up because they had had these incredibly strict, onerous lockdown procedures in the places where you had hotspots. And that's

when you had a variant that was somewhat more containable now. So it was like, OK, well, we can sort of like force a minority of the population to have to deal with these horrific, like this horrific temporary lifestyle so that the rest of the country can open up and do whatever we want. Now, because the variants are so hard to contain and because they are so infectious, you now have a bulk of the population that is potentially subject to these lockdown procedures. So I think that's part of what has flipped as well, is you can no longer look at it as like, okay, let's just contain the problem over here and the rest of us can go on living our lives. It's like, no, nobody can go on living their lives. We are all a day or an hour or a week away from being locked into our apartments

again and worrying about whether we have enough food to eat. Right. Especially more than two years later. So let's get to that part now. What is China going to do? It's an interesting tweet from a guy that's lived in China for 30 years. Let's put it up there on the screen. David Moser. He's a sinologist. He says, quote, I have lived in China for 30 years. I have never seen such brazenly open, sustained expression of rage. WeChat is exploding with protest videos and furious vitriol. Civil disobedience is becoming rampant. This is a serious test of CCP governance. And of course, the question comes, what are they going to do? Well, so far, they've done what they mostly do best, which is using force against these lockdown protesters.

Let's go and put this one up there on the screen. You can actually see this video. It shows a man, you know, standing in front of a police car, basically, you know, the van being used to press and harass protesters. And across the entire country, you're seeing mass, you know, arrests. Here you're seeing a violent takedown of, I think he was an older man. It's difficult to tell, but you can see very forcibly restrained. This is something that you have seen all across China being drug off to God knows where and, you know, for what exactly will happen to him, which is really the scariest point about all of this. And unfortunately, it really confirms Xi Jinping's central governance and the way that he has handled almost all protests. So let's go put the next one

up there. I thought it was important to highlight this, which is, look, Xi really was tested the first time with mass protests in Hong Kong. After the pass of that Hong Kong special law, which effectively gave the CCP more control and their ability to govern Hong Kong, you know, with outside of the whole one country, two systems, the crackdown that happened on Hong Kong throughout 2019 and then beginning of COVID and leading to effectively a full scale crackdown, not only arrest of anybody in the press, but any protesters in the street, moving the military in. There's a lot of theory, Crystal, that if COVID had not happened, that they would have done a Tiananmen-level takeover of Hong Kong. Wow. Because, I mean, I actually remember covering it with you at the time.

Remember all those photos of convoys of military and police moving from all across the country towards Hong Kong? That is a central lesson for Xi Jinping. And he can take away from it and say, hey, it worked. It was painful. We got criticized in the press, in the West, elsewhere. But at the end of the day, we took Hong Kong and now we fully and tightly control it under the boot. And unfortunately, this is a lesson that he has internalized for a long time from his youth. Let's put this final one up there because I think this is important. I remember

reading it at the time. I think it's important to highlight. It's called Xi Jinping's Tiananmen Family Lessons. And he says one of the things that he learned from his father, quote, is that the party comes first and that his experience of Tiananmen Square, really of protests in general, is that he sees protests as, quote, chaos. He says, quote, Xi sees the student protests as chaos similar to the destruction of the Cultural Revolution. The Xi family suffered terribly during Mao Zedong's campaign and the resulting political turmoil. His father was kidnapped by Red Guards and forcibly brought to Xi'an, where he was subjected to struggle sessions and later incarcerated in the capital. Xi Jinping was even berated for his father's supposed failings as a class enemy.

So the scars of the Cultural Revolution and of such an immense sphere of chaos is effectively what led to the Tiananmen Square Massacre in the first place. It was the lesson that Xi has internalized for Hong Kong. And unfortunately, I do think, you know, given everything that we see right now, the CCP always reaches for more oppression, for more control, and all at the liberty of use of force that they have a complete monopoly on in their country. I mean, the next chief executive of Hong Kong that they appointed is literally a cop who was charged with cracking down on the protesters, just to give you a sense. And so the visit there is incredibly symbolically significant. I mean, it's a victory lap. It's a show to the international community of, look, this is what we did and we really don't care what you had to say about it. And so, you know, I think China is

in a very tough place. The Chinese government is in a very tough place about how exactly they get out of COVID zero, how exactly they move forward just because of what they have done up to this point, allowing people to believe they could rely on the zero COVID policies, that they don't have to get vaccinated, leaning almost exclusively on a Sinovac vaccine that is less effective. And so now you're in this situation where they're sort of damned if they do and damned if they don't. And the population obviously getting extraordinarily restless. So listen, obviously, China is an incredibly significant global player. The Biden administration has been following sort of in the footsteps of the Trump administration, reorienting our relationship towards China. These things have incredible global significance. And so

that's why we're going to keep taking, keeping an eye on it. Have to. Have no choice to. Could have massive implications. I mean, look, don't, don't forget, you know, countries that feel under the gun often do crazy and erroneous things. Just ask Ukraine for what that looks like. Another important point that Matt Stoller has continued to make is that the Chinese government is set up for economic growth. They have not had an economic downturn since 1976. The modern CCP is built on the back of 8% annualized massive industrial growth. Well, COVID, the supply chain resulting global inflation and COVID lockdowns and COVID zero in particular, that's not happening. So for the very first time, their social contract is failing. What will they choose? Unfortunately, history tells us almost certainly they will choose oppression and violence. And that could, of course, have major geopolitical

implications. Well, and she has signaled as much that they're shifting from that extraordinary growth phase into a phase of sort of, you know, certainly power consolidation, loyalty consolidation, and, you know, moving forward with their Chinese nationalist project. So they were already moving in this direction and COVID has certainly accelerated it. We will see where we go from here. All right. Turning to our own lovely domestic politics here. You've probably been following this. You know, Kanye has decided he's going to run for president 2024. He's been hanging out with Milo Yiannopoulos. He's been hanging out with this Holocaust denier, right wing white supremacist dude called Nick Fuentes. down to Mar-a-Lago to visit President Trump, former President Trump, where he apparently asked him to be his vice presidential running mate. Okay.

And afterwards, he dropped this little video, which revealed it was not just Kanye and Trump who was having dinner, that anti-Semitic white nationalist dude, Nick Fuentes, was also at the table. Let's take a listen to the video that Kanye put out. I think the thing that Trump was most perturbed about, me asking him to be my vice president, I think that was like lower on the list of things that caught him off guard. It was the fact that I

walked in with intelligence. So Trump is really impressed with Nick Fuentes. And Nick Fuentes, unlike so many of the lawyers and so many people that he was left with on his 2020 campaign, he's actually a loyalist. When he didn't know what the lawyers is, you'll still have your lawyer list. And when all the lawyers said, forget it, Trump's done, there are loyalists running up in the White House, right? And my question would be, why, when you had the chance, did you not free the January Sixers? And I came to him as someone who loves Trump. And I said, go and get Corey back, go and get these people that the media tried to cancel and told you to step away from. He basically gives me this would-be mob-esque kind of story, talking to some kid from the South Side of Chicago, trying to sound mobby or whatever. He goes into the story about all that he went through

to get Alex Johnson out of jail and how he didn't do it for Kim, but he did it for me. But then he goes on to say that Kim is a, you can tell I said that. And I was thinking like, that's the mother of my children. Since we know, and all the Christians in America that love Trump know that Trump is a conservative. We're going to demand that you hold all policies directly to the Bible. When Trump started basically screaming at me at the table, telling me I was going to lose. I mean, has that ever worked for anyone in history? I'm like, well, hold on, hold on, hold on, Trump. You're talking to Ye. So there's a lot to say about this. I mean, first of all, let's not forget,

Kanye ran for president last time around. Missed the ballot deadlines. I mean, immediately launches as having public meltdowns. I mean, this is a man who clearly has untreated mental illness, which is an important context for this whole story. So there's that. He got, I think, 60,000 votes. Not a really strong showing, ultimately. But, you know, he's been a sort of Trump hanger on. There was a big White House visit. He's been a fan of Trump's, all that stuff. He's been embraced by a lot of right-wing figures because of that. Even as lately, he's been just going all in on this anti-Semitic. It's, you know, going into every like stereotypical trope about the Jewish people

that you possibly could. So there's been a bit of a distancing there. So already just Kanye going to Mar-a-Lago is already not advisable at this point. Right. Then you add into the mix Nick Fuentes. And this turns into, obviously, people going like, what the hell are you thinking about here? Former President Trump, who has just announced his reelect. So as he does, he takes a true social to try to lie and clean this thing up as best he can. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

This is his first statement. There were a number of statements. I'll read you two of them that Trump put out on Truth Social. Here's the first one. He says, Yay, formerly known as Kanye West, was asking me for advice concerning some of his difficulties, in particular having to do with his business.

We also discussed, to a lesser extent, politics, where I told him he should definitely not run for president. Quote, any voters you may have should vote for Trump. Anyway, we got along great. He expressed no anti-Semitism, and I appreciated all of the nice things he said about me on Tucker Carlson. Why wouldn't I agree to meet? Also, comma, I didn't know Nick Fuentes.

Okay, so this one, you know, isn't really passing muster. He's still spinning. He's still trying to figure out what's the best way, like, out of this jam that I've created for myself. So here's another one of the statements he put out on True Social. He says, so I help a seriously troubled man who just happens to be black, yay Kanye West, okay, who has been decimated in his business and virtually everything else, who has always been good to me by allowing his request for a meeting at Mar-a-Lago alone so that I can give him very much needed advice, which you put in quotes for some reason, he shows up with three people. Two of which I didn't know.

The other, a political person who I haven't seen in years. I told him, don't run for office. A total waste of time. Can't win. Fake news went crazy. So, Sagar, that is the story. Yeah, there's a couple of things, I think. I mean, with Kanye and the reemergence of Milo and Nick, I just find it incredible that they are so willing to latch onto an obviously mentally ill and crazy person, not only in distress, but just for the two

minutes of fame that they both, like desperately crave and it's also especially ironic that it's like the moment that a cancelled black artist who comes into prominence they're like oh yeah you know what we're gonna latch ourselves

onto them for notoriety so in a lot of ways it's actually a huge victory for the two of them who all they really care about is getting people to even say their name

and to pay attention to them in the first place and I mean in many ways they have succeeded so congratulations Milo has been relegated to the sidelines for quite a while now

after Link am I the only one who didn't recognize him in that I was like oh my god it's only until someone was like that's Milo I was like oh my god

that is Milo yeah I was watching with Kyle and I was like wait is that Nick he's like no that's Milo so anyway for those of you

who are just listening and not watching Milo is standing there the whole time in the video. He's his campaign manager. With Kanye. Right. He's his campaign manager, apparently.

And this dude, you know, the last time we saw him, he was doing an unpaid internship for Marjorie Taylor Greene. That was the recent foray into politics. Before that, he was no longer gay and he was Christian. Right. He was actually on YouTube, like, selling these, like, Christian tchotchkes on, like, some Catholic channel. That was where I'd seen him before. But, yeah, I mean, Milo cares about nothing other than attention. I think Nick is the same way.

Really? Yeah, absolutely. I don't know as much about him. He's a troll. I mean, all these guys, they're excellent at what they do, which is that they say outrageous things. They get people to pay attention. And they use that reaction in order to fuel even more trolling against said people

in order to draw eyeballs toward the screen. That's, I guess, fine. The point is, though, and I think Richard Hanania put this best, I'll just read a quote. One reason Milo and Nick Fuentes will never recapture the magic of 2016 is because they used to freak normal liberals out,

and it was fun. Now liberals are so hysterical. The normal GOP causes them to melt down. You don't actually need censored performance artists to do so. They simply have no role. I think there deeply is something to that. And beyond that, I find it tired and boring. Like in a lot of the ways that they were able to freak out and latch on to, you know, the so-called Trump movement was because it generally was dissonant to be pro-Trump in 2015 and in 2016. It's no longer dissonant to do so. Trump is the GOP. The man who's president of the United States.

President of the United States. Many people have reconciled themselves to it. So it's like, what value add are you giving to the conversation? And then, you know, of course, they're abhorrent in particular, you know, what they say just about Jews and the statement even that Milo put out. There's a more recent one that actually just came out this morning. I'll read it directly. This is from Gab. Of course, it's horrific and abhorrent, but he says this, quote, Nick and Ye didn't discredit the Trump 2024 campaign. Trump did that by himself by having the most boring low energy announcement in history. He did it by continuing to, quote, suck the boots of the Jewish powers that be who hate Jesus Christ,

hate our country, and see us all as disposable cattle, according to their, quote, holy book. So I don't think you, it's literally like reading something from the Middle Ages. Yeah. Fuentes has said of his opposition to LGBTQ rights, he's referred to it as the bastardized Jewish subversion of the American creed that is dismantling our civilization. So just so you know, we're not like, you know, this is very clear cut. It's not like borderline type of rhetoric here. What I know with both of them is they just want attention. It's very clear. They are trolls. They are obviously always trying to say outrageous things. I'm not saying they don't actually necessarily believe them, but what they have

both calculated and always wanted was for people to see them as the flashpoints so that they themselves could be elevated to the top of said movements and hold people to the standards that they want for the entire party. I think what's fascinating really about this is that they were able and are still only to really get the most grifting, like, mentally ill person to latch onto in order to do so. It actually shows a level of deep desperation whenever you're willing to do that. And the reason why is because beyond the censorship, and I don't support censorship, but what's clear is that the world is, and even much of like the online, right, has moved very, very far past these figures. It wasn't just them getting deleted off of Twitter and off of social media. It was that people looked at them and were like, yeah, you're beyond crazy. You're boring now. Like you're doing the same shtick that you've been doing now for several years. So that's, anyway, I think the greatest, uh, the greatest victory against

these two individuals is to just really not talk about them or give them the attention. In this case, we have to, I mean, they met with the former president of the United States that again, you know, to take it even up with Trump, it's like, people were like, I can't believe that Nick Fuentes got into Mar-a-Lago. I'm like, really? Really? You're shocked by that? Honestly? I was like, I'm literally not shocked by that at all. People are like, what kind of process does he have in place? None.

Guess what, guys? When I was in the Oval Office, I remember this. There at one point were like seven people while I was interviewing Trump just floating in and out of there. And that's just actually not how it's supposed to work at all. You're really not supposed to have so many people who are allowed in and out. That is the level of chaos and the ability for, remember that guy, the Mike Lindell and Overstock CEO who were doing all this insane stop the steal stuff. Yeah, and they like snuck into the White House. They like walked into the Oval.

Yeah. And the White House counsel walks in. He's like, who are you? He's like, what are you doing here? Yeah, exactly. So White House counsel, he was like on his way home for the night and then someone calls him urgently like you have to get in here these fucking insane people are like talking to the president you have to get back i see no this is not surprising to me at all everyone's like i'm shocked and outraged uh by president trump not

actual politicians which we'll get to i'm like really because this actually seems incredibly standard for him i'm not saying it's a good thing. Yeah. What I'm saying is this is really him. Shock? How could you be shocked by this at this point? I mean, honestly. And I saw Steve Bannon with some kind of cope that was like, he needs who's around him to make sure things like this don't happen. I'm like, this is the way he intentionally runs things.

He likes it. He's the former president of the United States. He's a big boy. He can make his own decisions, as he clearly did, about who he's having dinner with. So, I mean, and this is a common tactic with him. Whenever he does something that his acolytes don't like, it's not his fault. It's Jared Kushner. It's somebody around him.

It's the staff failed him, whatever. No, no, no. This is 100% on him that he, even taking the meeting with Kanye at this point. Why? What like what do you hope to accomplish there? And then letting Nick Fuentes in the door? I just don't even know. So maybe the most interesting part of this story to me is how the Republican Party is responding to this and especially some of the people who are, you know, posturing that they're going to challenge him in 2024. There's, of course, been all sorts of conversation, which I think is legitimate, that Trump is significantly weakened by the midterm election results, where a bunch of

his candidates went up in flames, where close ties to him, and especially the further you went in on the stop the steal nonsense, there was just a really direct correlation to, like, the further in that you went on that, the worse you ultimately performed. So there's this huge reckoning. At the same time, you, of course, have Ron DeSantis, who, you know, cleans up in Florida. Florida goes a totally different direction than the entire rest of the country. DeSantis is reelected by, you know, double digits easily. No problem. So you have this moment where a lot of people are saying, oh, Trump looks kind of weak. The announcement wasn't all that exciting. And maybe someone could ultimately challenge him.

OK, so you have a big mess up here from Trump that people all across, you know, on both sides of the aisle are condemning. So what are these people going to ultimately say? Let's go ahead and put this Maggie Haberman tweet up on the screen. So here's basically the rundown. Chris Christie, who has criticized Trump directly before, also criticized him here for meeting with Fuentes and Kanye. Mike Pompeo said something about anti-Semitism being bad. So a little passive-aggressive subtweet, but did not actually name Trump. And basically everyone else except for Asa Hutchinson, who is the governor of Arkansas, who's apparently posturing like he's going to run for 2024. He did say something as well. But all of the other potential 2024 Republican candidates, most notably, she says,

the one who's governor of the state where the dinner took place, that would be Ron DeSantis, have stayed quiet. Let me give you the comments from Pompeo and from Chris Christie, and then we can talk about all of this. Go ahead and put Pompeo up on the screen. This is his little Trump subtweet. Anti-Semitism is a cancer. As secretary, I fought to ban funding for anti-Semitic groups that pushed BDS. Okay. We stand with the Jewish people in the fight against the world's oldest bigotry. So, you know, happy to go against people who are protesting for Palestinian human rights, but unable to call out an overt Holocaust denier like Nick Fuentes when he meets with President Trump. Got it. And then you've got Chris Christie, who he's had a few things. Let's put this up on the screen. This is on Twitter. He says,

this is just awful, unacceptable conduct from anyone, but most particularly from a former president and current candidate. He links to a New York Times article where he is also quoted. And he said, this is just another example of an awful lack of judgment from Trump, which combined with his past poor judgment make him an untenable general election candidate for the Republican Party in 2024. He also said, and I think this is accurate, he can't stand not having attention all the time. And so having someone show up at his club, even if you believe that he didn't know who Nick Fuentes was and want to sit with him, feeds the hunger he feels for the attention he's missing since he left the presidency. And I do think that there is, I think there is a lot to that. Yeah. I think for me,

this just crystallizes something. Trump is obviously just going to be the nominee at this point. Like if you can't, and look, they're actually making, I think, the correct decision from a political point of view. What is the lesson? Access Hollywood doesn't stick. Charlottesville doesn't stick. Any of the innumerable so-called contradictions, if you do speak out against him, you politically will suffer and you will have no benefit to that. Now, the fact is, is that Ron DeSantis, the fact that Mike Pompeo wants to run against Trump and can't even say his name on something he disagrees with, good luck running against a man

and winning in the presidency. Like, to what this really underscored to me was, yep, Trump is still the absolute leader of the GOP. Not a single major elected official has said a word about this. If you were to ask him about the specifics, they'd be like, yes, I think he's abhorrent. You know, this, I don't support that, et cetera.

But they know that if they criticize Trump, he'll criticize them, that it'll hurt them electorally, possibly in a primary or in the future. And it just shows me like, how are you supposed to run against a man? What case can you prosecute against a man? And I'm of two minds on this because I do think that the midterm elections have shown us, I'm like, hmm, well, some, you know, Trump MAGA extremism clearly is deeply repellent to a lot of independent voters. That said, those are not Republicans. So the people who are Republicans, they actually love Trump. So are those people actually going to be affected by this? There's not a lot of evidence to tell us that they will be, that they probably will stick with him, that they will look

at this as like a media persecution or that they will believe Trump about I hardly knew the guy, right? His most famous statement, even whenever it's like, you know, Michael Cohen or people who worked for him. Right, right. They worked for 25 years. I barely knew the guy. So on this one, like maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I personally think he probably knew exactly who he was. I think he probably just loved getting his ass kicked. In all my experience covering him and seeing at the White House, the thing that he responded and loved to the most was

just people sucking up to him. And you remember that cabinet meeting, which was on TV, where he made every member of his cabinet go around and say how proud they were to work for him. And everyone's like, what is this? North Korea level situation. It's just odd, right? So anyway, I think, again, to underscore from a GOP point of view, Trump is still the leader of the GOP. If you literally can't criticize, and this is people are like, if you can't criticize him for this, I'm like, that's the point. You really can't criticize him. I mean, I 100% agree with you. Ron DeSantis, politically, like put morally aside, politically, he made the right decision by not saying anything.

But think about what that says. Here's Trump supposedly at his weakest, right? Yeah. Supposedly he's down. He's almost down. Like now's the time. If you can't say anything about this now, how's this going to work for you? Like what is your plan?

Yeah, I think DeSantis has played his cards smartly in Florida. Again, politically, I'm not talking about whether I agree with what he's done or not, but played his cards very wisely politically. I think, you know, he's sort of done everything he needs to do to position himself as the Trump alternative. Has he positioned himself as someone who can actually take out Trump? No. And this incident shows you exactly why. Now, look, anything can happen. You know, Trump ends up in prison. Does that change the dynamic? All those things. As of today, there is just no denying he continues to be the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. The base likes this guy. And if you can't come out and give an explicit reason why they should go in another direction, they're not going to go in

another direction. So, I mean, just like Chris Christie here does the right thing, right? Does the full-on condemnation he did, he did the right thing at the Republican Jewish Coalition too. Like at least he's out there actually saying Trump's name and making some kind of a case. Does anyone think that Chris Christie has a shot in hell of being the Republican nominee? No. No. Right. No, he doesn't. And the same thing will happen to Ron DeSantis or whoever it is the minute they start going directly at Trump. It's going to be the same, the same calculus, the same situation. So yeah, I think it's a very revealing episode, ultimately. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to Ukraine. Some really terrible stuff for Ukraine happening

right now. Let's put this satellite image up on the screen. This was taken just five days ago. So for those who are just listening, this is a satellite view of Europe, and you can see streetlights and other lights shining across the entire continent from Russia, even in Turkey, down below, Bulgaria, Romania. And there's just a massive black hole in the middle of it. Some of that is the Black Sea. The other is Ukraine itself, which just shows a massive power blackout basically across the entire country. And this was really a result of moving Russian missile barrages across the country, directly targeting power and water stations. So let's go to the next one up there on the screen, which is that really what the Russians have pivoted towards is waging war on the ability

of the Ukrainian populace to continue to support the war effort. So they have now caused outages in Kiev, in Lviv, in several other major cities, even in the former city of Kharkiv, which remember, according to Russia, is technically Russia, denying power to their own supposed citizens. Half of Moldova, whose grid is tied to Ukraine, also lost power. So more than 100 missiles and drones in the last two weeks have actually rained down across the country, striking power facilities, water facilities, leaving much of Kyiv in the dark for several days. And, you know, again, just to remind everyone, the weather over there has already turned. It's snowing this morning. It is a high of 34 degrees. Basically, from now, basically November 15th, I believe up until February,

the average high in Ukraine is 35 degrees. So it's freezing cold. And you have millions of people without any access to power. You have stories there of people in hospitals having to perform open heart surgery literally by flashlight from their phone. A nightmare. It's a complete nightmare. And again, it's a long and tried and true strategy of militaries that are trying to wage wars, especially from a position of weakness, but with some firepower, which you try and deny the enemy and its civilian population the capacity to continue to support the war effort. And unfortunately, that is in full swing right now. We are in the middle of the muddy season, or as they say in Russian, Rasputitsa, which famously

dogged the Nazis in the invasion of Russia back in the 1940s. Basically, the front line is ground to a halt. There are videos coming out from the front line and from all across Ukraine of Russian soldiers literally trying to drag tanks by hand through the mud. It's a disaster. It's just really not going to be possible. The only time to resume fighting is when the ground has become so frozen solid that it can be moved at. And at that point, it's like minus 10 degrees with wind chill and people are literally buried in the snow. So it's a very bad situation. Likely the fighting season has relatively stalled at this point. There's been some limited battles and there probably will be throughout the time. But I think this is a preview of what the next three to four

months of Russia's strategy are going to be. Deny, deny, deny to the enemy. Make it miserable as possible to get through the winter and is working so far. Yeah, that's exactly right. According to Ukrainian intelligence reports, Moscow is running low on precision cruise missiles, but they think they have enough in their arsenal to carry out attacks of a similar scale three or four more times. So I thought there was a quote here from the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. who was talking about, you know, they're basically weaponizing winter. They say Putin's motive could not be more clear and cold-blooded. He is clearly,

clearly weaponizing winter to inflict immense suffering on the Ukrainian people. He's decided if he can't seize Ukraine by force, he will freeze the country into submission. So that is the calculus here, is to try to hold the lines where they are, to try to inflict as much suffering as possible on the Ukrainian people. And this has caused real problems for them. Already, you have rolling blackouts instituted across the country for everyone, four to 12 hours a day without power. That's how you end up with an image like the one that we ultimately saw. Zelensky has announced a national drive that he's calling points of invincibility where they have, he's trying to set up thousands of makeshift centers. So when people do lose power, they have somewhere they can go that has heat, that has water, that has phone service, that has internet service to try to protect the population

that way, because there's just no way that you can guarantee that you're not going to be without electricity during the cold winter months for some significant period of time. Yeah, I think that's right. Let's move on now to my personal favorite, this new accusation by European diplomats. Let's put this up there on the screen from Politico Europe. Quote, Europe is accusing the U.S. of profiting from the war. EU officials attacking Joe Biden over sky-high gas prices, weapons sales, and trade as Vladimir Putin's war threatens to destroy Russian unity. Here's a direct quote from a top European diplomat. Quote, the fact is, is if you look at it soberly, the country that is profiting most from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas at higher prices and because they are selling more weapons. Now, I would just want to say, Crystal, nothing is stopping them from selling

weapons to Ukraine. Also, nothing stopped them from building more nuclear power plants across their country. Nobody forced them to take their nuclear power plants offline. You're not the ones. We're not the ones who forced you to make yourself heavily reliant on Russian gas. So when then you voluntarily cut yourself off from Russian gas and have to buy it from us, that's your fault, not ours. I do think it is revealing, though, that the long-standing prediction, not necessarily coming fully to fruit, that European gas prices, energy crisis, and more

would fracture the kind of Western resolve is starting to come at some point. Because the US, by definition, by not being reliant on Russian gas, is of course going to fare better. And then when we are going to supply 90-some percent of the arms going into Ukraine, of course our weapons manufacturers are going... Again, German defense contractors, you guys are welcome to profit from the war too. You sell it.

I would love for that to happen. Okay, there's a lot to unpack here ultimately because at the beginning I was sympathetic to their position because if you think of it from their perspective, France and Germany in particular, they didn't want to take the approach to this war that the U.S. and the U.K. ultimately did. And of course, we're driving the train. So we're the ones who, you know, dispatch Boris Johnson and say, like, we don't want a peace deal. We're the ones who say we want to push Putin out of power. We're the ones who lead the charge in terms of the sanctions, knowing that, yeah, it's been a little tough for our population,

no doubt about it. I don't want to downsell it, but it's nothing compared to the vulnerability and the price hikes and the incredible costs that the European countries have had to bear, especially some of the poorer European countries. We talk a lot about Germany. Obviously, they're very vulnerable. But, you know, there's basically like a bidding war and competition for energy reserves in Europe right now. And so the wealthy countries are much better positioned. So I am sympathetic to that piece,

that we basically have been driving this train, you know, putting diplomacy off the table, although there have been some more encouraging signs that maybe the Biden administration is considering that potentially there is a point in time and that point in time may be coming where we push our Ukrainian friends to at least come to the table and try to come to some sort of diplomatic resolution. So I'm sympathetic to that part. But then when you really read into this piece, it seems like what they're really pissed off about is actually the Inflation Reduction Act. Yeah. Like, that's why it wasn't actually really anything Russia did that is causing this tension right now.

Like, why is this coming right now at this point? It's actually because the U.S. took some really good steps in terms of our own domestic green manufacturing capabilities, and especially with regards to electric vehicles. And they are very, very upset about that because they're worried about that undermining. I get it. They're worried about undermining their own industrial base, their own electric vehicle manufacturing capacity,

and especially all the component parts, all of that stuff. So this is sort of being framed as part of their beef with the U.S. about how we're profiting off of the war and, you know, we're leading the charge. And those pieces, I think, are just like justified. And there's some legitimate critique there. But yeah, what they're really upset about right now and why it's coming to a flashpoint is because they're mad about the inflation reduction. What they are mad about is that our EV subsidies basically require our EV credits to go to companies that build stuff in America. There's made-in-America provisions. Crazy concept, I know, that a country would want critical supplies to be made in its own country. And they're like, no, that is an egregious affront because it might undermine Mercedes-Benz.

Protectionism, et cetera, et cetera. They have their own protectionism, by the way. I was going to say, do you want to know one of the most protectionist places on Earth? It's called Germany, the largest economy in Europe. Try and buy Mercedes-Benz parts, factories, and other, and build it not just in Mexico. Try building it in France or somewhere in a neighboring country. The German government would freak out. They look at them rightfully as national assets. That's great. It's a cool car. I want cool cars here. I want more than one just American company that actually makes stuff. So I wholly support these subsidies. And the point is, is that they're mad that we are not completely reliant on them for our so-called fake free trading system. They're mad that we're trying to build stuff here in the US. And really what they're mad about, I think, is that their own just fundamental strategic flaws are coming to light. And I just, look, let us again go over how much money we have given to Ukraine. Total government aid by the United States to Ukraine is $52.3 billion. The vast majority of that is military aid. The EU countries and EU institutions in total only reach $29.2 billion. If you stratify it to military aid, the vast majority of the aid,

some $27 billion so far that has been appropriated, has come from the United States. No other country in Europe even comes close except for the UK, which is currently allocated 4 billion pounds. So you consider that the only other country that even comes close to us is still 500% less than what we have given to Ukraine. Just the audacity to say that we are the ones who are, quote, profiting, when you're the ones who are not spending any of your own money on this actual country. This is the issue too, Crystal. They can be in the driver's seat if they want to. Germany is a rich country. It's one of the richest countries in the world. So is France. So is the UK. These are massive titanic economic powers, which if you combine them,

sure, they may not punch above the US weight, but they actually share a land with Ukraine and with Russia. They are welcome to do that if they want to. They just don't want to. And it's like it shows you that they are willing to offload all their responsibility onto us. I honestly can't blame them for that because, like, clearly they don't, like, the Biden administration has been willing to spend whatever. Yeah, I mean, that might do the same thing, but they don't complain about it. I don't blame them. I don't blame them for that position. I don't blame them for spending, you know, less money as a percentage of GDP on supplying weapons.

I don't blame them for any of that because, like I said, I think at the beginning it was very clear there was – France and Germany wanted a somewhat different approach, and ultimately our approach is what wins out. But, yeah, you can't then go and complain like, well, he's making too much money. I mean, yeah, I agree with you, but you've made a choice about how you want to approach this. Exactly. Yeah. But I do think when you read into this, the piece that they're really smarting over is the Inflation Reduction Act and the fact that after years, decades of the U.S. being all free trade all the time, you finally have the tiniest glimmer through, you know, the Inflation Reduction Act is what they're concerned about, also the CHIPS Act, but these little glimmer of industrial policy, of awareness, especially post-COVID, that, hey, guess what? You need to have some of these critical supply lines here. Even companies, you know, even without tax incentives, realizing that this was bad for business when you have this massive supply chain breakdown, worries about their future in terms of

being able to manufacture in China and what that's going to look like in the future. So you have some of this happening organically as well, but it seems like that's really the flashpoint here. And the other piece that is ongoing is, remember, they agreed that they're going to try to set this oil price cap on Russian oil. Well, you have the European embargo on Russian oil that is set to come into effect here very shortly in just a matter of days. I think it's December 5th is ultimately the day. And then separately, they're trying to institute this oil price cap to try to keep Russia from profiting to the extent that they have been off of their oil sales, having a very hard time coming up with what the dollar amount there should be. Some people are floating like $65 or $70 a barrel. A lot of European diplomats are floating that. But then that is still way above the actual production costs for

Russia. So Russia would still be profiting there. But then they're worried if they set it lower, then maybe Russia won't produce. So you have an issue with oil prices. And then the separate concern is like, it's not clear that this is going to work at all anyway. So that's the other piece that's going on here. Hey, you guys can have cheap gas anytime you want. Buy it from Russia. That's what the Indians and the Chinese are doing. You're the ones choosing not to. So it's your fault.

Okay. All right. So we have another piece of very significant oil news. This is something that has been a long time coming and we've been tracking closely here. The Biden administration has taken a very different approach towards relations with Venezuela than the Trump administration did when they tried to have that whole fake coup Juan Guaido thing. I mean, listen, I don't want to oversell it here. The Biden administration is still out there pretending that Juan Guaido is the legitimate leader of Venezuela. But we do now have a deal in terms of Chevron being able to pump oil in Venezuela. Let's go

ahead and put this up on the screen. U.S. gives Chevron the go-ahead to pump oil in Venezuela. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. U.S. gives Chevron the go-ahead to pump oil in Venezuela. Again, the Treasury Department on Saturday said they would allow them to resume pumping oil from Venezuela's oil fields. This license is not going to allow the state-owned oil company in Venezuela to benefit, but it does signal, they say, an opening for other oil companies to potentially resume their business in the South American country two years after the Trump administration cracked down on companies' activities there in an effort to put pressure and oust the Maduro government. They came to a deal here to basically require the Maduro government is negotiating now with the opposition. There are some negotiations over humanitarianism. You also have, so they returned to political negotiations in Mexico. Those have been

suspended for more than a year. They signed a rare humanitarian agreement that seeks to free up Venezuelan funds that were frozen abroad for health infrastructure and education. And that is estimated to be around $3 billion, and that's going to be administered by the UN. So, you know, the Biden administration reportedly, Ron Klain in particular, chief of staff, became sort of obsessed with gas prices and what they meant in terms of politics. That's why you had all these big releases from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, this ongoing attempt to try to come to some deal with Venezuela, where you could start getting oil flowing there again to increase overall global production. And that is now bearing fruit here.

Yeah, it's interesting. Let's go put the next one up there on the screen, because the oil market's actually changing pretty significantly. Right now, we're actually looking like we're going to have decent supply. And there is, unfortunately, weakened demand. Some of that weakened demand comes from just winter and less usage. A lot of it comes from zero COVID. Yeah, a lot of it comes from recession sphere. So it's not always a good thing whenever demand for oil goes down. But whenever you have more supply and a little bit less demand, then you're seeing more equalizing in the range of price. As long as China especially remains committed to zero COVID, you're not going to

see as high gas as if their economy was open. I really actually can't imagine what the midterms might have looked like without zero COVID. We really could have had gas more than a dollar more per gallon across the country, which really could have impacted things on a major level. More so, you know, everyone talks about the strategic reserve. The global market is so much more important than that. In terms of where national gas prices are right now, let's put this up there on the screen. We've got a map. So $3.55 dropped a little bit this morning to $3.54 across the country. I was just in Texas for Thanksgiving. Very cheap gas there.

$2.88 a gallon, some of the cheapest in the entire country. The American Southwest, anything near the refineries and generally cheaper. Still quite expensive out in California. But California right now is still really one of the only states with $5 a gas on average. And here on the East Coast, it looks to be pretty, it's normalizing around less than $4 a gallon. None of this is ideal necessarily, but we should remember that a year ago, before the invasion of Ukraine and still in the midst of some COVID craziness, it was $3.39. So that was definitely higher than it was in the middle of the pandemic. But to equalize back to where things were before the Russian invasion, and if we continue to see like a downward move in price,

I actually think that's pretty significant for the Biden administration. The Venezuela part, you know, if they can really get oil pumping and flowing there, would only increase the amount of supply, especially with weak demand, and hopefully help the economic situation. So I support it. I've supported it since day one. I hope they continue to pursue creative diplomacy to get cheaper oil for Americans anywhere. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean they've been – like the sanctions that the Trump administration imposed have also been contributing to – I'm not saying it's a sole cause, but contributing to unnecessary suffering of the Venezuelan people, which is important to keep in mind as well. Compare the prices now, $3.54 a month ago, it was about $3.75. So you can see there's been a sort of consistent downward ticking of the gas prices. I think that trajectory is almost as important as

anything in terms of how people feel about gas prices, because it's like, okay, am I getting squeezed more and more and more? Or am I getting, you know, can I see the light at the end of the tunnel here? California is the only state, at least as of yesterday, that had gas averages over five dollars a gallon. I mean, that's not a great place to be, but it is significantly better than where things have ultimately been. So, you know, the economic picture right now, it also it looks like inflation, the very last numbers we got overall, inflation seems to be on the wane. Potentially, the Federal Reserve will take note of that and maybe they will stop hiking interest rates to the extent that they have. There's still going to be a lot of pain over the Christmas holiday season as, you know, people's wages have really been cut into by inflation as prices and

food prices and shelter costs and housing costs in general continue to go up and rise. So there's going to be a real squeeze on people. And also the end of the pandemic era programs that really helped support people and give them a tiny bit of cushion. There are so many numbers that show that bank accounts, especially of the poorest percentage of Americans, have really been sort of bled dry. But at least the Venezuela thing seems like a little bit of good news. How much will it affect oil prices and ultimately gas prices at the pump? Anyone's guess. Absolutely.

Moving in the right direction. Right. All right. Let's end fun media segment. The gif that keeps on giving, the Taylor Lorenz of the Washington Post. Couldn't resist this one. Couldn't resist because it's also actually deeply revealing. Like a true insanity that runs through a very over-representative group and yet powerful one that exists in American media. to actually defend China's zero COVID policy with outright actual misinformation and just revealing what the end state for a lot of these branch COVIDians really is. So let's put this up there on the screen. So she replies to a tweet that talks about a Chinese business consultant

talking, justifying zero COVID by saying that in 10 years, the West will be brought to its knees because of long COVID, which will decimate most of its labor force. She says, quote, TBH, he's right. Millions of people in the Western world are becoming permanently disabled and chronically ill with an incurable conditions that destroys our ability to live a normal life. And our leaders and majority of media are simply ignoring it and misleading people about the risk. Secondary, in a response officially to the zero COVID protests, here's what she says, quote, there is no, quote, lasting natural immunity to COVID. You can get COVID over and over and over again because there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane. Also, choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people as the US is doing isn't a critical flaw.

And, you know, when you look and you think deeply about that, first on the longstanding natural immunity. Now, it is, now, from what I have read and what I have seen, it is true that your natural immunity can wane and that you can get COVID again. However, and as I understand it, the severity of the actual disease decreases over time as you continue to get it. And one of the whole theories around it is that constantly evolving COVID through natural immunity and through it going through the population is eventually becomes much more like the common cold in the way that people can live with it. So let's put that aside on the outright medical misinformation. Secondary though, what's the alternative? What she's defending here is a zero COVID total lockdown policy where people in Xinjiang literally burn to

death because they're holed up in their houses and can't leave or unable to get food. Like the idea that we're, quote, choosing to kill off millions of vulnerable people is ludicrous. Vulnerable people can get a booster shot any time that they want. They are also, and we should, you know, pursue policies that make it so that not as many people get diabetes and not as many people are obese here in the U.S. but something tells me that she would say that that was ableist, so I don't even think she actually supports any policy on that. Regardless, there is this deep and unhealthy strain with this idea that millions of people are being permanently disabled. There's no evidence of that, zero, on long COVID. I'm not going to say long COVID is totally fake, although I think most of the people who claim to have it is totally fake. And what I see in general is like a neuroses that is manifesting itself online amongst people who can totally work from home and are basically

take givers like her. I saw another woman who was like, I finally got it. I got COVID. She was looking at it as a moral failing on her part that by getting COVID, she was like, I skipped everything for the last several years and I still got it. I'm like, yeah, that's the point. It can happen. So don't skip everything. If you're really afraid, you know, really afraid, okay, you know, you can consider your booster. You could consider wearing a mask. Yeah, go to an event, wear a mask. But even then, you know, as we have proven and basically shown at this point, if you exist in our society today, and as China's showing us right now, zero COVID doesn't even work. Yeah. So what's the point?

There are two big things I want to say about this. There's a lot I could say, but there are two big things I want to say. First of all, in that first tweet that she put up where she says like a majority of the media are just ignoring long COVID and the, you know, the risks to the population. Yeah. I find it so funny. And I see this not just from Taylor, but I see it from other people who have a similar like, like COVID lockdown forever kind of mentality. They are disproportionately represented. The media was so late to where the most of the population was in terms of how they were actually living their lives. I

mean, we're still having this year, like, how to be safe at Thanksgiving. When, you know, I mean, some tiny sliver of people are very concerned about that. If you have, like, underlying health risks and whatever, yeah, you worry about it and be careful and safe and all that stuff. But the media was much, much later. They were much more on the side of the, like, Taylor Lorenzes of the world than they were of the way that most of the American population was ultimately living. And I have always thought

that what has made the COVID procedure conversation difficult is that you have two competing values. You have the idea of like health and we're in it together and we have to like do things to protect each other. And then you have the idea

of liberty and freedom. And so, like, these are competing values. And I understand how people can come down in different places about how heavily to weigh different things, what they value in their own lives, what they think makes sense as a national policy. And I think we have worked through that in a not always optimal way, but we have worked through that together as a country. I do not find it to be an acceptable point on the spectrum to be where Taylor Lorenz is here, of being like, what China is doing is actually the right policy. I mean, she says, because she's quote tweeting a Washington Post tweet here, where they describe Beijing's COVID zero strategy as having a critical flaw because, you know, you have these insane lockdowns. And she's like, no, it's not a critical flaw.

Actually, she's actively advocating for insane authoritarian crackdown lockdown procedures of the type that people in China are now rebelling against after watching some of their, you know, some of their fellow citizens die in an apartment fire because they literally couldn't get out of their apartment. So it's revealing to me that that is like actually where you are on the spectrum. You are on full authoritarian. And again, there are many places on that spectrum of balancing like safety and freedom, there are many places on that spectrum of balancing safety and freedom. There are many places on that spectrum that I think are acceptable answers. Full authoritarianism is not one of them.

Yeah. I think that's— Just my perspective. Should go without saying, you would think, in the United States. But here we are today, folks. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Today, I want to unravel a little political mystery. How is it that our political class managed to pass literally one of the most successful programs in history,

a government program which was efficient, wildly popular, and insanely impactful, and then they let it die almost as soon as it had begun. I'm talking here about the expanded child tax credit was passed as part of the American Rescue Program at the beginning of the Biden administration. And then in July of 2021, $300 checks started to flow to millions of families. 90% of children in the country were eligible for these payments

and the benefit was immediate and it was obvious. Childhood poverty plummeted by 40%, lifting 3.6 million kids above the poverty line. Food insecurity fell by millions. The lies we've been told for decades about lazy parents just looking for a handout so they can stop working, those were all exposed as ugly myths. Studies found those who benefited did not drop out of the workforce as conservatives had predicted. Although I personally believe that working less so you can invest more time in raising your kids is a noble and worthwhile choice, one which supposedly pro-family conservatives should support more than anyone. But maybe even more powerful than the statistics are the anecdotes about what these payments meant to struggling

families. New York Times just interviewed several beneficiaries, and it really breaks your heart to think about how this little shred of relief, which meant so much to these families, was ripped away so quickly and so cruelly. One dad said that with the child tax credit, it mostly went to help with bills, but it also enabled some small, previously impossible little luxuries. In particular, he said he was able to take his kids to Walmart for some new clothes so that it wouldn't be teased about their thrift store wardrobe. He was also able to take them to a state park for a night where they made s'mores and they slept in a borrowed tent. Of that trip, he said, I saw a happiness in my wife and kids that I hadn't seen in a long time.

I felt like father of the year. Another story showed why scaling back work is in the horrible sin that some have portrayed it as. With child tax credit, one mom was able to briefly quit her night job so she could take her girls to their cheerleading classes. She told the Times, quote, my kids always want me to be there. They looked so happy. But now, after less than a year, that credit is dead. Mom is back at the night job, and one of the girls dropped cheerleading all together. There are no more state park trips or new Walmart clothes in the budget. Just like that, millions of kids, our most precious resource and most sacred responsibility, are plunged back into the stress and uncertainty of poverty.

Lights cut off, housing insecurity, not having enough to eat, the whole thing. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, on a theoretical political level, yeah, I know what happened. Joe Manchin decided to kill Build Back Better. That was where Biden and Bernie had planned to extend this credit. Manchin spewed a bunch of evidence-free nonsense about how parents were using the credit to buy drugs as part of his justification for killing the whole Build Back Better effort. Sustained high inflation, then strengthened Manchin's hand, made Democrats go wobbly on all social programs.

So we ended up with the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. That bill cut most of the social spending from Build Back Better, instead settling for a slice of the green manufacturing agenda. Republicans, a few of whom had previously floated some version of their own child tax credit, well, they've now turned fully

to their old deficit reduction talk, and they're more likely to talk about cutting Social Security than they are cutting families a break. But on a deeper level, it really doesn't make any sense. The program worked. It was extremely popular across the political spectrum. How could it be dead and gone just like that? 70% of voters in these midterm elections said they supported the expanded child tax credit. Only 20% opposed it. It was especially important for the multiracial working class that both parties claim to want to represent now. Pollster Stan Greenberg, he found that hitting Republicans on their opposition to the child tax credit was even more impactful than hitting them

on abortion rights for a bunch of crucial voting blocs. That includes Black and Latino voters, along with Gen Z and millennial voters. It was one of the top three issues for the white working class as well. But Democrats, they didn't run on the child tax credit. They didn't run on the fact that they passed it. They didn't attack Republicans for blocking it. There was no mass rebellion among those who had benefited from it once it was stripped away. And there are no clear plans from Democrats to try to reinstate it now in the lame duck session. The abandonment of this transformational program is a clear sign of the dysfunction in our democracy. A program that works, a program that's popular among 70% of the public, should be invincible. It should be

impossible to kill. But the voters who benefited most from the program are also most likely to be politically disaffected and disenfranchised. The poor children themselves, of course, they don't get a vote. They don't have an army of lobbyists. They don't make political contributions. They don't organize fundraisers. Their parents, they may have a vote, but they are statistically likely to be non-voters, too busy struggling to get by to protest and too poor to donate to political candidates. Meanwhile, the voices which are loudest in the air of the political class, while they're all singing the same song about how all the spending on the poor

and the working class was causing inflation, but how we need the Fed to hike rates, to discipline labor, to fully bleed out the meager savings accounts of workers. And so Democrats, who are more enraptured with and concerned at this point by their affluent suburban voters, they went all in on abortion on January 6th instead.

As Dan Greenberg put it, quote, I think the main reason is that Democratic elected leaders see their political base as increasingly college-educated women voters in better-educated suburbs and economically dynamic metropolitan areas. And they believe their diverse base of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans are motivated by identity politics more than economic issues. Listen, politically, the strategy worked well enough in the short term, at least. It was good enough to at least keep the Senate, keep the losses in the House to a minimum. But morally, it's a catastrophe.

And it leaves Democrats politically vulnerable to any Republican who isn't a psycho election-denying freak. The story doesn't have to end this way, though. It was another disaster for American democracy, another instance of the political class abandoning the working class and the poor. A number of progressive lawmakers signed onto a letter suggesting they will refuse to extend a number of corporate tax breaks in the lame duck session unless they re-up some version of the expanded child tax credit. Now, with Republicans set to control the House, this is realistically the last chance for the expanded child tax credit for a very long

time. The last chance for millions of kids to get their new set of clothes from Walmart, their trip to the state park, their cheerleading classes, and their mom at home instead of at the night shift. The last chance for millions to go to bed with enough food in their bellies and a home with heat in the cold winter months. These children, they might be powerless, but they are counting on you. Please come through. I saw Senator Michael Bennett, who is more of a centrist type. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, as a journalist, it's expected you are going to get things wrong. That is built into the profession. It's why news organizations are not individuals. They have editors, standards, processes in place which determine how and what information gets printed in their paper, how much they vet information before they publish it, and at least allegedly check facts with parties involved before going to print. Perhaps no news organization on Earth has more of a responsibility on this front than the Associated Press, or the AP for short, one of the oldest news organizations in America,

which holds an old and vaunted responsibility for gathering and pushing it out in a timely manner, the most basic facts in major situations. They're more conservative than mainstream media in almost every way, their elections bureau being one of the last to call races, and frequently missing some of the most deranged and woke think pieces at the Washington Post and the New York Times. Their most basic function is information in its purest form. X happened, Y president said this, then those of us in Washington can stew with it what we will. Its information is so trusted in 2013, their account

was actually hacked and false tweets were aired saying President Obama had been attacked at the White House, plunging the global stock market and sending markets into chaos for a few minutes. That is the power of their information. And as anyone who is even vaguely familiar with Spider-Man can tell you, with great power comes great responsibility. That's why this monologue is important. Not to applaud the AP for making a mistake and then putting processes in place to fix it, but instead an ongoing cover-up of massive, globally important story that they bear total responsibility for. As you can all remember, on the night of Donald Trump's announcement for president, we also had to lead with an important story. A Russian missile had

landed in Poland, killing two civilians. But it was according to the Associated Press. That was the story. It was of massive importance. It could have indicated an attack by Russia on a NATO country, precipitate World War III. The story was immediately seized on by President Zelensky of Ukraine to call for NATO intervention in his war. Kremlin accounts disputed the story were dismissed in chaotic, hours-long environment. It was only several hours later, when the world was waiting with bated breath, did we learn the truth. Actually, these weren't Russian missiles at all. Actually, they were Ukrainian air defense missiles that landed in

Poland, killing two civilians. That truth, of course, paints a very different situation, a much more gray area that doesn't bear the consequences of possibly massive escalation and a planet-changing war. So, of course, the AP was not only incorrect, they got played by someone in the intelligence community. A so-called senior US official. How? Why? Who was this official?

Was he truly so important that based on his word alone, you were willing to scare the entire world? Clearly, the AP needed to answer some questions. And immediately they produced their fall guy, James Laporta. He's the reporter who received the tip and was then fired. It's clean and easy, but it's not so fast. The AP spun the firing of the reporter as justice because it was his fault that he left, quote, the impression that the story sourcing had been approved,

yet leaked Slack messages that I just showed you from inside the AP newsroom? Very different story. One that cast doubt on the entire organization from root to branch. Here's how the terrible saga played out. On Tuesday afternoon at 1.32 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, one that cast doubt on the entire organization from root to branch. Here's how the terrible saga played out. On Tuesday afternoon at 1.32 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Laporta posted in Slack. He said, Senior U.S. official, previously vetted by the vice president of AP News and Investigations Division,

had told him that Russian missiles had crossed into Moldova and into Poland. Immediately, the head of AP Europe replied with the question, Can we send out a coveted and official AP news report with that information? And do we need confirmation from another source? To which that reporter replied, quote, that call is above my pay grade. When an editor followed up and asked for a story, Laporta couldn't because he literally was at the doctor's office. He said all he knew is what he had passed along. Ten minutes after that message,

a news alert was then sent by the deputy head of the European AP desk, reading, quote, Russian missiles crossed into Poland, killing two, according to a senior US official. The damage at that point was done, and the entire world was on edge. Only 24 hours later, after the Polish government announced its conclusions, did the AP actually retract the story and then the blame game began in earnest. How could this happen?

Well, looking at the Slack transcript, we can actually surmise something obvious. This is not the story of a single reporter screwing up. This is a systematic failure, top to bottom, that indicts all their coverage in the past and in the future. Again, let's review. Laporta was at the doctor's office. He receives this false tip from some sort of senior intelligence official. Not just any official, an official previously vetted and trusted by a senior vice president of the Associated Press for determining trustworthiness. Meaning that we should all be asking the question, hold on a second, how many other alerts and how many other stories quoted this guy? Have we been misled before? Further, this shoddy information was enough for the editors in the chat to get excited enough to push an alert to the entire world,

who according to them, they believe that Laporta had actually cleared his tip with the vice president, not just the source in the past, hence why they are blaming him. But you read the transcript. His intent is actually clear. I think it reveals that the central news organization, which can impact markets and instantly change geopolitics, has terrible editorial standards. It is something that has plagued journalism on a mass scale since the arrival of Donald Trump and Russiagate. Russiagate and Trump brought record ratings to news organizations and power to intel agencies to get journalists even more so to believe literally everything that they told them. It eroded longstanding editorial practices at some of the most important journalistic institutions, and it made it so that in the middle of a crisis, random dudes on Twitter second-guessing the AP report based upon photos from the scene

gave us more accurate information in real time than the AP report based upon photos from the scene gave us more accurate information in real time than the AP did. Let this be an important lesson for all of us. With the erosion of standards, it literally is a free-for-all out there. The only person that you can trust is yourself, not to know what is right in the moment, but to be skeptical of everything that you see in an ongoing and chaotic situation. I think it's crazy. You know, at first, Crystal, I was like, wow, I can't believe it. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. don't forget, live show. We've got the tickets on sale down in the description of all of our videos today. We really appreciate to come and see you guys in New York and in Boston. It's going to be a lot of fun. Special thank you to all the premium members out there for supporting our work

and the show. You guys are just the people that we think about every single day, how we can help your experience, how we can continue to grow. CounterPoints is going to continue back here on the show this week. We're going to have full normal scheduling. So with all that, we'll see you tomorrow. Love you guys. See you tomorrow. Thank you very much. Ketutupan Terima kasih telah menonton! This is an iHeart Podcast.