Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/30/21: Booster Shots, Fauci Comments, Twitter CEO, Amazon Union, Chris Cuomo, Waukesha Memory-Hole, Hillary's Legacy, Conservative Happiness, and More!

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

Krystal and Saagar provide their perspective on Biden's booster shot plan, Fauci's outrageous comments, Twitter's new CEO, unionization at Amazon, Chris Cuomo's coverup, Waukesha massacre memory-hole, Hillary Clinton's legacy, why conservatives are happier, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Support Waukesha victims: https://www.gofundme.com/c/act/waukesha-christmas-parade-fundraisers https://www.unitedwaygmwc.org/Our-Impact/United-for-Waukesha-Community-Fund.htm Brad Wilcox’s Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/25/opinion/liberals-happiness-thanksgiving.html?smid=tw-share Brad Wilcox’s Work: https://ifstudies.org/ https://ifstudies.org/reports/the-divided-state-of-our-unions/2021/executive-summary  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. A plethora of big stories to bring you this morning. Of course, we're going to update you on the Omicron virus and variant and everything that Joe Biden said about that, where we seem to be headed. A few updates for you about exactly what is going on there. Jack Dorsey stepping down as head of CEO of Twitter. A little bit troubling, his replacement.

Some of the comments that have been made. So we'll get into that. Chris Cuomo under major pressure at CNN as new revelations about just how directly he was involved in his brother's defense, how he leveraged his media connections to try to help him with the cover-up. I'm not sure CNN knew that all of this was going on, so they have been forced to release a statement. First time that they've really had much to say at all about what's going on there. So we'll give you all of those details. Also, big news out of Bessemer, Alabama. You'll recall workers at the Amazon warehouse there, they had been trying to unionize. That effort

had been defeated. But all along, those involved with the organizing effort said, hey, this was not on the up and up. Amazon cheated and this was unfair practices. Well, the NLRB at this point has agreed with them. They are calling for a new election there down in Bessemer, Alabama. So obviously that is huge news. Also, our great friend of the show, Dr. Fauci, making some comments, quite eyebrow raising. We will get to that in a moment. But we wanted to start with the very latest on the new Omicron variant. Joe Biden making some comments yesterday about his plans to deal with that virus. Let's take a listen to that. The best protection, I know you're tired of hearing me say this,

the best protection against this new variant or any of the variants out there, the ones we've been dealing with already, is getting fully vaccinated and getting a booster shot. Most Americans are fully vaccinated, but not yet boosted. If you're 18 years or over and got fully vaccinated before June the 1st, go get the booster shot today. They're free and they're available at 80,000 locations coast to coast.

A fully vaccinated booster person is the most protected against COVID. Do not wait. Go get your booster if it's time for you to do so. And if you are not vaccinated, now's the time to get vaccinated and take your children to be vaccinated. Every child age five or older can get safe, effective vaccines now. I like the way he calls them fully vaccinated booster people. age five or older can get safe, effective vaccines now. I like the way he calls them fully vaccinated booster people. So a couple of things.

The totality of effectively what he's saying here is in addition to the travel ban, which even some of his allies and the doctor we talked to yesterday said, this isn't really going to do anything. This is more theater than anything else. He's effectively saying, look, we're not looking at any lockdowns, but we want you to get vaccinated and we want you to get boosters. This caught both of our attention yesterday because prior to yesterday, the CDC's guidance was that adults can get a booster, but that only people who are elderly should get a booster. Well, that guidance has now officially been changed because of this new

variant. Let's throw that tarot sheet up on the screen. The CDC strengthened its booster recommendations as worries mount over the Omicron variant, prompted by growing concerns. The CDC and Prevention Center for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday said all American adults should get booster doses of the available coronavirus vaccines. Adults age 18 and older should get a booster shot when they are six months past the initial immunization with Pfizer or Moderna or two months after the single shot J&J vaccine, which has proven to be somewhat less effective than the two-dose Pfizer and Moderna mRNA versions. The CDC had previously said Americans over age 50, as well as those ages 18 and older, living in long-term care facilities, should get booster shots,

while other adults may decide to do so based on their individual risk. So shift in language here, but also significant. Now you have a sort of blanket encouragement for all adults to get their booster. Full disclosure, I did get mine over the weekend. I was taking my kid to get his first jab and decided I may as well go ahead and get my booster as well. I had very little minimal side effects, just so you guys know, full transparency. But this does mark a shift in terms of how the CDC is talking about boosters. And this is something we tracked for a while. Yes. Because frankly, there isn't a lot of evidence that boosters are particularly needed at this point.

Only for elderly people. For elderly people, it seems to work pretty well. Right. And so, you know, one of the things that has been a little bit misleading about some of the media presentation of the vaccine effectiveness is, well, yes, breakthrough infections are a thing, and the efficacy with regards to getting COVID at all does seem to wane somewhat over time. You still have a lot of protection against severe hospitalization and death. Oh, yes. So, and I actually, it's bothered me that they haven't front-loaded with that information, because ultimately you want people to know that the vaccines do, in fact, work, and it is worth going out and getting them. Yeah, I think that this is the communication around this has been a mess. And this is what we flagged on this, which is the president came out

and said everybody should get a booster. Now, at the time that he made that statement, that was not a recommendation from the CDC, leading me and many other people to be like, hold on a second. Did Biden just go ahead of what CDC guidance was? Then the CDC hours later changes guidance. Now, the reason I'm dubious and skeptical on this is that remember the original booster guidance from the CDC and also from the FDA resigned specifically over Biden and the White House getting over its skis and recommending boosters for all Americans. The two scientists resigned. Then the CDC came out and said, okay, okay, we're going to revise our guidance on the booster. The official guidance is it's only for people who are 65 or sorry, 50 years and older, and also people who are 18 plus who work in a high risk environment. That was the only eligibility. Two weeks, three weeks later, they change it. November, I think it was November 19th, they came out and they changed the guidance to everyone is eligible for a booster, as in you can

go get one if you want, but you should only get one should, being not the can, should get one if you're 50 years or older plus 18 and you work in a high-risk environment. So all of this has changed within the span of a month and a half. Now, look, I understand, you know, my public health friends would be like, yeah, but Omicron, you know, the variant and changes. But you have to make this case very publicly to people or they're going to be like, I don't understand what's happening. And that seems to be the real problem. I completely agree with you. Look, double vaccinated, like, yes, you can get a breakthrough infection. It happened to me. It does, you know, decrease your odds of it, like, like population wide and all that. And it's going to, you know, dramatically protect you from hospitalization and death for a lot of the people who are worried about side effects and all

of that. Myocarditis is the one that is, uh, that is cited a lot. Your risk is actually much higher from getting myocarditis, even when you're young, from actually getting COVID, specifically long COVID. And especially those people who are a little bit older, 35, 40 or whatever, and above. If you look at the risks, look, it's something you should decide for yourself, but it's something that I think we should address here on the show. Hospitalization and death. And then look, there's risks from getting COVID and there's a quote unquote risk. Thereization and death. And then, look, there's risks from getting COVID. And, you know, there's a quote-unquote risk. There are side effects, of course,

from also getting the vaccine when you give it to hundreds of millions of people. You should compare those two things side by side. It's pretty clear, you know, which side I personally think you should fall on. Can I also say on the booster thing, I decided to get it because I don't want to get COVID. Like, even though I wasn't worried about... It's not fun. I wasn't worried about to get COVID even though I wasn't worried about

it's not fun I wasn't worried about being in the hospital I wasn't worried about dying but just like I get the flu shot I didn't really want to get COVID so that's why I got it but I do want to say for people who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine you really should get a second one

because that one first of all almost all of the protection against getting COVID goes away. You still do have significant protection against hospitalization and death, but it is significantly less than with the mRNA vaccine. So if you got the J&J vaccine, you should go get another one because that one just hasn't held up as well as the other two have. Another thing that just broke, at least I just saw this morning, which you should take with a million grains of

salt because we're talking about a pharmaceutical executive who has a financial interest in everybody getting boosters and getting more vaccines. But the CEO of Moderna, which of course makes what has turned out to be the most effective vaccine, is saying that he doesn't think that the vaccines are going to hold up all that well against Omicron. Now, that is speculation at this point because it's just too early to say, but I'll just read to you what he is saying. He said the high number of mutations on the spike protein with Omicron, which is, of course, what the virus uses to infect human

cells, and the rapid spread of their variant in South Africa suggested that the current crop of vaccines may need to be modified next year. He said, quote, there is no world, I think, where the effectiveness is the same level we had with the Delta variant. I think it's going to be a material drop. I just don't know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I've talked to are like, this is not going to be good. That's what someone who has a direct financial interest in us having boosters and having vaccines, a new vaccine every year for a new variant every year, that's what he's saying. That doesn't mean it's wrong. That just means you should take that into account.

And on that note, you know, while the stock markets dropped and oil futures dropped and there was financial fallout for most companies because of the Omicron variant, and by the way, these comments new from the Moderna CEO has sent the market even lower. Well, it hasn't been bad news for everyone, has it? Let's take a listen to an interview with the Pfizer CEO on CNBC. Do you see this happening every year? We either get a booster, a boost, a regular booster of the

same vaccine or a slightly different vaccine every year to deal with what we're seeing with these mutations? Is that what you foresee? It's almost like a, I mean, for Pfizer, you'd be selling these things every year. Not that you want to do that. I'm sure you're not hoping for that, but it'd be almost like an annuity for Pfizer. I did make a projection months ago that the most likely scenario,

it is that we will need after the third dose, annual revaccinations against COVID for multiple reasons, because of the immunity that will be waning, because of the virus that I'm sure will be maintained around the world for the years to come, and also because of the need of variants that will emerge. I'm more confident right now that this will be the case than it was when I made the projection. I think we are going to have an annual revaccination. I don't know how we're going to call it, but it will be an annual revaccination, and that should be able to keep us really safe. I mean, you love the just nakedness of the financial press.

I'm sure you don't want this to happen while the stock price is right next to it. This is like an annuity for Pfizer, right, with the stock prices right there along the side. And listen, as we talked about yesterday, the ideal, most profitable situation for these companies is to make a vaccine that actually works so people want it and then sell it at premium prices to the rich world and keep vast swaths of the world unvaccinated so that we do continue to churn out variant after variant after variant, which is why it would be so important if the Biden administration would stop just talking about lifting patent protections and actually put some muscle behind it, get behind the existing proposal at the World Trade Organization,

or write a new proposal and and most importantly, put their muscle behind pressuring Germany in particular to get on board with this as well, because it is unconscionable, unconscionable that you only have six or seven percent of Africa vaccinated, that the poor world has basically been left out of this entirely is just absolutely disgusting. Yeah. And I would also say that that a lot of that needs to be done in order to reclaim a lot of ground that has been given to people who are very skeptical of the vaccine. That's correct. Because you hear this.

I mean, what are you supposed to think? The guy's literally saying that you need a shot every year. Three months ago, that was considered a conspiracy theory in the United States that you're going to have to have boosters over and over again. And that's actually something that is cited by a lot of people who don't want the vaccine because they're like, look, even if I get it, then I still might get it. And I might have to keep getting one over and over again. And I simply don't want to, or, you know, risk compound year over year. I get it. Like I completely understand. And you know, why should

you trust the CEO of Pfizer? And especially when they have a direct financial incentive in order to do so. And then you look at what the government is doing, which is essentially embracing this policy now. Who is actually running the show? Is it the actual scientists? Will we be seeing change their minds on booster shots three times in the last eight weeks? Or is it the CEO? I mean, we need to reclaim some sort of public trust. And that's part of the problem. I just think this is completely ridiculous. And I'll put my cards on the table. I'm deeply skeptical. And I found in my own experience, I don't, I'm not getting good information. Like I got, you know, two doses of Moderna and then I got COVID. Do I need a booster shot? There's no official guidance on that because natural immunity is not currently recognized by the CDC

whatsoever in terms of its guidance on whether you should get shots or not. And look, I realize like how I'm beginning to sound, but this is somebody who went out and, you know, sought out the vaccine as early as possible. And then also you see this and you say, okay, well, you know, I'm a young man, got two doses of Moderna, also got COVID, have natural immunity. Do I really need a booster shot every single year? Or, and this is from a population-wide basis, what if we have it such that boosters, instead of being recommended necessarily for everybody, we focus on the ultimate metric, in my opinion, which matters the most, hospitalization and death. If we can reduce that every single year, and every year,

let's say that we do have a booster shot every year, and it'll be like the flu vaccine, which is that, oh, this particular strain of flu, well, look, everyone should get a flu shot, but in general, who do they really need to be given to the elderly? And well, you know, for the flu is actually very dead, much more deadly to children, but with COVID in particular, you could say, okay, if you're old, then yes, like you should probably get a booster shot maybe every year, just to make sure that you're going to be okay. Do you have to recommend it though for everybody else? This embraces to me COVID zero type thinking, which of course he has the direct financial incentive in pushing. An endemic model

would not push it towards this. It would say the option is available to those who are in a high risk category, immunocompromised, et cetera. But for everybody else, yeah, you're probably going to get some strain of COVID at some point in your life. I think everybody just needs to accept that right now. And the real question is around mitigation and making sure that hospitalization and death is as low as possible. But let me say, with your point that probably everyone's going to get COVID at some point in their life, if you have been vaccinated, that is a much less risky and potentially deadly scenario for you than if you are unvaccinated. So look, these companies are not good actors. And the fact that we, you know, are dependent on people who have invested financial

interest in this is gross. And the incredibly unfortunate side effect of that is in part, it does fuel, it fuels true conspiracy theories about how they want to just make money, but it also fuels false conspiracy theories about the vaccines themselves being nefarious or not working. When we have seen through, you know, hundreds of millions of trials around the world at this point, there are very safe, minimal risk, and highly effective, especially when it comes to hospitalization and death. And the biggest crime that they are committing is by not making this a public good so that it could be more widely available ultimately to the globe. That is really – I mean, it really is an unconscionable, immoral situation. And I think also gets to this core issue that, you know, I've had with our health care system for a long time, which is that when profit is at the center, that is the core value rather than health. So this should always, you know, from the beginning, we had all this like, oh, we're in it together and World War II style mobilization effort, et cetera, et cetera.

Bullshit. Bullshit. This should have been a public good. This should have been something where, you know, we make it as cheaply available to the world as possible. But that isn't, you know, in the interest of Moderna and Pfizer and other companies involved. And lest we forget that you, the U.S. taxpayer, funded and created and helped develop this technology, too. So it's not like these companies were white knights who saved us all. They leveraged research that had been publicly funded and ongoing for years.

And we gave them big upfront payments. We moved mountains to make sure that the development happened when the trials weren't, you know, they couldn't find enough diverse participants for the trials. We made sure they had that and the parts they needed. And we went on boarded trains to get those parts. I mean, the U.S. taxpayer is responsible for these vaccines and we should be the ones having the say over who it is made available to in the world. Just one more piece. This great reporting from Lee Fong over at The Intercept about just how nefarious these corporate actors are and how we never should, you know, trust them in terms of their interest here.

Pfizer is now lobbying to thwart whistleblowers from exposing corporate fraud. They're among the big pharma companies trying to block legislation strengthening whistleblowers' ability to report. This law, and this is really interesting because this is actually a bipartisan effort led in part by Chuck Grassley, a Republican, of course, out of Iowa. And so this law has historically returned $67 billion to the government. Whistleblowers have successfully helped uncover wrongdoing by military contractors, banks, and pharmaceutical companies. But this law protecting whistleblowers who are exposing corporate fraud, this has been eroded over time, in particular by a recent Supreme Court decision. And this to me is nuts. But effectively what the Supreme Court decision said is that if the company has any ongoing contracts with the government, then we don't believe your fraud claims. Because surely,

the government wouldn't do business with a company that was engaged in fraud. Yeah. I've never met a defense contractor that didn't engage in fraud. Exactly. This is insane. But that's what the Supreme Court decided. And it's something else we've, of course, talked about on the show, how the main value and main thing that advocates of some of these justices have looked for is that they will be reliable allies for corporate America. So Chuck Grassley and others, including Republicans and Democrats, have been trying to update this law. Pfizer and some of their big pharma allies have been standing with them to lobby against it aggressively. Yeah. And I'll just end with Matt Stoller.

I referenced his tweet, but I wanted to make sure you guys saw it all today. Let's put it up there on the screen where he says, quote, New variants from unvaccinated areas that force us to get boosters is literally the business model of big pharma. And I think that, Crystal, that's what you continue to hammer home. And I think that we should all really realize here, which is that a lot of this with the booster shot, it's efficacy around the guidance, around the financial interest and more. I don't think that we're having the correct conversation around it. I think it's both either resetting and putting expectations for people who are really afraid of COVID, that this is something that will have to

be done population-wide over and over again, when that's probably not realistic in terms of a US population-wide basis. Two, feeding and directly showing that these people want boosters forever for financial interest. And then three, where the guidance around it changes all the time, and I think just moves us away from where I would say the center of gravity of American public opinion is, but also just science generally. So look, it's the most honest conversation we could try and have on this because it's a very fraught topic. I bet a lot of people at home are freaked out and are like, I don't know what to do. Should I get one? Should I not? I get messages from people all the time be like, here's my specific case. By the way, I'm not a

doctor, so don't ask me. Please stop asking me whether your boyfriend should get the second jab or whatever. Look, and it's early days with Omicron. We really don't know much there. And I'm going to wait till, you know, actual scientists evaluate this, not Moderna's CEO. Exactly. But I guess to sum it all up, you are correct to think that these pharmaceutical giants are nefarious actors, but their game isn't creating a vaccine that doesn't work and then making you get it. The game is to have the rich world be the piggy bank, charge premium prices, and then allow these

variants to circulate. And just as Matt Stoller said, in the unvaccinated world, that is how they end up with the largest possible profit. And so that is the angle and the conspiracy that you should be very concerned about and very leery of. That's right. Speaking of conspiracy and something that we've been tracking here for a long time, I know some people are tired of hearing it, but I frankly cannot get over the total and complete transformation of Dr. Fauci into an outright political actor within the media. The transition took like six, seven months during actual COVID period of 2020, but is fully complete. And watching him in particular grapple with all of the questions

around his own role in gain-of-function research in the origin of COVID in the first place all came to fore over the weekend. This was basically completely ignored by the media. And I guess I have to give CBS some credit because they pressed him on it a little bit. So let's put this up there on the screen. I actually tweeted it out over the weekend. But there's a section of this transcript which is very important. Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation asks Dr. Fauci, quote, Beijing acknowledges now they don't think that it originated in a market. She's referencing COVID. He says, quote, well, it may not have originated in the market,

but it certainly could have. I mean, I don't think that they admitted it, that it didn't originate. I think they're saying they don't know how it originated. And so she continues to press him even more within the transcript crystal. And he continues to bring it back to the wet market theory four or five different times. bat a thousand miles away somehow was able to come to Wuhan and then it was, you know, like maybe eaten or bit, what was it, bit a pangolin and then that pangolin was eaten by a human. Or, what's more likely? What did we just learn from documents released literally two weeks ago, which is that that specific Laotian bat, which had a virus, which was 98% genetically similar to the current COVID-19, was actually being specifically studied and used in experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

You tell me which one is a little bit more likely. Once again, if that one, the latter one, about the Wuhan Institute, the lab leak, and all that is true, then it directly implicates Dr. Fauci. But you and I were talking, I mean, you read this transcript, it's bonkers. I mean, it's like actually crazy. It actually is. Because I was a little bit like, I just read that one part and I was like, okay, but then you go on and you read the whole thing. The thing that stood out to me is she asks about, do we need to further regulate gain of function research? And he's like, no, we already did that.

We're good to go. No problem there. Which he reversed the regulation on. And then she asked him if we need to further regulate wet markets, and he's like, oh, 100%. Right. So hold on a second. So the one with no evidence behind it, that needs to be regulated.

The one with a ton of evidence behind it, and actually with a bunch of U.S US government dollars that he contributes and controls, oh, that stuff needs to be regulated. Right. Well, and the other thing- I'm sorry, not regulated. Yeah. The other thing that it reminded me of, a point we have been making for a long time is, you know, the reason that you weren't allowed to talk about the lab leak hypothesis originally was because it was supposedly racist to talk about, right? That was the Trump card, no pun intended, used to shut down any discussion in the press about the lab leak hypothesis. People were being censored on different

social media platforms for even discussing it because it was quote unquote racist. But he goes on to talk about these wet markets. I it's a to me it's a much more sort of caricature-ish and potentially racist commentary that he's making there about like all these weird animals they won't stop these bats markets and yeah i mean that to me was a lot more problematic than the idea that as is the case I mean, this would not be even close to the first time that something escaped out of a lab. Like, how is that racist? That was just, so it reminded me of that as well. But he really does repeatedly throughout this interview go back to his conviction that it still may have come out of the wet market and points to the fact that,

and I think that this is true, that they made sure to clean out that, scrub the wet market, remove all the animals and everything early on. He insinuates that's sort of part of a cover-up, but they also did weird things at the lab. They scrubbed the server there. In September 2019.

They changed the air conditioning unit and all that stuff. That part he doesn't seem to take as evidence of a cover-up, even though it potentially is. It's truly nuts. And look, as I said over again, even the Chinese don't try and push the lab leak theory. Sorry, the wet market theory. Their theory is basically like, oh, it was on some goods,

and it made its way here, and that's kind of how it happened. And by the way, just stop asking a lot of questions. If you're in China, yeah, just zip it. And if you don't zip it, yeah, you're going to prison. That's what they've been doing over there. In May of 2020, as recently, they were not even standing by the wet market theory. So that just goes to show you there is not a single realistic iota of evidence behind the wet market-specific theory. I'm not saying zoonotic origin. I'm saying the wet market-specific theory. There's a ton more circumstantial on the lab leak. Guess which one Fauci is contributing to? And really, I found this next clip that we're about

to show you, I really found it disgusting. Look, I don't like Ted Cruz. I don't particularly love Rand Paul either, okay? They're both very partisan actors, et cetera, but they are elected United States senators. Dr. Fauci is the government official and specifically supposed to be nonpartisan and at the very least try to have some trust with the American people. Now, when Margaret Brennan presses him on, what do you think about, you know, the quote unquote attacks by Rand Paul or Ted Cruz says you should be prosecuted. Look at how much of like a Rachel Maddow viewer that this guy turns into. Just take a listen to this. So anybody who spends lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on with some of the investigations and

the congressional committees and the Rand Pauls and all that other nonsense, that's noise, Margaret. That's noise. I know what my job is. Senator Cruz told the attorney general you should be prosecuted. Yeah. I have to laugh at that. I should be prosecuted. What happened on January 6th, Senator? Do you think that this is about making you a scapegoat to deflect from President Trump? Of course. You have to be asleep not to figure that one out. Well, there are a lot of Republican senators taking aim at this. That's okay. I'm just going to do my job.

And I'm going to be saving lives and they're going to be lying. It seems another layer of danger to play politics around matters of life and death. Exactly. Exactly. And to me, that's unbelievably bad because all I want to do is save people's lives. I mean, anybody who's looking at this carefully realizes that there's a distinct anti-science flavor to this. So if they get up and criticize science, nobody's going to know what they're talking about. But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people could recognize there's a person there. So it's easy to criticize, but they're really criticizing science because I represent science. That's dangerous.

Oh, okay. You represent science. It's the ego of this man is unbelievable. And look, I know, I know it sounds partisan, but anybody who is able to look at this, you don't even have to like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul or whatever. You cannot declare yourself science. And what did we just point to preceding this? Is ignoring actual facts and evidence and pushing a hypothesis because you have a direct interest in making sure that one is

true and one is not true. It's just completely crazy. And this is the man who runs a lot of our policy. That's the thing. It's like, you have to, please, like i'm begging the wine moms of america like wake up and see this for what it is you cannot behave this way i um i don't really care that much about the ted cruz comment to be honest with you but the i am science thing is just so profoundly wrong and unhelpful i mean just as much as ted cruz and Rand Paul, or any sort of conspiracy theorist-minded person, let's put them aside, would want to turn him into science because then if you can poke holes

in a fallible human being, then, well, I mean, that is a really bad state of affairs for you to then lean into and say, yeah, you're right, I am science. And when you attack me, you're attacking science. When we know provably that he has been an incredibly fallible human being who was wrong about masks to start with and, you know, and wrong because he was just lying.

Not because he had bad information and came to America. Oh, now we know more. No, because he wanted to make sure that frontline health care workers had the PPE they needed, which is a noble goal. But you don't have to lie to the American people about it. That was one. Of course, we know the changing narrative on herd immunity and how he changed his numbers on what percent of the population would need to have immunity before you could consider it having herd immunity. And he admitted that he did that based on what he thought the public could handle at that point. Of course, we know he's got a direct personal interest in pushing

towards the zoonotic origin thesis or apparently holding on, you know, for dear life to the wet market thesis versus the lab leak hypothesis. So if you put yourself in that position, if you lean into that saying, yeah, you're right, I am science, then he's correct that it makes it easy to sort of undermine scientific consensus writ large because every human being is going to ultimately be fallible. So that's why this is so bad and damaging and also just incredibly, incredibly egotistical to be like, if you're attacking me, you are actually attacking science when, you know, there are a lot, a lot of bad faith attacks on Dr. Fauci. There's a lot of total conspiracy and insanity around Dr. Fauci. But there are also good faith critiques that are about

him not adhering to the science, not following the data and just being upfront with people and acting more like a spin doctor and a politician than a public health official. Which is what he is doing and is not what he was asked to do. It's a betrayal of the public trust, in my opinion. Actually, we're a lot worse off because of it. Let's get to the next segment. This was set the internet on fire, specifically Twitter yesterday. The big headline news, Jack Dorsey is leaving Twitter. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. He wrote a very long goodbye email. I'm not going to read it all to you. It's basically, after 16 years of having a role and a co-founder, CEO, et cetera, of this company, I have decided

it's finally time for me to leave. What he gets to in the most important part is he says that he will appoint a new CEO whose name is Parag Agarwal. So a lot of questions are currently arising. What does Parag Agarwal believe about Twitter? Who is Parag Agarwal? Okay, so let's get a little bit into his background. Parag, he started as an engineer at the company. He's a longtime fixture within the engineering community of Silicon Valley. From what I have heard, he's actually pretty well liked, once again, within the engineering community. And he was a CTO of Twitter, the chief technology officer. Here's the problem, though. Parag is an engineering type who is now the CEO of a company who doesn't really have engineering problems. This company's problem is that they have big socio-metapolitical questions to answer.

What does free speech mean? Should we amplify this or not? Our business model says one thing, our politics say another, democracy is another thing, all of elites are on our platform, regulating this public sphere is really difficult. To of elites are on our platform. Regulating this public sphere is really difficult. To do that, you actually need to have some principles. Now, here's the thing about Jack Dorsey. I'm not going to say the guy was the best CEO in the world, but at the very least, and I'm saying this on a personal level, a personal level, he was actually kind of committed to free speech. As in, look, I get it. He banned Trump from the platform, New York Post, all of that. If anything, his crime is being negligent and only running the company for like, you know,

10% of his time while he was co-CEO of Square. That being said, and this isn't just me, Glenn Greenwald and others who have been in dialogue with him, he personally was committed to free speech, trying to, very big believer in Bitcoin and decentralization and the inability of someone like himself in order to run the public square, launching Blue Sky, which was an alternative, which would have been decentralized and all that and not would have allowed deplatforming. What I'm saying is, is he was not perfect and the company that he built ultimately did become a very censorious place, but that he himself at least did not abide by that. This new guy is actually way worse and

is much more of a reflection of exactly that censorious lean behind the Twitter staff. And this is an interview that he gave just last year after the election. And I also want to say this, pre-January 6th, that's why it's so important, pre-January 6th in how Parag Agarwal, the new CEO, was talking as recently about the way that they would be regulating content. So let's put this up there, the new CEO, was talking recently about the way that they would be regulating content. So let's put this up there on the screen. It was an interview with MIT Technology Review. Quote, our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, okay? But our role is to serve a healthy public conversation. And our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier

public conversation. Now, that should scare the hell out of you. Why? Because he is explicitly casting aside the First Amendment in favor of what he and the team at Twitter decides is a healthy public conversation. Now, as we found out, this team does not believe that the Hunter Biden laptop story at the time would have added to a quote, healthy public conversation. And whenever you say things like we're not bound by first amendment, you're also explicitly saying we're not bound by freedom of the press. We are not bound by the ability for people to express themselves and have a healthy debate within a public sphere. Instead, Crystal, what they are pointing to is that we don't really believe in being bound by this arcane idea. They are almost imbuing themselves, he specifically, with godlike

powers and saying, no, it's our job to create a healthy public conversation. And by doing that, they're going to pick and choose what gets amplified, what gets not, what gets censored, what doesn't. And I would point out that Agarwal himself has, you know, he's had some problematic tweets that he's had in the past. Really? Oh, yeah. It's actually kind of hilarious because he didn't go and scrub all his tweets, which it's like, dude, did you not know that you were going to be the CEO of Twitter? I mean, I'm assuming that that was going to be one that you were going to go ahead and look to. That's funny.

And yeah, so he didn't go ahead and scrub all of his tweets. In 2010, he tweeted, quote, if they're not going to make a distinction between Muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists? Which, a little bit of a problem. Now, I'll give you the context, because he claims it's the context. He was quoting Asif Manvi from The Daily Show. Look, I mean, you see on Twitter. Is that a healthy conversation? Is that a healthy public square?

I mean, look. The other thing that's funny is, this interview was actually a very good interview. Yeah, it actually was. Because they ask him a lot of really salient questions. And part of it is they push him on, well, okay, what are your metrics for a healthy conversation? Like, give me some specifics here about what are you looking for? What are the metrics? How are you going to deal with it? What are your strategies? And it's just all this fuzzy, amorphous Silicon Valley speak that ultimately means nothing. And he goes on after he says that thing about our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment. He said, the kinds of things that we do about this is focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the

times have changed. One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard. The scarce commodity today is attention. There's a lot of content out there, a lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention. So subset of it gets attention. So a subset of it gets attention. And so increasingly, our role is moving towards how we recommend content. And that sort of is a struggle that we're working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we're building, how we direct people's attention, is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.

So if you unpack that, what he's saying is, look, first of all, First Amendment, whatever, times have changed, right? And so what we're focused on is what gets heard. So that gives you a little bit of insight into what some of their strategies probably already are and will be going forward, which is rather than just blanket, like sort of, you know, censorship or banning or pushing off the platform, which they may do, they'll do some of as well. It's more suppressing. It's a little more under the radar.

So making sure that the things that actually get promoted and are likely to show up in your feed are the things that they deem to be healthy conversation. Shadow banning. Which is, again, why, at the very least, these companies should be forced to disclose what their algorithms are, what their procedures are, because otherwise you're flying blind. You may feel like, I don't think people are seeing this tweet. I don't feel like people are able to search for my content

and see what I'm doing here, and not just on Twitter, but YouTube and everywhere else. Yes, which we deal with all the time. We deal with all the time where you feel like you're going crazy because you're like, there's something going on here, but you can never prove it because all of this stuff is completely opaque. You can never learn what's actually going on behind the scenes. And so I think what this really points to is we have got to know how they are making these godlike decisions about what a healthy conversation is and what isn't. And obviously they don't feel bound, quote, our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment. Okay, so what are you bound by and how exactly are you making those determinations?

What you're bound by is the mob of your employees, which they have caved to over and over again. And Jack, I mean, in some limited instances, like I'm saying, was pushing back. In this case, I don't expect that at all. Look, I have talked to some of these Silicon Valley engineering types. In my general opinion, these people don't have a damn clue, okay? They have no idea because they, they engineered this amazing technology, but they are not equipped to understand the sociopolitical implications of the technology itself. I don't think Twitter has an engineering problem. I don't think they have even a product

problem. Yes. They need to add like a subscription product. Okay. That's easy. And they're going to print billions of dollars. What they have to decide is how do we talk on the internet? What gets amplified? What gets amplified? What gets not? Should we abide by a consistent standard or should we have it so that our employees are going to revolt against this, revolt against that? How do you actually have a standard on which you can apply so that everybody buys into those rules? As you said, at least be required to publish what those moderation standards are.

Right now, it's up to Mr. Agarwal. And Mr. Agarwal has told us specifically, I do not want to abide by the First Amendment in my content decisions. And a lot of people who observe the want of free speech of a First Amendment-type environment on the internet, you should be very disappointed, I think, by this choice today. I think it's a tremendous failure on the part of Twitter, their board of directors, and all of that. And I think it's going to be a disaster in 2023 when Trump is running again, or we have an election cycle,

Hunter Biden laptop, it's going to be times 20, in my opinion. And Twitter occupies a very unique space in the information ecosystem. It's, you know, disproportionately where elites are. I mean, this is where elite, every journalist. I mean, look at our show, right? Like how many of it are tweets? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it's very, very elite driven, which makes it disproportionately impactful. Yes. So who's running the ship there and what sorts of decisions they are making have just, you know, massive consequences for what ultimately ends up being seen and heard and the type of discourse we're able to have. Absolutely. Okay, some bombshell news.

Some great news, frankly, out of Bessemer, Alabama. You guys will recall we covered this here extensively. The Amazon warehouse down in Bessemer, there was an effort to unionize that warehouse. Ultimately, when the vote came down, it was a dramatic loss for the union. However, we talked to the president of the union that was trying to organize them, and we talked to, you know, other reporters who were down there on the scene, and they said there was a lot of funny business going on here. And in particular, the thing that they consistently pointed to was that Amazon had a post office box installed

on their property that they effectively had control over, or at least gave the employees the feeling that Amazon was sort of controlling this election process. Now, the National Labor Relations Board, the regional directors in that area, had laid out very specifically all of the parameters of the election, when it's going to happen, how long the mail-in vote's going to occur. And Amazon asked to have this dropbox put on the property, and they said specifically no. And Amazon goes ahead and does it anyway. There were also other problems in terms of one of the things they're pointing to is that workers were effectively polled for union support, which again is illegal, by being told that if they don't support the union, they need to pick up anti-union

sort of propaganda or like merchandise. And so that gave them a very clear sense of which workers were pro-union and which workers were anti-union. Again, this is illegal. You can't poll the workers in advance because this is putting, you know, undue pressure on them in a very public way. So the bottom line of all of this is that the regional NLRB agreed with the union and the union organizers that this election was improper and that Amazon had illegally violated workers' rights in the way that they went about this, both with regards to the mailbox and with regards to these sort of this method that they use to pull publicly their employees. And so they have issued an order granting Bessemer Amazon workers a new election. Stuart Applebaum, who's the president of the

retail, wholesale and department store union, let's go ahead and throw the tariff sheet up on the screen, said that the decision substantiates their claims that the first vote on unionizing the Amazon warehouse was tainted by what the union called illegal misconduct that interfered with the election. Quote, today's decision confirms what we were saying all along, that Amazon's intimidation and interference prevented workers from having a fair say in whether they wanted a union in their workplace. And as the regional director has indicated, that is both unacceptable and illegal. So the process going forward, the date for the new election has not been set. Amazon has until I think December 13th to appeal this to now the National Labor Relations Board, which of course the members of which have

been set by the Biden administration. So they're much more pro-union than, you know, Trump had stacked it with a bunch of anti-union lawyers and then had a very anti-worker stance. So they have a good shot at prevailing even at the national level. In the meantime, they haven't set the date and the election may actually go on before that appeal has been fully, like that process has fully occurred. If you read between the lines, and there's a new Washington Post article out about this this morning as well, it seems like because the regional NLRB specifically set these terms and Amazon asked for this dropbox and they said no, and then they did it anyway, like I think they pissed these people off. Yeah. Where they're like, no, I told you you can't do this. And then you went and did it anyway.

And so, you know, this is a great win for the union. And obviously the odds are still a long shot. But I'd also say the environment's a lot different now than it was at the time. That's right. It is very different. And it's very important to understand that. That being said, the deck was stacked against them from the first place. I also, and look, Stuart, you know, if you're listening, I'm sorry.

But you pointed out this excellent article at the time. I forget who wrote it, specifically about the failures of union drives. And it was pointing to Amazon, but also in the modern era. And what they point to is that a lot of the organizers themselves were young activists who were speaking social justice speak to a lot of these people, emphasizing Black Lives Matter to a bunch of Amazon employees when, you know, we have seen time and time again on our show, the Jacobin Poll and more, what are the things that actual working class people, even working class black people, want to hear whenever it comes to both unions and to politics? They want to hear about how it's going to impact their wage, their life, and all of that. And instead, they were having social justice speak kind of being pushed towards them

as the opening message, which turned a lot of these people off in the ultimate election. How much did the Amazon Dropbox change? I literally have no idea. And it's not just about that. I mean, we've covered this on our show. They changed the traffic light outside of the area, the warehouse, so that worker, I think it was they sped up the red light or something like that, so that people could not come and congregate and organize in that drive. Amazon made them sit through all of these informational sessions. They basically went right up to the line, if not over the line in terms of legality, right? Yeah, at the very least, they have at least been recognized of going over the line. I am not minimizing that. I want these people to have the best and to have better lives and all that. But it's also on the union and them to actually try and message this

thing properly if they're going to try again. And the national environment would be very conducive to this. I really believe this. The great resignation is already happening. Yes, Amazon has thrown, I think it was 17, 18, whatever dollars, minimum wage. They talk about healthcare, all of this. But people, and Amazon specifically, has already admitted that they are having trouble hiring people in the middle of a labor shortage. There has never been more bargaining power for these people than right now. So right now would be the time to do it. I do think it's on the union to try again and to actually message it effectively this time. I think I'm trying to remember, I think it was in The

Nation, that piece that you referenced at the time. I found it very eye-opening to me personally. I'm like, oh, this is also why it failed. It's not just Amazon. Exactly. This is about talking to people about what they really care about. And like you said, look, you don't have to not care or whatever about Black Lives Matter or social justice, but whenever you're trying to talk to somebody and convince them to do something in this way, you have to lead with a lot more of what's this actually going to do for your life.

What are your actual concerns about what's happening here on the job? A hundred percent. And look, I mean, I wasn't there. I don't know how the messaging was done, to what extent, you know, I don't know how reflective that article was or not. I think the biggest issue is simply the way that the deck is stacked against workers in all of these places.

That's obviously the overarching problem why we have such low unionization rates in the country. But if ever there was a time, it is now. And I don't want to get anybody's hopes up because very likely the election goes the way the last one did. And it wasn't close. It was like two thirds to one third. It was roughly something like that, two to one effectively in the end count. So, you know, very difficult odds. Very much the odds are stacked against them. And they have a big hill to climb here. But what we've been tracking is how much there is a different feel in the air now with workers, whether they're walking out of their fast food jobs en masse, whether they are authorizing strikes in a strike wave that we've seen across the country, whether they're the Starbucks workers who in a couple different locations now have filed and are trying to unionize. There is a lot of momentum at this moment behind workers who are trying to claim a little bit more power and a little bit more in terms of scheduling, in terms of benefits, in terms of wages, and all of those things. So Amazon will do everything that they possibly can to make sure that the

result turns out the same way again. You know, in the past, they've fired workers, as we covered yesterday. Yes. Fired a young homeless man who was working at their warehouse in Staten Island because seemingly he became, you know, an outspoken advocate for the union, and that was unacceptable to them. So they fired him. Christian Smalls, of course, fired. And there are other instances across the country where they have been caught retaliating against workers who have wanted to organize. So I don't think anyone should delude themselves about the tactics they are able and willing to use in this instance, and just how difficult it is to certify a union to join a union. But they are getting another shot at it. It's something we're going to watch very

closely, and it will be a really interesting, I mean, this is almost like an in a lab test case of the difference between when this was happening at the beginning of last year versus now and whether there really is a different environment for workers and their power and their ability to assert themselves in the workplace. I think things have changed a lot. I think this could be a big one, in my opinion. We'll see. I'm not ready to get my hopes up yet, but we will watch it closely. Okay. Big news for the Cuomo brothers. It's another story we've been following really closely. So new information was put out by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who's now running for governor of New York, about just how involved brother CNN primetime host Chris Cuomo was in the attempted response and ultimately cover-up of some of Andrew Cuomo's

bad behavior, especially with regards to a number of the women who were coming forward and alleging either harassment or outright sexual assault. Let's go ahead and throw this tweet up on the screen. This is from our friend Brian Schwartz over at CNBC. He says, CNN host Chris Cuomo used his sources to get info on brother Andrew Cuomo's accusers. He also engaged with sources to get a read on upcoming stories that took aim at his brother. I have a lead on the wedding girl, Cuomo texted top aide at the time, Melissa DeRosa. And there is a lot more than this. So he was texting DeRosa saying, please let me help with PrEP, as Andrew Cuomo was having to respond to these repeated allegations. Then he texts her

and says, I have a lead on the wedding girl. That's in reference to someone who alleged misconduct at a wedding. CNN issued a comment. So first off, they didn't say anything about it. They declined to comment. But then as more and more media outlets, including the Washington Post, I mean, including a lot of sort of top flight elite media type places, started to run the story, they ultimately issued a comment hours after the publication of the initial articles saying that the news organization would be reviewing the documents. The thousands of pages of additional transcripts and exhibits that were released today by the New York attorney general deserve a thorough review and consideration, CNN spokesman Matt Dornick said. We will be having conversations and seeking

additional clarity about their significance as they relate to CNN over the next several days. Some of the additional information that has just come out is also centering around, Ronan Farrow was writing a piece about some of the accusers. And Chris Cuomo was trying to use his media contacts within the industry to figure out what does Ronan have? How many women? When's the story going to drop? So actually using his sort of professional network that he has gained in part as being this high-level host at CNN

in order to help his brother, the governor of New York. Of course, at a time when he's having his brother on and doing their little dog and pony show about swabbing the nose and having a grand old time back when his brother was a COVID hero. I think it's totally nuts. And I know it may be tiresome or whatever to hear us talk about it, but this is the most concrete example of the intertwinement between the people in power, the people who are supposed to cover them. I mean, Cuomo himself, Chris Cuomo, opened his show last night and did not address this.

CNN allowed him to go on the air after this was revealed, which is unbelievable. That is. And look, like, at one point, he was talking to Melissa DeRosa, the governor's secretary, via text saying, quote, You need to trust me. We are making mistakes we cannot afford. And then intimately involved with Melissa in digging up dirt on some of the accusers. He said, you know, I think we have a lead on so-and-so. But he was talking with his sources. I mean, what they point to is that Cuomo, we already know he helped draft a reply or draft a statement from Andrew Cuomo denying the accusation. That alone is already a

complete breach. And yet we heard, oh, it's his brother. I mean, you wouldn't, you know, who wouldn't do that? This is way worse. Using your contacts from the job that you have at a news organization in order to try and dig up dirt on the women accusing your governor brother of sexual assault. It is outright corruption. The fact that CNN did not take him off the air and immediately fire him is outrageous. And we were talking about this, Crystal. There's no way in hell that Chris Cuomo told the truth to Jeff Zucker and CNN. He probably was like, he didn't think his texts were going to come out, right? He's like, yeah, you know, hell yeah. He's my brother. I helped him. He had some phone calls. Yeah, I had a phone

call or two. I'm not going to talk to my brother. Exactly. I'm not going to talk's my brother. I helped him. He had some phone calls. Yeah, I had a phone call or two. I'm not going to talk to my brother. Exactly. I'm not going to talk to my brother. He's family. They like to remind us of that all the time whenever they were on the show together. You put all that together, that is not what happened here. This was deep in the weeds, helping orchestrate a campaign of smears against the women who were accusing Andrew Cuomo. And it also goes to show how long this has been happening.

We only know the text whenever it comes to this. Did he help him on COVID messaging? Did he help him on COVID policy? We know that he had him on his show. What about before that? I've played it here before. Chris Cuomo has been having his brother on his network since his time at ABC News. How long have they been in cahoots together in order to help his brother's political career in the state of New York? This could just be the tip of the iceberg. I really think it is. We've talked about this. Look, the sexual assault stuff on Cuomo, yeah, look, it's bad. But I personally think what he did, which was way worse, was sentenced to death by accident, but still sentenced nonetheless. Thousands of elderly people in nursing homes through his policy, using the liability shield and shielding these nursing companies from any

liability from the families of those, from the people who had victims, and then even worse, covering up COVID deaths and more from his office in the state of New York to avoid federal scrutiny. And on top of that, profiting millions of dollars off the book. That's an outright abuse of office, a terrible decision. And he never apologized to the American people. No, it's disgusting. And then to learn that, you know, I mean, it's a low bar, but Chris Cuomo has the highest rated show on the failing CNN network. And he's very influential. Oh, yeah.

He's close. Reportedly, they're close buddies with Jeff Zucker, who runs the network, of course. And so the way they've handled this, it's just, I mean, there's no way to spin it other than just they like him and he gets good ratings. So they're going to look the other way almost no matter what. Right. You know, this is the first time I really have seen them feel even pressure enough to have to say anything about what was going on with Chris Cuomo. Oftentimes when these stories come out, they just, they don't comment, they dismiss it. They say, oh, we've already said what we want to say on that. So for Cuomo to go and do his show

last night and not say a word, I mean, it really boggles my mind because we don't have bosses, but if there was something that was like this big that was swirling about us of course we tell you what was going on that's just like basic character to me i'd be like look guys here's the deal you know yeah like here's what they come on truth your eyes screwed up in this way i mean like at a certain point you gotta own it like this is a coward wildly inappropriate and unethical and gotta own it. He's a coward. This was wildly inappropriate and unethical.

And remember when Brian Stelter went on, what was it, Jimmy Fallon or something? Colbert? Colbert, I think. Yeah, and he was like, well, this is so complicated

you can never know. I think he said it was a crazy situation. Yeah, it's a crazy situation. No one's ever encountered this. Like, no, no, no. Conflicts of interest happen all the time.

There's a very clear playbook for how you handle it. And this ain't it. It's not a close call. So it's pretty wild. But the other detail here that's pretty interesting is, you know, of course, he says, Chris Cuomo, that, oh, he didn't even think about the conflict. He was just thinking about his family. And I was just thinking, here's this literal quote. His only focus, said was quote how do I protect my family how do I help protect him probably should have been thinking more about how I protect myself which just never occurred to me so he's casting himself it's like oh he's just so selfless it was just helping his brother it's an Italian thing you know right but

then they catch him in these texts telling Melissa DeRosa, again, the top aide, to, quote, delete this thread now. Also indicating he knew this wasn't okay. He knew it was not okay. You knew this was not okay. And also one other just little detail here that's kind of funny is Liz Smith apparently was. Oh, she makes a cameo. She makes a cameo here. I assume it's the same Liz Smith.

Yeah. Her name is spelled. Well, they never specify. They just say that she was like an outside advisor. And she was the one actor in all of this that Melissa DeRosa was like, oh, we're just going to stay the course and go hard on these allegations. And Liz is like, well, that's what you've been doing, and it hasn't been working out well.

So anyway. At least she told the truth. It just shows you how these networks, how these circles run, that, you know, top Pete Buttigieg advisor Liz Smith also involved in the Cuomo imbroglio. Classic. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, long-time listeners will tire of hearing me say this, but I think it bears repeating over and over again. The most pernicious form of media bias that exists is not what they choose to show you, what they choose not to show you. Selective coverage, selective outrage, it breeds the taste, the cares, the

attention of the ruling class and the conditions of millions of people who watch cable news to look at politics in the way that is shaped from above. That is why I am truly puzzled at the current lack of media coverage and of the recent Christmasade massacre in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where six victims, ranging from an 8-year-old boy to an 81-year-old man, were mowed down by Darryl Brooks Jr. Now, we knew shortly after the crime was committed, Mr. Brooks was released on bail, that Friday the District Attorney, that Milwaukee said that should never have been granted in the first place, and that he's a longtime violent felon. And then, well, it kind of just disappeared. It seemed like all reporting and inquiry into him just vanished. And not just vanished. When it was reported, his name was kept out of the media,

weirdly. Both Washington Post and CNN posting stories that say from CNN, quote, Waukesha will hold a moment of silence today, marking one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade. And from the Washington Post, quote, Here's what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by an SUV. Hmm. A car and an SUV. They just did it out of nowhere, huh? Look, let's be honest. They are afraid of making this racial. But it is not their job to assess it either way.

It's just to report on the facts. And when you look a little deeper into Mr. Brooks, it does not paint a one-dimensional portrait, okay? Brooks apparently has a very long and bizarre posting history, which includes sympathy with the black Hebrew Israelites, anti-Semitic memes, and including admiration for Hitler. He bragged in the past about calling himself a terrorist, and in some of his old videos, a quote, killer in the city.

And he generally seemed to revel in anarchy of the George Floyd protests, posting incendiary updates around wishing violence towards some whites. In general, he seems like a violent, off-kilter loser with the social media history to back all of that up. And perhaps that points to the motive. But the problem with our media is their selective coverage. Lack of coverage of these incidents leads to the correct assumption by many people in this country that when violence is perpetrated by people whose ideas are at least tangentially linked to those in the media and the people institutional left agree with, then it's

okay, justified, ignored, memory hold. It leads worse to a mindset that if the other side can get away with violence or at the very least avoid the national reckoning that seems to folly any violence tangentially tied to the right, that perhaps even more violence is then justified. Getting out of this hellish situation is the Gordian knot of today's politics. And it requires doing what I am doing just now.

Just tell the truth. Tell people what happened. So let's continue. On top of Mr. Daryl Brooks' bizarre social media presence, here's what else that we know about him. Brooks was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression at age 11 when he was growing up in Milwaukee. His father was an alcoholic, and he grew up in an abusive environment surrounded by drugs. He began committing crimes as early as age 17. He was charged for battery, and then he was in and out of prison and in trouble with the law across three different states, including sexual abuse of a minor. He appears to have had a long problem with methamphetamine use and has been charged on and

off many times with gun charges and a recent attempt at killing people in a fight with a car. Now, as for the crime itself, here's actually where things get kind of strange. Around 4.30 p.m. last Sunday, Waukesha police were called to a domestic disturbance between Brooks and one of his ex-girlfriends. It was after this domestic disturbance Brooks barreled his car into the Christmas parade with the video that you've all seen. As of yet, there is still no motive. Was this somebody who had completely snapped? Was he planning it all along? So far, he's been charged with intentional homicide. Perhaps there is evidence that we are not aware of yet from the

police about a so-called premeditated crime. As for Brooks' victims, six have died so far, all of whose deaths we've been charged with. Seven children remain in the hospital as of Sunday, three in serious condition, three in fair condition, one in good condition. Two others were released from the hospital before the weekend. And at least the great side of this is that $2 million have been raised so far on GoFundMe to support the victims, a link to which we will include in the description of this video. That's what we know. It's really not hard to do all of this. And it says a lot about the current state of our media that they selectively cover which crimes they'll amplify and which they don't. It's actually an acknowledgment on their part that coverage itself can drive a lot of the way that people think about current events,

what should be done and what shouldn't be. But it highlights also that in the long run, these people cannot win. I'm not saying the corporate media won't be around forever. But, you know, 20 years ago, we didn't even have the Internet to at least revel so much of what they're doing or not covering. We did not have shows like this one. Right now, most Americans have the means, if they so choose, to seek out some information for themselves. It is why the battles of the future are over who controls these alternative flows of information.

I choose to believe people are smart enough to decipher information and interpret it for themselves, no matter what the facts may be. And while things are bleak right now, I do think that eventually, at least I hope so, they will get better. And that's really what annoyed me, Crystal. I've seen a lot of people online point this out as well. They just want to know what was going on. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, back when Hillary Clinton was in the midst of her doomed run for president, her communications director coined a lament that they would employ every time the campaign

inevitably crashed into the rocks over and over again. Quote, We are not allowed to have nice things, they would say. After a pandemic and an economic crash collided with a completely toxic political atmosphere and tribal news media seemingly intent on making everything worse, it is a sentiment that much of the American public could likely relate to. But watching Hillary this week make her not so triumphant return to the Rachel Maddow conspiracy hour, it really hit me. From a political perspective, there is maybe no one in the entire country more to blame for authoring the current trash state of our politics than one Hillary Rodham Clinton. Certainly with regards to the trash state of the Democratic Party.

You see, it didn't have to be this way. We didn't have to be trapped in a hellish invented discourse about misinformation and disinformation. We didn't have to spend the last four years of media resources and public attention chasing down increasingly insane Russian conspiracies. Democrats didn't have to double down on the same elitism and policy inadequacy that led to their electoral decimation. We didn't have to be stuck with a Reagan-era neoliberal relic as president that only seems good when you compare him either to Trump or to the supposed dream team of Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg that we're apparently being threatened with next. So what the hell happened? Well, brace yourself, because I want to play a little clip from the Maddow HRC interview so that we can begin to explore how we ended up in such a maddening and

terrible place. So Rachel asked Hillary about a recent Atlantic piece arguing that liberal democracy is eroding and autocracy is on the rise. Here's a portion of how Hillary responded. Because I do think that we are facing a crisis of democracy, a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis that really goes to the heart of what the future of our country and many others around the world will be. So I spend my time trying to figure out what we can do about it. And I am not ever going to give up because there's just too much at stake. But first and foremost, we have to make sure more people, besides people like you, me, Anne Applebaum, and others who share our concerns, see what we see. Because I think that the role of disinformation, the way that propaganda has been really weaponized, and the increasing ability to manipulate people through algorithms and other forms of artificial intelligence will only make this harder to combat. Now, Rachel asked former Secretary Clinton a question that could have led any number of places.

You might explore the rot of neoliberalism, which has failed to deliver for millions of people, creating vast gulfs of inequality that have left desperate people searching for easy answers in strongmen. You could discuss the huge refugee flows triggered by war and by climate change that made it easy for nativists to scapegoat immigrants and promise a return to past glory. You could talk about the collapse of traditional centers of meaning, from community to church to family, the degrading of every human being into nothing more than their worth as a consumer. But for Hillary Clinton, the problem is not any of that.

It's social media companies, misinformation, and disinformation. She would go on to bring up the same topic over and over again, often unprompted, throughout this entire interview. Now, in fairness, Hillary should know a thing or two about misinformation because ever since the moment she lost her election and doomed us all to four terrible years under Donald Trump. She has been running a very successful propaganda campaign to convince the public that our biggest problem is, in fact, misinformation, and that the answer to this problem lies in handing more power over to people like Hillary Clinton. I mean this, by the way, very literally. In Jonathan Allen and Amy Parnes' book Shattered, they actually detail how Clinton and her team plotted to deflect blame and spin their loss. How else? By blaming Russian misinformation.

Here's the quote. In calls with advisers and political surrogates in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss. Quote, she's not being particularly self-reflective, said one longtime ally who was on calls with her shortly after the election. Instead, Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way, this person said. That strategy had been set within 24 hours of her concession speech. Now, Mook and Podesta assembled her comms team and at their Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election was not entirely on the up and up. For a couple of hours with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument. In Brooklyn, her team coalesced

around the idea that Russian hacking was the major unreported story of the campaign, overshadowed by the contents of stolen emails and Hillary's own private server imbroglio. And as far as Hillary Clinton is concerned, the plan to, quote, make sure all these narratives get spun the right way, well, that's gone exceedingly well, hasn't it? To use the language of the newly created discourse, they very effectively weaponized misinformation to convince the media and the Democratic base that the biggest national problem was, in fact, misinformation. Wrap your head around that one. Now, here we are

five years later, and rather than do a single moment of soul-searching about how the Democratic Party could possibly have lost to someone like Donald Trump, rather than ever consider that maybe they should stop running candidates who look like they'd be more comfortable in a monocle and a top hat, rather than actually try to figure out what the real concerns and issues are for voters, they have instead leveraged all of their messaging and institutional muscle to fret over what moms are saying in boomer Facebook groups. Of course, every liberal media outlet totally obsessed with the topic, too. Ben Smith's recent column exposes how top executives at CNN, NBC News, The AP, Axios, and other major U.S. outlets, they've been dialing into Zoom meetings led by Harvard's Shorenstein Center on Media to learn how to combat misinformation. Katie Couric just led an Aspen Institute commission on information disorder, among other luminaries like Facebook's former chief security officer, Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov, and Prince Harry,

for some reason. Ben Smith himself moderated a, quote, truth decay panel at Bloomberg's New Economy Forum. Now, all of these elite actors, from the Democratic politicians to the media executives, they love this topic. It's perfect. It doesn't implicate them at all. It doesn't require them to give up any of their goodies. and best of all, it hands them even more power as gatekeepers and official arbiters of the truth. After all, the previous controllers of the narrative were feeling a little nervous that the people might be getting ideas of their own and straying from the prescribed program. Legacy media didn't have to be pushed all that hard to embrace an agenda of crushing misinformation coming from the people in order to regain their own elite monopoly on misinformation. Only high-class propaganda and conspiracy theories,

please. Things like Russiagate and WMDs and the idea that the stock market is real. So in summation, our current hell world of demands for more censorship, lesser evil politics, and a perplexing inability of the Democratic Party to address a single real concert of voters, that was all set in motion by HRC. It's thanks to an intentional plot, hatched by Hillary and her paid operatives, to distract the public from their terrible campaign and their even worse candidate. A psy-op which she continues to this very day on one of the most influential political shows out there. And that, my friends, is why we are not allowed to have nice things. Sagar, Hillary really ran the gamut in that interview.

She also made sure to get in some, like, war hawkish stuff on Afghanistan. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Brad Wilcox of the American Enterprise Institute, longtime friend, somebody I found really interesting, wrote a new piece here. Let's put it up there on the screen, How Liberals Can Be Happier.

Found it pretty interesting. Brad, we promise it's not a culture war segment. Just welcome to the show. Tell us about what you find here. What are you guys laying out in this piece? Well, Sagar, what we see in the research over and over again is that conservatives tend to be happier on average than liberals. And we wanted to kind of look at what's going on here. And there are some scholars who think it's about the way in which conservatives might be more happy with inequality or more comfortable,

you know, sort of the way things are basically. But it turns out that's actually not what explains this gap between conservatives and Muslims. It's actually sort of how connected these two groups are to our core institutions in America, things like, you know, family, faith, and community. And once we look at those factors in our regression models, we find that those are the things that help to kind of explain the gap. In fact, liberals who are married with kids, who are happy with their families, who are engaged in religious communities, who are, you know, civically involved, these are the liberals who are more likely both men and women to be happy. So there's a kind of basically a path to happiness that runs through our core

American institutions for both conservatives and for liberals. I thought the piece was really interesting. And as you point out, I mean, this data is pretty consistent over time. I mean, this is something I've known about for a while, that conservatives tend to be happier. I always bought into the idea it's because, hey, they're more comfortable with the status quo. So liberals are sort of angsting over whatever's going on in the world. I mean, I count myself in that camp. The part of it that I guess I had a big question about is if religion is a big part of this, like that's for me, not really an answer because I can't make myself believe something that I don't ultimately believe. So there are sort of substitutes for a formal church religion experience

that exist in modern America. Yeah, Sagar. I mean, Crystal, I think there is a story here in the data that's about also kind of community life as well. And so what we see in the research with this UGOV survey is that liberal women, for instance, like yourself, who are kind of satisfied with their community engagement, that could be the local school PTO, it could be being involved in some kind of athletic group with your kids, whatever. If you're kind of engaged in your community in that kind of way, that seems to kind of deliver also a high level of happiness for liberal women. So let me ask you a more philosophical question. Why does happiness matter as a society? Like, can we look at, and this is what you guys do at the Family Studies,

in the Institute for Family Studies, what is good outcomes, or I guess what outcomes, which I might consider good, are correlated with happiness for the general population? Well, you know, Sagar, what we see in the research is that these kinds of outcomes tend to cluster together in terms of things like happiness, anxiety, and depression. And as both of you are aware, we've seen a big spike in America recently in deaths of despair, you know, which is sort of one manifestation of people kind of losing a sense of purpose, direction, and also, of course, happiness oftentimes as well. And so, you know, the story here in part two is that Americans who are able to forge ties, you know, in marriage, forge ties in a religious community or forge ties in some kind of secular local civic institution are much more likely to be kind of flourishing across the board. And happiness is just kind of one indicator of that flourishing.

And so I think we need to be thinking about how we're doing as a country and encouraging Americans to plug into these core social institutions today. I mean, that's actually in its way a provocative and radical notion in this country, especially over the past 40 years since the Reagan era, where the priority has really been around profit maximization, you know, jobs were shipped overseas as long as it was going to up GDP by a couple of percentage points. And pushing back against that notion of just the free market is the only thing we should care about is actually a value more associated with the left at this point. So as someone who comes from a more conservative perspective,

are there sort of economic policy implications or any sort of policy implications that come with a focus and a prioritization of happiness as a nation, which frankly is just not something that we've really focused on for a long time? Well, Crystal, I think in terms of thinking about economic policy, we need to do a much better job of making it easier for Americans who don't have a college degree and are not on the college track to flourish both in school and in the labor force. And so one concrete idea, for instance, would be to have a wage subsidy. And that would also kind of push us in the direction of a kind of family wage. That would be kind of one way of kind of making economic policy more family friendly. So that would be sort of one example of the kind of policy measure. I'd also want to stress, too, the ways in which currently our means tested programs like Medicaid, for instance, end up penalizing marriage for working class families with kids, making it more financially difficult to get married. And so I think we could also think about ways to eliminate that marriage penalty embedded in our means tested programs like Medicaid, for instance. And what about

rethinking our approach and framework work with regards to trade? Because one of the things that has decimated so many communities and has forced people out of where they grew up is, you know, there's no jobs left there. So the factory that was there when their parents or grandparents, that they had a stable middle-class life, able to support a family, that's now gone away. So there are implications there as well. Yeah. As you know, I mean, David Autor at MIT has found that the China trade shock was linked to the loss of about 2 million jobs in America. And that in turn was linked to market declines in marriage and market increases in single parenthood. So, you know, we have to think about how our trade policies and how our public policies more generally do or do not foster

good paying jobs for ordinary Americans. And that's certainly also kind of a policy issue to keep on the agenda for thinking about ordinary families across the US. Yeah. And then, you know, the last thing I have here, Brad, which is, you know, I've been a fan of this, and I cited David's paper here on the show in the past as well. But beyond, you know, the general policy implication, the mindset shift has to happen. Do you see that happening within the institutional right, or is it still just a very nascent movement? You know, Sagar, I do see among younger conservatives a dramatic kind of rethinking about the sort of character of public policy and sort of their thinking about economics as well.

So there's a much greater concern about thinking through policies that would sort of shore up the economic fortunes of working and middle class families as we go forward. Now, of course, there are still, I think, many older conservatives on Capitol Hill and elsewhere who haven't kind of made that shift. But there's certainly a real openness on the part of younger conservatives to rethinking economic policy with an eye towards strengthening American families. Yeah, I would hope so. Brad, really appreciate your analysis work, all of that. We'll put links down in the description to look at some of Brad's works. I've cited many of your studies here in my monologues. I find the work invaluable. So we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you. Yeah, fascinating stuff. Thank you, Brad. Thanks, Crystal.

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