Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/16/23: More Classified Biden Documents/Debt Ceiling Showdown/George Santos Uses Fake Name/Banks Preparing for Recession/FDA Failures/Davos Elites

Episode Date: January 16, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the never ending leak of classified documents found in Biden's office and home, Karine Jean Pierre insisting no compromise with Republicans on Debt Ceiling Limit, George Santos caught using a different name on camera, Banks begin storing money ahead of an imminent recession, FDA's failures on American obesity, and a look at the Davos elite now meeting at the World Economic Forum.AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054To 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.

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BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday documents found at the Biden residence. We'll bring you all the latest there as the drip, drip, drip continues in a very wild story. We also have the debt ceiling showdown has basically arrived. We will technically hit the debt ceiling this week. Now they will be able to sort of extend that through what they call extraordinary measures. But already a lot of political posturing going on. We'll tell you what that means for you. Many more updates on the saga of George Santos, new video of him calling himself by another name. And also they found a clip of him bragging about

his volleyball prowess and playing on the Baruch College volleyball championship winning team. Of course, he never even went to that college. And there are new revelations that may indicate where he got that money from to put in his campaign. He has now been tied to a proven Ponzi scheme that the SEC is going after. So I've got those details for you. We also have new warning signs that there is a recession on the way and quite a wild exchange between Chuck Todd and Senator Ron Johnson. Sagar and I will break it all down for you. Before we get to any of that, live show.

Live show. Put it up there on the screen. Paramount Theater, February 3rd. Go ahead and buy your tickets, guys. The date very fast approaching. We are very excited to come to Austin, Texas. And we have a great show planned for all of you. Very sparse number of tickets left. So go ahead and purchase yours while you have the chance.

We are really excited to go down to Austin. Okay, let's start with the classified documents saga. Even more, we did a breaking news segment for everyone on Thursday. Recap for those who didn't hear it, of course, Attorney General Merrick Garland forced to appoint a special prosecutor to look at the classified documents found at two separate Biden locations. And yet, over the weekend, we are finding even more classified documents at Biden's home. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This we're saying more classified documents were found at the home by his lawyers in Wilmington, Delaware. Interestingly enough, Crystal, President Biden was actually at his Wilmington, Delaware house over the weekend with some questions also of what exactly was going on.

Were his lawyers searching it while he was there? Was he overseeing the exact search? So they say the White House lawyer said that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden's private library. White House previously had said that only a single page was found. So now we have multiple documents. We don't know the exact number that were pulled out of the president's residence at Wilmington, Delaware. Some of them, which were literally found in his garage. For those who missed the infamous exchange, he claims that they were safer because they were in a, quote, locked garage with this Corvette. Here's that exchange from on Thursday.

Classified material. Next year Corvette. What were you thinking? Let me get a chance to speak on all this, God willing, soon. But as I said earlier this week, people, and by the way, my Corvette's in a locked garage. Okay. So it's not like you're sitting out in the street. But at any rate, yes, as well as my Corvette. Yes, as well as my Corvette, as if that somehow makes it so much better. I mean, you have to assume since Mar-a-Lago is under Secret Service protection and as Biden's residence is, they're roughly equivalent in terms of the security of around surrounding all of these things.

What I also find interesting is that all of the search right now, Crystal, is happening by Biden's own team. And of course, we really cannot get away from the timeline here. The first set of documents, the quote, nearly 10, nearly 10, not 11, not nine, nearly 10, nobody knows exactly how many, were found exactly six days before the midterm elections. Nobody was notified, of course, until the month of January. Previous documents, actually, the second pair that were found inside the locked garage were found in December, very late December after Christmas. All of this then breaking now, apparently after they were forced to notify the Department of Justice. By the way, the exact timeline on all of that also remains unclear. And this also

opens up questions as to whether this new special prosecutor, a Trump-appointed special prosecutor, will be one who will force to conduct other searches possibly of the presidential residence and maybe even of the Penn-Biden Center where previous documents were found. But a humiliating experience, obviously, for President Biden. I mean, it's a disaster on every level. I have to think with both this situation and the Trump classified document situation, this is basically what you get when you put doddering, incompetent, arrogant fools in positions of supreme power. Yes. There's a, I think, a flawed impression at times of the Biden White House that they're much more competent, that they're much more organized. Joe Biden has never been known as a man who was great as a manager. Now, he may have other qualities that, you know, recommend him to the American public. Certainly, they saw enough in him to elect him president of the United States.

But this is someone who has always been incredibly sort of disorganized and incompetent managerially. So the fact that he sloppily had these documents here and there and wherever, I mean, this is kind of par for the course for this man and ultimately not shocking given what we know about his sort of organizational skills within D.C. From a political standpoint, this is a total catastrophe. There's just no doubt about it. The fact that you have also this drip, drip, drip where, oh, we found some, oh, we found some more, oh, whoops, we found some even more documents at this point after they went so hard on the Trump document retrieval and raid and everything that happened there. Justifiably so, by the way. I mean, these are not things that you should be messing around with. I cannot understand why it is so hard just to keep classified documents

where they are ultimately supposed to be. And yes, as far as we know, at least at this point, there was more of an effort to cover up, et cetera, et cetera, with Trump. But the core of the alleged crime here is effectively the same. So there's a lot of cope from Democrats right now about how, oh, this is totally different. Guys, listen, yeah, the cover up might, the flavor of the cover up might be a little bit different. And yes, ultimately the FBI had to raid Trump's house to get a hold of the documents that they wanted back. But again, the story is still developing and the core of the misdeeds are the same. This creates real political challenges for Biden looking forward to 2024, too. How are you going to go after Trump for what he did with these

documents when you did the same damn thing? OK, so in terms of like electability and being able to secure your place in the White House for another four years, this is also total and complete disaster. It was supposed to be an open and shut thing, right? Trump took the documents. He covered it up. We didn't give it back. They had to raid his house. They have pretty much had an obstruction of justice case just ready to go. And it was all had to consider the political ramifications. Now, I mean, if they indict Trump and they don't indict Biden, whether the whole obstruction thing is substantively different or not from a political point of view, how can you prosecute the case against him? And you just know Trump would have a field day with this in the debate stage. I mean, it effectively neutralizes one of the core things that they had on Trump in terms of the case they were going to

prosecute against him. And you can also see this. The White House is stumbling. I mean, they have no idea how to handle this. The already, you know, not particularly articulate Karine Jean-Pierre is now just completely twisting yourselves in knots when question on this. Let's take a listen. He had a closet with classified information. Again, again, again, he did. He was surprised that the records were there. He spoke to this personally. He was surprised that the records were there. The first set of documents were found in November at the Penn Biden Center here in Washington. Why did it take until yesterday and until this morning, apparently, for whoever it was to inform Robert Lausch that that final document was found?

Was that because there were press reports earlier this week? Again, there was. And the hope was that nobody would find out? Again. Or was it because. There is a process, an ongoing process that is occurring? We did this by the book, by the book. Apparently, by the book means waiting until after the election to notify the American public. No,

that guy has them dead to rights. They waited until the nose, the news broke to the press in order to notify anybody. They tried to sweep it under the rug. They hoped that Merrick Garland and them could do it. Possibly also, in terms of Garland, it seems clear he probably would just found himself in a situation where he's like, there is no way around it. This is highly classified information relating to Ukraine, the UK, and Iran. This is going to leak. I have to address this from a substantive point of view, given the fact that I'm currently having an ongoing investigation into the president. And also, again, on a political point of view for Biden, here's why it's humiliating. They ridiculed Trump for doing the exact same thing. Clip here

from just four months ago of saying, how could somebody be so irresponsible? Let's take a listen. You saw the photograph of the top secret documents laid out on the floor at Mar-a-Lago. What did you think to yourself looking at that image? How that could possibly happen? How anyone could be that irresponsible? And I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods? By that, I mean names of people who helped or et cetera. And it's just totally irresponsible. That's a great question, Mr. President. What data, what names?

You had Ukraine, Iran files in your locked garage next to your car. Totally irresponsible. I mean, you know, we could play the same game here, right, in terms of putting things like literally in a garage as opposed to your private office. But apparently there was also stuff in his private office at home in Wilmington, Delaware. Political catastrophe for President Biden. There is just no wriggling out of it. Let me let me say one more thing. And we're going to we've got a couple of clips here, too, to show you of the Democratic response where, you know, they're on their back foot and they're kind of struggling here to defend

him. Republicans were in that place with Trump initially after the raid of Mar-a-Lago. There was a real rallying around him. We covered how basically every potential rival to him bent the knee immediately, including Ron DeSantis and a whole lot of others. But then as more information came out about just the level of classification and the attempts to hide them and everything that went on, the Republican side of the aisle kind of fell silent and they were less vociferous in their defense of the former president on this matter. Well, now they're feeling a lot more confident to basically come to his rescue and they have a case they can make for him now. And so I think it's not just on the, you know, this is a disaster for Biden. I also think this helps Trump in terms of sort of shoring up some

of his Republican support and finding some defenders on this matter as well. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it actually polarizes it now completely. Now we can turn this purely into partisan bloodsport. Again, why it is such a huge problem for President Biden. So look, last word on this. The special prosecutor is there. It's humiliating for President Biden. The White House has no idea how to respond. And now they're in their full, by the way, the House, you know, Republicans, Speaker McCarthy already saying, I'm going to be investigating this.

So we're going to have hearings. We're going to have, you know, We're going to have subpoenas that go out. There's going to be a full-scale review. And now we are going to have a laser focus on two separate investigations involving the former president, the current president, and then the probable nominee for president in 2024. And it's basically, you can pick whichever facts and all that that you want and end up on the side, and the other side really won't be able to hit you over the head with any sort of knockout blow. Huge problem there for President Biden's White House. Of course, it is a making entirely of his own.

How could anyone be so responsible? I think I told you this yesterday. I was like, it's the same story every time with these guys. They are so arrogant that they think that the law doesn't apply to them. Hillary, Biden, Trump, all of them, they're like, these are my documents. They're not your documents. It's outrageous that these people think so highly of themselves. You can put an email server in your freaking basement, or you can just take whatever you think exonerates you in Trump's cases to your private office, or

apparently in the vice president's case here, that just because you happen to handle Ukraine policy, you're allowed to take this stuff back to your house. Completely outrageous. Let's move on now to the next part with Democratic lawmakers. Ilhan Omar actually stunning MSNBC's Simone Sanders, former Kamala Harris staffer over on MSNBC, saying she's actually glad that a special counsel was appointed. Let's take a listen. Well, one, I'm glad that there is a special prosecutor that's been appointed to investigate this. You are glad that there is a special prosecutor. Tell me why. Because any time there is a deviance in regards to security protocols that should be taken serious, it should be investigated. What I find interesting is that Republicans who have defended Trump after he

literally stole classified documents, refused to turn them over, lied about having them, made up some story about how he declassified them, had to have his house raided in order for those documents to be found, are now only interested in investigating Biden, who has cooperated, who his own staff and former staff have themselves turned these documents in. So you have to understand, right, Republicans aren't really interested in upholding the law, in following security protocols. What they're interested in is playing a political game. You could try with that cope on the back end, but having to at least say that you have to defend the special prosecutor crystal or at least say like, yeah, I'm happy that there is one. I mean, clearly the White House, the Democrats, they don't have a uniform

message on all of this. I think that's a huge problem. Yeah. I mean, I think all our points are fair. It is true. Republicans didn't care at all about the Donald Trump documents. And now that it's Biden, now they're, you know, oh, this is, you know, investigation, et cetera, et cetera. And it was the same with Hillary Clinton. They care deeply about it. And then they switched and everybody's like flipping around how they feel about classified documents, depending on their partisan affiliation. No doubt about that. But look, I think that Merrick Garland appointing a special counsel was undoubtedly the right move here. I mean, he almost had to do it when you have the facts that are so similar in both cases. How do you justify having a special counsel in one case and not ultimately the other?

So to see Simone Sanders have that moment of being a little bit taken aback of like, oh, what? Yeah, why? Why would you say that is is an interesting little moment. Oh, yeah, absolutely. At the same time, Adam Schiff also reacting to this in the mainstream press just shows you some of the Democratic reaction. Let's take a listen. Let's get the Democratic response from Congressman Adam Schiff, the outgoing chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel the same way about this special counsel? I do think it's the right move. The attorney general has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied,

but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public. And here, I don't think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel. So look, what can you see right there? Both Ilhan Omar and Adam Schiff, like there's basically not any actual dissent from the special counsel, special investigation line, because they are also already on the record having defended the Trump investigation crystal. I think that the fact that, you know, even the wide gamut of all those people, and yes, they will try and defend Biden in terms of the cover-up and all that,

just shows you that the Dems are in a real bind here, pointing exactly what we're talking about for the political catastrophe previously. Well, and even Adam Schiff, who is the biggest partisan hack you can possibly find, had to acknowledge in that interview, too, that there are real potential national security concerns with the Biden documents. And it's part of why he said you have to have a special counsel to investigate this. So, yeah, I mean, it shows you Democrats really are in a corner with this. They don't have a coherent response. And listen, any normal person looking at this situation is going to say, how is this different? Really, how is it different?

Look, I get it. Trump went further to cover up the truth, as far as we know at this point. Yeah, that's right. Although, again, I just want to say the facts continue to come out. We continue to learn more seemingly every single day. But, okay, it appears Trump did more to cover it up. But, again, the core of the misty, the original sin here, I can't see the difference. I can't see the difference. Regular people are not going to see the difference. And if you're

trying to spin it and you're trying to obsess over like, well, nitpicking, well, he had a few more documents or he hid them law or whatever. I don't think that's going to work out too well for him. Good luck prosecuting that in the court of public opinion. Ultimately, the one that probably matters the most. Indeed. All right. At the same time, some drama, major, significant, I shouldn't even call it drama because it really is an issue that could impact people across the country. You know, we have this, in my opinion, very silly protocol of something called the debt ceiling, where you have to go through the motions of lifting this thing once you hit a certain amount. And it's not like it's authorizing new spending. You're just saying, all right, we're going to go ahead and do what we need to do to spend the money we have already appropriated.

So it's sort of this like accounting gimmick procedural thing relic that's put in place that everybody has to go through the motions on. Well, back in the Tea Party era, they started using this as a way on the Republican side to try to garner spending cuts that they wanted and to move towards their deficit reduction goals. Worked pretty well in terms of the hostage shaking. They were able to get some deals and get some things they wanted out of the Obama administration.

And so now with Republicans back in control of the House majority, it appears that one of the key deals that was struck with the Republican hard right rebels was around using the debt ceiling again to extract spending cuts. Well, this week, we officially technically hit that debt ceiling. Now, that doesn't really mean anything yet because they can use what they call extraordinary measures to be able to continue to make all the payments that the government ultimately owes. But this shows you this is the beginning of something that's going to be unfolding over the coming months and probably going to come to a head sometime this summer. Now, the White House's position here is pretty hard as far as what they are projecting publicly. They are saying we will only accept a clean

debt ceiling increase. That means no combination with any sort of spending cuts, cuts to Social Security, cuts to anything. We only want a clean debt ceiling increase. We are not open to negotiations. Here's Karine Jean-Pierre staking out that position. You will not negotiate anything about expending? What we're saying is that there should be this should be done without conditions. It is one of the basic items that Congress has to deal with and it should be done without conditions. So there is going to be there's going to be

no negotiation over it. This is something that must get done. So this is something that must be done. We will not have any negotiations. Meanwhile, you had other top House Republicans, including Jamie Comer, staking out a completely different position, completely at odds with what the White House is saying here, saying they are going to have to budge and the Senate Democrats are going to have to realize they're going to have to budge because we are coming for those spending cuts. Let's go ahead and put this reporting up on the screen from CNBC about exactly what this means. So they say U.S. will hit its debt limit Thursday, start taking steps to avoid default. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday notified Congress officially the U.S. will reach its statutory debt limit next Thursday. After that, they will take those

extraordinary measures to prevent a default on our obligations. The Treasury, she says, is not currently able to estimate how long those emergency actions will allow the U.S. to pay for government obligations, but it's unlikely those extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June. She goes on to say failure to meet the government's obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability. So basically, she's saying, listen, we got some time now till June. And then after that, it becomes dicey as to when exactly we will start to fail to pay some of our debt obligations. Yeah, that's right. And this is probably the most important thing that we have seen now is

a reporting of a private deal by Republicans. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from The Washington Post, where this secret deal between effectively the McCarthy holdouts and the GOP leadership would call on the Biden administration to make only the most critical federal payments if the Treasury Department does actually come up on the debt limit. The plan would call on the department to keep making interest payments on debt, which would maintain at least the credit on the international markets. House Republican prioritizations would stipulate that the Treasury continue to make payments on Social Security, Medicare, and veterans benefits, as well as funding the military. But it would also mean that they would have automatic cuts effectively on everything else,

such as Medicaid, food safety inspections, border control, air traffic control like the FAA, as well as thousands of other, quote unquote, discretionary programs. Also, here's the real issue, is that all of this is completely unprecedented territory. We never actually did run up to it in the Tea Party era. As far as how all this plays out, I'm just not entirely sure. It does honestly seem to me, Crystal, that the Republicans did prove their, they proved that they would shoot the hostage, you know, during the McCarthy thing. So if I'm the White House, I actually, like, look, you could say you're not going to negotiate. I think we all

know we're going to negotiate. Personally, you know, and I think for the rest of the U.S. economy, we would probably all sleep easier if you guys just came to a deal sometime in the next couple of months. But at the same time, I don't really know how this is all going to play out. I mean, they're very clear. They're not going to vote for it unless you have some sort of spending cuts. I maybe could see an alternative where House, because also, we should remember this, remember that McCarthy is a weakest speaker, that he doesn't actually control the floor all that much. There is a realm that I would see where maybe you would have like moderate Republicans team up with the Democrats to pass some sort of debt ceiling relief through the

Congress in an extraordinary situation. And then of course, the Democratic Senate could then go ahead and lift the debt ceiling on their part. That's one possible way we could get out of this. But I think the most likely scenario is that the Republicans are going to force some sort of major discretionary cuts on social spending, almost certainly not. Do I think that will be politically popular? No. Was it politically popular during the Tea Party era? No, it certainly wasn't. But I mean, look, what did we learn with these guys? Like, they believe what they're saying, so we should take it seriously. Otherwise, we genuinely could go into a default, although we would be remiss if we didn't talk about hashtag mint the coin.

Well, I was going to say, I mean, there is one weird trick to avoid this whole scenario. Truly, it's minting a trillion dollar coin. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the debt ceiling is ridiculous. So let's have a ridiculous solution to what's ultimately a ridiculous problem. Will the White House do that? I don't know. I really don't. But if they did, then you would basically defuse this problem forever and you wouldn't have the ability of people to take the whole government and the economy, our economy, world economy hostage in order to extract their ideological concessions that they are ultimately demanding. If you judge by history, I think you're right, Sagar. Biden says he won't negotiate. But this is also a man who, you know, has very few actual like principled beliefs. But he has this instinct towards comedy and bipartisanship. He likes to be seen as the guy who can make the deal across the aisle, even if it's a deal that you really shouldn't be making. And we saw this under the Obama-Biden administration. They offered a deal to the Republican House caucus at that point that was horrible. It included cuts

to Social Security in particular. And fortunately, actually, the Tea Partiers wanted even more. They rejected the deal. And so we didn't end up with that terrible deal. You know, their intransigence actually sort of saved us from what was a horrific grand bargain that would have been wildly unpopular and really bad for a lot of people. So do I think that Biden will ultimately decide he wants to come to the table and try to work together with these fools? Yeah, I think it's very possible. So we will see. There hasn't been any indication yet that the Biden that Joe Biden himself, the Biden administration, is interested in pushing the sort of legal bounds of what they are able to do with executive power. Yes.

You know, in terms of actually achieving like sort of left or progressive or just like mainstream working class goals. So I would I looking at his history and how he's operated in Washington, both as vice president and also as senator, I think it's more likely that he looks to cut a terrible deal. Well, certainly just because, look, we're already on the brink of recession, possibly might already be in a recession, depending on the technical definition, in terms of how people are feeling. And inflation is still, you know, it's gone down slightly, but it's still not great for working people.

A debt default would effectively, I mean, look, in terms of market crash, liquidity dries up, banks wouldn't be able to make lands, people would not be, in terms of market crash, liquidity dries up. Banks wouldn't be able to make lens. People would not be able to have mortgages. You would have a massive crash of the stock market all across the board. But it's not just rich people who would suffer. A lot of people, the liquidity crunch would be similar to what happened possibly even in 2008 on top of a downgrade and basically not even a breakdown of the global financial system, but a fraying of the global financial system, which would be bad for the US dollar, which means it would have impacts on trade. And actually, that would spiral into problems with oil markets and Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia. There's all kinds of interesting implications. So it's not

a joke for the United States to default on its debt. It does look like, though, that the Republicans are trying to have their cake and eat it, too, where they wouldn't technically default. They would continue to make the interest payments, but they would just force spending cuts in discretionary, which, look, even then, you're effectively in a so-called government shutdown. Well, one of the lessons I think I really saw throughout all of the various government shutdowns we've now had since, what, the 1990s, is it never really came out on the side politically of the people who seem to be holding the government hostage. So the New Gingrich shutdown did not work out to the benefit of Newt Gingrich. The Tea Party shutdowns absolutely

worked to the benefit of Obama because they were, like, blaming the Tea Party. They would go and, like, close national parks or whatever and blame the Tea Party. The public really turned against him. Also, don't remember this. The Trump shutdown did not work out in Trump's favor at all for the whole border wall situation. That's right. He shut the government down for three weeks, didn't get what he wanted, then he caved. Had to totally capitulate because it was a disaster for him. Completely capitulated because the public was freaking out.

So I just think any side which seems to be holding the government hostage for basic services, and seniors really freak out about this stuff, they generally politically don't benefit. So that would be my one word of caution to the House Republicans. Two other pieces on this, because I do think it's important to understand some of the mechanics here. First of all, what it reminds me of is the situation we cover pretty closely here with Liz Truss in the UK. Oh, yeah, that's true. Where they floated this quote unquote mini budget, which was this, you know, return the same sort of politics as the Tea Party, same sort of ideology, this sort of like deficit hawk, like fiscal austerity. And so she was going full steam

ahead and they were going to institute this mini budget. And because our financial systems are so complex and so interconnected, there were all kinds of side effects of this budget and market crash that led to what looked like a real catastrophe for the British economy with huge impacts on pensioners and all sorts of others that no one really foresaw in advance. But you had this cascading domino effect because all these pieces are interconnected in such a complex way that really no one has the full picture of how all these pieces fit together. And so I think you could have a similar dynamic here where even if they're able to come up with this prioritization schedule, no, we're still going to pay the bondholders or whatever. The fact that you have the U.S. government defaulting on its obligations, whether it's to bondholders or to seniors or to veterans or whoever it is, that can have massive cascading ripple effects that no one really understands how those impacts are all going to play out. That's number one. Number two, the whole concept of prioritizing our payments. So it's like, okay, we'll pay the interest. So we don't technically

default, but we're going to cut over here and not over there. You're talking about like 10 million payments. Okay. Incredibly complex situation. This has never been done before. They had an aide in that article that we had up in the Washington Post who was an aide to Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, who's a Republican, who studied this closely because they were trying to figure out how they could do this. And he said after studying it closely, he realized huge numbers of people would be hurt immediately with no good way to pick between options such as forcing hospitals to deal with the cessation of Medicare payments or depriving the Defense Department of funding. Studying this in 2011 convinced us this would be a really bad idea and something we really did not want to happen. We didn't end the exercise saying this is feasible and smart. We said, let's avoid this at

all costs because it's going to be a disaster. So again, this is a Republican who studied this previously and came away thinking like we should not under any circumstances ultimately go there. And then, you know, politically, you can see how this would be a this would be a field day for Democrats. Oh, you're going to pay bondholders, they're, you know, wealthy financiers. You're going to pay them your interest, their interest payments. But you're going to cut people off of Medicaid and not allow them to have their like hospital bills paid. You're going to cut kids off of their children's health insurance or off of their free lunch program. But you're going to pay these wealthy financiers. Those are your priorities. So even, you know, we're getting a little over our skis at this point.

But this is what is reportedly in the deal that was struck with the McCarthy holdouts. And now Speaker McCarthy was to come up with how you would prioritize these payments, effectively broadcasting that we are going to go to the wall. We are willing to go over the ledge. And this is our plan ultimately to deal with it. Yeah. No matter what, just pay very close attention. We'll cover it very closely. Yeah, for sure. Just because the consequences, the tail risk of something like this are just so high that we have no choice but to. At the same time, let's get back

to my favorite story. My favorite congressman, George Santos. Maybe that's his name. Maybe not. I've been saying that for a while, but now we actually have video of him introducing himself, not as George Santos, but as Anthony DeVolder. Let's take a listen. So my name is Anthony DeVolder. I'm a New York City resident. I recently founded a group called United for Trump. So if you guys want to follow, that would be awesome. How do you think that as a trans woman and a conservative, you can help educate other trans people from not having to follow the narrative that the media and the Democrats. Who is this? Who are you? So here's the other question. Isn't Anthony Devalder? I later was reading. He appears to be what he that name was then linked to one of his phony businesses that he was involved in. But it's also the question, like, who?

Also, there's actually another clip from 2020 where a GOP official introduces him. And it's like, oh, George Santos. He goes, I know him as Anthony DeValder, but I guess he's George Santos. It's like, who are you? Who have you been representing yourself as? Like, everything about this man. It's insanity. Yeah, I mean Who have you been representing yourself as? Everything about this man.

It's insanity. Yeah, I mean, listen, if it was any one of these pieces, you might be able to go, all right. Right. No, you can't say all right. Every part of his identity,

including his name, is just up for grabs, depending on how he wants to present himself on that particular day. Also, I think the organization he references there, like, oh, I started United for Trump or whatever. No, it doesn't exist. Okay. I got another one for you,

though, because this one was also really hilarious to me. So it came out when those Republican officials in New York did their press conference and were like, you know, calling on him to resign and just really go again on him. One of the guys who was speaking was talking about like, I expressed some interest in sport and he held out to me that he was like a championship volleyball player at a college he didn't even ultimately go to. So someone unearthed a clip of him on a radio interview, I think this is, with a similar line about how he was this great championship volleyball player. Of course, all of this also completely fabricated. Take a listen.

You know, it's funny. I actually went to school on a volleyball scholarship. You did? I did, yeah. When I was in Baruch, we were the number one volleyball team. Did you graduate from Baruch? Did you graduate from there? Yeah.

So did I. I did. So did I. Oh, very cool. We went to play against Harvard, Yale, and we slayed them. We slayed them. We were champions across the entire Northeast corridor. Every school that came up against us, they were shaking at the time.

Look, I sacrificed both my knees and got very nice knee replacements from HSS playing volleyball. That's how serious I took the game. Amazing. It's just amazing I took the game. Amazing. It's just amazing. And it's also, I mean, just invented out of whole cloth. The knees, the drama. The consistent theme here is whoever is in front of him at that moment, he's telling them whatever he thinks they want to hear.

There's another part of that interview where the dude's like, this is so crazy. The two sports you're into are the same two sports I'm into. It's like, oh, we both went to the same college. It's so crazy. It's like, no, he's just telling you exactly what he thinks you want to hear. That's what he did with Republican donors. That's what he did with the voters. That's what he did with seemingly every single person that he encountered throughout this whole saga. More seriously, beyond the like silly volleyball lies, is we're getting maybe a bit more of a clear picture into how exactly he obtained the cash that he fronted in his own campaign. Remember, $700,000 that he personally contributed to his campaign when no one really knows. How did you get that money when

you were just getting foreclosed, not foreclosed on, you were just getting evicted from your apartments. You were just reporting that you have very low income. You're seemingly struggling. Apparently, you stole his roommate's scarf, another designer. Anyway, it looks like he was involved with this, what the SEC says was a blatant Ponzi scheme. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. George Santos raised money for a company the SEC says wasant Ponzi scheme. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. George Santos raised money for a company the SEC says was a Ponzi scheme. He persuaded they found at least

one person to make a six-figure investment in a, of course, Florida-based company that they have now said was a Ponzi scheme. Mr. Santos was hired in 2020 to raise capital for the company. Harbor City Capital landed at least one significant investment from a wealthy investor. When the investment failed to deliver on the promised returns, according to one of the people, Mr. Santos sought to reassure the investor by saying he had personally raised nearly $100 million and had invested his own family's money in Harbor City. Of course, none of that is true. But the fact that he was associated with this Ponzi scheme where basically the dude who started this last name, I think his name is like JP Maroney. I read the whole SEC complaint because I'm like obsessed with this. Not only Sandoz, but I'm like obsessed with frauds and schemes right now. Apparently what they would do

is they would tell people they had this ability to, at low cost, generate all these sales leads. So their cost for generating the sales lead was a dollar, and then they could then sell them to other companies for $5. Well, that was all, it appears, pretty much made up. Maroney and his associates, including Santos All In, were able to raise like $17.1 million, something like $4 million if that went directly into Maroney's pockets, some of it went into his wife's pocket. Some of it went into companies that he held and other, you know, paid off his credit card debt, bought him a waterfront home that, by the way, they hosted a Trump fundraiser at with Don Jr. appearing and Kimberly Guilfoyle. And they then would use some of the proceeds to pay off some of the new proceeds to pay off the original investors, which is what ultimately makes it a Ponzi scheme. There's also in some of the reporting that Santos was notified. Some of the

investors were like, dude, this is all fake and fraudulent. One of the things they would advertise is like, oh, this is all safe because we have this sort of like line of credit backup thing at a major bank, and here's the bank. I think it was Deutsche Bank. And he was notified of the fact that that was all fake. So there's some indication that he knew there was something going on.

Of course, he says that he had no idea that there was anything inappropriate happening here. It's just straight fraud. And actually, if you read even more, by raising money from investors and paid in a form, he had to be a registered broker with the SEC. And it's not a not a registered broker. So he actually might be even guilty of straight fraud. And none of this was included on his mandatory financial disclosures. Right. He ceased. It looks like the timing is that he stopped working with Harbor City like a month before he filed for to run for

Congress. And that's when he sets up his Devolder company that and some of the people that he went into business with also came from the Harbor City Ponzi scheme. So one possibility that's being floated is that he, you know, had ill-gotten gains from this Harbor City capital thing that he uses then and sort of launders through this DeVolder organization and then ends up putting some of that money into his campaign. That's speculative. We don't know exactly the trail of money, but that's a little bit of what it is looking like. Let's go ahead to the next piece that we have here. Ultimately, go ahead and throw this up on the screen. So New York Times has some reporting that apparently these lies and, you know, outright fabrications were in fact known to some Republicans, at least.

Hard to say exactly who they said George Santos inspired no shortage of suspicion during his 2022 campaign, including the upper echelons of his own party. Yet many Republicans look to the other way. And effectively what happened here, Sagar, is when you run for Congress, not only does your opponent do opposition research on you, it's also very common that you basically pay for opposition research on yourself. Yes, that's right. To see what the other side is going to turn up and potentially use against you. So he authorized with his original campaign team, he's like, all right, let's go ahead and do that. And he authorized the spending to go ahead and research what they could use against him. And it turned up not everything, but it turned up some of the significant lies that he was telling about his resume, about his schooling, et cetera, and relatively easily. And his staff basically came to him and his consultants and were like, dude, you got to drop out. And now's the time before this all comes out and you're humiliated

and your life is destroyed. And he took some time and thought about it. And he was like, no. And he also told them like, oh, I'll produce the degree I got. And of course, there is no degree. So he definitely didn't do that. And his campaign staff, much of them resigned. The person who seems to have been key to resuscitating him and keeping him alive in terms of Republican primary and finding him new consultants is people around Elise Stefanik were able to get him new consultants. And he didn't come clean to them, apparently, about all of the mistruths and all of the things that have been turned up in the previous opposition research. And then you also had this dynamic on the Democratic side where he ran twice the first time he lost against this incumbent. And the incumbent just basically

decided, like, it's not worth spending money against this guy. I'm going to beat him anyway. Second time around, cash was tight on the—Zimmerman was the Democratic opponent's name. The DCCC did some basic opposition research on him. Failed to turn up any of this somehow. I mean, just utter incompetence there. They had some red flags of, like, yeah, maybe this is worth looking into. But it would have been expensive for Zimmerman. And he decided to spend the money on ads. Obviously now I'm sure like really regrets not going forward with his own opposition research into Santos. And so just kind of by happenstance, this guy skates through.

I mean, it's just so wild, like whenever you consider it, because when you read more and more, just the very basics of it should have been able to be unearthed. But look, I've been reading also about Ponzi schemes. I just read Finish, The Wizard of Lies, the Bernie Madoff book. And he has all the classic hallmarks of the fraudster. Where Billy McFarland also comes to mind, the Fyre Festival guy. That ability to just slip into the, I went to Baruch and established rapport and be like, oh, well, I also, you know, I shredded my name. Just the level of detail.

It's one of those where somebody said, you know, the criminal can always have like a bigger imagination than people. Because no one would ever conceive that a guy who's running for the United States Congress like out there with the whole world, you know, looking upon you, would ever say anything like this without being conned. So his, like, ability to just con so many people up and down the chain, he actually is a perfect person to raise money for a Ponzi scheme. True, true. I think he's going to be in serious trouble. I think at the very least, think about this, if you're a victim of that Ponzi scheme, given the clawback precedents from the Madoff case, like, very clearly they could go after him. He also could easily be guilty of wire fraud if he didn't register or if he transferred ill-gotten gains. And then he could also be guilty of campaign finance fraud if he used ill-gotten gains in order to circumvent or in order to fund a federal election commission

run. So overall, I think the feds are going to get him. I'm sure that there's an investigation underway. I think so, too. You know, right now he's saying he's going to hang in there. He's not going to resign. McCarthy isn't pressuring him to resign, even though a lot of New York Republicans ultimately are. But I agree with you. I think this ends with him in prison. There's just too much here, too many potential crimes. The campaign finance stuff is funny because our campaign finance laws in some ways are so lax. You can drive a Mack truck through the loopholes. If you know how to do it in a sophisticated way, then you can basically get away with almost anything. But if you don't know how to do it in a sophisticated way and you stumble over one of the many, many tripwires, they can and will throw the book at you. Yes.

And he did not do this in a sophisticated way. There are a million red flags here that they're already picking up on multiple investigations. So to me, that seems like the clearest path to him ending up behind bars ultimately. And I just, you know, I'm fixated on this, not even from the political perspective, although it is amazing. One of the meta stories that is kind of fascinating is the way both the Republican parties and the Democratic parties and the media establishment all just completely, you know, crumbled and fell down on their job and the most basic level of vetting of this dude. So I think I think that's an interesting storyline. But I just the psychology of it, I just can't wrap my head around. And then I ask myself, like, how many people are there like this out there?

Right. Who will just invent an entire biography and narrative and not like as a joke at a bar, you know, but as to lean into for their whole life story. It's wild. It's wild to me. And this guy was so brazen and also so sloppy that it was easy to catch him. But I'm sure there are a lot more sophisticated con men and women out there who ultimately get away with it and probably end up with a lot of riches and powers. There's a lot of people. That's the part that fascinates me. Remember Hilaria Baldwin? Yes.

You know, that whole thing. I mean, there's so many of these where you're just like, what are you doing? What are you thinking? You literally have a fake Spanish accent. Remember that clip when she's like, what's the word in English? I'm like, you literally aren't even Spanish. Like, what are you doing? This is craziness. But, like, I mean, look, it's a mind disease that affects people seemingly all at the very top.

And, you know, look, I think there's a lot of people out there. I was watching this interview, this interesting interview on the soft white underbelly channel of a con man. And, like, when you get inside the mind of these guys, they're vicious. They'll rip you off. No, the rules don't apply to them. And what really comes across also is that even in the interview, you can't help but like the guy the whole time. He's got something to him. He's like one of the biggest fraudsters in modern American history. It's like, wow. Anyway,

so Santos, I think he's going down. All right, let's go to the next one here. Let's put it up there on the screen. A really interesting development, which is not a particularly good harbinger. So a couple of things. That headline there is rising interest rates are lifting profits at Bank of America and Wells Fargo. However, the subhead is what we really want to focus on, that the country's largest lenders are increasing their reserves to protect against deteriorating economic conditions after reporting the resilient profits for the end of last year. Effectively, after the banks booked pretty decent profits in 2022, they are holding back a significant amount of capital on their balance sheets because they anticipate customers not

paying back their loans. And this isn't just one back, it's multiple. JPMorgan Chase said that they have over a billion dollars in reserve more than normal because they are predicting a, quote, mild recession to arrive later this year. The CEO of Bank of America said the exact same comments, quote, mild recession, prospect of the bank that is planning for Wells Fargo, even after it has been fined for defrauding customers and all that. Speaking of con men. Speaking of con men at a much, much bigger level, basically pulling back some of the cash reserves even after having to pay their fines and holding them on the balance sheet. Why does that matter?

Because all three of these big banks are saying that they are anticipating major loan losses across 2023 where people will effectively not have enough money or they're going to lose their job or based by inflation, based on credit card debt, basically the runway runs out, and they're not going to be able to pay their mortgages. Of course, we all found out in 2008 that can have a cascading runaway effect on the entire US economy. But in a couple of ways, this is almost one of those things which is both a leading indicator, but also which can have its own problems. Because whenever banks are not only anticipating that customers are not going to pay back their loans, but then they're also going to hold back some of their cash, what does that mean? It's even harder to get a loan than

previously. You know, right now, good luck getting a mortgage out there. I don't even know why you would want one because it's like, what, 7% or whatever. But let's say you're one of those people who, you know, now is the time you're going to do this, maybe I'll refinance or whatever down the road. The cash reserves, the down payment that the bank may demand on your behalf is going to be probably much higher than it was previously. And the risk assessment on top of that is going to be much more difficult. So I think that in general, getting a car loan, getting a mortgage loan, just the general loans that make our economy run, small business loans, the very basic architectures of consumer finance for a lot of people which breed entrepreneurship, venture capital, all of that, and also which businesses can often use to make payroll. I think it's a bad sign of where things could go.

Both the fact that they're doing it, but also by doing it itself is going to have problems. It can trigger, it can manifest exactly the outcome that you fear. And I mean, people are already in a tough position. There's all kinds of metrics about, you know, their bank accounts are being drained. They're having to rely on credit cards more and more. And, you know, interest rates overall going up. So those credit card payments become more and more expensive as well. And then as you're pointing out, as banks pull back, then it becomes harder to sort of like roll over and be able to keep that debt afloat. So people are increasingly in a real bind. And, you know, it's really clear, even as we get these good jobs numbers and you have this really complicated and sort of mixed picture of the economy, wages have not kept up with inflation. So the bottom line is for most workers, they are earning less and less and less. And that is going to take a hit on people's finances and take a hit

on their ability to make purchases and do all the spending and all the things that keep the economy going at its current pace. And then you still have the Fed out there saying, hey, we got to keep going forward with interest rate increases. So it continues to be a really dicey time in terms of the economy. I also thought it was noteworthy. Jamie Diamond, head of Chase, we have been covering a lot of his comments. He had been very sort of outspoken about where he thought the economy was going. And now as Chase pulls back this, you know, billion dollars hoarding cash, a billion dollars in reserves, he is now being pretty quiet about what he thinks is going to happen, which I thought was also kind of interesting. I'm covering today all of these

bankers, probably including Jamie Dimon. He's always there. Yeah, I think he's going to be there. Our gathering for the World Economic Forum in Davos. It'd be interesting to see what some of the comments that come out of there as the elites decide how they're going to run the world for this year. Yeah. And the other thing to consider is that if you're already in a precarious situation, if there is debt default, or if there is even talk of debt default, I think this happened last time around. Like our debt was degraded from like AAA plus or whatever to AAA minus. That actually had a whole problem because the other thing is that there are all these automatic investment triggers for pension funds and others where if something does get downgraded below a certain level, then you actually have to automatically sell it because

they have deals and contracts. You'll only invest certain types of monies and certain types of government in terms of rated funds. And if the government doesn't do that, it causes an entire mess. The point is that economic precarity is very much on the minds of the nation's top bankers. And because they run the country and especially run the way that people conduct business, I think that's a big problem. Yeah, that's a great point. Here we are at a sort of precipice, potentially on edge,

and facing down these government crises and possible debt default. It's a scary situation, no doubt about it. Absolutely. Okay, let's go ahead and move on here, Chuck Todd. Just an amazing showdown over on MSNBC. This reveals the brain worms, I think, of everybody on both sides. On the one hand, you have Chuck Todd here, who is completely unable to grapple with the idea that Hunter Biden, the laptop itself, any investigation to it seems legitimate. Even defending him, saying it's not a crime to make money off of your last name. Actually, it really might be. Then you also have Senator Ron Johnson also just spouting the most basic stuff from the laptop itself. So I think this is a great showdown of view into why our politics particularly suck and also why you can actually emerge on the other side from truth if you want to. Let's take a listen.

I have skepticism of both parties. I sit here with skepticism a lot of people's work. And I'm curious, were you at all concerned? Your Senate Democrats want to investigate Jared Kushner's loan from the Qatari government when he was working in the government negotiating many things in the Middle East. Are you not as concerned about that? Are you not concerned about that? And I say that because it seems to me if you're concerned about what Hunter Biden did, you should be equally outraged about what Jared Kushner did. I'm concerned about getting the truth. I don't target individuals, target individuals. You don't? You're targeting Hunter Biden. You're targeting an individual. Chuck, part of the problem, and this is pretty obvious to anybody

watching this, is you don't invite me on to interview me. You invite me on to argue with me. I'm just trying to lay out the facts that certainly Senator Grass and I uncovered. They were suppressed, they were censored, they interfered in the 2020 election. Conservatives understand that, unfortunately, liberals in the media don't. And that's part of the things that part of the reasons our politics are inflamed is we do not have an unbiased media. We don't, it's unfortunate. I'm all for free press, it needs to be more unbiased.

There's misinformation on both sides, but the censorship and suppression primarily occurs from the left. It's frustrating. Look, you can go back on your partisan cable cocoon and talk about media bias all you want. I understand it's part of your identity. Partisan cable cocoon. Yes. No one would know what that looks like, would it, Chuck, whenever we're defending. Also, you know, even the Jared thing. I agree with them 100 percent. But the fact that they don't care about Hunter, it makes them just as full of it as Ron Johnson. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you have two partisan hacks accusing one another of being partisan hacks. And it's like, actually, you're both right. Yes. Correct. But yeah, Chuck Tosla, I'm skeptical of everybody. Oh, really?

I would love to see the breakdown of Hunter Biden coverage versus Jared Kushner coverage, number one. Number two, I mean, he is right about Ron Johnson being full of it and only caring about the things that are good for his team. But the icing on the cake at the end there is Chuck Todd accusing him of only being in his partisan media bubble. And it's like, dude, maybe look in the mirror. You just said it's not a crime to make money off your last name. How can you say that you're not in a partisan media bubble and it's like, dude, maybe look in the mirror a little bit. You just said it's not a crime to make money off your last name. How can you say that you're not in a partisan media bubble? Oh, but at the same time, Kushner, it's bad whenever he does. No, it's all bad.

And this is also why we never get to the bottom of a lot of these legitimate corruption scandals. I would love, by the way, to see an actual accounting of that Jared Kushner Qatari loan, why he was in the World Cup in the first place, kissing her ass, you know, the Saudi deals, the MBS money that he immediately took, even though MBS's own fund was like, we shouldn't invest with this guy. He's not a particularly good investor. And he himself was

like, no, no, let's kick him a few billion because he was good to us in the White House. Straight corruption, if you ask me, it's also straight corruption. You know, the Ukraine thing, we all seem to have forgotten about Burisma. I'm not really sure why. I think it's probably more relevant now more than ever. Biden was literally the point man on Ukraine, on the Obama administration. That's why Ukrainian Energy Company was paying Hunter 50 grand a month. It wasn't just to potentially buy influence.

It's because it was the top foreign policy priority of Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. Then you add on the China discussion. By the way, Hunter continues to have multimillion dollars worth of interest in Chinese companies, which he has resigned his – he hasn't sold his shares, but he's like, I no longer take in active controls. He still has a stake in these companies. You know, look, the Ron Johnson report, he may be partisan, but his report on the Hunter stuff is actually well worth reading. I encourage people to go read it simply because it literally is looking at bank statements. And all of that, actually, President Biden called it a lie while it was happening. And yet no substantive facts have come out to this date that refute a single actual accusation in the Hunter Biden report that was put out by Ron

Johnson's committee in the Senate. Interesting. I mean, here's why this ultimately silly like little exchange matters, because these issues that are at the core of it, Kushner's corruption, potential Hunter Biden corruption and crimes, these things actually matter. And when it's clear that you only selectively care about it, you really undermine your position and your credibility with the American people. I mean, it's partly Ron Johnson's own fault that no one really took that report seriously because, oh, you care so deeply about this, but you don't care about the Kushner piece. And it's the same thing with Chuck Todd and the mainstream press. Like, oh, you care so deeply when it happens to be about Republicans, but you run cover for the Democratic Party consistently on an everyday basis. And oh, by the way, you know, you concocted this whole elaborate conspiracy theory of Russiagate that

you've still never acknowledged. You got wholly and completely wrong. So these people undermine their own credibility, and then they expect us to take them seriously when they report things that may actually matter, and no one should be surprised when everyone just sees them as complete hacks. So, very fun exchange, enraging exchange, and ultimately kind of an important exchange to dig into. Yeah, when I saw it, I was like, man, there's so much there. Yeah, it's a lot of layers. There's lots of layers as to what's happening. Okay. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, last week I did a monologue on the new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics for Childhood Obesity.

It recommended using weight loss drugs and surgeries on minors more aggressively and earlier. While the Academy didn't include lifestyle intervention in its recommendations, there were also so-called experts who created the guidance, who I showed here, saying that obesity was not a quote, lifestyle disease. Whether you agree on that central premise or not is the entire question. Do you want to manipulate our environment, our food, our lifestyle to prevent obesity? Or do you want to just let big pharma companies sell us the solution? I know where I fall in that debate, but at a certain point, all of us critics do need to make peace with this fact. We have very little influence beyond the individual level on any of these decisions. They are made by multi-billion dollar companies, massive government bureaucracies like the National Institutes of Health, the CDC,

the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Food and Drug Administration. At least one of those, though, we may have a slight chance of actually having some reform. The FDA is under massive fire right now, especially during the last two years, for its incompetence in its response to COVID, from rapid testing to its handling of vaccine approvals to just the blatant corruption revealed and revolving door with the pharma companies and taking their word for things. Well, we finally have a chance to actually make amends, not on the drug front just yet, but something possibly even more important than drugs, food. The food that we put in our bodies and the regulations that govern that industry, subject of multi-billion dollar lobbying efforts that shape everything that we see in our grocery stores. It all starts with the FDA and even

branch Covidians who would probably defend the FDA's conduct during COVID cannot deny they have failed at the basics of their food mission. Back up for a second. The FDA oversees approximately 80% of the entire U.S. food supply. It has a few basic missions. Number one, make sure food is safe, not poisoning us. Number two, provide nutrition guidance and facts for consumers. Three, to conduct routine inspections of food safety to ensure that companies are not cutting corners, and that Americans are eating what companies claim that they are. They have failed categorically at all three parts of their mission. As Helena Bada-Miller-Avich at Food Fix has noted, since 2011, despite getting more resources and a mandate from Congress to investigate foodborne illness outbreaks. Some 128,000 people are hospitalized a year from foodborne illness alone, and 3,000 a year, people actually die. Parents have been screaming

now for years, finally heard during the baby formula crisis, how many times the agency has dropped the ball and missed deadly outbreaks in food and formula for infants on top of multiple foodborne outbreaks in 2022 alone. The nutrition side is also just insane. I'm sure many people saw these viral segments about NIH-funded food compass studies at Tufts University, which concludes that Lucky Charms are more nutritious than ground beef or steak. It sparked rightful outrage, in my opinion.

But the question is, how do you even fix that? This is the key part. The FDA's literal mission statement is to try and promote nutrition information and evaluate claims based on food is the key part. The FDA's literal mission statement is to try and promote nutrition information and evaluate claims based on food to the general public. Take the word healthy, for example. FDA has allowed the same definition of, quote, healthy to be slapped on consumer goods since 1994 when I was a two-year-old. In that time, I think it's fair to say we've gotten a hell of a lot fatter as a country, unhealthier, and we've also learned a lot about nutrition. Yet in 2022,

they have decided to propose updating the label. Just so you know, what did the previous label allow? It placed limits and guidance on several minerals and vitamins in food to be called, quote, healthy. But, and this is the biggest but, it placed no limit on the amount of added sugar in a product and the ability to call it healthy as evaluated by the FDA. Imagine that. You could literally make sure and game the system by having some vitamins, add some fat content. You can have as much refined sugar, though, as you want and still call it healthy in the grocery store and dupe parents and consumers. Anyone want to claim with a serious face this was explicitly carved out, not explicitly carved out at the behest of the food and sugar industry? We all know the answer. I'm not going to sit here and I am going to sit here and claim

we wouldn't be fat if the FDA had proper healthy guidance in stores, okay? I'm not. But it's a shining example, though, of how broken the system is. It also observes the fact that they can do something about it. Take sodium, for example. The exact same menu items in the United States actually have double the amount of sodium

that they do in European counterparty foods, like McDonald's. Our FDA has effectively refused to set mandatory sodium guidance, which nutrition advocates have been saying can save tens of thousands of lives per year just through reduced hypertension. After literally three decades of fighting the FDA, they still have refused to set long-term guidance, as other developed nations on Earth have had in place for more than a decade. By some estimates, some quarter of a million lives actually could be saved just from doing this alone. All of this bears scrutiny at this moment for a simple reason. A major fight

is brewing in Washington right now after an independent review of the FDA found that it has completely failed at the food aspect of its job and should possibly be spun off into its own independent food agency. It's actually gaining steam in Washington. I want to add some fuel to that fire. Currently, the FDA is one of several agencies that actually looks at the entire U.S. food supply. The system is designed not to help or look out for you, but to be as inept as possible and make it as penetrable as possible for lobbyists at big food and agricultural companies, which want to make money. Our well-being has nothing to do with this. Spinning the agency itself off will not fix everything, but it makes a single point of concentration more vulnerable

to public scrutiny and to lack of incompetence. No more passing the buck. In the meantime, wake up. Healthy food label doesn't mean it's healthy. Quote, guidance from doctors is sometimes right and sometimes it's totally wrong. It's dangerous and it's driven by money. Until we take back our system, you need to look out for yourself because they sure as hell are not going to. And that's the crazy thing. You know, that healthy food. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, guys, global elites are attending the annual World Economic Forum in Davos this week. This is actually the first time since COVID when the event will return to its full-size scope and normal timing. But there's a sense that for the world's billionaire class, the gathering isn't quite what it used to be. The number of global leaders attending has thinned. Previously prevalent Russian oligarchs have been purged. Chinese billionaires dramatically reduced by COVID zero policies. In fact, many of the world's billionaires have seen their wealth take a hit from rising interest rates and a declining stock market. Back in 2018, six out of seven G7 leaders actually attended this annual confab. This year, only one will be in

attendance. That's Germany's Olaf Scholz. He'll be the lonely head of state representing the world's wealthiest nations. But most importantly, the worldview that Davos elites had arrogantly espoused for years and years has taken a huge hit. Now, listen, there's a lot of wild conspiracy theories about Davos, but the most devastating Davos conspiracy is right out in the open. A bunch of wealthy and powerful elites coming together to whitewash their own crimes with fake care for the world, while studiously avoiding discussing anything that might actually implicate them in the problems they are pretending to care about, and carefully avoiding discussion of the way they could actually solve the problems they are pretending to care about. Dutch historian Rutger Bregman put it pretty succinctly back in 2019. This is my first

time at Davos, and I find it quite a bewildering experience, to be honest. I mean, 1,500 private jets have flown in here to hear Sir David Attenborough speak about how we're wrecking the planet. And I mean, I hear people talk in the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency, but then, I mean, almost no one raises the real issue

of tax avoidance, right? And of the rich just not paying their fair share. I mean, it feels like I'm at a firefighters conference and no one's allowed to speak about water. I mean, this is not rocket science. I mean, we can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes. We can invite Bono once more. Come on, we got to be talking about taxes.

That's it. Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit, in my opinion. That's it, taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion. That man is a hero, but let's be honest, those panels, they're mostly for show. The real work happens on the side, where billionaires and world leaders, they meet in secret to ink deals

and plan how to continue hoarding resources and maintaining a status quo, which has created hunger, homelessness, wars, and the very climate crisis that they concern troll most over. Just to be clear here, the crisis is real. Their concern about it, decidedly not. Now, the Davos ideology is neoliberalism distilled to its purest essence.

Markets are all good and all-knowing. The elite class is wealthy and powerful because they won out in a grand competition we call the meritocracy. Therefore, they deserve to be dictating the conditions of the world from literally on high in the mountains. Government is the problem, and rich philanthropists, they're the answer. At least for the problems of the masses. Government is great when it can be captured to subsidize the wealth of the oligarch class. Perhaps never before has this worldview been more thoroughly repudiated. After all, 2022 was the year that the McDonald's theory of peace at the core of neoliberal foreign policy was shown conclusively to be complete bunk. This theory held that any nation incorporated enough into the global trading system

to have a McDonald's would not want to go to war with other Big Mac-consuming nations. Now, I know it sounds ridiculous. People really believe this crap. And more to the point, the theory was that these nations would meld into the Western model of capitalism and liberal governance. This is the theory with Russia, and this was the theory with China. Wrong and wrong again.

Russia invaded Ukraine and has now been largely cut off from that global trading system, McDonald's and all. China used our trade liberalization to game the system for their own benefit and has forged their own model of state-led capitalism and their own form of debt-driven imperialism through the Belt and Road Initiative. They surveyed the wreckage that American-style capitalism brought to other nations and said, no thanks, we're going to go our own way. At the same time, the pandemic, with its despair, unemployment, and death for millions, while billionaires floated safely on yachts and saw their unfathomable wealth balloon even further, that all served to, we'll say, heighten the contradictions of the neoliberal system.

When the economy was falling off a cliff and the stock market was reaching record heights, it was really laid bare just how fake and rigged this entire system really is. When taxpayers funded life-saving vaccines only to see big pharma profit to the tune of billions hoard patents and price gouge the entire world, it exposed that free markets may not be the all-knowing marvelous forces we had been led to believe. When our supply chain seized up, leading to shortages of everything from gloves and masks to toilet paper to baby formula, we realized that globalization had funneled fortunes into the pockets of the few while creating an incredibly fragile system

with shortages, price increases, and pain for all the rest. The inflation we're suffering through today is the continued devastating hangover from this particular hard lesson. So what does Davos man have to say about any of this? Well, this year, the number of Gulf billionaires attending has ballooned thanks to record-breaking oil profits. Are they going to welcome these new masters of the universe in for their feigned concern about the climate crisis? Are they going to voice deep concern for human rights violations by Russia, even as they celebrate these tycoons who have made fortunes

from some of the most repressive regimes in the entire world? Are the billionaire bankers that the U.S. sends in droves going to tell us about how the only way to counter inflation is by forcing the masses into unemployment? This week, we'll get to see

how the global elite are spinning all of these developments and many more. And according to the absolute ghouls over at McKinsey Consulting, a strategic partner of the World Economic Forum, because of course they are, apparently this year is actually set to be the biggest Davos attendance in history. And this fact hints at another important lesson of our time. The Davos ethos might be vanquished, but somehow it still dominates the world. Always look forward to these little gatherings, Sagar. See what the lords of the universe have to tell you.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Okay, guys, thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've got a great show for everybody tomorrow. Counterpoints, obviously, on Wednesday. All over this week, it's going to be a lot of fun. Some fun stuff.

Making plans right now for State of the Union live coverage and all that. You'll be able to join us here with the team at Breaking Points. Live show tickets, obviously, on sale, all that. But that's enough. Administrative. We'll see everybody tomorrow. Guys, enjoy and reflect on this Martin Luther King Jr. day. And remember the way that they stood in solidarity and were able to achieve so much when you were feeling down and depressed about our own political system.

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