Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/17/23: Pharma Censors Social Media/CDC On Pfizer Booster/GOP 2024 Dodging Trump/Tanks Shipped to Ukraine/ChatGPT University Panic/Near Plane Collision/Tiktok Fools Biden/Glenn Youngkin Killed Ford Plant/Calley Means Interview Sugar Industry

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the new Twitter Files from Lee Fang on how Pharma companies pressured Twitter to censor critics of Vaccine policy, CDC announcing potential stroke risks from Pfizer booster, Sarah Sanders refusing to endorse Trump while he blasts Evangelical leaders for being disloyal, Britain ships tanks to Ukraine, Wikileaks shows NATO warnings before Ukraine invasion, Shocking Near Collision from Two Planes in New York highlights Pete Buttigieg's failures, TikTok fools Biden administration to avoid ban, how Glenn Youngkin killed a Ford Plant for his 2024 ambitions, and an exclusive interview with Calley Means on how the Sugar Industry campaigned to paint opponents as racist.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054Merch: 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 Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody this morning, including we have a new Twitter files drop, this one courtesy of Lee Fong of The Intercept, looking at how left wing protesters were targeted by Big Pharma for censorship. So that is an interesting one. We also have some updates on exactly how the potential Republican primary field for 2024 is shaping up some very intriguing new developments there. Updates out of Ukraine, digging into what exactly we can expect as we head into the spring. This is a fascinating story. So ChatGPT is freaking out a lot of university professors. They're sort of like upending their syllabuses, syllabi? Syllabi, I believe. Yes. Figuring out how to deal with this new technology. So we'll talk to you about that.

We've also got a little more airline chaos and some insights into exactly what the hell happened with that ground stop previously. Great guest on to talk to us about big food, something we have been digging into this year. But before we get to any of that, live show. Live show. Put it up there on the screen. Paramount Theater, February 3rd, Austin, Texas. At this point, you guys know the spiel. The link for tickets is down in the description of this video and or the podcast if you are listening over there. We've got a great show planned for all of you. Don't miss it.

Only a couple of tickets left. But with that, let's get to the Twitter files. This is a very important story. Arguably one of the most important ones yet that has come out from the Twitter files. Been waiting a lot about COVID, vaccines, how exactly all of that came together. Lee Fong of The Intercept got full access. Just to preclude this, he says that he had no guidance or anything like that whatsoever. He had full scope in the ability to search the Twitter files and the archives himself. So let's put this up there on the screen. Just to be clear, he searched them, he put in a request with a lawyer. The lawyer would provide the results. And he also indicated he tried to do some additional reporting to corroborate what he was given from. Just to allay anybody who's saying, oh, he was handed this, et cetera. He says, quote, new piece from the Twitter files, how the pharmaceutical

industry lobbied social media to shape content around vaccine policy. The push included direct pressure from Pfizer partner Biotech to censor activists demanding low-cost generic vaccines for low-income countries. In 2020, it was clear that the pandemic would require rapid innovation. Early on, there was a push to make that solution equitable, an international partnership to share ideas, technology, and new forms of medicine to solve the crisis. But global drug giants saw the crisis as an opportunity for unprecedented profit. Behind closed doors, pharma launched a massive lobbying blitz to crush any effort to share patents or IP for new COVID-related medicine, including therapeutics and vaccines. The lobbying group that represents biopharma, including Moderna and Pfizer, wrote to the

newly elected Biden administration demanding any U.S. government-sanctioned country attempting to violate patent rights and create generic low-cost COVID medicine or vaccines, which developed Pfizer's vaccine, reached out to Twitter to request that Twitter directly censor users tweeting at them to ask for generic, low-cost vaccines. The reps responded quickly, and it was backed up by the German government. And a lobbyist in Europe specifically asked the content moderation to censor the accounts of Pfizer- AstraZeneca, and of activist hashtags. The potential fake accounts that Twitter monitored for protesting Pfizer were actually real people. He has one of those included of those. He actually spoke to this gentleman. It's a 74-year-old retired bricklayer in the United Kingdom. It's not yet clear what exactly the actions that Twitter took on this particular request. Several employees actually said in subsequent messages that none of the activism constituted abuse, but that the company continued to, quote, monitor tweets.

Additionally, Pfizer and Moderna's lobbying group fully funded a, quote, special content moderation campaign, which was designed called the Public Goods Project and worked with Twitter to set content moderation specifically around, quote, COVID misinformation. They spent some $1.2 million on the campaign, according to their own tax firms. The PGP campaign, which is called Stronger, helped Twitter create content moderation bots, select which public health accounts got verification, helped crowdsource content takedowns, and many of the tweets that they were focused on, some were genuinely like vaccine misinformation around micro trips, but others were in a much grayer area, including vaccine passports, vaccine mandates, policies that coerce vaccination. And finally, the Moderna

campaign included direct regular emails, actually with lists of tweets compiled by this lobbying organization to take down and others to verify an example specifically of one of those emails included in the correspondence. I mean, overall, Crystal, I don't know how you can't say that this is one of the most evil things yet that we have seen from big pharma. Like, look, even if you dispute or whatever on the vaccine, they clearly got together to try and make it so that any discussion of low-cost generic therapeutics, ivermectin obviously comes to mind,

efficacy regardless, at the time, it was certainly up for debate, certainly along with generic low-cost vaccines that were trying to be utilized by third world countries with generic pharmaceutical infrastructure like India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and specifically these companies to protect their own bottom line profit with U.S. government-developed technology, worked with Twitter in order to censor any discussion around that, something you cared about quite a bit at the time. Yeah, I mean, we covered this quite extensively, and part of what

we covered was the fact that the pharmaceutical companies were out and out lying about what the impact of having, you know, no patents and the ability of other countries to be able to manufacture these, what that impact would be and their capability to be able to achieve that. I mean, they were saying, oh, no, they're not. It's not possible. They don't have the technology to do it. And meanwhile, there was reporting in a number of outlets of like, no, no, there is a factory sitting here ready that could spin up millions of doses at low cost. They just need the recipe. They just need the patents lifted in order to be able to do that. Was any of that big pharma misinformation flagged or taken down? No, it was not. And that's part of what Lee lays out, if you put up this next piece up on the screen and his write-up here for The Intercept,

about how exactly this all went down. This public goods project that was funded by Big Pharma, Pharma said, oh, they just had a broad mandate. Anything they saw that was misinformation, they were meant to flag. Well, I mean, first of all, it's problematic that any of these groups has special access to start with. So let's begin with that. But then when you dig into what they were flagging, did they ever in a single instance flag the misinformation and the lies that were coming from big pharma? Of course not. But there was this effort to silence activists who were pushing for low-cost generic vaccines worldwide. And listen, you know, all of these things exist on a spectrum. So I don't think any of this should be censored.

But there are better and worse arguments that can be made for, you know, things that are just out and out false. Okay, there's an argument to be—do I agree with that argument? No, but there's an argument to be, do I agree with that argument? No, but there's an argument to be made. Things that are in the gray area, as Lee puts it, about really policy debate. I mean, I actually don't think that there is a good argument that you can make about that. Something like activists who are trying to hold powerful actors to account and you're doing everything you can to silence them. That is just, I mean, there is no argument anyone could make in good faith in that direction. Now, I do want to say, Lee points out, it's not clear what actions Twitter did or did not take in response to these requests. But he had a quote from a guy named Nick

Dearden from Global Justice Now about these efforts to silence activists on lifting vaccine patents in particular. And I thought he made a good point. He said, listen, to try and stifle digital dissent during a pandemic when tweets and emails are some of the only forms of protest available to those locked in their homes is deeply sinister. And I think that's a great point. These sorts of efforts at any time are deeply sinister, but especially at a time when you're limited in the forms of protests you're able to ultimately make.

That's all we had at the time. I mean, and even today, you know, the idea that one of the reasons that Twitter even matters, why do we cover it for you good people over there, is because it has a massive impact on the debate, on the way that public health authorities are thinking. It's like a glass view into exactly the hive mind of whatever the establishment is thinking. Being able to penetrate that hive mind is deeply important. And we can't brush aside even the policy debate because you have to consider this, which is vaccine mandates have a direct bottom line benefit to these vaccine manufacturers. If they are going to create COVID misinformation policy against vaccine passports, against vaccine manufacturers, if they are going to create COVID misinformation policy against vaccine passports, against vaccine mandates, and they're specifically advocating against policy which would impact their bottom line. Look, all of this could have been easily allayed. We could have probably had a much better conversation if there was no profit even to be had by the company, right?

Okay, so that's number one. So if profit is going to be introduced, then you cannot be colluding with the digital town square in order to make sure that you are taking off anything, even policy that you claim was in the best interest of your patients, your customers, really your customers. That's what all of us are. Whenever you're interjecting yourself directly into a policy debate. So I find this entirely despicable all the way around. I really do believe this might be one of the most important Twitter files, aside from the very first ones around FBI and government censorship. Why? Because it just shows you directly like a multi-billion dollar industry

through the fuse of government and lobbying campaigns, working with these people to create the rules. The rules are everything. That's the game in which all of us get to play. And it's a game that we don't have even a say of how it is. And I've never seen a more perfect example of like how systems can be rigged. And you also have to take it, I think, an even step back further from there, which is what does a true and honest open COVID debate look like outside of vaccine profits? We really have no idea. Like, how much closer does Paxlovid and therapeutics come to the fore? Do we even have discussions around vaccine mandates? I mean, in terms of the license for these doctors and others to not feel silenced in putting out alternative therapies or really just all kinds of experimentation, which, Frank,

again, is what you want in the middle of a public health crisis. I have no idea what that looks like, but I think we can be fairly certain that this same regime existed on Instagram. I know for sure anytime I used to post anything about COVID on Instagram, even to this day, actually, still get flagged. My account also hasn't got any followers, although our accounts have been suspiciously kind of tracked. And I think there's no—we have to suspect that it had some sort of impact, I think, on all the tech companies. And this is just a clear view into what that looks like, Crystal. Part of why I think this one is so important is because, I mean, look, we're about to cover another story about the vaccines and new data, raising new questions. Like, science isn't just a thing

where it's like, OK, you get an answer and that's it. And it's over. End of story from one study. I mean, this was an incredibly fluid, changing situation where you had new strains developing. You had a variety of vaccines.

You had different demographic cohorts. And what might be right for one demographic may not be right for another one. You layer on top of that a very fraught policy debate, entirely legitimate, whether whatever position, you know, you personally agreed with. I think the balancing of, you know, individual freedom and community responsibility, this

was complex and entirely legitimate source of debate. So for these gigantic companies to feel like they had any role or say in defining the parameters of that debate, in being the arbiters of what the medical facts were when things were very fluid and very much still in debate over some of the most contentious issues, you can see how this was one of the most problematic roles that Twitter and other social media companies ultimately filled. Yeah, absolutely. That's actually a good segue. Let's go to the second part here and let's go and put this up there on the screen.

This has been a big discussion in terms of COVID vaccination policy, specifically with respect to the bivalent boosters and the current recommendation of the CDC and the U.S. government that you go ahead and get a fourth or a fifth booster. So currently there has been a, quote, flag signal. The CDC and FDA have announced on Friday that their surveillance system flagged a possible link between the new Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent COVID-19 vaccine and strokes in people that are age 65 and over, specifically in the first 21-day period, raising a question in the surveillance mechanism of whether that stroke risk was elevated as opposed to days 22 to 44 post-vaccination, according to the CDC website. This is specifically from the CDC's own data for everybody, including YouTube, who is listening out

there. CDC's vaccine safety data link met the criteria warranting further investigation into whether the bivalent Pfizer vaccine led to a higher risk of ischemic stroke, which occurs when arteries pumping blood to the brain are blocked by a blood clot. Both Pfizer and Biotech said in a statement, quote, there is no evidence to conclude ischemic stroke is associated with the use of the company's COVID-19 vaccines. To also be clear, immediately afterwards, the CDC put out a statement, let's go to the next one up here, please, where they say that it is, quote, very unlikely that the booster carries a stroke risk after launching a review. However, that came just 24 hours after all of

this. Why does any of this matter? This is a perfect example of why lack of censorship around discussion around these topics is very important, specifically with regards to the bivalent booster vaccine. You can even put the original vaccine aside. The case for the bivalent booster was that it would specifically target Omicron and provide you better protection. We now know from a host of studies that have been done independently, if you are questioning this, I've done a monologue on it. Dr. Vinay Prasad, who we've had on the show, has written about this extensively. There is no difference in the amount of coverage that the bivalent booster provides people. Now, that doesn't mean necessarily that if you're old or if you're

obese or you have a pre-existing health condition in consultation with your physician that it may not be a good idea to get it because COVID could be particularly bad for you. But to then say, as we have seen now, multiple universities and colleges mandate that young people receive in some cases a third or a fourth shot just to be able to step foot on campus is totally absurd whenever you consider even the small risk signals that can be in there around myocarditis. And I think the discussion you are having right now, Chris, or you and I are having right here with this right now, we know that it's trepidatious, even in the current environment. And that's exactly what the problem is. Like, as you said, look, you know, these things change in terms of the vaccine signal and its efficacy and all of that. It was one thing when they

released it and then the virus changed. And then, well, it was a whole other discussion around lack of prevention, what it means, can it stop transmission? We have to have the ability to have an open and honest conversation because I could say with certainty that the way that the vaccine was sold is not how it ended up working out. I don't know if it was malevalent. I don't know if it was just lack of data. I like to presume good faith in general. But the point is, is that even having that discussion, I remember it very vividly. At the time, it was very difficult, you know, in order to have with folks, especially after I got my, quote, breakthrough case. And I was like, well, you know, I was like, I got some questions around what exactly is going on here. And that's fine.

That's normal. And also reflected in the data, only 4% to 5% of Americans have even received the bivalent booster after the U.S. government requested everybody get it. I mean, if 95% of people are telling you no to a quote-unquote government advice, that also shows a collapse of faith in the overall architecture. I think people just have a lot of questions about how much they really gain from this one. Yes. Like, is this really worth it? And I think those questions are entirely legitimate. A couple

things to note about this early signal. Number one, it is exactly that. It's an early signal for further investigation. It's not definitive or anything close to that. So I think that's important to point out. They actually didn't see this same warning signal in the Moderna vaccine. So if you have concerns and you were thinking about getting the vaccine, perhaps go with the Moderna one until they sort all of this out. And then the other piece that I think is important here that you're pointing to is, you know, the problem with the public health officials the whole way was that they really didn't trust the American people to actually be presented with the data and the facts as it is, whether it was

with regards to face masks or herd immunity or a number of other things, and be able to cope with that in a reasonable way. And because they sort of, we'll say, massaged the facts and at times outright lied to the American people, then that did degrade the trust of the American people. And it became a vicious cycle because then when the people didn't do what the public health officials thought they should do because they didn't trust the public health officials, then there was even more of an effort to, okay, well, we got to clamp down even more and we can't trust these people even less. And it led to this sort of vicious feedback loop. So what we know at this point is, number one, there's this early signal that they're going to investigate. And number two, this point is, number one, there's this early signal that they're going to investigate.

And number two, this was also, you know, something we covered here and Dr. Prasad talked about and you talked about as well, Sagar, is that these particular boosters receive very limited testing before they were pushed down. Now, that's not a different protocol than what is normally used for boosters or other sort of like related flu vaccines and other things like that. It was the standard procedure. But I think it's worth, as we're having all of these things stress test to look at the procedures and say, was this appropriate here? Is it appropriate in other instances? Or is this creating unnecessary risks that don't make sense? Am I the only guy who's shocked that all they need is to show some increase in eight mice in order to approve a flu vaccine for everybody? I mean, honestly, I was. Look, maybe there are much smarter doctors and immunologists than me that can tell me about why exactly that's actually a totally fine procedure, et cetera. But I mean, one thing that we all learn from this, our interview,

actually, I always recall with John Abramson, specifically talking about how peer-reviewed studies are based on data provided by pharmaceutical companies and how they can even hold back anything that they don't want necessarily to be peer-reviewed. And so that means that even the, quote, peer reviewers in Science or Cell Journal or any of these other prestigious publications, they don't even have access to the raw systems. I mean, the level of control that I think that many of these companies had, it was one in which we all kind of presumed good faith-ish. But, you know, in general, people trust the doctors. The doctor's like, hey, you should get the flu vaccine. I'm like, okay, whatever. You know, I don't think about it. They're like,

but then, you know, I'm reading this. I'm like, well, hold on a second. I'm like, what's going on here? It's like, is this how they all work? I'm like, what is actual efficacy? And I think the crowdsourcing of questioning all of this has made a lot of these people really uncomfortable because it's shaken that trust. And on an individual level, there are many doctors out there. I'm sure it's a pain in the ass. You know, I know many doctors watch our show. I'm sure it's a pain whenever people come to people like me or like, oh, what do you mean by that? Well, how does this work, et cetera? But, you know, overall, like, this is,

it's not necessarily your fault. It's the fault of, you know, the people at the very top. But it's still a problem that we all have to deal with. So anyway, I think it's a very important discussion topic. This is one that we'll continue to watch. We're going to try and have Dr. Prasad back here on the show just to explain everything that is going on with regards to policy and all of this and why it even matters. And the point is, though, is that from the first

segment, you had to be able to have these discussions because otherwise, I mean, the breakdown right now in social trust is catastrophic. Another key Dr. Prasad point, already people are wholesale rejecting the MMR vaccine for their kids. Measles is out of control through the roof right now because they don't trust vaccines, period, as a result of a lot of the COVID policy. You could say they're idiots, but that's not going to change their mind. So we got to come to something here

or we're going to have even more catastrophic public health problems as we go forward. So at the same time, there's a lot unfolding on the political front as the 2024 field is starting to shape up on the Republican side. Interesting moment over on Fox News, of course, we've been covering many others as well. Is Trump in a weakened state? Is he vulnerable to a primary challenge? challenged. And of course, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's actually now governor of Arkansas and was previously press secretary for President Trump and, you know, very like well-known face of the Trump administration, let's say, she got asked whether she is supporting former President Trump

for 2024. And she would not say, take a listen. Your bio on your official page as governor describes you as a, quote, trusted confidant of President Trump. Have you talked to him about his 24 run? Will you endorse him in that? My focus right now has been on 2022, winning the election in November, preparing through transition and getting ready to take office as I did this past week. I love the president, have a great relationship with him. I know our country would be infinitely better off if he was in office right now instead of Joe Biden. But right now, my focus isn't 2024. It's focusing here in Arkansas and doing what we can to empower the people. What kind of timeline would you have for making a decision? Do you want to see who else gets into the primary? Will you wait for the nominee?

Again, my focus isn't on 2024. It's on what we can deliver in this legislative session. So just total Stonewall won't say. Let me tell you, Crystal, I worked with her for a long time. That lady knows exactly what she is saying. She parses every single word. You can say what you want. I actually think she was quite good at her job. She was put in a pretty impossible situation. She was one of the only Trump people to ever face the press, if you'll remember in those regular press briefings. And she was, look, she chooses every word extraordinarily carefully. The fact that she didn't say yes, absolutely, and affirmatively tells you a hell of a lot about what's happening. Yeah. I also wonder if Asa Hutchinson, who is a former governor of Arkansas, senator of Arkansas, he has basically said he wants to run.

And, you know, I mean, Asa Hutchinson is a minor figure in terms of the national political scene. But Sarah Huckabee Sanders is now governor of Arkansas. And those local political connections matter a lot. So I wonder if that isn't also a factor in her, you know, holding her fire and, you know, being unwilling to come out full throated for Trump. But whatever is going on behind the scenes, that is not a good sign for Trump. On the other hand, there are some interesting other things happening in this race. Axios had a report about how the field is kind of frozen at the moment as people wait to see what happens with Ron DeSantis,

who, of course, is the most credible challenger to Trump at this point. They say questions about his political resilience and fears of going toe-to-toe with former President Trump have all but frozen the 2024 Republican field, delaying most of the leading prospects' timelines for entering the race. Despite dominating polling among Republicans looking for a Trump alternative, DeSantis has not been tested in the cleeg lights of a presidential election, his Republican detractors see him as a paper tiger who lacks the charisma necessary of a national campaign. Scott Jennings, Republican strategist sort of affiliated with Mitch McConnell, says everyone not named DeSantis is having a hard time figuring out their way around him. So they're waiting for him to screw up or fade.

But so far, he's doing neither. Another advisor said that no one wants to take flings and arrows from Trump, whether they get in early or late isn't going to matter if they have a built-in network of donors. DeSantis himself unlikely to make a final decision about running in and take all of Trump's fire early on. And at the same time, you know, they're kind of waiting to see, okay, what does DeSantis do? Let's let him get in. Let's let him take the fire and see how he fares. And maybe we can sort of slip in while all of that commotion is going on and avoid scrutiny. So I think the basic dynamics here are people are still afraid of Trump, bottom line, and they're afraid to come in and be one-on-one against him and go toe-to-toe with him right now and take whatever he has to throw at them. And I think that's a telling sign as well. I think it's a correct move too. I mean, this is also why, Crystal, if you remember after the Mar-a-Lago raid, we were like, look, if you're Trump, you should announce for president like right now. You party entirely

united against him. The fact too, that you can take such a massive beating in the midterms, which was a direct repudiation of Trump, stop this deal, not necessarily like Trumpism or whatever. Whatever that means at this point. Such a thing. But look, I mean, clearly it was not good for Trump. And you can still announce your candidacy and now have not a single person jump in against you. Well, that's a lot of power.

And I was reading on my friend Gabby Orr. She now works over at CNN. We forgive her. And she's a very good reporter. And what she specifically focuses on the GOP and 2024. And she was like, look, at this point, if you look back at the 2016 cycle, you had multiple candidates who had jumped all into the race on the GOP and the Democratic side too,

if you consider after 2020. So what is happening? We are seeing a total freeze out. And the longer that it goes, I mean, it's not a joke to just run for president. You need to raise millions of dollars. You have to hire a bunch of people. You need to get a ground game together. Then you need to come up with a strategy from Iowa and New Hampshire, whatever the calendar exactly will be in 2024. It actually does take about two years to actually do properly. And here's the other thing. There's been no exploratory committees that have been formed by Ron DeSantis or any of those people. Sure, they might have outside super PACs and all of that, but it's not even close to the level of what it looks like when somebody's actually going to run. And it's because they're afraid, you know, their infrastructure

is one of those where it's going to just be very difficult to take on Trump, especially when you're the, it's like a first out the gate problem. The first person is going to draw the most amount of ire and you have not yet seen any enough upside potential to actually challenge him. Yeah. We saw those comments right after the midterms where DeSantis got asked about the record and Trump in the midterms and whatever. And he had that comment that was like, well, look at the scoreboard.

That's it. That's all he said. And I think that's also very telling. Because again, look, the problem for DeSantis is him on his own doing his thing and riding the culture war outrage of the day that has served him very, very well. That is a very, very different thing than actually going up against Trump and being able to pull that off. Clearly, he's reluctant. I mean, there's just no

other way to judge what's happening right now. And the other thing is, look, maybe Trump is going to hit another really difficult maybe if he gets indicted, maybe that's another low point for him. But to be honest with you, I actually think that ball would bounce in the other direction of kind of strengthening his hand. Because again, he can say like, they're coming after me and it's a witch hunt and whatever. And just like when the raid of Mar-a-Lago happened, many of the would-be challengers will be forced to kind of bend the knee. He was in this uniquely vulnerable moment right after the midterms. I mean, it was as clear a repudiation of him as it could possibly be. It was as clear a sort of bolstering of DeSantis as it could possibly be. And the fact that they didn't take that moment of unique vulnerability

for Trump and do anything with it may end up being a real missed opportunity. But again, listen, I'm just guessing. Who knows? Like I said, maybe there's more to come out. Maybe there's more that weakens him. You do see Sarah Huckabee Sanders and others reluctant to actually affirmatively get on board. That is a sign of weakness. He didn't move any votes, really, in the whole Kevin McCarthy speaker saga. That also is a sign of weakness. But I don't know. I think they kind of let the moment pass without wounding him in a way that would make it possible to ultimately take him out.

At the same time, Trump is potentially using some of his proxies to go after DeSantis in a way that's kind of interesting. So Kristi Noem, who is governor of South Dakota and has her own potential presidential or vice presidential ambitions, has been taking some interesting shots at DeSantis. Let's put this up on the screen. So this was sort of interesting. So the headline here at Daily Beast, inside the one-Way Feud Between Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem. Basically, earlier this month, Noem's press secretary kind of out of nowhere took this shot at DeSantis over his stance on abortion. So this was for an article in the National Review ostensibly about, quote, the transgender lobby'sized Influence in South Dakota. And within this article that, again, was about something completely different, her press secretary said,

Governor Noem was the only governor in America on national television defending the Dobbs decision. Where was Governor DeSantis hiding behind a 15-week ban? Does he believe that 14-week-old babies don't have a right to live? According to three GOP sources with behind the scenes knowledge, Noem has Trump's blessing to take some shots across the DeSantis bow and Noem's efforts have not been going unnoticed as Trump continues filling out his VP shortlist. So their reading of this situation is basically she wants to be Trump's VP. She's sort of doing some of his dirty work right now, taking shots at DeSantis over a potential vulnerability with him with the Republican base,

which is he has not gone certainly as far as a Mike Pence or a Kristi Noem in terms of wanting to ban abortion altogether. Smarter positioning in terms of general electorate could be challenging for him with the Republican primary electorate ultimately. So some interesting like proxy fighting going on there. Yeah, I don't know how that one works out. I really don't. I mean, with Noam, she's a narcissist. She's just still very upset that she's been attacked by a lot of the GOP base. And she always wanted to be the DeSantis figure that DeSantis is right now.

A lot of that, frankly, is political talent. But you also look at what she's doing and clearly the proxy war itself, even that, you know, it's all under the radar. It's all just like veiled barbs. It's like at a certain point, you got to come out and just do it. Just say it. Yeah. I think at the same, ultimately, this is all just a sign of Trump's strength. Like he is the single North Star, the overall orientation. He is winning, you know, by a mile. We have this poll, we can put it up there on the screen from Morning Consult. For all the polls that show DeSantis doing well, I mean, I wouldn't hate to beat DeSantis in this poll, but what does this show you for those who are watching?

Donald Trump from Morning Consult. Latest one, 46% of likely Republican primary voters. Ron DeSantis, 33%. Mike Pence at nine. Liz Cheney at three. Nikki Haley at two. Ted Cruz at two. And then various other candidates below that one. So who would you rather be?

Honestly, I mean, those top three are all the three I would, I mean, Pence I don't think has a chance in hell, but his 9% does just show you the strength still of the evangelical base. If anything, it'd be good for Ron DeSantis if he jumped in because he wouldn't have to then, you know, go after the evangelical vote. However, with Trump himself, I mean, his level of strength is just so, it's so, he's got such a sizable portion with 46%. Now, look, clearly Mike Pence has a little bit of strength there with the evangelicals, but Ron DeSantis, the case is always very difficult to make. With Trump at 46%, sure, we could see a scenario where DeSantis is able to cobble together and get over 50, but he'd have to be the only one that's in the race. Given how much narcissists these people are, there's no way that's going to happen. You think they're just going to fall on their sword and be like, yes, Ron, you're

the chosen one. Look at Kirsten. She's like, no, it's my turn. Mike Pence, no, it's my turn. Nick, Liz Cheney, I get, you know, good luck in that one. But the point is, is that the individual, it's almost like a prisoner's dilemma. It's just always going to lead, I think, to Trump's nomination. Could be wrong, could be totally wrong, but he's a lot of strength right now. Yeah, I think the fact that they're all waiting and too afraid to dip their toe in the water is very revealing. I'm actually talking in my monologue today about some very clear signs Glenn Youngkin is planning to run and sort of like, you know, he's not interested in Virginia politics. And Virginia governors can't run for second terms anyway. Now, he could potentially make a Senate bid or something like that. But he clearly has his eyes on the national prize. So

he's another one who, you know, again, has sort of imagined himself since he was able to win in Virginia, which had become an increasingly blue state, that he might be the one. So these people are not just going to ultimately go away. It is worth noting in that morning tracker consult, Kristi Noem is at zero percent. Yeah, exactly. So the play for VP might be the move for her. This is interesting, and this actually tracks with the Kristi Noem proxy war taking the shots at DeSantis over abortion. Donald Trump went on with David Brody and got asked about evangelical voters and evangelical leaders. after he put three Supreme Court justices on the bench who ultimately were able to overturn Roe versus Wade, that some of them were showing a bit of disloyalty by not backing him immediately.

Let's take a listen to that. You were the ultimate fighter, the ultimate counterpuncher for sure. And that makes me think of evangelicals, why they loved you twice in those elections. And you announced when you announced your candidacy, at least as it stands now, some of these prominent evangelical leaders who backed you last time, they're not yet willing to commit, like Robert Jeffress is not, some others. It seems like many of them are waiting to see how the field takes shape before backing anyone. What is your message to them?

Well, I don't really care. Look, that's a sign of disloyalty. There's great disloyalty in the world of politics, and that's a sign of disloyalty, because nobody, as you know, and you would know better than anybody because you do such a great job, nobody has ever done more for right to life than Donald Trump. I put three Supreme Court justices who all voted, and they got something that they've been fighting for for 64 years or many, many years. Right.

And nobody thought they could win it. You know, they won. Roe v. Wade, they won. They finally won. And, you know, I was a little disappointed because I thought they could have fought much harder during the election, during the 22 election, because, you know, they won and a lot of them didn't fight or weren't really around to fight. And it did energize the Democrats.

But a lot of the people that wanted and fought for years to get it, they sort of, I don't know, they were there protesting and doing what they could have done. But with all of that being said, there's nobody that's done more for the movement than I have. That's a very interesting answer. Isn't it? Disloyalty.

That one's going to hit home, I think, with a lot of these, especially after he came out and blamed pro-lifers for the midterm results. Don't forget that. We covered that, I think, a week or two ago. And look, I mean, Trump, he's in an interesting spot where, at the same time, we shouldn't, even evangelical leaders may not endorse him. voters have always loved trump in fact this is a huge uh thing on the evangelical like intelligentsia right they're like evangelical voters have abandoned their principles for their support of trying in some cases in 2019 and on where they were some of the most enthusiastic people yeah back trump will trump's comments

have a backtrack on them i don't know know, it really is one of those where without the Roe versus Wade remaining on the ballot effectively with the Supreme Court, will they still come out and, you know, crawl across broken glass to vote for Trump, especially in a primary? It's difficult to say, but he does have a good case. He's like, I'm the one who delivered, not Mike Pence, not any of these people. I thought the way he framed these comments, especially when you match them together with what Kristi Noem's press secretary said. Remember, what she said was Governor Noem was the only governor in America on national television defending the Dobbs decision in kind of taking a shot at Ron DeSantis. And you can hear an echo of that in what Trump is saying here. He's like, I got it done. And then you all didn't defend it. And so where were you? The Democrats were way more aggressive. And so this is his own spin on what happened in the election, which, of course, you know, denies any of his culpability in the situation, but also frames him as both a sort of like pro-life warrior, but also blames people like Ron DeSantis who for not ultimately defending the decision once it came down.

So I thought this was very, I would guess that we're going to hear more of this line of attack from Trump of basically like, listen, I got the thing done. You all wanted done. And then none of y'all went out in front of the cameras to ultimately defend it. You ran and hid. And of course, we all know why, because it was wildly unpopular. And so that's why there were very few Republicans anywhere who really wanted to touch it with a 10-foot pole. Yes, pay very close attention, because if Mike Pence does end up running, you're going to be hearing this all day long, and a lot of this on conservative media. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Ukraine. Some interesting developments happening

in Ukraine. There's long been a quote-unquote Western tank taboo. Ukraine has always been very upset by this. They want armored tanks, armored vehicles, troop carriers, and others provided by the U.S. and by the West. And it seems that that taboo is breaking, not necessarily from the U.S., of which we are providing some armored fighting vehicles, but specifically the provision of tanks to Ukraine to be used in their upcoming offensive provided by the British government. We have a little bit of voiceover here. The British government put out a video where they were showcasing their tank. They had kind of a snarky tweet, and they also put together like a compilation, I guess, of a tank being badass. It's the challenger, too.

I personally, I love tanks. I think they're really cool from their inception onward. There was a lot of discussion in the history of warfare around whether tanks were obsolete. I would say they're never obsolete. You can go look at the battlefield in Ukraine and why they want them. Yeah, they've certainly mattered here. However, geopolitically, why does any of this matter? Because, let's put this up there, Rishi Sunak and the conservative government over there

are making an affirmative choice to actually do two things. Number one, provide, obviously, a couple of tanks to Ukraine. But number two is that these 14 tanks are specifically being taken away from the fighting capability of the Western NATO stock, something that the UK itself would use in battle if called to, instead of stuff that we mostly have in storage, weapons, ammunition, more things that can be resupplied much more easier. I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that the supply chain and creating a tank maintenance and all that is actually incredibly difficult, part of the reason why many countries don't have the most advanced ones, even here,

our own Abrams tanks. The question around this is, is this a symbolic gesture, or is this going to make a major strategic difference? Time will tell. I've seen a lot of different military analysts. On the one hand, you've got 14 Challenger 2 tanks. That's decent firepower, but we have to talk about maintenance. What if one of them gets hit? One of them gets hit by a mine? What if, or do you have the right mechanics to make sure these are highly specialized pieces of equipment? The electronics, all of that. Obviously, the Russians have a ton of materiel, but a lot of their stuff has been breaking down. Clearly, Ukraine's been getting stuck in the mud, has not been utilized to its most effect. There's also a

big discussion right now around tanks being provided by Poland. There's a big decision point actually for the German government because the Germans providing poles with the tanks and the poles want to give those tanks to the Ukrainians, but they can't do it without the Germans. There's also consternation in Germany right now because their defense minister actually just resigned yesterday, mostly over criticism of Ukraine. I'm not going to pretend to be an expert. A lot of it is the idea that she wasn't serious enough of a candidate to be in the job, though she was very trusted by the chancellor. Overall, provides a big decision point also for the United States, for France, and for other Western countries which do have these tanks. Are they going to take

stock of vehicles and other things, which most would say are pretty critical to the readiness of the US military, the UK military, and directly provide those to Ukraine on the battlefield? But the Ukrainians are hailing this as a major victory because the ability to have combined armed force combat and all that and move as a unit, this would lengthen their ability to break through in terms of Russian lines and take even more territory. Right now, they're more limited by how much they can walk. That's been something, you know, kind of a reversion to pre World War II type warfare. And a lot of the tactics that we developed for World War II and

kind of onward in terms of battlefield ones rely very much on tanks and armored vehicles in order to break through a line and then take as much territory of that as possible into the enemy's territory. So it's a significant decision regardless because it could presage even more tanks that go over to Ukraine. Yeah, I think it's a real open question how much of a difference this makes on the battlefield. I think what is a lot clearer is a couple things. Number one, you know, we continue to up the ante in terms of the types of weapons we are willing to ship. This was a non-starter

at the beginning of this conflict. Yeah, just six months ago. The idea of the, you know, the NATO alliance ship, anyone in the NATO alliance

shipping tanks was, you know, something that was completely out of bounds. We also are training Ukrainians, which we're going to get to in a moment,

on our own Patriot missile system. This was also something that at the beginning of this conflict, we're like Ukrainians, which we're going to get to in a moment, on our own Patriot missile system. This was also something that at the beginning of this conflict, we're like, no, that's too far. That'd be too much of a provocation for Russia. So we have seen throughout this conflict the way we increase and increase and increase what we are willing to do step by step by step. And this is a particularly significant step that we and our allies in the UK are taking here. The other piece is, as you were pointing to, Sagar, and there was a guy named Jack Waddling, Senior Research Fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, who described this as a hard fork in the road. Why? Because he writes, for months they have gifted equipment that they have held in storage.

Now, although these donations have been expressed in dollar terms, few of them have incurred heavy financial costs to donors. As donations begin to push into critical fleets and stockpiles, however, Ukraine's partners face the need to invest in regenerating their capabilities as well as supporting Ukraine. Now, he is very much in favor of this. He says, in a challenging financial environment, they have tried to defer this decision, but if they want a Ukrainian victory, then they can defer it no longer. But whether or not you agree with his analysis that this is the right thing to do, he's saying we're now at this place where you're no longer just taking what you had in storage and sending it over. Okay. And this also tracks with what Carlos del Toro, who's the Secretary of the Navy,

said, and then had to kind of walk back about how this is starting to eat into our own capabilities and our own stockpiles. So everyone is looking forward to what's going to happen in the spring. What sort of an offensive is Ukraine going to be able to mount? What is Russia ultimately planning? You know, are they going to have another round of conscription? Are they going to be able to sort of get their act together and push forward and reclaim some of the territory that they had lost after they initially took it? Those are really open questions. And the fact that Ukraine has had a lot of the momentum for this entire war does not mean that that will necessarily continue indefinitely. Yeah. And let's go to the next one here. This fits, again, with an affirmative decision to provide more advanced weaponry. The Ukrainians actually just arrived in Fort Sill, Oklahoma

yesterday to begin training on the Patriot missile system. Now, let's also be clear, it's going to take a long time for these troops to learn how to use the Patriots. And there's also a lot of questions as to whether they can even do it without the United States. One of the original reasons we didn't want to provide Patriot missile defense systems to the Ukrainians was because it was said by the U.S. military specifically we wouldn't be able to do so without having U.S. troops on the ground to operate them and in order to take care of them. These are very sensitive pieces of equipment. Whether that will remain the case or not, I think we'll all keep our eyes very open. Let's go to the next one here. Why does any of this matter in terms of the tanks

and more? Ukraine is preparing for the new offensive right now as Russia and Belarus are beginning joint drills. There's been a lot of questions around Belarus about a potential draft, about potential massing of troops on that side and some sort of dual, like an official, you know, dual alliance against Ukraine beyond just political support for the war. It's complicated too by the fact that a lot of Belarusians don't want anything to do with the war in Ukraine and they specifically don't want to be drafted to fight into it. Will Putin force the government there in order to acquiesce and to join him in some sort of Soviet Union type thing. I have no idea how exactly that would do, especially maybe to try and take some of the pressure off of the front line where

it is right now. I think what we do know is very clearly the Ukrainians are doing their absolute best. They're doing forest cleaning. They're doing a lot of drills. But the most significant thing that they remain is clamoring for as much firepower as they can on the world stage. Zelensky at Davos this week, making the same case, more weapons, more weapons, more weapons. Here he visited the US, number one message, I needed more, I need even more. Even the Patriots is not enough, quite frankly, what he said in his speech. Allegedly, that's what he talked about only with Biden in his meeting. So clearly, they're going for broke in 2023, whenever the fighting season does come and the mud seems to go away. And we're not that far away. We're only a couple of months from seeing some of that

behavior actually happen. Yeah, there's a report this morning about how Ukraine and the Russia's war in Ukraine is sort of dominating the discussions at Davos World Economic Forum. Not only is Zelensky speaking, the First Lady, I believe, is there along with a top aide. So they're going full court press, as they always do in terms of what can you give us? We need more, we need more, we need more. Who can blame them? But that is the sort of state of affairs as we, you know, see what's going to come next in terms of this war that has been going on now almost a year. I mean, with no insight, sadly. So that's where we are as of today. Yeah, that's right. Let's go to the next part here.

This is some interesting news that was broken by Branko Marsetic. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. He actually found some diplomatic cables previously unreported that showed that Russia saw NATO expansion as a red line. Now, I want to be very careful in the ways that I talk about this. I am not saying in any way that it is NATO's fault that the Ukraine war happened. The Russians are the ones who invaded. They didn't have to do it if they didn't want to. So that being said, okay, let's take a step back though as to what are the precipitating strategic conditions through which the war broke out. It's like when you talk about the First World War. Yes, it started with the Archduke Ferdinand. It also started a decade before whenever there was a German shipbuilding program. And you'd be an idiot if you didn't

consider the latter. Why does any of this matter? So what they say, what Branko has found are multiple cables, let's say, from NATO allies, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway, all in Washington in the early 1960s and onward, that showed that the Russians believed that NATO expansion of any sort was seen as a red line by the Russian government, specifically also in the post-Cold War environment at which NATO obviously not only expanded beyond Germany, but included former Soviet republics and others in the Baltics. All of this has long been a point of consternation. It's pointed as one of the major breaks in the US-Russian relationship.

People forget, we actually had quite a good relationship with Putin in 2001. He was one of the first people to call President Bush after 9-11. He visited here. Bush famously said that he saw a soul in his eyes. Throwback to our great President George W. Bush. He really did well for us all. Anyway. Worked out great.

Yes, worked out great. And actually, the Bush administration is a critical turning point whenever we think about the history, because that included not only the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states, but that was also, a lot of people forget the Russian incursion, whatever you want to call it, into Georgia. Well, that was actually after the declaration that they wanted to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. It was one of the first times we had a declarative statement that they were invited essentially into the NATO alliance. And effectively, you know, relations between our two countries have dropped off a cliff ever since then. But I thought that these cables were worth looking into and more

because when you write the history of this war in 100 years, this unquestionably is going to be a key part of the discussion. As I said, for a decade or 20 years or so after the First World War, nobody wanted to look back at the British Navy and the German Navy and Austro-Hungarians and all the macro strategies. It took a long time before we were all able to dispassionately sit back and be like, okay, these are the precipitating environment which created the conditions that war could break out. And I think we're trying to do the same thing here just in real time, which is why it's very difficult. Yes. Well, and let me also say a few things. Number one, I mean, what comes out really clearly from these cables,

which, by the way, it's worth noting, were pulled from WikiLeaks. So we wouldn't know any of this without WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, side note. But what comes out really clearly is, guess what? We were warned by a lot of people, including our own officials, that this was, that NATO expansion, especially with regards to Ukraine, was a red line for Russia, and we chose to cross it anyway. Now, of course, the Kremlin and Putin, they bear responsibility for this war. But as we look at, you know, what's unfolding with China and what they are laying out as their red lines in terms of escalation, it is worth bearing in mind that there were a lot of people that predicted exactly this sequence of events

and that this would be the path we walk on to end up at another European land war. And guess what? They were right. And here's the other piece that I think is really important. Note the way that we have been gaslit to extraordinary measures by the press and by the political class to pretend that none of this discussion ever happened when we have it here clear as day the number of officials and world leaders who were saying we got to be really careful here and this could end ultimately really badly. Let me read you one particular piece here. Branco writes, in a particularly

prophetic set of warnings, U.S. officials were told that pushing for Ukrainian membership in Bronco writes, unfriendly public opinion in response. All of this was told to U.S. officials in both public and private by not just senior Russian officials going all the way up to the presidency, but by NATO allies, various analysts and experts, liberal Russian voices critical of Putin, and even sometimes U.S. diplomats themselves. This is also really interesting, and we'll just say interesting. Many of these cables that Branca was able to find were transmitted by then U.S. Ambassador to Russia, William Burns, who is today serving as Biden's CIA director. Recounting his conversations with various Russian observers from both regional and U.S. think tanks,

Burns concluded in a March 2007 cable that NATO enlargement and U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe play to the classic Russian fear of encirclement. Ukraine and Georgia's entry represents an unthinkable predicament for Russia, he reported six months later, warning that Moscow would cause enough trouble in Georgia and counted on continued political disarray in Ukraine to halt it in an especially prescient set of cables, he summed up scholars' views that the emerging Russia-China relationship was largely quite, quote, the byproduct of bad U.S. policies and was unsustainable, quote, unless continued NATO enlargement pushed Russia and China even closer together. So again, they knew they were warned by Russians, they were warned by NATO allies, they were warned by their own ambassador to Russia that these were red lines and that there could be real consequences and this could

create destabilization in Ukraine. It could lead to Russia feeling encircled and lashing out. Again, this is, I'm not denying them culpability, but don't be gaslit into believing that none of this discussion was happening and that people didn't know that our actions were incredibly provocative. Yeah, and then immediately after the war, we admit Sweden and Finland into NATO. So anyway, perhaps one day we will find out how wise that decision was. And perhaps we would have liked a little bit more discussion about it at the time before you end up in a general European war. Let's go to the next one, chat GPT. This is a very important story. I know that many of you are very interested in it and

the implications of chat GPT on our society. I have yet to see a major macro case or an institution that is bringing down except for higher education. And that's where we want to focus our energy today. Let's put this up there on the screen from inside higher ed. And it's where we want to focus our energy today. Let's put this up there on the screen. From Inside Higher Ed. And it's specifically about the major changes that ChatGPT is having, both on the way that people are creating a syllabi, but also in terms of how students themselves are using ChatGPT and how it's revolutionizing homework, assignments, the way that they have

essays written. There have been now multiple cheating scandals in which professors have suspected and have confirmed later that essays were written almost entirely by ChatGPT. They've also, though, been used by students in order to try and generate outlines. And it raises a real question of like, what exactly is the okay way to do this? I don't know. In my head, I don't know why, but creating an outline is just very different than writing the essay and then editing it.

But is it? You know, at the end of the day, if you're outsourcing some of this work, but how is that different than previously whenever you would go read, you know, an example essay or whatever, and then try and use that to, for your college work. And I think it just brings a lot of really interesting questions. Like what are the new standards? Like what is cheating? What's not cheating? On the one hand, this is an incredibly helpful tool.

People are using the first draft of their syllabi. They're getting bibliographical references. They're getting all this, you know, busy work and stuff, which was just nonsense while you were in college. And on the other, some people just don't want to do any work at all. Like, how do we come to any sort of academic consensus as to what this means? This is the first field where I've seen major consternation on both sides and a real grappling of like, oh my God, what does this actual open AI system mean? It is actually a really fascinating thing to think about. I mean, this is far from the first time that technology has made certain skills obsolete.

You know, you think about taxi drivers as one example where, you know, it used to be really critical. You have the entire map in your head and you're able to get around on your own. Like now anyone can pull it up on Google Maps or whatever your map app of choice is, Waze or whatever, and no problem. You don't need to know any of that. Obviously, there's been tons of advances in automation that have made certain job categories wholly obsolete. This is not a new story. Part of why I think there's a particular freak out over chat GPT, which for those of you who haven't played with it or haven't seen the discussion around this, basically you can give it a prompt and it'll write a whole thing for you. So you can be like, write a Sagar and Jetty monologue about chat GPT and it can do it.

And do like a fairly decent job and do it really quickly. So that's what we're talking about here. It's still in the early phases and it's not perfect. And you can read it and find some things that are like a little off. It has weaknesses in terms of, you know, if it's on a topic that is personal to you or it's sort of esoteric and there isn't a lot of data research out there, it's going to struggle there. But, you know, this is because a lot of the automation previously had made obsolete either blue collar or service sector jobs. This one is kind of coming for the knowledge workers. Yes.

And that's what is, I think, particularly making people uncomfortable. Now, look, in my opinion, a lot of our technological advances come with huge upside, but they also come with some downsides as well. I mean, you know, we talk about teenagers and social media, and is that fueling a crisis of loneliness where you're not really doing things in real life anymore? It's all just on social media. And that is that part of why you're having depression, why you're having more self harm, why you're having more suicide attempts. These are still open questions which are being researched and debated. But most new major technological advances come with big benefits and also some costs and some drawbacks. That's my guess of what this is all ultimately going to mean. I think that first piece that we had up there was actually very thoughtful in sorting through some

of these complicated issues and basically pointing out this is going to change the sort of skill sets that are valuable. So instead of, you know, just being good at like churning out papers based on previous research, it's going to be more about knowing what questions to ask, going beyond crowdsourced knowledge. So again, if it's not out there widespread already, chat GPT is going to struggle with it. So that's where a human being can have particular insight. They say leverage AI-generated insights into decisions and actions. So the AI can generate the paper, but then what you do with that in the real world, well, that's up to the human beings. They point out robots and automation did displace millions of members of the industrial working class. Computerization eliminated large swaths of middle management jobs.

The threat now is to the very knowledge workers who many assumed were invulnerable to technological change. And again, I think that is why this is particularly striking a nerve with people who have a lot of power and cultural cachet right now. Yeah, exactly. And actually, let's go and put this New York Times piece up on the screen because this example just shows you how much the technology is changing. So a professor said that he read an essay, which was easily the best paper. He said a red flag went up instantly. He confronted his student and the student confessed to using chat

GPT. He said that the best paper explored the morality of burka bands with clean paragraphs, fitting examples, and rigorous arguments. Alarmed by the discovery, the professor now has to transform essay writing. He now is going to have students have to write their first draft in the classroom using browsers that monitor and restrict your computer activity. Now, what's also happening is some professors are redesigning their courses, including oral exams, group work, and handwritten assignments instead of typed ones to make sure that you can't just copy and paste from ChatGPT. It's like a reversion. These are just a couple of examples of how they are changing things. Some school networks are actually banning ChatGPT on their Wi-Fi. Many schools and others have no idea how to deal with this because it's such a new innovation. And it's like I was saying around the rules.

Why is an outline better than an essay? I mean, in some ways, it's like if it's not your original work, then it is plagiarism. But you're not plagiarizing one person. You're plagiarizing the brainchild of the entire internet. A lot of this is ethics discussions as well. And I thought that the piece that we put up there first, the Inside Higher Ed one, I thought it was good. It was like here's how we teach reasoning, critical thinking skills, and all the other reasons why college ostensibly even should exist in the age of crowdsource information. But I can also see college bureaucrats and all of those just becoming very – I really hate these things that I see college kids have to do.

I know we have a lot of college kids who watch our show. I mean, I think it's insanity. You have to keep the camera on you at all times. You can't even go to the bathroom during this break. Here's the thing. All these kids, they're smarter. They know how to work around the rules. They only make cheating.

In terms of the cheating and all that, it's just like kids will find a way. So you've got to design the coursework in a way where it's not just rote memorization or anything like that. You've got to design it in a way where it's more valuable for what they're actually taking away. But I don't think college has been like that for a long time. I think you have to ask some fundamental questions about what it is you want the student to get out of this experience. And I think the response that professors are having is understandable of saying, okay, well, we don't want them just cheating and outsourcing this to chat GPT, so we're going to force them to do it in class. We're going to block it from the Wi-Fi. But I ultimately fundamentally think it's the wrong approach.

And you can think about it with regards to, like, calculators. Like, calculators used to not be a thing. And so it was really important that you know how to work out these long, complex calculations by hand. Now, it still matters for young kids to be able to learn the basics of math and numerology and how this all, like, fits together and have some conceptualizing of what these numbers are and what they do. But being able to work out all these long calculations by hand using a calculator isn't cheating if you're ultimately able to get the right answer and enables human performance. So I think it's a similar dynamic here where to try to fight against the technology and block it out is not ultimately going to be the right approach, nor do I think it's ultimately the most sustainable approach. I think you have to ask yourself, what are the skills that you are trying to get your students to gain?

What is going to be relevant in the modern world that they're ultimately entering? And then gear your coursework towards that. So like I said, I think it's understandable that this is the short-term reaction. Long-term, they won't be able to sustain it. Bottom line, it's be able to sustain it. Bottom line, it's not going to make sense.

And we'll evolve and figure out, you know, what are those skill sets that are going to continue to be really valuable and where human beings have, like, uniquely something to add. Totally. I totally agree with you. All right, guys, we have a little more airline chaos that we wanted to bring you. This audio just, I mean, it's just really fascinating to listen to because you had a near miss at JFK Airport where air traffic control had to intervene. And we got a hold of the audio.

And actually, someone put together a little animation so you could see where the aircraft, where the planes were as they're getting ready to taxi and take off. So very close to a collision here, and they had to intervene. Let's take a listen to how this all went down. Delta 1943, cancel takeoff switch. Rejecting. Delta 1943, same intentions. Yeah, we're going to have to go somewhere around a couple of territories and probably make some phone calls. So you can hear some cursing there, an F-bomb, an S-bomb. I got real close to a collision there right on the runway. And listen, I'm not an aviation expert.

However, I've learned a lot this year. But people who were pilots are really familiar with the industry. We're looking at this and saying this is probably pilot error in terms of where this plane was going and where it was supposed to go. But it does raise a lot of questions. How often is this happening and how easy is it for those errors to occur? What can we do to sort of mitigate these potential collisions? At the same time, we have some new reporting from our friends over at American Prospect about who exactly is to blame for that ground stoppage caused by a failed computer system. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. They do such a good job. The question raised here, what was behind last week's FAA breakdown? Pete Buttigieg's personal choices were certainly a factor. Basically, they go into who is running the FAA.

And again, as a reminder, this whole situation unfolded where they had to have the ground stopped because you had a key computer system that was down. So, you know, a lot of people in mainstream press that, well, this isn't really Pete's fault. What does he have to do with it? But lo and behold, his management of the FAA in terms of who, which personnel he put in place could have been a key factor here. The FAA was left for a while with a vacancy at the top for the better part of a year. By statute, the deputy administrator is supposed to carry out the duties of the administration when the office is empty, but that's not how the Department of Transportation

under Pete actually handled that vacancy. Instead, they passed over the deputy administrator, Bradley Mims, and instead appointed a dude named Billy Nolan, who was the associate administrator for aviation safety. So if you're following along, they had this vacancy. Rather than following protocol of who the position was supposed to be filled by, they jumped to this other dude. Well, why did they do that? According to the piece, quote, There's no real explanation for why Nolan was picked over. Mims both have decades of experience.

The most noticeable difference between them is that Nolan is a former airline executive who also worked at Airlines for America, a powerful trade group. The other one who should have been in line for the gig worked in the public sector in advisory roles and largely worked in transportation consulting. So he went to the guy who used to lobby for the airlines to run the FAA. And as Stoller pointed out, there's long been a really cozy relationship between the FAA and the airline industry. They have not served effectively as regulators. And that's part of why potentially, you know, there wasn't money in order to rebuild this key system and make sure that we didn't have the ground stop that we watched unfold. Yeah. I mean, what I take away from the prospect piece is Buttigieg just doesn't care that much about his job. He just hires cronies. And when you hire cronies, bad things

happen. They specifically point to the fact that FAA has been very reluctant and Buttigieg specifically to take on many of the airlines. And I think we started with the clip to show you like, this is not a joke. You know, people can die. One bad, one wrong thing. And a lot of people who are totally innocent can lose their lives, hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. And clearly, this is one of the most critical systems that we use in the United States. It's highly regulated for a reason. Now, look, it is safe. There are, of course, or basically reluctance, to put a strong person into the FAA was a personal choice that he made that has led to much of the airline chaos that we see in our system. You know, I just had somebody contact me yesterday about how Southwest Airlines was only going to reimburse them like $200 of the $700 that they

had spent. Here, here's what they said. Southwest canceled three consecutive flights. I had to drive from Chicago to Dallas in a rental after Christmas. Rental cost was over $700. They are only refunding me $201 despite providing receipts.

I'm absolutely furious. They destroyed his vacation. Now they're only reimbursing him, you know, two sevenths or whatever of the cost. You're $500 out of pocket. How many people are going to keep fighting withing him, you know, two-sevenths or whatever of the cost, and you're $500 out of pocket. How many people are going to keep fighting with the airline, you know, after something like that? Most people are going to get pissed, and then they're going to eat it.

And that's not right. Most people in this country, by the way, don't even have $500 in savings. So how many people out there did this happen to? And the person who is supposed to have their back is Pete Buttigieg, and he has done next to nothing. They have a great line in here. They say, listen, the system was suffering from neglect, which resulted last week in that mass grounding. Buttigieg not directly culpable for that specific failure, but he is responsible for the personnel decisions about who is overseeing the situation. He's also responsible for setting the tone of the interactions between the Department of Transportation and an aviation industry that seemingly distributes dividends

in a more timely manner than it transports Americans. He doesn't care about the job. He's bad at the job. He has done nothing to hold these airlines to account when they have failed over and over and over again and screwed over their passengers over and over and over again. Has to be the worst cabinet secretary or among the worst cabinet secretaries in the entire Biden administration. That's what happens when you use just like nepotism and cronyism to make these key personnel choices. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I just think it's totally ridiculous. And we're not saying he's solely responsible. But when you oversee an agency and you oversee and have one of the, you have the biggest ground stop since 9-11

in modern American history, two weeks after the biggest airline meltdown in modern memory, and a year after the worst cancellation year in modern history on record. Something's eventually got to be your fault for not doing anything about it. And do you see the aggression and the necessity and the urgency that we should need from the man who is solely responsible for running it? I know the answer to that. Indeed. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, there is perhaps no area where Biden has been more feckless than on the issue of TikTok that we've now known for literally years that TikTok is Chinese spyware. It was popular before he took office for sure. But in the last two years under him, it has absolutely exploded. Trump incompetently attempted to ban the app, did not succeed because he didn't take the government seriously. And Biden's core selling point was a return to normalcy and competence. Obviously,

that has been revealed as a farce, especially in light of his exact same classified document scandal from the previous president. But with TikTok, it might be worse than incompetence. It's both a reluctance to do something that is in the clear interest of America's youth in fear of a temporary backlash and an ongoing weak posture to the CCP. The latest gambit by TikTok is classic in their behavior under the Biden administration. TikTok does not even pretend anymore that they do not answer to Beijing. Their entire selling point to the Biden administration and to the West about why it shouldn't be banned is that while, yes, they're owned by Beijing overall, they have all these fake corporate processes in place to make sure Americans' data is totally separate. That's why they have a Singapore-based CEO, they run their data through Oracle,

and the key part of the deal that they appear on the verge of striking with the government allows them to continue operating under Chinese control. In exchange, as I've outlined here many times in the past, Beijing just keeps running the show. We're getting even more contours of what that deal's looking look like negotiated in a latest proposal by TikTok. The crux of the plan is effectively to let the U.S.-based software company Oracle look at their algorithms on how they choose to serve up videos and how they identify which videos to delete. Under the system, quote, third-party monitors would also be involved. The third-party monitors would then, quote, check the code for video recommendation algorithms to detect whether it's been manipulated by the Chinese government or other foreign actors who have access.

They propose, then, that if you find such access, you can then flag it. But who do you flag it to? There are a host of other provisions within the deal that are just fake. Lots of corporate speak about how the company will be totally separate, and they have all these processes. Except for one problem. Buried within the proposal was this. Any proposal by which TikTok would spin off and put all of its transparency in would literally have to be approved by the Chinese. In other words, they would have to have approval of any deal, which is supposed to show how they're not controlled by China, to be approved by China. It's a farce. Luckily, people are actually beginning to catch on. And even Democrats in Washington cannot deny it anymore.

Just a few weeks ago, President Biden signed into law a ban on TikTok for all U.S. government issued cell phones and devices, unanimously passed in the United States Senate. It actually specifically came after numerous reports that I've detailed here ad nauseum. How TikTok employees have pulled data on its users who report bad things about them, and also how the app was specifically caught spying on American citizens and gathering intense data on them that had no commercial purpose, but did have national security implications. The company itself has already admitted it has zero control over its domestic algorithm. One internal example, during the 2020 election, a tweak in the algorithm by Beijing reduced the amount of political content getting recommended

by a full 30 to 40% in the United States. Why was that done? Who was suppressed? How can we have any confidence it wasn't done at the behest of the Chinese government? Obviously, we cannot. The federal government ban, too, is only the tip of the iceberg. Nearly half the states in the entire country have banned TikTok right now, including those run by Democrats like Wisconsin. In nearly every case, the state governments cite the FBI warning of security risks to their devices as well as to their public networks, including now at major public universities across

the United States. The momentum is actually moving every single day in this direction. And consider that a year ago, not one state had even banned TikTok. We are now in half. Biden has a choice. He can be the person who will be drug across the finish line well after it has established massive market share like now, embedded itself in the sociocultural life of America's youth, or you can just nip it in the bud and we can all move on. Elon's been talking about bringing back Vine. We'll see. Maybe that's the solution. In India, where TikTok has been banned for some time now,

clones immediately sprang up, and nobody there seems to care at all. The innovation of TikTok is easily replicable. There is zero, I repeat, zero reason why we should allow it to be controlled by one of our major adversaries. And I will end to address the most common rebuttal. But Sagar, all social media companies are black holes. What makes this different? First of all, you're not wrong. And I would change that certainly if I could. But the US-based social media companies, as bad as they are, at least they are subject to our laws. We can subpoena them. Our oligarchs can buy

them and reveal their secrets. They can tell the government to screw off if they want to and have many times. In China, none of that exists. Their companies, their oligarchs, everything are property of the state, subject entirely to their control. They can ban social media apps specifically because they actually ban ours specifically because they believe we would use them to swing their public opinion. Should we be so naive then to think that they aren't doing the exact same to us? All these deals that don't either force a sale or ban TikTok outright are complete and total BS and do not let them or the Biden administration try and tell you otherwise. I feel like I have to do this once a month because once a month they try their chicanery. 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, I'm tracking a revealing new move from a potential Trump 2024 rival, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Here are the details. Virginia was apparently in the running to be the new location for a Ford electric battery plant. Needless to say, governors go to great lengths in order to attract these types of jobs into their own states. But here, Governor Youngkin has gone in the total opposite direction in what at first blush might seem a surprising move. Here's the Washington Post, quote, Governor Glenn Youngkin said this week that he had rejected efforts by Ford Motor Company to consider locating an electric battery plant in Virginia

over concerns that the automaker's partnership with China created a security risk. Quote, we felt that the right thing to do was to not recruit Ford as a front for China to America, Youngkin said Wednesday night to reporters after delivering his State of the Commonwealth speech to the General Assembly. So, basically, here's the backstory. Ford has been ramping up EV production to meet new demand and has a new financial incentive to do so with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. One of their partners in battery production is China-based Contemporary Amperex Technology, or CATL. Now, in order to obtain the Inflation Reduction Act credits, though, Ford is working on a structure that will put their name on the plant and retain 100% ownership of the building and equipment, but CATL would run the plant and they would own the tech. Now, listen, as I just

discussed with Sagar, I'm actually sympathetic to some of the national security concerns around China and key tech, especially with regards to TikTok. But this one seems like a bit of a stretch. With TikTok, there are clear issues around the Chinese government spying on American citizens. In this instance with Ford, it's a bit harder to see what the real national security risk actually is. First of all, this plan is going to be built either way, whether it's in Michigan or in Virginia. Second of all, this company, CATL, clearly already knows how to make electric batteries. So it's not like they'd be really gaining any sort of groundbreaking technical expertise that China doesn't already possess and, frankly, isn't ahead of the game on us vis-a-vis our own competence. When pressed on these questions,

Youngkin's chief legal counsel offered a word-salad answer that the battery plant involved, quote, national security risk-type technology, and he stopped that. Real persuasive there, buddy. The truth is the decision to block this factory, which could have provided up to 2,500 good jobs in Southside, Virginia, a distressed part of the state where people are desperate for solid middle income jobs, makes little sense from a national security perspective. And it makes absolutely no sense at all if you're concerned with your political future in the state of Virginia. These types of high-profile job-creating deals are what gubernatorial approval ratings are made of. But it makes a lot of sense if Youngkin is angling to run for president in a party that

is extremely hawkish towards China right now, especially since Youngkin himself already has a lot of vulnerabilities when it comes to his own business dealings with the nation of China. When you couple that with the fact that the factory would be associated with a Biden-passed deal, the Inflation Reduction Act, you can see why politically Youngkin decided to throw the possibility of 2,500 good jobs out the window in order to posture politically. Now, there's another factor here that's relevant as well, which is that Youngkin sees China as a key political vulnerability given his own business record. Remember, Youngkin became an extremely wealthy man from his time running private equity firm, the Carlyle Group. And like all good private equity ghouls, he became fabulously wealthy by shipping a lot of American jobs overseas. One particularly noteworthy deal

from 2016 included buying a controlling stake in the Chinese outsourcing business VXI Global Solutions Business LLC and proceeding to ship thousands of American jobs to foreign shores. This record obviously opens him up to a devastating attack of the sort that the Obama team used to destroy Mitt Romney. But it didn't come out much in his run for governor of Virginia. Why? Well, because his Democratic opponent, Clinton's sycophant Terry McAuliffe, was an investor with Carlyle Group himself. But Trump, he's already hinted that he will have no problem attacking Youngkin over his China ties. In what seemed like a bizarre, out-of-nowhere attack, Trump wrote recently on True Social that Youngkin's name, quote, sounds Chinese. An attack that makes a lot more sense

once you know these key pieces about Youngkin's record at Carlisle. Here is that truth from Trump. He said, quote, Youngkin, now that's an interesting take, sounds Chinese, doesn't it? In Virginia, couldn't have won without me. I endorsed him, did a very big Trump rally for him, telephonically got MAGA to vote for him, or he couldn't have come close to winning. But he knows that and admits it, besides having a hard time with the Dems in Virginia. But he'll get it done. Classic Trump. So basically, Youngkin's move to block this plant really has nothing to do with his concern for national security and everything to do with his concern for his own political career. In fact, in a telling moment, Youngkin even tried to spin his time at Carlisle working with China to outsource American jobs as a positive. He told reporters, quote,

I think I'm uniquely positioned to understand how the Chinese Communist Party works because I dealt with it and I understand what they're doing. I doubt, though, that Trump is going to let him wriggle out of his record as easily as McAuliffe and the Democrats ultimately did. Now, one last thing to note here is how the decision to block a high-profile job-creating factory reflects the triumph of vibes and aesthetics in politics over any sort of substance and reality. In a sane political world, the judgment of voters in the state you're running would be a thing that matters for national political ambitions. And there is just no doubt that as far as local Virginia voters in rural Virginia are concerned, Youngkin's decision is a terrible move. In fact, right now over in Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear, who happens to be a Democrat in a very red state,

has earned one of the highest gubernatorial approval ratings in the entire country off of attracting Ford battery plants to the bluegrass state. Bashir is literally right now the most popular Democratic governor in the whole country. Again, in spite of the fact that Kentucky shifted hard red in recent years. That is how powerful this type of job creation can be. He actually, Bashir, has the approval of nearly half of all self-identified Republicans in the state of Kentucky. But Andy Beshear is trying to get re-elected governor while Glenn Youngkin wants to get elected president. And so instead of delivering for home state voters, Youngkin is delivering for the shallow commentary of Fox News pundits who won't get past a simplistic China bad talking point. Is it going to work? Well, his reincarnation as a China hawk

after selling the American people out for fun and profit for years, will that sell in a Republican presidential primary? Remember that Youngkin basically had the field cleared for him in the Virginia GOP primary, and he was able to walk a careful line on what exactly he thought about Trump and any number of other issues.

I don't think this man has any clue what awaits him when he actually has to go toe-to-toe with Trump and the other Republican would-be contenders here. But hey, you never know. Seems pretty clear, though, he intends to try. So that's a big takeaway, digging into this thing. And there was a reporting this morning about exactly... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We've been talking a lot about health and fitness and about big food, its influence and its corruption of higher institutions. So we got a great guest standing by. Callie Means, he's the co-founder of TrueMed, really caught our eye with a viral Twitter thread about how he personally actually helped to lobby the NAACP and other groups in order to try and include sugar subsidies in the food stamp program. Let's put that up there on the screen. I even did a monologue on some of this. But, Callie, we wanted to sit and talk with you a little bit about this.

So, first of all, why are you coming forward now? Why is this something that you want to talk about? What has inspired you in order to begin this discussion and to really become a fighter for exposing some of the inequities and inadequacies in our food system right now and political corruption? Honestly, I had several experiences that I think a lot of Americans deal with. A close family member died of cancer and digging into that several years ago, my mother, pancreatic cancer is highly tied to blood sugar dysregulation, highly tied to food. She was one of the 50% of Americans who was pre-diabetic or diabetic. And when you peel back the onion, diabetes, heart disease, dementia, depression, many of these elements that are hobbling the American people are highly tied to our broken

food system, become very passionate about that issue and working to change that. And that really brought me back early in my career, working in politics, which inevitably leads you to consulting after the campaigns and sitting around the table with some of these food executives, some of these farm executives. And it brought back some bad memories I wanted to speak out about because I believe our food system is rigged and our health care system stands by and profits from that. They stand silent. I think that's all very well said. Let's just start with the basics. What does research tell us about sugar and the amount of sugar that the typical American consumes and what impact it has on their health?

One average child right now is eating 100 times more sugar than they did 100 years ago. This is evolutionally unprecedented. And, you know, the foundation of our diet, and it's really taken me a while to even understand this. We know our diet's bad, but the foundation is added sugar. It's processed grains. And processed grains didn't exist until 100 years ago. The processing totally changes it. It takes the fiber off, so it's shelf stable, but there's almost no nutritional value. That turns into glucose in the blood as well. It's hidden sugar, so it becomes addictive and very metabolically unhealthy. And then the third thing is seed oils.

You look at any label of any food, even if it's organic, healthy food, it's canola oil, soybean oil. These were also invented in the last hundred years, really propped up by grain subsidies and the food subsidies, highly inflammatory, highly processed. So our diet has become much cheaper. We spend about half on food as other developed countries. And a lot of processes that are illegal in other countries, this isn't from a free market. It's from a rigged market.

And that's leading to 25% childhood prediabetes, 50%, as I mentioned, adult prediabetes, diabetes. 93% of Americans right now have metabolic dysfunction. And that's the basis of disease and why we're seeing an increase in so many conditions, both large like fatigue and depression. You know, 25% of Americans right now are on a mental health medication, which is just kind of hard to wrap your head around, up until increases in, you know, heart disease, diabetes, those things that are actually leading to a lowered life expectancy for the longest period since 1860 in America. We're actually dramatically seeing, you know, life expectancy lower right now, which doesn't make any sense.

Yes, exactly. And it's like not just a COVID story. It's been happening now for quite some time. Been tracking it here for a while. Can you talk specifically about the political machinations that big food used? You know, you can talk specifically about the NAACP example. That was one from quite a while ago. But there's an ongoing problem right now in terms of Big Food leveraging political conditions to try and create subsidies for government programs and dupe the American public. Yeah, well, I think my experience in 2012 really actually ties very well today. So just real quick, the playbook I saw in 2012, as you pointed out a couple days ago, was there's a three-part playbook. We went directly to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation, very respected civil rights groups, and it was a

quid pro quo. Koch paid them millions of dollars and they labeled the opponents racist. There's a tweet in the New York Times that I put out for Contemporary from 2012 where it talked about this, and that shuts down debate. And then conservative think tanks, you know, I grew up conservative, you know, wanted to change the world. I interned at the Heritage Foundation like a good young conservative does. And I was despondent to see that we would walk in with soda executives, pharma executives to the Heritage Foundation and ordering a slanted study was very transactional.

And then the most important, I think, is research institutions. Coke and processed foods spend 11 times more funding nutrition research than the NIH. And that's led to Harvard studies saying sugar doesn't cause obesity that led to the disastrous food pyramid. But it actually ties to today. Now the preeminent study from the NIH and Tufts Nutrition School, it says that Lucky Charms are three times more healthy than beef and systemically overrates processed food versus whole food. And that's going into childhood nutrition guidelines today. And I think where this circle is completely finished is you have pharma profiting. Now, of course, you have pharma and the health industry who said nothing about 10 of food stamps funding going to

diabetes water now pushing the american people to pay for an injection a weekly miracle obesity cure for 40 percent of u.s teens 40 percent of teens right now are obese according to the cdc and we're being told by all of our elite medical apparatuses that we need to give them this Miracle Curl, which is a weekly injection for the rest of their lives. They're not able to stop it. Of course, that won't stop them eating inflammatory food, which damages their cells and will inevitably lead to a lot of other diseases. What do you think are solutions here? here. I remember back a while ago in New York City, there was an effort, I believe, under Michael Bloomberg to just like ban large vessels of soda, like the big gulp level of soda outright. There was a big public education campaign. They had all these like very provocative sort of ads on the

subway and other places showing how bad for you soda ultimately was. But what do you see as a potential solution? Because I mean, his effort to ban big gulps led to this huge culture war backlash and nanny state conversation and all of that. So do you think that's the right approach or do you have other approaches in mind? No, I listen, our kids are really under that. I think any parents sees that. And that's why this tweet resonated. Now there's a couple of things that I think are absolute by no brainers. And I think this is the bipartisan issue of our time. So first on, not even in the political sphere, I think Bill Ackman, you know, spoken out about this, retweeted what I, what I put and said,

you know, billionaires need to start funding, you know, class action lawsuit, because, you know, the only difference between what the soda companies and the cigarette companies have done is so does an order of magnitude worse. I mean, what these companies have knowingly done and the devastation they've wrought on really just the cells of our children, which has led to mass dysfunction. So I think that's a private sector route. I think you, I've interestingly been contacted by members of Congress on the left and the right. I think you have both on the left and the right, this new crop of members of Congress who are, aren't as tied to special interests a little bit more on the populist wing.

And they're actually joining the ad committee and joining, you know, really passionate about this issue and want to call Coke and Pepsi executives in. And then before we even talk about taxes, before we talk about bands, I'm actually a libertarian. I think all drugs should be legal but at the most but I don't think we should be paying tens of billions of dollars to subsidize them for kids which is what we're doing so let's reform food stamps again that that's it that's a program that 15% of Americans depend on for nutrition 10% of it goes to sugar water right and let's talk about the grain subsidies the grain subsidies are the absolute I believe

most evil and nonsensical public policy in America. We are subsidizing, right, the grains and the corn, which turns into high-fructose corn sugar that's weaponizing our food, that's directly leading to trillions of dollars of downstream medical costs to the American taxpayer. So it's like we're paying for it and then literally paying trillions of dollars to the point that it's literally going to bankrupt our country. You know, it's 20% of healthcare spending now, but healthcare is the fastest growing and largest industry in the United States. And that's not slowing down and we're subsidizing that. And the last thing, just real quick, is we've got to just ask from an incentive perspective. The problem with healthcare is that 95% of costs are interventions on people that are sick. That's how healthcare works right now. Every single institution is incentivized for more Americans to be sicker for longer periods of time. Now,

I don't think there are that many evil people in the system, but that's exactly what's happening. Incentives speak. It's larger than any one person. So, you know, my company's interested in this FSA, HSA, these tax-free accounts give consumers choice. You can actually use those for healthy food and exercise, which is where we need to get to. We need to actually subsidize and incentivize with healthcare policy, real root cause cures. So I think reforming and expanding HSA for this consumer choice and steering people to do root cause solutions is very important too. Yeah. Well, we really appreciate you joining us, Cal. It was a very informative segment and we appreciate it very much. Thanks, man.

Thanks a lot. Okay, guys, thank you so much for Cal. It was a very informative segment, and we appreciate it very much. Thank you. Thanks, man. Thanks a lot. Okay, guys. Thank you so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've got a great CounterPoints show for all of you tomorrow, then Breaking Points on Thursday. Don't forget about the live show tickets and all of that, and enjoy the show. It's fun to have CounterPoints on Wednesdays. I like it. Yeah, indeed. Love you guys. We'll see you Thursday. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

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Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars?

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