Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/9/21: Biden Flop, Elon Musk, Travis Scott, Buttigieg Doc, IDW University, Heating Prices, Woke Racism, Russiagate with Glenn Greenwald, and More!

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about the grim new polling for Biden, Elon Musk's tax avoidance, Travis Scott's role in the Astroworld tragedy, a new Pete Buttigieg documentary, IDW University launching in Austin, the upcoming Winter heating crisis, woke racism after Virginia, Russiagate fraud with Glenn Greenwald, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Lots of really interesting and important stories to get to. Elon Musk may pay a little bit in taxes. We will tell you why, because there is some dispute over exactly why he might pay a little bit in taxes. There are new revelations coming out of that Astroworld tragedy in Houston involving Travis Scott. New indications that he was warned beforehand about the size and the nature and the rowdiness of the crowd. So we'll bring you all of those details. New review of something I know you guys are all eagerly anticipating.

That is the release of Pete Buttigieg's documentary right up in Politico. It's actually kind of interesting. I expected Politico to just do like a total fluff piece. Sorry, fluff job. Yeah, but it is a little bit revealing. So we'll give you those details. A new university is being launched down in Austin, Texas with some members of what used to be called, at least, I don't know, they still call themselves the Intellectual Dark Web. Anyway, you know what I'm talking about.

We've got Glenn Greenwald on the show to talk about the very latest embarrassment for the media with regards to Russiagate. But we wanted to start with some additional just devastating poll numbers for the Biden administration. Right. And the way that we're trying to do this is not just focus on pure approval, but try to dig down into the core of what Americans' concerns about Biden are. And I think there is no more revealing one than this. So let's put this up there on the screen. This is USA Today, Suffolk University poll, which is that nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, said they did not want Biden to run for a second term in 2024. That included 28% of Democrats, so more than a quarter. And that opposition to Trump running for another term was also nearly

as high, at 58%. That included 24% of Republicans, so aka about a quarter. I think that just crystallizes everything in the problem with our politics, which is we had two options, neither of whom a lot of people really wanted. People felt trapped largely in reference to their cultural positions, and so they had to go out and vote in order to vote against the other guy. But when you look at that amount of negative impartisanship, that is not the place for a healthy democracy. And Biden in particular, since he's the president and he's going to bear the brunt of the national mood, and frankly, he should, is really showing people for a lot of those who showed up to vote for him, even though they kind of held their nose, that holding their nose was the right decision. So let's put this what up there on the screen, which is that nearly half of those surveyed, nearly half, 46%, said that Biden has done a worse job as president than they expected, including 16% of those who voted for him.

And independents, by a 7 to 1 margin, have said that he's done a worse job, not better than they expected. So that almost is the worst one, Crystal. Partisan Republicans are always going to hate Biden. Democrats generally going to stick with their guy. He's still got 84 percent there saying he's doing a better job. But amongst the independents have a seven to one ratio in terms of those who say you're doing worse than doing better. That is a total disaster. And it just reflects the mood of the country

about how things are not working the way they should. Nothing is happening here in Washington. All of the necessities and basics of day-to-day life I'm getting to in my monologue even more today. But it's just, I think prices are skyrocketing. Things don't work properly. And he's just nowhere to be seen. I don't even know what he did yesterday. Was he in he in front of a camera? You know, sometimes when we're planning

a show, we have to go dig around. We're like, did he make a comment here? Like, where is the president? I have no idea. Can we get some sound of him saying something for Trump? You know, better or worse? He always weighed in. He always had a comment on something. Yeah. No, that actually is a really good point. We use so little of Biden sound in the show. He's not anywhere. Not because we don't want to, but because there just isn't that much of it relevant to the topics that we're covering to speak of. And if you look into these numbers, too, and some of the other poll numbers we're going to get to, you see that there's a sense that he's not focused on the issues that people care about. And especially for people whose number one issue is the economy, they feel like he does not have his eye on the

ball with regards to the economy. And, you know, out of the gates, there was a very different sentiment. So it's not like, oh, he's just had a, he's just gotten a bad, dealt a bad hand here. National wins are against him. Coronavirus continues. Out of the gates, when there was action and there was a kind of assertive take charge, this is what we're doing. This is how we're getting back on track.

We're gonna get checks out to everybody. Everybody was feeling a little more hopeful, like things were headed in the right direction. His approval ratings were quite high. They were really quite high. He was very hard to demonize. Republicans had effectively at that point sort of given up on even trying to demonize him and make him into the villain. They were instead trying all these like, you know, absurd trying to tie, pretend like AOC is really in charge of the White House or something like that, which wasn't really working all that well. So it's not like this was inevitable. He allowed his agenda to get completely mired and bogged down in D.C. so people feel like you're not actually doing much of anything

except arguing and every week killing another popular provision of your agenda that we actually voted for and wanted to see implemented. He isn't visible in terms of sort of taking charge of where the country is going. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people feel disappointed. It was a low bar, too, that he stepped into. You could imagine another scenario where because, look, the pandemic's not over, but things are definitely improved from the worst of that crisis. The economic recession is not over. There are still a lot of problems in the economy, especially with regards to prices going up and supply chain issues. But we're also in a much less terrifying and better place than we were previously.

You could see how actually some of these trends could have inured to his benefit if people had the sense that he was on top and focused on the things that they are in fact concerned about at this point. That's what it really is. I believe he could survive all of this if he was just a semi-competent president. I mean, I don't know another president who came in with promise of all he had to do was get the checks out of the door and vaccines people's arms and like do some semi-competent legislating with a decent enough majority in the House and in the Senate. And he couldn't do any of that. It's amazing. And then in terms of addressing the basics, people know Biden is not paying attention. Take a look at the CNN poll, and you mentioned some of this.

The majority of Americans say that Biden is not paying attention to the nation's most important issues. And among those Americans who say the economy is the most pressing problem, aka 36%, among that group, 72% say that Biden has not been attentive to the right issues. That is the dynamic that is reversed amongst the smaller 20% who consider coronavirus the top problem. So Biden is doing fine on COVID. He's got like a 79% approval rating amongst Americans there in the CNN poll. But the more and more, and I keep trying to emphasize this, COVID is moving to the back burner in terms of electoral politics in particular. People are pissed off about the economy. Majority of Americans have the vaccine. Yes, you know, there are many people who are unvaccinated, hospitalization rates, et cetera. But that is on the back of the minds for

most. It's about school disruption. It's about I can't get the stuff. I can't go out to eat. Things are too expensive. There are all kinds of different problems. And, you know, when you go and you look at this in particular, what you find is that the number of strong disapprovals continues to increase, Crystal. 36% say they strongly disapprove of Biden's handling of the presidency. And that is actually about the same as whenever they were asked for the strength of approval in April. So he had an about switch from a 36% strong approval back in April to now a 36% strong disapproval here today in the month of November. And as things continue to trend that way, as more disruption in the economy continues to happen, which we will have, and I'm going to be talking about that

for household heating expenses in my monologue, but that's just one other facet of the household balance sheet. Almost every single day-to-day expense, everything that people are doing is more expensive or is inconvenient in some way. Nothing is going back to normal. The president doesn't seem to have a plan to get everything back to normal. So, honestly, this could not even be the lowest point. I really do think it could get worse, much worse, actually, for the Democratic climate in the midterms from a year from now. I certainly think that is a possibility. Of course, I don't underestimate the opportunity Republicans will, you know, do everything they can to make it difficult for themselves to make any gains.

I mean, listen, I think Democrats are screwed in the midterms. I've been saying that for a long time. We've both been saying that. Yes, that's right. I think Democrats are screwed in the midterms. I've been saying that for a long time. We've both been saying that since long before Virginia, not because of, you know, critical race theory in Loudoun County or whatever, just because if you look at the fact that 70% of Americans are like, things are not going well, we're on the wrong track. That is a devastating number.

President's approval rating, all of these indicators tell you that the party in power right now is headed for some devastating results, which is why, again, you know, those of us who wanted to see some things done for the middle class and the working class in this administration were like, the clock is ticking. If you don't do some things now, it is not happening because, number one, you are likely to lose power in the midterms and then you're done. Like the administration this four years is over. And number two, you're also relying in the Senate on a bunch of like 70 and 80 year olds during pandemic to make sure that, you know, their lives continue for your power. The actuarial tables are not in your favor. So even if you wanted to live in a fantasy land where Democrats keep control of the House and the Senate, that also would arc you in favor of getting your act together and getting moving. Instead, Biden bought into what has been

his ideology in D.C. for the 40 years that he's been there, this idea that voters are really going to reward you getting a handful of Republicans to sign on to some part of your agenda. Bottom line is people don't really care about the process of how things get done in D.C. They don't care about the filibuster. They don't care about the parliamentarian. They don't care if Lindsey Graham voted for your stupid bill. They care about what's going on in their lives and what impact they ultimately feel on their day to day. Is life getting better?

Is life getting worse? Do I feel hopeful about the future for myself and my kids or do I feel pessimistic about it? And by chasing the beltway bipartisan dream, Joe Biden destroyed his agenda and he destroyed his popularity. You know, there's been this like very insular debate going on about this notion of popularism. This is very online. Very online. But I'll give you the kind of top line. This is David Shore.

He's a pollster and sort of data analytics guy saying, listen, this is pretty simple. What Democrats need to do is just talk about the issues that are popular. And I would say the Democrats have talked about the issues that are popular. They've talked about paid leave, 80 percent approval. They've talked about the child tax credit, very popular. They've talked about negotiating prescription drug prices, also very popular. So they are talking about things that are popular, yet they are not doing well because they aren't actually delivering on things that are popular and that are the top priority for Americans right now in this moment. So I sort of feel like the landscape we're facing right now is an absolute rebuttal to the idea that all you need to do is talk about things that pull well.

You need to actually deliver things that not only pull well, but actually have an impact on people's lives. That matters more than almost anything else. Yeah, a friend of the show, Matt Stoller, has disputed popularism with what he calls deliverism. And I would add an addendum to that, which is also that, you know, these agenda items also might be popular, but you also have to be focused on the absolute near-term problems. And Biden is just absent on that. You know, paid family leave is great, but what about my gas?

You know, paid family leave is great. Child tax credit is great, but what about the price in the food? You know, in the grocery store or restaurant? Can't hire somebody. What about my heating prices? If you're not even pretending to focus on that, you could even try and pass some five-year program and it wouldn't matter. So it's a fusion of the two. And that is his why.

I don't know what their theory of politics is in the White House. I truly don't either. If I had to guess, they believe everything is downstream of the pandemic. So Pete Buttigieg, who we'll talk about later in the show, he gave a press conference yesterday. We'll get to a hilarious part of that one in particular. But he was like, look, you know, everything is downstream of the pandemic. If we end the pandemic, then we'll solve all of this.

This is not true. Like, it has nothing. The supply backlog at the ports, yes, it had to do with the pandemic. But, you know, people could not be getting infected by corona tomorrow, and there would still be a backlog at the ports. It's because the global supply chain has fallen apart over the last 18 months. Fixing that has nothing to do with the pandemic. So how about you do your job? I mean, Biden, too.

I mean, look, I get this isn't the presidency you wanted, but this is the presidency you have. And people need to be called and rise to the occasion. I mean, in terms of what you need to come through and do, he should be issuing executive orders day after day to try and ease the problems of corona. Every American knows how annoying and awful it is to try and go do something that used to be pretty easy. Now it's more expensive or it's not working properly, or there's some kink in the system, and it's just not going the right way. And that's why people have such a high level of dissatisfaction.

That's what he should be laser-focused on as president. You do that, and you pass paid family leave, you'll be popular today, and you'll be popular three months from now, or a year from now, or something. These are the issues. Their theory of politics in the White House, maybe there isn't one. I really just don't know what else to say. I'm mystified at how terrible they are. Biden is not exactly a visionary. No, yeah. I mean, he's not. And I don't

mean that as an insult. I think it's just a statement of fact if you look over the course of his career. He sort of governs by like a basket of slogans and cliches and like, you know, stories from his childhood and has a few core instincts, one of which is this obsession with bipartisanship that I think have hobbled him in this moment when, you know, I think whatever you think the vision should ultimately be,

the country is clearly searching to make a turn. They're clearly searching for a more visionary leader who is going to rescue the country from what feels like permanent decline. I mean, that's the sense that people get is this country is on the way down, is on the way out. And so they're looking for someone who has a clear vision of how we change that, how we make sure that this is a nation again that is at its core, not that we've ever really fully delivered on this promise for the entire population, but that at its core is about making sure that its citizens can pursue happiness and live good and fulfilled lives, both for themselves and their children. And, you know, I think, again, going back to the hand that Biden was dealt here, a different president who had that sense of

an alternative future and a real vision for how to get us there actually had all the tools at their disposal to maneuver things. I mean, you know, you've got a crisis situation, especially at the beginning. That's the point that Brianna has been making that, you know, in the must pass, like we got to get the checks out the door and we got to do some instant relief right at the beginning of the administration. You don't wait for the big agenda items till now. You put some of them in here so that you're not just doing an instant injection of cash. You're building something for the long term that has a bigger picture vision. So you're delivering in that way. You could have done a lot more with executive powers that he's extraordinarily reluctant ultimately to use. And then part of it

is using the bully pulpit in an effective way and giving people confidence that anything that you can do and is in your power, you are going to do to help them get through what continues to be a very challenging and unsettling time when, you know, yeah, we're out of the worst of the pandemic, but the inequalities of the country have only gotten worse. The rich have only gotten richer. Prices are going up. You've got a plurality of people who think we're headed into a recession in the next year. These are really bad indicators. And you at the very least have to give people the sense that you are on it and you are doing everything you possibly can.

And I think on that metric alone, he has utterly failed and is incapable of doing anything other than fail. Yeah, that's right. That is his greatest failure. Okay, let's move on here to the stock market. This is a fun one. I've went deep on this one. I'm sure many of you noticed Elon Musk's tweet there where he asked whether he should sell some stock.

We'll get to that tweet. But I found a very interesting piece in CNBC which sheds light on why all of this might actually be happening. So let's put this up there on the screen. Elon Musk actually faces a $15 billion tax bill, which is likely the real reason that he is selling stock. So let's get behind into this. And this is actually, I want to go into it because it's very revealing as how the ultra wealthy, the ultra, ultra, I'm talking, you know, top 10 individuals in the United States

who hold the most amount of wealth. This is how their income actually flows. So as Musk has said, he never takes any income. All of his holdings are in stock. Well, he was actually compensated in 2012 as part of a compensation plan with stock options because he doesn't take any salary or cash bonus. His wealth comes from stock awards and the gains in Tesla's share price. So in 2012, he was given 22.8 million shares at a strike price of $6.24 a share. Now, Tesla shares right now are like $1,200. So you can see the delta, which means that he has gained

about $28 billion off of that stock option, give the stock option dispensation alone. Now, because we are now nearing the options expiring date in August of next year, in order to exercise them, Musk has to pay income tax on the gain from that $6.24 to the $1,200 per share. Now, those are going to be taxed at the ordinary income level because he was explicitly granted the stock option as part of his employee benefit or compensation, which means that he now owes 37% of that money to the federal government plus a 3.8% net investment tax. And because those options

were granted in the state of California, he's got to pay 13.3% top tax rate to the state of California. All of that comes about to $15 billion. So that actually puts a lot into perspective, given what a lot of people thought was a surprise from this tweet. So let's put the tweet up there on the screen. It was tweeted like 40, 72 hours ago or whatever, where he says, much is made of rate lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoided. So I propose selling 10% of my stock, Tesla stock. Do you support this? He said he would abide by the results of the poll. 57, 58% voted yes. 42% voted no. I think all those 42% are Tesla stockholders because they didn't want him to see him sell about $20 billion worth of stock. But all of this is-

If you have a vested interest. Yeah. If you have a vested interest. Listen, I mean, Tesla people, I honestly, I wish I'd gotten in. You guys were hyping it up. A lot of my Bitcoin friends were also into Tesla. And I was like, I don't know if they can be right on both. I followed them on one. Maybe I should have followed them on the other. But all that being said, it's very interesting to me watching this happen because it is a direct view into how the Bezoses, the Musks, and all the Buffetts and all of them, the richest people in the world, how they actually, if they ever do, pay any tax. It's exactly through this very Byzantine and complicated grantee system of stock option here, and then the strike price,

and then it's actually expiring now, 10 years later, which means that he has to sell, which means that to do that, you have to pay a tax on that. Now, look, I mean, I think it's entirely fair. $15 billion in taxes sounds pretty reasonable, given the $130 or whatever, so that he's actually, I think, I forget what his net worth is right now, $300 billion. He's the richest man on the planet right now. Right, on paper. And that's the thing, too, about Bezos.

I mean, we know that Bezos himself granted like $80,000 in income, right, in the last time that he paid taxes. And at one point was even earning the earned income tax credit, which is like a particularly terrible one. Claiming his children as dependents. I'm like, yeah, they're real dependent there. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, first of all, imagine being rich enough that you just have to casually send the federal government a check for $15 billion.

I don't know, man. That would hurt. That would hurt a lot. And that that's actually way less than you should be paying and should have been paying over this entire time if you compare your wealth to that of the average family and what they have to send into the federal government. So that's mind-blowing, number one. But number two, Elon is maybe the most famous user of a very common tax avoidance strategy that we've talked about a number of times here. I know you guys love it when we talk about step-up bases. It's called buy, borrow, die. And what you do is you acquire an asset, in this case, you know, it's Tesla and Tesla stocks. You borrow against that asset. So you're

never actually selling the stock to cash in on those gains. So there's no taxable event. You borrow against that asset, so you're never actually selling the stock to cash in on those gains, so there's no taxable event. You're borrowing against it, and then you die. And when you die, you leave that asset to whoever your heirs are, and they benefit from something called step-up basis, which means that however much that asset gained over the course of your life, that amount of wealth is never, ever taxed. Democrats had an opportunity here to change that. Initially, when we were talking about the reconciliation bill and the pay-fors and all of that, step-up basis, changing those rules so that this particular tax avoidance strategy can no longer be used, that was on the table. Well, that very quickly became not on the

table. And that's why, you know, now we're looking at potentially rich people getting a tax break out of the Democratic. Most likely they will get a tax break. Out of the Democratic bill because of the SALT caucus. Thanks, guys. That was fantastic work there. And almost certainly the largest fortunes will be largely unscathed. So it leaves us in a place where, you know, we have to depend on Elon Musk's Twitter survey, billionaire, the largesse and generosity of billionaires to fund what, you know, their part in society. That's a ridiculous situation. And I think it's made even more ridiculous by the fact that it appears the whole Twitter poll angle was a bit of a farce since he was going to have to pay some chunk of taxes anyway. And he just wanted to get, like, the good PR out of being able to look at me.

I'm so generous. I'm not trying to avoid taxes. Like, you all said I should pay some. And I'm going to. I'm going to sell this stock. I'm so generous. I'm not trying to avoid taxes. Like you all said I should pay some, and I'm going to. I'm going to sell this stock. I'm going to pay a bunch in taxes. So it's kind of a gross situation. It's kind of funny.

You know, I actually saw a decent take. I think Kyla Scanlon, who I recently was speaking to, she's like a Gen Z financial analyst. And she was like, you know, if anything, because he probably was doing this in order to gain, I think, even more popularity for the stock and reach it to a meme status, which would then actually create more people buying Tesla because you could see that it was entering public consciousness, which actually make the stock price go up even more. So I could even see some sort of interesting angle from that

perspective. But I think broadly, nobody just talks about what you just discussed, the loans. Our friend Joe Weisenthal over at Bloomberg, there was a recent academic paper that was put out in which there was a proposal, which is totally illegal, you could easily implement this, is you could actually tax loans as income over a certain threshold. And so it would have the added benefit of actually going after the ultra wealthy because just like in the step-up basis, you can cap it. So it's like, or you could have a ceiling on which it would kick in, for example, to 10 million, right? So nobody's going to go out there and be like, oh, my mortgage for my $15 million home is getting taxed. I'm like, I'm

sorry. I don't feel bad for you. You're at $15 million loan. But anything above like a $10 or $15 million range would very obviously be targeted towards people who are borrowing against the state of their assets to avoid income tax. And you could actually just tax that at a progressive tax income rate in order to target that as well, which would almost certainly make them then sell their stock in order to pay the lower capital gains rate. But at least in one of those situations, some tax is being paid. So that's really what it is. And I know that people are like, oh, the government should stay out of this. Listen, the government's already involved. So really what it is, is that you're trying to structure incentives. Right now we have a situation where the richest people in the country don't pay any taxes, period. They have an effective tax rate of 2% to 3%. Do you think that's cool?

I don't think it's cool. I think they should pay something. Now, what we should do is use the incentives in this tax system to push their financial decisions such that they can still keep a large amount of their assets and also pay tax just like you and I can. Crystal and I are small business owners now. We can tell you a lot about taxes here in terms of how that works. And, you know, we don't get little tax breaks like that in terms of write-off or whatever that the ultra-billionaire class has to do. If anything, it's a massive burden upon people who don't even have the same resources. And so I know I'm starting to sound like a boomer, but that's what's happened. But there's something to

it. We don't mind paying the taxes. What we do mind is that the system is so incredibly unequal and unfair. And just to zoom out from the nitty gritty of tax policy, this has large scale societal implications. I mean, what do we talk about a lot here? What does regular media talk about a lot? The breakdown in trust, the breakdown in institutional trust, the breakdown in the ripping of the fabric of society. And when you look at a landscape where the richest among us are basically avoiding taxes altogether. Sometimes not even paying anything. Sometimes literally, sometimes getting credits. Or getting credits.

Yeah, sometimes we're paying them, okay? When you look at that two-tier system of taxation and you look at a two-tier system of justice where, you know, the richest among us, again, seem to be able to buy their way out of any sort of accountability. When you look at this sort of stratified society of the haves and have-nots, yeah, that's going to lead to a lot of breakdown of trust in the nation, in each other, in institutions.

And this is just one particular and really important facet of it. Another thing we talk about is, you know, with the reconciliation bill, a lot of the discussion around this was like, oh, we need the pay-fors. We need to find the money here so we can fund this over here. Where, you know, really we need to be talking about making the tax code more fair just as an end in and of itself. Not just as a, because as we talk, the federal government isn't like your household balance sheet. It's not like balancing your checkbook, right? The global reserve currency, we can print money, all those things make it a lot different. But changing the tax code to get to some semblance of anything remotely approaching fair is an important end in and of itself if we want to keep the country from continuing to devolve into an oligarchy, which is, I don't

know if it's where we're headed. It may be where we already are. Yeah, I think that's really well said. Okay, let's move on to the story that we think is very important, which was the disaster at Astroworld in Houston over the weekend, where eight people were killed, many of them children, teenagers, young college kids as well. Hundreds of people were injured there as well. Now, we have some new information from the actual police officers and the Houston Police Department in terms of their interactions with Travis Scott in the lead up to this concert itself. So let's put this up there on the screen, which is that before the actual performance in Houston, the city's police chief actually met with Travis Scott to express his concern. That conversation lasted at least a few minutes. Now, what he said

is that he had conveyed his concerns regarding public safety. What happened later on that night? Well, like I just said, eight people died, hundreds of people there went ahead and got injured. And what they saw is that the police chief, he hasn't spoken at least to the specifics of exactly why he was concerned about public safety and more. But I don't think it would take a genius to point to the fact that Scott has a very long history of actually encouraging fans to basically behave raucously, jump security barricades, and more. This was actually written up in the Houston Chronicle. We can go ahead and put that up on the screen, which is that the tragedy casts new light on his history of encouraging rage and overcrowding. Back in 2015, he actually stopped a performance saying that, you know, while he was trying to move people.

And what they point to is that they can say that Travis Scott has been, you know, repeatedly, he has repeatedly encouraged this type of behavior at his concerts of encouraging rage, of encouraging overcrowding, of tacitly endorsing, you know, running the barricades and creating this chaotic situation, which culminated in what we saw there in Astroworld, where we saw thousands and thousands of people run through the barricades. There was a severe crowding of people. As Travis Scott's performance, there was a countdown clock. As you said yesterday, every minute moved forward. People felt that they were being crushed. And that really does seem to be the situation. Now, once again, there were also some other crazy stuff going on.

Had reports of somebody who was injecting someone with either a drug or a poison, a security guard possibly. That could have been something that caused mass panic. There was reports there also about lack of EMTs, health care, the fact that they were overwhelmed before the crisis even started because of bad planning. But I think it begins and points to the fact that Scott himself has a long history of encouraging fans to act in this behavior, number one. Number two, the police chief met with him and was like, hey, I mean, once again, we don't know the specifics, but expressed his concern to them.

They were concerned enough about public safety and his past in order to say something. And two, we showed you guys the videos yesterday of him continuing to play while he could visibly see people being resuscitated, having problems. His partner, Kylie Jenner, posting that Instagram story from the concert. We could actually see an ambulance actually moving through the crowd, trying to get to somebody. There was a lot of evidence and anecdotal stuff that showed that they were pretty well aware far before they actually ended up shutting down the concert. Many people had tried to stop the concert while it was happening. So there's a lot happening here, Crystal, which points into a real direction of responsibility here, at least, you know, in the public eye for how Travis Scott conducts himself.

And ultimately, we can't forget, this is the worst concert disaster since 1979. Houston police is causing it a mass casualty event. I mean, eight people died. Hundreds of people were injured. And there needs to be a lot of questions here so that we can avoid these types of situations in the future. The more we learn, the more it seems almost miraculous that quote unquote only eight people died. Because when you look at the videos, when you hear

the on the ground reports of just how dangerous this situation became, the number of people who were losing consciousness and the bodies that were getting trampled, it's really absolutely horrifying. The lawsuits are starting to roll in for Travis Scott as well. In one filed Sunday, an attendee said that others involved with the event, including Travis Scott, had, quote, actual subjective awareness of the risk involved but proceeded with conscious indifference to the rights, safety, or welfare of the attendee and others. That attendee, a man named Patrick Stennis, was trampled, crushed, and lost consciousness during the incident, according to the lawsuit that was filed, and will continue to suffer mental anguish, emotional distress, and discomfort.

I'm sure for the people who survived but lost consciousness, I'm sure they thought they were going to die. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm sure it was just sheer terror for hundreds, potentially thousands of people who were at this concert. And it's really sad because I know, you know, these were people who love this artist and who've been probably looking forward to this for months. And they get there and instead of being able to enjoy this collective experience,

they're in fear for their lives, in some cases getting gravely injured, in some cases actually dying because they wanted to go out and enjoy a concert of their favorite artist. One of the things that we've also seen from the videos that are coming out, you had people who were trying to get security to help them. I mean, these are bodies stacked up and receiving very little help, at least in some of the videos that were portrayed. I'm sure there were many brave, heroic people who saved a lot of lives. So I don't want to paint with a broad brush here. But there are also reports that Kylie Jenner and her family were escorted out, and other VIPs, as soon as things started to go off the rails. Yeah, and they're all tweeting now, we're so Kim Kardashian, you know, we're a horrible tragedy.

He's like, yeah, okay. You know, Travis loves his fans. All right, well, did he love them when he was on the stage and people were being crushed? Well, and in this lawsuit, they cite, you know, not only some of the things that you talked about. He's previously encouraged fans to storm the barricades. He's been fined for that. He was sued in the past because a fan, after Travis had encouraged fans to stage dive, he was pushed off a balcony and was paralyzed. Before this event, Travis tweeted something to the effect of,

the tickets were sold out, but we're going to let the wild ones in. That tweet has now been deleted. And so it just gives you a sense that for him this was kind of all a game. You know, he created a brand that was extraordinarily profitable for him personally around this kind of excess and chaos and anything goes. And ultimately, it wasn't a game. Real human beings, you know, people's babies, their lives were put at risk because of a whole confluence of factors that we're going to learn more and more about. I will say it has also sparked some insane conspiracy theories. You're now the expert on this.

So can you educate us? What's going on here? Indeed I can. Yeah. Okay, so let's put this Newsweek article up on the screen. Travis Scott satanic festival blood sacrifice conspiracy theory spreads after tragedy. So some of the imagery, a lot actually, of the imagery that he used with Astroworld, both the album and with this event, was sort of, you know, demonic, satanic. We can throw some of the images from one of the first people who was buying into this conspiracy theory.

We have a tweet here that you can see some of the imagery that was being used that kind of references these historic famous paintings of the gateway to hell and the stage itself was sort of set up to look like the gates of hell. That is pretty odd. I do have to say that's odd. It's very odd. People also pointing out in that bottom left in Astroworld poster, there's like Illuminati. It's like a pyramid and hands with eyes. It's like this Illuminati imagery. Then a lot of what's been shared around is this giant head of his with his mouth open. That's the one that visually references a famous painting of people being brought into the gates of hell.

So here I'll read a little bit from that article. They say, at Astroworld this year, the 30-year-old performed on a stage styled like the gates of hell. While revelers entered the gig through a large sculpture of his mouth, which has been likened to the famous Christ in Limbo painting by Hieronymus Bosch, which depicts the mouth of hell, many people also pointed out that the slogan for the festival was see you on the other side, which has not aged well due to the deaths that occurred. So this is the conspiracy that is spreading. Either that Travis Scott is a literal demon or that this was an intentional blood sacrifice to get him into the Illuminati occult.

Man, I haven't heard a good Illuminati conspiracy in a long time. That's what's happening online. This is some 2006 level stuff. So I got to congratulate people. It's been a very long time since I heard a good Illuminati one. I think we'll end it this way. Fun aside, at the end of the day, people died. And look, let's put this video on the screen.

You can see. I mean, this is what it was like. Look, for those who are listening, these people are packed right up against a barricade. They can't move. They can't move. They're sandwiched together. They literally have their limbs sticking out just to try and have some space.

You can see others. One guy, you know, up on top of somebody else on the platform. I mean, it just looks like real hell on earth. And so look, 14 year old, 16 year old boy died, you know, ages from 14 to 27. These are young people. They probably thought they were going to one of the best nights of their life. Travis Scott is a hero and a very, very popular amongst a lot of teenage boys across the country. And some of them met their, met their end. And was he culpable in that? There should be a long investigation. And all these Kardashians and them, they want to save face, even though they were completely safe deleting their stories,

putting out their PR statements. But people can see the truth about how he really felt about the fans whenever it really mattered. And I think that you always have a responsibility to the people who follow you when you're in a position like, you know, I think that you always have a responsibility to the people who follow you when you're in a position like this. Yeah, I think that is very well said. It was not all fun and games. Ultimately, people literally died, and our heart breaks for those families who lost their babies in this tragedy.

All right, I don't know how to make the turn, but the Pete documentary is coming out. So let's talk about that. Long anticipated. I know you guys have had your calendar marked four months for when the Pete Buttigieg documentary was going to come out. Politico had a little sneak peek at it, and there were some interesting details. Effectively, what this article argues, let's go ahead and throw the tear sheet up on the screen. It says, the headline is, he's coming across like the effing tin man up there,

which is a quote attributed to Liz Smith, his, whatever you think of Pete, very effective operator who ran his campaign. And she was coaching him here. That quote comes from when there were questions and he was expecting to receive questions about racial tensions and the death of a black man in particular while he was mayor. And she's saying, like, you need to stop acting like a robot because you're coming across like the tin man up there. But the documentary, the tension in it effectively comes from the fact that the documentarian can't really get anything out of Pete. Like there's a whole question with these type of politicians like him of is there more than meets the eye?

Like because he has this very polished and impersonal and distant public persona. Yes. So when he is at home, when he's with Chaston, when he's traveling with his aides, like, what's he really like? And basically, the answer is, there is nothing else. Like, this is what he's really like. There were no, effectively, I shouldn't say no, but very few unguarded moments.

Everything, in every way, is he's always on. He's always presenting the public persona. To the point that his husband, Chastin, gets kind of frustrated with him. Yeah, with him in the documentary. Yeah, so at the beginning of this piece, the documentarian, Jesse Moss, is talking to Chasten and he's saying, you know, what do you think that I should ask Pete? And Chasten says he did everything to climb every ladder without being his authentic self. You spent so much of your life hiding who you really were. Did you feel like you were able to be your true self on the campaign trail? And the documentarian says, well, do you think he's ready to answer that question?

Can he answer that? And Chastin says, he should, you can try. And then Pete walks into the room and Chastin turns to him and says, don't bullshit us, Peter. So there's clearly, this is like kind of the tension and most of what, according this um reading of it comes through in the documentary comes via chastin there's some also just like kind of heartbreaking moments um chastin is watching the it's the iowa caucus nights chastin is watching the results and he sees bernie sanders up on stage with his family and with his wife, Jane. And Chastin says, are you really going to be the only candidate who doesn't have your spouse on stage with them? And Pete just doesn't answer.

So there's some moments like that. There's another one that I found. Yeah, that I found really interesting where Chastin is the one who's kind of pushing up against the boundaries, they say, of what the campaign of this highly produced, polished, impersonal campaign. And he wants to start telling audiences that he and Pete are having trouble having kids. And he says it's something very real and it's felt by a lot of people. A staffer tells him it's a bit too intimate to bring up publicly. The two briefly debate the question before the staffer says, if you want to make it part of the narrative, we can have that conversation. So that's how scripted and, you know, tightly controlled and fabricated, let's just say, the entire image

and campaign ultimately was. So I thought it was a pretty interesting read. Yeah, I feel terrible for Chastin. I've said it here before on the show. I forget what segment we did about him exactly, but, you know, the poor guy, I mean, he's stuck here in a den of wolves. And because it was a Washington Post, I think think style piece about him and he was talking about how he was invited to a casual get-together so he thought it would actually be casual and he showed up and everyone was in a suit and i was like oh welcome to washington that's that's a classic that was what i got out of this too was like oh i actually feel really i feel horrible he's just a normal dude he wants to like live and you know be in love with his

husband and talk about normal stuff and then you know be in love with his husband and talk about normal stuff and then you know his husband's trying to become president of the united states and like you could see very clearly that buddha judge willing to sacrifice their you know anything which he saw as detrimental or opening up on something or you know maybe even too calculated or not calculated enough i mean describing your difficulty having children as part of the narrative is as dark as it gets, but that is a good look because this isn't just about Mayor Pete. This is how they all are. This is really a deep insight into like how gross and slimy and ultimately inhuman that you really have to be if you want to make it in today's climate. I mean, that's it. Even a lot of the quote unquote authenticity.

It's all fake. Is fake. It's like, we're going to give you a sense of authenticity because that pulls well. Right. Today. And that's what really comes through. There's another great Liz Smith quote here where he's talking about his, again, practicing, I think, for a debate and talks about his experiences as a gay man. And she tells him it's like he's reading an effing shopping list. You're not like effing an anthropologist here. This is like a thing that you feel, she says, as if literally reminding him that this is supposed to be a personal, emotional moment.

And she's having to coach him that, like, you're not just reading a shopping list. You're supposed to actually feel things in this moment. Yeah. You know, it's funny. It made me more interested to actually watch this documentary. Now I'm going to watch it. The very last monologue that I did on Rising was actually about this. And I remember because it had gotten picked up by Amazon.

And what was happening is that Amazon Music or Amazon Prime was effectively giving Buttigieg, you know, all these millions of dollars in free advertising. And I thought it was going to be some AOC, like bringing down the house, you know, hey, geography, or whatever. But actually, it looks like this, whoever this documentarian is, got at a little bit of what Pete actually is. We'll see. You have to think, too, that with Pete, where he probably thought that he could fool the camera, right? Like he thought, I'm so polished. I could fool them

with my fake authenticity and more. But you know, if you spend that much time with someone in such, you know, in an environment like this, and then you have your husband, you know, being one of these characters trying to push you in that direction, like getting at that tension, that silence, whenever he doesn't answer, he said, are you really going to be the only guy up there without your spouse on the stage? I mean, that is brutal in terms of what it really says about you and how much you want something else versus your own life. That's really sad. Yeah. Yeah. That was what I came away with as well. All right. We got one other thing we want to tell you about before we get to our monologues here. Let's go ahead and throw this announcement up on the screen. So Barry Weiss and a number of other sort of like-minded individuals are starting a university.

Let's put the announcement up there. It's called University of Austin, not to be confused with University of Texas at Austin. This is the announcement. It's posted on Barry's sub stack, but it isn't actually written by Barry. The headline says, we can't wait for universities to fix themselves. So we're starting a new one.

You can imagine some of what is in here, given, you know, the nature of this sort of, whether they call themselves intellectual dark web or not anymore, I don't know, but that sort of type of ideology and thought. They say on our quads, faculty are being treated like thought criminals. They reference Dorian Abbott, who is involved with this project, by the way. University of Chicago scientist who has objected to aspects of affirmative action

was recently disinvited from delivering a prominent public lecture on planetary climate at MIT. They name check another professor, Peter Boghossian, I think you say? Philosophy professor at Portland State University, finally quit in September after years of harassment by faculty administrators. Kathleen Strzok, a professor at University of Sussex, just resigned after mobs threatened her over her research on sex and gender. So here are a few of the relevant facts about this fledgling university, which, you know, a lot of it is the way they phrase it. We're very committed to free thought and we're anti-censorship, free speech university.

That's a good way to ultimately put it in terms of their framing. So at this point, they are planning on having a physical campus, but they haven't identified a specific space. It will be in Austin as the plan. It's not accredited yet. Yep. That's going to be a tough thing. I can talk about that later. Yeah. I mean, that typically takes years, up to seven years if you are successful in achieving accreditation. So because they're not accredited, of course, they're not offering any degrees yet. The first thing they are planning to offer

is something called, a summer program for college students called Forbidden Courses. It invites top students from other universities to join them for a spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.

So that's kind of the top line of this thing. So here's what I would say. First of all, it is the easiest thing in the world to stand outside and be a critic of, you know, people who are trying to build a new institution. That being said, one of the people that's involved here is Larry Summers, big red flag, one of the wrongest and most destructive men in America by my accounting. I don't want to pass judgment on everybody that's involved here because, frankly, I don't know some of the who have engaged in censorship and cancellation of people who would be critics specifically on the issue of Israel, Barry being one of those people. So my big issue with the kind of ideological conceit of this is that you seem to have a group of people who only recognize the problem of cancel culture as it applies to the right coming from the left. When in reality, as we track here, things like the BDS laws, things like in Texas, they're like literally banning books right now.

State of Texas. Yeah. BDS law in the state of Texas. You've got a whole thing with like CRT and banning books in the state of Texas. They certainly don't name check Abby Martin who won a lawsuit against a BDS law. So the reality with the problem of censorship and cancel culture is that it is not confined to one ideology or another, which is why it is such a problem. In fact, what I would say is that the right has a longer history of being more interested in this type of censorship. You can think of like, you know, moral panics over video games and certain books and certain music and all those sorts of things. The left is now moving some parts of the left, I don't want to paint too broad a brush, into that same sort of mentality where they have previously been more committed to actually

anti-censorship free speech principles, but to pretend like the problem is only coming from the left, I think means that you were not going to be serious about actually fixing the problem. And you're more interested in your ideological brethren having control of the particular form of censorship than you are actually committed to free speech. So that's my big issue. Yeah, it's going to be interesting. I don't know. Look, I account many friends who are there on the board of advisors. Niall Ferguson, I deeply respect, actually. He's somebody who's involved in the project. Let's put his op-ed there up on the screen. And I would say if there's any particular red flag for me, it's that the initial stuff that they're offering,

which is that school right now, the summer of forbidden courses, Niall talks about the next year will be a one-year master's program in entrepreneurship and leadership. And eventually, after all these are set up, there'll be a four-year arts college degree. You know, my dad had worked in the accreditation sphere, you know, accrediting other universities. This is not, this is a real thing, right? In terms of actually getting accreditation to become a four-year college degree, even in the liberal arts thing. I mean, you have to have the professors and all that. So look, if you're really trying to escape it, I just don't know. I think that the initiative is so titanic and it is so difficult. And while I applaud it and also even with the baked in caveats that you are giving, which I think are very, very relevant and very true, that I don't know if free speech in a cultural flashpoint and then build something around that is not that as useful as just like building and doing something to the contrary.

And if you're not going to have STEM, because STEM really is where this stuff matters the most. I mean, if you were to ask me about critical race theory, yeah. Am I annoyed like English majors are being taught critical race theory? Yes. Like where am I annoyed most whenever, oh, I don't know whenever we're talking about vaccine distribution and people in geneticists are saying we shouldn't vaccinate older people because they're too white or like disproportionately white. This was a real discussion if we want to remember back in January. That's where I'm like, okay, this, shut it all down, like right now. So I would point to actually the hard sciences, engineering, and more, where it's actually most important to have an environment which is devoid of a lot of this nonsense. Because those are the people who are, if you're going to build something with the baked-in, kind of the baked-in woke ideology or whatever, it can have the most destructive effects.

And really, it's just that it's a very difficult project, number one. I don't really know if lack of free speech or censorship is the biggest problem in the university today, right? And so that's the other problem, which is that what if we're just talking about class? And what if, and once again, I believe that a ruling elite in America is probably inevitability, even if it shouldn't be, and that these people are just portioning over their universities. So it does matter what's being taught there and more. But if you really want to focus on the core of where a lot of the disregard and stuff happens, I don't know if it's a censorship thing. I think it's a class thing.

Yeah. More than anything. I mean, just, for example, past in American society, 1940, only 5% of the American population went to college. These people were aristocratic elite Bush family. Think like George H.W. Bush. But they had a very strong awareness of who they were, of like where they were in the pecking order. And they had very, very different ideas around what it meant in order to be at the top. And did we really earn it? And they would go through all these convoluted things to try and at least promote the veneer of service. I mean, today we have an elite, a meritocratic elite, that believes they got there through meritocracy. But it's fake, right?

They got through the same class system that has always governed the higher echelons. So I just don't think that this gets to the core of what it is. Not to say I don't even believe that self-censorship, lack of free speech or whatever on college isn't a problem, but I think it's more indicative of a much bigger problem on a societal wide level. I applaud the project. I hope it works. I honestly do. I think part of why, I mean, this was roundly mocked online, let's be real. Yeah, it was. I think part of why, too, is because the language they used was so grandiose. Yeah, that's right.

It was like, we are the cavalry. You know, I mean, it just was so over the top. Like, this one unaccredited university that's not even ready to offer a summer program was going to save the country. Yeah, that would be another thing I would say, which is they should have gotten the land, they should have had the accreditation process ready. Yeah, because they made it and they had all this language of like, we know we're going to be criticized, which I always hate when people do this like preemptive, like people are going to criticize us. And that just means we're right thing too. It's like, just do your thing and put it out there.

And again, it's scary and it's hard to build something new. And so I don't want to be too much of a hater. But it seems very set up to over-promise and wildly under-deliver, especially since what they are promising here is nothing less than like the deliverance of America, the saving of the world. You know, start with a more modest promise. Have some more facts on the ground. And rather than, you know, being so preachy about it

and, oh, we know people are going to hate us and et cetera, et cetera, just do your thing and see what happens and see how people gravitate towards it and iterate on that etc., just do your thing and see what happens and see how people gravitate towards it and iterate on that rather than setting yourself up for this over-promising and under-delivering. And then the other part of this that I feel is there's a conceit here that this is not an ideological project, that this is just about the truth.

And it's very clearly an ideological project. And it bothers me, not just in this sphere, but, you know, we talk about this with regards to the media, too. It bothers me when people present themselves as just neutral arbiters when they clearly have an agenda. And I think that's something we try to be upfront about here. Like, you guys know what our ideologies are and what we believe in, the lens we view the world. I think it's much better to be upfront about those things than to end up like Mike Lindell, who's like, I'm going to have a free speech platform. No cursing, no pornography, no taking the Lord's name in vain.

It's like, no, you want a platform where you control what speech is okay and what speech is not. This has some of, it's a sort of higher level, more grandiose version to me of the Mike Lindell's free speech platform. I hope it doesn't go that way. We'll see. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, first food, then gas. Today, we are going to spotlight another area of set us up for failure in the long run. Now, you might have noticed, but it is getting colder outside.

Perhaps you yourself have reached for that heating button. Soon, the bill is coming. And I have terrible news for you. An effective tax upon all Americans is coming in the form of your heating bill this year. The results could spell disaster for the average household income. My friend Talman Joseph Smith over at the New York Times, he wrote an excellent piece forewarning that Americans' heating bills are about to contribute to inflation in a massive way. Approximately 50% of all U.S. households use natural gas to heat their homes. Now, the U.S. government now estimates that the

average American's natural gas heating bill, again, for half of all households, is about to go up by 30%. In actual dollar terms, that is a disaster. The average American household who uses natural gas is about to spend $746 on heating this winter, a full $172 per household more than they did last winter in 2020. That is the most expensive natural gas market since 2005 at the height of the war in Iraq. That is just average Americans. Rural Americans are also in for it because they rely largely upon heating oil and propane in more remote areas, which disproportionately impacts the Northeast and the Northern Plains. Connecticut's governor is warning residents that residential heating oil consumers can expect a 40% increase in heating their homes

from last year alone in price. Or what about propane? That's another story that's just as bad. Propane prices have actually doubled since last year. The markets are preparing for, quote, Armageddon heading into the winter months. Propane is the signature heating source for 6 million American households, and residential propane is currently up by 50% over the last year in price demand. The biggest problem is that we had a pretty big stockpile of propane, but if you've been out to eat over the last year, you've probably seen it gets used at restaurants and a lot of other places right now. That has depleted our stockpile, and it's going to rack up prices for rural Americans. And right now, the Energy Department estimates rural Americans who heat their house with propane will spend 100% more than last year if it's a colder winter.

The best case is 29% more if it's a warmer winter. The only energy consumer right now who is seeing the most modest increase in price is those who heat their homes with electricity, where the high-end estimate is only 15%. In other words, this is a total and complete disaster. We are steering down the barrel of a full-scale crisis this winter. The energy department is literally telling us that the average consumer is going to pay a minimum of 30% more. And yet, where the hell is the administration? I played for you all yesterday that horrific clip of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm cackling and laughing off of higher gas prices. But this is who is in charge right now. The president right now is nowhere to be seen. People are seriously about to run into a

brick wall with their household finances exploding. Massive increase in the price of gas, massive increase in groceries, now a big increase in heating bills. As I called for yesterday, Joe Biden needs to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve now. This is a full-blown crisis. Yet, when Biden was asked about it this weekend, he was totally noncommittal. Enough. Tap it. That's what it's there for. Second, Biden should tap the Northeast Home Heating Oil Reserve. That would provide relief for rural Americans. 100% increase in the price of heating your home is simply not tenable. Six million households who are poor should not pay the price. And we have

reserves for exactly this reason. Heating oil is a matter of life or death for some people, and we cannot screw around here. But third, and finally, we need to stop exporting our natural gas now. Natural gas exports to the rest of the world are up 71% since the start of the pandemic, with record demand from Mexico, Canada, Europe, and Asia. I and several senators are now telling Biden, hey, screw that. American gas is for Americans first. We should get our fill at a preferential price. Then the rest of the world can bid on what we have left. It is crazy that Americans would have to pay higher price because of a foreign demand for a product produced on their soil. Natural gas, as I mentioned at the top, is the number one heating source for American households at 50%. Any percent relief in price for

those households would mean hundreds of billions of dollars less spent on utilities, more able to spend on the economy, but more importantly, it would mean lives saved. When heating bills are high, people don't want to pay, and they don't turn on the heat, and every year some senior freezes to death at home, or people with sick kids can't afford it, and the temperature just makes it all worse. And we cannot allow that to happen. All three of the measures that I laid out here can be done tomorrow at the discretion of the president of the United States. We don't need Congress. All he has to do is use his pen. We need to pressure Biden on this now

to actually wake the hell up and act or we are in for a real bloodbath this winter. Governments are built for times like this, and we need the president who is actually going to do something about it. This was a follow-up to what I did yesterday on gas prices, Crystal. But I, you know, we were talking and I was like, I can't. All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at? The total Democratic Party collapse in Virginia, New Jersey, and nationally has sure led to some takes. MSNBC in particular seemed to go into full meltdown mode, reaching for a familiar villain, the corrupt politicians. Nah. The failure of Democrats to deliver on even basic campaign promises? Not so much. Maybe the fact that Terry McAuliffe didn't run on a single

damn thing other than Trump is bad? Of course not. The problem was the Democratic Party's old nemesis, the voters. Those battled voters who just won't do what they're supposed to do and show up every single election to vote Democrat, regardless of how pathetic, inept, or sold-out the party proves themselves to be. But of all the bad takes, there was one that really went above and beyond. Just take a listen. What the Democrats' theory of the case is, is that the white non-college educated voter cares about things like kitchen table issues, like infrastructure and pipes and how many gallons of milk you can put on the table. I contend that what they care about is using their guns on Black people and getting away with it. That's what they want. That's what they actually are in it for. Wow. Where do I even begin with this one? First of all, let's just start with the fact that the

idea that Democrats have leaned into kitchen table issues or delivered on kitchen table issues is actually hilarious. What they've really done is won the presidency on a decent agenda and then slowly, week by week, shot the most popular provisions in the head very publicly. So I don't know what the Democrats' theory of the case is, but Lord knows it's not delivering on kitchen table issues. But obviously, the really disturbing part here is how Ellie Mestal just casually smears an entire demographic group as racist killers whose main political consideration is being able to shoot Black people. This somehow manages to be both blatantly racist and blatantly classist all at the same time. Yeah, the college-educated whites, they have enough learning to vote the correct way, but those poor whites don't know anything except guns and the KKK.

You are essentializing an entire group of people down to the sum total of their race and their education status. And in the process, you're also completely letting the Democratic Party off the hook. Once again, the Democratic Party can never fail, only be failed by the deplorable public. Insinuating that there is something uniquely evil or bad about a particular segment of the population. So let's talk about the white working class again. Look, there is no denying race is a potent force in American politics, no doubt about it. There is certainly also no denying that elites weaponize race to divide the working class and maintain power for themselves. Clinton bundler Terry McAuliffe I'm sure knows a thing or two about those sorts of politics. But the last thing a leftist or progressive should want to do is to

play into that game. There's also no denying that class and race are linked together, leaving those whites who are struggling more vulnerable to racist and xenophobic messaging. But the shockingly horrible view that all working class whites care about is shooting Black people is not only wildly offensive, but it is wildly unsupported by data. First of all, the fact that Republicans keep winning larger and larger shares of Latino voters is an uncomfortable fact for the all Republican votes are really just votes for white supremacy narrative. The existence of a significant number of Obama-Trump voters, also a rather inconvenient fact for that narrative. But look at this. I'm also old enough to remember the summer of 2020 when some 74% of

Americans voiced their support for racial justice protests, including 65% of white, non-college educated voters. You might recall those protests were ignited by the murder of a Black man. That would seem to fly in the face of the theory that latent, pro-shooting Black people sentiment is what's really driving voters to the polls. Looking at this specific election, we've got a real-time experiment we can look to. Virginia and New Jersey, they both had elections. Now, in Virginia, the GOP did lean a lot more into white grievance politics by making critical race theory into a campaign issue. In New Jersey, critical race theory didn't really figure as a significant campaign issue. However,

New Jersey actually saw a larger shift to Republicans than Virginia did, indicating, if anything, that the GOP's focus on critical race theory may actually have been somewhat of a turnoff. After all, the number one issue for voters was still the economy. And those white moms who did say education was their biggest issue, they seemed, when he asked them, to care a lot more about closed schools and recovering from virtual learning than about CRT. The school closures were really hard for a lot of kids. And one of my kids in particular really suffered when schools were closed. It affected my family dynamic. It affected my social circles. It affected every part of me that the kids couldn't

go to school. And so I had to figure out what can I do to make sure that that never happens again. And you feel like even right now, not enough is being done to address their learning loss. And you view that as a crisis. We think our kids are in crisis. The learning loss is real. So we're in a situation where our kids are really far behind and they need a lot of help. They need a lot of additional tutoring. They need a lot of additional time after school

to help catch them up. And they're still not focusing on that. How much did that factor into you, for you, the CRT debate and everything? Definitely the education, the learning loss was number one for me. Everything else was below that. Mandates and CRT did not influence my decision at all. How about for you, Sandra? No, mine was all about the school closures. Voters didn't suddenly shift to Republicans because they randomly became more racist. In fact,

you could easily have predicted these very results just knowing Biden's approval rating, historical president, and the fact that something like 70% of Americans now say the country is on the wrong track. But I will say, this type of judgmental and condescending attitude coming from Democrats and their allies will definitely turn off a whole lot of voters, as it should. Who wants to be essentialized down to nothing but the sum total of their identity, told who you are and what you're about based on your race, your geography, or your education status? And we shouldn't pretend this was an isolated issue either, because while CRT and Virginia schools, it was mostly a manufactured moral panic over

nothing, and likely not at all determinative in the Virginia elections ultimately either, it is certainly true that a destructive, so woke its racist ideology is gaining traction among an influential academic left. Eric Levitz has a good piece out on this. He points to a trend of so-called equity consultants that can traffic in overly simplified and just straight-up racist notions about white people versus, quote, color groups. One influential consultant in this world, Tima Akun, she believes, for example, that, quote, objectivity, a sense of urgency, and thinking in binaries like good or bad and right or wrong are defining characteristics of white supremacy culture. She therefore advises progressive organizations to rid themselves of those, quote, damaging tendencies. Of this type of thinking. Levitz goes on to write,

quote, positing fundamental cultural distinctions between people with different pigmentations, not different class, regional, national, or religious backgrounds, but merely different concentrations of melanin is a task better left to white supremacists than to equity coaches. Hear, hear. Democrats trying to understand what the hell happened to their standing with rural America and the white working class should start by looking in the mirror. The white working class didn't get worse. Democratic elites high on big money got worse. And that is one generalization I am perfectly comfortable making. Sager, I was pretty stunned by these comments. Just to blanket an entire... So, guys, authorities have indicted and arrested Igor Danchenko.

He was, as it turns out, one of the main sources for the now infamous Steele dossier. Many implications here for Russiagate. More importantly, this is also an indictment of the media writ large. Joining us now to talk about the implications and to get into all of that is Glenn Greenwald. He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. You can, of course, find him on his sub stack and over on Rumble and many other places as well. Great to see you, Glenn. Good to see you, Glenn.

Good to be with you guys. All right. Just break down these developments and why they're significant. So this is an investigation that grew out of the appointment of a special counsel, John Durham, by William Barr and is now being supervised by Merrick Garland. So any indictments that Durham issues are necessarily approved by Biden's attorney general. And the investigation is seeking to determine whether there was criminality, not in the Russiagate scandal itself, but in the origins of how that scandal was concocted and disseminated. This is now the third indictment, essentially, that Durham has obtained. The first was in January when he obtained a guilty plea by

an FBI lawyer admitting that they lied to the FISA court in order to obtain surveillance against Carter Page, the former associate of the Trump campaign. So they spied basically illegally by lying to the court on an associate of the Trump campaign. The second was a month ago when they indicted Hillary Clinton's lawyer for having lied about various aspects of his attempts to plant in the media. And he successfully did it. A false story about a secret server between the Trump organization and Alpha Bank. And now this newest indictment shows the same pattern, which is that the Steele dossier, we were told for four years, was based on this very well-connected British intelligence agent, this British spy who had very reliable

sources deep in Russian intelligence. And as it turns out, he lied about that. His actual sources were basically operatives in the world of Hillary Clinton who were passing along gossip and using all kinds of speculation. So this entire narrative that got constructed on the back of the Steele dossier is now being exposed as a gigantic sham. Yeah. And, you know, one of the things that you've been pointing to there, Glenn, is not only the sham, but in terms of how much it shows, what did the media and how much credence did they place within the Steele dossier to drive so much of the Russiagate coverage over the last five years? So what's happening now, Sagar, is there is pretty much nobody at this point who denies any longer that the Steele dossier is a fraud. Like you have Rachel Maddow trying to salvage

the last tatters of her reputation and kind of internet crazies and that like weird, you know, obsessive Russiagate world that still lingers. But nobody really in media is trying to dispute any longer the obvious truth, which is that the Steele dossier was a fraud. What they're instead trying to do is kind of cut off the cancerous limb to protect the rest of the media organism by basically turning Rachel Maddow into the Judy Miller of Russiagate saying, oh, she was way out there. So we can go ahead and scapegoat her and kind of cut her off and let her be. And then they're also trying to basically say, OK, the Steele dossier was

fraudulent. But that doesn't mean that those years of Russiagate reporting we did was fraudulent. The ones we got Pulitzer's for, none of that they're trying to claim was based on the Steele dossier. So they're trying to salvage the rest of the work they did. The problem is, is that the Steele dossier, as everyone knows, is what gave birth to the entire climate in which Robert Mueller was appointed, in which all of these journalistic investigations proceeded, that gave credibility to this incredibly demented and, as we know, false idea that the Kremlin had blackmail leverage over Donald Trump and was using it to infiltrate and control the levers of the United States and U.S. power. That was the prevailing primary narrative for three or four years that came from the mainstream part of the media. And that is what is being exposed, not just this one document.

Glenn, so that we can learn from this whole experience, what were the red flags for you on Russiagate from the beginning? Because I'll admit it took me a while to get there to realize that this was all almost complete bullshit. You, outside of the people who were directly Trump aligned, you, Taibbi, Aaron Maté, Jimmy Doerr, Kyle Kalinske, you guys saw this as potentially fraudulent from the very beginning. What were the red flags for you that made you think we need to really be skeptical of the claims that are being made here? Yeah, I think it's a great question and an important one because this is actually something that I've not really been able to fully, I guess, convey or maybe even process there. I would say I would point to two primary components that caused me to be so skeptical from the beginning. The first is that,

and maybe this is generational, but foundational to my worldview as a civil libertarian and just somebody who was steeped in the evils of the Cold War was the McCarthy era, which is widely regarded as one of the worst civil liberties abuses in American history, had all kinds of clandestine agents working on its behalf to undermine American national interest. And basically there were all these treasonous operatives running around the United States, taking orders from the Russian government in order to undermine the United States. So when that theme emerged from first the Hillary Clinton campaign and then gradually her media allies, and it was identical to the McCarthy script that was thrown into the trash bin six decades ago with such disgrace. I just had an instinctive repulsion to that claim that they were revitalizing. And I expected that the left would too and was very surprised to see that it didn't.

The second aspect was there was just no evidence being presented for so long. First for the claim that it was Russia that did it, but then much more so for the claim, the broader claim that the Trump organization or the Trump campaign participated in things like the hacking of the DNC and Podesta emails. They were just the kinds of leaks from the CIA, from the FBI, from the NSA that come anonymously that anyone with any foundational journalistic ethos should instantly regard as suspicious, absent evidence being presented. And for a very long time, that was all we were getting were anonymous leaks that were evidence-free coming from the security state. What you really hammered home to me, Glenn, following you over the years,

was the fusion of the national security state and the media to a regard where if you're horrified by what happened in the Iraq war, this is 10 times worse. And you can't undo the damage there. It's something that you have been pointing to. What is going to be the fallout from this in terms of our ability to trust any story from the media, which has any hint of an intel connection after we've seen what happened now with the Steele dossier? I guess I just don't understand why it took this. I mean, we all live, most of us did as adults, through a very similar experience that should have already taught us that lesson, which was the lies that led to the invasion of Iraq. It was not Fox News that convinced most liberals and Democrats like

Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, et cetera, to support that invasion. It was the New York Times and NBC News and the New Yorker and the Atlantic. And we ought to have learned that lesson. And the media outlets said that they did, that we can no longer ever again, except assertions that emanate from this dark world of secrecy without a great deal of skepticism and evidence. They did may have culpas about it. They promised never to let it happen again. And so to watch it happen less than 15 years later, the exact kind of pattern was really startling to me. I really had, you know, come to be convinced that at least a lot of people had learned that lesson,

if not the majority of people. But the problem is Sagar that, and it's very similar to what happened in after nine 11 is if you convince enough people that they're everything that matters is endangered, right? The way, obviously, after 9-11, a lot of people, including myself and other people were convinced was the case. You're willing to place your faith and authorities in exchange for being protected. And so many people believe that the Trump presidency or the Trump campaign posed that

similar kind of existential threat, that they just renounced their rational faculties and put faith in those same institutions because of that same psychological dynamic. And that's why I think it's so important to really hammer home how important it is that we, you know, resolve to avoid that. Yeah, it's so well said. I mean, that fear is so incredibly potent and it can be so extraordinarily dangerous. Remind me, Glenn, how much sort of media soul searching and accountability was there after the Iraq war debacle? And what have we seen so far in terms of apologies, corrections, anything of that sort from the media with regards to how they handled the Steele dossier? Yeah, I mean, in the case of the Iraq war, the falsehood was so glaring. Everyone

realized and remembered that the primary argument for the invasion of Iraq was that there were a program that Saddam Hussein was developing, nuclear and biological and chemical weapons, had obtained large components of that program and probably already had an active weapons program in place. And even the U.S. government was forced to admit quite shortly after the invasion that they found none of that. And so there was really no way out of it for the media. So in 2004, the New York Times published an extraordinary editor's note listing the stories which they acknowledge contained insufficient journalistic skepticism and other media outlets published a lot of articles kind of saying what we got, what did we get wrong? Because back then there

was not really this polarized media where you could evade such a gigantic glaring error like this. The problem now is that if you read the New York times, if you read the Washington post, watch CNN or NBC, it's overwhelmingly likely that you're a Democrat. And that means that you have a view of Donald Trump that I outlined earlier, that he's this grave existential threat and everything should be done in order to stop him. It's almost like they don't have to provide any accountability because in part, the ecosystem of information is so closed that people don't realize yet just how fraudulent this narrative was. So they kind of can prevent people from even realizing it. And on some

level, even if they do realize it, their actual viewers, the audience that they care about doesn't care. They actually think it's a positive thing if they endorsed a narrative, whether it was true or not, as long as the goal was as noble as stopping Trump. And that's why I don't think they have anywhere near the same pressures to acknowledge what they did. That's the danger. No, that is that is really well said. Depressing that post-Iraq, what things have actually gotten worse in the media that actually at least then they had to fess up that we got this all wrong. Now they feel like they can just move forward and never face any sort of reckoning for it. Glenn, always great to have your perspective.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Glenn. Yeah, thank you guys for covering this. Good to talk to you. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's awesome.

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