Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/19/23: Trump Returns to Social Media, Twitter Loses 40% Revenue, Tesla Engineer Calls Out Self Driving, Tech Layoffs Continue, Zelensky at Davos, CNN on Covid Deaths, China's Birth Rate, Tax the Rich Legislation, Ken Roth on Harvard Blocked Fellowship

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump's planned return to Facebook and Twitter, a loss of 40% revenue and top 500 advertisers on the Twitter platform, a Tesla engineer claiming the 2016 self driving video was faked, Microsoft and other massive tech layoffs, Zelensky speaking at Davos World Economic Forum, CNN's Dr. Leana Wen admits the U.S. has been dramatically overcounting Covid deaths, a look into China's disastrous birth rate and what it means for their future, new legislation introduced to Tax the Rich is met with a pity party by the ultra-wealthy, and an exclusive interview with the former Executive Director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth who's fellowship at Harvard was blocked over Israel. (Editors note after our interview with Ken, news broke that the Kennedy School has reversed its decision: https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1616098772806782977?s=20&t=SwaY60EfPcwHNJbpFQJsAA)To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. 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. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. 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? and subscribe today. his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024.

You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at

BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. All kinds of interesting things to get into this morning. So we may have the return of former President Trump to Twitter and possibly also to Facebook or Meta or whatever we're calling it now. We'll get into that. He's also calling out Ron DeSantis in new commentary.

We'll have to dig into that. We've got also some Elon news, both at Twitter and Tesla. An engineer revealing that the initial Tesla self-driving video was completely staged and that was not advertised at all. And of course, there have been a number of crashes, some of them fatal and lawsuits that they're facing. So we'll get into that and also a big interest payment due over at Twitter. How will they be able to pay those bills? Also on the tech sector, new layoffs at Microsoft, 10,000 workers being laid off over there as a trend of just total bloodbath continues over in the tech sector. We also have some new comments from Davos,

both from Senator Chris Coons, who's one of Joe Biden's top allies, closest allies in the Senate, revealing comments there, and also Vladimir Zelensky making comments that are quite interesting too in context of what we are preparing to do with regards to Ukraine. We also have a moment on CNN where, you know, they are now allowing questioning of the COVID death toll and whether or not those deaths are overcounted and who it is coming from is also very intriguing. Sager is looking at the Chinese birth rate. I am looking at a very interesting moment over on Bloomberg News. They're very upset about some proposals to tax the rich. And we have Ken Roth on. I don't know if you guys followed the story. So he ran Human Rights Watch and he was looked like he was in line to get a

fellowship over at Harvard. That fellowship was blocked apparently because of his criticism of the state of Israel. So he's going to join us and tell us what he knows about that. But let's go ahead and start with the former president, Donald Trump, looking to get back on Twitter and back on Meta as he ramps up his presidential campaign. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. This is reporting from NBC News. The headline here is Donald Trump prepares for his return to Facebook and Twitter. Trump's presidential campaign formally petitioned Facebook's parent company Tuesday to unblock his account, according to a letter reviewed by NBC News. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen because this has some of the key scoops that are in this NBC News reporting.

So first of all, you've got Trump campaign advisors workshopping ideas for his first tweet. Of course, once Elon took over Twitter, eventually he allowed Trump back on the platform. But Trump has stuck to true social thus far, claiming he's going to stay there, that he's not interested in coming back on Twitter. I think we all knew that that was going to be short-lived. Now that he's getting back into campaign mode, apparently he is workshopping ideas for the grand return to Twitter. The next piece was campaign is formally petitioning Facebook to unblock his account. So there had been some speculation that they might actually sue Meta slash Facebook in order to enable his return. Instead, they have just written a letter saying, hey, this is really screwing up our political process here, which I think is frankly a very fair point. And they also say the campaign is prepared to engage with the House GOP to advocate on his behalf with Meta.

So the fact that you've got the Republicans in control of the House now, they also see as a sort of feather in their cap or a point in their favor in order to try to get his account reinstated on Facebook. Because remember, we have two different dynamics here. Twitter, he's allowed back on, but just hasn't chosen to return. Meta, he still is technically banned and is pushing to be allowed back on. I mean, I would guess that they're going to let him back on. It's kind of hard to keep. Yeah, when you've got, I mean, he's running for president again. He is very much likely to be the Republican nominee.

You can't just keep this guy off of Facebook forever. And they also serve two very different purposes, Sagar. I mean, Twitter is very much the elite conversation. This is what he would always use to needle the news media and be able to sort of dominate and drive news cycles. And he was very effective at that. Fantastic poster of morality and everything else aside. Meta is actually very important for him for fundraising, especially since there are a number of big donors who have said they're staying out this time. We'll see also if that holds. But Facebook has always been key for him in terms of fundraising and also like get out the vote kind of efforts.

Yeah. So this is a very important thing, which is that the Facebook case itself probably highlighted maybe even more so the capricious nature through all of this and how it is done. Facebook's initial reason for banning Trump was that Trump was, quote, inciting violence. Now, they kept and had a six-month suspension that they then upheld. During that period, Facebook has this entire fake oversight board process, right? This supposedly independent Supreme Court. Well, the Supreme Court looked at it and they were like, yeah, I guess we uphold it, but it's your company, Mark Zuckerberg, and you don't seem to have any real processes in place. So then, right now, in terms of what Facebook is saying, they say, quote, at the end of this period, we will look to the experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded. First of all, come on.

This is a freedom of speech issue, cut and dry, even on January 6th, whether you didn't like it or not. But second, two years later, the idea that there's a quote-unquote riskless penalty with an open-ended nature of suspension with no real processes in place to actually make a proper decision. I don't know if they're going to let it back on or not. But if you had a situation where Joe Biden was the nominee and he is allowed on Facebook and Donald Trump is and he's not allowed, that's just, you can't, that can't stand. It's not possible. Or the other way, I've seen some speculation that the way they may get around this is Facebook may actually just stop having political advertising entirely on the platform. That's something that was the original policy on the Twitter platform before Elon took over. He's reversed that policy. Facebook never went so far to have that. But they might just say they're like, look,

the money's not worth it. These are too many headaches and let it just be a free-for-all. Wouldn't be a bad decision, actually. That would be losing a big chunk of change for them. But that's the problem. The political advertising, I think, on Facebook is fairly significant. I don't know. The number's off the top of my head. And something that Ryan Grimm always pointed out is like these social media platforms and the advertising, you can do that there, are disproportionately important for upstart grassroots candidates. So when you talk about blanket bans on political advertising on these platforms, I think that's a bad direction to go in. But I mean, the free speech case, listen, I have enjoyed, as I've said many times,

Trump not being on Twitter. It was nice when we had a little break from him. I'm not going to deny that. But I have always said this is outrageous when you consider the people who were allowed to continue to be on these platforms. When you consider the fact that we had years of news cycles about some freaking Russian memes on Facebook or whatever, like that was determining the 2016 election results. Of course, we just got the study reported by the news media.

Turns out that didn't matter whatsoever. But to ban one of the most prominent candidates and the most likely GOP nominee for the 2024 election, to ban him entirely, continuing to ban him entirely from Facebook, I just think that that is not a sustainable position. But we will see what they ultimately decide to do. I have no particular insight into their decision making there and what they're likely to ultimately come down on. I mean, there is no question also, because the Trump campaign could prove, if you're thinking about this from an election interference perspective, 2016 to 2020, they raised an outrageous amount of money on Facebook,

like ungodly, especially in 2016. It was one of the major places actually that they sold the original red MAGA hat. Now, nobody's experiencing the same amount of enthusiasm they had that time around. But if you're cut off from such a critical financial lifeline, where you were raising hundreds of millions of dollars in 2016, just due to the private nature of a company and their fake content policies, that's a big problem. And actually what they point to also in the memo is they're like, if you don't let us back on, the House GOP is now in charge

and we are gonna go full bore in terms of influencing our allies in Congress to investigate you. And you may hate Trump, you may hate Trump a lot, but look, from a Sanders perspective, in terms of how our society has to run, like this is clearly not fair in any way and would just set a terrible precedent

going forward. Let me also say, even if you don't care about the free speech concerns, I did a little bit of reading yesterday into the research around what happens when you de-platform people. And listen, I mean, in some ways, cancellation works on one level. Like, even if you are Donald Trump or Alex Jones or one of these other larger-than-life figures, when you lose your place on the most central social media platforms, you do take a hit in terms of your followers, in terms of your reach, and those sorts of things. But there's a downside, which is that the people who follow you over to wherever your new platform is, they're more likely to actually become more

radical, more hardened in their views. So even if you don't give a shit about free speech and you're just concerned about like public safety and what's going to happen here, it's not clear that this is the right direction to go in. And you can even see this on a micro level with Trump himself, where since he has been pushed over to the truth social platform instead of being on Twitter where there are a lot of range of different voices, when he's just on truth social and you just have this sort of like one ideological contingent that is there on the platform with him, he has become more sort of fringe and isolated and more obsessed with like conspiracies and QAnon and these sorts of things. I mean, he wasn't reposting Q drops before the pushover to True Social.

So you can see how it has, just with him in his own focus and person, the way that this move has impacted him and sort of pushed him even more to the fringe and even more kind of to these radical conspiracy theory notions. I think that's a fantastic point. None of us should be in silos. It's always better. I've always been against, quote unquote, alternative platforms that are against those that are at scale solely for this reason. I don't want to just talk to an echo chamber. I want to talk to people and see people who I disagree with. Part of the reason

Twitter is actually so valuable to me and I think to our job and elsewhere is to see many of the viewpoints which people who we vehemently disagree with probably would never come across in real life, but have real disproportionate influence over our society and groupthink, those things are valuable for all of us. It's part of the reason also why we cover it on the show. And I think it's important for everyone to be involved in that, even if it is someone you don't like, and especially if that person is the president or the former president of the United States. Indeed. All right. At the same time, the former President Trump had sat for an interview with David Brody. We actually covered a piece of this earlier in the week. But there was another noteworthy moment

where he got asked about potential contender, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Trump's comments here, kind of noteworthy. Let's take a listen. I got him elected, pure and simple. He would have never, if I said I wasn't going to endorse you, and I was, you know, there was no reason to go wild about endorsing him. You know, he was one of about 100 congressmen who fought for me. And so, you know, I felt I might as well endorse him because I didn't know Adam Putnam. But he was a three. He was ready to drop out of the race.

It was all done. Adam Putnam had that nomination locked up, the Republican nomination for governor of Florida. He had it locked up. It was done. And when I, as Adam Putnam said to me when I met him a year later, I didn't know him at all, but I saw him.

He said it was like a nuclear bomb went off, a nuclear weapon went off when you endorsed him. And the race was over. He said he didn't even spend his money. There was no, a nuclear weapon went off when you endorsed him. And the race was over. He said he didn't even spend his money. There was no way he could have beaten him after I endorsed him. So, you know, now I hear he might want to run against me. So we'll handle that the way I handle things. We'll handle that the way I handle things.

Yeah, what did you think of that? Oh, I thought it was a great answer. I mean, that's exactly what I've said. Classic Trump. You know, it's funny. I interviewed Trump the day after the midterm, maybe like two days after the midterm, something he was really angry. And one of the first, he was like, look at this guy, Ron DeSantis. He was nobody, down 33. I endorsed him. He shot up to number one. So he's had this in his head for a long time. Yeah, for

sure. And he hates the amount of press that DeSantis is getting, the whole Ron DeSanctimonious thing. And it just, look, this also highlight, even if you're not going to run against Trump, even if you're not actively doing it, if the media even anoints you, he'll just start attacking you. And we covered that poll just yesterday, or sorry, on Tuesday, where we looked at the fact that Trump continues to have 46% support amongst likely GOP primary voters. I also think that the longer time moves on from the midterms, it's always going to be stronger in his favor. And then, of course, the only real scenario where this would probably work is if it was a true head-to-head matchup and who the hell thinks that's actually going to happen. It's not going to happen. You've got too many people with too many egos who think that this

is their moment. I mean, I covered on Tuesday, Glenn Youngkin looks very much like he's going to run even though he's sitting at like 0% in the polls. He's convinced himself that since he won in Virginia at a time when Republican fortunes were at their greatest and he happened to sort of stumble into the right moment at the right time. But he's persuaded himself that that means he's like some great political talent and genius. So he's probably going to run. You got Nikki Haley who wants to run. You got friggin John Bolton who wants to run. Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, all of these people. And individually, they may not garner that much support, but it doesn't take that much support for them to eat into the like, oh, maybe we're not with Trump contingent of the GOP base before it just becomes impossible for anyone to ultimately take him down. But listen,

we got a long way to go between now and then. Anything can happen, so who knows. I will say on he's fixated on this particular line of attack against DeSantis, basically like the I made you and you're being disloyal. I don't, I genuinely don't know how that lands with the GOP.

Do they care? Do they care about that loyalty test or not? I think there's a contingent of them that do, but there might be other stronger points to make against Ron DeSantis. I really have no idea. It's certainly possible. The other one, I think really what it is, is that instead of disloyalty, it's I'm the supreme.

Like, I'm the, you know, at the top. I'm the alpha. Yeah, exactly. I'm the one, the alpha at the top. Like, I anointed you. You're the next generation. You can follow. You're just like a copycat follower.

You can follow after me. When I'm done, then sure, you can go ahead and take the mantle. But for now, like when it's my time on the stage, don't you dare. And I think that's just always going to be the case. Honestly, even while he's alive, even if he's not an active candidate for president, you're always going to have to go and kiss the ring if you want to do that. The other thing is, Santus is a prideful man. You know, he's a very popular governor of Florida.

He doesn't want to do that. So you've got a contest of wills right now. Yeah. Another little interesting note is there's this one advisor to Trump now. What's her name? Christy Wiles? Yes. Christy Wiles, who was a top advisor to DeSantis and now is basically running Trump's campaign.

He had run his campaign in Florida before. And she seems to be a pretty key piece here because this is someone who had kind of a falling out with DeSantis. Susan Wiles, I apologize. Susan Wiles. Okay. Susan Wiles. So had kind of a falling out with DeSantis. And the thought is, you know, she would know better than anyone how to get under his skin, what his vulnerabilities are, et cetera. So that's an interesting thing to just kind of keep your eye on in terms of the inside baseball here. Moving on to the next piece. So Trump has been shockingly quiet since he announced his presidential campaign. He did the infamous

lunch with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West, but we really haven't heard much from him other than that. Well, it looks like they in the new new year, are now beginning to ramp up somewhat. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Politico. We've got some first details about what he plans to do. They say Trump prepares to open next phase of 2024 campaign in South Carolina. The former president will hold a more intimate event than his typical rallies in the key state later this month.

And of course, South Carolina in the Republican primary process is one of the early states, so it's important here. They say he's slated to make an appearance in late January in Columbia, South Carolina. It's not going to be a rally. But as I said before, this more intimate event with sort of, you know, key players, leaders, donors, that sort of thing. They're casting the plans as part of a gradual build out of the former president's campaign, following a relatively private month and a half since a November launch that coincided with the holiday season. I mean, a couple things. First of all, the choice of South Carolina, as I just said, it's early in the Republican primary process, so it matters from that perspective. You also have two potential candidates who hail

from the state in Senator Tim Scott and also his former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley. So could be something, you know, going on there as well. And then the other thing to note is we were talking about Susan Wiles, this advisor before. She seems to be taking a very different approach to this, his campaign rollout, than they did last time around in 2020 in the unsuccessful effort. You know, we covered they were blowing through cash like crazy. Hundreds of millions. Tons of staff had like a, you know, gleaming headquarters in Northern Virginia. This time they're keeping it more bare bones, much smaller in terms of staff. The campaign office has

like, you know, used furniture and is in a strip mall or something like that. So it's a much lower key kind of affair. And she seems to be approaching the rollout in a lower key direction as well, instead of jumping out of the gates. But these big rallies, which generate media coverage and generate enthusiasm, but also are quite expensive. So that's the trade-off there. And we shouldn't forget, South Carolina,

things were a little bit on the edge. He loses in Iowa. He does win in New Hampshire, but South Carolina was his second primary. I just looked it up. He won by 32 bit on the edge. He loses in Iowa. He does win in New Hampshire. But South Carolina was his second primary. I just looked it up. He won by 32% of the vote. So it's an important state there. And also, you can also work your way back up the calendar, thinking about Iowa caucuses

and New Hampshire and cementing your role in both. I had seen, and I know we covered before, a poll which showed DeSantis neck and neck with Trump in New Hampshire. So very likely that Trump also will try to make inroads there. It's actually a smart move, which is if you think that there is any sort of threat to you, you want to lock down those early states so that the media momentum going into Super Tuesday says that you don't have a chance in hell if you're coming up against Trump. So I look at this, actually, I think it's a smart move.

You're also getting the Republican political establishment, people like Lindsey Graham becoming his South Carolina co-chair and part of the leadership team. You want to lock that down. You want to get the political machine in process. So they're making moves, even though it is very sleepy down in Mar-a-Lago right now. Yes, indeed. Okay, let's go into the next one. Some big news with Elon Musk. It feels like things have been quiet over at Twitter, and maybe we have an explanation as to why. Financial bomb going off in the Elon Musk Twitter saga. Let's put this up

there on the screen. The Financial Times has very important reporting here. There is a major Twitter interest payment that Elon has to make in the coming days because he financed over $13 billion in debt. Now, you would also notice, by the way, that Elon has been tweeting a lot about Federal Reserve rates, and this is why. Because Twitter said that the first installment of these interest payments related to that debt will be due at the end of January. That debt means that Elon must personally pay $1.5 billion in annual interest payments, considering also that he financed a major portion of this deal

through banks Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, and Mitsubishi. He's got various interest payments that he has to make there at the same time that the company itself is losing a ton of money. Now, remember, before he even took it over, Twitter lost $221 million in 2021. He's got some things going for him. He fired 90% of the staff, and the platform continues to be working. So that's probably a benefit. You've got those people off. At the same time, he had like three-month severance payments, which he had to make out to all of them. So the financial runway isn't there just yet, and the payment is still due. Also reporting in the same piece, as well as Reuters and New York Magazine, that you've seen a 40% drop internally in Twitter overall advertising revenue. I'll

remind everybody that was approximately $5 billion in 2021, which wasn't even enough to cover all their expenses. So that maybe brings it to around $2.5 billion. Why does that matter? Because that means that their entire revenue is barely enough to cover the interest payment that they now have to make on the debt, let alone the debt itself. So it's a big financial problem overall. Also has big impact on Tesla stock if Elon has to continue selling Tesla stock, which right now is at a pretty substantial low as to where it was over the last two years and company problems over there itself. So this is all becoming a little bit of a financial problem for Elon Musk. Having put downward pressure on Tesla, his major source of wealth, he lost $100 billion in wealth in 2022, and at the same time

has the biggest problem of all for any billionaire, which is you actually have to liquidate your assets to pay straight up cash, which is something that none of them ever want to do. Well, they don't want to do it because then you have to pay taxes, and none of them want to pay taxes. So yeah, so he has kind of a couple of bad options. One of them would be to liquidate some assets and have to take the tax hit. Another one would be to collateralize Tesla shares, which he's done before. But that becomes really difficult when the valuation of Tesla has plummeted so dramatically. Their stock has fallen 65% last year. Musk sold heavily. The value of a stake in the company has plunged to about $50 billion from $170 billion when he offered to

buy Twitter in April of last year. So, I mean, listen, Elon Musk is still an insanely wealthy man. No one is saying that he isn't. But in terms of the business picture for Twitter, it's pretty bad. I mean, it was bad before he took it over, as you're pointing out. They were already kind of in a hole. Then you have this huge advertiser exodus. Go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen from The Guardian. They say, as Sagar just mentioned, that Twitter's been hit by a 40% revenue drop

as more than 500 clients have paused their spending. And, you know, whatever Elon is doing, messing around with like Twitter blue and the $8 a month, it ain't coming close to filling in that gap ultimately. So, yeah, he's in a difficult position. He's also floated, maybe taking Twitter into bankruptcy. I wouldn't expect them to actually do that, but it could be a way of putting pressure on the existing investors who don't want to get screwed and be last in line in terms of some bankruptcy proceedings to pony up more cash to ultimately keep this thing going. But given the fact that he wildly overpaid for Twitter to

start with, he's also not in a great position vis-a-vis these investors and the type of additional funds that they would put in at what rate. It's all a big question. I mean, right now, they're trying to squeeze revenue out. And in terms of Elon, I mean, things have been relatively quiet in terms of major news. They have some platform deals that they have struck that I was looking at just today. So they signed a deal. And then by the way, this is a little bit suspect. They signed a bunch of 2023 content deals with media companies. They don't appear to be really focused on the news per se. It's more like sports races, things like The Bachelor for Disney, ABC, Paramount, MTV, in order to promote their shows like the mask, more like mass media entertainment,

so media companies per se. So obviously, some of these companies are keeping their advertising on Twitter. But remember also, Twitter was a very small part of the overall advertising budget, writ large, according to all the social media companies. And even if they scale back slightly, all of that is adding up to a major impact on the bottom line over at Twitter. So it's a big problem right now for him financially, and it can have cascading effects on Tesla stock, on even SpaceX possibly. And he shouldn't forget, you know, like SpaceX is also a private really run company. These can have major impacts in terms of his ability to finance all of his businesses just because so much of it is intertwined with him personally.

So it's a problem. Yeah. Also, wasn't he going to step down as CEO? He said he would step down. We all voted. We all voted to say he sat down. But who knows? He's still there.

He said he would only run, what did he say, he'd only run the engineering teams and he would step down to find a general successor. Will he actually do so? We'll see. You know, we remain...

I love how these things get floated and it's like a big deal that everyone just like instantly forgets that it happened. Because this was a while ago when he said it. Two months ago, I think it happened in December. He said he would step down. Nothing yet seems to have come out. Some of the Twitter files remain and continue to come out.

But things even on that stage are really dwindling. I'm still waiting to see some big Twitter files. So, again, that's kind of where things stand right now for the company after all of the initial chaos. All right, second part here, let's go to this. Again, this is a problem, and this is actually causing problems for Tesla, the company, the major source of Elon's wealth. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. An engineer who worked for Tesla says that the company's 2016 video showing, quote, full autopilot was actually staged. Now, this was a senior engineer at the company after it was shared in a 2016 blog post saying full self-driving hardware on all Teslas. The four-minute video, which we will show you in a little bit, purports to say that a person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself. Let's go ahead and play some

of that video, which will narrate for all of you who are just watching. As I said, it begins, the person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He's not doing anything. The car is driving itself. The car is pulling itself out. The driver is getting in here. He's engaging the Tesla autopilot system. The car begins to move forward. It's moving on a street. There are cars around there. It's making the coveted left turn, the holy grail for AI self-driving because it's an incredibly shaky and tough thing to do. Another left turn there that you can see says that it shows you also some of the right rear camera angles. And we can go ahead and turn it off because I think people get the picture. You get the idea. The car is driving itself, okay? That's what they claimed in 2016. However, and also the CEO actually said the demonstration at the time was Tesla drives itself, no human input at all. Well, they are now claiming, Crystal, that this engineer says

actually that was entirely staged, and that's actually leading to some lawsuits from Tesla owners around the purported viability of full self-driving and the claims that the company made itself. Now, I mean, look, is this unprecedented? No. We should all remember, I think it was either the original Macintosh or Mac 98, where Steve Jobs basically was like, had them program a display on something. And they're like, well, we'll get to it eventually

to lead consumers to believe. And he did pull it off, to be fair. So not necessarily without precedent, but not a good look, especially because it could open the company up to lawsuits, which are already being filed after this report came out. There's long been a real fake it till you make it culture in Silicon Valley. And the ones who make it end up as, you know, world beating billionaire supposed geniuses like Elon Musk and the ones that don't make it end up like Elizabeth Holmes in prison. And, you know, what you have here is, listen, it would be one thing

if there was some sort of disclosure, but they insisted that this was 100% done. Tesla drives itself, no human input at all. That's what the video says. There is no fine print. There is nothing whatsoever. And this becomes incredibly relevant from a couple perspectives. I mean, number one, Elon has said himself that if the self-driving feature doesn't work, Tesla is basically worth nothing. So he sees this as a key, clearly saw this as a key part of the financial prospects of this company. of a deposition in a lawsuit over the death of someone who really actually trusted these representations that the auto drive feature fully functioned and was safe. This man who ultimately died in an accident, he believed it was safer than human control because he thought that the AI was that good. So it was the death of Walter Huang, a 38-year-old Apple engineer, died in 2018. His

Tesla crashed into a highway median on California's Highway 101. The lawsuit, which was filed by his widow, alleges that Tesla promoted its self-driving systems as safer than they truly were. So you can see why this video becomes a key part of this lawsuit. According to the family's lawyer, they said Tesla is beta testing its autopilot software on live drivers. And there have been other accidents attributed to the self-driving software as well. So not a good development in terms of the credibility of Tesla, in terms of their prospects with these lawsuits, and also potentially in terms of the financial future of the company.

Yeah. I will say, this is something that's beginning to annoy me. People are pointing to self-driving crashes and all that. Listen, none of this technology is anywhere even close to 100%. And frankly, if you trust AI to drive you, I really don't know what to tell you. Like, if you're not putting your hands on the wheel, they make it pretty explicit in all of these. You know, look, it's not just a Tesla thing because everybody focuses on Tesla self-driving. That's because it really has the most advanced technology. So, of course, they're going to have the most crashes that are involved. But almost every car on the market at this point, like Hondas, Honda Acura, I believe even Toyota. Ford, Hyundai.

They all have lane assist. They all have automatic cruise control. What's the number one thing they tell you on the screen? Don't trust it. Put your hands on the wheel, be prepared, keep your foot on the brake. So if you're not doing any of those things, that's straight up just driver error.

I mean, you have even cases, I believe also, of people like watching movies. They literally caught a guy, he was like watching a movie on his phone while he was on Tesla self-driving. He's like, oh, it's a Tesla's fault. Really, it's a Tesla's fault? They literally tell you, don't do that.

So I have some, I get very skeptical on all of this. I think it should be treated in the way that you should treat any nascent technology. It's interesting. You should try it. You should always keep your hands on the wheel. You should always keep your eyes going forward. We're more, I think we're probably two decades away from self-driving cars. It actually might be one of the most hyped technologies that has not yet materialized. It's very complex. It's very complex to be able to pull this off. I mean, I have, like, the lane assist on my car,

and the thing that it does the most is when there's, like, a turn lane, and so the line on the pavement goes away, suddenly the car's like, ah, I want to go over there. Yes, exactly. Like, whoa, let's just keep going this way. Or if it's raining, right? If it's raining and you can't see or if it's at a, once again,

just drive. I don't know why it's that difficult. Definitely don't rely on this tech. Yeah, I think And don't rely on Elon's representations

about the tech either because apparently those are staged and fake. I think you shouldn't rely on any of these companies for this stuff, even on automatic cruise control.

Like, you know, people break and are crazy all the time. I was driving here this morning and some person just cut somebody off which leads another person to cut somebody off. Like, the know, people break and are crazy all the time. I was driving here this morning and some person just cut somebody off, which leads another person to cut somebody off. Like the idea that we are yet at the point where you can do that safely and that's going to perfectly react, especially, you know, part of the problem I think for AI cars is the real case for

it is when every car is AI so they can talk to each other and they like have fully synchronous. Yeah, we're a long way from that. If we have, you know, some guy driving a 1995 car and then somebody else in a Tesla, like the Tesla is going to, you know, hard stop on its brakes and then it's going to get rear-ended or something in the back.

Anyway, my main contention is, look, if you trust a car to drive you, I don't know what to tell you. I think that's fair. Yeah. On the Elon point, I will say, like, he does have a track record

of making, like, grandiose technological claims that don't ultimately come to fruition. And this seems very much to fit into that. And then, I mean, just the—it is an extra step to put out this video and directly attest no human input. This is all the car. And have no fine print, no disclosure, no nothing, and put that out to the public. I mean, listen, I think you're right. Silicon Valley engages in this kind of shady crap all the time.

That doesn't make it okay or acceptable. I also, to be fair, this is just the engineer who said it. We haven't gotten confirmation yet. That's what he claims. So we'll see. I'm sure it'll come out in litigation. Yes, indeed. Okay, more tech news for you.

This is something that we have been tracking really closely. The trend of mass layoffs across the tech sector continues. The latest company to shed thousands of jobs is Microsoft. Let's put this up on the screen. They are cutting 10,000 jobs, adding, as Reuters puts it, to the glut of tech layoffs. In a note to staff that was shared with Reuters, Microsoft CEO said customers wanted to, quote, optimize their digital spend to do more with less and exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one. Microsoft also grappling with a slump in the personal computer market after a pandemic boom fizzled out, leaving little demand for its Windows and accompanying software. And that really is the story of all of these tech layoffs, more or less, is during the pandemic,

you had a massive boom in the sector. Of course, you had the stock market blowing up and going up and up and up. You also had people who were at home. So they were on Zoom. of thousands of jobs. As I said before, let's put some of the context here. Amazon, put the next piece up on the screen. They are now beginning a new round of layoffs. This we reported before. The number of people that they plan to lay off is around 18,000. This is one of the largest of the whole sector. And these are largely white collar workers. So this is incredibly significant. And you have actually a wonderful resource to track all of this. This is an independent person, layoffs.fyi. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. You've got some

indications of where the largest layoffs are coming from. You have Meta here, you have Amazon, you've got Uber, Booking.com, Cisco, Twitter, Better.com, Peloton, Groupon, Carvana. I can't read that one. Bijouxs? I've never even heard of that. Katerra. Anyway, those were the top layoffs as of December 2022.

The numbers have actually grown since then because you see Amazon on this chart with only 10,000 cuts. Now we know it's up to 18,000 cuts. And there's some, it's like up to 170,000 jobs in the sector across the entire industry that have been cut in the past two years. So, you know, this has a potential. Listen, first of all, it's terrible when people lose their jobs, even people who have been earning a decent salary, even people who probably have some decent job prospects in the future. Losing your job is painful. It's traumatic. It's very difficult. It can put people in a really horrific situation. You know, it really does sort of change the dynamics within the workforce where a lot of the growth in the upper middle class has been because of these tech jobs. So when you have such a pullback on a part of society that has been so important in terms of culture and also in terms of their spend, I mean, our whole society has practically been geared to this income class group. That's going to have big impacts.

And then at the other end of the spectrum, while wages have been getting destroyed by inflation, you have massive demand for workers in the service sector, pink collar, blue collar jobs, were treated as almost like disposable, like there were so many of them, we can just do whatever we want with them. And now you have a different dynamic where it's actually the tech workers who are getting squeezed here and struggling. Yeah, and actually a big part of it and what I always try to focus on is why it even matters is a huge amount of our growth has been disproportionately concentrated in tech, our economic growth specifically. So for example, the S&P 500 is weighted to tech, I believe, at somewhere around 25% to 30%. So with so many people's retirement savings and really just a bet on America in general, you're kind of betting on the technology industry and have been for, let's say, 25-odd years. Now, that has been actually quite a good bet now if you're looking at a long enough time horizon.

But in the short term, if you're going to have contractions in that industry, you're going to have all signs of spillover. So you're going to see a depression in the stocks. You're going to see a reduction of people's retirement overall portfolios. But you're also going to see a lot of the subcontracting firms and other things that rely on tech and tech money to actually do well. It's a complicated problem. You're also going to see, these are really the most leading indicators, the biggest and the biggest of the tech giants. But from what I've heard, people who work in early stage startup capital, it is a savage and a brutal time to try and raise money. I saw a CEO of one financial company who was talking about how he was talking to one of his investors.

One of the investors said, you're one of my top 5% companies. And he was like, that's great. So are you going to give me more money? He's like, oh, no, I'm not going to give you any more money. And so he's literally in the top 5% of somebody's investment portfolio. And he is unable to even raise money from these people. So a lot of venture capital firms, they're just not writing big checks in the way that they used to. And of course, so much of industry and growth and just money that bleeds all over not only San Francisco,

but Austin, any of these cities which have really benefited from all this, it's a big problem. Yeah. San Francisco's housing market has seen the biggest drops of any market in the entire country. Things are still wildly unaffordable. But you see the largest percentage drop there of any metro area in the entire country. And, you know, the other piece of this is that there's been a lot of bloat and a lot of sort of zombie companies in the tech space. I mean, frankly, a lot of sort of like fakery in the tech space where because money was so cheap and because you could get those infusions so easily and everybody had so much cash to play with, there was this attitude of like, all right, we'll just start your thing. It doesn't have to be profitable, and you'll be able to keep it going by basically taking in more and more and more cash. Right. That cycle seems to

have ended. And that's not it. I again, I don't want to seem heartless because of the real human beings involved. But having an entire segment of your economy that's really central, that's partly built on basically like zombie companies and fakery is not ultimately a really healthy thing for the economy. So that's part of the cycle that we're seeing playing out here as well, which is significant, important to track. Yeah, I think it's an important story. And it's one which has big implications for what the future of the U.S. economy really looks like. I would hope some of this money goes to hard industry, but I doubt that we will ever learn. Yes, indeed. Okay.

At the same time, as you all may know, the global elites have gathered once again, the World Economic Forum, in Davos. This is the first time post-pandemic where they're back to the full schedule and the full timing and the whole thing. According to McKinsey, it's the biggest Davos ever in history, Sager. And there's been a big shift in focus at the event, at this global confab. The Russian oligarchs, who used to be plentiful, have been pushed to the side. Also, you have a lot fewer Chinese billionaires because of the hit that China's economy has taken. Instead, you have a lot more Gulf billionaires apparently in attendance this year. And the discussion has been dominated significantly by the Russia's war in Ukraine, including an appearance by video Zoom or whatever by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. Tragedies are outpacing life.

The tyranny is outpacing the democracy. Russia needed less than one second to start the war. The wall needed days to react with the first sanctions. The time the free world uses to think is used by the terrorist state to kill. Ukraine and its allies have been resisting it for almost a year. This period proved all our prompt actions brought positive results. The opening of European borders for Ukraine is a great deal. So basically his point there is we don't have time to wait.

Russia is acting. You all can't just sit on your hands. We need more. We need more. We need more. Yeah, but I think it's a dangerous message to say the time that you have to think as in basically saying

like you should stop thinking. Don't consider. Just do. This is always a difficulty in talking about Ukraine. You know, look, they're doing what's best for consider. Just do. This is always a difficulty in talking about Ukraine. You know, look, they're doing what's best for them. They don't want us to think because they don't want us to think about the downside risk. I will never forget, personally, you know, we have that fake report, Russian missiles fall in Poland.

The first thing this guy does is say that, or they're Russian. It's not our missiles. We need a no-fly zone. NATO needs to intervene. Him and his government, they lied to us. a no-fly zone. NATO needs to intervene. Him and his government, they lied to us. Let's be real here. They straight up lied. And then didn't ever really take it back and didn't ever really apologize to Poland either after all that happened. Now, you know, on the one hand, you could say, okay, you know, that's reasonable. He's doing what's best for his country. He's doing what's best because ultimately that's

going to be the best chance that Ukraine has in this war. But, you know, the term ally presumes that you get something out of it too. And the question is, it's like, what would we possibly get out of being with somebody who desperately wants us to drag us into a broader war, even if their cause is just? It's a nuance and it's a complex situation. I just wish more and more people were able to square those two things. You can hope that things work out well for Ukraine, and you can also be skeptical of some of the things that you're saying. Let's go to the next one up here, and this is exactly why. Why skepticism and thinking is actually quite warranted. This is a headline from The New York Times, which is why it's the most important because you almost certainly know that it is true whenever it's hawkish news.

Quote, U.S. warms to helping Ukraine target Crimea. The Biden administration is considering the argument that Kyiv needs the power to strike at the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. Now, on the one hand, what the Ukrainians are saying, I want to be fair here, it's not crazy. Why? Because Crimea, if you look at it purely militarily, is a major supply line for the Russian effort going on in Ukraine. And if you were to look at it purely and on a military basis, this would be one which you could totally consider as to why it matters. Because it's a major supply base. It's where thousands, tens of thousands of Russian troops enter and exit. They also have a lot of military bases

and critical supplies that they keep there specifically because they don't believe that it will be struck by the Ukrainians. And outside of the bridge bombing that the Ukrainians were behind, we haven't seen any major action there. But of course, what's the overall strategic reason why you may want to think about this? Well, the Russians think it's theirs. And whether you agree with that or not, they think very hard that it is Russia. And if they think that, well, then the risk of escalation and specifically of using our weapons and provided weapons to strike actual Russian territory, well, you're entering kind of a new ballgame. We have no idea how the Russians will react. Part of the calculus by the Biden administration is, well ballgame. We have no idea how the Russians will react.

Part of the calculus by the Biden administration is, well, every time we up the ante, the Russians don't actually do anything. And it's not true. I mean, I'm sorry. It is true. I haven't seen any major escalation. I actually would dispute that. I mean, the attacks, the massive attacks on infrastructure trying to turn the lights off in Ukraine. Well, I meant against us.

I mean, not against the Ukrainians. Sure. Anytime they're like, oh, we're going to bomb NATO. It's like, well, you haven't done it yet. So, I meant against us. I mean, not against the Ukrainians. Sure. Anytime they're like, oh, we're going to bomb NATO. It's like, well, you haven't done it yet. So, you know, and it's obviously a consideration, but this would be unknown territory.

It's one that we considered non grata six months ago. Yeah. And I don't see any reason why you shouldn't consider it that way. There's a lot to say here. I mean, first of all, I just, on the Davos thing, to me, the Zelensky appearance

and all of their posturing around human rights is more a story of their own hypocrisy, where at the same time, they're like, of course, we're on the side of human rights and we're on the side of Ukraine. They're welcoming in the Gulf billionaires who are profiting off of this war through massive oil price increases and also, you know, affiliated with like the most repressive regimes in the entire world, human rights abusing, etc. That's fine. So the massive hypocrisy that's on display there, I think, is probably the most noteworthy part of his appearance because, yeah, he's going to do and say what he needs to do to try to, you know, win this war and defend his own people. And I can't fault him for that. However, on the Crimea piece, this is insane. The idea, the logic that's laid out in this article of like, well, Russia hasn't pulled out the nukes yet, so we think they're just not going to, is so foolish and so terrifying that they're taking such a casual approach to this that I just don't even know what to

say about it. And this isn't just, you know, us talking about it. There have been a lot of experts who have said, if you did have a horrific situation where Russia reached for the nukes, it would likely involve their red line with regard to Crimea. Anatole Levin of Quincy Institute

spoke to Branko Marcetic about exactly this thing, said, the thing is, we don't know when or if Putin actually would use nuclear weapons. My sense is it would be only in the very, very, very last resort because the damage to Russia's image in the world and the damage to Russian troops and territory occupied by Russia would be colossal. Talking to Russian experts, the only scenario in which they find it plausible, though they could be wrong too, but they say it would be if Crimea itself would be in danger. We've drawn certain red lines for the Russians and we need to draw

red lines for the Ukrainians. So there are many experts, not just this one, who say if there is a real hard red line for the Russians, this would be it. And the fact that we have so casually escalated and escalated and escalated in terms of our willingness, in terms of our direct involvement, in terms of what we are sending over there, in terms of the territory that we're willing to assist Ukrainians in striking, you know, it reminds me, frankly, of the buildup to this war. Branko also reported on those WikiLeaks cables, where it was like, you had experts, you had NATO allies, you had the US ambassador to Russia all warning. No, they're serious about these red lights. They're

serious about this, makes them feel like they're encircled. They're serious about this is really causing a problem for them and that it's not going to go unchecked. Now, again, always say they are responsible for their own actions. But ultimately, there were many people who predicted exactly the outcome that we have seen based on the actions that we were taking with regards to expanding NATO. And some of the people who dismissed that at the time said, very similar to this logic here, they always say that and they never do anything. They always say that and they never do anything. So maybe, maybe it's just all a bluff. Maybe it doesn't really matter to them.

Maybe they won't really respond in the most terrifying or horrific way. But to so casually dismiss it and dismiss the red lines that they have laid out very clearly, we just never learn from history. You know, another side of it, actually, so actually reading an analyst and what they said made a good point. It's like, look, even if they don't nuke it, a lot of Russians, they think that Crimea, like they may not agree with the Ukraine invasion, but they're like, Crimea is Russia, according to them. It could actually increase domestic political support for Putin inside of Russia.

And for the war. And if he used it as a pretext to do, let's say a call up of another 300,000 or something troops, he would actually probably not face the same level of domestic political pushback that they did. And look, I mean, I also think it just highlights the overall conflict itself. When the Ukrainians say they want to take Crimea, it's because they're like, as long as

Crimea remains in Russian hands, this is going to be a stalemated conflict that we will just continue to get pounded by. And I'm like, yeah, they're not wrong. And that's why a diplomatic solution is probably the only way it's going to end. They're like, but we want to have the upper hand in the negotiating table. So we want to try and sever some of the supply lines going into Russia. The problem is you don't know howwayed by the arguments. You can look at this article as clearly being leaked by hawks in the administration to test the waters. And try to force his hand, too. There's another major decision point. Actually, I just broke this morning. So I remember, I don't know if you guys remember,

we talked about the tanks going from Britain. Germany is now saying, they're like, we're not going to give those tanks, we're not going to let Poland give our tanks to Ukraine unless you give tanks to Ukraine. Because they're like, we don't want to let Poland give our tanks to Ukraine unless you give tanks to Ukraine. Because they're like, we don't want this on us, on the United States. So they pointed the, apparently they've been calling the White House and they're like, we're not sending a damn thing in terms of tanks unless you do it because it needs to appear joint. Because if there's a

problem, then we're the ones who are going to face the brunt and we'll get the blame. And we don't want that. It needs to be a US-based effort. And apparently America never wanted send the tanks. That's part of the reason why Britain and Germany were doing it, because they wanted it to be a European-led thing. But the Europeans are like, no, no, no, no, we're not having any of that. We'll see how that decision point lays out. Yeah, I mean, the latest reporting is that we're preparing another $2.5 billion aid package, including, you know, additional weapon shipments, including some things we have never sent before, but that they are still ruling out sending tanks. I mean, what they say is like, oh, well, these are hard, logistically difficult, and they're very heavy, and it's not even clear they'd be useful in the conflict. But I think the real concerns are more about, you know,

the continued concerns about escalation. Well, not just that. I mean, you know, once you have a tank, you can move pretty quick if you know what you're doing. And next thing you know, you could be 100 miles inside of Crimea. And now we're in a whole other situation. Part of the reason why the Biden administration doesn't want to give it to them. Yes, indeed. All right. There was another Davos moment that really caught our attention. This one flagged by a friend of the show, Ken Klippenstein. So Senator Chris Coons is probably Joe Biden's closest ally in the Senate. So when he speaks, it's really important to listen to what he had to say. Now, we've been covering here the fact that there is some angst on the

European side about the Inflation Reduction Act. They're concerned about the incentives contained therein, that some of their industry around green energy may come to our shores. So there's been some friction in the relationship. So in that context, Senator Chris Coons gets asked about nearshoring and French shoring and where does this terrifying protectionism all end? Let's take a listen to what he has to say. How far will the U.S. go in French shoring, making sure that things goes to Mexico and countries that you're allied with? Do you see the point of the IMF managing director, and how will the U.S. balance this to make sure that we also will have growth in the years to come, and this will be a

very shallow recession, if a recession at all? Look, thank you. Thank you for your comments and the opportunity. I do think that American leaders and business leaders in particular recognize that the severe disruptions of the pandemic and some of the challenges of the reach and the scope of globalization that have caused reach and the scope of globalization that have caused a backlash in many of our countries, a populist backlash certainly in the United States, need to be addressed. One of the ways to deal with some of our challenges in terms of the hemisphere and migration also is to do some nearshoring to improve the job opportunities in Central America, for example.

But I don't think it will be as robust as potentially projected. I do think that we will continue to have an open economy, to be committed to free trade, and to see the robust value that globalization has brought to the world as a whole swath of the country. They're talking about things like PNTR with China, opening up normalized trade relations with China, which has been devastating for blue collar workers. It's been devastating for our industrial base. It has made it so our supply chains, which was manifested incredibly clearly during COVID and continuing to this day, are incredibly fragile and dependent on a lot of other countries, but China in particular. And effectively, what Kunz is saying here is like, we had to do a little bit of this to sort of placate the people, but we're still really committed to the old way of doing things that lines the pockets of billionaires and a sort of

global elite class at the expense of blue collar workers here. The irony of it is, is that Europe has one of the most protectionist economies in the world. They just have the European Union. They're pissed that they don't get to have protectionism and that they don't get to ship their car parts here and that we don't put a tariff on them or that we require our stuff to be American made

while their stuff is European made and European owned, especially financially. The whole thing is a total farce. I cannot stand their pre- Germany's entire economy is a protectionist hellhole for anybody who wants to do business outside of the world. That's why they are one of the largest, I believe the largest economy in all of Europe, because they have all of these rules and regulations that pile up with the hand of Brussels. This is part of the reason why Britain wanted to leave the EU in the first place. The whole point is that when you look at it, they want protectionism for themselves

and free trade for us. And that has been the case with China, with the European Union, with Japan, with India, with Brazil. I mean, almost every other major trade partner that we have has an incredibly closed off homogenous system. And then they come here and they're like, no, they expect to be able to just do business completely the way that they want, and then ship all the profits back home while making sure that people here lose their jobs. It's completely ridiculous. And it's an ideology, you know, that Chris Coons and all of them have set from the top. I hope it gets rejected. I wish stuff like this was more at the political conversation like it was a couple of years ago. I feel like we've almost

forgotten about it. Yeah. I mean, this was really core to the rise of Trump. I mean, this was one of the things, you know, there was an over-attempt by the media to like say Trump and Bernie Sanders are the same. But on some of these issues at that time, they were singing a lot of the same tune and they were right. Yes, they were. And they have never been more vindicated in that messaging than right now. Again, we just lived through the terrifying experience of, oh, we're facing a pandemic and we literally don't make any of our own PPE. Oh, where are all of our pharmaceuticals manufactured? Oh, we can't even get baby formula on the shelves. I mean, the amount of fragility

and vulnerability that we discovered exists in our supply chain because exactly this thinking, not to mention, I mean, guys, we continue to have increases in overdoses and deaths of despair, continued fallout from the way that we decimated the industrial base and the working class of this country in favor of growth. Well, growth for who? To benefit who? That's a question they never, ever answered. They never wanted to answer because, of course, it's their political donors who benefited from this quote-unquote free trade regime for so many years. So, you know, this is why it's always important to pay close attention to what elites at Davos are saying to each other because they sort of forget that the rest of the world can hear them. That's a good point. And it's a little bit of a mask-off moment. So this is why I always track these things really closely and really appreciate Ken also

watching this and paying attention to it because there was a thought that, you know what, things might really be changing. There may really be a new consensus emerging in Washington and a different approach to, you know, supply chains and rebuilding our industrial base and getting some of this fragility out of our system. And the Inflation Reduction Act seemed like, OK, and we had the CHIPS Act, right? Maybe this is a new era of industrial policy. And at least according to Senator Chris Coons, who, again, is the top ally of Joe Biden in the Senate, this was all just, you know, a little bit of a ruse, a little bit of a sop to the populace. And we're going to go back to doing exactly what we were doing before.

Very unfortunate. All right. Let's go to the next part here, COVID. Leanna Nguyen, Dr. Leanna Nguyen, you know, having one of the most interesting turns in politics. Is that a real arc, right? Real character arc? It started out as one of the most, like, wear a mask, all this, and then became one of the really only people on CNN, I guess, whenever it was safe to begin acknowledging things,

saying, like like masks don't work unless you're wearing an N95. Now saying actually we're overcounting COVID deaths, kind of stunning people on CNN itself, and then also drawing a major reaction afterwards. Let's take a listen to exactly what she said. As you know, I covered this closely being in the Trump White House when this happened. I talked to a lot of health officials about this who are actually kind of skeptical of this claim that you're making. And I think one big thing has been, what is the evidence that these COVID deaths are actually being overcounted? Well, this is the reason why this kind of transparent reporting is going to be so

important. There is a way for us to look at death certificates and also to look at the medical records of individuals prior to their death. And I think this needs to be separated into three categories. One is the COVID as a direct contributor, the primary cause of death. The second is, could it be a secondary contributing cause? So for example, somebody with kidney disease, COVID then pushes them over the edge to have kidney failure. That's COVID as a contributing cause. And then the third is COVID as an incidental finding. So somebody coming in with a gunshot wound or a heart attack and they happen to test positive. I think that we need to separate out and look at the percentages of each. That percentage would have shifted over time as well. In the beginning,

probably a lot more people were dying with the primary cause of COVID. That probably has shifted. She's not wrong. That's been the case now for a long time. And actually, this is part of why it's so difficult. I don't know if everybody remembers, but the CDC put out a statement, what was it, about a year ago or so, where they were talking about how the average person who's dying of COVID post-mass vaccination campaign was like over 80 years old and had up to four comorbidities. And people lost it because what they are attempting to do is a lot of people want you to still believe that COVID is a major threat to your life. Now, with variants, with vaccination, natural immunity, therapeutics, and so much of the evolution of where we are right now, it's just simply not true, unless you have some pretty major underlying health conditions, and that's where it genuinely could be a major threat to your life, something that she actually even argues in this Washington Post op-ed.

Again, I don't exactly know why she's coming forward. The major kind of crux of her argument here is that it's important to actually keep accurate data as to what this is and to actually make sure that what the COVID death rate purportedly is is not something that is unacceptably high or a way that we can actually track the virulence and the progress of the disease. But this has also been the case now for quite a long time for a lot of people who are even looking at age tables and others regarding COVID many, many, I would say almost two years ago almost at this point. Now, the thing is though, is that this is effectively conventional wisdom for most people. I think they understand it. When an 85-year-old who's got heart disease and diabetes dies because they have COVID, is it really COVID that's what's responsible for their

death? That being said, this clip itself of benign conventional wisdom now at this point received a tremendous amount of pushback in kind of the liberal intelligentsia. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, actually echoing some exactly of what Caitlin Collins was pushing back there with quote-unquote health professionals. Please, Dr. Wen, we don't have time to wonder or speculate. The data is public. We know exactly how many COVID deaths were primary versus contributing versus incidental. It's actually not true. More deaths are now contributing, but that doesn't mean that they are overcounted. Go to the next one there, please.

On the screen, Mehdi Hassan saying, right-wingers are loving the latest nonsense from Leanna Nguyen, who has gone from COVID hawk to COVID to minimize to now aid and abettor of COVID denialists. Her latest conspiratorial claims have been debunked by a number of actual experts. And then the next one there, please, also important. Yes, similar, Dr. Lucky Tran, the cycle of disinformation. The White House is seeding talking points with handpicked minimizer Twitter docs like Leanna Nguyen. Minimizer docs spread disinformation via priority access to the media. Anti-vaxxers amplify, minimize their op-ed, pending the White House is using dissent as an excuse to loosen its policies. So these are all

people, again, who really do seem to believe that we, Crystal, are like in May of 2020 or something and want to freeze the conversation there. That's the part I just don't get. How can you possibly push back against this? Actually, that last person had one part of their thing had a point, which is that I think when you look at her character arc and you ask, like, why is she shifted so dramatically? Well, originally, the claim she was making the way she was positioning herself was beneficial to Democrats. And now, you know, while you have a lot of liberals who don't want to engage with with what she's saying and are just like panicked at the very suggestion of it. The Biden White House is very interested in people moving out of the pandemic and feeling like things are OK and like moving forward. So, I mean, it does just so happen that her commentary has sort of tracked what is most useful for the Biden White House, which that last commenter who had a lot of other things to say about it as well did point that out.

And I think that that is a worthwhile point. Listen, I don't claim to be an expert on whether the deaths are overcounted or undercounted or just right or whatever. I have not dug into it deeply. Let me just put that ultimately on the table. But what has bothered me this whole time is the level of panic about even having a discussion around it and providing a quote-unquote talking point to someone who might be your ideological adversary. And the shifting nature of what you're allowed to wonder about, question, dig into, the way public health officials have actively admitted to trying to shape public opinion and behavior rather than just present us with evidence and facts. And social media, and we've talked about that as well, has also played into this as serving as these sort of gatekeepers of what you can say and what you

can't say and what counts as fact and what counts as fiction. That has been the piece that has always really bothered me. And so I think that's sort of exemplified by the treatment of the comments here from Leigh-Anna Nguyen. It's just so insane. It's January 2023. I can't even believe that we're having this discussion. I thought people knew this a long time ago. And then the fact that people who have decent sway over at least public health opinion and public health authority in this country disagree with what she's saying is even more disturbing to me. But it is what it is. All right, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, when we first had Peter Zaihan on the show, I got to admit, I was kind of skeptical. Peter is just an extraordinarily confident person, and he's obviously brilliant. But when he would

declaratively say China's going to collapse in exactly 10 years, I couldn't help but recoil. Take it from the guy who said publicly he didn't think Russia would invade Ukraine. You can look pretty dumb when things go wrong. Making grand pronouncements about major events in the heat of the moment, it can come back to bite you. But what if Peter is smarter than me? What if he's right? What if the way that we are thinking about China is completely wrong? What if it is not a juggernaut, but it's actually an illusion the entire time, and it's crumbling right before our eyes? I'm not saying I agree, but let's go through some recent data that actually makes the case. First was major demographic data out of China that just came out yesterday. The CCP, for the first time, has admitted that its population has fallen for the first time in over 60 years. There

are several things to note here. First of all, this is the official number. Assume the real number is much worse. Second, even if you go by their official numbers, that means that new births in China have fallen a full 45% in the last five years, a full-blown demographic crisis that started well before COVID and is now accelerating. China now has a birth rate behind India, the United States, the United Kingdom, making it one of the worst on the largest economies on earth. To put things in perspective, the last time that things were this bad demographically in China, it was because of a famine caused by Mao Zedong. Worse, it does not seem like they have any easy way out. For all the talk of the legacy of the one-child policy and the cultural problems that it foretold, today's problems have a lot to do with economics as well. While yes, China is an

economic juggernaut in the aggregate, on the individual level, things are not set up there for the flourishing of family life. Much of this centers around couples who simply don't believe that it is economically possible to have more than one child right now, and a total lack of faith that the government may not reverse itself in the future and say actually only one child is now desirable. Michael Beckley, he's a US-based professor who wrote a book on China. He lays this out in Future, quote, China will lose 5 to 10 million working age adults and gain 5 to 10 million senior citizens every year for the foreseeable future. There is no way out of that. Worse, they are not on the backside of COVID right now. In fact, they are having their 2020 moment right now after abandoning their idiotic COVID zero policy. By their own admission, tens of thousands of people are dying of COVID per day. The virus is ripping like wildfire through its population. This, too, is causing mass consternation across the population because it is a clear sign that they stayed locked up for two years for absolutely no reason. The rest of the world

barely thinks about COVID, but for them, it's a full-blown crisis. And of course, it will only further weaken their population problems, and it highlights their economic ones. China's economy grew just 3% last year after a target set by the government for 5.5%. And again, three is the official numbers. Who knows what the real one is? Some Western analysts have put their real growth as low as 0.5% in reality. Dig deeper, the overall number is still stunning compared to the previous periods. Just a decade ago, it was growing at a rapacious 7.7% per year.

Its economy now looks on par of that with the West. Except the West doesn't need speedy economic growth to fund hundreds of millions of people and propel enough of our population into the middle class to maintain social stability and preserve an authoritarian dictatorship. There are other signs of impending problems lurking beneath the surface. We all took notice of the Evergrande bubble earlier this year. But the overall debt problem right now for China is immense. Right now, their overall level of total debt in China is $51 trillion. That's three times the size of their entire economy. It's the highest level in Beijing since they even started tracking it in 27 years, and they don't have the American luxury of being the world's reserve

currency. Furthermore, with their mounting demographic problems, they're having a hell of a time paying even for major social benefits. They need to care for their increasingly elderly population. They have barely any new workers to replace them. Current trends say soon they will have one worker trying to support three elderly, leading to even more borrowing and debt, not enough taxes or spending. I could go on further. I could point to their record high inflation, the fact they import almost all the energy that they actually need. They have very little reserve,

but all of this makes actually a compelling case for the Zaihan thesis. How are they supposed to be tough abroad when they have to sew their entire society back together in such a short period of time? Worse, they don't have the democratic release valve that we do. When our people are pissed, they can vote. There, it just boils and it boils. Every once in a while, it comes up to the surface so we can take a little bit of notice. Maybe a decade is too short of a time horizon. I've come away in the last year and with a very basic normie point. Authoritarian societies are just bad. In the long run, they really just don't work that well. They're actually not equal to us really at all, nor can they replace us. Look at Russia and China. COVID-0 is humiliating, and clearly their society is falling apart. At Russia, they claim they could

have an alternative system to the West. It turns out they have basically no friends on the international stage, and their economy only runs because of petrochemicals. Look, maybe all of this is way too optimistic. I could do a whole monologue on America's failures. I think I've done many here on the show. But looking from the outside in, the view of the Chinese century just does not look the same as it did a decade ago. Maybe Peter Zion is completely right, after all. Look, Chris, I... 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, today in an unusual nationwide coordinated action, legislators in seven different states are introducing a raft of legislation that is aimed at taxing the rich. The Washington Post has the story. The headline is, Billionaires in Blue States face coordinated wealth tax bills. Some measures are based on Senator Elizabeth Warren's proposals to make the super rich pay more. And the article details a range of ideas from a wealth tax in California to levy a 1.5% tax on assets over a billion dollars, pretty modest proposal in my opinion, to proposals in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, and New York that would increase capital gains taxes. They've also documented here efforts that would expand the state tax in order to curb the extraordinary transfers of intergenerational wealth,

which have increasingly locked us into a rigid class system. Now, each of these ideas has its own pluses and minuses, but all are wildly popular with the American people. An article a couple of years back summed up the research on this matter quite well. Quote, Most Americans want the rich to pay higher taxes, according to every poll everywhere. They cite polls showing a Warren-style wealth tax proposal with 77% support among Democrats and a majority 53% support even among Republicans. One specific idea to tax wealth over $50 million at 2%, much more than what's

being proposed in California. That clocked in at 74% support overall. Even more aggressive proposals, things like lifting the top tax rate to 70%, enjoys about 60% support overall. Taxing the rich is so popular that even a majority of millionaires supported taxing millionaires more. But, but we did manage to identify one demographic which was adamantly opposed no matter which proposal was tested. Wealthy, bespectacled, bowtie-wearing business anchors. This really comes from Senator Elizabeth Warren. This comes from her playbook that you don't just tax income you go after people's assets and wealth and maybe it doesn't have legs but this is something that is going to resonate with many members of the public the demonstrable reality

is as greg valier says get uh get out the moving vans here come the moving vans is what he says verbatim i mean this has been proven to florida and other states as well. Florida, Arizona, there has been, you see, an exodus at times of people from these very high tax cities. Think about those living in New York City. You pay federal, you pay state, you pay city tax. You have incredibly high rents. And then with inflation on top of that, and you compound that with the fact that you can, for most people, start to work more remotely at home. We obviously saw that exodus to Florida and potentially there's a wealth tax. It'll continue. I know you're laughing. I went by Pharaoh's desk the other day. We never talk. I walk by his desk once a year and he's got

a map of Texas out of the desk. I tell this story to everyone. I remember when I was moving over here seven, eight years ago and the accountant said they'd give me a call. Bloomberg offers a great service to relocate. So I take this call with the accountant. I'm thinking I'm going to be paying lower taxes in America. This will be great. That's a conner. Gets on the phone and says, federal income tax will be excellent. I'm thinking, fantastic. That's down from where I was in the UK. And they said, no, no, no, we're not done. And then they start going state, city. I was like, what are you talking about? This is so important. I'll let you go back to Anne-Marie or John. The summation of the many taxes is the tension. And then the property

taxes on top of that. Question I keep is, how on earth do you retire? Personally, I love here how the segment just devolves into a big pity party about how unbearably high their taxes are and how low taxes for the rich in the U.S. are a, quote, canard. Here's a little reality check. Thanks to Trump's tax cut, the wealthiest Americans, once all taxes are considered local, state, and federal, pay less in taxes than any other income group. Take a look at these graphics. pay less in taxes than any other income group. Take a look at these graphics. On one side, you can see what a reasonable tax system looks like, where the wealthier actually pay more. Back in 1950, that is the way our system worked.

But with the end of the New Deal era and the rise of market fundamentalism and trickle-down and the onslaught of unfettered money in politics, we've now got the relationship completely upside down. Again, after those Trump tax cuts, for the first time in politics, we've now got the relationship completely upside down. Again, after those Trump tax cuts for the first time in 2018, the richest Americans paid a lower tax rate than every single other group. Think about how disgusting that is. They have rigged the system so much that a waitress earning a tipped minimum wage of, let's say, $3 an hour has to pay more in tax than literal billionaires. And yet these fools are out here on TV crying about how unfair it all is to the wealthy. Let me give you a couple

more stats in our little reality check moment here. The pandemic has ushered in an even more shocking era of wealth hoarding. Two-thirds of all new wealth created globally since the start of COVID went to the top 1%. So 66% of all new wealth went to just 1% of people. Meanwhile, right here in the US, the number of people putting off medical care because they can't afford it reached a record all-time high in 2022. It spiked 12 percentage points in a single year. 38% of Americans are putting off basic medical care because of cost. And a majority of these said that the care that they needed was for at least a somewhat serious condition. And we wonder why we're all sicker and dying earlier. But go ahead

and cry more about some incredibly modest proposals to tax the rich just a little bit more. Cry and threaten to move to another state where they'll allow the plutocrat class to fully run the show exactly as you want it. Although, I do have to say, much as I find these people's worldview disgusting and greedy, the rich really do have a track record of relocating their wealth from state to state for tax avoidance purposes. So, their crybaby threats to take their money and go elsewhere, they're not idle. California, New York, Illinois, comparatively higher tax locales, they've all been losing population to places like Florida, Arizona, and Texas.

Plenty of wealthy New Yorkers spend just enough days in Florida to technically reside in that state. Now, that's not to say these statewide efforts are not a worthy endeavor, but they're no substitute for better tax policy at the federal level. Insanely, Republicans right now are pushing in the complete opposite direction with a so-called fair tax proposal that would guarantee a regressive tax system with the wealthiest paying the least and the poorest paying the most. A vote on this monstrosity was one of the demands of the McCarthy Tea Party 2.0 holdouts. The bill proposes to eliminate the income tax in favor of a national

sales tax, and it would dramatically hike the price of everything from groceries to prescription drugs. Sounds awesome, right? You know how expensive everything is right now? How'd you like to pay like 20% more on everything? What's more, since the poorest must spend a much higher percentage of their income on things like groceries, the tax is inherently regressive, codifying into place a thoroughly backward system whereby the rich are guaranteed to pay next to nothing in comparison to their income and the poor take it on the chin. As for the Democrats, they failed miserably while they were in control. They let the Trump tax cut stand. They did nothing on capital gains or wealth taxes or estate taxes. Just as Joe Biden famously promised, nothing fundamentally changed. And now two of

the primary villains and guaranteeing the disgusting status quo remains, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, are literally high-fiving in Davos. Bottom line, our bow-tied friends over at Bloomberg can probably rest easy. The politicians they bought still have their back. Love these little moments. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We've been tracking an important story of potential academic censorship, and we're very excited to welcome Kenneth Roth to speak about this. He was the executive director of Human Rights Watch from 93 to 2022. He's currently writing a book.

And let's go ahead and put this recent op-ed from Mr. Roth on the screen here. He says, I once ran Human Rights Watch. Harvard blocked my fellowship over Israel. Welcome to the show, sir. Glad to have you. Thanks for having me. My pleasure to be here. Yeah, of course.

So just tell us what happened here. Well, when I announced that I would be leaving Human Rights Watch last April, I was planning to leave as of the end of course. So just tell us what happened here. in being a senior fellow there during the current academic year so I could work on my book there. And we went back and forth a little bit. And I basically said, yes, that sounds like a good idea. And we thought that that was pretty much a done deal. There was one technical step that still needed to be taken. We needed the sign-off of Dean Douglas Allmendorf, the head of the Kennedy School. But we assumed that that would be just a mere formality. And so I actually, over the summer, contacted Almanjoff and said, look, I'm going to be there in September. Let's get to know each other. And we arranged a Zoom conversation and had a very pleasant half-hour chat until the end. And then he asked me this weird question. He said, do you have any enemies?

Now, this is odd for me because I've got a gazillion enemies. I mean, I've headed Human Rights Watch for three decades. We document government's human rights violations, criticize them for it. They hate that. So many of them hate me. And I ran through that with Elmendorf. I said, well, the Chinese government and the Russian government have personally imposed sanctions on me. I mentioned the Saudi government and the Rwandan government, particularly to test me. But I had an idea what he was driving at. So I said, and also, the Israeli government doesn't like me. And that turned out to be the kiss of death. Because two weeks later, I got a phone call from my friends at the Carr Center, who had to sheepishly admit that Dean Elmendorf had vetoed my fellowship

because of my and Human Rights Watch's criticism of Israel. Wow. I mean, it's outrageous. And this is something I want to focus on with you specifically, because you named a number of other governments. One of the accusations, I believe, that was leveled against you is that you disproportionately spend time criticizing Israel, whereas those appear to be ones where it might be more controversial. But, you know, lay out your other track record, not just Israel, but everything that you covered while you were there for three decades. Right. Yeah, I mean, that's an odd accusation because, I mean, first of all, if you just look at the facts, Israel is one of 100 governments that Human Rights Watch regularly reports on. So you know, it's like one, maybe

2% of our work. I mean, it's a tiny, tiny percentage of our work. So to say that we're disproportionately focused on Israel is just, you know, ridiculous. But the other thing is that the people who make that allegation, there's a sort of cottage industry of little groups of partisan defenders of the Israeli government. And they, in their view, you know, the Israeli government has never in the history of the world committed a human rights violation. They devote themselves to attacking anybody who criticizes Israel. And then, you know, that epitome of bias, they have the audacity to claim that we're biased because we impartially apply the same factual and legal standards to Israel as we do biased because we impartially apply the same factual

and legal standards to Israel as we do to everybody else. It's just absurd. Yeah. And I don't think there's any doubt when you apply that same criticism to one of the adversaries of the United States government, let's say in Iran or Syria or another nation, there isn't nearly the same level of pushback. I'd love to delve into some of the facts and reality here at Human Rights Watch. You all authored a report that I followed very closely titled, this was April 27, 2021, A Threshold Crossed Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. What is the critique that you level there? And obviously the word apartheid, very strong. What is the evidence that you use to bolster that claim? I think you're right for bringing that up,

because I think that that is a lot of what's behind this veto of my fellowship. But what we did, we were not making, very explicitly, not making an historical analogy to South Africa. Rather, we were applying international law. And there were two relevant treaties here. There's the UN Convention Against Apartheid, and then there's the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. And this sets forth very clearly, you know, these are the legal standards. And then in a, you know, 200-page report, which is incredibly detailed, we outlined, you know, why there was this oppressive discrimination against Palestinians. And, you know, if you spend time in the West Bank, it actually is pretty obvious,

you know, you have these, you know, well-developed, beautiful Israeli settlements where, you know, Israelis get to live under civil law with the full freedoms of an Israeli citizen. And then, you know, right next door in Area C of the West Bank, you'll have these Palestinian villages where they can't even add a bedroom without getting it demolished. They have to travel on separate roads. They need passes to get through checkpoints. I mean, it has all the hallmarks of apartheid. And the real question, I mean, I've been asked, why didn't you call it apartheid earlier?

And I think that's a fair question. But for many years, when we would point out this oppressive discrimination, people would say, oh, yeah, but don't worry. There's the peace process. Once we have peace, all this will be taken care of. That defense just stopped being credible because there is no peace process right now. It's completely moribund. The current government is going in the opposite direction from any conceivable two-state solution. And so we just,

you know, looked at the reality today. We're not going to assess the future. We just said, what's it today? And there's just no question that it's apartheid. This is what Human Rights Watch found. This is what B'Tselem, the leading Israeli group, found. This is what Amnesty International found, and, you know, a plethora of other groups as well. So, I mean, that's just the ugly reality. I wish it wasn't so, but it is what it is. Yeah. And, you know, look, even if you disagree, I don't think that's grounds for, I mean, the idea that Harvard is supposedly like endorsing all of the, like the opinions of its fellows. I mean, that seems pretty ridiculous in an academic point of view. My question also is, do you have any idea who, why, where did the pressure on the dean come from?

So was it above his pay grade? Is it donor-based? What's happening? Well, first, let me just pick up on your earlier point, which is to say, this is the Kennedy School. So the Kennedy School was supposed to be the nation's foremost policy institute, where they teach tomorrow's, the next generation of leaders, how to deal with domestic policy and how to deal with foreign policy, you know, how you address the Israeli government,

you know, given its rightward dangerous trend, is the classic thing that Kennedy School students should learn about. But evidently, Dean Elmendorf doesn't want them to hear, you know, an impartial perspective as Human Rights Watch would present. He invites literally 10 Israeli officials to the Kennedy School every single year, but they're all partial. That's fine. But an impartial observer like me, like Human Rights Watch, no, apparently that's not okay. Now, what was going on behind the scenes? We know that it was because of my criticism of Israel. Elmendorf has said that to Catherine Sikink, a very respected professor at the Kennedy School.

And he also told Matthias Ries, the faculty director of the Carr Center, that people who mattered to him objected to my fellowship. Now, we don't know what that means. You know, he doesn't seem to have a personal strong view on Israel. But who these people who mattered to him were, you know, were they donors? The Nation, Michael Massing's article in The Nation, outlined a number of very big donors to the Kennedy School who are big supporters of Israel. Did he consult with them?

Did he surmise what they would think? Was it some other influence that undermined academic freedom? We don't know. But the bottom line is the message that Harvard is sending is disastrous. It's suggesting that, you know, if you criticize Israel, that's the third rail that will compromise your academic career. Yeah. Well, we actually have that Nation article. We can put that tear sheet up on the screen that tracks some of the significant contributors and donors to Harvard and their pro-Israeli stances and asked whether this is, you know, the reason,

whether these were the people that mattered to the dean that ultimately axed your fellowship there. And part of what I hate about this is, frankly, the dean, by taking these sort of actions, plays into some of the anti-Semitic tropes about, you know, a cabal behind the scenes, well-moneyed, et cetera, et cetera. And I mean, that's one of the angles of this that I find disturbing and problematic. But, you know, listen, you're writing a book, you're well-established in your career, you're going to be just fine. You didn't necessarily need this fellowship. So what do you think is the bigger, broader lesson here? Why did you feel it was important to take your personal story public?

Well, you're absolutely right. This is not compromising my future. I'm fine. I have plenty of options because I've, you know, I've been leading Human Rights Watch for three decades. So I will go someplace else. I am already someplace else. And I'll, you know, I'll continue finding other opportunities. But as I said, I really worry about the younger academic, the junior scholar, even the student who, when they look at the situation, might honestly want to criticize Israel, but now says, well, I better not. This may really cost me my future. And Dean Elmendorf at the Kennedy School seems, at this point, paralyzed.

I mean, it's just hard to know what he's going to do. So we've appealed to Lawrence Bacow, the president of Harvard, to step in because this is really Harvard's reputation that is at stake. And if anybody can stand up to donor pressure, if anybody can offer a principled defense of academic freedom, it's Harvard, the richest university in the world. When I ran Human Rights Watch, if somebody came to me and said, here's some money, but we want you to exempt our favorite country, I would say, no, we're not the organization for you. We have to apply equal standards to everybody. That's just the cost of being principled.

Harvard can afford to do the same thing. It can announce that regardless of donor pressure, regardless of external pressure, they are not going to compromise academic freedom. They're going to uphold intellectual independence. If Harvard can't do that, who can? Yeah, excellent. That's a great point. $42 billion endowment. Exactly. I mean, if they lose a few donations, they're going to be just fine. Thank you so much for taking the time. Good luck in the next endeavor. Let us know when the book comes out so we can talk to you about that as well. Really grateful to get to talk to you today, sir. I enjoyed talking to you, sir.

Thank you. That'd be great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Maybe it'll piss some people off. Don't particularly care.

But listen, we care a lot about censorship in all realms of our society here. And this is one which you're probably not going to hear about in some of the conservative press that often talks about it. So it's important to give people a fulsome picture of everything that's going on in our society. This is a major one too, which look, as an American, the idea that you can't criticize anybody and not face pressure like this and supposedly the nation's premier academic institution, that really pisses me off. When I went to Georgetown for my graduate degree, I walked past a sign every single day saying this building was donated by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And I don't remember anybody batting an eye over that.

Or any Georgetown faculty getting in trouble for saying it. Well, it's not like any of them actually said anything. His point about how they welcome 10 Israeli officials, that's no problem. They're considered impartial. It's not like any of them actually said anything. His point about how they welcomed 10 Israeli officials, that's no problem. Right. Right. They're considered impartial. But the head for three decades of Human Rights Watch, that's not a bounce. Like, come on.

All right. Insanity. Anyway, thank you so much for your support to the show so we can highlight stories like this one. And in general, live show tickets. Go ahead and buy them if you haven't already and get the last couple there. But otherwise, we've got great content for you guys all over the weekend. We'll be back here on Monday for an amazing show. And we love you all. Love y'all. See you Monday. 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. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. 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, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune

worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.