Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/13/21: Donziger Released, Inflation, Tornadoes, 4th Shot, Starbucks Workers, Chris Wallace, Apple, MSNBC vs Assange, Assange's Next Steps, and More!

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Krystal and Saagar cover the worsening inflation numbers, devastating tornadoes in the midwest and south, Pfizer's campaign for another booster, Starbucks workers unionizing, Chris Wallace's puzzling decision, Apple selling out to China, MSNBC vs Julian Assange, the next steps for Julian Assange with his brother, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Help Assange: https://assangedefense.org/ Free Donziger: https://www.freedonziger.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big stories to get to. We've been following the aftermath of that horrible rash of tornadoes in western Kentucky and across five different states, causing more than 100 lives likely to be lost. We'll give you all the latest there. Some very, very eyebrow-raising comments from the CEO of Pfizer. Surprise, surprise. We'll detail that. Big movement in the world of labor. Starbucks workers forming the first ever U.S. union of a Starbucks shop that is up in Buffalo,

something we've been following closely. We've got those details. We also have on the negative side, Kellogg's is planning to hire replacement workers for their workforce, which has been out on strike. Biden has issued a supportive statement of the workers. So we'll tell you what's going on there. Also, big moves over at Fox News. A longtime host, Chris Wallace, is out. He is going over to CNN's cringe new streaming service. Decided to go out with a bang, I guess. Along with Casey Hunt. So I got to get into that. Also, you guys probably know, UK court has ruled in favor of the US extraditing Julian Assange here. We have Julian's brother in the program today to talk to us about his personal health, what this means in terms of the legal fights and, of course, the broader implications for free speech and censorship.

Big inflation numbers, too, that we want to start with. But before we get to that, some big news regarding Steven Donziger. Yes, huge news. Actually, good news here. So you guys probably know myself, Brianna Joy Gray, Katie Halper, Marianne Williamson. We did a live stream last week, Wednesday night, to try to call attention to the fact that Steven was wrongfully imprisoned for the crime of helping people in Ecuador to try to seek justice against Chevron. Chevron, of course, retaliating against him, finding favorable judges, throwing him in prison for a misdemeanor contempt charge,

which is insane. I mean, this doesn't happen. Even if you, and I personally think the charges are bogus, but even if you accept the charges, the fact that he would serve two years of home confinement and then six months in a federal prison because of this was totally insane. So the day after our live stream,

prison officials released him back to home confinement. He is not free, still in home confinement, but it is a lot better than sitting in a federal prison. So really excited. This week we'll try to get Stephen on so we can hear from him directly, but big development there. And we have a tweet. Let's put that get Steven on so we can hear from him directly. But big development there. And we have a tweet.

Let's put that up there on the screen of Steven actually at home. It says, Danbury prison officials release me after serve the rest of my sentence an extra 136 days. Huge step forward in our campaign, but the battle for freedom and to hold Chevron accountable continues. So, I mean, Crystal, do you have any insight into why he was released? Not really. What exactly the impetus was? Not really. I didn't even know this was a thing. That you can go to prison and they're like, ah, you Not really. Like, what exactly the impetus was? Not really. I didn't even know this was a thing,

that you can go to prison and they're like, yeah, you're good, actually. Yeah, we decided. Well, he had said he was the only person in the entire prison who was serving for a misdemeanor charge. Well, yeah, of course, right. Everybody else, you know, had been convicted of a felony.

I know that, you know, I think that the prison guards and officials, they were uncomfortable with him being there from the start because his case was such an outlier in terms of the general prison population. Beyond that, I really don't know, um, exactly what happened, which is why I'm anxious. You know, we'll, we'll try to talk to him soon and find out what was happening behind the scenes. Also, by the way, you know, part of what we were trying to do with the live stream was not just to put pressure on and raise awareness about what was going on since he was in prison and couldn't speak for himself, but also to help him raise funds for his legal defense fund, which is not only about his insanely high legal fees, which were, you know, an intentional tactic of Chevron to try to bleed him dry. But also, Chevron has not paid a single dollar of restitution to the people of Ecuador, whose community they poisoned, decimated, kids born with birth defects, massive amounts of cancer. People have died because of what they did down there. I mean, those facts

are not even in dispute. They haven't paid a dollar of restitution. And Stephen fully intends to continue to pursue that fight against them. So we, the Breaking Points community, contributed $1,000 to his legal defense fund, which you can go to freedonziger.com if you want to support him. But that was the other piece of what we're trying to do because this is an important step forward. But obviously, major, major battles still remain. Yeah, we'll have links down there in the description for everybody. Okay, let's talk about inflation. And it's not good. Let's say that at the very top, we hit a 40-year high with the new release of the data. Let's put this up there on the screen. Heather Long actually detailing where exactly all that inflation is coming from at a 6.8 percentage rate a month over month. Where are

the biggest annual increases? Gas is up 58% year over year. Rental car market, 37. Used car, 31. Hotels, 26. Steak, 25. That's the one which gas, steak, bacon, pork, those are the ones where you're probably going to feel it the most. Furniture, 12%. Fish is up 11%. New car at 11%. Chicken, bikes, and eggs all in the nines and the eights. Coffee at 7.5%. And rent at 3.5%. Now, rent, despite only being 3.5%, and I am saying only in relation to everything else,

is one of the biggest drags on the economy right now. 3.5% increase on one of the major household expenditures is going to hit people much, much harder even necessarily than 37% increase in the price of a used car or something like that. And of course, gas is also the same one. Lines are pretty long at the Costco. I can attest to that for sure. Now, what's interesting and sad even more

is that we've been talking here about wages and we've been talking about how at least we are seeing at the blue-collar level with the great resignation and the increase in wages for all blue-collar workers on average, their ability in order to quit and go get a higher one. In the aggregate, let's put this on the screen, wages are increasing at a rapid pace in the U.S., but they are still not keeping pace with consumer price inflation. So the U.S. real average earnings are still deeply negative. You can see in that chart there. So, you know, these two things, Crystal, are just the story of the entire economy

right now. I don't think there's another way to say it. And just look, I think there's a lot of, once again, scaremongering around deficit spending and more whenever it comes to inflation. But I would be remiss if I didn't say what we've been repeating from the very beginning. This is not just an American phenomenon. There is global inflation. So if you're like, oh, the U.S. shouldn't have done that stimulus bill. Well, you know, China's got double digit inflation. The entire OECD actually has very high inflation. Let's put this up there on the screen. Global inflation rates, apparently Japan is doing well. You know, they've always had some, you know, monetary chicanery going on there. But the United States compares with Spain, Germany, South Africa, New Zealand,

Canada, India, the Philippines, UK, Italy, South Korea, Finland, Singapore, Australia, all of those countries have over 3% inflation. And you can see also Russia, Brazil, Turkey, Argentina, Venezuela, I mean Venezuela and Argentina, longstanding inflation problems there. But we are very much, yes, on the leading edge, but it is entirely a global phenomenon. It's largely because of shipping, because of a massive global supply disruption. But also, we talked about each particular case has a very strange amalgam of inputs, right? So like steak, it's like, well, we had a problem with the meatpacking plant. So then we had a bunch of cows that were slaughtered. And also there was a drought and that makes it so that there's less cattle. And that combines with the

fact that people are staying at home and they're cooking more. So the demand for steaks and for grilling is up at an all-time high. You put all those things together, you have a 25% increase. Same with coffee. There was a drought down in Brazil. Well, Brazil supplies like 40% or whatever of our coffee market, 7.5%. So across the board, that's kind of what we see. But look, there's no denying this is destroying the Biden presidency. I mean, absolutely destroying the Biden presidency, destroying in many ways the case, the public case for the Build Back Better plan. It's giving Joe Manchin not an excuse necessarily, but he's very much trying to push it as far as he can in the future. And this is the number one issue on most Americans' minds right now.

Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I mean, these inflation numbers, it's the highest in nearly 40 years. Right. And as you accurately demonstrated with that list, the areas where prices have increased the most, these aren't things you can easily cut back on. Oh, yeah. Food, gas, rent, utilities. So it's no wonder that, and I think we have a tweet we can show up here, inflation is the number one issue on Americans' minds there. You can see the top three issues in the CNBC poll, not good for Democrats. Inflation,

immigration, and crime. Midterms are going to look great, guys. But I just don't think that as much as a lot of what the liberal press wants to do, they either want to ignore that this is going on. There's now a new effort to say like to point to other numbers that show actually the economy is great. And that is possible because there is such a mixed bag here in terms of wages. But if your wage gains are entirely offset by inflation, that's a real issue that if you're not speaking to and really trying to address, people are just going to feel like you're not in touch with what's actually going on in their lives. As to the causes, I mean,

we've tried to track some of these. You've done a great job of tracking down some of the specific examples. There's apparently a similar spike in inflation after World War II because of a similar kind of mismatch. You had people coming home. You had suddenly rationing was over. So people had a pent-up demand. They were flooding into stores to buy goods and services. But you didn't have the workforce totally back from wartime footing. So you had a similar sort of supply chain and labor force disruption that led to a similar spike in prices.

A lot of economists are drawing parallels here. But I also think, you know, when you look at that list of countries and which ones have the highest level of inflation, the fact that we're towards the higher end of that list, I do think we can point to some COVID policies, but not in the way that people on the right of the spectrum pointed out. The problem is not that we spent money. Part of the problem is that our policies didn't keep people attached to their jobs. Now, in the long run for workers, that may end up being a good thing, even though it caused a lot of pain. And I do not want to undersell that or understate it whatsoever. But what we see right now is workers shifting around to find employment that's going to be more stable, that's going to put their health and well-being at lower risk. Some workers took advantage and skilled up so that they could go to a different career, perhaps a longer-term,

more stable career. You see people shifting out of retail, shifting out of health care, shifting out of hospitality writ large. Again, those may not be bad things, and that's putting a lot of upward pressure on wages in those fields. But it also did create a lot more disruption here than other places. Some of the answers here are simple. I was reading another article, this was from Labor Notes, about one of the problems is that there aren't enough truckers, railroad workers, or warehouse workers. The reason for that is not that people are unwilling to do those jobs. The problem is that the pay has been low and that it's been long hours. People haven't been treated well. We're going to talk about the tornadoes and Amazon warehouse workers and what that has looked like. So a lot of the answer

here is better representation of workforce among unions, higher wages, more predictable schedules. Those things will iron themselves out over time, but it is going to take some time to get there. And obviously we are not yet there. No, absolutely. The other reason why we're at the top of the spectrum is we consume stuff better than everybody else. We are the world's largest consumer economy. We have people who were locked in their houses for a year, didn't spend any money. This Christmas season, you know, it's not just a return to baseline. It's up by like 30, 40% in terms of online retail. You couple that with a shipping crisis, boom, it's going to obviously cause a problem as well. And the other

problem is I don't think anybody is just being honest here about what's happening. Part of the problem is that the people who want to blame this all on deficits are turning a complete blind eye to the fact that companies miraculously have record profit margins right now, showing that they're taking advantage. The White House is actually out with a decent analysis. Let's put it up there on the screen, showing dominant meat processing companies are taking advantage of market power to raise prices and grow profit margins. Why is their message drowned out? Well, because they're a clown show that also want to say that this is the best economy the world has ever seen, or they want to be like, yeah, but it's all the meat processors. Listen, it is a confluence of events. I've gone back and I started reading some history and some real analyses of the 1970s inflation crisis. And it

was actually the exact same thing. People at the time were trying to blame, look, it was Vietnam. It was the return, you know, the disruption of the global economic order, plus OPEC, plus a whole host of other policies on top of Volcker coming in to the Fed. You can't, you know, in the aggregate, you can't answer just one answer as to like, well, this is why we had inflation. It's the same today. It's the very same thing. And the problem is that people are being, you know, real dogmatic in their view. This is the cause or that is the cause. Every single category has multiple different explanations, but the end result is the same. There's no denying it. The stuff is way more expensive for a lot of people. And a lot of people are pissed off. I think they should be pissed off. You know, we were talking about the wages. That's great. You know, at the end of the day, I'm always going to be happy when

a worker gets $13 to $15. But look, try to buy a house at $15 an hour. It's just not going to happen. Like the very top line stuff structurally is actually gotten worse in many ways. Housing prices, sky high. Try getting a loan from the bank right now. If you look at all the real benefits in the current economy, it goes to the top 1%. Assets are sky high. I think the Dow Jones is an all-time high ever. Same with the stock market. Most people, yeah, 13, 15, we're not going to erase that. But the overall problems in the economy are times 50 in terms of where they were in 2019. Yeah. I want to read a little bit from the Biden response that we had up there, which is pointing out, and this is something that Stoller has really beat the drum on for a long

time, even before we had this inflation spike, which is that four conglomerates control somewhere between 55 and 85% of the market for pork, beef, and poultry. Those are three product categories that have seen large spikes in inflation. You see protein is up significantly in that chart that we showed you. And meanwhile, these middlemen, they're using the specter of inflation to effectively jack up prices. I mean, this is price gouging. And it's not just in this area that you're seeing it. You see lots of corporations, Fortune 500 corporations, they got the highest profit margins they've ever had. So it's not that their inputs are so much more expensive, or if they are, they're going way above and beyond

what the increase in the cost of those inputs would justify. Here's some of the facts there. They say, according to these companies, these four large meatpacking conglomerates, their latest quarterly earnings, their gross profits, have collectively increased by more than 120% since before the pandemic. Their net income has surged by 500%. They've also recently announced over a billion dollars in new dividends and stock buybacks on top of the more than $3 billion that they paid out to shareholders since the pandemic began. So already, some of the inputs more expensive because of drought and climate change and things that you've been tracking,

surge in the cost of corn, which feeds the animals. Okay, and then they, on top of that, layer an extra profit margin because they can use the excuse of inflation to do that. And they have monopoly power. There's very little competition in this marketplace when you have just four large conglomerates effectively controlling the entire thing.

Is that the entire explanation? No, but it is a significant cause. And politically, you know, the Biden people, they put it on a statement, big deal. It doesn't matter. No one even paid attention to it. They should wage war. They should welcome the hatred of these corporations.

They should go to war with these companies that are jacking up prices unnecessarily and making life so difficult for Americans. And, you know, there's a lot of power in the presidential bully pulpit. We saw Trump occasionally. Every once in a while. Every once in a while would demonstrate that you can shame these companies sometimes into doing a little bit better than what they're doing. And again, from, you know, I think it would work, but also politically, it would give Americans an understanding of what's going on, a sense that the Biden administration actually cared about it. And we're fighting for them. And we're in touch

with what they're now routinely telling pollsters is the biggest issue in their life. No, I think you're right. But the problem is Biden has no credibility with the American people right now. He has zero trust. And I mean, in a way, like, why should they? He promised something would go back to normal. Now, look, you're putting out blog posts. That's great. You're also the president. You know, you could do a lot more if you want to. Until you do, put up or shut up, because increasingly you're just losing as much ground as you possibly. It's like a contest to see how unpopular he could be. It's honestly pathetic. It really is to see how quickly that their administration devolved into a total and complete disaster. And I really think they have nobody but themselves to blame. 100% agree. All right. Okay, guys, we've been tracking this deadly system of storms that went across the Midwest and the South there, hitting Kentucky particularly hard, an area of Western Kentucky that I've visited,

know lots of wonderful people there. These are very deeply rooted communities and the loss there is just, you can't wrap your head around it. You guys probably know this deadly tornado outbreak. It went across five states, has left at least over 100 people dead. We've had casualties in every state impacted by the storm, It went across five states, has left at least over 100 people dead. We've had casualties in every state impacted by the storm.

Six people in Illinois, four in Tennessee, two in Arkansas, two in Missouri. But the bulk of the devastating losses have come in that region of western Kentucky. We have a little bit of video that we can show you of what at least one of those tornadoes looked like. Let's go ahead and put that up. This one, this was a Kentucky resident who caught this imaging. You can see the lightning. Terrifying. And because they came at night, of course, I mean, you couldn't see what was happening before these tornadoes were right on top of people. Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear estimates more than 100 could be dead after those horrific storms. Let's go ahead and put the next VO up there on the screen. So this is Mayfield, Kentucky. Again, a deeply rooted community, one where, you know, everybody knows each other. People have been there for generations, called Mayfield, Kentucky home, and it is just absolutely decimated.

Lives lost, the bulk of the lives lost appear to have been from for years and years where people have celebrated and mourned and experienced significant milestones. Those are all absolutely destroyed. Let's go ahead and throw that tear sheet up on the screen from the Washington Post about that candle factory, which was in Mayfield. Forty were rescued from this candle factory, which collapsed in the tornado, and 40 are feared dead, roughly. So tremendous loss of life here. This was a significant employment center for the community. And in addition to this candle factory, you also had an Amazon distribution center that partially collapsed, killing six people there. So the people who were most at risk at this were the workers who were, you know, toiling through the night, you know, with Christmas orders coming in and peak

retail system. One of the things that came to light here as well is the fact that at this Amazon warehouse, they had banned workers. And this is apparently standard policy that had been pushed aside during COVID but has now been re-implemented. They banned workers from having phones with them. So what does that mean when you have tornadoes, fast-moving tornadoes barreling down on you, and everybody else in your community is getting repeated alerts and can track where the systems are and understand the implications for themselves and their family and their loved ones, whatever. These Amazon workers were totally in the dark. This piece from Bloomberg quotes a worker who says, I don't trust them being Amazon. With my safety, to be quite frank, if there's severe weather on the way, I don't trust them being Amazon with my safety. To be quite

frank, if there's severe weather on the way, I think I should be able to make my own decision about safety. A lot of people have pointed out this isn't the first time that Amazon workers have been exposed to dangerous weather conditions. They were expected to report to work during deadly flooding from Ida when there was that horrific heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, they were still expected to come to work. They handed out cooling scarves. And still some workers, I mean, the heat was insane, intense, and still some workers had to leave and seek care because of those extreme temperatures. So just absolute devastation there. A couple things on very unusual to have this kind of tornado outbreak in December. Normally, so what causes tornadoes is that change in extreme change in temperatures. Right. It's like a pressure thing.

Normally, you see that in the spring. And so most tornado reports, you're talking about March, April, May. December is actually typically the lowest month in terms of reported tornadoes. This swath of number one, making tornadoes stronger and more frequent, but number two, actually shifting where Tornado Alley is and putting it squarely, you know, along this corridor that has higher levels of population contributing to higher levels of death and destruction. So that's what we know at this point. And again, the images are absolutely devastating. Our hearts break for those who have lost loved ones and those who've lost their homes, their lives, their history, their memories in these communities. We're really thinking about all of you. No, absolutely. I think one thing we really do have to highlight is worker safety. I mean, something that they're pointing out is that because Amazon uses so many independent contractors, they didn't even know a lot of the people who were inside of the warehouse. So of the 190 people who

worked at the Edwardsville Delivery Center, only seven were full-time Amazon employees. And part of the issue is that contractors lets the company avoid liability for accidents and other risks. Local officials said the fact that so many of the workers were temporary made it difficult to account for those who could be missing in the wake of the tornado, complicating initial rescue efforts. And an Amazon spokesman said that they had 11 minutes warning because there was a tornado effect, a tornado warning at 8.06, but the Amazon roof collapse came at 8.27. So the facility had one tornado shelter, but some employees said that they were literally hiding

in the bathrooms, that they were terrified. The building across the street actually ended up collapsing. And look, I mean, a lot of what it points to is that the company, through its cavalier use and the way that it treats its people, makes it so that in an event of a disaster, they have no idea who's even inside of the building. They had no clue. Only, according to the report, as you said, only seven people that worked there at this distribution center were even Amazon employees. So when authorities are saying, okay, well, who was on site? Who could be missing? They have no idea. I don't know. Okay, well, who was on site? Who could be missing? They have no idea. No idea who may be alive or dead or missing or injured. No clue. And it does expose the over-reliance. I mean, they're just exploiting these loopholes to label people who, for all intents and purposesoses are their employees. You see this with Uber and Lyft and all these other companies that do the same thing. Their driver workforce, which is what was predominantly at this delivery center, is largely, quote unquote, independent contractors.

Even though, again, for all intents and purposes, they work for Amazon. It's all a way to try to skirt responsibility. And you can see the devastating consequences in a situation like this. Yeah, and Jeff Bezos was very late in actually order to skirt responsibility. And you can see the devastating consequences in a situation like this. Yeah. And Jeff Bezos was very late in actually order to say anything. He's celebrating launch at Blue Origin and then eventually tweeted out his support being like, we're horrified by the tragedy and all of that. Second richest man in the world, $211 billion. I'm always just struck at how much they just don't care. And in many of these cases. It's like these people literally built your company. You know, they pad your net worth and all that.

The least you could probably do is use one of your fancy planes or rockets and like go down there and do something about it or, you know, pay for whatever in order to take care of these people. Shelter something. Drop a little bucket for him. Yeah, I mean, nothing. It would cost them absolutely nothing. But, you know, they don't care. He's celebrating his launch. In terms of the presidential response, Biden is planning to visit once that would be useful, wanting to give time for search and recovery count to continue to go up and to rise over 100 because just the level of destruction is so complete in some of these areas that, you know, it's just wild. And all the people

I know who live in that area are safe, but they have told me about, you know, the church where they got married is decimated, the downtown that they grew up in, their family store, their family homes, all of those things. So such a hard thing as a community to be able, you don't even know where to begin to rebuild when everything has just been completely obliterated. So we'll continue to track it and certainly thinking about all of you guys out there in Western Kentucky and all the other states that were affected. Absolutely. Let's move on. COVID. I want to try and give you guys just complete an update as possible here on Omicron. We were looking at some of the data. It's a bit squirrely. So we did see a drop in cases in South Africa, but there's also over the weekend. There's also

a report around data processing there in terms of how Omicron is working in that country. Britain had its very first known death, the first global death, actually, of Omicron, which, you know, if anything, that's actually a plus. It's the first one. We know about the new variant for almost two weeks. But it is leading to a lot of questions around boosters, around how we deal with this as a society, given the fact that from what we currently know, yes, Omicron is much more likely to lead to a breakthrough case whenever you're vaccinated. I'm talking specifically about two doses of the normal vaccine, but the case, you know, seem to be generally so far milder and less severe in terms of how they manifest in patients.

Take that with a grain of salt. In the United States, we're much more obese and old than a lot of the general population, you know, in the world worldwide. And so if it would be worse anywhere, it would probably be here. Still hasn't manifested yet. We don't know. Yet again, though, it's leading to a huge discussion around booster shots because, let's put this on the screen,

the Pfizer CEO has now come out and said that a fourth vaccine, a fourth vaccine shot may eventually be needed. Now, I want to be clear in about how they're saying it and describing it now. He says, quote, I think we will need the fourth dose, pointing to the previous timeline of 12 months. But he says, quote, with Omicron, we need to wait and see because we have very little information. We may need it faster. And I think, once again, that this is playing into, Crystal, the fact that there is not enough critical discussion around these boosters

and the obvious profit incentive that the Pfizer CEO has to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to need a fourth shot. I mean, it was not very long ago that you were considered a conspiracy theorist to say that, you know, what are you going to get your fourth jab or your fifth jab or something? And people were like, you're crazy. All you need is two. Well, I mean, you have the CEO of the company already saying it, Israel already authorizing that shot. Some people I know, you've gotten a booster shot. Others have as well. The data out there, it's a very small study out of Israel showing that it seems to hold up. So you don't take that into account in terms of making your own decisions. But it just comes down to at what point is this going to become

government policy? Because we've seen also the vaccine mandate out of New York City, where all private employees there in all five boroughs are going to be required to be vaccinated. We don't know yet if new Mayor Adams is going to put that policy actually into effect. But for right now, it's on the books. And it seems to be the case, will they try to change the new standard of fully vaccinated to three or four shots? I mean, that could impact the way that if you're going to dine in the state of California, in New York, perhaps even air travel, not necessarily to get on the plane, but to get off the plane in Europe, South America, and elsewhere where they require vaccination. I just think that, you know,

feeding into this, A, look, sure, it probably contributes to vaccine hesitancy, but it just leads to the point of like, when is enough? What is the level at which it's okay? I'm not even like going to say full stop that there won't be a time when it's needed and when it's important and when we should encourage, you know, people to go out and get another shot. But their own data that they just released shows that a third dose led to similar levels of antibodies against Omicron as two doses had against the original virus, which led to strong protection. So, of course, they get out ahead of their skis because they see, like, in the cartoons where their eyes become dollar signs. Like, that's them right now.

Yes, literally. Like, literally them and Moderna, same thing, coming out and making similar, like, ah, this is, the CNBC dude similar like, ah, this is, the CNBC dude was like, oh, this is like an annuity for you. This is great. People can get a shot every year. And you can see the stock prices soaring. I mean, it's just absolutely grotesque.

We shouldn't be listening to what people with a direct financial interest in additional shots. Their opinion to me is worse than irrelevant. Oh, yeah. Show me the data, show me the independent studies, not the industry funded ones, and let's make an intelligent decision from there. Because you're right, when it's very easy to conflate the financial incentive they have to, let's have a third shot, let's have a fourth shot, let's have a fifth shot, let's have a new formulation that people have to get every year. It's very easy to use that clear financial incentive they have to then fuel conspiracy

theories about the vaccines, which are not true. Right. So that's the issue here. You know, I actually listened to Brianna had a podcast where she had Dave Weigel on to talk about sort of the politics of COVID and that sort of stuff. And she had Dr. Abdul-Assad on who we had on the show recently as well. And he was saying the line he wanted to draw was you should separate out their sort of business incentives from the science that these drug companies do. And he's saying, like, you can trust the science, but you can't trust the business incentives. And I wish it were that clean and simple. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because when you look at, I mean, they've been caught a couple times

by the FDA trying to juice their numbers. The Merck pill is a their numbers. Johnson & Johnson vaccine, their booster shot, they, you know, used some techniques that the FDA found sort of suspect to show a higher response than what actually was there. The Merck pill is a perfect example. You know, the opioid crisis, which part, a key part of how that was fueled was because the maker of Oxy was able for regulatory capture to get this line inserted into their disclosure that said it's believed to be non-habit forming. Anyone looking at that would think that was based on science because it's government approved language on, you know, on medication. But in reality, there was no good science to back that up. So this just gets to the core principle that when you have financial incentives at the center of your healthcare system, it leads to terrible results. And the reality is that two shots, yes, there are a lot of breakthrough infections, actually, a fairly significant amount of breakthrough infections, especially over time, that level of immunity does wane, but they continue to be very

effective protecting against severe hospitalization and death. If you are someone who is at higher risk, especially if you're elderly, it seems like a booster shot makes a lot of sense. If you're anybody else and you just don't want to get COVID and you want to be, you know, forward thinking about helping to stop the spread so that you don't have more of these variants germinating, then it makes sense for you to get the booster shot as well. But I don't know why we're listening to these people who have a direct financial incentive in pushing things in a certain direction. I completely agree. And, you know, this is the problem is there's no real rational discussion. And I honestly have lost so much faith

in the CDC and in the FDA in the discussion around all of this because there's no consideration of natural immunity whenever they discuss the need for a booster or not. I can only speak from an, I mean, this is the only data we have in terms of people I know who've had COVID and who did get the booster shot did have a severe reaction. I'm not saying that they got, you know, whatever myocarditis or whatever, but they're sick like four or five days. I mean, that's a long time. And the question was, is like, did they even need it in the first place in terms of warding off Omicron or more? And in terms of the data that we have, at least in countries that do recognize natural immunity, it is quite robust, especially if you

combine it with vaccine immunity. Of course, you know, it's nice in my case because that's what I have. But what it comes down to is that whenever we're pushing things both financially and then seemingly ideologically, it just leads to a total lack of trust and faith within the system. And it's like you said, look, you know, this all continues to embrace a general COVID zero mindset, which is that boosters and all that is probably going to stay for the immunocompromised and the elderly. And especially if you're obese, like if you are, you know, if your BMI or whatever is obese, you have comorbidities, diabetes, immunocompromised, all those things, you probably should get a booster every year in order to make sure because those variants are just going to keep on coming. COVID is always going to be circulating and it will always be a way higher risk to you than it is to the general population. For the general population, if you have two doses of the vaccine, even now currently, you know,

six, seven, eight months or whatever out, yes, your ability in order to prevent breakthrough infection, it's diminished quite significantly. We don't actually know what the number is on that. And if you haven't had COVID yet, yeah, you know, maybe if you really don't want to get a booster, all of that doesn't seem to be much of a problem. If you had some, you know, mix of the natural immunity, natural immunity with the shot or vice versa and all of that, then it's a little bit up in the air. And it also, also depends on your general physical health, on your condition and all of that. The lack of the nuance in the policy, and that's where, you know, I'm really scared is where this all comes into play because we were talking, hopefully we'll cover it, you know, in the nuance in the policy, and that's where I'm really scared, is where this all comes into play. Because we were talking, hopefully we'll cover it in the future on the show, we still

have a situation where kids are eating outside, like in the cold. I mean, this is totally nuts. And it's like, you see this mentality of COVID zero and completely unscientific measures that get embraced in public policy and pushed for who knows how long. I mean, it's been 21 months, okay, since COVID has come. I mean, it's been a long time and there ain't that much necessarily of a change in the way that this is manifesting itself and the decline of trust in our institutions and especially combining here with the people who have major profit incentives that pushes forever, it's very detrimental to public health. Look, it's not an accident that we have a for-profit healthcare system here that a lot of people are disconnected from and feel, you know, that they can't trust,

and oftentimes for good reason, and that we have higher rates of vaccine hesitancy here than other developed countries. Those two things, I mean, there's a direct correlation there. And as you see, like, you know, people who are more skeptical of government, who have oftentimes good reasons, both in their own lives and historically, to be skeptical of the healthcare system have been the most resistant. So again, that profit motive at the center of our healthcare system, whether it's hospitals or pharmaceutical companies or health insurers, it destroys trust and it leads to worse public health outcomes overall, which we can see not just with vaccine hesitancy, but with our public health data at large. I mean, that's part of why

we are less healthy and have more chronic conditions and more obesity and all of those things. So, again, I really don't care to hear from the Pfizer CEO about how many shots we may need and when. I'm going to wait to see some data that was not provided for by Pfizer or just, I mean, at this point, it actually goes against the Pfizer data, and it's just like the CEO wish- even more millions for himself. So there you go. All right. Big moves in terms of labor. This is exciting. All right. So on the same day that Donziger was released to home confinement from prison, Starbucks got their first U.S. union at a store in Buffalo. It was a big day for those sorts of things. So in a first, Starbucks workers agree to a union in Buffalo, New York. Now we've been covering this story, so you guys probably know some of the details here,

but there were three Starbucks stores that voted and the tallies came out on Thursday. And so in this particular one, the Elmwood Avenue location, they voted 19 to 8 in favor of a union. A second store rejected the union in a vote of 12 to 8, but the union said it might challenge that result because it was not confident all the eligible votes had been counted. And the results of a third store could not be determined because both sides challenged seven separate votes. My understanding is that third store, it looked like they voted to unionize, but that now is being challenged again by both sides. In addition, there are three other stores in Buffalo and a store in Mesa, Arizona that have filed petitions with the labor board for their own union election, seemingly inspired by this movement in Buffalo. And what's interesting, so this is the first U.S. store to unionize for

Starbucks. They threw everything they could at this effort to try to stop these workers from voting to unionize. Part of their effort was to appeal to the NLRB and try to get all of the workers in Buffalo who worked at any Starbucks to participate in the election. The NLRB said no to that, which is why it's important to have good people on the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board. They also tried to postpone the election. This is an important tactic, especially in the service industry where turnover is very high. The NLRB also shot that idea down. But even beyond that, I mean, they brought in executives to these stores to coerce and spy on employees. They flooded these stores with new

workers so that they'd have to, you know, bring them into the process of organizing and educate them and get them on board as well. They actually closed one store and turned it into a training location. I mean, they just did absolutely everything. They brought in Howard Schultz to do some big special anti-union event that they closed all the Starbucks stores to invite their, to have their workers come and listen to them. They did these private listening sessions. I mean, they really went all out to stop this result. And yet still, we have at least one store, the Elmwood Avenue location, that voted pretty decisively here to unionize. It's a huge deal, honestly, Sagar. Oh, it's massive. I mean, you know, this is the first store.

They fought everything they possibly could in order to make this happen. I mean, look, it is just one store. But all it takes in many of these cases is just a single one in order to spawn more people who want to try and do this store after store. And that's why the company fought it with every single thing that they had. It really does remain to be seen. It also could make it so that perhaps there are less unionization efforts. But simply in order to ward them off, they may have to raise wages all across the board. They may have to listen to a lot more of the way that the employees are talking. And in terms of employees coming to them and with their concerns and, you know, in terms of saying, oh,

well, we need better benefits here. We need in order to have our hours in a certain way. So having all this just is a big warning shot across the bow at Starbucks management. That's why they treated it so seriously. And also, this makes a big spotlight on potential anti-unionization efforts that they're going to try and continue in the past. Everything they did actually didn't work. In many ways, it hardened people in terms of forming the union. So if they try in the future to try and close the stores down, bring in Howard Schultz, stack it with all these fake employees in order to try and rig the vote counts and more, you're still going to see a lot of public awareness around what they tried and how it ultimately failed. So it's a big, big deal, a symbolic victory, obviously not the total one, but I think this is the beginning of the war more than anything.

Yeah. And listen, Buffalo has a history of union organizing. Yeah, that's right. And that labor history matters a lot. Irami was saying to me, he doesn't think it's an accident that you had India Walton doing as well as she did in Buffalo and laying some of the groundwork. I bet those things, you know, they do build on each other. So you see a little bit of movement in Buffalo. But I would love to know how much Starbucks spent to try to fight it. I mean, it has to be millions to fly in all those executives, to rent the hotel, to have the big party. I mean, they were willing.

Million minimum, I think. They were willing to throw so much money at shutting down even just this one store unionizing. It shows you what a threat they think it is. And I think that's really significant. And as I mentioned, you already have, following on the heels of this, additional stores filing with the NLRB to have their own union elections. So it could very well set off a bit of a domino effect. And that's a big deal because it's not just, you know, Starbucks is an iconic brand. Of course. And organizing in the service sector like this is so tremendously difficult. I mean,

it's, you have high employee turnover, the way that the laws are written right now, you know, it's every single individual store has to unionize one by one. And so it just makes it really extraordinarily difficult. But I also want to highlight, because our laws on unions are so crappy, and because the PRO Act is nowhere in sight, this is the beginning of the battle for these workers, not the end. Yes, exactly. Because now what can happen is Starbucks can stonewall them. First of all, they can file all kinds of appeals. I'm sure they'll do that stuff. But they can stonewall them in terms of getting a contract. They can pretend to negotiate in good faith and just continue to push off and push off and push off. Even in Canada, there was a Starbucks in Victoria that voted to unionize in August of 2020. It took a full year for them to reach a collective

bargaining agreement. I don't know the numbers in Canada. In the U.S., that is the norm. It is a majority of new unions that a year later still don't have a collective bargaining contract with their employer. So this is the beginning of the fight. And because we don't have those PROAC provisions in place, it means that can continue indefinitely. What we need is a clause in there that after a certain amount of time, it means that can continue indefinitely. What we need is a clause in there that after a certain amount of time, it goes to mandatory arbitration so that they're forced to agree to some kind of contract because as it is now, they can just push it off forever. There are even more aggressive tactics that companies have used. Dollar General had a store that voted to unionize and they fought it and

they went through appeals process. And when it looked like they were going to lose, what did they do? They closed the store. Shut it down. Yeah. They closed the store. Now that should be technically illegal if it's directly in response to a union drive. But, you know, they can just come up with some fig leaf of an argument. It's all you need. Of why, oh, it wasn't about the union. It was about some other profitability concern or whatever. And they close the store and that's that. So there's still a long way to go before this significant, really incredible, very exciting victory turns into real gains for these workers. But this is certainly a big, big step forward.

Absolutely. And the next story that we wanted to bring in the labor movement actually highlights how even when you have a union, the deck is still stacked in favor of the employer. We've been following the strike at Kellogg's. 1,400 striking workers there. Kellogg's, their big concern has been, those workers' big concern has been the two-tier wage and benefit structure. So something we've seen repeated across a lot of the strikes that we covered, including the John Deere strike. And so Kellogg's had offered them a contract that the workers overwhelmingly voted down that kept that two-tier wage system, wage and benefit system in place.

And so Kellogg's has now announced that they are going to replace all of those striking workers permanently. Again, something that should be illegal, but is not. And it would be illegal if the PRO Act were to pass, but it's not. So after a bit of time passed, Biden did decide to weigh in on this one, which, you know, I applaud him for doing, but also there's a lot more he could do. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. Biden says he's deeply troubled by Kellogg's move to permanently replace striking workers. That's all well and good, but what are you going to do about it? I mean, he's just, he's completely backed down on actually changing the law with regards to the PRO Act. He's sort of given up on that fight.

There are a lot of people who said, oh, this is unprecedented for a president to weigh in like this. It's actually not. Jonah Fuhrman and others online pointed out that in July of 94, President Clinton said some very similar stuff about Caterpillar Inc. and their striking autowork workers, that they should settle their bitter dispute and that this is poisonous to the labor movement and all that. And because he also didn't actually do anything, Caterpillar just continued doing what they wanted to do and it didn't end well for the workers. I remember reading about that. It was a big, big moment,

actually, in terms of the strikes and how it eventually all played out. Guess where Caterpillar makes all of its stuff now? You'll never guess. This is, like you said, yeah, it's good whenever you say stuff like deeply troubled. But I saw this, it's just like with Trump. Trump went to the carrier plant. It was a huge thing. They said they were going to stay. And then two years later, they ended up offshoring anyway, right? Or outsourcing the jobs. It was, you know, Foxconn. It was the same thing. There's so many of these different examples. These presidents, they pay lip service. They're like, well, I'm on the side of these guys. And then a couple years later, what ends up happening? So Kellogg is probably going to get away with this, which is

the really pathetic and terrible part. 1,400 workers right now set to be replaced after they rejected the contract. They think that they can weather the storm. And the sad part is, is they probably can. Most people aren't paying attention. I think, I remember whenever we were talking to a Kellogg worker, they had, what, record sales? The profits are high, like very up demand for Kellogg. People ate a lot of cereal during the pandemic. Exactly. People packed on a little bit, including me, in terms of the pandemic 15. And part of that was cereal for many people. So they're doing okay.

They think they can get away with this. The president, yeah, he put out a statement. But look, I used to work at the White House Press Corps. Presidents put out like 15 statements a day. Yes, they probably will note this, but overall PR, is it really going to make a difference? I don't think so, Crystal. Yeah. I mean, he shows he's not willing to actually do the things that would be with him. Right, exactly. His power to do. We saw this with Trump. You talk a big game, great. Oh, Harley Davidson.

Yeah, I remember that one. He was like, Harley, you can't do anything. Tweets about it. They didn't care. You know why? Because if you don't force them to do anything, they're just going to take the hit. And most of you will still probably buy Harley, which is made in China. Yeah.

That's just how it is. The big thing, the one thing workers do have going for them here doesn't have anything to do with Joe Biden, has to do with the fact that it may be difficult right now to replace 1,400 people across these plants, especially without, you know, lifting the wages and making the deal more attractive. So we'll see the success that they have filling in. And also, listen, you're starting from scratch. I mean, you're talking about a skilled workforce that knew what they were doing. And now you're going to start from scratch with people who have never done this job, never done this work, having to train everybody up. So even if you find enough people, like it takes time to get this all cranking.

And we saw what happened with John Deere when they tried to bring in a workforce that had no idea what they were doing. And it was terrible for them and dangerous for the workers involved. So I think, you know, Kellogg's is likely to face some very similar challenges here, trying to just writ large replace 1,400 striking workers, you know, starting from scratch. Yeah, I think you're right. Okay, fun segment. Chris Wallace shocked us all. He's leaving Fox News. Here was his announcement yesterday at the end of the show. Let's take a listen. After 18 years, this is my final Fox News Sunday. It is the last time, and I say this with real sadness, we will meet like this. 18 years ago, the bosses here at Fox promised me they would never interfere with a guest I booked or a question I asked, and they kept that promise. I have been free to report

to the best of my ability. To cover the stories I think are important to hold our country's leaders to account. It's been a great ride. We've covered five presidential elections, interviewed every president since George H.W. Bush, traveled the world sitting down with France's Emmanuel Macron and Russia's Vladimir Putin. And I've gotten to spend Sunday mornings with you. It may sound corny, but I feel we built a community here. There's a lot you can do on Sunday mornings. The fact you've chosen to spend this hour with us is something I cherish. But after 18 years, I have decided to leave Fox. I want to try something new to go beyond politics to all the things I'm interested in.

I'm ready for a new adventure, and I hope you'll check it out. And so, for the last time, dear friends. That's it. He's out, Crystal. Hours later, it was announced that that new and exciting adventure is going to be CNN's streaming platform. So let's put that statement up on the screen. Chris Wallace is joining CNN to anchor not on CNN, but CNN Plus, the, well, they call much-anticipated streaming subscription service. I am thrilled to join CNN Plus after decades in broadcast and cable news. I'm excited to explore the world of streaming. As I embark on this adventure, I'm delighted and honored to join Jeff Zucker and his great team. I can't wait to get started, Chris Wallace said.

They said he'll be hosting an interview program for the streaming service. I don't even know what the hell to say about this, Crystal. I mean, what are you doing? This man is 74 years old. He was actually a master of the cable medium. I'm not saying I like Chris Wallace or I don't like cable news even, period. But if cable has one purpose, it's interviewing high profile people live to millions. That's it. Chris Wallace was actually pretty good at that. The big interview, you know, the Fox News Sunday. The panel of his was always cringe.

But what he was always pretty good at was having on some sort of politician and grilling him. And part of the thing is that even here, whenever you have a politician in them, the fact that they know it's not live, it just doesn't have the same level of stakes. You know, you've worked in live TV. I'm sure it's certainly something where when you have that level, the veneer and everybody's watching, it's just a totally different thing. He was actually pretty good at it. Now he's coming out and trying to hang out with us here in the streaming world. And I got really bad news for CNN for Chris. I'm sure they threw, you know, gobs of money at him. Does anybody want to actually watch a 70-something-year-old dude interview now what he's going to get

are only B-rate politicians who don't care that much about his streaming service? Do you actually want to pay and seek that out to watch and stream it? The answer is probably no. I have no idea what he's doing. This is, look,

I can't imagine going out at CNN Plus after your dad was a legendary newsman and you anchored probably the most watched Sunday show in the whole country. It's a total joke. I don't know what to say. Yeah, it's very interesting. I actually have a lot of thoughts about this. I mean, number one, he's the type at Fox News who, of anybody there, he had the most mainstream credibility. Oh, yeah, for sure. People kind of put him in a category by himself. There's a few others that, you know, Brett Baer and some others who get the news imprimatur.

But he was really the one who had the most sort of mainstream cred. And yet, you know, he played his role at Fox News. Yeah, he did a good job. No, no, I don't mean that. Okay. At cable news. I do think I agree with you that, you know, he was very willing to press politicians on both sides of the aisle. Yeah.

And because he had the platform of that Sunday show, you know, these are some of the few places where politicians sort of feel like they have to go on. Yeah. So even if you give them a tough interview, they still are likely to come back. And so he was good at that and he was willing to do it. The thing with cable news is everyone is scripted into a role, right? And this is part of why you don't want to do cable news anymore. And I don't want to do cable news anymore.

Although I would say, you know, if there was a particular role where I felt like I could be useful in furthering conversation, I'm like, I don't think either one of us rule it out entirely. No, if I cared a lot about something, I would do it. Of course, but you have to know going in what the part is that they want you to play. So for example, as someone who's on the left, who went on Fox News a lot of times, I always knew that my job was either that what they wanted me to do was either to be like, even Democrats are critical of X, Y, or Z thing on the Democratic side, or they want you to be like the, you know, the paid heel, the idiot, right? To come on and either be like stupid or be hated or be, you know, like just

that person for the audience to serve as the villain. And for Chris Wallace, part of what his role at Fox News was to provide cover for the insanity that was happening in so many other parts of the network. So they point to Chris Wallace and they point to Brett Baer and they point to Martha McCallum and a few others and say, oh, no, we have a serious news operation. And so in a way, they're providing cover for some of the more ridiculous and absurd and inflammatory parts of the network. And even though I'm sure there are a lot of sort of mainstream beltway journalists here who think very highly of Chris Wallace, the reality is he never pushed pushed back on that that direction of the network.

He was fully part fully part of all of that even as he was willing to do a lot of things better and with more more character in his own program than other corners

of the network would do. So that's one piece of it. The other piece is the CNN Plus piece which is just like I would love to know how much they're paying him. The other piece is the CNN Plus piece, which is just like, I would love to know how much they're paying him. He's already a multimillionaire. That's why I don't get it. I mean, but the part of the whole strategy for the CNN Plus thing is such trash. Like Casey Hine and Chris Wallace, no one is going to watch these people. No one is going

to pay to watch these people. Are you kidding me? Cable news has the audiences it does because you have, you know, it's just, it's on in the background. It's ambient background noise. Each of these, all these anchors are replaceable and totally interchangeable. And there are very, very few personalities who actually could draw people in on their own merits. It's not like a meritocracy out there on cable news. In fact, oftentimes they pick people who are sort of the most pablum and the most boring not to upset the apple cart so that their sponsors don't get upset. So to think you're going to be able to go out into a more sort of free market space where you have to actually compete for viewer number one, that is not happening. It is not happening.

It is not happening at all. And, you know, I would say, you know, what you described, that phenomenon, I think is at all three of these cable networks, right? You know, the reality is that CNN is Chris Cuomo. It is Brian Stelter. It is the most ridiculous, clownish parts. And yes, they also have decent journalists. MSNBC is Rachel Maddow. It is Chris Hayes.

It is Russiagate conspiracy for all of the great people that they may have covering. It's part of the most disgusting and difficult balance of all of these organizations. It is interesting, though. So apparently, and he's been leaking this, obviously, to the New York Times and all of them, he was very upset about that Tucker Carlson Patriot Purge documentary, which we've talked here about, in which they specifically explore whether the feds were involved on January 6th. I do think it is telling that that also was the push point for him, for the dispatched neocons that we described previously. Apparently for Brett Baier also went to the head of the Fox News Network. Again, Chris is obviously leaking

this, and what the full story is, I don't know. Yeah, I sort of don't buy it, because just knowing how these contract talks go, when your contract is going to be up as a prominent cable news host like Chris Wallace is, those conversations start

a year before your contract ends. So do you think it's like a convenient heel to be like, oh, it was Tucker? I think so. And here's the other thing. It's like, look, I haven't watched it. I'm sure there are things in there that are outlandish and ridiculous

and all of those things, right? Just based on what I have seen about the documentary. But if that's your problem like I'd respect it so much more if you went out and said something about it like go out and own it right and make the case it's so cowardly and this is kind of that's kind of the point I was making earlier is like you know he would make these little like sort of subtle digs at the at different hosts coverage or you know he would he would plan himself as sort of a figure apart from the rest of the muck in the mud at Fox News. I just find that I just don't find that really

honorable. If you have an issue with the direction of the coverage, especially now that you're leaving, like say something. Don't just leak it to Deadline or whoever that that was the real thing. You were the New York that was the real thing you were. On background to the New York Times, right? Exactly, that you were unhappy with. Come out and make the case and let's talk about it. So that's a part of this that I find, you know, even as he exits, he's really unwilling to say what he actually thinks about Fox News or cable news writ large. The other thing that I was thinking about when I was, you know was preparing to cover this story

is obviously you have a lot of churn and turnover in cable news right now. Cuomo was out, not because he wanted to be, but anyway, he's out. But over at MSNBC, Brian Williams is leaving. Rachel Maddow. Right, she's out. Her daily show, she'll stay at MSNBC,

but it looks like her daily show is going to end in the spring. And I really think that even cable news hosts are sort of sick of cable news. Yeah, I think you're right. That's part of what he's saying here is like, I don't really want to do this game anymore. I'd like to interview some other people in a different format

and this is... Because having been a cable news host, I can tell you, I mean, it's soul-sucking. And especially now when their ratings are such trash and they can't even pretend like they're on top of the world. I think they find the format also like sort of brain deadening and stultifying and all that stuff. So that's part of why you see a number of people making the move to the exits. I think what always made it work for them is that they were famous. I mean, they were important.

And the real reality of it was, it's like, you know, in a disaster movie or something, and then they would pay like CNN's John King to be in the movie and be like, the Joker is taking over something. Yeah. I mean, would they really do that today? You know, I was watching a documentary. I forget what it's called, and they actually played a clip of Tim Ferriss on his podcast. Oh, it was The Alpinist. It was about this guy. He was a very young guy who ends up, he died, but he was a very skilled

mountain climber and alpinist and free spirit. Anyway, but I remember watching that and being like, wow, they're not playing a clip from cable. They're playing a clip from a podcast in which he talks about this guy. And I was like, that is like the flippening of power, as in they recognize that that a lot of the people are having them on in the background while they're listening to a Joe Rogan or their favorite comedy podcast or a My Favorite Murderer or what if Dax Shepard, whatever the hell he's doing or Breaking Points. I mean, any of these things. And for them to lose that, it's probably, that was what, it wasn't just about the money. Because let me tell you, these people are all miserable and they all work terrible hours as well. So they're all like pretty crazy. So that was what made it so worth it for them.

And I think in Chris's mind, he's jumping into the streaming game where the real cultural relevance is. He just doesn't realize, dude, nobody is going to pay. Like why would you pay for that? They've deluded themselves into thinking that people actually care about like them and what they have to say. And so, yeah, I think you're right about this. This is a point that Glenn makes a lot is there's a lot of jealousy of people who are independent, who are in the podcast field or have YouTube shows or whatever,

because they sort of feel like at least the more honest and self-aware of them feels like, well, I had to like sell out some of my principles to be able to play the game here. And now you're able to like make a living and do what you want and have total freedom. And you actually get to say what you think about everything and choose which topics you're going to cover and have total control and not be subject to this like, you know, toxic top-down bureaucracy that exists at all of these networks. And so I

think people like Chris Wallace, potentially, Casey Hunt, potentially, they delude themselves into thinking like, oh, maybe I could have that too, but you've already sold out. Your credibility is too late. I'm sorry. That ship has sailed. But I do think that that does drive part of it is even they feel like they recognize. I mean, I've talked to these, you know, a number of these hosts. They recognize how crappy the medium is and how depressing it is to do these like short segments where you can never actually dig into an issue and where you have very little control over what the topics are. And you've got to pretend like you really care about whatever issue of the day or Trump outrage of the day or whatever it is when sometimes you do and sometimes you really don't. It is soul-sucking.

And so when they look at people who have that freedom and independence and are gaining in cultural relevance, yeah, they feel jealous. They definitely do. I think it's a big part of it. Chris, we wish you the best, but we'll probably never hear about you ever again. Sorry, man. I don't know what else to say. Sometimes the truth hurts.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, some people ask, is it hard to do this job and come up with a monologue topic several times a week? Sometimes, yeah. But there's a bottomless well of stories about corruption that I'm always going to try to reach for and try to highlight for all of you. Today's is about Apple. At the top, I'm going to acknowledge the irony. I wrote this on an Apple computer. I have an Apple watch. I have an iPhone. I'm a full-blown Apple fanboy, have been for years. But as I said when I was discussing Elon Musk and his business dealings with China, nobody is above scrutiny.

Apple's supply and business reliance on China, it's a long sore spot for the company. They're woke, but when the topic of Uyghur genocide comes up or Hong Kong, they get real squirrely. And while we always knew that the Chinese Communist Party had massive leverage over them, it's very rare that you get to see any of this in writing. As in, how does it work? What's the brass tacks? And thanks to some great journalism from the information, we now actually have proof. And it's stunning. Apple CEO Tim Cook, top levels of the CCP, forged a $275 billion with the B dollar deal

in 2016, where Apple promised it would do its part to develop China's economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals, and worker training. The deal was personally forged by Tim Cook, and it was made from a position of weakness. See, in 2016, when smartphone sales were going down, Apple, which has both major supply and demand reliance on China, started facing all kinds of uncomfortable questions from Chinese regulators. Those questions included and sparked panic inside of Cupertino

because the CCP launched a domestic propaganda campaign against Apple, which actually led to a plunge in the sale of the iPhone. So the information reveals that over the course of that year, Cook forged a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese government in which he would put a billion dollars into Didi, which is a Chinese Uber competitor. After that payoff, Cook was then invited to a secret CCP leadership compound where he committed to aiding a dozen causes that China values domestically, including helping their domestic manufacturers develop, quote, the most advanced manufacturing technologies and to support the training of domestic tech talent inside of China. Now, Apple promised to, quote, use more components from Chinese suppliers in its devices,

sign deals with Chinese software firms, collaborate on technologies with Chinese universities, and invest in Chinese tech companies, aka you pay off whoever we tell you to pay off. That total deal was $275 billion of promised spending by Apple inside China, and it remains in place right now to this day. It's still in place. So you could say, hey, that's business. But what's a common theme in all these stories? This stuff isn't for free.

Even in China, when you agree to pay them, build their tech, grow their supply chain, train their labor as an American company, they still have you bent over. And they know it. So they pushed further. And they got Cook to agree to, quote, strictly abide by Chinese laws and regulations. You know what that means. At first, it starts really small. For Apple, it started with maps. I know, who uses Apple Maps anyway? It's terrible. But in 2015, China's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told Apple Maps they literally had to make disputed DAU islands, I'm sorry if I mispronounced that, appear large even when users zoomed out from them.

If they didn't, they said the Apple Watch was going to be a goner inside of China. So they panicked and they did it. And to this day, right now, if you zoom out from those islands, they appear larger than every other island simply for CCP propaganda purposes. It's like you can't make this stuff up. But as you all know, that's just how it starts. China begins flexing its muscles here. Soon it begins inspecting Apple's offices in China, auditing Apple Pay. Next thing they say, hey, you know, iCloud isn't secure enough for our standards.

So you need to hand over the encryption key to the U.S. and partner with a Chinese company and giving us a backdoor to billions of people's data, especially our own citizens. They then negotiated. They decided instead to partner with Chinese companies in Inner Mongolia, and they had to build data centers inside of CCP territory. They claim that Apple is the only one who has the encryption key. You're taking their word for it.

There's no verification. There are a million minute examples like that. And I encourage you all to actually go and read this piece. But the bottom line is this. Apple has a brand that they don't bow to anyone. That privacy is the key that they even stood up to our FBI. By the way, I completely support that. But in China, when it comes to real dollars, they bow just like everybody else. They accommodate ridiculous demands like the maps requests.

They put up with compromising their own customers' data. They pledge billions to fake tech companies that serve as bribes to members of influence all over China, all to protect their bottom line. And it worked. That's always a thing. It works well. Apple sales in China are record high. $275 billion they poured in, it's a paltry sum compared to what they've earned. Right now, Apple does business with companies that have even been proven to use Uyghur forced labor, and they don't care. Right now, they're complying with Chinese data security laws, which require them to store all their data in China and de facto give government agents access to it anytime they want. The Chinese win, Apple wins. The only people who really lose are us. One of our flagship tech companies is more beholden to a foreign government than the place

that it was born. And as I said when discussing Tesla, easiest way to solve this problem is to just simply make the choice for Apple and for Tim Cook. You either do business here by our norms, or you can do it there by theirs. You choose what you want. Until then, Tim Cook should probably shut his mouth on whatever social cause he's pretending to speak out here about in the US. He can either be an amoral, rapacious capitalist, or he can be a social justice warrior. But you can't do business the way that he has in China, and you can be both. I mean, Crystal, with all these things, I found a huge degree of public interest because a lot of people just don't really know. And if you want to hear my

reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, a U.K. court has now officially ruled that Julian Assange can be extradited to the United States in order to face Espionage Act charges. Those were brought by the Trump Justice Department, and they have been continued under the Biden Justice Department. Now, originally, a U.K. court had ruled against extraditing Assange, not because they objected to the outrageous charges against him, but because they worried that the toxic combination of Julian's extreme mental anguish combined with the endemic cruelty of the American prison system created a grave suicide risk. On appeal, the U.S. government, under Joe Biden, offered some fairly meaningless assurances regarding Julian's health, and those reassured the court enough for them to rule that he could, in fact, be extradited. Now, Julian does have a few additional legal options he can pursue. According

to his fiancee, they are planning to appeal to the British Supreme Court. If that fails or they are unwilling to take up his case, he could seek a stay of extradition from the European Court of Human Rights. Now, we're about to speak with Julian's brother, Gabriel, about his health, the charges against him, and the broader implications for press freedom. But I wanted to take a look at how the cowards in the American press are covering all these developments. In particular, take a listen to how all of this was reported on by MSNBC's Joe Scarborough. Claire McCaskill, there is a lot of smoke surrounding Julian Assange. Of course, there were the charges in Sweden that were subsequently dropped.

There is the hacking and his vendetta against Hillary Clinton. There is information that was released that showed military malfeasance by the United States. But, you know, it's so interesting that it used to be the far left who opposed George W. Bush's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq who made this guy a hero under the guise of the First Amendment. And then when he started leaking information against Hillary Clinton, it became the Trump right that suddenly held Julian aside. So but let's just forget the politics of this. As a prosecutor, you're given this case and you've got a guy who's stolen thousands of documents,

pages of highly classified national security documents, released them to the world, and in so doing, put the lives of U.S. troops, of people who were working with the United States, allies, collaborators in war zones, in the gravest of danger under any scenario. You take politics out of it. And this is an open and shut case. This is not the Pentagon Papers. This wasn't Times editors rifling through documents, figuring out what could be released and what couldn't be released and explaining it. This was a guy that got stolen documents and gave it to the world. The amount of propaganda and just sheer lies packed into those few minutes of commentary is as stunning as it is astonishing. Let me lay out this masterwork of deception step by step. So step one, paint Assange as a generally bad guy. It seems kind

of perplexing that Scarborough starts his anti-Assange screed by bringing up something totally irrelevant to the conversation, the rape charges against Assange in Sweden, which were discredited and ultimately dropped. But of course, by raising them at the outset, he starts to paint a portrait of a person who was suspect in any number of ways. Same with the irrelevant and unsubstantiated assertion that Assange had a vendetta against Hillary Clinton, which also feeds directly into step two, appeal to the audience's partisan bias. Scarborough asserts that in the beginning, the far left supported Assange and, quote, made him a hero, but now it's the Trump right who admires him. This is not remotely true. Most everyone on the actual left continues to support Assange because the principle of First Amendment

protections did not end when the information released stopped being convenient for the Democratic Party. It is true that liberals have further soured on Assange because of the Hillary Clinton revelations, but many liberals already hated Assange from the beginning thanks to their close ties to the military-industrial complex. The Obama administration, they didn't charge Assange, but they hated the guy. They launched a regime of aggressive surveillance against him. As for the Trump right supporting Assange now, it was the Trump Justice Department who decided to charge Assange and even considered kidnapping him or murdering him. In fact, there has been full elite bipartisan consensus about Assange from Obama through Trump

and now to Biden. But more to the point, what does it matter how our various political tribes feel about Julian Assange? The only thing that matters is how his case relates to freedom of the press, an issue which, of course, Scarborough scarcely even mentions here. Which brings us to step number three, wildly lie about what Assange actually did. So in reality, Julian Assange published materials from whistleblower Chelsea Manning, which exposed Bush-era war crimes. But in Scarborough's telling, Assange is, quote, a guy who's stolen thousands of documents, pages of highly classified national security documents, and, quote, released them to the world. This is just false. Assange did not

hack or steal anything. Even the U.S. government, which has tried to invent every phony and dubious charge against Assange that they possibly could, even they are not arguing that Assange directly stole the documents which were released. Instead, he did what journalists do all the time, which is to publish classified information given to him by a source. In that way, yeah, this case is in fact very much like the Pentagon Papers. Step four, repeat Pentagon propaganda about how the release of those documents put service members at risk. Now look, when the documents were first released, it was possible that some of what was put out there could have put our people at risk. But as Glenn Greenwald always points out, you know 100% that if even one life was lost or even put at genuine risk

thanks to these disclosures, the Pentagon and their disgusting apologists would have shouted it from the rooftops. We would know their names. We would know their stories. We would know exactly how WikiLeaks ultimately harmed them. But over all these many years, they have not come up with a single solitary example. So having thus laid out Joe's case of lies and disinformation, he then pronounces this an open and shut case. And he's right. Anyone with a basic set of principles looking at the actual facts of the case would also find this to be an open and shut case. Just as the Obama administration reluctantly did, you cannot criminalize Assange without also criminalizing journalism. Now, the cherry on top of all of this, which I couldn't even bring myself to show you lest you go into shock from exposure to too many terrible morning Joe takes, was Claire McCaskill suggesting that the assault on Assange was about preserving the rule of law, when of course what is actually happening here is a direct assault on the Constitution authorized and whitewashed by a

bipartisan chorus of elites. All of these people feigned great concern about the First Amendment, about freedom of the press during the Trump administration. Scarborough himself suggested that Trump would, quote, arrest us tomorrow, raising the specter of journalists and publishers, the New York Times and Washington Post behind bars. Well, Trump did arrest a publisher and in doing so paved the way to the criminalization of journalism that Scarborough pretended to fear. And instead of standing up for the First Amendment, Scarborough and Claire McCaskill and a lot more besides, they are cheerleading this authoritarian attack. With friends of democracy like these, who needs enemies?

There was so much going on in that clip that I couldn't even get to all of it. I love how he refers... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now for an update on Julian's case and also his health and the broader implications for press freedom is his brother, Gabriel Shipton. We're so grateful for your time today, Gabriel. Thanks for having me. Yeah, good to see you. I want to get to the bigger picture about the case, but first I wanted to ask about your brother's health. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. We understand he suffered a minor stroke while he

was in prison on the day of that hearing. How is he doing right now? How is his health? Yes. Well, uh, so yeah, he's, he's recovered from, from the minor stroke and he's now on, on medication. But, uh, I think this is just a, you know, it's, it, he will, he, you know, this is going to kill him and, and, and this is just another sign of pressure. Uh, you know, the constant anxiety that the, the pressure that's upon him is so great that eventually he will crumble. But at the moment, he's very focused and fighting, appealing this decision and eager to keep fighting. So Gabriel, you were telling us before the segment it was always going to go to the Supreme Court. I don't really understand the British legal system.

Could you explain it to our viewers about what's next? It's not necessarily open and shut in terms of an extradition to the United States yet, is it? Well, so the extradition was approved by the High Court. It went back on an earlier decision by the Magistrates Court to reject the extradition was approved by the High Court. It went back on an earlier decision by the Magistrates' Court to reject the extradition. The extradition was approved based on US assurances that Julian would not be kept in Colorado. I think it's... Anyway, it's a maximum security prison in Colorado,

that he would not be held under SAMS. But these come with caveats so that at any time the director of the CIA may change Julian's situation in U.S. prisons. He may be put under SAMS or what Daniel Hale is under at the moment, which is Communications Management Unit, which is similar to the ADX Florence, Colorado jail set up. What's one thing about this decision? It was made one of the judges was the chief magistrate of England and Wales. So he's the highest judge in the UK, the highest ranking judge in the UK, who's approved this extradition. So any appeals now to the Supreme Court become very hard because they'll have to go against the decision of the highest judge in the land. So it's become very real that this case is coming to the US.

It can be dropped at any moment. The Biden administration has the opportunity to let this go at any moment. And that's what we're calling for them to do. But yeah, I think now we can no longer rely on the British courts to stop this. They've approved the extradition. The fight has to be made here in the USA to stop this prosecution. And if the British Supreme Court takes up Julian's case, what will be the substance of the case that Julian's team will make there? I know ultimately the extradition hearings turned around Julian's health and safety. will that continue to be the thrust of the arguments that are made to the Supreme Court? Or will they also turn on the nature of the charges

against him? No, I mean, it's going to be based on the assurances. So it'll be the very narrow grounds that they can appeal this decision to the Supreme Court. So none of the substantive press freedom angles or any of that sort of stuff will come up. It'll be mostly on the assurances that were given by the US that they could keep Julian safe, which we know is not true. One of the most high-profile prisoners in the UN prison system, Jeffrey Epstein, he couldn't be kept safe. So how can, how can we, you know, rely on assurances given by the US? It's, it's, they're not worth the paper they're printed on.

Well, that's, you know, certainly something obviously to be considered and a very good example. I mean, in terms of what will get actually litigated at the British Supreme Court, Gabriel, is it going to be the same consideration of actual conditions in the U.S. prison system? Or will any of these substantive matters come to light? Or do they only matter here in the United States? Yeah, it only matters in the United States. They can't be fought in the Supreme Court. So the appeal might even be rejected. So Julian's appeal might be rejected to the Supreme Court. So it might not even make it there, and he might be extradited, you know, sooner than we think.

But, yes, none of those substantive press freedom grounds or those First Amendment grounds can be argued in the UK. I mean, the UK has no First Amendment. There are no it's it's press freedoms are terrible. They've got it's not like the US. Right. Yeah. Or at least how the US is supposed to be. Speak to those broader concerns, the Obama administration famously, they, you know, they wanted to go after your brother, but they couldn't figure out a legal rationale that wouldn't also implicate

the New York Times or the Guardian or any other number of mainstream publishing outlets. They couldn't distinguish. So they had to let it go. They launched aggressive surveillance against Julian, but it was only under Trump that they decided to take this extra step to actually prosecute him with major implications for journalists, for publishers, for the First Amendment. Could you just lay out the stakes for our audience who I think have followed this fairly well, but lay out the stakes as if they haven't been following this along from the beginning? Well, so since 9-11, the Espionage Act has been, you know, coming to use more and more. It's been used mostly against whistleblowers to prosecute whistleblowers,

you know, so Daniel Hale, Thomas Drake, people like that. But this is the first time that it's ever been used against a journalist and a publisher. So Julian, you know, he's not a whistleblower. He didn't work for the government or anything like that. He's a publisher. And so this is the first time this espionage, this broad espionage act has been used against the publisher. And it's precisely been used for Julian to be made an example of. But this is, if you publish secret information about the US government, about the military industrial complex, this is what's going to happen to you. So everyone around the world can now see, you know, think twice before, you know, they report on a leak. You know, well, do I want to do this because I could end up, you know, like Julian Assange. And this has a flow on effect to whistleblowers as well. If you're a whistleblower, if you're working, you know, in one of these organizations and you see something wrong, and you think, well, I could report this to a reporter, but will they report it? Will that reporter actually take my leak and publish it?

Because at the moment, if they do, they could end up in prison. So it's just this sort of compounding effect on transparency and, you know, government things, you know, transparency and government wrongdoing that we just don't know about. So the effects are already here. They're already with us. And I think, you know, you can see that in the amount of leakers that have come out from the security state in the last years. I can't remember any. Yeah, that's a great point. Gabriel, I know there's a rally plan in New York City where you are today outside the UK

consulate. We encourage people to attend there if they support Julian's cause and the cause of press freedom more generally. What else can people do to help support Julian and press freedom here? So I've been encouraging people to call their congresspeople, call your representatives, you know, let them know that you care about your right to know, you care about your rights to know what is done with your tax dollars. And as your elected representative, they should be representing your interests. So I've been asking people just to call their congresspeople, call them every day, just keep calling them and telling them that, you know, these threats to press freedom, you know, are not acceptable. Finally, Gabriel, when will we know whether the British Supreme Court is even going to hear Julian's case? What does the timeline look like from here,

to the best of your knowledge? So Julian has until the 24th of December to submit his appeal, or his lawyers will submit his appeal. Then I imagine it'll be six weeks or so before we know whether the appeal will be approved. And then I think in the coming year, they'll have to set a date. So it could be another eight months before we see an appeal here. And in that time, Julian will be

in the maximum security prison at Belmarsh, where he is a remand prisoner. He's not convicted of anything. He is there at the request of the US DOJ. The US DOJ has requested that he not be given bail. So that's where he is. He'll be rotting in prison until the Supreme Court decides when they're going to hear this next year. Wow. And the Biden administration could drop this at any time. Gabriel, we're super grateful for your time today and keep us updated. Thanks, Gabriel.

No, thank you both. Thank you. Yeah. Pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We appreciate all the support for you guys out here.

I have been reminded we have the ability to do gift subscriptions we had a couple of people write in they're like can I do a gift subscription for somebody yeah I didn't know that either

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if you want to send in the ability in order to do a trial gift subscription just send in an email we'll make sure that happens for you. For everybody else, if you could support us, it definitely means the absolute world. It helps our ability. We're building up the show as much as possible. And I got to be honest, Crystal, I don't think either of us realized just six months in, we'd be able to have the influence that we have. I mean, the Steven Donziger thing seems to have... Look, we can't speculate, but I do think that we drew significant amounts of attention. And then you did

the live stream here at our set. And the next day, the guy was released. I mean, same on Hassan. There've been a lot of cases like this. I can't go into all the details, but I hear from people who are in power, not necessarily the Congress people themselves, but their staffs who listened to our show and are like, this is, I got this idea for this thing from you. And yeah, it's very edifying and you guys support our work, our ability to continue

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