Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/16/21: Free Assange, Pelosi Corruption, Twitter Censorship, Student Debt, Gen Z Activism, Punchbowl News, Greed Kills, Covid Mania, Taiwan Debate, and More!

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about Julian Assange, Pelosi's defense of corruption, Twitter censorship, student debt cancellation, Gen Z digital activism, punchbowl news corruption, Amazon workers dying, Omicron madness, defending Taiwan, 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/Free Assange: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DRVDq8cicg National Review Debate: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/12/20/the-united-states-should-not-defend-taiwan/ https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/12/20/the-united-states-should-defend-taiwan/ Warrior Met Fund: https://umwa.org/umwa2021strikefund/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Twitter has some new rules that are questionable at best. I would dare say that they are anti-science. So we'll tell you about those. The Biden administration categorically ruling out doing anything about student debt. Of course, we already covered how they're going to restart student loan debt payments at a time when Americans do not feel good about their finances and how they are doing now and projecting into the future. So we'll tell you about that.

Also, this is actually good news. Something exciting, the way that Gen Z is organizing on TikTok. Very interesting. Getting involved in the labor movement in particular. Exciting new direction there. Some stunning news about corruption in D.C. news media, Beltway media. I know you're going to be shocked to learn about that. We also, and actually we should have a programming note about this.

So we have two guests on to debate what the U.S. should do about Taiwan. But we've had some technical issues this morning, which, by the way, might show up during the show. We've been having some problems with the camera. Right now everything is working, but it's caused us to start late. So we're going to do those guest segments. We're going to post them later. Yes, that's right. So for those of you.

Just so we can make sure it gets it on time. Yeah, to make sure that you guys get it on time, especially our premium subscribers. Couple other programming notes. First of all, how do you like our new... It's Christmas. Holiday decor. It's actually Sagar's idea to pull this stuff out,

but I love how it looks. And thanks to our graphics guys for putting together a new little holiday flair Breaking Points graphic for us. One other programming note is tonight I alongside Kyle Kalinsky, Marianne Williamson

and Katie Halper are going to be hosting a live stream for Julian Assange. Sagar is going to join us as a guest. We have an

incredible, truly astonishing lineup of people who are involved here and this is not everybody but we've got Assange's brother, Gabriel, who, of course, we've interviewed on this show as well.

We've got Glenn Greenwald. We've got Ryan Grimm. We've got Steven Donziger, who is now home. Still not free, but at least he's home. Ro Khanna is going to join us. Abby Martin's going to join us. Some of the reporters who have been covering it on the ground in the UK are going to join us.

Susan Sarandon, Daniel Ellsberg, Chomsky, Cornel West. So that's all going to kick off tonight at 7.30. We're going to stream it on our channel. Katie's streaming it on her channel. Kyle's streaming it on his channel as well. But listen, guys, this is one that is so important. Of course, we've been covering here the way that the prosecution of Assange started under Trump, continued under Biden, poses a grave threat to the First Amendment and especially to criminalizing journalists. This is why the Obama administration decided they wanted to prosecute Assange. But they decided they couldn't do it without also criminalizing The New York Times and every other publisher that releases classified information, which is something that journalists do all the time and that publishers do all the time. So this is a really, really important one. We want to put on as much pressure as we can. So if you guys can join us here tonight, 730,

we would really love that. That's right. I'll be joining. It'll be really, I'm just going to make the same point that I have here, which is that it doesn't care how you feel about a person. It matters about case law, about the precedent and the principle. And this is one where it's just clear as day as to what the exact example that would be set in terms of U.S. law against journalists, even our potential ability in order to expose things of people in power. And that's what matters the most in our profession. Everybody should be speaking up for it. Yeah, and they're not. And that's really disgusting, especially the number of journalists who were very upset about attacks

on the First Amendment during the Trump administration. They were concerned, though, about like mean comments or tweets about Jim Acosta. But this thing that Trump did, which was the worst thing he did in terms of attacking the press, there were very few who had anything to say about it then. And as Julian is coming very close to extradition now with the UK high court ruling that he can, in fact, be extradited to the US, now is the time to raise hell. So that is our goal for this evening. There you go. All right. So first story up this morning, some really disgusting and stunning comments.

I should stop saying that because, honestly, it's not that surprising. Par for the course. We should maintain our shock and disgust at these things, even though they are par for the course. Nancy Pelosi got asked about whether members of Congress and their spouses should be banned from profiting off their positions in public service by trading stocks. Let's take a listen to that exchange. Madam Speaker, Insider just completed a five-month investigation finding that 49 members of Congress and 182 senior congressional staffers have violated the Stock Act, the Insider trading law. I'm wondering if you have any reaction to that. And secondly, should members of Congress

and their spouses be banned from trading individual stocks while serving in Congress? No, I don't know to this second one. Any we have a responsibility to report in the stock on a stock. But I don't I'm not familiar with that five month review. But if people aren't reporting, they should be. Because this is a free market and people, we have a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that. It's a free market! Free market economy and people should be able to participate in it.

It's so disgusting, this attitude. You are supposed to be public servants. You're not supposed to be public servants. You're not supposed to be cashing in for profit off of the vast amounts of inside information you have. The reporter there, and I wish I knew who it was. I would give them a lot of credit for asking this question. They're referencing this insider investigation into just the amount of corruption and how widespread and bipartisan it is in Congress. We can throw that tear sheet up on the screen. We covered this early this week, and you can see why this type of reporting matters so much, because since a mainstream outlet

actually took the time and went to the trouble of doing this analysis, it results in this kind of a question and this kind of a very, very revealing statement from Nancy Pelosi. And of course, what Insider tracked here, Sagar, is the fact that they expose people who sit on defense committees who are trading defense stocks. They expose people who claim to be environmentalists and anti-climate change who are investing in fossil fuel. They expose people who are profiting off of the pandemic. All of these things where because they're in this position of trust that the public put them into, they have access to information that they're then turning around and profiting off of, or that could be in a position to impact the types of decisions that

they're making. That's the real problem is then you don't know, are they acting in your best interest? Are they acting in the best interest of their stock portfolio? Even the most libertarian of libertarian free marketeers will tell you that crony capitalism and government capture, regulatory capture is the greatest threat to the free market. And so if you do believe in a free market, I believe also very much one, then there actually has to be a level playing field in your ability in order to trade stocks. And one of the recognitions that we should have there is that you cannot have a level playing field whenever you're having such a dramatic amount of influence over the stock market yourself, whenever you are speaker of the house,

literally. I think what's especially gross is the defense of her husband, who has routinely been caught trading on, look, trading, making big time trades, hours before votes, multi-million dollars. To be 100% clear, this woman is worth $150 million. Now look, if that's not enough for you, that's fine. But then don't serve in the United States Congress. Nobody's forcing you to serve here. You are welcome, Madam Speaker, to retire, and you and your husband can day trade in your mansions and eat Jenny's ice cream all day long. Be my guest. Sounds pretty nice.

She's like 80 years old. She's got a bunch of grandkids. Go for it. But if you're going to have the public trust within you, especially in your position like this, to say that you have to be able to have your cake and eat it too, that's the most disgusting part. And you know, here's my one great hope. There is at least a somewhat bipartisan thing about this. People who hate Nancy Pelosi so

much, many Republicans have actually gotten themselves down to the position of being like, okay, well, I guess we have to ban it, which I would support, actually. Hold on. Are there any Republican members who supported this? Not a current one. The one that I saw who said it, his name was Blake Masters. He's running for Senate in Arizona as Republican. Kind of an interesting new right-ish type figure. We're going to see if he wins the primary. Trump had a fundraiser for him, so I do expect him to win. If he beats Mark Kelly or not, we'll see. But he said one of the very first things he would do when he comes into Congress is actually endorse this type of legislation, introduce it.

And also, we know that AOC already said this in the House of Representatives. That could be a good right left team up there. It really is kind of a perfect litmus test in a way, because it's like, what are you actually about? What do you actually want this position for? Is this for your personal elevation, profit, ambition, career positioning, et cetera? Or you actually want to do some good things? And listen, we can debate all day long what those good things might look like and have different ideas. But if the foundation of just having people there with good intentions who aren't just self-interested and trying to cash in. Like that's the baseline that you have to have in place. And then we can go from there. So, yeah, I mean, it's what's sad is, of course, while you have a few lone voices out there,

you know, a few members of the squad, maybe one person who might get through a Republican primary. Yeah, there's a lot of people. I'm being honest. You know, I mean, the sad thing is that it's far from close to anywhere like a majority. And obviously the person who has one of the most powerful people in all of Washington has totally dismissed it and utterly discarded it, like, you know, out of hand, contemptuously, too, like it was a ridiculous question. Going along with this is the fact, you know, one way that our elites cash in and achieve more power, more money and all of those things for themselves is through, you know, the the stock trading that they're doing in the House and in the Senate and their staffers as well and other government officials in positions of power. That's one way. Another way, though, was just exposed by ProPublica. They had a great write-up that wasn't even so much an article on new information, although there was some new data

there that's worth getting into. But they track over more than a century how these American dynasties of, you know, royalty level wealth are created and then sustained generation after generation, even after, you know, the failed sons and the failed daughters do absolutely nothing. And the intersection of that dynastic intergenerational wealth with the rigging of our public policy. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen because this was really important. If you guys have time, it's a relatively lengthy read, but it's pretty fascinating, especially if you're interested in history. The Great Inheritors, how three families shielded their fortunes from taxes for generations. So they track several of these families, including the Melons and the Mars,

and I can't remember what the other one is, and how they used tax avoidance schemes from the very beginning. Oh, the Scripps, that was the other one, which is an interesting one because the magnate there, he's founded newspapers that were meant for the working class, and he'd have these sort of like working class instincts sometimes, like pro-working class and anti-rich instincts but when it came down to it his personal fortune and avoiding taxes was the number one priority and so since they were able to achieve that then they were able to pass this generational wealth down and down and down and so the idea that oh you know three generations later it's all going to be gone. No, that's not actually

what happens. In fact, you have huge numbers of the individuals who are, you know, the wealthiest in the nation. It's like a third of all the wealthiest people

in the country. They didn't build it. They didn't, they just inherited it. They didn't do anything whatsoever to deserve it. The fortunes of Andrew Mellon and his peers have proved so durable, they say, over the past century that today one-third of the top 50 wealthiest Americans on the Forbes list are heirs. Sagar, I think that piece of information is actually very dangerous in a way to the status quo because we have all this mythology about how the people who are the elites and who

are the wealthiest, they're just a different class. They're a different breed. They earned it through their hard work and their brilliant visions and their innovations. We've talked here a lot about how a lot of those people are just financial engineers playing with money. And then a third of them, they didn't do a damn thing. They just got lucky by birth and, you know, were born rich. I've tried to explain this so many times about why focusing on Bezos and Musk is actually the worst way in order to focus on billionaires. I'm like, no, look, to their credit, they both built two incredible world-changing companies. Now, the rest of the people on the Forbes list, the guys who are worth the 1.2s, the 1.3s, the new billionaires, they're just hedge fund guys.

They're doing nothing. They're adding zero to the U.S. economy. And then a lot of them, one-third, are the Walton family, Jim Walton, who's apparently, what was it? He's like buying all private water rights in the state of Montana. That's right. The Waltons are like determining the state of the private water market. Or Abigail Disney, who's always on Twitter. Look, apparently she's actually quite pro-wealth confiscation or whatever,

which is kind of interesting. But regardless, it's more when we look at the way that intergenerational wealth spills down, nobody is saying you should not be able to allow and pass stuff on to your children. But what this piece shows you and why we paired it up together is you have there the Speaker of the House worth herself in the range of dynastic wealth, $150 million. That's more than you can spend in several lifetimes. It's being passed down to all of her children and also to juxtapose her wealth and her defense of her and her husband's trading in the mansions in which she lives, in which the squalor of many of the people of San Francisco are in right now.

And some of the things that you guys will read in this piece, which are just eye-popping, is Mortimer Sackler. I love that. Mortimer is his first name, heir to the Sackler dynasty. He took in $200 million by age 22. Bruce Nordstrom, the grandson of the founder, he collected $175 million in 2019. William Wrigley, the great-grandson of the chewing gum pioneer, raked in $570 million in trust income throughout that year. That are, once again, all heirs sitting on fortunes which are vast and doing what exactly? And here's the thing. Nobody's saying you have to take all of it, even some, or all of it, you know, the majority of it. But the whole point of the piece is that they pay almost nothing in taxes, that they have created a system of Nancy Pelosi

and many of these other people which have architected where they can shield the vast, vast majority, where they pay an effective tax rate far lower than any of you. If you're working stiff out there, you're paying higher taxes than them. And that's what's wrong. And this is, of course, part of how the racial wealth gap becomes so persistent over time. Because, of course, at the time when these fortunes were made you know black people were rampantly overtly discriminated against both by the public and also in law so the fact that these fortunes persist basically forever means that you are you know locking out people from achieving that american dream i mean some of the numbers here they say the scripts Scripps, Mellon, and Mars families, just

those three families, their combined wealth today is pegged at $114 billion. These are fortunes that were made a century ago. And still, this is the way that it persists. And by the way, you said that no one is advocating that you take all of it. Actually, I am advocating for a very, very high state tax because here's the problem is that wealth persists and wealth grows at a much more rapid pace than income does. So if you're working stiff, if you're earning wages, you are never going to have the chance to catch up because they're always this is how vast inequality just becomes generated and persists and accelerates generation after generation. And by the way, some of these people actually scripts himself.

He saw the way his own kids were like spoiled, lazy, entitled. And he initially in his life was in support of a large estate tax because he thought this isn't good for society. It's not even good for these kids and the grandkids who never have to do anything in their life whatsoever. But in the end, when it came time to pass his vast fortune on to his own children, he was also a rampant misogynist. I think he only really gave to his son or his sons or gave like half as much to his daughter and his wife or whatever. Anyway, when it came time for him to pass it forward, he decided that he would avail himself of every trick in the book in order to ensure that his wealth sustains. And so, you know, to take it back to the beginning with Pelosi and the Democrats, some measures to try to capture

some of these vast fortunes in order to fund the public good. There was some thought that that was going to happen under the Biden administration, not the most radical things, not the things that I might be in favor of, but some moderate steps to try to actually tax these vast fortunes, which today go completely untaxed, essentially. And that was some of the those were some of the provisions that got killed the quickest, not because they're politically unpopular. On the contrary, they are wildly politically popular. And the whole thing was more popular when it included those provisions. But because you had a huge lobbying effort undergone in part by some of the heirs of this dynastic wealth

funded by those same very people to make sure that those provisions ultimately got stripped down. And then when you have a Congress that sees themselves as part of that class and is in fact oftentimes part of that class, you end up with the situation that we find ourselves in today.

Absolutely true. Okay, let's move on to Twitter. You know, we've been talking a lot about the content moderation policies over at Twitter and why they matter. And I'll put that at the very top, which is that Twitter is where the elites have discussions. That matters a lot because those discussions filter down through different cable news mediums, radio and elsewhere to you. So even though you may not be on Twitter, you are very influenced by Twitter. Politicians are always there. The doctors even are always there. The public health people, everybody's debating and talking. It's a medium of discussion. So when that medium has policies which hurt journalism, it has a disproportionate impact on the entire field.

When that medium has a disproportionate impact in its censorship policy, it will affect what you see and what you don't in many other cases. So let's put that at the top. And that's why this new censorship policy matters a lot. Let's put it up there on the screen, please. Twitter is going to penalize users who claim that vaccinated people can spread COVID-19. So I'm going to read directly from the new section on their website. Quote, when tweets include misleading information about COVID-19, we may place a label on those tweets that includes corrective information about that claim. We may apply labels to tweets that contain, for example, false or misleading claims that people who have

received the vaccine can spread or shed the virus to unvaccinated people. Users can receive penalties up to and including a permanent ban. So that change was made on December 2nd, 2021. This matters a lot because it actually directly contradicts the CDC's previous announcement and guidance prior to the month or to the day of December 2nd. That's our second thing. Put that up there on the screen, please, where you can see here directly CDC director Rochelle Walensky. Now this statement, July 30th, 2021, quote, high viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raise concern that unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus. Now, I'm not saying that vaccinated people are the only people who can transmit the virus. I'm not making claims like that whatsoever.

But we also, Crystal, have some new data out this morning that because of the way that populations are dramatically more vaccinated than not, that we do see quite a bit of Omicron spread amongst the vaccinated. I'm doing my monologue today. One of the things I'm mentioning is that Cornell University, a place where they have a hard vaccine mandate for all employees and students, has seen some 600 cases of Omicron break out. That is actually nothing that much to worry about. If you're vaccinated, your chance of hospitalization and death is dramatically reduced. Yes, you will get a cold, essentially, or a mild case of the flu. That's basically what happened to me after I got COVID and I was vaccinated.

But the irresponsibility of this moderation policy is that it is directly contradictory, not only of general scientific consensus, but even from the most out there people at the CDC. And they see no problem with that. It's outrageous. The whole case for people getting boosters right now is because now, you know, there's a big concerted effort from the federal government for people, not just the elderly,

but all adults to go out and get their third shot is because not that if you're vaccinated, you should be worried about severe hospitalization and death, but because you want to have a booster so you can further limit the spread. That indicates that if you are vaccinated, you can still spread COVID. Now, listen, what a lot of anti-vaxxers do is they will conflate the fact that you can spread COVID if you're vaccinated with the idea that you are just as likely to spread COVID if you're vaccinated as not. That claim is false.

And if that claim, you know, that could be fact-checked or whatever. But to go directly against the science here, what the CDC says, which is that especially with Omicron, I just read a New York Times article this morning about how it is likely there will be more breakthrough infections with Omicron among the vaccinated. And that that will, if you have vulnerable people around you, that that's something you should be concerned about because you can, in fact, spread it. Again, if you're vaccinated and especially if you have your booster, you are less likely to spread COVID. But, yeah, you can still spread it. And so what their,

their official policy is directly anti-science. I mean, there's just no other way to possibly read it. And the reason that this is also important is because something that we've been pointing to, and many others as well, is that, you know, the people at Twitter, they're not scientists. They're not public health officials. The people at Facebook, the people on YouTube, you know, they're not public health officials or scientists or experts. And you're putting this tremendous power into their hands to deem what's true and what's false on coronavirus and, you know, every other medical issue when, you know, sometimes the science is unclear. It's complicated. There's oftentimes debates among scientists about what the right course is and what we're seeing in the data. And there are different studies that can be

contradictory. So the idea that they're going to be able to sort that out effectively, obviously this type of guidance very clearly demonstrates that they are not in a good position to be able to be effective, effective moderators of what the truth is in science. Oh, absolutely. And even, you know, trying to figure out what that less likely figure is on vaccination is pretty hard. I was just trying to find I know there's a Lancet study which looked into this. There's not really a hard number in terms of what that is. It also changes depending on alpha variant, delta variant, and Omicron variant around the exact, you know, how likely you are to spread it even if you are vaccinated. And once again, I mean, look, the core case to me is hospitalization and death, especially in the elderly and in the obese. If you have any sort of comorbidity or if you're elderly, then a case of COVID can be a real problem for you. I mean, at the very least, it can severely hurt your immune system. And I can tell you a personal

experience. My 90-year-old grandmother got COVID and was in the hospital in India. She survived thanks to the vaccine, or at least what I suspect to be the vaccine. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty amazing. If you're in your 90s previously, that was probably a death sentence. But that doesn't mean that, you know, she hasn't had some reduced impact on her immune system. So I just think that it's important for people to keep that in mind and especially this and exposing people to permanent bans for claims which are outright true just goes to show that these people are not interested in science. They are not interested even necessarily in robust debate. They are willing to err on the side of what they think is the morally just position. And maybe you can think that,

but it does not matter. What matters is that we actually have the ability to talk honestly. Something that we'll be covering in a future show, but which I just literally saw this morning, Crystal, is that the White House has been holding, quote, information sessions with Twitter influencers who are doctors. So they are literally, the Surgeon General of the United States is trying to get influential doctors on Twitter to kind of parrot the party line of the White House. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, this is crazy. I mean, we have the White House,

which has been wrong in many cases around science. Joe Biden, our president of the United States, who's a boosted man, still requires masks indoors in his building. Look, maybe. Okay. Maybe that's fine. He's pretty old.

He's old as hell. But, you know, that's not necessarily a very, that's not a very inspiring thing to watch and say like, hey, how come the White House has a mask mandate when the District of Columbia, the city that we live in, doesn't even have one? They don't have an answer to that question. They're just paranoid. So they go far beyond what the science calls for. mask mandate when the District of Columbia, the city that we live in, doesn't even have one? They don't have an answer to that question. They're just paranoid. So they go far beyond what the science calls for all the time. That's the right. They can do what they wish. But the problem is, is that then they're the people setting national policy. They're also the ones who are influencing this type of discussion, our discourse, all of that. And that is what really, you know, sets me aflame. I mean, isn't that sort of standard, like, operating procedure for White Houses, though? I mean, Obama did it, Trump did this sort of stuff, too, bringing in conservative influencers

and news people. I would posit that conservative influencers have far less influence than the Twitter doctors. Oh, I totally disagree with that. I don't know. I totally disagree with that. I mean, there is a very effective right wing pipeline that does not exist. Certainly true. Certainly on the left. Liberals obviously have a lot of cultural power and institutions. On social cultural issues, I would say yes. On and the local COVID officials in Santa Barbara or wherever, California, they are heavily impacted by what these blue checks on Twitter are saying. And

some of these people are freaking crazy. I mean, we're talking about, I see folks out there who are like mask forever. Yeah, I just think because it's so like tribal that you have, yeah, you have one group that's very influenced by that. And you have another group that's very influenced by, you know, Ben Shapiro or whoever. Absolutely. I'm speaking only in a public health context. Yeah, it is standard operating procedure, absolutely. I just think these people have a very outsized impact on how it could come and affect all of our lives, which is bothersome.

And it seems to see that how much influence they have and direction from the top can also be an issue. But, I mean, the major point to me is it's very clear that this policy is far beyond what science is. Who knows how this segment will do? I have no idea. I'm very curious to see how YouTube treats it. Indeed. Indeed. All right. So let's track a little Biden campaign promise that they now are just pretending he never made, which is when he was running for president, Bernie wanted to cancel all student debt and Biden took a much more conservative position, which is he wanted to cancel the first $10,000 of debt. So some enterprising reporter decided to ask

our great press secretary, Jen Psaki, what the hell happened to that promise? Here's how that went. I think you said last week that you're working on a plan to help students pay. But what about President Biden's campaign to forgive or cancel $10,000 in student debt? Pardon me. You know, what is the message to those people who feel that he's yet to follow through on that promise? If Congress sends him a bill, he's happy to sign it. They haven't sent him a bill on that yet.

Go ahead. So just totally dismisses it there. Like, oh, well, he hasn't got a bill, so he's not going to do it. Well, you have the power to cancel debt. Trump used this power.

Obama also used this power not to have a blanket cancellation, but the power is there to cancel as much of student debt as you decide you want to do this is not even like some of the things i push forward like i i think based on the analysis of david day and others that you could expand medicare to everyone that's that one would be challenged in the court that's a dicier proposition this one the precedent is really pretty clear that they have the power to cancel however much of the debt as they ultimately want. And so this is where you see

just how much BS this is. They pretend like they can do nothing. And this is something Democrats are so great at. They pretend, oh, the Republicans and the parliamentarian and the filibuster and gosh, we would if we could, but we didn't get a bill, so we just can't do it. This is 100% in your control. You just decided you don't want to. And you know who used to know this? President Joe Biden. Let's put that tweet up there on the screen.

This is while he was president of the United States. Additionally, we should forgive a minimum of $10,000 per person of federal student loans as proposed by Senator Warren and her colleagues. Young people and other student debt holders bore the brunt of the last crisis. It shouldn't happen again. Apologies. That was actually March of 2020. But regardless, this is a position that was already endorsed by the president of the United States during the course of the presidential campaign, asked about it there at the podium. She's like, yeah, you can send us a bill and sign it. Look, I mean, it's just very clear. These people, they have no interest in trying to think big whatsoever. Matt Stoller had a comment

in his section of his premium sub stack, which he publicized, I thought was so spot on. And it was like, Biden can't decide what he is. Sometimes he wants to be the defender of the status quo. Sometimes he wants to be some sort of new populist politician. By trying to be both, he ends up not being able to defend either, which is what makes him such a catastrophic politician in this age and why his approval ratings are such, you know, are collapsing. He's both personally inept at speaking, at, you know, appearing and using the bully pulpit whatsoever. And on a policy level is so all over the map that he's a restrictionist, an isolationist in some cases, whenever it comes to Afghanistan,

a neocon when it comes to Ukraine and the defense of NATO, a big bill spender when it comes to the CARES Act of 2021 right after he became president, and then some weird bipartisan deficit hawk whenever it comes to build back better. What the hell are you? Nobody in this country can be like Joe Biden is an X type politician. Yeah, he just is. I don't really know how I mean, that's what he's I guess throughout his whole career. Part of why he is kind of hard to figure is because he's very reactive. It's just however he feels about the personalities involved

or about the debate of the day or how it sort of gels with one of his little slogans or personal family lore that he trots out, that determines policy versus any kind of a real sort of strategic vision, impetus, direction ultimately. And so, yeah, I mean, he's all over the board. Just to really drive home the point that this is very different from what he was saying and what he promised on the campaign trail. Here he is on the campaign trail talking about student debt. I'm going to make sure that everybody in this generation gets

$10,000 knocked off of their student debt as we try to get out of this god-awful pandemic. There you go. And again, look, I get it. Working with Congress is very hard. Mitch McConnell is a very difficult man. The filibuster Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are genuine obstacles because they're so corrupt and they're just doing the better of the donors.

You know, you want to throw up these roadblocks like the parliamentarian and all these other things. But on this one, it's really clear. If you wanted to act, you could. And you've decided you don't want to. And, by the way, just like putting the morality and the utility of this policy aside, young people are some of your strongest supporters. And they are also some of the least likely to turn out in midterms. So if you wanted to just, you know,

maybe throw a bone to some of the people that you'd like to show up and vote your people back in in the midterms, well, this wouldn't be a terrible idea. The other thing I'll say about this is, Ironman was messaging both of us. I thought he made an interesting point. He's like, you know, the thing with the student debt and with the college, you know, the student loan payments as well, is that these people were basically sold a false bill of goods. And rather than focusing, the Democratic Party focusing on building the labor movement, building wages so

that you had other solid middle class options to go to without a college degree. Instead, what they leaned into was everybody's got to go to college. That's the one path for all. And, you know, we're going to push you in that direction. And in the process, of course, higher education costs skyrocketed. And what people are getting out of it is, you know, ultimately not what was promised. Yes, you are still much more likely to get higher wages going out of college than coming straight out of high school. But you're saddled with such debt that they were effectively sold a false bill of goods, which I do think is a really important moral context around all of this. No question. One of the things that frustrates me the most

around a lot of the Democratic discussion is they're like, relieve all the debt. And I'm like, yeah, listen, I'm totally for some sort of debt relief, but these people are criminals in the universities. I mean, we did that segment in the past about the Columbia, what was it, the Columbia film student who had $150,000 in debt, some outrageous six-figure number, and we've got zero job opportunities out of it. They increasingly, the inflation in the cost of tuition relative to the job market is astounding. It is criminal. There are a variety of reasons as to why that exactly has happened. And there, any discussion of paring back student debt without a discussion of the incentives and what they

charge should be moot day one, in my opinion. And that's part of the issue I see as well. The universities and the crooks and all the private debt collectors or whatever that are making money hand over fist on this. You know, the other thing is that Biden himself should acknowledge that he is the one who set up that original, what is it, the 2005-2007 debt bill, which made it so that you actually can garnish student debt from your wages. And wasn't he part of making sure you can't discharge student debt? That's exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm forgetting the exact year that this debt legislation, but he was the pioneer behind this. One of the things Elizabeth Warren fought him on and then said not a word about once she was actually running for president. Right. It was a different Elizabeth Warren. Yeah. All right.

So from the bad news to the good news about the young people, this is kind of cool. So Kellogg's, as you guys know, workers at four different locations, they have been on strike for quite a while. And their big issue is about two-tier wages and benefits. This is something we've seen throughout a lot of these strikes. And Kellogg's came back with a contract. Workers overwhelmingly rejected it. And so Kellogg's said, fine, then we're just going to replace you with a bunch of scabs. Well, some TikTokers and folks on Reddit thought that they would maybe mess with Kellogg's,

not only by boycotting them, but also, since Kellogg's is now, you know, having to hire 1,400 workers to replace these striking workers, why don't we mess with their hiring and resume system? So let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. This actually started on Reddit, on the anti-work subreddit, where they were talking, where they were trying to come up with ways to effectively spam the resume and the application process. And then a TikToker took it another step forward and actually wrote code to try to flood Kellogg with bogus job applications after it says the company announced it would permanently replace

striking workers. Let's take a look at who that Tikiktoker is and what he has to say about it well well well it's about that time again y'all remember this well apparently kels is planning to replace workers who are fighting for better workplace conditions and better pay and so people over at the anti-work subreddit have found out they're using these websites to do it these locations so you know what i had to do you know how to cook up a little a little something something a little something you know i'm not going to try to explain exactly what this does i'm just going to show you go ahead and run the code please when i ran on one of the four websites it starts up an application you need to sign in okay well it goes through the process of

of signing in because it has another privacy agreement itself because it creates an account oh and then it fills everything else in all of it including filling out the resume and then it automatically applies application has been sent and in case you're wondering yes all the data is relevant data zip codes match cities match states matches all matches up perfectly i'm still working on the rest of the fields but not bad for a day's work i'd say so yeah i love um i love the creativity and the like really, I mean, he's going for it. Apparently it's working.

I've seen a bunch of different TikToks with a lot of views of people talking about this and engaging with it. I actually, I joined TikTok. I was inspired by this gentleman. Black Madness 21 is his handle. He was my very first follow. But he had also written code after that Texas heartbeat law passed to similarly spam an anti-choice website that was trying to gather data about who might be breaking that law. And so he wrote code to help automate the process of spamming that website too. Also remember Gen Z, remember how they flooded the Trump rally

with RSVPs and tricked them into thinking? I mean, it seemed to actually work, tricked them into thinking that they were going to have tens of thousands more people at that rally than they ultimately did. And it made for a very embarrassing situation for him. Tulsa rally. Tulsa. And yeah, it was at a time when, you know, the campaign was just getting kicked off and it was it was controversial to do in-person events at all. And then they end up with this very embarrassing flop of a tiny, tiny crowd, which his whole thing was big crowd size. So it made a difference in terms of public perception. But I just like the militancy and the creativity that you see from this generation that isn't, you know, they're not going to just sit around and hope that Joe Biden does something good. They're kind of taking matters into their own hands. No, absolutely.

It's very interesting to me around the labor element of this. I mean, you know, it's not surprising. They have a bunch of Gen Z kids who are socially liberal who, you know, might be working in or university life and more, but to work and actually have some labor activism, that would be a wholesale change from whenever I was coming up in college. I mean, you know, I'm the millennial, you know, I went to college, graduated from college in 2014. I don't think I spoke the word union the entire time we were there. And I went to the, to GW, George Washington University here, very classic. Everybody wanted to be like Hillary unironically, which is extremely cringe. But one of the things you would hear from them is always around international relations and a lot of gay marriage stuff because this was pre-Obergerfell. A lot of social issues, but it was never any discussion around both the financial crisis and especially around labor activism.

My kind of original awakening was around the financial crisis and realized, I'm like, none of these people know anything or about anyone who's ever left, lost a home and that impact. I started reading books, are kind of the inklings of what would ended up

becoming the Trump backlash. George Packer had a book, 2013, called The Unwinding, had a big impact on me as well. All of these really is to say that if there is a change, and I hope our show can have some role in that, in pushing younger people to understand both working class issues, wages, equity within economy, and I don't mean equity in a racial sense,

in terms of how we actually have a more balanced society and the way that organized labor and how the people at the lowest bottom of the wage spectrum and totem pole play within that, it would just be a huge plus. So I hope this is a real, I'm still not going to join TikTok, but I will watch from afar with great interest at this time.

I'm still scared of TikTok because I don't really understand. I'm going to spend some time with my 13-year-old helping me to really get it. Maybe I should get a separate phone to protect all of my data and have TikTok. Your data is already gone. You're probably right. It's probably already been stolen.

I'm crystal ball BP there. Don't expect me to post anything anytime soon because I'm too scared to embarrass myself. But I am going to, you know, if you have suggestions of good people to follow, I would appreciate that. But I think your point is a really important one. We know from the polling, the younger you are,

the more pro-union you're likely to be. Interesting. But there's been a disconnect between that and actual sort of like understanding of the labor movement just because the labor movement has been so marginalized and because there are so few people who are actually members of labor unions at this point, that it's not a part of daily conversation in American public life the way that it used to be several generations ago. I mean, obviously, I'm significantly older than you. And for my

generation, we weren't thinking about unions whatsoever when we were coming out of college. It took me, you know, running for political office and engaging with rank and file and labor leaders to really understand labor and why it was so important. And that's me coming from, you know, a family that has a pretty significant labor history. My mom was in a union as a teacher. My dad, his family, my mom's dad was a sheet metal worker. My dad's family also came, you know, out of the labor movement and operating engineers in West Virginia. So even with that history, I still was totally uneducated about it until I started to run for political office and really started to engage with it. So it is extremely exciting to see a major cultural shift in understanding and engagement

with labor issues because, you know, ultimately I think that's the only way out of where we are. I think if you want to build any sort of working class power, multiracial working class power, that's the place it starts. So to see these little encouraging moves, creativity, and true activism that's being widely shared on TikTok and among Gen Z, I do think that's really exciting. It's one of the more exciting things that's out there right now. It really is. I said previously, I'm, again,

shamelessly stealing from somebody who tweeted this, I don't know, which is that the people who kind of came of age like we did post-financial crisis have a weird amount of familiarity with the financial system, like derivatives and credit default swaps and all this other stuff. You know, the big short movie and all that. We have a higher amount of Wall Street lexicon than the general population just because of that. I think the current generation is going to see that through the supply chains, through trucking, through unions as well, the great resignation, having more familiarity with that. And I would encourage them to really

delve deep into our history and to learn about labor politics of the 1920s and 1930s and the 1940s in particular, post-World War II. so analogous to how much is happening in our economy right now. So, look, it's a deep part of our history. They don't teach it anywhere. I didn't learn it until I started reading books for myself. I never heard about unions in school. A little bit like West Virginia. That was even more overt. I mean, you guys know West Virginia has extraordinary history of militant labor movements and some of the bloodiest battles fought on American soil in West Virginia, you know, as coal miners were trying to unionize.

That was all banned from West Virginia textbooks until very recently. So it's not an accident. It was intentional that these issues and, you know, the details of our history around these issues were ultimately hidden. But look, if you're graduating either from high school or college right now, you know what kind of a labor market you're graduating into. It's precarious. You have very little power. And so when you see something over here that's like, oh, this could be an answer. Oh, I could actually have a say in my workplace.

You can see how that would be extremely attractive and why there would be a big appetite for moving back, for having the pendulum swing back in that direction of workers having power in their workplace. Yeah, it's really interesting. Okay, move on. Fun segment, always about the media. This one, not as much about cable news, but about how stuff works here in D.C. So it's about Punchbowl News. Now, to be clear, we actually use a lot of reporting from punchbowl news. That's actually important. We find that they have some of the best on-the-ground stuff from Capitol Hill, updates, sources, and more. is deeply intertwined with lobbyists and with corporate power in a way that cable news is even less so. And what I mean by that is that the most important newsletters in Washington, Punchbowl News being one of them, Politico Playbook, Axios AM, are specifically sponsored by the largest corporations on earth

because they want their news and their ads in order to get in front of congressional staffers, other people who are in media, the players at the top who set regulations. It's one of the most effective ways for them to lobby against stuff is by co-opting the D.C. media elite. One of the famous times where this was actually called out was when bernie sanders did that live stream with the washington post and he it was sponsored by bank of america so it was like washington post sits down with uh with bernie sanders he came on he's like is this really sponsored by bank of america it was like i'm sure the washington post people were like freaking out. But that was the first time that I even saw a politician spotlight this. So that's the background.

It matters a lot in terms of setting the way that people view the news, experience the news, and understand what's going on in the city. Our three very important newsletters, Axios AM, Punchbowl News, and Playbook. Punchbowl is run by Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, and I'm forgetting the other guy. I think his name is John something. They are former Playbook employees of Politico, spun off their own company. So let's put this up there on the screen and finally get to it. This is really interesting. So Punchbowl News recently hosted, on a Sunday afternoon, a Washington football team little meetup in which it was attended by, quote, the American Investment Council, which is the private equity industries

trade group, Bruce Andrews of Intel, John Cott lobbyist of Capital Council, Marissa Mitrovich of Frontier Communications, people from law firms or consulting firms like McKinsey, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota, the National Restaurant Association, American Express, some law firms which represent National Beer Association, JPMorgan & Chase, the corporate lobbyists of Business Roundtable, which is the largest lobbying organization for Fortune 500 companies, a TikTok executive, a man that I've actually exposed here on the show before, Blackstone Group, ExxonMobil. So a who's who.

Together, they probably represent, what, over trillions of dollars in market cap? Easy. That right there is one of the largest sectors of the entire U.S. economy. And what's even more interesting that the prospect dug into is that the seats and the box in which they were hosting the event appears to have been even donated to the group. And of course, you know, this is a very influential team here in D.C. Dan Snyder, the man who owns the team, is a billionaire. And what you're seeing is all kinds of not only co-optation, but direct sponsorship by all of these groups in Punchbowl News hosting a quote-unquote confab between

reporters and their actual sponsors is something that other media organizations actually took a long time to try and develop firewalls, if there even is such a thing, between the sales staff and the people who sponsor them. In this case, that barely exists. And David Sirota over at the Daily Poster is always just showing you who is sponsoring this week's Punchbowl News. In some cases, it's presented by Pharma. It's presented by Facebook.

Something that has irked me personally, Crystal, is that Punchbowl News has gone all over New York media trying to present themselves as some cool newsletter subscription company because they charge a premium subscription just like in the way that we do with their product. And there revealed their revenue to the Wall Street Journal. Let's put this up there on the screen where you can actually see within there. It's called Journalist Venture Beyond Their Newsroom to try to cash in. Well, what they reveal to the Wall Street Journal is that they've made a million dollars in revenue on $10 million this year. So what I mean by that is that one million of their dollars has come from paid subscriptions, but they made $10 million, which means what? That $9 million, a.k.a. 90% of their revenue, is coming from corporate ads like Facebook and like Axon and like Pharma and like private equity. One of the reasons that you and I left the Hill is because, let's be honest, that's how the Hill made money too.

It's all about DC, Beltway, insider media who charge premium ad rates to a bunch of people who want to influence lawmakers. And I want you to think about that part for a minute. I think that's really important because we were uncomfortable at the Hill just knowing that was happening at all. And we didn't even have we had nothing to do with it we uh we didn't even know who was you know the sponsors were who was coming in who was average we didn't even know unless someone wrote us about it and was like hey did you know you're sponsored by the mer like american petroleum or whatever pissed off yeah and so we felt uncomfortable just even knowing that was happening even when we had nothing to do with it. Now, imagine how just flagrantly corrupt it is to have the same people who are doing the quote unquote journalism having buddy buddy relationships, hanging out at a football game, taking pictures together, and this total intertwining of the content and the journalism

and the editorial decision making with the corporate advertising. As you said, this is way worse than cable news because, again, at cable news, there's one department that is buying and selling ads, you know, that's dealing with the corporate people and having that whole engagement. Right. And then the anchors are not, they're not involved with that. So, and they're same thing. They don't really know, you know, oftentimes exactly who's, um, who's advertising or sponsoring during their hours, et cetera. And it's ever changing. So there's at least some, some lines there. There's some distance between the content

and the editorial and the advertising. Here, I mean, there's just, there's nothing. And you see on the newsletter, you see who it's paid for by, you see the way

they're directly, overtly courting these individuals. And yeah, I mean, this is part of the direction that the media landscape is going in

because do I think that Punchbowl is going to pay any price for this type of blatant corruption? It's just all totally out in the open, and I don't think they'll pay a price for it. I don't think they'll be pushed down a polite society. I don't think Jake Sherman will get any fewer CNN. No. MSNBCs. Oh, is he at MSNBC? Yes, yes. You can see how much I watch cable news.

Yeah, I mean, they're not going to have a problem with it. So it just shows you this will become the new norm because it's highly profitable for these people. I do want to say about the Washington football team and Dan Snyder that he is total trash and has absolutely driven a once-proud team into the ground. I don't know if I grew up about football. Grew up as a Redskins fan, and it's been hard to watch. Right. I don't know enough. I likerew up as a Redskins fan, and it's been hard to watch. I don't know enough.

I like that quarterback, Taylor Heineke. All I can say from this is that I cannot emphasize to everyone who is watching this show enough how much influence these people have. They are mini-celebrities here in D.C. because they have this town wired. They talk to every single person who matters. They use their reporting to get scoops and they drive the news cycle in a way that if you were to say of the top 15 most important people in DC, I would definitely put them in there. 100%. Yeah. Alongside people like Nancy

Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, President Biden. I mean, they are that influential into how this town works. And I see our role sometimes as really trying to explain, having been inside the system, how exactly that system works to people who are watching. Because you're not crazy. It really is just a small group of people. And those small group of people with their outsized influence, they make outsized cash.

And even us, as skeptical as we are, we have to depend on what they're doing. Oh, yeah, because nobody else does it. There's no other, because they're the ones that get the money. They're the ones that get the access. So we used Punchbowl in particular during the Build Back Better. Because they're right there. When that was like hot and heavy. Now we're kind of like, well, it's kind of stripped down for parts at this point and maybe not going to pass at all. Because they're right there. to do is we try to take that information and sort of question it for what their biases

might be there to try to present you the closest to what's actually going on. But that's part of why they're influential is because since they do have so much money and so much access, there's no other option but to use their reporting on things like that. No, it's very difficult. We try to be very transparent about that. And I always keep it in a grain of salt to be like, just so you know where this is coming from, why we try to present information from all sides.

But it just, look, this is why it's so hard. And it's exactly because of the people who pays them. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, they knew it was coming. As we learn more details about the powerful tornadoes that claim scores of human lives across five different states, we are also learning more about exactly what caused these storms to be so deadly. Forecasters, after all, they were issuing dire warnings well in advance. Meteorologists have actually become extraordinarily effective at predicting when and where tornadoes are going to strike.

New York Times spoke with a cashier at a gas station in Mayfield, Kentucky that was the hardest hit town, who told them that her phone had beefed with alerts all day long, that she was glued to the forecast, and that the impending storm was all that customers were talking about as they came and went. Quote, we all knew the storm was going to hit, she said. There's no way a single person here didn't know the storm was coming. So how did so many still perish? Now, one reason, of course, is just the inescapable whims of Mother Nature. The tornadoes hit at night in areas with significant population centers,

a result that actually might be caused by climate change shifting the traditional tornado alley. But some of the deaths were entirely preventable. At a candle factory in Mayfield and at an Amazon distribution center in Illinois, workers died en masse for a simple reason, human greed. At the candle factory, a place that has human greed. At the Candle Factory, a place that has come to symbolize the utter devastation of these storms, we have now learned that workers were told if they left early, they would be fired. Here's NBC News, quote, for hours as word of the coming storm spread, as many as 15 workers begged managers to let them take shelter at their own homes only to have their requests

rebuffed. 20-year-old Elijah Johnson, he was one of those workers. He said, I asked to leave and they told me I'd be fired. Even with the weather like this, you're still going to fire me, he asked. Yes, a manager responded. Johnson said that managers went so far as to take a roll call in hopes of finding out who had left work early. And with Christmas just around the corner, continued production of scented candles for companies like Bath & Body Works, that was put above workers' lives. When a tornado decimated the building, eight workers were ultimately killed. Many more were trapped under the rubble, terrified for their lives, praying to God to save them. And then, of course, there's Amazon. So OSHA is now investigating whether their actions and

neglect contributed to the deaths of six workers at an Illinois distribution center. But what we already know here is beyond damning. First of all, after the tornado hit, Amazon didn't even know how many people were there. Only seven of the 190 people on site were actually employees of Amazon. The rest were drivers who were deemed independent contractors. That's a classification that allows Amazon to skirt labor regulations and which apparently also keeps them from having to give a single care about who these human beings are. As one astute Twitter user wrote, quote, they may not have any clue about the human beings in that center, but I bet they know exactly how many iPads were in that warehouse. Well said. Second of all, Amazon has a standard policy against allowing workers to have phones with them at work. The implications in emergency situations are obvious. As the rest of the

community is getting alerts and warnings and forecasts and updates from loved ones, Amazon workers are wholly dependent on the goodwill of their bosses and corporate overlords to tell them about their safety in any hazardous weather that might be headed their way. As one worker at a different Amazon facility told Bloomberg News, After these deaths, there is no way in hell I am relying on Amazon to keep me safe. If they institute the no-cell phone policy, I am resigning. And finally, as was the case with the candle factory, it appears that workers were held hostage at the deadly facility, forced to stay even as they wanted to flee for their safety. This outrageous situation ultimately

ended in tragedy. Just take a look at this. These are the very last texts that Amazon driver Larry Verdon sent to his girlfriend. Quote, I'm fueling up now. Be home after the storm. Amazon won't let us leave. 30 minutes later, his girlfriend texts to check in. I hope everything is OK. I love you. Larry would never respond.

Killed by the wrath of Mother Nature combined with the callousness of his fellow humans, he leaves behind four children. And this is far from the first time that Amazon has forced workers to continue through deadly conditions, whether it was the flooding from Ida, an extreme heat wave in the Pacific Northwest, or the tens of thousands of positive COVID cases that it hid from its workers and from the public. But it was no accident that a small candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky would share the same greedy and deadly ethos as one of the world's largest multinational companies, ultimately. In this country, workers' lives matter less than profit. That is the cold, hard truth. What else can you take from the fact that workers were threatened with job loss if they dared try to

save their own lives? In fact, that state of affairs is literally codified into law. We're going to talk to David Sirota more about the scoop tomorrow, but he uncovered that industry groups, including some tied to Amazon, just blocked legislation in Illinois that would have protected workers from retribution for leaving the workplace for their own safety. At-will employment means the boss can fire you for any reason, and that includes trying to save your life. Sure, you might say, well, it's a free country. Ultimately, those workers, they can walk out any time that they want. But when monopolies dominate every sector of society, what other choice do you really have?

The technical freedom to walk amounts to no real freedom at all when so few good opportunities are available. And of course, being jobless in America, that is not an option. Your job and your boss has you prisoner. Amazon, they might pioneer some of the most brutal workplace tactics, but treating workers as disposable, that is a feature of our system, not a bug. This has never been more clear than it was during the pandemic. Remember all the essential worker discourse? Bosses were happy to put up a sign about how much they love their workers who are risking their lives for low wages to keep the country running. Did they pay them more? With few exceptions, no. Just like how those same bosses were happy to throw up Black Lives Matter banners while they were lying to their disproportionately Black workforces about the

number of COVID infections at their own workplaces. It is entirely appropriate to feel disgust and loathing for people like Jeff Bezos who create these workplaces and their rules and the mechanisms of enforcement. But it's the corrupt system that is the real problem here. It is worker powerlessness in the place where they spend most of their lives. That is the real problem. Because we love the whole idea of democracy in this country, in theory,

but somehow democracy in the workplace? That is considered radical. That is considered foreign. So call me crazy, but I think workers' lives are worth more than scented candles. And I think they should have enough power in their workplace to not be held hostage and cut off from communications as a deadly tornado runs its course. And Sagar, the more that we learned about these tragedies, both at the candle factory and with Amazon, the more you realize how preventable... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, for a little while there, it seemed like things were finally calming down. Even the mentally ill folks in charge of the city of Washington, D.C., finally rescinded their mask mandate. Mask wearing outside in D.C., a metric that I use for the paranoia level of the average upper middle class lib, it was declining. I thought perhaps we would get to the other side of this thing. I, of course, should have known better because it was just two days later that the Omicron panic started. Omicron is in New York. Omicron is in California. Omicron and a guy who was triple vaxxed. Oh my God. That was the internal media diet for many of the people and predictably the science, the logic and the insanity, it has now come right back so swiftly that I honestly feel like I'm losing my mind.

Sure, we may not have lockdowns, but we do have a paranoid elite that is destroying the lives of young people, of consumers, and of everyday citizens at exactly the time when we need to collectively realize this is never going away. The chief offender is once again the state of California, which has preempted all local regulations and is instituting a statewide mask mandate indoors that applies not only to your business, but listen to this. In the case of Santa Cruz, California requires, quote, masks must be worn in private settings, including your home, when non-household members are present. That is a real sentence that I just read from the Order of Santa Cruz, California.

And the worst part is what brought it back in the first place. The impetus, according to the state's Secretary of Health and Human Services, was a large increase in the number of coronavirus cases. Note, not deaths, not hospitalizations. Cases. To the extent that those two are related, it is predominantly amongst people who have not had the vaccine or do not have access to early intervention therapeutics. So once again, case count is the only thing that these people are focusing on, and they are thus setting a standard that there is no permanent return to normal. I can't emphasize this enough. There will always be COVID cases in America,

not just America, worldwide. You need to accept this. This thing is literally in deer now. It's in animals. You could eradicate it right now in all humans. It would still be mutating and jumping in the future. It's okay, because from what we see and continue to see, all variants have not jumped the vaccine

in terms of hospitalization or death or therapeutics' ability to reduce hospitalization and deaths from COVID. Therefore, the cases themselves only matter insofar as they actually kill people. And if they do kill people who want to risk it, well, that's on them, not on the rest of us. And yet, sensible mindset is being embraced by not only the largest state by population in the union, but by worse to institutions that are not even accountable to democratic impulse. Private institutions with massive sway over American cultural life have caught the same mind disease as the public health bureaucrats, and they are setting up a future where COVID theater will literally stay here forever. You don't believe me? Take a look at the wealthiest corporation in the United States. Apple is reinstating a mask mandate,

all U.S. stores limiting store occupancy. Till when? That's up to Apple. Soon, many large retail corporations will follow suit. I guarantee you. It won't even matter if the government in your area does have a mask mandate. The private businesses will enforce the policy of the mentally ill. But it's actually worse than Apple. The places where I actually start to lose it are the universities, where I hear tales of true insanity. College students thrust into chaos with sporadic testing, people narcing on each other for going to parties, and a bureaucracy accountable to no one that revels in enforcing mandates with no scientific backing. George Washington University, where I went to undergraduate here in the UDC,

is requiring booster shots for its entire student population, or they will not be eligible to register for summer or fall semester on campus. Zero consideration of whether they need one or not. Do they have COVID already on top of their vaccine? Doesn't matter. Considering that one of the first cases of Omicron was even caught by somebody who was boosted, is there zero evidence right now that that is even going to stop cases

and transmission broadly? So once again, where does this end? GW is not the only offender. Take a look at Cornell, which is shutting down its entire campus and moving to a, quote, alert level red after rapid spread of COVID among students. Now, you know what Cornell doesn't mention in their cancellation? They already have a vaccine

mandate. Every single one of those students is vaccinated. In addition to being young, they have a minuscule chance of death or illness, and so do all of their employees who also are vaccinated. This is a moral panic. You can tell me I'm cherry-picking, but I'm not a fool. I saw social justice ideology ripple through universities in the 2010s to emerge at the state, Hollywood, and media level by 2017. Now I see COVID mania institutionalized at the top universities and corporations. Directional power in elite liberalism starts with the bureaucratic mindset and from there ripples out to all of our lives. And that's why I know maybe I sound a little crazy, but honestly, I'm fed up.

I've had enough, not just for myself, but watching young people who I care about have their entire lives destroyed by people with little to lose and who are basing their decisions on emotion and have been for some time. Is there a fix to this? I honestly cannot tell you. It's not like you can vote out the president of Cornell or GW or the CEO of Apple. Those people are accountable only to their peers to the extent that they're accountable at all. But I know one thing they absolutely cannot resist is a crushing resistance to this nonsense. I don't know what that looks like. Most people begrudgingly comply because they're just

trying to get by in life. I'm still trying to figure it out too. All I know is that this cannot stand. It's got to break eventually. If the elites want to remain in power, they better listen now before somebody comes along and actually smashes it all apart. I mean, the Cornell thing, Crystal, I think is nuts. These people are all vaxxed. What are you supposed all apart. I mean, the Cornell thing, Crystal, I think is nuts. These people are all vaxxed. What are you supposed to do? I mean, do you have kids? And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We have some very interesting guests to join us right now. We have Patrick Porter and Elbridge Colby. They wrote dueling pieces in National Review on whether the United States should or should not defend Taiwan. Obviously, that has come to the fore of U.S. foreign policy. And it's something which I have very complicated feelings on. I don't even know yet where I stand, Crystal, as well. Actually, my feelings aren't that complicated.

But anyway, it's still interesting. I don't really know what to say. So I thought, you know, we would air some of the debate here on the show. Bridge, why don't we start with you? You wrote the United States should defend Taiwan. We have a tear sheet of that. Let's put it up there on the screen. Could you just give us a short summary of that view about what you were trying to express there and what exactly that you think. Sure. Great to be on with you guys and with Patrick. I mean, look, this is fundamentally about us, about Americans' interests and about China's ability to dominate Asia. Look, the reality is Asia is going to be well over 50% of global GDP in the future. If China

dominates it, which it clearly wants to do, it will dominate our lives, our jobs, our economic prospects and security we're just talking about. And it will undermine our liberties, which they're already trying to do. Look what they're doing in Australia. And we look what they've done in the NBA and Disney, et cetera. And Taiwan is not about Taiwan per se. It's about us. But Taiwan is really important to preventing China from dominating Asia because it's, look, everybody out there, a lot of countries like India, Japan, Philippines, et cetera, they'd like to live without being

dominated by China, but they're worried about whether it's prudent to stand up to Beijing. That's the big question. And the only rational basis they can do that for or with is American leadership and strength. And again, I'm not a fetishist on American leadership. I think we need to do less in the rest of the world. I've opposed essentially every military action in my adult life by the United States. But this is central issue. This is really critical to our interests. And they're all going to be looking how we treat Taiwan because we do have our credibility on the line with Taiwan. That's the fact. And it's also very militarily significant.

It's right in the middle of the sort of Western Pacific area, what's called the first island chain. Sounds obscure. But look, the reality is we're best at naval, aerospace, high technology warfare. We don't want to get in a ground war on the Asian mainland. That's been bad for us. Taiwan's an island. Japan's an island. Philippines are islands.

Australia, et cetera. That's our wheelhouse. So if we let Taiwan go, our alternatives are going to be much worse because countries in the region are going to say, oh, well, I guess you sold them down the river despite all your flapping your gums. Well, if I'm in Manila, I'm probably going to look to cut a deal, too. And so the best course for us is to defend Taiwan, but really to focus on it, to make it less costly and risky. And that's a matter of our defense establishment, our political establishment doing less elsewhere elsewhere and really focusing on making it tenable. And it is tenable because it's very difficult to launch and sustain an amphibious attack across 100 miles of water. So we can do this.

We just need to focus. And we haven't been, which is infuriating, frankly. Patrick, before I have you sort of rebut and give your side of that, I actually want you to defend the piece that you both agree on, because you start from a sort of basic framework that China is aggressive. You write Beijing's desire to dominate is clear. You say you agree with bridge that it needs some containing. I mean, just justify that. Why do you think Chinese aggression is clear? And why do you think that Americans I believe that China's bid for dominance in Asia is threatening at a very practical level, because it's a regime that is determined not only to be the leading regime in Asia, but to suppress dissent everywhere. We should be mindful

of the goals it set out. It literally claims the entirety of the South China Sea. It's outlawed dissent anywhere on earth about Hong Kong. And we've seen, and your show has shown, the way, the insidious way it uses its economic coercive powers to silence dissent. And the danger is that a China that becomes overmighty in the region, it's not so much that you wake up one morning and China is present in Washington.

It's not the danger of physically running the table and taking over all the territories. It's becoming such a dominant state that, in effect, across society, across the economy, across civil society, Americans end up having to censor themselves and watch what they say for fear of punishment. Can I just push on that a little bit? Doesn't that have as much to do with U.S. policy as it does about China? I mean, we didn't have to ship all of our manufacturing capacity overseas and make ourselves so dependent on China that, you know, whether it's Hollywood or whether it's tech companies feel that they have to or should, you know, bend the knee to whatever it is that the Chinese government ultimately wants. I mean,

doesn't that have a lot to do with the fact that domestically we've put profit margins and increases in GDP over any other sort of national value here? It does. I think the United States has inadvertently made itself vulnerable to this. And I think one of the most important fronts in this struggle is exactly that, the geoeconomic front, the industrial front, not just the military front. So I entirely agree. But that doesn't make the problem go away. It means that action is needed across a whole range of areas. And so, Patrick, get in then. You've come to this shared assumption, though, but you come on the opposite side of this spectrum, and then Bridge will come to you. Go ahead, Patrick. Okay, so I believe that the United States shouldn't ultimately commit to fighting for Taiwan for two reasons. Firstly, the issue is too dangerously war-prone. It's singularly dangerous as a flashpoint. It's too high a risk of deterrence failing and too high a risk of if

or shooting war does break out that the United States does not get the swift, overwhelming, decisive war that it wants, the one that it wants to fight at acceptable cost. But secondly, linked to that, while I believe and I agree with Bridge that Taiwan's fate matters and that refusing to fight for Taiwan would have consequences. It doesn't matter so much that it's worth going to the brink of it. In other words, I think Bridge exaggerates the strategic consequences. Now, I believe and I agree with Bridge that were the U.S. to ultimately stay back and only offer support with measures short of war, that would create manifold problems. It would create problems manifold problems. It would

create problems with alliances. It would create problems with what to do the day after. But nothing like the problem of actually getting into a major war where the U.S. can't control the escalation and which would do the thing that Bridge fears, which would destroy America's position in Asia. Yeah. I mean, Bridge, look, cards on the table, I think. Personally, I think it's insane to risk war with China. But I thought one of the more compelling points that Patrick made in his piece is just that China cares a lot more about Taiwan than we do. And so we've seen how this has gone for America, but for other countries as well, whether it's getting embroiled in Afghanistan, where the Taliban cares a lot more about that

country ultimately than we do. So even with a force that is vastly militarily inferior, like the Taliban was, we end up more or less defeated just because we don't really care as much, nearly as much about Taiwan as China does. Patrick compares it to the way that Americans feel like about Texas. So what do you say to that point of just, you know, this doesn't make a lot of sense strategically when they have so much more at stake and invested in it. Well, a couple of points. I mean, and I think Patrick and I share a lot. And I, you know, I respect and sympathize with your instincts, Crystal. But look, here's the facts. Over 50% of global GDP is going to be in Asia. And if the Chinese dominate Asia, it will matter immensely. And so it won't be a matter of our choice what

our economic policy is. It won't be a matter of our decision, all of your all the debates you're having about how to reform the social media companies won't matter, because they will all be essentially beholden or work for the Chinese. That's the reality. It's about power. And that's what Patrick and I agree on. And I think it's really critical that are we not become so solipsistic, that we think that we can chart our future without considering the world at large. If we were over 50% of GDP ourselves, it might be different, but we're not going to be. We're all going to be working for the Asian market in the future, and we have to reckon with that. The second point is, well, look, the Chinese have cared more about Taiwan than we have since 1949,

but they haven't been able to take it over for a couple of reasons. One, they couldn't, unlike in Afghanistan, which was a foolish nation-building mission disconnected from a real practical military goal. This is a very clear goal, which is defeat the invasion, a la Britain in 1940. Moreover, there's some people who do care a lot more about the fate of Taiwan than we do, and that's the Taiwanese, and they don't want to be taken over by the Chinese. So the Chinese actually have a very tough problem. And the point I would say in response to Patrick is we're going to have to be prepared to fight that war at some point or another. That's the real question, because Taiwan is 100 miles from China, but you know what else is? South Korea. So you know what else is 100 miles from

Taiwan? The Philippine island of Luzon. And Japan is only about 200 or 300 miles, I think, from China or Taiwan, depending on how you measure it. So we're going to have to be willing to fight over there. We did this in World War II. We had the same arguments, and then it was actually less compelling. Now Asia is clearly the center of the world. If we let the Chinese run roughshod over it, I mean, what they're doing to LeBron and John Sainz, that's just a tiny taste of what's going to happen to us. And they are very willing to do it.

Xi Jinping lived in a cave for five years as a teenager. He's basically murdered a lot of his political opponents. If you think he's going to treat us more gently than he's treating the Chinese people, then I think we're not reckoning with reality. So it's a tough, look, it's a tough decision. It's not cut and dry. But the key is, if we're clear headed about it, and we present them with a situation where they know they'll fail, or they have a high probability of failure, we'll be able to keep going and it'll be satisfactory. Bridge, let me ask you this. and this is a common one that I completely sympathize with. Taiwan's only spending 2.1% of its defense on GDP, I mean, sorry, GDP on national defense.

So if they really cared so much about defending themselves, why are they barely hitting a target that Poland and the Eastern European countries are surpassing? They don't seem to want to defend themselves as much. So why should we? So it's a disgrace, first of all, and I tell them that to their faces. I mean, if they continue in this, they will actually reach the point where it will become irrational for us to defend them. So they need to stop. And I tell them that all the time in very blunt terms. Secondly, though, if what I'm saying is true, which is that we would defend Taiwan for our

own interests, not for theirs, that's ultimately a secondary point. It matters because it matters about how much they can contribute to the fight and thus how much cost and risk we have to incur. But frankly, we're not doing it for the Taiwanese benefit. And one of the things I say to the Taiwanese is, we may defend you, but we may defend you in ways you don't like. During the Cold War, we told the West Germans, if you don't build up a real military, we'll wage a tactical nuclear war on your territory because we don't want to let the Soviets dominate West Germany. It's too important. And that's the similar kind of model here that Taiwan should actually make sure they get get up and get, you know, spend more, which they are doing, by the way, too slowly, they are increasing, but partially, honestly, to keep themselves out of being such a

terrible battlefield, because my view is, we may do things, you know, I mean, we're not just gonna like sign over Taiwan to the Chinese and let them have TSMC and all these military capabilities. That would be crazy. So, but you know, that's a lot of that's going to be in their hands. Patrick, I mean, I don't want a new Cold War and I certainly don't want a new hot war. What's your response to Bridges' argument here that effectively prepare it, being ready for war is inevitable. We're on this collision course. So you may as well accept it now and put your chips on the table now. Well, I sympathize with the underlying point that we're in the middle now of an intense security competition that does pose the risk of war.

That risk of the war, both Bridget and I agree with, is worth running ultimately because it's about something that Americans care about, which is their liberty. The issue of debate here is where and when to run that risk. And the difference between us is that I see Taiwan not just as one flashpoint amongst a number of potential flashpoints, not just as one domino amongst many dominoes, but as a singularly dangerous one, which is very different in the way Beijing sees it to, say, Philippines, Japan, South Korea. Now, to Bridger's point about counterbalancing and being prepared, absolutely, what America should do is not sit back passively, but help other countries in the region do what they're already doing, developing the ability

to block and frustrate China's bid for dominance, recent initiatives such as missile proliferation or AUKUS, but also litigation about territorial disputes to make sure that it's as difficult as possible for any power to actually run the table and dominate the region. But it does matter where and when the U.S. takes the risk. It mattered during the Cold War where and when the U.S. took the risk. Yeah, I think you guys both make important points. It's one of the things we wanted to highlight here on the show for a long time. We're going to have links down in the description for both of the articles that you guys wrote. And I really appreciate you guys making it work. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Absolutely. Okay, guys, I'm really glad that we were able to fit the guests in at the top. We had some catastrophic technical problems. I was like, I don't think this is going to work. But that's what we do here at Breaking Point, so thank you very much to our technical team. But we have a little bit of an announcement for the holiday season we wanted to say.

Yeah, so we were thinking about how we could give back during the holiday season. And as you guys know, labor movement really important to us here. And we've been tracking all these different strikes over a number of months. And I think maybe the longest running strike at this point is the Warrior Met coal miners. And those folks have been out for months and months doing battle, not just with Warrior Met coal miners. And those folks have been out for months and months doing battle, not just with Warrior Met coal, but with the private equity barons who now de facto own that company. They are not asking for much.

All they want is their wages to be what they were back in 2016. And they have been out of work for months trying to demand the very basics of what would be fair in this situation. So in order to support them in a holiday season, I mean, they have kids, they have medical bills, they have a lot of things that are going on that makes this a very tough time of year. We wanted here at Breaking Points, we're going to contribute $25,000 to their strike fund to help to support them. And we'd really like to encourage you all, the Breaking Points audience, to support their strike fund as well. We're going to put the link down in the description box. We'll be talking about this, you know, throughout the remainder of the year, encouraging you all to give and to support them because, again, their battle,

sometimes because it's so long going, because it's all the way down in Alabama, for a variety of reasons, they end up getting ignored. But they have been so courageous. Remember, there was violence from the boss. People getting hit by cars. The court system issuing an injunction to keep them from picketing. They have just had the deck stacked so aggressively against them. So we want to shine a light on them. We want to lift them up during the holiday season as much as we can.

There's going to be a link down there in the description. As always, if you can support us, become a premium member today. But enough of that. Enjoy the holiday season. I hope you guys like the decor. It's not just about celebration. It's about giving back as well. Thank you for supporting our work so we can support the Warrior Met Coal Striking Miners as well. And we will see you guys later.

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