Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/20/21: BBB Dead, Omicron Spike, Fentanyl Deaths, Kamala Confronted, Jan 6 Feds, Gen Z, CDC Lies, Elon Musk, and More!

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Krystal and Saagar discuss Manchin's decision to kill Build Back Better, Omicron cases spiking in American cities, fentanyl overdose crisis, Kamala humiliating herself again, fed involvement in January 6th, Biden letting Gen Z down, CDC lies about masking kids, Elon Musk winning person of the year, 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/Derek Thompson’s Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/plain-english-with-derek-thompson/id1594471023 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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watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Might be a holiday week, guys, but a lot of really big stories actually unfolding right now. Big updates with regard to Omicron, both the caseload, the hospitalization numbers, but also some dubious ways that people are responding to it.

So we'll bring you all of that. Some more terrible news, frankly, on the fight against addiction. Fentanyl has now become the leading cause of death for a broad swath of Americans, even during the pandemic, which is quite astonishing. So we'll talk to you about that. Kamala had quite a moment with Charlamagne Tha God. This guy is amazing. I love him. Yeah, he just doesn't care. He's amazing. And I don't think it's an accident that someone who's not technically a journalist is the one who, he doesn't care about access. He's not part of the club, so he actually asked difficult questions. Very revealing moment there.

We'll update for you on January 6th and who some of the still unindicted people were who were central to what happened on that day. Why are they still unindicted? Some new information there. Derek Thompson is on. He's got a new podcast, really interesting stuff. His latest two episodes, you just did one on the wrap of the Theranos Elizabeth Holmes trial, which I highly recommend to you because I at least am totally fascinated by that case. We're going to talk to him today about Elon Musk being time person of the year, the pros, the cons, how he sees all of that. But we have to start with the big news coming out of

Washington this morning, which is effectively Joe Manchin has just put a stake in the heart of the Biden presidency. He came out on Sunday and effectively a big surprise to the White House said he is a no on Build Back Better. Let's take a listen to that. I've always said this, Brett. If I can't go home and explain it to the people of West Virginia, I can't vote for it. And I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I just can't. I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there. You're done. This is a no. This is a no on this legislation. I have tried everything I know to do. And the president has worked diligently. He's been wonderful to work with.

He knows I've had concerns and the problems I've had. Wow. We've been predicting this outcome for quite a while. Not a huge surprise to us. Not a huge surprise, I think, to the handful of squad members who voted against the infrastructure package, understanding that, listen, industry wanted the infrastructure package. They did not want Build Back Better. And that's really all you need to understand to get how and why this played out. Manchin also put out a long written statement, which didn't say a whole lot.

It was like, oh, I can't explain this to people back home in West Virginia, concerns about inflation, concerns about the debt. Of course, none of these concerns seem to weigh on his mind when he's voting for massive defense bills or any of that. But what this really comes down to is the fact that a lot of corporate folks and a

lot of rich folks did not like Build Back Better. They found Manchin as a perfect tool to ultimately kill this. And so the thing that we thought was going to happen all along actually happened. The White House is seemingly completely outraged. I guess they actually bought this guy at his word. Let's go ahead and throw their statement up on the screen. This is from Twitter. Obviously, you can't read it all there on the side, but let me read a little bit to you. They said, this is, this is scathing. I mean, especially coming from this White House and how nice they've played with Manchin and everybody else basically in the House and the Senate. Senator Manchin's comments this morning on Fox are at odds with his discussions this week with the president, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.

Weeks ago, Senator Manchin committed to the president at his home in Wilmington, so making it very personal there, to support the Build Back Better framework that the president then subsequently announced. Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework in good faith. They continue later on in the statement to say, Senator Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly 2 million women who would get the affordable daycare that they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help that they need.

Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who've been lifted out in poverty in part due to the child tax credit why he wants to end a program that is helping to achieve this milestone. We cannot. A couple other little details here. Number one, we learned that apparently the White House just got a heads up 30 minutes. Right before. And it wasn't even Manchin who called. He had one of his staffers call the White House. That's cold. To give them a heads up 30 minutes before. That is extremely cold, which I think helps explain why the statement is so scathing. The other thing that we're just learning this morning is Schumer is still planning to hold a vote on Build Back Better, even knowing that it will fail because they want to get everybody on the

record. Is that really a problem for Joe Manchin? No, because politics, listen, if you go through each one of these things, they help West Virginians and they're popular in West Virginia. But because our politics are so tribal, just the appearance of opposing the Democrats is a great political boon and winner for him in West Virginia. And that's a sad state of Yeah, that's right. If you test each piece individually, people say, oh, yeah, I support that. But if you say, do you want Manchin to vote for Build Back Better? It's almost like seven to three or something in terms of what the polling actually is in the state of West Virginia. And that's the problem for Biden. I keep coming back to him. Yes, you're right, Joe Manchin. I mean,

he's got one of the most boomer ideologies that I've ever encountered. He put in a statement that he quoted Admiral Mike Mullen saying that our national debt is one of the most boomer ideologies that I've ever encountered. He put in a statement that he quoted Admiral Mike Mullen saying that our national debt is one of the greatest crises that we face as a country. This is something that Liz Cheney also believes and who is famous for saying in the Republican caucus. Yeah, but with a gigantic car bound for anything regarding the military industrial complex. Oh, of course, which is always hysterical, hilarious. But anyway, I digress. The point to me is that Biden is one of the weakest presidents that I've ever seen. Joe Manchin refused his call right before he went on Fox News. Manchin knew exactly what he was doing. He went on Fox specifically to make this announcement to target to the more conservative voters and to stand up and say, look, I'm standing up against Joe Biden was actually popular, it would be much more difficult for Joe Manchin to be posturing in this way. Same with Kyrsten Sinema, who, from what I understand, is also not a yes on this bill either. Manchin is also getting all of the, he's basically getting all the fl zero political capital. All any swing state senator has right now is to be seen as standing up against him for these purposes. As you said, look, politics is tribal, but Biden at the same time is a complete failure. I mean, we're going to be talking about Omicron where the national mood

is completely souring on his leadership and pointing at them and saying, what the hell have you guys been doing? And that translates, as we know, to legislation, which is that Trump, we saw this repeatedly, at the very top of his presidency, the most amount of political capital is when you have the ability in order to push real legislation. The more unpopular become, the more you get kind of laid in the morass of Washington, especially it's very easy for people within your own party to be like, yeah, I'm not going to do that and also face absolutely no consequences. So Biden gave the corporate people an opening in order to oppose him and also appear politically popular. So ultimately, I think he bears the ultimate responsibility. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

And as we've tracked from the beginning, I mean, there were massive tactical and strategic failures from the very, very beginning. He never really went out there and sold any of this to American people. Instead, you had a situation where, OK, you start with, you know, the plan that Bernie lays out. Every week, some popular provision of it gets shot in the head. By the end, by the time you got to Manchin saying no, I mean, this thing was a shadow of its former self. Even the pieces that they tout, like universal pre-K and the child care subsidies,

those things are wildly less than what they're even selling it as. I mean, the universal pre-K isn't anywhere close to universal. It's like block grants to the states. It's a fake program. And so that also means that you didn't have, you know,

a huge sort of grassroots push in the public to get this thing through either. Because I think, honestly, you know, we talk about, okay, who supports it, who opposes it in West Virginia or across the country, et cetera. Honestly, the most important number with regards to Build Back Better is how many people don't have a freaking clue what it is or what's in it.

No national investment in this thing. I saw that I think it was Nate Silver who pointed out that back when the Affordable Care Act was being debated, the Google search for Affordable Care Act was way higher than what Build Back Better is, which speaks again to a weak president who isn't selling the plan, who isn't making it difficult for people like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema to oppose this thing. They get a win-win. They get to serve their donors, and they get a political win out of it because they're, you know, opposing an unpopular president. And the details ultimately in the thing, sadly, don't matter. Probably maybe the biggest loss here is the fact that the child tax credit is going to expire. And that has, you know, that has legitimately lifted millions of kids out of poverty. It's something that, you know, a lot of Republicans actually

are interested in as well in terms of helping to support and encourage family creation. So that's going to die at the end of the year here. And then you look at even if you, OK, even if you say, all right, it's really difficult. It's 50-50 in the Senate. It's a really narrow majority in the House. So this was just this was too much, too far, too fast, et cetera, et cetera. There are a lot of things that Biden can do on his own that he just hasn't decided that he wants to do. So it's tactical failure after tactical failure after

tactical failure. If you're going to go against the corporate establishment, you have to be aggressive. You have to use every tool in your toolkit. You have to be willing to put it all on the line. And he was never willing to do that. And that's why I say ultimately, you know, we aren't surprised by this. It's sort of the expected outcome. When you're not willing to take on those corporate and wealthy interests head on, they're going to win. And they got exact, this was exactly what they wanted. They wanted the infrastructure bill and they wanted to kill this thing. That was the game from the beginning when Pelosi and the others went along with Josh Kotheimer's strategy of let's go ahead and put the infrastructure bill on the floor. And the progressive caucus folded with the exception of a

very few members. What was it? Four members of the squad? Six. That basically voted against it. That was it. That was effectively game over. And we knew it at the time. Obviously, Senator Sanders is not happy with this change of events. So let's take a listen to what he had to say. You know, what's going on now, Jake, in Washington is the big money interests are pouring hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that we continue to pay the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs that the rich do not stop paying their fair share of taxes. And I would have hoped that we could have had at least 50 Democrats on board

who have the guts to stand up for working families and take on the lobbyists and the powerful special interests. We have no Republicans. Now, one Republican in the United States Senate or the House, for that matter, is prepared to stand up to the drug companies or the insurance companies or the wealthy. I would hope we would have had 50 Democrats. But if that is the case, then I hope that we will bring a strong bill to the floor of the Senate as soon as we can and let Mr. Manchin explain to the people of West Virginia why he doesn't have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests. I mean, Chuck Chomer is

essentially going to be following that. But here's the thing. And this is what Bernie does not seem to be able to wrap his head around. As you said, yes, you can test the individual pieces, but you can't outdo the national environment. Joe Manchin is making a very politically popular move by knifing Biden. And I even like you said, the people of West Virginia, of the whole country, have no idea what's in this thing. It's not easy to understand. And I've seen some takes out there like, oh, this is the nail in the coffin. Deficit politics is back. I could not disagree with that more.

The problem with this bill is that, yes, the price tag is large, but the individual provisions are so complicated. Child tax, even the child tax credit provision, it's not real. It's not, it's a full extension. It's like a five year or whatever. It's like, okay, then what? You know, it's like, oh, we're going to expend it out and extend it to this period. Also, universal pre-K, kind of, it's a block grant to the state. Child care, also block grants, probably won't get implemented properly.

Several states have already said that they won't even do it. Every single one of these provisions is like this. More Pell Grants instead of community college. And people are like, screw this. I don't understand. It just seems like they're throwing money at all these fake half-baked programs. A friend of mine calls Democrats having program brain. They're like, let's create a new program and create all these bureaucrats. But look, the real problem right now is nobody can understand this thing. He can vote against it. He won't suffer any consequences. And the, yeah, look, the ultimate villain is Biden. He has not only not sold Build Back Better, he can't sell himself. He can't sell the country on anything. I mean, even today, the man is locked up in the White House all weekend. He doesn't do anything on Sunday shows. I mean, he doesn't even try to play

the traditional game. His administration was out there. They sent Dr. Fauci out there to say, actually, you're going to be wearing a mask on a plane for the rest of your life. I'm like, I don't even understand what level of politics these people are playing on. It's amateur hour. Part of one of the many failures here is technocratic neoliberalism killed this bill, because that's what you're pointing to with all the, why is it so freaking complicated? Like, am I going to get preschool for my kids and childcare for my kids or not?

Literally no one would be able to answer that question. Well, what state do you live in? And what income level are you at? And all of these things to go into it. And, you know, so yeah, they make it so complex that no one can possibly feel like they are personally invested in it rather than picking, you know, a few things that they really sold because they went through the reconciliation process. That was another failure here that they decided to put all these different pieces together, water them down

tremendously. And at the end of the day, there wasn't a public rallying for it because it was too complex to understand. It wasn't as much of a direct benefit to the American people. They stripped out some of the most popular provisions. Biden and the Democrats did a horrific job selling it. And yes, part of that is the corporate media's fault, where they wanted to fixate on, oh, well, what's the top line number versus what are the details of the program? But that's also on you as a political party to, you know, get out there and really message effectively on that. And that starts from the top. Bottom line is ultimately the corporates win again. AOC with a little bit of a bit of a bitter. I told you so. Let's go ahead and throw her tweet up there on screen.

She was one of just a handful who voted against the infrastructure bill because they wanted to keep it tied together with Build Back Better, understanding that was the only leverage that anyone had over rogue agents like Manchin. She says, when a handful of us in the House warned this would happen, if Dem leaders gave Manchin everything he wanted first by moving BIF, that's the infrastructure deal, before BBB, Build Back Better, instead of passing together. Many ridiculed our position. Maybe they'll believe us next time, or maybe people will just keep calling us naive. So the beginning of the end was when the Progressive Caucus folded. That's what she's pointing to here, Pramila Jayapal.

They decided to take Biden's word for it it that everybody was going to be on board. They wanted to believe it because they were getting heat after Virginia and the losses there. Suddenly the media was, you know, turning to blame progressives like they always do. They couldn't stand the heat. So they could they fooled themselves. I mean, that's really it. They believed the assurances that anyone looking from the outside would say you're crazy to think. Which we were like, are you stupid? Yeah, look at even- Do you actually believe that?

What there's- I mean, even at the time, people like Gottheimer and the others were saying, well, if the CBOs score. They were giving themselves an out from the very beginning. It was so obvious that this was how it was going to play out. And so here we are. That's how it played out. There ain't going to be a next time, AOC. You guys are going to be in the minority for a long time. For a long time. So enjoy. Enjoy the

backbench. Okay, let's move on here. We should spend a lot of time here because this is one of the most important stories in the country. And it is one of the most dramatic institutional state failures I've seen since, what, a year ago, in the last time that we had a big COVID wave. I really can't get over it. I have so many friends right now who are suffering. So it is personal, but let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, which is that New York has broken its record for single day positive cases for a second consecutive day. That was the city of New York. It was the same situation here in Washington, DC. We're talking about tens of thousands of new cases. Now,

as I've said previously, cases don't necessarily matter. But what does matter is the way that we have the state capacity to deal with this. And I cannot tell you anecdotally how many stories of complete desperation that I've heard of people who want to go home for the holidays. They suspect that they might have Omicron or a COVID, and they decided they wanted to go out and get a test. So, okay, let's say you live in the city of New York and you want to go get a test. Let's put this up there on the screen, please. This is a video taken in Harlem of the COVID testing line.

Just stick with this. As we can see, it stretches for blocks and blocks in the middle of the rain. People who are waiting, masks on, they're paranoid, they don't know. Anecdotally, I know people who have been tested recently in New York City had to wait two and a half hours in line a couple of days ago. The city of New York was supposed to give them results in 24 hours. 60 hours later, they finally received their test.

What is this? May of 2020? This is a complete failure crystal of the federal government because here's what has happened. We pushed mass vaccination and boosters. And once again, mass vaccination and boosters are great. Mass vaccination has reduced hospitalization and death to a level that we haven't seen in a long time. We may have a record number of cases right now, but the hospitalization and death to a level that we haven't seen in a long time. We may have a record number of cases right now, but the hospitalization and death figure looks almost like it was like, you know, a year and a half ago or something. But that does not mean, and this is part of the problem, we've not been honest, about the prevention around breakthrough infection. Mass vaccination is not going to stop widespread COVID. And so we have two problems right now.

Number one, we don't have accurate testing infrastructure. People right now all across this country are trying to go to a CVS and buy a rapid test. Guess what? Can't get one. Complete shortage. Why? Biden administration and the FDA have made it impossible. A second thing is therapeutics. Dr. Peter Attia, he's a podcaster, but he's pro-vaccination, all of that. He put out a video over the weekend where he actually has been prescribing fluvoxamine to a patient that had COVID. Look, I'm not a crank for talking about this. This is like level one qualification in terms of its use as a therapeutic. And a CVS in California refused to fill it because they said, oh, it doesn't meet the official protocol. It's like, whoa, so now you are in the business of deciding?

It's a freaking doctor who is the one who's prescribing it to you. We have no widespread availability of therapeutics or even of recommendations, protocol, treatment protocol on therapeutic for at-home COVID. And we also don't have an ability for people to have tests. We have left our population in the lurch. We are now currently on the midst of a wave of the likes we have probably not seen in a long time. You shouldn't worry too much because, look, most of you, 99.9% of you are going to be fine, especially if you've

got the vaccine. And unless you're old, obese, or you have a comorbidity or something, you're probably okay. And yet we have the total failure of the state right now. And it's just, I don't know. I really can't keep coming back to it. It's caused immense disruption. New York Times wrote this up. This is anecdotally, again, what we're hearing, which is that in major cities all across the country, offices are shuttering, holiday parties are dimming. We are seeing soft lockdowns all across of offices,

of restaurants, some moving to takeout, people, staff getting COVID and more, and the chaos that has been unleashed without the support from the government. We've essentially left people completely on their own. It's a horrible, horrible situation. And the cases just continue to rise. And we don't have the official number yet for today, but it's very likely it's going to break the next record because it's been the weekend. So there you go. That's right. I mean, I was looking just yesterday at the case numbers in New York City over, you know, they do like the rolling average over 14 days. So cases are up 194 percent. Hospitalizations are up 48

percent. So still rising, but not nearly as rapidly as the cases because you have a very highly vaccinated population in New York City. And I do want to just implore you guys, if you're not vaccinated, please do that because then you don't really have to worry about Omicron. You may get it. You may not feel great. None of that is fun, but you're going to be at tremendously lower risk. So please consider getting vaccinated if you have not yet done that. But we should also point out, look, as much as New York City, I mean, here in D.C., massive lines, you know, out where I live, driving into the city, huge lines because there's this massive testing shortage. And it really is completely inexcusable at this stage in the pandemic that you would not have the testing capacity that you need.

And this is something that's been a failure from the very beginning. It was a big problem under Trump, too. Early in the early days of the pandemic, remember back when Cuomo was getting his brother VIP access to a test? You couldn't get a test. It took forever for them to approve and actually have a test that people could do at all. And then, you know, at this point, why haven't we ramped up production? There are calls now for Biden to use the Defense Production Act to make sure that we have enough tests. This is so late in the game, though. You know, Kamala Harris was interviewed by the L.A. Times, and she said in that interview initially, we didn't anticipate Omicron. We didn't anticipate

new variants like Omicron. And then afterwards they cleaned it up. No, initially, we didn't anticipate Omicron. We didn't anticipate new variants like Omicron. And then afterwards they clean it. No, no, we anticipated that there would be variants, but we didn't anticipate this particular variant or whatever. Look, it sure seems like they were not prepared for another major spike. And the proof is in that line right there in the street. I mean, I feel so bad for those people, especially if you're feeling lousy. You're waiting there. There were kids in that line having to wait out there for hours in the rain just to find out whether or not you have COVID. That's absolutely pathetic. With regard to the soft lockdowns, remember at the beginning phases of the pandemic, one of the things that we tracked quite a bit was that actually the sort of change in people's behavior and the number of businesses that were shut down and the amount of spending that was happening in restaurants and retail, brick and mortar retail, it didn't depend that much on what the official state government policy was.

People were assessing the risk for themselves and taking it upon themselves to stay home or close their restaurant or close their shop or close their office building. And that's kind of where we're heading now. Biden at the federal level, and you're going to see, you know, New York City or San Francisco or other liberal places, they're going to put new policies in place potentially here. At a federal level, Biden seems pretty adamant that they don't want to go back to any sort of full lockdown. I think partly it's because, I mean, they just see the writing on the wall in terms of his approval ratings. There's not an appetite for it. And also, they don't want to pay people to stay home again. That's another issue here.

But are you going to see these what you describe as soft lockdowns where things start to shutter, you know, people just voluntarily start closing shops, stores, restaurants, all those things. Yeah, I think that's where we are right now. There's a few there are a few tidbits in that New York Times piece that were interesting. Some of the places that have hosted holiday parties, those have seen them turn into super spreader events. BuzzFeed News being one of them. They hosted a party last week in Manhattan. Afterwards, attendees reported positive test results to the company's in-house epidemiologists. Close contacts were encouraged to get tested.

But I love this nugget at the end. They assure us that, don't worry, the World Economic Forum at Davos is still planning on being held a month from now. So don't worry, guys. You can still attend Davos. All the global ruling elite will be able to gather. Don't worry. That's the other thing that pisses me off. People out there are waiting for a free test.

You know how you get a free test? I've had to do it before whenever we had two scares while we were at Rising. Yeah. But what did I know? I know you couldn't rely on the state in order to give you a timely test.

It cost me $250 to go get a rapid PC., 500 bucks. That was only two tests. You can go get them if you want. So if you're rich and you're working at Davos or whatever, yeah, you're completely fine. You can go and you can pay completely an arm and a leg and you can get a result very quickly. But if you're poor or if you don't want to spend any money, yeah, you're screwed. And that's why actually the soft lockdown is a consequence, I think, of government policy. If we had accurate ability to test and in order to make sure that we had sufficient ability to have confidence both in the consumer and on the restaurant side in order to stay open, then we would be fine. But you cannot buy a rapid test here in the city of Washington, D.C. because of the shortage. And it's both because people are headed home for the holidays

and because of a record number of COVID. And I come back to one of the most shameful moments yet of the Biden presidency when Jen Psaki mocked a reporter for saying, what are we supposed to do, send free tests to people? In case you guys don't remember, let's take a listen. Look at what we've done over the course of time. We've quadrupled the size of our testing plan. We've cut the cost significantly over the past few months. And this effort to push to ensure

insurers are you're able to get your tests refunded means 150 million Americans will be able to get free tests. Why not just make them free and give them out and have them available everywhere? Should we just send one to every American? Maybe. Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost? And then what happens after that? All I know is that other countries seem to be making them available in greater quantities

for less money. Well, I think we share the same objective, which is to make them less expensive and more accessible, right? Every country is going to do that differently. And I was just noting that, again, our tests go through the FDA approval process. That's not the same. Yeah, she's exactly right. Other countries do it just fine. A friend of mine was just in Kenya, where they have tests available everywhere, short lines, cheap, quick results. In Britain, they're free. Even if you're traveling there abroad, you can literally go to a pharmacy, order them ahead, and you can get seven weeks worth of free

tests if you want. In Germany, you can get them for a dollar. There is a company who is here in the United States who is selling tests to Europe because our FDA has not approved them. That is how much of a colossal clown show this entire thing is. Our citizens consigned to waiting in the cold and in the rain for two and a half hours because we are being mocked from the White House press podium at the idea that we might be able to give everybody a free test. You could scrap build back better, spend, I don't even know, I don't even know how much it would even cost, like $15 billion, nothing, in order to do this. Spin it up so that you have a test available at every single, like, CVS or whatever in the country, you'd have a 65% approval rating. I mean,

this is the most basic level stuff, but it is a massive, massive failure. And look, it's only going to get worse as the wave continues. Let's go ahead and put this AP story up on the screen. This is also going to be causing at least some consternation chaos, eventually going to make its way to the Supreme Court. Remember that the court had struck down previously the vaccine mandate, the appeals court, a new federal's court, a panel has actually ruled that Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for larger private employers can take effect, that reverse the lower court ruling. That is then likely going to go ahead and make its way to the Supreme Court. But in the interim period, and that's what matters, in the interim, by overruling that decision by a federal judge, the OSHA rule is at least now set to go into effect on January 4.

In terms of what the future handles on that, we're still not 100% certain. But that also could go into effect now. Just want to make people aware. It was supposed to take effect January 4th. They now say in this article, not clear when it is going to be put into place. I think it continues to be in a kind of limbo, especially because some of the preparations put on hold. While this is all being adjudicated. I think you can fully expect this to go to the Supreme Court. You know, this is one of those issues where looking at historical precedent, it seems like the precedent for this is pretty safe and pretty clear. But you have a very conservative Supreme Court that is not afraid to break with. It's possible. It seems so. You know, I would expect it to be upheld based on the fact that you've had much more stringent vaccine mandates upheld in the past.

But, you know, we'll wait to see what way that goes. You know, another thing that I was just thinking about while we were talking about the total lack of tests and unavailability of tests is obviously, you know, this is supposed to be vaccine or test. You're supposed if you're not vaccinated, the requirement is that you get a weekly test. Well, what happens if you don't have enough tests? Yeah, what do you do? How does that work then? That's a great point, Crystal. I mean, that just shows you, I think, how important of a tool widespread tests are

and have been from the beginning of the pandemic. I mean, it really does feel like back to square one, like those early days when you couldn't get a test, they weren't available, there was a shortage of them and everybody's running around. How are we back there again when, you know, it was obvious that it was possible there would be another variant that would come in that potentially would cause more breakthrough infections or possibly jump the vaccine altogether? Thank goodness, again, with regard to severe illness and death, the vaccines are still very effective against Omicron. That's what it looks like so far. But a lot of breakthrough infections causing these huge spikes in cases. And one of the things that I want to say about

Omicron is there's some indications, although it's a little bit mixed and a little bit too early to say that it is a milder disease. Yeah, we don't know yet. Right, but when you have it so transmissible and widespread, you're still going to end up with higher numbers of hospitalization and death just because you take a pretty good number in the less severe illness and multiply it by a really good number in the, you know, less severe illness and multiply it by a really bad number and the level of infectiousness, you're going to get a pretty bad number. So I do still don't know a hundred percent the level of severity of the disease, but that's what we do know. I do want to focus on one thing which broke last night. So we don't

have an element, but there was a statement that put out by the white house, which I've been thinking a lot about what you said, which is that, you know, does our public discourse reflect the fact that 85% of adults in this country have had one dose of the vaccine? The vast majority of people, if you told me a public policy had been implemented where 85% of the U.S. public, I'd be like, wow, that's a lot, right? That'd be one of the most successful public policies of all time. Yet the White House put out a statement last night saying, we are intent on not letting Omicron disrupt work and school for the vaccinated. You've done the right thing. We will get you through this. For the unvaccinated, you're looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your family, the hospitals you may soon overwhelm.

I just don't think that speaking that way is productive whatsoever and also not reflective of the general picture of the country. Yes, of course, if you're unvaccinated, you are much more likely to end up in the hospital and die. But I just think speaking that way, hey, look, you're not going to convince one goddamn person. At this point, maybe you weren't going to anyway. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I just think that speaking this way is ridiculous. I don't mind this messaging. To me, this is more the direction that they should have been going in from the beginning, because when they started to be, you know, to focus on boosters and the vaccines aren't enough, that gives you a little bit of a sense of like, oh, maybe these vaccines weren't that good.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Here there's a clear distinction of like, look, if you're vaccinated, you're probably going to be good. Yes. It's this group over here that at this point has had an abundant, you know, option and availability to be able to get vaccinated. You all are the ones who are going to be in trouble this winter. So I actually don't mind that messaging. To your point, does any messaging from the White House matter at this point? No, I don't think it matters. No, I don't think it matters either. I mean, listen, who knows? Maybe there's like some people on margins or

something that'll be persuaded. I personally think they should have been talking more like this from the very beginning of if you get vaccinated, you're going to be able to live much closer to a normal life, which is a lot less fear. And then you would have potentially I mean, the people who would listen to that are people like who live here, the sort of, you know, liberal suburbanites who are more freaked out about covid. They might relax a little bit. That puts less pressure on local officials to have, you know, closed down shoes and schools and mask mandates. Did I just say closed down shoes? Shoes. We shouldn't close down shoes. There's a big problem with supportive shoes, but that's a whole other discussion. Closed down schools, mask mandates, and the other policies that they are pushing public officials to ultimately do that I know you're going to be tracking in your monologue.

Yeah, that's right. I just am really struck by, you know, we are seeing mass paranoia, panic sweep through schools that are closing, which I'll get to. We are seeing a complete lack of tests. How are you supposed to have a vaccine or test mandate when you can't get any damn tests? It's basically just probably going to become a vaccine mandate. So then people are going to get fired. I mean, I just look to your point, if we just made it so like, look, you got it, you're good. Yes, you might get a cold and flu. So be it. That's life. We can move on. What do you do when you have a cold? You go to CVS, you buy some Dayquil and you go, hey, this really sucks. And if it's really bad, you go to the doctor and they swab you and they're like, you have influenza type A

or whatever. And then you stay home for a couple of days. Should be the same thing, and yet that's not the way that we're looking at it. Some really dire numbers that we didn't want to ignore or lose in the mix of other significant news that's going on here. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. So fentanyl overdoses have become the number one cause of death among U.S. adults age 18 to 45. That is being described accurately as a national emergency. Here is some of the data. So between 2020 and 2021, so in those two years, nearly 79,000 people between 18 and 45 years old, 37,000 in 2020 and 41,000 in 2021 died of fentanyl overdoses. That comes from a data analysis from an opioid awareness organization, so an activist organization called Families Against Fentanyl.

They doubled in two years between April 2019 and April 2021. In the first five months of 2021 alone, more than 42,000 fentanyl overdose deaths were reported. That represents an increase of more than 1,000 fentanyl deaths per month compared to the same time period. So, again, it just keeps escalating and escalating and escalating. And, Sagar, I thought there was a really interesting comment here. You know, we have this thought of, like, mostly heroin users, opioid users who end up having fentanyl instead of their drug of choice. But one of the experts here says it's showing up in all parts of the drug supply. Fentanyl has been found in all the drug supply, they say. That's why anyone using

drugs, not just opioids, should carry naloxone. The only safe place to obtain drugs is the pharmacy. So, you know, it's just dire. And we should also say here that this is a U.S. problem. I mean, other countries around the world are not seeing this spike in overdose deaths. So, there is a real failure here. There's a mass social cultural failure. And there's also, listen, I mean, the problem with the war on drugs when you have total prohibition is that fentanyl is the most concentrated dose. So it is the easiest thing for traffickers to bring across. It's the same thing we saw during alcohol prohibition. It was the highest level of alcohol, the most concentrated doses of alcohol. It's the same thing here. And that's why you're

ending up with fentanyl throughout the entire drug supply, leading to these incredibly tragic outcomes. People are not choosing fentanyl. People are struggling with addiction. They're not wanting and going out and seeking fentanyl, but because it is so concentrated and because it's so easy for traffickers, that's how you end up with it throughout the supply. Yeah. I mean, these sociopathic traffickers are just slipping it in basically to everything. Everything. It's the easy way for them to pad their drugs and all that. It really is horrible. I also think it is worth and useful to stack it up against Omicron that we just discussed. Absolutely. Imagine if we treated it with the same level of seriousness. The number one cause of death that we now have

of people between 18 and 45 is an illicit drug. Now, whether you fall on drug control policy or not, we should declare that a crisis and convene and put all the same national level of attention and discussion and all that. But a lot of people won't do it. And you know why? It's because rich people and people at the top can get Omicron and can get COVID. And the people who are predominantly dying of this are much more poor, disproportionately not likely to be represented in higher society. I really think that's what it is. We also have a, you know, a moral panic around drug use that prevents us from having like an intelligent conversation about it. So I'll give you a perfect example of this. One of the things that Dr. Carl Hart advocates for is you should be able, there should be widespread testing

capability of your drugs too. I mean, if you're just trying to keep people from dying, users should be able to know what is actually in their drugs. Now, obviously, I would advocate for decriminalization, you know, the Portugal model so that you can go and you get it from an official source so you know that this supply is not going to kill you and it's highly regulated. But barring that, having just the widespread ability to know what is in your drugs would save so many lives. And ultimately, I mean, that's the place where we are right now. Let's just keep people alive and give them a chance at recovery if they're struggling with addiction. But because we have like a lot of sort of moral panic around drug use, it clouds our thinking so that that's not even – no one's even courageous enough to advocate for that or to offer that at the political level. I think that could be part of it.

I also think that a huge number of effects, job loss, lack of upward social mobility, inability to, you know, find a mate, whatever, on the male side, on the female side, possibly, you know, being abandoned. I mean, it's just like, there's so many different sociopathologies that come together. But look, I mean, at this point, I'm just for all, any type of discussion for, like, what the hell are we going to do about this? Because it is not declared or looked at in nearly the same panic or concern that we have around a lot of these things. And I'll say maybe one benefit of COVID for me personally was it made me take my health a lot more seriously and be like, OK, let's have a real honest conversation here. And when you start having real honest conversations around obesity and being overweight and all of the downstream effects it ends up having on your life, you can make a lot of different unconscious life

decisions. Say, nah, you know, I don't need that. Or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do this differently or whatever. There's a lot of different behaviors that you can engage in. We don't even have the same level of conversation around fentanyl or drug use. I think that's a huge problem. And really, to me, I mean, we don't treat it with the seriousness that it deserves. And people should, I mean, we have a problem here, right here. You can see it all across the city. People, you know, leaning over after having just shot up, passed out on the side. It's just no way to live, both in having on the streets, but also for the people themselves. I know people who I grew up with or who ended up dying in a McDonald's bathroom.

You can't have that. You just can't. And it's not treated even close to the same level of seriousness. Right and left actually do care about this in two distinct different ways. But there is, I think, some form of consensus that could possibly be reached if we treated it with the same level of seriousness. But a lot of elites just don't want to have that conversation. Yeah, you know, this was one of the things that was a real draw for Trump in 2016. Chris Christie, do you remember that?

Yeah. His speech about what I think was a daughter or something that had a problem with heroin use. It was a big moment for him. It was a big conversation in the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton also talked about it because New Hampshire was extraordinarily hard hit. I mean, that's part of why it grabbed the national news attention because New Hampshire, obviously, a key early primary state and all of that, a key swing state in the general election. The numbers are so much worse now than they were in 2016. And it's just fallen off the national radar. And so I do think it's like, why do you, why are some deaths treated with more seriousness and care than other deaths? And there is a lot of

like moral judgment. Like another example of this is there's a lot less money and funding for research for lung cancer because it's seen as like, oh, well, it was your fault. Right. So there's like a contempt towards it. And I think that there's a similar dynamic here and people, because it's a hard problem, people have just sort of stopped talking about it and stopped focusing on it. But for the families that are affected that, you know, have lost loved ones, which there are so many in this country now, it's absolutely devastating, and people deserve a lot better. So we're not going to let it fall off of our radar,

so to speak, and continue to bring you the updates, but so far they've been very grim. That's right. All right. No way to make this turn. Let's talk about Kamala Harris and Charlamagne Tha God. So I guess he has another show.

I didn't know this. He has a Comedy Central show he has a million different shows I don't really know anyway I just watched one of him and Andy Schultz I have so much respect

for this guy I have to say such a good interviewer that somehow he always gets something revealing out of whoever he's interviewing obviously he had that

famous exchange with Elizabeth Warren it's just pure irreverence he's like I don't care about you you're here on my show I have a massive show. Tell me, and I'm going to speak to you

exactly as if you were famous rapper. Yeah, he doesn't, he's not impressed. Right. And he doesn't care if you come back. Yeah, right.

He doesn't need your, like, you know, approval. He doesn't need access to the club here. He's not part of that clique. And so he just actually asked people whatever he wants to ask them.

So with Warren, he was like, so what, you're the new Rachel Dolezal? And with Vice President Harris, he asked her, so, hey, who's the real president of the United States here? Is it Joe Biden or is it Joe Manchin? Let's take a listen to how that went. Who's the superhero that's going to speak against Joe Manchin? I want to know who's the real president of this country. Is it Joe Biden or Joe Manchin?

I'm sorry. I interrupted. I don't think the Vice President can hear you. It's Simone. I'm so sorry, Charlamagne. We can't hear you. She can hear me. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me, Madam Vice President? I'm sorry. We got to wrap. I'm sorry to interrupt. They're acting like they can't hear me now? Can you hear me, Madam Vice President? Okay, so I'm sorry. You got to wrap. So I'm sorry to interrupt. They're acting like they can't hear me.

I can hear you. Oh, so who's the real president of this country? Is it Joe Manchin or Joe Biden, Madam Vice President? Come on, Charlemagne. I really... Come on, it's Joe Biden. I can't tell sometimes. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's Joe Biden.

And don't start talking like a Republican about asking whether or not he's president. Do you think Joe Manchin is a problem? And it's Joe Biden. And I'm vice president. My name is Kamala Harris. There's a lot that's really interesting and revealing about that. First of all, I went and watched the entire interview. And most of it was, you know, fairly friendly. He pushes her on a few things, but Simone Sanders

starts saying, hey, it's time to rap. Yes. And that's who you hear come in. She comes in. That's why it's off mic. It's a little bit. And she's like, we can't hear you. We have to rap, Charlemagne. We have to rap. Yeah. And he was like, oh, they're pretending like they can't hear me now. He's like, she can hear me. And you can see Kamala's face is sort of And he was like, oh, they're pretending like they can't hear me now. He's like, she can hear me. And you can see Kamala's face is sort of like frozen, like, what do I do in this situation? And of course, the reality is this was recorded before Manchin totally, you know, killed Bill Bachbetter and with it, the Biden presidency. But we all know what the answer to the real answer to the question is.

We do know the real answer. And look, I mean, yes, it's a Republican meme, but it gets at something and strikes the core for a reason, which is because where is the guy? What does he do all day? I literally don't know. I mean, look, he's completely inarticulate, doesn't have a real vision for the country, projects no real confidence in our ability in order to exit the crisis for which he was elected to get us out of, which was COVID. And I just see a failure on every level as commander in chief, ability to pass legislation, failure, ability to inspire confidence, failure. Even, let's say, inspired your own base, right? This was Trump's great victory. Of all things, he was a very good leader of the

Republican Party to his own ends. His people loved him. Joe Biden has no confidence amongst most Democrats. Only 40-something percent of them even want him to run again for president. I mean, every level, leader of the party, failure. Leader of the country, failure. Ability to pass legislation, even though he ran on that. I was in the Senate. I know these guys. I'm the dealmaker. I'm the dealmaker. Failure. I mean, he passed one piece of legislation, just like Obama before you and just like Trump before that. It's like, oh, so actually literally nothing has changed in the last 20 years of the American, of middle American political system. I guess in some ways it's admirable, but this man has remained so naive about politics over the course of his 40 years.

Serves him well in some respects. He really thought it was going to mean something that he invited Joe Manchin to his home to try to, you know, twist his arm on Build Back Better. Like, that's not going to do anything. If you want to, you know, you're going to have to play hardball. You're going to have to, you know, make it uncomfortable for him. And there was no willingness or ability ultimately to do that. Back to Kamala's comments here. The other thing that really irritates me is she's like, don't talk like a Republican. And if you listen to the entire interview, that was her go-to maneuver. When Charlamagne would

challenge her on, you know, well, why is Build Back Better hamstrung? Why haven't you done what you need to do on voting rights? And effectively, the message was, well, sure, we've got problems here, but the Republicans are worse. The Republicans are worse. Sure, fine. But that doesn't ultimately, like, deliver anything for people. But that's all they've got. That's all they've got. That's all they've got. That's all they have. And so when he asked her a difficult question there, rather than, you know, being honest about where they are at this point, which has become manifestly clear to absolutely everyone, she's got to throw out, oh, stop talking like a Republican.

That's like the ultimate, you know, it's the ultimate smear and the ultimate distractions. It's ultimately all they've got. And, you know, I saw this. I tweeted out some stuff about the Kamala interview and got all kinds of, you know, pushback from her. What was the pushback? Well, it was the same thing. It was, you know, well, the Republicans are worse. It's like, OK, I 100 percent agree with you. I totally agree with you. These are the people who are in power right now. So what are you going to do about that? I mean, is that talking point the Republicans are worse? Is that going to like, you know, feed the kids who are going to stay in poverty because they don't have the child tax credit?

No, it's not. And ultimately, you know, I'm talking in my monologue today about how young voters have moved on Biden by a net 50 points. They gave him his highest approval ratings at the beginning of his administration. And now it's his lowest approval ratings of every demographic group. Why? Because they're not impressed with your, all we have to do is be like moderately better than Republicans talking point. So are they going to turn into Republicans? No. Are they going to show up for you in the midterms or next time you tell them, oh, it's existential and we're going to save the planet, are they going to believe you? No. So that was the other thing about this that was pathetic to me,

is they just have nothing else and nowhere else to go than to just, you know, other Republicans are bad. OK, great. Congratulations. That's why you have a 20 percent approval rating, too, by the way. I also hated her faux outrage. Like, come on, Charlie. It's like, actually, it's a pretty good question. Who runs the country? Is it Joe Biden or Joe Manchin? And actually, the answer to that question was revealed this morning. Joe Biden has complete inability to pass any real legislation. The other part of it too is this is a media thing. Can you imagine if she ever got a question like that

from a member of the DC press? It would just never happen. It's like only because he has complete irreverence, doesn't care, know he has a massive audience of people who watches him. He's like, look, you're gonna pretend you can't hear me? I'm gonna call you out live on the air. That's amazing.

I love that. Nobody is willing to deal with her office in the same way. You guys, I can tell you from the inside, the stuff I am hearing from people in the White House press corps about how these people operate from the background, if you insinuate in a story that she's unpopular, they call you a sexist and a racist. And that is why in almost every single major national press story in this country,

if you are writing a story about Kamala Harris's struggles, Kamala Harris's staff turnover, Kamala Harris's deep unpopularity, Kamala Harris's inability to manage everything, you will see the line inserted. Her defenders say that it's just racism and sexism. She's held to a higher standard. No, we hold you to the same standard that we hold all politicians. You're phony and you're terrible at your job and you clearly have no actual empathy for most people who are in the country. That's the problem. I mean, whether you can fix that or not, I don't know. I think it's pretty innate. But when you look at where and how she operates, she has the gall or she has this like gall on her face when you confront her with the truth

and reality. And that's as much of a media criticism as anything else because it just so rarely happens once in a blue moon so rarely happen and by the way not just with kamala i mean it so rarely happens that any of these politicians get difficult questions trump would only go and talk to like sean hannity you know somebody who interviewed him it was very tough to he get really mad whenever he asked some questions I mean you know Sarah Sanders

would be there trying to pull you away and whatever like you know I mean that's the other thing that's embarrassing

with Simone is Simone clearly knows her boss is probably not going to be able to handle this that well

and so Rad like I mean because it looks really desperate and sad when you have the staffer on camera, like, trying to save in real time. You should know better. The politician, not a good look. So anyway, but Simone Sanders, like many other members of the Kamala team,

on her way out. You know what I heard, Crystal? I heard every network in Washington is trying to scope her for a position, and they are even considering her giving a primetime spot on MSNBC. Whoa. Yes. So that's the country we live in, folks. You can fail on up to the White House, work for one of the worst vice presidents in modern history, and then fail on up to one of the top networks in the country. Well, and also, I mean, I don't know if Simone Sanders, like, I don't know what her core principles are. Yes. But, you know, she jumped from Bernie Sanders. Yeah, from Bernie to Biden. To Joe Biden thinking he was the winning horse. She was right.

She ultimately, yeah. She was right. To be clear. And, but then she ends up rather than being on his team, she's on Kamala Harris's team. And, and really kind of in the background. I mean, they, she's a very, obviously she's very, like, outspoken. She's very comfortable in front of the camera. and, you know, has a level of charisma. So I think she didn't necessarily enjoy being behind the scenes in the slot they put her in.

That's right. Okay. Let's move on to, there's a new investigation here around January 6th and some of the unindicted co-conspirators. We've brought you previous news around Ray Epps. We played that collage video. He was a gentleman who, as early as January 5, a protester, was saying over and over again, we have to go inside the Capitol. We have to go inside the Capitol. To this date, Mr. Epps remains unindicted by the federal government, despite the fact that we know his name. He was written up at the time in Arizona Press as having breached the Capitol and played a central role within that. Well, the site that brought Ray Epps to prominence has published a follow-on investigation on some other characters who also remain unindicted and also played key roles within the January 6th

Capitol breach itself. Once again, to be clear, they are unindicted co-conspirators. There is no evidence other than their lack of indictment to suggest their involvement by cops or their affiliation, all of that. But we have covered here previously on the show that many federal cooperators and informants and more are often given preferential treatment in the justice system, not indicted, allowed to commit crimes, and in some cases directed by the feds in exchange for working at a higher purpose. Putting that all out there. Also, the site that came out with this is, let's just say hard right. And also it's very poorly written. That's part of the other problem. Yeah. I mean, if you read this report, it reads very like conspiracy theory

down the rabbit hole. He would do himself well if he dialed it back like 30%. I agree, just do it straight. I mean, just the photos and the descriptions alone would do yourselves. That's because I encourage you all to go read this for yourself. Now, let's get into it and let's put it up there on the screen.

This is from Revolver, Revolver News, very pro-Trump outlet, as I said. That being said, has done some of the best work and the most investigation on this. That's just the simple truth. There are three characters that they focus on in the investigation here, Crystal, around the others, were fighting back and forth with the Capitol Police officers, with the barricades. That was the initial way that the protesters ultimately got inside of the Capitol. And there were three people there who they have focused in on via video and open source investigation.

They all have nicknames in terms of online sleuths. The first one that they dub is Fence Cutter Bulwark. The reason why they say that is because he was a man who cut a fence, and Bulwark is actually the name of a fire retardant suit that he was actually wearing at the time. A little weird. Come prepared for a fire retardant suit. Everybody wears that to a rally. Yeah, everyone just has casual access to a fire retardant suit. Anyway, so currently, Mr. Bulwark, he was actually standing right next to

the quote-unquote breach site at 12.31 p.m. That was 20 minutes before the breach at the Capitol actually kicked off. What he was doing there, he was doing nothing except looking out past the fencing that he ultimately would take down. Now, perched right next to him was another man

who is widely regarded as online researchers as, quote, the most famous of the unindicted co-conspirators, who is a man unmentioned in the mainstream press, but elevated and known as, quote, Northwest Scaffold Commander. And the reason why is because he was on some scaffolding at the northwest end of the Capitol. He was pictured there, and he is, quote, an extremely peculiar middle-aged man with glasses, a mask, and a blue baseball cap that has been assigned notoriety because what he was able to do is that he was at the very, very top of the scaffolding shouting orders and has been regarded through some open source investigation as one of the ringleaders and telling them to go forward.

The thing is, is that all of these men remain not only unindicted, Crystal, by the FBI, but also are not even being searched for. You know, we know there are people on that list who are like grandmas who kind of went into the Capitol or not. These people, despite having their faces known, are not currently been indicted by the federal government. The third person who I'll mention, he is going by the nickname of Black Ski Mask. And the really odd one in the case of the ski mask is that he is not being prosecuted despite the fact that they know who he is. And the reason they know who he is is that there's already a police report on him because on January 5, Black's ski mask was yanked out of a bus by dozens of police officers who

suspected that his vehicle was packed with guns and bombs. The bus was stopped right in front of the Justice Department. And actually, they went ahead and took a DNA sample for him, but he was mysteriously let go and remains currently an unprosecuted face who's actually on the most wanted list. Eleven months later, despite the fact that we know who he is, he was stopped by the cops, clearly present, and played another integral role. So what this investigation does is it points at open source data. Like I said, I encourage you all to read it for. Ray Epps, who did play a very central role in actually the initial breach of the Capitol itself, who in very sketchy circumstances have not currently been indicted by the federal government.

Yeah. Nearly 11 months later, while the QAnon shaman has got like four years. Yeah. So to take this out of like a partisan context, first of all, I want to say that the number one person responsible for the events of January 6th is Donald Trump. Yes. Created the conditions. We're going down to the Capitol. Yeah.

Riled up the crowd, told him to go to the Capitol, and then even after it's happening, does nothing in spite of apparently being beseeched by everyone he knew, including his own son and every Fox News host that you can think of, to please say something and do something to stop all of this. So let's just say that, number one. Good. Number two, Sagar and I have been far from impressed by the January 6th commission because it is a partisan exercise, you know, that, you know, has the potential to be used to justify further national security state crackdown, and that is our concern. However, I think actually knowing both the cultural and society-wide conditions that led to such a horrific day and set of events as January 6th, but also specifically what happened on that day, I do think those are things that every American should be concerned about.

I agree. And the fact, let's say that you're a liberal looking at this, you should be completely outraged that three, four actually of the most significant ringleaders, just looking at the video evidence, that they remain unindicted, that we don't know, you know, who these guys are, what they were up to, what their defense is, what their intentions were, was this plotted in advance, that we don't know those basic questions. And apparently the FBI isn't even really looking for them. You should be outraged by that, regardless of what ends up ultimately happening. But when you look at this, it is really bizarre because you have, you know, Ray Epps, who we talked about

before, but you've got this guy who's going through methodically cutting down the wire fencing and opening it up so people can get in. You got a guy who's methodically going through and removing the crowd barriers, putting them over a ledge so that, again, people can easily come in and go through. And the one that's the craziest to me is the dude that's on top of the, it's like a big tower. You guys have probably seen this, a big tower in front of the Capitol. That's the one with the scaffold guy.

Yeah, it's scaffolding that they use for the press to be able to record Inauguration Day. This guy is up there on top and he's with a bullhorn imploring people, move forward, move forward, just continuing to sort of issue these commands from on high to encourage people to move into the capital. And of course, we know the destruction and chaos that ultimately ensued.

How is that guy, who there are very clear pictures of? Yeah, literally, his whole face is very, I mean, you could, right, what are they doing? What are they doing? Like, how is someone like that, who was such a key instigator? How were they not indicted? How is the federal government? Why is the federal government not curious about this person? Because, you know, if you if you think and judging by some of the tools and the tactical gear and the way that these men prepared themselves, if you think that this

was planned in advance, then you would think that some of these individuals would be the ones that you want to talk to. Yeah, that's right. So I don't think you have to like, you know, I think that given our federal government's history and given what we know about FBI infiltration of right-wing groups at this point, given what we know at this point about the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping, all of those things, it is not crazy at all to suggest that there were Fed informants there. And in fact, we do know that there were at least one on the ground. But you don't even have to believe that to say that these are people who should be questioned by the federal government to actually

get to the bottom of how these events unfolded because they were there at key moments playing key roles. Why? What was their intention? Was it planned in advance? Those are questions that anyone, I don't care, Trump supporter, liberal, leftist, whoever you are, those are questions that everybody should want to know the answer to. And you know, to put this in a nonpartisan context and put it on the other side, I'll admit I was skeptical, but look, it did turn out that Umbrella Man from the original BLM George Floyd riot was a straight up white supremacist, allegedly, as revealed by the Minneapolis police. In terms of his connections and more, we still haven't found out. So that's in terms of the BLM. We know notoriously there's a lot of, I mean, what is it, the joke that like half the people at these white

supremacist meetings or white nationalist meetings are feds? Like, I mean, it's a joke, but it's a joke because it's kind of true. The Proud Boys are... Right. Their leader is a federal informant. Yeah, they have multiple known leaders in their organization who at least used to serve as Fed informants. And they were some of the first to walk in. They led a march there. And they're some of the first to go into ultimately the Capitol. So, I mean, that's not speculation. That's actual fact. Anyway, there are a lot of, I think, important questions here and big holes that, again, there just seems to be very little curiosity from the mainstream media, which in a lot of ways is very obsessed with January 6th.

But when it comes to these people who were so clearly, you know, really integral to what happened on those days, we have very little information and the federal government doesn't appear to really care. Yeah, no, I think you're right. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, as we track the final collapse of Build Back Better, which started as a significant plan crafted by Bernie Sanders, slowly morphed into a disappointing fulfillment of Biden's promise that nothing would fundamentally change, and finally collapsed in a heap of corruption, a specific betrayal comes more clearly into view. Biden was elected in no small part because millions of young people who had largely backed Bernie Sanders in the primary sucked it up and voted for Joe. In fact, turnout for Americans under the age of 30 skyrocketed in 2020 with around 55% of eligible

voters showing up. In 2016, for comparison, that number was just 44%. Now remember back in 2008 when there were a million articles written about how young folks showed up in droves for the rock star Obama? So in that historic year for youth turnout, only about 53% of those under the age of 30 actually showed up to vote. So Biden actually bested Obama on this metric. And of those young voters who did turn out, about 65% gave their vote to Joe Biden. That was 11% higher than any other age group. So while post-election analyses they rightly fixated, understandably, on how the suburbs swung to Biden and the Dems, young people were just as decisive. And how is Biden faring now with this group? Absolutely terribly.

In fact, Biden's approval rating with young voters has fallen off a cliff. Just take a look at this. At the beginning of Biden's administration, back when he was beating Trump and distributing vaccines and delivering checks, his highest approval ratings by age group came from voters under 30. Now, that situation has completely reversed. He now garners his lowest approval ratings by age from voters under 30. Overall, their approval of Biden has fallen a staggering 50%. So guys, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Biden has broken every significant promise that he made to these

generations on every issue that they care the most about. Let's start with college because it's so specific and it's so clear. Here is how it started. 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. And here is how it's going. I think you said last week that you were working on a plan to help students pay, but what about President Biden's campaign to forgive

or cancel a $10,000 in student debt? Pardon me. What is the message to those people who feel that he's yet to follow through on that promise? Congress sends him a bill, he's happy to sign it. They haven't sent him a bill on that yet. Guys, Biden does not need a bill. This is an issue where he could act with the stroke of a pen, but he's decided not to. A direct breach of campaign promises that has nothing to do with Congress, nothing to do with Joe Manchin or the Senate parliamentarian. And that's forgetting about the fact that he promised two years of free college,

a promise that was unceremoniously dropped from Build Back Better months ago. But wait, there's more. At a time when American pessimism about the economy is approaching historic levels, Biden has decided to restart student loan payments. On college affordability, disappointments and lies abound. But let's keep in mind, only about 40% of young Americans have a college degree, so we shouldn't collapse the interests of young people just down to student debt and college affordability. According to economist Yuga, the number one issue for voters under 30 is health care. In fact, health care is at or near the top of the list for every age group,

but for young people, it makes a lot of sense. They face a precarious gig work economy where they're unlikely to get health care from their employer and, in fact, suffer from the highest rates of uninsurance of the entire population. At the same time, their health overall and mental health in particular is in really bad shape. Over half of young Americans are overweight or obese. One in four has had serious recurring suicidal thoughts. So lack of access and affordability combines with a severe health crisis to make health care a critical issue for this age group. That's a big part of why they like Bernie so much. Medicare for All was the centerpiece, of course, of his campaign. Biden

always opposed single payer, but he did make some promises, guys. We need a public option now more than ever, especially when more than 20 million people are unemployed. That public option will allow every American, regardless of their employment status, the choice to get a Medicare-like plan. Now, there's no sign Biden was ever really serious about a public option. In fact, as soon as he won his primary, it dropped from his campaign completely. It was never even included in Build Back Better. Given the brutality of a pandemic which has killed 800,000 Americans, Biden could also have used existing laws in novel ways to expand Medicare to all for the duration of the pandemic. It would have been challenging in court, but fine.

Be on the side of getting everyone care and let the other side make the case for keeping people from being able to see a doctor at a time of catastrophic health collapse. That's to say nothing of the failures on lowering the Medicare age and dealing with prescription drug prices, among other issues. Now, the second most important issue

for young Americans is climate change. In fact, arguably, the existential threat of climate change was as strong a driver for progressive young Americans to back Biden as the threat from Trump. Remember the ads that Noam Chomsky cut centering on the twin crises of Trump and the climate? On climate, all the action was in Build Back Better, which has now, of course, gone up in flames. This was always a dicey prospect, given the fact that Joe Manchin literally chairs the committee tasked with writing the big climate provisions. Now it is all dead. But there's more.

Biden has gone above and beyond to open up new areas to drilling, approving leases that could lead to an additional 600 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. a grand betrayal of young Americans who will be the ones that live with the worsening storms, the flooding, the tornadoes, the wildfires, the water wars, the climate refugees, and mass destabilization, which will be the inevitable result of our current trajectory. It is telling to me that actually the only generation which cares more about climate than our young people are our elders. With their own health care and basic living secured through Social Security and Medicare, they're free to think about what kind of a world they'll pass on to their grandchildren. The incompetence, cowardice, and inaction of Biden has nearly sealed their fate. Finally, like all Americans, young people are concerned with jobs and the economy. Promises on this front include the $15 minimum wage and the PRO Act,

both of which fell victim to the whims of an unelected bureaucrat with the job title parliamentarian. Here, the outlook is grim for young adults. Even those who did what they were supposed to do and got that college degree with all the debt that comes along with it, they're not finding a real foothold in the labor market. Half of grads from last year have yet to find full-time permanent employment, and studies routinely find that if you don't get your feet under you fast in the workplace, your entire life trajectory gets knocked off course. Dreams like a family or home ownership or starting a business or being able to travel, those things get pushed off further and further into the future. Precarity and rootlessness, they become the norm. With depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts, the inevitable companions for far too many.

What happens when two political parties collaborate to deny their young generations a future? When Gen Z looks around and finds their interests casually discarded by one side and actively derided and sneered at by the other, what does it do to a country when their young people are shut out of power and opportunity? And when official channels for expressing that frustration and creating change are blocked by an army of corporate lobbyists. Biden's complete betrayal of his once enthusiastic young voters hastens the day when we will find out. I'm actually astonished there hasn't been more discussion of this, because at the beginning of his administration, this was his strong... 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, as you can all probably tell at this point in the show, I'm really mad at the situation that we have in the country right now. We've been in this for two years. I have friends waiting in line for two hours to get test results promised in the next several days. People are sick, and their government has basically abandoned them. And for the people

I feel for the most, though, it's children. They've lost years of their lives to COVID, the paranoia of our public health bureaucracy, and they are now learning with absolute uncertainty. We have been hoodwinked for months. Masks in schools have always been a contentious subject. The United States is one of the only developed countries in the world that is pushing it as official policy. It is not like our results have been all that much better than the rest of the world. Parents have been whispering and rising up against us in some districts. But in many places, it's not up to them. It's up to the state, who have looked to the Center for Disease Control for guidance.

But of course, we always have to ask the question now. What if the CDC, the organization we rely most on in this situation, is completely wrong? And well, that's pretty much exactly the case when it comes to masks in school. Right now, the CDC recommends all children ages two and up wear a mask in school based specifically upon a study published in September that looked at 1,000 schools in Arizona where they said schools that didn't have a mask mandate were 3.5 times more likely to experience COVID outbreaks than ones that did. That's stunning, right? Well, as David Zweig points out at The Atlantic, this study,

which the CDC director and public health people have been pushing relentlessly to justify the mask recommendation, it's a completely bunk study. First, Zweig points out that the study claimed to have looked at school-associated COVID outbreaks from July 15 to August 31, 2021. The problem is that, quote, Only a small proportion of schools in the study were open at any point in July. Some did not even begin class until August 10, meaning that students in the latter group who didn't have mask mandates had twice as much more time to develop a COVID outbreak. Might influence the numbers. Furthermore, in terms of definitions that they used for school-related outbreaks, they defined it as, quote, two or more COVID cases among students or staff members at a school within a 14-day period that could be linked. As anyone with a brain can tell you,

two cases in the school doesn't tell you a damn thing about whether transmission actually happened within that school. Worse, guess what else the study didn't control for? Vaccination status amongst the staff or students. David dug even deeper. He found that the study included virtual learning academies within it. Some were preschools. Some were programs otherwise listed as schools. Did the study control for that? When David asked, they refused to answer the question, especially on whether they had mistakenly included virtual school in their tally. And to this day, they say that their methodology was, quote, entirely appropriate for what they were looking at. Perhaps I'm boring you, but I want you to remember this.

This study is the single most cited one by the director of the CDC for a policy which is affecting tens of millions of children here in the United States. It's a policy which has been shown clearly to have negative effects, reducing socialization in young children, increasing asthma attacks when it's worn during sporting events, and it is despised universally nearly by all children forced to wear them and the parents who have to watch them suffer. It is clear as day the CDC relied on this study and elevated it because of their commitment to pandemic theater and not to actual science. And it of course raises the ultimate question, what else are these people lying about? If we cannot rely on the CDC to accurately assess risk to kids in schools and

whether they should wear masks, then what can we trust them for anything? This is why my deepest sympathies have and probably always will lie with the people who have total distrust in the system. Masks in schools are only the most glaring example of an anti-science COVID restriction regime that is destroying the lives of young people across this country. Prince George's County, right here in the DMV, is closing and going online school in January in response to the Omicron wave, despite glaring evidence that online school doesn't work, that kids are not at risk whatsoever from COVID, and that even when they're in schools, they don't need to wear masks. Doesn't matter. Tens of thousands of kids' lives ruined. At the higher education level,

same situation is clear. Stanford University going online school in January for the same reason, despite a literal vaccination requirement on campus. Universities like Dartmouth, where even a freaking booster is required, are forbidding all indoor social events, and are stopping people from eating at their indoor dining hall. These policies are sweeping this nation, and people are realizing how much their prevention strategy over the last two years has not worked. The impulse for more crackdowns will continue. Those of us who are adults, we can manage somewhat. We're miserable, but we can survive. What else, though, is the point of a civilization than to protect its young

and ensure that they have a better life? On that, we are failing dramatically. We are making public policy not to protect them from harms, and worse, we are actively harming them. We have robbed students across the country of some of the best and most important years of their entire lives, and we've done it all by ignoring science. I don't know what the way out from here is. I know that it starts with us.

We have to educate ourselves. We have to do our own research because the people who were charged with looking out for us betrayed the public trust and they have put their ideology over everything else. We've got to take power back into our own hands and you've got to fight back. It's for the good of kids who are coming up behind us, because we really do owe it to them. That's the thing, Crystal. I mean, look, I don't even have kids. You do. But, like, I read this, and you tell me about your kids' experiences.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, we've got host of Plain English, the one and only Derek Thompson. Welcome back. Great to be here. Thank you. Yeah, good to see you, Derek. So we were just chatting about Theranos, which is a whole other interesting discussion, which is the subject of your latest podcast, because that Elizabeth Holmes trial is just wrapping up. But I also wanted to talk to you about Elon Musk, who's been named Time Person of the Year. Let's go ahead and throw that up on the screen. It was a little bit of a surprise for folks. It certainly generated a lot of commentary. So Derek, if you would, make your case for and against Elon Musk as the most influential person of the year. Great. Well, thank you first for offering that I make the

case for and against, because I feel like with Elon specifically, sometimes if you only make the case for half the internet screams at you, and if you only make the case against the other half screams at you. So for and against is lovely. I can maybe inculcate myself in criticism on both sides. So why is Elon Musk the person of the year? Well, here's the really straightforward case. This is about influence, not goodness, right? And let's count the influence. He is the richest person in the world. That's a measure of influence, at least in terms of monetary value. He's the CEO of the most valuable car company in the world. He's the CEO also of the world's most advanced rocket company, a company he started 20 years ago that has arguably

already lacked the US government and all world governments in terms of its capacity to manufacture really advanced rocketry. He also is a presence in our cultural landscape. I mean, he is an online shit poster. He tweets, you know, crude comebacks at Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. So he's in those cultural waters as well. So whether you want to evaluate him from an economic standpoint, the electric car industry, he's fairly influential. If you want to think of him as just like a mean edgelord, he's also a presence in our culture. So to that extent, I think you have to take seriously his influence. We can debate in the next few, you know, back and forth, you know, what exactly that level of influence is. I would say it's rather large. On the other hand, I think you could say, look, this is a guy who is just basically a dick. He has a terrible record of being a boss.

There's an expose, it seems like every quarter about the working conditions of his factories. He's not standing up against China nearly to the extent that I would want the world's most influential person to do. He basically is in bed with the Chinese to a large extent because he's building and selling a lot of cars there. He understands that China, 1.5 billion people, it's a huge market for the future of electric vehicles. He doesn't criticize the Chinese government for all the terrible things it's doing.

You could say he's not wielding his influence in a beneficial way for the benefit of laborers and for the benefit of the Uyghurs in China. But at the same time, I think if you just look at the impact that he's having electric vehicle market, which probably accelerated by 10 years by sheer dint of sort of his power in the marketplace, clearly there is an enormous amount of influence here. Derek, something I've always appreciated about you is that you're always trying to go into the nuance. Hence, you have the Plain English podcast, which we highly recommend everybody go and subscribe to. How is it that we have arrived at a place where we do have somebody who is

obviously such a leap forward in technology, and that technology doesn't seem to be appreciated, the underlying ability in order to get us out of where we are? I see that on one technology. And that technology doesn't seem to be appreciated, the underlying ability in order to get us out of where we are. I see that on one side. And then on the other side, I see it as a complete fetishization as the only way to get us out of where we are. Can you balance like both the tech optimistic side of Elon and also, you know, a lot of the way that the government has to step up to that is completely disregarded by some of these folks? I'm always happy to do on the one hand. On the other hand, I worry that it eventually will make me seem like a squishy centrist or maybe like the squishy centrist that I am. But look, here's where I think about Elon Musk in terms of

influencing the climate. There's a way in which, and just play with me here a little bit. We talk about the dirtbag left as being a group of people that are crude and rude and impolite, but also are fundamentally fighting for things that from a utilitarian standpoint are good for the world. Right. There's a way in which you could make almost the case that Elon Musk is a closet member of the dirtbag left. He is an absolute dick online. There is no debate about this. He's a dick online. But fundamentally, what is he doing to global emissions? Well, driving cars and trucks accounts for about 30% of American emissions. So you would think if one individual could have a maximum value on declining US emissions, what would they do? They would accelerate electric vehicle adoption by 5, 10, 15 years. That is in many ways what Elon has done. When Elon built or released the Model S,

the flagship Tesla vehicle in 2012, 2013, I think the U.S. sold like 17,000 electric cars. That's it. Today, Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world, not just because they are selling so many electric cars. They sell, I think, 66 to 70 percent of the electric cars in the U.S. market. The top two most popular electric vehicles in the U.S. are both manufactured by Tesla. But it's like this is what I made the point about in my planning this podcast. If you want to see his influence, don't look at the cannonball he's dropped in the water look at the ripples ford it can't build and sell the electric f-150 fast enough lexus says they're going to be 100 electric by 2030 toyota has recently announced they are all in on electric vehicles everybody is getting in on this act everybody is trying to build electric vehicles as fast as

possible because they see the signal from tesla that this is the way to grow your value in the marketplace it's a little bit like a little bit of a corporate analogy so when netflix took over the world of entertainment all the other entertainment companies like disney said okay if we really want to play in this field we have have to move to streaming. We have to be more like Netflix. And so Disney could essentially say to its investors, don't grade us on our profit in the next few years, grade us by how quickly we build a streaming business. And that's exactly what they've done. In a way, that's what Ford and GM and Toyota are all doing. They're saying all of our investors, please grade us, invest in us by how fast we grow the electric vehicle market. I think that Elon has been

enormously influential in doing this. Very last point on electric vehicles. 10 years ago, you could have absolutely made the point that electric vehicles are a product for hippy dippy birkenstock wearing ben and barry's eating dudes out in berkeley who happen to have made their first million dollars in the software industry today because elon is seen as a little bit anti-left because he's seen as a little bit of a dirtbag i think he's de-risked uh electric vehicles for the right. That's why Ford has been so successful in selling the F-150. It's why a lot of other startups are getting into selling electric pickup trucks. This could be huge for the environment, huge for the environment.

And I do think Elon's been enormously influential both economically and culturally. So a few things. He's definitely dirtbag. I definitely dispute the idea that he'd be dirtbag left, though, just given his record of union busting as one thing. The other thing, though, is there's kind of a contradiction here where on the one hand, obviously moving to electric vehicles, extremely important, extremely significant. The same time, he's one of a number of billionaires that seems to be sort of giving up on planet Earth and being like, nah, let's try space instead. So how do those two things fit together? And then the other thing, just my own personal opinion is, I think you could make time person of the year the richest

person on the planet every year because of the way sort of our global capitalist system works. They are likely to be the most influential person every year. So just on that metric alone, I think it makes sense. Like you said, this is not like the, the, the goodest or the nicest person on the planet, the most influential. And I kind of think that the richest person in the world probably is the most influential person every year. Go ahead, Derek. This is a great point. And first off, I really appreciate the point you made about the dirtbag left. I'm being cheeky about the idea that it has historically been a leftist policy priority to reduce American carbon emissions. And a clear effect of the success Elon has had with Tesla has been accelerating the development of electric cars around the world, right? So here's what I would say to the

sort of Mars versus Earth debates that Elon, I think, very much sort of encapsulates. I don't particularly value space that highly. I think space is kind of cool, and we're going to put a pin in that. I think space is kind of cool, but I do not think that colonizing Mars is one of the 20 most important things that our tech luminaries could do right now. But I do think that you have to point out that Elon is not just doing one thing. Elon is just a lot, right? He's a dirtbag who's also accelerating the development of electric vehicles on Earth, who's also trying to populate space and the second thing is really important for reducing emissions here and the third thing is just something else so when it

comes to space and kevin ruse and i the tech columns of the new york times talked a lot about this my podcast plain english kevin is very down on space crystal it sounds like you might be very down on space here's the way that i think about. I don't think about space as a void that we should be really excited about sending people into. I think of it as a place that we could take some things from. So what does that mean? Well, there's an emerging idea called space manufacturing that suggests that there's a lot of dirty industrial manufacturing that we could outsource to shallow space and then use cheap rockets like the sort that are being built by SpaceX to take those things back from.

So let's take two examples. Fiber optic cables and human tissue. These sound like really, really random examples. These are two things that are really difficult to make in high gravity environments. And ideally, you would want to build these things in microgravity environments. Well, where is there microgravity? There's microgravity in low orbit space. So it's possible that building cheap rocketry could give us access to a layer of space wherein we could build a lot of really useful things and then send those things back to earth while keeping the emissions from uh those from that manufacturing process in space again so the way you think of the the space race as being good for planet earth

rather than extractionary and moving ideas to to space field i which is an interesting idea here's what i hear though what i when that plan is laid out and jeff bezos after his little whatever joyride and his dick mobile um basically said this explicitly of like oh but we're gonna send the working class there and they'll be able to come back occasionally. But, you know, it's to me, it's far from a utopian village vision of like, let's just export the working class and all the dirty work they have to do to another planet. I don't know. I'm pretty sold on creating human tissue out in space, Derek. But we got to go. But we really appreciate you joining us. Thank you, man.

Seriously, for everybody who's listening, as you can see, Derek is just a great parser of everything. Has the new Plain English podcast with the Ringer Network, another great network, which I'm a huge fan of. So congratulations to you, Derek. You're welcome back on the show anytime. We really appreciate you joining us, man. Yeah, Derek. Congrats on the podcast. It's fantastic, guys.

You'll definitely enjoy it if you take a listen. I learned a lot about Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes and all the things that are going on. Thank you, sir. Thank you, guys. Anytime, man. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As you can tell, we're very much in the holiday spirit.

And within the holiday spirit, Crystal, what are we doing for the holidays to try and give back? So, guys, we wanted to think about something we could do that would be consistent with the values that we believe in and that we hope you support as well. We've been tracking the labor movement, some exciting developments across the country, but also some really difficult times for workers. One of the strikes that has been the longest going in the country and which gets very little, frankly, media attention is the Warrior Met coal miners down in Alabama. They have been on strike for months and months and months going up against not just their company, but these private equity giants that now own that company. They're asking for very little just to get back to their 2016 wages. So in order to support them during the holiday season when they have been going without wages for so long, we are going to contribute $25,000 to their strike fund so that they can just to help them get through. We would love to encourage you if you're able to support their strike fund as well.

You know, I know some of them have had medical bills and challenges that way to make sure that their kids are. It's been going on for such a long time. Yeah, these are these are families so their kids can have a nice Christmas and all of that. So if you're able to give, we would love to see the Breaking Points community come through for these minors. And as I said, you know, we are going to give the first $25,000 to help support them as well. That's right. We'll have a link down there in the description. We appreciate it. If you can, you can help us become a premium member today. That supports our work, our ability to support them. All of you create a great show. Happy holidays, guys. I want you guys to get truly into the spirit. It doesn't matter how bad things are out there. Love one another,

love yourselves, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories Thank you. heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the

golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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