Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/22/22: Zelensky Demands Weapons in Washington/SBF GF Flips/Nordstream Investigations/Trump Tax Returns/Elon Steps Down/MAGA Civil War/Warren Vs Wells Fargo/Ukraine Aid

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss Zelensky's demands during his visit to Washington, SBF's girlfriend Caroline Ellison flipping, Nordstream Investigations find no Russian Evidence, Elon revealing when he will step down from Twitter, MAGA Civil war erupting between MTG and Lauren Boebert, Trump's Tax Returns, Senator Elizabeth Warren taking on Wells Fargo, and the extent of our aid in Ukraine.Give the gift of Breaking Points for friends and family with a premium subscription to gain access to more exclusive content: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/gifts/newAUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets & Presale Linkhttps://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054To 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Lots of big breaking news for you this morning. We're going to go through everything that Zelensky said while he was in town and what we think he might have said and been asking for behind closed doors. Also, very interesting story. You'll recall the Nord Stream pipeline that was sabotaged and blown up. And immediately there was a judgment made by many in the Western press that it must have been Russia. Well, sort of quietly yesterday, there was a story about how, well, actually, it turns out there isn't any evidence that it was Russia. Guess we'll never know what really happened. So we'll give you all of those details. We also have new stuff happening with Elon, of course, every day about when and how he may step down as CEO and also some new details

about that alleged stalking incident may not have been the way it was originally portrayed. We also, at long last, have some Trump tax returns. And so far, the real story there seems to be the fact that presidents are required to be audited by law while they are in office. And there was a big delay on auditing Trump. So that's kind of the biggest question that's come from those so far. And we have some right- wingers in disarray, MTG and Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetzel going back and forth, which is kind of an interesting story. And it all revolves around whether or not Kevin McCarthy is going to be Speaker of the House. We also have some big breaking news regarding Sam Bankman Freed and his former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who ran Alameda Research.

We'll get to that at the top of the show, but before we jump in, live show. Live show. Last time you have to hear me say it in this year, in the year 2022. February 3rd, 2023, we are coming to Austin at the Paramount Theater. The tickets are selling phenomenally well, so I just want to say thank you to everybody who is in the area. As we said, this is likely going to be the last one for quite a while. So if you want, if you're all over the world, across the country, and this is your chance, now is the time. It's a good Christmas gift. I've already gotten confirmation that, in fact, some people have been given it as gifts for Christmas and for their birthdays.

So that really heightens us, and it just makes the responsibility on us to give you a fantastic show even bigger, of which we take very seriously. And I'm not just saying this. These tickets are selling really quickly. So if you're interested in going, you should probably jump on it because it does look like these ones are going rather quickly. I've never been to Austin before, at least for a live show. So we'll make the most of it while we're in town. Should be a lot of fun. We're definitely looking forward to it. Okay. Let's get it to the, our graphic at the bottom of the screen is a little bit out of order. We're actually going to take SBF and move it to the front of the line here and get this little news break that we got last night out of the way. So let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, guys. We now have two former top executives in Sam Bankman Freed's

crypto trading empire, and I'm reading here from the New York Times, have pleaded guilty to federal criminal fraud charges and are cooperating in the prosecution of the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. That's according to the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. OK, so who are these two? One of them is SBF's former girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, who was also the chief executive of the cryptocurrency hedge fund Alameda Research. Of course, you will recall the whole downfall of FTX had to do with their interconnection with Alameda. That was SBF's original firm. Then he starts FTX and they're basically funneling customer funds out of FTX into Alameda for Alameda to place all of these risky bets. That is what is ultimately alleged. And so Caroline Ellison was the chief executive of that firm. We also have, though, pleading guilty

and cooperating with the feds. Gary Wang, founder, one of the founders of FDX, that crypto exchange that I mentioned before, both were described as key lieutenants in Mr. Bankman Freed's vast business empire. Let me go ahead and give you the details of what we know that they ultimately pleaded guilty to. And like I said, so they took a plea deal. They flipped. They are now cooperating with the feds in their investigation and prosecution of Sam Bankman Freed. So here's what we know. Caroline Ellison pleaded guilty to seven counts, two counts of wire fraud, five conspiracy counts involving wire securities and commodities fraud and money laundering, whereas Gary Wang pleaded law enforcement agencies, and to, quote, truthfully and completely disclose all information concerning all matters that they are asked about. I think we had mentioned here on the show before, people had spotted Caroline Ellison in lower Manhattan,

very close to the Southern District of New York office. And so there was already speculation over whether she was going to plea and ultimately cooperate and flip. It looks like that is exactly what has happened, Sokka. If I were SBF, I'd be real worried about this. He's already been agreed now to be extradited here to the United States. I think he was extradited last night was the plan. And so there we go. It's over. As far as Caroline Ellison is concerned, the reason why it matters is not only her own personal relationship with SBF, she was the head of Alameda Research and in that capacity oversaw many of the fraudulent loans both to SBF, to his top lieutenants, which were then laundered as political donations, to his own personal net worth, on top of overseeing the initial wire transactions, both from FTX over to the Alameda Research side. That's another reason why I think it's so important that Gary Wang, who was the founder of FTX and was a key executive there,

they have both sides of the transaction represented here in the guilty plea and in terms of cooperation. One party, Mr. Wang, can actually speak to the fraud complaints on the FTX side, and then Ms. Ellison can, of course, speak to the fraud and to the transfer of customer funds over to Alameda Research. Something that really sticks with me is the CEO, the guy who went through the Enron bankruptcy

and unwound it on behalf of investors. He's now doing the same for FTX. He said, it's very simple. He was like, look, Enron, and I actually encourage people to read about Enron. It's a very interesting story. The smartest guys in the room. It's a great book. That was a highly sophisticated financial engineering scheme using shell corporations and others in order to deceive

the stock market. This, as he said it, is just, quote, plain embezzlement. He's like, this is as close to embezzlement of a simple, clear-cut case as we've ever seen. You take somebody else's money, you transfer somebody else, then you take a loan based upon that. There is some sophisticated stuff going on with respect to margin loans and the FTT token and all of that, which were faking the balance sheet and defrauding investors. But on its face as a crime, this even the Madoff scheme is far more sophisticated than what was happening here. I mean, it seems like an example of people who were so smart they were stupid. Yes. You know, I mean, they really thought that they could just get away with this,

that he could keep this house of cards ultimately afloat. And you would assume that these two in particular would know where all of the metaphorical bodies are buried in terms of how this was all executed, how nefarious the plot was, how intentional all of it was. Because remember, SBF's whole, his whole defense, at least publicly in the media, was like, oh, I had no idea what was going on.

And I just I made a few mistakes. I sort of got out over my skis. They will know very clearly and have evidence to back it up whether or not that is the case. And I'm sure you have an opinion about whether or not that is ultimately the case. And the three of these individuals, they all live together in that Bahamian penthouse in the Bahamas. So that's where FTX was based. As they note here, Bankman Freed and Ellison were at times romantically involved. So they will be able to unpack this whole scheme.

And yeah, ultimately, I mean, in terms of the attempts to like hide the outright fraud and keep this thing going or any sort of like code of oath of loyalty or anything like that. There was clearly nothing like that going on. All of these people are just trying to save their own bacon. And, you know, I know that a lot of the focus, and I think rightfully so, is on SBF, but it is very unlikely that he was the only one engaged in criminal activity here and in outright fraud, stealing customer funds, etc. And so I hope there is accountability for everyone who was ultimately involved in what was a multi, multi-billion dollar scheme of not just defrauding and stealing from customers, but also this illegal political influence campaign. That needs to be taken a hard look at as well and all of the key players brought down, too.

Yeah, my big hope is that we don't pull a Ghislaine Maxwell here, you know, just throw her in prison and do so in such a way that, oh, we just never end up actually looking at one of the much bigger schemes of what's happening. Right, which politicians were involved, which D.C. players were involved, yeah. That's what I still have a lot of questions about. And remember, the feds are sitting on that information.

We should all push for transparency. Indeed. Okay, let's move on to President Zelensky and his visit to Washington, surprise visit that happened. The news broke on Wednesday, which CounterPoints brought to all of you. He ended up arriving on Thursday around 2 p.m. at the White House. Some two important public conference where he faced questions from two American political journalists, of which asked very interesting questions around what type of weapons Zelensky still wants, the relationship between the two, whether peace could still be negotiated. Let's take a listen to that.

I don't know. I don't know what just peace is. It's a very philosophical description. If there is a just war, there can't be any just peace in the war that was imposed on us by these, I don't know how to describe that because we are in the White House and I can't find the proper language. So these inhumans, I would say. And President Zelensky, you have made it clear that he is open to pursuing, well, let me put it this way. He's not open, but you're open to pursuing peace. You're open to pursuing a just peace. What's going to happen after patriots are installed?

After that, we will send another signal to President Biden that we would like to get more patriots. That is a lie. We are in war. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. That is my appreciation. How the U.S. calculated the escalatory effect of sending a Patriot missile battery to Ukraine. I did not discuss that at all with the president, but we do not. It's a defensive system. It's a defensive weapon system. It's not escalatory. It's defensive.

And it's easy to not, and we'd love to not have to have them use it, just stop the attacks. That was a very interesting exchange, because what you saw there was that President Biden actually had to jump up, jump in and clean up President Zelensky's comments when he was asked specifically about a, quote, just peace. Zelensky said a just peace essentially was not possible, spoke of the need for vengeance, reparations, and actually tried to even box Biden in with a 10-point peace plan, which effectively means the total expulsion of Russia from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. That's right. It is a complete nonstarter. So there was actually, for all the display of unity, I watched the entire thing. There were several moments where President Biden actually had to jump in and either clean up President Zelensky. The third question, which

you guys saw there, was actually the reporter asking, when are you going to give Ukraine everything that it needs? And President Biden preempted it and just goes, his answer is yes. And then goes, here's my answer. And Zelensky just goes, I agree. Clearly, though, in that, and as you saw during that exchange, he was asking for more Patriot missiles, and he continued to elucidate on it whenever he gave his joint session address to Congress. So that's the—do you want to jump in before he speaks? Yeah, let me just—a couple comments about that. To me, this was maybe the most clear-cut example of signs of disunity and also a sort of little bit of a peek into what some of the conversation behind closed doors might have ultimately been. That's a piece I'm almost

more interested in than what was said publicly, because part of the advantage of having someone face-to-face and being able to have potentially a one-on-one meeting with him in the Oval Office is, you know, you might be a little bit nervous doing like some sort of remote call, even though obviously they take all precautions to make them secure, that someone may be listening in on the other end. If you are face to face with someone in the Oval Office, you can really get into the nitty gritty of, OK, where are the real red lines? What is the public posture versus what is the real position? Here's how far we're willing to go. Here's where our population is.

Here's where I'm going to apply pressure to get you to go back and negotiate. Those are the pieces that I'm really interested in. So to me, this moment was a tiny, tiny glimpse of some of the more difficult discussions that were likely happening behind closed door. And the other one thing I want to note about that press conference, which was relatively abbreviated, they just took a handful of questions. But like every question was a hawkish question. Like the one you just said, the reporter was just like, listen, you said at one point that you weren't going to do a Patriot defense, missile defense system. And now you are. So why don't you just cut to the chase and give him everything that he wants? And, you know, the reality is there actually is an inconsistency

in what Biden is saying, because he, on the one hand is saying, well, we'll do whatever we can. We're behind you. 100 percent will give you everything you need to because he on the one hand is saying, well, we'll do whatever we can. We're behind you 100 percent. We'll give you everything you need to be successful on the battlefield. But we are also holding things back. And in my opinion, for very good reason to try to avoid World War Three. And so that kind of distance between those two, the real position and the stated position was a constant source of kind of a little bit underlying tensions. It also bears explanation as to why the patriots were not sent in the first place in the early days of the war, which is there's a direct acknowledgement by U.S. officials that the Ukrainians don't know how to use a Patriot defense missile system. And if we did,

we would have to send U.S. soldiers on the ground. And so actually, the administration has yet to answer a direct question as to whether U.S. troops will be deployed into eastern Ukraine in order to operate these Patriot missile defense systems, or if the Patriots, they will be somehow trained on it. If that's the case, these will not be available on the battlefield for months on end. This is a very highly sophisticated system, which you can't just simply deploy and use within a matter of days. And unfortunately, President Zelensky continues to push that. It was one of the key elements of his speech before Congress. Much of it, which, you know, was kind of nice to finally hear, was thank you to the American people for bankrolling this war,

especially because Congress is poised to send another $45 billion. I'm doing a monologue on that, bringing our total to more than $100 billion in aid within a single year. But he pushed in that speech for additional Abrams tanks directly supplied from the United States, along with F-16s. Let's take a listen to that portion of his speech. Can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves. That was the key moment from President Zelensky's speech. It was only about a 22-minute address or so within the chamber. Much of it was, you know, filled with, you know, thank yous to the American people, delivering a battle flag. Parallels.

Yeah, parallels between the U.S. Battle of Saratoga and the U.S. Battle of the Bulge. But finally, that was the major policy ask of the entire speech, asking directly for U.S. Abrams tanks for U.S. F-16. So if we can bring the Vesitana together, there are three things which Zelensky sought to get out of this. It wasn't just the Patriot missiles. He knew that was getting him. What we have here, and let's go and throw the next one up there on the screen, A-4. Number one is he wants longer range missiles that are capable of striking deep inside of Russia, so-called ATCAMs. These are something that the administration has refused point-blank in order to give President Zelensky. Two, he wants those Abrams tanks. Three, he wants the F-16s. Four, I guess,

is even more Patriot missile defense systems than what we're already giving here. So this was not simply a thank-you address by President Zelensky. This was really a shopping trip on his behalf for his military as it's stuck in the middle of this Christmas winter battle before the fighting season opens up in March. And of course, the Russians relentlessly were shelling and bombing all of Ukraine while he was here in the United States. Ukraine, Kyiv specifically, remains completely blacked out at all hours of the day, on and off as they work to restore power. But their energy infrastructure is in a very tough bind. There are reports of people in hospitals having to do like amputations and

heart surgeries, literally off of a generator, or in some cases with no electricity at all. And I mean, it's like 20 degrees in Kiev right now, 20 degrees Fahrenheit. It's a brutal, brutal winter, as I've said before. For four months out of the year, the average temperature, the highest temp on average is like 35 degrees. So this is not a joke what the Ukrainian people are going through right now, hence why he's here trying to get as much as he wants. And of course, all of this comes right now, actually this morning, Crystal,

very likely that the Congress of the United States will pass that $1.7 trillion spending bill, of which includes $45 extra billion to Ukraine. But clear here in his remarks that Zelensky's message is it's not enough. We need even more than that right now. I mean, he outright said that. At one point, he said, quote, we have artillery. Yes. Thank you. Is it enough? Honestly, not really. So, I mean, it was, you know, it was sort of like, thank you for what you've done, but also pony up. I need a lot more. I understand where he's coming from, but it also was quite, quite bold to be, to be totally honest with you, quite bold and consistent with, remember there was that report over the summer that Biden actually got really frustrated with him and actually kind of yelled at him on

the phone because they had just given him some big aid package. And then immediately Zelensky is on the phone like, I need more, I need more, I need more. Again, I understand where he's coming from as people are at war. The speech was very much tailored. You know, he has gone to great lengths whenever he has spoken to, you know, leaders of other nations and congressional bodies in other countries, legislative bodies in other countries. He has gone to great lengths to sort of tie the Ukrainian struggle into whatever their sort of previous national historical struggles are. So to make these historical connections. So, you know, we talked about American independence, talked about World War II. All of that was sort of expected.

He also really situated it in terms of a sort of global fight for freedom and democracy. So you're not just giving us cash. You're investing in global democracy. And he also threw in there, you know, some shots at Iran for people who are like very, you know, anti-Iran and sort of hawkish on that to try to try to win them over as well. And some of the other context here is this is in some ways a really good moment for Ukraine because they have been succeeding on the battlefield. They've done far better than anyone had thought. You know, they've really come a long way. They're in a strong position. Russia is really struggling. And all of that is the case. But at the same time, you have the brutal winter set in right now, as Sagar is talking about. Zolensky talked about people celebrating Christmas by

candlelight, not because it's romantic, but because they have no power. So the toll of war, which has long been very harsh on Ukrainians, is really harsh across the entire country. Speculation that Patriot missile defense system will actually be used to protect some of that energy infrastructure to try to keep the lights and the heat on for as many people as they possibly can. So that's the Ukrainian domestic situation. You also have, of course, in the U.S., Republicans set to take control of the House and Kevin McCarthy, who is very likely to be the next speaker, saying that, you know, it's no longer going to be a blank check. Now, I think ultimately the Republicans are mostly going to fall in line with whatever the Biden and the Democrats ultimately want.

But there's probably a little bit more nervousness on Zelensky's part that, hey, I got to get these people on board and make sure that I can continue to get these outflows that I've been getting from the United States. And then you also have the Europeans enduring a difficult winter with very high energy prices. And polls both in Europe and here in the U.S. indicating that, you know, people are still very much with the Ukrainian cause, but some of that support has softened and the level of prioritization has certainly softened. So that's sort of the backdrop and the context and why Zelensky decided now was the time to leave Ukraine for the first time since the war started and come to the U.S. And of course, as Sagar is going to lay out very explicitly in his monologue,

which has been overwhelmingly, of course, the biggest backer and benefactor and has really enabled the Ukrainians to get to where they are at this point. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's just no question about it. They're military. I mean, he basically even said it's true. And one of the journalists even said, he's like, without America, he's like, my country, my family would be dead and my country would be gone. It's actually true. I would like to hear that a little bit more often from their side, despite all their calls just for even more and more. But I think it's an important acknowledgement, at the very least. At the same time, though, in terms of the geopolitical picture, European support for the way things are going right now, and I'm not talking about the UK, more about France and Germany, it's a very different situation. Let's throw this up there

on the screen. At the very same time that President Zelensky is visiting Washington, Emmanuel Macron actually is calling on Europe to reduce the reliance on U.S. for security and specifically to provide some sort of security guarantees to Russia. This was a huge pushback from the Ukrainians and even from the U.K. and from the United States. But essentially what he said, Crystal, is that, look, for this war to come to an end, we are going to have to provide some sort of security guarantee to Putin so that he does not feel as if he will get invaded. Now, that was met with tremendous outcry from the Ukrainians and from the UK and the US, mostly because they're the most hawkish and they don't want to provide any sort of security guarantee. But you see a

much more and a different clear-eyed view from Macron as to what an actual negotiated settlement is going to look like. A negotiated settlement is one in which Russia feels secure and it no longer is going to continue its military operation against Ukraine. And Ukraine feels secure and it no longer feels as if it's going to get invaded or be waged war upon by Russia. Right now, those two poles are very, very far apart, but Macron is being chided in the West for stating the obvious. He's also, Macron, if you look at this, is very interesting. He even says mostly about the United States. He's like, look, the point is, is that by mortgaging all of our defense costs and socializing them in the US, we now no longer have nearly as much say over our

own European security affairs, of which I would say, congratulations, Mr. President. Now, though, you should ship a lot more weapons to Ukraine so we don't have to send as much. And then you can have much more say over what's happening considering it's on your continent in the first place. So there's a big split in the transatlantic alliance right now. This has been the case basically since the beginning of this war and even before the war. I mean, Macron was the most aggressive in keeping lines of dialogue open directly with Putin and trying to negotiate. He and Germany have long been more in favor of diplomacy and talks. There's been this kind of divide between the U.S. and U.K. and France and

Germany. So he's attempting to assert himself here a bit more. Let me read you the quote exactly, because I think it's very interesting. He says, peaceful times will require talks, first and foremost for guarantees for Ukraine for its territorial integrity and its long-term security, but also for Russia, as it will be party to an armistice or peace treaty. He also went on to say, whoever reproaches me for asserting myself on this topic should then explain to me what they propose. What the people who refuse to prepare and work on this are proposing is total war, a total war that will involve the whole continent. So, I mean, that's pretty striking comments from Emmanuel Macron.

Yeah, absolutely. He's been consistent there since day one. And I do believe that given the change, first of all, you know, why is Congress passing this $45 billion? It's because they know that it's very likely to be the last one. Zelensky actually made a lot of appeals here. He's like, I understand bicameral, bipartisan support is necessary to us, but we also need to consider that things are changing here. Our domestic populaces want to continue giving a blank check to Ukraine is well below 50% now at this point. It was at some 90% at the very beginning of the war. On top of that, how are the Russians responding? As much as the Russian economy is a disaster, as much as they have been humiliated on the

battlefield, Russia is not backing down in any way. They've been shelling the hell out of Ukraine, including with missiles now for a long time. And actually, in response to Zelensky's visit, let's put this up there on the screen, which is they are now announcing a 30% increase in the entire size of their armed forces, bringing their standing army to 1.5 million combat personnel from 1.15 million, in addition to a $15 billion increase in their annual military budget. So whatever remaining money that they have left, they are throwing it straight into the military. No sign of backing down whatsoever. Their new commander is very much dedicated to going

attacking the center of gravity, which is the Ukrainians' will to resist, as in taking down the energy infrastructure of the entire country. And if you see any sort of combined offensive in the winter or after the winter, it's going to entail probably a much more brutal campaign than even what we saw in some of these liberated cities. So we're in for, I think, a tough winter, both for the Ukrainians and also in terms of the geopolitical situation. Things are changing fast. Remember, it's only been 300 days.

We should always try and put things in the context of history. Imagine trying to guess the outlook of World War II, 300 days into the war. You'd be like, oh, Hitler's going to win. You know, oh, France and Germany are gone. The entire, you had the entire phony war. And you know, oh, Norway.

It's like, you can convince yourself of a lot of things. All the way up until 1917, the Germans thought, and probably correctly, that they were going to win the first world war. So things can turn on a dime. These things take a long time. Go back to the civil war, I can tell you the same thing. The point is, is that nobody knows where things are headed. All we see is a rocky future ahead of us.

I talked to our friend Yegor about the domestic political situation in Russia and a couple things that he suggested to me. One is, and there was some talk from the Kremlin about this, there's kind of an expectation there may be another draft. They recognize they need to increase their armed forces yet again. And, you know, in some ways, the conscription process the last time around was kind of a disaster for them. On the other hand, it's not like there's been a mass revolt that has brought down the regime. So, you know, they have some level of complacency and, you know, support among a good portion of the Russian public. The other piece, though, that he pointed out to me is just like here, you have people who are high placed and influential in Russian society who are making a lot of bank off of this war. And that creates a, you know, a perpetuating process of its own, a dynamic that we are very familiar with here as well. So keep in mind some of those background factors going on in Russia from the domestic political situation as well.

Absolutely. All right, let's move on now to Nord Stream. This is also very important. And I will recall here on this show, we were very careful to say, I don't know who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, and I'm not going to make any sort of guesses. And fortunately, we left ourselves a lot of breathing room, unlike most people in the Western press, including Western officials, because several months later, put it up there on the screen, forensic evidence shows no conclusive evidence that Russia is behind the Nord Stream attack. And in fact, whenever you read further, here's what they say, quote, this is a European official, there is no evidence Russia was behind the sabotage. That is after an assessment of 23 diplomatic and intelligence officials across nine countries interviewed in recent weeks, including those privy to non-public classified information and direct knowledge of the blast itself. Immediately, of course, it was blamed on Russia. And what we know right now is that it was

almost certainly a deliberate attack, though we still have no idea who was behind said attack. This is what I'm referring to. Even those with inside knowledge of the forensic details don't conclusively tie Russia to the attack. They also say forensic on an investigation like this are going to be extremely difficult, so we likely will never know. This actually also includes, Crystal, routine intercepts of U.S. by the United States of communications of Russian officials, clandestine investigations and more that have tied currently no evidence of Moscow to the blast on the Nord Street pipeline. So what do we know? A, it was deliberate. B, there's not a single...

And here's the other thing. You know if there was even one shred. Oh, we would know all about it. Just like one classified intercept by a fake source or whatever near the KGB, it'd be French page. If they could do it, they would blame them. But, and this is the point, not one shred has currently emerged to point towards

Russia. Who did it? We'll never know. Was it the US? Was it Ukraine? Was it somebody in the NATO alliance? Was it one of our new NATO allies? Sweden, Norway, right? Norway had a lot to gain, possibly, because the UK is a possible example. Everybody always talks about this because it's true, which is, you know, it almost certainly had to be a nation state because it required like an underwater submerged, like a submerged craft that had, you know, munitions. Like it was not an easy thing necessarily

to pull off somebody. There were a lot of different people to blame. I remember we laid out the case for like four different versions whenever it was happening here at the time. But I mean, it's pretty extraordinary and very damning of a lot of people in the media and the Western officials

who immediately wanted to blame Russia. Just like we should recall what happened with those missiles that fell into Poland. Immediately, Zelensky, the whole world, I will say, by the way, Zelensky immediately blamed Russia for the attack, just saying.

So he clearly has shown us he cannot trust a word out of his mouth whenever it comes to any escalation. He immediately blamed Russia for the missiles that fell in Poland. Oh, turns out the Ukrainian air defense missiles. And then he immediately blamed Russia for the Nord Stream pipeline. Oh, well, it turns out there's not a shred of evidence actually to back that up. And so the point is, is that for our own safety and security, we should take a wait-and-see approach. Which is exactly what we said at the time. Yeah. They even say in this article, some went so far, some of

these sort of insiders who have access to non-public information, some went so far as to say they don't think Russia was responsible. Pretty extraordinary for this to come out at this point in the Washington Post after everybody has sort of moved on. You know, Sagar, what it actually reminded me of was when you had the whole Hunter Biden laptop situation. Oh, yeah. And they were like, this bears all the hallmarks. Of a Russian attack. Of Russian disinformation. It's like this, this attack on Russia bears all the hallmarks of a Russian operation without actually having any hard evidence. And now they come out and say

very conveniently, I guess we'll just never know what really happened here. Okay, yeah, you guys know. You just don't want the rest of the world ultimately to understand what really happened and the way that they were misled. That's my opinion. The other key here is about the officials who immediately blamed Russia.

Let's put this up there on the screen. This was from a Ukrainian official, the head of the office of President Zelensky, in the immediate aftermath of the attack. The gas leak is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia, an act of aggression towards the EU who wants to destabilize economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic. The better response to security investment is tanks for Ukraine, especially German ones. Interesting. That's a very convenient takeaway there. Interesting. Very convenient takeaway. Here's the thing. Like I said, I'd probably do the same if I were them. That said,

we got to do what's best for us. Also, let's not forget our own energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, let's put this up there on the screen, in the immediate aftermath attack, and you could take this as a basically statement of policy from the Biden administration, said it, quote, seems that Russia is to blame for the attack. In a BBC interview, say it is highly unlikely these incidents are a coincidence. And she said that it would be stupid and absurd that Russia was not to blame. So there you have it. Basically, an official statement by a Western official, a secretary in the Biden administration and the Ukrainian government itself. We've had denials as well from many of the top heads of NATO states and others. And

we should recall, this is a very highly escalatory attack, not just the actual damage and all of that itself he put aside. It was near a NATO country's land border. We're talking about 12 miles away in a busy shipping lane. Something easily could have gone wrong and people, a lot of people could have died in some merchant shipping incident or other. So it was highly escalatory. Whoever did it clearly had the probably a nation state. And right now, some people think it wasn't Russia. So a lot of crow to be eaten by a lot of people, not only Western officials, but you also know the Western media was immediately pouncing on anybody who even

had a shred of doubt about what happened with this attack. Who was it that immediately tweeted out the US flag and basically indicated it was the US? That was Anne Applebaum's husband. Husband, who was a diplomat? Former foreign minister of the European Union. He said, thank you, U.S. He later deleted the tweet days later. Everybody freaked out about that. Ann Applebaum, for those who don't know, is probably one of the preeminent hawks, Russia hawks here in Washington.

She was also a massive Russiagator, coincidence, between the two. And has basically called for regime change in Russia. I don't think that's an uncharitable way to say it and would probably be fine with the declaration of war by the United States on that. Her husband, prominent European official there, tweeted that out, only deleted it three days later, has actually still yet to explain what exactly he meant by that. So anyways. Never said what his thinking was there. Look, that's all you're going to get from us. I'm not going to say anything about who it was or who maybe wasn't.

We don't know. Got no evidence, but you can make up your own. Looks less likely that it was Russia than maybe it did a few days ago. Let's get back to a frequent topic of conversation,

it seems, here on this show, Mr. Elon Musk and just what exactly he is up to on Twitter and Tesla and all sorts of other areas of our life and his life. Let's go and put this next, this first element up on the screen. So as you know, he put out the poll saying, hey, should I resign as CEO? And a pretty solid majority said, yes, you should. So he is now, he was kind of silent for a while. And then he said, I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job.

After that, I will just run the software and servers teams. Sagar, what did you make of this? Because, I mean, I found it sort of funny that he's like demoting himself to like mid-level manager. Like you can't find someone else to run the server team well i think that he actually i kind of look at it in the way that he has run tesla in the past is he always tries to focus elon is best at what technology business investment and technology he is basic his uh best feature at tesla and at spacex was managing the engineering teams and getting them to push towards creating better products and also meeting with the supply. So I think that he views the core software of Twitter as like the

user experience. And obviously the servers are very important in order to make sure that the site is always up and running. That's a key element of all social media companies, including Google and Facebook. They've spent billions of dollars on their servers. So I think probably because he views that as the core of the business and frankly, what his talents are like most suited to, given his own executive experience. It also shows something that I did a whole monologue on this after Parag Agarwal became the CEO of Twitter. The whole point is that the CEO of Twitter doesn't have a lot of business problems to solve. The business itself is basically exists. It's a $5 billion a year industry. 90% of it comes from advertising. It's actually not basically exists. It's a $5 billion a year industry.

90% of it comes from advertising. It's actually not that hard. You hire a bunch of advertising managers and you make up some fake metrics as to why they should give you money. Okay. The Twitter core product itself, it's not that complicated. It's existed in its current form since 2012, especially with retweets and all that. And the preliminary of it, 2009. All right. So what does the CEO of Twitter, what calls do they make? They need to make calls like, do I take down the private jet accounts of billionaires?

Do I agree with free speech or not? It's kind of a public messaging principal's PR job. And that's what Elon, frankly, was not well-suited to do. That's not in his skill set whatsoever. And I think that's why it's the correct decision for him to move down because he said he was a free speech absolutist. He immediately violated his free speech absolute principles. If he just focused on the tech, frankly, I think maybe it could be better. I'm still skeptical.

I'm much more of an Elon skeptic than you are ultimately about even what his skills and capabilities are at this point. I mean, it certainly doesn't appear to me it's in the business realm because he made a variety of business decisions while he was CEO of Twitter and every single one of them was a complete and utter disaster. I mean, yeah, he would have been better off just basically staying the course. Instead, you know, now Twitter is loaded up with all of this debt, $13 billion in debt. It will take a billion dollars in payment just of the interest. That's more than Twitter was bringing in before some percentage of the advertisers fled the platform. He tried this $8 Twitter blue check thing. It's very unlikely that that is ultimately going to work out with

them from a business perspective. And he keeps tweeting out about like, oh, we're having record interactions on the platform, record number of tweets. That really doesn't actually matter if you don't have ads that you can serve to those people or if they're not signing up for your $8 a month scheme here ultimately. And the $8 a month scheme also is directly at odds with the free speech, you know, supposed goals and aims of the platform, which I know it's very clear at this point he's all but completely abandoned. So, I mean, what I read into this was just basically that he had planned to leave. And there was early reporting even before this poll, kind of early on, that he was likely to not stay as CEO all that long. So for whatever reason, he's under pressure from potential

Twitter funders, from Tesla investors. That part is really clear. He had whatever reason, he's under pressure from potential Twitter funders, from Tesla investors. That part is really clear. He had sort of decided he needed to step down. He expected this would be the result of the poll. And now he's going to leave on his own time, step down as CEO of the company whenever he finds whoever he thinks would be a suitable replacement for himself. At the same time, there are some conflicting reports about what exactly happened with that alleged stalker incident that triggered the whole takedown of the Elon Jett account and then banning of all these journalists who covered the Elon Jett account and the whole sort of like cookie crumbled from there. So Elon had said and basically directly blamed the Elon Jet account for this incident in which he claimed some crazy person stalked the car of his young child, who he calls Lil X, and had shared some video on this.

And that, you know, then he started saying that the Elon Jet account, it was tantamount to sharing his assassination coordinates and this had directly put himself and his family into jeopardy. OK, well, we knew right away that the story didn't totally add up because the last time that Elon the Elon Jet account had even posted anything was a full day beforehand. And then we had reporters who were starting to call the LAPD where this incident allegedly occurred. And they said, we didn't we didn't get any crime report. We don't know anything about this. So started to be some question marks there. Now we have more information from the South Pasadena Police Department. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Insider.

They say, police are saying that a member of Elon Musk's security team is actually a suspect, not a victim, in what Musk alleged was that crazy stalker incident. Here's what they go on to say. On Tuesday, the South Pasadena Police Department issued a statement detailing the episode that sparked a wild week of Twitter tension, confirming that an incident involving two vehicles was reported to authorities on Tuesday, December 13th. But according to the police, this didn't go down perhaps the way that had been portrayed. A 29-year-old Connecticut man in the other vehicle who called police to report an assault with a deadly weapon involving a car. When an officer arrived on the scenes minutes later, the victim said he had just exited the freeway, stopped to use his phone in a parking lot when another vehicle pulled directly in front of him, blocking his path. The driver of that second vehicle is believed to be a member of Musk's security team. The man who called police said the Musk staffer approached him and accused him of following him on the freeway.

Both parties proceeded to film each other. And as Musk's security guard was leaving the parking lot, he struck the victim allegedly with, with his vehicle, and he was gone by the time police arrived on the scene, according to authorities. Now, the piece that I will say is confusing and conflicting here, though, is a previous LAPD detective had spoken with the Washington Post and did seem to indicate that there was someone involved in this incident who had a weird sort of obsession with Elon and his family. The Washington Post identified that man involved in the incident as Brando Collado, an Uber Eats driver who expressed strange claims, they say, about the musician Grimes, that's Musk's former girlfriend and

mother of two of his kids, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, maybe. Collado said he knew that Boucher lived near the incident, where the incident occurred, and suggested she was communicating with him via discreet Instagram posts. Right. So, I don't know. It seems like this incident isn't exactly as it was originally portrayed, though. Well, we already know it wasn't exactly what was portrayed, because the incident happened 23 hours after the actual jet had landed.

Right. Near a gas station, not near the airport, near Grimes' house. It's a messy situation. because the incident happened 23 hours after the actual jet had landed. Right. Near a gas station, not near the airport, near Grimes' house. It's a messy situation. Clearly, whoever this dude is is a little office rocker, right? Stalker. That said, the security guard now, and this is always the issue with private security,

it's like you're not a cop, dude. You can't be, like, slamming cars. You can't hit someone with a car. You can't be slamming cars into people. It's not really how it works in terms of being someone's personal security guard. So it's a tough situation. But I actually am happy that a lot of this is happening because the more that we get in court, the more we actually find out what actually happened. Because the police actually have the gas station video of where all of this occurred in the parking lot. They're going to have both the video that the

stalker took on top of the security guard, and both will be forced to testify against each other. But the preliminary details emerging from the police do not back up Elon's events basically at all in terms of what's happened here. And also, another thing I would really like to hear from the stalker is, did you use the Elon jet account to figure out where all of this was going on? Because if the answer is no, that's going to be kind of a damning problem for him. Yeah. Well, and even zooming out from the specifics of this particular incident, because it could be the case, look, he's a father, he's concerned about his kid, that even if there wasn't really any connection to the Elon Jet account,

after something scary like this happens with your kid, you sort of freak out, you lock down, and you want to keep them safe in whatever way you can. That's the whole problem of having one billionaire or one dude or a small group of people running a major platform as they start to make decisions based on their own biases, whims, emotions, feelings, whatever. And that's the whole problem. So ultimately, to be honest with you the particular details of this incident don't really matter as much as the fact that they very clearly revealed Elon was going to be just as fallible and human as anyone else and perhaps even more so in this

role and that's why this whole system and the way it's set up is ultimately a problem there was clearly not any sort of like, you know, unbiased arm's length decision making happening with regards to this incident. And it led to, you know, all these, not just the Elon Jet account, which, you know, I think a reasonable person could make an argument that this is doxing and I don't agree with that. But I think there's a reasonable position and argument you could make there. There is no reasonable argument for then banning all links to Mastodon because this guy was, you know, on that platform over there. No reasonable justification for banning all the journalists who were just covering this whole story, which obviously is clearly in the national interest. Banning Taylor Lorenz and the other dude, what's his name, Drew something?

Drew, I forget, Harwell. Who were talking to the police and trying to get the real details of what ultimately happened here. Like there is no justification for any of that, regardless of the specifics of exactly how this incident ultimately went down. Absolutely agree. Okay, guys, we finally, after many years, have a little bit of a look at some Trump tax returns. Here's how this all went down. Trump, of course, has been fighting the ability of the right now democratically controlled House to get their hands on his tax returns. He had exhausted all appeals and they said, OK, here are the returns. This House Ways and Means Committee sort of just recently got a hold of

these last month and they've been deciding what to do with them and how they can release them. And so they took a vote this week saying we are going to release these to the public. It is obviously at the 11th hour because Republicans are about to take control of the House. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. We don't have a full look at this yet, but New York Times has the top line key numbers from these six years of Trump tax returns. And, you know, to be honest with you, there's nothing all that particularly notable in these top line figures. Some years he, according to his tax calculation, made money. Some years he didn't make money. There was one year where he literally paid zero dollars in taxes, which is a thorough indictment of our entire system of taxation,

in my humble opinion. And there have been questions before about just how far he would go to stretch the legal limits of what you are allowed to deduct, not to mention the fact that his organization was just found guilty of tax fraud. So there are a lot of questions about the ways that he goes about calculating his taxes, none of which is particularly revealed by these top line numbers that we have here. So far, the biggest question is about why the IRS, for years after he became president of the United States, failed to audit his tax returns, which is something that they are actually required to do of every president every year by law. Let's go and put this up on the screen.

U.S. tax authorities failed to audit Donald Trump for two years while he was in the White House, Democratic lawmakers said, despite a program that makes that tax review sitting president's compulsory. The claim in a report issued by Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee voting to release six years of Trump's tax returns, raises questions over statements made by Trump and members of his administration that he could not release his tax returns at convention for aspiring sitting presidents because he was undergoing an IRS audit. It also, of course, raises questions over whether he was improperly influencing the IRS, whether the IRS was acting in a political manner. And there have been questions about this before because they just happened to, while they were not auditing Trump, they did just happen to

pick James Comey and Andrew McCabe, two, of course, of Trump's enemies, to audit during that period. So it's raising some eyebrows. If I will say, Sagar, it's kind of complicated because the initial IRS commissioner or whatever the head leader is called over there was actually an Obama appointee. Yes, that's what I was going to say. And then, you know, later on, there was a lot of pressure put on McConnell to get Trump's guy that he liked in that place. So that sort of raised some eyebrows. But given the fact that you had multiple people in charge over this period and they weren't appointed, some of them, directly by Trump, I think it looks to me more like incompetence than nefariousness, but I don't really know. It's certainly possible. There's no way to know.

What we do know is that Obama audited his first year in office. Biden was also audited his first year in office. But also, Trump's finances are a way bit much more of a mess than Biden or Obama's ever worse. And a lot of it was probably easy. It's easier, obviously, to indict or to audit somebody who's poor or in Obama and Biden's case, just mere millionaires as opposed to billionaires. Issue with Trump also, he's got all kinds of shell corporations and foreign financing and, you know, having looked at some of his personal finances and stuff in the past, it's a massive mess. Yeah. Just even trying to pull even some of the records from his New York based businesses themselves. Actually, it's indicated you can see in his tax returns,

he only paid a million dollars in taxes, even though he's worth several billion dollars. This is all part of the real estate scheming that he's been kind of a part of for a long time. I've always heard that if you want to make any real money in this country and also pay zero taxes, you should get into the real estate game. Yes. You can always write off like depreciation taxes and all of this madness. He also, in that big tax cut bill, put provisions in place there that would directly lower his own taxes. So, I mean, to me, that's a scandal. The entire United States tax code, honestly, the fact that someone as wealthy as Donald Trump could have a year in which they pay

zero in taxes, that is a massive scandal, but it's the sort of thing that's not really hidden. It's out in the open kind of scandal. The other thing that is a real head-scratcher is when they did, so the reason the audit was triggered is because Democrats on this House Waste and Means Committee started asking about whether he's being audited. And that's apparently when the IRS was like, oh, shit, we're supposed to be doing that. Yeah, we're totally on top of it. They assigned one person to do the audit. And as you said, I mean, he has to have the most complex personal financial situation and tax situation of any president in history. Probably since LBJ and JFK.

It has to be extraordinarily complex. And, you know, and he uses all sorts of exotic maneuvers to try to evade taxes and is very aggressive about evading taxes. And has spoken publicly about that, has admitted to it, and says basically, like, you're a sucker if you don't do that. So to assign one dude to try to figure all of this out, you know, again, I don't know that it's nefarious. I think it's, again, an indictment of the whole U.S. tax system that the IRS has been stripped of funding, you know, especially by Republicans who have cut the budget over and over again. And rather than having the impact of, you know, making it easier and less of a burden on ordinary Americans, what it means is they don't have the resources to go up against the army of lawyers and accountants that a rich dude like

Donald Trump ultimately has. So they were, I mean, they didn't stand a chance against Donald Trump and his billions. That was my take too. Yeah. It's like Obama, when he came into office, all he ever did was literally run for office and write a book. All of his personal net worth was based off of checks from his publishers. It wasn't that complicated. Yeah. Biden, I mean, the Hunter stuff and all of that, still a lot of questions, I think, that we should look into. But his own personal finances, Biden was actually quite poor until he left office.

Even then, his net worth is only like less than $10 million. Again, I am saying only on the scale of people who hold the office, which I'm not saying it should be that way. Trump, of course, having one person versus his army of lawyers, that's insane. But let's take this as an opportunity to say that you, as an average American taxpayer, are far more likely to get audited and screwed by the IRS than Donald J. Trump and all American billionaires and hundred millionaires. And that is wrong. So that this is

a structural flaw. Remember, the IRS is three times more likely to audit somebody who makes less than twenty two thousand dollars a year than it is to audit somebody worth over one billion dollars a year. Yeah, that is just that's bullshit. That is a massive scandal and wildly unfair and unjust. And the whole reason is because those tax returns are easy to audit. It's low-hanging fruit to go after the person who is a waitress and getting tips in cash and not 100% reporting them or whatever than it is to try to go up against somebody like Trump with all his lawyers and accountants and complex shell companies and complex schemes that he's able to deploy here. So that's all we know so far. The expectation, I think, is that we're going to get more of a look

at these things. There may be additional pieces that jump out that are revelatory, and we'll certainly keep our eye on it here. All right, at the same time, we couldn't resist digging into this disarray happening on the right right now. There's been a feud that has developed between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert in particular. This all centers around whether or not Kevin McCarthy is going to be future Speaker of the House. And basically, you have this small group of Republicans, members of Congress, who are calling themselves the, like, never Kevin caucus. And there are enough of them, it seems, to keep McCarthy from outright

winning the speakership. He has to get a majority. And, you know, the margins for the GOP caucus are very thin. So just a few people can make his life very difficult. And so you have Marjorie Taylor Greene actually supporting and backing Kevin McCarthy. And you have Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz and some others on the other side of that. And that has led to a whole public, whole public feud erupting into the open. I'll give you the details of this. But first, let's start. This all kind of started with Lauren Boebert speaking with Charlie Kirk and making some underhanded comments about Marjorie Taylor Greene. Let's take a listen to that. Someone who we all respect, Marjorie Taylor Greene, says Kevin McCarthy is going to be a

great speaker. I guess you'll have to ask Marjorie about that. I'm a fan of hers. I'm an admirer, but it's not something we see the same. Lauren. Well, you know, I've been aligned with Marjorie and accused of believing a lot of the things that she believes in. I don't believe in this, just like I don't believe in Russian space. Are you are you a hard no space lasers and all of this? No, I'm just saying we need to actually have an inside conversation and and make sure that these promises are there. So she takes a shot there at Marjorie Taylor Greene's infamous comment. It's about Jewish space lasers or whatever she said about that. So Marjorie was not taking this lying down. So

she clapped back on Twitter. Let's take a look at what she had to say. Go ahead and put this up on the screen. She says, Lauren Boebert gladly takes our dollars, but when she's been asked, Lauren refuses to endorse President Trump. She refuses to support Kevin McCarthy, and she childishly threw me under the bus for a cheap soundbite. And now, actually, Marjorie has written a whole op-ed for The Daily Caller supporting Kevin McCarthy, but taking a number of shots at not only Lauren Boebert, but also at Matt Gaetz. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, this next piece. She says, lying to the base is a red line for me. And that's what five of my closest colleagues are doing when

they claim a consensus how speaker candidate will emerge as they oppose Kevin McCarthy. Here's the reality. No one is running against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker. If they're successful, they'll give us something worse than Paul Ryan. The truth is, they have no plan. It's an empty promise, which is why I'm speaking out. And then she goes on to take a shot, particularly at Matt Gaetz here. She says, let's start with my dear friend Matt Gaetz. Many of his attacks against Kevin McCarthy are comparisons to Paul Ryan. Quite ironic, given Matt's very first vote in Congress was for Paul Ryan as Speaker. Even when we all knew Paul Ryan would never deliver the MAGA agenda, another loud voice is Bob Good.

For some reason, he just hates Kevin McCarthy. Pretty hard to understand why. Because Kevin McCarthy put $2 million into Bob's first campaign in 2020 and sent him more cash in 2022. Bob has a great conservative voting record, same as mine, but he's so focused on never Kevin he can't see past January 3rd. And she goes on from there. The reason I thought this was interesting, Sagar, is, you know, when your side isn't doing that well, that's when you see all of these fissures and infighting and petty feuds erupt into the open.

And as a card-carrying member of the American left, I can vouch for the fact that that is the case. And I think that's sort of what you see happening here. I was going to say, that's exactly what's happening. They're all basically shooting each other after the disappointing midterms. And Lauren Boebert, let's not forget, she's not denouncing Marjorie for no reason. She almost lost. She barely won in a

recount in a hard Trump district in Colorado. That's kind of a nightmare for her. So she's got a real problem between trying to square herself as some kind of Trump MAGA style figure and then also not trying to be aligned with MTG. At the same time, MTG is basically running purity tests in the party even after the loss, trying to make sure that the faithful are all aligned up with her and that she's like the carrier of the legacy. So I see it more as interesting. I don't even care about the McCarthy thing. I think he's obviously going to be the speaker. It's all this other like shooting each other stuff that I'm like, huh, that's fascinating. Because it's like, where is the future of MAGA and Trump kissing ass?

Is it Gates? Is it Boebert? Or is it MTG? Well, and the reason McCarthy is interesting in this is because Trump did endorse McCarthy. Yeah. But on the other hand, McCarthy is obviously not really like legitimately very sort of Trumpian stylistically, I guess you would say. Right. And so you've got Gates and Boebert and others posturing like the true sort of Trumpian MAGA position is to oppose Kevin McCarthy, even though McCarthy is actually backed by Trump. And then Marjorie Taylor Greene being like, no, the real position to take here is to support Kevin McCarthy.

And she calls out Lauren Boebert for being unwilling to, you know, affirmatively back Trump's next reelection. And I mean, on the merits of the Kevin McCarthy speaker thing, Marjorie Taylor Greene is obviously correct. Yeah, of course. They have not offered a real alternative. There is no one who garners anywhere close to the level of support of Kevin McCarthy. He is ultimately going to end up as speaker. And so, you know, they're sort of playing this like fantasy game.

And I think they are sort of misleading the base about how this might ultimately all play out. I think you are 100% correct. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, what would happen to you if you stole someone's car or their money or somehow their entire house? You would, of course, go to prison for many years. You would lose everything. Your life would likely be completely ruined. What if you did the same thing to not just one person,

but millions of people over the course of a decade? Well, if you're a big bank, apparently you can admit no wrongdoing, get hit with a fine that is a small fraction of your income, and basically continue with business as usual. That is the lesson anyway for the banksters at Wells Fargo, who have basically been running a crime syndicate alleged to have done everything from illegally repossessing cars to illegally foreclosing on homes to illegally overcharging their customers and setting up fake

unauthorized accounts. Senator Elizabeth Warren, to her credit, actually thoroughly exposed their track record of repeated criminal behavior in a hearing with the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this year. Take a listen. I want to talk today about one of the worst repeat offenders in our entire financial system, Wells Fargo. In 2016, Wells Fargo's fake account scandal was exposed. The company's leadership had squeezed their employees to create three and a half million unauthorized bank accounts. Director Chobrit, do you recall how much Wells Fargo was fined in 2016 for this fake account scandal? I want to say it was 180, 185 million dollars. That's right, including 100 million of that was from the CFPB. Now that was a

big fine, and CFPB and other regulators were right to impose it. But keep in mind that Wells Fargo booked more than $5 billion in profits that year. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised that a fine alone was not enough to persuade Wells Fargo to follow the law. Because over the next few months, the following scandals came to light. Wells forced consumers to buy unneeded car insurance. They changed information on customers' documents without authorization. and they illegally repossessed cars from service members. In 2018, the regulators finally said enough, and under then-chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen's leadership, the Fed put a cap on Wells Fargo's growth. Now, that was pretty shocking at the time, but it still wasn't enough to get Wells to follow the law.

Since that time, Wells has closed customers' accounts without authorization, damaging people's credit reports, and just to rub salt in the wound, continued to charge them overdraft fees even after those accounts were closed. Wells has also been fined by the SEC for recommending unsuitable products to mom-and-pop investors. It put up to 1,600 customers into forbearance without their consent. And just a few months ago, Wells was hit with another fine by the OCC and a new consent order because the bank is still screwing over consumers. It appears that cheating customers is simply in Wells Fargo's DNA. Absolutely correct

on every count there. She went on to ask CFPB head Rohit Chopra what his agency planned to do about this lawlessness, which she described as the baddest of the bad. Well, now we have an answer. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has announced that for a variety of crimes and abuses, they are ordering Wells Fargo to pay $3.7 billion. $1.7 billion of that is a civil fine. The remaining $2 billion is to go to the customers that they routinely screwed over. Now, according to the CFPB, thousands of people lost their homes and their cars, had their credit destroyed, and their money stolen by this rogue bank. These violations impacted some 16 million customers and persisted over more than

a decade. As part of this consent order, Wells Fargo swears they will clean up their act and they won't sin again. Folks, there is zero reason to believe them and billions of reasons to expect they will continue to deploy theft as a cornerstone of their business model. After all, this is far from the first time Wells Fargo has been hit with a fine for their illegal business practices. According to Motley Fool, as of a year ago, Wells Fargo was already operating under 10 other different active consent orders. Grit capital journalist Genevieve Roque-Decter helpfully compiled some of these recent fines. Check this out. In addition to this latest $3.7 billion, they had to pay $3 billion in 2020 for fraud, $2 billion in 2018 for toxic security abuses, $1.9 billion, they had to pay $3 billion in 2020 for fraud, $2 billion in 2018 for toxic security

abuses, $1.9 billion in 2013 for banking violations, $5.3 billion in 2012 for mortgage abuses. In 2018, the Fed, as Elizabeth Warren indicated, to its credit, went even further. Then-Fed Secretary Janet Yellen slapped a cap on growth at the bank and forced the resignation of four members of their board. That action was in response to the revelation that Wells Fargo had set up millions of savings and checking accounts for customers who did not want these accounts and did not consent to them. The rampant fraud was revealed when customers started noticing, hey, I'm being charged fees for products and accounts that I did not sign up for and did not authorize. But even after all of these penalties, investigations, public shamings,

regulators having no confidence that the bank has actually changed its ways. CFPB head Rohit Chopra wrote on Twitter that, efforts by Wells Fargo executives to clean up the bank have been far too slow. We remain concerned that the bank's product launches and growth initiatives to increase profits have delayed needed reform.

Fines are the only tool in the CFPB toolkit, but Chopra knows they don't have a prayer of actually changing anything. How do we know? Well, he actually admitted that in that earlier hearing with Senator Warren. Take a listen. Here's what I see. I see federal enforcers and regulators are very quick to lay the hammer down on small guys and small businesses. They will name people individually. They will ban them from certain business practices and often criminally refer them for prosecution. But there is a totally different standard for large firms who break the law over and over again. Yes, they do pay a fine, but often it is less than the profits that they made from the misconduct. We have to look at a broader array of remedies in banking. The

Federal Deposit Insurance Act talks about limitations on FDIC insurance. There is asset caps like we see that the Federal Reserve Board did or that the OCC has done. We have to look at structural remedies that stop the law breaking from continuing. Fines are not going to solve this with the biggest players. And frankly, I think if we care about equal justice, we should treat small firms and large firms the same. I agree with you. Thank you. You know, I think it's clear that fines have just become a cost of doing business for giant corporations like Wells. And we can put a stop to that. The Fed has the power to break Wells Fargo up, and they should use it. And in addition, I'm reintroducing my Corporate Executive Accountability Act to hold big bank executives personally liable when the companies they run repeatedly break the law.

Clearly for Wells Fargo, multibillion dollar fines are just factored in as the cost of doing business, and they profit more from defrauding their customers than they lose from the periodic governmental slaps on the wrist. Sarah Warren was 100 percent correct in that hearing, and she continues to be correct on this issue today. The Fed needs to break up Wells Fargo, and the DOJ needs to jail these law-breaking executives. After all, if we learned anything from the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, it's that no bank should be too big to fail, and no executive should be too rich to jail. One of the most glaring governmental failures of this century has been that after banksters nearly destroyed the entire global economy, they got off scot-free. Many of them were even handed big bonuses. This fine of Wells Fargo is welcome, don't get me wrong, but its inadequacy exposes how our most powerful regulators have learned nothing, and our banksters have learned that as long as they're big enough, they can get away with damn near anything. And it's pretty remarkable to see an agency have that. 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 we've discussed quite a bit today, President Zelensky is in Washington yesterday to ask for even more weapons from the Biden administration and to log Congress for including $45 billion more of aid to Ukraine in its multi-trillion dollar spending bill to be passed before the new year. It is genuinely difficult to describe just how extraordinary the sum of an additional $45 billion to Ukraine is in the context of everything that we have given to them so far and everything that has been given in the total conflict. Let's start with my first and favorite

comparison. How does our aid to Ukraine stack up against our so-called European allies? With the additional 45 billion to Ukraine, total amount of U.S. aid will surpass nearly twice that of the entire European continent, which is pledged for Ukraine combined comes to a measly 51 billion. The additional 45 billion would bring the US to approximately 100 billion in aid to Ukraine. So double Europe, got it. When you break it down by country though, it's even more pathetic. The United Kingdom, supposedly one of the richest and most powerful nations on earth, has given only a total of nearly 99 billion. Germany, the largest economy in Europe and one of the top five economies in the world, has given less. France, the second

largest economy on the continent, a great power in its own right, less than $1 billion. We are getting suckered here to a historic degree. But outside of the theater itself, it's also worth stepping back and considering how extraordinary the new sum is just on its face in U.S. history. The additional $45 billion to Ukraine is somehow $8 billion more than Biden even asked for. Biden only asked Congress for an additional $37 billion in aid. So that begs the question, what does Congress know about Ukraine's situation that the administration does not? The answer is nothing. They just added it on.

And that extra $8 billion exceeds the total amount of military aid given to Ukraine almost more than any other country on earth. Extraordinary. But let's continue down the rabbit hole. I became curious because I happen to have been covering wars for a long time. How does our total military aid to Ukraine stack up against, let's say, Afghanistan? Well, we were in Afghanistan for 20 years. In that time, and I'm talking here purely about direct military aid to Afghanistan, not spending on our own forces, we spent about $100 billion to train and equip the Afghan National Security Forces. So you can do the math here. That means that we have spent, on Ukraine, in one year, what now exceeds the entire U.S. military

aid to Afghanistan in a 20-year period. But because I'm me, I kept pulling the data. It's all inflation adjusted to constant dollars, just so you're wondering. How does it stack up against, let's say, Vietnam? Lo and behold, the total amount to Ukraine now also exceeds all U.S. military aid to the country of South Vietnam between the years of 1956 and 1975. Again, this is adjusting for inflation. What's extraordinary about these two comparisons is not just the dollar figure, but considering that Russia only invaded Ukraine less than a year ago. We have dispersed an insane amount of military aid

to Ukraine in just one year, one that hardly has an equal in the post-World War II era, especially considering that there were actually American lives on the ground in Vietnam and Afghanistan during our presence there, so it wasn't just geopolitical. Supposedly, it was at least to protect our own citizens. In this conflict, there's none of that. And then finally, my favorite comparison. The country that Ukraine is fighting, Russia, has an entire military budget of $84 billion, meaning total U.S. military aid,

and especially total aid to Ukraine, now vastly outpaces the entire military budget for a great power nation with nuclear weapons. And what's crazy is that this $84 billion is already a substantial increase for Russia by an additional $13 billion from just this year prior, considering that Russia is not just fighting in Ukraine, but as an entire force that also needs to worry about. Consider how crazy this is. I want to end it that way. I got nothing against Ukraine. They are our just cause in this fight. They were invaded, and if I were them, you bet I would also be begging for every gun and bullet that anyone has to spare. But we're not them. We have to consider what's good for us.

And what I see is a situation, emotion clearly is clouding America's judgment as to just how much of a raw deal that we are getting here. This is about European security, right? So why don't the Europeans pay for it? For those saying they're paying in gas, so what? It's their territory, allegedly existential for them. Well, then they should pony up existential amounts of dollars. Do you really believe if there was a conflict here on the Western Hemisphere that they would lift a finger for us in some sort of squabble with Mexico, for example? Obviously, the answer is no. My final challenge to the Ukraine firsters is this question. Is there any limiting principle

at all to your want to help Ukraine? The real world is about trade-offs and balancing. We can all wish victory to Ukraine. We are also forced to ask how, what, why, with what, and how long will it be attained? The longer this goes on, the more this entire edifice of the so-called transatlantic alliance is being revealed as a farce. And sometime soon, when America actually does need help, you're going to find out just how unappreciated our role abroad over the last 75 years has really been. And that's why, look, you put it up against Afghans. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. This is actually our last full show of the year.

We are not going to leave you guys high and dry, though. We have plenty of content. Lots of content. That we'll be uploading, including some really fun clips from our live shows, including some sort of big picture looks at the year that we've been recording and saving up so that Sagar and I can take next week off. Yes. Which it's good for us to reset our brains sometimes and think bigger pictures. With the family. We appreciate you guys giving us the opportunity to do that.

But one thing I wanted to mention, given that this final full show of the year has been focused a lot on Ukraine, is this has been one of the big topics that's defined the year. And we've been really grateful to you guys for trusting us to sort through what is a very complex and difficult and nuanced and hard to understand and hard to get accurate information on situation.

And in fact, one of the things we learned from our Spotify information, what do they call it? Wrapped. Year-end wrapped. Wrapped at the end of the year. Like for our brand. Yeah, is that our number one downloaded show of the year was right after Russia invaded Ukraine. And so I just want to take a moment to say thank you guys for making this incredible year of growth and challenge. Thank you for trusting us with some really challenging news topics that we've done our very best to try to sort through.

And we've got big plans for the new year, some of which are already coming into fruition. So we are endlessly grateful to you all for having our backs, for believing in what we're doing here, for supporting Breaking Points, for welcoming Ryan and Emily into the family and all of our great partners, because we really enjoy doing this. We don't take it for granted. And we're excited for what the new year is ultimately going to bring. Absolutely. Thank you especially to the premium members and all those who've helped us out over the last couple years. It's just been amazing. It's going to be a fun ride, guys.

2024, the cycle, it all starts next year. We're gearing up. We're ready for it. If you can help us out, link in the description. Other than that, happy, what is it? Happy Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Did I cover all my bases? I think so. Go with it.

There's probably a few more that are out there. Wiccan, whatever. Happy holidays. Yeah. Happy New Year. Many blessings to you and yours. Enjoy the time. Take some time.

Don't listen to Saga. Eat what you want. Don't eat what you want. And we will see you guys back here in the new year. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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