Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/24/22: Stock Market Crash, Ukraine Tensions, Insider Trading, Elite Narratives, Animal Rights, & More!

Episode Date: January 24, 2022

Krystal and Saagar discuss the stock market drop taking place, Biden's response to tensions in Ukraine, insider trading in Congress, a court ordering workers to keep their jobs, Jen Psaki's advice, World Economic Forum proposals, Mark Cuban, FBI's targeting of an animal rights activist, 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/Matt Johnson’s Work: https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So some big developments. Nancy Pelosi kind of changing her tone a little bit. A little bit. About banning insider trading. Opened the door just a smidge, which given her previous comments and total scorn for the idea, is a significant development. We'll tell you about that. We'll also tell you about some pretty eyebrow-raising comments from one Dan Crenshaw on the matter as well. You may recall Crenshaw has been one of the top performers in Congress in terms of a stock portfolio.

So that guy is really on to something. If you guys want to make some money, just follow whatever Crenshaw is doing. So we'll give you those details. Also a really stunning story that you picked up on these healthcare workers who, uh, were changing jobs. They got a new job, new hospital, um, all seems normal and better offer there, better benefits, et cetera. They said, you know, life balance, all those things were good. A judge has blocked them from changing jobs because their old employer did not want them to leave. I'm having so much trouble wrapping my head around this.

So we'll give you all of those details there. Maybe you guys can make sense of it. Jen Psaki under fire for some interesting comments she made about next moves for the Democratic base and how you should be approaching things. Also, major escalation and saber-rattling with regards to Ukraine. But we wanted to start with the stock market, which has experienced precipitous drops. Let's go ahead and throw this first element up there on the screen. The stock market crash is likely only beginning. So if you guys have been tracking this, significant downturns here in terms of the stock market. And

listen, stock market is a graph of rich people's feelings. On the way up, it mostly benefits the rich. But when you have a significant crash on the way down, it ends up hurting everyone and can spark a recession. So that is why we are focusing on this. This particular tear, she's pretty interesting. Effectively, what this comes down to is the fact that the Fed during the pandemic went bananas with injecting trillions of dollars into the market, backstopping stocks, backstopping debt as well. Now they are not only pulling back on those bond purchases, but they are also signaling that they are going to cut interest rates multiple times this year. And so one of the things that we've been trying to talk about here is just how much impact the Fed has, certainly on the markets, but on the broader economy. And as you watch these declines occurring in the stock market, it looks like this is directly

tied to investors actually realizing the party is over, interest rate cuts are in fact coming, and so they've been fleeing in particular the most speculative assets. And the thing that really scares me is that what Seeking Alpha points to there is that there is a record amount of margin debt and credit card debt combined with low investor cash allocation. Now, the reason that matters is that whenever you have a high-priced asset and you borrow against it, something called margin, what that means is that the cash isn't realized, right? The asset itself is floating, and you're borrowing cash based upon the value of the net present value of that asset. But then what happens?

If the asset drops, then you're going to have to get a margin call. And it's like, hey, you know, your asset isn't worth as much anymore, so you have to pay back extra cash. You're in the hole now, basically. But now, these people don't have a lot of cash per what we know in terms of balance sheets. We have a very reduced number of personal savings. All of this matters because, as Crystal said, on the way up, the stock market may not impact a lot of you. But on the way down, whenever people have to start pulling cash, this all affects banks. It affects payrolls. This is what happened during the great financial crisis and more. So on the way down, this can have a significant impact on your life, your employment possibilities. Obviously, everybody's

401k, those of you who are lucky enough to have them in retirement, all of that. So it's a big problem. Let's go ahead and put the New York Times tariff sheet up there on the screen. And this is what you point to. Look at the Fed lifeline, S&P 500, what they point to there. And they're very much in agreement on the same thing, which is that with the Federal Reserve change in rate policy that has been announced, a lot of people are saying that with this environment, the Fed is basically triggering and making it known that the insurance rates, or sorry, that the interest rates are going to be raised over the coming years. And this is simply cleaning up a lot of the more cheapest capital that was flying around within the markets, fueling some of the most speculative assets.

Yeah. And the issue here is that there are really no right answers. So on the one hand, you know, based on what we just said, you might say, well, the Fed needs to stop doing that. You know, don't lift the rates then. You know, keep buying the bonds, keep backstopping the market. The problem is that those policies, which have been really unprecedented, started after the financial crash, quantitative easing is what it's called,

which is just basically injecting, it's sort of like socialism for the rich effectively, injecting trillions of dollars into the stock market. This was amped up even further during the pandemic response. And yeah, it propped up. That's why you had these headlines that were like, the bottom has fallen out of the economy, mass unemployment breadlines on one hand, and on the other hand, stock market reaches new highs. That's why that was happening. And so on the one hand, they were using the only tools really at their disposal. On the other hand, they have helped to fuel massive inequality. And a lot of analysts say also huge asset bubbles.

Now, when huge asset bubbles pop, that is not just bad for investors and people at the top. That is a disaster all the way around. Look no further than the housing crash. That was a huge asset bubble that popped with disastrous consequences that we are still getting out from under. So these policies from the Fed help to inflate these bubbles. Now, on the one hand, you know, it's going to be a question whether they actually have the stomach for what is likely to be a major crash, a major correction. On the other hand, if you just continue these types of policies indefinitely, you're just potentially setting up

for an even larger crash down the road. So that's one piece of the puzzle. The other problem here is, of course, inflation. This is the reason why the Fed has signaled so aggressively that they may have four or even five interest rate increases over the stock market fall is going to be sufficient to totally tame inflation, given some of these other things that are going on, the supply chain crisis and all these other issues. Right. So that's going to continue to push the Fed in the direction of lifting interest rates. And like I said, at this point, because they have kind of created a gigantic mess, there aren't a lot of great options for them here. That's why some analysts are very concerned that we could be in for a gigantic crash. Yeah. And, you know, we're seeing this also in the crypto markets as well. Sorry to my fellow hodlers. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum triggered a major sell off along actually alongside some of the stocks.

And I think that what this points to, Crystal, is we're going to get a lot of testing of theories around the economy here. Is it purely the Fed? Is it also, do we have these asset bubbles? And we're going to have the same kind of trickle-down failure effect that we had in the financial crisis. Obviously, everybody remembers too big to fail.

I mean, it's not going to repeat exactly the same way, but when you have a huge amount of cash and loans and all that tied up in the richest people's basically bets in different assets, you have no idea how that's going to affect you and your life. The other problem with the Fed is, OK, they could raise interest rates. What's likely to happen then? They could trigger a massive recession. I mean, that's not good either. So as you said, there worst world where we would have more of a recession, reduced amount of demand, reduced assets too, then all of that could cascade down into some crazy spiral. I don't even know what that would do in terms of the currency markets as well.

So geopolitically, obviously, this would be a big disaster. And you can't erase the human cost. A lot of people kill themselves during recessions. It's not a joke. People die. People don't go to the health care. They don't go and seek health care. A lot of people died during 2008 that nobody really talks about or acknowledges. So that's the human element to this that I can't help but think about, too. No, that is exactly right. I mean, one of the things that we tracked at the beginning of the pandemic when things were extraordinarily grim economically was how a lot of the people that were most vulnerable during the pandemic crash were people who had been hit hard during the housing crisis and they'd never recovered. So they went from potentially having their own home to being foreclosed on.

And now they're in these temporary living arrangements. And then during the pandemic, loss of job, they can't even sustain the rent for those much less expensive places. So and then now, of course, we know the way that housing prices have spiked, making everything even that much more affordable, less affordable, whether it's with regards to buying a home. And also we've seen rent prices spike. So it's a bad situation that people are in. And you pointed to crypto. It makes sense that the most sort of speculative assets would see the biggest declines first. So, you know, crypto going up gangbusters during all of this makes sense when you have so much money injected in and people are just looking for assets that they can put their cash into. So crypto benefited massively from that makes sense that it would lead some of the measures in terms of declining during the early days of this crash. And I don't think that you should really be looking to maybe our business

journalists for advice on what to do during these times. They don't necessarily always have the greatest guidance to offer you. We just picked out one little example of that. Jim Cramer over on CNBC. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. He's got some great stock picks here, Zogger. Things like Netflix and Peloton. Go ahead and put the next

tear sheet up on the screen. Stay-at-home stocks like Netflix and Peloton have experienced massive declines. Peloton has lost like 80% of its value recently. And by the way, their executives

also sold off like $500 million in stock. That was terrible. Before their gigantic crash. So even Peloton execs don't think that Peloton is a good buy right now. Peloton, yeah. You're on your own, folks. These people aren't going to help guide you through these times. Peloton is almost certainly going to get acquired for some rock bottom price. My bet is Apple. That's what I think. Borrowing that from Scott Galloway. But that being said, yeah, the CEO has actually lost his billionaire status. Cries, shout out to Mr. John Foley. That must be tough going from the nine figure club to the eight figure club. I feel very sorry for you and what's happening there. But look, the Netflix and Peloton stocks were obviously big pandemic stocks. They

performed massively well during that time. And in some ways, it was a matter of time of when the crash would come. But it became so precipitously on top of a decline in the entire tech sector, on top of a decline in the entire S&P 500. So when you have all of that come crashing down at the same time, there is a large correction. And sometimes whenever it comes to markets, given that so much of it is feelings, the feeling of pessimism itself can fuel continued downselling because so few people actually control the overall markets themselves. So what really the point of this is, is get ready, prepare yourself. It is certainly a possibility. And unlike whenever

it goes up, it could have a big, big, big impact on your life, on all of our daily lives in terms of businesses shutting down, people losing their jobs. I don't want to see that, but it's very unfortunate. It could be a possibility. Yeah. It's like gains are privatized and losses are socialized. Get ready. And then calls for a bailout. By the way, nobody's going to get bailed out right now. At least I don't think so. By the way, nobody's going to get bailed out right now, at least I don't think so, from the political system. I don't see how they could possibly stomach that. I mean, the bailout would come from the Fed

going back to massive quantitative easing and losing the stomach for seeing a huge crash. Yeah, to the psychological aspect, there kind of was this mindset that set in of like, oh, stock market's never going down. Like, it's just going to go up forever. We can't possibly lose. And when that sort of psychological bubble burst, then you start to see, I mean, the early signs of it are selling off things like crypto and these more speculative assets. And then, yeah, the margin calls helped to fuel

more selling. And you can see how you get into a spiral where on the way up, when the asset bubbles are being inflated, the continued increased value becomes a kind of logic in and of itself. It's like, well, the value's been going up, so the value is going to keep going up. And as long as that continues to be the case, then the bubble continues to build. Once you lose that mentality, then on the way down, it's exact opposite dynamic. When values go down, that justifies more selling,

which justifies you thinking, you know, the values are going to go down even further. So it's honestly very rational behavior, the sell-off that we've seen, given what the Fed has very strongly indicated that they're going to do. And I think they've been signaling that for a while, and investors weren't totally taking them seriously,

and now they're actually starting to take them seriously. You take them seriously and take it seriously in your own life. Okay, let's move on. This is also a very important piece of news, again, with something floating around in the background that could explode into a major conflagration. So we had some breaking news last night that we didn't have an element for, but let me go ahead and read it to you. President Biden is weighing deploying thousands of troops to Eastern Europe and to the Baltics. The president is considering

deploying warships and aircraft to NATO allies in what would be a major shift from its restrained stance on Ukraine. Biden is considering deploying thousands of U.S. troops, aircraft, NATO allies in the Baltics and Eastern Europe in an expansion of U.S. military involvement amid mounting fears of a Russian incursion into Ukraine. Now, as they point out here, it would be a major pivot for the Biden administration, which has specifically not taken this tactic ahead of any move by Putin at the fear of escalation. And actually, this is part of the problem that we have in this entire thing, which is that I have noticed it is tremendously difficult for many Americans

to not put themselves in the minds of the other person. And I think that this is the single most important thing when you're considering international affairs, because you're like, oh, Putin is being a bully, et cetera. I don't even disagree with any of that. You have to try and understand what exactly this paranoia, fear, and aggression has come from, which is we said we would not expand NATO into Ukraine and the Baltic states. And we promptly expanded NATO into the Baltic states, and we invited Ukraine and said specifically that we intend for Ukraine and Georgia in order to enter NATO,

which is what triggered that 2008 incursion of Russia into Georgia, right? We said we wouldn't do it. Then we did it. And we basically triggered not only the rise of Putin and the, you know, kind of revanchist Russian foreign policy by validating their worst concerns about the West and the fall of the Soviet Union. So that is driving their concern. Now, on our side, we seem to have an inability of understanding why exactly expansion of the U.S. nuclear umbrella all the way up to the borders of the former Soviet Union and now currently Russia would make them paranoid. And it especially does not help whenever we do and consider and float options like this. These are major things up the escalatory ladder. Now, in terms of what the rest of the Western world is

doing, it's actually totally split. And that's part of the issue. The continent itself that we're supposed to defend, Crystal, can't really agree on what they want. So the Brits are very much out in front of this. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The British say that Moscow is plotting to install a pro-Russian leader in Ukraine, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, somebody who has long agreed with Putin. People should also remember Ukraine was once part of the USSR. There is a large Russified part of their population who speaks Russian, identify as ethnically Russian. It's not as clear cut as, you know, we might make it seem. But the biggest concern here around the escalation ladder on the U.S. side, both the Biden option, but also

former Secretary of State, or sorry, current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken interviewed on CNN over the weekend, where he keeps the door open for direct U.S. military involvement. Let's take a listen. Do you see any scenario in which more U.S. service members become involved here? One of the things that we've been very clear about, besides the massive economic, financial consequences that would befall Russia if it further commits aggression against Ukraine, is the ongoing, continued buildup of defense capacity in Ukraine and equally continuing to build up NATO's defensive capacities, including on the so-called eastern flank, the countries near Russia. And the alliance is looking at very practical and important measures

that it would take in the event of further Russian aggression. So there you go, Crystal, opening the doors to thousands of U.S. troops. Now it's being floated in the New York Times. It's very much a possibility, and it would almost certainly escalate tensions within the region. That's exactly right. You could see how this could quickly spiral. Because, I mean, the Biden administration's thing of this is like, okay, well, if he's going to invade in some way, we are going to do what he does not want us to do,

which is to place more troops in the region closer to them. But you can see how that significantly escalates the tension. Then what do they do in response? Then they go in. Right. And then what are we forced to do? Because we've got all this tough talk now. They're going to pay and we're not going to let it happen and all of these things. So where does it end? And that's the thing that is, you know, very uncomfortable. And look, let's be clear, the only people who really are interested in some sort of like, you know, boots on the ground in Ukraine from a U.S. perspective are all within 30 miles of where we sit right now. This is not something the American people are interested in. And to

your point, it's not. We're way beyond where anyone in Europe really is at this point in terms of how aggressive they want to be here, even the UK. So the other sort of like big show that the Biden administration has made is removing some of the families of diplomats at the Ukrainian embassy. The Europeans are out front saying we don't need this is too alarming. The Ukrainians were like, hey, this is crazy. They came out last night and then were like, why did you do that? Exactly right. They said that

U.S. move to withdraw diplomats' families was premature. The EU is not following the U.S. in withdrawing its diplomats. Top European diplomat Joseph Borrell says there is no need to dramatize the situation while talks with Russia continue.

So there's a lot of... My read of this is Biden made his very bumbling comments at the presser last week, which I actually kind of liked because he was like, if Russia does a little bit of an invasion, we'll see what we do with this.

But there was such tremendous backlash from the Beltway media. How can you say that? You've greenlit an invasion. Now it seems to me that they are going over the top to signal, no, we're really tough and we really mean it and we'll go to war if we need to and we're going to take out the diplomats' families and all of that stuff. That seems to be what is really happening right now. With regards to the UK, the other thing you have to think of in terms of their own domestic political considerations is UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is in a lot of trouble right now.

Tons of scandals there in terms of, you know, they had these lockdown measures. Typical hypocrisy. Meanwhile, he's having people over for drinks every Friday, which also classic Boris Johnson. I support that, Boris, but I just wish he'd let everybody else do it. Exactly. You're going to do it. You've got to let everybody do it. So anyway, he's in a lot of trouble.

So the other sort of political consideration is, oh, are they floating this and also turning up the heat and the pressure to sort of distract from what's going on from him. Domestic, I mean, this is a typical play that world leaders have long pursued of when they're in domestic trouble, you can use some sort of shiny foreign object and conflict to distract from that and take the pressure off of yourself. That could be what's going on there with the Brits. The other thing is, and remember, we have to consider this, which is that the argument for getting as involved as possible here would be we have to defend the integrity of continental Europe. Here's the problem.

The continental Europeans don't really agree. In fact, the Germans right now are blocking other NATO allies from providing lethal aid to Ukraine. Why? Because they want Russian gas. And for some idiotic reason, they have turned away from nuclear power, making themselves even more dependent on that state. They are, without question, the largest continental European power within both the military and economic perspective in the NATO alliance. So whenever that is the case, and they themselves don't want to get involved, you also should consider the domestic populations of the

actual European nations. Put this up there on the screen, which is that go ahead and take a look at recent polling data from actual NATO countries. 53% of the French oppose going to war if a fellow NATO member is attacked. So not even Ukraine, 60% of Germans, likewise. And as Sorab Amari points out, Ukraine is not even a member of the NATO alliance. So they don't have Article 5 protection. Now, look, is it true that the West did engage in some promises with Ukraine in terms of not necessarily guaranteeing their security, but saying that if they gave up nuclear weapons, that they would have some sort of— Listen, sanctions and all that I think is fine,

or at the very least some sort of backlash by the continental European powers. I think wars of territorial conquest are absolutely bad. But increasing thousands of U.S. troops into Europe, and again, for a country of which there is no strategic bent, and I don't like to talk this way, but it's, look, this is geopolitics. Ukraine is in the Russian sphere of influence. It has been for 500 years. It was part of the USSR as recently, you know, what, 1953 or whatever. It was part of that country. It's been part of the greater Russian empire for on and off for a long time. In terms of its economic relations with the United States, not really that big. It's not like they ship us anything in particular. They have much

more of an interest, the Russians do, in terms of keeping it inside their influence than we do. We have nothing majorly strategic at stake here. So it doesn't make a lot of sense in order to risk nuclear war. And I think that that is the terms of which we should discuss. This is real life. This is not a joke. And this First World War and the escalatory ladders of not understanding where the other side is coming from. The other point here I would make is there's a lot of saber-riding in D.C. about, oh, you know, we got to make sure that, you know, we appear tough. It's like, to what end? Right. To what end? Where does that lead? Where does that end? I actually think Biden's comments, the ones that sort of fell out of his mouth and everybody jumped on him for it, the press, that probably is where he actually is, that he doesn't really

want to do anything too crazy. If Russian does just the tip kind of invasion that he does. But we've seen before the way that commander in chiefs get pulled into this. We've seen the incredible powers of manipulation of, sorry to use the term, the deep state here in Washington. And I think that's exactly the process that is playing out right now. They pull you in. They say, you've got to appear tough. Of course, we're not going to actually do it, but you got to say you're going to send the troops in. You got to pull the diplomats' families down. You got to ratchet up the pressure. You have to make

them understand that you're going to be tough. Well, once you've said all of those things and you've gone out on that limb, then what? And that's how presidents get pulled into conflicts. As you said, this is incredibly dangerous to nuclear powers, butting head in this old school throwback Cold War kind of way. Why in the world would we care more about policing Europe's borders than the Europeans do? They don't care. I mean, that's their problem. That's ultimately what it comes down to. And that's the op ed you were talking about. So is it really that crazy for Biden and for the American people to groan at a supposed duty to police Europe's borders when Europeans have been this indifferent this long. No, it is actually the height of sanity. So again, all of these rhetorical feints, even if they are meant just to be rhetorical feints, they get you out on a limb where then you look like a fool

if you don't follow through. And then what does Putin do? And then they again tell you, President Biden, you're going to look like a fool if you don't also respond to this aggression. And by the way, we've just gotten out of Afghanistan. So the hawks are itching for some other conflict to pull the American people into. And that's what we're seeing play out right now.

Of course, they've already sent lethal aid to Ukraine. This is the U.S. embassy tweeted this out, showing off the first Biden lethal aid shipments to arrive. This came in very quickly. In total, Washington has issued over $2.7 billion in what they call defensive aid going back to 2014 with the latest commitment of $650 million more being pledged last year. So, you know, they're, again, saber rattling, showing how tough they are, showing how serious they are. We also covered last week how the CIA has been training a potential insurgency for years now, started under Obama, amped up under Trump, ramped up even further under Biden. So this is the type of dangerous situation that we are facing right now. Never forget the media has no interest in telling you.

They want you just to think Putin is this just operating from pure evil, that they have no national interest. They never want to explain to you the perspective of U.S. adversaries. And that's not even to justify that person or say it's fine, it's good, whatever. But if you want to be serious about thinking through these issues, you have to understand the way that your opponents are also thinking through this issue. And that is where the U.S. media is just total propaganda. And, you know, effectively by leaving that side out of the equation is effectively lying to you about what is really going on. Yeah, I mean, I don't know any network out there that will tell you that George Kennan, the father of containment, who invented the entire Cold War strategy against the Russians, predicted that NATO expansion into the Baltic areas, into Eastern Europe, would trigger another conflict with Russia and was rubbing it in the face of the fall of the Soviet Union and would lead to the rise of revanchist,

very paranoid people within Russia, aka Putin and the people around him. Putin has said that the fall of the Soviet Union, I think, is like the greatest human tragedy that ever occurred. I mean, you have to understand the mindset of which that they were raised in, and you also have to understand of greater Russian history.

They have always viewed continental defense in depth. And by that, I mean other people. And I know it's difficult to talk about this because there are real lives at stake. If you're Ukrainian, I'm sorry. I don't think it's fair that you get used as pawns in a great continental game. But that's how great geopolitics works. Russia is a nuclear power. That's how they view both the Baltic states and Ukraine. They see it as much more of a stronger security interest, both in terms of being able to remind the globe that they are still a global player with nukes that can influence global events, and also saying, hey, don't get any big ideas. You think you can't come over here and just continue to expand in our

neighborhood and just pay zero price for it. So the history of U.S. policy post that fall of the Cold War has made it so that, look, we intervened in Kosovo in the traditional, you know, USSR sphere of influence. We expanded NATO. We invited Ukraine and Georgia into the NATO alliance. I mean, this was seen with no—there was no controversy about that in Washington. Zero. Everybody here was like, oh, yeah, it's the best thing ever. Rubber stamp.

Boom. Russia go ahead and invade Georgia. It was like a slap in the face of history returning. And I think that people need to understand that history did not begin in 1991. It's been going on for a long time. The last thing I want to say here in terms of how totally psychotic some of the people who are treated very seriously here in this town are when it comes to these sorts of issues. In that same New York Times article where they're talking about, all right, Biden's weighing sending thousands more troops. They say another former top Pentagon official for Russia policy, Jim Townsend, said that even that proposal didn't go far enough. Quote, it's too little too late to deter Putin, Mr. Townsend said in an email.

If the Russians do invade Ukraine in a few weeks, those 5,000 should just be a down payment for a much larger U.S. and allied force presence. Quote, Western Europe should once again be an armed camp. That's the way people who are being taken seriously on this. That's the sort of things that they're thinking. Even these thousands of troops escalation that Biden is contemplating, that that's not enough, that, you know, if Putin invades and we're going to have to do way more than that, Western Europe should once again be an armed camp. Those are the sorts of words and thoughts and ideological direction

that should absolutely terrify you. That's nuts. Sorry, one last thing. You guys will remember Alexander Vindman, the heroic colonel who sparked Ukrainegate and all that.

This guy has been all over cable news the last 24 hours where he has been pronouncing, quote, war is coming to Europe. He says that the U.S. is going to get involved whether they like it or not. Literally, war is coming to Europe. The U.S. was sucked into the European wars twice. Here is my new op-ed on how we mitigate the risks to U.S. national security.

He is all but saying that war is inevitable on the continent. That news to the Europeans, but these are the people who are elevated to the worst, highest parts and heroically made amongst a democratic base and amongst MSNBC and all these people who take their word as gospel. He stood up to the big bad Trump. And now this nutcase wants us to have a full-blown war on the European continent with Russia over Ukraine. That was not even a possibility in the U.S. at the height of the Cold War in 1952. If you had said, yeah, we're going to go to war over Ukraine, Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles and all those would have been like, are you nuts? That's part of the USSR. And yet here we are, 2022, and it's somehow gotten even crazier.

What a world. Speaking of neocons, Dan Crenshaw with some very interesting new comments. So before we play you exactly what he said, you will recall that Unusual Wales has put out that report of trades by members of Congress, which show that Representative Dan Crenshaw has got the fifth largest return in all of Congress. Now, Crenshaw had not yet been pressed on this report up until recently, where he actually appeared on a podcast. And I want to give a special shout-out, actually, to this interviewer, because he did not let it go. He pressed him over and over again.

This is from the All-American Savage show. And when Crenshaw appeared, the interviewer not only presses him on why you would have to know why it looks bad, he actually gets Crenshaw to disclose some of the details on that trades and all but admit that, yeah, you know, I understand why people make it looks bad. But the reason why it should be allowed is because us as members of Congress, we don't get paid enough. You see, we're living a very poor life, a very paltry lifestyle. I'm not exaggerating. That's literally what he says. Let's take a listen.

There is one topic that I definitely want to get straight from the horse's mouth on this one. It wasn't very long ago that Nancy Pelosi was asked a question in regards to can members, sitting members of Congress, or should they be allowed to have direct involvement in the trading, in the stock market and things such as that? And she said, yes, it's a capitalist society. She supports that. And there was an article that was just published about yourself. I'm pretty sure you're probably aware of this. It basically talked about, I'd seen some turning point people posting about this and said, this is coming from Texas Signal saying Dan C Crenshaw, stock trading yielded the fifth highest return in Congress, basically pointing out that your campaign had received a donation from Boeing. They had lobbied, things such as that. Where do you stand on the number

twofold question? Do you believe that sitting members of Congress should be allowed to trade in the stock market, even though you kind of have direct insight and somewhat control over how that flow goes and which government-favorite corporations you get where I'm going. Let's start with that one first. Where do you stand on that? I mean, I think it'd be fine if you wanted to ban individual stock trading. Notice I said individual stocks. Right.

Of course, whatever. As opposed to what? As opposed to ETFs, indexes. I'm kind of neutral on it. If you want only millionaires and billionaires to run for Congress, then keep making sure that we can't raise our pay, that we can't get a housing stipend, that we have to just spend or pay rent in two different places. That's fine if that's what you want to support, but just keep in mind that no one will run for Congress because you have no way to better yourself. You have no way to better

yourself. Last time I checked, these guys' job was not to better themselves, it was to better the lives of the people that they represent. And just to give the lives of the people that they represent. How about that? And just to give you an idea, these people make $174,000 per year. Whenever Crenshaw and these people complain about this, what they really mean is I cannot afford the lifestyle of all of the rich people of whom I comport myself with as a member of Congress. You can pay just fine, by the way, on $174,000 per year if you live in a modest house of your district

and if you were to rent a cheap hotel or whatever here in Washington. I have friends who were staffers on Capitol Hill who were really pissed off by that because they contacted me and said, you know, the congressman and all people who work on Capitol Hill make many multiples less of this and are expected to live in Washington, D.C. And they made it just completely fine. So little.

They make like, and this is not a joke, guys, like $28,000 starting salary on Capitol Hill. Which is a real problem because then, yeah, basically the only people who can afford to do it are people who, and live in Washington – are people whose parents can help finance them here. And so it does create this pipeline of just basically affluent staffers and very hard for working class people to make it ultimately in that world. It's absurd and it's disgusting and it's so revealing. They don't see themselves as public servants. They're here to enrich themselves. They're here to fatten their employment prospects.

I mean, that's what they're all angling for. Like, if you want to understand what Kyrsten Sinema is doing, for example, she doesn't care about, like, winning the next Senate seat. She cares about how much she's going to cash in when she gets out of here. And that is not in any way unique. And you see them using whatever they can while they're in office to cash in while they are still in office, as Dan Crenshaw has done extraordinarily effectively. Fifth best, apparently, among him and all of his colleagues. So, yeah, it tells you so much about the mindset. And here's another thing, because, you know, a particular interest of mine has been getting more working class people into Congress because, look, it doesn't solve anything, everything, but having more people who live and know normal Americans would definitely benefit us in terms of the types

of policies that they would ultimately pursue rather than seeing themselves in this elite social set that they actually are in touch with the real lives and real concerns of ordinary Americans would be a wonderful thing. There has been zero improvement in terms of what class people are coming from when they represent us in Congress and state houses around the country, even as gender and racial diversity has improved. And it has nothing to do with the salary not being enough. You take an ordinary working class person and say, hey, you get to Congress, you're going to make $170K. They think that was a pretty good deal. The problem comes from the fact that you have, before you can even walk in, you know, get through

the gates of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, they want to see that you either are personally rich or that your social circle is personally rich. Then if you can somehow manage to raise through grassroots support enough money for the parties to take you seriously, then you face overwhelming contempt from the elites in the party and the donor class who think that if you're not, you know, an Ivy League educated whatever, then you can't possibly understand the problems of the nation to be able to effectively run and serve in office. That's why you end up with so little class diversity. There's all these gatekeeping mechanisms to keep working class people

from running successfully for Congress. It has nothing to do with making 170K once you get there. So extraordinarily revealing comments about what these people actually think they're doing here in Washington. Another thing I want to point out is that when they say you have no way to better yourself, you could better yourself by doing what the rest of us working stiffs do.

Or Crystal and I did. You can start your own company. You could. You can leave Congress tomorrow. You can go and work for somebody if you really have the skills. Here's the truth. Most of them have no actual skills.

They have no ability to make any real money out in the private sector. Their only value add is here in D.C., trying to rig the systems of power, working on behalf of the powerful. Here's the other thing I love. During that interview, this all-American savage, again, I give a lot of credit to this guy because he was like, well, okay, how much did you make? And Crenshaw goes, look, it was only $20,000. Only $20,000? Okay, I just looked it up. He makes $174,000 a year.

That is 11% of his total take of the year 2020. That's actually a lot of money. Then he presses him and goes, did you buy individual stocks? You bought Boeing, right? And Crenshaw was like, yeah, you know, like $2,000. And so All-American Savage goes again. He goes, well, have you ever met with any Boeing lobbyists before?

And he's like, look, I'm sure they've been present at my events. And he goes, can you understand then and see why people would be suspicious? And Crenshaw goes, look, they don't tell us anything. He's like, he goes, I think you guys dramatically overestimate how, you know, the amount of insider knowledge and all this. I'm serious. It's too long to play it all. I really want everybody to go and listen to this full interview because Crenshaw is so full of it. A, some sob story about he's too

poor to afford living in two places. No, no, no, no. You can afford it just fine, just not the way that you want to live large. And you don't have enough skills to actually do anything in the private sector. That's the reason why they want to get paid more. And then B, just writing it off as if it's some public conspiracy theory to think that these people who lie for a living would not lie to us and ask them to, they want us to trust them and their intentions. Hell no, Congressman. Remove all the barriers. And to your point, this is so dramatically popular that even Nancy Pelosi, the queen of trading herself, has now had to fold and say, look, if the members of Congress want to do it, then I support it. Let's take a listen.

So when people talk about, well, somebody might do this and somebody, I think I trust our members. If, in fact, we should have severe penalties for delay and reporting on stock, then do that. I've said to the House Administration Committee, review all the bills that are coming in and see which ones, where the support is in our caucus. I think there are two letters, each has like 14 members signing it so far. Maybe more will come, but that's what we have seen. But I do come down always in favor of trusting our members. Now, if the impression that is given by some that somebody is doing insider trade, that's a justice department issue. That's a justice department issue. And that has no place in

any of this. But to give a blanket attitude of we can't do this and we can't do that because we can't be trusted, I just don't buy into that. But if members want to do that, I'm okay with that. Oh, yeah, I still don't support it. But if they want to do it, I'm okay with it. Maybe I'm okay with it. Yeah, because you're retiring. That's why you're okay. Yeah, I mean, it is like this shouldn't count for progress,

but it does. No, it is. You can force their hands. Her previous comments were like, no, it's the free market, and people should be able to engage in that. I love her framing, though, were like, no, it's the free market and people should be able to engage in that. I love her framing, though, of like, I trust the members of Congress. We don't trust the members of Congress.

It's not really about whether you trust them. It's about whether we trust them. And the bottom line is the numbers don't lie. And this is why Unusual Whales has been so important. Because by doing the work of crunching the numbers, you can see, oh, turns out you guys outperformed the market. Oh, turns out you outperformed some of the, like, you know, most highly, like, the people who are supposed to be experts at this. Turns out you all somehow are better at it. Interesting.

We got to see how, yeah, oh, you're on a significant defense committee and then you're buying stock in Boeing and Raytheon and these other things. Or, oh, you claim publicly to be some big tech critic. Meanwhile, you're making money off when the tech stocks go up. Or, oh, hey, you had a bunch of like an insider briefing on the pandemic and what was coming and then you dumped a bunch of stocks. That's kind of weird. Why'd you do that? We have just been able to see through the transparency and through the analytical data crunching of people like Unusual Whales exactly what's going on. And so, listen, if you're not insider trading, if this is all on the up and up, then you shouldn't be concerned about this. Listen, if we could ban trading and get somebody like Crenshaw to retire, that's a public service in my opinion.

Well, that's the other thing. Go ahead. Go better yourself. Be happy to. How much would we see of how many people would retire once they were no longer able to better themselves through using insider knowledge to play the stock market? It would at least root out a few pretenders who are not public servants at all, who are just there ultimately to cash in and they can leave their office and go cash in as lobbyists even quicker, which is a whole other problem that we also need to deal with. That's right. Okay, speaking of rigged systems, this is the craziest story that I've seen in a long time. Thank you to the Anti-Work subreddit for flagging it for us. Let's go ahead and put that up on the screen, giving them credit for popularizing this. So here's what it says.

Judge allows healthcare system to prevent at-will employees from accepting better offers at a competing hospital by granting an injunction to prevent them from starting new positions on Monday. I'm going to butcher the name. I'm sorry, Appleton, Wisconsin. Autogamy. I think it's Outagamey. Outagamey County Circuit Court Judge Mark McGinnis has granted ThetaCare's request to temporarily block seven of its employees who had applied for and accepted jobs at As under any obligation to stay there for a certain period of time. And one of the employees who approached them with the chance to match the offers wrote in a letter that they were told the long-term expense to ThetaCare was not worth the short-term cost. No counteroffer was made.

So this is from the Post and the Crescent. It's local news. What they point to is that that this is a big radiology team. These interventional radiologists are regularly available to treat patients. We really need them to stay. All of this. Okay. If that's the case, then pay them more. It's very simple.

They won't do that. They won't counteroffer them whatsoever. And these workers are doing what is our God-given American right, which is to go and get paid more if somebody else is offering you more, especially if it's legally codified as at-will employment, which usually works to work. Think about that. Force you to work. Now they've come to some agreement where they have to do some sort of timeshare and they have to keep working at the other place. I don't know what country I'm living in where somebody can force you to work somewhere which you are not legally obligated to work. It's completely nutso. Well, think of the typical libertarian argument is, hey, if you don't like your job, it's a free country. Go get another one. They did. And then a judge blocks them from leaving. I read everything I could find on this. Every article I could find, I watched ThetaCare, which is the hospital group that's trying to keep these employees against their will. I watched them explain their side and I cannot possibly wrap my head around it.

Their argument is, hey, we've got this 11 person team and what they allege is that the other hospital went out and recruited seven of their people and hired them away from them. That's not illegal. That's number one. It's not illegal. This happens all the time. You're allowed to recruit employees. Number two, the workers and the other hospital system says, no, we didn't. There was one person who got a job here. Other people, you know, probably talked to that person. We're like, oh, it seems like you got a pretty good deal. They applied for other openings and they decided they were getting a better deal. So they left. What's more, as you point out, ThetaCare, the hospital that has, rather than offering them more money to stay, instead

gone to court and found a sympathetic judge to require them to stay, they had a chance to offer more money to make a counterproposal, and they did not want to. So yes, of course, when it is the employer who wants to fire people casually for whatever reason, oh, downsizing, sorry, pandemic came, sorry, we don't need you, et cetera, et cetera. We want to beef up our profit margins. That's never a problem. You can't, as an individual person, go to a judge and be like, listen, this is really a tough situation for me. But here, the hospital is able to go to the judge and say, hey, this is a tough situation for us.

And the courts intervene. I can't wrap my head around it. It is the craziest thing. And it just really exposes the lie that this is in any way a free market. The moment that labor gets even a little bit, tiny bit of an upper hand in a situation, then the powers that be have to come in and squash that and make sure it's still going to all turn out all right for the bosses. It is a completely insane situation. And the specifics of the deal, they say the judge granted injunction says they have to make available to ThetaCare one invasive radiology technician and one registered nurse of the individuals resigning

their employment with ThetaCare to join Ascension, that's the other one, with their support to include on-call responsibilities, or they have to cease the hiring of the individuals referenced until Theta Care has been able to hire adequate staff to replace those departing team members. So, again. Do we have a state-run healthcare system or not? Right. And these are not employees like in

entertainment a lot. Sometimes you're like you're under contract and you have to stay a certain period of time. No, no, no, no, no. There's nothing like that whatsoever. They just found a new job and now they're not being allowed to leave and they're being forced to work at this company

against their will. Crazy situation. And they acknowledge. So the attorneys for the people, the actual employees, said that ThetaCare had weeks to give them a counteroffer, to make alternative staffing arrangements, to make and plan for what was happening. And what I think is the most disingenuous part of this is that the healthcare industry is using COVID as an excuse. They're like, hey, look, COVID is ravaging our county. The healthcare system is at the brink. We need our workers here or the community will suffer.

And some judge seems to have, you know, caved. Here's the other thing. These, as I understand it, our hospitals are making bank right now because they get reimbursed for all the COVID care patients or whatever by the government and the insurance companies per the agreements that we have all signed and through the CARES Act, etc. And they are flush with more money than ever. As I understand it, the private health hospital system is going gangbusters in terms of cash. So they have the money if they want in order to pay these guys more. You could do it tomorrow. That's the whole point of at will, right? It's supposed to be a beneficial relationship, so they claim, on both sides. But you get a judge enforcer to stop your employees from going to go work for somewhere else. My only fear is this is a contagion

and it's going to spread because once you set this type of standard, think about the healthcare workers right now who are trying to make their lives better, trying to go make some more money and have had hell for two years, right? Well, now, getting totally screwed over. It's terrible. It's indentured servitude. Yeah, no, it is. I mean, that's basically, this is like court-enforced

indentured servitude. Absolutely crazy situation and I just can't see in any sane world what the legal rationale here is whatsoever. So stand with you, workers, I'm with you. We'll keep you guys updated if there's anything to say. All right, guys. Also wanted to bring you some eyebrow-raising comments from our press secretary, Jen Psaki, who I found out, you guys know I was a competitive swimmer in college.

I found out she was also a competitive swimmer in college, which kind of irritated me. But I did look up her times and I was faster. Sorry, Jen. Anyway, now that I've got my meat girl moment out of the way. So she went on The View and she was asked, hey, for people who are profoundly disappointed that, you know, you guys have basically failed miserably to do anything recently. This is the way I phrased it. It's not the way they phrased it. What should they do? Take a listen to what she had to say. So my advice to everyone out there who's frustrated, sad, angry, pissed off,

feel those emotions, go to kickboxing class, have a margarita, do whatever you need to do this weekend, and then wake up on Monday morning, we gotta keep fighting. And what that means, Lindsay, is we have to keep talking to members about federal legislation. That's essential. That's something that can be permanent, that can make sure people's rights are protected. But we also need to make sure people are educated in states across the country about what their rights are, how they can vote, when they can vote, how to request an absentee ballot. There's a lot we need to do on that front, and that's going to rely on the energy and the anger of that activism as well. There's so much here. I mean, first of all, there's the immediate shifting of blame effectively to like, you guys got to get out

there and do the work to make all this stuff happen, as if you aren't the representative of the most powerful person in the country and in some ways the world. That's number one. Number two, your assumption that the people that you're speaking to have the kind of money and leisure time to partake in the activities that you're suggesting also speaks to who you think is in the Democratic base, accurately, I'd say, at this point. Oh, go, you know, go to an expensive kickboxing class. Have a margarita, relax, and then get back out there and fight. It's pretty revealing that this is what she thinks and that people have like free cash laying around to do whatever they want to do when you all have failed so miserably in part because you haven't dealt with the economic issues that have made

life so difficult for so many people, so many people. Any little bump that they got during the pandemic from the super dull unemployment, from the direct stimulus that went into their accounts, that has been spent down and more. Savings rate is less than it was pre-pandemic. Bank account levels are lower. So folks out there in the countryside don't have a lot of just free cash to, you know, hang out this weekend and engage in the sort of leisure activities that you're expecting. I would more just make it like more of a meta point and just show you that, like, I know this woman because they're all the same. Most of them here. Yeah. They're all like that.

Just the pure, you know, distillation of wine mom liberalism. That's what it looks like. Margaritas, kickboxingboxing classes all of this once again you know i want people to be happy and live the way that they want but the fact that she thinks a that that is the base of the democratic party is very revealing though yeah i mean there's not a lot of working class black people hanging out at the rumble studio getting their kickboxing on right or going Or going to some fancy Mexican restaurant in here at town, which is not even that good, by the way, which serves some

ridiculous margarita with some mezcal or whatever from, oh, it's been aged, you know. I'm just giving you a taste of the lifestyle that these people engage in on a daily basis. Kind of fits with the whole Crenshaw thinking he can't live on $170K. That's exactly right, which is you put those together and you have elitism in its core, which is that that is who they think they are talking to.

And I started turning it around in my head. And in a weird way, she told on herself, which is that the people who do care the most about the fights that they are engaging in, voting rights and BBB, they are the elite class. You know, they're the donor class who care the most. As you've said, you know, you can care about voting rights if you want, but go check every recent public poll. Nobody gives a damn right now. People want the economy to work. They want the price of gas to drop. They want stuff to be cheaper. You know what? Seventy something percent of people don't want Joe Biden to run again because they don't feel as if he's meeting their needs. And she speaks in the cultural lexicon of the people who do care, the 20 percent or whatever, who care the most about this stuff because the rest of the issues

that affect the lives of the American people are not represented here and their views. That is how I see it as that clip tells them, tells you everything about who these people are. I think that Sirota said it well when we talked to him last week, that basically voting rights without economic rights are completely meaningless. Yeah, I agree with that. What does it matter if you have the technical right to vote when the only people you're allowed to vote for just continue the same policies of the rich? That is not real democracy.

That's a farce. Yeah, 100 million people didn't vote, Crystal, in 2020. 100 million. That's like cosplay democracy. And we know. I mean, this is the data and the statistics back it up. Representatives here, by and large, they pursue the interest of their wealthy donors, not the general public. So, you know, just having voting rights alone, it's not a solution for anything. And oh, by the way, if you're worried about Republicans stealing the next election, you can rest easy because they're on track to win it fair and square without having to rig a damn thing or change a single law. So maybe focus on the things that would actually prove to people that you have an agenda that's going to better their lives from a material perspective.

Maybe focus on proving to people that you actually are focused on their concerns, that you're doing everything you can to make sure that it's not just, you know, their wages going up except when you take into account inflation and then, oh, by the way, you're more screwed than you've ever been. How about you focus on some of those things and fight like hell and put the margaritas and the kickboxing classes aside until you get some things done for the American people? Yeah, the margarita thing and, you know, all of it together, you know, people just don't care what this president or his representatives are engaging with. And everything they do is just classic. I don't even know how to describe it, like cringe diplomacy. I mean, I don't know if you saw this. Jen Psaki cringe diplomacy. I mean, I don't know if you saw this, Jen Psaki and them had a signs that they were holding up saying, I stand with Ukraine and tweeting it out. Like, are you not an active participant in the situation? Like, what is this?

Just social media, like diplomacy? You may seem, I may seem as if I'm being nitpicky and all this, but I look at this as representative of a broader problem with our elite class, both Crenshaw and her together. Very clearly either out for themselves or just disregarding the vast majority of the people in this country that they actually lead. That's the problem. There are actual leaders. I know that's pathetic, but they are. 300 and some million people who are being led and spoken on behalf of by her. And she shows us clearly that she doesn't speak for the most of us.

Or they're blame shifting. And, you know, it's not their fault. It's the fault of people who didn't fight hard enough. The activists who didn't fight. The Obama thing. The grassroots who didn't fight hard enough. That's, you know, the blame all lies with them. And when Democrats get trounced in the midterms to, you know, a party that stands for literally nothing except for continuing to

shill for corporate America, they're going to have a thousand excuses lined up for why it's never, ever their fault. So somehow she manages in this one little short clip to signal all of those things. And it is incredible to watch. Thank you, Jen Psaki, for telling us who you are. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, there is perhaps no more cringe event in this world than the World Economic Forum, which was held annually at Davos, Switzerland. It has inspired some great memes online with their outlandish costumes. Often its agenda is mocked. Now, my personal favorite being this world billionaires dressing up as refugees to try and get a day in the life feel for it. And then often their panels give us plenty to ridicule too. At its heart though, the World Economic Forum is a deeply sinister effort. There was a time,

not that long ago, that at least the world's billionaire elite tried to hide their machinations behind closed doors. They were really weird clubs, there were clandestine meetings, behind-the-scenes calls with world leaders, but it was only in the mid-2000s and the 1990s, with the codification of neoliberal policy in the White House and across Europe, that they felt comfortable enough to come out in the open and not only push policy globally, but also be naked in their intentions. That's all that I could really think about when I saw one of the most stunning clips yet to emerge from Davos. Let's take a listen. At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us that the good news is the elite

across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted that elite less. So we can leave, but... Wow. Let that sink in. The good news is they trust each other more. The bad news is that all of us trust them less. It is really stunning to hear it verbalized that way, given that I would reverse the good and the bad news. But it's useful nonetheless. Globalization has brought a ruling global elite who are much more comfortable with each other than with their own countrymen.

And this begets a global effort to make the system continue to work for them and work less for all of us. All of this occurred at this year's World Economic Conference under the auspices of Klaus Schaub. Now, the leader who famously last year released The Great Reset and is now out with a sequel, The Great Narrative. Now, you might ask, what is The Great Narrative? Well, like The Great Reset, it is nebulous, but as they define it, it reads, quote, a collaborative effort of the world's leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives, co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive,

and sustainable vision for our collective future. Hmm, a whole lot of nothing, but enough there to parse. Collective future, co-create a narrative. In other words, a top-down nothing. But enough there to parse. Collective future. Co-create a narrative. In other words, a top-down effort by the Davos set to specifically set the agenda and the outlook for the world as they did with the outbreak of globalization in the 1990s. At its heart, the Davos Project, the Great Reset, and the Great Narrative are anti-democratic efforts to push back against nationalist and populist outbreaks across Europe, Asia, here in the United States, and in South America. It is an effort to regain the control over policy and democratic consensus that they had in the 1990s and the mid-2000s. And here's the thing, we absolutely cannot let that happen. Because while that clip went viral, there were other moments of the

conference that did not get as much attention. Take this one, for example. I just would like to highlight what you said about the European Chips Act, because it's an important step to create the physical brain for digitalization and to have it located to a certain extent in Europe. Uh, what? Digitalization of the physical brain and have it based in Europe? When most people talk about the need for more semiconductors, like me, it's so you can buy more cars, have more control over your future. And in fact, if you read the press release for the Davos European Chips Act, that's mostly what they say. But when Klaus Schwab says it, he says we need it for the digitization of the physical brain. As I have said in a previous monologue, billionaires and their

set are great at one specific thing. That's how they became billionaires. But for some reason, many of them think that mastery of that qualifies them to speak on everything. It's part of that reason that so many of them are eccentric and believe in some really weird stuff. I guess that's fine for them. Good for them for getting rich. But at least here we still have some democratic control. And the problem is that our elites set, as most typified by Davos, are so completely divorced from the wants and the needs of the common people that they are reporting to in these conferences. So to come up with the agenda and then try to force down upon us, even though we have rejected all of them, we have now rejected globalization

now in some form in separate elections from here in the U.S. to Britain to India. But let us not forget who remains the greatest winner of so-called globalization, and that's China. Now, for those of you who have missed it here, how lovingly and endearingly Klaus Schwab speaks of Chinese President Xi Jinping when he opened the Davos conference, literally. Take a listen. China has made significant economic and social achievements under your leadership. In the first three quarters of 2021, China's economy grew by over 9%. You have achieved a historic goal to become a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Mr. President, I strongly echo your remarks in 2017 that mankind has made progress by surmounting difficulties and when encountering difficulties, we should join hands and rise to the challenge. I believe this is the best time for leaders to come together and work jointly for the world to become more inclusive, more sustainable, and more prosperous.

In a lot of ways, Klaus Schaab was right. COVID-19 kind of was the Great Reset. It put things into perspective for millions of people. Some people decided that they simply hate their jobs and they're not going back. Many others quitting, taking new ones for higher wages. Many people said, screw it, I'm staying home, spending more time with my kid. A lot of us, myself included, you took stock of what really matters and you try to reclaim your own destiny. The key part, though, is that it isn't the reset Mr. Sch Schwab wanted at all. It is counter to the so-called great narrative that is critical to him and his set remaining in power.

And it reveals to us that the structures that they have put into place on the world economic system need to be ripped down and actually reset. When the elites feel so comfortable saying the quiet part out loud, it is time to get some new elites. And hopefully we are on our way there. I mean, can you believe that clip where she's like, well, the good news is we tried. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, guys, billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank guy Mark Cuban has a new entrepreneurial play, and it's actually kind of interesting. So, Cuban is pushing forward a new online pharmacy called the Cost Plus Drug Pharmacy, aimed at providing consumers with a lower price on common prescription drugs. Basic concept is fairly simple. It's kind of right there in the name. Cuban's company plans to charge consumers cost plus a 15% profit margin on a whole range of generic drugs. As a licensed pharmaceutical wholesaler, they say they can skip out on all the middlemen costs. They're also reportedly building a pharmaceutical factory in Dallas to produce some of these generics themselves. That construction is slated to be complete by the end of this year. Now, if Cuban's able to provide drug savings to the public, that would be a genuine service. Americans pay two to three times more

for prescription drugs than other rich nations, and the markup on some of these generics is insanely outrageous. While most of the outrageous price gouging on American consumers actually occurs in brand name drugs, some generics are still rife with pricing abuse. An analysis a few years back found generic price hikes of a thousand percent and even all the way up to 17,000 percent. And disgracefully, of course, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party is colluding with the entire Republican Party to make sure that those prices stay high and big pharma profit margins stay fat. Even the most basic reform, allowing the federal government to negotiate with drug makers, has proven too much for lowlifes like Kyrsten Sinema.

So listen, I am certainly all for any effort to give the American people a little bit of relief, even as I realize that behind every heartwarming story of a billionaire doing good deeds lies a corrupt, monopolistic, rapacious system rigged by those same billionaires. It's also not like this is exactly charity. 15% is still more than sufficient markup to score a healthy profit margin. And according to Mark Cuban himself, backing this pharmacy is actually an ideological play meant to persuade people that capitalism isn't all about just triggering opioid crises and denying the poor world life-saving vaccines. In his words, he backed the online pharmacy in order to show,

quote, capitalism can be compassionate. Now, there might be another reason for the play as well, though, beyond attempting to reform capitalism's flagging image, because I do think Mark Cuban is a savvy guy, and this would certainly be a pretty savvy play for someone who, say, might be considering a run for high office. I don't have any special insight into whether Mark Cuban is toying with running for president, but a few pieces here do seem to add up. Number one, even though you'd never know it, from the total lack of interest politicians in Washington show to the issue, health care is consistently either the number one or number two top issue for voters and has appeal across age, race, gender and partisan divides. The latest Economist YouGov poll has health care ranked as the number one issue for voters, higher by a little bit even than jobs and the economy. A full 90 percent of voters say it's an important issue to them.

And that's pretty stunning. Within that group, we know that huge bipartisan majority support reforms that would make prescription drugs more affordable. So showing that you're focused on the issue would be a safe and pretty popular move to show, yeah, he's a kinder, gentler reality show billionaire than the last asshole. Second, Cuban has been pretty flirty with Andrew Yang, and it's possible, maybe, he sees a lane for himself in Yang's new forward party. During the pandemic, Cuban had a pretty solid and very Yang-esque idea to take care of people while the entire economy was shut down. You remember this? He proposed on Twitter

that every American household should receive $1,000 every two weeks that had to be spent basically immediately to help prop up demand in the economy. What's more, Andrew Yang has left the forward party platform pretty open outside of a few specific democracy reform ideas that I could easily see Cuban getting on board with. There's no billionaire taxes or single-payer health care or even a specific UBI proposal for candidates to have to agree to. Just things like open primaries, ranked choice voting, and democracy dollars. Good reform, sure, but nothing that would directly challenge billionaire power in the immediate term or

overturn the current regime of money in politics that has made the notion that we live in a democracy a kind of cruel gaslighting. In other words, I don't see anything in the platform that would really be uncomfortable for someone like Mark Cuban, a capitalist through and through, who's got enough smarts to know that they probably better cut the peasants a slightly better deal, or at least give them a better pitch if they want to keep the pitchforks at bay. Finally, it doesn't take a genius to sense a pretty significant political opportunity right now. Both of the likely nominees for the two major parties are insanely unpopular. Just look at this. According to a new AP-NORC poll, only 27% of Americans want Donald Trump to run for president again. And oh, by the way, Joe Biden does not fare any better.

Only 28% of Americans want him to run for reelection. Those numbers are crazy. It's a testament to how rotten and destroyed elite Dems and elite Republicans are that the best they can apparently offer is two old men that three quarters of the country wish would just go away. And for someone like Cuban, even a losing presidential campaign, it could be a branding win. Could stroke his ego, increase his fame, provide him with new profit-making ventures. Cuban toyed, you might recall, with running for president back in 2020. Sager and I actually interviewed him about it. Then he decided not to run and he backed Biden. More recently, he said he does not want to run for president, but also that the reason

he's no longer interested is because he doesn't believe Trump will run again. So who knows? The man's changed his mind before. He could certainly change it again. Look, Cubans' politics are nothing special. It's mostly just the status quo in a different package. I would be willing to believe he's more competent than the last two bozos who won the presidency, but he's definitely not going to upend a status quo order that has profited him personally tremendously. However, our politics are so stuck and hopeless right now between two parties owned by corporations and costumed on one side in fake identity nonsense and on the other side an addled conspiracy nonsense that I am for literally anything that would help or even have a chance of helping to break that system apart.

We can't go on this way, can we? Oscillating between these two dried up husks that everyone hates and seems pretty unsustainable to me. But there's also no clear path forward. The only answer I can personally think of is more democracy, more candidates, more choice, more engagement, more threats to the existing power cartels. Cuban is not an answer in and of himself, but maybe he could provide an opening for something that genuinely could be. In other words, if Cuban wants to add his compassionate billionaire schtick to the mix, I guess I'm for it. And if he's got a way to give Americans slightly lower drug prices, well, the corrupt ghouls here in Washington aren't getting it done, so I'm for that as well. It's not exactly a ringing endorsement here, but I can't muster a lot of excitement for our increasing dependence on the whims of billionaires for everything from housing to meat to affordable drugs. If there's one thing

I know about the billionaires, it's that they're not going to save us. What did you think of this play from Cuban on the pharmacy, Sagar? I told you. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, we have an incredibly courageous animal rights activist. His name is Matt Johnson. He is press coordinator for Direct Action Everywhere.

I'm going to let Matt tell the whole story. But the gist of it is he helped to expose horrific abuse of pigs at a pig farm in Iowa called Iowa Select. He was charged by the government with terrorism for doing so, although those charges have just been dropped. Something that you'll explain why you're actually somewhat disappointed about that. Matt, welcome to the show. Good to see you, Matt. Good morning, Crystal and Sagar. Huge fan of the show and so happy to be on. Thank you.

So the situation began when a truck driver with Iowa Select Farms, his name is Lucas Walker, he contacted me and the animal rights organization I'm affiliated with, Direct Action Everywhere, because of the abuse that he was seeing at his company and because no one at the company was addressing it and no one in law enforcement at the local level, at the state level, was going to address it. And so, long story short, you have this person who drives pigs in and out of factory farms all day and is contacting an animal rights organization. And what we ended up exposing ultimately was this just horrifying practice known as ventilation shutdown. What happened was in the spring of 2020, COVID is ravaging meatpacking plants throughout the country and workers are getting sick and they have nowhere to send the

pigs. And this corporation cost-cutting measure does the cheapest option send the pigs. And this corporation, cost-cutting measure, does the cheapest option available to it, and they load these pigs by the thousands into these industrial sheds. They seal off the ventilation, and they pump in heat and steam, and these poor animals are screaming for hours on end while they're just tortured to death. And I exposed it, and I faced a felony prosecution and

was, there's an FBI investigation. I was called a terrorist by multiple, you know, government officials. And we wanted to take it all the way to trial. But what we found out was after a two-year run around with this case the day before trial. They didn't want to, you know, this stuff to see the light of day anymore than it already had. And they dropped the charges. That is really horrific. Let's go ahead and put the photo.

We have one of them up on the screen too. It's very important for people to understand exactly what you exposed and what you found. Now, as you show here, this was a column that you wrote. My arrest and aborted prosecution underline three lies Iowa is Propagating About Animal Agriculture. Tell us what those lies are and then go into the actual mechanisms that were used in order to try and prosecute you. Right. So the three lies are, number one, that animal abuse that is routine or normalized is acceptable.

And so in this instance, the industry, the animal agriculture industry in many states, including Iowa, actually writes into law that industry standards define the law. Industry standard practices, no matter how cruel they are, literally you have the industry writing the laws. Now, in many, you know, in many contexts, you have industries that are, use a little bit of a workaround and it's not quite so written into law, but that's what it is. So things like, you know, cutting animals' tails off with no anesthetic, cutting animals' testicles off with no anesthetic, completely, you know, legalized under the law. So that's number one. And number two lie that

the state and this industry is telling us is that the people who are documenting these crimes, such as myself, are the criminals rather than the corporations that are perpetrating these abuses. And Iowa is one of many states that has passed these so-called ag-gag laws, which just criminalize the act of documenting abuses in animal agricultural facilities. And the third lie, when all else fails, is that there's nothing here to discuss whatsoever. So when push comes to shove,

when their abuses have been exposed, when their efforts to demonize someone like myself fall short and it's about to go to trial, suddenly they don't want to talk about it at all and they just want it all to go away. So it's just really top to bottom, a corrupt system and a corrupt industry that people should be made aware of. As to my prosecution, I was charged with multiple charges, felony burglary charge for, at one point I removed a sick, dying piglet that was of no value to this company, and I faced up to five years in prison for that. I was also charged under an ag-gag law. Yeah. And as I mentioned, there was an FBI investigation. At one point, they approached this truck driver who had came to us and they threatened to prosecute him. And under that threat, they attempted to get him to wear a wire

to come and inform against me. They attempted to get him to sell drugs to me. And this is a guy who's my friend now. And he's put in this horrible position where it feels like he's going to get prosecuted by the FBI. Luckily, he stood up to them and didn't do it. But just top to bottom, a shocking situation. That's nuts. That was part of why your story, I mean, there's a lot of reasons your story really interested us. But that's part of it is that, you know, the FBI tried to flip this guy who gave you this information about these horrific practices and how basically anyone who attempts to be a whistleblower and stand up for what's right, the criminals they expose, they face no accountability. But they throw the book at, you know, people like Julian Assange, people like Steven Donziger, people like yourself and the truck driver who ultimately gave you this tip. Why in this instance did they decide?

Give us a little more detail on why they decided to drop the charges and why you actually wanted your day in court to have this whole story out. Yeah, well, if you go off of what Iowa Select Farms will tell you, they're just completely hands off. They're just, you know, letting the system do what it does. But I can tell you that, you know, we saw many of the emails. Their lawyers were extremely involved in really improper ways with the local prosecutor. And they had a hand in this prosecution. I actually had a prior prosecution related to this case a year ago

that was dropped when the prosecutor said they didn't want to testify. And, you know, we all know de facto what's going on here. They don't want this stuff to see the light of day. They don't want to testify about it. They want to accuse me of terrorism and try to, you know, scare me off, you know, from the safety of, you know, carefully manicured media releases and send their government goons out to do their bidding for them. But when it comes to an open court of law, they run away and hide. Yeah, you've got them dead to rights. I mean, that's kind of the amazing part about this whole story. Matt, what should people learn from the attempted prosecution of you, the silencing, some of the laws? What are some of the immediate steps people can do out there

in order to help your cause and people like you? Yeah, I hope that people feel heartened by this and feel that we do have, you know, some measure of power to push back against this kind of thing. I look at the Steven Donziger situation where you all were able to, you know, I think play a role in at least having him, you know, not be sitting in prison. So, you know, if we come together and we show up in person and in virtual spaces and we get our message out there, you know, we can still apply some pressure and achieve some good results. So I encourage people to get active in whatever way they're able to. That's well said, man. Yeah. And my last question for you, Matt, is what brought you to this issue with such passion? Because, I mean, you were ready,

you were prepared to go to prison for your beliefs and to expose these abuses and hopefully to help push the cause of justice forward. What gave you that particular, that passion and, you know, gave you the courage to face what could be an onerous sentence? Oh, that is a great question, Crystal. I mean, really, I'd say it began as a child. I was kind of shocked at this, you know, the kind of the concept of eating animals as a kid, it struck me. But, you know, growing up, you kind of learn about some of the dynamics. And I think I kind of take them, you know, to me you look at it and there's just so many individuals. You look at, I mean, by the percentage 99.999% of sentient life on this planet is non-human and the way these animals are being abused and the,

you know, tiny amount of representation they have, which, you know, doesn't take anything away from obviously all the human injustice that exists in the world, but, which, you know, doesn't take anything away from obviously all the human injustice that exists in the world. But it seems like, you know, extremely worthwhile case. And I encourage people to obviously pay more attention to it. And do you think it's possible to have the reforms that you would want under a capitalistic system? I mean, that's basically what this was about was, hey, we treat these animals like commodities. They're a cost burden on us now that the meatpacking plants are shut down. So we're just going to kill them off in the cheapest and easiest way possible. I mean, as long as the profit motive is the only sort of guiding force in society, are we going to get to a better place here? Oh, wow. Another great question. Thank you. Yeah, I think that we can. I think that the fundamental issue, and I'm sure there will be some disagreement on this case, of course, was just beyond the pale horrifying.

But it really is the product of an ideology, which is animal exploitation, which guarantees horrifying results. You look at a quick, you know, Costco has a five dollar rotisserie chicken and anybody can see, like, look at the entire cycle supply chain there of feeding this animal and transporting and processing and point of sale, there's not much care there. But even if it was a $50 chicken, what would, you know, what would kind of care would $50 buy for your dog and cat at home that you would think is acceptable for even a few months? Like even at $50, that animal better have no health issues whatsoever, or it's going to die probably in a horrible way. Or and looking at the places where these animals live, they're going to have health issues. So, you know, I think in this day and age, we have the Impossible Burger.

You've had like cashew milk ice cream. There's so many alternatives out there. I mean, at some point it's like, what are we even still clinging to here? Like, let's, you know, let's let's move forward and innovate and, you know, find the best in ourselves. I think that's a very uncomfortable conversation for a lot of people, myself included. I put myself in that camp, but that's exactly why we wanted to talk to you today. You know, we talk a lot about challenging power on this show. Part of what you're exposing is an incredibly corrupt system. Iowa Select, massive political donations across the spectrum, getting to write their own rules, appears to be controlling

prosecution or lack thereof. So we really appreciate you spending some time educating our audience and also for the courage that you've brought to your activism. Thank you, Matt. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. It's amazing. You know, look, Crystal, we keep opening the kimonos, so to speak,

but the level of just weird stuff that happens to our channel, it's difficult to describe. Yeah. It just so happens, you know, one of my monologues or whatever just disappears or isn't put into the feed on Instagram. One of our videos just doesn't play. It's always a reminder. We're one step away from just being taken off or demonetized. We get very little explanation

as to why these things happen to our content. You can surmise for yourself. The reason is, is that we rely on you. And so because of that, we have a premium link in the description if you can help us out. We deeply appreciate it. It makes us so that we cover every single one of these

things that we did today with no fear for retribution. Yeah, indeed. We appreciate you guys for enabling that and letting us do the show that we think that you deserve to the best of our ability. So have a wonderful day and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane

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Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back.

Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy.

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