Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/5/22 - Twitter Files, Kanye Banned, Dem Primary Rigging, SBF Lies, Iran Protests, Ivy Leagues, Buttigieg Shamed

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

Krystal and Saagar bring the news about Twitter Files, Kanye, Dem Primary, SBF, Iran, College Universities, Pete Buttigieg Shamed by Tapper and more!Breaking Points is doing live shows in NYC and Boston!CODE: BREAKINGPOINTS for both venues!NYC: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/03005D6A3318087FBOSTON: https://thewilbur.com/artist/breaking-points/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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it means the absolute world to have your support. What are you waiting for? Become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. So many things to get to this morning. We've got the big Twitter file release and the reaction to that release, which in many ways was as interesting as the info in the release itself. We also have to weigh in on the Kanye West, Alex Jones interview. I know you guys have seen this at this point, but there are some new developments, and we also felt compelled to give our own take on it. Democrats are positioning

themselves to rig the primaries even harder for Joe Biden. Have the details of that, the states that they are putting in what order and what the timing of that is likely to look like. We also have some new information, not that this will surprise anyone, but that Sam Bankman Freed was lying out of his ass when he was talking to the New York Times in other contexts as well. And we have an interesting media fail. I mean, it's an interesting story to start with. There were some indications from the Iranian regime that they may be getting rid of their morality police. But the way that news outlets ran with this without any of the sort of like mitigating language and possibility that this is just a feign or that it's not happening really at all is also an interesting story. We have Rokana here listed in the Chiron.

You can see there at the bottom. He's going to be coming into the studio a little bit later, though. He was named in the Twitter files, actually comes off looking quite good of everybody in the Twitter files. He comes off looking the best. We're going to talk to him about what they reveal, but that will be sort of separate. We'll post that later separately from the show because we're talking to him a little bit later. But before we get to any of that. Live show, put it up there on the screen. Last time that you will hear it from me, folks, December 6th and December 7th. We have a great show planned for everybody. What did you call it, Crystal? The year end spectacular.

Year end spectacular. Yeah, we've got, yeah, We've been working on some like year-end superlatives that we're going to unveil, which I'm actually kind of excited about once I started jumping into them. Yeah, it's fun. It's going to be fun. We've been building the graphics and coming up with some even more new stuff.

So I think everybody's going to have a great time. Boston and New York City, December 6th, December 7th. Tomorrow, CounterPoints will be sitting in for us here at the Breaking Points desk. So don't worry, you will still have full shows and premium subs will have access, of course, to the full shows that we do at our live shows. We're looking forward to meeting everybody there

in person in New York and in Boston. I'm excited. Christmas in New York, it's a magical time. Yeah, it's going to be super fun. A little bit different from our other shows, too, since we're going to... And by the way, on Tuesday when we're in New York, we should be getting Georgia runoff results. Possibly live on the stage.

Live on the stage. So that could be breaking while we're there with you. And like I said, we've got a bunch of like sort of special year-end-y activities planned that, you know, we sort of dragged Kyle and Marshall reluctantly to. That's right. But they're going to be good sportsmen. Well, they are going to, yes. They better put a smile on their face after all the hard work that we put into this. All right.

To the show. Twitter. So, of course, you guys want to know what's going on with Twitter. CounterPoints did a fantastic job of breaking this all down initially. But for those of you who haven't paid attention just yet, let's put this up there on the screen. We basically pulled four different tweets from Matt himself. He put out this tweet thread late on Friday night saying, thread the Twitter files. Now, we pulled what we thought were some of the most important ones from these Twitter files. He said, by 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another, more to review from the Biden team. The reply would come

back handled. Furthermore, both parties had access to these censorship tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However, and he points to, this led public policy executives to send out polite WTF queries. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms and the policy teams who had, quote, little or less control over moderation and the safety and trust teams. And I think really what comes through on the email so far of what Matt has released here is just a complete and total cluster, an inability to be grounded in principle, of clearly being scared off by the WikiLeaks emails, hair on fire, just paranoia without any grounding crystal in any sense of free speech of the First Amendment,

of any consistent application of content moderation, and in both cases, a really gross just like caving to both requests from the Trump and the Biden team, which show you that people at the top really can work the refs in this way, which I don't think is appropriate. Now, we can talk about the Hunter stuff aside, like what exactly they were censoring, but I do also want to say on that front, though, the Biden team refuses to address the Hunter Biden laptop. Then they're like, oh, you know, it could be fake, and they're planting all the stories.

Meanwhile, though, Hunter's dick pics, they're flagging for the actual Twitter contest. So is it real, then? Are you admitting the laptop is real? I mean, the whole way they handled this with, you know, just to give the backstory as a reminder here, the reason that this is so significant is because they took this just heavy handed, overt approach to censoring the New York Post reporting on this Hunter laptop information, which the Biden team never denied and which now, long after the fact, has been confirmed as real by

multiple news outlets. And yet you had this over the top effort by multiple actors to portray this as this is Russian misinformation, has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. We know, and I'll get to this in a minute, but we know from other reporting that, you know, there was, and from what Mark Zuckerberg himself said, that this was sort of flagged by the FBI, that something like this might be coming out. So we know there was some sort of government involvement there. But, you know, ultimately, yeah, I think, listen, it is totally appropriate for dick pics of the candidate's son to be taken down. But what this really reveals is the fact that they didn't actually

need the government telling them what and how to censor. Right. This is more a story of corporate power. And that's why I think these revelations are interesting. They add some texture and some color to some things that we already knew about how this process ultimately unfolded. But one of the most noteworthy things that Taibbi found here is that there wasn't actually that he could find in any of these files direct government instruction or pressure to, you know, handle the New York Post story in the way that they did. So instead, as you said, Sagar, the picture emerges more of a total corporate cluster. It seems like the people who made the initial decision to label this as unsafe, to suspend accounts that were sharing the information, to keep people even from DMing it to each other, which is a measure that they normally only reserve for extreme circumstances, things like child pornography. That decision seems to have been

made by people who potentially didn't really get that this was going to be a political firestorm with far reaching implications. Jack Dorsey, who was head of Twitter at the time, but kind of an absentee owner, really wasn't read into this whole situation as it unfolded. then once they've already taken these incredibly heavy-handed approaches then they start go oh my god what have we done how do we walk this bad I'm not sure we can justify this and ultimately ends with Jack himself posting a thread and saying basically like we fucked this up so that's what comes out here I mean you know they talk about both campaigns had access to these tools I think that the tools exist and that political candidates of either party are given any sort of like special access to this is not appropriate. There's clearly like very little concern within Twitter about First Amendment implications.

They're thinking more about like their terms of service. And clearly, you know, you have more Democrats than Republicans at Twitter. So they're more amenable to like arguments coming from the left of center and from the Democratic Party team. And, you know, ultimately you end up with this sort of catastrophic situation that they more or less bumbled into. And that's kind of, you know, you have ideological actors, people like Vijay Agati, who clearly has like an ideological view. And so she, because everybody else is just like chaos and sort of like flying by the seat of corporate power. You now have corporate boardrooms that in certain instances, you know, culturally certainly are allied against them. You know, some of these are just because that's where the dollars are. That's like what the business decision makes sense. And so you have this beginning of a reckoning of, oh, my God,

maybe these actors are too powerful. But you don't have a fully fleshed out critique of corporate power. So you end up with situations like this, where the reaction is more about these particular individuals, like this is a good guy, this is a bad guy, Elon's a good guy, Vijay Agade is a bad guy, rather than looking overall at the structure and saying, like, this is really bad for everyone to have these social media companies having so much power, so much control, and subject to the whims of one or two or a handful of executives. Well, it's so capricious, especially what comes through on that. Yeah. They just decided on a whim.

And, you know, let's throw the next one up there and the specific coordination, at least at the sub-governmental agency level of the DHS and of social media companies flagging what is misinformation, what's not misinformation. At one point, even flagging like Afghan withdrawal stories as potential misinformation. I think this actually shows you, which is that the FBI, the DHS, can shape the environment under a bipartisan administration as they did under the Trump administration by coming to Facebook and coming to Twitter and saying, hey, we know that there's going to be some hack operation, possibly in the waning days of the election. And that's what puts Facebook and Twitter on hair trigger alert, which effectively leads Facebook. You know, Facebook doesn't get enough scrutiny. They basically made it unfindable on their platform. So they may not abandon, but that's still pretty bad. I mean, that's straight censorship. They took, frankly, a much more intelligent approach from a PR perspective, because what Twitter did was so brazen and so undeniable and so heavy handed. It would have been much more intelligent for them

just to suppress the news, which is something that, you know, they do all the time. And then Elon himself has floated actually doing more, something that YouTube does, something clearly that Facebook does as well. So it's like, we're just going to make it so that this doesn't get shared all that much. But you're going to sound like a conspiracy theorist if you're out there talking about like shadow bans and algorithmic suppression, and you're never going to be able to really prove it because none of this is transparent whatsoever and that is the gateway into the apparatus which is only being built more so from 2020 onward of flagging quote misinformation like who knows what these people are down ranking and explicitly shadow banning behind the scenes i do hope it should be some sort of catalyst towards taking the power

out of these people's hands and just saying, look, clearly this is not working. The Trump team can work the refs. The Biden team can work the refs. I mean, the Biden stuff, you know, clearly doxing actually is illegal and posting private communications and private photos and all that. Okay, fine. So under a very consistent, standard, uncontroversial content moderation, should that be taken down immediately? That said, out of that, like, where's the line come from? You know, with emails from the laptop, which were immediately blocked. Also, the White House press secretary's account was literally locked by Twitter, which they point to in the Twitter files.

This is outrageous. We have got to come to some form of decision-making tree where they don't even have the ability to work on this. And because absent that, in the vacuum, you have everybody, people in power, celebrities even, Taibbi says, working behind the scenes. And you also clearly have Vijay Agade and this other fellow, Yoel Roth, who's given an interview yesterday to Kara Swisher at The Times. And it's amazing to me how unrepentant this man is. He continues to defend taking down the Babylon Bee account. He wanted to ban the Libs of TikTok account.

Defends booting Trump off the platform. Basically reveals wanting to take Trump off the platform 100 days previously to January 6th when he was an active candidate for president of the United States. Again, these such people, they should not have the power to make this decision at a global level. And I think that perhaps this could be a catalyst for that. I hope so. Let me just say one thing, one more thing

about what was revealed in these threads and what I think the most important takeaway is. It's that it didn't actually require the government getting involved for this to be an issue. And that's really, to me, you know, the crux of the problem here is corporate power. It's monopoly. It's the fact that whether it's Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey or Vijay Agaddi or Mark Zuckerberg or whoever it is, you can't just have all of these decisions, which are really important in terms of having a functioning democracy. I mean, ultimately, that is the reality. It mattered that this New York Post story was censored. God only knows what else they were doing behind the scenes and what information was being suppressed and what was being elevated and all of that. You should not

have these really critical and sometimes truly very difficult and very borderline decisions being made in secret by a handful of individuals. At the very least, we should have transparency. And so, you know, there we're going to get to the reaction to this, which was revealing in and of itself. I think Elon, you know, I don't know that he had like pure motives in releasing all of this. I think he was trying to distract from some other stuff. But what does it matter? I mean, I think it is important to have as much information about how all of this works and how it all went down at that time in real time as possible so that we can think more clearly about what the best solutions are to dealing with what is an issue of corporate power, what is an issue of,

you know, when you have total lack of transparency and back channeling from the federal government, which, as we put up the report from Ken Klippenstein, we do know from other reporting was happening in other instances as well. How do we actually deal with that in a democratic society so that we can all have a say in how these lines are drawn and what falls on which side of the line. Revenge porn of Hunter Biden, that should be taken down. I don't think anyone serious would argue that that should ultimately be left up. The question is, should any of these candidates have special access, special ability to work the refs at a company as important as Twitter? I would say that the answer to that is no.

Yeah, I completely agree. Okay, let's go to the next part here, which is that you are not going to see nuanced discussion of this from many figures on the left and right wing media. So we aggregated some of the absolute worst reactions from both sides. One of our favorite segments always to do. Let's put this up there on the screen. Here are five of the worst reactions from most embarrassing reactions to the Taibbi Twitter thread from Ben Collins. Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating shit. Wajat Ali, Matt Taibbi, what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a

cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul to the richest white nationalists on Earth. That's an interesting one. What he'll eat well for the rest of his life, I guess. Is it worth it? Medi. Imagine volunteering to do online PR works for the world's richest person on a Friday night in service of a nakedly cynical right-wing narrative. Pretending

you're speaking truth to power. Chris Hayes. Watching some of the most famous, most powerful, and richest men red pill themselves into disaster. Pretty wild. And then finally, what is that? Watching Matt's unbelievable fall

into lazy reactionary commentator and now PR hand for the world's richest man is depressing. Did they all get the same note or something? Yeah, somebody tweeted something out

and then everybody just ran with it. I mean, this is one of the things that bothered me about this reaction is you can feel any way that you want to feel about Matt Taibbi. But first of all, I didn't really I just genuinely don't understand if you look at this from a principled perspective, how this is, quote, feeding right wing narratives. I think it's a story about corporate power and abuse. That seems to me like an American problem, frankly. I mean, it really shouldn't be a left or a right issue. It's something that the Republican base is increasingly concerned

about, as we've tracked on this show. A few Republican elites have at least verbally and rhetorically made some sort of feint towards concern over this as well. You do have a little bit of bipartisan action on antitrust, even though that's still predominantly on the left. But if you just look at this from the principles of it, I don't understand why this is a quote unquote right wing narrative. In fact, Ro Khanna, who we're going to talk to later today, pops up in this chain of files to say, hey, there's real free speech concerns here. And I'm concerned about the First Amendment, how this is being applied. And oh, by the way, like the way that you're censoring this,

I think that you're drawing a lot of attention to something have the exact opposite intended effect. And I think that's true. I mean, the way they handled this made this story so much more famous and so much bigger than it ultimately would have been had they handled it in like a normal, rational type of way.

Yeah, and let me also say on the journalism front, this is just called journalism, folks. Listen, as Matt also put it, are these the same people that are mouthpieces for the CIA and the FBI accusing somebody of doing PR? It's ludicrous. And I don't even think Matt did PR in any way. Yes, look, Elon clearly is a fan of Matt Taibbi

for his perspective of being anti-establishment. That's fine. Okay, so what does Matt do? He takes the files. He doesn't immediately release them. Takes 96 hours, calls several sources, doesn't release all the files en masse like a publisher. He actually aggregates and puts out reporting on each individual slide, including information, contextualizes it within a broader narrative. That's called journalism. I mean, are we pretending that they wouldn't take files from

Apple or whomever? Sources always have ideological motivations. You're not doing PR for them whenever you take newsworthy information, add context to it, and put it out into the discourse. As you also say, it's not like it is selectively cherry-picked or edited files. And if it is, then we should be revealed as such to everybody. Look, we will find out more soon. Elon said he's also giving them over to Barry Weiss. I'm looking forward to reading and to seeing

anything newsworthy that these people put out. There's also a new narrative going on right now, Crystal, that these Twitter employees are, quote, being doxxed because their names are out there. Give me a break. Like, you people were some of the most powerful in American politics for a three month period at the center of a story. You're a public figure now. I'm sorry that your name is out there.

However, accountability, responsibility exists. Like your name was already publicly known, especially Vijay Agade, Yoel Roth, many of these other figures and any executive who had anything to say in this decision, well, welcome to politics. I don't know what to tell you. You should have gotten a different job. The idea that we are, quote, endangering their lives by talking publicly about who these people are. About the decisions that they made. You made a decision that was in the public interest. I personally would make it so that you were never in that sphere in the first place, but you're in it now. So I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. You accepted these positions of power and responsibility

and I'm sure the, you know, compensation that came with it. And so now you're afraid of like any public scrutiny of your decision-making. I want to underscore, because I think what you said, Sagar, is really important about the fact that, you know, reporters take information from sources who have an ax to grind and ideological motivation all the time. Yes, I would, too. All the time. I mean, the number of stories that reporters are being fed from the Biden team, from the Trump team, from whoever trying to get out there, their narrative and their, you know, ideological narrative. I mean, obviously, the deep state is doing this all the time, trying to mold and shape the discourse. And what a good journalist does is they take that information, they consider the source and the acts they have to grind or whatever

their ideological inclination is, they balance that against whatever is out there, and then they release it to the public in a way that provides the know, provides the facts and isn't slanted towards one side or the other. But to say, like, if your source has some sort of, you know, ax to grind or ideological inclination or some reason, motivation to get this information out there that you should just ignore it and not put it out there, that's just counter to what journalism ultimately is. So I think there was a real, uh, I also, I don't understand why there's a freak out about just having the information out there to me, understanding more seeing in real time, you know, ultimately it looks like what happened with the Hunter Biden thing was more a story of like corporate incompetence and failing to understand the impact of this decision, a few ideological actors who sort of like grabbed the reins, an absentee owner. So oftentimes what looks like more of a grand

conspiracy ends up just being like incompetence and a cluster. And that's what I really got out of these files ultimately. And I think it's useful to have that information again, if we're going to think seriously about how to deal with these problems. At this point, I don't, I have seen very few people who are still willing to defend the actions that Twitter took with regards to this New York Post story. I, everybody acknowledges like this was a total disaster. So why wouldn't you want to get under the hood of like, how did this happen? So we can make sure that to get under the hood of like, how did this happen? So we can make sure that things are handled in a more intelligent, rational and balanced way going forward.

Absolutely. So we also have aggregated some humiliating right-wing reactions. Let's put this up there on the screen. We got some really good ones that our producers put together. The Twitter files prove how radical leftists manipulate policy to silence conservatives. The traitorsitors need to be investigated immediately. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that the Hunter Biden laptop

was suppressed by Twitter in order to help Biden. But it did take a rocket engineer to buy Twitter and to get the files released. So, Eric Bullock, great stuff so far. Elon, there are powerful, evil people who don't want this to see the light of day. Keep a watchful eye on your six. I cannot wait for tomorrow's drop. And then finally, truth will ultimately prevail where pain is taken to bring it. I mean, I saw people calling people are cheering to be impeached over this. I saw people saying this was the greatest presidential scandal in the history of the country. I mean, literally, literally, they're saying even though Trump was president, Biden wasn't even president then, guys. I mean, and mean and by the way the Trump campaign they may have had less of their requests honored but they were doing the same shit so what are you going to do with that I mean the there the attempt to paint

this as like the greatest most bombshell revelation in the history of the earth was sort of absurd a lot of this like I said was sort of a little more texture on things that we kind of already knew. The biggest original bombshell was just the handling of this laptop material to start with. In some ways, what comes out of these is, I would say, significantly less of a bombshell than some of the reporting that, say, Ken Klippenstein has ultimately done. So the attempt to be like, oh, my God, this is like Republic ending and Biden needs to be impeached over it. And also, by the way, to totally ignore that the Trump campaign is doing the same thing on the other side was incredibly silly. And then we also have this,

my personal favorite. Yeah, this is really next level. A GOP rep calling for violent or a candidate openly calling for violent revolution over the Hunter Biden laptop now. He says, quote, it is only by bullets now. We can no longer get rid of tyranny by the ballots. It's only by bullets now. Everybody just calm down. Yes, we think it's bad. Yes, we are looking at a much deeper conversation

around corporate power, et cetera, but I don't think that any of that is necessary. And then finally, you can always leave it to Donald Trump to have the absolute worst reaction to all of this. And he certainly fulfilled everybody's expectations. So let's put this up there on the screen from Truth Social. Quote, so with the revelation of massive and widespread fraud and deception and working close with big tech companies, the DNC and the Democratic Party. Do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the rightful winner? Or do you have a new election? A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great founders, in quotes,

did not want and would not condone false and fraudulent elections. Just absolute peak cream from Trump there. I really don't even know what to say. I mean, I've seen quite a bit of a media freakout on this. You know what the deeper story is to me? Couldn't even keep his mouth shut for, what, two weeks? On his insanity?

It's amazing. I remember actually saying that during his live stream. I was like, man, this was a boring and a muted speech by Trump. He feels defeated because of the midterm results and clear rejection of MAGA. However, Trump idiocy, you can always bet to surface on a- We can't keep it in.

On a long enough timeline, Trump's idiocy will surface and become the predominant story. Lo and behold behold what is the first major story after his election nick fuentes and the kanye west dinner and then now calling for a suspension of the constitution to hold a quote new election result i do think it's important he does believe the shit people i mean i think we need to take that away is overtly calling for overturning the constitution and i mean the most like, I don't think anyone's surprised that he will just casually be like, yeah, let's get rid of the Constitution because, you know, Twitter censored an article in a way I didn't like and took down Hunter's dick pics. But it also really exposes that for all this talk of like how Republicans are moving beyond Trump and, you know, DeSantis has a real shot and all this stuff.

They didn't have anything to say about this. Even these people are supposed to be moderates. This dude, Republican Ohio representative Dave Joyce, who's like the head of some like problem solvers type caucus. It's called something different on the Republican side. But anyway, that type of centrist group, Republican governance group, that's what it's called. He got asked about this on the Sunday shows and he's like, that's not a deal breaker that he says he wants to overturn the Constitution. None of them wanted to say anything about it. And it just shows you, like, the Trump poll is still everything in the GOP.

He is still the center of gravity. So even when he says the most unhinged, like, overtly authoritarian things, they don't have anything to say about it. The same people who are like, Biden should be impeached over asking for Hunter Dick picks to be taken down when he wasn't even president are silent on the former president being like, let's overturn the constitution. I also look at it in a more meta-political, which is A, he has no discipline,

and B, it's like, have fun with that. You know, one of the things I think everybody underestimated in this election was voters' complete and total abhorrence of election denialism and specifically Trump craziness. And on this, good luck, Trump. You know, for a while, it did genuinely seem as if you were Teflon, but Americans seemed finally to just say, like, no, we've actually had enough. Personally, I think it's because people took it seriously. Previously, Trump would say crazy stuff, but the actual impact of it, nobody knew. Everybody watched January 6th. More importantly, I think everybody saw that if he had the ability to overturn the election, he absolutely

would have done it. And so then people are like, okay, I have no choice but to take this seriously because it's backed up by action and it's backed up by a concerted political movement to set up the infrastructure to try and deny the results of the 2020 election. 2022 election should or 2024 should it go against the desired result. And so voters acted accordingly. Now you're out there talking about suspending the Constitution. I just simply have no choice but to conclude, based on the election results, that people think this one hits differently than stuff that he used to say in 2016 and even before January 6th in 2020. I think that's a great point.

Yeah. I think that's a great point. And you could see the more that candidates snuggled up to him and embraced that kind of rhetoric, the more they were punished at the polls in state after state. But they still won Republican primaries. I mean, that's and that's the problem the Republican Party is dealing with right now is I think for a general electorate, it's it's a deal killer. Right. with right now is I think for a general electorate, it's a deal killer, right? I mean, even if Biden is in a stronger position at this point, but even if he is like significantly weakened going into the next round, people are going to look at this kind of insanity. And he is significantly more unhinged like by the week to like, you know, posting QAnon crap and just very disconnected,

like in this echo chamber, hard fringe echo chamber where you end up having dinner with Kanye West and Nick Fuentes. I think it's a problem for the general election for the, you know, for the primaries. Clearly, you can see in the lack of response to this type of rhetoric and the lack of response to the Kanye Nick Fuentes dinner, there are attempts to continue the same strategy of like, let's just try not to talk about this dude that they have not, he is not, his hold on the party is far from broken. So interesting how all of this has unfolded. Absolutely. All right. Another story that we felt we needed to weigh in on, uh, related to all of this, because ultimately, you know, there's a theory out there, which I think has some merit that part of why Elon wanted to release

these Twitter files now is to distract from the fact that he had banned Kanye West, which seems kind of anti-free speech, although, you know, we'll get into that piece in a moment. But the reason this all came about right now is because Kanye West, now Ye, went on Alex Jones's show along with his new buddy, Nick Fuentes, and there was no beating around the bush. There was no plausible deniability. There was no anything. He just literally goes full Nazi, repeatedly says how much he loves Hitler, why he loves Hitler, why he loves Nazis. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. I've done a lot of study. I think Hitler was a really bad guy and I repudiate what Hitler did. I understand that the British intelligence set him up and used him.

I like Hitler. I don't like Hitler. I know you're repudiate what Hitler did. I understand that the British intelligence set him up and used him. I like Hitler. I don't like Hitler. I know you're trying to be shocking with that. I'm not trying to be shocking. I like Hitler. I do not. I, the Holocaust is not what happened. Let's look at the facts of that.

And Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities. This is the voice of Netanyahu. Well CNN says white people are evil Nazis. So I mean, I disagree with both statements, but I get the trojan. I don't like the word evil next to Nazis. I think we need to look at... And the Nazis, in my view, were thugs that shut people down to a lot of really bad things.

But they did good things, too. We're going to stop dissing the Nazis all the time. Okay. I'm Netanyahu. I ain't never had a supermodel. Yeah, could tell. The Jewish media has made us feel like the Nazis and Hitler have never

offered anything of value to the world. Okay, well, why would the Zionists be killing Jews in mass in Israel with the poison shot? Because they'd work for Satan. They don't work for God. Exactly. And you've got a little bit of the Hitler fetish going on. It's not a fetish. It's not a fetish.

That's a term like, I just love information. Can we just kind of say, like, you like the uniforms, but that's about it. No, there's a lot of things that I love about Hitler. A lot of things. Hey, Netten, what did you think about that, Netten? This is insane. You are an insane person. But that's a good T-shirt.

I love Hitler. That's a bar. That's a bar. I'm joking. Germans had a really cool leader one time. Oh, my God. And he didn't kill six million jews that's just like factually incorrect but for the adl i want to say there's a lot of good nazis that

were just fighting for their country and for them all like george soros for them all to get put in a box they're all in a box every nazi is bad well could some of the nazis have just been fighting for their country oh they're all we can't we can't put them all in a box benjamin yahoo played donye watch today hey men what you what hey yay wow goes without saying this is disgusting it's deplorable it's historically uh wrong i mean the nazism is perhaps the most evil ideology that human beings have ever come up with um Hitler was a depraved killer. The Holocaust was real. Yes, six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. And it's also patently insane. For those of you who are just listening to this, just to paint the picture here, Ye is sitting there with a full black hood over his face so you can't even see his face by the way the weird like

voice that he's doing he brought a net and a bottle is that a fishbowl net like what is that yes something like that and a bottle of yoo-hoo chocolate milk and he's saying that this is uh former and about to be future israeli prime minister benjamin netton net in yahoo insane he's who he says by the way is trying to murder him and i mean part of what i think is worth saying at this point is number one please stop please stop having this man on this i mean this is all that you're going to get, right? Lex Friedman tried him, talk him off the list. Can we talk about individual people? Can we talk about like the facts of what happened to you rather than broad brush demonizing an entire

group of people, which is absolutely deplorable and disgusting. He complained about that in this interview. He is given every chance by Alex Jones, who's really trying to give him away out of this. You just like the uniforms, right? No, I love Hitler, he says, right? You, you know, I don't like, Alex Jones tries, I don't like Nazis. I think the mainstream media, blah, blah, blah, goes in his own conspiracy theories. No, I love Nazis. I mean, okay, so we know what he's going to say at this point.

Please stop having this man on because he's also, and this doesn't excuse the behavior or the hatred or the disgusting views, he is clearly in the middle of a manic episode. He has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And, Sagar, just to read to you a few of the hallmarks of bipolar disorder, of which he is clearly having a textbook uh uh media episode on you know all of these interviews feeling unusually important talented or powerful is one indication feeling able to do many things at once without getting tired racing thoughts talking fast about a lot of different things so-called flight of ideas okay this is a man who is mentally ill. If you saw him on the street, you would know that. If he was anything other than this sort of like celebrity god who we've been taught to look up to,

like they're so special and like, oh, they won the meritocracy race, so they must be a genius. If it was anything other than that, we would see this so clearly for ultimately what it is. Again, that does not excuse the deplorable, disgusting views. But what are we going to get at this point from doing another interview with Ye West? This is who he is. Yeah, no, he's clearly had like a massive psychotic break. And I was going to say thank you to the person

who put that compilation clip together. And just to underscore it, I mean, to the crazy posting, he continues, you know, on Instagram, just late last night, he posted this quote. Am I the only one who thinks Elon could be half Chinese? Have you ever seen his pics as a child? Take a Chinese genius and mate them with the South African supermodel. We have Elon.

I say Elon because they probably made 10 to 30 Elons. He's the genetic hybrid that's stuck. Well, let's not forget about Obama. I'm sorry for using curse words in church. I don't have another word for Obama yet. Yay, 24. Let's unify and find out. L-U-A-F-O.

I mean, look, as you said, it's almost difficult to be outraged at hearing such a thing just because you can see how much in the midst of a genuine psychotic break that the man is. Yeah. Disgusting and deplorable views aside. And I honestly just felt like watching him actually be used by these cynical, grifting actors

like Fuentes and Milo, that is a level of deplorable that is just far outracing almost even Kanye himself. Candace as well, effectively like stealing his money, right? Getting her husband's company bailed out by Kanye West to purchase Parler. By the way, that deal fell apart at this point. I mean, attempted stealing his money and grifting onto him. Also, Milo, it turns out, either somebody's had enough. We'll see. Put this up there on the screen. He is officially leaving the campaign. He says, Ye and I have come to the mutual conclusion I should step away

from his political team. Ye is a genius who I have come to love and respect. We remain friends. I will continue to pray for Ye and all of his endeavors.

Yes, he certainly will. I mean, that's the thing is if you, if your whole business model is provocation, someone is always going to be able to out-provoke you.

Of course. And I mean, that's part of what comes through in these able to out provoke you. And I mean, that's part of what comes through in these clips too with Alex Jones, because I mean, to make Alex Jones squirm in his chair and try to like, and be the moderate and try to get you to walk back from the ledge of the total insanity that you're spewing is really something. But ultimately there's always going to be someone who's willing to go full Nazi. Apparently, that person is Ye West and more pointedly, Nick Fuentes, who you don't hear from him in that compilation, but he's just sitting there smiling and nodding the whole time,

the whole time. And so apparently, I mean, I guess this was even too far for Milo Yiannopoulos, who, again, his whole thing has always been being the conservative provocateur. But yeah, if that's your whole business model is just shocking people, there's always going to be someone who's willing to push the envelope a little bit further than you are. And ultimately, you know, the gig is going to be up. So disgraceful for Milo, disgraceful for Nick Fuentes. Not that they had any shame to start with. No, yeah, of course they have zero shame. In fact, this is their only last chance of getting anybody to even say their name on television. So good luck, folks.

I think your gig will be up in, what, two weeks or so, eventually before the psychotic break continues, and they get fired, disgraced in public. As for Kanye himself, the man needs help. He's not going to reach it. You know, at this point, I doubt it's even possible unless it's genuinely forced upon him. As I understand it, the laws on that are actually quite difficult.

And, of course, he has a ton of money at his disposal. So he's his own worst enemy. He's the person, as you said this before, you're like, look, the man says I refuse to take my meds. So what are you supposed to do in a situation? I personally think, as you said, after the Lex Reidman interview and especially after walking off the Tim Pool interview with Tim, it was like the slightest pushback. Right. And he walks off the set. I'm like, look, what's the point at this point?

You know, let him languish in his psychotic, you know, manic episode. He can continue to post his way to idiocy. Now, that said, on a content moderation scheme, there is some more to be discussed. Yes. So let's go ahead and put this next part up on the screen. So it is after this interview, Kanye tweeted a symbol that included a swastika and his account was suspended by Elon Musk on Twitter. Now, the backstory here is that Elon had just brought him back and has, you know, had this sort of blanket amnesty for people.

And so Kanye had just been brought back onto the platform. And then he tweets this out. And there was also some sort of back and forth between them that was also released, their text messages, where Elon's basically like, OK, you went too far. And my understanding, I don't know if this is still the case, is that this was a temporary suspension because of the tweeting of the swastika.

Now, obviously, everybody here finds the use of this hate symbol to be utterly abhorrent. It is not something that you should share. It is disgusting. It is something that is just completely deplorable. It is a hate symbol. In the way that he used it specifically. Yes.

Like he didn't use it as the Hindu symbol, okay, for the folks who are out there trying to be contrarian. He put it inside of a Jewish star. I think it was pretty damn clear what he was trying to get to. However, Elon has portrayed himself as a free speech absolutist. So what does that actually mean? Well, we'll get to this in a minute, but as abhorrent and hateful as the sharing of a swastika is, it has actually been ruled by the Supreme Court as protected free speech. So we'll get to that in a minute. Musk was asked to justify Kanye's suspension. He says he did it because the swastika image was an incitement of violence and suggests it was a violation of U.S. law.

And the commentary here is that sw whom were Jewish, by the way, who defended the right of the American Nazi Party to march and display the swastika in Skokie, Illinois. You know, this was a town that had many Jewish people in it. So this was obviously a disgusting and inflammatory display by the American Nazi Party, an abhorrent, disgusting group of people. But ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled on the side of the American Nazi Party and their right to march and to display the swastika, even though these are hate symbols, even though it is hate speech, and even though it is disgusting. Let me just read you some of the specifics here. They say the ACLU famously defended the American Nazi Party's ability to protest in Skokie, Illinois, including the display of swastikas. The Supreme Court has struck down laws that have restricted offensive speech,

such as the wearing of swastikas in Village of Skokie versus National Socialist Party of America. But in a separate case, Virginia versus Black, the Supreme Court declined to rule that cross-burning was protected expressive speech under the First Amendment when such an activity was intended to intimidate, reasoning that sometimes it can constitute a true threat. So that just gives you a little bit more background of where the Supreme Court has drawn the line. So if you are a free speech absolutist, if you're saying, I am going to run this platform consistent with the First Amendment and protection of free speech. This action against Kanye, even though what he tweeted is disgusting and deplorable, not something that anyone should defend, is not consistent with those principles. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's why it was important that we both set it up with talking about how abhorrent, ridiculous and disgusting his views are.

However, if Elon does say he's a free speech absolutist, this does violate a free speech absolutist policy. And it highlights exactly what we were talking about in the Twitter files, because when Elon was asked why this was an incitement to violence, he said, well, I felt incited to violence when I saw his tweet. It's like, well, now you're actually just saying that everything is up to you. Look, you're not going to see widespread crying about this, and that's why it feels somewhat uncomfortable even to have to even point this out. But it does show you that principles matter for a reason, as the ACLU showed us in the Skokie case in the first place, which is trying to strike down and set a broad-based standard that can never be used

against any dissenting group in the future often happens in the edge cases in areas where everybody can almost universally agree that it shouldn't exist. And yet that does not mean that the government itself can use those policies to quash speech that it just certainly doesn't like, even when it is abhorrent as the American Nazi party. So it's a complicated situation, but I think it highlights again, even with Elon buying it, like it's still up to him. He says, because he felt incited to violence. Like what does that even mean? That doesn't mean anything. He said something similar about his decision to keep Alex Jones banned. He also based it on what was a tragic personal experience for Elon of losing his

first child as a baby. And so he said, you know, anyone, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically like anyone who would, you know, have anything to say about children and cover this up, like, that's just, I can't go there. So again, it was like his own personal view of what crossed the line. And that's why, listen, guys, you're not going to find your answers in any particular person or billionaire, even ones that claim to be free speech absolutists. I do think because he did, you know, it is not a comfortable thing to defend, you know, Kanye West posting a freaking swastika on Twitter. But Elon was taking some heat and criticism over this from some of the people who have been allies of his. And so I do think that might have

been one of the reasons why he decides to ultimately put out these Twitter files. It was one of the things that Glenn Greenwald suggested, among others. But that could have been the motivation for the timing right now, because it gets you talking about, OK, well, what was really revealed and what happened with the Hunter Biden stuff? That doesn't mean that, you know, Taibbi shouldn't have covered it or put it out into the information ecosystem. But I do think that might have been part of the motivation for why right now they release these files. I think that's right. I just want to say again, like, it's not comfortable to sit here and talk about how this violates like First Amendment speech. But that doesn't mean that it's not important. And I don't think anyone should construe it as a defense of the swastika or the American

Nazi Party or Kanye West. But simply to say that there is a much larger principle here that is involved. And that's exactly what I want to take out of the hands of these people for an individual decision. And it's when the principle is uncomfortable that it matters the most. That's when it actually matters. In clear-cut cases, then, you know, it's easy and, you know, the public will be 100% behind you. I have no doubt that if you poll the American public about like, you know, should be cut, cut your USB band or a swastika, probably we were very much on the minority side of that view. But again, that's when ultimately like having the bedrock principles and having them consistently adjudicated and having some sort of a democratic process involved matters the most. Yep.

Enough talking about Nazis, I think, for today. Let's talk about the moves made by the DNC and the Biden team to make it easier for him to win the nomination, potentially set things up for Kamala Harris, although I continue to be a little bit skeptical of that one. Let's go ahead and put this New York Times tear sheet up on the screen. Democrats move a step closer to making South Carolina their first primary. So ever since the Iowa disaster of the last primary, which I'm sure you all probably remember well, they screwed up the counting. It was a total cluster, just a mess all the way around. And then you layer on top of that, that Iowa is this very white state and small population. It's a state Democrats don't really win anymore, even though,

you know, in theory they should be able to. There's been discussion about changing the order of the primary states and about demoting Iowa in particular. So what the Biden team has been pushing for is a calendar that they think will be the absolute best for them and for Joe Biden getting the Democratic nomination again, which, side note, I think should tell you everything you need to know about his intentions to run again. The man is clearly going to run for president again. So where it looks like things are landing after a day-long gathering of the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee, is that South Carolina will replace Iowa as the very first voting location. That would happen on February 3rd. Then, very quickly afterwards, you would have New Hampshire and Nevada. So South Carolina is on February 3rd.

New Hampshire and Nevada would be on February 6th. Then again, very quickly after that, on February 13th, you would have Georgia and then Michigan on February 27th. So just so, you know, if you've forgotten the Democratic primary results from last time, which, you know, are unfortunately burned into my head for the end of time, Joe Biden did horrifically in Iowa, did horrifically in New Hampshire. He did a little bit better in Nevada, and then he absolutely romps in South Carolina, and then he's off to the races for Super Tuesday. So very clear why he would want to have South Carolina first. It is the state in the country where he feels like he has the strongest base of support, so he could start off there.

New Hampshire has in their constitution that they have to go early and be like the first caucus state. So I think they felt like they kind of had to keep New Hampshire up early in the process, even though he did very poorly there. But he matches it with Nevada, which is another state that he felt like he did pretty well in and has strong union support there, et cetera. Then you go to Georgia, another southern state where he feels he'll do well. And Michigan, you know, Rust Belt state where he also feels like he's pretty confident. So it's just blatant rigging. I mean, that's really what there's really no other way to put it. Ultimately, they are setting up the states in exactly precisely the order and the pace that he thinks will be best for him personally. Yeah. And you found this. Let's put this next one up there on the screen, which is actually also gives Kamala Harris an edge in a future White House bid with putting South Carolina up first. And we're not even making this a race thing. And part of the reason why is that the South Carolina primary, by and large, over time has heavily favored establishment

candidates. Now, why do I say that? Well, let's go to C3, and this is why it was important. Barack Obama actually trailed Hillary Clinton in South Carolina until he won the Iowa caucuses, meaning that a lot of voters there felt that they could not back Obama until he legitimized himself in another context. If the South Carolina primary had gone first in 2008, Hillary Clinton would clearly have been the nominee in 2008. It is blatant and always has much more of an establishment lean in the beginning, although they have changed their mind after results in Iowa and New Hampshire, as we also saw in the 2020 primary for the Democrats, given Pete Buttigieg's actually general overperformance, even though he did terrible in South Carolina, he did better than he probably would have if he hadn't had a better

showing in Iowa. The point is, is that I'm not saying Iowa and New Hampshire are perfect, but that the South Carolina being first effectively is a world where Barack Obama is never president of the United States. Should we not consider that? And with Kamala, the reason why it benefits her is not because of her race, but because of her establishment status. Because people like Jim Clyburn and whoever his political heirs in the state are would go to run up and back. Her would give her a major edge in that primary and in the future momentum. And you can just imagine the headlines like, when you win your first contest, it gives you major momentum. It makes it feel as if windows are your back. When in reality, the race could go totally differently by putting a different state at the very top.

It is crazy to think about how much the ordering of states ultimately really matters. And I think your point about the establishment benefit for candidates in South Carolina is really important because it's not like Kamala was doing well in South Carolina before she dropped out of this race last time. I went back and looked at the real clear politics averages of the polls in the different states. The highest she ever notched in South Carolina was eight points. But again, that's because she wasn't like Joe Biden was there. He was the establishment candidate. He had been Barack Obama's bestie and vice president and all of that. So he was just unshakable in terms of the South Carolina electorate. Jim Clyburn obviously had a lot of sway and a lot of pull in the state. So when he decides, all right, I'm with Joe, all the chips sort of, you know, all the pieces sort

of fall into place there. And, you know, I mean, there's a few other things to say. I mean, number one, not good for Pete Buttigieg, who's clearly been sort of positioning himself and trying to angle himself into his next White House bid, starting with South Carolina. Pete famously could not get any significant percentage of any minority vote. And so starting with South Carolina and Nevada is, you know, kind of a disaster for him. The other thing that you can say about it is it's not just the order of the states that matter. It's also the pace. So one of the things about Iowa that has been, I mean, this is like bedrock political tradition, whether you like it or not, like this has been the way we've done politics is it's a relatively small state. You know, it's a, it's a pretty rural state.

Candidates would make a show of going to all the different counties, showing up at all the different like Democratic Party meet and greets and functions and what used to be called Jefferson Jackson dinners. I don't remember what they call them now. And you could be a candidate that didn't have a lot of money and didn't, you know, have a gigantic national profile to start with. And you could gain some ground just with your shoe leather, like getting around the state and showing up at all the things and talking to the voters and building a thing for yourself. And so when you have four states here

going really quickly in succession within basically a week, if you're a candidate that doesn't have a lot of money in the bank, it makes it very difficult for you ultimately to compete. So you're not going to have time to prove yourself in Iowa, build a war chest and go on to the other states. It really benefits candidates who already have big national profile, big war chests, and are able to come out and have a ground operation in all of these states at once from the get-go. So that's the other piece of this. I mean, it really is quite a sea change in terms of democratic politics. This isn't set in stone. There may be some changes still, but it looks like this is the direction they're going in, and it is a quite extraordinary change from the past.

It's a genius ploy. You'd be like, what? You're against black voters? It's like, no, that's not what anybody's saying. What somebody's saying is that clearly it has an establishment bias, always has in the future, and that if you want upstart candidates to have a chance, having a smaller state, maybe it doesn't have to necessarily be Iowa. It could be Nevada. Nevada's not that big, really. It's a lot of campaigning in Las Vegas and then in Reno. So it's like actually could give you more of a benefit. Also, it's got Hispanic voters, a swing demographic right now, heavy union presence.

I could make just as good of an argument for the Democrats to hold it there than South Carolina, but there's a reason why they want South Carolina to go first. I see it as nothing but a rigging for Joe Biden and for Kamala and really establishment from here on out. And you are not gonna hear any dissent in the media on this going forward. Yes, very, very true. There was one more piece of this that we found interesting. Charlamagne Tha God always has interesting political commentary.

Sometimes cringe, sometimes great. Goes against the grain oftentimes. And he had some comments about, you know, there's there's an assumption, I guess, in this ordering of states from the DNC and the Biden campaign that Black voters are going to continue to be just a rock solid demographic for Joe Biden. And, you know, first he said, you might want to, he's sort of saying you might want to rethink that. He says, personally, damn near everything they promised Black people, I haven't seen come to fruition. I still think they could have gone way further on the marijuana thing. Hey, it's cool to pardon everybody that's in prison on a federal level for simple possession, but indicating they could have done a lot more.

And he went on to express that he is not too impressed with Joe Biden, and is apparently even less impressed with Kamala Harris, but continues to think Biden is the best bet the Democrats have. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. It's sad that, you know, you're talking about a potential rematch with, you know, an individual who's facing multiple, you know, federal and local investigations, a person who they say inspired and attempted coup in his country on January 6th, you know, a person who tried to basically change, you know, still change the results of an election, like just wouldn't acknowledge the results of an election. I feel like there has to be some type of qualifications for president.

I think when you're facing, you know, that much, I don't even think you should be qualified to run. And so it's sad that we're saying it's still a toss-up between him and President Biden. I think that's more indicative of what Democrats aren't doing.

And for me, I don't see the bench that the Democrats have. I personally don't see the person that they could put up in 2024 that could really galvanize and energize people. I mean, the fact that Biden is still their safest bet, I think that's sad too. So he's not too impressed. No, not at all. I mean, look, I, again, with Charlemagne, uh, he both was

like what a fan of Kamala Harris, but then he also did rightfully critique her whenever she tried to skip out on his interview. I've always appreciated him. What was it? P. Diddy in our previous in the previous 2020 when he came out and he was like, we're not going to, you know, the black vote is in monolithic. Like, we're not just going to show up on Biden as it relates to South Carolina and more. I'm just not so sure. I mean, I would wish that Charlemagne's view were the mainstream.

That said, like, look how they voted for Biden in 2020 on the word of Jim Clyburn endorsing him. It was like Clyburn's word alone was enough for a major landslide victory for Biden, enough to clinch the nomination, especially going into Super Tuesday. Yeah. He also made some comments about he was asking this Fox News digital interview, by the way, it was asking, again, about Biden's famous you ain't black comment. And he said basically that he had said the quiet part out loud. Whether he said it in jest or not, I'm sure that's how a large part of the Democratic Party feels. They feel like, hey, black men, black women, they're our most loyal voting bloc, and they show up for us no matter what. So some pointed critiques there of Charlemagne. I mean, listen, I think anytime you take voters for granted and just assume that they're going to have your back without ultimately delivering for them, I think ultimately there's going to be a price to pay. And I do think Democrats are seeing that with working class voters, black and brown voters in particular.

The place where Republicans have actually gained the most ground across the country are in cities with black and brown working class voters. I don't think that it's because Republicans have been so awesome. I think it's because Democrats have routinely failed these groups and working class in general. So a bit of a warning there. I agree with you in the short term, probably South Carolina will continue to be a solid place for establishment candidates. But bigger picture, it is just so brazen how the Democratic Party is trying to shore up the wall, make sure Biden has a glide path to the nomination, make sure that they can even lay out the path for their next terrible lackluster candidate, Kamala Harris, and continue their sort of like status quo dominance in perpetuity. Yes, absolutely. Okay,

let's go to the next part. This is an SBF update, which is very important. It's going really unnoticed by the mainstream media. The crypto media is actually the one who picked up on it. So let's see if credit where due. Let's put this up there on screen. So they show that SBF actually had detailed information on Alameda Research's finances as recently as March, according to Forbes. Now, why does this matter? Because SBF was such a narcissist that he actually compiled a Google Doc with his own net worth calculated by his own, basically, analysis that was sent over to Forbes. Now, that Google Doc, which had a sum of some $30-some billion, according to his net worth then for the total market, listed in detail the balance sheet and more, both of FTX, of his own personal wealth, and Alameda assets are exactly what led to the downfall of FTX in the first place after a run on the FTT token.

Now, let's remember, in the New York Times interview with SBF, the insane interview which we covered here, he said, quote, it is not a company I run about Alameda. Quote, it's not a company I've run for the last couple of years. Quote, and Alameda's finances, I was not deeply aware of. I was only surface level aware of Alameda's finances. percent of FTX, he actually had that Google sheet, which listed directly the assets and the specific coins on the FTX equity in addition to Alameda and its total net worth that he ascribed to himself. He said the Alameda funds under management approximately down to the cent level of what

they have. Now, how can you have down to the cent level unless you know what the underlying assets are there? He could claim that he got it from Alameda. I guess that's certainly possible. But again, like that is when you have a number that is in front of you about the total worth. And clearly, as he has also compiled his own FTX equity, he listed out Solana, FTT token, the Serum ecosystem token. I don't even know what that one is. Apparently it was worth $3 billion in March, which is amazing. FTX equity. But when you have the $37 billion that he listed on Alameda funds that were totally under management, and then putting your net worth at 16 billion, you clearly had a view at least somewhere on some spreadsheet of what exact assets under

management that alameda actually had and also there's a question here as to is this really all it takes to get on the forbes list we're talking about a google sheet with six columns and it just comes out and spits out like 30 billion and forbes just prints like spf on the forbes network it's like what that's all it takes it takes to get on the Forbes list? It's also very revealing, the type of person who would be like trying to get on the Forbes billionaire list and like working the numbers and working the reps and sending them. Like wasting your time when you could have been figuring out that your company was about to collapse. Instead going back and forth with Forbes about what your theoretical net worth was which ended up being uh less than nothing but yeah in that interview we played with Andrew Ross Zirkin the New York Times it was very his classic defense over and over again was like

oh I just didn't know I had no idea no idea I didn't even know we gave you know we bought this multi multi-million dollar how beach house for my parents i had no idea what happened to the money after the collapse when like assets were being basically you know ripped out of fti i have no i have no idea what happened to that i i didn't even know we had this kind of exposure with alameda i didn't really know what alameda was doing right this just shows you proof positive in case there was any doubt that he is a hundred percent full of shit i mean we can go back to some very basic and old concepts here when it comes to spf he is a con man that's it like you don't really need to understand anything deeper than this all of this there's some people

still after that interview there's a penny we're like i think he's telling the truth i believed what he said i think he just you, you know, got in over his head and he was out over his skis and the whole thing crumpled and he just made a couple of basic mistakes and didn't pay attention to the rest the way that he should, but it was an honest mistake. No, no, no, no, no. In case you needed any proof, you've got it here.

And Forbes actually even says, the level of detail that Bankman-Fried has provided to Forbes over the years shows he had detailed knowledge of some Alameda holdings and at least some knowledge of the transactions it was making, especially in 2021, despite stepping back from running the hedge fund after co-founding FTX in 2019. So it is clear as day.

This was his baby. I know, yeah. It was where the bulk of his net worth, a huge portion of his net worth was coming from, 90% total ownership. The idea that you would own 90% of something and not have a quote detailed understanding of what's going on is totally ludicrous.

And run by his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or whatever. I mean, we're not talking about a huge group of people that were running these things. He was clearly very deep into the day-to-day details of what exactly they were doing. There was also reporting that there was like a backdoor between FDX and Alameda that basically only he had access to. So anyway, he knew what was going on. He knew what was going on. And this also may end up being relevant in a court case in terms of his timeline and some of the

things that he has been saying, which appear to be patently untrue. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, he's been granting interviews all over the place. He had one with a editor at large at The Block, a two-hour interview. Frank Chaparro, which apparently just posted Unusual Wales, apparently is doing an interview with him today. The Wall Street Journal has doing an interview. I mean, really, all he continued, the Wall Street Journal just dropped one from yesterday. Oh, interesting. Headline was, FTX founder says he can't account for the billions that were sent to Alameda. He said, quote, I have little insight into the workings of the trading firm, even though he owned 90% of it.

So his new line is, I had no idea FDX was sending all these customer funds over to Alameda when I just, I simply don't believe that based upon the fact that he is able to provide an accounting of that when Forbes wants to put him on the billionaire list. He's like, oh, and now actually I know exactly how much money they have because now I own 50% of it or 90% of it. And you know, you should use that in my net worth calculation. Very interesting. Yes, it all happens. Indeed. All right. We have an interesting story for you. Just an interesting story. But also, the way the media covered it is also very interesting. So let's actually put the third element here up on the screen first, guys. So I got all these alerts,

Sagar news alerts yesterday saying that Iran was shutting down their morality police. It was being disbanded. And the headlines were incredibly unequivocal. So we have a few of them up on the screen. We say one says Iran has abolished the morality police. An official suggests in The New York Times, Fox News says Iran shuts down morality police in response to protests, colon report, Iran shutting down morality police. So the way the headlines made it sound very clear. And in fact, put the second element now up on the screen. This is from Yashar Ali, who the first headline from the New York Times was even more unequivocal. It says Iran abolishes morality police after months of reports. Doesn't say an official said they did that. They might have done it. They could potentially be doing none of that. Just totally unequivocal. They are

abolishing the Morality Police. And clearly, I mean, this is a huge story. We have covered here incredible protests across the country, you know, really persistent, massive crackdown with protesters being killed, all of this happening within Iran. So this shows that, you know, oh, they're getting some traction. The government is being forced to respond. And I still think that the kernel of that is likely true. But the way this was covered was incredibly irresponsible. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So you have a journalist here who is saying, here's a thread about responsible journalism, which is based on responsible sourcing. The comments on the alleged abolishment of the Morali police stem from the Iranian regime's

Attorney General, Mohammad Jafar Montazeri. Let's break down what he actually said in official Iranian state media. And I'm going to go ahead and read this whole thread that she ultimately put out. So this official said the following, the morality police has nothing to do with the judiciary system, the same source that created it in the past from the same place it has shut down. Of course, the judiciary system will continue its surveillance of social behaviors across society. So even the official who's saying, oh, we're getting rid of the morality police is saying, we're still going to enforce the law. Nothing is really going to change. We're just basically changing the name of it in the way that the enforcement happens." Then she links to a source here from BBC Persian.

Then she says, given the above, we know Montessori is not in charge, by the way, of the regime's morality police. Montessori does not specify who allegedly shut down the morality police and when and how. Montessori promises to continue enforcement of the country's Islamic Sharia laws. Editorially, it is not clear why New York Times and other media outlets have chosen to draw definitive conclusions from Montessori's words, who admits he's not in a position to do so, characterize it as a victory for feminists when Montessori says social surveillance would continue.

In conclusion, it is lazy journalism at best and camouflaged lobbying at worst. So, you know, New York Times in particular, but a bunch of outlets declaring as fact that the morality police has been abolished, showing that, you know, the government is under pressure, that they're caving to demands, that this is a clear victory for the feminists who've been protesting in Iran, when the reality is much more opaque and much less clear. Well, here's even better. So last night, that same attorney general whose comments they ran, he says, quote,

no official authority in the Islamic Republic has confirmed the closure of the morality police. So I wish it were true. You know, I see stuff like this all the time. It's a good example of how the Western media gets totally played by a lot of these. Right now, there's a lot of stories like China possibly loosening COVID zero.

We'll see, all right, maybe, or maybe they're leaking it to get the Western press off their backs and portray it as some sort of victory and then they come in and sweep in whenever that media doesn't pay attention as much anymore. Ever seen that happen in China? I certainly have with the Hong Kong protests.

And now here, I think is the exact same thing. Whenever, look, if it's actually true, we will find out. Will the hijab laws in Iran actually be enforced or will they be changed? Again, we will see. And then will they be changed on paper and then enforced differently in the streets? Again, we will see. To go ahead and to report this statement as total fact without any of the context of how the Iranian regime itself works, who this person is. The fact is BBC Persia seems to be the only outlet that actually nailed this from the beginning. Yes.

In the West, they failed. Now, after pushback, I have seen outlets, like I was reading an Economist story this morning that provided more of the context and more of the nuance, more of the uncertainty about what this actually means and whether it's real or not. Because clearly the initial, like, it's done, congratulations, way to go, guys, was met with massive pushback from this journalist and from, I'm sure, others, including Iranian protesters who are there on the ground.

One thing we do know, according to the protesters, is that the Morality Police have been much less visible and present over the past few weeks. I think it is safe to say, based on them even claiming that they're going to get rid of the Morality Police, that they weeks, I think it is safe to say, based on them even claiming that they're going to get rid of the morality police, that they are, I mean, they're definitely feeling pressure. There's no doubt about that. But whether this amounts to any sort of a substantive victory is highly in doubt at best. And again, this official, by his own words, I mean, they're not planning on getting rid of the hijab law. They're not even claiming that that's what they're doing. They're just saying we're going to still enforce it, but through a different mechanism ultimately.

So even in the best case scenario of they are actually getting rid of the morality police, they're just saying we're going to do the same thing. We're just going to do it in a little bit of a different way and try to claim this as, oh, congratulations, you won, when it's not, in fact, a substantive victory. Yeah, I think that's correct. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, a consistent theme that I've attempted to hammer home here on the show is that the so-called highest institutions of learning in the U.S. have long departed their mission statements. They are effectively recession-proof industries set up to bilk the federal government and students while funding a pernicious ideology that is spreading across our higher elite like cancer. At the root of it is a rigged financial system. These industries beclown themselves because they can.

They can because students pay. But more so, they don't even really need the students to pay anymore. It has become increasingly clear in the size of university endowments, which Malcolm Gladwell recently revealed as a scam of epic proportions, focusing his laser on Princeton University. Princeton is the world's first perpetual motion machine, Gladwell writes. At the heart of his argument is this, quote, after a stellar year in 2021, Princeton University has an endowment of $37.7 billion. Over the past 20 years, the average annual return for the endowment has been 11.2%,

which puts Princeton's return next year at roughly $3.77 billion. He continues, Now, what is Princeton's annual operating budget? That would be $1.86 billion. The arithmetic is not hard. $3.7 billion in investment minus $1.86 in operating still leaves you with $1.91 billion, leading him to conclude what? Quote, Princeton could let every student in for free.

The university administrators could tell the U.S. government and all of its agencies, it's cool, we got this. They could take out the cash registers in their cafeteria. They could hand out free parking to all visitors. They could give away Princeton sweatshirts on Nassau Street. They could fire their entire accounts receivable staff and their entire funding staff tomorrow. In fact, his team even put together this handy little chart. Princeton has been doing this recently, but for nearly two decades. On a year-by-year basis, their endowment return, just the return, nearly exactly equals or surpasses the entire operating budget of the whole school. Meaning no student would ever need to be charged tuition again.

Or you could imagine a world where students pay much, much less. Also, as you can guess, this is not just the case with Princeton University. It's the case with almost every Ivy League institution in this entire country whose endowments in some cases surpass, and I'm not kidding, the GDP of small African nations. With this mountain of wealth, why are they not doing what they were supposed to do? They were supposed to spend it on students. Instead, they simply reinvest the returns,

build an ever-growing pile of cash, giving fees to money managers, all while continuing to raise tuition precipitously, even when you're all giving them is freaking Zoom school. Tuition at Princeton right now is $80,000 a year. Let it sink in. That is 10 grand more than the average U.S. household income annually.

Which brings us to the tax code. Now look, I have long been critical of the 2017 tax cuts instituted by Trump and the Republicans. Mostly, it was a giveaway to the largest corporations in the U.S., stock buybacks that came back to us, bite us hard when the COVID pandemic showed that it turned out we don't make anything

in our country here anymore. But there was one good part to it, and it was called the university endowment tax. The TCJA, as it was known, imposed a 1.4% tax on net investment income of private university endowments,

which enroll at least 500 students and have endowment assets exceeding $500,000 per student. Only 40 universities in the entire country even met that criteria at the time. Now it's about 100. The thinking was this. If you exceed half a million dollars per student, you clearly are not spending the money on actual students. You are just earning a ton of money.

Hence, you have to pay a tiny, a measly 1.4%. If you admit more students, or if you spend more money, voila, you pay no tax. If you don't, well, now you pay only 1.4%, which considering their average return is 11%, you do the math. They are still coming out billions of dollars on top. But even this tax they they cannot stomach. With an all-out war begun right now by the major Ivy League institutions, Harvard, Princeton, and other tax entities are heavily lobbying Democrats in Congress to relieve them of what they say is an unfair tax burden. And the corrupt bargain actually almost won. A relief to the tax was actually

included in the original Build Back Better bill, but eventually died in the Senate. Their ongoing lobbying effort in Congress continues with sympathetic ears amongst the Democratic Party elite, which increasingly is driven by the concerns of the university educated. And this brings me back to my original opposition to student loan debt relief in the first place. These universities have become fantastically wealthy on the backs of students in government-backed programs, which require nothing on their part. They increase tuition. They use the money to fund their endowments. They are printing untold billions. Relief without targeting these criminals is effectively a bailout of higher ed with zero consequences for the actual bad actor in this situation. Now that the Supreme Court is poised to strike down debt relief as unconstitutional,

it is time to actually deal with this. Students desperately need help. They should get it properly through the legislative process. Congress should not only reject the overtures of these greedy criminals to provide them tax relief, they should increase that tax to 100% from here on out. That way, we never have to be back here again. We can force universities to spend the money they earn on students, and we should consider an even more strong excise tax to fund student loan relief

for all time, not just once, forever. That's a fair solution, but given currently the Democratic Party control by these universities, don't anticipate it anytime soon. They will just let the problem fester for even longer, and they're going to let these criminals off the hook. I mean, how crazy is that? That they can't even pay a one point. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, you voted for President Biden, but now you say you feel like he's turned his back on you. Why?

Well, what we've seen with this great rail strike of 22 that has ended very undramatically is we've seen unionized workers' right to bargain collectively get trampled on. Their voice has not been heard. They voted against the contract. We have a pro-labor president who loves to, you know, pat himself on the back for that. And when the going got tough, he turned his back on the people he's supposed to be looking out for. The leaders we vote in who are supposed to support us, you know, turn their back on us. Yeah, the system's broken. Back in 1981, Ronald Reagan, a former union leader himself, intervened in a strike of air traffic controllers and forced them back to work. It was a seminal moment in labor history and marked

the official launch of decades of labor movement decline and a bipartisan project of union busting, which has continued more or less unbroken up until this very year. Now, Reagan's decision to break the Patco strike helped jumpstart the era of neoliberal market fundamentalism that we have been suffering through ever since. But now we're at a different moment with a president who has promised to be a break from all of that. Neoliberalism, of course, is a political philosophy and as a paradigm has been rejected by the public, it's actually receding by some measures process, which has been accelerated like many rejected by the public. It's actually receding by some measures, process which has been accelerated, like many things, by the pandemic. We see some reshoring of jobs. We see a new dabbling in industrial policy supported by both parties. And we see historic grassroots energy in the labor movement, a rising militancy

across the workforce that I have not seen outside of the wave of teacher strikes, which were a prelude to this new surge of organizing and action. So this wave of action, it's been enabled by the worker-friendly officials that the Biden administration has appointed to the National Labor Relations Board. But the truth is, while President Biden claims to be a great friend to labor, he has personally been nothing but a disappointment. He campaigned on the PRO Act, but immediately dropped it. He promised to block union investors from receiving federal contracts. But he hasn't said a peep about that pledge since he's been elected, even as Amazon, which gets billions from the federal government, engages in brazenly lawless union busting across the entire country.

And now the final gutting disappointment. When push came to shove, Biden did exactly what Reagan did before him. He sided with capital and he broke the strike. Now, there's a lot of Democratic cope right now about this undeniable reality. Yeah, but the dumb partisans would say more Democrats voted for workers sick days than Republicans. Sure, Republicans are no friend to labor. And even the ones who voted for the paid sick leave mostly wanted to jam and embarrass Biden. But let's be clear about who was in the driver's seat here the whole time. It was Biden and it was the Democrats driving this train the entire way. It was Biden's presidential emergency board

that pushed the first horrendous deal. It was Biden's team who led the negotiations that led to another merely bad deal, the so-called tentative agreement. It was Biden's labor secretary who destroyed worker leverage when he immediately called on Congress to block a strike and cram down that tentative agreement if workers did not agree to it. It was Biden himself who then

ultimately called on Congress to cram down the agreement and a Democratic Congress which obliged, allowing a show vote on seven days of paid sick leave that they knew was destined to fail. The administration's rhetoric was exclusively focused on the pain that a rail strike would cause to the economy. They never took the rail barons to task for denying a basic benefit to their workers. After Democrats in the House actually passed seven days of paid sick leave, Biden issued a statement that didn't even bother to ask the Senate to vote the same way. There was no public pressure campaign. There was nothing but fear-mongering about how devastating a strike would be, a talking point that plays right into the hands of Warren Buffett and the other rail bosses.

The only silver lining of this whole catastrophe was watching Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg squirm as CNN's Jake Tapper absolutely raked him across the coals. Because in this moment, the utter vacuousness of the neoliberal approach to labor politics was on full display. And Pete is nothing if not the McKinsey-trained, living, breathing embodiment of the neoliberal approach to labor politics was on full display. And Pete is nothing if not the McKinsey-trained, living, breathing embodiment of the failures of technocratic market fundamentalism.

They're happy to support workers. They believe in paid sick leave and worker protections, so long as it doesn't come into even the tiniest bit of conflict with the oligarchs who they have put in charge of the country. Take a look. Why are you okay passing a deal that does not guarantee paid sick leave for these union workers? Well, first of all, the importance of this deal is that a rail shutdown is being avoided. If that were to happen, we would have seen hundreds of thousands of American workers

laid off, energy prices shooting up once refineries were unable to continue operating, issues getting chlorine to water treatment plants, auto industry factories shutting down within hours, if not days, of that happening. So what we've been able to avoid is a major blow to workers, farms, families across the country. So Tapper's initial question here basically amounts to, hey, asshole, aren't y'all supposed to be the party that supports paid silk leave? To which Pete barfs up their corporate-backed talking points about the economic perils, which had to be averted as if there were no other choices available to them to both give workers a better deal and to avert that economic catastrophe.

Worth remembering, too, that Pete self-righteously defended his own lengthy time off after he and Chaston became fathers, even though he was transportation secretary and the entire supply chain at that time was totally effed. Also worth noting that I saw a level of outrage when Pete's time off was attacked that I have not seen matched by a level of outrage when the time off of over 100,000 blue-collar workers is now decimated. But wait, with the Tapper interview, there is so much more. The question is, these rail lines, they're making billions of dollars. Profits are up for all of them, quite a lot in some cases. You and I have paid sick leave. My crew has paid sick leave. Why don't these railway workers deserve paid sick leave?

Well, let me remind you, the position of our administration is that every American worker ought to have paid leave, whether you're a railroad worker, a journalist, a federal government employee, or whether you work at Burger King. We believe that every American worker, certainly every full-time American worker, ought to have paid leave. The president has proposed that. The president has advanced that in proposed legislation. And so far, it has been unable to get past what has been

unified Senate Republican opposition. We are going to continue to press for that, again, not just picking and choosing one sector over another, but based on the basic idea that every single American worker ought to have paid leave, just like you have in pretty much every country in the world. Right. But that's... But for now, right now, a tentative agreement that was reached at the bargaining table between union leaders and companies contains provisions like this pay raise and other improvements.

Right. I get it. But saying that they ought to have paid sick leave and then getting in there and saying to the Warren Buffetts of the world, give these guys paid sick leave or the White House is going to make you guys out to be the bad guys and you're going to be the ones that are forced to blink after your reputations take a number of hits. That's a different matter. We've heard from multiple union workers who feel like the Biden administration has let them down. Gabe Christensen, a freight railroad breakman who

lives in Nevada, he told CNN, quote, here we have someone, meaning Biden, who touted themselves as the most labor-friendly president for many decades. And he basically just betrayed us. There really is no difference between Democrats and Republicans anymore. They're just feeding corporate greed, unquote. What do you say to Gabe Christensen? Pete goes on to a bunch of blah, blah, blah about how great the Biden administration has actually been. But Tapper has him dead to rights here. It is one thing to theoretically support paid sick leave. It is quite another to have to stand up to the billionaire class. Tapper finishes him off with that devastating quote from Christensen, which should be the nail in Pete's political coffin. Now, this moment exemplifies why,

while Biden has actually been a little better as president than I thought he would be, he and his way of politics are fundamentally inadequate to the moment. At a time when the labor movement is scraping and struggling to be reborn, when they needed a champion, he instead morphed in to frickin' Ronald Reagan. Occasionally with Biden, if you squint just right, you can catch a glimpse of what a post-neoliberal era might look like. It'd have reshoring. It'd have infrastructure, debt relief, antitrust enforcement. But ultimately, when the full measure is taken, he will always, always disappoint. My only hope is that while Reagan's strike-breaking signaled the beginning of an era,

Biden's strike-breaking will be seen as the last gasp of a zombie era that should have been long ago left for dead. And listen, say all you want about the Republicans. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, we are going to post our interview with Congressman Ro Khanna about the Twitter files and his surprised appearance in them later. But as always, thank you guys so much for watching. If you're able to come to our year-end spectacular shows in New York and Boston this week, please do so. We would love to have you guys in attendance. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, I can't wait. Live show. Last time I get to shout that at everybody. It's been a fantastic experience. Thank you, everybody who supports us, premium subscribers. You guys enabled those emergency reaction segments from CounterPoints. They did a fantastic job. CounterPoints will be here in the chair at the Breaking Points desk while we're away, and we will see you all next week. this is an iHeart podcast