Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/25/23 CounterPoints: Pence Classified Docs Found, DOJ Sues Google, Trump Charges, Cop City, Bezos Washington Post Sale, Ticketmaster, Elon Caves to India Censorship

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss classified documents found in Mike Pence's home, the Department of Justice announcing its anti trust case against Google, the final report of Fulton County grand jury investigating Trump may be released soon, guest Tina-Disiree joins us to discuss Cop City and how protestors of the new development have been charged as "Domestic Terrorists", reports Jeff Bezos may sell Washington Post to buy Commanders football team, and guest Raqib Naik joins to talk about Elon Musk caving to India's censorship demands over a BBC documentary on Modi.Timestamps:SoS: (0:00)Pence Docs: (1:50)Google DOJ: (10:10)Trump Charges: (20:57)COP CITY Protestors: (29:14)Bezos WaPo: (38:10)Ticketmaster Hearing: (49:51)Elon Bans BBC Doc: (57:38)EoS: (1:12:37)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/AUSTIN LIVE SHOW FEB 3RDTickets: https://tickets.austintheatre.org/9053/9054 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage 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. Happy Wednesday. Welcome to CounterPoints. How are you doing, Ryan? Wonderful. Never better. How about you? I'm good. You said you had two pieces of news to

mention right off the top here before we dive into what happened. Well, one, so Germany overnight officially authorized the release of 14 of its tanks to Ukraine, which will escalate the war according to the Russian embassy in Germany and also according to common sense. And they also authorized other countries that are in possession of German tanks to release those into Ukraine. The U.S. has even said that it's going to, you know, it's going to move forward with the process of shipping tanks over to Ukraine. Which is what got Germany to go along with it. Yeah, right. And so, and then also in the House of Representatives, the, you know, the House Republicans booted Ilhan Omar from the House Foreign Relations Committee, Adam Schiff and Swalwell, Eric Swalwell from the Intelligence Committee.

I mean, to me, it's, I get it that Democrats started it when they went after Marjorie Taylor Greene. But if you can't be on a committee with somebody you disagree with, like that's the first step to the whole thing falling apart. Yeah, they're in a bad tit for tat right now. And voters on both sides will take nothing less than responding to the tit with the tat. Right, because once you start kicking certain people off, and this is the problem with censorship as well, that why big tech platforms at first were hands off. Because they said if we take down some things but not others, that looks like we're endorsing the things that we don't take down. Advertising is the same way. If you accept some ads but not other ads, then it's like, well, you didn't not take that ad.

So therefore, you must approve of all the other ones. Well, this is actually a really great transition into the topic because as I've been thinking, the topic of our first block here, which is the documents found at Mike Pence's Indiana home, is that we're locked in this ridiculous pattern where politicians are just throwing stones in glass houses and wasting all of our time and money in the process. We now have two special counsels into classified documents that were found. We've got a third for Pence. I hope we don't. This is the news yesterday. CNN broke that last week. Twelve documents, about a dozen documents were found in Mike Pence's Indiana home. It is not clear, according to CNN, what those documents are related to, which is a huge piece of this puzzle. Pence asked his lawyer to conduct the search in

the wake of everything that had been going on with the Trump documents and the Biden documents. He immediately alerted the National Archives, which is what you're supposed to do. Then apparently these documents were in taped up and unopened boxes. That's per his attorney. But Mike Pence has weighed in on the other document scandals in a way that's not super helpful to him right now. I believe we have a clip of what he told David Muir earlier this year. I actually think this was just in November. Take a listen. Did you take any classified documents

with you from the White House? I did not. Do you see any reason for anyone to take classified documents with them leaving the White House? Well, there'd be no reason to have classified documents, particularly if they were in an unprotected area. Well, there were classified documents, and they were in, as you report, an unprotected area. So, Ryan, what drives me crazy about all of this is that it was clearly, there's a substantive reason to be concerned about

unsecured documents, whether it's because there's espionage at Mar-a-Lago or there's Hunter Biden's garage. He's engaged in high-level foreign lobbying and there's unsecured documents just laying around the place. The likelihood that these documents were reasonably classified and very sensitive and then actually came to be accessed improperly is small. And now we have two special counsel investigations going into something in which the likelihood for all of this is that people accidentally take classified documents because documents, dirty little

secret in Washington, D.C., the classification system is wildly abused. And so it's much more likely that that was the case. And that's not to negate the reality that there may have been something serious here, but it is to say this coverage has been disproportionate because it's just become a political football in a very unhelpful way. go after him and we're going to talk about what they might also go after him over down in Georgia pretty soon. But to focus on these classified documents rather than, let's say, some type of Saudi bribery related to the killing of Khashoggi, something that is a genuine world historic crime rather than a paperwork violation. However, like you said, depending on what kind of paperwork, names of people who end up getting killed, like, okay, now you're talking like significant problems, but we don't know that yet.

And like you said, it's more likely that it's something small that was over classified. So Democrats' decision to go after him for that then sets them up to be hoisted on their own petard like this, with Biden finding stuff in his University of Pennsylvania closet and then his garage next to his Corvette or his Mustang or whatever he's got in there. And then hilariously, Mike Pence, he's got some documents too. It does seem like they came down on Pence a lot harder than they came down even on Trump or

Biden. Eventually they raided Trump, but he seemed to invite that by being completely shady about the way he was handling and not cooperating with them. But Pence's lawyers told the National Archives, National Archives told the Department of Justice, Pence's lawyers were in communication with the National Archives, and they were setting up times to give these documents back. And then all of a sudden the Department of Justice shows up. Yeah. It seemed like they were eager, like, oh, now we've got two to one.

So we're back in the lead on this scandal. Well, because it keeps happening with Biden. I mean, there's new documents that turn up every few days. So they're in a rhythm, right? Like they're ready to go. They know what to do. They have the drill down. They've got the personnel ready.

It's a well-oiled machine at this point. It's a muscle reflex. More classified documents at someone's house, like let's jump on it and get the truck ready. And that's again, like Pence, you can see, I think it's really interesting in that David Muir back and forth. He looks very hesitant to me to come out fully and say, I did not take any classified documents because he knows, just like Trump knows, just like Biden knows, that the likelihood that something that was classified improperly or over classified, to your point, ended up in his paperwork somewhere. I mean, at this point, you have his lawyers going through boxes that are taped up and unopened looking for classified

documents. By the way, fine, fine. But if we end up with a third special counsel for Mike Pence, it's going to be a great example of how much time we waste by getting locked in these ruts and the tit for tat. It's such a waste of everybody's time. It's a waste of our money. It's a waste of the media attention. And just all around, I think, statement on how silly our politics are right now. And Edward Snowden underlined it, if we could put up a four here. So Edward Snowden posted, how is it possible that I have fewer classified documents in my house than the last few White House administrations? The Espionage Act is a, quote, strict liability crime. Good intentions are no defense. Under the dumb law, these guys are all unindicted criminals. Perfect. He's not

wrong. No lies detected there. That is accurate. Well, I was gonna say you would remember this. The Snowden, the documents that were brought to light by Edward Snowden, the classification abuse was pretty evident just in those. I mean, that was like a really good window into how the system was abused. Right. Right. And that's why it's such a dangerous path to go down to prosecute somebody like Julian Assange for publishing classified documents, because then the United States government can get around the First Amendment by just classifying everything and saying, well, it's not that we're censoring the press. It's not that we're restricting what the press can publish. We're just saying you can't publish classified documents. Oh, and by the way, everything is classified. And there are a lot of authoritarian, autocratic, or autocratic-leaning governments that do actually

have these state secrets acts where basically everything is classified. And that's what they use then to crack down on any media that is not even opposition, but just like neutral saying, yeah, you reported on a cabinet meeting that was held. Those cabinet meetings are state secrets. You're all under arrest. For national security reasons. National security reasons. This cannot be public information. Yeah, that's a great slippery slope argument at how easily that can turn into something really dangerous. Right. And the reason they so often do it is to avoid embarrassment. Right. Classification because of shame. Like we screwed up, let's hurry up and let's reverse classify all of this. You see that happening all the time. And in fact, it showed up in the Twitter files, if you remember.

The Department of Homeland Security started to try to, like, reverse classify its efforts around some of these, like, U.S. Army bots around the world. Not for any reason because they used to publicly declare themselves to be affiliated with the Army. Now they were getting embarrassed. They're like, oh, this whole thing is classified. Oh, that was Lee's first story. Yes. Let's not talk about this classified. Yeah.

But according to the Wayback Machine, it used to say it was a Pentagon account. Yeah. That's classified too. Yeah, Wayback Machine is breaking the espionage act. Yeah, and I think the big missing piece of this puzzle, again, is we don't even know what these documents are related to, whether it's Pence.

We don't know what a lot of the Biden documents are related to. And to your point, this could range from being something that is legitimately serious to something that is wildly unserious, like a lunch order. Yeah. So speaking of a robust free press, there was actually some very good news out of the Department of Justice yesterday, believe it or not. Let's roll. This is Jonathan Cantor, who we've been talking about for a long time on this show and also on the previous version of it back at the Hill, as somebody who was really going to potentially bring it to big tech. And it's good to see that he's delivering here.

So here's Jonathan Cantor. Let's roll B1. As alleged in our complaint, in late 2016, a Google digital advertising executive asked the following question in an internal email exchange. Quote, is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and the huge network. The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the New York Stock Exchange, unquote. The answer to Google's rhetorical question is yes. Indeed, there is a deeper issue. So the Department of Justice has brought a landmark case against Google. This is the United States versus Google.

And they're particularly going after their ad tech platform, saying that because they own everything involved in it and are just hoovering up all the money, that that's illegal. What did you make of Cantor's decision to pull the trigger here? Well, that quote he zeroed it on from a Google ad executive is incredible, just sort of musing out loud. Speaking of things people wish they could probably make private, just musing out loud about their monopoly power in a way that completely, I think, is a great explanation of the problem with their monopoly power. So for Cantor to zero in on this, this is the second major lawsuit that the Department of Justice has filed against Google in two years. The first one was under the Trump administration. That one was for the search engine function. This one is for the ad business.

This is—the suit says Google believed that, quote, it could become the be-all and end-all location for all ad serving and would no longer have to compete on the merits. It could simply set the rules of the game to exclude rivals. The result then, as the DOJ says, is that website creators earn less and advertisers pay more than they would in a market where unfettered competitive pressure could discipline prices and lead to more innovation and tech tools that would ultimately result in higher quality and lower cost. That's absolutely true. And it's a reason that so many of the libertarian defenders of tech are completely

missing that monopoly power is, unless you're like fully on the Ayn Rand side of the monopoly debate. Power is freedom. It's an absolute obstruction to free markets. And Google ads is a great example of that. Yeah. Let's actually play a little more of Cantor here, and then we can get Google's response. The department alleges that Google engaged in 15 years of sustained conduct that had and continues to have the effect of driving out rivals, diminishing competition, inflating advertising costs, reducing website publisher revenues, stymieing innovation, and flattening our public marketplace of ideas. And so if we could put a B3 here, this is Google's public response. They said that the DOJ's lawsuit ignores the enormous competition in ad tech. It attempts to unwind acquisitions made nearly 15 years ago. Doing so would harm publishers and advertisers while chilling innovation.

Chilling innovation. Yeah. Chill innovation. The only part of that that is a factual claim, the others are just, okay, unwind acquisitions made 15 years ago, fine. Yeah, we do want to do that. Double click, for example, is a big one. So it says, DOJ's lawsuit ignores the enormous competition in ad tech. What competition in ad tech? Right. Are you familiar with any competition in ad tech? They think they'll point to Facebook.

Oh, that Facebook also is a monopoly that hoovers up? Okay, so it's a duopoly. It's a duopoly, not a monopoly. Don't worry, it's fine. And another thing Cantor said there I think is interesting is he ended on saying that Google was flattening the public marketplace of ideas. And this is a point I always appreciate that Matt Stoller makes, which is when you have monopolies and as the right has come to be antagonistic and to cheer on people like Jonathan Cantor and Lena Kahn and the new Brandeisians, it's because it's been very illustrated to a very, I think, extreme point, the way in which monopoly power creates monopoly power over discourse and ideas. And the left has that right now. And it happened at The Federalist to us with Google Ads. They threatened to de-platform us from the ad business over our comments section.

Google owns YouTube, by the way. If they're so worried about comment sections and how that might reflect on a publisher, they should probably be more introspective. But you can see how these little things... That's shade being thrown at you commenters from Emily. Yes. Well, really from Google. You can really see how these silly things become levers of enormous ideological power. And that Cantor said that is important because it means he's sort of extending that olive branch to people who want to come into the coalition with him. Yeah. Let's roll a little bit more Cantor House. Here's B4.

Here are just five examples. First, locking in content creators through tying arrangements. Second, manipulating auctions, including by giving itself a first look and then a last look advantage over competing ad exchanges. Third, blocking industry participants from using rivals' technology and punishing those that tried. Fourth, amassing and abusing troves of its rivals' bidding data. And fifth, depriving customers of choice by degrading the quality of Google's own products. And so this goes right to what you were talking about, the way that publishers have no choice but to use, basically, but to use Google. And Google has a, they can make their own company then can bid on their own platform.

They can make the first bid. Then they can sit back, let the auction go. And then when the auction's done, they can come in at the very end and be like, yeah, I'll take that or I won't take that. And then they can also get all of that data so they know what all of their rivals are doing when it comes to these bidding competitions so that they can then beat them. And then he talks about how they walk away sometimes with up to 80% of the ad money. So you publish something. You make a website. People love it. They come and watch.

Or you make a show over here at YouTube. People like the show. They come and watch it. Advertisers want to reach your audience. So they pay to reach your audience. And then Google swoops in and takes half or more of it. Yeah, there's a great quote in the complaint where it says, in effect, Google was robbing from Peter, the advertisers, to pay Paul, the publishers, all while collecting a hefty transaction fee for its own privileged position in the middle. It's amazing the racket that they've been able to build under the nose of regulators, by the way.

These were a lot of approved mergers. And as the balance... The Obama era was terrible for this, yeah. Right, right. No, absolutely. The Bush era, too. Yes, absolutely. We've got two more good canter clips. Let's do B5 here. First, a Google employee characterized Google's ad exchange as, quote,

an authoritarian intermediary. Second, a senior Google executive conceded that switching ad servers for publishers is, quote, a nightmare that, quote, takes an act of God. Third, a Google employee described the company's scheme to pay publishers $3 billion yearly by restricting access to Google ads and, quote, overcharging advertisers. Fourth, a Google manager made it clear that, quote, our goal should be all or nothing. Use Google's ad exchange or don't get access to our advertiser demand. And fifth, a Google executive detailed the company's steps to, quote, dry out rivals.

You can see where their confidence is coming from because they have this repeatedly in Google's own words. You've got to love subpoenas. It's so good. And I think it's a very, I mean, it's a very substantive complaint. And that comes through, I think, and Cantor had a little swagger there, I would say. He had a little swagger because he has them in their own words. Right, because when Google responds, you're like, well, okay, what do you say to Google? Yeah.

And he waxed poetic about the role of advertising in a free press and in free expression of ideas toward the end of it. So let's roll this last side. For more than two centuries, advertising in this country has funded newspapers and other avenues of free expression. Revenue from advertising has provided critical support for content creation, the sharing of information, the exchange of viewpoints, which promote a free and vibrant and healthy society. The antitrust division, I'm so proud of this, has a storied history of safeguarding competition in offline media, from music to broadcasting to publishing. It is now just as important, if not more, to protect competition in the digital marketplace

of ideas, where powerful network effects make monopoly power even more durable and harmful, and abuses by companies with monopoly power, like Google, even more pernicious. It's good stuff. There you go. That's why this stuff matters. Yes. Right, because if you can't, you know, that leaves you with only a subscription model and without a possibility for an advertising model, which then drives everybody

into kind of a niche place. It's nice to be able to have a combination of both of those. Yeah. And again, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, some other attorneys general are in on a similar lawsuit on the state level. A handful of states, kind of a mix of some red and blue, I think Tennessee jumped in on it, filed alongside the DOJ yesterday. So this is a big, big, big case to follow going forward. There's going to be, Google's argument will be really, I think, instructive and helpful to watch them try to defend this in their own words because it's really indefensible at this point. Break them up. Break them up. Break them up. Moving on to Georgia, we can put up C1 here.

Georgia prosecutor is saying that a decision on charges is imminent on whether or not to charge President Donald Trump in the effort to, quote, find, what, 11,000 votes in Georgia, or anybody around him. Who knows which cast of characters the prosecutors may decide to indict. The question is whether or not to release the grand jury report that they produced, or not whether to release it, but when at what point to release it. What's your read on this? Right. So there was a hearing yesterday, and that quote about decisions being imminent comes from the Fulton County District Attorney, Fannie Williams, who was having to defend not releasing the full report yet, despite the fact

that actually a bunch of media organizations have come out and said the full report should be released right now. There's been a seven-month special grand jury, not regular grand jury, but actual special grand jury investigation. They've interviewed 75 witnesses, I think including Rudy Giuliani and some other folks. And as she was defending the decision not to release that report yet, she came out and said it's because the decision on the charges is imminent. So no full report yet because we're still deciding. And it looks like potentially she could be pursuing racketeering charges against Trump over election. That's what the probe, the special grand jury probe was into,

his election, trying to overturn the results of the Georgia election in 2020. They think they might have him on racketeering, which is interesting. And then they need to, Williams needs to decide whether she'll seek indictments from a regular grand jury now that the special grand jury report is over. I think this is a weird excuse. The prosecutors say it's, quote, dangerous to release the full report before the charges are brought. But then again, it might be that they want to bring charges that weren't recommended by the grand jury, which, by the way, did not even reach out to Donald Trump for an interview. That's what Trump's lawyers are using as a defense. And what if her resistance to

releasing the report is strategic? Yeah. And she's actually quite fine with it being released. But when it gets released, then she can say, well, the judge forced our hand here. I didn't want to have to do this, but now this report is out and there's all this pressure on me and you've seen, you see the evidence of the crimes. So yeah, we are going forward with the indictments. Do you think that that could possibly be part of the tactic here? Or do you think that there is really a decision that is imminent and what does imminent mean? Because that could mean, to me, imminent means like stick around because it's happening any day. For prosecutors, I don't know, it could mean weeks or months. Well, and by the way, that's the big implication of the story.

That's the big news here that it's Donald Trump being charged with criminal racketeering could be imminent in the state of Georgia. That's obviously, this is not an investigation. I think that there's so many investigations into Donald Trump that you can't pay attention to all of them. But this one is one that really has the potential to be a dangerous one. Now, she's saying, to your point, quote, we want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly. And we think for future defendants to be treated fairly, it's not appropriate at this time to have the report released. So that's her explanation for why she doesn't think the report should be released because it's about treating defendants fairly, which I don't believe, actually. I don't think she's really interested in treating defendants fairly because if she were, I mean, listen, this is from Trump's lawyers.

The grand jury compelled the testimony of dozens of other often high-ranking officials during the investigation, but never found it important to speak with the president. Therefore, we can assume that the grand jury did their job and looked at the facts and the law, as we have, and concluded there were no violations of the law by President Trump. That's an interesting read on their decision not to reach out to him. And prosecutors are also not the ones you necessarily want protecting the rights of defendants, right? That's not exactly, you know, you're going to lean on for that. That's why I don't believe her. How do you think Republicans would respond if they did press charges here? Well, that's why I think the media, this media consortium that's pushing for the report is

absolutely right. Because if there's witness testimony from some folks that shows there was some sort of racketeering conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes beyond the Trump quotes to Brad Raffensperger that everybody is already very familiar with. Sure, maybe there's something there, but I think Republicans, for the most part, are already completely on the bandwagon that this is, whatever is going on, whatever probes are happening against Donald Trump, it's political, bottom. And maybe to your point, that's why the prosecutor is trying to hold off on something being released so she can make the charges, then have it released, as opposed to it happening the other way around where the report gets released and it's like,

and then she has to make charges. It's more like, okay, I'll make the charges. Then you can see the report. But all anyone's going to care about at that point is the charges. Yeah. And for most Democrats, that call with Raffensperger, where he says, look, just find me the 11,000 votes, is enough right there. They're like, all right, you're done. That's a crime. I could see, I've tried to twist myself into a way of finding a way that that would not be a crime. And you could imagine, say, both Al Gore or George Bush looking at Florida in 2000 and saying, all right, we're down by 500 votes. Find me 500 votes. They don't necessarily mean go get a box and stuff it with 500 votes, they mean, they could mean find a county that, you know,

there are butterfly ballots that it could add up to 500 votes. But I think that requires giving Trump so much benefit of the doubt that nobody can really get themselves there. On the other hand, the reporting from that period and the documentary crew that followed him around, etc., all suggest that in his own mind, he may have actually believed this. And it's George Costanza. That's the George Costanza line. It's not a lie if you believe it. Yes, exactly. The Costanza defense.

Yeah, the Costanza defense. But yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's why you don't get Republicans eagerly latching on to something like this. Yeah, the Costanza defense. It's because they constantly are looking for something that's going to be the smoking gun. And that call is bad. But again, if you're if you're you can imagine a world in which Donald Trump really thinks that there are 11000 votes out there that need to be found. And so, well, I think it's an inappropriate language and inappropriate pressure to apply in a situation like that. It's not a clear-cut bombshell piece of wrongdoing to the extent that a man who was elected and won nearly 50 percent of the vote the second time, he didn't quite get there, but nearly beat Joe Biden. The point is, he has tens of millions of supporters around the country. If you want to charge him with criminal conduct, this might not be the thing. Like, this might not be it, the big one, because it's still just not that big clear-cut thing. But like you said, and I think it's a

good point, we'll see what's in the report if and when it does come out. Yeah. That could change. It won't change a lot of people's minds, but it could change some people's minds. Well, who knows? I mean, there was crazy. Those were some frenzied times in the Trump White House. And who knows what Rudy Giuliani or someone else may have said or, you know, evidence they may have come across that actually really is even worse than that call, which was already bad, but even worse than the call. It's entirely possible. Powell or somebody like trying to rally like the DHS to seize things, seize voting machines and stuff. Yeah, you could see some of that being like,

okay, you can't do that. That's a crime. Right, but her resistance to releasing it tells me there's probably not a bombshell, a real bombshell in it. Or there is, and she wants to reluctantly release it. I think that's a good theory, too. All right, well, we were hoping to be joined

by status quo reporter Tina Desiree Berg to talk about her new reporting down in Cop City, but she had technical difficulties, couldn't join us, but we wanted to let you guys know about it anyway, if we could put up her latest dispatch for status quo news called Inside the Dangerous Domestic Terrorism Charges Against Cop City Protesters. I think this is something that should be concerning to viewers across the political spectrum. Whether you wholeheartedly support the protesters in cop city, which is a confrontation in Atlanta between police and protesters who are trying to stop basically the demolition of a wooded area in order to construct a police training center, or if you're completely hostile to them and want them all arrested and charged with protesting,

civil disobedience, whatever it is, because what they're doing is they're ratcheting up these charges to the level of, quote unquote, domestic terrorism. And so, and Tina Desiree got a number of the kind of arrest warrants and police documents related to this from the protesters. We can roll some of her footage from Saturday. She was there as people were getting arrested. But what's your take on the domestic terrorism book being thrown at these protesters? Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And one of the questions I wanted to ask Tina is, as you're reading the charges, my read on it is that they're trying to, in order to charge people with domestic terrorism, what they're doing is lumping all of these

protesters in with people who, for instance, have been engaged in violence towards police and saying, because you're part of this group that has been engaging in violence towards police, we're charging you with domestic terrorism. You can see on this video, I mean, just stunning scenes out of Atlanta. That seems to be the argument. It's an interesting argument, especially as you said, you've seen a lot of pushback from the right on January 6th charges. And that has been a real concern that's mounted, that weaponizing these broad charges and these broad labels of domestic terrorism is something that can certainly be abused. And in the cases, as Tina points out, the charges for these individuals are not that they themselves in every case were engaged directly in serious violence so much as they were there and breaking the law in some way or the other.

So we're throwing the book at you and saying because you're part of this group, you're a domestic terrorist. Now, I think one interesting thing worth noting is that of the arrests, only one of those people was from Georgia. To my knowledge, only one of those people was from Georgia. To my knowledge, only one of those people was a local. So that's one thing I have seen folks on the right focus on, is the fact that these are all a lot of people from out of town. What do you think of that read on this? They're conflating or they're lumping everybody in saying, if you're there and you're part of this group and this group, you know, the protester, the activist who was tragically shot and killed, had a gun. His mother has or their mother, I believe the protester is not binary, has said, we don't know why the gun may have been there to protect from animals in the forest because that's what's going on here. So that certainly seems plausible to me, but that's what the cops are going to use then to say this is a domestic terrorist group. They're armed and targeting police.

Right. These arrests are coming after the killing of Emmanuel Turan, a protester known as Tortuguita. And there's a theory that's kicked around that says that they did not have a weapon on them. So a police officer was shot and injured. Police returned fire, killed Tortugueta. Later, after a very long search, found a weapon. Right. What people are saying down there is that they suspect somebody else pulled that trigger, that it was not him. Well, I mean, shooting is foul play.

No, on behalf of the cops that are trying to pin the gun to Teguita. They killed him. They find a gun. They'd like to say, okay, well, he was the one that was pulling the trigger. There will be forensics done. And we should know soon whether or not there's residue. That's something that can be demonstrated or not. But your point is right on, that lumping everybody together is deeply un-American. And there's also an irony to it

that neoliberalism says that everybody is an individual ripped from community, except when we want to lump you in with domestic terrorism charges. Then if you're anywhere near somebody else who's doing something that we find criminal, then you also then become a criminal. So all of a sudden we believe in community. one completely absurd example from Tina Desiree's reporting. One suspect is charged, and this is from the charging document. The crime they committed was fleeing from Atlanta Police Department investigator Ronald Sluss, causing injuries to Sluss's right knee and right elbow, said injuries being scrapes and cuts. So a person ran, and you saw the scenes, like those are the types of scenes that are going on. So somebody's running away from this, a cop chases them, falls, and gets cuts and, literally, this is from their own documents,

but it gets, quote, scrapes and cuts on their right knee and right elbow and then charge the person running with domestic terrorism. We use the word dystopian on this show a lot, but we're not overusing it yet because that, what could be more dystopian than that? The history of the leveling of domestic terrorism charges, I mean, what they're charging in the document, again, this is as I'm reading the charges and trying to parse what law enforcement is saying, they really are making that connection between, you know, what the group is engaged in and then what they can charge the individuals with. And as you point out from Tina's report, in individual cases, there's some really like low level stuff that doesn't seem to qualify as domestic terrorism in as much as, except for if you're saying because they're a part of this group that was engaged in domestic terrorism, etc., etc., then they are guilty by association because they were involved in a riot that was domestic terrorism.

That would be the law enforcement argument. Here's another one for you. Possessing road flares of the same style and type as have been used to set fires on the property and possessing incendiary devices. So possessing road flares is now a crime. And not just a crime, but domestic terrorism. And that's what I was going to ask you is, do you see this as being in line with a history of abusing the domestic terrorism charge maybe post 9-11 in a way that's chilling and attempts to chill and silence activities, because a lot of the stuff that they're charging them with is against the law.

Evading law enforcement is against the law. It's a slap a domestic terrorism charge on top of it. I wanted to ask you what you think about that decision politically, how that kind of fits into the history. It does. And, you know, it goes back to the 1990s. Well, actually, I mean, it goes back much further than that. You can always take it back further. But in the 1990s, it really ramped up with the ALF and ELF, remember the Animal Liberation Front, Environmental Liberation Front, where they started trying to then slap terrorism charges on people who were engaged in civil disobedience that was extending into, you know, significant property destruction, like burning down, you know, a ski lodge or something like that. And then after 2001, with public support for

prosecuting terrorism cases at 90 plus percent, that's when the United States government really ramped it up and said, oh, now we can really, really drive this home. And they've never really let their foot off the gas. I think there are really serious concerns of the double standard that's applied to, over the course of the last few years, the Trump years. And that's what I'm talking about specifically. I'm not talking about in general. I'm just saying this is a trend in the last few years, a double standard that the media applies to political violence on the left and on the right, which obviously is both wrong. And so I do have concerns about double standards from law enforcement and for media about that violence. That doesn't mean, though, that there aren't

distinctions that are well worth maintaining. And when we have charges on the books that exist to add the domestic terrorism charge to people who possess flares, as opposed to using the flares for violence, which they don't seem to have this person on, I still think that's probably an important distinction. Well, what's your point today? You want me to talk about Jeff Bezos,

maybe a little Michael Bloomberg, billionaires. It'll be a little bit a lot of alliteration, I promise. That's what everyone who watches the tabloids appreciate. Yes. Well, rumors abound that Jeff Bezos might be selling the Washington Post to then buy the Washington commanders. He can't get out of D.C. It's amazing. The New York Post reported this. Now, the reason that deal would make sense is because he's trying basically to sweeten the pot for Dan

Snyder, who really doesn't like The Washington Post and really doesn't seem to like Jeff Bezos, by selling the post. And then perhaps, the theory goes, he'll be able to sell the commanders. He'll feel more comfortable selling the commanders to Jeff Bezos. That's the New York Post report. There are other rumors. Axios has reported just last month, I believe, that Michael Bloomberg is also potentially eyeing the Washington Post. A source told Peter King over at NBC, it'll never happen. Dan Snyder detests the Washington Post. No way he'd sell to the owner of that paper. J.P. Finlay, also at NBC, tweeted, I've had people tell to the owner of that paper. J.P. Finlay, also at NBC,

tweeted, I've had people tell me the Snyder family has absolutely no interest in selling to Bezos. Meanwhile, Jeff Bezos also, you may remember, made a big, splashy announcement just last fall that he's going to be giving $120 billion, $120 billion away to charity. Layoffs at The Washington Post started just yesterday. They started on Tuesday. This is—Axios reported on the plans of an initiative also on Tuesday called, quote, Rebuild Local News. So, as The Washington Post is laying off these national reporters, there is now a coalition of outlets and media groups that have this initiative called Rebuild Local News. It's been around for a couple of years. But Axios and Sarah Fisher over there reported on the initiative to, quote, deliver approximately three to five billion dollars into the local news economy from philanthropy, business, consumers and the government, mostly through tax credits. Now, they say, of course, not all support would be used to hire or retain journalists, but if a meaningful fraction was, local news would be transformed.

The number of local reporters would likely double. Most local news deserts would be eliminated, resulting in a local news system more geared to serving communities. That's a big deal. Now, I don't really think tax credits for subscriptions to get around paywalls and ad buys are going to do as much as this group thinks that they're going to do. Those are all part of the proposal. It's a package of a bunch of different proposals that comes together in this big sweeping plan to rebuild local news, as their name says. I'm not sure that that stuff is going to be as powerful as they think. There are some steps like changing the way you can apply to be a tax exempt nonprofit news organization via the IRS. That's a good thing. Scrutinizing media mergers

with localism in mind, also a very good thing and also could be very powerful. But think about this. The group is predicting three to five billion billion could double, double the number of local reporters. $3 to $5 billion. Bezos bought the Post for $250 million back in 2013. The paper was actually going to lose money last year per calculations back in 2022. But they have been profitable in years since Bezos bought the paper. In other words, they don't need Jeff Bezos as much as local media needs Jeff Bezos and needs that money. Now, it should, if it is given, come with no strings attached, of course, so that you don't

have billionaires pulling the strings of media. Ideally, that's not the healthiest media ecosystem to have, but you can see how these numbers, just do the math. They're saying three to five billion could totally revitalize local news, could double the number of local reporters. If Bezos or Michael Bloomberg, who are looking at The Post, really care about journalism and democracy and charity, they'd funnel some of their money to local media with no strings attached. Why? I mean,

some local outlets are great. Some are just as awful and biased as The Washington Post. Before and after, they'd sort of been gutted by changes in technology and the economy. But you should rather have biased eyes on our public affairs than no eyes at all. What happens in the darkness, as the Washington Post might say, is that democracy falters and democracy dies. And that's a really serious problem. And we've seen examples of it that we're going to get into in just a bit. But consumers have also woken up to the problem of bias. And so I think that's a slight improvement anyway. If you're going into your local newspaper and you know exactly how biased it is. You can sort of appreciate the reporting and interpret it with that lens of knowing that it's biased. So why of all charities in the world is local media worthy of money?

Corruption, as we just said, is metastasizing and festering without it. We've seen example after example of this. National media is fanning the flames of division. There's actual academic research showing that the death of local news is tied to the rise in division. School board decisions, for instance, this is a really great example—that could have been dealt with after they were brought to light by local media coverage are now immediately going viral and becoming fodder in a national culture war in ways that just explodes local communities, makes them way more bitter and divisive. And again, if you'd had a local news reporter who knows all of the players in these hearings, the ecosystem would have been functioning

way more healthily. That's why, for instance, look at George Santos. This is a great example. George Santos, a local outlet called the North Shore Leader, with a Republican, partisan Republican publisher, by the way, was calling attention to inconsistencies in Santos' story during his campaign. No other local outlets picked up on the story, nor did national media. The publisher told PBS that that might have been because it was a busy cycle and people were distracted by bigger races, so it stayed in just this one local outlet that many voters may have missed, rather than getting pickup from other outlets in the community. As the publisher told PBS, though, quote,

nobody else covers local news and local communities like the local newspaper does. Again, you might hate your local newspaper, or you may have hated it when it existed 10 years ago, but without any eyes on all of these goings-on, public officials are corrupt, right? Because they know they can get away with it. They know they're not going to have to answer to the local reporter. They just might have to answer to somebody on the national beat on some major story. But on the little things, on the ticky-tacky stuff, they're not going to have to answer to anybody because nobody is following it, except in the case where their constituents might have time or interest in following it. But that's not everyone, and that's not every issue.

There are all kinds of small things that happen in local government, that happen in local school boards, that happen from public officials, that create major problems. And when you don't have the eyes of the press in the community, even if you hate the press, the reason that it's important to improve the press, to fix the press, whether you believe in challenging it through outlets like this or, you know, trying to improve other—the existing institutions, which is—feels like a losing battle at this point. It needs to be improved, because it's an essential part of the way we function as a

constitutional republic. Without the press, without a free press, corruption runs amok. And so, on the local level, that's a hugely, hugely important issue. It's very worthy of charity. It's very worthy of people's money. If they're going to give money away, maybe they should help local papers develop sustainable plans. If you're sort of funneling billions of dollars into local papers, okay, sustainable plans would be very helpful. We all know that Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg own major national media outlets for reasons other than charity, right? We know

Jeff Bezos doesn't own the Washington Post to save democracy from the darkness. But it would take just a fraction, a fraction of their wealth to utterly transform local news. And that would go a shockingly, a shockingly long way towards transforming our politics for the better. Speaking of extremely wealthy people and corporations, that may not be the most sympathetic cases, but are instructive ones nonetheless. What's your counterpoint today, Ryan? Taylor Swift. So yesterday, the Judiciary Committee convened the first hearing of the year where senators bombarded witnesses with Taylor Swift quotes. To have a strong capitalist system, you have to have competition. You can't have too much

consolidation, something that unfortunately for this country, as an ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well. The focus was on Live Nation's abusive monopoly practices. And here's Clyde Lawrence of Lawrence the Band laying some of that out. single time in our career when we've played at a Live Nation venue where we had any opportunity to not have Live Nation be the promoter or not have Ticketmaster be the ticketing company. And the SeatGeek CEO was on hand to explain how all of this works. Because Live Nation controls the most popular entertainers in the world, routes most of the large tours, operates the ticketing systems, and even owns many of the venues. This power over the entire live entertainment industry allows Live Nation to maintain its

monopolistic influence over the primary ticketing market. As long as Live Nation remains both the dominant concert promoter and ticketer of major venues in the U.S., the industry will continue to lack competition and struggle. There was also plenty of lying and real-time fact-checking. Here's Ted Cruz questioning the Live Nation president. How about on the ticketing side? What percent of the market do you all have? I would estimate, depending on how you want to count, what's in the market between 50 and 60 percent.

50 and 60, and depending on how you count it, does anyone have a markedly different measure of that? Yes, sir. Yes, Senator. They have 87% of the ticketing contracts at the NBA and the NHL arenas. They have 93% of the ticketing contracts at the NFL stadiums. And of course, there were more and more Taylor Swift lines. I have to throw out, in deference to my daughter Eliza, one more Taylor Swift quote. Karma's a relaxing thought. Aren't you envious that for you it's not? That's all I've got to say. Thank you. All right. So, and I'm not going to punish the audience with many more of them, but it was just all day long. Yeah. Amy Klobuchar jumped in on the fun. Right out of the gate. Didn't Blumenthal? Of course, all of them, but it was just all day long. Amy Klobuchar jumped in on the fun.

Right out of the gate. Didn't Blumenthal? Of course, all of them. Every single one had to do it. Now, to start with, of course, this is excellent. Ticketmaster, Live Nation, destroy them, fire them into the sun,

break them up. Break them up. They're the worst. But what's amazing is, you know who agrees with that? It's big tech. So after the election, and I got this email that was sent out by NetChoice, which is the- I got the same email. I immediately forwarded it to Rachel Bovard. Yes. And so here's what NetChoice suggested to Congress right after the election. And it's one

that jumped out at you, too. Congress and progressives like Amy Klobuchar are spending all this time going after tech leaders, including Meta, Google, Amazon and Apple, which are far from monopolies. Instead, the government should use existing laws and resources to protect consumers and investigate ticket masters, anti-competitive practices in the concert marketplace. Like literally a piece to go after Ticketmaster and not them. And there's a reason for this too. And they elaborated on this argument yesterday in a statement kind of celebrating that Ticketmaster was under the gun. And it goes back to this consumer welfare standard, which for 40 years has been the way that we kind of do antitrust policy, which says that as long as a consumer is benefiting, like as long as you can't identify particular price increases, then it doesn't matter if they control 100% of the market and they're abusing everybody

else in the market, their suppliers, their other customers, et cetera. As long as the consumer is doing okay, then it's fine. And so what big tech is saying is they are clearly in violation of antitrust law based on the consumer welfare standard. So go after them and don't change the laws, the antitrust laws, to reinterpret what it means to be a monopoly. Because what big tech has said is that, okay, Google is not a monopoly when it comes to search because it's free to do search. Google is not a monopoly when it comes to ad tech because it's free for the consumer to read these news outlets.

Is it a problem that, hey, we're ripping off everybody in the back end and kind of restructuring the culture and the economy? Doesn't matter because it doesn't violate the consumer welfare standard. Don't worry about it. Right, exactly. Don't worry about it. Listen to Taylor Swift. Go after Ticketmaster instead.

It's also, it doesn't technically, technically violate the consumer welfare standard by their argument. In some ways, I think you can probably show how it does. Right, you could. Yeah. But it's harder. Ted Cruz's question was really good there because that's one way these companies get around it, is they create these BS calculations by their own metrics. And then when you ask about specific individual cases, like the NHL, for instance, as the other witness brought up, you can see this is a joke. I think he said like, what, 87% of NHL stadium venue

agreements. I mean, that's insane and definitely not good for consumers. Right. So it might be true that at some Division III college basketball arenas, you can just walk up to the window and buy a ticket. Or, you know, if you're going for a drag queen story hour at the local library, Ticketmaster, right, it's free and it's not a Live Nation Ticketmaster event. You can just walk right in. So, therefore, we only really control 50 to 60 percent. Your Thanksgiving dinner, for instance, didn't use Ticketmaster for that. So clearly, we're not a monopoly over events. No, the point that you just made from the NetChoice email, which is so funny because we didn't talk about this before at all, but I also thought it was a funny email, is like, they're

saying, don't change the law. The law works. Just go after the people who are violating the actual law. Take that, like, let's use this as the most clear-cut, instructive example about why the consumer welfare standard works to regulate monopolies. Leave us alone, because we're not in violation of it. That's one thing that's always funny about government regulations, is that a lot of the other big players really love to see it, right? Because they know it'll put the smaller guys out. Like, they'll lobby for more regulation. Tim Carney has a great book called The Big Ripoff that you can read on this.

They lobby over and over again for more regulation because it ultimately works out better for them. In this case, it's two big guys debating, whether it's Ticketmaster or Facebook, Google, Neta, whatever it is, debating over this regulation. But it's so funny. And frankly, they're not half wrong. Like, they ought to crack down on Ticketmaster. Like, Big Tech and Taylor Swift are both right. They should. But that's not a reason to just let Google off the hook.

Do you think they want to sell tickets on Facebook? Oh, I'm sure they would, actually. I'm sure Google and Facebook would love to get into the ticket space business. You know what? I bet artists would love it if all of them were in the business. Yeah. Well, speaking of the potential for censorship, we'll be talking about a pretty incredible case out of India after this. Twitter and YouTube have censored a BBC documentary that was critical of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, raising all sorts of questions about the role of big tech in increasingly authoritarian societies, as well as now the biggest democracy in the world, in India. And so for a little bit of backstory, Kanchan Gupta, who is, his title is a senior advisor at the Indian government's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. He posted that this BBC documentary that looks into Modi's role

in the Gujarat massacre back in 2002 is, quote, a hostile propaganda and anti-Indian garbage, unquote, and said that the Indian government under new Indian kind of anti-free press laws had asked Twitter and YouTube to take down links to the documentary, as well as the documentary itself, as well as any commentary kind of around it, and that both Twitter under Elon Musk and YouTube owned by Google had complied with this. Some Indian members of parliament even had their tweets taken down. Amusingly, well, I put that in quotes, two John Cusack tweets were blocked in India. You can still see the John Cusack tweets here in the United States and around the world, but Indian audiences would be blocked from seeing them.

A number of Indian members of parliament attempted to get around it by posting links to the Internet Archive. And then rather shockingly, the Internet Archive took it down. So you couldn't even go through that way. They're now left to a telegram audio channel, basically. The only way an Indian audience can now hear this documentary is through a telegram channel. So, Elon Musk, free speech absolutist, but he has waffled on what his definition of free speech is relative to local laws. So what do you make of this latest development from Musk? I think it's a very big test for Elon Musk that so far is not going well.

And you have a big story on that exact question right now, what this tells us about how Elon Musk is looking at the platform. Ken Klippenstein tweeted about this, and Jack Dorsey liked Ken's tweet about your story. That sounds kind of meta. Jack is liking Ken's tweet about a Ryan Grimm story. happening at Twitter headquarters, helmed by a supposed free speech absolutist that does have a lot of foreign business ties, lucrative foreign business ties, in all kinds of different pots on the stove. And for the reasons you've been raising over the course of the last year, basically, since Musk flirted with buying Twitter first, this could be a real problem for him. Right, because he has all of these, his other companies have their other goals.

The Tesla has been trying to get into the Indian market. And I was thinking this morning, I was like, man, I wish Emily were kind of a more doctrinaire, just straight up Musk defender so that I could do, and I told you so here. But you've been skeptical of Musk's approach in foreign countries for this exact reason. China in particular. I mean, he had already failed the test in China before he took over Twitter by doing a red carpet ceremony in Xinjiang when the Tesla factory opened there. We're really lucky actually to have a guest who can weigh in on this today. The documentary, by the way, BBC documentary is called India, the Modi question, and we're going to hear more about it right now. And so, Rakeeb Nayak is an Indian journalist who's been covering this situation.

Rakeeb, thanks for joining us. Can you talk to us a little bit about the relationship between the Modi government and big tech companies over the years, because this is certainly not the first time that the Modi government has kind of pressured Silicon Valley to censor critics or to censor news reports. But it does seem like some type of a line was crossed here that seems like it was kind of the most, well, I'll let you speak to this because there was even a raid by police of Twitter headquarters previously. So to say that this crossed a new line and setting that aside might be wrong. But how are people in India responding to this? Yeah, definitely. I mean, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has used his emergency powers to block access to the BBC

documentary in India. And I mean, as you asked, I mean, this is not the first time that such kind of a crackdown on the content posted on social media has happened in India. It has been happening and exacerbating over the past nine years under his rule. But definitely the way Mr. Modi is handling the whole fiasco right now is unprecedented. And this is a direct attack on press and directly violates freedom of expression and the right to information. And I mean, see, we need to see this desperation to censor the documentary in a broader context, which is the G20 summit that is upcoming later this year. And Mr. Modi is using this as an opportunity to bolster his image both nationally and internationally, and is spending big money to get favorable coverage. But that momentum has been disrupted

by the sudden release of this documentary that has rightly put the much needed spotlight on his murderous past. And his information ministry has sent over hundreds of requests to different social media platforms like YouTube and Twitter to censor and withhold posts with videos and links to the documentary. And unfortunately, the so-called flag bearers of free speech like Musk are caving to the

pressure and complying with the government order. And honestly, I wonder if Musk's free speech absolutism was meant only for the global north and the far right and not the countries in the in the global south but it's not surprising to me his focus on making quick profits at twitter makes it very vulnerable to uh pleasing the indian government as as the country is one of the biggest markets for social media company and and it's not just Musk right now. Before, Facebook has done the same. And over the years, they are allowing platforming of hate speech and hate speeches on their platforms that target countries, religious minorities, especially Christians and Muslims.

And some of our viewers may not know much about the Gujarat massacre. Can you talk a little bit about what that was and what the documentary exposes as Modi's role in it? So, Ryan, what happened on February 27, 2002, was that a train filled with Hindu devotees was passing through Godzra town in Gujarat state when it caught fire and led to death of 59 people. And the Hindu far-right groups and the state government immediately put the blame on Muslims, which was later disputed by an Indian government investigation in 2005 that said that the fire was an accident not caused by Muslims.

Nonetheless, the accusations were enough for the start of an anti-Muslim violence, which resulted in killing of more than 2,000 Muslim men, women, and children, and displacement of another 200,000 people. And the BBC documentary on Prime Minister Modi is a damning piece of journalism that looks at what Mr. Modi really is, a bigot who has built his political career on fanning anti-Muslim hate, bigotry and violence. And to be honest, Ryan, what has been told in BBC documentary is already known across India since 2002. But the new piece of information that this documentary adds is the

findings of an inquiry conducted by the United Kingdom government right after the riots, which without ifs and buts holds Narendra Modi, the prime minister of the world's so-called largest democracy, directly responsible for slaughter of thousands of Muslims. And it was all preplanned. The report says, I'm quoting from the United Kingdom's own report, that on one protection of the other, the Hindu extremists led by militant groups like Vishwa Hindu Parishad were going to attack the Muslims. They had computerized lists of Muslim homes and businesses they were supposed to target, and which is quite telling of the fact that the government officials

were aiding it. There was widespread and systematic use of rape as a weapon to target Muslim women. And to put it precisely, it was a mini Rwandan genocide, which had the seal of Mr. Modi. And there were police officers who filed affidavits before the Supreme Court, saying that he gave explicit orders to police not to act and let the Hindus vent their anger. And in retribution, a few years back, Mr. Modi jailed one of those police officers under bogus charges. And I mean, it's also important to talk about the victims of the Gujarat 2002. Their wounds are still fresh.

I have met the victims just this past October. I met one of them who had to take asylum in the UK. And the whole Indian judicial system has miserably failed them. Just yesterday, a court in Gujarat acquitted 22 Hindu extremists accused of killing 17 Muslims, including two children. And this past August, Mr. Modi's home ministry shamefully gave a go-ahead to the premature release of 11 extremists who were serving life sentences

for brutally gang-raping a pregnant Muslim woman and killing 14 of her family members, including her two-year-old daughter during the violence. And not just that, even activists spearheading the legal fight for justice and holding Mr. Modi to account were thrown in jail after Indian Supreme Court in June 2022 cleared Mr. Modi of complicity by ruling that there was no evidence against him. But Ryan, one thing I do want to make clear is that this

documentary is also a stark reminder to the world that the person who they think can usher the so-called world's largest democracy in prosperity or turn it into a global power is a myth. Because politicians with blood of innocent citizens on their hand can only do one thing, that is oppress, divide, and rule. And that's what Mr. Modi in India is doing today. Rakeem, I want to pick up on one thing you said, which is that a lot of the Modi's involvement in the riots back in 2002 is pretty widely understood and known in India. So how then does this censorship decision, which is getting international headlines and is big news here in the United States, how does that play in Indian

politics? Does that change Modi's standing? Is it a sort of political net benefit or a net disadvantage for him, a net loss for him, just on a purely political level, how does this affect his political standing in India? I think it won't affect him politically, because right now he has a strong, loyal base. And in 2014, when he was brought into power, it was because of his murderous past, because of his Islamophobic past, he was taken into power. He was brought to power. But I think definitely it will create a lot of noise internationally and within the country from the minorities,

from the religious minorities and from the victims who are still waiting for justice. But I don't think it is going to be a disadvantage for him politically. But as far as his support base is concerned, they are more emboldened. They are more, I think they are happy about what they see in the documentary, because this is what their ideology of Hindutva, Hindu supremacism stands for. That is anti-Muslim hate and bigotry. Well, Rakeed, that's incredibly important context for the dystopian decisions made by Musk's Twitter and Google's YouTube to censor this information. I appreciate you joining us today.

And that does it for us today. And we got anything else? I was going to say, once again, there was sort of a through line and we didn't do it intentionally, but of a creeping authoritarianism on a global level, not just an individual. Deeply dystopian stuff. Deeply dystopian stuff that's happening, um, from a collection of people who operate globally, right? So not just censorship in the U.S. or censorship in India, but people in the U.S. helping for there to be censorship in India of a documentary out of the U.K. Right. And if people think that, well, I don't care about India. So, you know, if the

Indians want to change the Indian laws and they can change Indian laws, not my problem. Musk shouldn't be criticized for this. I think people need to understand that we're a connected world and the same kind of corporate power currents and the same political currents that are coursing through India are also coursing through the United States. And if you think that you can allow the collapse of democracy

and freedom of expression in India and it will not bleed back into the United States, I think you're mistaken. I think you should care about the right of Indians to freely express themselves and to share whatever information they want for its own right on its own grounds. But if you don't, you should understand that it's going to come home at some point too. And that's why the DOJ lawsuit that we covered earlier in the show against Google is so important. That's why reining in the abuse of the classification labels is so important. A quote from Rand Paul, he said, I haven't actually been to a classified hearing where I actually thought I heard a secret.

He said that just last night. I saw the quote and wanted to bring that because I think it all gets to the overarching theme of how people are using national security implications to abuse public trust and to abuse the system. And they're doing it not just in the United States, but as you said, on an interconnected global level. So we'll obviously continue to watch that theme as it develops on a daily basis. Yes, we will. All right. And we'll see you next time.