Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/26/23: Trump Unbanned, Tanks To Ukraine, Zelensky Fires Top Ministers, George Santos Financial Trouble, Brett Farve Corruption, Pelosi Google Stock, Jim Cramer Cringe & MORE!

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump being unbanned from Facebook, tanks being sent to Ukraine, Zelensky firing top cabinet ministers, George Santos campaign finance trouble, Brett Farve's historic corruption, Pelosi sells Google stock, Jim Cramer's horrible economics, egg prices, Biden's polling & MORE!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/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. 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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Big breaking news for you this morning. Facebook slash Meta has decided to let the big guy himself, Donald Trump, back on the platform. Not a huge surprise at this point. I mean, the guy is running again. You kind of like there was a lot of pressure for them to ultimately do this. But we'll dig into the decision because they've thrown in some caveats there as well, trying to kind of have it both ways. Same time, huge, huge news with regard to Ukraine. We have decided to send them tanks. That

is a line in the sand that we had drawn previously. And even as recently as five days ago, there were all kinds of news articles that were like, yeah, we're not going to do that. Well, now we are. So talk about what that means. We also have some new financial disclosures from George Santos that, if anything, just deepen the mystery of where his cash that he put into his campaign actually came from. We've got the Mississippi auditor, some incredible video of him sounding off on that Brett Favre welfare scandal. Nancy Pelosi caught in a gigantic trade just before major antitrust action against Google. And in a related antitrust note, we also have Jim Cramer melting down on CNBC about government action against some of these big companies. We have Ryan Cooper on the show today to dig into an idea that has just been floated,

which is using a sovereign wealth fund in order to fund Social Security. So it'd be interesting to get his take on all of that. Yeah, but let's start with Facebook. This is obviously huge in the realm of tech and censorship. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, I always have to say that, is ending its suspension of Donald Trump's accounts with new guardrails to deter, quote, repeat offensive. Written by Nick Clegg, the former British politician, the president of global affairs over at Meta, he says, quote, we will be ending the suspension of Mr. Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts in the coming weeks. We have put in new guardrails to place to deter repeat offenses. The public should be able to hear what politicians are saying so they can make informed choices.

Imagine what a controversial decision. So here's what they say. The public should be able to hear what the politicians are saying, the good, the bad, and the ugly, so they can make informed choices to the ballot box. I agree. But that does not mean there are no limits to what people can say on our platform. When there's a clear risk of real-world harm, a deliberately high bar for Meta to intervene in public disclosure, we act. Now, of course, that is an outrageous standard, one of which is deeply capricious and of which is completely open to their own interpretation. So they go through a whole bunch of fake legalese. And the reason I'm saying that is there's no law. All of this

is contrived. This blog post refers to its oversight board, to its internal processes. Listen, it's all fake. They claimed that, oh, well, after a rigorous standard put into place, we decided on January 8th to suspend Donald Trump's account on Facebook, as if it was part of some longstanding decision, and then finally it entered. That's outrageous. All of it was done in a completely, supposedly uncoordinated act by Twitter, Facebook, and many other big tech platforms with regards to Trump in kind of a post January 6th hysteria. But whenever they do restore the account, they say some things which we should hold them to account in the future. They say, quote, the normal state of affairs is that the

public should be able to hear from a former president of the United States and a declared candidate for office again on our platform. Now the time period of suspension has elapsed. The question is not whether we choose to reinstate Mr. Trump's account, but whether there remain such extraordinary circumstances that justify extending the suspension beyond the original two-year period. Crystal, they say that they have now, quote, new guardrails in place and that there will be a strike system and that should he ever, quote, endanger the public again in the future that they will take his account down but look at the end of the day this is all in mark zuckerberg's hand he made the call to take it down he made the

call to put him back on it's insane that this is even in the power of a single man and i just hate all of the fake contrivance around oh well now we have decided here's our protocols as if they won't just completely dispatch with them or come up with some sort of tortured rationale for the next time they take action against this account. Yeah. I mean, all of the legalese and the quote unquote guardrails that they put out here, it's just an attempt to quiet critics who want Trump to remain off of Facebook. They're trying to have it both ways. They're trying to, you know, the other piece that we shouldn't ignore here is it's not just their assessment of like free speech and potential free speech and potential acts of violence.

They've also got a bottom line that they have to worry about. And Donald Trump spends a lot of money on Facebook ads. So I heard Ro Khanna make this point, and I think it's a good one. It's not an accident that all of these social media platforms, and Facebook in particular, because they probably got the most money from the Trump campaign. Like the one year that they don't have him on is the year that it happens to be, happens to be like irrelevant to the political process basically. And also irrelevant in terms of their bottom line, because he's not, wasn't running for anything. It was like the only year since he popped up on the scene where he wouldn't have been spending really money with them anyway. So it was not any sort of loss to them. Well, now that he's ramping up his campaign, well, now there's some money to lose. So that also has to weigh into some of these

decisions as well. But yeah, ultimately, this is all a farce. They will do with this account what they decide. It is in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg. He has previously concocted these sort of elaborate schemes to try to distance himself and make it like there's this Facebook Supreme Court and it's this independent board of arbitration. No, it's up to him. He made the decision. He will make the decision again. And all of this is just an attempt to quiet critics, which of course won't work. I mean, the people who want him off forever, they're going to continue to want him off forever and that's not going to change. Exactly correct. And Trump, to his credit, actually intuited some of this. Put this up there on the screen. He says, Facebook, which has lost billions of dollars in value since deplatforming your favorite president, me, has just announced that they are reinstating

my account. Such a thing should never again happen to a sitting president or anybody else, which is not deserving of retribution. Thank you to Truth Social for doing such an incredible job. Your growth is outstanding and future unlimited. Not so sure about that part, but I am sure definitely that they did lose some money. And at the very least, look, he's not wrong. I mean, in terms of the way that we thought about these platforms, a lot of it was destroyed in 2017 with deplatforming in general, really ramping up throughout those years. But the final act really was Trump. And actually, when you really think about it, it was Trump in conjunction with Parler. I still remain that Parler was one of the most dangerous and censorious things that's ever happened because that was about the infrastructure

of web itself, like with Amazon Web Services and the denial of servers that will literally allow a company to exist. That is where things really kicked into high gear. And I've done other monologues here since then about Andrew Tate. You can hate Andrew Tate, but simultaneous de-platforming across the internet is pretty insane. Kiwi Farms was another big one. I mean, we're talking about de-listing on Google. Then we're talking about the very ability to exist online. I'm not even saying I like any of these places, but it's not about like. It's like, how can this be in the hands of Sundar Pichai over at Google, of Tim Cook, the removal from the App Store. That was another big

one. I mean, I believe Apple has, if not a majority, near majority of control over cell phones in the United States. These are all things where, and this is the classic example, the phone company. The phone company doesn't care what you say on the phone. If you break the law when you're on the phone, it's the government's job to go and get in a subpoena and be like, okay, he's breaking the law while he's on the phone. It's not AT&T's job to censor what you're saying to somebody else in a private phone call. Now, you can say, yeah, but the internet is different because you're talking to everybody, but not really. I mean, when you think about infrastructure, that's the whole point is infrastructure is supposed to be completely content neutral. And we escaped that on January 8th, 2021.

I mean, I think it's a little more complex than that because almost everybody agrees there should be some limits to what people are able to say. I mean, threats of violence, doxing, like, you know, outright harassment, revenge porn. Like, there are lines that I think society would want to draw and that we draw with the First Amendment as well. But even a place like 8chan has some rules around what you can and can't post. So, that's where things ultimately get complicated because then you have to ask. It's not like a phone company because you have to ask, all right, where do we draw that line? The problem is having the power to decide where do we draw that line on something that ends up being really critical to our democratic infrastructure in the hands of a very few people. And it being a complete black box, I mean, before the Twitter files came out, we really had no

insight into the internal process within Twitter as one example for how they came to this decision. And once we did have some insight into how they came to that decision, it was exactly as we suspected. It was completely ad hoc. It was driven by a couple of ideological actors. It was driven by external pressure and the sense of employees at Twitter of how the people around them in their lives would judge them if they didn't take action against these things. And so even though they had these stated rules governing the platform, ultimately when push came to shove, it just ended up being their own personal decision making that led to the outcome of Trump being banned from the

platform. So, you know, that to me is the core of the issue. And in fact, it's quite relevant. We have a number of stories in the show today about antitrust actions being taken, the attempt to curb and check some of the power of big tech, which obviously is relevant in terms of censorship, but relevant in terms of all sorts of aspects

of our lives on and off the internet. And it really is a sort of crucial frontline battle of our time. And one that, you know, fortunately, there is some, some genuine bipartisanship on. There are plenty of people who just posture, you know, plenty of Republicans who just want to posture about the censorship. But then like Jim Jordan, ultimately, all they're doing is like carrying water for the tech companies. They don't actually care about the power piece. If you're not focused on the power of these companies when it comes not just to censorship, but all of the activities that they engage in,

all of their impact on public life, then ultimately you're not really serious about this. Important point. We're going to table this discussion. We're going to talk a lot more about both the Google lawsuit that the Department of Justice, the second Justice Department lawsuit against that company, and also about the overall reaction to antitrust and how things are changing. So let's go ahead and talk about Ukraine. That's what we originally were going to start our show with before the Trump news broke last night. There's a major titanic development here in Washington, the decision to send some dozen, two dozen or so M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine on the battlefield in conjunction with Poland, with Finland,

and with Germany and the departure of tanks from all of these Western nations to try and help Ukraine in its offensive in the coming months. President Biden making this announcement. Let's take a listen. Putin expected Europe and the United States to weaken our resolve. He expected our support for Ukraine to crumble with time. He was wrong. He was wrong. And he was wrong from the beginning, and he continues to be wrong. We are united. America is united, and so is the world. And we approach the one-year mark,

as we do, of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We remain united and determined as ever in our conviction and our cause. These tanks are further evidence of our enduring, unflagging commitment to Ukraine and our confidence in the skill of the Ukrainian forces. This is an important decision marker. It was one that was never contemplated by the Pentagon, by the Biden administration, and by Western officials, which changed all within the last month. So let's go all the way back. So first, President Zelensky visits here in Washington. One of the two main asks that he asked President Biden, number one, was not just Patriot missile

system, but more Patriot missile systems. Number two is tanks and jets. Now jets are off the table for now, but listen to this story because the tanks were completely off the table. Then what happens is that Poland has in possession some Leopard tanks that were given to it by Germany. Poland says, I want to give these tanks to Ukraine because of repeated requests by President Zelensky. Well, then what happens? What, they have to go to Germany because Germany is the one who gave them the tanks. Germany says, no, we're not going to give you those tanks because then the decision is on us to allow Poland to do it. Chancellor Olaf

Schultz says, the only way I'm giving these tanks to Ukraine is if you give tanks to Ukraine, because then it's a complete NATO decision, especially led by the United States and not one that lands in Germany because Germany doesn't want to be the one that is retaliated against by Russia if such an attack were to happen. They don't want to be the one that is retaliated against by Russia if such an attack was to happen. They don't want to be out there on their own. Just not to cut you short, but just to insert a little piece here. This is from Politico's reporting about behind-the-scenes negotiations. This should make everybody very uncomfortable.

Schultz was adamant in his discussions with Biden that supplying Leopard tanks to Ukraine marks such a qualitatively new step that the U.S., as the world's biggest military power, but also Germany's guarantee for nuclear deterrence, must be involved. They also want to demonstrate unity toward Putin, important to the chancellor from the very beginning, that we take every step with as much unity as possible, a spokesperson said. So they're basically like, listen, we don't feel like our nuclear deterrence is enough. We want the world's superpower on our side I mean, that's how provocative they ultimately view this step.

And they really come to loggerheads because the military, in particular the Pentagon, really did not want to send these tanks. And they put out there like, oh, it's because it's hard to train on. No, they saw this as a significant escalation. They also worry about our own, you know, readiness, as we've been talking about as well. Biden was reluctant. And effectively, Germany was under pressure. And there was starting to be this ugly split in the NATO alliance. And Biden just caved and was like, all right, fine. Rather than have any demonstration of disunity, we're just going to go along with sending these tanks. Something that they had completely ruled out early in this conflict. Because remember, it's easy to like

lose track of how these things all started. The original thought and the original what was sold to the American people, we will provide them whatever they need for their defense. Tanks are a strictly offensive capability. So this was previously like, you know, completely out of bounds. And now here we are. Well, the reason it also matters is the offensive itself. What is that offensive going to look like? Where you can combine that with some reporting that we brought to you all just a couple of weeks ago about the U.S. is warming to the idea of Ukraine taking back Crimea.

Now, look, I have no idea whether they even have that capability. And on the tank piece, it's important. So I asked some of my friends who work in the defense industry, and I was like, all right, what's actually the deal with these tanks? And they're like, look, we don't actually even know the detail of the tank itself. The tank itself is a platform. There's a lot of technology that goes into the U.S. tank. There's, in terms of the ones that we sell, we sell them all over the world. Some of them are from the 1980s. Some of them, you wouldn't, like a 2023 Abrams tank versus a 1980s tank, then 2023 one is going to win every day, even though they look kind of similar. So the point is, is that that's actually unclear. They need to be specially

manufactured in the next couple of months by the U.S. defense industry. So congratulations to the makers here in Northern Virginia who are going to be supplying those tanks. So they're specially manufactured for Ukraine. They need to be trained on it. There's an entire logistical pattern that needs to develop in order to supply and keep up these tanks. In general, pretty advanced pieces of technology. So that's a piece of it. However, it was immediately noticed by Russia. Let's put this up there on the screen. The city of Kiev immediately under bombardment. That happened right after Kyiv secured the tanks. And the reason here is that the U.S. and Germany are sending these tanks immediately after this decision was made. The strike happened on Kyiv. So when we put those

two things together, clearly the Russians see it as something. Now, how exactly are they going to respond? We genuinely have no idea. I actually saw a really troubling headline this morning in the New York Times. It says that the Ukraine war, or it says, here's how President Biden reluctantly agreed to send tanks to Ukraine. But let me read you guys the subhead. It was just this morning. The decision unlocked a flow of heavy arms from Europe and inched the United States and its NATO allies closer to direct conflict with Russia. That is literally, that's not me scaremongering or whatever. That's from The Times, probably one of the most hawkish outlets in this entire conflict. It also comes on the heels of the

doomsday clock, the famous clock about how close we are supposedly to nuclear war. Let's go ahead and put this video up on the screen. I can speak over it from the Bureau of Atomic Scientists. They now say we are set 90 seconds to midnight, which is the closest to catastrophe that we have ever been in the history of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, calling it, quote, a global catastrophe. Look, we're trying to approach this in a very level-headed way and not be skeptical. I'm even trying not to let my bias come in here when it's Germany. And I'm like, yeah, why don't you send them to the tanks?

I'm like, you're the one who's only a couple hundred miles from there. It's your country. You're a continent. Why do we have to be the ones to do it? The reason why I think that this is significant and was regarded as such by President Biden, by General Mark Milley, by the Navy Secretary who said that we're going to have to start cannibalizing our own supplies if we continue to have to supply Ukraine is that this could change the entire ballgame on the battlefield. and everything is breaking down. Their infrastructure, military supply chain, disaster. That's why they're so reliant on railroads like it's World War II. They don't have the upkeep. Ukraine capturing many of these things. And it was one of the ways that they were able to cripple the Russian offensive in the first place. Well, now if they have sophisticated Western technology that can outmatch Russia on the battlefield, we're not talking just about

breakthroughs, but you don't know where that's going to stop. And let's say that it stops in Crimea. Now what? We're actually in a completely different strategic situation. I'm not even saying I think Russia should have Crimea, but what we're saying is they think they should have Crimea and they have nukes. So what does that mean? Now, according to the Times, President Biden and his advisors believe that the risk of the tactical nuclear weapon being used in Ukraine has gone down. What does that mean? I don't know. You know, the risk of everything seems to go down until it goes way up whenever the strategic situation changes.

Right. I mean, their logic here seems to be like, well, they haven't nuked us yet, so it should be fine. Like, I guess they're just not going to. And I do think that's a real myth, the idea that Russia has not escalated in response to some of the actions that we have taken with regard to Ukraine. They did escalate. Now, they didn't escalate to nuclear war yet, but they did escalate in terms of going back to attacking Kiev, going to attacking the energy infrastructure to try to make this winter as brutal and painful as Ukrainians as they possibly can. So, you know, they ultimately went forward with the draft and there's rumors that they may do another round of conscription domestically.

So I think even this mythology that Russia didn't respond, that there was no escalation, is just factually inaccurate. And it also, as I said before, it reminds me of some of the conversations that came out in the WikiLeaks cables that were revealed by Branko Marcetic. He talked about how there were a lot of people who said, oh, the Russians always say that about Ukraine and NATO, and they never really do anything. So the fact that they didn't act instantly was taken as proof that, like, they're all bluster. They're not ultimately going to move forward. That turned out to not be correct. In reality, it was a red line for them. In reality, again, onus and burden and culpability fully on Putin

and the Kremlin, et cetera. But they had drawn a red line. We ignored it. And that is part of the context of how we ended up ultimately in this place. And I just see a lot of echoes of that here. And the last thing that I'll put in here is, you know, a lot of what they're trying to sell to the press is like, oh, well, this was all about unity with NATO and unity with Germany. And you heard that in the president's comments. There was a line, though, in that Politico piece that just came out of the like inside story or whatever that really stuck out to me, too, because part of the debate before they decided whether or not to send these tanks was about the capability of the tanks, if it really made sense in this context, some of the drawbacks of this particular type of tank.

And apparently, according to Politico, you'll love this, those comments frustrated defense industry executives who felt the Pentagon was making disparaging remarks about U.S. manufactured equipment. Weeks before, Laura Cooper, a Pentagon official charged with overseeing Ukraine policy, had called the Abrams tanks a gas guzzler. The U.S. does not have to advocate for sending the Abrams, one industry insider said, but administration officials shouldn't criticize the tank. That's especially true since another country in the region, Poland, is buying M1s from General Dynamics. Other countries like Morocco, Iraq, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have purchased export versions of the tank as well. So they were also deeply concerned that this was impacting their bottom line and ability to sell weapons around the world. So they're putting pressure on the administration to make this decision from their own bottom line perspective as well.

One of the reasons why I think this is, again, so important is they don't know how to make these tanks. They don't know how to do anything. And they don't have the money to buy them. That means that we're on the hook forever. Like a real nation, whenever it mounts a defense, it has an industrial base. It has an economy. It has a populace that is capable of mounting that singular defense, sometimes with allies but not wholly reliant on them, in order to mount it and defend its sovereignty. Ukraine has none of that.

I mean they would not – they wouldn't even deny it. Without NATO and the Western countries, they fail to exist in a single moment. If we cut them off on ammunition, they're dead. It's over. And so when does it end? Like, what does the actual end period look? Because even if they push Russia out,

what are they going to do? Then they'll say, if you don't continue to give us all these things, then they're just going to come back. Yeah, so what are we on the hook for? $50, $100 billion a year for every single year going forward? And I really cannot let the Europeans off the hook. This is Libya all over again. They're the ones who, I'm quoting Susan Rice, who herself was a complete hawk,

who said to, this is all in the transcript, you're not going to drag us into your shitty war in Libya. Obama did not want to go into into your shitty war in Libya. They didn't, Obama did not want to go into Libya. It's the Germans and the French who were like, no, we got to do it for human rights, all this stuff. Oh, look at Benghazi, Gaddafi, all this. And then now what's happening in Libya right now? They're literal slave markets that are over there in the entire, ask the people who live in literal like anarchy, whether they prefer then or now. I'm not saying Gaddafi was a good guy, but the point is, like,

should we have been the ones who determined exactly what was going on there? It was all during the promise of the Arab Spring. It was only, what, 10 years ago that that happened. Like, how do we have collective amnesia? And I think it should scare everybody that they were not willing to do it without the burden on us,

because, listen, we're all in it now, and we don't have any say. And this is also why I was always advocating for the Congress to step up to its constitutional responsibility and to write strategic provisions in the arms that are given to Ukraine and define the exact platforms and take it out of the executive hand. Biden is an 80-year-old man. He could drop dead tomorrow. The policy of the United States then is all in the hands of Kamala Harris. Are we comfortable with that? Are you comfortable with that? Like, take away even the nuke button. Look at this. This is the

extraordinary amount of responsibility that they have abdicated. I think it's really important. And again, let's throw this next one up on the screen. It just shows you that this was just a couple of days ago. Top U.S. officials don't want to give Ukraine tanks despite German pressure. Five days ago. That's how quickly that we fold. And it shows you the power of the Ukraine lobby here in the United States. All right, let's go to the next one here because this is also important in terms of Ukraine. What's happening domestically? Let's put it up on the screen. Zelensky fired nine of his top officials after reports that members of his government went on vacation to Spain and France and took bribes during the war. These are the senior most officials in the top Ukrainian government who have been fired actually

during the war. So let's look at who these people are. Four deputy ministers in the Ukrainian government, including five regional governors, were sacked by the Ukrainian cabinet. This was on Tuesday. The deputy prosecutor general also announced his resignation as a result of this. investigations showing that some of them were going on lavish vacations using a Mercedes owned by a prominent Ukrainian businessman. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian border guard was maligned for partying in Paris as the war continued in Eastern Ukraine. Zelensky painted this as an anti-corruption move. This is also after they talk about how apparently the former deputy defense minister resigned after the papers reported that he had purchased food for the military at prices inflated two or three times higher than what was actually in

the grocery store, spending some $360 million on food. Now, let me ask you, whose dollars do you think that is? Because there is no such thing as the Ukrainian economy right now. We are backstopping everything. So congratulations, American taxpayer. You're the ones who paid for that food. You funded these all expenses paid vacations to Paris and Spain and wherever else. So way to go. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the key things that the media has really gaslit us on. Yeah. Up until Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there was all kinds of reporting and you were allowed to say this is a nation that struggles with corruption. Yeah. The most corrupt country in Europe. Very corrupt nation. Okay. The minute that this happened, you were not allowed to say that

anymore. That's why they deserve to be invaded. Right. Of course. Of course. But the reason that that became out of bounds in terms of, you know, commenting on whatsoever is because then that naturally raises questions in the minds of the American people. Okay, well, what are we sending them and where is it going? And maybe let's have, like, an inspector general to keep track of where the weapons are going and what the money is funding, et cetera, et cetera. But that was out of bounds. You couldn't ask those questions. And so it was important to just pretend

like Ukraine was this pristine beacon of democracy. And again, the fact that they had struggled with corruption, as many nations around the world do, including our own, doesn't mean they deserve to be invaded. Doesn't mean that they were like, you know, it's their fault or that Russia has a point or any of that. But it should have been always part of the context to inform the debate here domestically about what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it. Instead, you know, Rand Paul's very reasonable proposal, hey, let's have an inspector general to watch over where these funds are going and where these weapons

are going was completely voted down and dismissed as unreasonable. Yeah, look, I mean, is it too much to ask? If you're gonna give somebody 100 billion, is it at least being spent on, you know, like who do I feel for the most in this whole situation? Actual Ukrainian people and soldiers. I mean, listen, one of the crazy things about warfare in the 21st century is, and I remember

this during Syria and I remember it now, you can watch some of these videos of guys getting ambushed on the front line, both Russian and Ukrainian. It is terrifying. And it just shows you too, like, look, war for all the talk of tech, a lot of it is just two guys in a hole. And some of it comes down to like horrific hand-to-hand combat with bullets, and it is terrible. And the idea, I think, a lot of us can take pride in. It's like, all right, these guys are fighting for the defense. They got weapons in their hands, and they're standing up to try and do something about it.

But at least you want to make sure that that's actually happening, not that the rations that they're eating have been horrifically overpaid for by the American taxpayer so that some guy in Ukraine can take a vacation in Paris. That starts to really piss me off. And I think a lot of people should be really pissed off about what's going on there. And the fact is, is like, look, in terms of the Western media, nothing. I mean, absolutely no investigation. There was no reporting. No, it's hard to find, actually. No reporting on all these vacations and whatever that were apparently going on that Ukrainian government knew about. There was no reporting on that here. I have to go to Ukrainian sources or Russian sources and use the translate thing and be like, all right, well, I think that's

what's actually going on here. And it's like, all right. And this is also why, do I know what's happening? The presumption that any of us know what's actually happening in Ukraine, it's like all right uh and this is also why like do i know what's happening the presumption that any of us know what's actually happening in ukraine it's a farce like almost everything that you see in front of you unless it's literal raw video and then even then you know who knows yeah what they're bringing out and uh what whether the translation is correct it is it shows you the difficulty that we face here and trying to give people a fulsome picture of what's going on. But anyway, I think it's an important story. It's something that you've got to track.

I mean, Zelensky's a guy. He's cracked down on media. He's fired or banned some opposition parties that were actually in Ukraine. In terms of the people he's replacing, I mean, who knows whether those people are good or not. Are they corrupt in the right way? That's always a real question. The bribes, et cetera. I've done my best to try. So for example, they talk about the bribe. I'm like, well, who bribed him? I'm looking into it. One of these deputy ministers takes a $400,000,

but nobody's naming the bribe. I'm like, well, who is it? Is it Russia? Is it Eastern Europe? Where's the money coming from? None of that is open in the report. We're going to stay on this because I actually do think it is really important. Yeah. And just one more piece on, you know, the incomplete picture and the lack of questioning that we get from the Western press here. There's some real questions about exactly what happened with regards to this apartment block that was hit with a missile. Devastating attack on civilians there. Oh, it's on civilians there. And, you know, the Western press reported very definitively and conclusively that this was definitely a Russian missile strike.

Well, go ahead and put this up on the screen. A Ukrainian advisor actually suggested that it was not a Russian missile which hit that building, but that it was a Ukrainian attempt to disrupt that missile that ended up incidentally hitting this building. And Zelensky himself made some comments at the World Economic Forum that seemed to suggest that was also a possibility. But this advisor resigned, apologized over the comments. And listen, I don't know what the reality is of what happened here with this apartment block, but I do know that there should be some curiosity in the press. Now, listen, ultimately, right, if Russia wasn't firing on this area, then this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. So, yes, still Russia is to blame, but there's a qualitative difference between

Russia was trying to hit an energy block and ends up, the Ukrainians in trying to disrupt that missile, ends up with these casualties on the apartment building. That's a very different portrait being painted of this war versus Russia intentionally targeting civilians in an apartment. Well, we have no idea. Again, I have no clue. Guess what? I know the Ukrainians lied and they said that it was Russia that fired on Poland, that accidentally hit those guys in Poland and killed two people when it was actually their missile. And were absolutely adamant. Right. They were adamant. They didn't admit it until we straight up had the forensic proof. And then even then they're like, oh yeah, show us the proof. And they probably still deny it to this day. I guess

we're all just not supposed to talk about that. Do I put it past Russia to hit civilians and kill them? No, absolutely not. Of course not. Why would we? Especially, maybe it wasn't intentional. Maybe they're just guided systems or shit, which is also – Bad at war. We know this, actually, in terms of them – they, like, try to hit a bridge and they end up hitting a park. I mean, you know, they've hit several civilians. This is part of the problem, which is, you know, you shouldn't put anybody on a pedestal. Nobody is – the hagiography of Ukraine is exactly what makes it so difficult to ask questions.

But I'm optimistic. Look, we're a year into this thing, and I'm not saying this tanks and all this stuff doesn't worry me. But people are asking more questions today than ever before. And one day, we will get a real account, just like we did with Libya, just like we did with Iraq. And just remember what it was like in 2003, if this show had been on the air, and we've been saying what we were saying, what we believed about Iraq. And then a year later, you're totally and completely vindicated. So we'll see. Well, let me just say, to offer the administration's perspective, what they would say back to us about the tanks in particular is, this is all an attempt to really strengthen the Ukrainian hand so they're

in a better position to sit down at the table for negotiations ultimately. But you could make that argument indefinitely, right? But that's ultimately the case that they would put forward. All right. Let's move on to Americans. America's congressman George Santos, a.k.a. Anthony DeValder, a.k.a. Katara. This is a big deal. I mean, listen, all the lies and the like insanity of him claiming he's on the volleyball team and the video of him as a drag queen and all of that stuff is, you know, interesting. And obviously I've been really fascinated by it. But the key question here has always been, where did that money come from that you put into your campaign, buddy, hundreds of thousands of dollars when there is no real track record of this business that you claim you ran doing any sort of, you know, actual business.

It appears that up until very recently, you had very little funds to your name. You were getting kicked out of apartments. You reported, I think, a $55,000 income the last time you ran from Congress. So how did you suddenly have this big change of fortunes where now you're putting in $700K to your own campaign? Well, the Santos campaign has now just filed an amended financial disclosure. This was with regard to their campaign expenditures. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen from Daily Beast. Late Tuesday afternoon, Santos' political operation filed a flurry of amended campaign finance reports telling the feds, among other things, that a $500,000 loan he gave to his campaign did not, in fact, come from his personal funds as he'd previously claimed. However, while the newly amended filing told us where the funds did not come from, it also raised a new question. Where did the money come from? While both the old and new campaign filings claimed that the loans came, quote,

from the candidate, the most recent amended filing had ticked the box for personal funds of the candidate. And on this new amended filing, that box is unchecked. So they are no longer claiming that this was personal funds of the candidate. So they're saying that it came from the candidate, but not from the personal funds of the candidate, which raises a whole slew of questions then, again, where did the money come from? And effectively, the only legal answer to that would be is if he got like a bank loan, you know, that then proceeds go into his account and he uses that bank loan to fund his campaign. That is, from what I read from other, you know, campaign finance experts, et cetera, that is effectively the only legal answer to

that question given these new revelations. And by the way, there was another $125,000 loan that they made the same change to, unchecking that box saying that it came from the candidate's personal funds. Yeah, I really believe that this will be the downfall of Santos more than anything. Just because, you said it, you're like, look, as long as you follow the rules,

we have one of the most corrupt campaign finance laws in the entire world. But if you don't follow the rules, you are going to jail. Like, it's like Dinesh D'Souza, right? campaign finance laws in the entire world. But if you don't follow the rules, you are going to jail. Like, it's like Dinesh D'Souza, right? Like, one straw donation, that's it, boys. You know, welcome to the federal penitentiary.

That's part of the reason why I think SBF is, even if he was not guilty of wire fraud, which I allegedly do believe that he is, it's like, if they can prove even one straw donation, they have you. The feds, you're done. FEC violation is actually not hard to prove. It's part of the reasons why campaigns spend so much time, energy, and more investing and making sure they at least do follow the limited rules and at least go around the loopholes,

501c3s and 4s and all this. You got to know the way to work the loopholes. Right, but he didn't do that. If you do it right, you can do whatever you want. But you have to do it in the right way or else, yeah, you're facing prison time. And he doesn't appear to. I mean, look, like you said, unless he straight up took a bank loan. And who the hell is going to give Anthony DeValder or George Santos a proven Ponzi schemer, felon, whatever, criminal history?

Who's going to give him a $500,000 bank loan? Like, it's maybe. Or, but if he took it from somebody and reported it as personal, that's it. I mean, look, you could try and revise the filing, but in the past. But, you know, lying to the FEC is a very serious crime. Yeah. I very much think that this is going to go down. I agree with you. I don't see how he gets out of this one or how he comes up with any sort of explanation that really makes sense, which is why, I mean, this new filing is just honestly bizarre.

Just to remind you of what he had said previously. Previously, he had said that this was, quote, money I paid myself through the Devolder organization. He had confirmed to the Daily Beast last month that he withdrew money from his firm specifically to underwrite his campaign reasoning. He was the firm's sole owner. It was actually an LLC, not a sole proprietorship. But, you know, that you could maybe see if he was earning a bunch of cash into this company that is his company. And then he takes it in salary, which is kind of what he had claimed before, and then uses a big chunk of that to fund the campaign, you may say like, well, that wasn't really that wise given that you don't seem to have that many other funds, but okay, it may technically be legal. Now though, if you're saying

this wasn't actually your money that you were putting in, again, the only legal answer to what's going on here is that he got some kind of a bank loan. It can't have been just passed through from some other rich person. That is not going to pass muster. So he's under a lot of scrutiny there. At the same time, we've been covering the fact that he has now been caught involved with what the SEC, Securities Exchange Commission, is accusing of being a Ponzi scheme and appears, based on the indictment that I read, of very much being a Ponzi scheme. Washington Post has new reporting on how Santos operated within this Ponzi scheme,

the way that he worked to try to draw investors in. And it is really fascinating. I don't know if you guys watched that Inventing Anna about Anna Delvey, this like supposed, this woman who portrayed herself as a German heiress and like really fooled a bunch of people in New York City, like almost got away with the whole scheme. There are a lot of Anna Delvey vibes contained in this Washington Post article. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

The headline here is, I felt like we were in Goodfellas, how George Santos wooed investors for an alleged Ponzi scheme. They opened this article with a sort of like dramatic description of him bringing in investors to this restaurant, one of the restaurants that he spent

like tens of thousands of dollars in, by the way, in his campaign finance reports, and would pitch them and over multi-course elaborate meals, really sort of portrayed himself like he was this very wealthy, high up individual that he was hobnobbing with elites in the city, which again, if you watch the Anna Delvey thing, like that was her whole thing. It's just, if you project that you are that and you have the right people around you, other elites will basically buy into this mythology that you're creating about yourself.

So here's some of the details. They say an internal harbor city meeting is the name of the Ponzi scheme. Santos refined his pitch, breezily offering stories he said he could tell investors to demonstrate his credentials or lighten the mood, according to Zoom recordings that the Post obtained, some of the tales were self-deprecating, but they delivered the same message, that he operated in the orbit of the rich and powerful. For example, he told this story about, I think it was the Blackstone CEO, that Santos was at a meeting with him and fell over a table or something like that. So again, it was self-deprecating, but it was like a humblebrag. The bottom line of the story was, these are the sorts of people that I'm friends with. These are the sorts of people I know, of course, is all completely, completely made up. They also talk about the way that the staff at this restaurant,

which again, he spent $30,000 on in his campaign, according to his reports. They would welcome him and his clients. He would order dish after dish. And one of the people that was involved said it really made her worry that he was trying to fleece this person that she had put him in touch with. And she said, I was so pissed. He did this nice show and dance. Everyone at the restaurant knew it. It felt like this was a routine he did, like this was not the first time.

So also raises some questions there about whether he was using the campaign funds in order to finance these elaborate dinners that he was using to try to pitch people on a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, exactly. And you know, I've also been fascinated by schemers. I've really just gone back to the case of Madoff. Madoff was also a genius exactly in this regard in that even when he needed money desperately, one time he was like 200 million in a hole. And some guy came up to him and was like, Bernie, I want to give you a hundred million. He's like, yeah, that's not going to cut it. And in, in, at a gala and you know, they're talking and, uh, he's like, well, what do I need? He's like,

I've got longtime clients. I'm sorry. I can't do it for, for, uh, for me to do it. I'd have to put somebody away. And he's like, okay, 200 million. He's like, no, no way. I'm sorry. That's just not going to do it. He goes to 250, which is exactly what Bernie needs. He needs it in order to make his next withdrawal for one of his clients said, nah, he works him all the way up to 400 million. And he's like, all right, I guess I can make that work. And that it worked. I mean, that's the, it's like you read about it and you're like like that's just the brazenness of the lack of shame i just can't if he doesn't get this money around it it collapses

the whole scheme collapses unless he gets that money today it ended up collapsing uh like a couple of months later but i mean you know i don't have that in me man i whatever that is it's a rare rare quality and it auto selects for the bernffs, for the Annabelle Bees. Is it a rare quality? It doesn't feel that rare right now. I don't know. I hope it's a rare quality. It's an amazing story.

There's actually a movie on it where they dramatize that scene on HBO called Wizard of Lies. I got to watch that. That is incredible. I mean, you know, I really have been obsessed with this story. Not even so much like the political implications, whatever, like politicians lie, we get it. You know, this guy, part of why a lot of people feel like there's extra scrutiny on him or something because he's a Republican. But I got to tell you, I mean, I think anyone who lied this brazenly and just invented these personas, there's just a public fascination with the way that you can navigate through the world,

making up elaborate lie after elaborate lie. And, you know, ultimately he did. He did trick a lot of supposedly sophisticated people, you know, even with this Ponzi scheme, tricked at least some number of supposedly sophisticated investors to get in on this thing, tricked a lot of Republican elites. Elise Stefanik apparently was a big sort of patron of his and sort of reviving his congressional campaign after some opposition, some internal research that they had done revealed some of this stuff. And a bunch of his campaign staff fled. Well, she's the one that comes back in and her consultant gets on board and that kind of enabled him to continue in this race in the way that he did and ultimately win it. So that's the part that is really fascinating to me is like the psychology, what it says about the holes in our political system, what it says about like what people are vulnerable to in terms of the stories that get told. So it is remarkable.

That's what it is. Another fraudster, Brett Favre, former, Hall of Fame quarterback, et cetera, et cetera. So we dug deep into this story because it truly, truly is shocking. And just to remind you of some of the details, I did a long monologue on this if you want to go back and review all of the nitty gritty details. Bottom line, Brett Favre was involved in a scheme to steal millions of dollars from Mississippi's welfare fund. This is money that is supposed to go to poor people in a state where you have a lot of poor people, number one, and number two, where they are so stingy with distributing this money, it's almost like there is no welfare system in the state of Mississippi.

Instead, multi-multi-millionaires like Brett Favre were like pigs at the trough for this thing he alleges no wrongdoing. And I had no idea what was going on for the lawyers. Let me just put this out there. Well, the Mississippi auditor is speaking out in a new interview on HBO, talking about how this was the largest public fraud case in the history of the state. And it wasn't just Favre, there were other players involved who ultimately robbed this welfare fund of like a hundred million dollars. Let's take a listen to what that Mississippi state auditor is saying. What I can tell you is that this is the largest public fraud case in the history of the state of Mississippi. Here in the poorest state in America, money from the state welfare fund intended to help alleviate poverty was instead being rerouted by those in charge to their cronies and friends, nearly $100 million in all. They thought of this fund as not only

their own fund to do what they wanted with, but they thought of it as a slush fund that no one was watching at all. They thought of it as a slush fund. Just a reminder on some of the details specifically with regard to Favre. He took $5 million for a project to build a volleyball stadium at the university his daughter was attending where he had also attended. That was like the big part of his involvement. But there was also, and this is something he says there, there's a weird transaction involving $1.1 million going directly to Favre where he was supposed to speak at three total speaking engagements, but he didn't show up to those events. So, I mean, already disgusting that you, who are a very wealthy man, are taking this money to do these speaking gigs that are supposed to be about like motivation or whatever. That's the way that they justified taking this out of the welfare funds, which is disgraceful to start with.

But then you don't even do the speaking gigs. Allegedly, again, he says there was no wrongdoing here. But this is having huge political reverberations also, Sagar. The former Mississippi governor was really implicated in all of this and had sort of like direct involvement. There were text messages that were revealed between him and some of the key players in this where he seemed to know exactly what was going on. He also denies wrongdoing. The current governor, Tate Reeves, Ryan Krim lookalike. He does. What an image in your head.

He and the previous governor, you know, they're really tight. They were that he was sort of like an acolyte of the previous governor, you know, they're really tight. They were that he was sort of like an acolyte of the previous governor. They have the same network of donors and social circles and all of that sort of stuff. So he is also implicated here and seemed to be involved in what looked to be a cover up of this whole scheme during his time in office. Well, I don't know if this is the whole story of why the people in the state are not too impressed with Tate Reeves, but he's actually in a little bit of trouble for reelection. Obviously, Mississippi, deep red state. The idea that a Democrat could have any shot in this state is incredibly far fetched.

I'm not going to say that the Democrat is going to win. The fact they're even within striking range is quite remarkable. It's an article from The Hill. They say Democrats see Mississippi's governor race as ripe for an upset. He's got some of the lowest approval ratings Tate Reeves does in the entire country, has been name checked, they say, at times in the state's long running welfare scandal. And if you look at the polling, you know, the Democratic candidate is only a few points behind right now. So there's a real chance that if this thing continues to unravel the way that it has been, you know, that people are just done with

this dude. Again, wouldn't bet on it, but I think the fact that this is even a question mark right now shows you how devastating the scandal has been for him and the entire Mississippi political class in that state. Red, blue, independent. Everybody thinks it's pretty gross to use public funds that are allocated for single moms and poor people so that a hundred millionaire can embezzle money and build a new volleyball stadium for his daughter. I mean, I think we can all just kind of come around that and say, yeah, this is pretty crazy. And look, with Brett, they have these people dead to rights. You got text messages.

What do they say? Nobody's going to find out about this, right? Yeah, that's right. It will never be. He's like, the press is never going to know about this, right? They're like, yeah, you're good. He's like, yes. First of all, what are you doing?

Ever heard a signal? I don't really understand. Boomers. Yeah, that's true. Thinking that iCloud or whatever is safe. The Mississippi auditor here, also, it's not like these are liberals. It's not like these are Democrats. They're like, this is a horrific, massive public fraud case talking about millions of dollars

where you're literally using welfare funds as a slush fund to build and spend on infrastructure projects that personally benefit you. This is corruption that you used to see in the United States in like the 1800s. And that's really what it, but in a way it's analogous. You have a governor, he thinks he's untouchable. Brett Favre, he's like a king, right? He's, I mean, look, undeniable. He's like one of the most famous people in the United States from Mississippi. He's like,'s like one of the most famous people to ever come out of the state ever. So he's probably like a god in Mississippi. And that's how they treat him. And apparently he thinks he's above the law.

Yeah. Just totally ridiculous. Absolutely. And, I mean, I do think the fact that you have effectively, you know, a one-party state in Mississippi at this point where they don't feel like there would ever be any sort of political accountability. Just to give you the numbers on Tate Reeves and what's going on here. Morning Consult poll released this month found him among the 10 governors with the lowest approval rating in the country. Mississippi Today, Siena College poll found 57% of respondents, including 33% of Republicans, want to see someone other than the governor as the state's top official. It wasn't

that long. Mississippi was one of the last states to sort of transition from the era of like electing Democrats locally and like the Dixie Crab model and that whole thing. So it actually wasn't that long ago that the governor was a Democrat. But, you know, in recent years, these are blowout elections.

They're winning by 20, 30 points. So to have it even close at all, again, utter indictment and shows you how disgusted the public there is with this entire scandal. Yeah. And you know what? I really think that they should be. So speaking of public corruption scandals and fraud and the history of the United States- Equal opportunity here. You know, I guess past speaker, Speaker Pelosi. She no longer has as much of an impact, let's say, on public policy. But let's just say she's probably in the know as the representative from San Francisco. So we're about to talk about, in the Ticketmaster

block, but really about antitrust, the government suing Google over its monopoly in the ad market, something we could probably talk about a lot here on Breaking Points with respect to YouTube. Well, right before that lawsuit came about, whether it was public knowledge or not, who knows? Let's put this up there on the screen. Nancy Pelosi reportedly, with her husband, sold $3 million actually worth of the stock just four weeks ago. So the next one that we can put up there on the screen,

it actually shows you the exact trades that were disclosed in the periodic transaction report. You could see it right there, several trades, all that just hit in the last weeks of December. And what do we see? We see trades between 500,000 to a million dollars, all of class A stock that were being made. And the real question is why? I mean, in many respects, we're talking here about people who literally run the government in the know, representative here even from San Francisco. Let's even, Crystal, put aside the lawsuit. You represent a lot of people from Google. You should not be trading Google, period. But then you add in the actual discussion, you add in, or the lawsuit, you add in the potential of insider knowledge. And let's all

be real here. The only reason that we even know is because of the toothless periodic transaction report that comes out three weeks later. It's not even real-time data that we get. That none of them even really feel particularly compelled to abide by the law. Right. Who fought the idea of a stock trading ban until they were ridiculed publicly and it became a major kind of meme online? And at the end of the day, did the stock ban pass that Congress? Well, no, it didn't. Listen, both of these parties recognized that there was real public appetite for some anti-corruption measures, in particular, banning members from trading stocks. There was genuine bipartisan efforts working across the aisle. Abigail Spanberger, who I'm generally not a big fan of,

she was involved with a significant effort reaching across the aisle to come up with something that would actually have some real teeth on this. It was all there. And lo and behold, not while Democrats had the House, and remember when Kevin McCarthy pretended like this was something he cared about? Hey, why isn't this one of the demands that the Kevin McCarthy holdouts wanted in terms of their negotiations when they were extracting their pound of flesh? Hey, why isn't Kevin McCarthy talking about the stock trade ban now that he's actually in a position of power? Lo and behold, these people have no interest in changing the rules because they're making them fabulously wealthy. And, you know, the bottom line with this Nancy Pelosi stock trade and many others besides, it almost doesn't matter whether it was based on inside information or not. The outcome is just as damaging to the American public because no one is going to look at

this and think like, oh, this is all just like fair and above board and based on public information. Bullshit. When three weeks later, this lawsuit is revealed to the public. And we know how close you are with the Biden administration. And we know how much insider knowledge you ultimately have. Like no one is going to buy that. And Google stock dropped, you know, immediately after the lawsuit. I mean, not a lot. Brilliant traders, aren't they? Why? Like what exactly is going on here? And it's not just, you know, it's not just Pelosi.

There's so many of them. There's like so many accounts these days. I just found one guy on Instagram. He does a bunch of these videos. The Nancy Pelosi stock trader account actually does Republicans as well. And they disclose and they show all kinds of trades. I mean, the fact that any of this is legal is insane. And, you know, I was talking with some people on the Hill and, you know, they've even brought it up to their bosses. They're like, hey, like, what are you doing? And people on the Hill, and, you know, they've even brought it up to their bosses. They're like, hey, like, what are you doing? And the bosses are like, oh, what? You know, like, I'm a – and they were like, no, dude.

They're like, unless you can prove you're innocent, you're guilty. And I actually think that's the exact right way to approach a public politician, somebody with so much power, so much influence on the decision, unless you can literally prove. And then, again, just to point to the fact that we're not even talking about ETFs. We're not talking about the Dow Jones or S&P 500. We're talking about direct stocks directly impacted by US government decisions, of which she was one of the most powerful members. She was actually at the speaker at that time. She still is. You think she's not... Hemeries is her hand-picked successor. You don't think that he's doing the things that Nancy Pelosi strongly suggests that he should do. No, you're right. She's still in charge over on the Democratic side, no doubt about it. I should note that the

trades were all made technically while she was still Speaker and would have been privy to a lot of this discussion. So there you go. You can take that to the bank. This is corrupt as hell, and I really just can't believe that we just continue to let it happen. It's outrageous. Yes. So on a more positive side of things, there are two areas where I really think the Biden administration deserves some credit. And both of them have less to do actually with Biden himself and more to do with people that he put in some key posts. So, you know, I've been very impressed with the head of the NLRB, the National Labor Relations Board, in terms of, you know, really trying to rebalance the scales with regard to corporations and labor. The other areas, antitrust, where you had Tim Wu, Jonathan Cantor, and Lena

Kahn, who have really sought to usher in a new era where we actually care about corporate power and we actually attempt to check corporate power. There has been a, this obviously is something Matt Stoller tracks very closely and has done a phenomenal job educating a lot of people, myself included, on. And this week in particular, there were a few things that were quite significant in the antitrust news. Number one is there were Senate hearings with regard to Ticketmaster and the whole Taylor Swift debacle, which led to a lot of justified questions about this monopoly and the way that they gouge consumers and screw artists and have total control over so much of the live performance market. We'll get to that in a moment with Ticketmaster. And the other piece was that the Department of Justice announced

a big lawsuit against Google, and they're having some success there ultimately. So folks over at CNBC, they're very unhappy about this whole development. And in particular, Jim Cramer, bless his heart, having total meltdown on air. And also, by the way, getting a bunch of key facts just straight up wrong in his Google lobbyist talking points that he's parroting here. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. This is the most ideological antitrust department I have seen since, and you'll get this, Standard Oil and Teddy Roosevelt. That is their ideology.

David, that's an ideology. I remember I took Marks and Engels. Remember when Engels said the people are like a sack of potatoes? After he was speaking of the peasantry. Understood. And under antitrust law, it may be very difficult for them to prove a case. That said, there is no shortage. She is anti the man.

It's a real throwback. We're not used to it because Obama wasn't like this. They lost the House of Representatives. So they go real hard left. They're hard left. Obama wasn't like this. I've read Marx. First of all, I highly doubt that you actually have read Marx in English.

I don't know if he's ever wrote a book, ever. That said, I mean, look, that's the finance industry getting peddled. Really what they see is they're calling it ideological whenever you're talking about straight up literal. I mean, one of the things that's important, A, he misses who's actually doing the suing. But the investigation itself is pretty clear. Read the facts that are laid out in the lawsuit. They're like, by our estimation, you have a monopoly, which is against U.S. law. It's now on the government to actually prove those facts in a court and convince somebody that it's true. And then we can figure out what exactly it looks like on the other end. But, you know, we talked about this, I think, in one of our last shows.

Does anybody think the promise of the internet actually came true? I remember being online in 2007. And I remember just being like, wow, man, like anything is possible. Like MySpace and Facebook and all this, the idea of meeting all these people. Did we really imagine that we would have centralized chokehold points of control? That's not really what was promised. Now we're in the middle of the AI revolution. And I don't know, at first I was skeptical, but increasingly the way I see a lot of institutions behave, I'm like, you know, I think this is great. Like when I'm watching these

professors lose it, that they can no longer just assign busy work and then try and put, they're like, oh, we made it actually to do something and, you know, have oral exam, which by the way, I think is fantastic. I think oral examination and all that is really important in terms of what you're actually going to take away. And maybe even the idea of credentialism and life skills and what a lot of busy work even looks like in the workplace is being miserable, can be taken away. That's all a result of monopolization, which is being enormously profitable for Google, for Facebook, a few select companies. And I think it's a very open question, like, do we want that? We had a big fight in this country about that with railroads, which we recognize as infrastructure. We had the

same fight with banks. We kind of forgot that lesson a little bit, 2008. But why should we? Why should we forget that lesson? It's important. This is our country. Why not? There's so much to say about the Kramer piece. I mean, first of all, as you pointed out, just straight up got a number of the facts wrong. Thought it was Lena Kahn that was involved in the suit. No, it was Jonathan Cantor of the Department of Justice, number one. Number two, this was also not just the Justice Department.

This was also a group of eight states. So it's not just like one crazy ideologue or whatever. And there are other lawsuits against Google that also involve a lot of states, including like Texas and Ken Paxton, hardly some like hard left maniac. That's number one. Number two, and this was something a stoler flag for me as well, is Lena Kahn actually was at odds with a lot of labor activists who also you would say, you know, broadly oftentimes on the left over Microsoft and Activision because she was opposed to that going through. Of course, they like the idea of some people on the left like the idea of large corporations because then that gives

you one node that you can organize and can make it easier for labor unions to gain support. So even the idea that everybody on the left has one view of how this should all go, even that basic fact is not true. But the bigger context for all of this is the fact that these mergers and acquisitions are big business and big bonuses for Wall Street. So Kramer's friends who are still working on Wall Street and still very much in the industry, their paychecks depend on these big paydays from mergers going through ultimately. And so since there's been a slowdown in that kind of activity because the government is applying new and long overdue, frankly, scrutiny to these companies

getting larger and larger and larger and larger and the impact that has on our society overall, that's upsetting Kramer and it's, I'm sure, upsetting a lot of his friends. So that's sort of the context here is he feels that there is, you know, a lot of money at stake that people are losing out on because they can't just continue the industry of growing everything larger and concentrating more and more power in these industries. And not just tech either. If you look at agriculture, if you look at basically any industry, meatpacking, any industry in this country, the amount of power and consolidation in the hands of a very few people is really disturbing. It's bad for labor. It's bad for competition. It's the opposite of having

an actual free and fair market. Yeah, but it is great for stockholders, right? Absolutely. And that's really what it's all about. Great for Wall Street. And when we think about it too, ticket masks, this is another reason we should be hopeful. Look, the entire Congress basically was unified essentially against Ticketmaster in their hearings. I know Ryan and Emily covered it, but I just think it is astounding to watch this mashup of senators from all sides, you know, using the Taylor Swift, uh, doing the Taylor Swift debacle. And sure, it's cringe watching old people do it. That's like, should we care? I mean, they're trying to capture the public imagination in order to bring good

to our industry. So that's a good thing, in my opinion. Let's take a listen. Ticketmaster ought to look in the mirror and say, I'm the problem. It's me. Once again, she's chair captain and I'm on the bleachers, so. As a ode to Taylor Swift, I will say we know all too well.

Karma's a relaxing thought. Aren't you envious that for you, it's not? That's all I've got to say. So what do you see there? I mean, we literally have Mike Lee, we have Republicans, Democrats all quoting Taylor Swift. And through the quotes, what's actually coming through? They're all against the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger, which at the time, only a couple of bands spoke out. Nobody in Congress thought about it.

Obama gives it the rubber stamp. And now here we are. It's like a complete catastrophe. You know, one of the artists who testified before the Congress just did a really fantastic job, like laying out how much that it's hurt him. And this is somebody who's actually, I mean, he's not like a household name per se, but gets a lot of views on Spotify and elsewhere. And he was just showing exactly the problems that it has faced his industry. Taylor Swift is just the bleeding edge. I was just in Mexico, listened to a lot of Bad Bunny. Apparently they even screwed up a Bad Bunny concert in terms of their admittance there. And the important point actually,

Matthew Zeitlin pulled this, which is over on TikTok. People are unironically posting a clip of Josh Hawley going after Ticketmaster. I don't even think they know anything about Ticketmaster or even, or sorry, they don't know anything about who Josh Hawley is, but the clips on Congress of Ticketmaster getting flamed is really touching a cultural nerve. Here's an example of that. You're forcing everybody who just wants to get this ticket on the resale market, who hasn't bought from you, as we're told to begin with, you're forcing them to become your customer in order to take possession of this ticket. I mean, that's really something. I mean,

hats off to you, I guess, for being innovative and using your monopoly. But I have to tell you, from a competition standpoint, this really, really worries me. So what do you see there? It's like, whoever put those and overlaid that, it's clearly becoming like a meme. It's something that really was felt. So the Taylor Swift situation, I think, just happened really at the exact right time. Your entire job as a cell tech is you literally can't even do that in a competent manner. But there's a lot more that's been going on behind the scenes over a decade. And this is the one heartening area where we can say, like, something is changing. Good, reward politicians for this

instead of like, you know, his January 6th fist pump. Good point, yeah, very good. See, you can go. Maybe this is the cynical place to ultimately take a stand. Sometimes you can go viral whenever you do good things. So listen, it's a message of hope, I think, for us. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at?

Well, one of the reasons that gas prices matter politically is the simple fact that most Americans just drive past it on a day-to-day basis. You drive one day, you see the price go up, you do it every single day for a month, you pull in, you see a bill higher, then you just say, what the hell's going on in this country? It's a relatively inelastic product most of us need it on a regular basis. It's very difficult to adjust to when you see even massive increases in price. But gas, it's not the only product that's doing that. So is the grocery store. And while we focus a lot on the grocery store bills in the aggregate, let's zoom in on something that a lot of you have taken notice of. Eggs. Eggs are interesting. Most Americans buy them on a weekly basis. In fact, the average American consumes nearly 300 eggs per year. And actually,

the amount of eggs that we eat has significantly gone up in the last few years to the highest level in over 50 years. Eggs are and have always been an important part of the American diet, from its inclusion in baked goods to the quintessential breakfast, which is why the price increase over the last few years or so has been so devastating to a lot of households. And shocking. As you can see in the chart before you, before the pandemic, eggs were roughly the same price as the 1980s.

There was minor price movement in 2015, but by and large, it was like a reliable, stable product. Relative productivity increases in the egg industry actually kept the price down over time. It's part of why Americans could be so reliant on eggs as a cheap way to feed their families. That is, of course, until 2022 and now 2023. As the chart shows, the national retail price of eggs is over $4 a dozen, when just a year ago it was $1.79. What accounts for a 200% increase in the price of eggs? Well, if you ask the egg industry, they will tell you bird flu. Seems simple though, right?

A historic bird flu outbreak that is killing hens means less supply while demand is high, hence the price. But is that everything that's going on? If you read deeper, it doesn't really appear to be the case. While bird flu is definitely bad, the total flock size of egg layers across the country has actually only gone down by 4-5%. A 4-5% reduction in the number of hens laying eggs does not even come close to explaining that price increase. In fact, the largest US producer of eggs, CalMain Foods, is the perfect illustration. Last month, it reported its overall sale dollar volume rose to nearly $1 billion over the last quarter, helping it generate $198 million in profit. So how much profit did they make the year before? Well, it was a million dollars.

So are you starting to get the picture? You have a 200% increase in the price, and then you have a 200% increase in profit. Interesting, but it's bird flu. That's the largest egg producer, though, to be fair. It hasn't been so easy for egg producers in the last year or so. The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions on the Russian economy have actually pushed grain prices to sky-high levels, leading to an immense increase in the cost for egg producers to feed their hens. When you add on top the immense amount of petroleum product needed for transportation, farm equipment, natural gas, and all of that redirected into refrigeration, and you get the result of what we have right now.

Really bad news is that while prices appear to be receding from their December high, that's peak egg demand during the holidays, the price effect is actually still being felt heartily at the grocery store. Worse, we are beginning to see the same thing that we did with gas at $5 a gallon. When gas got to the highest point in modern history, people just started driving a lot less, not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They stopped going out to eat, reduced their lifestyle, they were just more miserable, reduced their savings. Same thing's happening right now with eggs. Putting aside the 1990s idiotic thinking about cholesterol, eggs are actually very good for you.

They're relatively fresh, natural, and a complete protein. Filling, there's a reason that a lot of people eat them for breakfast. But as egg prices increase and people adjust, they're naturally going to reduce their consumption of food in favor of what is cheap. What's cheap? You already know. Process, fast food. Anything instant. It's cheap? You already know. Process, fast food, anything instant.

It's probably processed as hell. Designed to be hyperpalatable, more likely to be less nutritious. What says cheap in bad times versus what gets expensive actually tells you a lot about society and what it's designed for. The simple truth appears to be, we are designed to make sure the lowest common denominator of price

is the least nutritious. Thus, the poorest and most vulnerable amongst us are pushed to process food. At the outbreak of COVID, I actually had a lot of hope. Come together as we did in previous national crises. Wake up to our lack of resilience. The fact that we don't make anything here anymore. Our hyper-concentrated economy designed for just in time and not for the flourishing of our people. But we didn't wake up to any of that. We didn't get good leadership under Trump or Biden. We're just left to fend for ourselves. That's why people are so angry right now.

They're not stupid. They know what's going on is not right. It's just that nobody is looking to actually do anything about it. It's really frustrating. That's the interesting thing about eggs. I love that statistic. 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, guys, Joe Rogan recently floated a conspiracy for what is really behind the Biden document scandal. Take a listen. If I had to guess, they're trying to get rid of him. Yeah. My guess would be they're trying to get rid of him. Yeah. My guess would be they're trying to get rid of him. If all of a sudden his own aides are sending these, instead of like taking these classified documents, which you have located, and go, well, let's not do that again, and fucking locking them up somewhere. His own aides. Self-reporting?

Dude. Come on, dude. That sounds sus. Well, no one self-reported that fucking laptop. I know. That laptop. Well, that was Russian disinformation. That reeks of Russian disinformation.

They got a hold of the social media companies and lied to them. They did whatever the fuck they could to keep that from happening. And even this, they discovered this before the midterms. Now, I'm not sure that any of the people around Biden are actually clever or cunning enough to pull off this elaborate plot, but Rogan is picking up on something that is a real dynamic here. Biden is not in a great position politically in general, and the continued fallout from this document scandal has been an absolute catastrophe for him. On a substantive level, there remain real questions about how the hell this all happened, the level of carelessness it implies, the real possibility of national security compromise, the arrogance of expecting a separate

system of justice for yourself. On a political level, though, if anything, the situation is even worse. Why? Because Biden's document scandal hits him right where it matters the most, electability. And there were already some real warning signs for Joe Biden in that very department. Stretch your memory way back to the days of the 2020 Democratic primary. Pete and Kamala and Beto and John Delaney, they were all there. Bernie, too, of course. But in the end, one figure stood alone, Joseph Robinette Biden. It wasn't that voters were particularly enthusiastic about Biden's policy positions. They did have some warmth for him personally, but they preferred Bernie on any number of issues. Ultimately, though, they came to believe Biden was best on the issue that they put above all others, electability. And they were

right, sort of, because he completed the mission. He did beat Donald Trump, although it was ultimately really too close for comfort. Now Biden is facing his re-elect, and in some ways, and up until recently, that squishy pundit-defined quality of electability looks relatively intact, strengthened even. First and foremost, he is the incumbent president. That typically does count for something. But he also defied history in the midterms, avoided the absolute Democratic shellacking that looked imminent and which had become a sort of political custom for the party in the White House. Sure, voters consistently told pollsters they would love some options other than Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Sure, Democratic voters consistently said they

did not actually even want Biden to run for president again. But in the wake of the midterms, it felt like those lingering doubts would surely be assuaged. But the truth is, although the midterms might have shut up the press and the Democratic politicians who distanced themselves from Biden leading up to November, they didn't actually quiet the public's doubts. For an incumbent president, Biden continues to be in a very weak position with regard to his own Democratic base. As a shocking example of how that weakness shows up in the numbers, there's a new poll that just came out testing a hypothetical 2024 Democratic primary in the key state of New Hampshire. Overall, you ready for this? 66% of New Hampshire Democrats say they are opposed to Biden running

for a second term. Plus, and this makes me throw up a little bit in my mouth to say, but it's got Pete Buttigieg beating Biden by five points. What's even more notable is that Biden has actually lost ground in this poll since the last time they tested the waters. That was back in July. Back then, Biden only trailed Pete by one. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, they have also seen their support rise. Now, Biden's erosion in this poll is counter to the media narrative that the midterms basically shored up his standing and erased any lingering Democratic doubts. The result is even more worrying for Biden, given what a colossal mess Pete has made lately with his unwillingness to hold the Criminal Airlines 2 account. They're losing to that guy. Now, it's

true that New Hampshire is not a great state for Biden. He does better with Black and Latino Democrats than with the overwhelmingly white population of New Hampshire. But he continues to show plenty of weakness at the national overall level, too. In a new Emerson poll, a sizable minority, 42 percent of Democrats, say they want a different nominee. That same poll finds Biden losing a head-to-head matchup against DeSantis. But even more disturbing, it's got him trailing Trump by 44 to 41. Now, this comes on the heels of a separate Harvard-Harris poll, which found Biden trailing Trump by five. Since Democratic voters selected Biden for his electability, it then makes

sense that their continued support of him would rise and fall with their sense of whether or not he can win again, whether or not he is the best candidate to take on a Trump or a DeSantis. And they have some good reason at this point to be a little doubtful. For one, Biden ain't getting any younger or any more capable. His ability to do the job for another four-year term has long been one of the top concerns of Democratic voters and general election voters alike. But now, Biden is in a terrible position to make a strong case against Trump. It's going to be Hillary Clinton all over again, trying to attack Trump on his character, but being too flawed personally for any of it to really land and stick. There's no way that Biden can use Trump's own document malfeasance against him now.

Not to mention the fact that Biden and now Pence have been caught in very similar misdeeds makes it so much less likely that Trump is going to be indicted. Listen, not long ago, I thought there was really little likelihood that Trump could make it back into the White House again. Now, I long ago, I thought there was really little likelihood that Trump could make it back into the White House again. Now, I am not so sure whatsoever. Republicans did not stick the knife in, and Biden's thrown him a massive lifeline. Biden's supposed electability saved his political career in 2020, but in 2024, he's going to have to sell something else to Democratic voters because far from a strong contender, he looks very,

very vulnerable. And there's a bit of an intra-Democratic... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Ryan Cooper is the Prospects Managing Editor and also author of How Are You Going to Pay for That? Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. Great to have you, Ryan. Welcome. Good to see you, man. Glad to be here. Yeah, absolutely. So you wrote an intelligent piece about this new idea that was proposed by Bill Cassidy and Angus King. Let's go ahead and throw this up on the screen. The headline here

from the prospect is the smart bipartisan plan to shore up Social Security. Bill Cassidy and Angus King propose an American social wealth fund. So I would love it if you could just start with the very basics of what is a social wealth fund and why is this even being contemplated at this point at all? Yeah, well, a social wealth fund is quite simple. It's just a government investment account, basically. You know, the government finds a source of revenue from somewhere and they usean. The money doesn't come directly from the that. It's just like any wealthy individual that has stuff like this. This will be just doing it on a government scale. And the proposal is to just use that as a source of revenue to basically bolster the finances of social security, find

another revenue stream for it, as it were. And so they proposed to not take the existing Social Security trust fund, but to find some money from somewhere else, in this case by borrowing, actually, and invest it in stocks. Or I think that's mainly what they proposed. But, you know, theoretically, you could put it in whatever you wanted to. Right. So, Ryan, I mean, what are the arguments against this? I guess one of them would be at least with Social Security, it's a guarantee. You know, S&P 500 returns like whatever, 13% on average, but sometimes it drops by 22% and sometimes it goes up by 40%.

So what would you do? How do you mitigate the downside risk, I guess, to taxpayer money and to the overall benefit? Well, there's a risk with everything. You know, one of the reasons we have this problem right or so is because that the money has been invested in this hyper conservative account, which is all Treasury bonds. And as you say, you know, there's an enormous difference over the last like 30 years is about an eight percentage point difference between the return on the S&P 500 and the return on United States debt. So, you know, there is a

risk, but, you know, there's also a risk to not doing it, which is that, you know, you're leaving money on the table. And one of the nice things about a government is that you have a theoretically infinite time horizon. And so if there's a bad turn in the market, you can usually just wait it out. These are usually transitory things that only last a couple of years. And so you can basically sit on your hands. You could, in the case of an extreme event, just bolster it up with some extra borrowed money or something like that and just wait for things to turn around. So, you know, it's not like a person where they, you know, you absolutely must get your money out when you need it. You know, the government can shore things, you know, paper over the cracks for a long time.

Got it. How do you like this idea as opposed to what Senator Sanders has long proposed and others, and apparently Joe Manchin just came out in support of the idea of lifting the income cap. So right now there's a limit to the amount of wage income that is actually taxed to go into the Social Security Trust Fund. The idea is like, why are we giving this tax break to the wealthy, basically, that is undercutting the ability to make sure that Social Security benefits will be there for retirees into the future. What do you make of that proposal instead? I think that's great.

You know, the reason I would say I mainly like this Social Security investment scheme is that it puts the idea of a social wealth fund on the table. And I think if you're actually going to do it, you know, the way to do it would be like Alaska. Basically, you know, you're taking some of the capital income of the country, the income from investment returns, which is about 30% of national income, and goes overwhelmingly to the richest people in the country. And just like getting the government's fingers in that particular, you know particular pie. And you could do it for Social Security or you could do a universal basic dividend like my friend Matt Brunick proposes. But yeah, I don't think these necessarily trade off. I would also get rid of that payroll tax cap. And that would, I think, shore up the Social Security's finances indefinitely as well.

So we could do both and. And in fact, boost Social Security benefits higher than they are now, which is probably a good idea. Do we have any examples of other nations, you know, that are able to do that? I know Norway has a good one, but again, that's kind of oil related. Is there anybody on par with us that has a similar financing scheme? Yeah, I mean, Norway is the big one. They own like 1.3% of all the stocks in the world, which is crazy when you think about how small the country is. There are a lot of, you know,

petro states have them. Alaska is probably the single most relevant example. I believe North Dakota has one as well. And as you say, these tend to come from oil rents because it's much more easily politically to do it that way because it's like the oil is not, you know, being created by a capitalist or something like that. It's sort of, you know, the heritage of everyone. But, you know, the guy who set up Alaska's dividend thing, he tried that multiple times with different sources. He wanted to do it with fish taxes, and then he wanted to do it just with tax money. And there's no reason why you couldn't just use regular government money. You know, I mean, that, you know, that buys just as good as anything else. You know, it's just a question of getting the politics squared away.

And, you know, eight percentage points of investment return is really, that's a huge, you know, imagine being a Wall Street trader and you're looking at something like that, just being able to borrow at these rock bottom prices and invest in the market. I mean, you know, it's a total no-brainer. Yeah. Good point. Last question to you, Ryan. Part of why there's all this discussion now of Social Security and Medicare is because you have some in the Republican caucus who are once again back to floating cuts to, quote unquote, entitlement programs. Joe Biden seems a newly reformed man, but he has in the past been open to these cuts as well, including during the Obama administration when they floated insanely this grand bargain, which the only reason we didn't

end up with it is basically because the Tea Party at the time was like, no, this doesn't even go far enough. So, you know, we have this debt ceiling situation coming up where the Republicans are very committed to holding the country hostage in order to extract some sort of spending cuts, maybe with entitlement spending, quote unquote, maybe in some other area. What is your level of confidence in the ability of this administration led by Joe Biden to sort of hold firm to their current position that we are not going to negotiate on the debt ceiling whatsoever? I am semi-confident. You know, Biden's a party guy at the end of the day. And, you know, the party has totally come away from the

position of Obama in 2011, when, as you say, he was putting like $800 billion in Social Security and Medicare cuts on the table, you know, to give to the Tea Party. By 2016, Obama was proposing an increase in Social Security benefits, you know, pressed by Elizabeth Warren and other folks, Bernie Sanders as well. The other thing about Joe Biden, though, is he tends to be a little bit of a flapjaw who just sort of say stuff without really thinking it through. And I've heard from people

inside the congressional staffers on the Hill who are afraid that he'll just get to talking with the Republicans and just randomly propose some like big bargain. But, you know, at the end of the day, Social Security and Medicare are so popular. You know, a Pew poll from a couple of years ago said 74 percent of Americans do not want Social Security benefits to be cut. I think Biden is a savvy enough politician that he knows that that would be horribly unpopular and it would be a terrible precedent to give the Republicans anything in return for like holding the global economy hostage. So, you know, fingers crossed, basically. Yeah. Well, especially when

you have Trump actually already out there. I mean, this was one of the ways he broke ranks with Republican orthodoxy in 2016. And he's already come out and said you should not put a penny of cuts from Social Security and Medicare on the table. So it'd be terrible position for Biden to be in going into reelect if he is up against Trump again, to be, to let Trump get to the left of you on those issues. Thank you for breaking all of this down for us. We really appreciate Ryan. Thank you, Ryan. My pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. It was a fun show today.

It was a long show. Lots to talk about. Always happens. Whenever you've got to break stuff down, we've got breaking news, all of that. I hope you guys enjoyed at CounterPoints yesterday. We certainly did. They did a phenomenal job. We've got great content, partner content specifically for everybody all throughout the weekend.

Shout out to the premium subscribers who enable all of our work here possible. We just really couldn't do it without you. And especially with the discussions we're having right now, Crystal, new set and logo and all this other stuff. It costs a lot of money. It costs a hell of a lot of money. And literally the only way is because of all of you. So thank you all so, so much for giving us that confidence and we will see you all next week. Love you guys. Have a wonderful weekend. this is an iHeart podcast