Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 12/9/21: Polls, Ukraine/Saudi Arabia, Twitter Censorship, NAFTA, Don Lemon, Clown Country, Media Madness, Free Donziger, and More!

Episode Date: December 9, 2021

Krystal and Saagar talk about polling numbers for Democrats, Biden's policies on Ukraine and Saudi Arabia, Twitter's new censorship regime, the terrible consequences of NAFTA, Don Lemon's journalistic malpractice, the administration's inability to distribute covid tests, media gaslighting about its coverage of Biden, the Steven Donziger case, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Katie Halper’s Show: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKatieHalperShow Free Donziger: https://www.freedonziger.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of stories we're tracking this morning. An update for you on the Ukraine situation. Biden met with Putin. And a look kind of overall at his foreign policy, which has been a little bit all over the place so far in his presidency. Some conflicting signals there, some good, some bad.

Twitter has suspended the Nancy Pelosi portfolio tracker account. And also an account that was just providing updates on the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. They also have some new policies, again, that they announced. This, again, that they announced. This, again, all since that new CEO took over. Very troubling signs there. Happy anniversary to NAFTA, the terrible free trade agreement signed during the Clinton administration, which devastated many American towns. We have a new analysis on just how devastating that was,

not just economically, but for Democrats politically. Update on the whole Jussie Smollett situation. New little twist, which is that Don Lemon was apparently texting him, tipping him off to the fact that the police were not really buying his story. Got it. Did Lemon have anything to say about that on his broadcast? We'll see. We'll let you know.

Also, Katie Halper is going to join us. I did a live stream with her last night, along with Brianna Joy Gray and Marianne Williamson. Tried to raise funds for Steven Donziger's legal defense fund. He, of course, is in prison for the crime of trying to hold Chevron accountable for the devastation that they inflicted on people in Ecuador. But we wanted to start with some really interesting polls. Lot of warning signs here for Democrats, but also a few warning signs here for Republicans, too. As they look forward, let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. This is from The Wall Street Journal. Their headline reads, Voters Pessimistic About Economy, Biden's Leadership, Wall Street Journal Polls Fines.

First survey in The Wall Street Journal's new polling effort shows Republicans in strong position, though Democrats have advantages in some policy areas. Kind of the headline numbers. We can put this next tweet up on the screen with the approval ratings and where things stand. So Josh Kraschauer says Biden approve at 41, disapprove at 57. Noteworthy there, too, he has the strong approve is only 19. Yes. The strong disapprove is 46. You don't want to be there. No. Generic ballot, GOP leads by three points. That's roughly the margin of error, but Republicans also have a structural advantage when it comes to Congress and also to the Senate party, better able to deal with the economy.

This is a devastating one. Republicans, 46. Dems, 35. That's terrible. Terrible. So top line numbers, very, very ugly for Democrats. And it doesn't get much better from there. We'll get to some of the warning signs for Republicans at a moment.

But, you know, Tucker, I just keep coming back to when you think about the way Biden campaigned. In a way, he really promised nothing. Yes. It was very vague. It was very, you know, it was like a collection of slogans and catchphrases. And mostly the promise was, listen, we're going to get rid of Trump. And this guy's, you know, been obnoxious and terrible, and you're all sick of him. And that was enough. But on the other hand, because he promised things like return to normal, like restore the soul of America, well, in a sense, those are actually really big promises. And so the fact that we still have a pandemic,

we still are having to worry about new variants and still having to worry about masks and is my kid going to be able to go to school this week and all of these things. So there isn't a sense of like, oh, we're back to normal. You layer on top of that the inflation concerns, which are voters' top concerns here, which I think Democrats, look, some of it's, a lot of it's out of their control. And a lot of these are supply chain issues that, you know, came naturally out of the pandemic. But there's also not a sense that they really care that much

about it. That's a big problem. And then on the restore the soul of America piece, I mean, do you feel like America's soul is restored? I particularly don't. We're doing our best here, but we try. Still a lot of work to be done. So I actually think because he had these amorphous slogans and catchphrases that actually amounted to really high bars, if you look at it through a certain prism. We're not back to normal. America still feels divided as ever. You can understand why people look at the state of affairs and feel pretty depressed and pretty down on the party that controls the White House, the Senate, and the House. Yes, and there are deeper issues here also for the Democrats, which is that right track, wrong track in this poll, 63% wrong track,

27% say right track. I really want to meet these people. They must all be rich. I don't really know who they are. But on the issues themselves, these are also very important. These are the areas where Republicans have the advantage. Rebuilding the economy, 46% say they trust the GOP, 35% Democrats. That's a disaster. Get inflation under control. This is even worse for the Democrats. 44% say Republicans, 26% say Democrats. Secure the border, 52% Republicans, 16% Democrats. Where do Democrats have an advantage? Their biggest one is actually get pandemic under control, 41% versus 25%. Now, here's the problem. People don't care nearly as much about the pandemic right now

than they did in November of 2020. Improve education, 38% Democrat, 29% Republican. Make healthcare affordable. This is actually the biggest one, 47%, 25%. It's 47%, obviously, for the Democrats. So really what it is is about which of those issue areas is top of mind for most Americans on the aggregate. It's going to be the economy. And to the extent that it's culture, it'll probably be the border. Both of those places are where the Republicans are

leading by a mile. So when you look at where exactly the debate is, that goes to show why it has such a strong disapproval. The other part that really strikes me here is that Biden has achieved something that is remarkable. He is as disliked as Donald Trump in terms of his strong disapproval and also has none of the strong MAGA approval. That kind of explains why his decline has been so precipitous. As Trump famously said, he probably could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and most people would stick by him and nobody would care. However, he also had a vehement opposition amongst a large segment of the population. They kind of balanced each other out. He had very, very high, strong disapproval and strong approval.

Biden has very soft approval. Most people are like, if they do like him, like, yeah, I guess. That's better than Trump. That's better than Trump. Yeah, better than Trump. And then people who hate him are like, I really hate Joe Biden. And this is a part of negative polarization, but also just the type of leader that Biden cast himself as. I'm also thinking about what you said, which is that it's very important. When you promise nothing and also everything, restore the soul of America, well, then you're actually just going to be very much, you know, thrown into the hands of whatever the economic tides are. I mean, I think Trump would have survived this.

I think that inflation would have been just as out of control under Trump. I think gas prices would have been just as out of control under Trump. But Trump would have been out there every single day either blaming the Democrats or pretending to do something about it or, you know, whatever the next culture war controversy was. And that wouldn't really be top of mind for a lot of people. What you're pointing out is that Trump knows how to drive a news cycle. And I would say the right in general much, much better at this where they decide what fights they want to have. Yeah, that's true. Right?

In Virginia, they decide. And look, I think the CRT thing in Virginia was overblown. I think you can look at these numbers and see a lot more about what the national trends are. But they decided what conversation they wanted to have in Virginia. Biden, on the other hand, is so absent and so, you know, so checked out of the national conversation that he truly is just buffeted by the winds of whatever happens to be going on, especially after those first couple months when, look, there was a sense of, OK, vaccines are going out and that's actually going pretty well. And if you guys will remember back, that was a big question, because depressingly in this country, it seems like everything we try to do just falls apart and fails and becomes some total bureaucratic nightmare. But the vaccine rollout under Biden, it actually went well. People were getting vaccinated, and there was optimism there.

He right away passed pretty quickly a significant relief bill where people got a check in their account right away, and he had very strong approval ratings then. And then he let his, and this is 100% his fault. No one else to blame here. He let his agenda get completely bogged down. And so, you know, yeah, they got this infrastructure thing passed that is woefully inadequate and that people aren't really going to feel or see or be able to touch in their town for years. And even then, I mean, again, this is so much less than even just to restore our infrastructure to like where it needs to be, let alone a big national project that people can really get excited about and get behind and restore some sort of national pride and feel like the country is on the up again rather than permanent decline. He let it all get bogged down. You know, he decided he wanted it all get bogged down. He decided he wanted to go for these bipartisan votes. He lost momentum when really he should have front loaded

everything he could into that initial relief package when there was a lot of momentum and a lot of pressure to actually get something done then. So listen, a lot of things are out of a president's control, but the reality is a lot of this in terms of where he stands politically lies directly at his feet, and he has no one else to blame but himself. It's narrative control. It's frame control. I mean, but the bully pulpit Doris Kearns Goodwin book goes very much into this. I mean, Teddy Roosevelt, you know, very famously is that through energy and action alone, you actually can transform the nation just through being who you are and using the office of the presidency. Trump, you didn't necessarily use it for good, but he used it for himself and it worked out quite well. But the one part of this poll that sticks out is this. Let's put it up there on the screen from Ryan Gerduski. In 2024,

would you vote for Trump or Biden? Trump, 45. Biden, 46. But then ask, should we continue Biden's policies or move Trump policies? Trump, 48. Biden, 46. I'll add this. Almost any poll I ever saw with Trump underestimated him by like two or three points. So maybe Trump comes out on top of that, on the policy question, I don't think most people give a damn about policy. I don't think that's irrelevant. But compare that to the 46-26 on inflation, 46-whatever, you know, 30 on the economy. It's not even close. And what does that show you? Trump is so odious. Many millions of people will still forego their objections over inflation, their objections over the economy and say, hell no, I'm not going back to that. And I think that's an important lesson. In many ways, Trump is also one of the only Republicans who could win and also one of the Republicans who is so noxious to

the national public that he makes it so that any election that he's involved in was going to be razor thin, razor tight about how it comes down in the end. See, I actually think at this point, the Republican Party would have a better shot at winning next time around if it's not Trump. I think if you put generic, just look at the numbers. I mean, if you put generic Republican in, they beat generic Democrat. They beat Democrats on inflation, on the economy, on all these things. Then when you say, well, how about Trump versus Biden? People are like, I think I might stick with Biden. So, you know, I mean, because think about where Biden is right now. Can things get worse for him? Maybe. But this could be the low point for him. I thought that three months ago. And for him to

still be, you know, basically, you know, it'd be a coin toss whether he would beat Trump today or Trump would beat him, that's actually better position than I thought he was in, if you consider, you know, what's likely to happen in 2024. So if even at this, you know, pretty low point for Biden, Trump is not even close to a shoe in, while Republicans overall, and look, this is not because they're good or great or offering anything. They're literally not even running on anything for the midterm election. But they calculate. They don't have to. We can just let Democrats do their thing and stand back and attack them, and that's going to be enough. It's a sad state of affairs, but that's where we are.

So that's interesting. The other piece, and we should take this with a big grain of salt because this caught a lot of attention, the Latino numbers in this poll. First, let me say the sample size is only, what is it, 165 people. And there's a margin of error of eight points. So a million grains of salt. However, it shows Biden and Trump basically tied among Latino voters. Let's throw Kornacki's tweet up on the screen here. And he points out there's a huge gender gap here among Hispanic voters as well. And again, this is a really small sample size. So to then go and further break it down into men and women is, you know, again, you're adding to that margin of error.

But for Hispanic women in this poll, Biden's job performance basically evenly split. Hispanic men, on the other hand, minus 23. On the generic ballot, so would you vote for a generic Dem or a generic Republican in 2022? Hispanic women say Dem plus 17. Hispanic men, GOP plus 16. And in terms of the White House in 24, Hispanic women, Biden plus 25, Hispanic men, Trump plus 23. So, again, it's a really small sample size, but it does track with some of the trends that we have seen of how that community feels about Latinx terminology. And which, again, I don't think it's like the biggest thing. It's just symbolic of the way that at least a significant part of, you know, of that demographic is feeling like these people don't get me. They don't understand me. They're looking down their nose at me.

They're like a different, you know, class. And this is really not for me. So I think that's kind of what's going on. Honestly, it validates a lot of what I've said, which has pissed a lot of people off about barstool conservatism. I was like, and a friend of mine pointed this out. He's like, you know, a lot of this is just a realignment, not necessarily towards working class party, but non-educated. And when I say non-educated, I'm not casting a spurt. It's not disparaging.

Non-college-educated men. I really think that's what the future of the Republican Party holds. And Gustavo, I think his last name is Oriano, who we had on the show during the recall election. Oh, yeah. He coined a term, which has really stuck with me, called Ronchero libertarianism, which explains a lot of how exactly somebody can vote for a Trumpist-style candidate, hold a position where they're pro-Medicare for all, and also, like, not for abortion, but also pro-gun rights. It doesn't track on most of the way that we think about culture wars or

politics today, but that's actually what a large percentage of Latino non-college educated men kind of fall into that category, especially down Rio Grande Valley in California. Remember that, that the entire way the demographics slip in the support for Gavin Newsom recall and more, Newsom lost a significant amount of ground amongst Latinos. And a lot of it was on lockdown procedure. So I think, once again, that this culture war, as it moves away from the 1990s into anti-PC stuff, it really does validate the Barstool conservative thesis that I've kind of put forward,

especially around men, like non-college-educated men. You can call it grill dad conservatism. You can call it whatever you want. But a lot of that stuff, it seems to be moving and tracking in that direction. The Youngkin results also kind of validate that as well, where Youngkin, depending on which exit poll, we don't have the verified ones, he either came within nine points of winning Hispanics or he completely tied. I mean, either that's a disaster, especially, and if you break that down by men, it was even plus 20 or something like that.

Same thing here in the Biden data. So it's just a good it's an interesting snapshot. Yeah. Where's the country at? Well, and I mean, remember, who did best among Latinos on Democratic primary is Bernie Sanders, which gets to the point that it's like, you know, there there can be this sort of knee jerk like, oh, well, they're just like conservative. It's a lot more complicated than that because, yeah, there was a, first of all, Bernie's campaign made an actual effort to message and not in a blanket like, we're going to decide that immigration is the only thing you probably care about and, you know, use terminology that's... It was on health care. They did super well with

that. Yeah. Medicare for all was a big winner in that community. And also, again, just the effort that was put in and Republicans have decided and made a concerted effort under Trump that we're going to try to reach out to this community. And you can see that there's a lot of fruit being bored. I mean, this is a key swing constituency at this point. In all of our talk about how hardened things are and how tribal and how polarized, you can see this demographic moving in real time and truly up for grabs. So anyway, again, it's a small sample size, but it's yet another data point of Democrats had this completely arrogant assumption, the coalition of thecendant, that as demographics change in the country, it was going to be lights out, game over for the Republicans because they had this, you know, the Obama coalition that was just going to keep building. And that the assumption was Latinos would move more into their camp over time and look like the voting margins of the African-American

community ain't working out for them so well. So we'll see what happens. That's right. Okay, let's move on to talk about Ukraine. Obviously, this is one of the most important geopolitical flashpoints. We kept an eye on it last time. Things have been updated. Last time we told you about how Biden and Putin were going to have a phone call. So the phone call has happened. Now, there's some interesting ways to parse this. On the one hand, Biden said that he was not – basically he ruled out any idea of unilateral U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine in response to a Russian invasion. But that does not mean that it's not still a very hard position against a potential Ukrainian invasion. Let's put this up there on the screen in terms of what he actually said. I thought this was the most noteworthy part that a lot of journalists are missing. President Biden told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now if Russia

escalates in Ukraine. And National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reiterated that to the press. I found that very noteworthy because what they're basically saying is we're willing to go farther than we did to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, which resulted in kicking Russia out of the G8, which resulted in all kinds of different sanctions, in the fact that Europe essentially economically blockaded Russia for a couple of years until they decided they wanted that gas, and then they decided to forget about it. But after a couple of years, like, ah, you know, like it is what it is. Give me that gas. But again, what I said about unilateral, put this up the next one from Jennifer Jacobs. Asked if he would put troops on the ground in Russia, President Biden says, if it were a NATO ally, we would of course have that obligation. True. But the U.S. won't unilaterally put U.S. troops on the ground.

And he further went on to say it was very difficult to parse this answer. It was like four minutes, although he would have played it for you. But he was like, we're going to follow the lead of other people in the region. Now, Biden was getting some praise from people, Crystal, for saying, oh, he said he wouldn't put U.S. troops. But that's not what he said. He said that we wouldn't do it unilaterally. What he said is he opened the door to the idea that Poland, Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia, or whatever, any of the NATO countries in the area who might want to lead us as part of some coalition into Ukraine, he kept the door open to that. I think

that's completely bonkers and crazy. I mean, what have we learned, people, from the last NATO mission, which was, most people don't know this, Libya, where NATO actually dragged us into the total morass of bombing in that country for some humanitarian mission. Totally worked out, right? Because, you know, Libya to this day is like, there's like modern slavery or whatever in Libya. Oh, that's horrible. And it's the number one departure point for African migrants in the continent. It's basically completely split apart. ISIS was there for a while. It's a hellhole.

It's terrible. Look, I'm not criticizing Libyan people. No disrespect to the Libyan people. No disrespect. I'm saying it's actually our fault. They deserve a lot better. I agree. It sounds like a beautiful country. Great food. Also, but what I can see is that it's very obvious that we got dragged.

We had no idea what we were going to be doing in this country. And this is pure Beltway brain because what it is and what I mean by that is that there is a very hot discussion right now in the United States, especially in D.C., where people are saying, oh, the lesson from Afghanistan is that we have to show the world that we're willing to fight. And it's like, hold on a second. It's not all just about norms. It's about practicality. Ukraine is not a NATO ally. They have no zero obligation for us under Article 5 in order to defend them. You also look at history. Ukraine has been part of the greater Russian empire for like on and off for like 600 years. Yes, I know. Also part of the Polish, the German, et cetera, contested land. And none of this has anything to do with the Ukrainian people who deserve the best.

I want the best for them and self-determination. But it's a sad, tough world. And sometimes larger states that desire conquest for their own desires are going to do that. And it comes down to whether us as the United States should do something about it or no. Like I said, Biden is not saying we're going to unilaterally do something. But I think that opening the door to potential U.S. deployment of troops on the ground in Ukraine would, A, validate, you know, a lot of the doubts that the Russian people have and that Putin and them have around NATO encirclement of Russia and more. And second, is that just the last thing that we need right now? Literally the last thing that we need right now.

You can see in Biden's comments why Russia is so sensitive about the idea of having more NATO countries right on their border. Because if Ukraine was a NATO, I mean, he's saying if Ukraine was a NATO ally, we'd be sending troops in. Also, we did invite Ukraine into NATO. You know, people forget this over two decades ago. And, you know, counterintuitively perhaps, but I was mentioning this on the last show, Russia's moves have actually made the Ukrainian people more interested in joining NATO where it was just a few years ago like 12 to 14 percent. Now it's majority support. So his aggression has also backfired in terms of sentiment within the country. But, you know, the other thing is here, if you put aside the possibility of troops on the ground, which I think is a relatively remote possibility, because let me tell you, if you

pulled that, what would it be like? Friggin five percent of the public that we go troops in you know in ukraine no one wants that um not that our politicians always listen to what the people want but even like the the whole well we're gonna we're gonna sanction them a lot more and has this stuff worked it depends i mean because you think about how's it worked in cuba how's it worked in iran how's it worked in Iran? How's it worked in Venezuela? Even with Russia, I mean, we sanctioned the hell out of them last time. Did that check their behavior? No, not at all. Well, that's part of what I've been arguing this with a lot of friends.

People are like, yeah, sanction them. I'm like, listen, that's great. You can do it. Okay. Are the Europeans who actually have them on the continent going to do anything about it? Because what happened last time? Merkel and all them, they talked a huge game. Nord Stream 2 was greenlit like three years later. Even that, oftentimes, this is happening in, we're going to talk about Saudi and Yemen,

this is happening in Yemen right now. Saudi's calculus was, if we do this embargo, we make life miserable for the people of Yemen. Well, that's going to cause the regime to fall. Well, it's been the opposite. It's sparked nationalist fervor. It's actually made the conflict more intractable, more entrenched. And so, you know, they can have a backlash effect too. It's not like there's this thinking that, oh, if we sanction them, we make life difficult for them. Then it's going to force them to the table. Oftentimes it backfires because people are freaking stubborn and they feel like if we're being attacked and you're making our life difficult, hell no, we're not going to give you what you want. That's not going to happen.

So, I mean, even again, if we just look at past history with Russia, this hasn't worked. And I don't care whether these oligarchs can get their money or whatever. I mean, that was the big thing that we did last time is like, let's try to make it difficult for the oligarchs. And I certainly have no love lost for them. But if you're going to actually go to the extent of trying to make life difficult for the Russian people, first of all, it's immoral. And second of all, even if you put the morality of it aside, it just doesn't really work. It hasn't worked with Russia. It hasn't worked with Cuba. It hasn't worked with Iran. It hasn't worked with Venezuela. So it's more, to me, a theater of like chess beating and let's show the world how tough we are and we're going to say no to Putin or whatever, even as there's, you know, I'm glad

there's no actual, there's no willingness, like nobody, well, some people do, but there's very little appetite among the American people to actually have troops on the ground in Ukraine. So I honestly think the sanctions and whatever, I think it's a silly direction to go in, even though I understand there's this desire, like we have to do something, but the something that we always do doesn't seem to actually work out. And I will say this, which is that, look, what does Putin say that he wants? And once again, look, he could be full of it. And in many cases has been very much so in the past. He's like, look, I want you to guarantee that you're not going to let Ukraine into NATO and that you're not going to continue to let NATO expand east. And I'm like, well, look, I mean,

we said in the 1990s, you guys democratize, we're going to help you out. All of that, the idea that we're just going to encircle you around your border is a complete conspiracy. Oh, and then we let Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia into NATO. And then we bombed the Balkans and got involved again in Yugoslavia, which is a former Soviet Union country. I mean, they felt very emasculated, embarrassed. And I think a lot of people in D.C. delude themselves because they talk to some democracy activists in Moscow, and they're like, the Russian people really want democracy. Well, there's not a lot of evidence for that, actually. A lot of people in Russia really like Putin. Look, there's not a lot of evidence for that, actually. A lot of people in Russia really like Putin. Look, there's no way in order to actually parse what the actual data is,

does he actually have like 85% approval rating? Probably not. But, you know, the history of that country and more is a much more deep comfort with authoritarian-style government, especially in the rural parts. And they do have a yearning for the greatness of what was once the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union. These types of moves are actually super popular amongst a lot of Russians. And anybody who's honest about what the state of the domestic politics in that country will probably tell you that. So it's just this European Western view of what they want Russia to be, as opposed to dealing with what it actually is, how it drives its internal calculus. I'm mentioning this because I just want peace in that region, right? I want

what's best for us, the Europeans, the Ukrainians, and the Russians. And ultimately, some of that is going to lead to some discomfort on our side to how that state is going to conduct itself. And having clear red lines as to when we get involved or not is equally important. Allowing a lot of this gray zone type conflict to infect us. We're like, oh, we have to get involved. It's like, well, hold on a second. Nobody actually said that you did. Look, you invade Latvia. Okay, let's go. We have Article 5. That's different. But on Article 5, when it doesn't apply, then it becomes a nebulous kind of concept of norms and all that. That's exactly what got us bogged down in Afghanistan.

That's how you went from a counterterrorism mission to we can't leave until every little Afghan girl knows how to code, apparently. And I'm like, I'm sorry. That's completely unrealistic, and it has no basis in reality. And it's semi-sound callous. But listen, this is about money and lives, more importantly, which is the lives of our soldiers and their own lives as well. We didn't make life better in Afghanistan. I mean, it's a total catastrophe and we're lied to. I mean, the money, the lives lost, all of that, it's a horror show. And, you know, this is the other thing people

didn't want to admit in Afghanistan, that there was a genuine desire among some to see the Taliban back in control. A lot, actually. Because the U.S. had, you know, backed these warlords who are horrific child sex slaves and totally capricious and violent and uncertain and chaotic. And next thing you know, your hospital is getting bombed by coalition forces. I mean, it wasn't a good life under American occupation. And so it's also recognition of like, what are we actually capable of doing? We're certainly not with Russia, including the Iran nuclear deal and including climate change. And this sort of tension and these skirmishes, it doesn't help anything. The other thing we wanted, I mentioned the Saudi piece. And this is very troubling.

So Biden came into office singing a very different tune on Saudi than either Trump or Obama had in the past, saying it was going to be a different day and explicitly, you know, saying that we were no longer going to back them in this war against Yemen, which has been absolutely devastating. But they appear to have kind of changed their mind on all of that. Now they just backed, they whipped against an amendment to block aid to Saudi. And there were some interesting coalitions that were formed here. Let's go ahead and throw this Ken Klippenstein tweet up on the screen. So he says, despite candidate Biden's vow to make Saudi Arabia pariah following Khashoggi's murder, White House says it strongly opposes Congress's attempt to block $650 million missile sale to Saudi in new statements. So they didn't just

take a hands-off approach here to those bipartisan actors who were trying to keep this money, this weapon sale, from ultimately going through. They actually put out a statement saying, no, no, it's important to us. We want this missile sale to go through. Very troubling and, again, different from what Biden had said in the past. And as I was mentioning, you know, there were some interesting actors, some interesting bipartisan coalition going on here for once in the correct direction, which is to try to end our support of this devastating war. Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders agreeing with one another on the Senate floor. Let's take a listen to that. And we are complicit. We are arming the Saudis and allowing this to happen.

Offensive, defensive, they shouldn't get any of our weapons. We should stop selling them any weapons until they stop starving the country of Yemen. President, I find myself in a somewhat uncomfortable and unusual position of agreeing with Senator Paul. You know, Senator Paul makes a good point there, which is like people try to parse this, oh, it's offensive versus defensive. That's kind of nonsense. Because the reality is, if Saudi wasn't bombing them, then they wouldn't need these defensive capabilities that they're trying to get us to sell. So ultimately very disappointing and just a total breach of what they had promised before from this White House with regards to Saudi.

It's a very odd amalgam. It's like, what is the Biden foreign policy? Kind of whatever the guy feels on one thing. Every once in a while, it turns out, well, like Afghanistan, I know it's a controversial statement. Sometimes he's like some very, you know, NATO brain of 1974, like we are in the Ukraine situation. And then sometimes on the Saudi thing, it's just good old fashioned, you know, swamp Washington style business as usual. So you never know what you're going to get with Joseph R. Biden whenever it comes to foreign policy. And that's always been kind of the problem. I mean, it's kind of, I mean, the policies have been very different from Trump,

but that ad hoc, like, I like this one. I'm going to do something here. I'm going to not do something there. It's very, it's very Trumpy, you know, that there's not really an overarching, even though he talked about an overarching scheme. But in reality, it was very ad hoc, what Trump did. And this is what, you know, what we predicted based on what we were reading about Biden as well, that it would be very sort of like relational, how he felt about a place, how he felt about a particular ruler. And that's ultimately what we've seen. That's right. All right, let's move on. This is an incredibly troubling story. Can't say didn't tell you so, because we did. You're at breaking points. But the new CEO of Twitter has greenlit a new regime

of policies, which we outlined previously, how they're going to destroy journalism on the so-called privacy policy of not being able to post pictures of so-called private people without their consent, despite the fact that a huge amount of Twitter activism, journalism, and past events like George Floyd, Philando Castile, Kyle Rittenhouse, and so much more were decided based on social media posting. Well, now has come a regime of actually blocking what they claim are anonymous bot accounts, which are causing harm, but once again, very telling about which exact ones are getting blocked. And two of them yesterday were nuked at the very same time, which just goes to show you that this is a protection regime of the elites and of powerful.

Let's put this first one up there on the screen. The Nancy Pelosi portfolio tracker, after amassing more than 200,000 followers on Twitter, was nuked. Now that's really interesting, isn't it, Crystal? Because that portfolio tracker was just doing one thing. They were posting trades that the Pelosi family was publicly disclosing via the Stock Act. That's it. There was no false information, as far as I could tell, that had been posted in the past. There hasn't been necessarily any warnings. There hasn't been any clear iteration of what the violation of the rules. It was simply exposing the fact that this woman, the Speaker of the House, and her husband and family routinely engage in extraordinarily sketchy, but yes, legal stock trades. So much so

that many teenagers on Twitter had been taken, or sorry, teenagers on TikTok had taken to following her trades and just making those, repeating them blind, and actually doing quite well in the stock market. Interesting. Great. Isn't that interesting? Democratization of information. That's what the entire internet was supposed to be about. Boom. It was completely and totally nuked.

And then the second one, I want your reaction to this, Crystal. Yeah. This is the best one. Okay. Let's put it up there. In the midst of one of the biggest days in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, well, the tracker trial account was suspended, once again, amassing over half a million, 525,000 followers on Twitter. All they did was tweet pictures and updates from the trial. And they also, right before they got nuked, happened to tweet about

how some images and past evidence presented at the trial seemed to indicate that the FBI was aware of Mr. Epstein's problems long before they went ahead and charged him in 2019. Miraculously, the account was nuked like, you know, an hour later. Really interesting. I didn't know that was among the Nazis. Came out yesterday. Wow. I mean, listen, I can't say I followed every single tweet of the Nancy Pelosi portfolio tracker or the Ghislaine Maxwell trial tracker, but this is insane.

I mean, this is totally crazy. I would love to know. I would love to know what their pretend justification is here. It's hard to see it outside of the context of this new CEO who said, you know, that we're not going to be bound by the First Amendment. Here it is in action right now. And that the question, you know, that he was going to be much more in favor of censoring and picking and choosing who got to say what on the platform. And, you know, this seems like early evidence that he meant what he said.

Mm-hmm. No, not only did he mean what he said, he greenlit this terrible policy. Let's put this up there, their tweet, their justification. Someone has to sort out the bots on Twitter, and we've got a team on it. We've launched a label for the good ones,

and while the label is an endorsement, we want you to know which bots are developers to help entertain or just harmlessly share info. The ones that they're cleaning out what they claim are bot activity, but are certainly not, or if they are, are just, you know, I mean, these are accounts and algorithms or whatever that are just built in order to aggregate information. And it just gets to the core of the product. This was supposed to be democratization of information. At the very beginning, the Twitter CEO called himself the free speech wing of the free speech party. And that was great while the

revolutions were happening in other countries. Whenever it came to challenging power here in the US, it's just all about protecting those who are in power. And, you know, I just don't know how to get away from the fact that it just seems like every single time the account that gets nuked are the ones that happen to challenge those who are at the very highest echelons of power. And the ones that get to stay up are, like, fighting misinformation or something like, here's exposing Russian bots or DNC tracker. Listen, they better take down every K-Hive bot account if they're going in this direction. But that's the problem is we know they won't. They will never do that. We know they won't.

And the language of that was actually really disturbing to me too. Like, we're going to tell you what the good ones are. It's like, wait a second. Why? Who are you to be the judge and jury on this? Your judgment has been incredibly suspect. And even if it hadn't been, like just giving that sort of power to one individual or a handful of individuals, it's not going to go well. And since this guy's already put his cards on the table about what his view of

all of this is and how, you know, he's got a different ideology, doesn't subscribe to free speech and First Amendment. It's a very troubling direction. And yeah, I mean, any accounts that challenge power, whether those accounts are on the right or the left, those are going to be the most in jeopardy. And the ones that sort of go along with the established order of things and are part of the sort of manufacturing consent lane, they're going to be just fine.

The K-Hive bots, they'll be left to their own devices to do whatever they want. And just so you guys know, what happened to be released yesterday at the Epstein trial was a photo of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sitting at the private Queen's Log cabin in Balmoral, Scotland. I mean, who amongst us has not been invited to that cabin where the Queen has been pictured before

and it is one of her most prized residents. I mean, listen, it's just a natural place in order to end up and the fact that that photo was to be released, why wouldn't you want that circulated out in public, right? Or the fact that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were pictured in some really strange poses, feet stuff, you can go and look it up for yourself.

Against feet people. I'm declaring a fatwa against feet people. But look, once again, it's up to you. You go up and look at the photo, people, them on the private plane. You could see them all over the world in Paris and elsewhere. But like I said, some of the most important exhibits that were released were actually evidence of the CDs and tapes and other evidence from Epstein's actual private residence that were taken out and appeared to have been cataloged and

seen previously by the FBI, which is the tweet that the trial tracker put out there. And that is the part which nobody's paying attention to. You know, I've seen some people be like, why aren't you guys paying more attention to the Epstein trial? We actually are to the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. Part of the problem, though, as I've said from the beginning, is that they're charging crimes from 99 and 2004, and they appear to be going out of their way not to ruffle feathers, not to expose too much about some of the most powerful people to the extent that Bill Gates and Clinton and all these people have been mentioned. It's really just pilots being like, yeah, I saw him on the plane. I mean, that doesn't mean anything. They haven't gotten into the financial network. Ghislaine

Maxwell herself has not been charged with any money laundering or movement of funds or paying off people. It's simply with the actual assault itself. I don't want to minimize that. But the assault itself was covered up by a whole lot of powerful people at the very top. And those people are getting away scot-free. Still haven't gotten a damn thing from it. Yeah, absolutely. We wanted to take some time to cover a very not illustrious anniversary. This country is anti-celebrating the 28th anniversary of NAFTA. This week, of course, signed into law by Bill Clinton. It was a free trade deal that ended up devastating a lot of American towns. Some of you all probably live in those towns and saw what it did to your communities, which were completely hollowed out. In its wake

was left, you know, joblessness, hopelessness, addiction, suicides, deaths of despair, all of those things. And there's a new analysis about exactly what some of the political impacts of NAFTA ultimately were. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. This is from the National Bureau of Economic Research. They looked at the local economic and political effects of trade deals, specifically NAFTA. And I'll read you a little bit of what they say here in sort of technical language, but not that technical, and then we can talk about it. So they say, look, there's been this question of why have white, less educated voters left the Democratic Party over the past few decades? Scholars have proposed ethnocentrism, social issues, and deindustrialization as potential answers. We highlight the role played

by the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. In event study analysis, we demonstrate that counties whose 1990 employment depended on industries vulnerable to NAFTA suffered large and persistent employment losses relative to other counties. Those losses begin in the mid-90s and are only modestly offset by the nonsense transfer programs that they try to put in place. And furthermore, they find effectively that that was really the start of the departure of a lot of white working class voters from the Democratic Party. Now, look, they say it interplays. And it's what we always say with racial identity issues and social issue positions. These things are all a cauldron.

But to just dismiss the impact of this policy that was absolutely devastating on, you know, entire swaths of the country has always been completely ridiculous. And it's the sort of thing that, you know, there's all this like mocking of people for economic anxiety, etc. And I certainly would never argue that economics was the only reason that you've seen this white working class shift to the Republican Party. But is it a part of it? It's just absolutely undeniable when you look at the facts and the statistics. And again, if you saw this happening in another country and you were looking from afar and you say, oh, well, this party like devastated. You lost your job because of this party. And then you went to that party. It wouldn't be hard to put it all together. I also think I went back and looked at some of the estimates of how many jobs,

how much job loss NAFTA caused. Some of the estimates are somewhere around 800,000 to a million jobs. And I think it's even so much more than that, though, because if you lived in your roots and your, you know, your family and your neighborhood and your community is in a town that was centered around one of these factories that went overseas, it's so much more than just the loss of 3,000 jobs or whatever it is to your town. I mean, this is your whole identity. This is maybe where your father or your grandfather worked. This was your basis for a middle-class life. This really destroyed everything that was around you.

And I lived in one of these towns in East Liverpool, Ohio, and you drive throughout that whole region, and it's just the same story town after town after town in the Ohio River Valley. And it weighs just the same story town after town after town in the Ohio River Valley. And it weighs on you when you see those closed, shuttered factories and steel mills just rotting husks in the middle of these towns, falling down, abandoned graffiti. You know, it ends up being people who are struggling with addiction who are there camping. I mean, it's just it really takes a toll on the psyche of a person and a family and a place. So I even think just the job loss numbers kind of understate how completely devastating NAFTA was to so many people.

It also, they're never able to capture this full picture. You can lose 3,000 jobs from a factory, but that factory buys stuff from the next store town. And also all the people there, maybe they go get all their clothes cleaned or dry cleaned or whatever, their uniforms at this particular store. And maybe that store buys its chemicals from a guy two towns away. Yeah. That entire supply chain gets wiped out. Not only that, but I mean, I saw this in East Liverpool. Liverpool, Ohio used to be be kind of a magnet around the area. There was a downtown. There were ladies' dress shops.

There were theaters, department stores. And that whole thing, all of it, is just completely decimated. I mean, there's little left. And, again, that's all because what the economic engine was, that was there. First, it was making plates and dishes. That overseas in like the 50s and 60s. And then it was a steel mill in the next town over. Once that was gone, everything just crumbled and hollowed out. And that means, too, you don't have tax revenue to pave the roads.

Your roads are your physical surroundings just decay and deteriorate. Houses are dilapidated and abandoned and falling down. And, you know, we've had policymakers who for decades have looked at that and not cared and said things like, oh, well, it's creative destruction. Or said things like, oh, well, why don't you just move? Not understanding that place in a community and these ties. People like where they live. This is incredibly human to feel rooted in a place and like this is your spot.

So anyway, just the latest analysis that shows Democrats sowed the seeds of their own destruction here. And Clinton, I feel like I've been talking. It's not just Democrats. You know, there were a lot of Republicans on board with this, too. 100%. Most of them were, too. Yeah. No, listen.

It's really important. I mean, Reagan was the fricking worst, like his policies, but what the, what the Democrats have, the Republicans have long been the party of the rich and on board with this type of crap. Clinton reoriented the democratic party so that they were on board with, with the same program in a lot of ways, economically with like, let's just shave off some of the ragged edges. Let's make it within the meritocracy a little bit better for women, a little bit better for people of color. But, you know, I feel like I have been talking about the Clintons a lot lately, but it's because they are really the architect of the modern Democratic Party. Obama was just a continuation. He was effectively empty and just sort of like got filled in with the Clinton era neoliberalism.

So this is what, you know, David Autor, I've cited this a million times, but still one of the most He was effectively empty and just sort of like got filled in with the Clinton era neoliberalism. So this is what David Autor cited this a million times, but still one of the most important studies, an MIT study that looked at the China trade shock, which is, of course, downstream. NAFTA was like the very first taste of sugar for the business community, right? Ninety-two, ninety-four, and it set the paradigm of free trade. And, of course, there was an explosion in economic activity. And it takes a while for disruption in order to sweep its way through the U.S. So what they did is they jumped on the back of that in 99 and 2000 and 2001 to push the WTO entrance of China. Now, you put those two things together and you supercharge it throughout the 2000s amidst a crazy financial bubble, and you wipe out millions of manufacturing jobs in the span of, what, seven years? And then all of a sudden, you see a decline in marriage formation, decline in fertility,

drop in earnings amongst men and women who live in the communities who are most disproportionately affected by this, which leads to more children who are born into poverty, which leads to more reliance both on government program, on subpar social outcome like education, the amount of crime, drug use. And then what happens? Then we have to come out and be like, okay, well now we have to treat this, you know, discreet, crazy problem when it's way upstream of some major economic decisions. This is always why, you know, people are always like, why do you have beef with the libertarians? It's because they are stand by this. I mean, they will tell you with a straight face that it was worth it. You know, it was totally worth it in order to have increased GDP, which disproportionately went to the top 10%, some rich people in New York and in Texas and, you know, people who do business with China.

But I would say it's not, and that Americans have a right, and I do believe this, a right to be able to, born in this country, live in your town if you choose, if you choose, but you should not be forced to leave, and live a relatively prosperous life relative to your parents and the people who came before you. Yes, great riches can always be in anybody's attainment

if they want to work hard enough and all that, but most people don't want that and they don't need to, which is that they should be able to be born, have kids if they want, have a family if they want, and stay exactly where they are around their parents. A lot of people would choose that life, but they're not able to have that. And that's what trade really took away from millions of people. That's it. It forced people to have to flee if they were going to be able to have any kind of a stable income. Yeah, I mean, that's it. That's it, exactly. And then when you have that community institution decline,

I mean, it truly is devastating, and it comes from an ethos that just puts money, profit, and profits of capital above everything else. So I thought the study was important, especially as we look at some of the Biden numbers about continued fallout with the working class, and not just the white working class, by the way. But this is kind of where the problems start for the Democratic Party. It wasn't inevitable, and it doesn't have to be inevitable in the future. Absolutely. Okay, let's move on to one of the fun favorite segments. Hard pivot, but look, this is good stuff. I can't get over it. I've been obsessed with the Jussie Smollett trial about what's happening. I remember watching it at the time. Were we hosting together then? I can't remember. You were still on with Buck. I was at the Daily Caller.

I'll never forget it. And I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, this is total BS. I was like, this is a complete lie. And it was at this time when Kamala Harris and the whole country was reckoning and all this. And I was like, none of this makes any sense whatsoever. I felt like I was completely crazy. And then all of it just completely began unraveling. Buck and I both were like,

we're going to wait. Because you have a brain. Because we've been a couple of times, we've taken this approach a couple of times. We're like, we're going to see how this story plays out before we jump on covering this one. It's like any time someone's like, oh, a swastika showed up at a dorm.

I'm like, yeah, let's hold on a second, all right? Let's let the cameras investigate. Let's let the facts play out and see. Right. Nine times out of ten, it's some psycho who's doing it to themselves in order to get attention. Well, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen

because this isn't just about Jussie Smollett, who's, by the way, clearly a deranged, crazy individual. In a way, I almost feel bad for him in how desperate he needs the attention. But what he reveals is that at the trial is that CNN's Don Lemon warned him via text in 2019 that the cops did not believe his account of the attack. Now, this is very important because what Don Lemon was doing, he was personal friends there with, you know, Jussie Smollett, that's fine, you know, whatever. But he did exactly what Chris Cuomo did in that he was using his sources and CNN's reporting information who had sources within Chicago PD

claiming and feeding it back to Jussie saying, hey, what you're saying, the cops are not buying it. So he's essentially backdooring and using that non-public information that he was able to get through his work at the CNN network and their sources within Chicago PD and feed it back to the assailant himself. Why? Because he felt bad for him, because they're personal friends, and because he wanted to make it into some sort of racial reckoning at the time. And that is what a whole lot of people did in these interviews and the way that they treated him, you know, as, you know, Dave Chappelle in his famous skit, Justice for Juicy, all this stuff. That was real. That was a real phenomenon. And yet, whenever it comes time to discuss the fallout

of that, Mr. Lemon has nothing to say on the very same day that he testified about his role on that trial. This is how he covered it on his show. Let's take a listen. Jussie Smollett, the actor who is accused of lying to police about an alleged hate crime in 2019, testifying in his own defense today. At the time, Smollett told police that two men had attacked him in the street, yelling racist, anti-gay remarks, put a noose around his neck, and poured bleach on him. Smollett has repeatedly denied staging the racist and homophobic attack against himself. He is charged with six counts of disorderly conduct on suspicion of making false reports to police. So joining me now with the very latest from the trial is... That's it. Didn't mention his little role there.

Yeah, then he just brought in a reporter who also studiously avoided, I mean, this reporter was meant to like lay out, here's what happened in the trial, and he said this, and they said that, and whatever. Somehow left out that little piece of information that Don Lemon was mentioned on the stand by

Jussie Smollett as having tipped him off. And that was why he basically, you know, stopped cooperating with the police was because he'd been tipped off by Don Lemon that they weren't buying it. I mean, look, that's actually, I mean, you know, in terms of not legally, but he helped Jussie basically try and set himself up for knowing that the fall was coming, which eventually was let off by the city of Chicago, and eventually took years in order to even put him on trial in the first place. But him stopping and making obviously false statements to Chicago PD ultimately did lead him down the road where

he didn't put himself on the record multiple times in a legal sense. So from that position, Don Lemon helped him out actually quite a bit. I just don't know why. It's so unethical. I mean, I don't even know what to say. It's crazy. It really is crazy. And then for him to make the brazen choice to cover the trial and just not say anything is also really head-scratching. I mean, if you want to be an unethical coward, you would just not cover it. Because then you just feel like, you know, I mean.

That's pull a Cuomo. Yeah, pull a Cuomo and just let me just. There's a lot of other stories in the world. Let me just leave that one alone. But no, no disclosure, no anything. And I don't know. I mean, CNN, it's been quite a week for them. How do they allow this?

Quite a week for them. How do you allow this? And they haven't said a word about it. I'm just totally silent about it. And this is, again, very— Cuomo was more egregious because it was more sustained. And there was a pattern of lying to higher-ups. It looks—he says he told them everything.

I don't really believe that. But, you know, it was sustained. It was over a long period of time. There were multiple instances. There were, like, tons of text threads and whatever where he's saying, delete this thread, and I got some dirt on this one over here, and here's what Ronan Farrow's coming out with based on my sources. But this is a microcosm of the exact same behavior. And so how do you punish this one and fire him, and now they're all going to court,

it looks like, and have not a word to say about this one. The real question is how much more of this is there? I mean, this is only because of investigators and people being forced to the strand. I mean, this is tip of the iceberg, 0.01% stuff. Like, I just think about the George Carlin line, you know, it's a big club and you're not in it. That's what this seems to be to me. Well, and CNN's in the hot seat this week. But remember, also with the Cuomo stuff, it came out that Katie Turr, while she's live reporting on allegations against Andrew Cuomo, she's reading texts from Cuomo advisor Liz Smith of Pete Buttigieg fame. And Liz is bragging to the other Cuomo aides like, oh, she's just reading my spin straight on air.

She's just reading it verbatim. And if you go back and look at the tape, you can literally see her doing it live. I mean, that's really the problem, even bigger than Cuomo or Katie Turr or Don Lemon is. This is how they behave over at Fox News. I mean, we know how tied in they were with the Trump people in the Trump White House. It's the same deal over there, just on a different political team. I think it's just not, I can't imagine doing that. Anytime somebody texts me their spin, what I try to do, you've seen me,

I'll be like, listen, a person I spoke to who was in whatever, this is what they told me. I don't know if it's true. Yeah, you tell people this is their spin. Here's what they tell me. If you ask so-and-so, and I do this all the time, because trust me, people are always trying to spin us here on Breaking Points. They're like, oh, you don't understand this.

You don't understand that. I'm like, yeah, maybe we do. But, look, I'll hear anybody out, and that's usually what we try to do. And then I'll try and represent, especially if it's a view that I don't hold. I try to say, these are what the people that I talk to tell me about how they view this particular thing. Here's why I don't really agree with that. But to just read somebody's spin like that straight out is just unbelievable. And same with the, I just can't get over it. Like, using your job and personal network to help out a criminal, somebody who obviously lied. I mean,

it was so obvious. And then covering it up, I think the only conclusion I can come to is that Lemon and the rest of the media at the time had, they needed this thing to be true. Because at that point, they had hyped it up so big. They were way out on a limb on this one. I mean, I remember the day after. It was like, oh my god, you know, Justice

for Juicy, all this stuff. It was a reckoning. It was what we needed. And the rest of us were like, 2am.m., MAGA hats, downtown Chicago, subway. I don't know about that. And to be honest, I feel almost like a coward for not saying it more publicly at the time. But look, we've stayed. We waited. The noose around the neck.

Remember that? It was such, obviously, I couldn't believe it that you know we are beating the bleach was also the thing is that like hate and racism is extraordinarily real and so when you're gonna fake something like this i mean this that's that's the problem too is that then next time something real does happen people will be much more skeptical you know i mean they'll look at they they won't believe it because because you went out and faked this whole elaborate thing, allegedly, for the lawyers. But, you know, I mean, that's what really is disgusting about it to me as well. Like, using race and hate and homophobia as your plaything to try to get yourself clout.

To help his contract on Empire. Clout and fame and attention is just disgusting. I mean, it's just, it's grotesque behavior. Self-clout. To help his contract on Empire. Clout and fame and attention is just disgusting. I mean, it's just, it's grotesque behavior. And then for Don Lemon to be, you know, an accessory to that is also grotesque. Absolutely right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, if you really want to know why America is a clown country, COVID showed us pretty much what we are.

We are the most polarized country on planet Earth over COVID restrictions. We have a high death rate because 74% of this country is overweight, with a large number who are morbidly obese. Our government had a haphazard, anti-science way of handling restrictions. And pretty much everything has fallen victim to the culture war. The best thing we did was produce an effective vaccine in a pretty record amount of time. On pretty much everything else, we just completely failed. Here's the thing. Didn't have to be this way. I remember thinking in March 2020. World War II. We have a foreign virus invading us. We need to mobilize our population. Beat this thing. We can change the relationship between government and citizen. We can have everybody bought in in a time of crisis. Spin up American manufacturing. Let's get to work, right? Yeah, I was pretty much wrong within like two weeks of that whole situation.

Now our politicians argue and fight for scraps at the table of whatever's left, and the rest of us are left with a sclerotic and useless government which doesn't really give a damn about us. And this really hit home to me this week. When White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the President Biden's scheme to allow Americans to expense at-home COVID tests to their insurance companies, why don't they just give one to every American? Watch her reaction to that crazy idea. Look at what we've done over the course of time. We've quadrupled the size of our testing plan. We've cut the cost significantly over the past few months. And this effort to push to insurers are you're able to get

your tests refunded means 150 million Americans will be able to get free tests. It's kind of complicated, though. Why not just make them free and give them out and have them available everywhere? Should we just send one to every American? Maybe. Then what happens if every American has one test? How much does that cost? And then what happens after that? All I know is that other countries seem to be making them available in greater quantities for less money. Well, I think we share the same objective, which is to make them less expensive and more accessible, right? Every country is going to do that differently. And I was just noting that, again, our tests go through the FDA approval process.

That's not the same. Look at how she mocks that idea. What are we supposed to do? Take every single American and give them a test? Yeah, actually. As the reporter points out, right across the pond in the UK, in a country of 67 million people, you can walk into any pharmacy in the country.

You ask for an at-home test and they'll just give it to you. You don't even have to pay. Here in the U.S., you have to pay a minimum of $12 per actual test. That adds up real quick. And as they point out, expensing something to your insurance company is a pain in the ass. Also, what about the uninsured? The mockery of Jen Psaki tells you everything, that they did not even think about it. Why?

Because under this current administration and state infrastructure, maybe it's just not possible. The reality is they are so incompetent and decrepit that they probably can't send every American a test or make them free and widely available. As Natalie Scherr points out at The New Republic, what's particularly idiotic is that the at-home tests apply to private insurers, meaning they don't work for many seniors

who are on Medicaid and Medicare, also for the poor. The elderly, the Biden administration is currently only allocated 50 million free tests to those community health centers for them. That sounds great until you realize there's 80 million people on Medicaid. So 50 million is barely more than half of that, what they need for each person to only get one test at one time. Why do we have such a test shortage? Well, Biden admin has basically been sitting on his hands for the last year and has only in the last two months or so approved more than one at home test maker. Well, no wonder we have a shortage. Only one company up until recently was allowed to make them. In fact, there is a California-based rapid test manufacturer

currently not allowed to make tests for the United States because the FDA is sitting on its hands for approval, but they are selling them by the millions in Europe. You can't even make this stuff up. Slow FDA approval of tests within zero pressure from the Biden administration has meant we only have one test maker, which results in a shortage, and it makes it so they scoff at the idea of giving the U.S. everybody one. It's pathetic. Again, par for the course when it comes to this pandemic.

Leave it to America to create the vaccine in the first place and screw up every single other element of the pandemic response. This mindset infects everything in our economy, in our society right now. Joe Biden has record high levels of disapproval, especially on the economy. Really, why? It's worth asking. People are concerned about prices going up and gas prices and COVID on all three. The Biden admin is basically telling us they can't really do much. I mean, look at the president. The guy is nowhere to be found. He can't pretend that he cares that much about how people are suffering and how much people are desperate to go back to normal. They try half-baked scheme after half-baked scheme. Yeah, it was great. Like we just showed you,

Biden tapped the Strategic Presidium Reserve. I called for him to do it. That was awesome. But he didn't go far enough. He's stopping domestic oil producers from exporting globally for the first time, which would have dramatically decreased the cost of our gas. On the coming heating bill crisis, which I've told you about, he has yet to take any action on electric prices or heating oil reserves. You are all about to get smacked with a 30% higher heating bill than normal times, and then nothing they can do about it. On supply chain crisis, he has done nothing. He's never sent the National Guard, never sent the federal government's power to try and lessen the backlog at the port of Los Angeles or elsewhere. I can go on forever.

In every single sense, they take the easiest possible course of action to try and grab a headline but don't actually solve the problem. At-home tests and the horrible answer she gave is just one example of how the Biden admin itself really does not believe in doing anything to help you. I mean, Crystal, she's scoffing at that idea. Oh. Oh, what are we supposed to do? And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, the media has been too mean to Joe Biden, according to the media.

A new column by Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has been making the rounds in liberal elite circles, arguing that when compared to Trump, Biden's press coverage has been way too negative. The column calls on the media to get their act together and start giving Biden the fawning praise and uncritical stenography that he deserves. And if Biden does not receive this media tongue bath, democracy will surely fail. It sounds like I'm kidding. I'm actually not. That's the analysis.

Let's take a look at it. Here's the column. It's titled, The Media Treats Biden As Badly As or Worse Than Trump. Here's proof. The aforementioned proof is the fact that an AI algorithm found that over the past 11 months, Biden at times received more consistently negative coverage than Trump did.

Specifically, this magical algorithm of media sentiment finds while Biden received a democracy-saving amount of positive coverage in the early days of his presidency, starting this summer, he began to be covered critically, and now his coverage is fairly similar in sentiment to that of Trump at the same time in 2020. As a result of this critical Biden coverage, democracy will probably end. Where to begin with all of this? First of all, be very skeptical about this algorithm, which we know really nothing about. Human language is very difficult to parse. How do you rate a cable news panel that says Trump is literal Hitler versus a cable news panel that says, hey, Joe Biden's approval rating has fallen? Both would, I guess, be rated as a negative sentiment, but any actual human being with a brain could tell you that that sentiment is not exactly the same. But naturally, way too many pundit and journal types are taking this garbage seriously.

Josh Marshall of TPM credulously retweeted the column, noting that it, quote, confirms what's been obvious. Obvious to who? Aaron Ruppar, former Leah Fox, did his own write-up of the analysis, layering on top of the magical algorithm a few examples of articles that he deemed to be unfair to Biden. Now, in reality, these articles just pointed out that Democrats are in pretty bad shape heading into the midterms, which is both true and probably worth reporting, although I would prefer less horse race and more content there. And CNN's Brian Stelter hosted liberal media watcher Eric Bullard to back up the claims that were made by Milbank. I mentioned Dana Milbank. Here's his column for The Post this weekend, getting lots of buzz from liberals on Twitter. He says journalists are contributing to the murder of democracy. And he says he has data gathered by

an artificial intelligence machine to show that the press has turned more negative against Biden than the press was against Trump at this time in Trump's first year. What do you think about that? Is that possible? Does it ring true to you? I think it rings true to my next guest. The Dana Milbank's column, I think, is incredibly important. And I think it's very convincing that Biden actually is getting worse coverage now than Trump. Look, you know, and if Trump were a traditional Republican president, if he had been a Jeb Bush president, that would be OK. Look, you know, Trump got bad coverage. Biden gets bad coverage. Everyone gets bad coverage. Trump was a fascist.

Now, listen, let me say, while no one should be persuaded by this algorithm, I do actually think there are instances where you could argue that the press was unfair to Biden, primarily with regards to the Afghan withdrawal. That coverage was wildly slanted against Biden and in favor of the hawks, the neocons, the grifters, and psychopaths who lied to the American people for decades in order to keep the Afghan gravy train going forever. But of course, there was nary a peep of pushback then from the mainstream press while that was all going on. They were too busy earnestly asking people like Condoleezza Rice and John Bolton for their advice and praising George W. Bush for offering his thoughts on the matter. I mean, isn't this always how it is with these people?

They finally get around to criticizing the mainstream press, and then they do it from all the wrong directions. But by far the most hilariously bad part of the Milbank column isn't the reliance on a secret algorithm to tell Milbank what he obviously already wanted to hear, or the assertion that the press has been harsher to Biden than Trump. It's the part where he argues that critical coverage of Biden is tantamount to an assault on democracy. He directly says that in the column. Here are the relevant portions. Quote, the findings confirmed my fear.

My colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy. He continues, we need a skeptical independent press, but how about being partisans for democracy? The country is in an existential struggle between self-governance and an authoritarian alternative, and we in the news media collectively have given equal, if not slightly more favorable treatment to the authoritarians. How about being partisans for democracy, he said. And you know what? I actually want the press to be partisans for democracy. But what does that actually mean? Milbank spells it out here in no uncertain terms.

According to him and a whole bunch of liberal pundits and journos who agreed, being partisans for democracy means favorable coverage of establishment Democrats. To do anything other than reprint their talking points and report out their preferred narratives is to hand the country to the authoritarian forces outside the proverbial gates. Now, at breaking points, we've got a very different understanding, and we think about it a lot because, in a sense, being partisans for democracy is what we actually try to do here, and it does not look like uncritical coverage of powerful actors, including the President of the United States. On the contrary, it requires challenging

established entrenched elite power structures on behalf of the people, whether that be challenging Big Pharma or Wall Street or Silicon Valley or the Republican ghouls or the Democratic ghouls. To do so does not mean that the Republicans are just as bad as the Democrats or the Democrats just as bad as the Republicans, Biden just as bad as Trump. But there is no doubt that these broken, corrupt, ideologically bankrupt partisan organs are upholding a status quo that has led our country and its citizens to a state of entrenched decline. I would have loved the press to be partisans for democracy during the early 2000s, when they were instead busy parroting the Bush administration's lies to forces into catastrophic and needless wars.

I would have delighted in the press being partisans for democracy when they were instead ignoring widespread Wall Street fraud and shilling for banks instead of homeowners during the 2008 collapse. It would have been wonderful for the press to be partisans for democracy instead of terrifying everyone with their Russian spy conspiracies that persuaded half of America that their democracy was already gone sins for democracy, instead of terrifying everyone with their Russian spy conspiracies, that persuaded half of America that their democracy was already gone, and the other half that the press would parrot any wild claims so long as it was negative about Trump. And yes, the media's failure to serve the people rather than these rotten institutions has helped open

the door to authoritarianism, as people lose faith and establish channels of political change and play footsie with would-be strongmen no matter how absurd, like Donald Trump. And by the way, the problem with the media's coverage of Trump was not that it was too easy on him. The problem was that they obsessed over all of the wrong issues routinely, every time. Russiagate instead of Saudi and Gulf money. Ukraingate instead of Trump's massive tax cuts to the 1%. Mean tweets about Jim Acosta instead of the all-out assault on press freedom represented by the prosecution of Julian Assange. And you might notice a pattern with all of these media Trump obsessions. Each one might have challenged Trump, but in service of some other established power center.

Rather than go after Wall Street and billionaires, they ran cover for the deep state. Rather than go after the CIA ghouls embarrassed by Assange, they instead helped sell books for legacy media ghouls. Rather than challenge the oceans of Gulf Petro state cash that prop up bipartisan Washington institutions, they decided to try to start a new Cold War. It's in those choices that the media failed to be a, quote, partisan for democracy. In other words, the media has got a lot of problems, but being too mean to Joe Biden ain't one. I thought this column was so revealing. That, you know, you could look at... And if you want to hear my reaction to

Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now, live, in person, is Katie Halper. She is host of

The Katie Halper Show and co-host of The Useful Idiots Podcast along with another friend of the show, Matt Taibbi. Great to see you, Katie. Good to see you, Katie.

We're finally meeting in person. I know. I think it's wild. That is weird. I feel like I're finally meeting in person. I know. I think it's wild. That is weird. I feel like I've known you for years. I know. That is really weird. Actually, so the reason Katie is in town

is because she and myself and Marianne Williamson and Brianna Joy Gray at this very table, by the way, Sagar, Brianna was very impressed with your desk. Held up well. She loved it. Yeah, she said there's something that makes you feel powerful about sitting at this desk. Anyway. Love it. We all came together to do a live stream to both raise

awareness and also to benefit Steven Donziger's legal defense fund. And Katie normally is in New York, but came down so that we could all be together, which was another thing that like, you know, we're all we're all friends. But we realized I don't think we've ever we've certainly never been all in the same room together. I don't even know if we've all friends, but we realized, I don't think we've ever, we've certainly never been all in the same room together. I don't even know if we've all been in the same state together. So it was a little bit of a left YouTube history. But Katie, I wanted to have you on both to talk a little bit about the stream last night, which I think, you know, we were really excited about. And we had some incredible guests who were able to join us.

But also just to talk about the issue itself. You kind of spear itself, you kind of spearheaded, you know, we were all on board, but you really took the reins of saying, we got to do this and we got to do it now and let's set a date and let's get this going. So just speak a little bit to why this was so important to you. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on again. And I think the Steven Donziger case, to me, it's pretty similar in some ways. There are obviously some differences, but it's an interesting parallel to the Assange case in many ways, where you have a, in the case of Donziger, you have a corporate prosecution and persecution of someone who was just doing his job.

He was defending people in Ecuador whose water had been poisoned by Chevron. He was doing something really noble. He was taking on an incredibly powerful corporation. And for that reason, he was punished by being sent to prison after being sent to living under house arrest. And it's a topsy-turvy world, right, where you have the person who actually does the right thing, takes on the evil corporation. And Chevron, while there was a lawsuit that determined they owed the people of Ecuador $9.5 billion, has paid nothing. The only person who has gone to any trouble over the United States' awful war crimes have been the people who have helped reveal those war crimes. And it really puts, I think, a light on how much of a joke our democracy has become. And you see

this both in the actions of the U.S. government and also the complicity of the media. And you also see how bipartisan this project is, right? Because you have this under Trump and under Biden. And something we've talked about before is how actually, you know, hello, libs out there, you should be up in arms about this. If Trump did this, you know, this corporate prosecution, you'd be very upset. If Trump and Pompeo did this, why is Joe Biden, in the case of Assange, why is Biden siding with Pompeo and Trump and not Obama? Yeah, I think the part that really got to me with Stephen is the first lawyer in U.S., even if he was guilty, which is very up in the air, is the first lawyer in U.S. history has literally ever served jail time in contempt of court and also was being prosecuted by a private

prosecutor. I mean, when I learned all the details, I was like, this is completely crazy. It's so insane, it's hard to wrap your head around. No, yeah.

It's actually hard to explain because you're like, well, there was this case. No, but it's for real. It's true, right. You're like, wait, you were at home for two years

and now you're in jail? So I know you guys have a statement from Stephen. Do you want to read some of that? Yeah, so he wrote us a statement from prison, and it's relatively lengthy. I think we'll post it online so you guys can see the whole thing, but I'll just read a little bit of it. He says, I write this via email on day 42 of my imprisonment.

As to your point, Sagar, the first lawyer in the U.S. to spend even one day in jail for my misdemeanor contempt offense, for which I assert my innocence. I am the first lawyer ever to be locked up for a misdemeanor of any kind. As the United Nations ruled, my jailing in the nation's first corporate prosecution appears to be retaliation for my successful work as a human rights lawyer who helped indigenous peoples in Ecuador win a historic $10 billion pollution judgment against Chevron. And I'll just give you a few of the details. I mean, he talks about, look, life in prison. I know there are lots of jokes about club fed. This is not a fun place to be. Federal prison is extraordinarily difficult and tough environment. And it's been made even worse that they've been

in lockdown over COVID. Since November 18th, nobody can get outside except once or twice a week for an hour. I live with another man in a 60 square foot cell designed for one person. We take meals in the cell. Food is scarce. Medical care is spotty. Programming largely on hold. And COVID testing is virtually non-existent. This is close to solitary confinement. It is a hard time. Of 900 or so men in the prison, I'm the only person here not convicted of a felony. He does say, I mean, it's horrific what's been done to him, what's been done to his family, and of course, the bigger picture, what it means for all of us and what it means for all of us

and what it means for the people in Ecuador, which he always and goes out of his way here too, to say, don't forget what this is all about. Chevron committed grave crimes in Ecuador for which they have yet to pay a single dollar. And some of what we heard last night, Katie, was people who had been to Ecuador, had spoken with the people, some of the activists who have been involved, who understand the extent of the damage there that's been done. Yeah, I spoke to Luis Yansa, who is part of the Amazon Defense Coalition, who lives in this area, L venal craven greed that allows for Chevron to just literally sentence people to death in order to make more money. And it's rapacious. And again, the fact that the only person who's been in trouble for this has been Stephen. And they're also going after people in Ecuador, a lawyer in Ecuador and Luis Yancey, this activist. So I think

we also have another statement, by the way, from Noam Chomsky, which I think sums it up well. We had so many wonderful guests last night that we couldn't even get to all the things we had planned. You've got to turn into the stream, youtube.com slash the Katie Halper Show. I'm not saying that as a plug, although a plug is, of course, nice. No, we'll put a link in the description. Okay, yeah, awesome.

And so this is what Noam Chomsky said over email to me. Stephen Donziger performed a major service for all of us by exposing the shocking activities of Chevron. His reward? To be targeted by a vicious corporate judicial campaign relying on the vast resources of the corporation whose malfeasance he exposed and to be subjected to harsh punishment. This is not only a disgraceful miscarriage of justice, but also, as no doubt intended, a warning to others daring to expose the crimes of powerful corporate institutions. Wow. Which sums it up. Let me ask you guys this. What's next?

I mean, is there any possible—I mean, I know he's going to get out of prison, what, six months, I think. I mean, but is there any recourse on having this vacated? Like, what exactly is the next course of action for him? Well, they are trying to get it vacated. They're trying to make it so he doesn't have to fulfill the six-month sentence. But you know something else, and I spoke to one of his lawyers, Martin Garbus, is that Chevron can just go at him again and again. They can throw all the money that they want to into this case because it's not just about avoiding paying the $9.5 billion. It's really about not wanting to set a precedent where they are at all responsible for their actions. So part of the reason that freeing Steven Donziger and raising funds for Steven Donziger is so important is you're also raising funds for the people of Ecuador so that they can continue this legal fight to make them pay. And I just think that something so important is that one of the two very corrupt judges who oversaw this case,

and of course something irregular about this case, is that the prosecutor declined to prosecute. And Judge Kaplan then took the extraordinary step of hiring a private firm to prosecute Don Ziegler. Who has Chevron as a client. Right, and that firm had represented Chevron. He also handpicked the judge and sent it to this judge from the Federalist Society. No shade.

Oh, listen, go ahead. Sagar's not a Federalist Society. I know, I'm sorry. I don't mean to hurt. Sub-tweeted the FedSoc many times on the podcast. Which is a right-wing legal organization that, of course, the left would be nice. Hello, you could start doing this yourself, but whatever. Of course, they don't do that.

And she is so brazen in her taunting of Donziger that during her sentencing, she said that it seems like only the proverbial two-by-four between the eyes will instill a sense of respect of the law for Mr. Donziger. How, I mean, the impunity and the lack of, I mean, I'm not a big decorum person, but I thought judges were supposed to have that. No, I mean, if anybody's supposed to have decorum, it's probably a judge. Yeah. I agree with you.

Marian and Susan Sarandon, who wants to, I think, play Judge Prescott. Yes. They both want her to play Judge Prescott. They're both very interested. We're talking about how she seemed to actually take pleasure in a psychopathic way in what they were doing to Stephen. And to your point, Katie, you know, anyone would forgive this man at this point if he said, you know what? I want to get out of prison. I want to move on. Like, I want to go on with life. I want to do other things. Like, God bless you, I hope. But I got to, I have a family, I have a life, I got to move on

to something different. But he fully intends to continue pressing the case against Chevron, which to your point is why the legal defense fund isn't just about, which that would be a worthy cause in and of itself. He has such massive legal bills, which was also an intentional strategy of Chevron to pile up massive legal bills and sort of like bleed them dry war of attrition. But we were raising money for his Legal Defense Fund,

both so that he can cover his legal expenses, but also so that he can continue the fight against Chevron because the fact of the matter is they have yet to pay a single dollar for the crimes that they committed. Just so people get a sense of, I mean, we really had, we had Roger Waters. We had Richard Wolff, who was phenomenal. We had Susan Sarandon. We had Chris Hedges.

Lucy Lawless. Lucy Lawless. Yeah, she was fantastic. She was, really. I'd never spoken with her before or really watched her before. And she had actually traveled to Ecuador. Oh, wow. And so she could speak with great passion and eloquence to the situation on the ground there.

But we also had Nina Turner on who, as always, eloquent and passionate. Let's take a listen to a little of what Nina had to say. I just wanna make two important points, which is justice cannot wait until the opposing party is in power for us to stand up for it. If it's just to stand up for this under Trump, it's just to stand up for this under Biden, so that shouldn't matter. And then secondly, I want people to imagine if they were in the middle of an ocean drowning, which person or persons do you want to come and save you? Do you want the person who's going to parse out, you know, who's going to be hurt if I come to save you, whose feelings, or do you want somebody to say to hell with whoever I'm coming out to

radically save you or if your house was on fire. Well, guess what? Our house being Mother Earth is on fire. The people of Ecuador have been transgressed. Stephen and other folks have stood up for these people. Now, Stephen is in prison paying the price for standing up for justice. And the least we can do is have the decency to call out people who ask for this power. You know, Brejo, I'm right with you. It just boggles my mind how we are programmed to protect the people who have the most power and then look down our noses and tell the people who have the least power to wait for justice to come. Now, we did have one member of Congress, Chewie Garcia, out of Illinois, who sent us a prerecorded message, which we really appreciated.

We've had Rashida Tlaib, who advocated, and we've also had, I think, maybe nine members of Congress who signed onto a letter calling on the Department of Justice to—do they call them to commute a sentence or to take over the prosecution? Yeah, reclaim it. I mean, Stephen Dothaker says, I'm the only person who wants to be prosecuted by the Justice Department. But what Nina's getting at here, Senator Turner's getting at here, is like, what are you all afraid of? Because ultimately, you know, a grassroots upswell of support, which Stephen has behind him, and we saw, you know, people

responding online last night. That's one thing. But these are the people in power. I mean, they're the ones who could make things really uncomfortable for the Biden administration and shame them into action and point out the dramatic inconsistency between their statement and their actions or inaction on this case. And so far, we haven't seen much. Yeah, I mean, so the ask is obviously they could take it back from this corporate prosecution or they could just free him immediately. And something we see a lot is this, you know, hiding behind the veil of technocracy or the veil of, you know, would love to do it, just can't do that. And we all know that that's a myth. So they could immediately free him.

Also, I should mention people should go to freedonziger.com to learn more about what can be done. But yeah, I think, again, we see this thing that if we're done under Trump, people would be up in arms. And instead of calling it out, to be fair, part of the reason they're not calling it out is because the Dems aren't that much better when it comes to climate change, when it comes to their donors having ties to fossil fuels. And we see, you know, the people who represent Stephen in Congress and in the Senate,

Gillibrand, Schumer, and Jerry Nadler, they have ignored, they haven't even bothered to respond to the significant and substantial petitions that they've gotten from their own constituents asking them to address this. And that's in large part because they have their own ties to the fossil fuel industry. And I think that what Nina is saying here is so important. And as always, Senator Turner is so eloquent and so inspired and inspiring. And the question is, will Democrats actually wake up to things like this? Will they actually differentiate themselves as not Republicans, indeed, not just in rhetoric?

And we see it whether it's climate change in general, dragging their heels on climate change, or the way that they are allowing for this corporate prosecution and corporate persecution of Donziger, which, again, they would in rhetoric. This is why it's so convenient for the Dems to have Republicans in power, because it's great to be able to point to the Republicans as the bad guys when they do this. And they are the bad guys when they do this. And they're slightly worse, I would say, on these issues than the Democrats are. Definitely. I mean, there's a substantive difference. Yes. But that's not enough.

You can't be just slightly you can't just be not Trump on these issues. Yeah. No. And on these particular issues, they're not even not Trump. They're literally with Assange. Yeah. With Donziger. They're continuing the exact same direction of the Trump Department of Justice. Guys, if you want to, we'd love for you to watch the stream. It's at Katie's channel on YouTube. We'll post the link in the comments.

If you're able to give freedonziger.com to his legal defense fund, both for his legal bills, but also to continue the fight against Chevron, because this is just an incredible travesty. And I just, I ask everybody, he's in prison. I mean, we've had Stephen on a number of times. Katie's interviewed him. He's an incredibly effective advocate and spokesperson for himself, but he can't speak right now. So we have to keep the pressure on. We have to keep the attention on.

And that was really the inspiration for last night. For Stephen, for his wife, for his son, and for the people of Ecuador, and for justice in general, and taking on corporate power in general. That's exactly right. I don't know if you announced this, Crystal, but we're putting $1,000 here at Breaking Points into the fund and I encourage you guys to do so as well. No matter where you fall, it's an important case. The only lawyer in U.S. history to be in prison for contempt.

That's crazy. And the allegations of fraud against him, by the way, were based on dishonest testimony from an Ecuadorian judge who had his family, he and his family were relocated by Chevron and coached. Brought to the U.S. in exchange for lying, basically. Katie, thank you for

helping spearhead this thing and making it happen. The response last night seemed to be really good. Thank you to all the guests that we had last night and thank you to all of you guys for caring about this case because we've seen

the interest from our audience as well. That's right. Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. Of course, you can support us. Premium link is there in the description,

but it's enough about that and we will see you all next week. Have a good one, guys. this is an iHeart podcast