Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/31/22: Ukraine Crisis, Dark Money, Polls, Trucker Convoy, NBC Neocons, Railway Workers, Rogan vs Hedge Funds, Dylan Ratigan, & More!

Episode Date: January 31, 2022

Krystal and Saagar break down the Ukrainian leadership's discontent with hawkish media, liberal dark money, polling on covid and SCOTUS, a convoy of Truckers protesting in Canada, NBC News hiring more neocons, Rogan's response to Spotify, railway workers getting railroaded, Joe Rogan vs hedge funds, the stock market with Dylan Ratigan, & 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/Dylan Ratigan: https://www.tastytrade.com/authors/dylan-ratigan  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Thanks for listening to Breaking Points with Crystal and Sagar. We're going to be totally upfront with you. We took a big risk going independent. To make this work, we need your support to beat the corporate media. CNN, Fox, MSNBC, they are ripping this country apart. They are making millions of dollars doing it.

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to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting stories breaking right this morning. We got a new analysis from the New York Times about just how much Democrats have learned to love the dark money that they used to decry. Shocking. That's going to work out great for the country. Don't worry, guys.

We've also got some new polls showing just how dire the state of the economy is and how people are judging the Biden presidency. Big news out of Canada. A lot of you guys asked for us to cover this story, and it is really interesting. A huge convoy of truckers converged on Ottawa in that nation. They are protesting vaccine mandates. It's turned in sort of a catch-all protest. All restrictions, mostly. Yeah, against any sort of pandemic restrictions.

So we'll tell you about that and what the response was in that country. Also, some interesting additions to NBC News we want to tell you about. And just breaking over the past day, we've had Joe Rogan and the whole Spotify thing. He now has a response out. So we don't have it in our little lineup there because we added it last night. Literally happened last night. Yeah, so we wanted to give you his response and talk a little bit about that. Also, a great friend of mine, great analyst of the market and all things economic, Dylan

Radigan, is going to join us to talk about what is going on with the markets, with the Fed, and what we can expect moving forward. But we wanted to start with the very latest with regards to Ukraine. Yes, so this is the most underrated story in terms of what is dominating cable, but is arguably the most important coming from Washington, not Brussels, not Berlin, not Paris, and especially not Kiev. Well, this is what's been happening over the weekend. Let's put this up there on the screen. So Russia, so the Pentagon is claiming, per the New York Times, that Russia is positioned to fully invade all of Ukraine. But here's the thing. The actual Ukrainians are like, hey, hold on a second. Kiev continues to say that Washington is using overheated rhetoric,

that their intelligence does not match Washington's intelligence, that they have not even close to the same indications of the same level of Russian preparedness, and in fact, keep warning us that our hot rhetoric is making the situation much worse. What especially was very interesting, Crystal, was immediately after a phone call took place between Biden and President Zelensky, you will all remember of the Trump impeachment fame, there was a breaking report from CNN. And this is the key part, not with sources from Washington, with sources from Kiev, where their CNN international reporter spoke to a Ukrainian official where they said that there was a huge disagreement between Biden and Zelensky over whether the Russians were actually going to invade. And Zelensky admonished President Biden.

But here's the crazy part. That report was then taken down off of Twitter and then re-added with context to say that the White House disputed it. But here is the original report that CNN aired live. Let's take a listen. You and our world leader, senior Ukrainian official tells CNN that today's phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, quote, did not go well. Our source tells CNN that the two disagreed about the immediacy of the threat of a Russian attack on Ukraine. The White House and Pentagon have been emphatic that they believe an attack could be imminent. We should note the White House just released its own readout of that call, and there was no mention of President Biden's warnings or the two presidents' disagreements.

The White House did say Biden underscored America's commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty. That's the original report there. And their reporter, who was based in Kiev, specifically spoke to people inside the Ukrainian government, where Biden claimed a couple of things. He said that the city of Kiev could be sacked. OK, last time I checked, I don't even think the Russians have been saying that this is going to happen. This ain't Ivan the Terrible in the year 1650 or whatever. The other thing is that the Ukrainians specifically pushed back on Biden saying that,

look, your intel does not match our intel. And given that that's our country, maybe we have a better idea of what's going on on our board. That would be like the Ukrainians being like, let me tell you what's really happening down in Mexico. We'll be like, you know, I think we know pretty well what's going on in Mexico. Okay. Yeah. And we're going to play a clip from him in a minute. I mean, he has repeatedly voiced concerns about our actions,

about our rhetoric, about the rhetoric coming out of the media. So this situation with CNN is kind of hilarious because they sort of like accidentally tell their viewers the truth. And then they're like, well, we got to add some context and let's pull this down from Twitter. Well, what? Who says it's not true? It's like, oh, okay, yeah, and they never lied before. You know, I mean, we picked up on these signals right away

when we saw this little bit of space between what the Ukrainians were saying and what the U.S. was saying and thought there might be something going on. The more that time has gone on, first of all, the more vocal the Ukrainians have been to say, hold on a second. Even going so far as to say, you know, things here aren't really that different than they were over the summer. Like things have not really significantly changed. Reporters on the ground in Ukraine say, people are going about their daily lives. Everything seems pretty normal and pretty calm. So you ask yourself, like, what the hell is going on here?

Why is the U.S. suddenly so invested in amping up the rhetoric and bringing us to this, you know, old Cold War style of conflict? Well, one of the things that you always have to consider in terms of the American context is just how much money there is to be made off of these conflicts. Let's go ahead and throw this Ken Vogel tweet up on the screen. You've got Raytheon's CEO and other military industrial complex CEOs just outright talking about how much money there is to be made over these types of conflicts, including specifically the conflict in Ukraine. They say all of these things are

putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. I fully expect we're going to see some benefit. This was a great piece from Responsible Statecraft that tracked what these CEOs are actually telling their investors about how great these conflicts ultimately are for their bottom line. And oh, by the way, you know, we just got out of Afghanistan. Of course, there's a disastrous crisis happening there that we want to cover more as well with a famine and potentially a million children starving. But we get out of one conflict and they got to look for somewhere else where they're going to make a buck and continue to generate those fat profit margins that they've come to expect.

Looking at the defense spending bill, predicting that it's just going to continue to go up and up and up into the future. And, of course, they are the ones who stand to benefit. Something like 50 percent of our defense spending goes to these types of goals. Then you look at who the media is sponsored by. Let's put this next element up on the screen. Look at Politico. I mean, they are classic. This is the craziest one.

Classic example here. You've got an article here that quotes Jen Psaki saying, Russia could at any point launch an attack in Ukraine. Right below it, powered by Lockheed Martin. There was another article, same deal, same outlet, Politico, that said like the argument for why the U.S. should rattle Putin's cage. Same deal. I think that one was also brought to you by Lockheed Martin or one of the other military industrial complex schools. So you have to remember these groups of people are directly intertwined. Sometimes, oftentimes, the people they're bringing on their airwaves as supposedly neutral actors have financial interests at stake in these conflicts.

They are getting directly from people who have interests. They're the sources for these stories that they're putting out there. And so they feed into this rhetoric that the Ukrainians are saying, listen, your rhetoric is not helpful. It's not accurate. What's coming out of your media is propaganda. And the actions that you're taking specifically with removing the diplomatic families from the country are really exacerbating the problem. So again, there is something going on here. Big disconnect from what the Americans are saying and what the Ukrainians are saying. And frankly, I would trust the Ukrainians who are there on the ground and it's their country a hell of a lot more than our people here. information environment. That's what it looks like when you have the media directly being paid and sponsored by these defense contractors. But worse, whenever you have people, every journalist

in Washington is parroting what the White House and the Pentagon are telling them to be true. We are not listening to the actual Ukrainians. And here again is the prime minister of Ukraine specifically calling out the U.S. media for not reporting the truth and for inflaming the situation. Let's take a listen. We've talked to the president. We've talked about this. We think that there has to be a balanced approach. I'm not saying that he's influencing American media, the independent, but the media policy there has to be very well balanced. If they want to know what the situation is, they can come to Kiev. Do we have tanks on the street? No. But the feeling is,

if you're not here, the feeling is when you listen to them in Germany, in France, in Lithuania, I'm talking to the president of Lithuania and other leaders, the image that mass media creates is that we have troops on the roads, we have mobilization, people are leaving from places. That's not the case. We don't need this panic. You know, in the history of warfare, I cannot think of a country where geopolitical interests are very aligned, in which that country itself is not the most hawkish. Almost always that's what's happening. I think back to World War I, Austria-Hungary. They're like rearing. They're like, yeah, we got to go.

We want to go into Serbia and attack Belgrade. It's everybody else who's like, hey, calm down, all of that. This is like if the Austro-Hungarians were like, I don't know, maybe. And the Kaiser was like, no, no, you got to go. You got to do it. This is happening. And London and Moscow and everybody is like, no, they're pushing. It was always a reluctant drag.

It wasn't something that was being specifically pushed back on by the very people on the borders who were involved themselves. I mean, in the analogy of, you know, all of history and great power conflict, I cannot think of a single situation which is like this. And, you know, we are living in such a crazy time because this is out there in the open. God bless the internet that we can have a dubbed conversation like this and be able to bring it to people here in the United States. I mean, when you have our mass media organs so completely taken over by the Pentagon and by the White House and not giving any credence to the Ukrainian themselves, I fully now get it. During Afghanistan and now, I get how Iraq happened. I never used to really get it. I was a kid when really, and I got turned very against the war early on, but I was a teenager. I wasn't

really paying attention. O'Reilly and all that, I didn't live through it as an adult. I understand now how these people drove the country into war and they've learned nothing. Honestly, it might be worse. It actually might be worse. There's a through line here because all of those people who dragged us into war and lied to us and were the chief propagandists across the media,

they were all rehabbed effectively by Russiagate. Yeah, that's true. We're going to get to that later in the show. Yeah, so that was how they were all brought back from the dead.

I mean, these people should never have been heard from again in polite society. And then because they were willing to like come out against Trump and then go on this like Cold War hawkish Russiagate conspiracy nonsense. That's how they ended up in prominent positions again. So that, you know, when we're talking about Afghanistan, you're reaching for these same folks. And now when we're talking about this conflict in Ukraine, you're reaching for these same people who were rehabilitated through this incredibly damaging conspiracy. And so not only do you have them elevated into positions of power, but you also have this whole Cold War mythology about Russia revived and popularized across the country. So Americans have this idea that,

you know, Putin is this great villain and, you know, this incredible 5D chess master. And like you said, Russia controls the information space and all of this. And look, I'm not saying that they're like good actors and not nefarious or have good intentions or any of that. But we've made them out to be these like totally capable, competent, evil geniuses controlling everything that happens in the globe. And that's insane. We're actually in the trucker segment. Our producer sent us. Somebody on the CBC was like, maybe the truckers were brought here by Putin.

Basically, it's like, I mean, it's not only infected our country, it's infected, like, the countries around us and around the world. And so it shows you just how, even though the Russiagate, you know, stuff, it ended up being stupid and conspiratorial and the P-tape, and you can kind of laugh about it, but ultimately it had really devastating consequences. And oh, by the way, that sort of misinformation,

I don't see any like trigger warnings or concerns or de-platforming or pulling music down off of Spotify because Rachel Maddow's podcast there. Thank you. You know, like you were saying, look, we're not venerating the Russians. They are the 11th largest economy in the world, overtaken by South Korea, Canada, and Italy. When you're losing to Italy, you've got problems, especially on the continent of Europe in the consideration of history. Their economy is entirely reliant on petroleum. Most of their great power comes from their nuclear arsenal that they amassed when they actually were a great power. I mean, when you consider it in the broad swath of both

all of history and recent history, they are not punching anywhere near what they used to. And in fact, most of these moves can be explained by their relatively weak position that they find themselves in right now. The way we have turned them into this, like, gigantic thing that everybody should be so concerned about, it is not 1975 anymore. I mean, remember how Obama used to talk about Russia? Yes, and he was right.

He was right. Making fun of Mitt Romney. He was correct. Yeah. Like, you know. He's like, oh, should we fix bayonets on the, I love that line. Yeah, absolutely. He's right.

And like, saying the same things you're saying about their economy. That was the mainstream of Democratic Party thought in the country before Russiagate like warped everyone's minds. And so now we're at this place where people just don't at all have a reasonable view of what's happening. And people who are genuinely nefarious actors and self-interested actors within the American media political context have been elevated, have been lionized, have been given these positions of power. And that is just it's an incredibly bad place to be. So listen to what the Ukrainians are saying. There is an increasing divide between the extraordinarily hot rhetoric we've seen from the U.S. press about, you know, false flag operations and stuff coming out of the U.K.

I mean, all of these things that they're floating to us. And meanwhile, the Ukrainians are saying, hey guys, this is not our experience here on the ground whatsoever. Yeah, all these people who are holding I stand with Ukraine signs actually listen to the Ukrainians. You know who I stand with? The actual Ukrainians who are like, hey, chill the F out, Washington. All right, thank you, President Zelensky.

I'm with you on this one. Okay, so just as we follow the money with regards to military industrial complex, important to follow the money in politics in general. Republicans have long been very comfortable with dark money. They've been broadly opposed to any sort of campaign finance reform. They've been happy to have, you know, especially Post Citizens United, all of the corporate money and special interest money they possibly can flow into their coffers. Koch Industries, a big benefactor financing all of these different organizations that funded a bunch of conservative-leaning groups and Republican politicians. All right. Democrats have not only caught up to Republicans in this regard, but they have actually, by some

measures, according to New York Times analysis, exceeded what the Republicans are pulling in in this dark money. And you know what we mean by dark money is money that comes in and you don't disclose where it's coming from. It's essentially untraceable in terms of its origin. Exactly. So let's go ahead and throw this New York Times investigation up on the screen. They say Democrats decried dark money, then they won with it in 2020. A New York Times analysis reveals how the left outdid the right at raising and spending millions from undisclosed donors to defeat Donald Trump and win power in Washington. Let me read a little bit from this analysis they have here. They say spurred by opposition and then President Trump, donors and operatives allied with the Democratic Party embraced dark money with fresh zeal, pulling in by some measures more than Republicans. The analysis shows that 15 of the most politically active nonprofit organizations that generally align with the Dems spent more

than one and a half billion dollars in 2020. Compare that to roughly 900 million spent by a comparable sample of 15 of the most politically active groups aligned with the GOP. One of the groups that they point to in particular as the new sort of money powerhouse on the Democratic side is called the 1630 Fund. They've received mystery donations as large as $50 million. They've given grants to more than 200 groups. They've spent a total of $410 million in 2020 alone. That is more than the Democratic National Committee did itself. And, you know, they talked to somebody with the group who says,

listen, while we are dedicated to reducing the influence of special interest money in our politics, we're also committed to level the playing field for progressives. This is insane. I mean, one of the reasons Trump got elected that I think was undersold was his talk about draining the swamp, his rhetoric, which I think was very effective about, hey, listen, I'm a rich guy. I know how this system works. I played this system, and I'm not going to be influenced by all this money because I'm already rich. So it doesn't, you know, it doesn't impact me. And now, of course, that all turned out to be ridiculous. He was like wildly corrupt and all of those things. But I think that rhetoric had a lot of

appeal. You are just a blatant, disgusting hypocrite if you're out there on the one hand saying, oh, yes, we care very much about money and politics, and we want to get the money out of politics and campaign finance reform. And then you're spending all your time raising millions and millions of dollars from dark money donors and being propped up by these secretive groups that, you know, the American people have no insight into where this money is coming from. And ultimately, you know, Democratic Party aside, this type of infiltration of money in politics, this is why, this is a big part of why you have this disconnect between what people want Washington to do and what Washington actually does. So when you have both parties just completely run by outside dark money, it's a disastrous state of affairs for democracy. Oh, this is so bad. And you know, one of the most repulsive parts of this that I did not even know

was legal is that billionaires can actually give to a nonprofit organization, a 501c3, per the tax code, which allows them to take a tax break crystal. That 501c3 can then give money to a 501c4, which is a political action committee. And that political action committee, the 501c4, can then give money to a dark money group. So you have essentially made it so that a billionaire can actually get a tax write-off for then eventually basically straw donating to these dark money groups doing all kinds of stuff. And here's the thing. These things are totally legal. They can basically spend money on whatever they want, all kinds of stuff. And here's the thing. These things are totally legal. They can basically spend money on whatever they want, all kinds of political advertising and commercials and more that, you know, things that you may not even think. Facebook ads, advocacy campaigns. And, you know, the main thing I would say to the Republicans is you guys invented this and now you're just

getting beat at your own game, which is actually the most pathetic part because you look at this. Major nonprofit groups aligned with the Republican Party totaled 972 million in 2020. And for the Democrats, it was 1.7 billion. So they're being beat almost double at the game that they invented. And now it's just a slow ball towards what? I mean zero representation in our terms of our actual politics. And so many of these people who say that they want to crack down on any of the – crack down on secret funding. You know, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island. He's like, yeah, but with any luck, now that Democrats are more seriously in the dark money business, Republicans may begin to support some transparency.

So he's even admitting the game there. Being like, yeah, well, now that we're winning, maybe they'll come along with us. But how many of these Democrats are actually going to go ahead and sign on to this legislation? None. This is going to be the status quo forever. They'll never close it.

And the problem is, at this point, I mean, to really deal with it, you probably need a constitutional amendment. I mean, it's just become a very difficult. Oh, right, because the Supreme Court. There are, look, I actually like Andrew Yang's idea of democracy dollars to at least help to try to put some money in the hands of the American people as a counterweight example. It's a very difficult problem to solve at this point. I mean, I guess that is the potential silver lining is just like with the stock trading stuff, what it became about Nancy Pelosi. Suddenly Republicans were like, OK, let's do a good talking point for us politically as well. Let's get in on this. I mean, if they see this as their political advantage.

But the problem is with money and politics, that the people who are in power disproportionately benefited from the current regime. So are they going to like undercut themselves and their sources of funding and their sources of funding and their sources of power, especially people like, you know, I mean, Pelosi is a perfect example. Part of how she maintains such an iron grip on the Democratic caucus is because she raises a lot of money and then she gives it out. And so she uses that and weaponizes that so that people feel like they can't criticize her, feel like they can't break from whatever the party line is because they need those campaign contributions ultimately to keep coming in. So that's a major source of every single politician in Washington who has a real

power position. This money flowing through the system is a major, major source of their power. The other piece of this that I find to be interesting and troubling is you'll see the reason why Democrats were able to jump to this big lead was all about Trump. So on the Republican side, some of the big donors didn't like Trump and they either stayed out or they started entities that ultimately backed Democrats. And on the Democratic side, and we've seen this play out time and time again, they basically made the argument to their people that, listen, Trump is so bad that any means are justified to be able to get him out of there. So, you know, the end of getting Donald Trump justifies the means of letting the dark money flow and throwing out any principles that we had in that regard. And so the specter of him as this

existential threat is used to, you know, weaponize money in politics, to amp that up, you know, to just abandon their principles on that regard. Of course, we saw the way that that specter was used to discard any concerns about the policy direction or the efficacy or the competence or, you know, the mental acuity of Joe Biden. You can't criticize him. We can't competence or, you know, the mental acuity of Joe Biden. You can't criticize him. We can't have someone, you know, like Bernie who actually believes in things and might do things. We've just got to go for whoever the electable person is. And so it really has been used. They've used Trump very effectively to maintain the status quo and to even amp up the, you know, these nefarious forces that if you actually care about the future of democracy,

things like this rampant money in politics is way more damaging than anything the people on January 6th could have done. Oh, I mean, yeah, that's probably the most controversial thing about all of this, right? But anybody with a brain is like, yeah, people spending billions of dollars to try and, you know, rig the election in whichever way they want. That seems pretty bad. This is also why I get so frustrated, Crystal, with a lot of Republicans now all of a sudden just waking up to all of this stuff. I remember the Time magazine piece that came out. It was like how Democrats fortified the election. I mean, look, a lot of the libertarian ways that we have preached post-campaign finance funding actually paved the way for billionaires to try and do everything in their power,

which was a lot of power, in order to try and swing the election away from Trump. I mean, if you're really behind and for campaign finance reform and more, let's go. But look, it'll never pass through the existing Republican politicians because they're just as dirty as the rest of them. Now they are, you know, they've been in bed with the Kochs and with all of the intersecting 501c3s and 501c4s for so many years that they don't even know how to operate without them. It's like a third arm of the RNC. It's the same thing now with the DNC.

And this actually makes it worse because now I don't think it will ever change. But it's a very good peek behind the curtain. If you want to know how it all really works, I mean, this stuff, the 1634, what the hell is that? What's happening? They gave Bill Kristol $40 million. How do you give that freaking moron who ran a magazine into the ground and then ran the, you know, what? And then started defending democracy or whatever. One of the wrongest, most evil people in American politics.

And this guy gets $40 million. This is what they're spending your money on. So if you're one of those people who fell for one of these ads, stop Trump or whatever on Facebook, I don't blame you. It's okay. You know, emotions were hot. But be real about where your money is really going

because it's not the way that you think it is. The only thing that I will say as a little, to not have this whole segment be total gloom and doom is the alternative power center of having grassroots funds and candidates who truly are supported and able to win office based on these small dollar donations across the country. That's a new phenomenon and that's a very positive direction because that means at least you'll have a few politicians who can get elected and can get into some position of power without relying on these big money donor networks. And the other thing I would say is this money is very effective at the local level, very effective even – like the lower you go down on the ballot, the more that the big dollars ultimately matter. When you get to the presidential level, it actually really, I mean, Hillary Clinton

had a dollar advantage over Trump. And Trump still beat her. And Trump still beat her. Because all of this money, I mean, what, you're going to buy more ads, you're going to inundate us even more. People are looking at these candidates. And so I don't know that the money

makes that much of a difference, ultimately, at the presidential level. It does matter a lot lower down on the ballot. So I guess that's kind of a, you know, kind of a optimistic thing that this money ultimately there at the electoral level doesn't totally swing things at the presidential level, but it dramatically impacts the way that they govern once they ultimately get here. And that to me is maybe the most pernicious part of it. Yeah, no, I think that's really well said. And so look, we can defeat it. You know,

don't think that it's all gone. This show shows you that user supported content can and, you know, maybe in the long run can win, but it's going to be a titanic and gigantic fight. This is not just what we're up against. This is what any candidate who stands up against this. And ultimately, though, it's what you are up against. This is what any candidate who stands up against this. And ultimately, though, it's what you are up against. It is against you and your popular will. So let's go ahead then and talk about popular will. Look at what I did there, Crystal. Nice work. Let's move on to the poll segment.

So this is something which, look, as you said, take all polls with a grain of salt. But what I think is usually where people are correct is not necessarily on candidates and how they feel. How do you feel about the state of the country? How do you feel about COVID? How do you feel about the state of the economy? How do you feel even about the Supreme Court? And luckily, ABC News went ahead and tested this. So let's put this up there on the screen.

So 76% of respondents want Biden to consider all nominees, not just a black woman, a very good indictment of identity politics. 75% say the economy is either not good or poor. Only 1% say excellent. I want you to guess who those 1% of people are. And 50 to 49 support Biden's approval on COVID. So this is a catastrophe for the White House. Now, the major headline out of this was the indictment of identity politics. Look, I could have told you, you know, when affirmative action goes down in the state of California, the most

liberal place, like it's pretty obvious what's happening in terms of popular will on that issue. But the one where Biden is just so underwater is not just the economy, but especially crystal and COVID because his only strength in the past was when COVID was the number one issue, the way his trust numbers on that in 2020 before the election were like 80, 20. I mean, they were sky high, but right. It's even after the vaccine. And even though the economy wasn't doing well, people said, yeah, he's a little iffy on that, but I trust him to handle COVID. Well, now you're at 50, 50 on COVID. I mean, when you're there, you've got nothing left, especially because COVID is like third or fourth or sometimes even fifth on the number of people's priorities. So you look,

especially on how Biden is on the wrong side of COVID. He's on the wrong side of the economy. You know, here's the other part. You know, in terms of Ukraine, vast majority of people polled said that they did not want to get involved in Ukraine. Shocking. I mean, absolutely shocking. Don't worry though, as we just covered in Dark Money,

it's not like popular will is generally expressed here in DC. And that's where the disconnect between the White House on the way that the country feels about COVID, about the economy, you know, even the way that the country feels about COVID, about the economy, you know, even the identity politics thing on the Supreme Court, the way that everything is focused on here in D.C. is almost always on the opposite side of public opinion. So what is the point of voting for these people? I really don't understand it. The Democratic Party has been completely captured by a small bubble that is like wildly out of step with the American public.

I mean, the Supreme Court thing, I don't think it doesn't really matter in terms of how people are ultimately going to vote. But just to give you sense, this isn't just like, oh, white people are mad about Biden only considering a black woman. Only a little more than one in four non-white Americans want Biden to consider only black women. So the numbers are not that different for people of color versus the entire population.

If somebody picked me to the part of my skin, I'd be so pissed. It just, again, and you know, it doesn't really, it's not, there are a lot of qualified black women and ultimately,

this isn't going to swing the balance of the court that much, so I can't get that emotionally invested in anyway, but it's just a small signal, again, of how their views on culture and their views on economics have become disconnected from what the broader American public ultimately wants on the economy. So you have this new line of thought and rationalization here in Washington that apparently is being taken seriously.

That the problem is that Biden did too much. Like what? I mean, that's like the polar opposite of what's going on. People are like, you aren't doing anything. You aren't focused on my problems. You aren't delivering the goods that you said you would deliver. And yet somehow the conventional wisdom has been up. Biden went too far. What has he even done in the past year? I mean, we haven't had really anything since the initial checks. And then we got this infrastructure deal that is a nothing burger. I mean, I know they want to sell it as this big deal, but we saw the bridge collapse

in Pittsburgh over the weekend when he was there to talk about infrastructure, which was horrifying. And then I went and look at, you know, look up the numbers. We got 230,000 bridges in this country that need major repairs or to be rebuilt entirely. So even this infrastructure deal, okay, fine, it's good. It's better than what we got under Trump in terms of infrastructure. But it's like a drop in the bucket in terms of actually upgrading, actually just refurbishing what we've got, let alone upgrading to the status of what a modern state should be. And that's it. That's all that they've done. So yeah, people are looking at this and going, I feel pessimistic. My paycheck is not going as far as it used to. The other thing I was looking

at is rents in some cities have skyrocketed like 40%. So all of the things that really hit the bottom line of working class families, all those prices are going up and up. And what are you doing about it? Talk is cheap. Like, let's get some executive orders going. Let's go and call out these CEOs and name and shame them and curb their corporate profits. Another poll that we had looked at before shows that people understand that corporate greed is driving a decent chunk of this inflation. And so you've got a perfect lane there to do something about it and yet no action. So, yeah, Biden is trying to do what Obama tried to do before him, which was to tell people that, no, no, no.

Let me tell you what's really going on in your economic life. People aren't buying it. Democrats aren't buying it. Republicans aren't buying it. Independents aren't buying it. The Democratic base is completely demoralized. And so you're set up for a bloodbath in the midterms. Yeah. And I want to explain that concept, too, about didn't or did too much.

Well, he did too much on things that don't matter and then didn't do enough on the things that do matter. He spent enormous amounts of political capital trying to pass Build Back Better, which nobody cared about from day one. Got watered down, watered down, watered down, and eventually Manchin and Sinema just killed it. And now he looks weak weak and nothing got done. And it's actually, even if it had, nobody really would have cared. Meanwhile, the price of gas went up by 50%. Meanwhile, the supply chain crisis continues. Actually, it's getting worse in terms of the container ship problem that I've been tracking pretty closely. People are actually looking at the prices and the skyrocketing in terms of the variability on that. It's a disaster for American shipping companies and ultimately for the end consumer. Same with the grocery store. I mean, look, what the problem is that they're not willing to think out of the box and throw everything at

the wall on the stuff that really matters. And when you don't do that, then of course, nobody's going to trust you on anything. And on COVID, I cannot emphasize this enough how out of step they are. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. A majority of voters now believe that COVID should be treated as an endemic disease. But, and here's the problem, a majority of Democrats, specifically self-identified Democrats as in part of the base, say that it should continue to be treated you know, white, upper class liberals, suburban liberals, are the people who are driving all policy for everybody and their mindset and the way they approach it and more. This filters down into misery. I went to go see Russell Peters this weekend in Tyson's Corner, Virginia.

OK, Virginia does not have a statewide mask mandate, as famously as Glenn Youngkin and all of them showed. In the freaking comedy show, you have people barking at you to keep your mask on if you're not, you know, eating or drinking. And then when you're in line to go to the bathroom, everyone is screaming you. First of all, this stupid cloth. OK, I won't say the efficacy of it, given what happened to Dan Bongino. Go look at what the CDC go ahead and says about the efficacy. I'm like, this is, you know. And then, meanwhile, what's happening, which is that the everybody there also had to be vaccinated in order to get in or have a proof of a negative COVID test.

I'm like, this is all fake. This is nuts. And yet, when is it going away? This is what I'm saying in terms of their feelings and more cascade down into misery of everybody's lives. And, you know, look, I know people go, you know, it's so hard for Saga to wear a mask. That's not the point. OK, the point is, is that it's not going away. I hate it. Everybody else hates it. Nobody has a reasonable end goal, Crystal, in terms of being told what's happening. And the White House is on the other side of that issue.

At the beginning of the pandemic, when Trump was running for re-election, we tracked how the views of the hardcore Republican base and of Trump himself were wildly divergent from what the views of the broader population was. And this created a problem for him because to keep the base happy, he had to put himself on like wrong, on like 80-20 on the wrong side of issues. The numbers aren't quite that bad in the other direction now, but they're getting that way for Democrats, where the way that the broader population feels is very different from how the loudest and hardest core of the Democratic base ultimately feels. And, you know, David Leinhart in his newsletter this morning for the New York Times actually made a good point.

He's like, look, on one side you have Republicans and there's, you know, a big problem with vaccine hesitancy that's keeping people from protecting is if you still if you are boosted, you know, double vaxxed and boosted, which I am, and you still feel like you are at this tremendous risk, what you're effectively saying is like, I don't actually believe this vaccine worked. That's correct. That's the message that you've internalized and that you're putting out there in the world with your actions. And that in and of itself is a form of vaccine hesitancy. And I thought that was an interesting way to think of it. Now, I think that the type of vaccine hesitancy where you don't get the vaccine and you leave yourself vulnerable and at risk to severe illness

is a more damaging type of vaccine hesitancy. But it is a similar strain of thought where you are not actually grappling with what the real risks are based on your status as a vaccinated and boosted person. So ultimately, yeah, this creates, you know, political conflict. And I think Biden has not really known how to navigate this. He certainly hasn't leaned into like, you know, new lockdowns. He hasn't leaned into national masking you know, new lockdowns. He hasn't leaned into national masking mandates and these sorts of things. But there hasn't been any sort of clear messaging about, OK, what's the end point? What does this look like? What is back to normal? How do we get

there? Or putting pressure, he's the leader of the Democratic Party, putting pressure on politicians down the line to sort of fall in line with, OK, this is the direction we're going in and this is how we're going to continue to live with this disease, which is now effectively endemic and is going to be here in one form or another for in perpetuity. There you go. Just accept it. Yeah. And speaking of restrictions, all of that, protests against such restrictions. Yes. Okay. So this is a very interesting story, and it has a lot of facets to it. A lot of you guys have been following that there was this huge convoy of Canadian truckers who converged on Ottawa. And this protest was initially sparked by a regulation change that was actually enacted both by the Canadian government and the U.S.

government that says, if you are an international trucker and you're crossing national boundaries and borders, then you have to be vaccinated. And if you're not, you're going to have to be subject to tests and a two-week quarantine, which I have to assume if you're a trucker. Yeah, that's impossible. That's not going to work. Okay. So this is what sort of sparked this protest, but it became this catch-all movement for everybody who was upset about the various pandemic restrictions that they still have in place in Canada. I'm not an expert on Canadian pandemic restrictions, but my understanding is that they have things in place that are more stringent than what we have here. And I should also say that they also, as a population, are more in favor of those restrictions by a large margin

and generally support, you know, the broader population generally supports this direction, which I think is important context here. So let's go ahead and throw this Reuters tear sheet up on the screen that has the basic details here. Thousand stage peaceful protests in Ottawa against Canada's vaccine mandate. So again, this was a convoy. There were some like wildly inflated figures on social media of like 50,000 trucks. From the best I can tell, it was more like hundreds or maybe a couple thousand, nowhere near the 50,000 trucks. From the best I can tell, it was more like hundreds or maybe a couple thousand, nowhere near the 50,000,

but that's still a very significant movement coming all the way from Western Canada and driving all the way to Ottawa, convoy across the country. They say here thousands held a loud but peaceful protest in Canada's capital, Ottawa on Saturday against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's COVID-19 vaccine mandates on the streets and snow-covered lawn in front of Parliament. It was cold as hell while these people were out there, by the way.

It's like 16 degrees out there. It says that the so-called Freedom Convoy started out as a rally of truckers against the vaccine requirement for cross-border drivers, but turned into a demonstration against government overreach during the pandemic with a strong anti-vaccination streak. So what was interesting here from the media perspective is the best I could figure out, there were a few people who were part of this broader movement, not organizers of the convoy, but somehow affiliated, you know, and supportive, I guess I should say, of this movement, who said something like, this is going to be our January 6th. And so the media took that, freaked out, ran with it. There was, you know, a lot of concerns that this was going to be violent. They were going to storm the Capitol or whatever. Thank goodness that did not end up happening. And it seems in retrospect that those concerns may have been wildly overblown.

You also had something interesting happen with GoFundMe, which is that this group raised millions of dollars. Last count that I have here is $6.2 million. Let me put this tear sheet up on the screen. And GoFundMe wouldn't release that money initially. What they said is they needed to have some details about how the money was ultimately going to be spent. At this point now, they've released an initial $1 million because they say they received some details

of how the money was ultimately going to be spent. But there also were concerns. I think this was part of the whole idea that this was going to be violent and it was going to be Canada's January 6th. And they didn't want to be seen to have helped to fund something that turned into some violent insurrection. So there was a whole panic and freak out of this. Let me just say one more thing about this, which is, well, we've got the Washington Post editorial, which shows some of the kind of media freak out.

This is how they're treating these people. Canada must confront the toxic freedom convoy head on. This op-ed goes on to say they're too big to ignore and too unreasonable to placate in so far as they represent a broader challenge. Either way, we shouldn't ignore or placate them. Rather, the convoy and its supporters must be met with the counter movement that refuses to give them an inch, but instead focuses national, subnational and local efforts on true threats to liberty, which do exist. Listen, I feel about this kind of the same way I felt the early anti-lockdown protests that we covered here that there was a whole media panic about in the U.S. press. I didn't support their views and their values. I don't support the views of a lot of the folks here. And there is a whole

lot of like anti-vaccine sentiment among this group that converged on the Capitol. But people can protest. I mean, that's what democracy is about. You have a view. You disagree with the government. You go. You stage a demonstration. It's a very clever one.

I mean, it's very evocative to see all these truckers in a convoy across the country and converging on the Capitol and making your point, why is the panic and the upset around this and just totally smearing them like they're evil wrongdoers set on a violent insurrection or whatever, I just think that that ended up being very silly. No, the media treatment is repulsive. I would love to see GoFundMe show me one instance in which they demanded this of any Black Lives Matter thing

that raised a gajillion dollars, which they, you know, a lot of recent reporting shows has been squandered on mansions and making people rich. Yeah, demand the plan, GoFundMe. It's amazing, right? Who gets the right media treatment and who gets cracked down and who doesn't. And look, this, all of the treatment of these people is insane. Go ahead and put the next one up there, which is that Justin Trudeau was apparently moved to a secret location as thousands of people protested COVID-19 vax mandates for truckers and other restrictions as it made its way into Ottawa. going to happen. They have whipped themselves into a frenzy in which they look at their peaceful citizens, which is what was actually happening here. You know, protest. Last time I checked, Canada has some sort of freedom of assembly. Well, you know, they have whipped themselves

almost into the same as us to think that they are literally going to attack them and have mass violence break out. But look, we should be very clear here. Let's put this up here. 70% of Canadians support dismissal of employees who refuse COVID-19 vaccines. All right. Canada is not even close to the U.S. They have a much more compliant population. To me, they're a lot more analogous to Europe. I mean, you see a lot of what's happening, the nastiness and insanity in Austria with people getting held down for protesting, all that stuff. The Canadians are a lot more like that than they are like us. They don't have the same frontier mindset, even though they do have a frontier and the freedom and individual liberty that is really baked into kind of our psyche doesn't really exist. And the real

issue, I think, to us was not just the treatment domestically in Canada of the media there, but really of our media trying to make this into a national story in which demonize and try and connect it to some global authoritarian right wing movement. As you pointed out, you said that what was it? They thought that the Russians had been placed these truckers. Yeah, there was some, I don't know, some idiot on the CBC was like, yeah, I know it might sound crazy, but we've got to ask, what was Russia's involvement here? It's like, oh, Jesus Christ. Yes. I'm sorry what we have unleashed on the world. Yeah, I mean, listen, you don't have to agree with the goals and aims of every protest movement to say they got a right to protest.

I personally kind of agree with most people. It's the most basic possible thing. And I think you were right to point out, look, about 90% apparently of these truckers, of Canada's cross-border truckers are already vaccinated. So this is probably a pretty small proportion that ultimately is upset about these rules.

But listen, you want to get out there, you want to organize, you want to have a peaceful protest and make your views heard, like go to it. That is what democracy is supposed to be all about. I also saw some of Trudeau's comments, like very dismissive and contemptful as well, which I, you know, I just I think that's a bad look. I don't think it's appropriate. And to be dismissive of people's concerns, You don't have to agree with, again, I think there are, from what I saw,

interviews with this group. You've got a lot of people who have, like, you know, anti-science, sort of like anti-vax views. But people can have a right to go out and express themselves against what they're arguing about. Here is effectively just a government policy. They are, it's okay to have opinions that differ from whatever the dominant ethos is ultimately here.

And I think it shows a lack of confidence in your own viewpoints when rather than engage with someone who has a different viewpoint and wants a different policy, when you just feel like you've got to smear, demonize, dismiss, censor, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, to see that sort of infected the Canadian public in a similar way to what we've experienced here is not great. Yeah. Our greatest and worst export apparent or our worst export to the world. When I say greatest, I mean, biggest one is apparently our idiotic woke politics. This is whenever I travel abroad, this people are like, why are you sending this madness here? To give you an example, this was a cartoon, political cartoon. Put this up there. Fascism!

Yeah, it's very fascist in order to protest restrictions. These things don't even make any sense. They're completely idiotic. Of course, when I read the NPR report on this, in the protesters, one truck carried a Confederate flag. Many carried expletive-laden signs. So they're going to pick one truck out of all the trucks in order to say that this was what it was really about. Okay, first, there's no even real, yeah, you want to talk about real separatism in Canada? It actually exists. They're called the Quebecois, but you know,

they are idiotic. People are unable to understand other countries, even when we literally share a border with them. So, look, the media treatment on these people is repulsive. As you said, I do not support the complete anti-vax views. But for the broader support, this is garnered in the United States and even within Canada, which has a very high vaccination rate. Most of them are against the restrictions. I am not going to Canada anytime soon because from the restrictions as I can tell, it sounds like complete madness. It's like being, you know, it's far more stringent than anything in New York or even in a New York or a Washington DC. I don't really like to get into like criticizing other countries' policies and what their populations have decided on democratic

basis that they want to implement and that they think makes sense for them. I just, I'm not an expert on it. I don't want to go into that direction. But in terms of just saying, hey, it's okay for people to protest and have a different opinion on whatever that policy is, that seems like a really easy position to ultimately take. Yeah, that's well said. And, you know, if we were the neocons, we'd be like, we need to go in there. You know, imagine, let's go, we need to spread democracy to Canada. Look, feel bad for them, but you know, that's the Canadians' problem. Let's move on to NBC speaking of neocons.

This is something I'll never let it go. The people who propagandized and lied us into the war in Iraq are the biggest criminals morally of our generation. They should be shunned. They should be made unemployned. They should be made unemployable. If you want to talk about cancel culture, these are the people who should be canceled. And instead, they have failed upwards to the tune of millions and millions of dollars.

So you will remember Stephen Hayes. I've talked a lot about him on the show. He wrote a famous book called The Connection between Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, which helped lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq and the manipulation of the American public. He recently resigned from Fox News as a commentator, not for any real reason because he or in my view, because of protesting Tucker Carlson's January 6th documentary. He said it was ridiculous in order to insinuate that government agents were somehow involved in January 6th. I love that this is very drawn out. Yeah, no, right, right. Pay close attention to where the line gets actually drawn. What is the actual objection here?

Something that has basically been proven to be true. We're not endorsing the view that it is a false flag whatsoever. But, look, it's a matter of public record that government informants were involved in. There's a lot of other stuff that continues to come out here. Well, after his resignation from Fox, he's found a new home. Let's put this up there on the screen. What do we find? The dispatch's Stephen Hayes joins NBC News as contributor and political analyst. He will appear regularly across all NBC programming, the Today Show, Meet the Press, and NBC News, and contribute to the network's special political

and election coverage. Thank you so much for the treat, NBC News, of being able to hear a discredited, wrong, and foolish man who is going to now enlighten millions of liberals. Who he has been completely rehabilitated to because he opposed Trump and basically endorsed many of the views of Russiagate. And let's put this up there. They left out that little key part of Stephen Hayes' bio, The Connection. I can't describe to you how completely insane this book was at the time and how instrumental it was in helping sell the American public on war in Iraq. And actually, God bless Glenn Greenwald because he dug through the archives and he found the clip. Take a look at how the media was treating this man at the time

and the claims that he made in 2002. Well, Stephen Hayes has a new book out called The Connection. And Mr. Hayes from the New York Times yesterday, they have a quote from the staff report that is scheduled to be coming out from the Independent Commission on 9-11, sometime during the next couple of weeks. The staff report found that there was no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaeda cooperated on tax against the United States and that repeated contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Can what the staff says and what you say in your book both be right? No, I don't think so. I think the staff, I mean, that was, I think that mirrors the language that was in the first staff statement, 15, that was released a couple weeks

ago. And I guess it's a question to harken back to a previous administration of what the meaning of collaborative is. George Sennett has said repeatedly that the Iraqis provided training, funding, arms, safe haven for al-Qaeda. I would say that that's collaborative. If there was, in fact, this training, which I believe there was, I report about in my book, that to me is collaboration. Now, whether they collaborated on attacks, I think is a separate question. Yeah. And I apologize. That was June 2004 that that was published. But he was, and what I was referring to is that Dick Cheney had actually cited him

as the, quote, best source of information about Saddam's al-Qaeda connection. So I want to be clear here, that book, you know, was instrumental in helping convince the American public that the ongoing war in Iraq was vital. His previous work, which had not been in the book, had been published and referred to a lot of this stuff, helped pave the way for that war.

And you just can't look at that and tell me that that person should have anything to say about modern American politics until they get on their knees and apologize to the world for what they helped rot. He was the number one proponent of this idea that there was a direct connect between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda. And I think also, you know, what's come out afterwards is the way that he sources, I mean, he had this like one deep state source who fed him what they wanted the narrative to be.

And he dutifully engaged in stenography and put out there exactly what the deep state wanted out there in the public media sphere. It was very successful at that. So that's one thing. I actually went and looked up some of his quotes about when he was arguing in favor of the Iraq war. He said, I think liberating Iraq will send a strong message to Iran, North Korea, and other hostile regimes, not only because it will show that we will, the United States will not tolerate bullies, especially bullies with weapons of mass destruction, but it will also, I think, hopefully show what a free, liberated people, what a free, liberated Iraqi people can do for themselves. And it will, again, be a fabulous model not only for the Middle East,

but for places throughout the world that haven't had these kinds of freedoms in the past. It's a model, all right. Or haven't had them realize. Yeah, that was quite a fabulous model there, Stephen Hayes. He said there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to plot against Americans. And I didn't realize, but in doing research for the segment came to find out, not only did he write that book, The Connection, he also wrote a like hagiographic biography on Dick Cheney. Yes. And another one on

Paul Wolfowitz titled The Brain, Paul Wolfowitz and the Making of the Bush Doctrine. So, you know, we're about to talk about Rogan. Rogan is, you know, he's like basically Hitler at this point in these people's mind. And someone like this is getting a, you know, who, who cost thousands and thousands of lives, helped to propagate these lies on the American people, has never apologized, has never like really been rehabilitated, has continued to go along with some of the worst excesses of media lying and propaganda, this person gets elevated. They're allowed in polite society.

They're given a sweet, new, prominent gig on NBC across all of their platforms. It's just absolutely absurd and disgusting. No, I know. You know, I saw Paul Wolfowitz on the street one time, and I remember looking. I mean, most people wouldn't recognize him. And I was just like, you son of, you know, I was just filled with rage. It was actually around the time that an ISIS attack had happened. And I was like, this is your fault. You know, I remember thinking that and looking at

him and just wanting to do something, you know, maybe I just didn't have the courage and actually to go and say something I probably should have. And, you know, you think about these people, COVID and misinformation, et cetera. I want, and we're going to talk about this with Rogan. We're about to get to that. I want a label placed on every single one of his appearances. This man lied about the war in Iraq, but you know what? They'd have to put that up during the whole goddamn broadcast of almost everybody of these people in the media. I mean, this person lied about Russiagate. This person lied about the Wuhan lab leak. This person lied about...

This person's being funded by Raytheon. This person's being funded by... I mean, this is the problem. You want to start putting labels on things? Let's put labels on things. Let's put labels upon people who are real liars. You know, this is a good segue. I'm hopped up.

You know, Rogan, he went ahead and responded yesterday to the late last night. He put out a 10-minute long video. I encourage everybody to go and watch it. His thoughts on the current controversy with Spotify. Let's hear it from the man himself. The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today, is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact. Like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID, you would be removed from social media.

They would ban you from certain platforms. Now that's accepted as fact. If you said, I don't think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media. Now that's openly and repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said, I think it's possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you'd be banned from many social media platforms. Now that's on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories that at one point in time were banned were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast that have been accused of dangerous misinformation. I do not know if they're right. I don't know because I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. I'm just a person

who sits down and talks to people and has conversations with them. Do I get things wrong? Absolutely. I get things wrong, but I try to correct them. Whenever I get something wrong, I try to correct it because I'm interested in telling the truth. I'm interested in findingpta on, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who I respect very much, and I really enjoyed our conversation together. He has a different opinion than those men do. I had Dr. Michael Osterholm on at the very beginning of the pandemic. He is on President Biden's COVID-19 advisory board. I had Dr. Peter Hotez on, who is a vaccine expert. I'm interested in finding out what is correct and also finding out how people come to these conclusions and what the facts are. You know, and Crystal, he actually goes on to say, he said, look, you want to label

it? Fine. In terms of Spotify's decision, I'll go into some of that more in my monologue. At the end, though, I mean, this is the most gracious response. He goes, you know what? Thank you, even to my haters. You keep me sharp. I mean, look, he acknowledges in there, he says, I'm going to be having on people with differing opinions. He said, look, if anything, a mistake I made was when I have a controversial podcast, I have to have a guest with differing views right after that. He's like, but I schedule it myself, so I let it get out of hand. Again, it shows you that it's an utterly unique product. It's just so repulsive to me to watch this ongoing campaign, of which there is a lot more going on behind the scenes, which I will

detail, but of which is so, it's a singled out, as we just talked about when it came to NBC. You have liars and propagandists in the media who get away with 10 times murder and more of what anything Rogan could even be accused of doing, let alone actually be responsible of. They fail upwards. They have no labels that are placed upon them. Why don't NBC's advertisers boycott them

for hiring somebody who is an Iraq War propagandist? The selective outrage and the selective pressure is done for one purpose. They want to demonize not only Rogan, but anybody who listens to Rogan, anybody who associates with Rogan, anybody who would defend Rogan and make him politically toxic and unpalatable

and to demonize the people who listen to him, who support him and more, and make him untouchable because they're afraid of the power that he has accumulated in our society. That's the one. And they need a scapegoat for their own failures. Yes. And so it's very easy. I mean, this caricature they've painted of Rogan is so ridiculous to me.

It's also annoying. They make it like he's like Kim Jong-un or like every podcast is just like lying about vaccines one after another. Listen, we talked about the Malone podcast, Dr. Malone podcast in particular. I had a lot of issues with it. That guy's just wrong. He cherry picks the data. He is actually totally wrong on some of the things that he said.

I didn't even listen to the other guy. What's his name? Peter McCullough. I listened to both. I can't really speak to the other guy. What's his name? Peter McCullough. I can't really speak as much to that one. And I will say, you know, in terms of Rogan's response, one of the things he led with is like, here's their credentials, their doctor, this one has these patents, they're most published or cited. He's, you know, involved with the development of the

mRNA vaccine. That stuff to me doesn't have as much weight ultimately like to me the credentials aren't enough and personally i would not choose to interview those individuals because they are much more deeply steeped in this sort of like medical and scientific jargon and i know i would get snowed because i just this isn't i don't spend all day long thinking about covid and medicine and epidemiology. And so if you have someone who is very sort of advanced and has all of the scientific jargon, it's very easy for them to sort of, you know, to put out these talking points of this study and that study and the other study that you haven't looked into deeply. And it's very hard to fact check in real time. All of that being said, the caricature that is created of Rogan that he

speaks to as well is so ridiculous. Like he has on people all across the spectrum, including people as he points to Sanjay Gupta and others who have very traditional and represented in mainstream media views on vaccination and on coronavirus. And ultimately the idea that Joe Rogan is like the biggest problem in society and the thing that Joe Rogan is like the biggest problem in society and the thing that you're going to like go to the wall to protest over. To me, it's just beyond silly and absurd. I thought this was a very classy response from Rogan.

It showed why people really do trust and appreciate him because you can see he is reflecting on it himself and not just trying to like hardline, like they're ridiculous. He's thinking about how could I have handled this better? He's like,

hey, I can book this. What could I do different? You know? And actually like expressing gratitude for the criticism which is way more than,

you know, personally I'm like too fragile to be able to do that. You know, look, I've said this before. Vinay Prasad came on the show.

We did a half hour long segment with him. before. Vinay Prasad came on the show. We did a half hour long segment with him. Dr. Vinay Prasad specifically broke down some of the most problematic claims in the Malone interview and in the McCullough interview as well. It was 3,000 words. It was here's claim, here's the fact check, all of that. And even though it was critical of Joe's own podcast, I sent him that article, and he tweeted it out almost immediately and expressed interest. He read it. I mean, this, what more could you ask for?

Have you ever seen Brian Stelter or Jake Tapper or any of these other people even acknowledge any of the criticism of the outright lies that they have told? Not, you know, I only did CNN there. Okay, let's include many of the people on Fox News, many of the people on MSNBC. They would never do this. And, you know, I only did CNN there. Okay, let's include many of the people on Fox News, many of the people on MSNBC. They would never do this.

And, you know, there was a segment over the weekend that CNN did. We'll cover it tomorrow, but I'll mention it here. Where they said, people are fundamentally angry about not being able to stop Rogan's audience from wanting news that is bad for them. We are all haunted by the specter of this guy who is listening to Joe Rogan and internalizing this bad information. So they think that it's bad information on Joe Rogan, but that you can get good information on CNN. You ask me who has lied more, who is 10 times more destructive, 100, 100,000. I barely have the exponents to describe who has been more destructive to American society, Who never admits error. Who never does any self-reflection or contemplation.

It is the mainstream media 100%. They are absolute enemies whenever it comes to this. I'm willing to use this rhetoric at this point because watching this happen to somebody who I deeply respect and who has, look, elevated us on a personal level. But even if I had never been on the Joe Rogan experience or any of that, I've been a fan of his for several years. The way that they have painted him in the press is outrageous. And it's become a meme now. None of these people actually listen. Do you think every guest is a COVID guest? It's usually them getting high and like with comedians and talking bunch of bullshit, which is great. That's originally what made it popular. In my opinion, the most controversial things

and subjects that he touches are when we question archeological science like Graham Hancock and the Younger Dryas Earth Impact Theories and whether the Sphinx is 10,000 years old or whether Christianity is actually the subject of like psychedelically tainted milk. These are way more controversial in my, by the way, these are the episodes I live for, you know,

those are my favorite ones or David Cho or, I mean, Anthony Bourdain. Those are the best interviews that he's ever done. The CrossFit stuff, you know, carnivore diet, vegan diet, debates, whatever. That's what the Joe Rogan experience really is. You would never know that if you didn't actually listen. You can tell I'm, you know, for those of you who listen as much as I do, this is what you really get from it. So to watch this campaign and the selective outrage and the way that they're trying to weaponize him or weaponize popular culture against him is really disgusting. And I also recognize, too, that it's not about Dr. Malone. It's not about Dr. Peter McCullough. It's about power. This CNN segment is everything. They And I also recognize, too, that it's not about Dr. Malone. It's not about Dr. Peter McCullough. It's about power. This CNN segment is everything.

They want the good information, their information, to be the only information that people get. Yeah, I mean, his audience is so much bigger than theirs. And it's so much more influential, too, because, you know, CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, I mean, they benefit from these sort of, like, legacy systems.

It's on in the background. Like, people are sort of half tuned into it. They don't care about any of the individual personalities. I mean, we saw it when we were

when we were talking about our book. You could tell when you went on, I mean, any cable news segment that we did, nobody bought the book from that.

They don't care. Because people aren't, they don't care what these personalities have to say. They don't trust them. There was a New York Times reporter who put out a tweet that was basically like, you know, Rogan is what he is.

Maybe those of us in the media ought to ask why people trust him more than they trust us. Right. And people melted down. He got wrecked. Because you can't say that. You can't say like, hey, maybe we should do some self-reflection about why this guy is so popular and trusted and like the numbers in terms of trust in mainstream media just keep falling and falling and falling.

Oh, no. Can't say that. Can't possibly have that conversation. I don't know. I had to laugh this morning. I got a text from a friend of mine who is at home in Brazil visiting her family. And she was like, what's going on with Rogan? I heard on three different brazilian radio

stations that something is happening like you know with all of the problems in the world brazil especially by the way conflict in ukraine and you know climate crisis and all like democracy falling apart all of these issues in the world and you're gonna think the biggest problem where you're gonna like stage your protest is over joe rogan and oh by the way and i know you're gonna think the biggest problem where you're gonna like stage your protest is over joe rogan and oh by the way and i know you're gonna talk about this in your monologue but for the non-premium subscribers like the idea for neil young that you're gonna take your music down off of spotify you're gonna push people towards amazon yeah yeah like amazon is some beacon for light and goodness in the world i mean rogan could never hope to do as much damage

as Amazon has done with their- Spotify is evil. So I'm going to go to the most evil corporation in the United States. Evil company on the planet that has ever existed practically. I mean, just crushing labor and the labor market and unions and firing people and surveilling them and getting sanctioned by the NLRB

and just totally destroying small-town America economies. Yeah, that's the place where you should push progressive dollars towards Amazon. That's going to be really good for the world. Very well said, Crystal. It just shows you how empty these people are. We'll continue to stand up for them, and we will continue to keep you guys updated. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, today I've got a story for you about

billionaires, workers, and a rigged system. A story of how every crisis is weaponized to further the exploitation of the working class. So here is what you need to know. We've all seen at this point how decades of globalization, monopoly consolidation, and just-in-time production in the service of corporate greed all combined to leave our nation very vulnerable to supply shocks. When the pandemic hit and global shipping routes were thrown off course and millions of people were sickened, this vulnerability left us with huge price increases, shortages, and bare shelves, or what is called in the antiseptic terms of the world of economics, a supply chain crisis. Immediately, neoliberal ghouls and billionaire

enablers jumped in to lie to us and try to convince us that the real reasons for this crisis weren't corporate greed, oh no no, and weren't late-stage capitalism. The real problem was that working people got a tiny bit of relief in the pandemic. The real problem, as always, was those lazy workers. Politicians moved to starve workers out, cutting off pandemic-era benefits to force a choice on those workers. You either go back to dehumanizing low-wage employment or you starve. They tried to sell us on the idea that the supply chain crisis was caused by a lack of truckers without telling you that deregulation of the trucking industry under Reagan broke the unions

that had helped make trucking a middle-class job. Today, port truck drivers in particular can face conditions of modern-day indentured servitude. I'm really not exaggerating. So yeah, who would want to work in that industry? He also tried to sell us on the idea that the supply chain crisis was caused in general by a labor shortage. In reality, plenty of workers will show up for your jobs when they come with dignified conditions and a living wage. So that's the big picture. That's the backdrop against which railway workers in particular decided they had had enough. Already, because of the supply chain crunch, the folks who literally keep the trains running were being worked to the bone. Already, these workers are expected to be on call 24-7, 365 days per year. Their one respite was that they were guaranteed seven days off per month.

But their employer decided that wasn't enough. BNSF Railway, one of the country's largest freight companies, announced they were going to institute a new attendance policy. Now, the details here are a little bit complex, but the long and short of it is that instead of seven guaranteed days off per month, these workers would only have two. Two days off per month. The company, of course, says they have to move to the new draconian and inhumane policy because of a labor shortage. What they don't tell you is that these workers have not even had a cost of living raise in two years. Maybe try paying people decently and then tell me whether you're able to find enough folks to move the goods. And oh, by the way, BNSF is owned by billionaire Warren Buffett, who has turned a wonderful investment, wonderful profit on this investment.

In fact, with shipping costs jumping and demand increasing, BNSF has been notching record-breaking profits in recent quarters. So the company's performing better than ever, but the workers who made that record-breaking performance possible are getting screwed. Surveying this landscape, 17,000 of BNSF's union workers said, hell no, we're not putting up with this crap, and nearly unanimously voted in favor of going on strike. In theory, they should have had tons of leverage here. Strikes are all about making a company feel pain. These corporations will only ever act in their own profit-making interest, so you gotta hit them where it hurts, the bottom line. BNSF operates 30,000 miles of train tracks and ships everything from steel and oil to corn and soybeans across 28 different states.

Even a temporary work stoppage would be a devastating result for them. There was a huge catch. The railroads are governed by their own special law. It's called the Railway Labor Act. It's a 1926 law that leaves it to a judge to decide under what circumstances railway workers are allowed to strike. A judge gets to decide whether the worker's cause is worthy or not. So looking at the exploitative practices, the lack of a raise, the record-breaking profits, guess whose side our wonderful neutral court system came down on? Naturally, they decided to side with the company and screw the workers. A federal court in Texas

just issued a temporary injunction against striking, arguing that the harm to the company of a strike would be far greater than the harm to the workers of not going on strike. I like the way they explicitly weigh corporate profits more heavily than workers' lives. But what's more, they point to the corporate-caused supply chain crisis as a reason to kill the strike. Here is that quote. The record further establishes that a strike would exacerbate our current supply chain crisis, harming the public at large, not just BNSF. A temporary restraining order will thus serve rather than disserve the public interest. And there it is. Corporate greed created a supply chain crisis.

Corporate greed led BNSF to underpay their workers, causing their own internal labor shortage. Rather than solving that self-created crisis by lifting pay, corporate greed led BNSF to shift that entire burden onto their existing workers. And then, the federal judge comes in to point to the supply chain crisis caused by corporate greed in the beginning in order to cut off the one source of power that those workers have to fight back. What a system, folks. And somehow, all of this is considered to be in the public interest, because your only value and the only part of you that anyone considers is your worth as a consumer. Now, this injunction is just temporary.

The union still has legal avenues to pursue, but frankly, it's not looking too good. It seems unlikely the next court challenge will go any different next time around. And I don't know about the workers, but the union leadership is adamantly opposed to engaging in a wildcat strike or slowdown or other action in contravention of the law. To sum up, this little story in a nutshell is how you end up with 40 years of wage stagnation as corporate profits skyrocketed. This rigging is how you end up with near historic numbers of people supporting unions and wanting to unionize, yet union membership continues to fall year after year after year. Sure, Starbucks workers are winning unions. Will

they actually be able to negotiate a contract? Sure. Bessemer Amazon workers get another shot at a union election. But will they be any more likely to prevail when Amazon can still threaten and fire them? Sure. These railway workers are unionized and can collectively bargain, but they can't actually use their power in order to get themselves decent terms. So this is how you end up with the illusion of democracy and the reality of corporations blocking the exits at every single turn. And the people with the least power get blamed for the bad results. Rahm Emanuel once famously said, never let a serious crisis go to waste. And so the supply chain crisis becomes one more excuse to stick it to the working class. And this saga, it reminded me of...

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, everyone, as I sadly predicted, the Neil Young effort to cancel Joe Rogan has spiraled. Several other artists and podcasters have come out saying they're pulling their product, and the pressure is already beginning to ramp up. Spotify stood tall to Neil Young.

Can it do so if this thing really snowballs? I have no answer to that question. But something I immediately was suspicious of when it came to Neil Young was this. How much of this is actually Neil Young? How much of this is big money interest behind the scenes? The thing is, I've seen a lot of high profile cancellation efforts in my time, and in almost every single case there's a lot more going on behind the scenes. The people speaking out may be doing so organically, but it also happens to just coincide with the financial

or oligarchic interests of some very, very rich people. Like when these fake groups are funded to point out Fox News misinformation, and then the people who happen to publish it always work over at CNN. You guys get the idea. There is more than meets the eye. So let's start with Neil Young, where this entire thing began. The original impetus for Neil Young's demand was a letter that he posted on social media saying that Spotify can either have Neil Young or they can have Joe Rogan. But as I noted in our original segment, that letter was posted and then almost immediately deleted, which is really odd. It raises questions.

Who is demanding this? Is it Neil Young? Or is it the people who own his music? You see, a recent trend in the music business is that iconic artists such as Neil Young sell their catalogs to big money groups who then reap the profits in perpetuity. Young actually sold his catalog in January of 2021 to a company called Hypnosis. Now, Hypnosis is a $1 billion company which recently announced an ownership agreement with Blackstone. Well, Blackstone, I know a lot about that company.

You may recall their efforts that I've put here on the show to turn America into a nation of renters and take over single-family housing, as I've covered on many monologues. But they have interests everywhere. See, my interest here is perked. Blackstone, BlackRock, and these big private equity giants are ruthless in their pursuit of profit, and they are savvy political players who know how to play the game.

They have all sorts of ties to the pharmaceutical industry, including, as I just showed you, announcing the CEO of Pfizer, joining them as a senior advisor. Did any of this play a role? Who knows? But do you really think it's a coincidence that days after Neil Young's music was pulled off Spotify, that he debuts a four-month free trial for any person who wants to sign up for Amazon Music? Amazon Music, who has struggled to gain market share and, of course, has longstanding connections with all of the big money people in the game that I just talked about. Young claims he's not personally getting any money from the deal. Okay, is Blackstone? Is

his catalog? What about the other company? Those are great questions. I'm sure our amazing media is going to probe that tomorrow. Part of why all of digging into this money matters is that the music landscape has changed dramatically. New streaming music data actually is broken down by Ted Gioa. It shows old songs now represent 70% of the entire US market. And the new music market actually is shrinking. In fact, in 2020, the 200 most popular tracks on streaming now account for less than 5% of all streams. In other words, most people are just listening to the same stuff. This is why, with Neil Young, there has been a mad dash in recent years to acquire the catalogs of old established players like him by big money.

In the last few years, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Calvin Harris, Shakira, Barry Manilow, others, they all sold their catalogs to private equity giants. In 2020 alone, $4.67 billion of music catalogs changed hands globally, with almost every single major hedge fund in the world getting in on the action. The point of all of this is to open your eyes to see possibilities that you may not have imagined. At first, it was simple. Just Neil Young taking a stand, right? Well, maybe. But now, a lot of people with big money and a big agenda who just so happen would profit if Rogan went down,

like Amazon or Pfizer or Blackstone or others who consider him a thorn in their side. The problem now is that even if this was astroturfed in the beginning, it is on for real. Joni Mitchell now has come out. She said that she's not going to stand, so she's going to stand in solidarity with Neil Young. Then she says delete or cancel Spotify. Others, that trended on Twitter for nearly the entire weekend. Perhaps the biggest blow, though, to Spotify, at least on the podcasting side that's

come so far, is Brene Brown of the former TED Talk fame. Put that up there on the screen. Brown is announcing she's going to, quote, not be releasing any podcasts until further notice. And as someone was quick to point out, it's ironic, given her podcast description, says she wants conversations that are, quote, teaching me, challenging me, confusing me, maybe even ticking me off a little bit.

Well, I guess not too much challenge in there, huh, Brene? I expect it to get worse. An hour after I originally finished writing this monologue, Spotify exclusives Harry and Megan came out to say they've expressed concerns to Spotify, of which they have a deal with. And then Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, he put out a statement saying, quote, we've heard the criticism. We are implementing chances to help combat misinformation. The statement detailed how Spotify will now add a content advisory to any podcast episode, which includes discussion about COVID and will direct people to a resource that has up-to-date information. They said they will also, quote, test ways to highlight our platform rules and our creator and public tools

to raise awareness around what's acceptable and helps creators understand their own accountability. Yeah, okay. I've seen this movie before. You give in to the mob and you give them an inch, they will keep coming. Will Spotify really be able to withstand this pressure? Who knows? Principle's not going to save you in these instances. I wish it would, but I'm not naive. Only money will. In the beginning, it was actually simple. Rogan has far exceeded Spotify's own expectations in getting actual people to come over to the app and his increased overall podcast listenership. It's why he got paid what he got paid. And Neil Young simply didn't stack up to that economic value. But you add up enough people, it becomes a much, much, much

tougher decision. Spotify knows that. So do the hedge funds, with all kinds of conflicts of interest. And just like with the rest of the U.S. economy, they're the ones that really run the show. So hold on to your seats and you really hope that Joe prevails in this one. He is up against more powerful interests than many people even realize here. I mean, isn't it fascinating, Crystal, to see that, you know, we... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. I understand your analysis and I understand its logic, but I think you're missing a critical piece. Okay. You know who's behind this?

I'm talking about the whole Rogan, Neil Young thing. Joe Rogan. If Joe Rogan gets canceled, he collects on the Spotify contract. He's able to launch an independent media company, which is much bigger than what he is on Spotify. In other words, the person who benefits the most from being attacked on Spotify is Joe Rogan. That's a good point. Because he can collect the payout. Remember, being on Spotify, if anything, makes his audience smaller.

The best thing that could happen to Joe Rogan would be to get canceled by Spotify. Well, that's true. Because then he would launch an independent media like Breaking Points. He would have a bigger audience than he has on Spotify. And he would collect the Spotify payout. I think Neil Young is the seed capital behind Joe Rogan independent media. You know, Dylan, you're starting to make some real sense here. You cracked the conspiracy of Joe Rogan, the puppet master of all of this. Well, it's a great point, too, because it just shows you their efforts to cancel him and whatever.

I mean, it's going to do the opposite. It's only making people talk more about Joe Rogan, putting him more in the public eye, and probably benefiting him and Spotify most of all, even though I know on a personal level he does not enjoy any of this whatsoever. It's not good for him. Dylan, let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen. I wanted to get you on to talk about a whole range of things, but let's start with what's going on with the markets, which have been kind of all over the place. We've got this headline that just came out end of last week. Weaker U.S. consumer spending, rising inflation pose a dilemma for the Fed. We've been talking here, and of course, the Fed has been signaling very strongly. They're going to hike interest rates. They're going to try to wind down quantitative easing. So just give us the

Dylan Rattigan perspective of what's going on in the economy and the markets right now. Sure. Well, again, first, some context. It's January 31st. This will be the end of the worst month overall for the S&P 500, for the big index, since March of 2020. So the last time we had a big, consistent, month-long sell-off was the month that the pandemic started, politically anyway. Biologically, it was happening months before, but politically, it went into effect in this country in March of 2020. We've just completed the worst month in the U.S. stock market since that month. That's pretty amazing because there have been a lot of negative events in this country, not to mention all the lockdowns, April, May, June, you know, all the variants that

have come. So I'm actually surprised that the markets have performed as well as they have between March of 2020 and January of 2022. That's the first thing. Why have they performed so well? We all know trillions from the U.S. government supporting generally very large businesses along with some, and in my opinion, not enough, particularly for small business owners and for independent entrepreneurs, but certainly plenty of direct assistance to certain parts of the economy. So it's not a surprise to see the market come back down, one, as a result of the increase in stock prices between the lows in March and April of last year, or two years ago now, and this month, one.

So valuation eased, give back. You mentioned, Crystal, the interest rate hikes, which will be happening this year. So the market likes to price in the future, not the past. And so you're seeing repricing across the board in anticipation of an overall higher cost for anybody to borrow money. So higher interest rates, the run in valuations, and then the never ending sort of saber rattling and idiocy in the geopolitical theater. You put those three things together, a down month where, you know, I know some of the super names like, you know, whether it's, you know, Robinhood is down 90 percent or 80 percent. Some of these sort of meme or meme related stocks have been annihilated. But the overall indexes are, you know, 10% plus minus in terms of the decline.

I think when you get the complacency of a market that seems to only go up, and then you get any indication that maybe the market might also go down a little bit, it is emotionally more alarming for people than it really should be. So anyway, that's the context. You do have inflation. We can talk about it. We do have rising rates. We can talk about it. Companies' earnings honestly are coming out ahead of expectations. Four out of five companies are beating expectations right now. Granted, they manipulate the expectation to accomplish that, but all the same, they are exceeding expectations. So on the earnings side, market's fine. On the rates side, the market's adjusting to reality. On the valuation side, this has been a long time coming. So this is the question I have here, Dylan, about the eventual possibility of a crash. I saw news

over the weekend that Goldman Sachs yesterday saying, we have been averaging $1 trillion worth of puts per day against the market. It's the largest on record. First, if you could explain for the audience what exactly that means. But, I mean, that seems very concerning to me that there's a lot of money to be made if the market does crash. Well, again, remember, a put is simply a bet that the market is going to go lower. However, when they say there's a trillion dollars worth of puts, those puts are not necessarily new positions that people are buying, betting the market will go lower. Many of those positions are hedge positions that were in place before the market sold off that had to be adjusted because they became losing positions. So the issue with a headline like that, Sager, is one, the overall market is much bigger and there's more money than ever. So a trillion dollars sounds like a lot of money, but a trillion dollars

today in the global financial market is not the same thing as a trillion dollars in 1975 or 85 or 95 or even 05 or 15. So the number's not as big as you might think. And that number is much more a natural reflection of repricing, losing positions because of the sell-off. In other words, at first you're like, a trillion dollars worth of puts, that means people will just bet a trillion dollars that the stock market's gonna go lower.

Right. Right, which sounds terrible. But that's not what Goldman Sachs is saying. They're saying the value of the puts traded is a trillion dollars. But they're not saying that the reason those puts are trading is as a directional bet on lower prices for the stock market. It's a refunction of the overall volatility because we've had these plus and minus two, three, four percent days that creates lots of people that get inside out. Like, you know, if you're you end up down, if you're leveraged and something goes down four percent in the morning, you may have to recalibrate everything that you do only to see the stock market come back in the afternoon. And everything you just did in the morning is now pointless, but it's still you recorded all that volume. And so I would say that those numbers

are much more a reflection of the overall velocity and volume and activity in the market and less an indication of an explicitly negative sentiment. Got it. Good. Do you think that we have asset bubbles that if popped could create a very dangerous situations for the economy? Well, the only thing to be very clear, the only thing that creates real danger for the economy, whether it's an asset bubble or whatever it is, is if there's extreme leverage. So if there are a hundred dollars at risk for every real dollar that exists which is what happened in 2008 and 2009 and then that one dollar goes down by 50 so you now go from one dollar to 50 cents on the real dollar which then means that you go from a hundred dollars to fifty dollars

you're down fifty dollars and now you have to pay $50 with 50 cents, which is what happened. I don't know if that makes sense to you guys, but that's what happened in 2008 and 2009. That's a disaster. If you believe the reporting from the Federal Reserve and the central banks, if you believe the capital requirements, if you believe the standards that are in place post-2009 to restrict leverage, right, so the question is not what is the asset price? The question is how much money has been borrowed against the underlying asset price. Got it. price. So if I have $100 worth of Robinhood stock and I borrow $1,000 using my $100 of Robinhood stock as collateral, and then Robinhood stock goes down to 10 or 12 or wherever it is right now,

that $1,000 that I borrowed is a huge problem because I only have ten dollars. That's the annihilation, right? That's too big to fail. But if I have the hundred dollar position in Robinhood and my leverage is one to one or one and a half and my leverage is lower, the damage to the overall economy is much less. And so the honest answer is I don't really know, and I don't actually think anybody really knows what the aggregate, what the total amount of leverage is in the financial marketplace. And without understanding how much leverage exists, it's very difficult for anybody to understand the potential catastrophic consequences for the economy. Now, with that said, we know that the entire value of all the houses in the United States is used as a basic collateral for the banks to lend trillions of dollars. We know that the equity, this equity value of stocks and bonds that are held in the financial markets is base collateral for lots of borrowing.

We know when those asset prices, whether it's bond prices, stock prices or housing prices, go down in value quickly and significantly, which they have not done, by the way. I understand there's the horror show. I can point to, you some of these super tech stocks that have been creamed. But the overall asset prices in the equity and bond markets are lower, but they have by no means crashed. But when you get a major down pricing in asset prices, housing, stocks, bonds, where it goes down 10, 20, 30, 40% quick, that should be very alarming and concerning because then it certainly, if there is leverage, it will create a massive problem. So you have to assume, Crystal, the risk is there. But at this point, you're not seeing

explicit evidence of the consequence of that risk in the form of catastrophic removal of credit availability from the banks. When you get an asset bubble collapse and you have a catastrophic issue, the way that plays out is bank lending to individuals, small businesses, medium businesses, and large businesses goes away. And when bank lending goes away, all business stops happening. That's what happened in 2008 and 2009. That's the risk that you're talking about, Crystal, when you ask about the asset bubble. Right now, we're not seeing that yet. Sorry, go ahead, Sam. No, no, no. I'm saying this has been very helpful, Dylan. One other thing, Dylan, while we have you that I wanted to ask you about because you have unique visibility into.

I mentioned in your introduction you got your hands on a whole lot of things. PPE, media mogul, biomedical. One thing I didn't mention is that you're also involved with a company that helps book travel around the world, which kind of gives you unique visibility into how people are feeling about coronavirus right now. Are they panicked? Are they traveling? Are they not traveling? Are they staying home? What are they doing? And so from your vantage point there, how does the behavior of people match up with some of the headlines that we see from the media? Yeah, I mean, it's super interesting. And again, just for context, the company's called Hotel Planner. I'm on the board of directors.

I've been involved with the company since 2013. The company's actually going public in February on the NASDAQ. And so there's been a lot of action. Imagine trying to go public with a travel narrative on the virus and the pandemic. And then you have what actual human beings actually do when they do or do not book travel. And obviously, for sure, March 2020, April 2020, May 2020, June 2020. Talk about catastrophic. You're talking about vacancy, you know, hotels with zero rooms booked. Not 10%, zero, okay?

And you're talking about 90% cancellation rates. The interesting thing coming through early, going a year later now, spring of 2021, Delta variant. There was a downtick, but not nearly the downtick that you might have thought, because Delta was obviously the first big, oh my God, this is never going to end. And then with Omicron, the gap has never been wider between the narrative on the virus and the behavior. In other words, people are traveling, people are moving, people are, you know, maybe for, again, I don't know what the health consequences of this are or may be. Or the hospital capacity constraints, which I think is the primary concern that people have with all this. But I do find it interesting that the longer this goes on, that the bigger the gap between travel behavior, which continues to be consistent, and it's the reason Hotel Planner can go public, right? If people say, well, hang on, what's going on? I thought there's a pandemic.

And then they talk to investors and they say well look at the numbers you know where revenues are at a record okay and so there's a huge gap right now between behavior and um narrative i guess when it comes to the pandemic i would say the biggest of the pandemic you know and i think a lot of us socially understand you look around and see that people you know i there was some comedian that was saying you know anyway that people are people are not staying home yeah gotcha right makes sense dylan it's always wonderful to have your insights thank you thank you dylan you'll come back and join us again thanks for the wisdom i love that all right thanks guys our pleasure take care bye bye Thank you guys so much for watching.

We really appreciate it. We appreciate your support, you know, every day. You know, this Rogan thing is always a reminder. They can turn on you at any time. I talked about Dan Bongino. Look, not the biggest Bongino fan. The guy was literally taken down for questioning the efficacy of cloth masks, which the CDC just did the other day.

And then technically they banned him for some fake reason. What, you're posting on a second channel. This can happen to anybody. We talk about controversial stuff all the time. We also post our stuff on Spotify. Will our stuff be getting misinformation labels? Also, these new things, rules that they've put out, Crystal, different ways that creators double speak, you know, whatever, basically in order to say they're going to develop probably

some sort of strike system the way that YouTube possibly has. We can only rely on you. So thank you for your support. It's what drives both of us every day, both fulfilling the promises that we make to our premium subscribers, but also you are the only people who make this show possible, who make it so we could cover all of the things down there the mainstream media are not telling you and are really gaslighting so many millions of people. So thank you to those who can. And if you can't support us, it really means a lot because it helps our mission.

And I see why we were prescient in a way, why we designed it this way. Yeah. And specifically for this reason. Yeah, and even if you're not blatantly canceled. Right. Like the algorithmic screwing, all of those things. Anytime I talk about school masking, blatantly canceled. Right. Like the algorithmic screwing, all of those things.

Anytime I talk about school masking, it's like... Yeah. So we appreciate you guys. Thank you for making it possible to do this. Thank you for giving us absolutely no fear or concern about what the consequences of covering topics that may be uncomfortable might be

or having on guests that might be uncomfortable. We love you guys. You enable us to do what we do here. Have a wonderful day and we will see you right back here tomorrow. See you tomorrow. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy. But to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars?

Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.