Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/10/22: Congressional Trading Ban, Deep State Grows, GOP In Disarray, Woke Union Busting, Bitcoin Heist, Assange DAO, & More!

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar talk about legislation being proposed to ban insider trading in Congress, an expansion of the federal police state, GOP in disarray, the administration's lack of transparency on Ukraine, differing covid viewpoints within the Democratic party, Joe Rogan's political views, a billion dollar Bitcoin heist, woke union busting, the potential of DAOs & NFTs, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/WSB: https://www.wsbdapp.com/ Assange DAO: https://assangedao.org/ More Perfect Union: https://www.youtube.com/c/moreperfectunion Orf: https://www.youtube.com/user/Orf  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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 Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? A lot of very interesting stories to get into this morning. So, indeed, we do have a great show. I have to make sure I say that. Otherwise, there will be lots of comments. People get mad. People get mad. Okay, so we have some updates on exactly how much power the national security state seems to be grabbing post 1-6.

Some troubling indicators there. A little bit of an update on the whole GOP in disarray situation split between Mitch McConnell and the RNC and, of course, Trump. Some updates coming out of Ukraine, some that are very troubling, some that are actually a little bit hopeful. And we also want to tell you about Bernie Sanders wrote an op-ed about the whole situation that was actually pretty good. So we'll tell you about that. Major shift in blue states with regards to COVID, but the White House lagging behind. And the CDC. What blue state governors are ultimately doing. So there's a big split there. We'll get into that divide and what is driving that. Also excited about the guest we have today. First time on the show, a guy who's a founder of Wall Street Bets. So we're going to talk to him about a range of things, including that huge, like, $53 million that was raised in the Dow to benefit Julian Assange and to purchase an NFT. So we'll tell you about all of that and how that went down.

But we wanted to start—oh, and we have a couple of surprises for you today. Oh, yes. We have a surprise. But we'll get to that. We'll get to that. So a little treat. A little treat for you today to look forward to that isn't in the lineup there. But we wanted to start with some big movement on a story, of course, we've been tracking for months now with the assistance of Unusual Whales. And that is the push to ban members of Congress from trading stock.

One of the biggest obstacles to making any change there is one of the biggest whales herself, Nancy Pelosi. She has been put under enough political pressure now, and we'll break down for you exactly how that happened, that she has actually shifted her position on this. And now it looks possible that a bill will actually move through the House. Let's put this Axios reporting up on the screen. Pelosi buckles, pushes stock trading ban. She said on Wednesday that a bill could be put forward, quote, very soon. And she said she would support legislation that imposes more harsh fines for lawmakers who violate the Stock Act. Of course, that's sort of a little bit meaningless. But the fact that she is willing to move on a bill that would actively ban stock trading, incredibly significant. Let's put the next piece here up on the screen that has her

specific comments. She says, I'm a big believer in our committees. There are certain criteria I wanted to see. We have to tighten the Stock Act. It has to be government-wide. The judiciary has no reporting of stock transactions, and it makes important decisions every day. So the marker she's laying down there, just to make it really clear, she's saying, like, I'm open to this, banning stock trading. We're going to move. But it has to include the judiciary in particular and the Supreme Court, all branches of government, which, fine. I support that. Totally support that.

But it was interesting that she added that to the mix. The one thing I want to flag for everyone is that everything dies in committee. I've seen this story a million times and so have you, Crystal. I support X. That's why I'm going to have my House Ways and Means Committee drafted. And then nine months later, after it's been marked up and all of that, nothing ends up happening. So be extremely wary. This is not an actual fold. This is a rhetorical fold. Rhetorical folds do matter, certainly. And I want to parse her language, too.

We have to tighten the Stock Act. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're asking. We don't care about the Stock Act, which merely requires you to disclose your trades and then pay a measly fine if you don't report it, which many of these people do. Which they're oftentimes in violation of and don't care. We don't want to tighten the Stock Act.

We want to ban stock trading, period. So they're going to try and weasel their little ways out of this one in every rhetorical flourish that they possibly can. That was an immediate red flag to me. That being said, her saying that she's open to the ban itself and kicking it into the committee is important. One other thing I do want to say to your point, the other trick that they'll use, and Schumer has been very effective at this, is when there's something that's really politically popular that they don't actually want to do, but they want to pretend like they want to do, they'll insert something into it that's a non-starter that causes it to die in committee or die on the floor, some sort of a poison pill. So that's the other thing to be on

the lookout for. Yes, exactly. There's all kinds of legislative shenanigans that can happen. And I want to point, too, that we are of the most extreme position on this show, which really isn't even extreme because most of you agree. It's not just lawmakers, it's their spouses too. Family members, all of them, banned them from trading stock. Yes, I know it's a sacrifice. Don't go into public service. I don't know what to tell you. And so at least to their credit, not going to hear this often, but Senator Warren and Senator Steve Daines teaming up. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is actually a bipartisan bill, one of the reasons that we wanted to go ahead and highlight it. To file a stock ban bill, that's part of what you would see. And you actually see that they would ban lawmakers and their spouses from owning and trading individual stocks. This

is the most important thing. Yes. And it goes further because now we have, especially coming out of the Senate, we have a bunch of different proposals at this point. We've talked to you before about the Ossoff proposal, which had previously been the one that sort of went the furthest because it included the family members. But his proposal is you have to put the stocks in a blind trust. There's all kinds of ways around that one too. So that one was better than obviously the status quo and better than the Hawley bill also is a blind trust, but doesn't include some of the family members. So it wasn't even as far reaching. It wasn't even as far reaching as Ossoff's. The Warren Daines bill here, again, bipartisan effort, which is great to see and part

of why there's so much political pressure to move on this thing. This is the furthest reaching one because it would not, it's not saying, okay, you can put it in a blind trust. It's saying you can't have these things at all. There's eight senators who have lined up though behind the Ossoff-Kelly bill. So it's an open question, which one of these things ultimately moves, which is why we're breaking this down for you because it really matters a lot, version you end up getting if we end up getting a version at all, because there are still a lot of obstacles on the path. But all of those caveats aside, I think we have to say, Sagar, I mean, this is an astonishing thing to watch because it actually feels like democracy worked a little bit. You know, it's like this is normally

only like Jeff Bezos gets to feel like lawmakers are responsive to his demands. And so, again, caveats, it's a long way from a done deal. But there's been significant movement from Pelosi, first and foremost, from Schumer. He also initially didn't really want to say anything about it and now has come out in favor of some sort of a ban. You have Republicans on board. You have Democrats on board. You've had enough outside pressure to force them to at least pretend like they're doing something. And now we have an opportunity to hold them to account and actually demand that they follow through on what they're saying here. As always, we have to give huge credit to Unusual Whales, who really kicked off this whole thing, who did the reporting on the public disclosures through the Stock Act, was able to put it together and say,

look at these people are all beating the S&P 500. Look at these people are all beating the Wall Street traders who are supposed to do this for their job. Look at how they made this trade. And then, oh, lo and behold, they had committee business that was relevant to that company. Look at how this all works. That sparked a lot of reporting from mainstream outlets that helped to put pressure on these lawmakers. And then, of course, you all showing that rage, showing the bipartisan desire to have this little modicum of anti-corruption cleanup go through. That has made a difference in pushing this thing ultimately forward. And then on the inside, Ryan Grimm has some new reporting about how AOC actually was involved in helping to force a discharge petition and kind of forced Pelosi's

hand. That forces a bill out of a committee. So she put pressure on behind the scenes, recognizing this public push, and that's what ultimately forced Pelosi to come out and say something. Yeah, that's right. You know, Unusual Wales, once again, credit to him. He actually put out a timeline. It's kind of fascinating to me. It's almost exactly a year ago, Crystal, that you and I first did our report on the Unusual Wales Senate report about people who beat the stock market. So January 2021 is when he first put out his first Senate report. And February 2021 is when we first put out his first Senate report. And February 2021 is when we were the first people to report it. I'm not taking whole credit for this.

Obviously, he's the one who did it. We helped popularize it. It became an internet meme. And then from there, it kind of went off to the races. And obviously, we've been participating in it from the ground up. But let me just highlight that and stick it in again. I know that things seem dire right now. But look, this was a groundswell movement of the internet, born of young people, of people who watch our show, young people who posted it online, the TikTok traders who copied Nancy Pelosi, because they know. They wanted you to disbelieve your eyes that they could beat the stock market. We knew it was corrupt. It was the most glaring thing possible. And when you see the dollar amounts and the figures when they're getting rich and everybody else is not, we just knew it was BS. And so credit to all of you, really. All of us, I guess, for helping

participate in this movement. It's been one of the most heartening things that I've seen in quite a long time. And it is fascinating, too, because we still face a number of people who are willing to say the quiet part out loud. Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama pulled a Crenshaw whenever he was interviewed yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. I'm going to refer to the pulling a Crenshaw from now on. He says, banning stock trades, I quote, I think it's ridiculous. They might as well start sending robots up here. I think it would really cut back on the amount of people that would want to come up here and serve.

Yeah, well, it did. Robots, interesting idea. Yeah, but honestly, at this point, probably better off. Probably better. And look, if it were to prevent Senator Tuberville from serving in the United States Senate, I think that probably would be a net positive, okay? I mean, this is part of what I'm talking about. These people want to have their cake and eat it too.

They want to use inside information, privilege, and status, and all the trappings of power in the United States Senate, and be able to not profit off of their position and hold millions and millions of dollars. Senator Tuberville himself is already a millionaire. He's a wealthy dude. He's a millionaire many times over. He's fine. This is the point. It's never enough for those people. And you know, we live in a free country. Nobody asks you to run for Senate. You can go down in Alabama on some beach mansion and do whatever

you, Gulf Shores, right? That's what it's called. I think so, yeah. They can go hang out in the Gulf and do whatever the hell they want down there. Nobody's stopping you. But you want to be able to trade while you're also in the Senate, and that is the absolute line that cannot be crossed here. And what I always find here is that it's amazing that they're willing to even say the quiet part out loud. So Alabamians, I don't know if that's what they're called, but okay. I think so. Pay attention, Alabamians, and the rest of the country. This is what they think so little of you that they want to be able to get away with it. And don't think for a second that he is not just the one guy willing to say it because there are a lot of people behind the scenes.

I've been making calls from Capitol Hill, from what I understand, the institutional backlash to this. So many of these people know they can't pull a Crenshaw and just say it. Yeah. But they are going to try everything in their power to kill this bill. Yes. And they would be happy to partner with Pelosi on a poison pill or whatever it takes to have this public show of, oh, of course we support this anti-corruption. Yes, we're in favor of it. And then find some way, some excuse. This is the one thing Democrats, it's the only thing basically the Democrats are good at, is finding, coming up

with an excuse for why they can't do the super popular things that people support. But this represents significant movement. And oh, by the way, a little bit relevant to Senator Tuberville's comments here is the fact that he himself has performed exceptionally well. Let's go ahead and put that unusual Wales report up on the screen. Among the top performers listed there, what do you know, Senator Tommy Tuberville. And of course, you can see this is a highly bipartisan list. He's not doing quite as well, though, as his his pal in his ideological pal, Dan Crenshaw. Nor is he performing as well as Nancy Pelosi herself. So he does have a little bit of work to do. But obviously,

this whole being in the Senate thing has been very personally, financially beneficial to him. So you can understand why he would be loathe to see that change. Let me also highlight the comments of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who also is going to be very influential in this fight. He says he considers legislation and, quote, see what may be appropriate. I would just remind you all that the senator and his wife made deep ties to the Chinese Communist senator and his wife made deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party, and his wife, who somehow was allowed to serve as our Commerce and Transportation Secretary's father, is a massive Chinese shipping magnate who's like a multi-millionaire many times over, who she herself has profited off of in terms of royalties on the book.

One of the many glaring hypocrisies of the Trump administration. That's a great point. And, you know, a lot of Republicans don't ever want to talk about that one. You know, Elaine Chao should never have been able to serve in high office. And it's amazing, too, that he's the Senate minority leader and his wife is out there worth $20 million with some crazy, you know, Chinese shipping cash. That's as shady as it gets. Once again, these people are corrupt to their core and they always claim that it has nothing to do with it. Let's find out. Let's find out the truth.

Here's the sad thing. Here's the sad thing is that, you know, Crenshaw made those comments about, like, oh still many ways for these people to get rich off of their office, especially once they finish their quote-unquote public service and then go sell themselves off to the highest bidder, selling out our country, selling out our constituents, all that stuff. So don't worry, guys. There's still plenty of avenues for you to, like, you know, line up like a pig at the trough off of your public service. But again, I don't want to undersell it because even seeing the little glimmers of how this pressure came to be. And I think there are two major factors, maybe three. First, you have, you know, the initial spark, the grassroots outrage. Then you have the mainstream reporting that they start getting asked questions about it at the podium because these regular reporters in D.C., they

weren't going to ask about unusual whales. But once Business Insider and other people started picking it up, then they started getting pressure when they were doing press conferences. And the fact that this was a bipartisan thing made it so the Democrats saw Kevin McCarthy starting to posture about, oh, maybe this is something Republicans will run on for the midterms. That added an additional pressure of like, oh, shit, well, we can't let them, you know, they can't one up us on this thing. And so that also helped to create pressure. I think it's really encouraging to see an effort like this that truly was grassroots by far. So how many things exist in the country that aren't

just like wrecked by culture war and totally tribally divided? This is one of the few that I can see that falls into that lane and you can see how effective it was and how much pressure it has put on people here in Washington. Very true. Crystal, you just did a video for More Perfect Union. Yeah, so More Perfect Union has picked up on this and they did some great research about just breaking down, okay, when you've got two different bills that are kind of similar but have some key differences, what actually determines which one's going to move and pass and which one is going to die in committee? that members of Congress and their stock portfolios and how they stand to benefit or how they stand to be financially hurt by the legislation that they're considering, how that can determine the track and the fate of these bills as they move through Congress. So I partnered with them on this video breaking down some of that information. Let's take a look. Last summer, More Perfect Union started a project that had not been undertaken in nearly a decade,

reviewing the stock holdings of every member of the United States House and of the Senate. What we discovered is that when members of Congress buy and sell corporate stocks, they're not just padding their own personal wealth. Something much more corrupt is happening here. You can see it by looking closely at two major bills before Congress right now. Both of them have bipartisan support, both were approved out of committee, and both are considered a priority of the president's. But only one is on the fast track to congressional passage, while the other can't even get a floor vote.

Why? Digging through Congress's trades, we uncovered numerous brazen examples of the corrupting influence of corporate stock ownership. And we realized the key difference between those two bills, the one that's set to be passed into law benefits the stock portfolios of members of Congress and the other bill does not. I'm Crystal Ball,

and this is The Classroom by More Perfect Union. So guys, check out that full video on our website, or on our channel on YouTube, also on the More Perfect Union channel. They did some phenomenal research here, digging into exactly what are the factors, the money that is driving some of these decisions behind the scenes, and how that would relate to a stock trading ban. So I highly recommend that to you, and not just because I was involved. Absolutely. It's good to see the set being used and the desk for great purposes. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. This is a really,

such an important story that's been flying under the radar, completely ignored by the media to very far-reaching implications. So the Department of Homeland Security on February 7th issued a new bulletin, which is an update and a summary of the terrorist threat to the United States homeland. And inside is one of the most dystopian things I've ever seen, a full domestic war on terror. Let's put this up there on the screen. At the very top, the Department of Homeland Security says the United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, quote, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories introduced and or amplified. These threat actors seek to

exacerbate social friction to sort discord and undermine public trust in government institutions to encourage unrest. Okay, so the number one thing that they say is that the proliferation of false and misleading narratives, which so discord or undermine public trust in the U.S. government institutions, is the top factor in the summary of the terrorism threat to the United States. As they say, the key factor, number one, listed right there in front of you, the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which so discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions. And they specifically point to both claims on COVID-19 and on the election. Look, on the election, sure. But on COVID, absolutely not. And remember also,

whenever we talk about what it means to have a proliferation of false or misleading narratives, who gets to decide? In June of 2020, talking about the lab leak hypothesis itself would have been considered a false or misleading narrative. Same whenever it comes to efficacy of vaccination, whenever it comes to preventing transmission, same whenever it comes to a host of different things that you all know that we could say and go down the list, not to mention the establishment lies that have existed. So this is the codification of the U.S. government, Crystal, of saying that sowing distrust in their lies is itself an act of terrorism against them. It's a dystopian thing.

So later in the show, we're going to play you a clip with some blatant misinformation on COVID from The View. Is the FBI going to do a raid of The View? I'm joking. I believe in the First Amendment. Or, you know, we're also talking about Leanna Nguyen, similar thing, some misinformation exposed around her evolving, rapidly evolving position on masks. Is this a dangerous threat? I just point these out to show you that a lot of the way that this is looked at and considered is very arbitrary, and it doesn't fall either along neat partisan lines. The other thing that I could easily point to here, obviously, which actually was a dangerous conspiracy theory, was Russiagate. I mean, look no further than the tensions in Ukraine right now and the way that

the public's mind is warped in their view of Russia and our foreign policy and the level of threat that that country represents to our interests to see how dangerous that view ultimately was, not to mention when you have a vast amount of the public truly, truly believing that Trump was a full Manchurian candidate, that our government has been taken over by a hostile foreign nation. You don't think that's a dangerous situation? Of course it is. I mean, if these things are dangerous, that's certainly dangerous. But this is what's disturbing is, you know, we've been warning against, there's two directions you can go and you can go towards the police state where

everybody's mistrusted and every piece of misinformation is cause for concern and cause for a lockdown and justifies handing more power to the very people who have failed us at the most critical times in American history. That's one direction. Or the other direction, which seems increasingly unlikely that we go in, is that you actually have enough trust in your fellow citizens that you think they can handle existing in a democracy, even when they're wrong, even when they say crap that's crazy and silly and just, you know, totally inaccurate, but that you have to accept that sometimes in a democracy with the free flow of information that is going to—and people who have different ideas about the direction that the country should go in, that that is ultimately going to be the case. That's what it means to live in a liberal society. And look, let's take it as far as we can. When the CIA spokesperson, State Department, excuse me, tells us that they have intelligence, that the Russians are planning some Alex Jones false flag information, and we don't believe them and we laugh at them here on our show, is that an act of terrorism by sowing discord and undermining public trust in the U.S.

government? I mean, under their definition, yeah, that is. Is that enough to put us on a list to subject our communications to surveillance and all of that? Exactly. Can they subpoena our communications? I mean, look, I know I may sound paranoid, but this is for real. And actually, this is also how it works in many other countries. So do not underestimate that this could ever get this far. Same whenever it comes to Afghanistan. I mean, they lied to us for 20 years. I mean, and we saw the proliferation of false or misleading information sown by the government.

What are we supposed to do whenever you're exposing what's happening there? Is there a, you know, is the state now saying that by questioning their narrative on the ISIS drone strike originally, was that, you know, sowing discord and creating tensions that are leading to terrorism? This is the point, which is that what is worse, the government lying or us exposing the lies of the government and you

understanding the lies of the government? I'm going to go ahead and say the first. But when the government says that by exposing and understanding that, that you are then complicit in feeding, you know, terrorism narratives, that is are then complicit in feeding terrorism narratives, that is insane. They want to try and do this. The only good news I could say is that people are waking up. That's what happened on Afghanistan. That's what happened, too, with Ukraine.

The vast majority of the public is, I don't believe you. I don't believe you for a second. Oh, you say the Russians are doing X, Y, and Z? Prove it. Release the video. Release the pictures. Release your intel. I'll assess it for myself.

Until then, you have no credibility here whatsoever. And that's what they're responding to. But they're calling us terrorists, essentially, in this memo. It's deeply disturbing, Crystal. And it leads to how many things have we shown you here? The DHS secret unit, which spies on journalists. The Capitol Police, which is spying on members of Congress and staff, which we'll get to a specific allegation in a second. You know, sending, you know, Gestapo agents to people who are like, I'm going to get in trouble for that one.

But sending people. I was laughing at the Marjorie Taylor. Yeah, Gus Boccia. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Marjorie. Come on. You know, read a book, sweetheart. I don't know what to say. But like dispatching agents, you know, in the Capitol Police, from the Capitol Police, local sheriffs to a left wing podcaster who likes a tweet, which is supposedly of the U.S. Capitol post-January 6th.

For months, we had fences and military personnel in the streets for literally no reason. Because of a QAnon thing that was planned in March or whatever, hundreds of millions of dollars, not a single question as to whether that was a good use of taxpayer funds or the time of our brave National Guardsmen and women. Well, it also came months after there was deep justified concerns about militarizing the streets over the George Floyd protest. But then they didn't say a word. But there was a peep out of a lot of the same people who I would submit had very justifiable concerns about that potential direction in the Trump administration. But yeah, when it was in response to January 6th, there was no public debate about it.

No, that's right. And, I mean, on the Capitol Police front, this is where I always have to reiterate this. Remember, they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. So that we have no clue what they are doing unless Congress itself gets its act together and investigates them. And, you know, I'm very troubled by this. And, look, I don't trust a lot of members of Congress. Many of them are willing to lie for nefarious purposes. So look, I'll give you all sides of the story. So let's put this up there on the screen. Congressman Troy Nels said an allegation on Twitter that the Capitol Police Intelligence Division investigated his office

illegally and that one of his staffers caught them in the act. So here's what he says. On November 20th, 2021, Capitol Police entered my office without my knowledge and photographed confidential legislative products protected by the speech and debate clause enshrined in the Constitution, Article 1, Section 6. Two days later, on November 22nd, Thanksgiving week, three intelligence officers attempted to enter my office while the House was in recess. Upon discovering a member of my staff, agents dressed like construction workers began to question him as to the contents of a photograph taken illegally two days earlier. Capitol Police never informed myself or senior-level staff of their investigation, and the reasons are clear. They had no authority to photograph my office, let alone investigate myself or members of my staff. So why is the Capitol Police leadership maliciously investigating me in an attempt to destroy me and my character? Maybe because I've been a vocal

critic to Speaker Pelosi, the January 6th Committee, and the Capitol Hill leadership. Now, to be clear, Capitol Police says that the congressman is completely full of it. So let's put this up there on the screen. The chief says that the congressman left his door open during the Thanksgiving holiday, quote, open and insecure, and that an officer conducted a security check of a door that was left open, and that's all that happened. Now, look, like I said— I don't trust either side of this story. I don't trust either side of this. It's so hard to say.

But he has a very specific allegation there in terms of taking photos, dressing in outfits, intelligence division. Dressing up like construction workers is pretty highbrow-y thing. That's the part that gets me. Look, it could be totally made up. I have no idea. But, you know, to have an allegation like this, and then the Capitol Police explanation actually doesn't make a lot of sense.

They said that they entered his office because the door was open. Yeah, maybe. I mean, but that sounds a lot like when the police are like, oh, we saw like a plastic bag on the floor or whatever. You know, it's like, you know, it could be making up some justification. Right, maybe. I mean, but that sounds a lot like when the police are like, oh, we saw like a plastic bag on the floor or whatever. You know, it's like, you know, it could be making up some justification. Right, exactly. Making up some justification in a pretext. Especially, I mean, that doesn't explain if there were costumes involved. Right, costumes, photographs, all this.

What we can say, not knowing which side in this particular incident to particularly trust, but we can say that the Capitol Police has definitely claimed more power for themselves in the wake of January 6th, which is, of course, ironic given that they were the primary failures on January 6th. They have had an increase in their budget. They've opened field offices across the country. And their intelligence division, as the entire Capitol Police unit, is not subject to FOIA. So it's very hard to ultimately, you know, for journalists to get to the bottom of, all right, what the hell is happening here? Is this true?

You know, this is his allegation. Let's see the relevant documents involved to figure out what exactly happened. troubling that they have claimed more authority, claimed more power, claimed more budget, expanded their operations because they are so unaccountable that even beyond what the FBI and the CIA are doing, it's impossible to know what is going on with them exactly. Yeah, exactly. We have no idea what's happening. And you put this in concert with the DHS memo, and you see, look, a very clear effort. We ran that story here about the FBI, not noticed very much by the media,

but the FBI is surveilling and conducting routine background checks, along with Capitol Police, of guests of members of Congress. Yeah, compiling dossiers. Compiling dossiers. On people who are just constituents going to meet with their member of Congress. Right. No allegation that they're QAnon cranks even, that they're just like regular people who want to meet with their member of Congress. They're right as a United States citizen in order to meet in the office of with their representative duly elected by them, the

people. I mean, I know I sound a little bit dramatic, but like that is really what it comes down to. I mean, the Capitol Police and these people say, oh, they're doing it in order to keep members safe. I mean, they're investigating the members themselves, compiling dossiers on what's happening. We also know during the whole January 6th thing that the Capitol Police and the FBI had used warrantless surveillance techniques by pulling numbers off the cell tower in order to pull the phone records of members of Congress. Once again, look, you can think that's justified. Get a warrant. I mean, I don't know what to tell you. These are duly elected representatives. Now, look, I think we should all have the same constitutional protection and right to privacy, but especially whenever we're talking about high government officials, we have a very ugly history

in this country of security agencies and services violating far beyond their mandates in order to exercise power in the deep state, you know, Hoover and all that. I don't have to be the first one to tell you. So this is very scary. And the real scary part is that the establishment is behind this definition of terrorism. That's all it takes is that little opening for them to go ahead and open up all these units and billions of dollars and appropriated money for terrorism. Remember the Patriot Act? I mean, it takes is that little opening for them to go ahead and open up all these units and billions of dollars and appropriated money for terrorism. Remember the Patriot Act? I mean, it was a joke, Crystal. People in law enforcement that I know would tell us like, oh yeah, you know, we would just say the guy has a Muslim connection just to have funding or whatever. They game the system

and the dollars. That's what this is all about. So now if they look at, are looking at domestic terrorism, they can classify you as that. They can have immense more resources from the department to go and investigate you under whatever pretext that they want. They can invent it. You know, the numbers in terms of trust in government are like historic lows of every single institution. And so if you are one of those people who is in the existing power regime, you're asking yourself, how do we keep our grip on this thing? dissatisfied public that's seeing through the ruse that is done with the sort of neoliberal order that we've had for decades now. How do we keep our grip? And when you're putting out bulletins that are saying, hey, if you're opposed to us, then you might be subject to surveillance. You might be actually a threat, a dangerous threat. That's a really ugly direction to go in. And you can see how it could happen when you have people who are desperately trying to keep a hold on power and a lid on an increasingly angry and dissatisfied populace. And that's how you end up in a really ugly place.

Absolutely. All it takes is one thing. Okay, let's go ahead and move on here to the GOP. Cable News loves this story. We'll try and give you all sides of it. So you will recall, I think it was on our Thursday show last week, we put up on the screen the Trump statement in which he called out Mike Pence. He said he was a coward for not disputing the results of the election. Obviously, he's like totally bonkers.

And it was crazy. But it actually proceeded, as I said in the show, Pence is set to give us, was set to give a speech in Florida, Orlando, Disney, actually, at the Federalist Society Convention, where he gave a robust response to Donald Trump. And it was, I'll give it to him. I mean, look, like it was the strongest repudiation I have seen on this specific element. Let's take a listen. But there are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, that I possess unilateral authority to reject electoral college votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election. But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election. But President Trump is wrong. I had no right to

overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone. And frankly, there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution, I had no right to change the outcome of our election. Well said, Mr. Vice President. Indeed. Very interesting. Obviously, you know, Cable had a heyday with that one. It was like, Pence declares war on Trump. Look, I mean, in a way, this is the least you could expect from Pence. I mean, Trump literally hung him out to dry on January 6th. Yeah, and there are people marching around the Capitol chanting for his death. All of this. So, look, I mean, I obviously acted honorably on January 6th, and I think, you know, he continues to do so. That being said,

if you think that Pence is going to be the GOP nominee for president, I have a bridge to sell you. I mean, people, the Republican base loves Trump. They don't care about January 6th, period. They genuinely do. They probably don't look at Mike Pence as a traitor outside of the hardcore MAGA faithful, but they're like, oh, he didn't stand with Trump like when it mattered, or he's not a fighter like our man Trump. He will not win absolutely 100%, period. But it shows you the growing fissures within the GOP because right after that, what ended up happening is that the RNC has gone ahead and censured Congressman Adam Kissinger and Congresswoman Liz Cheney for their

role in the January 6th select committee, authorizing subpoenas, turning it into this whole circus on Capitol Hill that CNN and all these other people can't get enough of. So the censorship of that included the line legitimate political discourse. So this was something which has been made a lot of, but I went ahead and I read the actual censor, the censor language crystal, and they were not responding to the, you know, the riot and the insurrection or whatever you want to call it itself. They were saying like a protest is a legitimate form of political discourse. I mean, that is true. Yeah. I mean, obviously, in this context, we see what they're doing.

And that's okay. But I mean, I hear, you know, how many times I hear a riot is the voice of the unheard during Black Lives Matter protests. All I'm saying is it's very clear here. We can we can delineate what's happening. And if from the RNC, they're obviously trying to whitewash what happened on January 6th. No question about it. That being said, Liz Cheney and Adam Kisinger are serving on the committee at the behest of the Democratic Party and of Nancy Pelosi.

I mean, I don't think they're acting honorably or whatever. I think they're trying to save their careers. I think it's disgraceful that the only decent thing that Liz Cheney has done in her entire career is the thing that gets her censured. Seriously. I mean, it just shows you how hollow the Republican Party is. I mean, they literally are running on no platform, as we've talked about many times. And so even though like all of their worst and longest held beliefs, Liz Cheney is 100 percent on board with the one thing that she did of like being honest about what happened on January 6th and condemning Trump for his disgraceful role in that day is the fact that they love Liz Cheney, even though she has all of these horrific, odious views. When they line up to kiss her hand. Totally counter to what the party is supposed to be about.

But, you know, for them, for especially the elites in the Democratic Party, it all collapses down to where do you stand on the issue of Trump? And so Trump has just totally rotted the core of both of these parties. On the Pence comments, you know, I mean, I want to give him credit. I think he said it very clearly. I think it was a strong statement, unequivocal. You like to see that. I'll also say that I think Trump's comments forced his hand where he realized he couldn't play this sort of like play both sides. I think you're right.

You know, because initially after January 6th, it seemed like, all right, there's going to be a very clear break here. Then afterwards, he sort of tried to have his foot in both camps of the I was honorable on January 6th, but also I still like Trump. And Trump, by putting out that statement calling him a coward and all of that, he realized, like, I'm not going to be able to have it both ways. So this is my only play left is to actually lean into, you know, the fact that this was not good and I did the right thing, Mr. President. I think you're right. You know, the interesting part, too, is this has exposed a big fissure here in Washington in terms of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy actually supported the censure of Liz Cheney, Adam Kissinger. Obviously, they're in his conference. But Mitch McConnell actually spoke out against it.

Let's take a listen to that. Well, let me give you my view of what happened January the 6th. And we're all, we're here. We're here. We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That's what it was.

With regard to the suggestion that the RNC should be in the business of picking and choosing Republicans who ought to be supported, traditionally the view of the National Party committees is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions on some issues. So, obviously having a Senate minority leader on your side, that's a big fissure. I mean, it's interesting. You know, like I said, I have no sympathy for the Stop the Steal wing of the party whatsoever. I think you're absolute cranks. And, you know, you made your bed and Georgia shows you that doesn't particularly work out so well. What I find is annoying about this is it's just clear to me, Crystal, Liz Cheney, Adam Kissinger, you guys are Democrats now. It's fine. Just accept it. Like, the central dividing line is Trump. You guys are on the other side of that. I think that's okay.

I wish it wasn't that way. If our politics could transcend that, I would be happy about it. But that's just simply not the way that it works right now in terms of the base. We were talking about this earlier with Jonah Goldberg on the CNN thing, trying to define conservatism towards something that the majority of people who identify as conservatives in the Republican Party do not agree with you on. And if you're out of step, it's okay. I am too. I long ago accepted it. I do my agree with you on. And if you're out of step, it's okay. I am too.

I long ago accepted it. I do my own thing here on the show. I don't know why it's so hard for people to try and pull it in a direction that the majority of their people don't agree with them in, even if you do find that belief odious. Do you know what I mean? I do. I mean, I guess you could look at it from the other perspective,

just to be fair here. I don't have any sympathy for this, Janie. I just want you to know. But, you know, from her perspective, she's thinking, well, the Republican Party shouldn't just be about Donald Trump. It should be about my commitment to war and tax cuts for the rich. That's what it should be about. And so, I mean, I guess, whatever. She also has, obviously, media play here.

Her profile among the media establishment has been highly elevated. So it's not like this has been all bad for her. This has been, in certain ways, depending on whatever it is she wants to do next, if she wants to go sit on a board of Halliburton or Boeing or whoever, then she'll be able to do that. On the McConnell thing, let me say this about him, which is that this man has no principles or values. So get that out of your head right now that this is like principled stand from Mitch McConnell. What he's pissed about is he's like,

let the freaking Democrats run around and talk about January 6th all day and have the public understand that they're not focused on the problems that the public is most concerned about day to day. What are you all doing? Like jumping into this January 6th censure insurrection debate and putting our, you know, very likely massive gains at risk for the fall. This isn't what we should be talking about. That's what he's pissed off about is that this is stupid politically to bring up this crap and start this fight and have this big debate, you know, in the Republican Party about January 6th. They were in much better position when they were just letting the Democrats hang themselves out to dry. And so that's what McConnell is mad about. He's mad that this is politically like completely brain dead for them to be going in this direction of these censures and their own sort of like internecine January 6th fight. No, that's that's correct. Actually, weirdly, and I'm now sympathetic to Mitch McConnell, which is look at the end of the day, this is Trump's party.

I just think anybody who's a Republican needs to accept that. And I say this again with with my own idea that this is terrible. Like, that's why I want nothing to do with it. But if you're in it, that's what the majority of Republicans believe. And they voted and they've told you that a million times, hence the RNC shenanigans. It is all about Trump and his personality, period, and putting up a middle finger to the left. If you have any higher aspirations or beliefs than that, I don't know what to tell you. And I don't know a single data point that you can point to that would show you opposite. I mean, the idea that it's about anything bigger or ideas, none of that. Any single policy proposal.

Let go. Let go. Accept the reality. It's okay. You can hang out here with people who are disgusted by everybody. And I still maintain that's the actual center of the American public. But you look at this and you see what's happening within the GOP. Is it sad and clownish? Yeah. But also the people who are fighting against it, I don't know, man. I feel like they're just as sad as clownish as everybody else. It's very impotent, that much I will say. And then it's hard to get behind them when the values that they want to restore in the Republican Party are so, like, odious and have been completely destructive to the country.

And that just gets completely sanitized and lost in the media coverage of this. And it's just, yeah, the media's brain did here, too, of, like, it's just which side are you on? If you're opposed to Trump, then you're a good person. It doesn't matter all the, like, crimes you've committed and errors you've made and sins you've, you've, you've had in the past. That's the only thing that ultimately matters. So again, I just, as you're watching all of this unfold, think about the political incentives that people have versus, you know, imagining that Mitch McConnell is suddenly like a voice of reason or principle in any of this. I agree with that. All right, guys.

A few different developments that we wanted to bring you out of Ukraine. The first one is really troubling. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. So the Military Reporters and Editors Association is formally asking the Defense Department to allow journalists to embed with the U.S. troops that have been selected to deploy to NATO's eastern flank. What is going on here is that typically when there's a military deployment, reporters, some number of reporters, are allowed to embed with the troops to get a view from the front lines. Now, let me say, oftentimes those reporters end up being just complete stenographers and propagandists for the U.S. government. Yeah, but it's better than nothing.

But it's better than nothing. Yeah. and propagandists for the U.S. government. But it's better than nothing. And bizarrely, with this deployment to Eastern Europe in relation to the Ukraine conflict, reporters have not been allowed to embed with the troops. This is a significant break from longstanding precedent. Obviously, it's troubling. Obviously, it is dramatically hypocritical given the Biden administration's professed commitment to a free and fair press and transparency, of course, with regards to, you know, we already knew they were hypocrites on this because of their continued prosecution of Julian Assange. But, you know, given that there is a lot of very justified

mistrust of the line we've been sold from the U.S. government about what exactly is going on in Ukraine and what exactly are Russia's intentions, the fact that you have them denying the ability of reporters to embed with the troops is another major red flag and massive question mark. No, that's the part I don't really understand, which is that I was once in the Pentagon Press Corps, too. I mean, look, it's standard. Wherever the Secretary of Defense goes, you go. Wherever the troops are, that's it. I mean, period.

End of story. I don't understand. So whenever they're stopping embeds, you have to ask, what don't they want you to see? I mean, this was actually a longstanding practice too in the war on terror, Crystal. We would have these secret deployments in Nigeria or Somalia or Syria as well, and reporters were not allowed to go. The only reporters who you would have to follow were Kurdish guys on the ground. Some of them have their own interests, too. This is the same thing. What, are we supposed to rely on the Latvian and Romanian press? No, that's insane. And just to put it into perspective, even at the

height of some of the worst actions in the history of the US military, there have been American journalists sitting right there. Vietnam, I forget his name, Neil Sheehan, I think was his name, on the front line. He eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for the Pentagon Papers. Or people who were on the front line of the tip of the spear in the invasion of Iraq, one of the first convoys, had an American journalist sitting there in the Humvee. I support that. World War II, there were journalists who were flying air missions. Look, all I'm saying is that if we are going to have a war, at the very least, as you said, even if they're the worst Pentagon stenographers, it's better to have independent NBC news footage than some fake propaganda video that is released. Yeah, Ned Price. Just trust us. Just trust us. They're putting a false flag. I promise. Crisis actors, it's happening. You don't need evidence. That's what worries me more than anything,

which is that what don't they want you to see? I mean, at the end of the day, this continues to seem, I don't want to judge, you know, nefarious intent and all of that and sound too conspiratorial, but you're going to come out and make all kinds of crazy accusations against the Russians saying, oh, they're planning this, this, and this, and release zero evidence and then send troops over there and not allow our own press in order to go there,

who are we supposed to rely on for accurate information? It's not conspiratorial. It's just being skeptical, which is what you're supposed to be of any institution or any person who has a massive amount of power, which obviously the U.S. government does. And I also think we have to say that if the Trump administration had pulled a similar stunt, I think you would have heard about it. I mean, there would have been endless cable news panels about it and a lot of concern, as there should be. But with the Biden administration, it just

really flies under the radar. I mean, there are some mainstream outlets that wrote it up. I don't want to pretend like there weren't. But have you seen a cable news segment on this? Have you seen people running around here hair on fire about the end of the free press when this is truly a very troubling development? It's extremely dangerous. On the other hand, there are some glimmers of potential progress, maybe, that are coming from the efforts of French President Emmanuel Macron. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. As we've been telling you, Macron has really taken it upon himself to engage in a lot of shuttle diplomacy, talking to the Russians, talking to Ukrainians, talking to his European allies, and of course, talking to the U.S. as well. He had a meeting with, he has told reporters that Vladimir Putin actually assured him that Russian forces would not ramp up the crisis near Ukraine's borders.

So he's saying that in the meeting that he had, there was significant progress made and that there was some kind of an agreement there would be no deterioration or escalation. That was just before meeting with Ukraine's leader. But, gigantic but, the Russians are saying that's not true. They're saying there was no agreement. We agreed to nothing. Absolutely not. Although they said, you know, at some point, like those troops on the border of Belarus, like those will come home. So maybe that was an indication that like, we're not going to show our hand that we actually made a firm commitment because that

takes away all of our leverage, but also some indication that possibly they're thinking, all right, maybe we need to dial this back. Hard to say. Macron went on to meet with the Ukrainian president and has been working with European allies to try to figure out things here. The other problem is that Russia really seems to mostly want to engage with the U.S. more than the Europeans. And obviously, you know, by us really aggressively inserting ourselves into this situation, we've kind of exacerbated that particular dynamic. But these are some glimmers of hope. Well, the reason why they want to engage with the U.S. is because they want it to be about great power conflict, and they don't want it to be about an actual European decision. Like the local national interest. Which is why I support the French president being the

one who is most involved here and practicing some shuttle diplomacy. It's your continent. It's way more your problem than it is us. Look, we'll back you up. You know, if you want to sign some accords or whatever, fine, I don't care. But we should not be taking the most forward, most steps in ultimately what is a European conflict. I also find very interesting, Crystal, that Macron, in speaking with the Germans and others with the leaks, are that they are much more comfortable with the idea of some territory or whatever moving hands, which again, just shows you that our red lines in the sand are ours from Washington, not how the actual Europeans who are most affected by this crisis actually feel. I find it particularly just like ironic that the Biden administration is sending all these more troops than the French and the

Germans, that we are forward deployed to the easternmost flank of NATO, while the French president of Western Europe is engaged in a very diplomatic process with the Russian president himself. Now, from what I can tell, I think this thing is going to take months. From what we've seen here, Zelensky and Putin and the shuttle diplomacy that Macron has been practicing, Putin is getting what he wants, which is attention. He wants respect from the West and from the United States. So Macron and the Biden administration, in a way, playing a little bit into his hands. But this could result through the Macron efforts and especially with more diplomatic action with an actual settlement. But just like Crimea, I mean, the Minsk Accords of 2014, that took like a year in order to come together.

I think it would be a very, very similar development in this time. It's also worth noting, because it's important to understand everybody, is sort of domestic political considerations. Macron is up for re-election. Right, he's up for re-election. And, you know, Europe is facing some of the same inflationary pressures that we are here. In some cases worse. In some cases worse. And so I don't know what the numbers are specifically in France, full disclosure, but they're very worried about energy prices spiking.

They're very worried about, you know, when energy prices spike, food prices spike, everything goes up. That's as Biden is experiencing right now. It's like the worst thing that a president can deal with, especially when you're facing re- reelection and voters are set to go to the polls very shortly. I think the first round starts in like April. So this is, you know, this is very pressing. Not to mention, I'm sure, for him to be to take on this leadership role in a very public and globally recognizable way. I'm sure that also improves his standing with the French people. So he has interests here as well,

but those interests seem to push towards diplomacy and de-escalation in a way that the American interests seem to not. We wanted to also share with you, Bernie Sanders published an op-ed on the situation in Ukraine that I thought was very balanced and pushing things in a good direction. Let's go ahead and put thated on the situation in Ukraine that I thought was very balanced and,

you know, pushing things in a good direction. Let's go ahead and put that up on the screen. And he warns about, and this is what Bernie's good at, he warns about some of the impact of the escalatory rhetoric, not just in terms of bringing us to the brink of what would be a horrific war, but also he warns against the pain that could be inflicted through even levying intense sanctions against Russia. He says the sanctions against Russia and Russia's threat in response to those sanctions could result in massive economic upheaval with impacts on energy, banking, food, and the day-to-day needs of ordinary people throughout the entire world. It's very likely that the Russians will not be the only people suffering

from sanctions. And by the way, any hope of international cooperation to address the existential threat of global climate crisis and future pandemics would suffer a major setback. He goes on to talk about how concerned he is about the familiar drumbeats in Washington, the bellicose rhetoric that gets amplified before every war. And what I really appreciated that he did that is so rare in any sort of American media ecosystem is he talked about, look, Russia's not a good actor here. Like, let's be clear. Let's not whitewash that, you know, they have their own territorial ambitions. They are their own imperial power. And, you know, the state is corrupt and it's run by a bunch of oligarchs and all that stuff. Right. But Russia has interests in the region. And to pretend like we would act differently is silly, he says. To put it simply, even if Russia was not ruled by a corrupt authoritarian leader like Putin, Russia, like the U.S., would still have an interest in the security policies of its neighbors. Does anyone really believe the United States would not have something to say if, for example, Mexico was to form a military alliance with a U.S. adversary? So he explains, look, you don't have to act like Russia, like he's a good guy or their intentions are nefarious, but you have to understand the way they're looking at this

and how we would react if we were put in a similar circumstance. So in that way, I thought it was very important and effective. Oh, absolutely. I mean, look, you guys should remember, even Yeltsin, who was our Western-backed person, he opposed the expansion of NATO in Eastern Europe. I don't think a lot of people remember a lot of these things. I appreciated the Bernie op-ed as well. The only member so far I've seen of the Democratic left who was willing to speak out against this. I appreciated the Bernie op-ed as well. The only member so far I've seen of the Democratic left who was willing to speak out against this. I mean, I know Ilhan Omar did as well,

but it's important. Look, it can't just be the right wing and anti-establishment that talks about this. You've got to have people who are inside the coalition who talk about it too to show the Biden administration, be like, hey,

you're not going to get 100% support over here. And who aren't afraid of being called like, oh, you're a traitor and you're a useful idiot and whatever. I mean, people say that about Bernie anyway, but I thought he laid it out in a very reasoned way and said, listen, guys, diplomacy is the answer here. Let's stop pretending like we can play these war games and that there aren't going to be massive, horrific humanitarian consequences for Europe and for us as well. Yeah. It reminds me of one of my favorite moments of the campaign when, what was it, the Washington Post said that the FBI had warned the Sanders campaign that the

Russians liked them or whatever. And he's like, Washington Post, huh? He's like, who owns that again? Where'd that guy go? He's been gone for a long time. All right, let's go ahead and move on to COVID. We got to start. I mean, this is the fun block, but we had to make it serious. So we'll start with the fun part at the very beginning, which is that The View's Sunny Hostin made some very interesting claims on her show, which just go to show you the brain worms that still exist within the liberal intelligentsia of how they view COVID in the United States as the national winds are shifting. Let's take a listen. 2.5 thousand people are still dying every single day from COVID. Why are we normalizing mass death like that? My friend Madi Hassan tweeted that. You know, everyone knows it's personal to me. You know, we lost both of Manny's parents to COVID, but there was no vaccine at that time. Right.

You know, we know the signs now. I still don't understand how we are normalizing two point five thousand deaths a day from covid and parents aren't vaccinated. We got to ask what percentage of those are unvaccinated because they reserve their individual liberty not to take that vaccine. I think ninety nine. Yeah. So she says that we have a one percent death rate of younger Americans, that is not true whatsoever. The actual number is 0.008%. So once again, these people are dramatically overstating what the actual threat to COVID is to you and your life, especially if you have a dose of the vaccine. And this is wildly out of step with the not just American people, but now the Democratic governors of the United States in some of the bluest places in the country.

But where does it come from, Crystal? Which is that the Biden administration has missed a tremendous opportunity, in my opinion, by not reining in their CDC and Dr. Fauci. So the CDC yesterday effectively rebuked the Democratic governors. Let's put this up there on the screen. They said, our hospitalizations are still high, our death rates are still high. So we work towards that and we are encouraged by current trends. We are not there yet. She was asked specifically about the Democratic governors dropping their mask mandates. So you see here that the CDC continues to encourage wearing masks not only indoors, but also in public outdoors, which is

absolutely bonkers from a not just public opinion perspective, but also from a public health perspective, given what they've admitted around cloth masks and their own efficacy. Won't go too far for the YouTube gods. But I find it crazy that the CDC and the White House, Joe Biden just tweeted yesterday, wear a mask in public, are not clearly trying to get ahead of where not only public opinion has long been, but Democratic opinion has been. When Connecticut starts dropping its mask mandates, you know, and you're not, you're crazy. I don't know what to tell you. In Oregon, in New York. What's happening? Well, first I want to start by speaking to Sunny's claims here, because I have deep concerns about

the anti-vax misinformation that she is spreading about the efficacy of the vaccines and the COVID misinformation that she is spreading about the true risk to children. And I say this in jest, maybe we should start like a campaign to censor or ban, you know, other artists should pull their shows from the platform. How can you support? ABC is owned by Disney. That's true. How can you support this type of COVID misinformation? I think it's outrageous. But I do want to say, I mean, you wonder why you have young people who feel themselves, their judgment of their own risk is actually greater than the judgment of elderly people. And you wonder why there are such really super intense feelings about what happens with school shutdowns and what happens with masking in schools. And part of it is because there has been mass media propaganda that has been inaccurate and has not helped people truly understand and accurately weigh the risks that exist to their children. There's a cost to

that. And there's been this assumption from liberals and from corners of the left that you can't possibly be too safe, that it's sort of OK to have misinformation as long as it's in the direction of overstating the risk of COVID and safetyism. And there's not an acknowledgment that there were costs also to those measures that were taken, especially with regards to our kids. And, you know, it really bothers me, this like weaponization of children and her self-righteous, like, well, I'm not taking a chance with my kids, making it like people who say, hey, you know, the mask has been not great for my kid

and I want the schools to be open. Like, they don't care about their children too. So I do find that disgraceful. And I find it I find it unfair that misinformation that goes in the direction of which I have a major problem with downplaying the risk of covid downplaying the efficacy of the vaccines, all of that, that there isn't the same sort of condemning and concern and correction on the side, when you're overstating the risk of COVID, and by the way, you're also, Sonny, by saying these sorts of things, is also downplaying the effectiveness of the vaccines. That's the part that, you know, when you pretend like now that we have the vaccine, nothing has changed and the risk landscape hasn't shifted at all, that is also sort of like anti-vax misinformation, honestly.

No, of course it's anti-vax misinformation, but it's the kind which, you know, stands fine. It's allowed to be on air and it's not a problem. The only thing that pisses me off, Crystal, is that this is not about science. They're moving explicitly based on public opinion and they're even telling us that. Let's put this up there. So the New York Times actually put this in its report that Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey, who actually nearly lost, arranged a series of focus groups across the state to see what they had missed. Check this out. Mr. Murphy's advisors were struck by the findings. Across the board, voters shared frustrations over public

health measures, a sense of pessimism about the future, and a deep desire to return to some sense of normalcy. Even Democratic voters were wary of the toughest restrictions, growing increasingly impatient with mandates, feeling ready to live with the risk that remained, and as cases plummeted, the public health dynamics were shifting too. That is exactly what this is all about. It's not about the science. It is clearly about the general shifting public opinion, not only amongst Republicans and not even independents, but almost half of Democrats as well. about like disgusting about face I have ever seen. And this is best shown in the case of Dr.

Leanna Nguyen, who she's frequently appeared on CNN. She was one of the first people to push masks for all, including mask mandates across the country, but in recent weeks has been one of the chief opponents of restrictions. Why exactly? Because she's a party activist. And National Review actually did a great write-up of this. Let's put this up there. Just three weeks ago, just three weeks ago, Dr. Leanna Wynn called for a tightening of mask policy, specifically saying that N95s and KN95s should be widely distributed and required in crowded indoor public setting. And now, just three weeks later, she has gone out and written an op-ed in the Washington Post saying that we need to get rid of most pandemic restrictions.

Precisely why? She says that the science has changed. Crystal, nothing has changed in terms of the science of the last three weeks. Politics have changed. Politics have changed. The polls have changed. Not only a month ago, Glenn Youngkin was described as a genocidal maniac for giving parents the option to not have their kids wear a mask in school.

And the freaks in Northern Virginia continue to go after him for that. But this shows you very clearly that they're trying to create this fake permission structure in elite democratic governance, Crystal, where they can forgive themselves for their past sins. Like, oh, look, it was justified what we thought. And as you said, look, school closure in March, I get it.

April, I still get it. May, things should get a little dicey. Post-summer, I don't get it anymore. But, like, we can show forgiveness for the early days. Yeah, because we didn't know. Any American can. You pulled your kids out of school. And I told you can show forgiveness for the early days. Any American can. You pulled your kids out of school. And I told you you should. I was freaking out. We had no idea what

the risk was for kids at that point. I had N95 and goggles that I got on Amazon, okay? I was one of those people in early February. But it was very clear, very quickly, what was happening. And as the politics change, they continue to change. And the chief opponent to all of this is going to be the elite media, the Sonny Hostins of the world. And the whole point of this show is to show you these people are powerful. Don't underestimate it. I try to have sympathy for the, quote,

freaks in Northern Virginia, as you put it, because they trust people like Sonny Hostin. If they want to do it, fine. But why are they forcing it on all of us? But there's two pieces. There's one part that is noble and understandable, which is that they are genuinely concerned for their safety.

They have been misled about the risk to themselves and to their kids. And so that's why they have such a strong reaction. The other part is less noble, which is like, you know, this sort of class of people, the affluent suburbanite, their whole politics consist of like displaying how virtuous they are.

There's actually a book out called Virtue Hoarders that's really great. Oh, really? It talks about exactly that. I need to read this. Yeah, we should interview this woman. It's amazing. But anyway, I think it's a good way of understanding the sort of politics there where it's all about let me display to you what a good person I am.

It's this weird—I'm going to talk a little bit about this in my monologue today. It's this weird shift from liberal people engaging in things that have like collective action and this kind of like bootstrapping of politics to just be about like I'm a good person. Let me show you I'm a good person and let me demonstrate that in all the ways I possibly can. And that part is sort of less sympathetic in terms of your commentary on the, quote, Northern Virginia freaks. I'm sorry, everyone. To many of the people in Nova. I've been thinking about it. I'm not trying to give you a hard time.

I've just been thinking about it. You know, when people won't come next to me in the grocery store as they got an N95 strapped to their face, I'm like, something's wrong with you, lady. I don't know what else to say. Seven in 10 respondents have said, it's time we accept COVID is here to stay and we just need to get on with our lives. And I think there's a few things. First of all, just the length of time, people get used to a certain level of risk. It's been two years. Like normal to accept there's some additional risk involved in this, having this virus circulating. Omicron is less virulent, less, you know, less bad than previous strains in terms of how sick you get, which is great news. And people are vaccinated. And so

that has significantly, I mean, dramatically, by tenfold, lowered their risk. So one thing that I want to respond to directly, because this is some of the talking points that are out there right now, which is true, which is that the death rate is pretty high right now. There's like, you know, a lot of people who are still dying of COVID. But those people are largely unvaccinated. Mostly unvaccinated and deeply unhealthy and old.

And so if you're vaccinated, then you really, and you don't have a lot of other comorbidities that put you at dramatic increased risk, you're good. So that's the piece that I think to pretend like nothing has changed, even after we got the vaccines, is again, its own form of anti-vax misinformation. Well said. And unfortunately, this continues to be spewed by the U.S. government. Jen Psaki continues to say that everybody should be wearing a mask, even in schools. Let's take a listen. Go ahead. Jen, given that the CDC guideline still remains that

masking is recommended in schools, if you are a parent, a teacher, a student living in a state where that is no longer recommended, should you still follow the CDC guideline? Yes. Yeah. So even if the state is not requiring that you wear masks in the schools? Well, this is where we would advise any American to follow the CDC guidelines. And as Dr. Walensky said, and you referenced, they're constantly evaluating, right? Because the data is changing, the science is changing. It certainly is positive that case numbers have come down, hospitalizations come down, and they look at all of that information. That's why it's also important to note the difference between leaders who are saying we're going to leave it up to

localities, local school districts to make decisions. No parent who wants to send their kid with a mask should be penalized. No teacher or who wants to wear a mask should be penalized, or school district. Nobody's being penalized for wearing a mask. That's ridiculous. In fact, it's the opposite, the people who aren't. But look, that continues to be the position of the Biden administration, Crystal. They are on the side of 25 percent of public opinion. I think they've got the worst of all worlds here because they're actually not satisfying the people who are like the triple mask people. Oh, that's a good point. Right, because they're not mandated. They're not doing anything. So they're not satisfying the base. They're just sort of gesturing towards the base. And then they're

significantly, which, you know, I mean, there could be a political strategy that might make sense of like super energizing the like, you know, pandemic lockdown people and getting them to the polls in the fall. I don't think that would work out, but that's one direction. The other direction is to, you know, accept that public opinion at this point is we've got to figure out how to live with this thing and we've got to move forward. They're doing neither. And so, you know, just one factor in why his polls are now, for the first time, the average of polls under 40% for approval. That's a big problem. Okay, we have a big surprise for everybody.

Oh, I forgot the surprise. Yeah, we have a big surprise for everybody. Crystal, what's the surprise? Okay, so as you know, there has been something we've decried here at the show, this very caricaturish view of Joe Rogan. And I'm not just talking about the N-word compilation, although that is certainly part of it. But his portrayal in the media is he's this like right-wing reactionary guy who loves Donald Trump and is a racist and a sexist and all of these things. Now, listen, if you actually consume Joe's podcast, you know, he's a complex guy. And some of the things that he may, you know, say and engage with when Ben Shapiro is on might be

different than when Andrew Yang is on, might be different from when we're on. But we asked Matt Orfalea, who's a great sort of video editor, to put together a compilation that shows a more accurate reflection of some of Joe's views. Now, I wouldn't say that this is like a holistic view of Joe either because he's a complex guy who has heterodox views, sometimes contradictory views as we all do. But I would posit to you that this is more a reflection of his actual politics, his actual view, what you get when you actually consume his show, than certainly the caricaturish media view that is out there. That's right. So let's take a listen to Matt's video. I really believe if Michelle Obama runs, she wins. She's good.

She's great. She's the wife of the best president that we have had in our lifetime. I've never voted right wing in my life. I consider universal basic income a really good idea. I want free college education. Take it easy. Hello, Bernie. How are you, Joe?

Wonderful. Pleasure to meet you. Nice to meet you. I like Tulsi and I like Bernie. That's it. Oh, yeah? Everybody else can eat shit. Look at you, fucking progressive.

Yeah. I think I'll probably vote for Bernie. I think he's looking out for the interests of the working people. And I think he wants people to have a better life and do better. And I'm all for that. And if that means I have to pay more int people think oh you're a socialist i've heard people say that oh you're a fucking socialist bro like first of all he's not even a socialist he's a democratic socialist it's a different thing i would like to spend more in taxes if

they could fix inner city communities and and take these poor neighborhoods and we should spend more you fucking republican 87 percent of scientists said that human activity is driving global warming. I'm very pro-choice. I'm very women's rights, civil rights, gay rights, trans rights. I'm even universal health care. Obviously, this protected status is driving me crazy. This thing that Trump's doing with children that were born in other countries and then brought over here as children. And then they're talking about deporting them.

That drives me fucking crazy. Yeah, that me fucking crazy and the hard right version of that is despicable this these people that i see online why didn't they apply for citizenship oh who knows maybe because they're fucking 13 i don't give a fuck if they broke the law you don't take parents and kids and separate them you just fucking don't you know alonzo no he's a funny comedian yeah he said he goes not all donald trump supporters are, but all racists are Donald Trump supporters. He definitely awakened that side. But the January 6th thing is important. See, it is important, but is it the six months later?

Should it be the ruling number one conversation of a journalist? I think it's really important. And one of the reasons why I think it's important because it highlights the reasons why a guy like Donald Trump is so fucking dangerous. It's because a guy can incite a bunch of morons to do something really fucking stupid. But as far as trans people, some trans people listening to this, I got nothing but love for you. For everybody. And in fact, Eddie Izzard is one of my all-time favorite guests. Oh, I love Izzard.

The right-wing thing is just an easy way to dismiss me, because I'm not right-wing. I can't recommend your book, Race Matters, enough. So there you go. Meet right-wing Joe Rogan there. Right-wing Joe Rogan. A little bit different than the media presentation. Humans are complex.

They're dynamic people. This is not, you know, the caricature-ish view is ridiculous. Here's just a little bit of a counter to that. Share it with your family and friends and show them the other side of the Joe Rogan that we know. Yeah, and guys, make sure to subscribe to Matt's YouTube channel as well. And he's Orff on Twitter. It's like a zero and then R-F. He did a great job.

Thank you, Matt. Phenomenal job. He does great stuff. So thank you for that, Matt. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, today's monologue, it's a little bit off the beaten path for me, but I've been so engrossed by this story, I cannot do my best to just share all my favorite parts of it with you. The news broke Tuesday afternoon that the Justice Department, in its largest asset seizure ever, has recovered $4.5 billion in stolen Bitcoin and arrested two

individual on U.S. soils. So the Bitcoins were stolen in the year 2016 from an exchange called Bitfinex out of Hong Kong. And at the time, it was an approximately $70 million heist. Now, when you think about Bitcoin hackers, I'm sure you have the same image in your head as I do. Overweight dudes in the basement, neckbeard, glowing keyboards, all of that. But what if I told you it was these two Brooklyn-ish hipsters posing in front of a tie-dye mural? Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Rian and Morgan are accused by the Department of Justice of helping launder approximately 120,000 Bitcoin worth $4.5 billion. And this isn't any old couple either. Mr. Lichtenstein is a dual Russian-American citizen who is actually an alumnus of Y Combinator, which is a prestigious startup accelerator in Silicon Valley. He's a

tech entrepreneur who's even gotten funding in the past from Mark Cuban, but he is by no means the star in this relationship. No, no, no, no, everyone. That honor belongs to Mr. Lichtenstein's wife, Heather Morgan, also known as a self-described surrealist artist and rapper, Ra's al Khan. Khan as in heir to Genghis Khan. Now, you may know her from this hit. Let's take a listen. on my fingers and boots on my feet. Always be a goat, not a goddamn sheep. Email me. Fuck your message at the beep. Beep. Beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Spirit of a revolutionary, power of a dictator. Love to be contrary, but I'm fly like a gator. I've got pilot blood. I'm a real risk taker. Pirate riding the flood.

Badass money maker. Grandmother crocodile. Weirder than an X-file brief fire so sexy when i slither sparkle on my little finger hell of arousal ear to ear poised to throw a zinger playing on their worst Russell Kong the first time she better win come real far but don't know where i'm heading motherfucking crocodile of wall street look if i had to listen to it, so did you. Morgan also bills herself as a contributor to Forbes, where she's written very helpful tips for business owners, including this one.

Experts share tips to protect their business from cyber criminals. What people did not know, that was the true Galaxy brain take, because she was an expert on laundering billions and billions of dollars. Try to normalize her obviously awful rapping, she even wrote a piece saying, quote, got burnout? This tech CEO thinks you should try rapping. All of this is just a highlight. These were some grade A weirdos. So per Morgan's potential wedding photographer, she even wanted her engagement photos to include not only her husband and her, but her husband with the many iterations of her

rap persona, requiring a lot of photo editing. These are truly not sending their best hackers these days. In fact, even in the ways that they spent the money was hilarious. They bought NFTs and Walmart gift cards. They were apparently having a hell of a time trying to actually launder it all without tripping up fraud censors among regulators. Obviously, they failed at that. But okay, let's get to the case itself. The most hilarious part of all of this, especially to people in the Bitcoin community, is how exactly the Justice Department got the Bitcoin in the first place. You see, I don't even have 0.01% as much Bitcoin as these people, and I take a lot more precaution with my private keys.

Now, the keys being the only way that you can actually access your Bitcoin and transfer them. It turns out that the way the Justice Department got the key is because Mr. Lichtenstein was storing them in his cloud storage account, like an iCloud. The keys were apparently so badly encrypted, it only took the government one day to crack the code, at which point they took all $4.5 billion worth of Bitcoin and transferred them to themselves in their own accounts in the largest asset seizure of all time. It is a crazy story. And there's obviously more to it. There's no way these two are the hackers because they weren't charged with that. They were just part of the laundering machine. So look, I'm sure there are still many other criminals out there. But just imagine sitting on all that money

and you can't even spend it. It must have been truly a crazy six years while they lived with all of that on their chest. In terms of how exactly the criminals were caught, it's a very interesting look into Bitcoin and the blockchain itself. Per the criminal complaint, which I actually do encourage you all to read, the Fed spent nearly five years tracing the stolen Bitcoin through the Bitcoin ledger on the blockchain, which maintains a record that is forever recorded and cannot be manipulated to their eventual destinations. Now, the couple, as the Feds allege, routed all of these funds through thousands of different transactions to try and hide their tracks, including converting the currency to different

types of crypto, opening up fake accounts with fake identities, all sorts of other crazy tricks. And the immutable blockchain itself, the ledger, is actually what allowed the Feds to slowly and surely trace each transaction and end up in the right destination. It's actually a fascinating proof of power of the blockchain with some lessons. As I already mentioned, if you have Bitcoin, don't store your keys in the cloud. If the Feds can get them, so can malicious thieves like the people who stole these Bitcoins. But to me, as a believer in Bitcoin as a hedge against the financial system and centralized control, it actually shows me how much centralized control still has an ungodly amount of power.

The precise reason these idiots weren't able to spend all their Bitcoin is because of all the identity protocols that the crypto exchanges in the U.S. are required to abide by. Same with banking regulations, identity verification, even cash withdrawal. Look, obviously, all of that is great when it's involved here with criminals. But when we're talking about the proposition of Bitcoin itself, it still shows that there's a long way to go. And it also shows the power of the man over something which shows promise, but has yet to come to fruition. I'll end with a prescient warning from a man nine years ago when he wrote on a forum, quote, the anarchists and the idealists will soon learn the decentralized nature of Bitcoin

won't make a difference if anyone transmitting it is in violation of federal law. That's very well said and prescient indeed, because that man's name was Ilya Lichtenstein. And nine years later, he was indicted for helping launder $4.6 billion in stolen Bitcoin. How crazy is that? He even wrote, he goes, yeah, all you... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at?

Well, friends, I have found it. The most immaculate, stunningly perfect, created-in-a-lab example of woke capital masking a completely odious, anti-worker, regressive agenda. You ready for this? So, there is a new union effort over at REI in New York City. Workers attracted to the company, presumably for their progressive language and supposedly progressive values, well, they've decided they want the retailer to actually try to live up to those values. What's more, REI is not just a nominally progressive company, but it's actually structured like a co-op, which you would

think would indicate some kind of corporate commitment to democratic values in the workplace. So, did REI welcome this new union effort with open arms? Of course not. Not only are they rejecting it, but they are doing so in the most hilariously revealing way. The company recently released a podcast for their workers in order to unleash a typical torrent of union-busting propaganda, but they put a really special spin on it, prefacing their union-busting with a theatrical woke dance in an attempt to disguise their terrible agenda. Here's how it begins. Hi, REI.

My name is Wilma Wallace, and I serve as your Chief Diversity and Social Impact Officer. I use she, her pronouns and am speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people. Wilma then introduces her guest, REI CEO Eric Arts, who also provides his pronouns and does his indigenous lands acknowledgement before smoothly transitioning into his anti-union talking points. We don't believe, I do not believe, that introducing a union is the right thing for REI. And more specifically, I believe the presence of union representation will impact our ability to communicate and work directly with our employees and resolve concerns

at the speed the world is moving. And that is the core of why we don't think that introducing a union is the right thing for our employees. So Wilma, allow me to unpack this. Now friends, I have seen and heard that same anti-union propaganda approximately a million times, which just goes to show you whatever political sheen, whatever gloss a company decides to paint on themselves, with very few exceptions, every one of them is ultimately committed to the same things, money and control. But the prize for woke union busting this week has got to go to Starbucks. We've been tracking the wildfire of Starbucks unionization efforts spreading across the entire country, and it's truly the worst nightmare for the corporate

bosses who run that company. Their initial strategies from Buffalo pushed the edge of legality but were insufficient to stop two stores there from unionizing. Now, faced with a deluge of dozens of stores petitioning for unions, Starbucks has decided to veer straight into the most aggressive and illegal tactics possible. Specifically, Starbucks has fired seven workers, nearly the entire organizing committee, at a store in Memphis, Tennessee. Those seven workers actually represent more than a third of the entire workforce at that store. One of the fired workers explained, quote, I was fired by Starbucks today for quote unquote policies that I've never heard of before and that I've never been written up about before.

Starbucks Workers United added that many of these workers had no prior offenses, no prior write-ups whatsoever. The union has filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging Starbucks, alleging that Starbucks's actions were illegal. Starbucks, of course, denies that. Now, this sounds exactly like the playbook that Amazon has run to halt union drives in its warehouses, things like firing organizers Christian Smalls and Daquan Smith, and inventing BS rationales for why those workers were let go. The sad thing is that these moves are common, and they're often successful. The NLRB has limited tools to deal with this kind of lawlessness, and disputes over firings can drag out for years, long past the time when any

remedy would actually matter for the union drive at hand. That's why these tactics are employed so routinely. The Economic Policy Institute found that companies are charged with breaking the law in 41.5% of union elections, and that companies were charged with illegal firings in nearly one-third of NLRB-supervised union elections. Contrast these illegal regressive firings with the language and the posturing on Starbucks' website. Their most recent blog post, there, written by the company's chief diversity officer, recounts the horrors of Jim Crow segregation and includes these words apparently written unironically, quote, like many Black, Indigenous, and people

of color BIPOC were encouraged to dream big and then were taught to keep those dreams to ourselves out of fear that someone might question our desire for more, our desire for true freedom and autonomy. Tell me more about your quest for freedom and autonomy as you woke wash for a company that will casually fire its workers if they dare to push for any freedom and autonomy for themselves. This weaponization of wokeism for regressive ends, though, it's not just the domain of corporate America. Their protectors and their cronies use the exact same tactics to great and disastrous effects. There's a particularly dangerous battle unfolding over who's going to occupy Stephen Breyer's seat on the Supreme Court, and it follows

the woke Capitol playbook to a tee. As we reported before, James Clyburn is aggressively pushing federal district judge Michelle Childs for that spot. She meets the Biden administration's arbitrary demographic test, and that alone is supposed to convince us that she would be a progressive addition to the court who might rule in ways that benefit the disproportionately Black working class. But at every turn, she has instead worked in service of her class, exposing the real dividing line in politics. She worked for years as a management-side labor attorney at a famed union-busting law firm. She won support of Republicans like Lindsey Graham and corporate Democrats like Jim Clyburn by fighting for corporations to kill claims of discrimination and civil rights violations, a commitment that she continued while she was on the bench as a judge. Woke Capitol has so perverted our discourse, though, that just by dint of her identity, it would be extremely difficult even for supposed

progressives in the Senate to vote against her confirmation. A large swath of the public and certainly our elected leaders can't see that the important difference between SCOTUS members isn't their gender or race, but how fervently they serve corporate power. Even Senator Sherrod Brown, a reliable pro-union vote in the Senate, has been pushed into backing Childs. As he told Politico, quote, If she is chosen, I'll be enthusiastic. I've heard things. I am reassured from Clyburn and others that she would be a good nominee. Outside progressive groups have mostly greeted Childs' potential nomination with a shrug.

One told Politico, quote, that those groups were not interested in creating a problem for Biden on this. So your commitment is to the comfort and ease of the most powerful person on the planet. What about the problem that Childs could create for the working class and marginalized people you pretend to give a damn about? Just ask yourself this. How could a president who promised to be the most pro-union president in history even consider such a person? Woke corporate identity politics are the reason. Hollow identity politics. These efforts are why I have come to see the fetishization of language and ineffective anti-racist trainings that focus on individual racist sin rather than institutional harm as not just empty but extremely destructive. It is no

exaggeration to say that the people most committed to this direction are the most direct and most potent obstacles to actual change because the entire ideology says that racism is an immutable sin at the founding of the country that we can never hope to eradicate. The implication is that rather than fighting its effects through union efforts and institutional change, we should instead focus on individuals, on personal demonstrations of anti-racism of the kind that corporations are only too happy to employ. Or we should focus on individual diversity projects that swap out some white male elites for some maybe black female ones. These projects provide something that sort of looks and feels like maybe it's change, but is in reality just a further entrenchment of existing power.

Barack Obama's hope and change message, coupled with an administration that was stuffed to the gills with Wall Street lackeys, that provided the roadmap for every woke corporatist who followed. You get the money and you get the elite status and you get to wrap yourself in virtue. It is a great deal for those who benefit from the existing system and aren't, say, looking to make rent and join a union. And you can use your pronouns and your diversity language to turn around and accuse anyone who objects

of being a racist or a sexist or a transphobe. We must understand this ideology and the people pushing it as an enemy to be defeated because it is as big a reason as absolutely any that exists in the world that this country remains so miserable for so many people of every color and creed. And I just looked at these three stories, the REI thing, Starbucks, think of the language thing. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us to weigh in on a range of topics, we have Jamie Rogozinski. He is the founder of WallStreetBets, a Reddit that you guys probably know about. We covered it quite a bit last year with GameStock back in 2012, and he also is the author of a book on that same topic. Great to meet you, Jamie. Good to see you, Jamie. Nice to be here. Thank you very much.

Yeah, absolutely. So we wanted to start with an item that's in the news that I thought would be interesting to get your thoughts on. Let's go ahead and throw this tear sheet up on the screen about Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, who of course is being prosecuted by the U.S. government right now in an attempted extradition back to the U.S. to face prosecution here. Supporters of him just raised $56 million to buy an NFT. They did this through what is called a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization. You know, for people who aren't like native to this language, can you just explain what a DAO is, what they did, what they did with the money and what's going to happen now so people can understand the significance of all of this. Yeah. I mean, first of all, NFTs and DAOs, all these different things, they have a definition. They all stand for something,

right? But that's sometimes not enough to fully explain it because the definitions aren't fully clear. NFTs are very frequently related to pictures or artwork or different pieces of content that somebody creates. But NFTs and DAOs, which are starting to kind of intermingle with the same concept, they're blurry. So what happened here with Julian Assange was to create this community, which he arguably probably already had given how much he raised. They came together with a common cause and said, hey, let's purchase this NFTft this this non-fungible token a picture an image i haven't actually seen what what the content of it is

but with the stated purpose of helping him out with his legal fees in other words it's kind of like a crowdfunding uh exercise for them right the idea of dao is a concept where instead of having like a company with a president and he tells everybody what to do or a board of directors, you have a community that comes together and they all vote on what they want to do. And they can all vote on how they want to move forward with whatever decisions need to happen. Yeah, it's really interesting because, Jamie, when I think about it, Wall Street Bets was kind of a proto thing for a lot of what's happening in Web3. As one of the people who founded this, talk to us about the evolution of that subreddit and how you watch the quote-unquote memification and kind of bring together of ultimately what was a decentralized community affect the stock market in the way that it did with GameStop. Yeah, I mean, effectively, the concept of

community is probably the strongest component currently in or the strongest theme currently in the world of crypto whether it be dows nft projects tokens currencies whatever it might be it's just people that come together with a common interest and they hang out and they chat sometimes in chat rooms sometimes on different social media and they get excited and they learn from each other they contribute to this particular project wall street bets was exactly that right it starts off as people that are interested in the stock market that are interested in taking risk that don't have any issues with taking uh a little bit of money and risking most of it in hopes that they can turn it into a lot of money right and as the the community was established

and word got out lots of people like yeah that that sounds like me i i want to do this too you know i'm young or I was affected by the 2008 crisis, whatever it might be. And then it just kept growing by itself organically. And this community, what they do is they literally hang out, they have fun, they find different exploits that they can try and take advantage of. In finance, they call these things arbitrage or whatever it might be. In this particular world, they use memes instead of using Excel sheets, but it's the same concept. So as the stock market has been on sort of uncertain grounds lately,

a lot of those meme stocks were the first to take massive hits. What's your reaction to that? And also, were there any sort of like lessons learned out of what happened with GameStop? You know, the volatility is about to happen at some point, right? The market's been going up since 2000. I mean, for the past 14 years or so, it's been going up and up and up with the exception of last year. So at some point, sooner or later, we're going to have some volatility. We're starting to see a little bit of that here,

whether it comes or stays, sorry, whether it goes or stays is anybody's guess. With regards to the meme stocks, it goes, it's the same exact point right they have different catalysts like earning calls whatever it might be lessons learned really depends on what it is that we're out there to learn right a lot of people went out there and made money a lot of people went out there and lost money and you know explanations can can can come up with uh people can come up with explanations relative to well it went down because Robinhood stopped trading, whatever it is. But at the end of the day,

it's just the market and it's got its own mindset. And sometimes it does things because of exogenous factors, endogenous factors. Wall Street business largely moved on, right? Like it's not, they're not going to sit there thinking about like, well, we would have done this differently.

No, they're just looking for different ways to continue having fun, to continue to try and find ways to, and find ways to find free money in the market or find high-propensity trades in the market. Yeah, I think perhaps – I always understood this just from the shit-posting angle of it because I grew up on the internet. I try not to curse here that often, but I don't really know what else you can describe it. How are you trying to bring that energy to this new venture, which I know we have a little bit? We can put that on the screen. Trying to bring trading stocks into more of a crypto environment, but also obviously using the energy that you found and instigated in Wall

Street bets. How does that look? Because this very much looks to me like where the future is going to end up. Well, it looks very much to me the same thing, right? That's the reason why I'm getting involved with this. Look, at the end of the day, it's painfully apparent how powerful crypto can be. And crypto, not to be confused with the price of Bitcoin or some other coin or a dog coin. It's the technology, this DeFi platform, this ability to decentralize interactions, financial interactions. I don't say transactions because sometimes they're not quite transactions, but there's interactions. And it's incredibly powerful, right? And there's a lot of efficiencies and a lot of things that crypto does better. So I'll give you an example. You could easily make a crypto synthetic stock or

tokenized stock trade anywhere between 20 to 24 hours a day, something that normal stocks should be able to do in case Elon Musk decides to tweet on a Sunday about selling his shares, right? You're able to do that now with crypto. It makes perfect sense when you see something like that happen on the weekend or China saying we're going to default, whatever. Just you can go to your computer right there and then not wait until the market's open 24 hours later and actually take advantage of that. And there's a lot of efficiency in terms of crowdfunding. We've seen studies that look at Wall Street bets at the post and the various stocks that

people discuss on there. They've shown that on average they can beat the S&P 500 given their collective ability to come up with different ideas. So why not bring that into crypto? Further democratizes the financial landscape. People are all the way around the world, can participate in their own way. So it's obviously going to be the next big thing and I want to be a part of it. So one of the critiques of crypto, because there's a lot of idealism around it, I'm an idealist myself, so I appreciate that. But one of the critiques is that you're just recreating a lot of the old problems

of the old system, in particular in terms of income inequality in sort of a new form. So the vast majority of crypto is held by a relatively small sliver of people. It's the same sort of thing where if you So the vast majority of crypto is held by, you know, relatively small sliver of people. It's the same sort of thing where if you're like first movers advantage. So it's people who, you know, got in early or most likely to benefit the most. What is your response to that particular critique? People that get in early also risk the most.

Risk and return go side by side. If you hear about a project that's just about to launch or an NFT project that's just about to go, people like, yeah, this is going to be the best thing ever. You put a lot of money into it, but you haven't had a chance to see what the team is made of or what the launch is going to be like. That's like buying a pre-construction apartment or a house, right? You're paying less for it, but you don't know what you're going to get. So, yes, the people that get in early can make more money. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that there's income inequality, right? You have that spectrum of saying, look, you have the higher risk stuff. And if you pick any of the

dog coins, you're going to risk a lot and you might make a lot of money, right? Or if you pick a stable coin like USDC or whatever it is and decide to deposit it for 8% interest a year, then you're not going to lose any money. So, you know, you have that spectrum there. But at the end of the day, I believe that it contributes to income equality. So I'll give you a small example. People have been trying, and I believe they've already started to succeed at turning real estate into an NFT.

In other words, putting the deed on the blockchain and actually have it be recognized and selling it that way. What this allows you to do is one step away from fractionalizing it, meaning breaking it into smaller parts. Income real estate is a great investment, but it's only a great investment if you invest in the expensive properties, like the beachfront properties are the ones that are millionaire properties, and those are the ones that go up forever. But if you buy a place in the slums or in some place it's not going to be developed in the near future it tends to stay that way right so even real estate is not is not fair but if you take an nft component and say well i know you can't afford the million dollar mansion

or whatever but you can afford a small percentage of it that's that's within your reach then all of a sudden you've actually leveled the playing field and allowed more access to people that perhaps don't have as much money to buy into the good real estate. And what's your reaction to the just massively pervasive fraud that we've seen with NFTs? You know, it's an unfortunate growing pain that any new concept has to go through. We saw some of that similar in the ICO in 2017-ish where people come up there.

It's relatively low cost to come up with this project and tell people, hey, come here and give me your money. You know, like just like Assange just pulled $56 million. Now, arguably, he's got a reputation and it's less likely to turn into a fraud. But it doesn't stop anybody from trying to do that. The good thing is that people wise enough. There's a lot of projects where people get burned and there's a lot of projects where people don't. And then all of a sudden they start being a little bit more careful with regards to how they want to invest their money into it. But at the end of the day, sometimes they know, you know, there's going to be a pump and dump.

I don't care. I'm going to go into it. I'm going to buy really low and I'm going to sell one that's at the peak of the pump. And if they don't sell at the peak of the pump, they say, shoot, I ran out of money. Let's reload the machine. Let's pull the lever. Let's try again with another one tomorrow. And I won't be so greedy. It's the Wild West out there. Appreciate you breaking it down for us. I find it really interesting, especially, you know, kind of tying into the history of Wall Street Bets. So thank you for joining us, man.

Great to meet you, Jamie. Thank you very much for having me. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it. What a week. I feel like it's been like nine years. Weirdly, it has been the biggest week ever in Breaking Points history.

I can't thank you guys enough. But it also is proof of why we do the show, both stand up around free speech, but we didn't drop any of our coverage of some of the most important issues that were happening. At the end of the day, that's what we try to do here, more than anything. Yeah, and I think both of us on Tuesday,

when our YouTube channel just wasn't working for a few hours, and we were very frustrated, and there was nothing we could do. I mean, it was just like, very frustrated. We were freaking out. And there was nothing we could do. I mean, it was just like we tried everything. We ruled out and it was nothing on our end. The channel just literally wasn't working on the back end. And so we had this single point of failure. And I think it just was another validator for us of why we created the business model that we did.

Because the premium subs were able to get the video. Yeah, we got it out on Vimeo at like 1130. Right, because for them it doesn't have to go out on YouTube. We Yeah, we got it out on Vimeo at like 11.30. Right, because for them, it doesn't have to go out on YouTube. We were able to send it out on Vimeo. So you have different options. So you don't have this single point of failure. But in terms of like, you know, the free public clips

and, you know, the ads being inserted in there and all of that, there was just nothing we could do whatsoever. It was crazy, guys. I mean, we couldn't post for four straight hours and we still have no idea. YouTube doesn't even know. They're like, yeah, we don't know. Just started working again. Your account, and then all of a sudden, we were allowed to upload. Ended up being one of our biggest days ever on YouTube, but look, I mean, maybe it would have been bigger. I have no idea, you know? So like you said, you have a single

point of failure, then you have a point of failure, ultimately, and we had a very stark reminder of that, but we didn't actually sweat it, except for the people who, you failure, then you have a point of failure ultimately. And we had a very stark reminder of that. But we didn't actually sweat it except for the people who can't afford a premium subscription. I felt bad for them. But financially, it was okay. If we had relied only on them, I mean, we would have been truly screwed. It was really frustrating, but in the end, it all worked. Right. We had the backlash.

It worked out. But it only worked out because we know that we have you guys. Otherwise, I would have been tearing my hair out and losing it. Oh, my God. So thank you to everybody who supports us on the premium membership. It's for moments like that that we literally live for you. We watch it happen before our eyes. It's happening all the time on Instagram and other in terms of shadow banning and elsewhere.

But again, you guys are the people we rely on. And you fund our work, our ability to produce the Rogan video that we did today. So much more that we could literally just on a dime, hire somebody who does extremely good work. Yeah. This stuff is not cheap and all of it comes down to everybody. So thank you all so much. We really appreciate it.

Love you guys. Have a wonderful weekend. We'll see you here next week. 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.

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