Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/14/22: Ukraine Escalation, Trucker Convoy, Clinton Spying, Trump's Toilet, CNN Derangement, Obama's Delusion, Afghanistan Crisis, & More!

Episode Date: February 14, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the latest Biden administration warmongering in Ukraine, Canada's escalation towards the Trucker convoy, Hillary's campaign operation to spy on Trump, the report Trump flushed White House documents down a toilet, CNN's deranged views on Joe Rogan, Obama's terrible midterm strategy for Dems, the real history of NATO, and Biden's decision to steal billions from Afghanistan.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/Ali Latifi’s work: https://authory.com/Ali https://www.businessinsider.com/facing-hunger-desperate-afghans-are-selling-their-kidneys-for-money-2022-1  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, guys. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Lots of big news breaking this morning. We've got some big updates for you out of Canada on that trucker protest. Both the government treatment and also some of the fundraising platforms and everything that is going on there. We also have a big update for you that went pretty unnoticed by the mainstream media about just what was going on with the Hillary Clinton campaign and what got Russiagate really kicked off. It's a little bit complicated, but we sort of dove deep to try to figure it out into this thing as best as we could. We also wanted to update you on the story that the mainstream media cannot stop talking about, which is Flushgate, the allegation that Trump was

flushing potentially sensitive documents down the toilet at the White House and clogging the toilet, and also some better documented instances of him, I guess, taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago that are supposed to be kept in the National Archives. We'll break all of that down for you. Also, the very latest in the CNN in disarray continuing saga, anchors crying, melting down, having mental breakdowns, and all of this as their big CNN plus streaming play is sort of in the works and set to launch sometime in the future, near-term future. We also have a journalist, an Afghan journalist, to talk about the Biden administration's actions, basically stealing that country's money and the profoundly devastating consequences of that on the Afghan people.

But we wanted to start with the very latest out of Ukraine. Yeah, that's right. Ukraine is obviously top of mind, the Ukraine crisis. There were a lot of developments over the last couple of days. We're going to try and stick to the very top line ones that you absolutely need to know. The first and the most important one was this. Major escalation of rhetoric from Washington, warning that they believe that an invasion of Ukraine by Russia is imminent, that could happen at any time. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan emphasizing that could even happen before the Olympics.

This is what he said at the White House press briefing room. Let's take a listen. We are in the window when an invasion could begin at any time should Vladimir Putin decide to order it. I will not comment on the details of our intelligence information, but I do want to be clear. It could begin during the Olympics, despite a lot of speculation that it would only happen after the Olympics. As we've said before, we are ready either way. We are ready to continue results-oriented diplomacy that addresses the security concerns of the United States, Russia, and Europe, consistent with our values and with the principle of reciprocity. We've continued to make that clear to Russia in close coordination with our European allies and partners.

We are also ready to respond decisively alongside those allies and partners should Russia choose to take military action. To put that in perspective, that is a massive escalation of rhetoric, saying that the United States is in possession of intelligence, that Russia could invade at any moment. This also came during a very, very bizarre media episode, Crystal, which is that moments before Jake Sullivan steps in front of the podium, all of these deep state mouthpieces, NBC News and Politico say, breaking, U.S. officials believe that Russia has given the order to invade Ukraine. Everyone's like, whoa, wait, hold on a second. What? What's happening? Jake Sullivan then comes up there. He pushes back on that a little bit. He says, well, we believe they could invade at any moment. I mean, once again, I cannot emphasize enough that this accusation by the United States is it has almost no parallel in world history.

Like if you really believe something like that's going to happen, you need to release intelligence. And there's a lot of questions right now. What game is Joe Biden and Washington playing in this crisis? They have the most heated rhetoric of all. Now, yes, we have seen war warnings from Paris, from Berlin, from many of the others who are involved. And we'll get to, though, what the Ukrainians think of all this. They're not very happy, actually, with Washington. Sullivan pressed, however, on that claim of, hey, you say you have evidence. Can you give us any of it? And once again, as we see in this crisis, they cannot give us one shred. They just want us to trust them.

Frankly, I don't. And don't just take my word for it. This is exactly what he said. Let's take a listen. You've been warning about the Russians using a false flag operation to justify invading Ukraine. That's a strong claim to make without presenting a shred of evidence. Is there anything more you can tell the public, a public that might be justifiably rather skeptical of claims about intelligence? Well, let me make three points on this. First, we're not putting forward this intelligence to start a war, which has happened in the past, Jake. We are putting forward this intelligence to stop a war. And I think that fundamentally gives it, at the outset, a different level of credibility. Secondly, this is consistent with the Russian

playbook. We have seen them do this before many times. You ask any Russia expert, they will point to examples of where Russia has used false flag operations as pretext to start military action. Once again, Crystal, they can't give us any evidence. We're not doing it to start. We're doing it to stop. Well, the people who are in charge say that you're actually not helping whatsoever. Put that up there on the screen. As we said, always listen to exactly what the Ukrainian says. President Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, quote, today the best friend for enemies is panic in our country. All of this information, which only helps panic, does not help us. There is too much information about deep, full-scale war. Even the relevant dates are already being said. Zelensky saying, in effect, calm the F down.

We have a diplomatic process. Macron is going through shuttle diplomacy. Kiev believes that there is a diplomatic solution. Just this morning, Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, comes out and says that he believes that there can continue a diplomatic path. Washington is not helping in any of this. It's unprecedented in all of history to see a supposed allied country actually pushing the situation into a worse place. Yeah, and it's actually not just Ukraine. The Europeans are also like, we're not quite where you are, United States of America. Let's put this next element up there on the screen just so you can have the full picture here.

So U.S. intelligence believes, this is according to Politico, Russia is eyeing Wednesday, February 16th to start military action. That's how specific they are making these allegations. They say it could be preceded by a barrage of missile strikes and cyber attacks. Some U.S. allies, though, are rather skeptical. A U.K. official, and they've been the ones who've been willing to go along the furthest with us, they said, quote, we have a different interpretation of the February 16th intelligence that is very diplomatic speak for what the hell are you talking about? Meanwhile, two European Union diplomats shared even more skeptical views with one saying they still refuse to buy it.

It would be such a mistake by Putin. And I think there's a few things that you could say here about why so few people, even Jake Tapper, is pushing back a little bit on the intelligence that's being proffered here. Of course, we played that extraordinary moment where Ned Price was being pressed very hard by an AP journalist, one who is routinely actually pretty good on these things, but saying, listen, what you're suggesting here sounds like Alex Jones conspiracy. You're talking about crisis actors. You're talking about false flags. You're talking about faked videos. Where's the proof? And so you can see the way that over these many years, their routine lies to the American public have made even some of their, you know, typically staunch allies in the media push back a little bit. The American people are highly skeptical of these wild claims that continue to be made. And at the same time, you also have a dangerous

state of affairs where because of the lies that were perpetrated through Russiagate, you have a good part of the country that sees Russia in this very skewed and one-dimensional way where, you know, Putin is this mastermind and he's the chess master and sort of they're our biggest adversary and our biggest enemy. And they're behind everything that's happening in the world from, you know, political events here to the Canadian trucker protest, et cetera, et cetera. No one is saying, and I think we should be, you know, we always try to be really clear here. Like Putin is not a good actor. Russia does have imperial ambitions and is in a sort of revanchist mindset. Putin does seem to want to sort of

reassert the greatness of the former Soviet Union, certainly wants to have these spheres of influence undisputed. But also the part you never hear from the mainstream press is some of the, you know, legitimate thinking that goes into Russia and their approach to all of this and their discomfort with the way that NATO has encroached closer and closer to their borders with Ukraine, of course, being a key piece of that. And I know you're going to some of that in your monologue. Yeah, my monologue today is actually a history of NATO, NATO expansion and all that, just to put everything in context for people. I agree with you and I reiterate this completely. The Russians are not good actors here. Nobody is disputing that.

They're the people who amassed 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border for seemingly no reason. But if you zoom out a little bit, you can actually understand how we can slow roll to this. And my ultimate conclusion of the monologue teaser is that the hubris of the foreign policy elite has made it so that they thought they could do anything on the world stage with no consequences. Oh, yeah, you can invade Iraq. Nothing's going to happen. You can slow roll troops all the way up to the Russian border. It's all good. Well, look, history is back, folks. It ends back in a big way. This is the main thing. I mean, we are escalating this crisis in a significant way. Joe Biden ordered an additional 3,000 troops to Poland amid the Ukraine crisis that makes 6,000 troops deployed to Eastern Europe just this week. 6,000 troops,

obviously not necessarily to fight, but to show as a deterrent factor. But when you have this many number of troops now in Poland and in Ukraine, or sorry, in Poland and in Romania, as well as the forward deployed NATO advisors all throughout the Baltic states, you can understand why Russia says that they feel a legitimate threat of encirclement. And the ratcheting up of these tensions, once again, puts us in a bad situation. I've reiterated these scenarios in the past, but it's bared going into again. When you have all of these troops who are forward deployed, what are they going to do? They feel like they have to set up security operations or maybe overflight missions or something over allied territory. But we already

had a situation over the North Sea where a Russian jet and a U.S. jet came, you know, not that far away from each other. And at that point, we are leaving it up to what, two 27-year-olds in order to prevent World War III. All it takes is for one in order to collide with the other, and then all accusations start flying. One guy does the wrong thing. When you put people in these situations, this happened exactly in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it can lead to a massive escalation in a matter of minutes. You don't screw around whenever it comes to nuclear war. And you know, Crystal, I actually went back and I started looking at some of the past conflicts. I cannot find a single historical parallel in which the

allied nation of a weaker state, and by all accounts, Ukraine has a legitimate, they legitimately obviously have a grievance here. They have a possible threat of invasion. They should be the ones freaking out. I cannot find a single instance of a weaker state facing a legitimate threat of invasion who was not themselves begging larger allied nations in order to come in. Usually their rhetoric is the craziest one. I even went back and I pulled and looked at the telegrams that the Prince Regent of Serbia was sending to the Tsar of Russia in 1914, being like, we cannot defend ourselves. We supplicate your majesty to give us your aid as soon as possible. I pulled the letter that actually

Castro sent to Nikita Khrushchev, October 1962. He says, if they invade Cuba with the aim of occupying it, the dangers are so great after such an invasion, the Soviet Union must never allow circumstances in which the imperialists could carry out a nuclear first strike, essentially saying you should nuke them. That's what it looks like whenever you're a small, tiny nation and you have a big nuclear ally who's defending you and you think you're facing invasion. In this case, imagine if Castro was like, hey, you need to stop. You're going to get us killed. Same with Serbia. There are so many different scenarios that I tried to go and look at. There has never been one where they face a real threat of invasion that they saw as existential, where they were not the ones telling the allied nation, you need to calm down. And that's what really bothers me about this.

They're being truly used as pawns in a geopolitical game. And the way that the media explains away the disparity between the Ukrainian reaction and the U.S. government reaction is by saying, well, the Ukrainians are very concerned about the economic impact, so they're trying to downplay what's going on so that capital doesn't just totally flee. Flights are getting shut down already at this point because the danger of an imminent attack and all of these things. given the past history, that doesn't totally account for the difference here, especially when you add into the equation that our closest allies, including the UK, are not going along with the wildest of the allegations here being made with absolutely no evidence offered to the American people whatsoever. And I think you can just see the justified skepticism out there that says, listen, you guys have lied to us so many times. Like, you'll just casually do it and think nothing of it.

We need to see at least a little bit of something before we're going to go along with these sort of wild theories and scenarios that you're ultimately spinning out. I thought the most revealing moment in that Ned Price exchange was when he was like, well, just because it doesn't happen doesn't mean that we were wrong. It just means maybe like our play here was effective and it kept them from doing this thing that they had planned. So they're saying like, we're not going to show you the evidence and we're never going to be able to prove to you whether we were just making things up and completely lying to you or whether this was based on anything at all. So it just shows you the way that they sort of manipulate the information ecosystem.

And while you have a few little instances where the media like JTapper, like we showed you this morning, is willing to be like, you know, how come we should believe you on this? By and large, it's all just getting reported as fact, as that, you know, wild media situation demonstrated. What do you think was going on there with the journalists who were just reporting, like, Putin's given the orders that an attack is imminent? Do you think that was fed to them by the administration and they reprinted it? No. Worse. I think it was fed to them by the CIA. Yeah. And that the CIA and the DIA and whatever, the NSA, all came together and they're trying to actually push Washington in the administration's hand.

The administration has to rein them back. But a middle ground from such an expansion position is still not a good place. This is how the deep state rigs the media and actually pushes people in the direction. They can say, we've determined with absolute confidence, but the president rejected it from his presidential daily brief, or something like that. There's all sorts of games that are being played on the back end. And I think we should also zoom out a little bit bit too. Look, the Russians say, tell us Ukraine won't be a part of NATO and this whole thing is over. So look, why don't we just call their bluff

and say it? Ukraine is never going to be a part of NATO, period. We rescind the invitation. If they still invade, well, we just robbed them of all credibility of their legitimate grievance against that country. Ukrainians also, by the way, pass it. You know, if you guys don't want to get invaded, you should pass a resolution in parliament. Apparently they're considering it right now. Just say it. I don't understand. I mean, this entire thing over potential NATO membership, I'm sorry. United States is never going to extend their nuclear umbrella to Ukraine, given how much Russia cares about this. That is straight up geopolitics. So I don't understand why the Biden administration can't try and end this tomorrow and unequivocally

say, yes, Ukraine will never be a part of NATO. Your move, Mr. Putin. If he invades then, then you and I even can be like, look, he's full of it, right? But nobody, nobody can say at this juncture that Washington does not have a role in what's happening right now. And the last thing I'll say here is remember at the beginning of all of this, when Biden gave that kind of like disastrous presser and he was asked about the Ukraine tensions and he was like, well, you know. Oh, yeah. The just the tip moment. Yeah. If they invade a little bit, like we'll have to talk about it. And then there's this total freak out. Right. You know, a lot of it, which definitely came from the deep state and information fed to their sort of media

allies. And then that forces a shift in the posture of the Biden administration. And ever since then, they've been trying to be like as belligerent and hawkish as they possibly can to try to like shift that initial perception that Biden, you know, may have been more sort of like reasoned and pushing back against the the drumbeat towards conflict and war here. So it is very interesting to watch in real time the way the propaganda is disseminated, who is rewarded for disseminating that propaganda, the way that even, you know, the CIA and the deep state are trying to influence what ultimately happens here with the information they're releasing, how the administration is handling it. And it's all playing out with real-time consequences. So they're saying

tomorrow's the day, guys. We're about to find out. Yeah. Look, I truly hope so. A war would be disastrous. This would be a true return to the 20th century, wars of territorial conquest with thousands of people dead. I mean, the city of Kiev has been sacked many times by many different actors. It's not something I wish upon the Ukrainians, the Russians, on any of the Europeans. We don't want this. This is bad. Huge consequences for working class people around the world and especially in Europe in terms of energy prices, in terms of food prices, in terms of just— and obviously the human cost and the death toll. And this is never a thing to wish for.

And so we hope that diplomacy is able to win out here, although it's not looking good. I really hope not to see a war again on the European continent. All right. All right, guys. Big things going on with our neighbors to the north. Let me start with the headline from this morning, and then I'll sort of go back and walk us through how we got there. So the truckers had closed down a number of bridges. Those bridges have been reopened, I believe, late last night.

Finally, the big one, the Ambassador Bridge, was reopened. All right, let me show you how we got here. Let's throw this first tariff sheet up on the screen. So truckers' bridge blockade forces shutdowns at auto plants. So they hit them right where they right where it hurts in the capitalism. This U.S.-Canadian border crossing carrying 25 percent of all trade between the two countries had been shut down by the trucker convoy. You had a couple of other bridges also shut down. And Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer really freaked out about this. Understandably, I get why. Because you had production lines from multiple automakers shut down because they could not get, you know, the supplies that they

needed to continue production. This, as we know, continues on top of we already had a lot of issues with car production and shutdowns because of the supply chain crises. So when you had these bridges shut, this immediately created problems for these auto plants. The quote from Governor Whitmer was, it's hitting paychecks and production lines. That is unacceptable. So that's act one. Bridges shut down. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is very upset. Auto plants are shutting down. Step two. Let's put this next piece up on the screen. Joe Biden puts in a call to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. And, of course, the language here is very diplomatic and very sort of nice. But it seems that in no uncertain terms, the president of the United States was like, you got to get this shit handled.

This is not, this is hurting us now. Like, you need to take care of this. The trucker's mistake was screwing with our commerce. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. Yes, exactly. When it came to our profit making abilities, that was where we had to draw the line. What Biden said is the prime minister promised swift action in enforcing the law. OK, so Biden puts in the call to Trudeau. That was on Saturday. Then let's put this next piece up on the screen. You start to have these, you know, calls coming from liberal media outlets that maybe are a little inconsistent with the reaction to past calls for law enforcement crackdowns. And this says, as protests stretch on in Canada and truckers block supply chains with the U.S., some Canadians are asking, why hasn't Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ordered the authorities to quash the demonstrations. That subhead down below says, why hasn't Trudeau ordered the police or the army to quash the protest, Sagar? Crystal, that's actually from the news desk. That's the most remarkable part.

That's not even an op-ed. It's not an opinion. I remember a certain Tom Cotton op-ed that was pulled off and everybody freaked out and all of that. But, oh, whenever it comes to this one, then, you know, principles suddenly go out the window. Let me say, I was fine with them publishing the Tom Cotton op-ed. I was very much opposed to the content of the Tom Cotton op-ed because I think we should be extraordinarily reluctant to call in the military onto civilian streets for any purposes.

I thought that with George Floyd. I thought that after January 6th. And I think it here in terms of what's going on in Canada with our neighbors to the north, although they have their own different standards and norms there. Actually, I think they are even more reluctant than we are to call in the military to handle what is ultimately, what is it? It's a peaceful protest. This is not particularly my cause. I actually am sympathetic to a lot of aspects of it, but this isn't particularly my cause. My principle here is that we have to support protests and freedom of expression. And you see a lot of hypocrisy all the way around here in terms of, you know, you've got

liberal media suddenly like, hey, where's the army? Let's call in the military. Now, the way that they framed it was like, some Canadians are asking, where's the military? So you have that on that side. On the other side, of course, Fox News, when it was the George Floyd protesters, they were already dissenting the military. Now they're all, yeah, now they're freedom fighters and protest is noble. These are the same people who push for anti-protest laws in a whole bunch of states. But the next thing that happens, this is incredible, again, in terms of liberals being pretty hypocritical here. This is a woman who's a security analyst for CNN. Yes. Juliet Kayyem, I don't know. The convoy protest applauded by right wing media as a freedom protest is an economic and security issue. Now, the Ambassador Bridge link constitutes 28% of annual trade movement. Slash the tires,

empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks. Now, the one problem, so first of all, that's obviously extraordinarily aggressive. The other thing is that a lot of the drivers themselves were removing their tires and bleeding their brake lines so that you can't move the truck. So it seems to me like slashing the tires and emptying the gas so that you can't move the truck. So it seems to me like slashing the tires and emptying the gas tanks. First of all, you're talking about vandalism and theft. But second of all, that's like sort of helping their cause and making the trucks less movable. Also, do you know what it means to slash an 18-wheeler tire?

You're going to die, okay? This is something that everybody knows about truck tires. But look, the major thing is that the Canadian government, definitely at the behest of the U.S. government we're going to be canceling this. And actually, in the beginning, not even saying that they would return the money as they have in the past, saying, oh, we're going to give it to our chosen charities, basically confiscating people's money. After protests, they eventually ended up returning it. Well, there was another website called GiveSendGo that had been raising money for these truckers. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. And lo and behold, by Canadian law, this is from Global News, Ontario has frozen those funds from GiveSendGo's Trucker Convoy fundraiser. Once again, millions and millions of dollars donated

through the online fundraising platform. And actually, some breaking news this morning, Crystal, that I just sent over to you, which is that, unfortunately, GiveSendGo, their servers were hacked, and it seems that people are downloading the donor list of the actual donors to the cause itself. There's a man named Dean Blundell, who's actually been bragging about this over on Twitter, and says a lot of these people are basically saying, I have the entire list, just checking with legal nerds rule, essentially implying that he's going to be doxing some of the people who are donor lists or making it available by public. This is a total weaponization of online fundraising. I mean, I've said this in the past, you know, Black Lives Matter, as we see right now, currently in financial disarray over the

millions of dollars that were saved with a lot of questions. I still support the ability of gifts and go and of GoFundMe, any of these places, in order to raise money for a cause you believe in. That is between the citizen and the cause itself. If you get duped, that's on you. And that's the same thing whenever it comes to this. I mean, you are seeing a full-scale operation by the Canadian government, once again, very much at the encouragement of the United States government in order to quash this. I think it's also funny, too, that the Canadians no longer say this is like some Russian-sponsored trucker convoy. They're blaming us. They're like, basically, because our media is free and we actually have a First Amendment and freedom of speech, that we have a

large amount of support here, probably, frankly, more domestic support here than they actually do in Canada for the trucker convoy. That being said, a lot of our money is flowing into the fundraising dollars for these Canadian truckers. And Trudeau is like, this is American money, an American cause, flooding our politics, all of that. I don't have a lot of sympathy for that. I think it's kind of funny. It's funny because, yeah, I listened to that podcast where they brought on this woman who's like a terrorism financing expert. Oh, yeah. You're the one who found this.

This is crazy. To talk about this. And it was really funny to listen to because, yeah, it was the same language that they used during Russiagate of malign foreign interference and that sort of language. But, yeah, they're talking about us. Which, look, I get it. I mean, I wouldn't prejudice it like, you know, we're like the big brother who's sort of throwing our weight around

and funneling these millions into this protest. But that's ultimately the way the world works. And there's nothing illegal or like particularly, you know, overtly nefarious about that. They were thinking about having a government hearing into the source of the financing. There's all kinds of really unsupported allegations that are being floated about where the money is coming from and all of these pieces that, again, I mean, listen, if it is coming from

some nefarious place or dirty money somehow, then you have to show us the allegations of that. You can't just sort of make that up out of thin air. You know, my primary feeling about all of this is jealousy that we don't have on the left protest. This is a very effective and smart protest. It's spreading across the country, across the world. Sorry, there's one in Jerusalem. That's right. And actually the New Zealand, I was just reading this morning, the New Zealand, are they president or prime minister there? Anyway, whoever's in charge in New Zealand was also making the allegations that their protests that they're having on their soil now are foreign inspired and sort of like astroturf from the U.S. and from Canada. Saying that there are Trump flags at the protests, that there are Canadian flags at the protest. But clearly, I mean, clearly they have inspired people towards these sorts of tactics around the world. Clearly there is some level in every country of organic backlash to what has now been

years of pandemic restrictions. Actually, officially two years. We did our first coronavirus segment on Rising about two years ago today. Yeah. So, you know, like I said, it's not particularly my cause. I'm extremely envious of the tactics in the organization. There was a New York Times article about, like, how effectively organized this was, that they had people who were providing supplies. And you had former law enforcement and former military who were involved in the leadership, who understood logistics and understood the planning. And so, you know, the tactic of shutting down supply chains at a time when there's already a lot of pressure there is a really smart, yes, militant tactic. But that's what the most effective, you know, economic boycott. This has a long and at times proud history. You have to make people in power feel some sort of pain because they don't care if you're just like in your designated free speech

zone saying whatever. You have to make life uncomfortable for people in power. And that's what they have effectively done here. So again, look, it's not particularly my cause. I support their right to peaceful protest. And I am only envious that the left hasn't had this level of sort of like organization and focus on disrupting supply chains and these types of tactics that could ultimately have an effect. But we'll see how long of an effect it has. Unfortunately, let's put this up there on the screen, which is the Canadian police have actually been clearing the bridge, the Ambassador Bridge, after a week of disruption. The Ambassador Bridge being where hundreds of millions of dollars of parts and other things were being held up there. Gretchen Whitmer and the president and others had

really been focusing on that. So look, we'll see. I mean, my hope is that this will lead to at least some pressure within Canada domestically, at least to try and lessen some of the most stringent stuff there. I mean, you know, you can see Quebec and lessen some of the most stringent stuff there. I mean, you know, you can see Quebec and others, like you can't even buy groceries if you're not vaccinated. I think that's nuts. Like, I don't support that. This is the domestic West. We don't run that way. That being said, look, it's your own country. You guys decide if the majority of the population, so be it. I'm not saying we should liberate the Canadians, although I'm sure we'd be, I'm just going to, I'm sure we'd be greeted as liberators. Yeah, that's the way

that always works out. I think we should stay out of Canada, their weird French place in Quebec in particular. But this is something where it's a beautiful place. Poutine is weird and gross, though. What I generally think is that with all this, it's not, as you said originally, even about those trucker vaccine mandates. It's become an international cause for restriction. People are fed up. And on that, I'm going to get behind it 100%. I'm not necessarily, you know, even the back,

of course, I'm against the mandates. But as you said, there was some very troubling, like, true anti-vax sentiment within the convoy. But at this point, the conflagration, Israel, for example, everybody in Israel has to be vaccinated anyway. You think they're lining up around vaccine mandates? No, they're sick of living under restrictions, just like many of us. In fact, here in the United States, luckily, we're more free than most people. But New Zealand, I mean, and Australia and Israel, they have been put through the ringer in a way that is unparalleled outside of Asia,

like Hong Kong, essentially, in terms of what their restrictions look like. And I don't think human beings should have to live that way in a civilized society. So from that point, I think it's a good cause. Here's the other piece is, and I think Taibbi had a good piece about this whole thing. He had a good write-up that I encourage you all to check out on his sub stack. You know, the treatment both from the media and from Trudeau has been to sort of dismiss the demands and the concerns of this group as like beyond the pale. Yes. And I just, you know, I don't agree with that. Even if you totally disagree with, you know, their view on mandates, their view on mass policies or any of those things, I think we should all agree that these are legitimate

places of public debate and discussion. And so the attempt to just sort of like demonize them, push them out of the public square, say, you know, say that this is basically, you know, off the table or beyond the pale in terms of even having a debate, I really object to that. I mean, the one place that I think the narrative from the right is kind of silly is making this out like this movement is representative of all working class people or this is some like working class one. Like that's not true. It's not true in Canada in terms of, you know, the actual views of working class people and who's vaccinated and who's not. It's not even representative of all truckers. But the part that I think we should be most concerned about here is, number one, this instinct towards like pushing people out of the public square rather than engagement, I think is very damaging to democracy. I also think that the piece of the fundraising platforms taking it upon themselves

to pull the funds or being pressured by government to pull the funds, like that's another direction that we should see as very troubling in the same lens as, you know, the type of censorship that we've been tracking them pushing Spotify to do and pushing these other big tech platforms to say, basically, like these views are sanctioned and these ones aren't, you don't want to hand these people more power than they already have. They have so much power and so much of liberal energy these days is dedicated towards like begging people who already have a lot of power to claim even more power about who has a legitimate voice, who has legitimate grievance and who doesn't ultimately.

So to me, those are the pieces that are really important. In terms of the impact, ultimately, of these protests, because as you point out, after Biden made the call and was like, listen, capitalism is priority number one, so you better get this figured out. The bridges are reopened. There are continuing protests in Ottawa that are significant, although I guess there has been some engagement, I was reading this morning, with the folks that are there trying to limit where the truckers are to certain areas so they're not as disruptive in residential neighborhoods. So there's been a

little bit of give and take and dialogue there. But this has not been good for Trudeau. Trudeau already has low approval ratings. His government is not particularly popular. And so while I don't know that they're going to get any of their specific demands immediately met in the short term, because I don't think that Trudeau or the rest of the government wants to be seen as sort of like capitulating in the face of this, they're going to want to avoid this kind of conflagration in the future. I agree. So I think it acts as more of a check on potential future actions. And in that way, it's probably very effective, not just in Canada, but other places around the world that are going,

I don't want this to happen here and to have such a political blow up here as well. So I think even if they don't win on their specific, you know, vaccine cross-border mandate issues or, you know, local pandemic restrictions, I do think it serves as a kind of check on future actions and restrictions that could be contemplated down the road. That's well said. And you're correct, which is this has been a major embarrassment to Trudeau across the world in his relations with the United States. It's also given and shown us some of the cleavages in Canadians and Western society broadly. And the larger inspiration now in Jerusalem and New Zealand, perhaps elsewhere, is going to serve as kind of a global conflagration possibly against these

things. I don't want to overstate it. I have no idea how big those things will be. But as you said, more what it is, is it's a Democratic check in the future against people in power saying, all right, we can— So let's say there's another Omicron. I don't think a lot of these restrictions can come back simply because of what's happened here. Yeah. So there we go. All right, let's go ahead and move on. Crystal and I had to do quite a bit of investigation.

I wish you guys could have heard us trying to figure this out on the phone. Figuring this one out, reading into the indictment and more and in terms of there's a lot of claims that are being thrown around so let's get to

the very, very bottom of it. The Durham investigation continues that being John Durham who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr to look into the originations of the Russiagate investigations. It's been going on now

for many years, you know. And in terms of indictments and others, it has disappointed some, but what has been revealed most recently is quite interesting, and I don't want to overstate the case whatsoever. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Daily Mail, actually of all places, did the best write-up in terms of what I can tell from the actual details of this investigation. So special counsel John Durham has said that the Clinton campaign paid a lawyer who then paid a tech firm to hack, and hack is actually disputed here, into the White House and Trump Tower servers to find Russia links. So here is the actual indictment, or in terms of the complaint that was issued against Michael Sussman.

So Michael Sussman is a lawyer. He was working for the Clinton campaign. Now, two months before the 2016 presidential election, Michael Sussman met with then James Baker, who was the general counsel of the FBI. Sussman delivered to Baker a presentation in which he outlined what he claimed was a definitive proof that the Trump campaign and the Trump organization had links to Alpha Bank, which was a Russian bank, and thus that Trump was a Russian stooge. During the course of that conversation, Michael Sussman said that he was not acting on behalf of anybody's interests. Now that is what he's actually been criminally, or has a

complaint against him, given that he was lying to James Baker, the FBI, because we now know he was being paid by the Clinton campaign. Now, here's where it gets interesting. What also is said is that Sussman was working on behalf of a tech executive. Now, per this new filing in this report from John Durham, this tech executive had access to a DNS company, which itself had been acquired and yet somehow has some sort of contracts and connections with the DNS firm, which handles both Trump Tower and the executive office of the president. And that this tech executive working with Michael Sussman was compiling non-public DNS information, that's internet traffic information, of both Trump Tower and the executive office of the president while Trump was in office in order to try and compile and spin a narrative that there was a connection between the Trump campaign, eventually the president of the United States, and the Russian government. So this lawyer essentially is the cutout with the Clinton campaign. He lied to the FBI. He was working with a tech company, which had a contract in order to look at the DNS information of both Trump Tower and the White House, and that this tech company then was, or somebody in this tech company was using their position to compile and

get this non-public data to then give to Michael Sussman to try and craft a narrative, which then made it seem that the Trump campaign was aligned with Russia. So there you go. I know it's complicated. It's not as easy as well. The Clinton campaign was hacking. It's like, kind of. They were paying somebody to do this and had a connection with this guy who also had access to this information. Not necessarily a hack itself. Definitely an abuse of power in terms of the tech executive. We don't know who this tech executive is necessarily. They named one person in the indictment, but we don't know if it was him or somebody who was working for him. So that's the long and short of the story.

I know it sounds incredibly complicated. All of these Russiagate stories are like this. So that is as best as I can on some of these. You guys might remember, this was towards the end of the Clinton campaign. We started to see

these stories pop up in the media about the Trump Tower pinging. The server. Yeah, the server pinging

Alpha Bank. And the articles were always very tantalizing because it, I remember reading. It seemed, oh, this could be like the nexus. Like if they're having some secret communications, this could be how it is all being done. And so what this story really exposes is sort of the genesis of where those particular stories were coming from. And so we had already learned that this lawyer allegedly lied to the authorities about the fact that he was, in fact, working for the Clinton campaign and being paid for the Clinton campaign by the Clinton campaign to kind of get the intelligence community to take this seriously.

OK, and this was all happening before the campaign even ended. So there's that piece we kind of already knew. The new piece here goes into details about how exactly they were able to gather this information about these pings coming from Trump Tower and then ultimately coming from the executive office of the president. And the language is very opaque and not very specific. But what we can gather here is that allegedly this tech company had access to both the Trump Tower information and the executive office of the president information through other contracts, other things that they were doing. That this was non-public information. So this wasn't something that just like a smart person who's super tech savvy could go out there on the web and gather. They had access to this confidential

information and they mined this information and other data for the purpose of, this is directly from the complaint, for the purpose of gathering derogatory information about Donald Trump. Then the way it was presented to the intelligence community was in this very sort of skewed way that didn't include the context that actually these sorts of pings are pretty common and that the ones that were coming from the EOP and coming from Trump Tower, that this represents a very, very, very small fraction of the ultimate traffic that was going in this direction. I'm sorry, guys. I'm way out of my depth here in terms of the tech. But the basic idea is that they were using non-public information to spin a story to the FBI,

and they were lying about their motivations for spinning this story. That's really what this ultimately comes down to. I'll read you a little bit more of the language here because it gives you a sense of where some of this information came from. It says, in connection with these efforts that Tech Executive One exploited his access to non-public and or proprietary Internet data, Tech Executive One also enlisted the assistance of researchers at a U.S.-based university who were receiving and analyzing large amounts of internet data in connection with a pending federal government cybersecurity research contract. So they're using this data that is not public to spin a narrative to try to persuade the FBI that there's something here that they need to leak into. And then we also know that they were obviously feeding the story to media outlets and the journalists who, you know, uncritically and unthinkingly were willing to regurgitate the story have all, of course, been elevated.

That's Franklin Ford. I mean, this guy, he was at the Atlantic. He made a lot of money. Natasha Bertrand was another one, right? There's another one, Alpha Bank. I mean, these were big careers made. She was, I mean, she made her way all the way from business insider, national security, to the top NBC News, MSNBC analyst, making a lot of money, getting big contracts, and today actually serves as a chief conduit of a lot of what the CIA wants to launder in terms of public information right now during the Ukraine crisis. This is the biggest and greatest sin of Russiagate is normalizing and making the careers of people who ultimately, at the end of the day, are mouthpieces for the CIA

and others that have longstanding consequences far outside of Donald Trump. Well, these are like some of the same people now who are being relied upon for their Ukraine analysis. Exactly. And this matters as a big really matters in terms of our public policy. But let's also not forget Donald Trump's role in all this information. Very mature and responsible way. In the most Trumpian way possible. Put a statement up there on the screen. So the latest plea, latest pleading for special counsel provides indisputable evidence. My campaign was spied on by operatives paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign. This is a scandal far greater in scope and magnitude than

Watergate. Those who were involved in and knew about this spying operation should be subject to criminal prosecution. In a stronger period of time in our country, this crime could have been punishable by death. In addition, reparation should be paid to those in our country who have been damaged by this. I don't know what those reparations would look like. It says we should use the death penalty against those who were involved. The most Trumpian response possible. Look, all things considered, I don't care this story one way or the other.

I mean, look, I thought Russiagate was a traumatic and horrific thing that happened to the country, that it was a great crime by many elites and in the media to grapple with their own failings of Hillary Clinton. That being said, it's been six something years now. And whenever you look at this, Michael, okay, fine, prosecute Michael Sussman. Obviously Hillary was dirty, but look, Trump, I mean, you won the 2016 election against all odds. That's the real story to me. And then, yes, I mean, you barely lost. You only lost by 40,000 votes in the 2020 presidential election. So litigating what happened in September of 2016, I don't think that's the biggest story in the country. I thought Obamagate, Ukraine Great, and Russiagate were immensely important at the time, and they certainly should

have been investigated. And I support, you know, bringing those people to justice, and I think they were dirty as hell. But to still focus and litigate on the 2016 election at this point is just pointless. We have much, much bigger problems than that. And everybody getting all wrapped up on this and right wing media, I don't know what to tell you. You were correct. I'm not disputing it. The media are definitely enemies, criminals for what they did back in 2017 and all throughout the Russiagate scandal. But look, man, we got COVID, we got an economy, supply chain crisis. I think it's time to move on. Yeah. I think the other piece of this that is important though, is that the media was so

obsessed with this story. And part of why we had so much trouble figuring out what the hell happened is because you only have like two outlets that even cover it. The initial story came from Fox News and Fox News y'all gotta get it together because that thing was incomprehensible. Yeah it was written horribly. It was so poorly written. That's why we put the Daily Mail thing up there because at least they did

a decent job. At least they explained it in a way that was like 70% comprehensible. But that's part of the problem is that since you only have like one or two write-ups to rely on, and they both come from partisan media, it makes it really hard to try to really figure out, okay, obviously Trump is saying like,

spying, treason, hang them. And there's this very dense article to try to figure out what's going on here. So it makes it very difficult to accurately report what happened and why it matters and what the stakes ultimately are. And I think, just to tie it back to some of the conversations we've been having about censorship and misinformation and all of that is the people who spread this kind of misinformation, which is so damaging, which we will live with the consequences of for a long time. You've infected like half the population with these horrific Russia brain worms, you know, going right back to this total Cold War mentality.

There's no accountability there. They don't even feel it. And this is, I think, was it Taibbi that also made this point about this is in some ways worse than any Iraq war? Because at least at the end of that, they all had to acknowledge like we got played and we were really wrong. And there was some sort of like contrition about it. Now with this, like they won't even cover the new developments that expose how wrong they were from the beginning and the way that they were manipulated and played or in some cases like knew, that they were lying to the public. So that's, I think,

probably the most important piece of this story. Ultimately, it is a media story about how they were really happy to go into all of these insane conspiracies. What if Trump was a Russian agent since 1987 and the P-tape and all of that? But the stuff that comes out now that's inconvenient for what they were selling for years, they just don't even bother. They don't even bother to talk about it. No, you're absolutely right. I think our analysis

fits with the next story. Yes, what they are talking about that we didn't want to fail to bring you is Trump's handling of potentially sensitive information. And I do have to say, we're going to get to this incredibly cringe Hillary post later on, the butter emails. She's trying to sell hats with butter emails.

You don't have enough money? The whole merchandise shop, I really recommend to you because it is some of the most cringe merchandise I've ever seen in my life. But I do think it's fair to say that if you were super obsessed with how Hillary handled her emails, you should probably care a little bit about this story about how Trump handled his classified information. So let's put this up there on the screen. Maggie Haberman, who I think was one of the more solid reporters during the

Trump administration and has a new book coming out this fall called Confidence Man about his rise and about his presidency. She gave Axios this little scooplet that she got, which is that reportedly Trump had a habit of flushing documents down the toilet in the White House residence. Here's Axios. They say, while President Trump was in office, staff in the White House residence periodically discovered wads of printed paper clogging a toilet and believed the president had flushed pieces of paper. That is the Maggie Haberman scoop. Let's go ahead and put Politico up on the screen. Of course, Trump denies it. He says that the allegations are another fake story, calls them categorically

untrue, simply made up by a reporter in order to get publicity for a mostly fictitious book. A mostly fictitious book, by the way, that he apparently cooperated with. Yeah, he sat down with her. He just can't resist, can he? No, every person I know who's writing a book about Trump, it's the easiest thing in the world to, he sat down with her. He just can't, he just can't resist, can he? No, every person I know

who's writing a book about Trump, it's the easiest thing in the world to get to sit down with him. That's his, I remember, you know, I can tell you this, I interviewed Trump the day that Bob Woodward's book,

first book came out, and his biggest, his biggest pet peeve was that Bob had not spoken to him for the book. Now, it's not that Bob didn't try, it's that his staff never told him that Bob Woodward was calling. Yeah, that's what was happening. So just a little bit of inside info.

Part of the deal with Maggie is she covered him as part of the New York press. She knew him for a long time. He used to call her constantly. I mean, this is the other thing I can also put out there just because I worked in the press corps and I knew how it worked. A lot of the times when Maggie Haberman would say a senior administration official, that senior administration was Trump. He technically is the most senior administration official. Many of the Trumpkins will not believe me on this. He had a great relationship with the press.

He would call them constantly. He was always checking up on what was going on. And as much as they bashed him, the press in public, they loved Trump. They could call him. He was the only president in history who would just call a reporter randomly just to chat and be like, what's going on with this? And then leak something off the record. I saw it all firsthand while I was there. Well, it makes sense because it was a total symbiotic relationship.

Exactly. Because they were getting rich. I was great for him. And he was getting press. Now look at how their ratings are. Yes. And you can see why they enjoyed that relationship with the president. But I do think, I mean, I will read Maggie's book when it comes out.

Yeah, I'll read it. I'll be much more interested in that one than in some of the other ones. The other piece of the Trump classified information story, and we don't know, by the way, obviously we don't know. First of all, if it's true about the toilets. Second of all, what was being flushed, whether it was sensitive or class. We don't know, first of all, if it's true about the toilet. Second of all, what was being flushed, whether it was sensitive or class. We don't know. All we know is that staff were saying, according to Maggie Haberman, that they were finding wads of printed paper in the toilet. It does sound like the sort of thing Trump would do, I will say that much.

The other piece that we have a little bit more on is the fact that he brought a lot of documents, some of which were classified and reportedly some of which were even marked top secret, down to Mar-a-Lago rather than handling them in the way that's appropriate. They're supposed to be handed over to the National Archives so they can sort of like take care of them. He apparently brought a bunch of stuff with him, boxes and boxes, down to Mar-a-Lago. And there are questions about the legality of doing so. Now, what I will say is that the president has a lot of latitude with regards to classified documents, including- Right, because he's the classifier-in-chief. He's the classifier-in-chief. So if he wants to declassify something, he can unilaterally do that. So for those who are thinking there might be a legal case here against Trump, it's probably going to be pretty difficult to prove.

It's a high legal bar to get to criminal charges. The Washington Post says prosecutors would have to prove someone intentionally mishandled the material, was grossly negligent in doing so, which can be a steep hurdle in its own right. That's why Hillary wasn't charged, is because they didn't deem that she met that bar of intentionally mishandling the material or being grossly negligent in doing so. And Trump as president would have had unfettered latitude to declassify material, potentially raising even bigger challenges to bringing a case against him. But I do think Edward Snowden made a really good point. Let's put his tweet up on the screen.

He says, once upon a time, just copying a top secret document was enough to get you prosecuted. Ask me how I know. And with Trump and his staff and there were things about Ivanka and how she handled classified information, all of that, and with Hillary Clinton, I think it shows you the way that routinely elites feel like none of the normal rules apply to them. And oftentimes they don't apply to them

and there is no accountability for the crimes that they do commit. No, I think you're right. And this is, again, one of those stories where it's like, oh my God, yes. I mean, did anyone expect Trump to handle classified information well? No. No. And this also gets to the whole, and Hillary kind of capitalized on this classic.

Let's put this up there. Oh, God. She posted this on screen, but her email, she's selling these hats because apparently the lady's not rich enough already. I have to pull up the caption to this. Hold on, let me pull it up because it includes the word Galentine's Day.

Oh, good. Galentine's Day and the news that Trump was flushing documents down White House toilets. A special edition hat is in the Onward Together store now, as always. Proceeds support the work of our partner groups to protect voting rights, help young progressives run for office, and more. Link to get yours in my profile. So, guys, just a little tip for you there. If you want. For Galentine's Day, you can go get the most cringe merchandise of your life.

That's right. What always bothered me about all of this is that, look, it was not necessarily just the email. It was Hillary gets away with stuff that no other person would. And it was about corruption within the elite. Yeah. I think that also applies to Trump. Trump also gets away with a lot of stuff that no other normal person would. However, Trump was able to tap into that anger and Hillary was not.

And that is her ultimate political failure. So the misunderstanding of the email scandal and so much more, everyone's like, oh, who cares so much about classified information? You never understood, which is, and I'm not saying people are logically consistent. The reason it struck a note was everybody knew that a normal person would have gone to jail for what Hillary did. Everyone knew that. And she didn't because she was Secretary of State, former First Lady, and had all these connections within the government. And it was a symbol of corruption, of the elites being able to get away with something while nobody else is not. That's right. And that's what Trump spoke to. And that was exactly what people hated the most about the Clinton. Exactly. Was the sense that the rules that everyone else had to play by didn't apply to them.

And, you know, you tie that in with the Goldman Sachs speeches and all of that. And you could just. Clinton Foundation. Clinton Foundation. And, you know, and yeah, the way that that was tied in with her time at the State Department. And all of this was genuinely awful and played into people's, yeah, greatest concerns, legitimate concerns about Hillary Clinton. And that is why it struck such an incredible nerve. But, you know, for people who profit from not understanding those things,

it's easy to just condense it down to like butter emails and paint it like it was just some, you know, unfair smearing of Hillary Clinton. And I mean, the thing I always say is it is incredible. The person who was most directly responsible for giving us Donald Trump is Hillary Clinton. No question. And the people who picked her. Yeah, that's right. And the people who rigged the system to make sure it was Hillary Clinton. And yet she suffers,

like there's no accountability there. There was never any soul searching there. Immediately, I mean, this is documented too. Immediately after she loses, they get together in a conference room to decide who they're going to blame that loss and how they're going to spin it. Russia. Guess who they decide? Russia.

And then the media, like dutiful little puppy dogs, picks up on that narrative and spins out the lies and the conspiracy theories that, you know, just continue unabated and lead us to this dangerous place in Ukraine. So it's sort of like all of these stories, there's really a through line and connection to, because a lot of it does start with this woman and Russiagate. A hundred percent. So look, we covered them both, Durham and Flushgate, the only places that will do it. And I think they both speak to obsessions on the right and on the left in litigating 2016. We got big problems right now. It's been six years, okay? On either side, I just say let it go.

And meanwhile, I see people on CNN being like, this is Waterworksgate and all this. It's just, I mean, spare us the cringe. For God's sake, please, I'm begging you as a citizen, please spare us from all of this. But they won't. They'll be continually focused on this, and then they wonder why everybody hates each other

and thinks that the media focuses on things that don't really matter. So we try to give you all sides of both. Holistic view. Yeah. Speaking of CNN, what do we got there? Oh, man. This is great, great stuff, Crystal. So I teased the wrong story, by the way, about CNN Plus streaming.

We're recording a segment for later in the week. So look forward to that. We've got an even juicier one for you today. This one is as juicy as it gets. And look, I promise you, I am as sick of talking about the Joe Rogan thing as most of you. But it's important to try and call these things out because we are seeing full-on brain worms, weaponized warfare by the mainstream media against a freaking comedy podcast. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.

CNN put out an op-ed yesterday titled, quote, Joe Rogan's use of the N-word is another January 6th moment by a Mr. John Blake, who is a CNN political analyst. Now, that headline ended up getting so much pushback that they actually ended up changing it to the one on the right, which says, quote, why shrugging off Joe Rogan's use of the N-word is so dangerous. And the reason why it struck a chord, and by this I mean why it struck a chord as to mocking and making fun of it, is that as the point I actually made on the Joe Rogan experience, which was that January 6th has become a catch-all symbol for the Democrats that

they're focusing on. So the point that has nothing to do with Trump and is instead inciting a domestic war on terror, that actually, if you put it in the context, isn't nearly as important as the things that we're focusing on, that the select committee and all has become just like Russiagate in its excuse for many of the Democrats' failings and papers over the bigger problems in the country, they then use this and say that Rogan's past use of the N-word, which I am not condoning and which he himself has apologized for, along with some jokes which were terrible by his own admission and his own right, well, they are saying that that is the January 6th moment. And Crystal, I had to suffer through reading this crap.

Oh, it's amazing. I enjoyed reading it. It was insane. It's one of the most tortured, yeah, we just faked you headline. They're up there. Essentially what Blake says is that because Rogan got away with it, and again, what does that mean to get away with it? That he survives and gets to continue publishing on Spotify?

That this has then normalized N-word use in the United States. I think it is the most patently ludicrous interpretation because what he says is that because Rogan survived in the way that Republicans have survived, this is the same January 6th moment. And he's essentially saying that Rogan and the Republican Party should thus, I guess, no longer exist. What are you saying? And this is also what I love. And Charlemagne actually is the one who said this, not me. Whenever somebody on his show was like, I want to see him pay a consequence. He's like, what does that mean? What are you saying? What's enough? He apologized for it. What's enough for you? Oh, you want him to get taken off. That's what you really want. You want

him to, it's like, what should he be drawn up and quartered in the streets? I mean, do you, when you compare it to January 6th and what these people want, what do you want? You want a congressional investigation that lasts well over a year longer than January 6th and what these people want. You want a congressional investigation that lasts well over a year, longer than January 6th itself? You want us to pointlessly spend all of our time talking about this rather than the issues that matter? Oh, yeah, that actually seems, in a way, sure, it is a January 6th moment. But, you know, I mean, this is one of the most tortured and ridiculous things I've seen. But it does crystallize, crystallize. It's always funny when I use that word. It does show you elite liberal public opinion on the Rogan scandal and how they're trying to use it as some sort of bigger societal pretext more than anything else.

So had to cover it just to show you how crazy these people are. And I disrespect them even more that they changed the headline. Oh, yeah. Stick by it. Stick by it. Absolutely. Because the whole point of the piece is about January 6th. I mean, it leads with January 6th. And then the kick point of the piece is about January 6th. I mean, it leads with January 6th, and then the kicker at the end is about January 6th.

Clearly, like, that is the thesis that is being offered here. I'll just read you the beginning so you can get a little bit of taste, and I've got a couple highlights for you, too. They say, The podcaster Joe Rogan did not join a mob that forced lawmakers to flee for their lives. He never carried a Confederate flag inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. No one died trying to stop him from using the N-word. But what Rogan and those that defend him have done since video clips of him using the N-word surfaced on social media is arguably just as dangerous as what a mob did when they stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th last year. And as if that's not deranged enough,

this individual goes on to suggest that Rogan could lead to genocide. I'm not kidding you. They say, when people in positions of power use dehumanizing language to describe other groups, atrocities often follow. This is not ancient history. They go on to talk about Rwanda and the Tutsis and the Hutus.

Like Rogan repeating the N-word in the context of someone else saying it is going to lead to some mass genocide on the level of Rwanda. I mean, this is totally, totally insane. And it's one thing for there to be some random analyst who has these completely insane ideas. It's another for one of the leading news networks, allegedly, in the country to platform this idea and publish it and put it out in a tweet. And, you know,

I mean, this is completely it just shows you, number one, how wildly desperate they are for anything that can save them from the ratings apocalypse that they've been suffering, but also just how far afield they are from what actually matters to people and what's actually gone wrong in this country. I mean, this is so far from the real issues facing this country. That's what's incredibly, you know, putting Rogan aside, that's what's really disturbing about it. No. And, you know, also I'll point to, which is that down in there, he goes, he points to past cancellations. He goes, the top executive who resigned from Netflix after using the N-word. One of the instances actually in which led Joe to actually say that on his show, but in which he was referring to an executive who was saying,

who was mocking the idea of saying it and was still fired, this Netflix executive back in 2018. Or when Roseanne Barr lost her show. Or when Paula Deen lost her business empire. Or Seinfeld in terms of past cancellations. He's saying cancellation works. It should be the norm. This is the way that we should litigate and set new norms in American society. And the fact that it didn't work in this time is now proof that January 6th is every day. That was another famous headline I think that we wrote here, didn't we, that we showed here from the Washington Post. January 6th is every day. That was another famous headline, I think, that we wrote here, didn't we, that we showed here from the Washington Post. January 6th is every day on Capitol Hill because

the people who are responsible, once again, who are those people, always nebulous, they never point that out outside of Trump himself, are still walking around. Look, this is being used and weaponized as a pretext, just like with Rogan. On the Rogan side is in order to crack down on all heterodox opinion as a pretext to cover up for Rogan, on the Rogan side is in order to crack down on all heterodox opinion as a pretext to cover up for the fact that they have mass failure and institutional lack of trust. January 6th, select committee, much of this is the same thing. Cover up the fact that Biden administration

is flailing and failing. Yeah. And to not actually, and then use it as a pretext also to expand the domestic national security state. Is it clear as day? Rogan is an embarrassment to CNN. Yes, that's right. He humiliates them because—

His existence humiliates them. His existence humiliates them. His success humiliates them. I mean, you see Brian Stelter, like, coping in real time with, like, why do they trust him? Yeah, they did a whole segment. They're like, we hired an expert to show us why people like the Joe Rogan experience. He's like, you should hire an expert.

You should hire an expert to sit down and be like, this is why people don't trust you. And I know this sounds repetitive and all of that, but you have to see, this is like a full-scale information warfare upon a system and a space, frankly, which allows us to even exist. I mean, this is why I see it as such an existential threat. If they could try and take him out, they could take any of us out at any time. Easily we could be taken out by these forces. Oh, easily. And we're not like uncancellable the way he is. Not even close, right? I mean, look, our business is set up thanks to our premium people that, you know, we won't suffer if it happens, but it can happen like that to somebody lesser. And I've seen it happen many times now, many of those instances of which we just reiterated, and the ongoing warfare like

this, it takes a toll. Look, Joe may survive, but will he be able to book the same? What if there are guests out there? Some of my personal favorite guests who've been on The Rogan Experience have nothing to do with politics. People like Robert Downey Jr. or like Rob Lowe or artists or whatever, will those people be able to go back on the show? They'll have to suffer reputational damage. And these are people, you know, freaking Iron Man. Like, you think he's going to suffer or he's going to take a risk when that happens? It could have an impact on his product. And I think that that is the goal, to make him as radioactive as Donald Trump was in our mainstream culture, to try and neuter him. But ultimately, I do think in the long run, that makes him stronger. But

don't underestimate this. This is a full-scale, you know, warfare upon this space. Yeah, and CNN has a direct financial interest in tearing him apart, which is always important to remember when you're reading these things, too. I just hope it doesn't get in his head, because part of what people do love is his intellectual risk-taking, that he just, you know, says what he thinks. And, you know, sometimes that's wonderful. A lot of times it's really interesting. Sometimes it goes off the rails, as we've talked about with the, you know, sometimes that's wonderful. A lot of times it's really interesting. Sometimes it goes off the rails, as we've talked about with the, you know, the vaccine information. But I really hope that this doesn't get in his head and impact the way that he does his show. I don't think so. He's already back at it, so I think he'll be okay.

But, look, we look at all this, and you can see what the mainstream media is going and doing to people. And I actually predicted this. I did a monologue, I think a couple months ago, about how CNN right now is ignoring the space. They were for a long time. Then Rogan got so big that they started to lob some attacks with the vaccine stuff. But then this was a full-scale political hit job. And I predicted that this would happen

because when they realize they can't compete with you and they realize they're never going to change what made them so untrustworthy in the first place, they're going to declare war upon independent media. And I think this was the first opening battle in what is going to be a long civil war for many years to come. Indeed. All right. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, we are into 2022 now and the writing is pretty much on the wall for Democrats in the midterms. The House is gone. The Senate very likely is too, barring some totally crazy and unforeseen event that completely

turns the political landscape upside down. It's going to be an ugly one for Dems. We've laid out for you the deeply revealing GOP strategy of literally running on nothing, not even bothering to pretend that you're going to do anything for the public, is about as cynical as it gets and displays an obvious contempt for voters. But in terms of embarrassing political strategies, what the Democrats are contemplating now gives the Republicans a real run for their money. Because apparently, the people with power and influence in the party have decided that the correct strategy for the midterms is to promise even less than they already have and obsess over Trump even more.

Do these people have a single brain cell among them? Let's start with this part of the story. Our former president, Barack Obama, has decided to take a small break from his Netflix deal and his celebrity hangouts and his uber cringe Bruce Springsteen podcast to weigh in on Democratic Party politics. According to Punchbowl News, Obama joined a House Dems conference call to urge them to stop whining about not being able to fulfill their most basic campaign promises and to cave more, citing his own capitulation during the Obamacare fight. Now, before even getting to Obama's comments, let's just take in the fact that this super popular DC tip sheet

newsletter is brought to you by Blackstone, a disgusting acknowledgement of what the business of journalism actually is, how they get their scoops, and who those scoops are meant to serve. But I digress. As far as Obama's comments, he said, Democrats have a tendency to complain about what we didn't get done rather than talking about what we did get done. Continuing, if we can get some stuff done, some major domestic initiatives, some progress on climate, there will come a point where you decide if you're getting nothing or getting that. In other words, stop fighting for anything that's even remotely adequate for the moment, give up more often, and remember above all else that politics is about winning elections, not actually delivering for the people. Of course,

Obama's strategy is one that will both deliver nothing and lose massively, just as he did in his famous 2010 shellacking. I love his assertion, too, that somehow Obamacare is a model to follow here, as if it wasn't a total insurance company giveaway that still left millions of people out in the cold and with massively high prices. Now is a particularly brazen time to cite it as a grand success, given that part of why so many Americans have a deadly mistrust of the health care system is because it continues to be corrupted by profit-seeking ghouls who care only about their own bank accounts and couldn't give a shit about the health they are supposed to be in the business of providing.

Thanks, Obama. And while, yes, single-payer had not become a significant part of the conversation back when Obama was passing the ACA, the idea that he fought for and won all he could get is just not true. And I cannot allow it to stand. Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group that was intimately involved in that fight, specifically in the fight to add a public option to Obamacare when that was a live issue, he also corrected the record on Twitter about the possibilities that existed in that specific moment, reminding everyone that Obama caved to senators and states he won by large

margins and that there was a possible majority coalition on the table for a public option if he bothered to try. Of course, as our friend Iron Me often points out, Obama's only political interest now is in preserving his legacy. That, of course, requires him persuading everyone that what he accomplished is the maximum that can ever be accomplished. He views any major legislation or real progress as a threat to that legacy,

so you can nearly always find him right there waiting in the wings, trying to derail everything good and persuading politicians who really don't need much persuasion to think small. So the first part of the midterm messaging is cave war, promise less. But if anything, the second part of their message is even more astoundingly stupid. We're going to double down on Trump obsession. This portion comes from a Washington Post piece looking at the internal Dem debates on midterm strategy. According to this article, some influential players in the party are pushing Dems to run more on Trump and on January 6th. This is not just a group of random fringe operatives

either, folks. Stop him now. A key super PAC in this effort was launched by Mandy Grunwald. Mandy was director of advertising for Bill Clinton's 92 campaign. She produced the glossy bio montage that was the center of the 92 DNC. She was expelled from Clinton world for a time before making a big comeback, vociferously defending Bill from scandal and then landing in Hillary world for her Senate campaign. In the Biden era, this is funny, she's been called in to try to minimize the damage that CDC director Rochelle Walensky does in her frequent train wreck interviews. In other words, Mandy is as well known and well connected in D.C. as she possibly could be. And she's also not alone. The article quotes other D.C. operatives pushing PACs and Democratic senatorial campaign committee to lean into Trump and lean into January 6th as a key plank of their midterm messaging. Obama's 2008 and 2012 pollster, Jeff Garron,

is also pushing to put Trump front and center, telling the Post, Trump personally is relevant to the extent that voters see Republican victories in 22 as setting the stage for Trump's comeback in 2024. That is the message they're pushing. These influential operatives fret that the wrong lesson was learned from Terry McAuliffe's loss in Virginia to Glenn Youngkin. McAuliffe basically spent the entire campaign doing nothing other than telling people Glenn Youngkin was the second coming of Donald Trump. Now, given that Trump lost Virginia by nearly 10 points, if that strategy was going to work anywhere, it was in Virginia, especially where the liberal northern Virginia suburbs have come to dominate electoral politics.

Voters, though, thoroughly rejected this Trump-centric messaging as clearly as they possibly could. So these Democrats are trying to unlearn the one reasonable thing that they actually learned from McAuliffe's loss. And of course, no one was ever interested in learning the real reasons he lost. Number one, that McAuliffe's own entanglements with the vultures in private equity left him unable to land a blow on Youngkin for his tenure at the Carlisle Group. And number two, that Democrats failed to deliver

on an agenda that would materially benefit the public in any meaningful way, giving people no real reason to continue showing up for these people. Which brings us right back to where we started, with Barack Obama telling Democrats it would be politically disastrous for them to even try to deliver. Now, maybe you're thinking, sorry, Crystal, but material politics is out. The only thing that really matters now is the culture war. Well, we've just had a revealing and terrible experiment that proves the material politics can still significantly sway voters. Democrats, you will recall, passed a temporary

child tax credit as part of COVID relief. It helped reduce childhood poverty and bolster household finances to actually an impressive degree. That child tax credit has now ended, resulting in financial strain for families and apparently, according to new numbers, political carnage for Democrats. In fact, Morning Consult found that after the child tax credit expired, political support for Democrats fell off a cliff among those specifically who had benefited from it. Back in December, you can see in these charts, this group supported Democrats by a margin of 49 to 37, a significant advantage. Now that the credit has expired, that same group that had benefited from the credit supports Democrats and Republicans in statistically equal numbers.

Massive decline for Democrats over the same time period. Overall support for the parties among all voters was more or less static. So it was only those who lost the benefit that abandoned Democrats in large and significant numbers over that time period. But actually delivering for people, well, that's hard. And it's frequently at odds with donor interest. Going after Trump and promising nothing, well, that's pretty easy. And it's also been wildly profitable for the people who are pushing this direction. If they win, fine. If they lose, they'll still get rich. So guess which direction they're going to go with.

In no world do Republicans deserve to win this fall, but Democrats sure as hell do deserve to lose. I can't, I mean, I can believe it, but it's just incredible. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, the only thing that you can rely on the U.S. media to do at a time like this, when war is possible, is for them to parrot the official line from the State Department, especially if Democrats are in power.

Now, millions of Americans are asking themselves at home right now, what the hell is going on in Ukraine? It's a complicated question. The White House and the media would have you all believe this just started yesterday, devoid of context, devoid of an understanding how we even arrived at such an insane place. I actually happen to love Russian history. It's a place that's fascinated me for a really long time. So let's take a trip down memory lane of U.S. policy towards Russia. The Cold War, I'm going to assume, a trip down memory lane of U.S. policy towards Russia. The Cold War,

I'm going to assume, is familiar enough to most of you. But after World War II, the world was basically left with two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S., with its allied West, had one vision for the future of Europe. The Soviets had another. Both ultimately were about economic and security control as superpower conflict escalated. The U.S. and the Allied West, seeking to show solidarity against the Soviets as they consolidated control over East Germany and Berlin, in 1947 signed a mutual defense pact with France and the U.K. The next year, it included Belgium and some other Western countries, and in 1949, it was codified officially as NATO, the North

Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO was specifically designed to extend the US nuclear umbrella over Western Europe to deter the Soviet Union. They responded in kind after the Soviets got the bomb with something called the Warsaw Pact in 1955 and it produced the famous Iron Curtain. It is critical to understand that NATO was specifically formed as a deterrent to the Soviet Union in the 1940s because as the Soviet Union began to crumble, the United States sought a peaceful transition to a new world order.

President George W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker understood that Russia must feel secure to transition out of the Soviet Union and should feel secure by intimating that they long feared NATO would not crawl east. President Bush specifically told Gorbachev that the U.S. would, quote, not take advantage of the revolutions in Eastern Europe. And as East Germany began to fall and the country consolidated, there again was actually a pledge by the German side that NATO itself, while yes, was going to expand to East Germany during reunification, would not continue to go east. Secretary of State James Baker even told the Soviets that NATO would

not expand, quote, not one inch eastward as the Soviet empire collapsed. Now take those words very seriously because they matter a lot in this story. While, yes, the assurances were made in person, they were never made in writing, and it was never official U.S. policy. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Bush administration specifically did not celebrate or declare victory, so as not to antagonize or dance on the graves of the proud Russian people when they were down. It was a wise decision. It understood that how you handle victory is important, because if you squander it, you could find yourself in conflict again. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. had a really big choice to make. What do we do with NATO? I mean, it doesn't really have a point anymore, or does it? And with the end of the Cold War came a new president, Bill Clinton,

who had a lot of very idealistic views on international security. Clinton viewed the West and the NATO in its unipolar moment as the guarantor of peace across the world. And thus, when a civil war broke out in Yugoslavia, he committed not only the U.S., but NATO forces to an air campaign to try and protect civilians. This was a very pivotal moment because Yugoslavia, while always independent, has historically been the backyard of the Russian Empire, a place where they have been involved for literally

hundreds and hundreds of years. And the interests of NATO didn't necessarily align with pro-Russian sentiment. It was the first sign to the Russians that NATO specifically had the ability to project military power in a place that they consider a vital security interest. From there, bigger decisions were made with NATO. Former Soviet states like the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were admitted to NATO in 1999. Now, those states were begging for NATO membership because of their historic enslavement by the Russians. But it was then that the debate was never had.

Why does any of this make any sense whatsoever? Sure, those states want to join. That's great. If I were them, I would do the same thing, and I don't blame them. guarantee of the United States to total war in 1999 when Russia was on its way to a corrupt oligarchic state facing a massive currency crisis and weak as hell. The hubris at the time of the U.S. was, well, we can do whatever we want and the Poles and the Czechs want to join, so okay, why not let them? We believed we could extend this guarantee with no costs. Now, this mindset continued under George W. Bush. In 2002, another major bridge was crossed. Seven new countries, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Romania,

Slovakia, and Slovenia were all invited to join NATO. Again, what's going on? Hold on a second. We are talking about a huge part of the traditional Russian Empire and Soviet Union. Why? What is the threat here? Keep in mind, in 2002, the U.S. foreign policy establishment thought that Putin could be a friend of the United States. Putin was the first leader to call George W. Bush after 9-11. He was invited to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas in November of 2001. He was seen as a potential Democratic ally. But Bush and the United States effectively spit in his face months later with the expansion of NATO. And after the belligerent war in Iraq, the U.S. credibility on use of force was tarnished for all time. To top it all off in 2008, Ukraine and Georgia were officially invited to join NATO, leading to a Georgian conflict.

That was a warning of what was to come today. Now, when I say we had no debate in this country over NATO, I really mean it. None. Zero. No panels. No congressional checks. Nothing. It was bipartisan policy. Only one man predicted what was to come. George Kennan. He was the famous father of our containment strategy against the Soviets. He wrote, quote, in 1996, this is a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western, and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion to have an adverse effect on Russian democracy and to restore the atmosphere of the Cold War to East-West relations. He was a brilliant man who was ignored in his time. And those warnings survives us to this day. So that brings us to where we are now. Putin's pretext and demand for massing troops near Ukraine is that he wants a guarantee from the

U.S. that NATO will never expand to Ukraine. He sees the creeping NATO threat as a pretext to keep Russia down and weak forever, never able to retain their former glory. Is it kind of crazy? Yeah, certainly. But people with nukes get a vote in international diplomacy. And here in the West, we don't like to see the perspective of the other fella. And I put this all together because when you see the big picture, it's a lot more complicated. Putin is certainly the aggressor. If you look at events in just the last month, you zoom out a few decades, it's more complicated, right? I say none of this as a fan or an apologist for Russia.

I think they are a belligerent, failing state. But when I look at this history specifically, what I see is the hubris of foreign policy elites in the United States. It has cost us enough. These people, they thought they could invade Iraq and expand NATO with no consequences whatsoever. So when you see our elites in the White House or on TV arguing over what should be done, remember, it's their fault we're even here in the first place. As younger Americans, let's come together and say, no, enough. Let's have the debate our leaders never had so that we do not repeat the age-old mistake of graying

older men sending their sons abroad to die for their hubris and for their sins. And that's what I look at with that situation. I don't know how you can't look at that and say, well, you know, it's not true. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Afghan journalist Ali Lafti. He was previously in Afghanistan. today at BreakingPoints.com. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was an extraordinary decision here made by President Joe Biden that Biden will be spurning a demand by the Taliban, splitting $7 billion in frozen Afghan funds of the central bank's assets between the victims of September 11 and then also to humanitarian causes. Now, as a journalist, as an Afghan yourself, can you break this down and make our audience of Americans understand whose money actually was this? So this was literally the assets of the central bank of Afghanistan. So this wasn't just money,

this was gold, this was other valuables that they sent to the Federal Reserve for this very reason, because they were afraid. First of all, the Afghan government of the last 20 years, which the U.S. supported wholeheartedly, was full of corruption and fraud. So there was fears that it would be stolen. There was always a fear of a potential Taliban takeover and how they would use that money. So for those reasons, the money and the assets was sent to the U.S. Federal Reserve. Another $2 billion is in other foreign banks. But this is money that belongs to the people of Afghanistan. You know, this is money that should be feeding the banking system in Afghanistan. At least half a billion of it is literally people's bank deposits that, you know,

federal reserves and central banks, they keep this money, right? They don't all stay in the physical bank. At least half a billion of that is literally the savings of poor Afghan men and women, you know, who have been working and scrimping and saving over the last 20 years. And the Biden administration's whole flawed logic to all of this is basically that, well, this money is a result of our foreign investment. You know, our occupation made it possible. We gave foreign aid. We created business opportunities, so on and so forth. So for that reason, it's not really the money of the people of Afghanistan, which is an incredibly unfair, short-sighted, and incorrect reading of the situation.

Because right now, if you are in Afghanistan, there is an enormous cash shortage. An enormous cash shortage to the point where if you need to get cash out right now, you can get between $200 and $400 a week out of the bank. And when you do that, you have to stand outside the bank, you know, maybe for several hours in a day or several days back and forth, you know, like several days back to back. You know, I was speaking to people who would line up outside a bank, say at like 4 a.m. and by noon, the bank would be out of money and they would have to come back the next day. And they had been doing this repeatedly for three, four days at a time. And again, if you're talking about $200 to $400 a week, you have to remember that you're talking about people that have families of five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten people living in one house.

And so with that immediate money, what are they doing? They're paying their back rent. They're buying groceries. They're paying school fees. They're paying mobile phone credit, all these basic sort of supplies, all these basic expenses, so that basically within the end of that week, you're out of that money again. So you're just repeating this process all over again, week after week, hoping that you can get that. I mean, I lived above two banks, the last place I lived in Kabul. And at a certain point, I had to get $1,000 from Western Union. Whereas in the past, it would take me maybe 20 minutes. This time,

it took me four days. Because literally, you would line up outside the bank, you know, I walk downstairs, and they would say the money from the central bank, so the central bank would send physical cash, right? Hasn't arrived yet. Once it arrives, we'll start handing out the money. And as soon as it's gone, it's gone for the day. So, you know, so you could tell me if this is an accurate way of characterizing it. Our actions here and what I would describe as theft is basically causing a banking collapse in the country and which is helping to fuel a devastating humanitarian crisis. If you could, you know, first of all, is that the right way of thinking about it? And second of all, talk to us about that humanitarian crisis and what day-to-day life looks like right now for

millions of your people. So, yeah, you're right. It's it's essentially you know because that comes with sanctions so part of the sanctions is keeping that money and not letting it back into the bank so that even people who have money are not able to take out their money right they don't have access to physical money and then the the other part is that aid is being cut back greatly because their whole fear is well what if the taliban take the aid? What if there's corruption? What if there's fraud? Which there's a very high likelihood because the former republic was highly fraudulent and corrupt. But, you know, if that wasn't as much of an issue back then, why is it so much of an issue now? You know, you can always, you've had six months to figure out other ways to get this money out there.

And to make sure that people have the the basic necessities to to go on with their lives because you know this this is what i've been saying repeatedly is that during this occupation the economy in afghanistan was never set up in a way to be self-sufficient you know right now they're going back to the humanitarian issue you know hospitals are out of basic supplies you know they're out of anesthesia they're out of like needles, they're out of like bandaging equipment, any kind of basic things that you need. They all either came from, say, like foreign aid organizations or they had to be imported in and bought, you know. And then you have hospitals and schools where the staff aren't being paid and they're essentially just working for free until a point where they can get paid in public institutions. In some places, they're being paid a fraction of what they used to be paid, maybe 25%, maybe 30% of what they used to be paid.

So in terms of the humanitarian situation, yes, you have people who are always hungry and starving because, unfortunately, the afghanistan was never set up in a way to uh take care of the poor but now you have now now it's expanded to the point where people who are relatively um stable who had say office jobs who worked for the government who worked in private schools or private clinics they are no longer either either the places they worked have shut down uh because there's no more money or they're not getting paid what they used to get paid. So now even those people that lived relatively comfortable lives, they are also now going day to day and wondering how they will pay for themselves over the next few months. This is very important.

And Ali, I believe it was you who pointed it out. Not a single Afghan was actually involved with 9-11. I mean, look, there's a much better argument for seizing a whole lot of Saudi Arabian assets. There's some right here in D.C. They've got some nice banks and a nice embassy over there. I'm full of gold. We could go take it tomorrow to compensate. Yeah, go ahead. And this is what makes so many people in Afghanistan angry is that no Afghan had anything to do with the 9-11 attack. And the average person living in Afghanistan in 2001, you have to remember this was the first time the Taliban ruled for five years. The average person in Afghanistan at that time had no idea what the Taliban government was doing.

They didn't know that they were harboring Osama bin Laden. They didn't even know who Osama bin Laden was. They didn't, you know, they might have heard Al-Qaeda from the news, but there was no television. So, you know, if it played on the radio, because the Taliban had banned television then, but like if it played on the radio, maybe they might have by chance heard that Al-Qaeda staged an attack somewhere, but that's about it. It's not as if the average person in Afghanistan actively supported Al-Qaeda or actively supported and welcomed Osama bin Laden. I mean, to be quite honest, even the average Taliban, you know, government members and fighters in 2001 probably didn't even know who bin Laden was or what he was plotting. So, again, you know, you're going after an extremely poor nation, you know, a nation that had suffered because after 9-11 to drone strikes,

to night raids, to abuses by many different foreign forces. I mean, we all remember Robert Bales in 2013, if I remember correctly, you know, he went in the middle of the night into a village in Kandahar and just started killing civilians. So, you know, Afghanistan has consistently been suffering since 9-11, even though it had nothing to do with it. And, you know, Afghanistan has consistently been suffering since 9-11, even though it had nothing to do with it. And, you know, some people will say, oh, well, the Taliban government allowed bin Laden to stay, but that's, you know, a government decision. And that, you know, that was a pariah state anyways. It's not as if the average person in Afghanistan cast a ballot for them or was necessarily accepting and welcoming of them.

I mean, think of should our people in Detroit going hungry because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Right. In that case, the U.S. had a direct hand in. The hand in. Or it's as if saying we're going to punish Guatemala for Hiroshima

and Nagasaki. That's what's happening right now. Ali, I know you're a journalist, so you don't necessarily want to put yourself at the center of the story. But I just wonder if you could talk to us about how our actions in your country have shaped your life. So I grew up in the United States, right? So I was born in Kabul and I grew up in the U.S. So I'm old enough to remember the end of the Soviet occupation. And then I went back for the first time in 2011,

and I was living there until this year from 2013 on. And in my eyes, even back then, what I saw was that none of these systems throughout this occupation were set up to be sustainable. They were never set up to put Afghanistan on its feet. You know, if we go back to sort of the ideas of corruption, you know, Biden, Biden, when he was vice president, Obama, when he was president, Bush, Trump, all of these people knew that the Afghan government was corrupt. Never really made them pay for anything. Never really held them accountable. And when Obama first sent the Taliban to Doha in 2011, he never really forced anyone to go and sit down with them.

There were secret meetings, you know, behind closed doors. And then when Trump started his in 2018, his negotiations, he never really put real pressure on the Afghan government. He didn't include them to begin with. But when it got closer, he didn't put any real pressure on either side to take this peace process seriously. And when Biden finally announced his withdrawal, it's not as if the Afghan people were asking the U.S. to stay. They were sick of it. They were fed up with it. But what everyone is upset by is that there was no conditions. There was no plan. And you're seeing this over and over and over again. Look at what Biden keeps saying. He's saying, oh, you know, you can spend 100 years

and you'll never unite Afghanistan. He's speaking about the country in a very dismissive manner. And, you know, if you look back, he told Hamid Karzai that Pakistan is more important to us than Afghanistan ever will be. He called part of the Kanata Valley, which is one of the most beautiful parts of the country, hell on earth. You know, even this, you know, again, if he had had half a brain, he would say, Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9-11. He's not taking his responsibility seriously. He withdrew, fine, but you have to withdraw properly, and you have to follow up on that withdrawal.

He's failed on both accounts. Were you surprised how quickly the government just completely collapsed? Yes, absolutely. Because I was in June, July, I was doing interviews like this and all these TV stations were saying, within 30 days, Kabul will fall. No, you're kidding. There's no way, you know? And what changed everything was in, I think it was August 13th, when the cities of Herat and Kandahar fell, the second and third biggest city in the country. I knew then that it was over, you know. And again, this is the other thing is the U.S. was there for all of this. They were there when districts were falling throughout the summer.

They were there when provinces were falling from August 4th to the 15th and they were there from the 15th to the 31st, the end of the occupation. So it's not as if the Taliban takeover surprised them at all. They knew this was coming. Their own intelligence was telling everyone it's going to happen in 30 days and 60 days and 90 days. So again, why was the immediate reaction we're going to cut in 30 days and 60 days and 90 days. So again, why was the immediate reaction, we're going to cut off all funding? You know, we're going to starve the people. How many people have already left the country? And what do you see as some of the potential follow on impacts in the surrounding region? So it's estimated that 100,000 people have left so far. It's hard to know exactly how many of them were actually all Afghan, but let's say 100,000.

Those were among some of the most educated, some of the most talented people who spoke multiple languages, who had academic knowledge, who had professional knowledge. They're all like, for instance, the media, right, the thing I know the most about. The Afghan media is essentially decimated right now. There is very little, you know, homegrown Afghan media still operating in Afghanistan at this moment, even though that was, like, the one thing that in the last 20 years really was something that flourished. You know, it was the first time in our history that we had a real free press.

We had women's rights and things like that in the past, but we never had a real free press until the last 20 years. And now that's being diminished completely. Yeah. I mean, Ali, I really appreciate you coming on and outlining this, speaking actually as an Afghan yourself and for the Afghan people. It's something, a perspective that doesn't seem to exist in our national media. And look, it's been used as pawns for 20 years. I think this is just the latest, clearest example. We thank you for joining us and for your own personal bravery in this. Thank you.

Yeah, keep us updated, Ali. Great to meet you. We'll have you back on, Ali, to keep us updated. Thanks very much. Stay safe. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. You know the Rogan story, we talked about it earlier. Some people are sick of hearing about it. We're frankly sick of talking about it. But the reason why that we cover it and

frame it in the way that we do is we see it as the attack that it is. And, you know, I was thinking this weekend a lot and I was like, wow, like, you know, last week was our biggest week ever for the show. It was also the week where we weren't able to just post on YouTube. We don't know why. They haven't given us an example or a reason for why. It was four hours that our account was basically disabled. And it was like in those moments, you're like, wow, this is how much control they have over us. And this isn't just about YouTube.

This is about the entire centralized system. They can disappear you in a second. So, look, this is why we have this system set up the way that we do with the premium subscription and all that. And I'm very thankful for it every day because you can have the biggest day ever, but you can also be very much at their whims.

I don't want to live that way. Crystal, I know you don't either. And I don't think a lot of you want media to act that way. So that's why we have it designed and we appreciate everybody who stood up for us. Yeah, we really, really do. We love you guys. Happy Valentine's Day. Yes, and we appreciate everybody who stood up for us. Yeah, we really, really do. We love you guys. Happy Valentine's Day.

Yes, and happy birthday, Mom. Happy birthday to my little Ida Rose. They share a birthday. I know, it's kind of cool. We love you guys so much. You guys are our Valentines really every day. You come through for us. So thank you.

Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you back here tomorrow. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

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