Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/16/23: Nikki Haley Humiliates Herself, US Says May Never Recover UFO Debris, Ohio Derailment Water Poisoning, Republicans On Ukraine Aid, MSNBC Girl Boss Haley, Feinstein Forgets Retirement, Ohio Corruption, Google Takedown with Matt Stoller

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Nikki Haley's humiliating start to her 2024 campaign, the US says UFO debris may never be recovered, the Rail company hiding from potential water poisoning in Ohio derailment, the Republican base turning on Ukraine Aid, MSNBC's girl boss defense of Nikki Haley, Saagar looks into Dianne Feinstein forgetting her own retirement, Krystal looks into the media hacks that cover up the blatant corruption in the Ohio train disaster, and then we are joined by Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) to discuss the civil war over Google anti trust.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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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last night, so we'll show you all of that. Also, President Biden's supposed to make some remarks about the UFO situation and the Chinese spy balloon situation. This comes as they are also warning, you know, guys, we just may not be able to get any of that debris. We may never really know what happened. Who's to say? Ultimately, we also have an update from Ohio, actually a number of updates from Ohio, as what appears to be a potential cover up unfolding. Residents are told to drink bottled water, but assured that the air quality is perfectly fine. Meanwhile, Norfolk Southern, of course, that's the owner of that train that ultimately derailed because of lax safety provisions. They bailed on a public town hall they were supposed to attend last night. People are absolutely outraged, as they should be.

So we have all of the details there. Also, some updates on Ukraine. Some indication maybe the Biden administration is thinking that they need to engage in some diplomacy, at least here down the road. We'll see about that. And also Republican support for continuing to support Ukraine with the level of aid that we have has been dropping. And we've got a great moment for you from Andrea Mitchell and John Bolton that you just got to you got to check out. There's a lot of layers there. Yeah, you can't miss this one. All right. Well, let's start with the woman herself, Nikki Haley, officially launching her campaign yesterday, delivering her

launch speech, heavy on bio, heavy on some sort of like veiled references, maybe to Trump, definitely to Biden. Let's take a listen. And take it from me, the first minority female governor in history, America is not a racist country. We're ready, ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past. And we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future. In the America I see,

the permanent politician will finally retire. We'll have term limits for Congress. And mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old. at Fox News and went ahead and proved the sort of central problem of her candidacy when she was totally unable to answer how she differed on policy from former President Trump. Take a listen. What specific policy areas would you say part with Donald Trump? What I am saying is I don't kick sideways. I'm kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president.

He's the one I'm running against. And what I'm saying is you don't have to be 80 years old to be president. We don't need to have these same people going back again. We need something new. We need a new generation of fighters. We need people that understand whether you're American, you're average American is coming from, and we shouldn't be afraid to fight for that. And that's what I'm willing to do. I'm not going to kick sideways. I don't have time for that. That's not my focus.

I'm kicking forward. It's all about Joe Biden. Why is she always kicking? Why is everything kicking? With the heels. With the heels. It's like a feet thing. Why are we always talking about Nikki Haley's feet?

I don't understand. It got worse from there because actually Hannity asked her again. He went back. He's like, okay, that's fine. Kicking sideways or whatever. But President Trump is the one in the race. These things are all about contrast. What is a policy difference that you have?

And she just went back to that same, like, I'm not kicking sideways. I'm kicking forward, which means not. I mean, it was a very like. It's like the Marco Rubio moment with Chris Christie. Yeah. When he says over and over. It's like, oh, you memorize this one line and you literally have nothing else to say about it.

And listen, if you can't say Trump's name, if you can't lay out how you're different from him, don't waste your time. And that's to you, Nikki Haley, that's to all of these people. If you can't directly challenge this guy and lay out some reason other than your age that you are different from him and that you have a different policy vision, I don't know why you're bothering. Oh, absolutely.

And you know, the funny thing is, is they don't want to mention Trump. Trump is fine mentioning them. Oh, yeah. Immediately, he's taunting her, being like, she said she would never run against me. I guess maybe she needs to answer why she broke her promise. We have this, you know, let's go and put this up there on the screen immediately after she makes her announcement.

Yeah. Here you have that 2021, that moment where she actually outright comes out and says, yeah, this is why I'm not going to vote against Trump or why I'm against Trump. We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path that he shouldn't have and he shouldn't have followed him. We shouldn't have listened to him. We can't let that happen ever again. Right after January 6th. Then she goes to Mar-a-Lago and apologizes. Like a month later. Right. And then she says, I won't ever run against him as long as President Trump is in the race. So make up your mind, lady. Which is it? And just back to the point, Trump is willing to go after

her immediately. Put this next one up there, immediately after her candidacy is announced. He comes out with a scathing actual policy disagreements with Nikki Haley, Crystal. This is interesting. Let me read you some of the things that he lays out here because the line of attack, several of them are quite fascinating. First of all, he pulled this quote from her where she said, the reason I ran for office is because of Hillary Clinton. And so his headline is Hillary Clinton is an inspiration, Nikki Haley. But the very next thing he leads with is Haley supported Paul Ryan's plan for entitlement reform, threatening Medicare and Social Security. He also the next thing on his list is instead of finding

a peaceful solution to the Ukraine-Russia war, Haley has supported sending more American fighter planes to fuel the war. He goes on to talk about her, you know, differences on immigration, some transgender bathroom bill, and also, you know, takes credit for bringing Otto Warmbier home. His mother was introducing Haley there. And then the last one is Haley flip-flops on the 2024 race. And this is her saying, I'm not going to run against Trump and then ultimately getting in the race. But Sagar, I thought this one, two of them I thought were really interesting. One is him going after her for saying she'd cut Medicare and Social Security,

which is something that he signaled he's going to go after DeSantis on as well. And almost sort of makes the case that President Biden is making about Republicans, too, that there are quite a lot of Republicans who have been interested in cutting Social Security and Medicare and continue to be interested in cutting Social Security and Medicare. And then the other piece that we've highlighted before is Trump clearly sees a lane for himself in the Republican primary, pushing back on the direction of Ukraine aid and support, pushing more for a diplomatic solution. Now, listen, guys, you never know what this guy is actually going to do. So it's not like I take his words all that seriously. But he clearly sees the political opportunity here. And we're going to have some polling later in the show on Ukraine

that I think backs him up in that regard. Oh, absolutely. It backs him up. And beyond that, actually, let's say 50 percent of Republicans say that they don't want to continue to support Ukraine. Well, then all those people are going to support Trump because every other Republican does want to continue to support Ukraine. It's actually a very smart and savvy move. I thought that the attack was perfect, actually, because he led with the she's disloyal because she used to support Hillary. Then he hits her on probably the most salient policy difference around entitlement reform, Medicare, Social Security, then Ukraine, then immigrate. It's like a greatest hits of all the things that matter most to the Republican base. I mean, look, she never had a chance in hell. The opportunity that she had to actually contrast herself with Trump

just doesn't exist. And increasingly, I don't believe that any of this kind of Kennedy-esque attempt, new frontier, new generation, it just doesn't meet the moment as much as I would like for it to. I really do. But politically. It's got to have something more to it than just like I'm younger than you. Absolutely. But I'm saying, OK, you take the new frontier. You're like it was not only a new generation, but it was like new generation policy ideas. Didn't necessarily work out all that well. But what I'm saying is that that was at least aspirational of getting away from like the closet of the 1950s and the stagnation of all that.

I'm doing some of my monologue on this and age and why it to the extent that it matters and doesn't. But the point with this is that she's not offering anything new. It's like, OK, you're 51 years old, but you are a complete creature of the Washington establishment, which is what Trump is hitting her on. And that's what the fundamental disconnect is. I mean, the thing with Nikki Haley, listen, guys, y'all know I'm not a fan of Donald Trump. But the few things that he was right about, she's wrong on. From a policy perspective, there is just no doubt she is way worse than Trump. And rather than being an actually a new generation or some sort of evolution from Trump, she's actually a regression to the Paul Ryan politics that dominated D.C. before Trump.

And so that's what you're getting at is it'd be one thing if it was like, OK, here's a new generation. These are fresh ideas. And here's a whole new approach and way of thinking about America and the problems. No, it's not that. It's literally a throwback. The people who were upset in the Republican Party when Trump came into office and had at least some different ideas about trade and China and some other things, they want control back and they think she might be a vessel

to be able to bring the party back to where it was during the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan era ultimately. So that's why the critique on social security and Medicare is a really fascinating one, because this is becoming a very clear and salient dividing line within the Republican Party. And my God, I mean, literally ever since Social Security was passed, conservatives have been trying to roll it back. And of course, we've seen various efforts. I mean, George W.

Bush trying to privatize. We saw Paul Ryan Mitt Romney. And Democrats have been complicit in this at many times as well. I mean, during the Obama-Biden administration, they actually accepted a deal that also would have cut Social Security. The Tea Party said it didn't go far enough, so it didn't ultimately happen. But it's a very new dynamic where you have all of the Democrats effectively saying, no, no, no, we don't want to cut Social Security. And quite a number of Republicans saying the same thing as well at this point. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, overall, I think that it just highlights the biggest problem for all these Republicans. Put this next one on the screen from The New York Times. It just talks about all of these prospective candidates. They're trying to topple Trump and they can barely utter his name. She

doesn't say his name one time at all. What's the point? The pastor that is introducing her, he doesn't say anything about Trump. It's all just this vague nonsense. Like, we got to move on. We got to have a new generation. And, you know, also, she didn't pick 75 for no reason. You know why? Trump is 76 years old as of today. So that was like, but they're all subtle digs. People don't know. If I hadn't just told you Trump is 76, I don't think people know what his actual age is. The audience mostly thought she was talking about Joe Biden. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. If I hadn't just told you Trump is 76, I don't think people know what his actual age is. The audience mostly thought she was talking about Joe Biden. Yeah, exactly.

Reporter Benji Starlin made this point, which I thought was intelligent, which is, you know, he was recalling back when Marco Rubio was trying out a very similar line of new generation, et cetera, et cetera. And taking these shots that, you know, he was hoping people would interpret as being about Donald Trump, but they didn't interpret them that way. Like, you have to come out and say it, right? And if you aren't willing to come out and say it and really take him head on and lay out something, I just don't know what you think you're going to ultimately accomplish here. And it's not just Nikki Haley. I mean, listen, Ron DeSantis isn't in the race yet, but he also in his rebuttals to the attacks on Trump. He also does a similar dance of just saying, well, look at the scoreboard, but not directly taking him on ultimately. And you're you're not maybe he's going to change once he actually gets in the race. Maybe he'll take a more direct approach. It's got to be it's it's entirely necessary if you're ultimately going to succeed here so

um the fact that none of these people can directly confront him while trump is happy to take them on he also his uh initial comments about nikki getting into the race he was like yeah more the merrier he doesn't see her as a threat and immediately he was like she's pulling at one percent she's got a long way to go well he's right. He should taunt her. And not only that, but he's also correct in the analysis that for him, the more that get into the race, it definitely is better for him. So he's happy to see Nikki and Tim Scott and Chris Sununu and John Bolden and all these people lining up, not to mention, you know, Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence lining up to jump into the race. Speaking of being vague and potentially running for president, former vice president Mike Pence laying out some also sort of like, you know, vague, buzzwordy, consultant-speak case for

himself recently. Take a listen to this. What we need in this country is a return to common sense and common values. In return for the common good that the overwhelming majority of the American people support. And look, this is a big country. It's a beautifully diverse population. I'm a conservative, but I'm not a bad guy about it. Some of my best friends are just as fiercely liberal as me.

When you push back from the table, there are issues that bring us together. This is so vegan. Boilerplate. Boring. Common sense. Common good. You know, this actually, for people who are in the know, the whole common good conservatism was like a real Paul Ryan push back to 2000 era's Bush conservatism. And it's like, look, guys, how many times are we going to learn the same lesson? This stuff doesn't work. What the base and even the country wants is nothing to do with any of this think tank vague language.

What are you going to do for me? What are you actually running on? And with Trump, to the extent that he's ever done worst in politics, it's always whenever he departs away from that. on. And with Trump, to the extent that he's ever done worst in politics, it's always whenever he departs away from that. So he is right back to his strong suit, attacking Republicans on Medicare and Social Security. Got a very old Republican base who are hardcore with Trump on this, and they are not with the donor class. Also, I actually think this is the biggest problem for Haley, DeSantis, and others. The Republican establishment wants them to win specifically because they're not Trump,

and the people who back them, whether they like it or not, are exactly those who Trump vanquished in the 2016 primary. Paul Singer was one of those people, vehemently, staunchly anti-Trump all the way up until he won the nomination. Ken Griffin and many of the other billionaires that have come out that are backing Ron DeSantis are similar. I saw yesterday, Bill Ackman actually endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy. He was like, I think Vivek is going to win. Uh, Vivek is a guy who wrote the woke ink book. We've had him here on the show. He's been on the realignment as well. If you want to go listen to those interviews, he apparently is thinking about running for president, but Bill Ackman is also, you know, he's one of those where you might remember him for trying

to crash the market during COVID and making a killing whenever he was shorting it. That's what I remember him for. Private equity guy. One of those Mitt Romney type Republicans. The more posturing that these people make, they're the ones who the voters hate. So anytime you're backing up behind them, you're actually having the opposite intended effect. It's just one of those where all their money is going to come and all of their support

is going to come from fundamentally a more establishment coalition. The only one with a chance possibly of doing that is Ron DeSantis. And he still has a very, very tough line to walk in all of that. And the only chance he really has is if he's the only one in the race. And what you're seeing from the Tim Scotts and the Nikki Haley's and now Mike Pence's and all those is the anti-Trump vote is going to be totally split. And Trump is going to use that completely to his advantage. It's the narcissism of these Republican politicians and of the establishment, which will ultimately bring them down in this. Yes, indeed. Here's the latest, just so you have a sense, primary tracker for Morning Consult. I always have to say the polls have been all over the map. So, I mean, always

take polling with a grain of salt. Take it with, like, a lot of skepticism because there are continuing polls that show Ron DeSantis in a stronger position and some that even show him beating Donald Trump right now. But here's Morning Consult has Trump at 47, Ron DeSantis at 31, Mike Pence at 7, Nikki Haley down at 3 percent, along with Liz Cheney and Ted Cruz. So, and you know, when you look at the morning consult, they always do these trackers that are like every week they check in. And it's been pretty stable in terms of their polling. It's been basically everybody's been clustered around these same percentages the entirety of the time that they have been polling. So that's where things stand. I just thought it was remarkable in particular. I mean, number one, we're going to talk about this a little bit more later, but I also got to say like the identity politics from Nikki Haley,

leaning into the bio and being a brown girl in Bamberg, South Carolina or whatever. And she, even then, right after she laid out one of those lines, she immediately was like, I don't believe in identity politics. Like, girl, what are you doing right now? Yeah, exactly. Just be. Why can't you just be a good governor for South Carolina? And yeah, look, once again, you can lean into your bio. I'm also proud of being a child of Indian immigrants. I think that's fine. You know, but the the trying to, like, cast it as part of this and then also rejecting, like, some of the tenets of leftism, which you're clearly utilizing in your own campaign, and will show you some of her merch, that is what's cringe to me. Like, either do it or don't. Right.

But you are trying to have it both ways. And broadly, part of the reason why I hate it is there's nothing underneath that. It's like, okay, what else? You know, I remember all this happened during the Kamala thing in the Indian community. People were like, we got to support Kamala because Indian. I'm like, yeah, what does she think though? Like, what does she actually believe? You know, in India, Trump is more popular than Kamala. You know why? Because they don't care about her background. The other thing with Nikki Haley doing this is like, I mean, I think she has an awareness that this only gets her so far with the Republican base.

But her whole she has no policy plan that's different or that she wants to lean into. So even the new generation stuff is really identity based. I mean, it's just literally about what like what year you were born in. So her whole pitch is bio, is like based in her bio rather than any sort of specific policy plan. And listen, I just don't think that that sells with the Republican base, with the Democratic base, with the American people. You can ask Kamala Harris how well it worked out for her in the Democratic primary. Right, exactly. Ultimately. Yeah. And I think that's the way it should be. Yes, indeed. Okay. Let's move on to UFOs. Interesting developments there. So President Biden actually broke this morning, is scheduled at least at some point today to bring us an address on what's going on with the UFOs,

specifically, most likely their version of the Chinese version of the story. But one thing that you should keep in mind is just as we predicted here on our show on Tuesday, let's put this up there on the screen. Well, officials now say in all three cases, these debris of these downed objects, they're never gonna be recovered. The White House is trying to quote, tamp down on conspiracies. They say, if it can't be recovered,

it's just gonna be very difficult to say with great certainty what these things actually are. That'll tamp down the conspiracies. Yeah, that'll certainly tamp down the conspiracies. I mean, look, here's the thing. They've now had days in every single one of these instances. I've checked. In the weather conditions have been changing in the Yukon and in Alaska, Lake Huron. So as we told you previously, first it was choppy water. Okay, that lasts for a day. All right,

so what about the next day? Well, now it's too deep. I went ahead and checked. The maximum depth of Lake Huron is 754 feet. That is actually quite deep. However, we have had multiple instances in our history where we have gotten stuff from far deeper, the U.S. Navy specifically. There's actually a military base on Lake Huron or very nearby with some capabilities. We know that the U.S. Navy has all of these different assets that they can fly and bring from across the board. Or at the very least, why don't you tell people we have the equipment, we have a concerted effort, it'll be up in two months, something like that. They're not even coming out and saying that.

They're just like, yeah, debris recovery operations are ongoing and continue. And remember, to date, we've had no images. We've had no photos. Now, look, we can wait and see for what the president says. Some pilot audio actually came out from the F-16. One of the things that really comes out from the pilots is they're like, we have no idea what that is. They're like, I don't know what it is. I think I see some string.

No, I don't see any string. I don't know how it's staying aloft. It's really small. They actually said it was, since it was moving and staying aloft at 40,000 feet, and they were moving at such a high rate of speed, they had difficulty even keeping a visual on it. We know that the missile actually missed over Lake Huron. It required two missiles, which actually get a target lock on them, indicating impossibly maybe have had some heat signature. And, you know, look, I want to say again, it probably is a balloon. It probably is. But it's one of those where they have got to at least assure and tell the public about what's going on. And we know, we know, all the way from over 20 years now, that you have internal video that can be released, as have been released,

with the UFO videos. One of the things that struck me the most were some of the comments from senators after the classified briefing, where they were honestly outraged with the Biden administration. This was bipartisan, actually. They were like, this has been going on for years. They didn't tell us anything. We have no idea. And we have got to answer more questions about what's going on. Senator John Kennedy and others reacted immediately on Capitol Hill. Here's what they had to say. I just know that going into the last two hearings, I had the impression that this was something that had happened over the last two weeks. And that's not accurate.

This has been going on a long time. Now that this cow is out of the barn, the president and the director of national intelligence needs to address it. They need to explain to the American people, if they know, and I'm not sure they know, if they know they're not telling us what these things are, who put them up there, and do they pose a threat to the American people. The director of national intelligence coordinates all that. She is a cabinet-level officer. She needs to come brief the United States Congress. And then she and President

Biden need to talk straight to the American people. That would be nice. Just answer basic questions. A lot of frustration on Capitol Hill. Senator Tom Cotton saying the same thing. Senator Dick Durbin, many of these people saying the same. They're like, hey, look, we didn't learn anything. Tom Cotton was like, I learned more from reading the news than I did from the classified briefing. And I just want to say again, if they thought it was really a balloon, they would have said so. If they had any confidence that it was something that they could identify positively, they would have told Congress. What do you also learn from that, especially from Senator Kennedy's comments? This has been going on for a long time. It's exactly what we've been saying here for years now in the discussion of

this topic. And the revelations are really is that whenever you uncalibrate the radar from where it previously was, it turns out you're going to find all sorts of things that are flying up in your airspace. Crystal, you had that idea that maybe they're just going to recalibrate back. I would not put it past them. They're like, we don't want to deal with this. We don't want to look at what's going on. I mean, we haven't had any more shootdowns, so maybe they already did that. They're like, listen, ignorance was bliss. Let's just go back to that regime. I think that's very likely. I mean, and also in terms of stuff coming out on the Chinese balloon,

currently intelligence says that we actually watched the balloon take off from Hainan Island. The Chinese are saying, apparently with some earnestness, trying to tamp down the tensions. They're like, look, we only meant for it to fly over Hawaii and Guam. They're like, we didn't mean for it to drift up here. Well, I mean, according to the reporting, the U.S. is actually kind of buying that that's the case. Because, yeah, they watched it take off. I guess there were unusual weather patterns and there were actually some indication that after it was spotted in Montana or whatever the Chinese were actually trying to bring, but it went awry. Anyway, I don't know. But the other piece that was interesting to me, I think it was in that

same article that's in the New York Times about the Chinese spy balloon. They're getting from their administration sources that, oh, we think that these other balloons were probably like weather balloons that were defunct and it was basically just like air debris or trash. What does that mean? It's like, well, I mean, first of all, we need proof. I mean, that's number one. Trash doesn't fly around in static at 40,000 feet

for hours on end. Well, and also, you use two Hellfire missiles to take down a freaking dead weather balloon? Really? Really? And as we have pointed out already, the fact that they are unwilling to say like, oh, it was a balloon, that one dude was like, there's a reason I'm saying it's an object, not a balloon. Again, there's a lot of reason to be skeptical about any of these claims, but it's revealing the things that they leak to the Times. They can't say it outright because they have no proof, but they can suggest on background,

like, oh, this is what we really think it is. Judging by the reactions of members who came out of that briefing, I wouldn't put too much stock in that particular explanation. And Senator Kennedy made this very eerie comment, very cryptic comment. He was like,

all I'm going to say is lock your doors tonight. Yeah, exactly. And look, what? From what I've tried, I've talked to my people on Capitol Hill, Senator Rubio, Senator Gillibrand, both have been warriors on this issue. And they are the ones who are the most read in. They genuinely seem afraid of the fact that we don't know what's going on. They've pushed for transparency now for two years at every single time. The Pentagon, the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence that he mentioned there have obfuscated and withheld evidence from them. We also, from Director

Ratcliffe, former director under Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, many of them do not report having seen any of the major intelligence. This is one of those where I really believe it is such highly special compartmentalized information that they are willing in some ways to keep it away from leadership and from the elected officials. I've told this before. John Podesta, who is the White House chief of staff, he's actually a big UFO guy. He tried to get to the bottom of this whenever he was the White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton, and they basically were like, go away. We're not telling you anything. President Clinton is on video. You can actually go watch the clip if you're interested, where he's like, I'm embarrassed to admit I tried to find out, and they wouldn't really tell me.

And so he was the commander in chief in the 90s. Things have changed somewhat in terms of some of the transparency pushes and all of that. And by the way, some indication that our show has made some difference, at least in the Pentagon. They're getting a little riled up over Jeremy Corbell's comments by specifically calling people out here on our show. So that's good. We're making a bit of a dent. I think that's great. And the point is, is that we have to continue to push, push and push. At the end of the day, all we really do have control over is public pressure, not just on the executive, but on Congress. And Congress is pissed. I really think they should be. Final thing, let's put this up there. As we alluded to, the president is

weighing the possibility of a Biden address on UFOs. It looks like it'll come at some time today. I don't think it's going to be a primetime address, like a 9 p.m. type thing. Maybe he'll give a press conference or maybe he'll just do a drop by in the White House press briefing room. We still are awaiting whatever those details are. If they break at some point to the day, we'll try and get you some coverage on that. But that's where things stand right now. And an attempt to, quote unquote, tamp down conspiracy theories. You know what you can do on that regard? Yeah. Get the frigging debris removal going. Show us what it is. Give us some proof. Even then, people are going to be skeptical because they just don't trust you because of all the lies that have been told. But that would at least be some move in the right direction. Absolutely.

All right. We have some significant updates for you out of Ohio with regards to that horrific train derailment that, in the words of one hazmat expert, basically nuked an entire town with chemicals. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Ohio officials are saying, oh, the air quality is fine, but don't drink the water. Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff said air quality testing shows it is the same as it was before. But Tiffany Kavalec, who is chief of division of surface water for the Ohio EPA, said they are watching the cloud and how it could affect water systems. Quote, we know there is a plume moving down the Ohio River. She said that water systems are being shut down as that plume goes over an area and testing is taking place to make sure the water is safe. Residents of East Palestine are being advised to drink bottled water for now. Vanderhoff said water from the

municipal system appears to be fine, but more extensive testing is ongoing. He said people with private wells should get them tested. Remediation work continues. And as a reminder, something we showed you, some of the dead fish from a local person who recorded video for TikTok, there have been reports of dead animals being found all around the East Palestine area. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the official source, says that 3,500 fish from 12 different species have been discovered dead. We showed you before our partners over at Status Quo interviewed a fox keeper. One of his foxes died. Others of them were seriously ill.

People are still reporting that they are nauseous, that they're getting headaches, that you can still smell the chemicals in the air. So a lot, a lot of skepticism about exactly what is going on there and how safe it is and what the most critically, what the long-term health impacts could ultimately be. Status Quo, Jordan Sheridan interviewed Erin Brockovich, of course, noted expert and crusader for safe water and safe air. She talked about how this could be a cover-up unfolding. Take a listen. This is definitely not your first rodeo, not my first rodeo. EPA testing is often, if you want to give them the benefit of the doubt,

flawed or not totally thorough. Do you trust? I mean, maybe they're not detecting it now, but what do you think of the doubt, flawed or not totally thorough? Do you trust? I mean, maybe they're not detecting it now, but what do you think of their claims that they're not detecting it? I don't trust. In all fairness, it is going to take some time to do all of this testing. Now, some of the reports I read that the EPA initiated yesterday, they're almost talking out of two sides of their mouth because they state it's a known toxic substance, and it's known and continues to be known that it's leaking into the water, into the air and into the soil. OK, so we have that side of their story. But then over here, they go, well, we tested the homes. I've read where they didn't find any detection limit within the limits that they're supposed to be looking for. Well, that says to me that doesn't mean you didn't find it.

Right. And but that's safe to go back. Which is it? Do you really have enough information to call all clear? Is anyone from those agencies going and collecting the dead animals? So there's just seems to be a big gap. Lack of transparency. Smells like a cover up.

What the hell's going on? And if you don't know what the hell's going on, I think you need to tell the community. I'm not sure what the hell is going on. She's right. Yeah. Big gaps. Lack of transparency sure smells like a cover up. And, you know, this would be far from the first time that government officials and in cahoots with industry basically lie to people about what they know and their confidence that

these people will be safe if they come back to their homes, breathe the air, and ultimately try to drink the water. My personal favorite, friends at the lever, let's put this up there on the screen. Buttigieg now claiming, actually, I am completely powerless to reduce derailment risk. Well, why exactly are you in this job? But the funny thing is, as they point out, it's just literally and completely not true. As they point to, the Transportation Administration actually has a tremendous amount of regulatory authority over cost-benefit analysis on the brake rules

before enacting it. They require executive branch overview and insight. This is the case with the FAA. This is the case now with trains. And the Transportation Department told the Lever, quote, they would use all relevant authorities to ensure accountability and improve safety once the investigation into the cause of the derailment is done. I mean, this is just completely and totally just passing the buck, trying to obfuscate yourself from responsibility. Joe Rogan even brought this up yesterday on his

podcast. He's like, this guy's out there talking about diversity in the workplace and transportation while you have a massive environmental disaster that's happening here. And the EPA, as far as I understand it, they haven't even been taking regular readings of air and of water. I mean, look, I'm just going to be inclined to believe the resonance here over whatever the BS that the company and the regulatory authorities have been putting out. You brought up that TikToker yesterday. I watched that full video and he was like, this is what always happens. The government just parrots the company line because they don't know anything. That's another problem too. Our capacity for dealing with these disasters is actually not high. We just rely on the company

paid experts. We're like, all right, issue the press release. Everybody just move on. Well, I don't think we should move on. Not yet. Yes, that is exactly right. And we are definitely not going to move on. And I'm going to talk about this more in my monologue. Massive, massive media failures on covering this story and talking about how we got to this place. So to the extent that it's been covered at all, it's covered as this sort of like act of God, inevitable, couldn't have been prevented tragedy rather than, hey, actually industry corruption in the Obama administration, in the Trump administration, and now in the Biden administration, they're the ones that stripped

down the safety regulations and the guidelines. They're the reason why this train, which was packed full of chemicals, so toxic and explosive that they literally had to do this quote unquote controlled release to avoid the whole thing blowing up like a literal bomb. This train was not classified as being highly flammable. Think about that. Think about that. That is all because of industry corruption. So this wasn't out of nowhere. This wasn't like, oh, my God, we couldn't prevent it or oh, my God, you know, there was nothing we could do to mitigate the impacts here. This is a specific story of corporate corruption over years and years and years. The media has completely failed to tell that story. And so it makes it easy for people like Pete Buttigieg to, you know, do his like feigned helplessness dance, which is something Democrats tend to be really great.

Oh, we just we'd love to do. We just can't. We're constrained. The parliamentarian, the rules, the NTSB, whatever. They always come up with a frickin excuse. And because the media hasn't explained the story to people and the specific actions that led us to this place, it lets characters like Pete Buttigieg get off the hook for not doing the very basics of his job. There is another very specific outrage here. Norfolk Southern, which has, you know, given their executives millions of bonuses. They've done massive amounts of stock buybacks who are aware that their shareholders,

rather than investing in rail safety or investing in their workforce, those are the things that they have decided to do. And those actions directly led and contributed to this derailment. Well, last night they were supposed to show up at a town hall to answer some questions that local citizens had for them. And guess what? They backed down. Like the cowards that they are put this up on the screen. This is so outrageous. The tweet here says, just invite email. Norfolk Southern says they will not attend tonight's town hall in East Palestine because they are, quote, increasingly concerned about the growing physical threat to their employees. What about the threat to the locals in that county? And many people also pointed out, oh, really, you're so afraid for your safety. That's the real reason.

Zoom is a thing that exists. If you really wanted to, you know, give your side of the story and field these questions in the interest of public transparency, there were methods to do this if you were really so fearful about your safety. But of course, it has nothing to do with that. And also to try to paint these local citizens who are rightfully enraged in a negative light is absolutely enraging and outrageous. Two things that came out of that town hall just last night. Number one, actually, the railroad company put gravel over contaminated soil, actually being forced to remove it by the FDA. They're calling that the cover up. The second was a resident actually asked the mayor of East Palestine and said,

where's Pete Buttigieg? And the mayor says, I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. Yesterday was the first time I heard anything from the White House. So as of February 15th, the mayor of East Palestine was not contacted by the White House and by at least the president's office, presumably not even President Biden himself. That's almost, what, a full week after the train derailment, after the controlled release and all of this. I mean, this is a total abdication of responsibility here. And you've even got, what, the governor of Pennsylvania issuing questions and letters. You've got state officials here who are more invested in doing a better job than our higher authorities who are literally tasked with making sure this stuff

doesn't happen. I mean, part of why this has been ignored by a lot of relevant national officials, you know, the Biden administration, obviously they've been asleep at the switch. Both of the senators from the state, Sherrod Brown and J.D. Vance, totally late to the party. J.D. didn't issue a statement until nine days later, even though, I mean, this is the region of the state that he's sort of most passionate about. This is technically Appalachia in Ohio. And it's because this story implicates everybody. It's not an easy partisan narrative. And the Democrats in particular are really embarrassed right now, or they should be really embarrassed right now, because they were involved in crushing this potential rail strike, which is all about, you know, the rail workers and their union

representatives have been warning about safety, about rail safety, about if you keep putting profits over people, we are going to have more accidents. And lo and behold, we've had multiple, multiple derailments, including this absolute catastrophe. So it's very uncomfortable for them, I guess, because of their own nefarious actions and their own roles in creating this problem ultimately. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. All right, let's move on now to Ukraine. A very interesting piece in the Washington Post, not necessarily the reporting itself, but more about what it signifies and what the people who are leaking to them have revealed, at least, about U.S. policy. So let's put this up there on the screen. Here's what they say. Quote, U.S. warns Ukraine it faces a pivotal moment in the war. Now,

the reason why this matters are a bunch of background quotes from the senior administration officials. They say, despite promises to back Ukraine as long as it takes, Biden officials say recent aid packages from Congress represent Kiev's best chance to decisively change the course of the war. And they pointed specifically to Republican efforts to not support any new aid to Ukraine. So the second thing that I found fascinating was this. Senior administration said the Biden administration will continue to request as much funding as it believes, but there's no guarantees that Congress will actually do it. Now they say that the war in recent months has become a slow grind with neither side gaining the upper hand. Biden officials

believe the critical juncture will come this spring when Russia is expected to launch its offensive. And more broadly, I think the real headline out of it is they were basically like, it's now or never. We're probably not going to be able to provide you any more weapons or support after this year. And after this point, you're going to have to go to the negotiating table. What they point to, and actually, there was a couple of things here which really made me raise my eyebrows. Number one, Crystal, was this line. So everyone should remember that we have given or appropriated $100 billion to Ukraine. I believe we have 60 billion left. Now, currently, on the pace that Ukraine is using ammunition, they warn that Ukraine will exhaust

the current congressional package as early as this summer. So they're gonna roll through 60 billion in ammo and in weapons and in support in literally a matter of months, just showing you how much ammo that they are consuming over there in Ukraine. Number two is actually this. Zelensky is making some moves which are really rubbing the White House the wrong way. So specifically in regards to defending the town of Bakhmut, which we've talked here, they just evacuated all those aid workers. Here's what they

say. Ukraine has expended significant resources and troops defending Bakhmut. American military analysts have argued it is unrealistic to simultaneously defend Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive to retake what the U.S. views as more critical territory. Zelensky, however, attaches a symbolic importance to Bakhmut and believes that it would be a blow to morale to lose the city. He said his country's forces would fight as long as we can. However, what they point to is that Zelensky, while he may know best to rally his country, have expressed concern that if they keep fighting everywhere that Russia sends troops, it will only work to Moscow's advantage. Why? Because Moscow has tremendous amount more material. They also say, according to them,

they have an initial force, Russia had 150,000 troops. Right now they have 300,000. Now you have hundreds of thousands more assembled in the draft. They're about to come there. They are going to outnumber Ukrainian forces significantly. Now Ukraine's going to be on the defensive and a defensive warrior is always going to have, you're going to need less necessarily, however it will change if you're doing an offensive. But what they say is that Zelensky is expending a, quote, extraordinary amount of blood and treasure for the city of Bakhmut, which has no strategic value, and that instead what he should have been doing was basically holding back, getting some of these weapons, conserving ammunition. One of the things that it kind of pointed to me is

Zelensky is actually in much more of a desperate gamble than people may think. He's trying to hold together the actual population of Ukraine. And also part of the reason why he's on this whole push for more is they can do math and how much they're expending ammo. Right today, Kamala Harris just landed in Munich. The NATO Secretary General over the last couple of days has been making pleas from all over NATO. He's like, look, Ukraine needs a hell of a lot of ammo. I mean, if you're rolling through $60 billion of weapons in literally four months, and there's still not even an actual Russian offensive that's happening right now, I don't really know what to say in terms of sustainability of this conflict because they ain't got no industrial base. They got no ammunition or whatever of their own. Like,

it is completely based on our support. And Russia still has the capability to ramp up. If they want to. Rumors, right. If they want to. There have been rumors of another draft just in terms of just sheer manpower. These would be inexperienced recruits basically sent, you know, like grist to the millstone or whatever that saying is, but they do have that capability. And the piece that really stood out to me in that Washington Post article is we talked to you before about how Rand Corporation, which is mostly funded by the Pentagon, put out this long assessment saying, look, we are not headed to an outright victory for Ukraine. We are not headed to an outright victory for Russia. We're headed to a stalemate. And the best thing we can do is try to avoid a really long, it's

already a long war, try to avoid a really long war because the cost of this thing are a disaster. The cost in terms of the obvious risk of escalation, the obvious risk of potential Russian nuclear usage, but also in terms of Ukrainian civilian casualties, Ukrainian economic devastation, world hunger and poverty increasing because of increased food and fuel prices. These costs, they say, are far too great for too little gain, given that what we're headed to is a stalemate. So we told you about that. Well, in this report, they talk about how U.S. intelligence officials have concluded something similar. Quote, they have concluded that retaking the heavily fortified

Crimean Peninsula is beyond the capability of Ukraine's army right now. That sobering assessment has been reiterated to multiple committees on Capitol Hill over the last several weeks. So that, again, underscores this idea that Zelensky has put out and plenty of administration and congressional leaders have backed that we're going to have complete victory. We're going to push Russians out of Crimea. That is a fantasy. capabilities has raised concerns in Europe that the Ukraine conflict will persist indefinitely, overburdening the West as it grapples with other challenges, including high inflation and unstable energy prices. And against that background, here's the money quote, Biden's aides say they are pursuing the best course of action, empowering Ukraine to retake as much territory as possible in coming months before sitting down with Putin at the negotiating

table. Now, is this really what they think? And is this really a strategy that they will stick to? If we get down the road and Ukraine does well and consolidates their position or takes back a little bit more ground, are we then gonna say, all right, now's the time to negotiate? Or are we going to feed ourselves this lie

that we fed ourselves before of Ukraine can win? We gotta keep pushing, got to keep fueling. We got to keep sending them, shipping them arms and increase the amount of military aid that we are getting them. Because so far in this conflict, all roads have led to that same conclusion. If Ukraine's on the back foot and they're not doing well, we got to help them. We got to strengthen their negotiating hand. And if they're doing well, oh, they can win. We think they can have complete and outright victory. So I hope that this report is accurate, that this is actually

what they're thinking. But I remain skeptical until I actually see any sort of push for diplomacy, keeping in mind that it was the U.S. that nuked an early potential peace deal in the first weeks of this war. I don't actually believe it. I think this is meant to more pacify domestic political forces that are against it. I am completely of the same belief. If they have even a modest success, there's no way in hell even the Republicans will stop the arms.

Look, I hope so, but we'll see. The second thing is that, let's say that they're on the back foot tremendously, then of course, you know, the same narrative, oh, we can't let it happen. It's like a sunk cost fallacy at this point. I mean, we've got $100 billion invested in the only thing that may actually be the limiting factor is literally the sheer amount of ammunition that they require and our inability

to provide it to them without also hurting our own defense stock. The U.S. Navy secretary already said that's the case. By the way, if you think we might have ammo problems, the euros have way less of stockpiles than we do. They are already also on the back foot, and they might have to cannibalize their own forces. They're welcome to do that if they would like to. I don't think that they will. So if anything, it may be actual straight-up industrial production of economies which are not in a total war environment like Ukraine that might be the broader limiting factor on all this. But I think you should take Zelensky's recent push abroad as evidence that he is seeing the exact same thing, which is like we're using

a lot of ammo. By the way, included in this, Congress is going to appropriate another $10 billion more likely to balance the budget of Ukraine, which I just can't ever particularly get over that one. We're going to make sure that their economic house is shored up, not the IMF or any of these others, on top of the $100 billion that we've already appropriated towards them. So it is possible that this could be the end, but I am very, very doubtful of it. Politically, what we alluded to earlier, let's put this up there on the screen, Glenn Greenwald flagging this from a new poll of Republican primary voters, 50% of voters say they are less likely to support a candidate who supports providing military aid to Ukraine. DeSantis has not really said anything about Ukraine. We don't really know where he stands.

Some of his votes in the House were pretty much just typical of what a GOP politician would say. But Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo have been actually criticizing Biden for not sending enough weapons to Ukraine or not supporting them enough. And clearly Trump views this as a major attack vector. There was a Politico piece from a couple of days ago where Trump believes that one of the ways that he could, what he can divide the Republican primary is he can be the one who is anti-war. And I've always believed, you know, that Trump is incredibly good at pointing and finding a cleavage in American policy where nobody is willing to say it. Now, look, we had an argument about this with Kyle and Marshall on the other

side. They were saying, oh, well, actually, it's very popular to support Ukraine. I mean, right now we're at 50-50. And in terms of where the conflict is likely to go, oh, we're going to ship another $10 billion. Well, that's going to make headlines. Maybe that'll change things. Depending on how the Ukrainians do, that could change things as well. Who the hell knows what things are going to look like a year and a half from now? So if I was Trump, I'd be a betting man on this position. Absolutely. Clearly he's leaning into it.

This is one of the first things he hit Nikki Haley on. They're signaling they're going to hit Ron DeSantis over it. As you said, Sagar, I don't think DeSantis has said a lot with regards to Russia. The things he has said have been a quite different tone than what Trump has said. I've got a New York Times piece on DeSantis' foreign policy approach where they've got a few quotes here. They say, where Mr. Trump responded to the war by calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a genius for invading, Mr. DeSantis decried the invasion as a Russian strategic blunder. Trump long admired Putin as powerful and intelligent.

DeSantis has dubbed him a, quote, authoritarian gas station attendant. Trump notoriously accepted Putin's denial of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections from The New York Times, guys. Mr. DeSantis in 2013 saw, quote, Putin as somebody who's trying to confront the U.S. and last year included Russia on a short list of countries with nefarious intentions to engage in espionage or influence operations in Florida. So he's taken a sort of verbally a more traditional Republican approach, like more like the way Mitt Romney talked about Russia. Yeah, but none of those like are like, we need to support Ukraine. No, I don't think from, you know, what I've seen, he hasn't said a whole lot on it.

But clearly Trump thinks that based on his sort of more neocon approach from when he was in the House, that this might be a place where he can push him. See, this gets back to the discussion we had earlier, which is, I think, the biggest limiting factor for DeSantis on foreign policy is going to be the fact that all the billionaires who are not going to back Trump are going to be the neocons themselves. If you think MSNBC people are cringe on Ukraine, you should meet some of these folks in terms of their views. Well, you've given us a good segue here because we've got a nice little MSNBC clip to share with all of you all this morning. All right.

So as we discussed earlier, Nikki Haley launched her presidential campaign, much fanfare and girl boss energy, et cetera, et cetera. And it led to an amazing exchange between Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC and John Bolton, and in which it's just like every piece of it is wrong in some way. So just take a listen. We'll react on the other side. You've quoted Mike Pompeo as saying that she is light as a feather. Would you be saying that about a man? Let's compare it with another woman. In the video trailer that she put out last week, foreshadowing the announcement this week, she opened up with quotations from Jean Kirkpatrick. Now, Jean Kirkpatrick, obviously another former U.N. ambassador. In the 1980s, I would say Jean was America's Margaret Thatcher and a phenomenal person. So the idea that Nikki is trying to associate herself

with Jean Kirkpatrick, I think, is a little presumptuous. The reason I found this incredible is because, okay, so you have John Bolton criticizing Nikki Haley. Fine, there are many things to criticize her for. We did it as well. But he chooses the worst possible angle of being like, she's not enough of a neocon. For those of you who don't know,

Jean Kirkpatrick, she was in favor of iran contra she was like the intellectual author of reagan era she was a real reagan foreign policy her view her view was that we should support any authoritarian regime didn't matter human rights abuses etc i mean she laid this out in great intellectual depth as long as they were anti-communist. So supported all sorts of brutal dictators, like I said, Iran, Contra, et cetera. So he's like, she's not enough like that, which is a terrible critique. And then Andrea Mitchell responds by critiquing John Bolton, which again, good, lots of things to critique John Bolton on, but it's from like, you're not being fair to a woman. So it's like the worst, it's the worst conversation, the worst analysis all the way around. I would even say that Jean Kirkpatrick was at least a more talented speaker than Nikki

Haley. So I'll say on a pure political talent level, I would also level that. I don't doubt that. One thing that we were talking previously about was about her leaning into identity politics by also decrying identity politics. Just look at some of the crap that she's selling on her website. Let's put this up there on the screen. Sometimes it takes a woman Navy t-shirt. I mean, sometimes it takes a woman bumper sticker with the Nikki Haley logo down at the bottom. It's just so boilerplate cringe. I don't, again, I tweeted this. I'm curious what you think. I said, you know, which political consultant gave Nikki Haley the mistaken impression any of us give a shit about her high heels? And, you know, somebody replied to me and they're like, hey, look, you know,

43% of GOP voters are coming from women, even for Trump. So if you figure how to tap into that and bring them out in primaries, there's a premium. No idea if heels does that, but presumably not meant for us. But I mean, am I the only person who thinks it's actually sexist to say that talking about high heels makes you a pro-woman candidate or appeal to women? Let's look at the data. 53% of white women in 2016 voted for Trump. White women also increased their vote margin for Donald Trump in 2020. You had more Latina and black women also vote for Trump in 2020,

despite all of the whatever, you know, anti, he's not a feminist, all this other stuff. Is there any evidence that that's actually what appeals to women at all? I mean, like, why is it the superficiality of high heels and of sometimes it takes women? Think back to Hillary Clinton. I literally just laid out, she lost white women, and she is the person who leaned into glass ceiling and all sorts of, where is the evidence that women care at all? I mean, it's just like, okay, it's nice. You're a woman, I guess. Yeah, that's nice. Like it'd be nice to have a historic first, but tell me what you're going to do, lady. Like, it's not enough. Okay. You have a vagina. Congratulations. Like, tell me what you're going to do, lady. Like, it's not enough. OK, you have a vagina. Congratulations.

Like, what are you actually going to do? And the other piece of this is it is such consultant brain because you see it, too. You see it on the Democratic side as well. They just assume like Kamala Harris is a black woman. So she's going to appeal to black women, which, again, is like both sort of racist and sexist to essentialize people like that, that people are just so brain dead that they see someone who shares some identity characteristic and they're going to be like, that's my vote. It's listen, there is something to people want to feel like you understand their experience. You get where they're coming from. That is real. But to just essentialize it like that, like the way to appeal to women is to talk about how you're a woman. Good luck. That's all I have to say. Well, also on the light as a feather comment,

I mean, what Bolton was saying is that she is actually a policy lightweight, which is empirically true. One of the stupid things that Trump did was appoint her UN ambassador when she was formerly the freaking South Carolina governor in a non-competitive race prior to that, winning some like state legislation. She had literally had no thoughts whatsoever on foreign policy and then gets arguably, you know, at least once upon a time, was an important role. To the extent that she comported herself, she raised her hand one time and took a photo of it. It's like, OK, so now you're supposed to be president of the United States? And listen, she could prove us wrong.

She could have proved us wrong in that interview with Sean Hannity that we showed you earlier. She could have come out with some deep policy thoughts and knowledge, demonstrated some sort of knowledge, expertise, vision, whatever. But instead, she just regurgitated this weird canned line about I'm not kicking sideways. I'm kicking forward over and over and over again. So, you know, I'm not mad at her about her resume. There's plenty of line items there, but you have to demonstrate some sort of political competence, some actual vision for the country, and just falling back on your age, your gender, your race, that you grew up in a small town in South Carolina.

Good luck. good luck. Good luck. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, I know I can rub boomers the wrong way sometimes when I talk about them derisively. I just want you to know it's not personal. The ones who watch our show, I guess you guys are the good ones. But generationally, you need to understand how boomer and silent generation tyranny is soul-crushing to people who are my age. We genuinely cannot believe we have been ruled for our entire adult lives by

geriatric overlords who not only ruined the promise of the country, but somehow still remain in power. Perhaps no better example of this exists than Dianne Feinstein, the 89-year-old California senator who officially, finally, announced her retirement yesterday. Too little, too late, you ask me. She's been verifiably senile for years. Disgracefully, she refused to accept her limitations and give up what is actually a serious job. Feinstein represents the people of California, a full 40 million people, the largest in the entire country. California, if it was owned country, would be the world's fifth largest economy, ahead even of France, India, Italy, and Brazil. They deserve proper representation.

Instead, because reporters have been afraid to be too polite and are corrupt democratic hierarchy, the public has been shielded from just how much Feinstein has completely lost it. And funnily enough, the full extent of how far gone she is was actually put on display in her retirement announcement. Why? Because she literally did not know her staff had put out a statement that she was retiring. On Capitol Hill, moments after the statement came out, a reporter asked her about the announcement. She said, quote, I haven't made that decision. I haven't released anything. To which a fine staffer cut in and said, quote, we put out a statement. She goes, oh, you put out a statement, and then she walked away. That's insane. That's weekend at Bernie's stuff, people. The craziest thing is she's not even doing the right thing and resigning,

only she will not seek reelection in 2024. The people of California have to continue to have her represent them for a full two years when she will be 91 years old. If I sound callous, I'm sorry. I know it's a tragedy when people age and families have to deal with it. She was a private citizen. I would have nothing but compassion for her. But she's not. She's a public servant. It's just not right. The problem with the Feinstein situation is just how much the Democratic Party and her fellow geriatrics in power have gone to protect her. When the San Francisco Chronicle in April did a story on how senile she is, the only fellow senators admitting it on background said she was senile. No one would say so on the

record. Worse, the only person on the record was Nancy Pelosi, who said, quote, Senator Feinstein is a workhorse for the people of California, a respected leader amongst her colleagues, adding that it is unconscionable weeks after losing her beloved husband of more than four decades and decades of outstanding leadership to our city and state, she is being subjected to these ridiculous attacks that are beneath the dignity in which she has led and the esteem which she has held. Oh, it's unconscionable. So outside of the corrupt deal to shield this from the public, maybe it just struck a nerve with Pelosi, who is literally 82 years old. She's only seven years younger than Feinstein. In fact, if you look at leadership in this country right now on a bipartisan basis,

it will make you want to vomit. Sure, it's great Pelosi is no longer the Democratic leader. We all know she still pulls the strings. Schumer is the spring chicken of the Senate. He's only 72. McConnell is 80. Our president is also 80. If reelected, he would be 86 the day that he left the Oval Office. Call me ageist if you want. I don't care. That's too old for the hardest job in the world. Trump, of course, is in the same league. He's 76. All of this is madness. In fact, the 117th Congress, which just ended, was literally the oldest Congress in American history ever. And it wasn't always this way. At a time when 50% of this country is below the age of 38, only 5% were the same in Congress. Now look, I'm not saying it's got to be one-to-one, but a little bit more parity would be nice, wouldn't it? And sure, age

itself is not a determination of anything. Bernie has the highest approval rating of all young voters, and he's older than Biden. Buttigieg is beloved by boomers. He's not even 40. The positions matter, of course, but at a certain point, we've got to move on. Much of this, in my opinion, is a reflection of the ability to run for Congress in the first place. The basic fact is that boomers vote more, and they participate in our politics because they actually have a stake in this country. People my age just don't. The average 75-year-old today is 77% wealthier than the average 75-year-old 30 years ago.

Meanwhile, the average 35-year-old is 19% poorer. Same for those who are age 45 to 54. Those 34 and younger are also poorer. Much of you can also ascribe home values, which of course only helps the elderly. They have a massive net worth and keep going up with prices, making it only harder for millennials, Gen Z, and even Gen X to buy a house. Who cares about property taxes if you have no property? Who cares about estates if you don't and probably will never have one? Why even care about high income tax if the odds are you probably will never get there? That's why young people don't vote. It is also why those who do vote their own into power. I have no idea what the solution is, but I do know fragile systems like this, they do break.

And when they do, it doesn't go so well for the people at the top. What I do know is at the very least, we cannot continue to be insulted by having literally senile people represent us in Congress while their nursing home age colleagues do everything they can to protect them. You can respect the elderly and the lessons they have to teach us while also advancing the interests of the rest of the public. Unfortunately, we have not yet learned to strike that balance, and I hope we do someday, because whatever this nonsense is, it cannot go on forever, literally. I mean, look, again, I don't want to sound mean. I know it can be callous, but she didn't even know she retired.

That's insanity. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. What are you taking a look at, Crystal? Well, guys, residents of East Palestine, Ohio, are now being told they better stick to bottled water for the foreseeable future as a toxic soup of chemicals makes its way through that community's waterways and disperses throughout the broader Ohio River Valley. The derailment of a train packed full of hazardous chemicals has been a horrifying disaster for the local community, and it's been a lesson in the monstrosity of corporate greed combined with industry-friendly politicians and regulators. Or in any case,

it should have been a lesson in this political toxic sludge, but unfortunately corporate media nearly across the board has failed to give Americans any context for how the hell this nightmare situation came to pass in the first place. Norfolk Southern and their industry allies have perpetrated a grave crime that could impact this part of Ohio for generations. And the corporate news media have served as accomplices in the cover-up. According to a comprehensive analysis from Media Matters, only 3% of broadcast coverage mentioned the years-long successful industry campaign to weaken rail regulations. And if you don't understand the way that corruption

fueled this disaster, you really don't understand this story at all. It is just a tragic, inevitable act of God with no one to blame and no action to be taken. And that is precisely the way that industry wants you to view this derailment. As our friends at The Lever reported, three different administrations failed to regulate the rail industry in ways that very specifically contributed to the devastation of this crash. The Obama administration exempted trains carrying exactly the sort of chemicals that were on this train from being classified as a high hazard flammable train, designation that would have subjected them to more stringent safety regulations. After seeing this train turned into a giant fireball and official warnings that if not for the controlled release, it could have literally detonated like a bomb blowing up the entire town, imagine the levels of corruption that would lead to such materials failing to be designated as high hazard and as flammable. The Trump administration, though, they went even further. They rolled back Obama-era safety regs, which would have required modern braking systems to be rolled out industry

wide. Now, this particular train relied on a braking system literally invented in the 1800s. And as a result, experts say the devastation of the crash was much more profound, with more cars derailed, more toxic chemicals spilled. And the Biden administration, with Pete as absentee figurehead at the top of the Department of Transportation, just let the new corporate status quo reign. Civil war era breaks, unregulated toxic chemicals and all. But they did add their own special little touch by effectively backing industry's approach to screwing and stressing and stripping their workforce down to the bare bones, all in the name of cost cutting so they could give their

executives bonuses and their shareholders a multi-billion dollar giveaway. Three administrations, Obama, Trump, Biden, both parties, Democrats and Republicans, they all birthed this whore. Anyone pretending that it's only one party or one person to blame for these years of failures and industry bootlicking is a liar and a hack running cover for their team. Anyone pretending like this was a fluke accident, which couldn't have possibly been prevented, is also a liar and a hack running cover for industry. And a look at the news media's coverage is to see an entire universe of liars and hacks with hardly a single exception. Now, media failures to reveal the real story, they were profound and they were really across the board. None of the Sunday shows covered the train derailment at all, not one. And American Town

was literally poisoned by corporate greed. They couldn't bother to make mention of it. During a key three-day stretch from February 10th to February 12th, there was not a single mention of this derailment in national news, not one. But the specific strategies that were deployed by each of the three cable news networks really exposes the nature and the purpose of the cover-up. According to that report, quote, on cable, national network CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC, they aired just over two and a half hours of coverage on the train derailment. The majority of reporting was done by CNN, which dedicated over an hour of coverage across 42 segments. It was followed by Fox News, which aired 50 minutes across 22 segments. MSNBC spent 36 minutes across 19 segments reporting on the derailment and toxic fire that followed. Let's break all of this down. In every instance, you can see how the network's biases and political orientations drove their

coverage. CNN did the most coverage of the three networks, thanks to their if it bleeds, it leads orientation. But while they cover the derailment because it's a sensational news event, not a single segment actually looked at the bipartisan political corruption that led to the catastrophe. Not one. Sensationalism with zero accountability. The CNN way. Over at MSNBC, they decided the best way to run cover for the failed response of the Democratic administration was just to mostly not talk about the derailment at all. Over a 10-day period, they devoted a mere 36 minutes to the catastrophe. To put that in context, this is a 24-hour news network. That means they had 14,400 minutes of airtime to fill over that time period, and they

chose to devote only 36 to the derailment. Now, Fox, they did slightly more coverage, clocking in at 50 minutes around the 10-day period. But now they're leaning in after Pete handed them an absolute gift by talking about white construction crews and ignoring the derailment. With this blessing from the culture war gods, Fox has now decided to cover the story, laying into the Biden administration, while of course conveniently ignoring the fact that Trump failures were some of the most critical in setting the stage for the current catastrophe. New Ohio Senator J.D. Vance went on Tucker Tuesday night. Take a listen. Well, Tucker, we've had hundreds of train derailments after we spent over a trillion

dollars on infrastructure in this country. So the fact that this isn't getting obviously better is a major indictment of the people spending the money and what they're spending the money on. Now, we know if you listen to Secretary Buttigieg today, that they are focused more on whether we have too many white men in construction jobs than he is on the fundamentals of his job, which is ensuring we have a viable transportation infrastructure in this country. And unfortunately, my constituents in East Palestine have been some of the main victims of the fact that we have failing infrastructure in our country again after spending tons of money in an effort to actually fix it. So the problem we have, Tucker, is that we are ruled by unserious people who are worried about fake problems

instead of the real fact that our country is falling apart in some of the most important ways. You mentioned the Environmental Protection Agency. Of course, it says it right there. It should be focused on clean air, clean water. It's the thing that I'm most focused on for the people of East Palestine. But so often they're focused on environmental racism and other ridiculous things instead of fixing the problem that they are established to fix. So listen, zero disagreement for me on the unseriousness of Mayor Pete and Biden and all the rest. But listen, Janie Vance, you are the senator for this state. You couldn't be bothered to put out a statement until nine days after the fact. You didn't care about this one lick until you could come up with a partisan culture war angle.

So spare me your belated faux concern and outrage. Second of all, the problem here isn't from your list of right-wing culture war buzzwords, environmental racism or wokeism as another Fox host claimed, or war on white people as Charlie Kirk claimed. It's corruption and it's corporate greed, plain and simple. It's a system that puts profit over people and doesn't give a shit about working people, whether they're black, white, purple, or blue. And in this instance, very specifically as documented by the lever, it's a story about a bunch of politicians on both sides of the aisle who would rather lick industry's boots than protect places like East Palestine. But you don't want to tell that story because it implicates the guy you owe your whole political career to.

That would be Donald Trump. And you don't want to talk about that corruption because it leads straight back to your own party. You want to know why the media is covering up for industry on this story. It is the same reason they do it all the time, because it doesn't fit their dumb, partisan, black and white narratives. MSNBC doesn't want to talk about it because it looks bad for their team. Fox doesn't want to be honest about it because that would look bad for their team. Instead, they invent some culture war dribble that in the absence of another accurate story is going to wholly fill the void. I lived 15 miles south of East Palestine for years, actually in the exact same county, Columbiana County.

The toxic sludge that's now drained into the Ohio River, that is flowing right through East Liverpool, where I used to live when I gave birth to my first child. The core of my politics today were developed while I lived there. There are few places in America which have been more betrayed by both parties than this region. Steel mills shuttered. Factory work sent overseas. In East Liverpool, the town budget was so stretched that the mayor used to use his own money and sweat

labor to paint the municipal pool every year so that local kids could at least have a place to go in the summer. And no surprise, this despair and abandonment has also made it the epicenter of the opioid crisis. Now, the news media did not tell this story because it didn't fit into their little partisan bubbles. They didn't expose who was making money off of that destruction, the lives that had been decimated. They treated it just like they did this train derailment

as an inevitable act of God. Who could help it? Thank God for truly independent media because we all know damn well the way that we have been lied to. And this story has made me really mad on a variety of levels, the total dishonesty crossed the board. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at the federal trade commission led by lena khan um there is a commissioner by the name of what's her name christine wilson who has resigned and a bit of

a blaze of glory here she's got a wall street journal op-ed uh explaining her thinking let's go and put this up on the screen she says why i'm resigning as an ftc commissioner lena khan's disregard for the rule of law and due process make it impossible for me to continue serving. So we needed to figure out what the heck was going on here. And we brought in the man himself, Matt Stoller, who is author of The Big Substack and is an expert on all things antitrust. And I knew we'd be following this very closely. So great to see you, Matt. Good to see you, man.

Thanks for having me. So what is the backstory here? Drama. You know, there's a, there's a, there's like a, I'm going to call it Lena Kahn derangement syndrome, right? You remember how like Trump just blew the minds of liberals and like broke their brains. And then, you know, the same thing kind of happens to Republicans. Like this is what's happening in the antitrust establishment. So you have Lena Khan and then also more broadly a movement of people coming in, many of the viewers of your show who are saying like, hey, we should stop monopolies. We should do something about these problems. And the old antitrust establishment, which has been kind of a group of technocrats living in a clubhouse for 40 years saying,

this is a very scientific area and ordinary people have nothing to say. They're deeply offended. And Christine Wilson is kind of like, she's the protege of some of the original people who constrained antitrust in the 80s. And so she's just like mortally offended that Lena Kahn would come in and say,

no, we're gonna enforce the law. And so her kind of going out with a blaze of glory, air quotes, sarcastic air quotes, is her saying sort of to that old establishment, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the antitrust defense lawyers and CEOs who are used to merging and Jim Cramer and so on and so forth. It's saying, you know, how dare she, she, right? And, and she, she legit believes it. She's not like, I mean, there's a lot of dishonesty in what she's saying, but like she legit believes that there's like a new era of lawlessness, but that's because she doesn't believe in stopping mergers or, or the government being able to ban non-compete agreements or

various things like that. She just thinks that that's outlandish, even though that is what the laws say. So the reason why I think his story is important is it's obviously a much bigger fight that's happening right now. And one of the reasons I think we are, I want to do our best to try and elevate what Lena Khan is doing is, when you contrast her ability to actually do her job with so many other quote unquote young promisers in the administration, like a guy like Pete Buttigieg, the contrast is just astounding, like the level of competence. So what are the actual fights that she's calling out that Lena Khan is engaging in

that will have a major impact on our viewers and really all of us in America? Yeah, no, I like that you said like Pete Buttigieg. It's like, no, it's Pete Buttigieg. Oh, he's the poster child. But there's many, there are many. There are many examples, but there's also just one. There's one Pete.

Oh, sure. Yeah, so there's plenty of there are many, there are many examples, but he's, but there's also just one, there's one. Yeah. So, so there's plenty of, um, it's actually interesting because the department, they actually, it's a great comparison because they're actually, um, the department of transportation has, uh, uh, authority that is, was actually the statute was ripped out of the FTC statute and given to DOT. And so it's the same authority. DOT is actually a little bit stronger and one, you can see one person is using that authority. DOT is actually a little bit stronger. And one, you can see one person is using that authority and one person is not. So what is, what has Lena Khan done? All right. So she's challenged a bunch of mergers. So if you look at, I mean, you guys did a segment on Jim Cramer freaking out. The reason that she, that, that he's freaking out

is because dealmakers on wall street are very upset at the new tough challenges to mergers. So mergers have dropped by 76% this year. That's not entirely an antitrust thing. That's also because of the funding environment is different. But some of it is antitrust. So she's challenged Microsoft and Activision, Meta within. We'll see what happens with the Kroger Albertsons. But a lot of deals are just getting abandoned.

And the FTC lost the meta within challenge, but made some important legal advances there. But broadly speaking, the environment for dealmakers is completely different. You can't consolidate your way into dominance anymore, or at least it's much harder to do that. Another thing that she's done, and I think this is something that got a lot of attention, is that she said non-compete agreements, the things that the parts of employment contracts that say you can't leave and work for a rival, she said those are unfair and unenforceable. So she's putting out rules that are not enforced yet, saying the 30 million or 40 million people who are subject to non-compete agreements are no longer subject to those particular provisions. I mean, they're called

non-competes, right? So that's like pretty obvious that they're anti-competitive, right? It's right in the name. Yeah, that's right there. But there are a lot, I mean, there are a lot of other things. So one of the things that she started on is a new policy that says that like a gym can't make it, they have to make it as easy to cancel as signing up. Yes. Right. Which, and there's, you know, there's, let me see, there's, what's it called? Fortnite. Right. Like there were certain like user interface deceptions that were going on there, like dark patterns that make it easy for kids to spend money and and um actually make uh

allow like essentially sexual in-game purchases but also like sexual predation of adults and kids right because they made it far we actually covered this i think i did a monologue they made it they made it super easy for kids to basically get permission like you had to opt out of the chat feature which allows like people who are older to be in with little kids who are on the platform. They market it to kids. So there is a lot going on there. But the FTC came in and said, you have to pay $500 million and stop all of this. And that's actually changing the whole industry. The gaming industry is going to look at that and they're going to say, oh, the engineer in the room who's like, hey, maybe we shouldn't do this versus

the marketing guy saying, oh, but our ROI says that we should. Right. The engineer now can say, you saw what happened to Epic Games, right? So these are changing industry structures in important ways. And Christine Wilson voted against all of those. Yeah. Just to be clear. Interesting.

So I see there's a Larry Kudlow segment with her. Very, you know, very upset. They're saying that Lena Khan's approach is, quote, modern socialism. OK. And the chyron on the thing says Biden's push for big government socialism. They call her the radical chair of the FTC. I mean, what's your what's your response to all of that? Well, I mean, the Republican Party is in an interesting spot because they have lived since the early 80s with a coalition of social conservatives and economic conservatives working together to try to get conservative judges and conservative policy.

And that coalition is falling apart. And you saw that with Trump coming in and you see it now, Trump saying protect social security and others saying, let's, let's cut it. But it also hits in antitrust and market power questions. So, uh, there are, there are a lot of young Republicans who are very upset with monopoly power. And they look at Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and they say, these feel like private governments and we're skeptical of government power. And then you have people like Larry Kudlow and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and essentially conservative boomer donors

that are like, no, no, we like preserving our property. And there's a serious and interesting tension, but the criticism of Lena Kahn is really coming from the old school corporatist wing of the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment, too. I mean, you know, Chair Kahn really upset a lot of Democrats when she not not like Democrats in Congress, but like the antitrust establishment Democrats, the people in the Obama administration who really didn't challenge a mergers who allowed. They were a bunch of them were not all of them, but a bunch of them were really offended. So this is this is kind of like a culture war among people who control all the money and power in America. Can you talk a little bit more about the Republican

side? I mean, I don't, how was Trump on these issues? Was there any sign he really thought about or cared about him? How were the people that he put in place? How do you think he would approach it if he was president again. Are there any other potential Republican presidential contenders who would, you know, side fall more on the Lena Kahn side of these issues? And also, are there genuine allies in Congress who back, you know, banning young competes and actually enforcing the law with regard to mergers? Yeah. So those are a lot of questions. I'm going to forget them. First talk about Trump. Right. OK. Yeah. I already forgot that one. So it's interesting you bring that up because one of the things that happened with Christine Wilson and her colleague, Noah Phillips, who left a couple of, I guess, a couple of months ago, is that they actually got crosswise with the Trump administration. And so they want to portray what's happening as a partisan fight between the three Democrats on the commission and the two Republicans commissioned with five.

Sure. But actually, that isn't what's going on. So under the Trump administration, there was Trump filed the first monopolization claim at the DOJ in 20 years. So there was Microsoft in the 90s, and then Trump brought the first Google case. But the FTC brought a case against Facebook in 2020 under Trump. And that was a three to two vote. Now, the thing is, is it wasn't a three to two,

the three R's wanted to bring it in the two Dems. It was two Democrats, the Republican chair named Joe Simons, and the two people who voted against it were Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson. So she actually voted against the Trump chair bringing a Facebook antitrust suit. Another example was, you know, Trump is very like protectionist and like want to make things here. Well, one of the things the FTC can do is they can say, if you label something as made in America and it's not, that's fraud. Well, the FTC under, you know, the Democrats at the FTC under Trump were trying to get this put into a rule.

And they were actually working with Trump White House officials to do that. The people who opposed it, Noah Phillips and Christine Wilson. Lena Kahn's first thing that she did at the FTC is to vote for this rule saying, to propose and vote for this rule saying made in America, fraud is illegal. Who voted against it? Christine Wilson. So this is, and this is on ideological grounds, like how dare the government, I think Larry Kudlow would say, oh, that's socialism, right? But like, it's obviously it's like, that's silly, but the point here is they're offended at the idea that the FTC or that the public sector in general would work to structure markets in a way that doesn't funnel money and power to the top. And so that's what's really going on. And I think what will happen.

Well, so there were a number of questions there, but like what's going to happen next is Mitch McConnell will nominate. You know, there are two open slots. They're eventually going to nominate some Republicans and they will probably be less libertarian than Christine Wilson and Noah Phillips. And that will, it will sort of change how we do antitrust enforcement. But I wanted, I forgot the other questions you asked. The congressional allies with regards to Republicans. Oh yeah. So, so the non-compete thing is really interesting. So you have Todd Young from Indiana and you have Kevin Cramer from North Dakota. These are two senators who came out and said, you know, with some Democratic senators like Chris Murphy, they said, this is good. We don't have non-competes in North Dakota.

We don't have non-competes. Or I think there's trying to bear serious problems with non-competes in health care in Indiana. And they so they came out and they, it is a good thing that the FTC is making non-competes unlawful. And, you know, you also saw Jim Jordan on the other side, he runs the House Judiciary Committee. It is likely he's actually said, I'm going to investigate the FTC for banning non-competes. This is an outrageous power grab and may issue subpoenas and so on and so forth. So you're going to, you're're seeing this weird split on the right. And there's an attempt to portray it as partisan, but it isn't.

Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying watching it. Very interesting. People pay attention because these people control literally the entire economy. As you said, culture war of people who control all the money and power. I love that.

All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've got great content for you all over the weekend. And we will see you all next week. Thank you. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming.

What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High Key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key,

a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know.

Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime

and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.