Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/22/22: Putin Escalation, Media Insanity, Truth Social, PGA Turmoil, CNN's Demise, Facial Recognition, & Identity Politics!

Episode Date: February 22, 2022

Krystal and Saagar break down Putin's speech on Ukraine, warmongering insanity in media, Havana syndrome madness, Trump's new social network launching, golf's Saudi Arabia controversy, CNN's financial demise, authoritarianism at home, Dems identity politics, and more!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Ross Barkan: https://rossbarkan.substack.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. of dollars doing it. To help support our mission of making all of us hate each other less, hate the corrupt ruling class more, support the show. Become a Breaking Points premium member today, where you get to watch and listen to the entire show ad-free and uncut an hour early before everyone else. You get to hear our reactions to each other's monologues. You get to participate in weekly Ask Me Anythings, and you don't need to hear our annoying voices pitching you like I am right now. So what are you waiting for? Go to breakingpoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. As you guys know, major breaking stories this morning.

Of course, we're going to bring you up to speed on exactly what is going on vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia, but there's a lot else that we want to cover, including how the media has covered this whole conflict, not sending their best as per usual. Also, another incredible media story. They keep going with the Havana syndrome thing. Even after, even the CIA is like, y'all, this is fake. And it's been proven that the sound

that they play is crickets. 60 Minutes still doing a whole deep dive, so we'll tell you about that. Trump's big social media play has officially launched. True social. To great aplomb. Yeah.

Not often the best start. I did a little of my own journalistic digging here, so I'll tell you about that. Also, there's a big fight within the golf world that I'm going to try to explain to the best of my understanding. It has a great intersection with this show, though, because we've brought to you before stories of NBA players and owners who are unwilling to be critical of China in spite

of their human rights abuses. Now you have the same dynamic with some in the golfing world in Saudi Arabia. So we want to break that all down for you. We've also got Ross Barkin back on the show to tell us about exactly how Eric Adams' mayoralty is going at this point. But we wanted to start, Sagar. Oh, and one other thing we announced yesterday. Let me remind you again. We are doing State of the Union coverage.

I always forget to say it. But March 1st, State of the Union coverage. It's going to be a crossover with us, Kyle Kalinsky. Marshall is also going to be joining us. Pre-show is at 8 p.m. The speech is supposed to be at 9. We'll stream it on this channel and then we'll have post-show analysis as well. And some other good announcements coming your way too. That's right. We got big stuff coming down the pipeline. Thank you to premium subscribers for enabling all of that. But let us start with what's happening with Ukraine. So a lot of big breaking news. So, you know, it's always fun. And whenever somebody reveals the way he truly thinks to the whole

world and President Vladimir Putin of Russia held an office hours of sort yesterday, expounding upon history, NATO, the West, and ultimately culminated in his recognition of two breakaway Eastern republics in eastern Ukraine, where there has been a civil war going on for eight years. We cut up some of the most insane and ultimately important parts there for you. So it's a little bit long, but we have the English translation here. Let's take a listen. Ukraine itself is now being controlled from the outside. It is perpetrated not only by the instructions from the West, but also locally via a network of foreign consultants, NGOs and other institutions deployed in Ukraine. They have direct influence on all the important decisions at all the levels of government, from the central down to the municipal. It influences the main state corporations,

Ukrainian railways, energy complex, Ukrainian post, administration of the seaports of Ukraine. And Ukraine doesn't have independent court system anymore. The Kiev authorities gave the preferential right to choose the members of the supreme legislation court bodies and via its embassy in the u.s the embassy of the u.s directly controls the national agency on preventing corruption national anti-corruption bureau specialized anti-Corruption Bureau, Specialized Anti-Corruption District Attorney Office, and Anti-Corruption Court.

It's all done under the pretense to increase the efficiency of fighting corruption. Well, okay then, but where are the results? Because corruption is still there. It's even worse than it was. Russia did everything it could to keep the territorial integrity of Ukraine. We tried hard to implement the resolution of the Security Council of UN 2202 that endorsed the Minsk agreements on resolving the situation in Donbass. But everything was done in vain.

The presidents are changing, the parliament members are changing, but the idea of the aggressive regime is still the same. Regime that seized the power in Kiev. It was created by the coup d'etat of 2014. And those who chose the way of violence, they admit they see no other way to resolve the Donbass crisis other than the military way. In this regard, I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago, to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of Donetsk People's Republic and Lugansk People's Republic. And I would like to request the Federal Assembly to support,

to back this decision and ratify the agreement of friendship and mutual help with both republics. We will draft this document and sign these documents in the near future. A little glimpse there into the mindset of Putin. If you want the full rundown of the speech, we have a little compilation here of Russia today's chyrons, starting with some of the most ridiculous things. Wide-ranging. It was wide-ranging indeed for Mr. Putin. Let's put it up there on the screen.

Lenin made some erroneous decisions about our territory. He's saying there that it was madness, actually, in order to give up the former Russian empire, if you've ever had any doubts as to what Putin thinks in his mind. Ukraine's trade with Russia is bigger than the European Union. Ukraine has been blackmailed. He called Ukraine a colony and a puppet state. He actually even pulled an Iraq WMD crystal. He says Ukraine will be developing its own weapons of mass destruction. So I think here's the thing. Oh, also, I should be remiss. This was an important piece of news and kind of clarifies what some of

the U.S. was accusing Russia of yesterday. They said, we know who you are, who participated in the 2014 Ukraine, the Maidan revolution. And he's like, we know, basically it's an implied threat as to whether, you know, they would actually do anything or not about it. We will continue to see. You're talking about the kill list that the US government alleged that they have yesterday. Obviously he didn't say kill list, but it's not like he hasn't killed people in the past. So I think really what it comes down to ultimately is that the major news is that he recognized those breakaway Eastern republics. That is the number one most important thing that you need to know. But two is this, which is it is extraordinarily clear here that while yes, NATO and many other Western provocations is, I think,

very responsible for putting us in this situation, it takes two to tango. And it's very clear here, Putin truly believes in his mind that not only the fall of the Soviet empire was one of the worst things that ever happened. He said it was one of the most tragic events in human history, but he wants very clearly to restore the Russian empire to its former glory. So let's go ahead and throw the next element up there on the screen, just so you can understand exactly what we're talking about. For those just listening, this is the map of the Donetsk People's Republic, so-called, and the Luhansk People's Republic, so-called, that has been recognized by Russia. That's the gray area. Now, the reason that this

matters is that the red line that is front of you, for those just listening, is basically half of the so-called recognized territory, is where the current Ukrainian front line is. So on the right, that's the Russian front line. On the left is the Ukrainian front line. So just this morning, Crystal, in Russia, the Duma actually met in order to ratify Putin's decision. Now, in ratifying that decision, it's actually unclear right now as to whether they ratified the decision to recognize the territory that is under the direct control of the so-called Russian separatists, a.k.a. the Russian troops themselves, or all the way up into that gray area where there are currently Ukrainian soldiers. And the reason that matters is because shortly after the speech, let's go ahead and put this next one up there,

Putin had gone ahead and issued a military decree ordering the Russian military to pursue, quote, peacekeeping operations in these territories. And there are reports now of troops crossing the Ukrainian border, eastern Ukrainian border, the former border. However, we have not yet had a report as of right now. We're recording this early in the morning on Tuesday as to any direct military confrontation between actual Ukrainian military and the Russian military themselves. So there are a couple of possibilities here. Yesterday, I predicted that I thought that the Russians would annex the Ukrainian breakaway republics. They actually didn't do that. They just recognized the independence and all but name only, essentially guaranteeing their security. The reason that that matters is it actually gives them a legal pretext to pursue

war if they want to. They can say, well, the Ukrainians have gone and had atrocities or committed a military offensive against our allies. We now have a defensive cooperation security agreement. Think of it like their own NATO type thing, a Warsaw Pact in the mini that we have out there. So this is where the situation is complicated. What will the Ukrainian military decide to do? Will they decide to contest the front line there or they retreat to the gray area? Or will the Russians stop simply at the front line? All of this remains to be seen as things are very much up in the air here, Crystal, in Washington whenever it comes to sanctions. Indeed. And we'll get to the specifics of what we know from us and our allies at this point with news continuing to break on that front this morning.

But just to get up to where we are, effectively, he gives this long speech, parts of it crazy, parts of it you're like, yeah, you kind of got a point there about NATO and U.S. meddling and, you know, Ukrainian U.S. influence in Ukraine and all of these things. The long-term factors, there's no doubt that our posture and the West's posture in NATO expansion has exacerbated these tensions and helped to create this standoff. 100% responsible for the fact that Europe is legitimately on the brink of a war that could be absolutely devastating for lots and lots of people and, you know, biggest military engagement war since World War II possibly on the table. So just to make that clear. So what he does is he recognizes these separatist republics officially and then uses this as a pretext to send Russian troops into these areas on a quote unquote peacekeeping mission. This is effectively, you guys remember the very beginning of this

conflict, Biden gave that presser and he floated the sort of like the just the tip invasion scenario. This is what it is. And I think that those comments from Biden in that first presser were maybe the most revealing of his actual thinking, because he in a very Bidenist way strays off the talking points and says, well, if they just go into these separatist areas, we'll have to see what we do. And in fact, you see now that there is a they are not levying the heaviest sanctions that they could against Russia, things that have been threatened at this point. They're just focused on sanctioning these particular regions. Some of our allies are going a bit further. But you can see that at this point, they're saying, okay, well,

if you stop here, there's going to be this level of consequence. But if you go through with the full Ukrainian invasion scenario that U.S. intelligence is claiming has been planned, that's going to be a whole different ballgame. So that's where we are at this point. I do think, you know, Biden has been very clear, and I think this is important because we know the way that, you know, leaks from the deep state can help to pressure commanders in chief. We've seen it across multiple administrations. Every single president subjected to this. He's been very clear from the beginning that he will not, under any circumstances, send U.S. troops and have boots on the ground in Ukraine.

But what they are more likely to do is to ramp up what we've already been doing in Ukraine, which is flooding it with, you know, our own weaponry. Yeah, we sent them a lot of lethal aids. Something that Putin brought up as an agitating factor for him in his lengthy, you know, diatribe here. So we will continue to flood them with weapons, likely. And what has been floated and reported in the press is the sort of stance that we took in Afghanistan when the Soviets were there, where we're training and arming both, you know, publicly, but also covertly through the CIA, the Mujahideen and the insurgency in Afghanistan. Very likely we'd be using, you know, our NATO

allies in the area as training bases for an insurgency that would be then going back to Ukraine. So unlikely that even in the worst case scenario, we end up with our own boots on the ground. That doesn't mean that we wouldn't be involved in sort of propping up what's going on there. Oh, absolutely. And I want to say, I see a clamoring here in Washington in order to bring the full suite of sanctions that were reserved for a full military invasion of Ukraine. And I couldn't agree more with the current policy. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from Jen Psaki saying that they will be putting sanctions both particularly on these breakaway republics. Now, let's be honest.

There's not a lot of business. Not doing a lot of trade with Donetsk. Not much business between Donetsk and Washington. That being said, here's the point, which is it doesn't take a genius to know that these areas have been in civil war for eight years and have been under de facto military occupation by the Russians already. So under that circumstance, there is a substantive difference between crossing the Ukrainian front line and basically taking over new territory rather than old territory. That is what the escalation ladder is supposed to look like, which is that punishments are supposed to fit the general circumstances. Unfortunately, the neocon brigade here in Washington is clamoring for the full suite of sanctions specifically against this act. I'm not whitewashing it. I think Putin, frankly, sounded like a crazy person. His biggest problem, Crystal, is that he actually would have had more

legitimacy in the eyes of the world if he had simply just said, look, they didn't give me what I wanted. They said Ukraine, they would refuse to tell me Ukraine would not be a part of NATO, and thus I am taking this action for the defense of Russia. A lot of people across the world, in many different places, including inside of Europe, Eastern Europe, in China, other words, they could support that. But now you have basically said unless you are full bore on board with this like absolutely rewritten Russian revengeous history. Restoration. Right. Restoration of the full Russian empire. You know, like some treaty of Brest-Litovsk, you know, and all this other stuff.

Then you're not on his side. And so he basically, and this is always a problem with authoritarians, they really just can't help telling you exactly what they believe because they're so arrogant and they just don't have any checks. You saw yesterday in that Russian Security Council meeting that one of the officials slipped up. And he's like, Putin was like, what should we do, Mr. Minister? And it's all televised. It's some sort of weird Soviet show. And the guy, yes, man, he's like, well, we should annex them. And Putin's like, that's not on the table. We're talking about recognizing independent republics, not annexations. And he gets all sweaty. He's going to get beaten a little bit longer. I want to, on that point about the Biden administration's relative restraint as compared to what, you know, I saw Newt Gingrich out there saying, oh, it's Chamberlain all over the Putin is Hitler comparisons. Please people go watch my Chamberlain monologue. Please do.

Definitely do that. And here's what the Biden administration is officially saying. This is from a senior Biden Biden admin official. More sanctions coming tomorrow, but won't say if Russian peacekeeper, quote unquote, moves into Donbass count as an invasion that will trigger the massive sanctions promised and notes that Russia has long had a military presence in that area. Exactly right. So they are preserving their ability to hold back the biggest sanctions. And also, I mean, that creates some one of the things Putin said in the speech is, hey, I think they're going to sanction us regardless. So this is the Biden administration trying to signal, no, actually, there is a chain of escalation here. Our response will depend on your actions, whether or not they believe it or whether they intend to, you know, go further. And, you know, the full invasion scenario that's been painted by the U.S. intelligence community, we have no idea. We simply have no clue. And we should also say this. I am very happy to see Europe actually stepping up in this and taking a stronger hand

because it is their problem. There ain't going to be no iron curtain over here. Let's put this up there on the screen. Immediately after the Putin speech, top EU leaders announced that there would be EU sanctions against those involved in the, quote, illegal Russian recognition of the Ukrainian breakaway provinces. But the most significant news actually came this morning, Crystal, when the German chancellor announced that there will be a cancellation of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And what I mean by that is that the certification process, which was underway, they went ahead and said that that will have to be delayed. You were telling me this morning that that is now going to be kicked over to a member of the Green Party, which, you know, you can go ahead and guess how exactly that's going to go.

Previously, the pipeline had been sort of like okayed from an environmental perspective by the previous administration under Angela Merkel. Now the person who's in charge of that process comes from the environmentalist Green Party. And so it's not just only that, hey, we're taking a pause while you're doing what you're doing. We're actually throwing the inspection back to, you know, this person who's in charge of assessing the environmental impact, who happens now to have more of an environmentalist stance. So puts the pipeline in jeopardy. And this is definitely the most sort of bite that we've seen from any of the actions so far.

No question. So just to give you guys an idea, the Nord Stream 2 has been one of those things that gets talked a lot about. It was a $10 billion pipeline between Germany and Russia. Now, Germany has taken, in my view, very foolish decisions, has decommissioned a lot of their nuclear power plants and has actually gone even relying even more on natural gas. They have resisted many times over the years any call whatsoever to include Nord Stream 2 in any sort of sanctions package. Now, the reason that that matters, and actually as early as just yesterday, Mario Draghi had gone ahead and said that there will be sanctions against Russia, but not whenever it pertains to energy. Germany being the biggest

powerhouse within the European Union had made it known it does not want to risk any sort of energy problems, given that already European gas prices and natural gas is sky high. But what happened yesterday with the Putin speech kicked them really into action. And they said, fine, you know what? We're going to have to go ahead and make sure that this pipeline doesn't happen. I cannot underscore this enough. That is an immense blow to the domestic Russian economy. And that's really where some of this is being and kind of coming from. Not to psychoanalyze Putin.

He's been, what, on the throne, so to speak, as he probably kind of coming from, not to psychoanalyze Putin. He's been, what, on the throne, so to speak, as he probably likes to see it, since, you know, 1999. He's 67 years old. His life dream has been to restore the glory of the former Soviet empire. He seems to believe that he can be able to act this way across Europe and still maintain what fundamentally he knows is a weak and a dying country. I mean, you have demographic decline dramatically over the last 25 years, economic contraction, full-blown oligarchy that has taken across the entire Russian economy. And at the end of the day, the only valuable thing that Russia has is oil and gas. Now, obviously, oil, it's the third largest oil producer in the world. I'm

not going to lie. But they don't have very productive sectors of their economy. And the thing about oil is, is you got to sell it to somebody else. Yeah, you can use some of it. But with the global markets at the way that they are, he has put himself in a very vulnerable situation. And what reminds me of this is that the idea is that authoritarians and states are actually most dangerous on their decline rather than on their way up. Because think about this. Ukraine is a country of 44 million people. They actually are fairly dynamic economy ish. I mean, yes, it's very corrupt and all that, but they have a large youth population, more of a connection with the West. They're educated.

It actually would be a coup in order to add those 40-something million people to the Russian nation and the Russian Federation, I guess. And so the way he looks at it, it's a way in order to lash out, use the nuclear power, obviously with his ambitions, at the end of his life and try and restore some dignity. And I'm not saying it as if I agree, but in his own eyes as to what is happening. So that's kind of my read on the situation. But I think this is awoken. What was the phrase that Yamamoto said? It was like awoken a sleeping tiger or something after Pearl Harbor. I think Europeans are really going to have to wake up. They have skated under the U.S. nuclear umbrella for a long time. Their German defense spending and all that has been like 1.6 percent or whatever of GDP. We're entering a new era of geopolitics here with this Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That, I think, is really significant. I mean, it does feel like we're at this kind of

pivot point in terms of, you know, Europeans and in terms of the sort of global order. Just to underscore what you're saying about Germany and their reliance on Russian natural gas. These are the numbers. This is from the New York Times. So natural gas, increasingly critical source of energy for Germany. Last year accounted for nearly 27 percent of all energy consumed and two thirds of that natural gas came from Russia. So this hurts the Russians. It's also going to definitely- The German economy is about to tank. There's no question. It's going to hike energy prices definitely in Germany and across all of Europe that were already, like us, facing elevated energy prices. So that's why this move is so significant, because they know that it is going to impact their

own, you know, the pocketbooks of their own consumers there in Germany. So that's really significant. The other thing that I want to say about Putin's speech, you made the point that it was sort of foolish that he, you know, just had to tell you everything he thinks about it instead of focusing on the issue at hand. And what even people like Bernie Sanders have to admit are some legitimate grievances about NATO expansion. I mean, you've heard it all on the show. Understandable concerns about those sorts of things. But because he has to lay out the full breadth of Soviet history and all of this, it expands the concerns beyond Ukraine so that other areas that were part of the Soviet Union, then you have to go, oh, so maybe this isn't just about Ukraine and their potential

membership to NATO. This feels more like you have those revanchist ambitions that go beyond anything that the West could do at this point to satisfy you. And so that's why the speech also was both foolish and I think dangerous, because at the end of the day, what are we talking about here? You know, I think you and I, certainly you also, I have grown up in a time when this sort of day to day concern of a nuclear conflict with Russia was not really tangible or real. And now, even though Russia, yes, the economy is war-abund, yes, the demographic decline, yes, they're sort of reaching for this lost greatness, but they are still a nuclear power. And so conflict with, you know, a nuclear power spells potential doom and devastation and is extraordinarily dangerous, which is why we've said from the beginning with regard to the specific concern about NATO, just freaking give because what are you holding on to? And then he looks crazier whenever he says these things. Yes, and even the Ukrainian. And then you would really see, okay, is this really about just this, you know, one country

potentially maybe in like down the road a decade joining NATO? Or is it about this larger revanchist program? And so the real irony here is that no one even really wants Ukraine and NATO at this point. This is all over the principle of, in theory, Ukraine becoming part of NATO. And that was part of Zelensky's frustration that we played on the show yesterday. He's like, they're not stupid. They can see that there are a lot of NATO states who don't want them in. And so he was saying, listen, just tell us that. Like,

be honest about it, because that might help to de-escalate the situation. It's just so silly to get so caught up on this principle of theoretically we could let Ukraine in, even as no one actually intends to let Ukraine into NATO. I couldn't agree more. And like he I'm relatively certain after that speech that all of this would have happened regardless. But that would have given us a lot more credibility in the eyes of the world. We're like, look, we gave it to them and then they still did it. So if what they really mean is that they want the Baltics back in the empire. Sorry, Baltics are in NATO now, like there's a tripwire and that's just how it is.

And they don't seem to, and if that's really your beef, then say so. Well, and then we have more clarity. Right, exactly. Then you know what you're dealing with. Whereas now he can still have this fig leaf of cover about, oh, this is just about NATO's potential expansion. And don't think that the Chinese

are not going to be backing him up on this because they look at, they're watching very, very closely as to how this all relate in East Asia. My great fear is that this has a conflagration and that we have some great European war and that it will tank the entire global economy. I mean, already we're seeing problems in the US market. Obviously, I have concern for the Ukrainians. I'm not saying this is the biggest problem, but I'm saying in the way that it pertains most to us is that we're going to see huge spikes in oil. War is very bad for business, except for a few.

And in our case in particular, energy and gas prices are already throwing domestic politics into turmoil. This could make the situation ten times worse. We do a ton of trade with Germany and with all these other countries which are about to be majorly effective. A great European crisis, as we have found out in 1914, as we found out in 1940, will have an impact whether you like it or not here at home. So unfortunately, there's a lot of blame to go around. I think in this case, Putin obviously is really- He's the aggressor here. I mean, there's no way to get around it. His speech, in a way too, he just validated his worst critics, which, like I said, if he was smart, he would have said, look, we didn't get what I wanted, thus I'm taking these actions. He had to put it all out there, and look, in a way, it's good.

So now you know exactly who we're dealing with. Yep, indeed. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the media. I think we just spent like half an hour dissecting all of that, which is kind of what you need. You need to go into all of the nuance and the detail and listen to the speech. And over on cable news, you're not hearing any of that. You're hearing a constant drumbeat for war. Perhaps the single most insane piece that we want to draw is that an argument over on MSNBC's Meet the Press from Yamiche Alcindor that the U.S. should prepare to go to war for oil. This is not a joke. It feels like it's 2002 again. Let's take a listen.

But also the thing that you hear President Biden saying is Americans need to prepare, be prepared for if this comes to our shores and it comes to our shores in the effect of higher gas prices. When we already are seeing an eight year high, we're already seeing inflation at 40 year highs. So the president is also trying to tell Americans if we have to get involved here, the cost of freedom may be in your wallets at the gas tank. Oh, my cost of freedom in the gas tank. I mean, this feels like Iraq. If we have to get involved here, the cost of freedom may be in our wallets at the gas tank. Like legitimately what are you saying? Are you saying we should go to war?

Like I just did an entire thing where I was concerned about gas price, but that doesn't mean that you go and invade another country. I think the bigger problem is that this is the type of analysis which people are getting bombarded with. You know, I was looking Andrea Mitchell, who of course is like, I don't know, basically an ambassador for NATO, over on her program. She quoted, you know, two officials being like, this is an invasion. Former Ambassador McCaul say that what happened today is an invasion. You can't come into a country uninvited. Is the White House listening? This is my always question. What are you calling for? What are you asking? You know, go ahead and put the next up there on the screen, which is that we are seeing a full scale insanity amongst the kind of elite establishment left here.

Lawrence Tribe, who himself was an advisor to Joe Biden's Supreme Court counsel, says led by Fox News is Tucker Carlson, the GOP's Trump wing appears to be throwing its weight behind Putin. If Putin opts to wage war on our ally Ukraine, such aid and comfort to an enemy would appear to become treason, as defined by the Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution. This is just one of those things where this language is dangerous. By that standard, and I'm not saying I even agree with all of Tucker's coverage on Ukraine, but, you know, tonally, I would say there's probably some similarity between some of the things we've been saying here.

Would that qualify us as treason? Like, this is not the alien and sedition acts of whatever, you know, 1793. And that's essentially the spirit under which Mr. Tribe is go ahead and pushing for. So as much as we can condemn Putin, as we did in our coverage, as much as we can show you the nuance and say, look, if he had done this, he probably would have had more legitimacy and we can critique the U.S. position. These people are crazy. And we see this over and over again. I don't think we have it cut, but, you know, we were looking at CNN's Jim Sciutto, who is the head national security reporter for CNN, who is based right now

in Kiev, and saying things like, is this it? Sneering at the White House position. I see Jake Tapper and other people at CNN constantly retweeting things calling for extremely harsh sanctions against the Russians. Now, look, maybe that's the correct policy if they cross the Ukrainian front line. But right now, they are currently occupying a place that has been in civil war for eight years. The White House has the correct view, which is it is substantively different if you're here than if you're here. And what I mean by that is part of the formula of a currently occupied place or in a place where there's literal Ukrainian troops and you're engaging in a new type of warfare. And yet, Crystal, the press is universal in calling for the most aggressive

and hawkish posture possible from the United States. And it's the repeat of Afghanistan all over again. And I gotta say too, like you brought up Newt Gingrich and all these people crying Munich in 1938. You people look like fools. I can't wait to watch, by the way, Trump, who wanted better relations with Putin, to come out with some ridiculous statement and be like, Biden is a weak man. You know, I would have stood up.

It's like, OK, well, what does that mean? What do you mean by standing up? You want to send troops over to Ukraine? Because I don't want to do that. And that's not what America first meant whenever you're running in 2016. The culture warification I'm watching over on the GOP side is just disgusting to behold. Same thing that happened under Afghanistan. Yeah, there's a lot to say here. I have the Newt Gingrich quote just to show you that there's truly bipartisan insanity, dangerous insanity around this.

He says the Biden administration talks and Putin acts. This is such a clear replay of Chamberlain trying to deal with Hitler that is more than a little frightening. Putin is pushing day by day and has no fear of NATO because he has no fear of the United States or his president. What are you talking about? Exactly. And okay, so what do you want? Okay, so you want war. And the most important question is, and then what?

Yeah, exactly. And then what? Yeah, exactly. And then what? I think Russiagate has obviously, the mass hysteria of Russiagate over four plus years has led to this total hysteria that prohibits a significant chunk of the public from being able to analyze this in anything approaching an objective manner. And so what we've seen since Russia's so-called peacekeeping operation into the Eastern separatist areas, which is not acceptable or okay in any way, but there's an immediate reaching for the most inflammatory rhetoric about what this represents. And that puts a lot of pressure on the Biden administration because immense pressure. They're out there trying to say, listen, this is different than a wholesale invasion of Ukraine. This is not the same. Russian troops have been in this area for a long time. So we're going to react, but we're going to

do it in a way that is commensurate with what they have done so far. And because you have such media, consistent media pressure, wanting them to call it an invasion, wanting to levy more aggressive sanctions, wanting to take this extremely hawkish sort of stance towards the situation, you know, that makes it difficult for the administration to hold the more reasonable line that they have at this point. Because again, going back to Biden's original comments, I mean, this is what he said. And I think these were his most sort of like candid and truly what he thought comments when he lets it slip. Yeah, if he does this, you know, if he goes into the Eastern separatist regions, then we'll have to see how we respond.

And then the media attacks him relentlessly for the honesty of those comments and that he's not just consistently hawkish. And then what we saw from the administration after that was this more consistently hawkish tone, which we don't know. We can't get it in the mind of Putin. But did that contribute to the escalation that we see now? We don't know. So it is very it's not just that these people suck and they're wrong. It's that their hysteria around this and their desire to sort of call out anyone who doesn't stay right on their, you know, hawkish script is extremely dangerous. And it's obviously not the first time we've seen this impulse in recent American history. I think we talked yesterday about a similar hysteria after 9-11, which, of course, is a direct attack on our soil.

But you saw this same, you know, there was a whole movement on, especially among Republicans, but some Democrats as well, to say you can't even question U.S. policy. You can't question, you can't say we can't go to war. You can't, you know, you can't question what we're doing now that we're over there. You have to support the U.S. and if you don't, you're a traitor. The whole freedom fries, all that nonsense and hysteria, which some of these very same people were able to see very clearly at the time. And now when it comes to this situation, because we've had mass hysteria around Russia and Putin for four years, now their thinking is completely cloudy. And the last thing I'll say here, because Glenn has been pointing this out consistently, is you can tell what a dramatic shift there's been in the thinking

among democratic elites and, you know, liberal intelligentsia is that Obama's tone with regards to Russia was dramatically different. Yes. During the Crimean crisis. During the Crimean, some of the very same things that he said then, including acknowledging what is just a fact that Russia has a lot greater interest and a lot more at stake in Ukraine than we directly do, I guess that would be considered treason now. Yeah, let me read here from an Atlantic article with Obama from 2015. Obama's theory here is simple. Ukraine is a core Russian interest, but not an American one. So Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there. The fact is, is that Ukraine, which is not a NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination

by Russia no matter what we do. I asked Obama whether his position on Ukraine was realistic or fatalistic. Quote, it's realistic, Obama said. Quote, this is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for. In fact, he expounds even more. He says, if there is somebody in this town that would claim we would consider going to war with Russia over Crimea and eastern Ukraine, they should speak up and be very clear about it. That is, yeah, you know what? I agree, Mr. President. And it's amazing that Democrats have shifted so much on that. I sent you that polling data just yesterday from a focus group in South Texas where Democratic

voters were actually more likely to say that the U.S. should send troops to Ukraine than the Republican group. I mean, personally, I wish both groups would say that, no, that we shouldn't be doing that. But there is a real cost to years of, you know, just Russiagate absolute madness. And, you know, I've said this too. My great fear is that we will be distracted once again by the problems of the old world while we continue to see a reshaping of the entire global order. I mean, the interests of the United States do not lay in the long term on the European continent. They lay in Asia. And yet we continue to just be distracted by these internecine, ridiculous conflicts dating back to the 16 and 1700s.

They're not the powerhouse they once were. You know that Russia's economy is the size of Spain? Spain, okay? The Italians are beating them. That takes skill in order to lose to them economically if you look at the grand scheme of history. And yet we are continuing to just be so focused on them simply because they're closer and we have more historical ties. We're missing the forest completely for the tree.

It's culture war too. Yeah, culture war. I mean, listen. Drives me crazy. Russia is a proud nation and they feel like, the justifiable part, the part that you can understand,

is they just feel like they've been humiliated. Yeah, I mean, from their perspective, I get it. Over and over again. Yeah. And, you know, at some point, I get it. Over and over again.

And, you know, at some point, they have to put their foot down. That does not excuse the aggression here, which has led to an extraordinarily dangerous situation. But you will certainly never hear that perspective on mainstream press. Yeah, I mean, it's possible to say Putin is bad. He has a fine point. Or he has, you know, a point whenever it comes to this particular angle. But now apparently we've got to go to war. Because when you just treat someone as a caricature and you don't try to say, okay, well, here's a little bit of where they're coming from and a little bit of where maybe we can see

their point, then you end up with hysterical overreactions because how else do you deal with like an unmoored madman who's just like acting in insane ways? Then, yeah, the only way you can deal with such a person is through potentially aggressive action. and of Putin the mastermind and Putin the puppeteer and Putin, you know, holding blackmail over Trump and basically de facto controlling our government, that has created a significantly more damaging and dangerous situation. And unfortunately, Democrats, I think, especially are more susceptible to be cowed by liberal media in particular. Tell us more about the media on this one. Let's talk about the media.

Okay, so when last we brought you the latest updates about the so-called Havana syndrome, this is the allegation that some nation, maybe Russia, probably Russia, Sager, has been running around the globe with invisible microwave brainwave machines and injuring random low-level State Department people and other national security state Americans. So it's named Havana Syndrome because the first allegations of this conduct came out of Havana, Cuba. But now we have a new report from 60 Minutes that this is not just on foreign soil. It has come here to the U.S. Let me start, though, with the fact that this has already been debunked even by the CIA. Let's throw this New York Times tear sheet up on the screen. The CIA says most Havana syndrome cases unlikely to have been caused by foreign power. A report concluded most cases have environmental or medical causes, but the government remains focused on investigating two dozen incidents that remain unexplained.

So even the CIA is saying, I don't know about this whole brainwave thing. This isn't really selling. So we're going to walk this back a little bit. 60 Minutes was not deterred, however, Sagar. No, no. The world's most watched news, or sorry, America's most not watched news program. I know that may be surprising to some of you, but they're still sticking with it. They went deep on possible Havana syndrome cases. We have a little bite of that.

And they're going to play for you the sound that they say is associated with the brainwave machine. Let's take a listen to that. This former official, who we agreed not to name, recorded the sound at his home in Havana. Before we play it, understand that the sound does not cause the injury. It is a byproduct, like the sound of a gun, which is not what does the harm. Here's what he recorded. The injured officials we spoke with said the sound, or a feeling of pressure, came from one direction and focused in one location. It was a continuous sound and one that only changed based on my location.

They left, it dissipated. They returned, it recurred. That to us was something that we had never heard of, we could not explain by known medical or environmental conditions, and to us deserved our special attention in an effort to understand what might be the plausible mechanism. So let's talk about that sound, Sagar. What does that sound remind you of? Some of you may recall that I did a monologue previously about what this sound was. This is not new information. If 60 Minutes had done like two minutes of Googling, they might have discovered that other analysts had already found this sound is literal crickets that are native to this area. We have audio of those specific type of crickets and you can compare for yourself how similar it is to their, you know,

their sound, Havana Syndrome sound that they played for 60 minutes. Let's take a listen. So that is the Indy's short-tailed cricket. I'm sorry if you now are stricken with Havana syndrome, but the government will look out for you. You can't get Medicare for all. But if you have been injured by a fake CIA-invented brainwave syndrome, they will cover your medical expenses. So that's the upside there. And this one portion, I think, just completely undermines the entire report in the digging that they did here.

Because how can you have not done the Googling to realize that this sound has already been revealed to have been crooked? Yeah, I just I can't imagine how they could run this story. I mean, the CIA themselves, it's so that's most of the 1000 cases that have been reported to the government itself are rather undiagnosed medical conditions or stress. And I think that's what it comes down to. Clearly, our diplomats are under some real pressure here because a lot of them have undergone a true mass formation psychosis to think that they have had brain injuries. Especially if you get demonetized. Yeah, sorry, everyone. Yeah, having brain, well, it's not like our stuff doesn't get demonetized constantly anyway,

but in order to have brain waves or microwaves shot into their head in order to make them think, this is stuff that even at the height of the Cold War that we were probably most paranoid about what was happening, And even in those cases, it almost never turned out to be true. I don't even know how it's possible to convince yourself that you hear a cricket and that you've somehow undergone some sort of episode and you're losing your mind.

I think all it can come down to is this. Serving in Russia or in Cuba or in elsewhere is probably stressful. So I'm gonna try and have some empathy. I've read stories before about how the Russians will screw with our diplomats. Like apparently one guy took a dump on a diplomat's floor and they'll move your furniture around. I think they killed somebody's dog once too. I'm not sugar-kitting it.

I'm saying, like, look, they screw with our people pretty significantly. I don't know if we do anything similar to them. Just put it out there. Cuba, same thing. You get tailed around wherever you're going. There are definitely hardship posts. And so to those people, I sympathize. I went to an international high school with some kids of diplomats, and they have weird lives.

So I don't want to sugarcoat that. I don't want to say that what they're undergoing isn't stressful. Yeah. But that seems to be the precondition through which you can then convince yourself that a freaking cricket is like an attack upon you when you're already in this like heightened state of alertness. Yeah. The real criminals, Crystal, are the media and the CIA and the government for taking these people seriously and being like, why don't you just come on home to Washington for a couple of years, live in the Nova suburbs, just chill out a little while. Yeah. And the other thing is that, I mean, we see this, we've talked about this with regards to vaccine side effects. Just because someone gets a vaccine and then they have some physical ailment does not mean the vaccine caused the physical ailment.

Just like if you hear crickets and then you have some true physical problem, it does not mean that the crickets caused the problem. You know, you have a lot of people who work in the U.S. government, in the State Department, and in all of our national security agencies. And some of them are going to have a situation where they hear a cricket and then unrelated have a legitimate physical issue. Right. And human beings are pretty bad at sort of sussing out cause and effect. Right. And this is I mean, this is just throughout human history.

Something unusual happens and then you feel a physical ailment. It's very natural to connect those two things, which is why the report from the government that looked into these to find, okay, is there something really going on here, is so important. Because here's the other piece is, if you're going to allege something as extraordinary as these microwave brainwave machines injuring, routinely injuring State Department employees, you should have some real significant evidence. I mean, that's an act of war. It actually is.

It's an act of war. It's an extraordinary claim. What 60 Minutes talks about here is people who allege this happened to them at the White House. So again, that even ups it considerably where it's like, OK, well, if they can do that to you, random national security official walking out of the White House like they could do that to the president, they could do that to the vice president. If you're going to levy that kind of a charge, you got to have some actual evidence to back

up that that is what is happening instead as their evidence. And this was like the dramatic moment. I watched this whole thing. You're welcome. This was like the dramatic crescendo of this entire piece is them playing the cricket noise as their evidence that this is a real phenomenon and here's the proof. If that's all you got, then it's not a good sign. And it should cause you to question not only this particular report, but literally everything else that they do.

A hundred percent. All right. We got to update you on former President Trump. His big social media effort. You know, he announces his thing, Truth Social. And some of the first things we learn, Devin nunez is the ceo all right hilarious um another thing we learn is that i guess the tech for it was basically just like ripped off from another platform it's basically twitter only supposedly free speech um except they also have

uh i guess hired like an ai company to, you know, police some speech that's on the platform. So this thing launches yesterday. Yesterday? Yes. Yesterday. On the App Store. On the Apple App Store. And it does not go well. Let's go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen. Something went wrong. Trump's Twitter knockoff suffers bumpy launch. All kinds of people reported, first of all, they couldn't sign up at all. It just said something went wrong. Please try again. Then if they persisted, really determined to get on to true social, they keep trying. Eventually, they might create an account. They might be able to enter a login and password. But then they're routed to, like, they get a screenshot on their phone that says they're in a wait list.

I tried this yesterday. Ah, so where did you end up on the wait list? So I, here's my experience. First of all, I got the something went wrong thing a couple of times. Then I get through the first step and it says, we're going to, you know, we're going to send you an email and verify your email. That email never comes. I do it again.

And that one does go through. And then eventually like two hours later, I get the original email. So I get the first verification email. I click on it and it takes me to the screen where it informs me, thank you for joining. Due to massive demand, we have placed you on our waitlist. We love you and you're not just another number to us. My favorite part of this is it has a little button that looks like you can refresh where you are in the wait list, but it doesn't actually do anything. Oh, it doesn't work. It's just a photo.

Yeah, it's just a photo of a button that might make you think that they would update you. The other part of this is apparently, so when Devin Nunez, CEO, was asked about how this is all going and when the bugs might be worked out, he said they hope to have the bugs worked out by the end of March. That's the time frame. This is the part I don't understand. Why did they launch this right now? There was no reason to. No one was clamoring for this right now. No one was like, you know what I need? Truth social in my life. That's

exactly what's happening. I mean, this is obviously a colossal failure. You're much more brave than I am. I would never put that thing on my phone. There's no way I would trust whatever idiots are running this thing in order to say that the security permissions are whatever. I don't think they're confident enough to have, like, you know, any sort of

security. Maybe you're right, but then there's obviously going to be some, you know, massive gap or whatever for data that some Chinese hacker will exploit. So I don't want I don't want to touch that thing on my phone. Look, I just think this is emblematic of everything Trump touches. I mean, everything the guy does is half assed, is, you know, done in the most ridiculous way possible. But at the same time, you can never underestimate his power. Truth Social was one of the top most downloaded apps on the free store yesterday. So it's not like people didn't use it.

I think it certainly will garner users. I mean, my bigger problem with it is that the company is shady as hell in terms of its actual financing. It's through a SPAC, so they don't have to disclose a lot of this stuff. There's some questions around whether it's even okay for the former president to even be involved in this regarding SEC. And then also the company that's taking it public has shares, which are going up

by a lot. And so there's lots of many billions of dollars to be made from this company. So look, all of it, is it a serious competitor to Twitter? I don't think so. I mean, all of these getters, Twitters, all of them just copy the functionality of these websites, not actually adding anything new as to what's happening. I mean, and at the same time, didn't we already see that it's possible? Well, their terms of service have not yet been scrutinized or whatever, but it's not like we all don't know that they're going to have their own kind of probably ridiculous type of censorship regime, all for the idea here of being explicitly like pro-truth, anti-censorship, but then can you go on and can you say anything bad about Trump himself,

who's literally the owner of the company? That's how I always see these things playing out. Yeah. We'll see. I mean, look, I would love to see an alternative. I just don't think it really exists in its current format. We talked about this whenever it came to Rumble and to Joe Rogan. So I think it plagues the same problem. And personally, I will never be downloading Truth Social. I'll just lay the marker out there. Yeah, you should.

Yeah, this is the issue with any of these companies that are like, we're going to be like YouTube, except we're going to have different terms of service, basically. We're going to be like Twitter except because what you end up doing is people have a lot invested in Twitter. I mean, if you've been on there a long time, the whole benefit of a social media platform is your social connections and that the people you want to follow are also on that platform. So the people who are going to move to the new, you know, whether it's scatter or social or whatever it is outside of people like me who are just curious about whether it actually works or not, um, are going to be people who are like the most diehard. Um, and so you're going to get a pretty like narrow breadth of conversation in a lot of these places. The reason why somewhere like Substack has been successful is because they weren't just like, oh, we're just, you know, we're about free speech.

They are about that. And they've been very consistent, very great. Yes, props to them. Absolutely. I think they're, you know, I think they've also created a product that served a genuine need. And they expanded the market. They created something new. So that's why they have, as much as the content on there,

they've tried to characterize it in the mainstream press as fringe, and it's just full of anti-vaxxers and all this. That's not remotely the case. I mean, the most popular politics newsletter on there

is a liberal doing... Yeah, resistance cringe. Yeah, it's like historical whatever. And that's great. There's a bunch of never Trumpers on there who have gigantic platforms and are wildly successful. So it truly has a large ideological breadth because it served a genuine need

and helped to expand the market. So those sorts of plays to me are a lot more interesting, putting Trump aside of it. And I do think, you know, having a politician run a supposed with an interest in potentially getting elected president again, running a supposedly free speech site, that doesn't seem like something you should have a lot of confidence in. Yeah. And also just the idea anything branded as truth is cringe. You know, somebody put this out there. It would have been funnier to call it covfefe. That actually would have been funny.

I would have been like, that's funny. You know, Trump famously tweeted this. It actually would have had a little bit more of an oomph to the brand. This is just explicitly kind of like a boomer targeted app and then anybody who is already aligned with Trump. So you're actually putting a ceiling on your market when the whole point of social media is to have a network effect where the entire planet becomes and joins your platform. So look, that's the business analysis of this thing. Not a surprise in order to see it rolled out terribly, not unlike the Trump administration at all. So yeah, funny to see. All right, guys, another story that I'm going to try to explain. So I'm not a golfer. And until like this year, I knew nothing about golf.

Kyle, though, has Golf Channel on in the background all the time like he's an 82-year-old man. Golf Channel and Weather Channel. So I've learned a little bit. And so I knew a little bit of the backstory about this new super golf league that is trying to get off the ground with major backing from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Main source of funding for this thing is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi, sovereign wealth fund that totals more than $400 billion. So there's been this divide in the golf community because this new upstart league is trying to throw a ton of cash at them

and tell them, like, you know, try to lure the top players over, telling them you're going to get more money, you're going to have more rights, you're going to have more say. And so there's been a very interesting split in the golf community about who's willing to just, like, throw any principles to the side in pursuit of the cash, and who, either because they're sort of invested in the PGA or because maybe they have a principle or two, was like, no, that's not for me. So, the big story that is making waves here has to do with Phil Mickelson.

Let's go ahead and put this New York Times story there up on the screen. He praises Saudi-backed golf tour despite Khashoggi killing. So, a biographer had an interview with Mickelson and asked him. Mickelson has been, you know, one of the top boosters of the Supergolf League and just sort of like, you know, shamelessly in it for the additional cash, even though he is already an extraordinarily wealthy person. And his comments were really quite something. This is from direct quote from the biographer. They say he didn't pretend to be excited about hitching his fortunes to Saudi Arabia, admitting that the Supergolf League was nothing more than what he called sports washing by a brutally repressive regime. Quote, they're scary motherfuckers to get involved with, he said. We know they killed Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over

there for being gay. Knowing all of this, why would I even consider it? Because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to reshape how the PGA Tour operates. So pretty remarkable. And in a way, I think it seems like this is sort of solidified most of the top golfers against the Super Golf League, because, of course, a lot of pressure is put on all of them to basically take a stand on this thing. And so we've had more players come out and say, no, I'm sticking with the PGA ultimately. I'm going to throw it to Kyle, though, who is the expert.

He did a whole segment on his channel, Secular Talk, breaking down what Mickelson's actual thinking and complaints are here, which goes way more into the weeds than what I know. Let's take a listen to what Kyle had to say. So what's his gripe with the tour? Well, he thinks the players are getting screwed because he says, well, the media rights of the tour are owned by the tour. And so basically we're underpaid for the value that we bring in. That's the argument that he makes. Now, the way it actually works is the PGA Tour works like virtually every other pro sports league with a minor difference. Now, this

minor difference does make the tour worse, in my opinion, but it is pretty much the only difference between the PGA Tour and other pro tours, pro league sports leagues. about 55% of the money of the media rights goes to the players. 45% goes to the tour. It's about the same for other leagues. The difference is on the PGA tour, you have independent contractors and not employees. So, you know, they make their own schedule and they're not technically employees, which as you all know from previous segments we've covered, that means you don't have certain labor protections that you would have if you were categorized as an employee. If you're categorized as an employee, there are more perks and benefits that go along with that. I don't know what the situation is like on the PGA Tour with who gets health care and who doesn't.

But, you know, Phil, worth $400 million, makes about $50 million a year, and he's complaining, effectively, that he's underpaid. Yeah, it looks very clear to me this is a money grab. I mean, Phil Mickelson is a 100 millionaire many times over. No, what I did see is that apparently he has a big gambling problem, and so people are like, maybe he does actually need the money, but if you've got that kind of a gambling problem, a 10 or 20 or whatever extra million is not the answer. You know, working on yourself is probably the answer here.

Rory McIlroy is another top golfer, was asked about Mickelson's comments. Let's go ahead and put that up on the screen. He says, I don't want to kick someone while he's down, obviously, but I thought the comments were naive, selfish, egotistical, ignorant. It was just very surprising and disappointing. Sad. I'm sure he's sitting at home sort of rethinking his position and where he goes from here. And I thought it was important and you thought it was important to cover this because we've talked about where companies and NBA players. Yeah, LeBron James.

Right, have been unwilling to criticize China because of their paychecks. And now you have a similar phenomena among some golfers, although now the majority of top golfers have overwhelmingly come out and said, no, we're not going in this direction. Well, good. And then, of course, the other piece of this is, guess who is angling for a piece of the action? Yeah, who? President Trump. Let's put this up on the action. Yeah, who? President Trump. Let's put this up on the screen. Trump properties in talks to host lucrative Saudi Gulf events. And it says they're angling to host these events at his

golf courses, courting three people familiar with the matter, potentially handing Trump a lucrative business partnership with an oppressive regime that he consistently defended as president. I forgot, they detailed in this article, I forgot that the PGA had pulled a couple events from his properties. That's right. So it's not just that he likes the Saudis. That was his first foreign trip overseas. He was very cozy with them, very restrained when it came to the Khashoggi killing, basically say, we'll never know what really happened. We know exactly what happened. But also there's sort of like potential revenge in it for him against the PGA who had pulled two of their events from his properties. So pretty got to get in in the group to see the Trump business angle for the Saudi business,

especially when Jared Kushner is out there shaking his hat out there for more Saudi money in his private investment group. Meanwhile, Trump's own Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, actually has received Saudi money. I cannot believe that we are even allowing this foreign regime of which, you know, has exported terrorism here for many years to then try and compete with the PGA by financing billions of dollars to take over this prestigious area of American sports, American life, all so that they continue their cultural influence in our country. Shame on Phil Mickelson for doing what—for saying this and even playing footsie. Good for Rory— Oh, he's done more than play footsie.

Yeah, I mean, even more so. And, you know, good for the top golfers, including Rory, for coming out and shouting him down. I will confess, I do not know that much about golf and all that. And I have no doubt that the PGA certainly probably takes the lion's share of the profits and that it is extremely unfair for the up-and-comers who are on the tour and all of that. That being said, doing business with the freaking Saudis is not the way to go. Well, it's also funny because Mickelson sort of postures like, oh, he's just doing this. Standing up for the little guy. He's standing up for the little guy. But, you know, the PGA has actually instituted some reforms that I won't get into the technical specifics of. But in response

to the threat of this league, they have actually changed some of their policies. But the impact of those policy changes has just been to funnel even more money to the top players in the league where, you know, the guys who are like barely making it are struggling. They're sometimes going into debt. You know, it's much more difficult for them. been just to throw more cash at players like Mickelson to try to keep them in the league rather than addressing what are some of the real issues here in terms of player rights and compensation and the volunteers who make these events go. Personally, I think CFIUS, which is an arm of the U.S. Treasury, should ban this immediately and not allow any of this cash to even come in here. It's ludicrous.

It shows you how many of these people can be bought. There's no real heroes. It's disgusting. And hell no. Good to the golfers in the community who are standing up. Par for the course in terms of Trump as well. That's good. Par for the course indeed. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, we've been tracking the complete meltdown unfolding over at CNN as their anchors mourn the loss of their corrupt leader holding wakes and detailing their mental anguish in leaked audio. New reporting suggests, though, that they might have every reason to be in full freak-out mode. So in a new report for The New Yorker, media reporter Claire Malone paints a pretty dire portrait of the future for CNN's current business model. As you know, CNN's currently part of a massive merger as Warner

Media was acquired by Discovery. It can be easy to forget since we are personally so focused on the news business, but compared to the overall entity, CNN is actually relatively small potatoes. Warner Media alone includes HBO, Cinemax, HBO Max, Cartoon Network. So you're talking Game Thrones, DC Comics University, Universe, Harry Potter, and Lord of. So you're talking Game of Thrones, DC Comics University, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings all under a single roof. And that is before you put it together with Discovery, which includes Discovery Channel, HGTV, The Cooking Channel, and a whole lot more. All in, you're talking about a media behemoth with about $43 billion in annual revenue, of which CNN represents less than $2 billion. For comparison, in 2020, CNN brought in $1.7 billion in revenue, while its sister network, HBO, brought in four times as much revenue in the same year at $6.8 billion.

What's more, as The New Yorker points out, after the merger, Discovery will have more than $50 billion in debt. That means that the overall joined company's CEO, David Zasloff, he is going to be forced to make eye-watering cuts to the tune of billions of dollars as soon as he steps in the door. According to an industry source quoted by The New Yorker, quote, there's going to be an enormous amount of pain in terms of firing people. Now, prior to Zucker's abrupt firing, hosts at CNN were feeling pretty good about how they were looking in the merger. They were hopeful that the enormous pain would be felt more heavily at other properties and maybe not so much there at CNN. After all, Zucker was their close friend.

They'd invested years into sucking up to this guy. He had protected and enabled them during the Trump administration. And most crucially, Zucker was close friends with the guy who will be wielding the axe, making those cuts, that new CEO, David Zaslav. Surely, Zucker would see to it that the current CNN model, trajectory, and talent would be preserved under the new regime. Plans had been announced for Zucker to retire once the merger was complete, but that was of little concern since his mistress, Alison Gallus, was expected to step right into his shoes and effectively continue his reign.

And then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, that whole succession plan completely collapsed. Now we know why Zucker was so reluctant to fire Chris Cuomo. Zucker knew that he could also be implicated in the ensuing scandal and that the Cuomos are not shy about playing hardball. And sure enough, a scorned Cuomo went for the jugular, giving Zucker's corporate rival, the head of WarnerMedia, Jason Kyler, the weapon he needed to depose the entire Zucker regime. So now, in the blink of an eye, the talent and the staff are all left completely exposed without their protector, facing a new order under a giant corporation that is under pressure to make billions of dollars in immediate cuts. As if that wasn't all bad enough, they already know that one of the masterminds behind that new entity really kind of has it out for them. Meet John Malone. We've talked about him before. He's the TV magnate and cable pioneer who spent decades buying up cable

companies across the country. According to The New Yorker, in 94, he owned one out of every four cable boxes in the country. He's also one of the largest private landowners in the nation. And at one point, he had a large enough stake in the Murdoch's News Corp to actually threaten that family's control. That's what a big fishy is. He's also an ideological libertarian and one of the largest shareholders in Discovery. Malone and Zasloff, that's the new CEO, they are said to be close. And insiders tell The New Yorker that he is the brains Malone is behind the scenes putting together Discovery's streaming bid.

Crucially, he has made it clear he's not too impressed with CNN's programming as of late. In a recent interview, he seemed to indicate that CNN needed to pivot from its opinionated anti-Trump coverage, saying, quote, I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing. So to recap, CNN was bought by a giant that is poised to fire a whole bunch of people. Their protector is suddenly gone and the new guys may have it out for them. But there is one more piece of this ugly puzzle that should simply not be missed. CNN's big bet on the future, their own CNN Plus streaming effort,

is poised to be hilariously cringe and completely unwatchable. CNN Plus is their big chance to maintain relevance to society and to provide their new owners with some real value. After all, Discovery's big play is their own streaming bundle. Malone himself believes they could be number three

in the streaming game just behind Netflix and Disney. So if CNN can deliver subscribers to the Discovery bundle, then they'd be able to prove their value to Zasloff and to Malone. So part of this hugely consequential play, CNN's bet big on a streaming lineup that includes a parenting show with Anderson Cooper, a generic news show with Chris Wallace, and a book club show with Jake Tapper. Literally, who is the audience for any of this? Even CNN employees are skeptical. They told The New Yorker, do people really love Jake Tapper enough to want to watch his book club? But of course, there is danger here for us, too. The worse the mainstream content, the less they can actually compete, the more they'll just try to eliminate the competition.

Just take a look at what they tried to do to Rogan or the way they come after podcasts in general or Substack or YouTube shows. These anchors are addicted to their careers and the money and their imagined perceived status, all that comes with this. Without their slots at CNN, no one would ever utter their names again, and they will fight like wild animals to try to maintain their perch. So this helps you understand what's going on just below the surface, which is why we— And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, yesterday I spotlighted financial warfare that the Canadian government has declared on its protest movement. It amounts to a full-scale unbanking of dissidents that are against the Canadian regime, including canceling mortgages, canceling insurance, canceling the very financial architecture that enables individual freedom and movement in the modern world.

The move so close to the United States raises a troubling question. Is it possible here? The answer to that question is complicated. On the one hand, we have a much more robust case law against the type of unilateral unbanking that we saw in Canada. On the other, it's not like we haven't just watched the Department of Justice and the Biden administration use the war on terror machine against its own citizens. But fundamentally, the conclusion I've come to here is the one that mirrors the Patriot Act and war on terror debates. There are always justifications for gathering data, safety, patriotism, stopping terrorism. But the more amassing of data, the more information that

is collected, even if innocent at first, eventually can be utilized as a tool by the state for nefarious purposes. Canada claimed that it was only temporarily invoking the Emergencies Act, that this financial warfare would be limited in scope. And yet, here is the Deputy Prime Minister just two days ago saying that the new measures must be put into place permanently. I believe do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and payment platform and their payment providers. So that's that is something that we need to do and we will do and that needs to be in place permanently. Permanently, huh? I already played for you all yesterday the clip of the Ottawa police chief saying that financial warfare will continue for, quote, months to come. In other words,

now that this Rubicon has been crossed, there is no turning back. They are not going to give this up. That is the story of data collection and use by high authorities. It doesn't look like a tool of oppression until it is. And so we all have to be careful to remove all tools. It's in that context I highlight a matter of grave importance right now. After a little-noticed IRS regulation back in November of 2021, it says that anyone who wants to use IRS services online, including, quote, viewing and making payments, updating mail addresses, would have to do so through a contractor called ID.me. All accounts would have to transition over to that contractor by 2022, which requires facial recognition technology done by that third party to validate your identity.

Yes, you heard me correctly. The IRS, through no act of Congress and through an administrative change, said that facial recognition is required by the U.S. government now to pay your taxes. Now, luckily, that got enough attention that they backed down, in part. Did they really? Because instead of facial recognition, you can now verify your identity

through a live interview with a representative from that third-party contracting service, ID.me. So cool, your only two options are this, give the government your face face or do a live interview with a third-party government contractor. Now, according to the IRS, taxpayers' video selfies proving their identity will be, quote, permanently deleted. Yeah. Forgive me if I don't trust them. But what alarms me is the rationale here, including support from elite media. The Washington Post is running an op-ed from the former head of policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Guess what they say? IRS should not back

down from using facial recognition. Why? Well, because there's tax fraud. And I'm going to go ahead and say this. It's maybe even controversial. The problems and cost of tax fraud, which amount to less than like 1% of all government spending, is worth the cost of living in a free society and not having the tax authorities have your literal biometric data. Already, we are seeing a full-fledged federal takeover of the online financial system. You need a face scan or a live interview to pay your taxes. If you have a side hustle and you're accepting payments on Venmo or other apps like PayPal and you made over just $600 in one year, then those companies now are obligated to give that information to the IRS. Now, look, are a lot of these people not paying their taxes?

Yeah, that's true. And that's wrong, I guess. But let me say this unequivocally, what's worse, not paying your taxes when you're cutting hair and waiting tables and being a mover and barely making your ends meet as gas prices destroy your daily ability to live your life, or being a multi-millionaire hedge funder who gets to use financial fakery and tax loopholes legally to not pay any taxes? I'll declare this. Until their tax fraud is dealt with, when the IRS unit, which is responsible for going after the uber-rich, has exhausted its role, then okay, we can talk about people making $1,000 on Venmo or PayPal. But in our current system, where it is completely legal for most of the richest and most scummy

members of our society to pay nearly nothing while people who are struggling and are getting hit for tax evasion, screw that. It's not only not fair, it's wrong. The architecture we are building today through the new IRS regulations, in addition to these Venmo and PayPal requirements, is the means through which similar financial warfare can be declared in the United States. If they can use it for tax purposes, they know your account, your username, everything. All of that can be weaponized in the future. If they need your face for tax purposes, well, they can use that in the future to match protesters using cameras to their IRS accounts, which is linked to your bank account

information. I say screw all of that. We need to reject all of these tools sold to us to combat fraud when the real fraud is giving up so much of ourselves to them in the first place, only for them to misuse our trust again and again and again. I mean, can you believe that? Financial recognition, facial recognition tools that? Financial recognition, facial recognition tools. They're like, yeah, don't worry. We'll never use it. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. In addition to writing for a number of publications, Ross Barkin also has his own

substat called Political Currents, where he tracks lots of interesting things in politics, and especially Eric Adams, mayor of New York City. Welcome, Ross. Great to have you back. Good to see you, Ross. Yeah, thank you for having me on. Always great to be here. Yeah, our pleasure. Let's go ahead and throw this first piece up on the screen that caught our eye. You said, Eric Adams wields his weapon of identity. It didn't take long. And Ross, of course, you had tracked the way that sort of consistently through his career, Eric Adams uses a just very surface level identity politics to mask what a lot of times has been a, you know, completely corporate agenda. And here's an instance, a very blatant instance of him using his identity to sort of try to cow journalists into stop, you know, stopping with any tough questions or critical coverage. Just break down for us what happened

here. So what happened was rather fascinating. Eric Adams, who's been the recipient of largely positive press coverage in his mayorality, certainly compared to Bill de Blasio, his predecessor, goes up to Albany, the state capital of New York, in an attempt to get the bail laws changed in order to reintroduce more cash bail, make it easier to try minors as adults in an attempt to stem, you know, rising crime and murder. Certainly it's debatable whether that would actually work. And these reforms were passed in 2019 during, you know, a sort of swell of criminal justice reform measures. And Adams has been very intent on rolling them back since getting into office.

He doesn't really have the power to do that because they're state laws, not city laws. And so he went to the state legislature. He asked them to do this. They said no. You know, they had a polite press conference about it and the press covered it. It was rather unremarkable to tell you the truth. And then Adams at a press conference goes on this rant about how there aren't enough black reporters and editors, which is true. But then, you know, in essence describes the racism of the press as a reason for allegedly negative coverage of his trip to Albany. And it was just detached from reality in multiple levels. One, the coverage was not negative. And two, you know, there is no element of race in terms of the way these reporters wrote about Adams at all, certainly in this juncture. But already in February, less than two months into his term, he's already invoking his identity in fights with the press, which is something I warned about last year. You did. I'm worried about because it's

very convenient and easy and can shield him from a lot of serious scrutiny. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, Ron. You were very prescient in Eric Adams. And yet we were talking before the segment, he's pretty popular. He seems pretty good at politics. He's always like coming down fire poles and he's got media ops and he's like trying to project vigor and energy. And yet he can shield himself from a lot of criticism with identity politics. Have you seen any actual coherent efforts yet to try and push back against Adams in the city politics? Not a lot so far. One of my warnings for my friends on the left last year was that Adams is going to be a very difficult opponent for the reasons you described. He is popular. He's good at politics. He's really good at the aesthetics of politics. He has no, I would argue, serious policy agenda yet in office.

Again, when Bill de Blasio came into office, he had these very clear policy goals he wanted to achieve. With Eric Adams, it's really a mishmash. There's not a whole lot, but there's a lot of performance. And there are a lot of these kind of, you know, bellicose moments that he has. And now the wielding of identity to kind of shield, you know, what I would say is sort of a centrist fiscal or conservative fiscal agenda, certainly around things like tenant laws and rent laws, which are somewhat controlled by the mayor. That's something I'm watching. So, you know, the opposition to Adams, it's come up in different places. You know, right now he's embroiled in a controversy. He's trying to hire not one, but two, you know, former politicians and pastors who have very clear anti-gay views. And he's brought them both into government. And so there's been a little firestorm about that. But generally speaking, I think the left writ large is figuring out what to do about Adams. Do you ignore him? Where would you oppose him? Right. Because, yes, he is a widely operator and he is very good at the substance list part of politics, I would say, which does matter. You're governing a large matters a lot. Yeah. Well, and listen, no one wants to be called a

racist. It's a horrific charge to make. And I think some of the people who would be most concerned about being tagged as such are the type of, you know, white liberal reporters who are covering Eric Adams. Have you seen that sort of weaponization of his identity work throughout his career? And do you think it'll work for him with the press this time and sort of push them off of some of their tougher coverage? It's a weaponization that he certainly has employed before. So, you know, obviously, we're in this kind of moment where I'd say identity is being exploited to a unique and bad faith in a unique and bad faith way. Not that that didn't always happen, but it feels like

certainly in the last year or two, it is ramped up in certain political spaces, spaces where educated elites travel. But when something Adams has done for a long time, when he was Brooklyn Borough President, you know, he defended the illegal use of parking placards at Borough Hall by saying his white predecessor did it. So I'll do it too. They're not going to be different laws or enforcement for the white politicians. And so it was sort of implying that as a black man, he could be corrupt too. So none of this is really new. The difference is the stage, right? Now he's mayor of New York City. Now he's at the center of everything,

whereas before he was not. And to your point with reporters, that was a point I raised as well. And that was one of my fears that you have a press that's largely left leaning, which is what it is, right, tends to be white. And so I do think there is a certain amount of guilt in parts of the press core. And I do think attacks like these can work where rather than hold their ground, reporters might go, well, no, no, I'm not racist. I will prove to you I am not racist right through X, Y, Z. How will that manifest itself? I don't know. But that was always my fear about this road Adams walked down, because in the modern rules of bad faith identity politics, he will always trump the white reporter who went to the fancy college. Right. Because he's the black man who grew up in a working class milieu. And so he's really able to exploit that, even though he himself is not working class anymore.

He's a landlord. He has a lot of money. So we'll see kind of how it manifests itself. But it's a very real concern where you do have a press corps that is vulnerable to being called racist and may not know how exactly to respond or to process it. Maybe we'll try to cater to Adams more. We'll see. I don't know how that's going to shake out. What do you think are his ambitions? Like, do you think he's content being mayor of New York City? Do you think he has statewide ambitions? Do you think he has national ambitions? And do you think that he has the putting aside his agenda? I keep hitting this can of hairspray that's over here. Do you think that putting aside his agenda, he has the sort of political talent to be able to perform on a statewide or national level? You know, he hasn't talked openly about his larger ambitions

like Bill de Blasio did to kind of an awkward degree where immediately Bill de Blasio is floating himself for president, for national office. And of course, he tried and failed. Adams has been cannier that way where he doesn't talk about it so much. But, you know, statewide is tough because we have a new governor now, Kathy Hochul, you know, who's quite strong politically. She's not going anywhere. I would say nationally is always the interesting one, right? I think Adams certainly has already called himself the face of the Democratic Party. He's drawn close to Joe Biden. I think a lot of centrist pundits like the idea of Eric Adams in the national scene, you know, black, tough on crime mayor. It's kind of checking a lot of boxes.

So I would not rule out a future Adams bid for higher office. Maybe, who knows, one day for president. Again, it's not something he's talked about in the way Bill de Blasio did or Bill de Blasio tried at least to push, but I do think he is very ambitious. Now, that doesn't necessarily translate to getting particular policy goals accomplished in the city. It's a very interesting time right now because there is no overarching big idea of this administration. And I think for Adams, it's kind of more about playing a role, you know, being this sort of spokesman for, I don't know, the center flank of the Democratic Party and kind of inserting himself into various places, hobnobbing with celebrities. What does that all add up to? I don't know. But certainly, I think, unlike de

Blasio, the national pundit class likes Eric Adams a lot more. And he's the type you'd probably get a more serious reception if somehow he ends up making a trip to Iowa. I think the national press would be more interested. That's really interesting. Yeah. Woke corporatists are very popular with the DC pundit class. I think he's going to run. I do. I could certainly see it. Ross, your analysis here has been invaluable. I really recommend people go and subscribe to your sub stack.

It is called Political Currents by Ross Barkin, and it's always great to see you, my friend. Link down in the description. Thank you very much, Ross. Thank you for having me. Great to be on. Our pleasure. Anytime, man. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Ross. Thank you for having me. Great to be on. Our pleasure. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We've spotlighted this, but man, we've been getting hammered on YouTube demonetization here at Crystal. I mean, it's like every day there's a new something, Epstein segment, something

doesn't get monetized or whatever. Look, it just shows you this is why we rely on you guys. And look, we have this new live show that we're going to be doing for the State of the Union. We have some awesome new people. We're doing partnerships and hiring. You're going to be seeing a lot more content on the channel, and it is all thanks to the premium members who enable all of the infrastructure that gives us the editing resources, posting resources, studio time, and all the other attendant costs. So thank you all so much to those of you who have supported us. We really appreciate it.

Link is down there in the description if you are able. Yep. We are expanding, guys. Super excited about our State of the Union livestream. That's going to be fun. That's going to be awesome. That's our sort of first, like— Yeah, it's our first live—live is scary.

I don't know if people realize this. It is a different deal. Pulling stuff in. You have guys in your ear. You have things that are happening. It's a dynamic situation. You've got to move people in and out, mics. It's fun, though. It's a lot.. Pulling stuff in. You have guys in your ear. You have things that are happening. It's a dynamic situation. You've got to move people in and out, mics. It's fun, though.

It's a lot. We love doing it. When we were back at the Hill on Rising, we loved doing the debate coverage and the election night coverage. So I'm super excited about that. And like Sagar was saying, we are expanding in terms of sort of the partnerships that we're striking to make sure that we have, you know, a really rich library of content for you guys from people that we really like and trust. That doesn't even mean that we always agree with these people,

but we think that they have interesting analyses that are, you know, relevant to you all and a good eye for content and are honest brokers and honest actors. That's all we can do. Yeah, so stay tuned, as they say. More announcements coming very soon on that front. Guys, have a great day, and we will see you back here on Thursday.

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