Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/12/24: Trump Floats Social Security Cuts, Non Whites Flee Dems, Boeing Whistleblower Dead, Biden Memory Transcript Revealed, US Intel Says Bibi Gov Collapsing, Pope Smeared As Putin Puppet, Bill Maher Dream Ticket Biden Haley, Pentagon Says No UFO Evidence, Haiti PM Resigns Amid Gang Uprising

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump floating social security cuts, non-whites flee Democrats, Boeing whistleblower found dead, Biden transcript released showing memory issues, US intel says Bibi gov near collapse, Ukrainians smear Pope as Putin puppet, Bill Maher says dream ticket Biden Haley, Pentagon says no evidence for UFOs, Haiti PM resigns amid gang uprising.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have today, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Many interesting

developments to talk through this morning. So Trump, yesterday while we were doing our show, he was giving an interview to CNBC's Squawk Box and floated potential cuts to Social Security. We'll talk to you about that. We also have a Boeing whistleblower who was found dead. A lot of questions there as Boeing is facing increasing scrutiny over many failures. The U.S. just dropped a threat assessment indicating that perhaps Bibi Netanyahu's coalition could fall apart. What is behind that? Bibi also giving a big interview over at Fox News. Loves that American English language media, apparently. New questions about the failures of the West in terms of Ukraine.

Some really interesting stuff there we want to break down for you. We're also taking a look at Bill Maher revealing his dream ticket. Guys are going to love this one. Sagar's taking a look at a new UFO report and what it reveals and what it does not reveal. Jake Johnston is an expert on Haiti, and he is going to join us to talk about what is unfolding there. So a lot to get to this morning. Yeah, I'm really excited. So a couple of things. First of all, thank you to everybody who continues to subscribe. We have a discount that remains there that you can go in and help us out. We love doing the

live stream, and we're going to continue special election coverage like that. If you want to participate, especially in the exclusive content, that's the place to be breakingpoints.com. Second, Spotify video. So we have had tremendous problems, not on our end, but actually there are various server problems. What we've effectively come back to is that in order to release the show on time, it will be available 11 a.m. or as early as it's ready for YouTube. Unfortunately, again, completely out of our control. Spotify, the servers and all of that that are, again, out of our control,

they are gonna take about an hour or so to process. So for those of you who are asking why Spotify video is not immediately available when we release the show, it is our desire, but technologically not possible right now. Working on a best possible solution, we'll get it to you guys soon. But wanted to be sure all of our premium members had that update. Yeah. So if you guys, if it's important to you to get the show as soon as possible, your premium YouTube link is the best

way to go. Spotify is just going to take a little longer because it just apparently takes a little longer. So there you go. Don't ask us why. Just wanted to tell you that we are focused on it. There's just not a lot we can do about it. There you go. All right, let's go ahead and get to this interview that Trump gave to CNBC yesterday. A lot of interesting moments, but this one probably was the number one issue

that caught people's attention. Trump floating the possibility of cuts to Social Security. Let's take a listen to that. One thing that I think that, at least the perception is, that there's not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or non-discretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. It's almost the third rail of politics. And we've got a what, a thirty three, thirty four trillion dollar total debt built up and very little we can do in terms of cutting spending.

Discretionary is not going to help. Have you changed your outlook on how to handle entitlement, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid? Mr. President, it seems like something has to be done or else we're going to be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever? So, first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting, and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There's tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don't necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they're going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak. They're going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak. So anyway, you heard there at the beginning, he says there are many things we could do,

talking about cutting. Then he goes on to talk about waste, fraud, and abuse. So his campaign immediately recognized this was a bit of an issue. So put this up on the screen. They sought to walk it back and clarify his stance, claiming that what he was really talking about was that cutting waste. He wasn't talking about cutting benefits. Of course, the Biden-Harris team immediately jumped on it and sent out this tweet, Trump, quote, there is a lot you can do in terms of cutting Social Security and Medicare. What did you make of all of this, Sagar? Yeah, I mean, it's an own goal by Trump,

because one of the most powerful things that he did in 2016 was take the opposite view of everybody else on the stage on entitlements. It's actually been one of the main, I would say, changes that he brought to the mainstream, especially seeing for some Republican politicians embrace it since then. So I thought it was a big problem for him. I mean, this is it. Look, he just talks. And it's clear, too, that people have been inside of his ear. And I think that's the biggest problem. And this was something we saw over and over again in the Trump administration is despite the rhetoric and frankly, what I actually probably believe that Trump thinks himself, he still surrounded himself with the likes of Stephen Moore and Larry Kudlow,

who's now on Fox and Fox Business, I believe. And he has his own show. There's an entire think tank here like America First Principles, which is staffed of all of his former people. Very likely, many of them will be going into the next administration headed by the former Rick Perry person. I mean, we know what these people believe. So this to me is about the waters that he's swimming in and the fact that he would, you know, he's a politically astute man. So a slip up like this, I was I thought it was a big mistake. Yeah, it was a big mistake on his part. I was frankly surprised.

I guess it was a bit of a reminder to me of how how stupid he can be at times. Yeah, maybe right. And how much he can shoot himself in the foot. Things are not static. And the fact that he walked it back doesn't really make a difference because the Biden team has their thought now. They have their talking point. They can go, hey, Trump said he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. So who are you gonna believe? What's those expressions? Are you lying eyes? Whatever. Anyway, they've got the thought and the clip that they want for the ads. They can roll this out and claim that he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare. And I don't think it's crazy to think

that he would, just given Asagar was saying the type of staffers that come in, the type of operation that is here in D.C., the type of instincts. I mean, Republicans, this has been something they've been seeking for a very long time. So I thought that was a really interesting and I think significant moment, given how important those programs are to so many Americans. There was another moment that may be more personally significant to Donald Trump, which is that he cannot seem to shut up about E. Jean Carroll. He's already been hit with multi tens of millions of dollars in terms of defamation suit against her. And yet he still had more things to say about her in this interview. Unbidden. Let's take a listen.

People sometimes wonder how to prioritize and you just keep charging. Well, the legal issues aren't, Joe, the legal issues aren't legal issues. They're Biden issues. Biden put Fannie, beautiful Fannie, who's turned out to be now a corrupt district attorney. But in my opinion, they're almost all corrupt. All of the stuff that you see is weaponized government. The D.A. in New York is being run by the D.O.J. They put their top person into the DA's office. All of this stuff, including the Miss Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never met. I have no idea who she is, except one thing. I got sued. From that point on, I said, wow, that's crazy what this is.

I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation. People aren't moving into New York because of the kind of crap they're pulling on me. Right. So he, you know, goes on there about E.J. and Carol, her legal team says they continue to monitor his statements because he's already had two defamation judgments go against him in this case. $91 billion bond against him. This is going to cost him some serious money between that and the, what is it, the business trial, the fraud trial that happened, the civil fraud trial. And look, you may think they're

illegitimate, but he's got to pay no matter what in the state of New York. Apparently, he's already appealed the court. This is already leading to a liquidity crisis within him. Another thing I'm not sure if you saw is that the RNC actually defeated a measure which said that their specific campaign cash can be used for Donald Trump's legal expenses. So it is officially now open the possibility on top of a new cleaning of the house currently happening over at the RNC that some of the money that should be raised by the party could then be used for overall legal expenditure. So I think it was a very specific reason why Trump and his team went very, very hard to make sure that the Haley Barber kind of amendment inside the RNC was defeated. And this is exactly why, because politically, I think,

I mean, at a certain point, I'm curious what you think. Personally, obviously, you should shut up. But politically, like, you know, every time he attacks the legal system and tarnishes or goes after the people who are coming against him, it does build him up into sort of a martyr. So he is in a bit of an impossible situation. A martyr with his base, which he's already won. So what does that really benefit him? I mean, to be honest with you, I think both politically and obviously from a legal perspective, he should probably shut up about E. Jean Carroll because there was not that much media coverage of it. The more that it's in front of people that a jury found it credible that she was actually raped and that he had to pay these tremendous amounts because of that finding,

the more that sinks in for the public, it's kind of a Streisand effect of a case that was on the back burner because there were so many other criminal cases and this was a civil suit. So it got a little bit less media fanfare around it. So no, I don't think it's good for him to continue to bring up E. Jean Carroll and remind people of the specifics of this case and what it was ultimately all about. One other interesting moment from this interview, something we touched on yesterday. So back when Trump was in office, he seemed amenable to a potential TikTok ban. Obviously didn't actually get any changes through, but he seemed amenable to it. Now he seems to have switched his position. He got asked about that with CNBC.

Let's take a listen to how he explained it. You guys decide, you make that decision because it's a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There's a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger. And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media. Mr. President, though, is TikTok, but do you believe that TikTok is a national security threat or not? Because if it is, and I believe that your, the emergency powers order that you

had put in place at the time suggested that it was, was that not true? I do believe that. I do believe it. And we have to very much go into privacy and make sure that we are protecting the American people's privacy and data rights. And I agree. But, you know, we also have that problem with other, you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies, too. I mean, they get the information. They get plenty of information and they deal with China and they'll do whatever China wants. So there he is trying to clean this up, talking about. I mean, I think basically Sager, he realized that this was a total political dud because so many people use TikTok.

And, you know, to take it away from them would be a disaster. And I do think that the personal like vendetta against Mark Zuckerberg looms large as well. I was talking with some friends and I believe that this is one of the biggest and probably possibly most impactful elements outside of the election of Stop the Steal because a huge, basically the high IQ version of Stop the Steal is no, no, no. Bamboo ballots and all that stuff didn't happen. It was vote by mail and vote by mail was because of Zuckerbucks. I don't even know what the hell this is about. It all goes back to some philanthropic donations by the Zuckerberg, Priscilla Chan Foundation or

whatever, Priscilla Zuckerberg Foundation that gave to organizations that were putting out the vote and the Democratic think tanks. The Time Magazine article is also a very, very critical part of the high IQ stop the steal thesis. For those who don't know, it's basically a story about how Democratic billionaires spent a lot of money trying to swing the election for Biden. I mean, it's not illegal. Welcome to politics in America, guys. This is what I'm saying. Guys, it's not like, does it bother me? Yeah, it's not illegal. It's not even honestly nefarious because they openly admit it in their 501c3s. And by the way, if you want to do something about that, there's this thing called Citizens United that we could all overturn and we could change. And we can take politics, the spending out of politics. But

do you really want to do that? Or do you also want your bucks, you know, your billionaires to side with you? Let's all just be really honest about what happened. It is true that the forces of capital and culture definitely were against Trump

by for the most part in the 2020 election. Some were. OK, but a significant amount, a significant amount specifically of technology, which again comes back to this. This has now been retconned into this major thing about how it's Zuckerberg, specifically the Zuck Bucks, which drove out the vote.

And that goes to like a Facebook thesis about voting, which is now spun into hating Facebook more than they hate TikTok. And I do significantly. Facebook is such a bastion for conservatives. Like conservative content does extraordinarily well on Facebook. So that's part of what is amusing to me about this. Again, it's not, none of this is coherent. Like it has to do with money and it has to do with like this general like opposition to Google and to Facebook, which, you know, I mean, they're not wrong. Like people and the heads of those companies are Democrats and all of that. But again, like it's about a much bigger structural thing if you actually want to dig into it, which most of these people don't. I think that genuinely

is the major impetus behind this. Trump himself hates Zuckerberg with a passion that is like genuinely difficult to describe as a result of this. And a lot of this traces back to Molly Hemingway in her book, who wrote a whole thing about how big tech stole the election. So this is the thesis. It's been very, very mainstream now at this point, if people are interested and want to go and look at the genesis. And I do think that the TikTok stuff is a result of that. Not to mention, Trump very recently made peace with the Club for Growth. The Club for Growth, he had a bit of a spat with them in 2022. They're cool now. The major backer of Club for Growth is Jeff Yass, the guy who owns a $21 billion stake inside of ByteDance. Recently hired Kellyanne Conway. He's been spending a lot of

time down at Mar-a-Lago. So if you combine personal corruption, hiring people around him, political convenience, and Target TikTok, TikTok band's main beneficiary would be Facebook and or Google, then it's like the perfect storm for Trump to reverse face. And let's be honest, I mean, this is a man who has no problem just like flip flopping on a dime. He has no shame. And, you know, in many respects, this is his fault. Like back in 2019, he tried to do it. He was so incompetent that it wasn't able to actually get done and they didn't follow through. And now, you know, he's in a situation where Biden or at least whatever this House bill is trying to do the exact same thing Trump did. But then he can't. He's opposing it because it's Biden. And now there's all these other

conditions that are attached. Do you think that his position changes the Republican Party orientation towards TikTok because obviously they take a lot of cues from him? No, actually, there is a lot more anti-TikTok sentiment, as I understand it, in the House. But that said, as I said yesterday, I think this bill will pass the House. I do not think it will pass the Senate. The Senate has, first of all, I mean, you know, structurally, Crystal, like a single senator can hold something up, whereas a single House member cannot. Rand Paul is already basically against the bill for a lot of the libertarian reasons that we discussed. There's enough Democrats also who I don't think would be on the record who would want to sign something like this.

And then there's all these procedural ways you can kill something because they also have all their own TikTok bills and they have all these other considerations they would do. So I read this analysis too from a lot of the Capitol Hill watch this morning. Most people don't think this thing has a chance in hell in the Senate. So I don't think this will be a major problem. All right. At the same time, there's some fascinating new analysis that we wanted to dig into for you about the way that non-white voters are basically voting more like white people. There is a racial realignment that is occurring that is showing up increasingly frequently in the polls. There's a great Financial Times column with a bunch of associated charts that really broke this down. It was very interesting. Put this up on the screen, this first piece,

and keep this up for a minute. So this tracks that racial realignment, as I said, with non-white voters, especially non-college non-white voters, shifting away from Democrats and toward Republicans. So you can see that blue line is the Democratic share of those voters over time. And the red line is the Republican share of those voters over time. One thing, Sagar, that I noted about this particular chart is you actually had some of this realignment occurring during the Bush years. There was a trend towards closing that gap. That ended and reversed under Obama, I think partly because he was the first black president. And I do think that that forestalled something that was almost an inevitability, that as the memories of the civil rights era faded, that younger black and brown voters would vote more in line with what their actual political preferences are. Meaning that previously you had a lot of conservative black and Latino voters who were nonetheless voting Democratic, even though the party was at odds with some of their especially socially cultural

conservative positions. That's right. And now, with those memories of the civil rights era fading, they are beginning to vote more in line with what their actual political views and ideology, especially, again, on culture, really reflect. Well, I mean, the next graph, guys, if we could please put that up on the screen,

really reflects what you're talking about. So, for example, and this has been, I think, the biggest story. I've been trying to hammer this home now for years. White college-educated voters are the ones who are swinging most towards Democrats. People who are boomers, 65 plus, also increasing. And just so everybody knows, this is not necessarily a bad thing for the Democratic Party because boomers and white college-educated people, they love to vote. Now, white non-college-educated, slightly moving Republican, Asian-Americans slightly. Then you look at the overall age groups. There's been major swings, the biggest swings amongst the 18 to 29 demographic, amongst Hispanics, and specifically

amongst black Americans. The black American swing away from Democrats is some net minus 25%. Again, I do not want to overstate this, but amongst younger blacks specifically, and men as well, we are seeing increasing less identification with the Democratic Party. Now, will these people vote? Maybe. Statistically, probably not. Will this have a lasting impact on our politics? Yeah, I think so. And the reason why is because increasing non-party identification is now really the mainstream, Crystal. We saw this previously where both the Democratic and Republican identification are near all-time lows. Independent is actually nearly double the individual party identification for both Democrats and for

Republicans. So a lot of these black voters, Hispanic voters, I wouldn't call them Republicans per se in terms of a vote red no matter what or vote blue no matter who context. But I would say that they're up for grabs in a way that they have not been in a generation since the 1964 era, which really, you know, the whole Southern strategy and all that completely changed the U.S. electoral map. And I think we're in the midst of that. Florida becoming a red state is a sign. Ohio becoming a red state is a sign. Georgia becoming a blue state. Arizona becoming, or at least a purple state, Arizona. Like our battleground maps from 20 years ago are totally different from the way that you and I are going to be watching this election in 2024. Yeah, that is true. Put the next one up on the screen,

because this was really interesting to me. This is something I hadn't really thought of. But this chart, the headline here says, we're used to the idea that young people lean more towards Democrats than the old. But the opposite is actually true of black Americans. The younger you are, if you are a black American, the less likely you are to identify with the Democratic Party. Now, you'll notice that trend line for Republicans, it's inched up a little bit among young people. But it's more like you're saying, Sagar, they're not switching from Democrat to Republican. It's more that they're less of these diehard, partisan committed Democrats and more likely to be independents. And there is somewhat of an uptick among Republican support, although based on this chart, it is relatively minimal. And, you know,

I have to say, like, obviously, I'm no fan of the Republican Party, but I think it's I think it is a healthy thing for Democrats to reckon with the fact that they cannot take any demographic group of their base for granted, because the minute that, you know, you feel like, oh, well, they're just going to be with us. It really doesn't matter what you know what we do. The minute that that group is going to get absolutely none of their wishes and priorities met. So in that way, I actually think it's very healthy that you have this reassessment of, you know, the relationship with the Democratic Party. And it's more of like, OK, well, what have you done for me lately? And that's what I hope and I wish. The next one, this, in my opinion, is like one of the most impactful graphs that you're ever going to see

on American politics. For those who are just listening, it says that the income divide in US politics is almost closed and the richest now favor Democrats over Republicans. It shows how the poorest third of Americans spiking in the year 1980, which makes sense, by a near plus 25% margin, prefer Democrats, while the richest third at, again, a near 20% margin, support Republicans. Since then, the gap has roughly began to narrow. It slightly went back to where things were in the Bush era. But from Obama really onwards, there has been a major swing of white college-educated Republicans

who, of course, are going—or, sorry, white college-educated people who are, of course, going to disproportionately make up the richest third of Americans, swinging their Democratic preference. A lot of this is culture, but a lot of this is four-year college degree. So while we can look at this in income, I really think it comes back to education, education, education. The poorest third of Americans increasingly becoming much more Republican over time. Let's be clear, they still do not prefer the Republicans on net, when part of this is why I still think the Democratic coalition is very strong. Let's be clear, they still do not prefer the Republicans on net, when part of this is why I still think the Democratic coalition is very strong. It's not only do they have a net

preference amongst the poorest third, but now they have all of these rich people who love to vote, and they have all of their interests, you know, that the Republican Party used to be very reliably, you know, have them come out to the ballot box while the middle third, middle class, slightly more Republican, but still net 50-50. And this comes back to a big problem in the Republican party. I mean, if people want to roll the tape and kind of look at what I used to say back four or five years ago, I'd be like, look, inevitably the Republican party, like they have to service these new working class voters. But I don't think it's true. I do think that culture is frankly enough, you know, to get you to net 50, which if you can have billionaire donors and you

can have white working class people vote for you, why wouldn't you do that? So, I mean, politically, the current strategy, the obsession amongst Republican elites, Crystal, is we got to win back these suburban voters. It's not how do we service and further a lot of these new poorer Americans who support us, change our views maybe on cutting entitlements or unions or, I mean, minimum wage, all these other health care. There are all sorts of different issues, but this is kind of the trap. Now, if a smart man would say that they would adopt those and they would kind of accelerate that trend and make the richest people in the country Democrats so that you have the cultures, you know, you have the cultural capital and capital, actual capital together, and then you can use like a populist revolution against them. But that's not really what's happening. I mean, we talk a lot about here.

It's class de-alignment more than anything. And I also think gender plays a huge role because John Byrne Murdoch, the guy who wrote this, he didn't put this in here, but he wrote a previous column, which I did a monologue here. Huge portions of what we're discussing amongst those black and Hispanic numbers. It's almost all men, specifically black men. Like if you break out the black men and Hispanic men, we're talking about men, specifically black men. Like if you break out the black men and Hispanic men, we're talking about like net 49, net 50 in actual ties in some of those groups. So it's gender. A lot of it is income. And most of it comes down to sociocultural values. A lot of it is not really economic at this point. But well, yeah. And that makes sense

because look, the parties do have differences on economics. There's no doubt about it. We were just showing Trump, you know, floating cuts to entitlements. This is a longtime Republican project. I think Democrats, even though they in the past, not very recent, you know, quite recent past under Obama, Biden, they were also open to these cuts. You know, at this point, they're pretty locked in. They're not going to cut Social Security and Medicare.

They're unlikely to improve Social Security and Medicare, but they have really closed the door on cuts. At this point, they're pretty locked in. They're not going to cut Social Security and Medicare. They're unlikely to improve Social Security and Medicare, but they have really closed the door on cuts anytime soon. You see this in the little things that the Biden administration has done, the little cuts to prescription drug prices, the going after junk fees. You see it significantly in terms of labor and antitrust in particular. So I don't want to minimize or erase that there are real differences between the parties. But we are also in an era where both parties are fully locked into the neoliberal economic paradigm. So in that way, yes, there are differences between them. Those differences matter. They're significant. But the overall economic paradigm is the same. And so it's not

like you have two competing economic visions, which in another time period during the New Deal era, you did have two competing economic visions. And that's when you had significant class-based interests represented within the Democratic Party. So now many of the battles are around culture. And it's also, as we've talked about before, Sagar, in an era when, you know, people have little faith that either political party is going to be able to significantly deliver for them from a material perspective. The thing that then makes sense for them to vote on is like, who's with me? Who's with my cultural tribe? And so that's why you see not a class realignment, which would indicate that working class people were all shifting towards one party, but a class deal alignment, meaning that your income status is not really

predictive anymore of which party you're going to affiliate with, because, you know, it's more about those cultural interests than it is about those class or economic interests. I think that's a terrible state of affairs in terms of our politics, but I do think that's a reality of where we are and where we continue to head. We've been there for, you know, we've been here before. I like to think about history and kind of think about how this was all previously. So I think the most analogous political era to where we are right now is called the age of Acrimony, which was the 1870s, the post-Reconstruction, Rutherford B. Hayes, like the Bargain, up until post-Gilded Age in the Progressive Era, where at that time, whether you were rich or poor in the South, you were voting for the Democrats because you hated black people and you wanted to preserve Jim Crow. And whether you were rich or poor in the North, you were voting Republican because you hated the South and your ancestors or your father or whatever fought against them in the Civil War. And yeah, you know, it turns out that we're aligned ourselves with the Vanderbilts, the Wideners and all these other rich people. But

so be it. We got to resolve this question. Now, what a lot of people forget is we had some of the highest voting rates in the entire country at that time. And the reason why is people really hated each other. I mean, the South, they hated the North, and the North, they hated them right back. And they wanted to preserve at least some in Massachusetts and others, preserve rights for blacks and others. And there was also big questions around capital, which the South hated because they didn't have any, and the infrastructure. But the way that we resolved that was the progressive era with Teddy Roosevelt and with Woodrow Wilson. The problem is we had to wait for a genius like Teddy Roosevelt to really come in and to completely flip the Republican coalition and lawmaking on their side. And he had to use his own personal will to actually change some of those questions. But he brought

in a ton of new voters. And then Woodrow Wilson readopts this progressivism and actually changes the relationship of government to the people. But, you know, don't get me wrong. It takes a long time. I mean, the era I just talked about was some 40 years of genuine insanity in the U.S. And something we'll talk about later in the show is called the Peter Turchin end of America thing. But what he really points to is that the Gilded Age is still the most analogous period to where we are right now. And I have a personal fascination with that time period. But the more and more I think about it, I can't help but see not only the income parallels, but the haughtiness and the arrogance of the American elite at that time is exactly like it is today. It's just the same.

And it took a First World War to destroy them. I mean, it took a long and, you know, horrible and bloody war to actually change that consensus. Yeah. The last thing that I'll say about these charts that I think everyone should remember is that we can have these assumptions in politics that partisan identification and certain trends are just like immutable. Like they are what they are. And it's just always going to be that way, which is such a crazy way to think about politics when you consider like it wasn't very long ago, West Virginia was a locked in Democratic state. Right. And Colorado was like leaned Republican and was definitely up for grabs.

Georgia was hard right, hard red. No Democrats stood a chance. Although if you go back a little bit further, Republicans didn't stand a chance. So these things can't be taken for granted as just like, you know, that this trend is what it is and it's never going to change or that black voters are always going to 100% identify with the Democratic Party and going to be locked in. Things change and they shift and people are dynamic. They change their minds and, you know, different generations have different approaches to things. So if we could actually end by putting that first chart, A5, back on the screen, because

there is one last thing I wanted to note about that first chart. So a lot of the realignment, racial realignment that you see reflected in this chart where Republicans almost closed the gap, a lot of that is based on 2024 polling. So a lot of it, the very last piece where they really come together, you see the trend prior to that, but a lot of it where they really come together is based on polls, not actual votes. And so that's gonna be one of the big stories of this election cycle is whether or not this chart and the way it looks here comes anything close to reality or whether Democrats are

able to stem the tide a bit. And I think the difference in that is the difference of who was gonna be the next president of the United States right there. Yeah, no, you are absolutely right. The big flashing red sign. And this is funny because I was tweeting about this a little bit yesterday. I had a couple of Democrats that I was chatting with, and they were like, hey, you can take all these non-voters that you want. These people, it's like, yeah, they may like you.

They may have Instagram reels about they hate Democrats. They're really going to come out to vote because our new white people, our rich white people, those people love voting more than anything else. And nothing gets them as jazzed up as a Planned Parenthood sticker on the back of their car. And I mean, I can make fun of them, but it's true. They vote, they vote their interests and they organize, they have a lot of money. They have a lot of cultural capital. So I wouldn't bet against them either. I mean, those, you know, in a certain sense, like, you know, don't screw with suburban white women. Like, they will come out to vote more than anybody else. Let's move on to the next part here. This is about Boeing. I've been wanting to cover this story for quite some time, and then

some shocking, shocking news broke yesterday. Let's put this up there on the screen. A Boeing whistleblower was actually found dead here in the United States in what is being claimed is an apparent suicide. John Barnett, he had previously worked for Boeing for 32 years. He retired in 2017 and since then has spent his life being a whistleblower against the Boeing Corporation. In fact, in the days before his death, he was giving evidence in this lawsuit against the company. He was actually found dead in Charleston. The real thing that Mr. Barnett had been whistleblowing about is that he previously worked as a 787 Dreamliner quality manager at the North Charleston plant. And he had specifically told BBC and other outlets that under pressure workers had been deliberately fitting substandard parts to aircraft on the production line.

And he also said he had uncovered serious problems with their oxygen systems, meaning that only one in four breathing masks would not work in an emergency. So soon after then starting work at that South Carolina company, he became very concerned, eventually concerned enough to leave and to cooperate with law enforcement, with federal whistleblowers. He was an integral part, actually, of the FAA's examination back in 2019 of the problems that were happening over at Boeing and was giving testimony in their most recent investigation into what the hell happened with Alaska Airlines. In the days before his death, he actually gave an interview to TMZ with some pretty shocking claims. Let's take a listen. One, this is not a 737 problem. It's a Boeing problem. And I know the FAA's gone in and they've

done due diligence and inspections to assure that the door plugs of the 737 are installed properly and the fasteners are stored properly. But my concern is what's the rest of the airplane? What's the rest of the condition of the airplane? And the reason my concern for that is back in 2012, Boeing started removing inspection operations off their jobs. So it left the mechanics to buy off their own work. So what we're seeing with the door plug blowout is what I've seen with the rest of the airplane as far as jobs not being completed properly, inspection of steps being removed, issues being ignored. My concerns are with the 737 and the 787 because those programs have really embraced the theory that quality is overhead and non-value added.

Well, I'd taken a team of four inspectors to Spirit Aerosystems to inspect the 41 section before they sent it to Charleston. And we found 300 defects. Some of them were significant that needed engineering intervention. When I returned to Charleston, my senior manager told me that we had found too many defects, and he was going to take the next trip. So the next trip he went on, he took two of my inspectors. And when they got back, they were given accolades for only finding 50 defects. So I pulled that inspector aside and I said, did Spirit really clean up their act that quick? That don't sound right. Yeah, they certainly didn't. And in fact, just yesterday, Crystal, there was a new report from

the FAA that they caught Spirit Aerosystems mechanics using liquid Dawn dish soap as lubricant for that 737 MAX door seal instead of, you know, the proper lubricant that you're supposed to use. That's how they're cutting costs over there in Boeing. And that's why, I mean, there's been a lot of suspicion around Mr. Barnett's death because you can see he was pulling no punches. And this is potentially a catastrophic event for Boeing. Boeing is the most important aviation company

in the United States, arguably in all of the West, huge military supply contractor, etc. They are now facing a Justice Department investigation, criminal investigation in this matter. And Alaska really took the wool, I think, out of everybody's eyes on what's going on with this company and how deep the rot really goes inside. Yeah, that's right. There's also news this morning that a six-week audit by the FAA of Boeing's production of the 737 MAX jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process, according to a slide presentation that the New York Times was able to review. They initiated the examination after that door panel flew off.

The agency announced the audit had found multiple instances in which Boeing and the supplier Spirit Aerosystems failed to comply with quality control requirements, including the company had failed 33 of 89 audits during that examination conducted by the FAA. And just to speak to the claims that this whistleblower was in the middle of making when he was found dead in his vehicle in a parking lot, some of these claims had really been backed up by evidence. According to the BBC, Boeing, of course, denied all his assertions. We should put that out there. But in 2017, they did a review by the FAA, and it did uphold some of his concerns. It established the location of at least 53 nonconforming parts in the factory was unknown and were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action.

That's relevant because he had said that they were pulling parts out of the scrap heap that had been rejected as nonconforming and using them to save time and cut costs, etc. So the fact that these nonconforming parts were missing were indicative of his story being accurate. On the oxygen cylinders issue, the company said in 2017 it had identified some oxygen bottles received from the supplier that were not deploying properly, but denied that any of them were actually fitted on the aircraft. Of course, he had indicated that as many as one in four oxygen masks were unlikely to deploy because they were defective upon testing.

So yeah, the fact that he was in the middle of making these complaints, making his voice heard and is found dead is extraordinary. Yeah, it's really suspicious. And again, let's put this up there. This is just days after that the U.S. Justice Department is now opening a criminal inquiry into Boeing. This is tied to the Alaska Airlines incident specifically. Boeing also said, told a Senate panel, it cannot find record of the work done on the Alaska plane. Really? Interesting. Can't find any record. And I just want to take it back to all of the, I want to take it back to the rot of this company because Spirit Aerosystems used to be a part of Boeing and it was sold off by Boeing in the pursuit of shareholderism and of profit. So now what's happening now, as they understand that they're in deep shit, Boeing is now trying to

rebuy Spirit Aerosystems. And now they're in a major crisis of the company because they're facing a Justice Department investigation. And, I mean, the craziest part of all of this is that not even a few years ago, they were found liable and nearly faced a murder prosecution for killing some, what, several hundred people in a faulty software update. All of the fixes were supposed to have been put in place. They had a new CEO, new corporate practices. But this tells you, like, it's not the new CEO problem. It's that the company doesn't know how to build an airplane anymore. And that, I mean, I can't get over it because this is the backbone of U.S. manufacturing,

high-tech manufacturing specifically. It's one of the pride and joys of the U.S. economy. And as usual, you know, over the last 70-something or 30, 40 years now since the 1970s, it turns out that it's all just a financial fakery. They hired Nikki Haley on the board, buying back tens of billions of dollars worth of their own stock. The stock is doing great, you know, before this, even after the, you know, crazy incident. That's all they cared about. They never cared about this. And then it all just comes to head when a freaking door plug blows out of the middle of the airplane. Lucky that it didn't happen when they were cruising altitude and several people would have been sucked out and killed.

Yeah. I think there are two major societal root cause trends that led to these terrifying, horrifying, and in certain instances, deadly mistakes. Number one is, as you're discussing, the financialization of Boeing, which is something we see across companies. What does that mean? It means rather than caring about having the best engineers and the best product and making sure damn well sure that it is safe and ready to go. Instead, they were more focused on catering to the giant casino that is Wall Street. So and that is not specific to Boeing, but obviously in the instance of Boeing, the results are absolutely horrifying. Number two is a widespread trend across Democratic and Republican administrations in the neoliberal era of defanging regulatory bodies and handing off some of their key functions to industry itself. So over successive administrations, including some very recent deregulation under the Trump administration, the FAA has basically handed off a lot of its key

functions to relying on companies like Boeing to basically self-certify. So, I mean, it sounds insane, but I'm not kidding. This is the direction that many government agencies have gone in where they're not even really capable of doing the sort of quality control and safety inspections that would be required to ensure that the public is kept safe when they're flying on one of these jets. It's handed off to industry. So you have the fox watching the hen house in this instance and many others. And so that's how you end up with a situation like this where, you know, so many things, such sloppy work. If the testimony of this whistleblower, this now deceased whistleblower is accurate, you know, just total shoddy safety standards, commitment to the bottoms, at least excerpts from the transcripts, of the special counsel that interviewed Joe Biden

and alleged that he at times had forgotten the name of his son and more, has now had and been released ahead of Robert Herr's testimony, the special counsel, before Congress later on today. We wanted to take some time out of the show just to bring you some of the excerpts from that transcript because, frankly, they are extraordinary and they do back up Mr. Hearst's claims. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. And I'm going to read directly from the transcript, specifically from the time when Biden appears to have forgotten the year that his own son, Bo, had died. He says, well, several I's, I don't know. This is 2017, 2018, that area, the special counsel. Yes, sir. Mr. Biden,

remember in this timeframe, my son is either been deployed or is dying. And so it was. And by the way, there were a lot of people at the time when I got out of the Senate that were encouraging me to run at this point, except the president, I'm not, and not a mean thing to say. He just thought that she had a better shot of winning the presidency than I did. And so I hadn't, I hadn't at this point, even though I'm at Penn, I hadn't walked away from the idea that I may run for office again. But if I ran again, I'd be running for president. And so what was happening though? What month did Beau die? Oh, was it May 30th? A White House lawyer, 2015, unidentified male speaker, 2015. Mr. Biden, and this is the key quote, was it 2015 he had died? Unidentified male speaker,

it was May of 2015. Biden, it was 2015. His lawyer, I'm not sure of the month, but I think that was the year. Another person, that's right, Mr. President, Biden. And then what's happened in the meantime is that, and Trump gets elected in November of 2017, he asks, unidentified male speaker, 2016. 2016, all right. So then why do I have 2017 here? White House counsel, that's when you left office, January of 2017. Yeah, okay, but that's when Trump gets sworn in, January, right. Mr. Bauer, right, correct. Okay, yeah. And in 2017, Bo had passed, and this is personal. So, I mean, Crystal, this is crazy. Also, they haven't released the line from this, but this is your and mine favorite one so far.

Mr. Biden needed to be nudged to recall the name of the federal agency that takes custody of official records, the National Archives, or that a fax machine is the name of the device that transmit images of documents over phone lines. Ironic because he's so old, he probably did use fax machines. Whereas you and I know the name even though we have outlived them. I have used a fax machine. I have never used a fax machine. But listen, I was saying sometimes my brain feels a little bit like this, but I do feel confident I can always recall what the name of the fax machine was. I mean.

Let's be real here. Like, this is crazy. Here's— Yeah. So, a few things. First of all, you'll recall that the president took great umbrage at the idea that he could not recall when his son had passed. He also took great umbrage at the notion that the special counsel had even brought this up.

While it's clear from the transcript, the special counsel didn't actually bring it up. Joe Biden himself brought it up and it is entirely accurate to say he was unable to recall even within a few years the date of when his son died. Not only that, in the same exchange, you see him struggling with the dates of when he was vice president. I mean, listen, you guys who are watching are probably political junkies like we are. I mean, those dates of 2008 and 2016 are permanently etched in our heads as these seminal political moments of Barack Obama getting elected and then Donald Trump getting elected and being sworn in, not in 2016, not in November of 2017, but in January of

2017 when he's sworn in. So to be really struggling to grapple with this basic timeline is really something. And then the line about he couldn't recall what a fax machine was, there's a lot of co-world reading, the New York Times accounting of this transcript. There's a lot of cope in there about, well, they didn't talk about all the times when he was lucid and they didn't talk about the fact that he seemed to have this really great recall of the layout of his own house, which is like, OK. I would hope so. But, you know, I think it speaks to the fact that you can have moments like President Biden did in the State of the Union, where he more or less had it together and seemed, you know, energetic and lucid, et cetera. And then you also have times, and anyone who has elderly loved ones, friends, family, whatever, can relate to

this. You also have times that are very foggy and where you're struggling with basic names, dates, places, et cetera. So I think the transcript is entirely consistent with that understanding of where the president is mentally and that understanding which is shared with the American people. I think it also, Sagar, underscores some of the predictions we were making about how the impact of the State of the Union, which was, you know, billed so highly by the punnett class, is unlikely to be sustained because for every instance that you have like that where he seems like all right he's still got some you know gas in the tank there are instances like what's represented in this report where he's struggling he's fumbling he's mixing

up names he's mixing up countries presidents of countries Yeah. I mean, look, it's not an exaggeration. Again, I'm going to read directly from the transcript. He says, do you have any idea where material would have been before it was moved into your garage? Biden. Well, if it was 2013, then he goes, when did I stop being vice president? Someone says 2017. So he goes, so if I was vice president, it must have come from that stuff. That's all I can think of. Then he later on is asked, my problem is I never knew where any documents were coming from or who packed them, just that I got them delivered to me. So at this stage, 2009, am I still vice president? Someone whispers to him. He goes, yeah, okay. I mean, again, you and I both know. I'm like,

yeah, dude, you became vice president in January of 2009 when Barack Obama took the oath of office. So, yes, in 2009, you were the vice president. 2017, we all know when Barack Obama left office and Donald Trump assumed office. Like, how do you not recall that immediately off the top of your head? I had previously seen Joe Scarborough defend Biden and be like, I loved my mother more than anyone else. And if you immediately ask me, I may not know the time, the exact year that she had died. I'm like, well, first of all, that's concerning. Second, I don't believe you. But third is what it becomes clear here. It is a pattern of being clearly mixed up. More so, it is backed up entirely by multiple public moments, Crystal, of confusing the president

of France with Mitterrand, who is now dead. He has been gone for so long and no longer the president, confusing the names and the leaders on top of people that he used to consort with or his times in the past. This is all a much bigger pattern in his public life, which is now confirmed, shockingly, honestly, in an official transcript by the Department of Justice, who again concluded they could not prosecute him because no jury would believe that like a doddering old man, you know, willfully was trying to hold secrets inside of his garage. Yeah, that's right. And, you know, there's a lot expressed that we can see in these bits of the transcript that we have in front of us about he has no idea how,

this is what he's saying, no idea how these boxes came to get there, no idea what's in those boxes, doesn't even recall the documents that are in these boxes, et cetera. And so I think that plays into the special counsel's recommendation not to charge him based on the fact that a jury would be like, this man is confused about all kinds of things, including how these boxes apparently ended up in his garage. The other thing that I'll say here is that, you know, the American people have legitimate concerns about what's contained in this special counsel report, how that reflects upon his ability to do the job. These are, you know, understandable, legitimate, based on their experience of the president at this point in his life. And his team is also sort of communicating to the public that they also don't have confidence

in his ability to assuage these concerns, which is why they keep him hidden so much. You know, it's one thing, yes, he did the State of the Union off of a teleprompter. It was OK for all things considered. But, you know, freeform interviews with difficult interviewers, giving press avails, et cetera. We know the way that they have really sheltered and shielded him from those exchanges. There has not been a commitment yet to even debate with Donald Trump. That may be a smart strategy, but in terms of democracy, they really owe it to the American people for them to get a sense of where he really is, not just on one night, but overall a more complete picture in general.

And listen, I also want to say there are a lot of people that despise Donald Trump. And even if he's consistently as sort of befuddled as he comes off at times in this transcript, may still say, I don't care. Like, it's not a great situation, but I'm still going to vote for Joe Biden. But they really do owe it to the American people to make him more available so that that determination could really be made. Yeah, I totally agree. But yeah, it'll be up to the American people. What I just can't believe is that they actually do want to run him for actually five more years remaining in the office. It is what it is.

All right, guys, some very interesting news vis-a-vis BBNet and Yahoo. So the U.S. has released an intelligence assessment. This happened just yesterday, which shed some insight, I think, into some of the political maneuvering, maybe less so the actual reality of the Netanyahu coalition and its strength in Israel. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So this intelligence assessment called the threat assessment raised doubts about whether or not Netanyahu could stay in power. As the CIA director said, a hostage deal was the most practical way to halt at least temporarily the war in Gaza. That threat assessment says the Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, quote, may be in jeopardy. Here's specifically the language in the report. They

say distrust of Netanyahu's ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war. And we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections. Quote, a different, more moderate government is a possibility. The report also predicted that Israel would have trouble achieving its stated goal of destroying Hamas. Quote, Israel probably will face a lingering goal of destroying Hamas, quote, Israel probably will face a lingering armed resistance from Hamas for years to come, and the military will struggle to neutralize Hamas's underground infrastructure, which allows insurgents to hide, regain strength, and surprise Israeli forces. So, Sagar, it's interesting that this was included in this report. Obviously, a very intentional inclusion.

Now, whether or not that right-wing coalition is in fact in jeopardy is, you know, it's a real question mark. There's definitely a lot of fissures there that have come out into the public. The public definitely does not support Netanyahu, although a significant amount at least feel like he should stay. They shouldn't have new elections until after the war is concluded, which is why he wants the war to continue basically indefinitely. So there are some real fissures and problems there for him, which we've spoken about before. But what I took more note of is just the fact that this was this sort of like shot across the bow from the Biden administration to express their displeasure with Bibi

and also positions their critique of Israel as just being about this one person versus these sort of broader issues. And it doesn't reflect the fact that, you know, the entire security cabinet, whether they're quote unquote moderate or right wing like Netanyahu, are more or less basically united, as is the public behind this all out assault on the Gaza Strip. Yeah. So Odi and I, their threat assessment, it is the public behind this all-out assault on the Gaza Strip. Yeah. So, Odi and I, their threat assessment, it is a political document. People should be very clear about that. I read most of it yesterday, just because I was interested. I like to see what the CIA and all have been cooking up in terms of their fakery on Ukraine.

That's why I was reading through. But I read through the Israel thing. It actually didn't strike me because I hadn't thought of it in the political way that you are, but it should have been obvious. This is the bipartisan – or sorry, this is the Democratic emerging consensus. We're like, well, we got rid of Bibi and now the government has this fake intelligence maybe that his coalition and all that have been undermined. And I don't know, Crystal. I mean, look, I think there's no doubt he's tremendously unpopular. At the same time, it's March 12th. It, it's been a long time since October 7th. He's still there. He's lasted longer than Liz Truss.

And she did not nearly as bad as Bibi, right? So if the political will was there, I feel like something would happen. I'm not as confident that Netanyahu is as weak, you know, as people may think, especially if there's ongoing hostilities. Obviously, why it's his direct interest to continue to do so. But it is noteworthy for the political point that you mentioned. Yeah. I see it as part of the rest of the PR campaign that we've been tracking the, oh, we're really concerned about civilians. We're going to do, you know, a humanitarian aid drop that, you know that killed five people and barely contains any aid. Or we're going to build over multi-months with 1,000-plus U.S. soldiers this temporary port

when we could just pressure Israel to actually let in the trucks that are amassed at the border right now and, by the way, pressure them to stop the bombing. But we don't want to actually change our policy. We just want to change the way the Democratic base feels about that policy. So, you know, putting out this, this is like the next iteration of all those leaks early on about how Biden was having really tough conversations with Netanyahu. This is like the next iteration of that. It comes after Kamala Harris said the word ceasefire, immediately saying temporary ceasefire, so not the lasting ceasefire that the majority of the American public wants to see, but co-opting that language.

It comes after very significantly actually inviting Benny Gantz, a rival of Netanyahu's and also a member of the security cabinet, to come visit with the vice president and also with Jake Sullivan over the objections of Netanyahu. So again, I think they're trying to posture for the American public and especially for the Democratic base that they get it, they care about Palestinians, they don't like this bad guy, this bad apple Netanyahu, even though the problems go far beyond him. So that's the sort of vein that I'm seeing this in as part and parcel with the rest of the PR push to change the imaging and branding of the U.S. complicity in the

genocide without actually changing the U.S. policy of being complicit in the genocide. At the same time, Bibi Netanyahu himself, notably, gave a big interview over to Fox News, Fox and Friends, where he made some interesting comments, including some that are very disconnected from reality about how Americans feel about Israel's assault on Gaza at this point. Let's take a listen. I'm telling you that we have to take care of Israel's security in our future, and that requires eliminating the terrorist army. That's a prerequisite for victory. That victory is important not only for us, it's important for the civilized world as we're fighting these barbarians. And let me tell you something, you know, I've seen these recent polls

where 82 percent of Americans support Israel in its battle against Hamas. 82 percent. That's been constant over the last five months. So they recognize that our battle is your battle and our victory is your victory. And I'm sure that deep down everyone in Washington understands that. So not sure where he's getting his numbers from, that 82% of Americans support Israel and have consistently supported Israel since October 7th. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen, just put some actual numbers to it. This was quoted by Ken Roth. He says, more than half of Americans say Washington should halt weapons shipments to Israel until it stops the assault on Gaza. According to a new poll, many in the Democratic Party want Biden to use some of the U.S. considerable military aid

to Israel as a lever. We've been tracking this, of course, Sagar. I mean, overwhelming numbers in favor of a ceasefire, especially among the Democratic base. Huge, huge numbers in favor of a ceasefire. Now we have a majority saying, hey, we should not be shipping weapons until they stop this assault on Gaza. So I don't know where his 82 percent number is coming from, but it is incredibly fanciful and disconnected from reality.

In addition, you know, he continues to use this framing like, oh, our war is your war and, you know, pulling us into this. Listen, in a sense, he's right because of the way that we've supported it. But, you know, the idea that this has some broader global stakes outside of the conflict between Israel and Gaza, I mean, that's the other piece that has always been objectionable to me. Well, that is certainly what he would like because he wants to pawn everything off after the day of the war ends onto us truly and for us to pay for it as we are already doing with this new Gaza pier and thousands of American soldiers that will be involved.

His dream is for us to occupy Gaza and for him, them to just, you know, disappear, I guess, scot-free. Meanwhile, there's also no Palestinian state. Interesting, you know, how they get everything that they want. He really struck this also later on in the interview, Crystal, where he frames it not even in terms of a U.S. war, but how this is good for Islam, this is good for Muslims in the region, this is good for Gazans. This is very Iraq war-esque, like trying to make a coalition of the willing and a liberation of the country itself. Let's take a listen. The future of the Middle East, the future of many Muslims, the future of Gazans is dependent on our victory. And we don't intend to give up.

We're going to achieve this victory, I hope, with the solid support of the American government as we've had up to now. And I hope it continues. Yeah, so there you go. It's now it's a war for Gazans. It's a war of liberation. A lot, there's so many rings to Iraq, you know, throughout all this, from the response to not understanding

how the international community is responding to the lack of day after, you know, plan, or even if they do have a plan, whether they're going to execute it or not. So I don't know. I mean, rhetoric like this, it's clearly built for somebody. To be clear, it's obvious why it's going on Fox News.

I wish just for once he would do an interview in his own country with his own media because they would actually press him. Even though Israeli society is by and large behind the war, they're much more willing to ask real questions, ask a hostage question or something. These people ask him nothing. He's just like sounding off on Fox News. It's ridiculous. It's also, I mean, it contributes to the increasingly partisan valence of how Americans feel about the state of Israel. And I mean, Netanyahu has been, long been a part of affiliating the cause of Israel and Zionism directly with the Republican

Party. This goes back to Obama when he was very opposed, Netanyahu was very opposed to the Iranian nuclear deal. He comes over the objections of Obama, speaks to Congress. And it's from there that you see this trend developing. And now, you know, you see very clearly the overwhelming majority of the Democratic base wildly disagrees with Biden's unconditional support of Israel policy. Quite a lot of independents do, a not insignificant number of the Republican base does. But Republican elected politicians are almost completely lockstep with basically the exception of like Thomas Massey in support of effectively the Biden policy, even though they posture is like, oh, we want to go even further.

Like there's much further that you could really go. But there was another moment in this interview that was quite noteworthy, not because it's new, but because it's somewhat new for Americans to be grappling with the fact that the Israelis, especially led by Bibi Netanyahu, have no interest in a Palestinian state, which, remember, has been the official stated goal and policy of the United States of America for literally decades now. And here he is saying, listen, no one wants a Palestinian state, me least of all. Let's take a listen to that.

99 to nine Knesset members, that's over 90%, supported my policy of opposing a Palestinian state being rammed down Israel's throat. That's the vote we had the other day. So when people say, well, we have to have this, you know, talk with Netanyahu

because he's holding back the prospect of this wondrous peace with the Palestinian state. You don't have an issue with me. You have an issue with the entire people of Israel. They're really united as never before and united to destroy Hamas and ensure that we don't have another Palestinian terrorist state like the one we had in Gaza that could threaten the state of Israel. That's something that the people of Israel are united behind. And from what I can see, most Americans support that as well. So he's saying, listen, in Israel, we're united. We don't want a Palestinian state. Now, he wildly overstates the case because, you know, when you actually poll Israelis, there is still some support among

the Israeli public for an eventual Palestinian state. You can put this up on the screen. This was the latest poll I could find. The question also is quite specific to the moment, so I thought that was good, too. Pollsters asked, do you support or oppose the notion that as part of a deal to end the war, which will include long-term military quiet, guarantees from the U.S., and a peace agreement with Arab states such as Saudi Arabia, Israel should agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state. 51% said no, but you do have 36% who say yes. So it's not like it's 100% uniform.

But Bibi is making it as clear as day and has said repeatedly many, many times now to the U.S. public directly, I do not want a Palestinian state. I will stand in opposition to a Palestinian state. It has been my lifelong goal to block a Palestinian state. And so that part of the particular U.S. fantasy about the Israeli government position and the idea that, you know, the problem in terms of thwarting a peace deal is solely on the Palestinian side. That particular fantasy, he is insisting on getting rid of, wiping clean, shooting down. And it's pathetic and humiliating for the Biden administration that they can't really acknowledge or grapple with that and that he feels perfectly comfortable to go on

American television and put that in their face that like, yeah, I know that's your goal, but I don't care. I am completely opposed to it, always have been and always will be. Yeah, that's the issue is that it's like a fantasy version of Israel that lives in their head, not the real one that most people are grappling with. That's also why some of the public polling such diverges with a lot of the rhetoric that we see out of the administration. But eventually they will have to grapple with reality. You know, the war will come to the end one day. And then what?

You know, what exactly are we going to do? We'll see. Yep, indeed. Let's move on to the next part. There's some really shocking and just terrible footage that is coming out of Ukraine. There's been footage now that has been verified of Ukrainian border guards who actually caught several men of conscription age who were attempting to flee the country. Each of them had paid 10,000 euros

to actually escape Ukraine. Ukrainian border guards caught them and beat them. Actually, on camera, we can play some of that that you can see here. I mean, it's just really brutal treatment, as you guys can see, like being dragged out, thrown on the ground, being beaten up, being harangued there at the border. And it is just illustrative of the

desperate conditions that a lot of the people in the country now feel as the war continues to not doing very well. And I think that, you know, this reality is beginning to sink in for a lot of people. The CIA director actually just yesterday testified. He's like, well, you know, without USAID, we're going to see a lot more of the falls of Advika. But the irony is, is that the reason that we have to give more aid is that then maybe in 2025, they can change the status quo. I mean, the status quo, you can't change the fact that you have a population that doesn't particularly want to fight, as evidenced here. Most of those who did want to fight are either dead or now maimed. The average age is some 48, 50 years old. In the

Ukrainian military, they've been unable to adopt Western-style tactics successfully. What they can do is to employ a massive amount of artillery ammunition. Here's the problem. We literally don't produce even one third, the entire West, of what Russia can do in a single year. I mean, all of the odds are stacked against them. And the fundamentals of the conflict have been basically the same from day one. F-16s, Crystal, as you'll remember, the only thing that I think more aid would do now at this point is have the Ukrainians be in such a risky position that they would get us involved. And we're starting to see some of this. The Czechs, the French, the Poles are all trying

to normalize now the idea that NATO troops should have to go in on the ground, which of course is full-blown World War III. That's their plan, what they have right now. Otherwise, I mean, they have no- They don't have a shot. Prayer of victory. So yeah, I mean, we've seen the way that there's been this escalation from the beginning of the Ukraine war of all these red lines that were drawn about what we would and wouldn't send. And we just keep walking by them, walking by them, walking by them. And eventually you get to the point where the only thing left is, all right, we, you need troops because you don't have enough

fighting men left or willing. So I guess we're going to come in and do that as well, which is why you really can't just hand wave away some of the things that Emmanuel Macron in particular has been saying. You know, I mean, this, this video is, I think it's really important for a number of reasons. Number one, it underscores the fact that even though I'm sure that if you ask Ukrainians, like, do you want to keep, you know, in theory fighting and reclaim your land, you're going to get an overwhelming yes. But when you ask Ukrainians, are you personally at this point willing to risk your life in service of that goal, the answer is increasingly no. It also underscores the fact, you know, these men had paid a significant amount of money to try to avoid the

draft. And this was something that we had talked about before, the fact that, you know, there is significant corruption problem in Ukraine. So those who have been able to pay, who have the money, have by and large been able to escape fighting in the war. And so it's left to the poor and those without the means or the political connections who are sent into this meat grinder. And increasingly, you're running out of those as well. So as much as the military weapon issue is acute for Ukraine. The manpower issue is at least as acute for Ukraine. I think that is, you know, part of what comes out in this video. I've said this too. I saw it personally. I was in Budapest and in Vienna. There are Ukrainians everywhere. It's a joke. Like the tour guides joke about it. They're like, oh, by the luxury hotels, they're like,

look at all these Ukrainian plates. There was a joke in Vienna that every strip club in the city has been packed full for two years by all these rich Ukrainian dudes who don't want to fight and are filthy rich. I mean, at a certain point, you can't judge them because they paid their way out and they don't want to. But it's more one of those where it's like, really? This is such an open secret in all of Europe. And yet here, especially in Central Europe, but over here, like we have a fantasy version of this conflict. You also see the continued dissent is completely crushed, no matter where it comes from. Let's put this up there on the screen. The recent target of Ukrainian propaganda is the Pope, who has provoked outrage for saying that Ukraine should have the courage to, quote, raise the white flag and end the war

with Russia. I should also be clear, he didn't actually specify that Ukraine should be the one, but he said that people should have the courage to, quote, raise the right flag and to end the war in order to stop the suffering, to which the Ukrainian foreign minister said, our flag is a yellow-blue one. This is the flag by which we will live, die, and we will prevail. We shall never raise any other flags. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the pontiff was, quote, engaging in virtual mediation and that they support us with the prayer and their beliefs. But this is indeed what a church with the people is, not 2,500 kilometers away somewhere, mediation between someone who wants to live and who wants to destroy you. We've also seen, let's put this next one up there,

that there are now Ukrainian propaganda accounts that are tarnishing the Pope in a Russian-made flag, as if that's gonna be a popular strategy all across Europe and for a lot of the people who have been calling for peace in Ukraine. But it just demonstrates, Crystal, how unhinged the discourse remains. I mean, it's just a basic concept floated there by the Pope. And he was like almost immediately crushed. You actually see some of this too,

whenever he talks about Israel and Gaza as well. So not necessarily surprised, but it does show you how crazy the rhetoric that remains inside Ukraine is. And it does not match any of the actions that anyone with the eyes can see. The foreign minister of Ukraine seemed to equate the Pope's position here to Nazi collaboration in the last century. He said, first of all, he called on Francis to stand on the side of good and not put Russia and Ukraine on the same footing and call it negotiations. He also appeared to refer to collaboration between Ukraine on the same footing and call it negotiations. He also appeared to refer to collaboration between some of the Catholic Church and Nazi forces during the Second World War, quote, at the same time, when it comes to the white flag, we know this Vatican strategy from the first half of the 20th century.

I urge to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and to support Ukraine and its people in their just struggle for their lives. The reality is, if we had actually cared about the Ukrainian people, we would not have short-circuited those negotiations early on. Obama actually had warned Biden back during his administration not to over-promise the Ukrainians, knowing the limits of what our support could do. But we, again, engaged in this delusional and very arrogant view that said, oh, we can keep our hands clean and just, you know, ship some weapons. It'll be good for our economy, the military, military industrial base. We'll love it. And we'll be

able to destroy Russia. We're going to use our economic sanctions, et cetera. None of that has gone the way that they thought it would. you know, least of all the sanctions. At this point, we threw Russia's the most sanctioned country on the planet. We threw our entire playbook at them and basically gave a preview of how limited the efficacy of those sanctions actually is. So way to go, guys. Great strategy. It's totally shocking and yet very little changing there in terms of the status quo. Perhaps reality will eventually sit in, but it is not today. Yes, indeed. Some notable comments from Bill Maher recently. We always love his political

evolutions here. This man supported Bernie Sanders in 2016. Did he though? Did he though? I mean, he, in theory did. Then he goes to Amy Klobuchar in 2020 and now he's got a new idea of his dream ticket. Let's take a listen. I know it's crazy to think that she could run with Biden, but that's my dream, a unity ticket. And then he would, I think, definitely win because nobody's going to. And of course she said some crazy things. Most politicians have not as crazy as we've never been a racist country. I mean, that's pretty crazy. Wow.

But you would literally destroy the Democratic base. I mean, take off the first African-American female vice president. She's a woman of color. But it's just like black women are like the core of the Democratic Party. So he's talking there about dream ticket with Joe Biden and Nikki Haley. Or Mitt Romney, of course. Don't erase Mitt Romney. Yeah, I mean, this is one of those where every time a unity ticket gets mentioned, you should be terrified. The last unity ticket that almost materialized in America was

John McCain and Joe Lieberman, two of the most unhinged neocons to ever live. Can you imagine how many wars we would have been in if those two had ever been elected to the presidency? I would have rather had Sarah Palin in the vice president's chair than freaking Joe Lieberman. But, you know, media eats this crap up. They love it. The idea that Nikki and Biden are going to join forces or, again, Mitt Romney. It's like, what do these people believe? Like, yeah, they may talk nice. They may also not like Trump.

What do they fundamentally believe? It turns out it's some crazy stuff here. Yeah. They always erase that. They'd rather take the rhetoric. Whatever. There's some real alignment between Nikki and Biden on Israel, certainly. Of course, there's alignment between Biden and Trump on Israel as well. So great Democratic choices

we have here. How do you think this ticket would actually perform, though? Do you think it would do well? If you didn't care about the policy and the idea of having this neocon as vice president, whatever, if you put that aside and you're just talking about pure electoral politics, how do you think it would do? I hate to say it. I actually think he's right. I think it would do well. I do think – see, I think – I respect Tara, the person who said that it would destroy the Democratic Coalition. Yeah.

Democratic Coalition hates Trump so much they're going to vote for anybody who's not named Trump. Second, Nikki Haley, as we've all seen, she gets about a third of the people who vote in these GOP primaries, suburban women and all of them. They do love her. They love that particular brand, rhetoric, the kicking whatever direction that she is. I can see it. I hate to say it. I actually think that given what we talked about in our earliest segment of the show about a lot of rich people preferring Democrats now, you could get a decent amount of the rich people who are still Republicans to cross over to vote for somebody like her. They fetishize the idea of, you know, unity in the worst possible way. And it may draw enough of these rich, small business owner Republicans who don't like Trump to at least consider voting for Biden. And they would love that idea. Plus,

they hate, they probably hate, they probably hate Kamala more than they hate Nikki Haley, although I could be wrong. So politically, I unfortunately believe that it might be a potent ticket. Romney's a different story. That's actually different. Haley, I think it might work. I'm not as convinced. You know, I've even seen polls that were Nikki versus Biden, where Trump actually does better versus Biden. So I think her electoral strength, number one, is a bit overstated. And number two, the comment that Tara made there is an important one, which is you're already on the rocks with significant portions of your coalition. You pick some psycho Republican corporate neocon type as your number two. Like they are going to they're gone right there at the very least, not going to show up, maybe vote third party, whatever. So I feel personally like the type of white suburban

college educated voters that would be interested in the Biden Nikki ticket are probably already voting for Joe Biden. Like that realignment, I think has already pretty much happened and consolidated, which is why you saw even the Republican primary, the people who were voting for Nikki Haley were a lot of Democrats who had a pretty favorable view of Joe Biden and are likely to vote for him in the fall anyway. So I don't know that it's the electoral winner that Bill Maher thinks it is. I'm personally a little more skeptical of that as long as we're playing like fantasy politics here.

There are some other noteworthy comments from actor Robert De Niro on this show as well about how he feels about Donald Trump and what might happen in another Donald Trump term. Let's take a listen to those. Such a mean, nasty, hateful person. I never play him as an actor because I can't see any good in him, nothing, nothing at all, nothing redeemable in him. And we have to, and whoever the people are who want to vote for him, and they look like intelligent people around there, for some reason it can't be. It cannot be. If he wins the election, you won't be on the show anymore. He'll come looking for me. There'll be things that happen that none of us can imagine. That's what happens in that kind of a dictatorship, which is what he says.

Let's believe him. Take him at his word. I did from the beginning. Yeah. I mean, I said from the very beginning, this guy is never going to concede power, and he still hasn't. No. He still hasn't. He admitted he lost the last election, and he advertises that he will go on.

He says he's been cheated out of one term, so maybe we should get rid of the only, a president only gets two terms thing. There is so much narcissism in these people. It's unbelievable. How, how are you, Robert De Niro, at the center of Trump's mind? Like, nobody cares about you, dude. What are you talking about? I actually had kind of the same reaction. A few things. I mean, I don't really dispute his characterization of Trump. I did find it interesting, and I'd like to speak with another thespian about the analysis that, like, he wouldn't play him because he can't see any good in him like is that necessary to make a character interesting that you at least see some

side of humanity in them he played the sociopath bernie madoff so he can't play trump like what are you talking madoff look you can hate trump if you want madoff was genuinely an evil person in terms of what he did and the people who he ripped off, including members of his own religious community who he bankrupted and he never expressed a single ounce of remorse and drove his own son to suicide. So if you can play that person and his other son then died of cancer, arguably from the stress induced by having to turn his own father in as a crook. If you can play that person with some level of empathy, but you think that Trump is somehow more evil than that, then I think you're actually out of your mind. Yeah. Oh, and not to mention in Killers of the Flower Moon,

a murderous psychopath who is poisoning his own daughter, or no, whatever, whatever Leo plays. Right? It's Leo's wife, but I forget their relationship. I think it might be his uncle or something like that. Anyway, bad dude. Yeah. If you can play somebody who is poisoning native women, killing them, and then rolling up their inheritances so that you can then take over.

You know, spoiler alert, by the way. Then I think that you could probably play Trump in a movie. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I just wonder if other actors have that same sense of like, I need to be able to find some like positive aspect of this, you know, killer, psychopath, whatever in order to play. Anyway, put that aside. That was what struck me too is again, like, I think Trump is a deeply dark and nefarious figure. I think what he did on January 6th was horrible. I think he does want to take power and hold on to it and likes all of those things. But there isn't evidence, I guess I wouldn't say it's evidence based that Trump who could have, I guess, gone after Bill Maher and Robert De Niro in the first term,

particularly has a sight set on them for the second time. That is the part of it that's like, you know, there's a lot of other problems that you focus on with the Trump era, him going to lock up random actors or commentators. Donny Deutch said the same thing, remember? Probably not one of them. He's going to throw us in prison. It's like, no, he's not. Nobody is thinking about you except you.

And that is where the narcissism, I mean, if you saw, the crowd laughed at him. They were laughing. Well, and that's why I couldn't quite tell if it was a joke or it was meant to be serious. But it seemed like he meant it to be serious even as the audience thought it was a joke. No, he's 100% serious. I think Bill is too. So anyway, that's our latest update from the Bill Maher edition. Also had to give a little bit of a UFO update and put that in the show.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Broke earlier this week. The Pentagon, in what is now a tradition at this point, has said it has found no evidence of extraterrestrial spacecraft in its possession. A 63-page unclassified report published says that the most comprehensive report the Pentagon has ever produced. They have batted down claims of any reverse engineering programs inside of the Department of Defense. It was part of the AERO office, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which says that they reviewed records from 1945 to October of 2023 and have definitively been able to find that there has been no evidence of any

U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, official review panel that has confirmed any sighting of a UAP that has represented extraterrestrial technology, according to Major General Pat Ryder in this statement. Now, there are a couple of things, though, that they, you know, maybe neglected to point out and some other glaring things that I wanted to put in there. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen. Actually, Garrett Graff, who wrote an interesting book about UFOs, some of which I have beef about, but it actually raises some good questions. First and foremost, he goes, there Graff, who wrote an interesting book about UFOs, some of which I have beef about, but it actually raises some good questions. First and foremost, he goes there are four actual questions that are not being answered here.

One is the alternative hypothesis of secret tech from foreign nations. Two is their definition of, quote, what a peculiar characteristic of an aircraft is. Three is anything about material and any material science breakthroughs by defense contractors. And four is, quote, scientists at the forefront of physics point out that we should be humble about how little of the universe that we truly understand and of the knowledge limit that was baked into the report. But I thought that the questions that he raises are very legitimate, Crystal. And I just think it comes back to the idea that an agency which has been unable to pass its own audit for five years can effectively now audit all of its historical programs going back to 1945 and claim any sort of legitimacy in the eyes of the public. In my opinion,

totally ridiculous, especially when you incorporate many of the questions that Garrett, who is, by the way, a skeptic of a lot of stuff that I would believe even that he points out in his Wired report. So this does not close the door for you in terms of- I mean, how could it? You're like, these people can't account for a trillion dollars in their own budget. The US government being like, nothing to see here, people. We're all good. I did think this article was very interesting because it matched up some of the claims and, you know, testimony of people who saw things that they couldn't explain with what the report claims that it was and pairs that up with past incidents of things that were thought to be UFOs and then were later identified as just advanced U.S. aircraft that the public didn't know about yet. So he writes, AARO untangled one witness's claim of spotting a UAP with, quote, peculiar characteristics at a specific time and place and were able to determine at the time the interview said he observed the event, the DOD was conducting tests of a platform

protected by an SAP, a special access program. That means people don't know about it. The seemingly strange characteristics reported by the interviewee match closely with the platform's characteristics, which was being tested at a military facility in the timeframe the interviewee was there. So Garrett writes, what was that craft and what were its peculiar characteristics? A lot of the questions he raises here is like, okay, so if you're talking a lot of this up to new technology development or even more radically like new potential understandings of physics and the basic mechanics of how the universe works, like,

tell us more about that. What is that all about? What are we developing? Because this is one of the things you always point out is typically there's some indication of breakthroughs that are about to be made or like the science or the math has already worked out theoretically and it just hasn't been able to be applied in a practical way. So what he's getting from this report is a lot of maybe there are some quite, you know, there may be some quite advanced technology the public has no awareness of that might have been reverse engineered from China or Russia or another global power and could explain some of these instances as it has in the past. Maybe it's captured alien tech. I mean, you know, we would know. Like, this is the thing.

I say it all the time as you just referenced. The atomic bomb was an engineering problem. It was not a theoretical problem. There is no theoretical solution for many of the peculiar characteristics, as he points out, for a lot of what is pointed out, or for a lot of what has been described by these people. Maybe they're mistaken. And look, I should also note, 99.99999% are going to have a human explanation. That's the point of actual review. The reason why I don't take anything these people say seriously is that the former director, Sean Kirkpatrick, has conducted himself in a crazy manner and has honestly lied to the American public multiple times now, at least whenever he was under oath and before Congress. That's been disproven by his own staff. Two is that we still remain and have huge questions from the UFO whistleblower David Grush, one of the main points that he made in his testimony, again, under oath, was that defense contractors specifically

have been using this audit loophole and the lack of oversight over DOD funding by siphoning off large amounts of funding to then rededicate to material science research as it is then applied to UFOs. Is he lying? I don't know. I mean, no one's proven that he's lied yet so far. There have been multiple efforts otherwise to actually obfuscate his testimony and to keep him from testifying in a classified setting to a lot of these people. Apparently, the news is now Chris Lee actually might be going to work for Congress, which would be great because maybe he can help uncover some of this stuff.

My only point is that there is no reason to take anything that these people say and just as definitive when, again, whenever it comes to the law-mandated audit, they cannot account for more than a trillion dollars of their own assets five years or so in a row. It's like how are we supposed to believe that you conducted some comprehensive thing going back until 1945? Like all the bureaucratic trickery and all the other things that Garrett Graff lays out too in his piece. So what happens next, Sagar? I don't know what else is going to happen next. It's like, we just keep waiting. We just wait and wait and wait. And it's like, we keep getting these fake reports. They assume people will believe it. People keep telling me that there's going to be some more whistleblowers and others for catastrophic disclosure, especially after what happened with the UFO amendment. It's possible. I don't know.

I still wait. I'm a bit despondent now, honestly. I thought Grush would change stuff. I thought more people would come forward. I've been informed that more maybe will, but, you know, we'll take it in a case-by-case basis. All right. I'll only evaluate it as we can see in terms of what comes to me. But this does not allay any more of my big questions that remain here. Yes. Well, we have some decidedly terrestrial and man-made concerns, real chaos unfolding in Haiti. We wanted to understand

more about what's happening. We've got a great guest standing by to help us do exactly that. Let's get to it. Chaotic situation unfolding right now down in Haiti, where current Prime Minister Ariel Henry has said he will resign once a transitional council is in place. This comes in the wake of a variety of paramilitary organizations or gangs forming an alliance to try to overrun the state government. We wanted to dig into whatever the heck is happening here, and we're lucky to have an expert on Haiti joining us at the table. Jake Johnston is the author of Aid State, and he is also a senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Welcome, Jake. Great to have you.

Good to see you, man. Good to see you, Jake. Thanks for having me. So first of all, start with, is what I just said there accurate? How would you describe what's happening and unfolding on the ground in Haiti? Yeah, I mean, I think in general, that's right. I mean, we had this announcement last night. And, you know, I think one key piece of this also is that announcement followed a separate announcement coming out of Kingston from the CARICOM community, the leaders of the Caribbean nations. Secretary of State Blinken was there as well. The Prime Minister of Canada also participated, a number of other foreign powers, announcing support for a new transitional council, presidential council of seven members to

take over the government and name a new prime minister. And so that directly preceded Henri's pre-recorded message last night, sort of announcing his intention to eventually resign. So why don't you take us back to some of the roots of this? People, I'm not even particularly familiar. We covered previously some of the collapse, but it feels like there's been full-scale societal breakdown. So what are at the roots of this most recent iteration of that? And what do you get into in the book? Yeah, sure. So I think, you know, there's a few things to understand about this very proximate causes of what happened. I mean, so one, there was an announcement about two weeks ago from these same actors that are now announcing a new government that Henri would hold an election in

August 2025. So well out into the future. This is a leader who has come under criticism for his lack of legitimacy, right? Consolidating all the power under him over the last two plus years in office in Haiti. And so that was obviously met with quite a bit of concern in Haiti, right? And it was the next morning that you really saw these coordinated attacks against government institutions begin across the capital. Taking a step back, right, and going into some of these deeper causes, right? Because this has not happened, you know,

this is not a week old, it's not two weeks old, it's not two years old, right? I mean, in many ways, this is 200 years old. Haiti was born of a successful slave revolt, right? The first country to abolish slavery in its constitution. And in many ways, it has paid for that ever since, right? And at the root of so much of the conflict, one, this history of foreign intervention, and two, a broken social contract where you have a state that has not represented or been

held accountable by the people itself, but really more so from external actors, which again gets into that history of foreign intervention. Can you talk about who these gangs are? What are their roots? What do they want? What's the role that they're playing in this crisis? Yeah, it's a lot to unpack here, right? And things are moving quickly. And I think there's also another issue, which is, you know, what people say, as we know, is not always what their real motivations are, right? So the big change that we saw over the last couple of weeks was that these disparate armed groups that, again, have been involved in different sorts of criminal activities, kidnapping, rape, extortion, things like this for many years,

but of course all have different motivations, different interests, different connections to communities and things like this, have joined forces together, right, in this effort to oust Henri. But what their ultimate end goal in all of this is, I think, remains a bit to be seen. They have been seemingly allied with an individual who is seeking to claim political power and become president, an individual, Guy Philippe. He is a former police officer who was very involved in the 2004 coup of the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was, in 2017, he was arrested in Haiti and actually extradited to the U.S. and spent the last six plus years in jail on money laundering

related to drug trafficking charges. And he was actually just deported back to Haiti by the U.S. administration in November of 2023. And there does appear to be at least some coordination between his political ambitions and the actions we're seeing from armed groups in the streets. Oh, interesting. So relate back to, you were talking about foreign intervention. Your book is called Aid State. Just give us some, maybe even more context as you're talking there about intervention, about some of the failures of aid. As you said, this is bipartisan. It goes back a long way for people who aren't as familiar, maybe. Yeah. So, of course, I mean, I talked some about the history, right? And so we can talk about the U.S. occupation and French colonialism,

but we don't need to go that far back to understand the foreign intervention, right? I mentioned the 2004 coup in 2010. This was right after the earthquake, right? And this is what I think a lot of U.S. audience sort of remembers about Haiti was this big earthquake and billions of dollars being pledged in a very high profile effort, right? Former President Clinton was awfully involved. Secretary of State Clinton was involved at the time as well. So $10 billion, but there was an electoral process right after that earthquake as well. And the international community, the U.S., the OAS and other players directly intervened and overturned the results of that election, ushering into power Michel Martelly. And him

and his political allies have basically been governing the country with the backing of the international community for the last 15 years, right? And so when we look at the situation today, that dynamic is at the cause of so much of this, right? Is that these governments that have been elected in very low turnout votes with questionable legitimacy, with possible criminal ties and alleged things of this nature and that, have received this international support so consistently for so long. It really made a Haitian solution, Haitians coming together

to build something different, to build something that could actually be sustainable next to impossible, right? And I think one of the really concerning things right now is with Henri, right, he was blocked from returning to the country about a week ago. He tried to return, he was not able to. He's been basically quiet and holed up in Puerto Rico for the last week, no, no,

it would have been until last night. But in that vacuum, in that absence, right, it was international actors who have sort of facilitated this political negotiation. But the optics of what happened, right, it looked almost as if Haitian coalitions were submitting their applications to the international community to be accepted, right? And this dynamic of foreign actors providing legitimacy for Haitian governments is, again, at the root cause of so many of the issues we've seen, right? And so this announcement in and of itself is certainly not a solution to the situation

in Haiti, right? It is a potential first step, but far from a resolution of the crisis. Part of what you lay out in your book, and you actually start with this, is this comparison between the, quote unquote, nation building we did in Afghanistan alongside this quote-unquote less heralded and less visible quote-unquote nation building that we were doing in Haiti. Obviously, both were complete and utter failures. One of the things that you point out is the fact that aid, international aid, which sounds great and sounds, OK, you want to go, international aid, which sounds great and sound,

okay, you want to go in and it's humanitarian and Bill Clinton's going to be there and he's going to help you all. But over time, the way that aid has been deployed has been in the service of our interests and not in the service of Haitian interests and has actually undercut the ability of the Haitian government itself to fulfill that basic social contract. So what can we say about this project of nation building in Haiti as we watch what's unfolding now? Yeah, I think the most simple thing is you can't impose a democracy. You can't impose a state from external sources, right? I mean, it's just not going to work. You might buy a little time. You might have these periods of stability, but in the long run, it is going to blow back, right?

It is going to blow up. And that is, I think, what we're seeing in Haiti. I think it's what we've seen in other nations where this has been tried as well. We're looking at foreign assistance in general, right? And it's not all humanitarian, right? There are big money going to development projects and things like this.

One thing to understand, right, is these aren't your mom and pop NGOs, church groups that we think of when we think of humanitarianism. The biggest players who receive US foreign assistance money are for-profit corporations. We've designed a system that delivers aid to developing countries and others,

but as you said, at its core, are US interests. And so for Congress, who doesn't really like to appropriate money for foreign aid in general, if they are going to justify it, what's in it for my district? What's in it for my constituents, right? And so we have created legislation. We've created requirements that force these aid agencies to give money to U.S. corporations, to import U.S. things. And okay, you can understand it from a U.S. perspective and U.S. interests,

but what is the actual effect of that on the ground, right? It's undermining local markets. It's undermining local organizations, the very organizations whose organization, right, who bring people together is what could actually lead to a sustainable local solution, right? They're undermined by all of this money coming in and going to outside actors, right? And of course, as you mentioned, the government capacity itself. So the Haitian state, right, through these aid policies, and this has taken place over decades, has really been outsourced, right? You've got about 80% of public services, health, education, things like this, handled by private sector actors, NGOs, funded by development banks and things like this. This totally severs the relationship between the population and the state. You can't hold those actors accountable for those services that you're getting.

Makes sense. And that really distorts the notion of a sovereign democracy itself. So where do you think things go from here? And do you have a sense of what the Haitian people would actually like to see? Well, look, I think, you know, I certainly don't mean or intend to speak on behalf of the Haitian people. It's obviously up to them. I think there are a few principles that certainly I've heard, which is, you know, openness, transparency, inclusion in a process, right, that involves Haitians sitting around a table

and coming together with a solution, right? And I think these foreign-imposed and foreign-organized solutions directly undermine that. And so, you know, we'll see how this plays out, right, and how effective they're able to do to meaningfully improve people's lives. But there is going to be a trust deficit from the very beginning with any government that comes out of an agreement or an imposition from outside actors, right?

Did the paramilitary organizations enjoy any kind of popular support, or they're just seen as violent killers and criminals? I don't think it's an extremely simple answer, right? I mean, I think to various degrees, some of these actors do have ties, at least in their communities, right? I mean, this has been a context that's been building over years with these groups fighting each other over territory. And you rely on them for protection for any ability to move. You are relying on these actors. And so there's a certain amount of that built up. I don't think, you know, my impression at least is that anyone in Haiti is looking for

armed groups to actually take state power. And I think there's an open question of if they are even after that, right? Like I was mentioning earlier, these political connections, I think, are so key to trying to understand this dynamic. You know, we've seen in Port-au-Prince the last couple of days, things have calmed down a little bit, just a little bit, right? The really intense attacks on government institutions have calmed down. The port control has been reestablished over it and things like this.

People are moving about a little bit more. I think that's obviously related to these political negotiations that are happening. Are people going to get a seat there? Are they not? How are we going to react to this? And I think now today everyone's waking up. Okay, we've had this announcement from Henri, this new presidential council, backed by foreign governments. What is going to be their reaction? You know, we'll see. My guess, right, is that this alone is not enough to convince them to drop their fight.

Well, it's been very, very insightful and we'll rely on you again if this comes up. So thank you. Yeah. And guys, please check out the book. I've been reading it, Aid State. It is fascinating, not only to understand, you know, more deeply what is happening in Haiti right now, but is a real window into U.S. influence around the world, I guess is the nicest way I could possibly say that. Jake, great to have you. Thank you. Good to see you, man. Thanks. Yeah, it's a pleasure. We'll see you guys later, or this way. This is an iHeart Podcast.