Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/13/24: Robert Hur Explosive Biden Hearing, UAE Threatens Israel Over Gaza Aid, State Dep Spox Confronted On IDF Abuse Of Medics, CPI Inflation Rise, Kenya Halts Troops To Haiti, Putin Floats Ukraine Negotiations, Leaked Report Says Ukraine Victory Impossible, Andrew Tate Arrested After Adin Ross Leak

Episode Date: March 13, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Robert Hur's explosive Congressional testimony, UAE threatens to cut off Israel economic support over lack of Gaza aid, State Dep Spox confronted on IDF beatings of Gaza medics, CPI report shows inflation rise, Kenya halts troops to Haiti amid gang uprising, Putin says Russia ready to negotiate, leaked French military docs say Ukraine victory is impossible, and Andrew Tate arrested after streamer Adin Ross revealed his escape plans from Romania.   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. All right. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. You know, Emily, in a normal election year, the news from last night would dominate today's cycle. But instead, I think we'll just give it a passing mention. Right.

Joe Biden clinched the Democratic nomination. Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination. Uncommitted did extremely well in Washington state. We won't know how well until all the mail-in votes are counted Thursday. It looks like they're going to get delegates to go to the DNC. But otherwise, an anticlimactic contest came to its anticlimax last night, I guess. Yeah, that's right. And more trouble for Biden actually here in Washington, D.C. as Congress, Robert Herr, Special Counsel Robert Herr testified in front of Congress. It was actually fairly explosive from both Republicans and Democrats. Nobody was happy with Robert Herr yesterday. We'll get to that in just a moment. We will cover some developments out of Israel, including an especially galling video that we will break down in just a bit here. The CPI numbers are out, Ryan. The inflation numbers are out. They were released yesterday. Some really, I think,

depressing news. The soft landing is getting bumpy. The soft landing is getting bumpy. We're going to cover developments out of Haiti specifically, actually, that not only has Ariel Henry resigned as Sager and Crystal covered yesterday, but also now it looks like- We're going to do a little invasion. Yeah, it looks like- Just to help them out again. Just to help them out. A little more help from us is all they need. So we'll talk about the Kenyan troop situation, have a full breakdown of that. We are going to be talking about Ukraine and some reports from French media that basically nobody's paying attention to

here in the States. Actually, a new Putin comment as well to cover. And then, oh my goodness, what happened with Andrew Tate? Man can't catch a break. Looks like one of his streamer friends actually caused his arrest. So we'll get to that in just a moment. Remember, if you go to BreakingPoints.com, there's 25% off right now. BreakingPoints.com, it's an election year. How can you not do that? Yes, a great deal. You've got to do that. Great deal. All right, let's start with the testimony yesterday of special counsel Robert

Herr, who was appointed to look into whether Joe Biden had willfully retained classified documents at various properties from his garage to his basement. Obviously, this happened after Donald Trump was investigated for classified documents that were littered about Mar-a-Lago. But let's start with this quote or this exchange between Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz and, again, Special Counsel Robert Herr, who, by the way, it's worth mentioning, worked for Rod Rosenstein and was a liaison to Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation into Donald Trump, which put him off on the wrong foot with the sort of Trump allies right off the bat. Although he was a clerk for William Rehnquist, he was actually appointed by Donald Trump to one of his positions in 2017, but then

obviously ended up working for Rod Rosenstein and working with the Mueller investigation. So people like Matt Gaetz, right out of the gate, we're not happy with that. Gaetz out of the gate. Gaetz out of the gate. So here's Matt Gaetz. And I think this, again, this exchange, we're starting with it because I think it really encapsulated the point that Republicans wanted to drive home yesterday during Hurst's testimony. February 8th, the White House question. Mr. President, why did you share classified information with your ghostwriter? The president, I did not share classified information.

I did not share it. I guarantee I did not. That's not true, is it, Mr. Hurd? That is inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence in my report. Yeah, so it's a lie is just what regular people would say, right? Yeah, all right. So the next one. And all the stuff that was in my home was in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked. That wasn't true either, was it? That was inconsistent with the findings of our investigation.

Another lie, people might say, right? Because what you put in your report was, among the places Mr. Biden's lawyers found classified documents in the garage was a damaged open box. So here's what I'm understanding, right? As Mr. Armstrong laid out, you find in your report that the elements of a federal criminal violation are met, but then you apply this senile cooperator theory that because Joe Biden cooperated and the elevator doesn't go to the top floor, you don't think you'd get a conviction. So of course, Herr famously declined to bring charges, infamously perhaps I should say, against Joe Biden. On that question that Matt Gaetz was just getting at, the willful retention

of classified documents, Robert Herr declined to bring those charges because he said, it's very similar, echoed to James Comey's treatment of Hillary Clinton back in, I think this was 2015, saying that no jury would find beyond reasonable doubt that Biden was guilty of that crime because that question of willful, that Biden was, I think this is the description, a quote, well-intentioned elderly man. Robert Hearst said a jury's not going to find him guilty of the willful retention of documents. Democrats, Ryan, yesterday seized on that question. They're upset with her for, as they see it, littering his report with pejoratives and basically being an ageist against Joe Biden, being unnecessarily cruel is one way to put it, perhaps. Here's Jerry Nadler absolutely laying into Robert Kerr yesterday.

In short, to borrow a phrase from the last administration, the Kerr report represents the complete and total exoneration of President Biden. And how does that record contrast with President Trump, the documents he retained and the criminal charges pending against him in Florida? We know that Trump deliberately took large amounts of classified information from the White House. He has admitted as much, occasionally pretending that he classified this information without telling anyone on his way out the door. We know that he stored that information around Mar-a-Lago in the craziest of places, on the ballroom stage, spilled across the floor of an unlocked closet, next to the toilet. We know that he showed classified military plans to an author interviewing him

at Bedminster. Quote, as president, I could have declassified it, Trump says on an audio recording. Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret. Still a secret. Okay. Ryan, what did you make of the dueling attacks on her from Republicans and Democrats? I think what it really showed is what the public deserves is a dual trial of both Trump and Biden. Same time. Like, I think we have earned that. They're both in the courtroom. They're both charged with the same thing, you know, mishandling classified information.

They've both got it tossed about their various properties. They're both clearly. They both said things that are not true. Now, Trump, like, engaged in, like, a massive conspiracy to try to cover it up after he knew that they were going after these classified documents. Whereas once Biden realized he'd screwed up, he basically just said, here, take everything. That's the key difference. But I think it would be a lot of fun for the public just to have them both tried in front of the same jury and you'd have them cross-examine each other. No, I don't want that. Instead of a debate. Both tried in front of the same jury and you'd have them cross-examine each other.

No, I don't want that. Instead of a debate. And it can be moderated by the Presidential Debate Commission. It's just bad all around. Lovely. Chris Wallace is in the courtroom moderating them. And then Frank Luntz can do a focus group with the jury afterwards. With the jury.

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. Well, so on that. Hold the whole thing in a diner. It's so, again, it seems like they're both. I mean, it doesn't seem they both had classified documents. Donald Trump obviously was hesitant to turn them over because he believed that he could. And he told his like groundskeeper to like destroy them and to flood the place to try to destroy servers like just just clown car Coen brothers, although types of like cover up. Speaking of clown car Coen brothers, the Biden's like coverup. Speaking of clown car Coen brothers,

uh, the Biden's ghostwriter, they touched on this yesterday in the exchange with her immediately started deleting, uh, stuff from his notes that showed that Biden had been sharing classified information with him improperly information that had not been properly declassified. Uh, and so again, that is another thing that Herr was approached by Republicans about yesterday. Also sort of like Coen brothers asked, not quite on the level of the Mar-a-Lago shenanigans. Yeah, it's more run-of-the-mill criminality. It only becomes criminal when classified information is involved when you are challenging state power, when you are challenging state power,

when you're going against the federal government. If you are leaking about the federal government's crimes to the public as a public service, then you're going to get tried. Then you're going to get tortured and put into maximum security prison and put into isolation and driven insane. And even if you're an Australian citizen, they'll try to extradite you here to lock you up for that. But if you're just writing a memoir that nobody's going to read and it's just a grift to get paid off by, you know, the super rich publishing houses in New York, then it's basically like you can just do whatever you want. Yeah. And news outlets, including The Federalist, had transcripts, obtained transcripts actually of her and Biden's full conversations on October 8th

and 9th. So if those dates sound a little wild to you, that's because indeed it was October 8th and 9th as Biden was dealing with the fallout from the October 7th attacks. And the conversations between them showed basically that that hers description was apt. The sort of he Biden did actually at one point. People might remember that angry press conference immediately after hers report dropped that called Biden a confused elderly man or a well-intentioned elderly man. Biden had that weird press conference from the White House that night. Biden actually blamed her for bringing up Beau Biden and was just absolutely incensed, sort of indignant that her had brought up Beau Biden. The testimony, if you read the transcripts, Biden is the one who brought up

Beau Biden. So that entire exchange where Biden was, again, trying to prove how great his memory was and confuse the presidents of Mexico and Egypt. Not only that, he was actually remembering his conversation wrong, which, again, is totally fine. These are long conversations. It went over the course of multiple days. Biden sat for these very long interviews, picking at some painful scabs over the last decade of his life, if not a little longer than that.

But again, as he was sort of indignant about a report that his memory wasn't great, his memory was not so great. Although speaking of people not having a good memory about their own memory, Democrats took the opportunity to put together a little greatest hits of Donald Trump-isms and just played them at the hearing kind of for no reason at all. So let's play it here for no reason at all. They're basically saying that Trump has his own memory lapses. Yeah. So, yeah, let's roll some Trump.

Called like up here and it's called memory and it's called other things. So you don't remember saying you have one of the best memories? I don't remember that. And Putin, you know, has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear war terror. You've heard that nuclear. We have to win in November or we're not going to have Pennsylvania.

They'll change the name. I talked to Putin a lot. Did you ask him that? I don't remember that. I saw that this morning. I don't remember asking him that question. I have a good memory and all that stuff, like a great memory.

For 20 years, they were fighting ISIS. I defeated ISIS in four weeks. And we did with Obama. We won an election that everyone said couldn't be won. I'm not cognitively. And you know what? When I am, you're going to be the first people. I know my people. You'll say, all right, Trump, you did a good job. Get the hell out of here. The Pennsylvania one, I don't get. Maybe he's right about that. Like, how do we know? Maybe they will change the name of Pennsylvania because of whatever happens. I was curious what you made of that one as a, as a, what, Urschwald, Pennsylvania. Yeah. I mean, it would be sad if Trump's right and they change the name. It's a good name, but

there's no way to know. Yeah. No way to know. But we will know when he's cognitively blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. And we'll, and his people will tell him. We'll know right away and say, Trump, get the hell out of here. Yeah, clearly not. I'm surprised they didn't use the one where he called his wife Mercedes. Did he do that? Yeah. Oh, I missed that one. So again, I think it is clear that both of them willfully retain classified documents, although that question of willful is hard to prove in front of a jury. And I think most importantly, even Biden gets at this in his lengthy testimony to Robert Herr, the transcript of the testimony to Robert Herr, we wildly overclassified documents. And that's a point

Biden sort of strives to make repeatedly in that conversation with Herr. And that's an entirely fair point. But then we get Ryan stuck in this ridiculous cycle. I mean, this might be one of the most ridiculous cycles of this election. We're going to talk about the inflation numbers in just a bit, but the world feels like it's on fire. Hot conflicts in Eastern Europe, hot conflict in the Middle East, people struggling here at home, and we are now in this doom loop about our elderly leaders retaining classified information, which, again, wildly overclassifying our information. Some of it we know in both cases actually was probably legitimately classified. We have no evidence that this willfully retained classified information was used improperly by any foreign adversaries that anyone saw it that shouldn't have. There's some suspicion with

some of the Trump stuff. With the Trump stuff that he may have retained it for. Nuclear fleet stuff and other dicey. Yeah, no, it's absolutely serious stuff. Some of it, at least. I'm sure not all of it is. But all of that is to say, this is, of course, what's happening when people leave office. There's actually, you know, interpretations of what's it called? The National Archive Act, something like that. National Archive Act. That presidents can do this. And I'm not saying that's the correct interpretation, but this is just getting into a legal, again, doom spiral over our elderly leaders. You have Democrats pretending that

it's not a problem when it's Joe Biden. You have Republicans pretending it's not a problem when it's Donald Trump, even though Matt Gaetz is clearly getting at whether the DOJ has a double standard. It's such a sideshow to the problems because it's just about one-upping each other and the double standard. It's so meta. It's like a double standard about a double standard when you get to Jerry Nadler. Yeah. And we can put up the final element here from this tweet from Byron York. People can pause this and read this exchange if they want to. But curious for your take on this, because I think everybody agrees, for the most part, polls show 90 plus percent of people would roughly say that, yeah, that Matt Gaetz is right,

that the elevator doesn't go all the way to the top anymore. However, separating all of that out, I think bungling some of these dates here, to me, is not the clean hit that people think it is. And what I mean is that I do this too, and I'm not senile. It's not easy to remember off the top of your head exactly what year things happened as far as I'm concerned. Did we start rising in 2020, 2021? What year? Oh, yeah, I never remember that. What year did we jump over here? 2022, probably? 2023.

I don't, I don't actually. You're proving your point live. I don't actually know. But we could, but if I was being interrogated and somebody had like calendars in front of me, I'd be like, oh yeah, it was when this happened and this happened and this happened. And that's sort of what he's doing.

He's connecting things that happened at the same time. But he does remember that his son died on May 30th. Yes. And people remember those dates that tragic events or celebratory events happened, but they often don't remember the year. Like I could tell you the day I got married. My wife doesn't watch this show, so I can admit that. I'd have to think for a while. I'd be like, what year was it?

It was a long time ago. I do remember the day. Don't ask me the day. So that, like, okay, I think he's right generally, but I think the specifics, like, I don't think he got in there. So one point on that, though, I will say is that when he's talking about, so for instance, in 2017, he missed, as Byron pointed out, that's when he's talking about whether he left the Senate in 2017. Or he pinpoints 2017 and then talks about it as broadly that era in which he left the Senate. And then he really does confuse the era between the sort of vice presidency and when he ends up actually running for talking about Senate and because he was thinking about running for president twice and conflates them and yeah yeah he does so he talks about Obama

obviously saying he doesn't think you should remember president in 2016 and that era he then confuses with when he decided to run for president in the 2020 election cycle so I totally understand you saying like pinpointing years especially when you're as old as he is, becomes impossible. And he's also a liar. But he's a liar, yes. And his staff, and this is not just saying this, like his staff that I've talked to over the years, as well as books that have been written about him, talk about the fact that if he's cornered, he will just tell a straight up lie. And there's also like very public lies that he's told, like the time where he was going to bust Nelson Mandela out of prison, his involvement with the civil

rights movement, which when he dropped out of the presidential race, he ended up like apologizing for some of that back in 1988. And then still tells a lie today. Like he tells lies about things that he apologized for previously lying about. And then you add on top of that, it being difficult to keep yours together. Yeah, you can imagine how a jury would be like, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Although, yes, again, that question of reasonable doubt and the willful retention, that's what this really comes down to. And that's where Republicans thought that they had. And I think they did get a good clip with her yesterday saying when Matt Gaetz was saying, you know, reading Biden quotes about how he didn't do this, he didn't do this. And then going to her and her saying, yes, that is inconsistent with findings

based on my report. And Matt Gaetz being like, yeah, that's a lie. Again, though, my broad takeaway from this is just we are in the partisan doom spiral. So welcome to the Thunderdome 2024. Enjoy. Let's move on to Israel, Ryan, in this I-24 report about the UAE and the land bridge for Gaza aid. Right. So if your behavior has managed to frustrate the United Arab Emirates, you've gone awfully far. So Israel, because of the blockade of the Red Sea carried out by the Houthis, has seen tremendous economic damage being done to its economy broadly. And so what they have been able to do is they teamed up with Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, and other Arab partners to create basically a land bridge that can, you know,

help to keep goods flowing back and forth. The UAE is now saying that if Netanyahu doesn't start allowing in significant amounts of aid to Gaza, the UAE is going to pull out of this land bridge accord, which could collapse the entire thing. The Emiratis have been probably the most loyal Arab state to the Israelis over the last decade or so. They have less of a population to worry about than Saudi Arabia, who has been kind of the second most loyal to Israel over, say, the last 10 decades. The leadership of the UAE was extremely tight with Jared Kushner and basically helped to broker the Abraham Accords across the entire region. To have them coming out this publicly and saying that if Israel doesn't change course, you know, it's going to sever this crucial

economic tie is something they really need to pay attention to. Mohammed bin Zayed, the head of the UAE is in this article saying that he refused to meet with Netanyahu recently, which is, and we had reported back in 2017 that Kushner, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, Mohammed bin Zayed, were all texting each other on WhatsApp and had this real tight relationship that went around the state apparatus and was one of the things that helped them build towards the Abraham Accords that now MBZ wouldn't even meet with Netanyahu, I think shows you how far Israel's standing has fallen in the region in service of this starvation policy. And what's your read on what type of pressure from around the world is going to have any influence on Israel's willingness or unwillingness to allow aid in?

I think it's also just an incredible statement on how poorly the United States has handled diplomatically the situation and then even like obviously the substance of the policy, which is another question. But if we're just talking about pure diplomacy and how the United States has sort of liked to see itself as the leader. But you know, these are our guys. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a I think a pretty damning. If we're losing the UAE, we don't have anybody. It's a very damning indictment of how the Biden administration has brokered these negotiations. You know, Israel's furious with Biden. And, you know, we'll see what happens in that relationship. But obviously, Netanyahu went on Fox and Friends this week to kind of talk a little smack about Biden. And now, yeah, to your point about the UAE slipping away. And let's talk about the context of

this global revulsion at what Israel is doing when you put up this new BBC investigation into something that we covered here previously on on breaking points, which was the Israeli assault on Nasser Hospital. You know, we talked about, you know, one particular doctor, you know, who went missing for many days. Now, a number of now about a dozen medical workers from Nasser Hospital, according to the BBC, are still missing and their families are deeply concerned about their well-being. But the ones who have been released, you know, spoke to, three of them spoke to the BBC independently and told stories of their captivity. And the way that

this type of journalism works, where you don't have forensic evidence, you don't have video, you don't have photos. They actually do, the BBC has some video and photo from inside the hospital of pretty rough treatment of the medical staff, but not after they leave the hospital. The way you do that reporting is you try to reach people independently so that you don't say, all right, you talk to one doctor and then you ask that doctor, you know, who else can we talk to? That's fine. Like if that's all you can do, that's all you can do. But it's better to find them independently so that you know for certain that they didn't communicate with each other. And then you hear the stories they told. Where were you taken? How long were you there? What were the people look like you did this? What exactly did they do to you, and if you can pile up a bunch

of different stories, then you compare them. Then you can, then that is some level of corroboration, and that's what the BBC did here in its report, finding that the medical staff, including the doctors, were severely beaten, were doused with cold water. One of them had their hands broken. The kind of abuse that you can imagine coupled with harsh interrogations and the uncertainty if you're going to wind up in a, whether you're going to wind up in a mass grave or you're ever going to see your family again. And so the State Department's Matt Miller was asked about this BBC report yesterday at the briefing. Let's take a listen to his response here. They've interviewed three doctors or three members of the staff at that

hospital who've given like detailed accounts of their detention by Israeli authorities. They told the BBC they were humiliated, beaten, doused with cold water, forced to kneel in uncomfortable positions for hours. One was set upon by a dog. I'm wondering, is that a specific, one of these specific cases that you would raise with the Israeli government? I have only seen the report. I don't know if we have raised it, but I would expect that we would. It is the type of cases that we often raise with them

to seek more information and to make clear, as we always have, that any detainee should be treated in strict compliance with international humanitarian law. Are you aware of any cases where Israeli troops have been disciplined for mistreating prisoners? I am aware of cases, I don't know specifically with respect to prisoners, but I know that we recently raised with them an incident where Israeli soldiers were filming themselves inside a mosque inappropriately, and the IDF told us that they were investigating,

and if appropriate, there would be accountability and discipline. But that's a case where there's video evidence. They showed their faces in the video. Yeah, correct, but it doesn't change what we think the standard ought to be, which is if there are allegations that are substantiated, there ought to be accountability. That's true for the Israeli military, it should be for the United States military and military anywhere in the world.

You notice, and the reporter says that's a case where they were doing it on video. I thought it was interesting that Miller said, if appropriate there will be discipline. So even in that case, Israel wouldn't commit to the State Department even privately. Okay, we will discipline these soldiers. Because you can imagine a scenario where the State Department says, look, there's a video going around of these soldiers put up themselves on TikTok of themselves desecrating this mosque. Here they are. And you could imagine a world in which you shared that with your partners, your allies, and the allies said, this is horrifying. We're going to find out exactly who these guys are,

and there's going to be discipline. We apologize. Rather than, you know, if we find something disturbing in this video, we'll, you know, at that point, we'll take action. But, Emily, the part that really struck me from his response was, I'm not sure if we have talked to Israel yet about this, but it is the type of thing that we do talk to them about. We're five months in, and the pattern is so recognizable that you can say, oh yeah, doctors being beaten and having dogs set upon them. Yep, that sounds familiar. That's the kind of thing. The type of thing. That's the type of thing we often do talk to our Israeli friends about. And so the IDF has, in the BBC story, they have said, quote, we emphasize that the hands of patients who were not suspected of involvement in terrorism were not tied.

They deny some specific stuff, and then it looks like they declined to answer questions about other specific things. It was kind of an interesting response from the IDF and the BBC. Right. There were some patients. That's the other thing that makes the reporting so credible. They said some patients did not have their hands tied. Right. Some. Right.

And they said they don't perform, they didn't answer questions about the doctor's cast. So that was one of the things I find interesting, just given that they were answering questions about others. You know, they were saying, for example, that they don't perform mock executions. The IDF does not perform mock executions. They said it does not and has not carried out mock executions of detainees and rejects such claims, but then didn't answer the questions about the cast and it denied other things. So it was sort of a mixed response from the IDF, which is always interesting because a categorical denial is what would be most common. Right. And so then you're wondering like, what did these medical personnel go through that they felt was a mock execution?

And what is the IDF's definition here? Well, there's no paperwork, so it wasn't actually a mock execution. It was just, we're threatening to put you up against the wall while you're blindfolded and we might kill you. But they actually didn't even point their guns at them. But if you're blindfolded, you don't know that. And we have this video that Eric Toller and colleagues at the New York Times reported on. This is a voiceover, so we can go ahead and roll it whenever. But Eric Toller posted this to Twitter and said the Israeli military published a drone video of their strike on two people, one of which was carrying, and quote, RPG. We asked them,

and the IDF admitted that it was actually a bicycle. So if you can stomach watching this video, what you are about to see is this gentleman not carrying an RPG but a bicycle. Having his life snuffed out. He apparently was on his way to pick up flour delivery and they were bringing flour back to their families. To me, when this video first circulated, it was always preposterous that this was an RPG. For people that weren't watching, it's two guys walking down the middle

of a rubble-strewn street, and one of them has a long-looking thing near his right hand. The reason we have footage of that is that there was a drone overhead. Those drones, if you've watched any video of Gaza, or you've talked to people who've been in Gaza, make a buzzing sound. They know that there's a drone over top of them. If they are Hamas fighters with an RPG, they would not be sauntering casually down the middle of the street. This was on March 3rd in Gaza City. It makes absolutely no sense that that would be an RPG. Is Israel not watching the telegram videos that

Kassam Brigades are posting on a basically daily basis? The guys with the RPGs are crouched inside buildings, sneaking around looking for a window and launching them at tanks. They're not walking down the middle of the street. What this was was a drone operator who found human beings and was looking for a kill. So the IDF claims that the route, part of this, the reason this happened is that the route had been used to transfer ammunition to fighters that were then attacking the IDF. Their response, this is actually a statement from the IDF quoted in the New York Times, they say, during the several days leading up to the documented strike, armed terrorists used the route shown in the video

in order to transfer ammunition and attack IDF forces. The strike took place after real-time identification of the people as armed terrorists based on information gathered ahead of the strike. So actually, it sounds like they're standing by the contention, even though they were wrong about the classic RPG bicycle mix-up. Tale as old as time. They're standing by the contention that this was a combatant who was killed in that video. Well, they're saying that they genuinely thought it was, is what they're saying it sounds like. Yeah.

Because he was in an area that had previously been used for transporting weapons. But Gaza is a very small area. Everywhere is an area where there was recently fighting for the most part. Yeah. So the other thing I wanted to highlight from the, so by the way, this is in the New York Times, it says the IDF still defended the strike, asserting that the two people were combatants

without providing its evidence. So they're still standing by. Okay, so yeah. Well, it's their men in somewhere between like 15 and 65. And that has become another disturbing part of this coverage, that any man basically is considered to be a fair target. And as a dude, I kind of, I reject that premise. The Times also notes that at one point in the video, you can actually see the wheel

of the bike. Sure. It's so clearly a bike. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it's another of the mounting problems for the IDF. This is sort of a small potatoes compared to the whole, all of the problems for the IDF. But this one is so clear of all of the, of all of the deaths that are sadly stacking up. This one is so clear that it will be a problem for them going forward.

And, and it's for them to not be able to say, we made a mistake. It looked from our perspective like it was an RPG. This is war. Things happen. Our sympathies are with the family. That would be, I think, would not be sufficient because it was so obviously not an RPG, but it would be at least acknowledging the humanity of the person, that the two people that you killed, the grief that you caused their loved ones, that they won't even do that raises the question of like,

what on earth would they ever acknowledge? I think that's a great point that actually gets at this entire conflict. But, you know, the sort of propaganda efforts, we've talked about this many times, the propaganda efforts, which is what happens in war. Obviously, Hamas is engaged in propaganda efforts. Obviously, that's part of war. But the propaganda efforts on behalf of the IDF and sometimes, as you point out in that Matt Miller clip, it's difficult for the United States as an ally to even defend how bad some of the propaganda has been. But it is true that when you are attacked and you're engaging in war, there's going to be the fog of war that's actually a tale as old as time. And I think it would behoove Israel to have more transparency about some of these things instead of the show of transparency, which ultimately ends up to be just pure propaganda so often. Yeah, stop doing these things when you do them, apologize.

And actually stop the starvation. Don't just apologize for mistaking the RPG, mistaking a bike for an RPG. Or you're going to lose the UAE. And that's what they don't understand or don't care about, it seems like. And the American, like, potentially support of the American people, which is absolutely crucial to their effort. Yep. Which is probably why you have Netanyahu going on Fox and Friends.

Well, let's get back to the American people. Let's talk about the American economy for a minute. So yesterday we had new inflation data, which is shaking up people's thinking about what the Federal Reserve is going to do when it comes to interest rates going forward, which has a, it just reverberates all throughout the rest of the economy. So we can put up this first element here. So consumer prices rose basically a little faster than they were expected, 0.4% in February, which was a 3.2% rate, slightly higher than expected year over year, you saw rent and housing continue to be, continue its surge. You saw gas prices contributing to this inflation spike. Even if you take gas prices out, you started seeing this.

And so over the last roughly year, wage growth, and particularly wage growth at the bottom, has been outpacing inflation. That's a good thing. That's the direction that you want to go. The several years before that, coming out of the pandemic, inflation was rising faster than wages. So basically, you need several years of wages growing faster than inflation to catch back up. Because people aren't pulling prices down, except eggs, actually. Well, as you say, and also with high interest rates, you have a lot of people, especially in lower income brackets, who went into debt because they were laid off during the pandemic. So many service workers, people in that position, paying high interest rates.

So not only does wage growth have to be steady for years, you then also have these high interest rates that are compounding the debt. I mean, it's making the debt worse and worse and a deeper and deeper hole to climb out of. So even if your wages are climbing, you still are going to have a steep hill ahead of you to get out of the debt. And one thing I think people aren't quite realizing when it comes to how rough this part of the economy feels like is how kind of good it was in 2020. And it's hard to say good in 2020 in the same sentence because you had the lockdowns, you had the pandemic. It was a difficult time kind of socially and culturally. But when it came to finances, people were doing a lot better because you got all of these direct checks.

You had what they call the super dole, the $600 a week in unemployment. You had multiple checks rolling out. You had checks in March 2020. You had checks again in December 2020. And you had checks again in February, March 2021. Just your bank account one day like this, don't do any work. And boom, all of a sudden, thousands of dollars in your bank account one day like this, don't do any work. And boom, all of a sudden, thousands of dollars in your bank account. And help to your business.

And interest rates were down under three, not a mortgage interest rates under 3%. And what that did is it allowed basically everybody at a home at the time refinanced. And so their monthly nut went down and a lot of people cashed out. So they had more cash in their pockets month to month, and they had taken, let's say, $10,000, $15,000 out, and either that padded their savings account for the problems that always come up in life, or they did the thing that they needed to do for so long, you know, repaired the leaky bathtub, you know, got the house painted, whatever. And so to go from that to then prices spiking at 9% back in 2021, and then coming down, but not having enough time to recover sucks for this economy because you need more time

for wages to outpace inflation. A year is not enough. You need five years. Actually, to get back to a humane economy, you would need 100 years of wages outpacing inflation. So let's put this next element up on the screen from Jason Furman, because Ryan, I'm curious what you made of Jason Furman's analysis. He put some of these numbers into, basically, he was looking at core services, core goods, and what you're seeing, and this is important, if you're watching this, you go back to about 2010, and the core goods prices are actually all the way to where they are around right now. They have this huge spike around 2021, 2022, and then they've dipped now down to where they were almost in like 2014, which is similar

to where things were before the pandemic around 2020, core services spikes right around 2020. It was on kind of a steady climb from 2012, roughly, around 2010, 2012. But then where it is now is so much higher than where it has been for core services. So that's things like shelter. And Furman specifically calls out shelter. So the cost of rent, the cost of housing, that is way higher than it has been in anyone's recent memory. And that's why some of this is so uneven. So when you're seeing Paul Krugman's analysis that actually everything's fine, it depends. I mean, it just really depends on who you are, what kind of life you live, if you own, if you rent, what your finances look like. This is a really,

really tough economy for a lot of people and for many people specifically because of that core services mark. That is not anywhere near where it used to be, right? And that is significantly higher. And there was this big debate, is inflation transitory? Is it endemic? The transitory crowd looking at that core goods, I think, can argue like from a Keynesian old school perspective was absolutely correct. That was obviously transitory. Like you had a stimulus and you had some greedflation and you had an opening up of the economy after the pandemic. The price of goods popped and then the price of goods popped, and then the price of goods came back down. That was to be expected and transitory. The services inflation is an endemic problem that is going to need to be sorted out.

You've also got home insurance, auto insurance, health insurance, all those other costs that are just utilities that are just part of your, some utilities are in core goods, that are just kind of part of daily life and they're just more expensive. And what that does is, you know, you just feel that by the middle of every month. Like it's that amount of money is coming out of your paycheck and your paycheck is just isn't going as far as it used to, even as wages did grow for the last year faster than inflation. But you need a lot more than that. So I actually want to play this clip of Gary Cohn, who's one of Trump's Goldman boys. I think this is on CBS Face the Nation this week, because I think he made a pretty good

point in the context of why people are feeling as though the economy isn't great. So Biden is not polling very well in the economy, again, despite people like Paul Krugman and many, many others, actually, who have said, you know, why aren't this optimism or this pessimism that the public is experiencing is not backed up by data. The media is telling way too negative a story about the economy. Listen to Gary Cohn here. Inflation has a compounding effect, meaning as you look at inflation year over year, you're adding up those numbers. You're not starting at a zero every year. So if we had 6% inflation last year, 7% inflation, and now we have 4% inflation, that's 10% inflation.

So if you take a basket of groceries at the beginning of 2020, just a simple basic basket that cost $100, it costs well over $125 today. Because those 4% one year and 7% one year and 7% the next year, they add up. They're cumulative. So there's a huge cumulative effect inflation. So when people are being told, consumers, you're wrong, inflation's heading. No, they're right. They're completely right. They're completely right.

And what they're more right about is we at least finally have gotten to the position where wage growth is faster than inflation. But we had not been there until the last few months. So people were losing purchasing power. And that's why people were angry. And then take on top of that the high interest rate environment, where if you thought you might have been in a position to buy a house because you save money, you go out to get a mortgage at 7% or 8%, you can't afford a house. So Kohn is now an executive at IBM after leading the Trump National Economic Council.

But that is completely accurate, Ryan. Yeah, right. And as he says, wages finally were growing faster than inflation, which as somebody who advocated for robust government spending throughout the pandemic, To see wages growing faster than inflation is extremely satisfying. Vindicating. And to see unemployment below 4%, which is driving all of this labor militancy and could, you know, and is helping to reshape the political economy, giving more power to workers rather than bosses. Like all of that is a good thing. But tying it in with the greedflation, which was these corporations seeing the opportunity to raise prices and just taking profits and walking away with it, plus the obvious inflation you were going to get from supply chains and just the opening up of the economy after a pandemic, you know, has left people, you know, way behind.

And, you know, so often we, economists and the news talk about inflation either in month-to-month terms or year-over-year terms. But he's right. Like, we're all adults. Like, we remember what it cost to go to the grocery store three or four years ago. And we now know what it costs today.

And as he's saying, a $100 bag is now a $125 bag. That's a huge problem. One of the reasons I think we talk about it in that context is because, like this report, so this is the BLS data. That's what we're talking about. We started with the CNBC's tariff sheet about that. They put out the monthly data. They put out the year-over-year data on inflation. And so that's what the media calls the hook. And that's economists are in the weeds analyzing

changes in specific aspects of the baskets on the month-to-month basis because that's what's relevant every single month when you look at the changes. Sometimes you get a bird flu and eggs are super expensive. But you're like, well, that's not a macroeconomic issue. Right. That's all the birds got killed. Right, right. But if you're just a consumer, if you're not a member of the media or an economist, so 99% of the population, the year over year is what really matters to you because you're comparing it to what you were paying before and what your wages were before. And so, yeah, I mean, it's obvious that's how people think of it.

Normal people think about it. And also, yes, and inflation, for the most part, and price growth is pretty steady across. Everybody gets gas. Everybody's got car insurance. I mean, not everybody has car insurance, but a lot of people do. I guess not everybody buys gasoline, but a lot of people do. Everybody eats. So everybody feels those price increases. Wage growth depends on the company you work depends if you switch jobs depends depends where you live Depends on all sorts of other factors and so for lots of people, you know

They're seeing significantly better wage growth than inflation over the last several years for other people. They're making less they're not doing Yeah, and for others they're right in the middle there. We've got this trade publication, the Kobesi letter, that actually dug even deeper into these numbers. If we can pull this up, they say they dug in on super core inflation. And what they found is even more disturbing than what you're seeing reported. And this is the Fed follows super core super core inflation. And so they say on a three-month annualized basis, super core inflation jumped 6.9% in February, which is huge. That's pushing back to 2022 levels. Core services, less shelter inflation is a key metric that the Fed follows. So in January, the metric jumped 0.7% month over month, the biggest jump since September 2022. In February, it was up another

half point month over month after multiple increases in 23. They say all while real wage growth is turning negative again, the fight against inflation is far from over. So inflation is one thing if wages are going faster than inflation. If wages are losing purchasing power to inflation, that's when things turn deeply ugly again. Right, yeah. So a lot of positive signs, but also could potentially be some really negative stuff. I mean, there is really negative stuff if you're looking under the hood. But trends, of course, could continue to go into a frightening direction for a whole lot of people, Ryan. All right, let's move on to Haiti and let's talk about what's really going on over there.

Let's put up this first element here. So the big news is that Kenya, which had been pressured by the United States to send a thousand police officers as basically an invasion force under the auspices of the United Nations, has now said that it's hitting pause on whether it's actually going to do that as the de facto fake prime minister has said that he will resign his fake position once the United States and its allies has created a new fake government in Jamaica to take its place. The Kenyans are using this opportunity to say, you know what, I don't think so. Not so sure we're actually going to go along with this. So to back things up, in 2022, there was a extraordinarily contentious and contested and not very widely credited election in Kenya where President William Roto was elected. Since his election, and the U.S. was very clearly backing him the entire way,

celebrated his very shady victory. Since then, Kenya has taken all sorts of odd international positions. If you look at that giant green board in the United Nations and you see the weird countries that are like siding with the United States and Israel in these like, you know, 250 to five votes, Kenya is always right there with them. Uh, Kenya, one of the only countries in the quasi region that joined with the US in this operation prosperity guardian going after the, going after the Houthis and their, guarding the prosperity, uh, the Houthis with their blockade of the Red Sea. And then all of a sudden, Kenya's like, sure, we'll send troops to Haiti. That sounds like something we'd love to do.

The Kenyan population obviously is wildly against the idea that the Kenyans would go and occupy Haiti. Well, there's money in it for Kenya. Obviously that's sort of we're paying for it Yeah, carrot, right? So not only are we paying for that? Yes So the US on a State Department said yesterday that yes, it's they confirmed We're gonna pick up the tab for this entire invasion and occupation Although we're hoping that the French and some others will you know kick in the Canadians might kick in here and there. Meanwhile, we're also facilitating billions in World Bank loans to Kenya that are effectively facilitating kind of an ethnic cleansing campaign that the Kenyan government is operating in rural parts, which we'll talk about later in the show. This

is about Haiti. We'll talk about Haiti here. The context of this is this U.S. created government. So the U.S. has been creating governments for Haiti, you know, for more than 100 years. Sometimes they're just actual U.S. governments that are occupying Haiti. Other times they are U.S. allied governments that we installed after a coup. Other times, the Haitians rise up and managed for a while to have some type of self-determination, which we then undermine and come in and replace. And we do this every five years or so. And then we keep wondering, well, what's wrong with the Haitians? Why can't they get their act together? Rather than saying, maybe it's us who've been doing this for more than a hundred years and haven't, and, and continue to

make things worse for them. Maybe, maybe it's us, but maybe not. So they're going to try again. So they, so they met in Jamaica. Matt Miller said that the state department spokesperson said that there were some Haitian civil society representatives who zoomed in to the meeting in Jamaica to form the new government. The condition for being part of this new government created by the U.S. and its core group allies is that, well, A, you can't be any people that the United States doesn't like. We can get into that in a minute. But you have to support Kenyan troops coming into your country. Then they come around and say, well, the Haitian government is requesting the international troops from Kenya to come occupy its country. Except, okay, well, the Haitian government is requesting the international troops from Kenya

to come occupy its country. Except, okay, yes, we just made this government in Jamaica and we insisted that a condition for joining the government was that you agree with this policy ahead of time. It's like absolutely crazy making. Meanwhile, the actual power in Haiti is our man, friend of the show, Jimmy Barbecue Charazier. Let's roll a little bit of barbecue here. Go ahead, Emily, describe what people are seeing here. So you're seeing barbecue. You're seeing a barbecue saying that it's important to tell the international community to give Haiti a chance because what is happening in Haiti now, and he's speaking in French, we Haitians have to decide who is going to lead the country.

So that's to the point Ryan just made. And what kind of model of government that we want, we are going to figure it out how to get Haiti out of the misery it is in now. If the international community, he continues, continues on the road you are on now, it will plunge Haiti into further chaos. And again, as soon as the assassination of Jovenel Moise happened, it was very clear that we would end up exactly where we're ending up with people, in fact, like barbecue, gangs basically control 80% of Haiti. That's the estimate. It's kind of impossible to get that estimate anyway, but that's the estimate from the UN and other groups. Right. And so here's

the interesting question. Is that still a gang? I wish we should interview our old libertarian buddy, Robbie Suave, about this. It's a constitute gang. What is a government except a gang that was successful in taking power and monopolizing violence? Because whoever is installed by the core group is going to have to negotiate with barbecue. There's no other question about it. And I don't know what you were in. I found this sort of U.S. fixation on barbecue to be in some ways like incredibly distasteful because it's almost, it's patronizing in a really gross way. Like, oh, what a mess Haiti is. It's led by a man named Barbecue.

Right. And on TikTok and elsewhere, you're seeing these claims that he's a cannibal, which are, you're like, is it 2024? And you're still calling like Haitian figures like cannibals? The US-backed Devaliers had plenty of, we backed the Duvaliers, had plenty of interest in voodoo and all of that.

I mean, it's not, I'm not talking about cannibalism specifically, but the things that people are now finding to be very amusing about Haiti, it's just, it is, it's gross, it's patronizing. Yeah, and hey, is barbecue a rough dude? He's a rough dude. But's just, it is, it's gross. It's patronizing. And hey, is barbecue a rough dude? He's a rough dude. But he gets, the name barbecue comes from the fact that his dad like sold barbecue chicken on the side of the road. Right. Like that's like, it's, he's not called barbecue because he barbecues people and eats them.

So Ryan, you asked Matt Miller questions just yesterday at the State Department briefing and pushed him on this question of Haiti. Yeah, let's watch that. Follow up on his point about the resignation of Ariel and react after Moyes assassination on re was plausibly linked to it via phone calls and others and was not in line to take power. But it was the US and the court group that kind of recognized him and pressured Claude Joseph's power. He was seen as illegitimate at the time, called a de facto prime minister. In retrospect, was it a mistake to have pushed Joseph aside or pushed anybody aside for Henri, given that Henri now, a couple of years later, is out after a

failed... So ultimately, that wasn't a decision for the United States. And what happens now is not a decision for the United States. But the U.S. and the core group made the decision by recognizing it. Our goal all along has been a transition to democracy and trying to achieve a stable security situation on the ground so that Haitian political leaders have the room to make the tough choices they need to make. But then why endorse a foreign intervention of troops from outside of Haiti to come in? Like in 2004, 2010, 2021, the State Department, the core group

got their way when it came to who would form the Haitian government. That's setting aside the occupations and invasions of the past. What makes you confident that this time it's going to work? So all the other times it did. So first of all, I'd say that the multinational security support mission will be there at the invitation of the Haitian government. That is a key prerequisite for their deployment. And it's what the guys just made that government in Jamaica. But it's what it's what the it's what the Kenyan government said in their statement. They have to have a government that has invited them with which they can collaborate. And it's why they're looking for the appointment of this presidential transition

council and ultimately a new prime minister and ultimately a new government. But when it comes to what just happened in Jamaica, again, this was a collaboration of CARICOM leaders, Haitian civil society, the United States, Canada, France, Mexico, Brazil, all of whom have an interest in seeing stability and all of whom have the same goal. That was actually kind of funny and in a really dark and twisted way where you're interrupting him to say you guys made that decision and where he says it was not the decision of the U.S. to recognize Ariel Henry or basically to back Henry. You were like, well, you recognized him. The core group recognized him. When he wasn't the prime minister. No, he was in this like the cloud.

You mentioned Claude Joseph. There's a huge power struggle that people's memory hold. Yeah. And then he's like, well, the Haitian, the troops are there at the request of the Haitian government, the Haitian government that we just made in a hotel room yesterday. Over Zoom in Jamaica. Afterwards, I asked him a question that I think will in a hotel room yesterday. Over Zoom in Jamaica, yeah. Afterwards, I asked him a question that I think will be important down the road. I said, is there any particular Haitian that the U.S. would not want to see come to power? And he said, no, that's, again, that's for the Haitian people.

And I have two people in mind, and let's talk about stuff you can't talk about on the normal news program. Sure. When I asked that question, one is Guy Philippe, who is a super controversial figure because he was involved in the 2004 coup. So this was a U.S. stooge who helped overthrow Aristide, but has since become something of a kind of revolutionary figure. And the U.S. locked him up from 2017 until just recently. He's now back in Haiti and is widely considered to be, as a politician, because he served in the Senate before the U.S. threw him in prison, for drug smuggling. And the way you know he's probably innocent is that they actually convicted him of drug smuggling. Like, if you're a real drug smuggler in Haiti, they're not going to touch you. Like that's just, that's, that's like how that works over there. Uh, and so he's

extremely popular, but the U S hates him. The other one though, barbecue. Yeah. Barbecue is the guy who's kind of running the show, um, at this point. And we call him, we call him a gang leader. We call him a criminal. We call him a cannibal. Right. And the cannibal thing is obviously absurd. Criminal? Sure. But like we said, what is a state? And states sometimes are formed through revolution. He calls himself, the actual name is the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies.

So that's an alliance of basically nine gangs that have gotten together and they've made him kind of their leader and their spokesperson. He basically had an alliance with Jovenel Moyes, who comes from outside of Port-au-Prince, had the rural support. Yeah, and Moyes' deal with the G9 was basically, as long as you are keeping the peace in your neighborhood, and there's peace and justice, then we're not going, like, then that's fine. Like, then you're basically the government in this area. Barbecue is known in his areas to have extremely low crime outside of barbecue crime. Some of the other gangs, not so much. Some of the other gangs take advantage of their situation, just the same way that police forces around the world, if they're corrupted,

take advantage of their position to extract bribes, kickbacks, use extortion, blackmail, use their monopoly on violence to, you know, to enrich themselves. No reason to think that a quote unquote legitimate police force that the U.S. installs with Kenyan troops is going to do any differently. Yeah, that's the joke. So to me, I think you should, I think you should actually do what Matt Miller is saying. Like, let the Haitian people work this out. And if that means that they get behind Guy Philippe and barbecue, why do we know so much better than them? If they need help with logistics, with financing, with credit, fine.

But troops? They don't need troops. They don't need international troops. It's not even just this idea that we know better. It's this idea that Haiti is like a playground for us to control the hemisphere, which is obviously not a new thing at all. I mean, it goes throughout time, throughout the Cold War in particular. But one of the people who's been saying exactly what barbecue is saying is someone that we had on the show. Biden appointed Daniel Foote as special envoy to Haiti right after the assassination of Jovenel Moise, which by the way, a man was just convicted of. He was an ex-DEA informant. The DEA claims he was not acting on behalf of the United States government. He and others identified themselves as DEA agents when they stormed Jovenel Moise's compound in all the way back during the assassination itself. Moise had the support of the United States, the backing of the United States.

People questioned whether that was, there were cracks in that foundation. He had sort of appointed Ariel Anri as his successor. Two days later, he was assassinated by people purporting to be DEA agents. That's how insane and twisted this story is. But Daniel Foote has been saying exactly what Barbecue is saying, that you need to let the people of Haiti determine who their next leader is and break the cycle of U.S. control. And you know what? I think this is one of the least covered stories. We can put the next element up on the screen. One of the main reasons, according to Foote, perhaps the chief reason, this is, he called it when he was in an interview with us here on this show, he said the straw that broke the camel's back for him when he resigned just two months after he was appointed to that post was that a huge priority of the Biden administration that he was representing in these

negotiations with Haiti was the ability to deport Haitian migrants back to Port-au-Prince. Even in that picture, if you're watching this, you see a Haitian migrant. That's a picture that I took in Matamoros. And the Haitian migrants there, every single one of them, they came from Argentina, Chile, Brazil. A lot of people know that by now. They do not. They all wanted to cross the border legally because the last thing that they wanted was to go back to Port-au-Prince. Most of them hadn't lived there since the earthquake in 2010. Some of them, you know, 2014, maybe the last five years. But the Biden administration, and this is from my perspective, I think Ryan and I disagree on this, but my perspective is that Joe Biden is too cowardly to actually make tough changes to our

asylum policy. So what he does instead are these Band-Aid policies that are just a patchwork that end up incentivizing the flow of people. Haitians, every single Haitian I talked to was an economic migrant. Doesn't mean their life was great in Chile or Argentina. They wanted a better life in the United States. They'll openly say that. That does not qualify you for asylum under a law for the most part. But you can get into the United States. You can get entry into the United States, make some money. Maybe you get kicked out in two years. I've talked to Haitians at a shelter in Texas. I saw their papers physically. Their hearings were two years down the road. It's just an absolute abject disaster. And once again, the Biden administration

sees Haiti as a pawn. One of the reasons, according to Daniel Foote, that they were continuing to back Henri as he was not calling for elections. That was a huge part of the reason to back Henri was we're going to get onto this on-ramp towards democracy. But even as Henri was not calling for elections, haven't been elections in Haiti since 2016, the last terms for people in their Senate expired last year. Through all of that, one of the reasons is that Ariel Henri, one of the top reasons, would accept migrant flights back to Port-au-Prince in the tens of thousands, tens of thousands. Brian, do you remember the stories, the horrible, heart-wrenching stories of Haitians trying to get

off the planes before they were in the air because they found out they were going to Port-au-Prince? That was the last thing they ever wanted. Yeah. And it reminded me of this 1994 famous Joe Biden quote where he said, if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn't matter a whole lot in terms of our interests. And so, yeah, Biden. I forgot that was a Biden quote. Yeah, that's a Joe Biden quote. Yeah. And it's just, yeah, Haiti is just once again a pawn on the great chessboard. It's not the Cold War anymore, but Haiti is a pawn on the chessboard. And the problem with this is it's, again, we were talking about doom spirals earlier in the show.

This is a doom spiral. And that's one of the things that Daniel Foote, he made this argument with us. He said that it's, quote, counterproductive. And it is because Port-au-Prince is in shambles right now. And you're going to send tens of thousands of people who desperately don't want to be there, who haven't lived there in years, back onto the streets. If you continue appointing your stooges to lead Haiti, you're going to continue into the cycle of despair. You're going to have more people leaving. You're going to have a completely destabilized region. Countries like Honduras and DR and other places are actually having their own border crossing issues with Haitian migrants right now because people are fleeing in desperation. So it's not even productive. It's not constructive in the long term for stability in the region.

But all that matters is the short-term goals of whoever is in power here in the United States. And Trump, by the way, backed Moise as well. And exactly what Foote warned about. We invited him onto the show today. He couldn't make it. He's actually going to be here tomorrow. I'm filling in for Crystal. So stick around tomorrow for the former envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, who resigned in protest. And he'll talk about his fired uptake on how things are unfolding now. Speaking of debacles, let's move on to the war in Ukraine. And we can put up this first element here.

Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a fascinating interview, which follows on his Tucker Carlson interview, where he strongly hinted that he was open to serious negotiations about bringing this war to an end. Now, in an interview that our friend of the show, Yegor Kotkin, says that the Kremlin is kind of blasting all over the world, which shows that this is not a gaffe. This was a very kind of calculated message that he is now sending out. He says, Russia is ready for peace negotiations with Ukraine based on the realities that have developed on the ground. And the latter part of that is clearly an indication that he's saying we're going to keep the territory that we have conquered, but we will reach an agreement, an enforceable agreement, that would end this war. The question for Ukraine would have to

be, is this the best deal that they can get? And can they get a better deal if the United, let's say the United States decides that we are going to actually send hundreds of billions of dollars more for this war effort. Is there a world in which with hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian lives and several years of time, Ukraine can conquer back territory that Russia has seized and then go to the negotiating table, having reconquered this territory? Because if that is a possibility, you're going to have people within the Ukrainian government who are going to say that, and the Ukrainian population say, we need to do this, you know, not one inch to the Russian invaders. But that's where we get to this new report in a

French investigative magazine called Marianne, which is not getting picked up here in the United States at all. But they obtained a cache of intelligence documents, basically, that include the French assessment of the Ukrainian capabilities. We can put up this article right here. People can go check it out. You can just click the English, you can just go ahead and click the English translate button and you can get the gist of it. But essentially what they're saying is some of what we already know, but they put it in starker terms that some here in the U.S. may realize are appropriate. First of all, it talks about the absolute depletion of manpower on the Ukrainian side, that Zelensky needs 30,000 conscripts a month. He's getting,

he's, he's getting less than half of that. Whereas Russia is able to pull in 30,000 volunteers every month. Russia is able to cycle in and out its, its reserves and its fresh recruits with its, with its veterans. Whereas Ukraine is relying oftentimes on entire units that have three weeks of training. They say that in the 2023 counteroffensive, that was debilitating for the Ukrainian troops, that they were up against much better trained and equipped troops. And also, defense is easier than offense. And it also says that the Russians have gotten insanely good at communications jamming. The Ukrainian reliance on drones then relies on communications. And if you can jam the

communications between the drone operator and the drone, uh, your, your drone is now just a flying rock at that point. One of the big questions I think going forward too, for people who want to continue the sort of neoconservative argument that this incentivizes Putin to just take back all of the former Soviet territory. If you concede one inch of the Donbass to Putin, he's next going to immediately invade, what, Finland. And then he's going to take Sweden and now is willing to sit down at the table and discuss these terms and ends up, let's just say hypothetically, some small amount of territory in the Donbass that was already, in many cases, contested, that was already a war zone in many cases. And he doesn't get to Kiev. That initial expedition that the Russian military took was stopped by Western forces, was halted by Ukraine. And then they get

into this long stalemate for more than two years. Is that really granting Putin a permission slip to conquer the rest of Europe? Is that really your argument as to why we can't sit down and negotiate right now? Because any negotiation would just give Putin license to take all of Ukraine and then take Poland and then take Finland. That's really your argument at this point. That's really the only good, the only possible logic that you can cling to as a reason not to negotiate. But it's stupid. Yeah. And let's say you're a diehard supporter of Ukraine and you believe that the invasion was fundamentally evil and needs to be rolled back. The question, though, is—

Which it was. It was fundamentally evil. But the question then becomes, what is the risk and what is the cost of not entering into negotiations at this point? And the risk is losing further territory. And so the Marianne report has an entire section underneath the risk of a Russian breakthrough is real. And they talk about how, you know, in mid-February, Ukraine abandoned the city of Avdiivka. We covered that here. That was a huge, you know, it was a huge collapse. But what they, but they zero in on kind of the how of that happened. One was that the kind of Russian advance had found innovative ways to target the Ukrainian positions and was able to break through despite them sending an elite brigade,

the 3rd Azov Air Assault Brigade, to kind of buttress their line. And the line collapsed. The line collapsed anyway. They write, the decision to retreat by the Ukrainian armed forces was a surprise. Its suddenness and lack of preparation, fearing that this choice was more endured than decided by the Ukrainian command, which was suggesting a possible onset of, quote, disarray. In other words, it's not obvious that the Ukrainian military command ordered a retreat so much as that the troops just said, we're out of here, and the Ukrainian command was then forced to accept that retreat. It goes on, the Ukrainian, and this is key, the Ukrainian armed forces have tactically shown that they do

not possess the human and material capabilities to hold a sector of the front that is subjected to the assailant's effort. The Ukrainian failure at Navdivka shows that despite the emergency deployment of an elite brigade, Kiev is not capable of locally restoring a sector of the front that collapses. So what does that mean? Like if the Ukrainians are not capable of holding a sector of a front that is specifically targeted by the Russians, that means a breakthrough is, is either imminent or possible. And that gives Putin serious leverage in negotiations. Because if you have shown that you cannot, even with your elite brigade, maintain your line, you're at risk of complete collapse. So Putin also in an interview with state media, since I mean, I guess it's ahead of the election is how it's being framed.

Like I'm on RT right now. After he jailed and killed Navalny. He has a subheading or RT has a subheading here that says Russia ready for nuclear war. The quote from Putin is for us, the Ukraine conflict is a matter of life and death. For them, it's a matter of improving their tactical position globally and in Europe. He said that Putin insisted that Russia is ready if the U.S. tries to, quote, play chicken. Moscow is prepared to use nuclear weapons and considers its arsenal, quote, more advanced than anyone else's. He also, I mean, he had some other comments about the war. Putin said, for example, that when Macron said the West should have, quote, no red lines

when it comes to Russia, Putin replied that is Western politicians fantasizing and riling themselves up. So when he says, and this is very clear, it should have been very clear since the beginning, for us, the Ukraine conflict is a matter of life and death. And for them, for the West, it's a matter of improving their tactical position globally and in Europe. He has more men available to him to fight this war than Ukraine does the Wall Street Journal report that Ukraine is essentially plucking War age men off the street not even not even actually war age men people that are considered older than you would consider War age right off the streets military age men off the streets because they can't locate men

They don't have enough people to fight the war. And there was, did you see the viral video of like 34 Ukrainians who were trying to sneak into Romania and they were caught at the border and the Ukrainian border guards are just like beating the hell out of them. And they're going to take them and then they're going to push them to the front, to the front lines where they're going to have to fight and get killed. And that's what it means to continue this war. Like you're at bayonet point marching people to a front that they are not willingly signing up to go and fight on. Well, and one thing that sort of the

neoconservative crowd or the foreign policy establishment has argued over the course of the last two years is that Boris Johnson wasn't scuttling any real talks or the foreign policy establishment has argued over the course of the last two years is that, Boris Johnson wasn't scuttling any real talks or the U.S. to what Israel had said wasn't scuttling any real talks because Putin had not been serious about actually negotiating on serious terms. That when Putin was saying he was ready to negotiate with the United States and with the West and with Zelensky, he wasn't actually serious about that. You know, whether or not that's a good excuse not to sit down with him is a different debate. But at this point, Ryan, I think it's hard to dismiss Putin's overtures here as unserious. Yeah. And also, I found this Marianne report from the Twitter account of Arnaud Bertrand, which I recommend everybody follow if you're not. He's on Twitter.

He's at R-N-A-U-D-B-E-R-T-R-A-N-D. He's often finding and then translating really interesting stuff from around the world. So I highly recommend that one. Again, let's read this Putin quote one more time. Russia is ready for peace negotiations with Ukraine based on the realities that have developed on the ground. Now, this has been a pretty dark show. So let's finish with something light and fun. Yeah. Andrew Tate, back in prison. Yes, light and fun, although I don't know that it actually is light and fun, Ryan,

because the allegations against Andrew Tate. Okay, yes, the allegations against him. Less light. Not fun, not light. The fact that he's locked up, fun. Well, the way he ended up getting locked up again. Yes, that is deeply fun. This story is, I was going to say unbelievable,

it's actually perfectly believable how this transpired just yesterday. We can put this first tear sheet up on the screen. This is from USA Today. I'm just going to read the top part of the USA Today report. Influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate were detained in Romania on a British arrest warrant and could be extradited later on. Multiple outlets reported the brothers were detained Monday evening. So, okay, this actually broke Monday evening for up to 24 hours while the Bucharest Court of Appeal decided whether or not to execute the warrants. That's according to the Tate spokesperson. Now, the court decided Tuesday then to grant the extradition request, but only

after Romanian legal precedents are finished, according to the AP, the court also ordered them to be released immediately. The two brothers, as many people remember, were indicted by Romanian officials in June of 2023 on charges of rape, human trafficking, and forming a criminal gang to exploit women. They were released from house arrest in August 2023 while awaiting a trial. Now, it's since been, I don't know if confirmed is, that might be too strong of a word, but the legal team for some of Andrew Tate's accusers have said that a live stream by one of Andrew Tate's influencer friends directly triggered, NBC News even confirmed this with the legal team, directly triggered his arrest. And let's just roll this clip. F3. We'll jump to F3 first. Yeah. So if you watch, well, actually even we can just put F2 up right now. Control room's choice.

Yeah, dealer's choice. Player's choice, whichever one you want. But we'll just start here with F2, and then we'll move to F3. Fortunately, I don't think many people in Romania understand, but in the West, in the countries that are owned by the Satanists, with a certain level of fame, you either put on a dress or you go to jail, and I'm happy to make my choice, which is jail every single time. My soul is not for sale, neither are my principles.

We are innocent men. We're very innocent men, And in time, everybody's going to see that. And we're very excited to finish this judicial process and get our name out there. So that was Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, rebutting the allegations in similar terms as they have for the last year or so after this whole situation transpired. But F3 that we've previewed, we've kept you in suspense long enough. F3 is what led to, according to actually the legal teams of his accusers, what led to Andrew Tate's arrest.

Let's roll this. Andrew had hit me up. He said, hey, I'm going to be leaving Romania soon and probably never coming back. If you want to come over and do a week of long streams and content before I leave, I think it'll be big. And it's never, it's, I'm sorry. He said, it's not, it's basically now or never. Um, so, you know, you know, and this is just, I told you guys this year, you know, it's a week of content, right? Um, and again, guys, it might be the last time we ever do this. So it's kind of like we got to take advantage of it now because, hey, bro, it's it's it's just it's basically like, yeah, it's like that.

So he was arrested on suspicion that he was about to flee Romania because, again, his friend said he was about to flee Romania. That is. Do you think do you think his friend's in trouble? Yeah, pro tip, I guess, you know, be a little bit more discreet about your getaway plan. I don't know. I mean, that's, so that was Aidan Ross, obviously a popular Andrew Tate ally, but yet you- Formerly popular and maybe formerly popular. But it does seem like incredibly, almost unbelievably stupid to read that on air. But it's also just I feel like part of the part of the gig is not scripting things. So you're popular because you're not scripting things. Right. You just you just aren't necessarily thinking things through like highly produced shows where you have your own mug. Yes, there you go. But, you know, not that we actually don't have any scripts on the show.

That's that's a little inside baseball. We don't. We do. I think people can probably tell that we don't have scripts. I think it's probably not a secret to anybody that we don't have scripts. But all that is to say, that's sort of the draw for Ross is that nothing is scripted. But, of course, when you're not scripting, you're thinking things out. Sometimes you do accidentally rat out your friends. I will not do that to you, Ryan. I appreciate that.

If you flee. If I'm ever fleeing Romania. The last time it seemed like Greta Thunberg's beef with him online had gotten him arrested. Turned out that maybe that wasn't totally true, although it was fun to believe. This one, though, does actually seem to be the reason he got pinched. Yeah, the law firm that's representing four British women, that's a civil suit, by the way. The law firm that's representing them is called McHugh Law, said that this is what they have information that this is, they believe this is what triggered the arrest. But they also said, though, it's a separate, these are new allegations, apparently. He's being arrested on charges or on new allegations, fleeing, suspicion of potentially

fleeing new allegations, fleeing Romania amid new allegations that could be criminal. Because again, those four women are waging a civil suit against Andrew Tate. So more to come on this story for sure. Maybe stay tuned to the influencer universe, the Andrew Tate influencer universe for any breaking updates about his whereabouts. Reminds me of that South Florida couple that they did the true crime series about where they were dentists. Did you follow this one? They killed the guy in Tallahassee who was their son-in-law over a custody dispute. And then on the phone, we're talking about, on a phone. We're like talking about fleeing to Vietnam Mm-hmm where there's no extradition and then the grandma got arrested like in line at the airport on her way to Vietnam

don't don't don't talk to your streamer friends or On a prison phone about your plans to flee the prison phone seems even somehow dumber than the influencer You just assume your influencer friends not gonna read your text on air, but that's also not a great assumption. And you're on the prison phone. It's like this call is being monitored. Yes. Cool. Anyway, so I'm going to Vietnam because I don't think they have extradition with the United States according to my Google search.

And then also use Tor for your Google search when you're searching does the United States have an extradition treaty with X country? Because that might get in trouble too. Yes. That's just generally, these are pro tips from Ryan Grimm, who apparently has never fled. Never fled the law. Well, not yet. Anyway. We don't need to get into that. All right. That does it for us on today's edition of CounterPoints. Ryan, you'll be back here with Sagar tomorrow for a bro show. Bro show tomorrow morning. BreakingPoints.com, remember, you can get your 25% off discount. That's been going on a while, but we can't tell you how long it's going to last,

so you better snap that sucker up. And we could probably preview here. We have some interesting stuff in the works. If you're a premium subscriber, you get all of CounterPoints right to your inbox. You don't just watch the clips. You've been kicking around this Friday show. Yeah. And if you go to bringingpoints.com,

become a subscriber there, that just encourages us to bring you more, including a Friday show. Yeah, so stay tuned for more information on that. Stay tuned for Ryan and Sagar back here with the Bro Show tomorrow. And we will be back with CounterPoints next Wednesday. Hope everyone has a great week.

All right. See you later. This is an iHeart Podcast.