Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/17/22: Ukraine Military Aid, Peace Talks, Economic Outlook, Trump's future, Media Warmongering, & An Exclusive Jon Stewart Interview!

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

Krystal and Saagar break down the military aid sent to Ukraine by the US, peace talks moving forward, federal reserve raising rates, Trump cutting off Mike Pence, cancellation of Russian athletes, warmongering in the media, oil companies causing high gas prices, the debate on daylight savings time, and Krystal and Saagar's Full interview with Jon Stewart!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Jon Stewart: https://www.theproblem.com/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So we'll break all of that down for you, of course. We also have the Fed making expected but also very significant moves. Big nonetheless. Finally kicking up the interest rates. We will see how the economy responds to all of that and signaling there is a lot more to come there. So we'll break all of that down for you. Trump not doing so well in terms of the primary challengers that he has backed in big high profile statewide Senate races.

We'll tell you about that. And also he's pretty much ruled out if he runs again, having Mike Pence on the ticket. That's big. Not a huge surprise, but still very significant. Definitely big deal there. We've got an update for you on some of the hysteria and anti-Russian mania that is sweeping the world with a top tennis player potentially being banned from Wimbledon if he doesn't outright denounce Putin. Of course, this is a standard that literally no one else is being held to when they live under oppressive regimes. Also, a wonderful video compilation for you of how the media pushes for war. But this is big, guys. We've been holding on to this for a minute. We had an exclusive interview with Jon Stewart.

It was a big deal. It was not really exclusive because he sat with us. It was exclusive to us. Okay, it was exciting for us. He sat down with us for half an hour. For half an hour. Which fulfilled some childhood dreams. Indeed. Yeah, this is a little bit, I mean, I have to admit,

it's a little bit of like a bucket list thing for me, for sure. We get into media, Ukraine coverage. We go back and forth with him on a number of things. So looking forward to sharing that with you guys that we recorded, what is it, like two weeks ago now that we recorded this? I think so, yeah. That's right. Anyway, we've got that, but we want to start with what is happening in Ukraine. There we go. Okay, so President Zelensky has addressed the U.S.

Congress yesterday. The most controversial part of it and what bears the most discussion is he played a video for the entire Congress where he asks explicitly for a no-fly zone. And after that video, during the no-fly zone, he tried to connect what's happening in Ukraine to our own American history, including 9-11 and Pearl Harbor. Let's take a listen. Remember Pearl Harbor. Terrible morning of December 7, 1941, when your sky was black from the planes attacking you. Just remember it.

Remember September the 11th. A terrible day in 2001, when evil tried to turn your cities, independent territories in battlefields, when innocent people were attacked from air. air Yes just like no one else expected it you could not stop it our country experience the same every day right now at this moment every night for three weeks now various Ukrainian cities, Odessa and Kharkiv, Chernihiv and Sumy, Zhytomyr and Lviv, Mariupol and Dnipro, Russia has turned the Ukrainian sky into a source of death for thousands of people. So obviously an emotive speech there, but look, you know, he's got to do what he needs to do for his country and we got to do what we need to do for our country. And look, connecting it to 9-11 and Pearl Harbor, where the United States was explicitly attacked, is just simply not the same situation as a different country that is getting attacked. And we can have as much sympathy and feel as terrible

for the Ukrainians as possible and try to do as much in order to support them. But at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we keep our forces out of this war, and not just our forces, but to stop a nuclear holocaust or nuclear Armageddon. You get to choose whichever one you pick. That being said, his speech has been the impetus for a massive bipartisan support of a ton of new weapons to Ukraine provided by the United States. Let's put this up there on the screen. We just greenlit $800 million more in military aid to Ukraine. This includes 800 anti-aircraft systems, including longer range, 9,000 anti-armor systems, 7,000 small arms, including machine guns, shotguns, grenade

launchers, 20 million rounds of ammunition, and drones. So this is a colossal amount of weapons that is now headed towards Ukraine, greenlit by the U.S. Congress and announced yesterday by Joe Biden. And it was actually announced and signed at the same time, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen, that Biden signed another $13.6 billion in emergency aid and humanitarian aid to Ukraine. So on the one hand, Crystal, there does not yet have any real bipartisan support for a no-fly zone. That does not mean that there aren't active members of Congress right now. A couple of different U.S. senators, a couple members of the House of Representatives who do are floating. Basically, we want to start World War III. But the secondary

of that is that we are now shipping billions of dollars of weapons to this country almost overnight. And that was supported with a massive bipartisan basis. Yeah, that's right. Now the skirmishes around whether to provide these fighter jets, I've seen some Democrats, including Ted Lieu, saying, hey, we should really be sending these fighter jets over a supposedly liberal member of Congress. There were a few other things that were significant about this speech. I mean, look, there's no doubt Zelensky and the Ukrainians have already won the hearts and minds of the American people in a really bipartisan fashion. We're going

to talk in the block about Trump. One of Trump's candidates has an ad, a negative ad being run against him that he's too sympathetic to Putin. Interesting. Yeah, that's fascinating. It is fascinating. So those are the politics that exist right now. In terms of the information wars, there is no doubt Zelensky has been extraordinarily effective. And also just the cause of the Ukrainians is an incredibly noble one that I think the American people have been really compelled by. So his very evocative language, they also showed a video reel of some of these cities before and what they're facing right now. You can't help but just, you know, your heart breaks for them. There's absolutely no doubt about it.

He also did, though, something that was, I think, very intelligent, which is he did, once again, repeat the request for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, asking them to close the skies. But he acknowledged the politics of this, that it's unlikely to happen, that it is a red line for the U.S. So he said, listen, if you can't do that, at least provide us with these surface-to-air missile systems so that we can shoot down and target Russian bombers on our own. That's a savvy move. And it is a savvy move. You know, it's still a really big ask. You know, it's an extraordinary thing for us to ultimately provide. And there we don't have all of the details of what is inside of this new aid package. But there are some indications that precisely the systems that

he's requesting are going to be provided by the Biden administration. So I think that, you know, that angle was likely very effective. One other thing that I'll say here that I thought was significant is he also sat for an interview with Lester Holt. And he said, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said effectively, like, I understand you're worried about starting World War III. What you don't realize is that World War III may already have started. And for the people that we hear, exactly, for the people that we hear that are very hawkish in the Congress, in the commentariat, in the foreign policy blob, that's the type of language that they use. They're using it constantly. They say, listen, you know, we're already in this conflict. No, we're not. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like, maybe that's where we're

headed. I certainly hope not. And we ought to be doing absolutely everything we possibly can to forestall that possibility. But again, I thought it was both a sh trying to save your people. Like, give us help. I totally get where he's coming from, but we have to understand his interest and our interest and the world's interests are not the same thing. And we also saw Ambassador Michael McFaul, who's turned into a real villain and moron in all of this, putting up a tweet that he ultimately deleted that was basically saying, like, why don't we just trust Zelensky and do whatever he wants us to do? No, his interests are not the same as our interests. We have to recognize that and we have to be able to evaluate this in a dispassionate way, even as this is the most emotional thing. Thinking about these babies and women and pregnant women being killed in maternity hospitals, of course it's extraordinarily emotional, but we have to think in a clear-headed and clear-eyed way. Yeah, this is the point, which is, look, if he's doing what he needs to do, when I say savvy,

I mean saying that's a smart way politically. I'm not saying I necessarily support greenlighting some of the most offensive weapons possible to Ukraine and then having the Russians basically say, well, you supplied them and you're killing our soldiers, and then next thing you know, they go ahead and bomb a U.S. convoy or something like that. I also would not put it out of the realm of possibility that a lot of this aid, as we've already seen in that Russian strike near the Polish border only 10 miles or so, that a lot of it could get bombed. And that's my question. Who's taking this aid? Is it our pilots? Are we just giving it to them?

Are they going to come and pick it up? These sound like minor logistical questions, but if we're going to have a bunch of guys driving into Ukraine with weapons, and we already know the Russians are bombing said convoys, it doesn't take much. Consider them legitimate targets. It doesn't take, and I already said

they consider them legitimate targets. It doesn't take much in order for things to climb up the escalation ladder. I want to address that World War III point too. If we were in World War III already, we would know it, okay? It's not happening. There's a reason that they want you to, they want to gaslight you into thinking that because then it authorizes all of the most offensive weapons and basically greenlights an entire war with Russia. I was particularly upset over the weekend, or sorry, over the last day, when the Polish government has been asking for a

humanitarian convoy, which would be armed. So an armed humanitarian convoy of aid into Ukraine. And I'm like, is nobody in Washington telling these people to shut up? Because you're a NATO country. Poland, if you go to war with Russia, you're not the one who is going to be launching the nukes. It's going to be us. And given Article 5, we have to defend you. It's a Senate ratified treaty. It's a tripwire. Nobody is telling the Czechs and the Poles and I forget who the other head of, I think it was Slovenia, the heads of state who traveled to Kiev. I'm like, what are you doing? If any of you people die, we're dead too. Yeah, thank God that all went okay. That was extremely dangerous. Look, it went fine, but it was an incredibly foolish move for them to do so.

Also, you know, there was some reporting because we were talking about that right as it was breaking. So we were just processing kind of like the headline there. There was some reporting after the fact that some of the other NATO members were not happy about that move. And there was a big split and divide over them doing that. I mean, it was brave, but also foolish and also kind of reeks of just like virtue signaling. Yeah, save your bravery if we actually get into a war. Don't start the war. If you're actually accomplishing something good, but they did like there's no sign that there was anything real ultimately accomplished here. Look, in terms of what Putin's endgame is, we still have really no idea exactly what he wants to accomplish. Is it, as we talked about before, they seem to be upping their strikes on these sort of industrial capacity. Are they going to say, hey, we demilitarize them now.

We're good to go. Putin is saying we don't actually want to occupy and like hold on to Ukraine. Of course, you can't trust any word of anything that these people say. And the concern over it escalating beyond Ukraine is very justified when you consider the rhetoric that he used in that speech before he goes into Ukraine, which was these very, you know, sort of broad empire style ambitions. However, we also have to say, remember, before this all kicked off, there was a long time of buildup of troops on the border. There were a lot of military indicators

that this was going to go beyond Ukraine before it actually happened. So we haven't seen that, you know, troops amassing on any other borders that would indicate that there's an intention to move beyond Ukraine. So all of that is a long way of saying that we are not in World War III and no one should be thinking that way. We still have to be thinking of taking every possible opportunity we can to provide an off ramp toamp to make sure that we are pursuing diplomacy, because that is the absolute best possible way for all of this to end. Yeah, 100%. The president spoke a little bit yesterday about these new weapons. Let's take a listen. So when the invasion began, they already had in their hands the kinds of weapons they needed to counter Russian advances. And once the war started, we immediately rushed $350 million

in additional aid to further address their needs. Hundreds of anti-air systems, thousands of anti-tank weapons, transport helicopters, armed patrol boats, and other high-mobility vehicles, radar systems that help track incoming artillery and unmanned drones, secure communications equipment and tactical gear, satellite imagery, and analysis capacity. And it's clearly helped Ukraine inflict dramatic losses on Russian forces. There you go. In terms of the president triumphantly announcing that, that's obviously going to announce a, or that's going to bring some pushback from Moscow. Let's go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen, which is funny

because at the same time, though, they're shipping 585 million in humanitarian assistance for the Yemenis, which is what, like one, what is it? I can't even do the math right now. I think one twentieth of the total aid package that's currently going towards Ukraine. We're not saying that the Ukrainians shouldn't get support, but it's always, of course, just interesting which groups of people get assistance, sympathy, and bipartisan support for a total pushback, and then which don't. And we'll be talking a lot more about the Saudis later on in this block. Yes, very true. Yemen is the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet. I saw some numbers about the media coverage of Yemen versus Ukraine. Now, I think Ukraine is justifiably covered a lot because it represents such an extraordinary

pivot point in terms of geopolitics. It's the West also. Yeah. I mean, there are broad geopolitical considerations here. And oh, by the way, the prospect of potential nuclear war. However, you know, the complete erasure of the Afghani people now that, you know, the media is over their panic attack over Biden's withdrawal and the complete invisibility of what's happening in Yemen, given the extraordinary extent of the humanitarian catastrophe there that, oh, by the way, we're complicit in is, it really is a crime and shows you, this is something we get into with Jon Stewart, actually, there's a little bit of a back and forth on all of this. But it shows you that the media always is most interested in displaying the humanity of people whose cause happens to

align with what the U.S. government wants and the U.S. government's foreign policy. That's not to take anything away from the Ukrainian cause or their suffering or their humanity. It's just to say we'd like to see that humanity displayed in a more consistent way all around the world. Absolutely. Let's get to the diplomatic section of this. So let's go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen, which is that while all of this call for a no-fly zone and arms is happening in English and in Washington, in Ukraine and in their relations with Russia, there's a little bit of a different tack. So Ukrainian President Zelensky says that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO. Instead, he calls for new formats of interactions with the West and security guarantees.

That obviously is a huge development, especially if you pair it with some significant progress in the peace talks. Let's put this next one up there, please, which is that Zelensky's talks with Russia, he says, are starting to, quote, sound more realistic. He adds this caveat. However, time is still needed for the decisions to be in Ukraine's interests. Our heroes give us the time defending Ukraine everywhere. Now, if you add in Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, there's some more. He says, quote, there is hope for reaching a compromise with Ukraine at the peace talks and says, quote, there are absolutely specific wordings that are close to being agreed, which is specifically on neutrality for Ukraine and security guarantees

for Russia. So we have brought you previously kind of if the best case scenario, here's how it would go. The Kremlin said that they're pursuing demilitarization. They could claim through their military campaign, we've demilitarized Ukraine. We have destroyed their defense industrial base. On the Ukrainian side, they have to recognize Crimea. They have to recognize the DNR, the LHR, those breakaway Eastern republics, and they have to guarantee in their constitution that they will never join NATO

or the European Union, any sort of, quote, Western bloc. However, as long as they get to keep their political leadership, that's not a terrible deal, given that it would completely take away all of the, it would take, you know, the Russian forces would withdraw, they get to keep their political regime, they get to keep defensive weapons. At the same time, can you really trust somebody who's bombing the hell out of your country and who's just invaded you? I don't know. It's tough, right? So it's easy for us to say here on this side of the Atlantic, oh, you should take that deal. But over there, obviously there's some bitter feelings. But from their speech, it's not a bad thing. And things are also ramping up in U.S.

contact with Russia, too. Yeah, so a few more details about what is being reported in the sort of draft peace deal here. First of all, I think it's important to say that there is no way of knowing that the Russians are actually negotiating in good faith. That's the massive caveat here. And in fact, Max Tadon, is that how you say his last name? Yes, Max. That's the massive caveat here. And in fact, Max Sedan, is that how you say his last name? He's been a wonderful follow during all of this and has done some of the best reporting, I think, on the potential outlines of a peace deal. And a Ukrainian source told him, listen, there's a likelihood this is trickery and illusion. They lie about everything, Crimea, the buildup of troops on the border and the hysteria over

the invasion. So that's the gigantic caveat that hangs over all of this. But we have to have some hope that a peace deal is potentially going to come together. Some of the other details here is that they say the 15-point draft would involve Kyiv renouncing its ambitions to join NATO. They seem to be ready to do that. That seems to be maybe kind of the lowest hanging fruit, and promising not to host foreign military bases or weaponry in exchange for protection from allies like the US, UK, and Turkey, according to people who are involved. However, the nature of Western guarantees for Ukrainian security and their acceptability to Moscow, that could prove to be a big obstacle to any deal, as could the status of the country's territory seized by Russia and its proxies in

2014. So those are the big sticking points. If Ukraine says, okay, we're going to, quote unquote, demilitarize, not have offensive capabilities, not host foreign bases on our soil, in exchange for that, we need some kind of a security guarantee from the West, from the U.S., from the U.K., from Turkey and others. What does that look like? What does that language look like? First of all, we, you know, have a vested interest in knowing what those sort of security guarantees look like. But that's also where you could have an issue with Moscow and then, of course, negotiating over those territories. So those are the sticking points. But the fact that you do have language on both sides indicating we're getting closer together and you no longer have the Russians talking about denazification, which was the thing that really was just this broad brush like anyone that we don't like that opposes us, we consider a Nazi and we want to get out of there. That also is a hopeful indication. Those are totally hopeful. And the reason why we should support this is, look, also if you're Ukraine, you need to show the world you did everything

possible in order to put an end to this thing. And if the Russians do break their word, and let's say they're using this as a guise in order to launch a full-scale military attack, then the sympathy of the world will only be even more so on your side, if that's some trickery that they're up to. It's clear that the U.S. is now taking more of a diplomatic role with Russia. The first U.S. diplomatic contact, let's put this up there on the screen, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan had a call with his counterpart on the Secretary of Russian National Security. Now look, in terms of the statement, you don't get very much out of it. The fact that the call took place at all, though, that's significant. That's a good thing. Have direct lines of communication. Talk to your adversaries. Talk what the sticking points are. We're not going to know

what the details are. But in the context of where the peace deal possibly could be going, it's all a good thing. Let's put this next one up there, which is that the Russians have released a 15-point tentative peace plan that would include a ceasefire and a Russian withdrawal. Now, to be clear, this is the Russian demands. What exactly is a part of this is, like we said, there's the Ukrainian constitutional commitments on NATO. There's also a guarantee of a semi-guarantee of the political leadership in Kiev. But the most significant demands are the ones that we have already put out. Now, the important thing is that the document exists.

Yes. Let me say one other thing about this in terms of the U.S. Ryan Grimm. So the lawmakers are very eager. We showed you the aid package that's been rushed together, the massive amount, I mean, truly extraordinary amount of weapons that we flooded the zone with in Ukraine. U.S. lawmakers are very keen on that part, and they like to talk about that part a lot. Ryan Grimm has been pressing Jen Psaki on, hey, Zelensky says, you know, give us these weapons, but the other part of his demand is help us more with the diplomacy.

Have you or will you empower him in those negotiations to be able to say to Russia, if you do X, Y, and Z, the U.S. and NATO will roll back their sanctions because that gives him a lot more ability and a lot more power in those negotiations. You know, if this is the massive stick that we've tried to use to batter Russia into submission here and get them to be reasonable in these talks, which is, you know, kind of a little bit of wishful thinking, but this is the giant stick that we've used. You have to be able to empower Zelensky to be able to say, hey, you do this, then we're going to, us and our allies are going to roll back these sanctions. The administration has not said

whether they're willing to do that. And Ryan Pressaki at press briefing, you know, on exactly that, and she really wouldn't answer. So, you know, it's just another, this is another sign of the time, sign of where the bipartisan consensus is. They're all for sending all kinds of weapons and offensive capability and supporting the Ukrainians with, you know, I mean, we've talked about some of the intelligence that's in the coordination, military coordination, which is quite extraordinary as well. But when it comes to the diplomatic front and how we actually build this off-ramp and hopefully resolve this conflict,

we get a lot less discussion. You have very few lawmakers pressing the administration on this. Of course, the media, and we'll get to the media later on, has nothing to say pushing them in the direction of diplomacy. It's always in the direction of escalation. It's always in the direction of more sanctions, more weapons, and all of that. So that's another thing to keep an eye on. To my mind, I think Ro Khanna is one of the only representatives who's really been talking about not just the military and the sanctions, but also, hey, we've got to empower the Ukrainians as much as possible in these diplomatic talks. Yeah, that's right. The ideal is that the way this works is that if the two of them,

the Ukrainians and the Russians, can agree on some sort of framework, then the great powers need to get involved. And it would be Ukraine, and it would be Russia, the European Union, the United States, Russia, and China. And if those three, obviously Russia included in there, if those groups can come together and agree on a rollback with the sanctions, it would look a lot like the ideal of the Iran deal. That's how we got with the P5 plus one deal was to negotiate and create the architecture, the great powers, both in economic might and military might, coordinate that towards a singular goal. That is a possible way this could get done. Look, this is all wishful thinking. All of this could be a ruse. And we've seen enough of these fall apart. I think I watched something like 20 ceasefires

not happen in Syria. So don't get your hopes up. They almost always fail. But a paper I remember reading in grad school, which used to give me hope, was the more attempts at a ceasefire, the more likely an eventual ceasefire is likely to happen. So that may sound like a tautology, but what it is is that the more attempts that you have at peace, even though they're extremely likely to fail, the more likely you actually are to have peace in the end. So trying to open lines of communication, which seem futile, frustrating, stupid, almost always break down. Yes, sometimes they do break down. You have to fight to the death, but it's actually pretty rare in the history of human conflict. So pursuit of peace in and of itself is a goal, which is not satisfying in the short term, but can pay off in the long run. Yeah. And there's two other reasons to be a little bit hopeful, which is,

you know, the very first talks that were held between the Russian side and Ukrainian side, relatively short, you know, a couple hours, and that was that. These have been going on now for days, and they've continued the lines of communication. So that's one thing. The other thing, which you found, Sagar, let's go ahead and put this tweet up on the screen, is, you know, you have some interesting rhetoric here from the Chinese. Yes. So the tweet, go ahead and put this last tweet up, A11. Right.

There couldn't be a more powerful sign of which way the wind is blowing in Ukraine. China meeting with Ukraine officials in Lviv. So the Chinese actually came to Lviv. And they said, we have seen how great the unity of the Ukrainian people is. That's per the Chinese ambassador is quoted as saying. So the fact that the Chinese are there, that they are showing some at least rhetorical solidarity with the Ukrainians is also, you know, an indication that hopefully some pressure is being put on Russia behind the scenes to make a deal in good faith. This is the Chinese version of there are fine people on good sides. On both sides.

Very fine people in Ukraine, in Russia. Good people. Sorry, I had to get that out of there. Very true. In terms of how Putin is talking, though, look, the hot language that continues towards the Russian people is very much there. He gave an address to the Russian people. We have a dub of that. Let's take a listen. So we have

exerted all ways to resolve the matter peacefully. The problem that occurred not by our fault, and in this regard, we were forced to launch this special military operation. The Russian troops near Kiev, near other Ukrainian city, has nothing to do with our intention to occupy the country. That's not our objective. So that's a very key. Occupation is not our objective. Could be a lie.

This could, you know, they could say they'll stay there forever for peacekeeping. We've seen that before on many sides in terms of people. But I think that even though he has the hot rhetoric and he called out the oligarchs and all that, he's still saying, look, occupation is not our end goal. So that could be a signal to an off-ramp to the Russian people. We're just trying to read tea leaves here, and obviously we want to be hopeful. But it seems crazy until it's not crazy, you have an actual yeah peace deal and we remain hopeful that the the language around the oligarchs was pretty interesting some real like sort of populist flamethrowing with regards to the oligarchs which i think you know is probably pretty popular with his domestic audience he he says he's focused on a certain type of traitor, those who, quote, earn money here in

Russia but live there, meaning in the West, who like foie gras and oysters. So, yeah. So he's trying to position himself as like, I'm the true champion of the people, and these rich people are leeching off of you, and they're anti-Russian and those sorts of things. The reality is it's a completely symbiotic relationship. And, you know, the other thing I'd say about the oligarchs is I of you and they're anti-Russian and those sorts of things. The reality is it's a completely symbiotic relationship. And, you know, the other thing I'd say about the oligarchs is I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for them to turn on Putin or have any sort of significant influence in ending this ultimately because, yeah, they don't like the Western sanctions. But thanks to our wonderful banking system, they, you know, even under sanctions have gotten richer and richer. So

their livelihoods are not threatened. And number two, their wealth is completely dependent on this guy. So without Putin, they don't have the property and the rights and the, you know, their ability to earn the massive ill-gotten, begotten fortunes that they have. Yeah. There was an interview on The Realignment with Nate Sibley. He's kind of a sanctions expert. He explained this really well, which is that the way that we conceive of the oligarchs as an independent power base in Russia, it doesn't really exist anymore. That was the case from the early 2000s up until 2014. But part of the reason that Putin purged the oligarchs and Western influence is because all of the immense pressure that he got on his regime from the oligarchs when he took over Crimea. They were like, hey, man, you're screwing with business. And at that time they were very popular. So since 2014

he's undergone a campaign to basically root out, imprison, and destroy their power of those oligarchs and make them totally dependent on him. So they don't really exist in the same independent power base that they did in like 2006, 2007. It's a totally different situation now. It's much more like a top-down autocracy than it is anything else. Just something to keep in mind for people out there. By the way, another thing to keep in mind is we helped create the system. And Matt Taibbi lays this out very well in the interview we did with him last week. Yeah, people should go and watch that interview.

It did really well. I was happy about that. Yeah, I mean, Matt's always really insightful on this stuff. Let's go ahead and move on to this next segment on Saudi Arabia. So this is very important. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Saudi Arabia considers accepting yuan instead of dollars for Chinese oil sales. So this is a massive piece of news, Crystal. Obviously, it calls into question the petrodollar and all sorts of things that talk about the bedrock of the U.S. financial system. But more important is that this is a very clear signal that the Saudi Arabia are, quote,

angry over U.S. lack of support for their intervention in the Yemeni civil war over the Biden administration's current attempt to strike a deal with Iran. And so that is why they have slapped Biden in the face by refusing to take his calls. They will take the calls of the Russian president and of Xi Jinping and they're like, oh, sure, yeah, we'll buy more oil. Now, China, remember, they buy 25% of Saudi Arabian oil exports. They are addicted to Saudi oil. And a huge part of the One Belt, One Road initiative is actually getting more Saudi oil or as much as they possibly can. Now, I found this fascinating because this is a clear signal that they are not afraid whatsoever of the Biden administration, which is pathetic, honestly. The

Biden administration continues to greenlight arms sales to this country. We allow ourselves to be humiliated on the world stage by having MBS refuse our president's phone call and their king refuses to talk to our president. They refuse to pump more oil despite our ass. And, you know, there's probably some active OPEC collusion on their part in order to keep oil prices as high here as possible to destabilize the Biden regime. And all of this, I would just say, is screw them. I mean, we have a tremendous amount of leverage, Crystal, on the Saudis. We built that country and guaranteed its security since the 1940s or whatever. And we sell them hundreds of billions

in arms. Right now, at this moment, they are begging us, hat in hand, please support our war in Yemen. We need more missiles. We need more whatever. We need your ISR. We need your support. How about this? Screw you.

Arm sales? Screw you. Pump more oil. If you don't start pumping more oil, the whole spigot is turned off. I was attacked by some Saudis for saying all this. They're like, oh, yeah, we'll go to China. Good luck. Use some Chinese weapons against those Yemenis.

See how it works out for you. Well, not to mention that, I mean, their entire military base is built off of American weaponry. So they need our parts and support. Yeah, what are you going to do? Interoperability. Well, you're going to start from scratch? Okay. Go ahead.

Good luck. Go ahead and do it. I literally, I would love to see it. I would love to see these idiots who have built their entire economy run by the West, both their firms, their expertise, their education. They all live here. Well, and not to mention, I mean, our support of the Saudis and Israelis are the two obvious, most glaring examples of our hypocrisy when it comes to human rights around the world. And so anytime we want to, you know, hold ourselves down as some beacon of democracy, you know, it's the democracies versus the authoritarians.

They can just say, oh, really? Talk to us about Saudi Arabia. They just mass executed 81 people. They beheaded them. Right. And a number of them Shia in a message. This is, you know, a very political message trying to derail the Iran deal. So this is an incredibly nefarious regime. They don't care about human rights. Obviously, they're willing to murder an American journalist in Jamal Khashoggi.

The Yemeni crisis is horrific, greatest humanitarian catastrophe on the planet. And so there's two things that are really significant about this. Number one is, as you lay out, just the disgusting nature, one-sided nature of our relationship with them, the way that we show total fealty and it's grotesque. And, of course, our continued dependence on their oil is what keeps us in the game with all of that. We talk about there was such obsession over Russian

election interference. I mean, this is the real election interference right now. And Ken Klippenstein's been doing the reporting on how they've basically intentionally been, even before this crisis, increasing the price of oil to put the screws to the Biden administration and create a difficult political landscape. The other piece of this is we've been tracking some of the potential downsides of us throwing our financial weight around with these massive sanctions against Russia, which you already had countries like Russia and China starting to build alternative financial architecture so that they can be effectively sanction exempt. And this, you know, the Saudis signaling they're

going to now do business, oil business in one is another sign of that. I just think that we should take all of this with the grain of salt, which is the Saudis are weak. They peg the Riyadh to the dollar. Oh yeah, you want to let the Riyadh float? Go ahead, be my guest. You know, doing the Riyadh yuan transaction, it's not as easy as it sounds. You know, doing the Riyadh-Yuan transaction, it's not as easy as it sounds. You know, removing their ability to basically backstop their entire economy, society, and military with Western aid, that would take decades. We have a tremendous amount of leverage upon these people whose regime we have guaranteed security now for literally decades. I mean, put that all together, if we wanted to and we had the stones, and literally decades. I mean, put that all together. If we wanted to and we had the stones, and this is where I blame Biden 100%.

I think the Saudis need to be absolutely smacked around and play as much hardball as possible. This is not a country which has anything but oil. And same in terms of their political leadership, their society. Everything is built upon the West. We have created it. And not to mention 15 out of 19 of their citizens, last time I checked, crashed into the World Trade Center and nothing ever happened. What we should have done in response to 9-11 was cut the ties here because, I mean, they have been incredibly malign in terms of spreading this extremist form

of Islam. Yeah, who's the number one exporter of terrorism? It's Saudi Arabia. Look at the amount of clerics that come out of there. They're an exporter of Wahhabism. I had the misfortune of living in a Wahhabi country. I don't wish it upon anybody else who is out there. I mean, just look at what they've done in Kosovo and elsewhere, the funding of these extremist mosques, even in Chechnya.

I mean, look, we should have nothing to do with these people save for the oil that comes out of their ground. And unfortunately, we beg to them like a dog. That's what's happening with the Biden administration. You know, oh, please, can we take a phone call? Enough. Congress can cut these arms sales off tomorrow. And I would love to see a member of Congress defend shipping the Saudis weapons

when they refuse to pump oil in order to help our consumers. We should put these people on the spot geopolitically, but there's no courage in Washington whatsoever. And I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear it about Trump either. I mean, he kissed their ass constantly while he was in power. Jared's over there begging for Saudi money in his investment fund. But I think that's the point, which is that the Saudis' entire future plan, you know, U.S. university funding, all that stuff, is built upon intertwinement with the West. Their sovereign wealth funds, they invest here. Uber, all these other companies. Okay, guess what? We have something called the Export Control Act. We can destroy you tomorrow. We can cut all your wealth off. All of the U.S. banks, the malls, and everything that

they own over here. Done. Tomorrow, your kids who are all hanging around in Georgetown with their Ferraris shipped off. You're done. Sorry. Been seized by the U.S. government. We could do this if we had the actual political will, but we don't. And instead, I just cannot, you know, watching the people who behead 81 people, who have crashed into our towers, just manipulate our oil markets and then laugh in Biden's face. It's humiliating. It's truly humiliating. It's disgraceful. It is absolutely disgraceful. There's another. All right, let's move on to this is really significant in terms of the economy is something we've been tracking for a while. Let's go and put the CNBC tear sheet up on the screen.

So the Federal Reserve yesterday officially approved their first interest rate hike in more than three years. There's expectations for at least six more ahead this year. Now, you can see, I'll keep this up for a second, you see the federal funds effective rate over there on the side, how much it has trended down. That since starts in 1980, that graph. And you can see there on the very end, that little tiny tick up from zero, that's where we are. Okay. So interest rates still by historical standards set by the Fed, extraordinarily low. But this is a major signal in terms of a change in their policy shift. And, of course, this is in response to the high inflation that we've been experiencing. Now, in their statement that they put out that everybody, like, really parses and reads a lot of,

what they basically argue is, listen, guys, the economy is strong enough. We've had strong employment growth to be able to handle these interest rate hikes. So we're moving ahead. Did that reassure the markets? Seemed to yesterday. A little bit. You know, yeah, there was some recovery of, you know, losses from previously. So seemed like in the short term, not a huge catastrophe. But the balance here, the outlook is very precarious. Let's put this next piece up on the screen. This is from a CNBC Fed survey.

You now have a third of the economists that they survey thinking that a recession is likely. That is up 10 points from February. A lot of things go into this. You've got one advisor saying we might be on the cusp of the Fed raising rates. At the same time, there's a minus sign in front of GDP. Of course, the war in Ukraine has increased the inflation forecast as well. So you have increased inflation forecasts. You have diminished expectations for growth. At the same time, you have the Fed raising rates. This all contributes to a really, really shaky outlook in terms of our economy.

And the other piece of this that we've also talked about is, you know, not only did the Fed lower rates back down to 0%, but they also engaged in a massive program of what is called quantitative easing, which is basically just backstopping the market. And they did this first, you know, extraordinary ways after the financial crash. Well, during the coronavirus crash, they did, they amped this up an insane amount. So really extraordinary lengths were taken to completely backstop the market in, you know, manners that they had never done before. So we also got a little bit of indication that they're going to start to roll that back and decrease their balance sheet and sell assets back. And that's the other thing that is a gigantic question mark of how quickly they unwind some of the quantitative easing that they've done. Yeah, this is very interesting because the ripple

effects throughout the economy, we just have no idea. It could spark a recession. It could change the housing market. It could change the amount of debt, which is flying all around. There's a ton of easy money if you're rich right now, even though there's obviously a consumer crunch with debt and all of that that's going on. Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen, which is raising it by 25 basis points, but also saying that balance sheet reduction will be beginning at a coming meeting. That's another one, right? Because the Federal Reserve has all kinds of sketchy stuff on its balance sheet from mortgage-backed securities and other things that

they've engaged in through quantitative easing. Unloading that could itself have an impact on the market. And then when we think about where exactly things are right now, it's just so difficult. We have wages, which are not keeping pace with inflation. And the Fed has a dual mandate. They have both to pursue full employment, but also to not have rapid inflation. So on one hand, we do have relatively good employment. Not terrible, but okay. On the other hand, we have 8% inflation. So this is a big problem. And also, the inflation that we have is not really a result of monetary policy. Most of it is through a massive demand hike given the end of COVID and these huge supply crunches all across the economy that are a result

of globalization, oil markets, Saudis, which we just talked about, all kinds of crazy stuff. And you put that together, and it's a very difficult situation. I've seen some predictions that stagflation could again happen because of this crazy kind of roiling within the markets, both on the monetary side, but also on the supply side. And let's go to the next one up there. Really what it is, is about the level of uncertainty in the financial system, which is most Fed officials here see as many as seven rate increases in 2022, Crystal. So we could have an interest rate, who knows what the interest rate could be at the end of this year. That would massively impact housing prices, like all kinds of stuff. And some people are even saying that it's possible they raise rates even more quickly because the war has added to

inflation expectations. And then, you know, you covered how China is now in a new lockdown. Now, on the one hand, their decreased demand for gas could help to lower gas prices, but obviously that's going to create massive supply chain issues once again. So very, very uncertain landscape here. And there is one way. So when we think about like food prices and gas prices, those are the things that we normally think about when it comes to inflation. But there is one way in which the Fed really did contribute to inflation, which is at the high end of asset prices. Because they effectively, I mean, this was a massive multi-trillion dollar, as David Dayen says, cannon shot at the markets, right? The wealthiest among us. They backstopped not only the stock market, but also the bond market. So this is

why you had these dueling headlines at the worst of the coronavirus crash, where it's like massive job loss, massive numbers of unemployment claims, and the market's hitting new record highs. The Fed's policy is why that was happening. And that was much more about their policy of quantitative easing and the really unprecedented links that they went to there and the type of things that they were buying and backstopping. That's what was creating those dynamics. So you have some economists who say, you know, we had a housing bubble in the financial that caused the financial crash that we're all familiar with. Now we kind of have an everything bubble in terms of asset classes.

And the Fed has to be very careful how they execute this policy because, yeah, you do have to deal with inflation, and that's very significant, but you can have these cascading effects where the bubbles pop, and then there's just a complete collapse. And while you may not have benefited much on the way up, if you're an ordinary person who's just struggling to make ends meet, you will certainly be hurt on the way down if these bubbles ultimately pop. Found that all that out in 2008 the hard way. That's exactly, that's why we cover it, you know, so in depth is because we know, you know, if a company can't borrow in order to make payroll, you're fired.

If they can't finance a new expansion or they have to pay more on their debt, you're fired. If you, you know, the value of your house collapses, the value of your house collapses through which you have a loan, you're done. You're going to get're done. You're going to get evicted. You're going to get foreclosed. I mean, these are real consequences that we have already seen. And the whole too big to fail thing, obviously, that didn't work out so well almost a decade more, more than a decade after the financial crisis. And now it's been

14 years. We're really due for some sort of crash. There's all sorts of wonky stuff that's happening within the economy. Everything is super expensive. But also, we have a decent labor market if you're working class. There's a disconnect there. Wealth, obviously, is flying around at a historic rate. So everything just feels completely crazy. And you just never know when the music stops. Yeah.

And when it does, it's not the rich people who suffer. It's you. Yes, that is exactly right. Let's go ahead and move on to Mr. Trump. He's making some interesting statements. Gotta keep tabs on this dude. Yeah, I mean, look, he's very likely to be our next president. So he's been given an interview with the Washington Examiner where

he made some interesting comments about Mike Pence. Let's put this up there on the screen. Trump is effectively ruling out tapping former Vice President Mike Pence as his running mate should he mount a third White House bid and win the Republican nomination. Quote, I don't think the people would accept it, Trump told the Washington Examiner. So what he says is that the friction from the 2020 election was just something he really can't get over. And more importantly, his people can't get over. He says, quote, Mike and I had a great relationship, except for the very important factor that took place at the end. We had a very good relationship. Quote,

I haven't spoken to him in a long time. So obviously Pence took a shot at Trump in his most recent speech. I think it was on the Federalist Society a couple of months ago where he defended what he did, obviously, during January 6th and recertifying the election results. It's not like he had any choice. He didn't have anything he could actually do, despite what Trump will tell you. But his unwillingness to stand with Trump in order to certify the election because Trump was convinced of some cockamamie scheme where perhaps he could kick it back to the states, none of which was reality. And it's so tiresome to even acknowledge so many of these things. Y'all really want to give Kamala Harris the power to decide who wins the next election?

What a nightmare. Yeah, she would declare herself queen for life. The point is that Trump is ruling out Pence as his next vice president, which opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities, which is who's he going to pick? One of the things I could see is that because he views DeSantis as a threat, he might put him on the spot by making him – try to make him become the vice president, DeSantis would find it very difficult to turn him down, especially if Trump called him out for not doing so, because Trump is obviously threatened by DeSantis. And being vice president, you have no power, and it's a great way to keep somebody under your thumb, kind of keep them out of the limelight, if you would like. It would be a tough spot for DeSantis to put himself in, but it also would make him make the heir apparent, right? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if Trump can handle like his, his ego is so fragile and he's so clearly like despises DeSantis. I have a hard time, even though that would be a savvy move,

I have a hard time imagining him actually doing it because he's so worried about having anyone around him steal his limelight that to elevate DeSantis like that, I don't know. There would have to be some extraordinary acts of, like, ritualistic humiliation in order for that to ultimately happen. I'm thinking of, remember when he invited Mitt Romney to that dinner? Yes. There's that famous photo and, like, made him, like, beg for the job and then didn't even give it to him. Something like that would have to happen where DeSantis totally, like, bends the knee and defers to him and is just this, you know, leashed puppy dog to Trump in order for that to be a possibility.

These are total speculations on my part, but I do know that the Republicans like to do cringe identity politics. They'll be like, see, we have a black vice president, or see, we have a woman vice president. Yeah, that's true. In that vein, I could see a Tim Scott very much so. You know, Tim Scott, ideologically kind of a free market guy, but he was a supporter of Trump whenever he was in the Senate. Also, the Trump people would love to have a black vice president for identity politics reasons.

You know, another person I think I could see getting picked is Elise Stefanik. You know, she turned herself into a true, like, Trump warrior. What about, where is Nikki Haley in the pecking order now? Didn't she say she said some stuff against Trump? Yeah, she trashed him in the Atlantic and then called him and was like, no, please, please take my call. And he was like, I'm not going to take your call. What a joke. She's never going to be president.

She's never going to be vice president. She's a loser. But the people who have kissed his ass the most are like at Elise Stefanik. He held a fundraiser for her at Mar-a-Lago very recently. And he said this very amount could be our next president, which is hilarious because she's actually quite liberal on a lot of social values. And so a lot of the social conservatives hate her, but it's not like Trump cares about ideology. That being said, he will have to shore up a little bit of his evangelical support base if he were to run again. So I don't know how that would shake out.

You know, there's that dude in Kentucky, too, whose name I'm blanking on. Oh, Daniel Cameron. Yeah, who's the AG of Kentucky. The Attorney General. I can see. He spoke at the RNC. He's kind of like a rising star. Anyway, I think that's an interesting thought because they are really into doing that, just like equally hollow identity politics on their side.

I could totally see it if that were to happen. In terms of his power within the GOP, kind of a fascinating turn of events that not a lot of people predicted, including me. I'm just going to put this up there on the screen, which is that Trump is not doing so well in terms of the GOP primaries. The former president endorsed candidates who are struggling to capitalize on his support. So, I don't know, Crystal, what did you make of these? Yeah, so the three, these are big primaries. Three Senate primaries in North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, where his candidates are not doing well at all. So Trump, you might recall in North Carolina, he endorsed Congressman Ted Budd. And he tried to cut this

deal to get this other dude, Mark Walker, out of the primary. Walker didn't listen to him. So he's still sort of bleeding support from Ted Budd. At this point, the date has passed. They're all going to be on the ballot for the primary. So that's a complicating situation. The latest poll that just came out has Budd in second place. This person, Pat McCrory, former governor, is at 35 percent. Budd's at 24 percent. And then Walker, the one he tried to get out, is at 17 percent. And then this is the race that I referenced earlier where Bud is getting hit

for being like a Putin apologist in new ad spending, which again is very interesting, the politics of that, that clearly it's not where a lot of the hardcore MAGA base thought the politics were ultimately going to go recently. So Bud had said something about Putin, like he's a very intelligent actor and there are strategic reasons why he would want to protect his Southern and Western flank. We understand that. So that's what he's getting hit on. So that's North Carolina where things are not going particularly well. And not only is Trump's candidate not winning, but Trump failed to use his influence to shape that race and get the candidates involved that he wanted to. The other one that we've

tracked very closely is in Georgia. Of course, you have Kemp, who's involved in the whole, you know, got on the wrong side of all the stop the steal stuff in Georgia. And you had Perdue challenging him. And I think this is the one where we both thought, like, oh, Kemp's been made into such a villain with the Republican base, Trump has been so vocal against him, you know, and Perdue is a known quantity, that this is very likely

to be the direction, but as of now, Kemp continues, you know, poll after poll to have a significant edge over Perdue. That's maybe the most noteworthy one. And then you have in Alabama, Mo Brooks. This is hilarious. Yeah, who Trump is apparently just like despondent about what he's doing. So here's the polling there. You have Brooks actually in third place in this primary. He trails Durant and Britt. They're both tied at the top at around 33 percent. And Trump's candidate, Brooks, is lagging down at 17 percent. And I guess what I think the real problem is that Brooks is losing. And so Trump milquetoast where, you know, he said that, like, voters should focus on moving forward rather than on 2020.

So he didn't even say, you know, that the election wasn't stolen. He just said, which, of course, it wasn't stolen. He just said, like, we should look at the future. So Trump is using that to say, like, I'm disappointed and he's even floating, potentially backing another primary candidate. That's what I was going to say. So there was a report last night that Trump is mulling, unendorsing Mo Brooks and endorsing Britt or Durant in the Alabama race just because he's trailing so far. But, look, his inability to shape these things is going to be – is a big problem for him in terms of his control. And if Brian Kemp in particular, if he wins, that's a, I mean, that's a sea change.

That's a massive win. Right. I mean, he was target number one of the Trump wing for refusing to whatever, uncertify the election results in Georgia. So with that, it would just be a massive blow to Trump's influence. And really, I think it would shake kind of the GOP power to its core. Don't take this too far, though. Trump is going to be the nominee, you know, for the GOP if he wants to. But in terms of his support for endorsement, this is something he takes a lot of pride in. If he were to have a blow to that, he's going to freak out. And the ramifications of that, they're going to be big. Yeah. Well, the other piece that's interesting here with all three of these races is, you know, Trump is really trying to make these primaries a

referendum on where you are and stop the steal. And the voters are just basically not having it. You know, I mean, that's again, exactly. That's exactly right. And so, you know, this is the danger of Republicans continuing to go with Trump and Republican elites continuing to go with Trump is this is the only thing he cares about. I mean, he's obsessed with the stop the steal nonsense insanity, even to the point of like, this is the litmus test issue for all of these people that he's backing in the primary. And if you like Mo Brooks say one thing that's a little bit off, then he might use that's a little bit off, then he might use that as a justification to pull his endorsement, even though I think what's really going on there, as we said, is that Mo Brooks is losing and Trump doesn't want to back

a loser, especially when he's backing a couple of other losers, it seems like. But that's what really comes through as the common theme with each of these candidates is he's created this one stupid litmus test issue that is, you know, the equivalent of, it's actually, it's way worse than the Democrats' obsession with January 6th, because at least January 6th actually happened. You know, Trump is obsessing and making his whole political legacy and his whole political program about what happened in the 2020 election. So it's a foolish direction. And I think that these potential losses for him in these significant races shows that it is not even really landing with the Republican base at this point, who, like you said, are concerned about the things that everybody's concerned about, war, peace, inflation, gas

prices, how do I pay my bills? And he has nothing to say about any of that. Yeah, well, we'll see how it works out for him. Yeah, indeed. All right, we have been tracking some of the Russophobia, McCarthyist, neo-McCarthyist sentiment that is sweeping not only our country, but the world. And this is really a disturbing example here. A couple of really disturbing examples that we wanted to track for you. Let's

go ahead and put this first tear sheet up on the screen. So this says that Medvedev, top tennis star, he's number one in the world right now, is told he will be banned from Wimbledon unless he denounces Putin directly. Russia and Belarus have already been thrown out of the Davis Cup and the Fed Cup, but individual players have thus far been free to continue. So the backstory here is that the UK sports minister, Nigel Huddleston, revealed, quote, discussions were taking place with the All England Club over preventing, quote, supporters of Vladimir Putin entering the sport's biggest tournament. Giving evidence to the Digital Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, this dude said, it needs to go beyond that, beyond the comments that Medvedev has already made.

We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Vladimir Putin. And we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines. So here's what Medvedev has already said and done. He already removed the Russian flag from his Instagram account following the invasion, and he also posted an impassioned call for peace in the world after he replaced Djokovic at the top of the men's rankings. And so, look, here's the thing. I mean, this is extraordinary. And I think the way that I was thinking of it is, you know, we covered the plight of Peng Shuai and being very concerned about her. Imagine forcing her to directly denounce Xi Jinping.

We can't do that. It's outrageous. If you live in a country where you have, you know, essentially authoritarianism and you know that dissidents are frequently jailed and punished for that. Yes, of course. It's completely unreasonable to demand these direct denunciations, especially, I mean, he's already said so much. So this is a truly insane situation. situation it's wrong on principle and it's also wrong because it's only being applied to this one group of people living under you know with this asshole putin um why don't you require every sports figure from every country with human rights abuses including our own to denounce you know let's

go down the list and denounce this and that human rights abuse it It's insane. If Medvedev was a, well, like had a Z on his jacket, pro-Russia, screw the West. I wouldn't, I still wouldn't support it, but I could see it. Yes. He's taking the Russian flag. He's taking his own country's flag. Yes. Out of his own bio. He called for peace. Called for peace. That is, look, the guy's got family. You know, this is something that we just don't understand in the West. They don't play over there. If you screw with the regime, they will jail you, your family. They can harass everybody. They can take your kids out of school. I mean, there's all kinds of ramifications. I was reading, this is longstanding Russian policy going back to the time of the czars, to the Stalin era, and all of that, which is that the number one way to keep

you in line is not to say you're going to suffer. It's your family's going to suffer. Who knows what they could do to this guy? If you fall out of favor, you can lose your post at the university. You can, you know, your kids could get taken out of school. You could be denied something.

I mean, you could be, you know, shipped off or whatever, some fake jail sentence or harassed and stopped by Russian authorities. You can't let this happen. Like exactly what you're saying with Peng Shuai. Okay, look, I support her right to speak out and not face harassment by the Chinese government. But I'm not going to demand that she continue to use her platform to speak out for it because she, or against the regime, she has family and we already saw what happened to her.

She had to participate in some weird hostage video where she's like, today is the date and I am fine and having dinner with my friends. Very normal conversation. I mean, these are not things that we want to see. The best that we could do is allow him to compete and at the time, if he competes and uses that as a call for peace, a call for peace in itself is already a very subversive thing against the Russian regime. There are actually other Russian athletes, Crystal, I checked, who are supporting the Russian government, wearing the Z, supporting the Russian military campaign. He is not one. There was a gymnast who at a medal ceremony had the Z on his uniform. He can do what he wants.

I think you're an asshole, but whatever. Yeah, I mean, I don't support him getting pulled either. Medvedev hasn't said anything supportive of Putin whatsoever. I mean, I listened to his comments that he made when this all first started. And he said, listen, I'm a tennis player. I travel around the world. I'm interested in peace. Like, that's what I care about.

So this is insane and is part of, obviously, a broader trend that we've been tracking here. And by the way, you know, this doesn't help win over the Russian people to your side if that's part of your goal. They feel that they are being judged for the sins of their leadership and collectively punished, and they are. They're not wrong to feel that way. So you don't think that Putin is going to use that to keep his people on his side? Of course he is. I mean, this really does harden the world into, us versus them dynamic when you are punishing people just indiscriminately who have nothing to do with this invasion or this war and are even actively speaking out against it. The other one that, you know, this really struck a nerve with me because I knew Ed Schultz at MSNBC. He was one of the people who put me on his show most often when I was first getting

started. There's a lot to say about Ed, but when he was at MSNBC, he was one of the only voices there really consistently talking about working people, consistently talking about unions on the ground, covering the union fights in Wisconsin and Ohio that were unfolding at that point. And, you know, so I do have some loyalty to the man because not only was he that lone voice at MSNBC and basically gets fired because of it, but also because when I was first getting started, he was one of the hosts that would, you know, routinely value my voice on his program. So after he leaves MSNBC, he goes to RT. And now they have found it necessary, after Ed Schultz has been dead now for quite a while, to posthumously label him as state propaganda. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen.

This is terrible. The journalist Ed Schultz posthumously has just been tagged as Russia state affiliated media. He passed away in 2018. He was with MSNBC before RT. Russophobia reaches beyond the grave. Ed Schultz is not Russian propaganda. He's not anything now because he's dead. What are you doing? This is completely insane and just speaks to the mass hysteria that goes after absolutely anything even a little bit associated with Russia. If it's a restaurant that has the word Russia in it, it's going to be targeted. If you're a pianist who is coming to do a concert in Canada, you're going to be banned

because you can't possibly have anyone who is from Russia even play the piano or play tennis. Complete insanity. It really pissed me off whenever I saw it. I sent it to as many people as I could because I was like, this man is dead. Leave him alone. Twitter feed gets retroactively labeled. Isn't that his family? Yeah, exactly, his family.

Ridiculous, come on. I don't know what the guy said when he was on Russian TV, but I grew up watching Ed Schultz as well. And I remember seeing him. He never did anything bad. And even if he did, let the dead, leave the dead be in this. But look, this is the craziness of the system that we're in right now. And look, this is dangerous. You know, this mindset and this kind of slow roll, even Putin yesterday said Russia is being canceled. So don't think that they're not going to use this for their own domestic purpose. I love the way he uses our language.

He knows what he's doing. Yeah, fake news. He speaks perfect English. Many people forget this. Putin is a long observer of the West. The people who hate us the most, they actually understand us better than we understand ourselves. Yeah, well, there are a lot of parallels between Russia. I mean, the Russian economy and our own.

Their rich get labeled as oligarchs, but ours aren't so much different here either. Another part of the landscape that we've been tracking is the fact that the media is like the most hawkish group in the entire country. And they only ever, and not just in this particular circumstance, but they only ever push in favor of more escalation and more war. We saw this really clearly with their coverage in Afghanistan. You know, they didn't give a shit about Afghan civilians for 20 years. And then the minute Biden actually tries to end the war, then for like two weeks, they actually care about Afghan civilians. And then once it's over, they again, once again, don't care.

And so what we see here is a consistent drumbeat. They're not pushing the administration over what Ryan Grimm is saying, hey, what are you doing to enable peace? What are you doing to push for diplomacy here? No, they're consistently pushing for more escalation, potentially provoking World War III. This is a video compilation put together by The Intercept of the questions that are being asked of the Biden administration routinely. Let's take a look at that. Why does the U.S. believe they know better what Ukraine needs than what Ukrainian officials are saying they need the most? It sounds like, you know, we're pretty dug in on our position when

it comes to the no-fly zone, when it comes to the MiGs, despite this growing bipartisan call in Congress to shift a little bit. To put it bluntly, is Zelensky wasting his time tomorrow asking for these things? The President is likely going to be speaking to Congress tomorrow. He's been pushing for fighter jets, a no-fly zone. You're going to hear some of those same requests tomorrow as well. Has the administration been thinking shift of the men at all? I don't see them calling for a no-fly zone. You're going to hear some of those same requests tomorrow as well. Has the administration thinking shift of the men at all? They're calling for a no-fly zone. They're a NATO member. They share a border with Russia. How do we view their calls for a no-fly zone? And on President

Trump's address tomorrow, of course, he is expected to ask for more assistance. As my colleague noted, a lot of the U.S. positions on that haven't changed, as you just said, when it comes to the no-fly zone. But on the aircraft specifically, the Pentagon said last week that Secretary Austin said they do not support the transfer of additional fighter aircraft at this time. Is that still the United States' position? Would a strike in Poland on supplies or anything really automatically be met with a military forceful response, which would be a conversation amongst allies about how to respond. There are reports that a Russian drone made its way into Polish airspace before going back to Ukraine and being shot down.

Does a drone into Poland count? Former ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Ivanovich, has been quite outspoken recently. And she said, you need to mitigate risk, but it's also true that not taking greater action comes with a risk as well, because Putin is a bully and he only understands strength. Is the president showing enough strength against Putin? If Putin were to use chemical weapons, would it change the president's thinking when it comes to these nigs taking the no-fly zone on the table? But at least on this issue, are you prepared? Can you give us any more details about what that threat means of severe consequences?

The president obviously made the same threat last week. Is that purely economic consequences or would there potentially be a military cut? Wow. So you see there just just consistent, every question. What about the no-fly zone? But what about the no-fly zone? But what about the MiGs? Tell me more about the MiGs.

And to the point that Saki actually just recently noted, she has answered that question about the planes, she says 167 times, to which Kristen Welker there says, well, here's the 168th. If you want to know why I had to get the hell out of that room, that's why. I remember just looking around and be like, oh, you guys are idiots. You don't know anything. I mean, you're very good at posturing on television. I guess that's a skill. That's it. I mean, they're unable to see a complete one dimension of the impact of their questions,

of their policy, how they can create the systems and the incentives of which the policymakers will then respond to. They are outright pushing for World War III. Why don't we send more weapons? Who are you to decide that you know better than Zelensky? We're not saying that we know better for them that in Ukraine, we know what's good for us. That's the job of the U.S. government. They have no conception of sovereignty. And over and over and over and over again, why not more? Why not more? You can see exactly there. What is the reward mechanism?

The more you give, the more praise that you get from the media. People will give you as much. And then you slow walk yourself into a third world war. That's the exact opposite of what we should want. There is no incentive. I used to ask this stuff all the time. When I was most attacked by the White House press corps is when I would press Trump on the possibility of peace with North Korea because I was most concerned about nuclear war. I'd be like, why don't you invite Kim Jong-un to the White House?

Do you view his recent outrage as good faith? These are not the way that you get notice in the press corps or you get clips. The way you get notice is, why are you not more forcefully denouncing the Kim regime? Listen, I think what's happening is terrible, but I want to avoid the nuclear exchange. The political rewards are always on the side of being hawkish, and this is why. I mean, the only time they like Trump is when he was bombing Syria. That's a good point. I mean, every time.

The beautiful site or whatever. Yeah, Brian Williams. Oh, my God. But, yeah, and people are like, this is when he became president. You know, that whole thing. I remember that. Yeah, the only political rewards are on the side of hawkishness. And this is how you end up with a landscape where overwhelmingly the American people are saying we have to do more, we have to do more, we have to do more, without recognizing how much we've already done, which is like extraordinary

and historically unprecedented. But because the media's constant drumbeat is you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough, of course that's the impression that's created. And this is where the three networks, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, are really basically indistinguishable. Totally uniparty. You know, this is complete the three networks, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, are really basically indistinguishable. Totally uniparty. You know, this is complete uniparty stuff, complete bipartisan consensus, always pushing in only one direction. And so you have to know, if you're the Biden administration or the Obama administration or the Trump administration, that you are going to take a tremendous political hit. Because, of course, the American public, when they see you getting attacked from all sides for not doing enough,

of course, that's going to have an impact on public opinion. We saw that very clearly with Afghanistan. I mean, that is when Biden's approval ratings really took a hit and have never recovered because you had such a consistent drumbeat from the press. And that's exactly what we're seeing here. You know, you've got a lot of legislators. exactly what we're seeing here. You've got a lot of legislators. You already see a shift now. You've got some Democrats now calling for, hey, we got to get these fighter jets to them as well. No Fly Zone still is mostly off the table. But this is how you end up putting a lot of pressure on the politicians who all want to posture as the ones who are backing the tough thing and doing the

most. So it's a dangerous situation when you have this landscape. Combine it with, remember that exclusive story that we brought you, the audio about the White House press corps and who gets to ask questions? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, well, do you notice where all those people are sitting, folks? In the front row. That's the mainstream media. And they get to rig the whole briefing. They get to decide how long it takes. They get to decide who gets asked the questions. The people in the back, people like yours truly who used to be there trying, scrambling to try and get a question, oh, you don't get a guaranteed question. And these people are the ones who might ask a dissident

question about diplomacy. The questions matter. The incentive matters. The White House knows all three of the people they call on the front row who work for the cable networks will be played on loop for millions of people. And that is, again, feeds into the incentive structure of what they want to say, of how they want to message it to the people. And then when they ask these questions and drumbeat for war, there is no reward for diplomacy. I'll bring it back for the people who are not watching this fully or non-premium people. What I was talking about in the A block and diplomacy block was this, which is that most attempts at peace fail. However, as many attempts as you can at peace happen, the more likely that peace eventually does occur. It takes a long time. And you can think of it as kind of a negative feedback loop. Calling for peace is really hard because, you know, you want to save face and all of that.

Diplomacy and negotiation is also very difficult. It almost always collapses. There's almost always incentives against it in order to keep fighting. But if you keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying, eventually you will come to an outcome. And peace is easy. Like the type of negotiated settlement that they would have to come to here, which would involve some really significant concessions from Ukraine. Like it's very easy to sort of posture against that and say, oh, you're giving Russia their way. So that creates all these disincentives for the Biden administration to help support that diplomatic process. And that was another thing we talked

about in the A Block is you hear this consistent U.S. lawmakers very happy to talk about the sanctions. We got to do more. Very happy to talk about the military weapons. But very little pressure, I mean, basically no pressure on the Biden administration to actually empower Zelensky in terms of the diplomatic negotiations to try to achieve some sort of deal here by empowering him to say, hey, if Russia actually comes to the table and actually does, you know, does their part and gives up a little bit too, that you are empowered to say, we're going to roll back the sanctions that have been imposed by the U.S. and NATO. I would love to see a question. What are the

red lines for negotiations of the United States and any negotiated settlement between Ukraine and them? Would you agree with President Zelensky's, you know, ditching of NATO membership? Is that something that the United States would support? Does the Biden administration stand in support of a negotiated settlement whatsoever? Yeah. Great questions, right? You're not going to hear a single one of them. No, there's never, never any pressure for peace. Yeah. Never happens. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, I'm looking at gas prices, and there is a very simple reason you are paying so much at the pump right now. It's greed and it's corruption.

You know it. I know it. And guess who else knows it? Bill Burr. Only thing I know is the gas prices are high. Which this is yet another time where I thought I would just wish regular people were organized. You know, it's like we told we made we made the gas prices go down to like two bucks a gallon, a dollar ninety a gallon in 2020 by all staying home and not driving.

Granted, the government told us to stay home. I ain't fucking staying home. I don't trust the government. They're bombing Iraq. That's great. Support the troops. Anyway, you know, we made it go down. So why don't we just all just like drive less?

If you're working somewhere and somebody lives kind of near you, why don't you commute? Fuck these gas companies, okay? They keep doing this shit where it was like, they didn't know the pandemic was coming, so they had all of this fuel and then we didn't use it. So the supply and demand thing. So then we start buying it again. And then what do they do? They stop producing it. And then they're like, oh, we don't have as much. They do it on purpose. They're greedy cunts. They pay all the politicians, the Republicans, the blue ties, the Obamas, the Trumps, the Bidens, the Clintons. They pay all of them. They pay all of them. You know, and so they don't do anything about it.

But we have, we have the power, man. Once you get the power, then you don't drive your car. Then you get the girl, right? We have the power to just make it go back down again. Just don't fucking drive. If you can, or whatever, commute with somebody else. All right? Do your part this week to fuck over the fucking oil companies

and drive less or commute or stay home one day when you were going to go out or ride your bike. Do something like that. Fuck these fucking greedy cunts who create a shortage on purpose so they can try to make up all the money they lost in 2020. It's fucking disgusting. Pretty simple, actually. So let me show you what the greed looks like here. Take a look at this.

Big oil is raking in record profits. And these numbers are from before Russia did their so-called military operation in Ukraine. Their shareholders got burned during COVID. And these are people who are used to winning big every single time. So as Bill Burr accurately assessed there, they are intentionally holding back on production so they can use these obscene prices to pay off their people while your people and you get screwed. Now let me show you what the corruption looks like. Millions of dollars in campaign contributions in this year alone. Three million to Democrats, nearly seven million to Republicans, in case you thought voting them into office might improve the situation.

And just take a look at who is at the top of the list for just this year in big oil money. Oh, that would be our friend Joe Manchin. Next up is the likely next Speaker of the House, Republican Kevin McCarthy. Overall, you've got six Democrats and 14 Republicans rounding up the top 20 most bought off industry shills. Congratulations to them and most of all to our entire nation. Now, it sucks that this is the case, but gas is an absolute necessity in American life. Our public transit

is crappy. Our working class has been pushed out of their community, so they have to commute long distances. Our lives, jobs, and economic well-being, they are all wrapped up in what the numbers on those signs posted on the side of the highway say. As I lay down on Tuesday, because gas is a vital public good, like vaccines or healthcare in general or public safety or education, we should really just nationalize the damn oil companies and run them for our benefit rather than for the benefit of a group of our own oligarchs. Now, I'm not holding my breath there, but at the very least, the politicians who are too cowardly to actually do anything about $5 gas, at the very least, they can level with us. They can be honest about what's going on. But since the truth is rather unflattering to their donors, it shouldn't surprise you that

many have concocted an elaborate web of lies instead of telling the truth. Let's start with the Republicans, who've never met public land they didn't want to despoil or oligarchs that they didn't want to enrich. They are leaning into their standard hippie-punching messaging. Gas prices are too high because Biden is a tree-hugger who loves windmills or something and won't drill. And also, what about the Keystone Pipeline? I'm sure socialism, CRT, and the woke mob are somehow also implicated. Now, personally, I would actually like it if Biden had made some real progress on moving away from fossil fuels and we never have to suffer at the hands of the Saudis and a bunch of villainous oligarchs again.

But he hasn't. On the contrary, under Biden, oil production has increased to more than the first year of the Trump presidency. The number of oil rigs has also increased. And thanks to a court decision blocking Biden's attempts to halt drilling on federal lands, the Biden administration recently held the largest auction of oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico ever, which is projected to produce 1 billion barrels in total. It will take years, of course, for these barrels to be extracted, refined, and put to market. But the point is, there was no sudden collapse in oil production because of socialism, AOC, and the Green New Deal. I wish Joe Biden was that guy, but he just ain't. And about the GOP's beloved Keystone Pipeline, even if Biden had never stopped work on it, it would still be in construction for

at least another year. The truth is, when it comes to drill, baby, drill, this administration is not a whole lot different from the last one. And how about the Democrats it comes to drill, baby, drill, this administration is not a whole lot different from the last one. And how about the Democrats? Well, yesterday, we brought, or rather Tuesday, we brought you Biden's new messaging on gas prices. Make no mistake, the current spike in gas prices is largely the fault of Vladimir Putin. It has nothing to do with the American Rescue Plan. Back to Wall Street. Wall Street estimated that the, and the San Francisco Federal Reserve said, analyzed it, said the Rescue Plan contributed only 0.3% to inflation. 0.3%.

That's coming from the Fed. Rescuing our economy didn't cause this problem, but we're working to fix it. Putinflation, I guess, is what we're going with here, because apparently the Democratic Party learned literally nothing from their failures during the years of Russiagate. The corporate wing of the party is right back to using Russia as a boogeyman to excuse their failures on everything. And here's the thing, guys, we aren't stupid. Just take a look at this. Gas prices have been climbing for a year. Russia invaded Ukraine like three weeks ago. Not to mention, no one made you ban Russian oil, something that was expressly off the table just a couple weeks ago and then was

quickly rushed through without even stopping for consideration. The messaging on this isn't hard, guys. Bill Burr just laid it out on a platter for you. Your own pollsters have been begging Biden to lean into a populist message on inflation, calling out the corporate monopolies, price gouging, and greed. It is a good mentality of the people who are wrecking the working class. You even tiptoed up to it in your State of the Union address, and people liked that speech. 55% approved of it. You even seemed to get a little bump in the polls from that, Biden. And now here we are, back to Putin the mastermind, controlling everything from our presidential

elections to the gas price in your local town. Because that's a lot more comfortable than actually standing up to the donor class and corporate power and the paid-off shills like Manchin and Sinema in your own ranks. And guess what? Those people deserve to be named and shamed. Because not only are they lying to you right now, they are propping up a rigged system that pumps big oil with subsidies, making it hard for renewables to compete. AOC gets a lot of credit for me for getting this one right. In a recent thread, she wrote, many folks run around claiming to be free market capitalists, but what they actually are is captured market capitalists using subsidies and restrictive policy to hold us hostage to fossil fuels, for-profit healthcare and housing, etc.,

that many wouldn't choose if they had the choice. If you think gas is expensive now, she continues, imagine if we actually had to pay the true price without the insane government subsidies and favoring granted to them. If fossil fuel companies didn't have such tip scales for them, it's very likely we'd be much further along with cheaper alternatives. Indeed. But as long as we're more likely to get the truth from comedians than the politicians who have real power, the more working class Americans will be left vulnerable to be preyed upon by our very own American oligarchs. And it just drives me crazy. Like, everyone is lying about what's going on. Trying to support their own team...

And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, Tiger, what are you looking at? Well, to preface this, I know there are more important things going on in the world. And to be honest, I wish the Congress had done something more useful, like banning a stock trading ban, passing a nuclear energy new deal, doing something to alleviate gas prices, you know, anything else. But they didn't do that. So instead, through an act of legislative trickery, the Congress has done something colossally stupid, bending to a very vocal but wrong majority of the American people.

So you see, while nobody was looking, the Senate, by something called unanimous consent, passed where nobody objects passing the Sunshine Protection Act. It was introduced by Senator Margot Rubio and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. The bill would end the current practice of clocks going back one hour to standard time every November and instead make our current time regimen permanent. The ostensible support of this is that Americans are tired of turning their clock back in the winter. Now, I guess if it's 1955, I would have more sympathy for that argument. But if people are being honest, most people don't change their clocks. You just look at your phone and that does it automatically. The actual impetus

behind this bill is that Florida Senator Marco Rubio wants to extend sunshine in the state of Florida in the winter months, not because of any rigged depression data that they claim, but because it would be better for Florida's tourism industry and thus the tax base of the entire state. I get that. I can empathize with it. The man is doing what he needs to be done for his people. But what about the rest of us? The good news is I already know the answer to that question. We have run this experiment before. Truly consider the consequences of permanent daylight savings time. If DST is made permanent, sunrise in December over Manhattan would be after 8 a.m.

In Michigan, it would be in some places after 9 a.m. That means that a massive portion of morning commute and, more importantly, school commute hours would occur in pitch black. Okay? Let's take a look at this. In the 1970s, a similar hasty move was made. Congress haphazardly made daylight savings term permanent. And guess what happened? Everybody hated it. As Josh Barrow points out, this New York Times article from the 1970s shows what hell that it would be in the Northeast and in the Midwest under this regime. Ironically enough, some of the first people to lose their lives as a result of this policy

were two Florida youngsters killed in January 1973 while walking to school in the pitch black. Shop owners described having to burn significantly more fuel oil and use more electricity to heat up their workplaces because sunrise was so late. Cities across the country had to spend tens of thousands of 1970s dollars to make sure that all their school signs were reflective. The city of Memphis had to clad its kids in reflective tape to make sure that they were not hit on their commute

so early in the morning. So why not just move the schools later, right? That's what everybody says. Well, they made that same argument in the 1970s. And the response was, people have jobs, and it's not like start times for work vary across seasons, and it would be hard on parents. Maybe if you're a white-collar worker, but not for working-class folks, especially on shift work. Within nine months of doing this idiotic policy before, Congress repealed the decision because people hated it so much. The

regime of darkness in the morning was dangerous for kids. It made people depressed to spend such long morning hours in the dark. And governors of the Northeast and Midwest states were the very first to beg for it to be over. Now, I know Russia is verboten these days, but they tried this too in 2012. Initial polling showed that it would be a success to adopt permanent summertime. And even in an autocratic country like Russia, Putin had to reverse course, saying that he heard the concerns of those in Siberia and in northern Russia and that they would bring back standard time. Everybody says that they would like it, but that's just because the grass is always greener on the other side. Advocates for this policy have invented all sorts of fake

arguments. Oh, but did you know it causes health benefits because people have a spike in heart attacks when the clocks jump forward? Well, yeah, that's technically true, but as sleep scientist Matthew Walker has said, when clocks gain an hour, there's also a drop in heart attacks, which is basically commiserate. So in other words, it's a wash. The real problem is you people need to get more sleep, which is another common argument in favor of permanent daylight savings time. Oh, but the clocks jumping around disrupts my sleep. Yes, that is true very much in the short term. But okay, for a day or two, right? But as legendary Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman has laid out in his podcast, backed up by expertise from the National Institute of Health, viewing early sunlight uninterrupted is vital to setting

your circadian clock and helping you get better and healthier sleep at night. Any limitation of early sunlight, which is what this would do, intentionally limit one of the most vital resources that exists in biology to all of you getting better sleep. Look, I get it. I don't work a 9-to-5 job anymore, obviously, so I don't have to suffer the indignity of getting out of work and it being pitch black. But I did it too for many years. The idea sounds nice to have a little bit more sun. But is it?

As Huberman points out, with this criticism was raised about whether there are health benefits then, to the evening sun. If you're not getting morning light, the afternoon sun exposure will actually just keep you awake longer and further disrupt your sleep cycle. The truth is simple. Additional daylight in the morning during winter is better for you from a health perspective. It keeps children safe on their commutes to school. It naturally sinks people's wake-up times to the sunrise. And look, does a 4.30 sunset in the winter suck? Yeah, it sucks. Don't get me wrong. It's one of the things I hate most about living on the East Coast. It's cold. It's dark. You got to drive or walk home. You got to walk your dog with nine layers of clothes on. You mutter hello to your neighbors and you're all clad in beanies and you can barely

recognize each other. It's cold. It's black outside. But that's simply the reality of living up here on the East Coast or in the Midwest. Accept it. We've chosen it. Enjoy your morning sunrise and join me in fighting back against this ill-considered and foolish legislation. Your kids' lives could actually depend on it. I feel very passionately about this. I can tell. Look, you know this too. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We mentioned this earlier, but we did have a big interview. We're very excited about it.

They actually reached out to us. Yeah, I was shocked. I couldn't believe it. Yeah, James came in like, John Sirup, he wants to come on. We thought he was literally joking. I thought he was joking. Yeah. So not only did he come on, we got to sit with him for 30 minutes. Let's go ahead and put up, we have his show. We've got a little screen we can put up. It's called The Problem with John Stewart. I've been watching it pretty regularly. There it is,

The Problem with John Stewart. He's got a new season that has just started, and I think it's really excellent. The format is different from The Daily Show. He kind of does like a Daily Show-type monologue at the beginning. In my opinion, his political commentary is a little bit sharper than it used to be, which I appreciate. More nuanced, too. He's had more time. Yeah, well, that's true, too. I mean, it's not daily, so you have time to really sit with each topic. And then he pulls in—then it gets very serious.

He pulls in experts and has a panel discussion. And he goes and does these very hard-hitting interviews with high-level people, you know, whether it's Janet Yellen or Jamie Dimon. I think he especially shines when it comes to the economic topic. So anyway, we had a chance to sit with Jon Stewart. We're going to play that interview for you now. And then on the other side, we're going to talk about some pieces that we wanted to get into but didn't have a chance. Let's take a look. All right, guys.

I can hardly believe I am saying these words, but joining us now, the former host of The Daily Show and the current host of The Problem with Jon Stewart, the one and only Jon Stewart. Welcome. Great to have you. Good to see you, sir.

Oh. Hold on. I'm about to make my entrance. There he is. Wow. A little bit older than I remember, but very dramatic. Yeah. So I really have genuinely been enjoying the show. We've actually talked about it here on Breaking Points a couple of times, but let's just start with, oh, of course, yeah, what was the sort of creative spark that led you to create this show and decide to come back into the media space at this time? I think it was that sense of having worked out in Washington, The Daily Show was kind of an exercise in catharsis, an exercise in sitting in your underwear,

yelling at the TV screen. And there was a certain impotent rage to it. But it also, for my creative mind, ran its course. I wasn't quite sure how to evolve it anymore. I wasn't quite sure what else to do with it. And I didn't want it to become a caricature or become rote. And you don't want to stay somewhere just because they're letting you. And you can see now, the other folks that had been on it have worked and evolved it into these different forms that have been really cool to see, you know, Oliver and Trevor and Sam and like

they've, they've moved it and made it their voice. And, and that's kind of, that's the creative process, but I couldn't, for me, uh, I just, I just needed to step away and kind of engage more in the real world. And so after having done that and seeing how the halls of power have a relationship with their constituents but it's not it's not one that is necessarily grounded in their needs or the necessities or their reality and so it stemmed from the idea of like why is that gap so difficult to bridge and it seems simple, to be honest with you, a lot of this stuff seems simple. So it was like, you know, the impetus of the show is just why not? You know, you'd have these constituencies with these very real and urgent issues. You'd have the stakeholders in those issues very articulately stating what their problem is or what the process is or the perversion of that process. And then you have people who have an ability to affect

change over that disconnected from it. So the idea for the show is sort of simple, which is set the map on where the kind of corruption or perversion is in whatever issue we're talking about. Let some of the stakeholders express how that corruption or perversion affects what they're trying to accomplish or affects their lives, and then try and talk to somebody who might have a sense of how you could overcome that, or is in a position where they could affect it. It's really interesting to see you in the new format. That's sort of long-winded.

No, no, it's fine. We're on the podcast. You don't have to worry about the commercial breaks or whatever. We got limitless time. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. What I enjoy is that while you were a source for me whenever you were on The Daily Show,

you would always famously say, like, I'm a comedian, I'm not delivering the news. But here, you've really embraced both the comedy aspect, the explainer aspect, and then the news-making interviews. So how has that kind of changed your, not even calculus, but like, the way that you guys come up

with the constructs of the show? Because to sit down with a Bob Iger or to sit down with a Jamie Dimon, to sit down with the people that you are and to push them in a way that, or the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, both, those are not necessarily things that might've happened in the previous era. And you've affected change. I mean, I think single-handedly are responsible for the word burn pits being uttered by the President of the United States in the State of the Union. How is that, how have you reflected on that in the current, in the State of the Union. How have you reflected on that in the context of the current show?

Well, I don't know. So part of it is Daily Show made its money on volume. You know, we were there. So, you know, we had to do four shows a week. So you're always there. So you would have those types of interviews, but you would also have, you know, the third lead on New Girl and also somebody who wrote a book about how they built the Pentagon. So it was this wide

variety of things where you'd have a, you know, someone was asking me, well, you know, there's an earnestness to the show. And how is that? And I feel like The Daily Show was very earnest. You may have thought it was cynical, but it wasn't. It was more pathetically earnest and idealistic. The only difference is we would have a correspondent deliver that earnestness with archness. They would approach it from the arch position and then I would say, that sounds crazy.

I would be the mirror to say to the person who is delivering an arch premise, but that sounds like it's backwards. So, you know, we had a lot of people on the show back when I was doing it that were newsmakers from Rumsfeld to Sibelius to Pelosi to all these people that were Judith Miller. But I think it got in volume, it's forgiving in one sentence in that when you fuck up a show or you're not doing it well, know you can come back and take another crack at it the next day but also everything blended together and kind of a stream of it there becomes a certain meaninglessness yeah to volume yeah because all it is is it just plays into the churn yeah no we totally get it i mean we experienced that i don't know if you know our trajectory at all, but we were, this show used to be at the Hill and it was five days a week and we've taken it independent and intentionally scaled it back to three days a week because yeah, you just get in the cycle where you're like, you realize you're talking about stories that you

don't actually really care about, that you don't actually really think are a great use of the audience's time. You're hosting guests that you're like, really think are a great use of the audience's time. You're hosting guests that you're like, this person's not really adding anything to the conversation. So for us, three days a week has been a good sweet spot in terms of being able to, we do a daily monologue, each of us think about, have a topic that we have time to get invested in. So I definitely hear that. I wanted to ask you, you've got a great new episode out on the media. We do a lot of media critique here as well. So I want to dig into that a little bit more. But one of my favorite episodes that you did was on the economy. And you took apart the sort of like moral panic over socialism and also really pointed out that, guess what, guys, we have a lot of socialism for the rich. It's only when it's, you know, to

benefit the working class that suddenly we have these moral panics. And it just struck me watching that episode that the critique and the commentary was, to my ears, a little bit sharper, a little bit more pointed than from the Daily Show era. And first of all, I wonder if you agree with that and if you feel like your politics have evolved or changed over the interim since you were, you know, last doing The Daily Show? I mean, I think my politics are relatively consistent. It's that, I mean, honestly, you could have lifted that, and I probably did, the socialism for corporations to pit directly from The Daily Show. Again, I think it's got to do with having a little bit

more time to craft something that can be a little bit more specific and a little bit more surgical. I think when you're, you know, comedy in general, and especially as I wielded it, is pretty reductive, just in general. It's, you know, comedy is a distillation of a variety of biases and prejudices into, you know, a kind of a catch-all bucket. And so I think for this, it was about trying to deconstruct the narrative of what is considered socialism. It's the idea that for a certain status quo population in America, an entitlement is just basically shit you don't need. And a stimulus is shit you need that you think is important. And so it's trying to make that point that if you look at the status quo, mainstream distillation of our economic policy,

we have this identity. The show always tries to exist in the difference between what the image of something is versus the room where that image is planned, the meeting where they design that image. Sometimes it's purposeful. Sometimes it's by happenstance. Sometimes it's malevolent. Sometimes it's just blind spots and ignorance. But it's looking at that. And it's pretty clear that the image of the United States as a beacon of free market capitalism, where the government doesn't choose winners and losers, and just this laissez-faire invisible hand creates the wealth. This is how God intended money to be made, is a fabrication and a fallacy. And I think the whole point of

the episode was to show that as specifically as we could and to show that it's all a manipulation. It's just a question of where the powers that be decide to put the emphasis in that moment. Yep. I think that's a really important point. You know, I remember thinking so much during the Trump era, whenever we had to react to some of the insanity, I was like, man, I wish Jon Stewart was around during Russiagate and Smart. So to get to watch this episode was like a cathartic experience because I remember thinking how important it would have been to have you around at that time. And I think the biggest problem, John, which you allude to,

is, look, you know, yeah, Fox is bad. I would have come to your house, by the way. Yeah, you just should have called me. I would have come to your house. You could have had me around. I wish. I could have sat on the couch with you and watched TV. My mom would have been thrilled, man.

But when I think about it, it's like, yeah, okay, Fox is bad. Right-wing media is bad. We agree, you know? But so many of the same characteristics, the intertwinement of the administration, talking points, building up narratives, and as you point to in your interview with Bob Iger, is it's not just that the media is covering fear,

it's that by their the media is covering fear. It's that by their ridiculous and selective coverage, they're influencing the trajectory of policy and of politics in this country is just as easily applied to so much of whatever the corporate, liberal media industrial complex, as much as it is on the right. John, why is it so difficult to get the people in that complex to understand it? Having come from a more conservative background, I can tell you a lot of people at Fox, they know what's up. They know what they're doing. But the people of The Washington Post and The New York Times, they truly believe they're doing the Lord's work, exposing all this,

and they don't even see their own role in so much of the system that they're helping to perpetuate. That's why I always found your coverage so valuable. It's just skewering of everybody, which I think is where the majority of the country is. They hate it all, all of it. Well, so one of the difficulties of the nihilism that you described is I think you have to understand it's about incentives and mechanisms, right? And the mechanism and incentivizing for right-wing conservative media is different from the mechanism and incentivizing for what you would consider mainstream or then, you know, left-wing media. So it's not about a pox on all your houses.

It's about criticism or examining each thing as its own separate entity, but being as clear-headed and smart about what you believe to be. It's about looking at things on a different polarity, whereas the mainstream media has set up kind of this dynamic of right versus left, because it's producible and it's a good source of conflict and it's reductive enough that you can repeat it. I mean, the one thing you guys know about making content is it's one thing to be able to make it. It's another thing to be able to make it all the time, every day, consistently. And that's their job. They're on the air 24 hours a day,

seven days a week, or you have talk radio, or you have all these other things that have to be producible. And so, producibility is an enormous foundational principle of the dynamic of right and left. What we're trying to do is look at it from a principle of corruption versus integrity or noise versus clarity. Don't always obviously achieve that, but that's the goal. So, you know, when you say something like the right-wing media, yeah, that's bad, but the left-wing media is bad too. It's not a question of them both being bad. It's a question of what is one trying to achieve? What's the incentive behind what they're trying to achieve? And how are they going about achieving it? And I do think there's a big difference between

what CNN does and what MSNBC does. And I think there's a big difference between what all of them do and what the right wing media sphere is much more directed and much more politically aligned and entwined. I mean, you saw that after January 6th. The text messages back and forth were between the president of the United States and his handlers and Hannity and Ingram and, you know, the right, the right wing's media is a much stronger arm of a political movement. That is true. CNN and MSN. Although I do want to say, I mean, CNN just got caught in a big scandal where the president of the network and his mistress stand accused of

helping Governor Cuomo at the height of his popularity, coordinating talking points, having him be interviewed directly by his brother in prime time. Jen Psaki is now being floated as a new host at either CNN or MSNBC. And Simone Sanders, who was comms director for the vice president, is at MSNBC. So I'm not sure that there's that much political detachment. Yeah. But there's revolving doors. And what I'm saying is the coordination. You can't have it on the left because the left is a much more fractious coalition. What I'm saying is their bias tends more towards sensationalism, right? And easy narrative. And it's not relentlessly focused on achieving political aims. They're just not. And if they are, they're really bad at it. And I would say

the example you have about Chris Cuomo and Andrew Cuomo is much more about protecting one of their own than it is about protecting a political movement. That it had a lot more to do with nepotism and the cozy relationship between those industries than it did about, you know, trying to advance Medicare for all. You know, the-wing media is about, and you've seen them have to flip now when you look at their coverage of Russia and Ukraine, right? So Russia is much more politically aligned with our political right.

They're defenders of, they're an Orthodox Christian state, defenders of Western value. So there was great kind of common purpose with our right-wing media. And then this guy goes like full Hitler and everybody's got to backtrack. But the fact remains that there is a lot of common cause

in their sort of politics. Does that make sense? So I'm not suggesting that left-wing media is the same as mainstream media, is the same as right-wing media. But what I'm saying is you have to be able to critique them for what they are and not put them all in the same pot. And it's not both sides-er-ism to do that. Yeah. And there's one, well, there was one piece of that that you pointed to there with regards to the Cuomo scandal that I think is correct, which is it was much more about, you know, Zucker was interested in getting the governor of New York, who was this big political star at the moment, sort of exclusive to his network. like casual back and forth with his brother where they're joking about swabbing each other's noses or talking about mom's spaghetti dinner or whatever. So there was a money and corruption and nepotism angle there ultimately. And that was one piece that I felt like was a little bit

left out of the episode that you did on the media. Because you talk a lot about the pressure for sensationalism, for ratings, you know, anchors getting the minutes by minute by minutes and seeing, okay, these stories, you know, climate change is unsexy, but, you know, Russiagate is very sexy. So we're going to lead with it every single night and the walls are closing in and all of that. But I do think part of the problem is that sort of coziness and that clubbishness where they're all in the same circle as the very people whose feet they're supposed to be holding to the fire. So that's how you end up with a situation like Governor Cuomo. And this wasn't just CNN. Everybody was lionizing this guy at the same time that there were real questions about the handling of nursing homes, about the corporate liability shield

that he was helping to usher through that was used as a model by Republicans. And all of that was ignored because they were all sort of in the same social circles. And it's uncomfortable to hold people that you know and consider as peers to account. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, you're dead on there. And I've said that to everybody who works here, and I said it to everybody at The Daily Show, which is when we all leave this show, look around this room because these will be your only remaining friends. You know, we don't we we we can't have we can't have colleagues. And, you know, that that cozy relationship and everybody depending on each other for their for their livelihoods in that revolving door,

is an enormous issue. And it's why the White House correspondence issue should be taken out in the back or sent to a farm upstate. The idea that because you can't do your job while protecting access and feelings. Yes. Ever. And I think it's an enormous problem. But I think beyond that problem, you have to look at the dynamics of how they're incentivized to

make their money. Look, there are people there that get bonuses for ratings, right, on the news. And so that naturally incentivizes it. Salaries are based on if you can drive a better demographic. So those are all the kinds of things that, and they're competing for a narrower and narrower audience. And I think if you drill down with almost any of them, they don't think that, look, I'll give you an example. The way that they're covering ukraine is bold it's brave it's immediate

a lot of times it's thoughtful a lot of times it's illuminating and it's heartbreaking, not just for what they're going through, but for having to be on the front lines of something so dangerous. But what it reminds you is there's a different model to do all this. What it does is point out the superficiality and the general tediousness and triteness of the majority of their coverage. Yes. Because it's not along the lines of, now let's bring on Van Jones and Rick Santorum to tell us how to put Ukraine into perspective. They're not using the right-left polarity. They're using right-wrong. They're not using the right-left polarity. They're using right-wrong. They're using corruption integrity. Now, it doesn't mean that some of it isn't manipulated and some of it isn't redundant and overdone. But what it shows is there's another way to do this

that's compelling, that is insightful, and within their grasp that they have the tools. And that's all we're asking for is cover it in a manner that is illuminating and not obfuscating. Because generally when you buy into the two-team paradigm there, and they do it differently, right and left and mainstream, you're buying into a false dichotomy and one that clouds the conversation and doesn't, you know. So when you look at that, it's hard to imagine, well, if you've got the capacity to do it this way, why aren't we doing everything this way?

I think a lot of it is just current system thinking. So old dad O'Brien actually pointed that in your episode. Whenever Crystal and I started our show, actually a lot of what you said resonated with me. Whenever you told the Comedy Central guys, you're like, let me do what I want. And if you're not, you can fire me. Everybody told us that covering the news in a class first in a nonpartisan way was not going to work. They're like, nobody cares. It doesn't matter. Good luck, all of this. You know, now it's what, number one or whatever in the news category on Spotify,

which is not connected to a corporate media organization. Now, no, everyone said we were idiots. Look at you, come on. Everyone said we were idiots. No big deal or whatever. Let's fucking go. Let's fucking go. No big deal.

But this is the point though, which is that nobody wants to take that leap of faith. Nobody wants to try. And within that framework, it's not going to happen at the most systematic level. But it's actually something I wanted to ask you, which is that you are one of those people who's not going to cut anybody's slack in an interview. Yet, you got Jamie Dimon to sit down with you. You got Bob Iger to sit down with you. You got Bob Iger to sit down with you. You got the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to sit down with you. What is the model then for people like us who are kind of coming up in your footsteps? Because we find this

problem, John. Politician wants to come on, but he wants to talk for five minutes and stick to whatever his bullshit bill is. It's like, no, that's not how it works here. And then they say, okay, I'll go to CNN. I'll go to MSNBC. I'll go talk to the New York Times. You actually successfully broke through that barrier. How do the people who are coming up do the same thing? Or is it even possible to have the same level of household ID or whatever that you have from coming up in legacy media in the 2000s and 1990s? Well, first of all, your goal can't be household ID. Well, it's not, to be clear.

It's to get the big interview, too, right? Well, but again, even that. What your goal should be is to get really good at diagnosing what are the corrupting or corroding influences in whatever story. It's about becoming a weatherman for bullshit, for figuring out how is this system incentivized for negative outcomes, or how is this system incentivized to keep the status quo in power at the expense of disenfranchised communities

or communities with less power. It's about power dynamics more than anything else. And it's about learning how those work and being able to diagnose them and being able to articulate them in a really clear way. And if you do that, and if you become really expert at that, and then you develop a constituency. And that constituency has value

to salespeople. And politicians are salespeople at heart. And if you have a constituency that they feel is an important one, or that they feel will have consequences for them in a negative way even, if it's shame or if it's uplift. If you develop that, then you can't be ignored. Because, I mean, that's the right-wing media model. You develop this constituency that can't be ignored. My point is develop it in a way that's honest and that is looking at systems not in a political way or a partisan way, but not being ignorant

that those are the dynamics which can affect change. But make your arguments urgently and smartly about the dynamics of situations and nuance and call out corrupted arguments wherever you find them. And that helps you build a constituency that's, what it is, is earning your editorial authority. And if you earn that, then you can use that to get access to do those things. But if your access is based on obsequiousness, or if your access is based on the care you will take for that person's, you know, fragile status quo world, like that's useless. It does no good. And you don't need the access. You can do your job, the jobs you guys do, you can do without access.

Certainly. We do it every day. Yeah. Unfortunately, half of it. Yeah. John, let me ask you this. What I'm talking about. Do you think that the cable news model is salvageable? Because, you know, I even think about the Ukraine war, which you said, like, you feel really good about the coverage and they're doing, you know, right versus wrong versus right versus left. But, you know, at the same time, the worst humanitarian crisis on the planet is happening in Yemen right now. They don't find that good for ratings. It's also inconvenient for their friends and politicians because Saudi is one of our allies versus Russia is one of our adversaries. Or you could look at the Afghan where there was a lot of focus when we were finally after 20 years withdrawing our troops.

And now that, you know, our freeze on the Afghan government's reserves is helping to spark a mass humanitarian crisis and famine, suddenly there's no coverage to be found. So given the fact that there is such sort of like selective coverage, all based on what's good for ratings, what's good for their friends and whatever political circles that, you know, they're frequenting, is it possible to change the cable news model to be more edifying without just creating an entirely alternative eco-media system? You just did it. You just did it. You just explained how to do it.

But don't you have to change the incentives? How do you change the incentives? Because right now, it's not about the individual people. You know, there's a certain type of person that thrives in cable news because they're willing to sort of accept the system as it is. But it's really not about the individual people. It's about this system that's ratings driven, that's access journalism driven, that's 24-hour news coverage driven.

So can you change that really fundamentally without sort of changing that structure altogether. So I guess I don't buy the premise that if you were to cover Yemen responsibly and give it the attention that it deserves or the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, that you would suffer, that your ratings would be the problem. Now, there may be fluctuations, but it's already an incredibly small, narrow group of people. And it's designed by Nielsen, which is from like the 40s and 50s. So it's a nonsense rating system to begin with. So to be judging important stories,

the larger problem for news organizations is they are really good at singular focus. So when you have an event that matches the magnitude of their news gathering firepower, that confluence works really well. But the truth is they should be able to cover all those things. You're dead on right about Afghanistan, The high dudgeon that everybody took about the mistakes that were made in those two weeks, you're like, where the fuck have you been? And maybe if we had covered it

with the kind of aggressiveness that it had deserved from the beginning, we wouldn't have been there for as long as we were, that we would have a different foreign policy that didn't rely on destroying countries and then being their social safety net for the next 15 to 20 years as we try and rebuild them

to the point where they're friendly enough to us that 19 people in a basement in Hamburg couldn't plan an attack. I mean, the whole thing is nonsensical from the get-go. But that being said, these companies make their money on carriage fees. Like, Fox News makes almost $2 billion a year, not just for ratings, but they make carriage fees. CNN makes carriage fees. MSNBC doesn't make the kind of carriage fees that they do.

So why do you think then, if it's not a ratings issue, why don't they cover what's going on in Ukraine, for example? Because I would submit and tell me if you think that I'm off base here. It's chauvinism, but it's, you know, this what's going on in Ukraine is OK for them to talk a lot about because not only is it good for ratings, but it's also Russia is one of our adversaries. So we're not going against one of our allies. But in Afghanistan, you know, now it's the Taliban in charge. And so we can't be, you know, seem to be nice to them. And with regards to Yemen, Saudi is one of our big allies. They have a lot of, you know, money in this town and all over the country and a lot of ties to political leaders here. So it seems to me that that's a part of how they choose what to cover and what to go all in on.

No question. No question. I mean, it's, you know, the Saudis are considered an ally. I mean, it's very hard to think of that regime as anything other than murderous, especially after Khashoggi and those kinds of things. It's a repressive regime, certainly. But I think the other thing that we have to talk about is what the people of Ukraine look like. They look like us. And Muslims are scary.

And that world is primitive. And Africa is primitive. And that world is primitive. And Africa is primitive. And those worlds, I mean, they've said it, Trevor did an unbelievable bit on this, which was, you know, a lot of news reporters going, you don't expect to see this

kind of destruction in this part of the world. They're civilized. They're blonde-haired and blue-eyed. How could this be? They watch Netflix. Exactly. So I think you're dealing with a lot of, look,

biases and prejudice are rife in everything. The question is getting us to overcome the blind spots, getting us to, you us to not have that. And I've sort of described it all the time as an eight-year-old playing soccer. There's a ball and everybody runs to it and no one else is on the field. Like hold your positions in other places

to give people a better perspective on everything that's going on in the world. And it's not like it can't be done. It can be done. And I think it can be done to profitability. Now, will it be the billion dollars that CNN makes off their carriage fees and things? I don't know, but it'll be fucking profitable.

And if you get the right people involved to it, it'll be dynamic. And it's about telling stories and telling them well. Yeah. Yeah, well, we agree with you. And people are hungry for, you know, real sort of unvarnished, as you put it, uncorrupted, you know, attempts to sort through what is a complicated and nuanced world. So thank you, John, for your time again.

Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. I was just going to say one more thing. Yeah. Please. When you talk about that, the thing that people always wonder is that doesn't mean it's not visceral. Exactly. Or emotional.

Right. Yes, it doesn't. It's not some hokey, like, let's all come together. Yeah. It's just. That's right. You know, one of the things that inspired us from The Daily Show that we tried to bring into this show is your willingness to, you know, to just look at the landscape and point out the absurdities wherever they were. And the other thing that we really have tried to embrace here is engagement. That's probably the most controversial part of our show, to be honest with you. So thank you for that model.

Guys, watch the show is The Problem with Jon Stewart. We've got a nice little graphic we can put up there on the screen. It really is worth your... I like the graphic. I've gotten a lot out of the show. I think the new model has a lot to recommend it. So thank you for your time today.

We're grateful. Thanks, Jon. It was a great honor. And everybody go subscribe to Jon's podcast. Thanks, man. Oh, thank you. Keep up grateful. Thanks, Jon. It was a great honor, and everybody go subscribe to Jon's podcast. Thanks, man. Oh, thank you. Keep up the great work, guys. Thank you, sir. Doing our best. Thanks, Jon.

So there you have it, the one and only Jon Stewart. Clearly we had some disagreements with him, and there were actually more disagreements that we had with him that there just wasn't, like, time and space to get into. Yeah, we didn't have enough time. He was on a very tight schedule. Yeah, but, you know, one of the things I would love to spend 30 minutes with him just on the Ukraine war coverage. Right. Because I kind of didn't want to go all in on like debating

whether they've done a good job or not. And so we focus more on just like, well, why do they cover this one so much and not these other things, which I think is an important piece. But, you know, I'd love to talk to him about what he thinks of the clip we played here today of the media only pressing the Biden administration in the direction of war, in the direction of escalation, the way that, you know, the American people have been very poorly informed about what a no-fly zone would ultimately mean, which is reflected in polling that shows that if you just say, hey, no-fly zone would ultimately mean, which is reflected in polling that shows that if you just say, hey, no-fly zone, people are like, yes, let's do it. And when you're like, if it means World War III, they're like, no, let's definitely not do that. So those were some

areas I would love to also get into with him. Yeah, I think, you know, the one problem I had with what he was saying is he's still not willing to really stick it to the mainstream, if that makes sense. I almost feel like his, because I was talking about the party apparatus, and he wasn't quite willing to compare the total integration of the Democratic Party or elite liberalism particularly with MSNBC in the way that he is with Fox. Like he seemed – I think – and I say this with respect, but that is a 2000s view of the world. Like I think that that is a view of the world through which the Iraq War happened and of which his most formative year. So I get it. I get where he's coming from. But I just think things have changed dramatically in that fusion.

Because I thought about this for a long time after the interview because he was basically like, it's qualitatively different. Fox News is an organ of the Republican Party in a way that MSNBC and CNN aren't of the Democratic Party. Now, first of all, as we pointed out, you clearly have a lot of very similar interconnectedness. This is something we've covered on our show. There's the Cuomos, and we're learning more and more about how directly they were involved with him and indirectly pushing back against. Right. Simone Sanders. You've got Jen Psaki. So you have those overlaps.

But I did think about it. I think there is a little bit of a distinction there in terms of Fox News really was built to be a sort of like Republican Party booster. And it is very direct. Like they have direct partisan aims. CNN and MSNBC, first they were just billed as like money-making ventures. Well, CNN, to be fair,

had a cool vision in the beginning. MSNBC fell into this liberal framework because that was what sold, right? Keith Olbermann was successful. Other things, everything else that they were doing was basically failing. So they're like, oh, this is our thing. But I don't think it's fair to say they don't have ideological aims. Their original goals aren't directly like,

we're here to support the Democratic Party, even though that ends up being effectively what they do. Yes. But they have very much an ideological mission, which is this particular liberal view of the world that they think is just the world. They don't really see the ideology of it, even though if you're us standing on the outside, like it's very clearly an ideological agenda. And I was trying to point that out to him. I don't think it was becoming clear.

Like I said, I think some of this is just colored by living, and I get it, like having scarred and all of that. But the world changed a lot in the last, you know, even five, six years or whatever since the Daily Show has gone off. And I found that to be probably the biggest point of contention and disagreement that I think that we had with him

around like how the operating systems of those networks exactly work about there was just I feel like uh more graciousness towards them than they frankly deserve well and here's the thing is like you know his solution was basically like well they could just do better you know just like putting it on the individuals basically like, well, they could just do better. You know, just like putting it on the individuals, basically like, no, they could just do better. Like the ratings incentives don't have to push them in this direction. It's really just about them making better choices. And I just, that I fundamentally disagree with. I agree. I mean, there's no way you, of course, the individuals in that system have agency, which is why we're tough on some of the individuals in the system. They choose to be there.

They choose to cover it the way they do. They choose to cherry pick. They choose to propagandize. They choose to lie at times. Like, all of those things are true. But it's also true that if you don't do those things, you're going to get chewed up and spit out by the system that exists right now. The incentives in cable news and the structure of cable news is what it is. There's no rescuing it by having like, well, if we just got better people in and they made better choices.

No, because the whole reason that this group of people is there and being propped up and elevated is because they play well with the system as it exists. So as long as this is the landscape driven by corporate ad money, ratings driven, infotainment, broken into these little atomized chunks where you can never have any sort of nuanced and thoughtful discussion, dependent on access for your career prospects. Access is the key. Yeah. The number one thing.

And also the clubbiness that exists now between journalists and the people that they're covering, the fact that these are their friends and this is their social circle. Like until you change that, you are never, you could change all of the people that are in the current system and you would just come out with an almost identical product. They're all interchangeable. Oh, 100%. And I think that actually that's the one area that I did agree a lot with him, where he was like, you have to accept that you can't have colleagues. This was hard to accept in the beginning.

Yeah. We were like, man, we're pissing a lot of people off. It feels like you pissed this guy off. My phone rings and you pissed this person off. But the more the audience showed up, I was like, it's worth it. It's worth to burn these bridges that you spend years creating in order to show people how it all works. And it doesn't make a lot of people in this town happy.

It can make you a pariah. I mean, it can make you ignored, which is what we've effectively become. Even as the show gets bigger, it's inverse to its success in the circles of power, if that makes sense. And he understood that. He told his writers, he's like,

you can't have friends. You will not have colleagues. It's just us. It's us against all of them. That's very much a mentality that I found and accept from him. Another area that I was trying to probe him on was, how do you get these interviews? Because the biggest problem that we have is that, yeah, some people want to come on, but then they want to talk about this. They want to talk about their BS bill. Senator only has five minutes. Screw you. I don't care. You know, I'm not CNN here. I don't need you necessarily.

You need my access to the audience. So then it becomes a matter of how do you establish so much credibility as he does that people feel like they have to sit down. Right. And that's kind of where we're at right now. I also wonder because, for example, and you brought this up in the interview, he interviews VA Secretary Dennis McDuff. Right, right. Very uncomfortable interview. Oh, man. I mean, John...

Yeah, the guy was like, I don't care what you think. John is very, like, nice in these interviews. Yeah. But he also does not let people off the hook. And you saw that

with Dennis McDunn. You saw it with Janet Yellen. You saw it with Jamie Dimon. I mean, he really comes in very prepared. This is, again, the advantage of doing a show that's periodic, that you don't have to perform on a daily basis

so he can spend the time to really research and dig in on these topics and prepare well for these high-level interviews. And I also think, with the show still being relatively new, like, Dennis McDonough had no idea that this was what he was getting into I think you're right when Jon Stewart

asked for an interview this guy's a comedian he sees him as being like oh he's like on our team he used to crap all over Fox yeah like

this is one of our people right I wonder if he's going to continue to have that kind of access as more of these

interviews are done and these high level officials realize that this is not going to be a cakewalk to have that kind of access as more of these interviews are done and these high-level officials realize that this is not going to be a cakewalk. You are going to be held to account and you are going to have your feet held to the fire because I think he has really delivered. That's been one of the most impactful parts of this show

is these interviews that he's done and he's really good at it. And you can tell that what he told us about you can't have friends and you can't go in caring about whether this person will ever speak to you again. You can see in the interviews that he really actually follows that policy because he doesn't, again, it's not ugly. It's not like, you know, yelling at people just for the sake of like yelling at them. But they're very tough and they're very well informed and they're very uncomfortable for the interview.

And he still has choke points. I mean, the guy works for Apple technically, right? Like they distribute his show. Yeah. It's funny because I saw him interviewing Bob Iger and I was like, I know that Bob Iger has a deep relationship with Apple. There was a deep one going back all the way to the Jobs, the Steve Jobs era. You know, they almost sort of combined their companies in terms of Disney and Apple. There was a deep one going back all the way to the Jobs, the Steve Jobs era. You know, they almost would have combined their companies in terms of Disney and Apple. So when I see this stuff, I'm like, you know, like if he pushes them a little bit too hard, these guys

still all have friends like all around town. I just am thankful for the way that we set up our business so that that doesn't even exist because at the level that he's operating at, I mean, they will use everything to try and destroy you. So that's another key. That was another question I had written out for him that I didn't get to ask, was the decision to go with Apple versus going independent? Because clearly here's a guy who has a following, who has enough money.

He could be doing what we're doing. Yeah, very easily. And then you don't have any corporate pressure above you because so far the thing that he's gotten the most pushback on his show were the comments he made about Rogan. Oh, that's right. That's right, defending Rogan.

Rogan. And that was extremely controversial and then he had to do another episode talking with misinformation experts that was frankly a little bit cringe. Yeah. But that made me think about how he has a similar vulnerability with Apple as Rogan now has with Spotify. And so

even some of his stuff that he's said now on Russiagate, I mean, he's critical of Russiagate. He's critical of the dismissal of the lab leak theory. Well, it's kind of okay to say those things now, but I wonder if he would have been able to say them at the time when public opinion was so far on the side of, if you're even talking about lab leak, not only are you wrong, you're racist. I can imagine a similar very aggressive cancellation campaign against him with regard to Apple and really bringing some pressure on him. So in any case, it was a really interesting conversation. It was really exciting to get to talk to John. I think his new show is really, really worthwhile. I recommend it to you guys, and we're grateful for him taking the time.

Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. As we said, look, one of the things we talked about with John was about how to build a future media company, and I think we've really settled on it. It's a tough time right now in order to do business on the web. I'm already shaking. I'm like, are they going to take us down today for playing a clip of Putin in English,

even though it's the news and we have to show people? The only way that we can be 100% censorship-proof is because of your guys' support. We think about you all the time. We sent that Jon Stewart interview out to our premium subscribers early. You guys are always top of mind because you give us the confidence to weather any storm, whatever may come. So thank you. Yes, indeed. And I think we've never felt that more than we feel it right now. You know, it's very difficult to sort through all this information. It's very difficult to feel like you can present it without worrying about what the consequences are. I mean, they're reaching back to Ed Schultz into the grave to label him and cancel him. So there is a true

climate of hysteria right now. So thank you guys for supporting us and making sure that we don't have to ever worry about that. Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you back here next week. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there.

Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay informed, empowered, and ahead of the curve with the BIN News This Hour podcast. Updated hourly to bring you the latest stories shaping the Black community. From breaking headlines to cultural milestones, the Black Information Network delivers the facts, the voices, and the perspectives that matter 24-7. Because our stories deserve to be heard.

Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here, host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. This is an iHeart Podcast.