Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/21/22: Russia-Ukraine Escalation, China's Shift, Hunter Biden Coverup, Fauci Returns, Indian Geopolitics, Saudi-US Relations, & More!

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Krystal and Saagar cover the military developments in Ukraine, Zelensky banning opposition parties, China's shift towards Russia, the Hunter Biden coverup, Fauci's return to TV, US media's shaming of India, how America is jeopardizing peace in Ukraine, and the imbalanced relationship between US & Saudi Arabia.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/Murtaza Hussain: https://theintercept.com/staff/murtaza-hussain/ Yemen: https://theintercept.com/2022/03/16/yemen-war-biden-us-support-saudi-arabia/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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that can resist mainstream pressure. And again, guys, go to breakingpoints.com in order to subscribe. Thank you all so much. We love you and we appreciate you. Enjoy the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of big updates to get to this morning. Some troubling moves actually by Zelensky banning a bunch of opposition parties.

We'll give you the details of what is going on there and why he is doing that. Also some troubling details out of China. Any sort of hopes we had last week that there may be a little bit of a split between them and Russia? Not looking so likely this week. So we will update you there. Also, we'll update for you on the whole Hunter Biden laptop story. So you recall the Biden DOJ and the New York Times confirmed the authenticity of the emails on that laptop that during the election had been deemed as having the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Of course, all the spooks who had said that, just doubling down or not responding

to the story at all. Most of the press not covering it. So we'll give you those updates. Dr. Fauci has emerged to make some comments that are sparking some controversy. We have a wonderful guest on to talk about what is going on with Saudi and Yemen and our complicity in that incredible humanitarian catastrophe. But we wanted to start with the very latest on the ground in Ukraine. Yeah, so there's been a big proxy fight here in Washington over the last couple of days. Are the Russian forces stalled? Are they not? So we thought we would wade into a little bit of that with our battle updates. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Some very measured thoughts from Michael Kaufman. He's a respected Russia analyst at CNA, and he has been

absolutely spot on about this entire war so far. So we thought we'd bring it to you. He says, quote, about two weeks ago, I suggested Russian forces have three weeks before combat effectiveness becomes increasingly exhausted. I think that's generally been right, but we are not quite there yet. The war has broken down in perfectly could be called three fronts. Russian advances have stalled out amongst two of them. One of them, which is the front around the city of Kiev, is far from encircled. Now, here's what he gets to, which is that the area to watch in the coming weeks is the Russian attempt in order to encircle Ukrainian forces in the eastern part of the country in a pincer movement. And that would put the Ukrainian military in a very precarious position. In terms of what he thinks in the grand strategic aim,

he says, I think Moscow is searching for something that it can use to declare a victory. Taking the Donbass, having the leverage to attain concessions from Kiev, probably what they're looking to accomplish at this point, this is at best a guess. So they're actually, that might be an optimistic take, Crystal, because if that's what they can do, they can declare a victory, a quote-unquote victory, declare some sort of concessions, then this will end in a diplomatic stalemate. The other way is that it doesn't end up in a diplomatic stalemate and we enter a full-blown hot conflict. Now, the reason why, though, it's important not to overstate that the Russians have been beat back, they've been stalled completely, is because all of that is part of a proxy war here in Washington as to whether we should ship arms to that country.

And unfortunately, that's kind of what we've been seeing on the domestic Washington front with the press declaring a've probably noticed all of a sudden basically every major news outlet is running with this term stalemate. Right. That the conflict is approaching a stalemate. Let's go ahead and put Axios up on the screen, which echoes that reporting. Researchers say Russia's invasion is reaching a deadly stalemate. And what that wording and that analysis is being used to justify is, hey, all we need to do is send more weapons in, escalate further the amount of arms that we're shipping in, and perhaps make that, you know, maybe we need longer range drones. Maybe we need to think again about those MiG fighter planes. So let's up the number of weapons that

were flooding into Ukraine because they're on the precipice of really being able to push the Russian forces back and that would force Moscow to the table. So that's what this stalemate analysis is being used to justify. And there are reasons to be skeptical of this. Number one, Russia, yes, has deployed a lot of the forces that they had amassed at the border, but this is not even close to their entire capability. And so the fear is always, and this is part of what Kauffman says as well, he says, generally, I don't see how any military success can add up to something that constitutes a political victory for Moscow. If there is another phase, Russian forces will probably try to compensate for poor performance by inflicting greater destruction. They have much more advanced, and we're going to get to this in a minute, military technology

that they could deploy and inflict even greater horrific damage on the civilian population, mass casualties, etc. And so the idea that, you know, the Ukrainians have basically like almost won this fight, which is also what the Ukrainian people believe, is just not accurate when you consider the totality of the Russian military capabilities versus what the Ukrainians have. I also think people are really misreading what happened here. So the group that put that out is called the Institute for the Study of War. And very long ago, yours truly was actually an intern at that group, 2015 or so, and some different flirtations of neoconservative foreign policy. But it's important to understand here the ideological

bent of the organization. And I don't want to speak ill of a former employer, but I think it's very clear that the two individuals who run the think tank are very much more of advocates for a much more hawkish position and for intervention in the conflict. And I don't think that they would dispute me saying that. Now, it's important to see and understand that when they declare stalemate, they are using a military term. Because if you read their report, he actually says, he says, look, it's actually going to be long and a bloody protracted campaign. He reminds that the Somme and the Passchendaele conflicts of World War I, where, you know, millions of people were killed, those happened in a condition of stalemate.

The end of the Civil War where the most people were killed, that also happened in a position of stalemate. The problem is that the press takes that and runs it as like, oh, it's a total stalemate. It's all good. Actually, no. Stalemates are at the time when there can be an escalation, an increase in the number of civilians. Let's go ahead and put this next one up there on the screen,

which is another reason. You've got to go and probe people's research, where Michael Brendan Daugherty, who is a friend of the show, he says, quote, unfortunately, I think ISW, the Institute for the Study of War, is relying exclusively on what the Ukrainian government posts on Facebook. And one author there tends to really over-interpret what they say. I would go with the New York Times for now. So there is a big narrative battle here in Washington as to whether the actual Ukrainians have fought the Russians to a stalemate. Now, it's possible. It could be that they are on a stagnating part of the front line. That does not mean, though, that the war won't get much worse. And in fact, if you read their ISW report in the bottom, that's really what

they say. So I think that there's a lot of interpretation games that need to happen here, because if you look at it and say, oh, that's great, that means we need to supply the Ukrainians with even more weapons or offensive weapons. They're going to win this thing. No, that's absolutely not the case. And if anything, this could signal instead an escalation into the worst part of the war, where an easy knockout military victory not attainable, and now we're going to a full-blown civilian bombing campaign, if there's no diplomatic response. For a long time, we've worried about Russia escalating tactics, given that things did not go for them the way that they expected them to go. I mean, that part is definitely very real. But just be skeptical, I guess the whole point is just be a little skeptical of this narrative. Understand the ideological underpinnings

that this comes from. Understand what it's being used to justify, because the whole sort of narrative around this is the Ukrainians are almost there. We just need to do a little more. We need to give them a little bit more. And so it's, you know, being used to make an argument that we need to escalate the type of weapons and the type of support that we are giving to the Ukrainians. Yeah. Outright military victory by the Ukrainian military. That's just not going to happen. It's not on the table. It's not on the table. And they would tell you that. The honest ones would tell you it's absolutely not going to happen. Really what it is, is that as a defensive force,

when you're a smaller defensive force, your main military objective is to make attacking and the offense as painful as humanly possible in order to fight to some sort of diplomatic settlement. And we'll give you the diplomatic settlement in a bit. But the reason why it's important for all of us to have an honest conversation is because Russia is holding back a significant part of its military capability because they don't want to be even more of a pariah state in the eyes of the world because it's not necessarily military necessity at this time. But there is a whole – like there are many, many rungs higher on the escalation ladder in the Russian military capability that do not exist. The Ukrainians are fighting to the death with everything that they possibly can. They are throwing everything in terms of a total war against the Russians, but it's not even close to the same on the other side.

So really what it comes down to is defeating their political will to continue fighting this war. That may still happen, and there can be a conversation about that, but do not delude yourself into thinking that this is any way over. So let's go ahead then and move on to the next part of this, which we find incredibly important, which is, and let's put this up there on the screen, which is that over the weekend, the Russians claimed the first use of a hypersonic Kinzhal missile in Ukraine. This is an incredibly significant event. Hypersonic missiles obviously are capabilities which the Russians and the Chinese have, but which the United States, at least from what they tell us, we do not have. The reason why it matters is because they are much faster than any traditional ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile, and because

they defeat any of the military anti-air defense, anti-missile defense systems that we have currently in place. It's kind of like an increase in an offensive strategic weapon, and it's a very clear demonstration by the Russians. If you think that they needed to use this militarily in Ukraine, they didn't. They did this as a very clearly screw you, and I'm using PG-13 language, to NATO and to the United States, which is, hey, we got these missiles. We can use them. Here's how well they work. And by the way, we could strap a nuke to it if we wanted to, and it could be in the city of Washington in five minutes from Moscow. I don't know the exact flight time, but it's something like that. And if you launch it even closer, then you're going to have no warning whatsoever, and we can destroy and penetrate

the United States. You have no defense systems that are even capable of this. This is something the Russians did often when in Syria, they would use ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other of those types of technology. Frankly, we did the same thing whenever we used Tomahawk missiles against the Assad regime. This is all part of a proxy war and kind of like a, you know, showing what exactly you can do.

But the use of the missile itself is an incredibly important strategic event, Crystal. Yeah. And very much as a warning to all of us here in the United States. And I think we should heed that warning. I think we should understand what that warning is. Yeah, and they bragged about it. They put on a video, and this is just a message of don't F with us.

And I think it fits well with what we were just saying about the fact that they have suffered significantly more losses, that they haven't achieved their military objectives in the timeframe that they expected, that I think there are genuine issues with the morale of the Russian soldiers. All of that being said, this is still, they're saying, hey, whatever problems we're having on the battlefield, remember what we've got in the arsenal. Remember the capabilities that we have here and what we can do and the pain we can bring not only to Ukraine, but the broader region if you continue to escalate. So this was meant to be a direct message to us and to NATO and Europe in general that, you know, don't F with us. That's basically the message that this sends because this can also, these Kinzels can also carry a nuclear warhead. So that's also really important to

keep in mind in terms of we've seen this sort of escalating nuclear rhetoric from Putin and from his Kremlin allies. This should also be seen as part of that escalatory rhetoric. Yeah. And so Secretary of State, our Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, he was on one of the Sunday shows. He is significantly trying to downplay this. It's like, oh, we're not too worried about it. Let's take a listen to how the Biden administration is trying to handle this. Russia is also saying that it used a hypersonic missile at least twice in Ukraine so far. So this is a missile that travels what, more than a mile a minute. It's very difficult to intercept. Is this weaponry game changer? I would not see it as a game changer. I think, again, the reason that he's resorting to using these types of weapons is because

he's trying to reestablish some momentum. And again, we've seen him attack towns and cities and civilians outright. We expect to see that continue. But I don't think that this in and of itself will be a game changer. Okay, he's trying to frame it in terms of the actual Russia-Ukraine war. They didn't use this because they militarily needed to. They did it because they have it and we don't have it. And we're not going to have it for several years. It was a very clear demonstration of capability and they're trying to tamp that down. Clint Ehrlich, who is a military analyst, put this up there on the screen. He very much has a different, and I think the correct take, which is that this is a major deterrent signal to NATO. As he says, quote, there is no plausible

reason that the Kinzhal would need to be deployed against Ukraine, given that its own air defenses have been suppressed. It is Russia's single most advanced conventional weapon, 13 times faster than a Tomahawk missile with three times the amount of payload. And its use was similar to when the administration, the Trump administration, used the Moab bomb, the famous mother of all bombs in Afghanistan. Both of those, that one was much more of a signal to the Iranians. But this is all part of a broader display of strategic military power, which is, hey, you want to ship all these missiles and all this stuff to Ukraine? Okay, that's fine. This is what could be waiting for you. And they could use, Crystal, a Kinzhal missile against an arms convoy that we send in there. Even if it is armed by the Ukrainians, I very much could see that happening.

And look, all of this is what the danger of escalation is, which is that when Russia bombs that military convoy that we sent in, only 10 miles from the Polish border. Look, everybody says that the navigation systems are good, but we're not talking about a lot of space here. I mean, all it takes is one guy to do something once wrong, and the next thing you know, you have a missile that lands in NATO territory. Now what? Now what do we do? I mean, we're at war. That's a tripwire. I mean, if you kill the wrong guy or we had those

three NATO heads of state that went to Kiev. And then here in D.C., we have these idiot pundits who are arguing that Biden should go to Kiev. if he dies, it's over. We're going to nuclear war. Are you people crazy? We can't send the president into a war zone like that that we're not actively involved in. There is a lack of consideration here as to just how important the use of this technology is. And it's the reason that the Chinese used it last year as well,

flying it all the way around the globe in a Sputnik moment to say, hey, we got this too. And their development and use of that technology are very clear to sign to us. Do not screw with us. Yeah, and the narrative that's being spun by Austin and echoed by a lot of their media allies is, oh, we think Russia's using Kinzels because they're running out of more precisely targeted missiles. It's like, no, that's not what this is about at all. And they know that, right?

They're not stupid. But this is clearly what they're trying to sell to the American people is, oh, the Ukrainians are actually, you know, they fought it to a stalemate. If we just do a little bit more, and actually these tactics from the Russians, this is a sign of their desperation.

That means if we just continue what we're doing and up the ante a little bit, then we're going to push them in the direction of ultimately having a peace. So that's how they're trying to spin this, but that's not really what's ultimately going on here. It's very important that you all understand that. Yeah, exactly. So there's a proxy media war happening in terms of the use of the hypersonic missile. The use of the missile itself is a very important strategic event, and it's meant very clearly in order to signal things to us. And we should actually watch very closely with the use of some of these weapons that the Russians are using, you know, thermobaric weapons and others. The reason behind all of this is a defense and a

display of strength towards the NATO countries, even though, yes, it's ridiculous and asymmetric, it is. But there's a reason that, on the one hand, it also is a demonstration to the Ukrainians of what we were talking about earlier in this block, which is, hey, look, you want to start using javelins and trying to shoot down our stuff? Fine. We're going to start using hypersonic missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, all these things against you. This is the immense military power that they still

have to bear. And they're not pulling out all the stops, but it's a demonstration that in a full scale hot war with the Russians, this is exactly the type of technology that we would have to deal with. It's a type of stuff which could penetrate US air defense systems. And it's also a symbol to all of us of how fast things can go off the rails. I mean, all it takes is one mistake, two mistakes, something like that. And then within five minutes, 100 million, 200 million people are dead. Well, and what the Biden administration has been, this line they've been trying to walk in terms of what they do send into Ukraine and what they refrain from sending into Ukraine is they're trying to provide things that don't have the ability to be an offensive weapon against Moscow.

This is part of why the MiG discussion matters. Exactly, because there were a lot of people who were playing dumb saying, well, I don't see what's different about fighter jets. Well, what's different about fighter jets is that those can go into Moscow and be there very quickly. Whereas if you have, you know, these Stinger missiles and these sorts of things, obviously those are most effective use there on the ground. And so, you know, when you've got morons like Lindsey Graham running around talking about regime change in Russia and assassinating Putin and other people like Adam Kinzinger basically calling for full scale war, Moscow is looking at those things and feeling very leery about the possibility of

U.S. offensive action against the regime. So that's why they've tried to walk this line, but they are under increasing pressure to do more, provide more weapons, up the ante in terms of what is actually being sent over there. And this whole narrative is being used to justify that direction. Yeah, that's right. Just remember, this was done explicitly as a reaction to our shipping of arms over there. So let's just keep that in mind as we continue this discussion. Very important. All right. We want to bring you the latest in terms of a potential peace deal, which I got to tell you guys, I am not very hopeful about at this point. I'm going to talk more about this in my monologue. But let's go ahead and put this first piece up on the screen, which seemed a little bit hopeful.

So we had some reporting, this from Financial Times, from Turkey. They are saying that Russia and Ukraine have, quote, almost reached agreement on a neutral Ukraine with no plans for NATO, demilitarizing Ukraine and security guarantees, denazification, whatever that is, lifting restrictions on the use of Russian in Ukraine. This was a sticking point. This was a sort of source of tension between the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine and Ukrainian-speaking population and with Russia themselves. There were laws that were passed, basically, you know, making it, getting rid of Russia as one of the official languages. So that's one of the pieces here that's a kind of sticking point. But, but, let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen about denazification. There's some more details here about what that might mean. Likely a compromise would involve Kiev making some token concessions, banning certain groups, changing the names of streets named after what they describe as Ukrainian partisans who fought alongside Nazi Germany. It's a very diplomatic

way of putting it. Against the USSR in the Second World War, Russia is also likely to soften a demand for Ukraine to make Russian the second official language in the country of key rolls back laws limiting its use, one of the people added. So this is once again putting out there, oh, we're getting close to a deal that here here are the outlines of it. This could really be coming together. But I think there are very good reasons to be skeptical of this. First of all, there was reporting from the U.S. that behind closed doors, Zelensky, when he was meeting with the leaders who sort of foolishly and in a very risky maneuver actually went to Kiev to speak with him directly. Some of the diplomats familiar with those exchange basically said, like, he's they want to fight.

They don't think that they need to back down. They're not trying hard to reach a peace deal. Peskov, who's Putin's spokesman, says on the Possibilities piece that the degree of progress falls short of what we would like and how the dynamic of developments demands on the Ukrainian side, meaning Russia's ongoing assault on its cities. Peskov said direct talks between Putin and Zelensky will only happen if Kyiv, quote, does its homework by holding negotiations and agreeing their results. For now, there is no substantial movement. They won't have any agreements to commit to. So what's going on here? You have two sides that think they're winning.

Yeah. You have the Russians who, you know, they just debuted this incredibly extraordinary capabilities. They know they've got a vastly superior military. Yeah, they may be engaged in these talks as a sort of like, you know, as like a PR deal demonstrating the war. Of course, we're serious about peace, demonstrating their own population. Of course, we care about peace, but perhaps not really negotiating in good faith because they think they can ultimately accomplish their military objectives. And they don't think that they have to accept any sort of concessions. You have the Ukrainians, and I just looked up the polling,

90% of the Ukrainians think they're going to outright win this war. 90%. And so even if Zelensky in his heart of hearts knows the reality, this is the political landscape that, by the way, he's helped co-create. So he can't go in and accept in a deal what would be extremely painful concessions. I mean, any actual peace deal would almost certainly end up with ceding some Ukrainian territory to the Russians. Like, that's what the Russians are willing to accept. And I don't think the Ukrainians are anywhere close to being willing to accept that because they believe not only that they are going to win ultimately, it was almost a majority of Ukrainians who believed

in this polling from a Ukrainian pollster that they would be able to prevail in the next couple of weeks. So you're not going to have a peace deal, which requires painful concessions on both sides, when both sides think that they are on the cusp of victory. I think that, once again, it seems like it's been going on for eternity, especially to us. But look at the history of warfare. This has only been less than a month. It has not been even a full four weeks. That's not a long time in the history of a military campaign. And especially whenever we have two relatively irreconcilable positions, which is that the Russians have now put a need to save face in terms of declaring some sort of victory, or they need to fight it out as a stalemate. You see this all the time in the history of offensive warfare, which is that you have somebody who is a leader like

Putin, who gambles that he can get this done very quickly, doesn't have to bring 100% of his military power to bear. Then you have this smaller state, which puts up a heroic resistance. This actually has two downsides. Number one, which is that it shows the bigger power that they have two options, save face and negotiate or fight to the death and throw everything that you have in there. And then on the other side, it actually gives, I wouldn't say a false hope necessarily because they're not diminishing what they've done. But it gives them a false sense of, oh, we could actually win and we could fight this thing. And then what ends up happening is you have the solidification of the two positions. And now we have a situation where here's how it almost always ends in history, which is that, yeah, we'll try to negotiate.

Both sides say they can't negotiate a position. We're going to have a very, very bloody, quote unquote, stalemate, the use of offensive weapons by the Russians in order to break that stalemate, as we saw all throughout the First World War, the Civil War, and World War II, which leads to a tremendous loss of life. Then with the Ukrainians, you have a solidification of that civilian population who doesn't want to negotiate. And it takes, I hate to say this, about four to five years and hundreds of thousands of deaths before those people are really ready in order to be once again either subjugated or negotiate some sort of position. I just think I don't see a way out of that, given the history of European conflict, given the Russian history in the way that they fight. And we shouldn't forget,

the Ukrainian people themselves put up heroic resistance actually against the Nazis during the Red Army and fought to the last man and to the death. So you have two very proud peoples here. You have a classic situation of military history that everything tells us, look, as much as I want diplomacy and we'll cheer and work for it as hard as possible, it's extraordinarily unlikely, and we just generally know the way this is going to go. And I don't want to sound glib in this. This is a tremendous, tremendous loss of life and suffering for so many people. Yeah, that's exactly right. And especially when there's,

you know, when there is this kind of war propaganda in our media, in the Ukrainian media, convincing people that reality is different than reality actually is. Ultimately, you know, that doesn't serve the cause of coming to some sort of negotiated settlement, which is extraordinarily difficult. So, you know, any little rays of hope that we felt like maybe we were getting last week on that front, I wouldn't be hopeful about. I just think the two sides are too far apart, both convinced of their own imminent victory and so unlikely to be willing to give up the concessions that would be necessary here. We also wanted to bring you an update from inside Ukraine,

some of the political moves that are being made here that are really deeply troubling. Let's go ahead and put this first tear sheet up on the screen. So President Zelensky has suspended 11 political parties that they claim have links to Russia. Now, I don't doubt, let me just read a little bit of the news here and then I'll give you a little bit of my analysis. So they say the country's national security and defense council took the decision to ban the parties from any political activity. Most of the parties affected were small, but one of them, the opposition platform for life has 44 seats in the 450 seat Ukrainian parliament. Here's what Zelensky said. He said, the activities of those politicians

aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response. Therefore, the National Security and Defense Council decided, given the full-scale war unleashed by Russia and the political ties that a number of political structures have with the state, to suspend any activity of a number of political parties for the period of martial law. So they have, you know, been under martial law, understandable, given that it's wartime, and he is now using martial law to ban 11 different opposition parties. Now, obviously their rhetoric is very similar to, you know, this idea, oh, they're Russian-controlled, they're Russian puppets, they're pro-war, those sorts of things.

Which they might be, and in some cases appear to have very close ties. That may very well be the case for some of these parties. But some of them have been actively anti-war. It's mostly sort of leftist, like socialist or communist parties that are being banned here outright. And notably, not the ultra-nationalist, linked-to-neo-Nazis parties. Those ones are still good to go. So it's a troubling development here, and I think it matters for a couple of reasons.

First of all, it matters in terms of our understanding of who Zelensky is. I've been very leery of the Zelensky hero narrative. Even if it was totally true, it's still dangerous because his interests in his country are different than our interests. So when he's aggressively out there calling for the most hawkish actions, which would in fact lead us directly into a war, we need to understand that we've got to protect our interests and we shouldn't just be doing what Hero Zelensky says. So I think this shows you that there is a lot more going on in Ukraine than has been presented in the media. It's what makes it so complicated, which is that the media is casting this

as a war of a democracy against an authoritarian state. I mean, yes, Ukraine is a democracy. It's probably more democratic than Russia. That doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own problems. And notice, we're not out here being like, Zelensky is a thug. We're not equivocating whatsoever. What we're saying is, well, it's complicated. That being said, look, the Russians still invaded the Ukrainians.

None of this is to justify a Russian invasion at all. In some ways, they deserve a lot of what they're getting. But the problem is, is that the Ukrainian government itself and the way it responds to this, this matters less towards us and even the Western narrative around defending democracy, but how the Russians are going to signal this inside of Russia, which is they're like, oh, look, they're persecuting these Russian peoples. They're not banning the Nazi party, the Azov battalion. So they remain affiliated with this thing, which is so objectionable to the Russian people that they would then continue fighting. At the same time, if you're Ukraine, I mean, do you really want to allow like pro-Russian elements to be like operating in your government? I get it. The problem, and I'm not justifying it,

what I'm saying is that the anti-democratic ends, this is a hallmark of warfare. And I think that that is why this is really tragic, which is that we are seeing both of these states descend into total all-out kind of a civilizational struggle. And in all of history of war, especially in that region, what you see is a massive totalitarian crackdown, consolidation of power, and the use of that sometimes to very unfortunate ends. You know, I'm seeing reports here about the way that civilians are being treated or prisoners of war being treated on both sides, you know, some horrible things. And it's like, that's just simply a hallmark of war. And I'm not, again, not justifying it, writing it off. I'm like, this

is what war is. Like when Russia decided to launch this, this is what they have lit. And I'm not, again, not justifying it, writing it off. I'm like, this is what war is. Like when Russia decided to launch this, this is what they have lit. And part of the issue though, is that we're not honestly talking about it either in order to say, hey, look, if this is a war for democracy, this is not something that you should be doing. If this is a war that you are casting yourself as a member of the West, well, if you do want actual entree into the West, like, you know, he signed his EU application, this stuff can't be happening. And I mean, this is all part of why what's happening in this entire conflict is all in the gray area. And while there may be, it might be morally outrageous that the Russians have invaded, that doesn't mean the Ukrainians are perfect either.

And that should also change how we view our calculus. Doesn't mean we don't support them, doesn't mean we don't defend them. Doesn't mean we don't defend them. But they're not the most perfect people on earth either. The cause, the Ukrainian cause, is absolutely righteous. And just. Yeah, and just. And the Russians are the aggressors here, and there's absolutely no equivocating in that. And any commentary about, like, Ukrainian's democracy is not all that it's being presented as, none of that should be construed as any sort of a justification for what's being done to them at all. So I want to be completely clear about that. But, you know, also looking at this development, there are some echoes from our own politics, like Cold War

politics, the way that, especially during Russiagate, any potential ties to Russia was used as a way to smear and dismiss people, that this is often used as a tactic to shut down any sort of left-wing opposition in particular. So, I mean, he's using war to take this to a very extreme place. But you can see the echoes of the way that this is used in our own propaganda and our own politics as well. So that's another reason why I thought it was interesting here. Let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen of additional actions that are being taken. Zelensky has also signed a decree that combines all national TV channels into one platform, citing the importance of a unified information policy under martial law. And if there's one thing he has been very

good about, it's he's been very effective in his communications, with one notable exception we're about to get to in a moment with regards to Israel. But, you know, this man came up as an actor and a comedian. He knows how to he knows how to communicate in a way that lands with the populations that he's talking to most often. And so this is yet another way for him to sort of shut down any potential dissenting voices and make sure that all of Ukrainian television is speaking with the message that he wants ultimately to go forward. Yeah. And in Israel, had to bring in this because I do think he actually significantly miscalculated. Let's put this up there on the screen. While Zelensky was addressing the Israeli Nesset, he says that Ukrainians helped Jews during the Holocaust. Many Ukrainians are among the righteous among the nations. He says, quote, the people of Israel now have a choice to make. And there is actually a lot of criticism inside of Israel accusing Zelensky, who himself is a Jew,

of minimizing the Holocaust and whitewashing the Ukrainians' role because, well, there was, let's just say, a lot going on there in terms of World War II and the Nazis. And let's put this next one up there on the screen, which is that if you go ahead and peruse what exactly the Israeli reaction to this, it's been a significant error. Zelensky has been trying, as he notes here, to tailor his speeches to appeal to various national audiences like Martin Luther King in 9-11 here in the U.S. or when addressing the U.K., evoking Churchill. But invoking the Holocaust in Israel was really, I think, a bridge too far. And he appears to have pissed off a significant amount of actual politicians in Israel to that end, especially because Israel, and I'll be talking

about this in my monologue, is pursuing a strategic sovereign foreign policy here. They are not wanting to take a significant side. They're one of the mediating partners whenever it comes to the peace deal along with Turkey because they have good relations with Russia. They have a huge Russian population. And so Zelensky trying to force them to take a side has had some interesting consequences. I also just have to say this, because it's hilarious. Adam Kissinger tweeted yesterday that he was like, Israel must take a stand.

They must make a choice. Their support for Ukraine will then make contingent U.S. support to Israel. And I was like, oh, interesting. their support for Ukraine will then make contingent U.S. support to Israel. And I was like, oh, interesting. I was like, Adam Kissinger has neoconed himself so hard that he is now, like, aligned with skeptical elements of arming Israel no matter the consequences. So that's interesting. Yeah. Kind of a hilarious development. That's a very unusual horseshoe there.

Yeah, that is a true horseshoe. Like the neocon leftist horseshoe, that one almost never happens. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say here. I think that there were some much more effective ways to shame Israel. And they do deserve to be shamed here in a certain sense. I mean, for example, the entire region has been mostly taking in a lot of Ukrainian refugees. And Israel has been notable in turning away people who are coming in. I mean, the very first day they set an extraordinarily limit. It was like 5,000 people of non-Jewish

Ukrainians who were allowed to enter the country. That was exhausted on day one. And so, you know, for a people who obviously were persecuted over many, many years and who famously in one of the most shameful moments in our own World War II history turned away when they were seeking refuge to then close their doors to the Ukrainian people because of, you know, their own sort of commitment to being an ethnostate. I think that deserves to be publicly shamed. And then the other thing that is interesting here, and you can read this a lot of different ways, but the Ukrainians asked for their Iron Dome defense, missile defense system, which

we helped to create. I mean, we're like part owner in this thing and apparently put some pressure on the Israelis as well to provide this. And they were like, nah, we're not going to do that. Well, to be honest, I hate to say it, but that actually, I think that would be kind of an offensive move, both on Israel's part and on the U.S. part. But look, I actually don't begrudge Israel for not choosing a side here because they are making some significant diplomatic progress. And at the end of the day, a sovereign country's job is in order to pursue its sovereign interest. And that's what I would say that has really rankled the U.S.

It is part of a broader discussion of it's kind of interesting that all the Middle Eastern client states that we have don't do anything that we ask them to do when it comes to crisis, which may have some questions around why exactly we give them complete and total unconditional support no matter what. But that is a different discussion for another day. Yeah. Well, we're going to continue that discussion with Murtaza Hussein later on in the show. So we'll get back to that. Absolutely. At the same time, some significant comments coming from the Chinese state. So last week we were bringing you some of the indications maybe they were uncomfortable with what was going on with Russia.

Maybe they weren't going to really back Russia up, that they were kind of, you know, considering pressuring Russia to come to the table and end this thing, which would be the best possible situation. And they are the country that has the most power, the most sway ultimately in being able to force some sort of concessions on the Russian state. Well, now not so much. Let's go ahead and put this Axios tear sheet up on the screen. So the day after Biden and Xi spoke, you had China's vice foreign minister just completely taking Russia's side, blaming NATO directly for the war in Ukraine, among other comments. I'm going to read you a number of his comments here because this was quite significant. He called NATO a Cold War vestige, warning that its expansion could cause repercussions too dreadful to contemplate.

He said sanctions against Russia are now going to such lengths that globalization is used as a weapon. Even people from the sports, cultural, art, and entertainment communities are not spared. Let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen. This is from Reuters. He also said that the sanctions against Russia are getting more and more outrageous, adding that Russian citizens were being deprived of overseas assets for no reason. Some more of his comments. History has proven time and again that sanctions cannot solve problems. Sanctions will only harm ordinary people, impact the economic and financial system, and worsen the global economy. The pursuit of absolute security by NATO precisely leads to absolute non-security.

The consequences of forcing a major power, especially a nuclear power, into a corner are even more unimaginable. So listen, I actually agree with some of that analysis about sanctions. I do think that they are extraordinary what we're doing. I do think they will be brutal on the Russian people. I do think that the, you know, freak out over sports and cultural figures is insane. But if you're only talking about NATO and you're not talking about the fact that it was Russia that just invaded, then clearly you have a very selective view of what is going on here, which is why these comments would seem to indicate that any hopes that the Chinese government might step in to help bring this conflict to a close, probably not going to happen.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, let's put this New York Times tarot sheet up on the screen, which actually echoes a lot of what Matt Stoller did for us over the weekend on the coming food crisis, which is that China is facing its worst wheat crop in decades after severe flooding and is planning to buy more of the world's renewing supply. Kiev and Ukraine are known as the breadbasket of the former Russian empire, and they are going to need to buy a lot of Russian wheat, which is one of the world's largest wheat producers. So that's another reason why the Chinese are going to have it difficult in order to take sides. But really what it is is I think the Chinese are maybe trying to get ahead of a narrative here in the West that maybe they were abandoning the Russians. And I think they are just trying to play all sides, you know, because we've seen reports that they denied at least kind of

the weapons request from the Russians, but then they're blaming NATO. So what they tell us is very different than what they tell them. In terms of what they're telling us, though, is a very clear message of being absolutely politically neutral, even if it makes them look like a clown.

And that's what we saw whenever it came to the recent Chinese ambassador's appearance on the Sunday shows when he was pressed on the Russian invasion. Let's take a listen. And we are in no opinion. Russia amassed more than 150,000 troops at China's border. Well, that's why we want to have a good, friendly, good neighborly relations with Russia. But you would recognize that's not good, friendly, neighborly relations to put 150,000 troops on the border of a neighboring country and then to send those troops into that country.

In those circumstances, why can't you condemn this as an invasion? Well, let's don't be naive. Condemnation. It sounds naive to say that's not an invasion. It doesn't solve the problem. I would be surprised if Russia will back down by condemnation. What is urgently needed? Will they back down if your president asks Vladimir Putin to back down by condemnation. What is urgently needed... Will they back down if your president

asks Vladimir Putin to back down? Will your president ask Vladimir Putin to back down? We have done so. They rely on you. And we will continue to promote peace talks and, you know, urge immediate fire. And, you know, condemnation, you know, only doesn't help we need wisdom we need wisdom we need courage and we need good diplomacy well Vladimir Vladimir

Zelensky says he would like to meet with Vladimir Putin mm-hmm Vladimir Zelensky is in a bunker. Vladimir Putin is at a political pro-war rally right now. You can't have diplomacy when it is one country, the only one country willing to actually negotiate. China has good relations with Russia, has good relations with Ukraine, and that China keeps close communications with the United States and with Europe. They enable China to reach to all parties' concerns in the crisis. So China's unique role, you know, can help the peaceful settlement of the crisis.

I keep a bit cringed to watch that entire thing. But I did think it was important for you guys to hear all of it because you're seeing he's trying to toe the line very clearly. Well, he's not wrong. He's like, well, condemnation isn't going to solve the problem. So but also we're not going to condemn it. And then she's like, well, will your president ask him to stop? He's like, well, we have done so with peace talks. Well, they haven't exactly been present at any of the major peace talks. And from what we can see, they haven't pushed them towards the negotiating table. because they have an alliance, but in terms of how they're being perceived on the world stage, their image even post-COVID was terrible, and now being aligned here is even worse. And now we even have the US saying that they could face significant consequences. I'll talk a bit

about this in my monologue, but they could even face sanctions from the West for continuing to buy Russian oil or in other escalatory out like maneuvers which could keep them out of certain types of trading organizations and others. All of that is on the table. So they're in a tough bind, Crystal. I think at least from what we can see right now, they're sticking with Russia. If we sanctioned China, that would be- That would be huge.

Extraordinary. I mean, that would really be a major, major geopolitical realignment. And we have put C4 up on the screen here. The reporting out of Biden's meeting with Xi was that he did warn China of, quote, consequences if they aid Russia in Ukraine war. choir going further than just their sort of like studious neutrality, which really does put a finger on the scale on the side of Russia, versus actually providing some type of direct military aid, I think is what he's talking about here. He said he warned him of implications and consequences if Beijing designs to give material aid to Russia to support its war in Ukraine. He made the case China would pay a similarly heavy price if they backed Putin of Russia in the fight, similarly heavy as to the price paid directly by Russia. Less than two months after, of course, Putin and Xi had declared a limitless partnership in facing off against the U.S. and the West. Xi reportedly told Biden, I think this phrasing is very interesting,

quote, let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off. Basically, again, saying like, you all created this mess with your NATO expansion and all, you know, sort of like thumbing your nose at Russia. So now this is your problem. We're not doing anything to solve your problem for you. Of course, they could be instrumental in pressuring Russia to come to the table and ultimately negotiate in good faith for peace. But all indications today are that they're not interested in doing that. I don't think they're interested in any of that. So look, it's going to be interesting in terms of how this is shaking out. But in terms of the A Block where we told you guys about how

the Kremlin is kind of pissing all over the idea of a peace deal, and now these Chinese comments, we could be entering, you know, a little bit more of a strident Russian campaign, which is not, unfortunately, a good news whenever it comes to peace. Yeah.

So there we go. Certainly the case. Okay, let's go ahead and move on to this next one. This is a fun one. We have to, you know, throw in something fun into the show. It can't all be doom and gloom. You will all remember that when the Hunter Biden laptop story came out, it caused one of the biggest freakouts in modern political memory. Twitter outright censors the New York Post in one of the most outrageous acts of censorship that we have seen yet from the big tech companies. Then you see a

full-scale media campaign in order to not acknowledge the laptop, despite the fact that no Biden campaign official or Hunter himself ever denied that the laptop was not his and that the information on it was not authentic. Therefore, it was obviously real. And yet, two years on, it's very clear that all of the emails on the laptop have been confirmed, that they are not part of some op. At that time, the media launched a campaign to discredit the laptop by saying that intelligence experts told them that it had, quote, all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Not that it was Russian disinformation. Well, two years later, now that the New York Times, the Department of Justice itself has confirmed that the laptop is real, the New York Post has contacted those 51

intelligence experts. Let's put it up there on the screen. And lo and behold, not one of them refuses to apologize for discrediting that story. The officials, including James Clapper, who was literally almost indicted for perjury to Congress, who signed that letter saying that he has the classic hallmarks of Russian disinformation, they have not responded whatsoever, apologized, denied any of their previous comments, which is completely and totally outrageous. Because what's happening here is a complete and a total – they're ignoring this. It's a media blackout campaign. And here's the other thing. We're not saying this is the biggest story in the world. It bears investigation, certainly. Hunter certainly looks guilty as hell of tax fraud and also of probably not registering as a foreign agent. And that's, you know, a crime which we saw under the Trump people. Yeah,

you'll probably get like 18 months in prison or a fine or something like that. I doubt you'll get prison time under this administration. But more what we're saying is that the fact that this is being ignored and that this was only reported once, that it isn't going – it isn't at least requiring any of these intel experts who said this nonsense. And we have that. Let's go ahead and put D2 up there on the screen. This was from October 2020, right before the election saying, oh, Hunter Biden story is Russian disinformation, dozens of former intel officials say. The fact that this hasn't had a complete and a total retraction and that any of the so-called

intel experts are not willing to denounce this because they're supposedly nonpartisan. Well, Crystal, I think it just tells us a lot about how the actual media apparatus works and how full of it these people are. They're outright political actors. They're not real experts. They should be discredited. They knew at the time. Yeah, they knew. I mean, come on. And Noteworthy, the author on that Politico piece at the time that said that they outright said it was Russian disinformation, which wasn't even what they said. They said it bears the hallmarks of or classic earmarks of Russian disinformation is Natasha Bertrand, who has, of course, been promoted since then. She's now CNN, White House, whatever. So she got a nice little bump up in her career after peddling false information to sway an election herself. And that's why I think what matters about this story

is the actual details that were revealed on the laptop mattered. They were significant. They raised some questions about Biden family corruption, which is a story that's certainly worthy of consideration. But I think the meta story here is what's way more important. And the New York Post in their piece put it quite well. They said, big tech, former government officials and the media conspired together to bury a story. No, not just bury, create a false narrative that flipped the script to make Joe Biden the victim of a conspiracy. In short, they peddled online disinformation to sway an election. That's why this matters, because you can see the way that they did this. They all worked in tandem to suppress information that they thought was unfavorable. And so it's very noteworthy, even though we, of course, didn't

expect any better, that then when provided with, okay, so now it's been confirmed, actually the Biden DOJ authenticated it. We talked before to a Politico reporter who had already confirmed the authenticity of at least some of the emails. And the New York Times, the paper of record is saying, guess what, guys? This was authentic, nary a word out of any other mainstream media outlet. But these 51 intelligence ghouls who had originally were so concerned about this that they had to get together and they had to sign this letter and they had to put it out into the public square. Now, suddenly, they are nowhere to be found. Almost none of them responded to this at all. Revelations that you think they were so concerned about it on the other side that they might be concerned about it now that we have the truth of what was going on.

But Jim Clapper, famous liar, he actually did respond and he doubled down. He said, yes, I stand by the statement made at the time and would call attention to its fifth paragraph. I don't know what that is. I think sounding such a cautionary note at the time was appropriate. Oh, okay. So he has no regrets, Sagar. He would do it all over again, even though this turned out to be completely and totally false, which was obvious at the time because as you said, if it had really been fabricated Russian disinformation lies, they would have denied it, but they didn't. They never, ever, not Hunter, not Joe, none of them ever said that these emails were not accurate or that they were fabricated.

They would not confirm it whatsoever. And you know for a fact, if it was fake, they would be out there screaming it from the rooftops. If they could find. It was completely obvious at the time. These guys aren't stupid. They know it, so there you go. You are 100% right.

If they could find even one thing on the laptop which wasn't genuine, they would say it. And don't forget the media story on this. Remember NPR. Let's put this up there on the screen. They should retract this. They said that the Hunter Biden news was a, quote, waste of time. The NPR public editor said, why haven't you seen any stories from NPR about the New York Post Hunter Biden story? Because, quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are pure distractions. Look, this, at the end of the day, was actually, look, it was a story, of course, of public corruption, the 10% for the big guy. It certainly noted and needed some investigation at the time and even the immediate months after. Was it the

biggest story in the country at the time? No, it wasn't. There was literally a global pandemic, the election, all of that. And yet, the censorship campaign by the media and by big tech, they made it worse. In many ways, it was a Streisand effect. I'll never forget the day that it came out. You and I were sitting at the rising desk. Yeah. And I was like, hey, there's this story from the New York Post. And you were like, I don't think that's a big of a deal.

And I was Reddit. And I was like, yeah. I was like, I think we'll have to wait until something comes out, and we didn't even cover it. And then later on that day, that's when the Twitter goes and they cancel it, and they stop the allowing of links, and we were like, oh my God, now this is one of the biggest stories that we have to cover.

That happened over and over again, and many times that we've seen censorship campaigns happen. So all of this is a long-winded way of saying that the media and the intelligence officials and all these people, they refuse to have any contrition for an outright con job that they pulled on the American people, which is a disgraceful act and is exactly why they have no credibility with many people who were already distrustful of them in the first place, because frankly, they shouldn't have any credibility. And I think that Glenn Greenwald is right in pointing to this is a hangover effect from the fact that the media and the intelligence apparatus, they were they blamed themselves for getting Trump elected by reporting on Hillary's emails, by reporting on the leaks from WikiLeaks. And because the Clinton campaign,

I mean, they really strategically plotted, like, how do we avoid being blamed for this devastating defeat? And this was the path that they plotted out. And so now you have all of these media organizations so desperate to make sure that they're not involved in helping to elect Donald Trump, that they're unwilling to just do their job of reporting and letting the public sort out what they make of that information and, you know, go to the ballot box and make their choices. Yeah, very well said. Okay, finally, they finally let him out of the cage. Dr. Fauci is back, and he's not back necessarily in the way that we would want. In his first appearance on national television in nearly a month, Fauci returned to the airwaves in order to say that the Biden administration

may need to bring back mask mandates if necessary. Let's take a listen. We have to be careful that if we do see a surge as a result of that, that we're flexible enough to reinstitute the kinds of interventions that could be necessary to stop an additional surge. That could mean a return of mandatory masking, especially in areas of high transmission. Ah, so mandatory masking. That could come back. That's kind of amazing. And you pair that then with his most recent appearance on The Sunday Show in order to echo a similar sentiment. Let's take a listen to that.

You know, you've said you're going to stay in this job until we get out of the pandemic phase. Of course, you've been serving your country now for decades. Are we approaching the point where we are past the pandemic phase and you'll go get some rest? I'm not so sure, George. I want to make sure we're really out of this before I really seriously consider doing anything different. We're still in this. We have a way to go. I think we're clearly going in the right direction. I hope we stay that way. Well, there we go. So, Crystal, I think it's very interesting to see Fauci reemerge and say that we may need to bring back mask mandates and more.

I do have to say, is he, are the Biden people too stupid to not keep this man off of the airwaves in order to, like COVID was dead. Everybody was moving on. And yet he somehow is unable to say, no, you know, this would be the time for him to step down. Right. You know, he's certainly lost a lot of credibility with the people,

but the culture war is not as hot at this time around masking and lockdowns. This would be the time to go and declare victory and say, hey, look, I did my best. I'm 80-something years old. It's time for me to go. But I just don't think

he can handle himself not being on TV and not being the center of the spotlight. I mean, one thing you do have to say for Dr. Fauci is he looks incredible for his age.

I mean, I cannot. He's a doctor. Right. He clearly knows, has some secret sauce for taking care of himself. I didn't think the comments were that outrageous of being like, if things change, then things might change. But I think your broader point about like, listen, I know liberals love Dr. Fauci.

Like they've got their little votive candles. They got their trust Dr. Fauci signs and all that stuff. But the reality is he has lost a lot of trust with the people that you most need to have a trusted figure in place with. And, you know, there is, has been a significant shift from the Biden administration on how they're talking about COVID and how they're approaching these things. And so you would want a messenger who would be perhaps a little bit more in step with the direction that they are ultimately going in. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So look, at the same time, also, we wanted to bring you some news around ivermectin. Obviously, there was a lot of controversy around that.

Let's put this up there on the screen. So in their largest trial to date, and this is from the Wall Street Journal, which is ivermectin did not reduce COVID-19 hospitalizations in the largest trial to date that they saw there. They said the patients who got the antiparasitic drug didn't fare better than those who received a placebo. Now, I'm sure the pro-Ivermectin folks may have something to say.

I tried to see what exactly the criticism of this was. It seemed like a pretty good study from some of the doctors and others that I follow. And I think that it really just goes to show you that this is what we needed the entire time. We needed a legitimate view as to whether a double-blind placebo-controlled study, as to whether this was going to work or not. The whole culture war that erupted over this at the time was totally ridiculous.

Prescribing it, especially as a medical doctor, should not have been shunned or shamed, given what we knew at the time. And any sort of intervention for therapeutic drugs like fluvoxamine, ivermectin, any of these should have been on the table and open to a real investigation. And instead, because the media is what it is, they have to simply rot, you know, they have to have their brains rotted.

But we have the data now, so maybe, given that we've all moved on, it doesn't matter as much anymore. And we have the COVID pill, but there it is. Here we are, now that it's, yeah, so late that it does it in the game. Here it is, though. It doesn't make that much of a difference.

We have a decent study that says it does not look like it has worked. The last piece that we wanted to show you here is potentially worrying signs that we may see another COVID spike. Let's go ahead and put this. This is kind of an early indicator. COVID-19 is being found increasingly in U.S. wastewater sewage systems. So the numbers here, nearly 40 percent of wastewater sampling sites report at least some increase over the past 15 days. That's more than twice what it was a month ago. The CDC has found throughout the COVID pandemic that wastewater is one of the sort of early leading indicators of when we may see a rise in terms of COVID. There's this new variant that's really taken off in Europe, BA.2, that seems to be equally mild as Omicron, but even more infectious, which has caused a spike there. All indications are that our existing vaccines, especially the

mRNA vaccines, continue to be effective against it. So I don't think there's any reason to panic about this. You know, we're not facing the early days when we didn't have vaccines and we didn't have effective treatments and we didn't know what was going on. We're not headed back there. But, you know, just to sort of note that we may see another increase because of this new, even more infectious variant that could be coming. Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, let's go ahead and move on. All right, Saga, what are you looking at? Well, the ironclad rule of media bias here at Breaking Points bears repeating. The most pernicious form of media bias is not what they choose to show you, but what they choose not to

show you. Selective presentation of facts, cherry-picked headlines, curated bias is the name of the game for narratives on cable news and in the Western press. It's designed specifically to fulfill an ideological or policy agenda. And in a time of war, it is perhaps the most dangerous. In the sincerious and crazy environment that we're living in today, we've seen a collective psychosis take over the media and the global elite, as they push for a no-fly zone, aka World War III with Russia. But more recently, they have taken up a different cause, one that shows the outright

chauvinism of the Western press, which could in fact have major geopolitical ramifications. And that is how it is currently treating the nation of India. India right now is being raked by the Western press for continuing to explore ways to buy Russian oil, not voting to condemn the invasion of Ukraine in the UN Security Council, and in general, taking a very cautious approach to how it handles this crisis geopolitically. This has caused consternation and outrage here in Washington, with many accusing India of abandoning the West and siding with Russia. There's just a problem with that narrative. Last time I checked, India is not a Western country. It is a master of Eastern democracy on the other side of the globe with nothing at stake

in Ukraine or in NATO. And as I said at the top, what people don't mention in all of these articles slamming India is that while India is exploring ways to buy Russian gas, the European nations that are literally in the EU, inside of NATO, bordering Ukraine, are buying Russian oil and gas right now, namely Germany. This does not stop, however, Trish Regan, she's the former Fox News anchor, from saying the quiet power out loud of a lot of Washington group think that India should be literally sanctioned for buying Russian oil. She says, quote, right now you're with us or you're against us. Simple. Is it that simple?

Or maybe, just maybe part of the reason that we're in this goddamn mess in the first place is because we acted with chauvinism and refused to consider the interests of other countries. I am an American nationalist. I believe that the principal interest of U.S. foreign and economic policy should be to produce prosperity for the American people. If that at times happens to align with the interests of the world, then fine. But that is not my primary motivation. It is having that mindset that lets me appreciate this. The world does not always revolve around us. And other countries also have their own strategic interest, which is fine. What the Western press doesn't tell you about India

is that they buy 70% of their arms from Russia, and they need those parts. The Indian foreign policy, going back to the days of the Cold War, has always been non-alignment. Explicitly, don't take sides and play the US and Russia against each other. And in the modern age especially,

India believes the West cannot be trusted, especially after the Obama administration continued to back Pakistan, even after they funded and directed a merit terrorist attack in Mumbai, and given that the Western press describes India as fascist every chance that it gets. The biggest problem the West makes in its dealings abroad is the assumption that other people's elites are as deranged as ours. Most people just act in their self-interest with relatively no other consideration. India is not the only one. Take Israel, America's greatest ally, right? Israel has pointedly taken a neutral

stance on the conflict to balance its own strategic priorities. Israel has a massive Russian population in its own right. It maintains deep ties with both countries, and thus they're not jumping in the fray nearly the same way as the American and European allied West. Now look, there's a variety of reasons you're not hearing nearly the same way as the American and European allied West. Now look, there's a variety of reasons you're not hearing nearly the same criticism of Israel amongst our elites in public, but behind closed doors, there are whispers that they are, quote, abandoning us. No, they're not. They're doing what's best for them. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has realigned global politics forever, and the axis on which it is being defined is

fundamentally not one that is all that useful to U.S. interests in the long term. Should the U.S. relationship with Russia really be tarnished over, wait, India really be tarnished over Russia? At the end of the day, Russia is not all that important to U.S. interests. Yes, a stable Europe is in America's interests, but to the extent we can do anything about it, it is the Europeans themselves who must lead. The future of U.S. GDP, of U.S. interests, is and has always been in the Asia-Pacific for the future. And yet the domination of Ukraine and Russia coverage here in America, in the West, is coloring the way with which we will engage with the globe and in the Asia-Pacific. Even right now, the U.S. relationship with China is defined by Russia. Are they supporting Russia or not? In

fact, I find it especially amusing that it is acceptable to the American elite to sanction China for supporting Russia. But years ago, when it came time to put tariffs on China for years of abusing the global trading and financial system and killing U.S. businesses, oh no, no, no, that would be a flagrant violation of the global order. The key to keeping America out of the war further and to keeping U.S. prosperous in the future is the ability to balance the outrage at what is happening in Russia with our actual interests in the future. Instead, we are allowing the pull of the old world, once again, to suck us up into a conflict and into an ideology which is not in our long-term interest. This only serves our enemies and our adversaries in the long

run. And just like the hubris of Iraq broke our position abroad for two decades, this too can and will have a long-standing impact on America forever. I think that's very important to consider this, Crystal, because... And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, I'm starting with President Obama as well. Back in 2014, President Obama was under tremendous pressure to do more about Russia's takeover of Crimea. In particular, top aides were pushing him to send U.S. arms into Ukraine in order to fortify their military.

Now, among Obama's questions and objections to that potential course of action, one concern stood out. He worried that, quote, arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians. And so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow. Well, those concerns have, of course, now been tossed aside by two administrations as the Biden team and our NATO allies have flooded the zone with what is truly an extraordinary amount of weapons of all kinds. We've got drones, anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles, not to mention our covert CIA-led training programs in the separatist regions and additional programs training Ukrainian insurgents here on our own soil. Bolstered by our arms and by their own courage, Ukrainians have in fact mounted a stiff defense of their country, and they certainly have an advantage in the stiff defense of their country, and they certainly have an advantage in the tenacity of their population. Every Ukrainian grandma out there is spending

their free time fashioning Molotov cocktails, while young conscripted Russian soldiers reportedly abandon their posts in despair of the depravity of their mission. But Russia's use of a new weapon is a deadly reminder that while, yes, a guerrilla insurgency can continue basically indefinitely, without direct U.S. involvement, something that absolutely no one should wish, Russia's vastly superior military tech will ultimately prevail. In fact, in a demonstration of their advanced weaponry, Russia says it used hypersonic missiles in Ukraine for the first time, something we covered earlier. The Kinzhal dagger was allegedly used to destroy a Ukrainian missile depot and what

analyst Clint Ehrlich is characterizing as an extraordinarily significant development. Quote, by firing Kinzels in Ukraine, Putin is sending a major do not F with us message to the West. He is reminding the world that whatever logistic challenges his military faces, it retains an edge in absolute bleeding bleeding-edge nuclear and conventional weaponry. Now, this all puts Russia's war on Ukraine in a horrible no-man's land that echoes Obama's warning, frankly. On one side, you have Putin, who will absolutely not accept anything that smacks of humiliation or defeat. As a result, the longer the conflict wears on, the more he will deploy these powerful, indiscriminate weapons, which destroy cities and murder civilians. We've already witnessed this escalation. The use of a hypersonic missile should be viewed as part

of that escalatory cycle. On the other side, Ukrainians, buoyed by early successes, our bank backing, and the wartime inspiration of Zelensky, falsely believe that they could win this war outright. In fact, a recent poll by a Ukrainian-based pollster found that 93 percent of respondents in the country thought that Ukraine would be able to repel Russian attacks. Nearly half believe such victory will be achieved in just the next few weeks. 82 percent believe that it's unlikely the country will lose any of its territory. Now, sadly, this is fanciful, given the vast disparity between Russian and Ukrainian capabilities. This rock-solid belief in victory on both sides of the equation, frankly, it makes a peace settlement nearly impossible. After all, to negotiate a deal, both sides would have to give up extremely painful concessions. Why would the Ukrainians or the Russians negotiate an excruciating compromise when they believe they can outright prevail on the battlefield

and dictate the terms of peace. The Washington Post is now reporting that these dynamics are, in fact, standing in the way of a negotiated settlement. In spite of some public statements by Zelensky and his team that Ukrainians were aggressively pursuing diplomacy, behind the scenes, reportedly, there's actually little movement. According to a diplomat familiar with conversations in Kiev when the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia all traveled there to meet with Zelensky in person, he showed very little interest in a negotiated settlement and said Ukraine needed to keep fighting until Putin altered his demands. A senior U.S. official gave a similar assessment, saying, There's no indication on our end that the Ukrainians are suing for peace.

They want to fight. Now, all of this would seem to validate Obama's concerns expressed at a very different time that our fortifications have provided Ukrainians with a sort of false hope, making it impossible for Zelensky to sell a peace deal with compromises to Ukrainian public convinced that outright victory is in fact imminent. At the same time, even if Zelensky is willing to negotiate this painful peace deal with Putin, it does not appear that we've actually empowered him to do so. Any peace deal would, of course, have to include a rollback of the draconian sanctions we imposed upon Russia over the past several weeks. In order to negotiate, Zelensky needs the authority to say, hey, if the deal meets our terms, we can promise you that the U.S. and NATO allied sanctions will end. It doesn't appear we've actually given Zelensky this ability.

Ryan Grimm recently pressed Jen Psaki on exactly this point in what may be literally the only pro-peace question that has been asked in the White House briefings. She refused to directly answer. What's more, Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently told NPR that we had our own red lines in terms of what an acceptable peace deal would look like, a mere withdrawal by Russia apparently being insufficient. Blinken said of the sanctions, they're not designed to be permanent. But he continued, we will want to make sure, they will want to make sure that anything that's done is in effect irreversible, that this can't happen again. Russia won't pick up and do exactly what it's doing in a year or two years or three years. So the U.S. position is not whatever deal works for the Ukrainians also works for us and will trigger sanctions rollbacks. Instead, we are demanding that the deal include some sort of guarantees that the peace will be

irreversible. What that would look like, I don't know. All of this is a long way of saying we have given the Ukrainians the tools to fight, but not to negotiate. To make matters worse, powerful interests here will always push for more war. A hawkish, bloodthirsty media that only ever presses for World War III and stands ready to punish every single leader who has ever been committed to peace and diplomacy. A military-industrial complex that is constantly horny for war and the billions in additional profits that will flow into their pockets from every conflict that we stumble into.

A foolish and corrupted political class that, with few exceptions, preens for the pro-war media and shills for the pro-war defense contractors. All of this spells likely prolonged devastation for the civilians in Ukraine who are suffering under a brutal onslaught. Let us be completely clear here. Russia is the aggressor. And of course, they are the biggest obstacle to peace since they're the ones who caused the war in the first place and continue to unleash fresh hell every single day. But the false hope we provided the Ukrainians might be a terrible cruelty disguised as kindness. Instead of asking how we can do more,

we should be asking all day every day how we can help to create the conditions for peace. Every moment of delay risks the outbreak of World War III. And Sagar, this is what we were talking about earlier, how, you know, both sides have an interest. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept to talk all things Saudi Arabia. It's good to see you, man. Welcome to the show. Nice to see you guys. Absolutely. So let's put this up there on the screen in terms of what's happening exactly with the U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.

Obviously, there's a horrific campaign going on right now in Yemen. The news just broke this morning, Murtaza, that the U.S. has supplied Patriot missiles to the Saudis, despite the fact that we've extracted no promises from them in order to pump no oil. We just simply are doing it as a gesture of goodwill, which is please pay attention to us. As somebody who's been covering this for such a long time, what does this tell us about the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia? Well, it's a very curious relationship because in many ways, Saudi Arabia is dependent on U.S. security guarantees. They're dependent on political guarantees from the U.S.

They have very close ties with U.S. elites. But as we see, there's not the reciprocity you'd expect given the unequal relationship here as well, too. You may have seen in the past few days, there were stories about the crown prince of Saudi Arabia not returning the calls of the U.S. president. It's a very significant sort of signal. I think that what you're seeing here is that there are many states in the Middle East, especially, that have had a lot of money or had a lot of political connections in D.C., and there's a sense of entitlement that's come along with that now or a sense that they're paying money and they expect good customer service from U.S. elites who they deal with

normally. You know, I'm not super, you know, we should not take everything symbolically so seriously. But I think that generally speaking, it's a significant step for a Saudi prime prince to literally ignore the phone call of a U.S. president or refuse to speak to them. It's a bit of a slight against U.S. president or refuse to speak to them. It's a bit of a slight against U.S. leadership and by extension, the American electorate who likes Donald Trump or Joe Biden, whoever else it is. It's significant that, you know, we don't really take a hard line with these countries. And the more and more we allow them to have a lot of runway in their

behavior, the more you see these sort of abuses, whether they be, you know, slights against Americans or abuses like we're seeing in Yemen, which the U.S. is actually supporting in many ways. Yeah. Could you talk more about that for people who haven't followed what's going on in Yemen closely? What is our level of complicity in that crisis, which is considered to be the greatest humanitarian crisis on the planet right now? So the U.S. has given arms and political support to Saudi Arabia and the coalition of other Arab states, which have been blockading Yemen, which has been at war with Yemen for several years now. It's actually interesting that

post, you know, in the last decade or so, it's clear that the U.S. tried to build up Saudi Arabia as a local proxy in the sense that it could do military expeditions on its behalf, building up its military, its air force, training, and so forth, with the hope that the way that Iran was a long time ago before the revolution and the way Turkey has been and certain other states have been in the Middle East, they would be the enforcer of U.S. interests alongside the U.S. in the region. But I think we've seen that the war in Yemen is not ending. It's not even clear that Saudi Arabia is winning it or the the tide is turning, or even that there's a stalemate. Things

have become potentially worse for Saudi Arabia and Yemen. After years and years, very lopsided conflict. The U.S. has been arming this conflict at the beginning. We've seen that Saudi Arabia is not seemingly capable of acting as the role that the U.S. wanted. Instead, we're in this sort of worst-of-all-worlds situation where the war is going on and on. There's been shelling of the UAE and Saudi Arabia as well, too, from Yemen. Rockets have been fired as well backwards. And it's not getting better, but it's also coming to conclusion. And we settled to a status quo where this blockade is on Yemen, where millions of people are starving. There's mass outbreaks of disease.

And what you're seeing is the richest country in the Middle East really decimating the poorest country in the Middle East. It's a very ugly scene. And we certainly have been complicit on the side of Saudi Arabia. Right. So from a moral perspective, obviously that's happening. And then from a geostrategic perspective, Murtaza, the way this is always justified is, yeah, but they pump all this oil. They have all this money. What are we supposed to do?

We have to support them. This is about balancing against Iran, the Abraham Accords, and all of that. In terms of actual U.S. interests from a hard power perspective, we already outlined they're not doing what we asked them to do, but are they having a detrimental impact on U.S. interests in the region? Well, if you look at the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia going back to 100 years, when Saudi Arabia didn't really even exist at that time, it was in the very nascent stages of becoming a country. When the U.S. developed this relationship with them, there was expectation that, OK, we'll provide security and protection. And in return, when we need you to do so, you'll pump more oil. And this has been the, whatever else is said about, you know, relationships between people or peoples

or whatever else it is, that's been the core crux of the relationship and what's led to the U.S. security guarantee for Saudi Arabia for so many years. Now we're seeing

that they're not exactly willing to do that, per se, when we want to. They're kind of standing up and saying, well, we're not going to do that.

We're going to ignore these requests or we have other, you know, potential partners. There was a very important story in The Atlantic a few days ago by Graham Wood. It was an interview with the MBN, Ahmed bin Salman. And he mentioned in the interview that, you know, if you don't like us, we have other options. We have China.

They'll go out to take our oil or our investment money and so forth. And I think that's true. And we're seeing some of that now, too, because, you know, they're entertaining call to see or ignoring Biden. There's reports of the Chinese helping them develop ballistic missiles. And they're pivoting in some ways or hedging their bets a little bit because they feel the U.S. not doing everything they want. From a hard power perspective, for the time being, Saudi oil is still very important to the global markets. And but I think even they see that, you know, there's going to be a Horizon somewhere where oil is going to be less somewhat less crucial than it is today it'll be decreased reliance on it other alternative energy sources nuclear renewables many many other things

and when that time comes Saturday will not be so indispensable to the U.S as it is today and it's becoming less so there's been a natural gas and oil Revolution in the U.S there are other alternative sources coming on the market. It's still very important, but I think that it's possible for them to overestimate their importance. And if they continue overestimating it, and if they continue going down the same path vis-a-vis the U.S. as they are today, they're going to find that we don't have much in common and we have a lot of great differences. And the U.S. could become easily a rival or an antagonist to the U.S., to Saudi in the Middle East if the relationship is not built on something more solid than this very transactional bargain

that they are no longer even holding up. You suggested a moment ago that perhaps the Biden administration should take what you described as a harder line with Saudi. I would say that them transferring Patriot anti-missile interceptors to Saudi is probably the opposite of a hard line. So what would an alternative approach look like? You know, it's very interesting because we do give the Saudis pretty much everything they want in many ways. The contention on MBS's part or the side of the leadership's part that the U.S. is somewhat from saturday that's what they they view it as it doesn't seem very substantial the one thing that i could see is the iran nuclear deal um but either the us has own interest in his pursuit in the region to extricate itself in the region after many many years of inconclusive and uh

you know many ways failed wars so you know transferring these missile systems i think that there's still a very complex relationship here. The U.S. does not want to completely alienate Saudi Arabia right now. They're not able to do everything they want. The Iran deal is potentially being revived right now within the next week or so. There's a lot of signs of that. And they're trying to assuage their anger by giving them these missile systems and trying to have it both ways. I think there's a very indecisive policy. Can we say that there's a coddling policy or a hard line? There's an indecisive one. A hard line policy would be,

you know, it'd be something maybe closer to what we're seeing, not all the way in the spectrum, but closer we're seeing in Russia, there'd be sanctions on Saudi officials for human rights abuses, which we know is going on very, very extensively in Saudi Arabia. You know, still, there was a killing of a Washington Post columnist by the Saudi crown prince. They kind of escaped center from that. They get a free pass for a lot of things. And this goes back even before that,

the war on terror era. There are a lot of things that they get away with effectively because, and that's the indulgence that they get for being, having this relationship. If we stop giving those indulgences, it would start feeling like a hard line,

even though we're only enforcing our own interests. Martaza, how much of this latest, you know, MBS not taking the phone call and unwilling to pump more oil and they may be getting 95 percent of what they want out of the Biden administration, but they got 100 percent of what they wanted out of the Trump administration. They see Biden is weak politically with low approval ratings. They see he's likely to get shellacked in the midterms. And so they're happy to put their thumb on the scale to try to affect that outcome, have Republicans take control of the House and the Senate, ultimately perhaps reinstall Trump in the White House. How much of it is them sort of not only just waiting out the Biden term, but actively trying to make sure that the Biden term is a

four-year affair? I get the strong sense that they've decided that they do not want to deal with Democrats anymore in the U.S. They like to deal with Republicans. They don't want to deal with the Democrats. That's fine. But it's very insulting and, you know, offensive to Americans because Americans are our own choice who we elect. And we expect other countries to deal with them, you know, by, you know, to recognize the Democrat choice of American people, not to have preferences and prerogatives and trying to change the configuration of US politics. I have a theory about this, that in DC, there are a few countries which seem to get everything they want using different means, financial or other forms of soft power. Saudi Arabia has been in that little bracket of countries.

The UAE is there. Israel is there. Turkey is there to some extent. Even Azerbaijan is there in many ways. And the sense of entitlement now, because under Trump, you could really see these countries got everything they wanted. They got everything they wanted and more with a bow on top. And they're getting a little bit less than that now, as you said, Crystal. And that's antagonizing them. And they want to go back to 100 percent because as they see it, they're paying for a service, which is the protection of this empire that is far away, but gives them what they want. And they have these relationships in DC with their elites and they want everything they want in return. They want good customer service.

They want no one to be criticized. They want to be praised and coddled. And if they don't get that, they're going to be very angry. Just like someone get angry with bad customer service for a service they're paying for. I think that this transactional relationship that we're seeing, it's something which if you pay more attention to it, it's quite outrageous. It's undemocratic. It does result in de facto interference

in our politics. You can see this by maybe this MBS is thinking that if we don't help Biden with oil prices, the American people will kick him out in a couple of years because he'll be so dissatisfied. Then we'll turn the taps back on for Republican administration. That's fine, but in those couple of years because it'd be so dissatisfied. Then we'll turn the taps back on for Republican administration. That's fine. But in those couple of years, Americans are going to suffer a lot. And Americans are not, you know, they're going to remember this has happened as well, too. I think that if we pay a lot more attention, we'll see that Saudi Arabia is one of many countries deeply interfering in politics.

And it's even a bit worse because other countries maybe have some organic basis of support in the U.S. I think we can all recognize that Saudi Arabia does not have a mass support base in the U.S. What they get is money, and it's about money, and it should not cross certain lines, up to and including trying to manipulate the outcome of our elections now and in the future. I would submit that gas prices probably more consequential for U.S. elections than some Russian Facebook ads, poorly worded English. But, you know, that's just my guess. No constituency on that for cable news, unfortunately. Murtaza, thanks so much for joining us, man.

Great to have you. Always enjoy your work. Everybody go and check him out. We'll put a link down to his Twitter in the description. Appreciate you joining us. My pleasure, guys. Nice to have you. Absolutely.

Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. Like we said, and, you know, we've been trying to emphasize, this is the most censorious environment we've ever operated in. I was watching with bated breath because we had to play a clip of Putin in our Thursday show. Same with demonetization on so many of these segments. Look, the news is not always good. Sometimes it's bad. And especially in this hot-blooded, crazy environment, we are just simply one step away from total takedown. I see on Spotify. When's the last time we even covered COVID? We did it today. I think, what, like two weeks, maybe three weeks?

All of our episodes are being labeled on COVID misinformation and all this. All of this is to say is that we rely on you guys, our premium program, to build the team. We have all that awesome third-party content, which has been performing really well. We have some more cool stuff in the pipeline. And in order to pay all those bills, we rely on you. So thank you all very much. We really appreciate it. Did you see the thing that happened with Kyle? He had covered the Full Send podcast interview with Trump, and he didn't even play the part of the interview where Trump talked about stop the steel rigged election or whatever. And they pulled the entire his coverage of an interview of the president of the United States.

Like that's the former president. Insane. Look, we can't operate this way. We rely on you guys. That's that's what the way it's. Yeah, that's why we built it. That's why I appreciate you all so much. Have a wonderful day.

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