Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/21/23: NYPD Barricades For Trump Arrest, Trump Implies Desantis Is Pedophile, France Protest Explode, WH Press Corps Silences Reporter, Fauci Confronts DC Residents, Finance Youtubers Sued, Iraq War Hawks For Ukraine, Trita Parsi on Iraq Failures

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Krystal and Saagar discuss the NYPD setting up metal barricades ahead of a potential Trump arrest, Trump lashes out at Desantis with incendiary claims that he is a gay pedophile, protest in France reach a fever pitch over Macron's Pension Cuts, the White House Press Corps silences a dissident reporter, Black DC residents reject Fauci to his face on vaccines, Krystal looks into Finance Youtubers sued over FTX shilling, Saagar looks into how Iraq War Hawks are beating the drum on Ukraine, and we're joined in studio by Trita Parsi, co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who talks about how the Media is repeating the same Iraq war mistakes in Ukraine.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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Indeed we do. Will today be the day that Trump gets indicted? Some indicators pointing in both directions, so we'll break all of that down for you, as well as a little bit of the process of just how exactly this is all going to work. Is he going to be handcuffed? Is he not going to be handcuffed? What will this all look like? Also, Ron DeSantis finally breaking his silence about the imminent Trump indictment. Kind of making things worse for himself in a way, I think. Really kind of satisfied.

I think so. We'll let you guys. We'll let you decide. We'll play the comments and you guys can see what you think. France really on the brink today after Macron's government barely surviving a vote of no confidence. The people, I mean, 75 percent of France completely outraged about his, quote unquote, pension reform, changing the retirement age from 62 to 64 in a very undemocratic fashion as well. So we'll tell you all about that. Some press room chaos yesterday that Sago

was particularly interested in. Mainstream reporters rushing to the defense of Karine Jean-Pierre, lest, you know, one of their colleagues get out of line and be and lack proper decorum within the press briefing setting. So we've got that video for you. Also, PBS did a little documentary following around Dr. Fauci as he was trying to persuade people to go out and get vaccinated. There was quite an interesting interaction that got a lot of people's attention. We will show you that as well. We also are happy to have Dr. Trita Parsi in studio with us today

to talk about the event we're doing together. Remember, it's 20 years of the Iraq war, how exactly the media failed us and what, if anything, did they learn from that. And he also wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, in connection with Iraq and the media not really learning their lessons, the way the Ukraine war has been covered and the role that the U.S. has just recently played that we covered yesterday in blocking any potential ceasefire if it is suggested by China. Before we get to any of that, though, Spotify video. That's right. Thank you very much to our premium members who've been signing up for Spotify and have been using

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There we go. Absolutely. BreakingPoints.com to become a premium subscriber so you can take advantage of Spotify video. All right. Let's get to the big story of the day. Will he or won't he be indicted? I'm, of course, talking about Donald Trump. Manhattan DA looks like imminently they are going to arrest and charge Trump with something related to the whole Stormy Daniels hush money

payment situation. As we broke down yesterday, it's really sort of a combination of two pieces here. There's outright business fraud of recording the payment as something that it wasn't really on the books. And then the way that they get it from being a misdemeanor to potentially a felony, and this is all speculative until we actually see what the charges are. But the way they get it to a felony is by arguing this was in service of another crime, which was a campaign finance violation. The argument here, the theory here is that Trump's campaign as he was running for president way back in 2016 got a huge benefit from these hush money payments. This was of course not recorded in terms of their books and it would have been a contribution over the limit if it had been. Okay, so that is the legal theory of the case.

We have some contradictory indications this morning about the timing of this potential indictment. Everybody seems to think it continues to be imminent and could be today, could be the next coming days, could potentially be next week. But I think this is coming sooner rather than later. The first one is that all NYPD officers, including plainclothes detectives, have actually been ordered to wear their full uniform today starting at 7 a.m. ahead of a possible indictment. This is from a CBS News reporter so that's one piece. Okay maybe this is coming today. On the other hand Robert Costa with the with also with CBS News. I thought he was with the Washington Post I guess a while ago. Anyway Trump's team did not hear from prosecutors this evening.

That was last night, according to Susan Nichols, an indication that no indictment was made today. So is it going to happen today? Is it going to happen tomorrow? Is it going to happen a few days from now? Nobody really knows. We have some additional reporting to I'll get to in a moment. But let's go and put our first element up on the screen from The New York Times about what this would all look like. The headline here is New York authorities prepare for unprecedented arrest of an ex-president. Head of a likely indictment law enforcement officials are making security plans as some of Donald Trump's supporters signal that they intend to protest. More on that in a moment. They talk about in this article, you know, Trump would be

fingerprinted. He would be photographed. He could even be handcuffed if he is indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in the days ahead for his role in a hush money payment to a porn star. The former president of the United States will be read the standard Miranda warning. He'll be told he has the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. In the wake of Mr. Trump's public call for action, there were some scattered signs his followers were planning to protest on his behalf. So far, that hasn't really amounted to a whole lot. But we'll see, you know, if it scales up. And in terms of whether or not he'll be handcuffed, that's sort of like, you know, they can make that decision. They could handcuff him behind his back. Sometimes white collar

defendants, they say, are handcuffed in front of them. And they could also make the decision just not to do that whatsoever. It is expected, this has been reported out, that Trump will surrender himself. So, you know, that makes some of the point of whether they would have to, like, you know, force an extradition from Florida or something insane like that. But listen, with this dude, you just never know what he's going to decide to do in the moment. Yeah, we have no idea how any of this is going to go down. And the preparations, though, is that clearly New York authorities are preparing for the worst. We had some video actually from the scene yesterday. Yeah, as you can see there, this is the NYPD unloading barricades to surround the district attorney's office, the courthouse

and elsewhere. Couple that, I think, Crystal, with the report that you read this morning about the NYPD officers being told to dress in full uniform. They're expecting quite a bit of protesters, but said protesters have not yet materialized. So we don't yet know what's happening. Yes, that is correct. We also have go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen. Just some additional reporting about potential timing here. This is from Politico.

They say that Trump indictment could land soon, sending law enforcement scrambling. A grand jury is expected to charge Trump within days, according to three people involved in the deliberations. Now, according to Politico, they say an indictment by a grand jury is expected late Monday or Wednesday. Well, Monday passed. There was no indict grand jury is expected late Monday or Wednesday. Well, Monday passed. There was no indictment. So perhaps it will happen Wednesday. This is according to three people involved in the deliberations. There was one final person who apparently was scheduled to testify before the grand jury Monday afternoon. There was an expectation that Michael Cohen then might be brought back to rebut that witness, but that apparently didn't happen.

I think all of this, Sagar, and why we wanted to cover it is just to underscore, even though the details of this case have been hashed over again and again, it really feels like old news. The specter of a former president being indicted is, I mean, it's historic. This is a first in history. It's a remarkable, unbelievable moment. And, you know, to see how this all unfolds and to think about, okay, they're considering whether or not to handcuff him and he's going to be read as Miranda rights and he's going to be fingerprinted, to me really brought home the kind of gravity and seriousness of the situation. I'm glad you said that because we have to be able to separate out. I think we both have said, we're like, look, on the merits, you know, it looks like a weaker case politically, think kind of a disaster to be, this is really the one that you want to go with. We're talking

about bookkeeping fraud with a very extraordinary interpretation of the law. Good luck. We'll see how that actually works out before a judge. Let's put that aside. Just the act of simply arresting the former president is something that we have gone out of our way to avoid here in the United States for literally hundreds of years, especially going back to what, like Andrew Johnson. And then of course, the Nixon administration, whenever we think about Gerald Ford's at the time unpopular decision to basically pardon Nixon for all crimes and to prevent the Justice Department forever trying to indict even a current president. A lot of these norms and all these things were set in place,

even though, look, they don't pass the smell test in terms of, yes, technically he's a private citizen, but he's an active candidate, and he's a former president, and he has a large constituency. So it's an extraordinary act regardless of what it is. So we have no choice but to get into the nitty-gritty of the bookkeeping fraud, of the exact nature of the payment, of whether Michael Cohen was charged or called before the grand jury or not. I found that a little bit interesting. I'm curious your interpretation. The fact was that he made

himself available to the grand jury for two hours. They did not end up calling him, which means, I guess to me, currently, that they will not be pursuing in any way the campaign finance allegation, even with respect to the way that it would relate to the bookkeeping fraud that is there. At least that's a legal interpretation that I also saw that was out there. Potentially. If they had, that would have been materially important to the cover-up, so to speak. But we also know that other members of the Trump Organization have been cooperating with

federal authorities and myriad other legal cases on top of tax fraud and other so it's possible that they also, their testimony may be material to this as well. Yeah, I mean, I genuinely don't know. My understanding was that the witness who had been called before, who once advised Michael Cohen, who was also a lawyer, this guy Robert Costello is his name. He was brought in to kind of call Michael Cohen's character in question, which I don't think is a particularly difficult thing to do, given that he served jail time for some of these same, you know, similar charges.

So anyway, I think the idea was Michael Cohen could then come back in and sort of reestablish himself as a credible character was my understanding. But, you know, it's very hard to know from the outside what exactly is going on here and why the decision was made to not bring Michael Cohen back in. Perhaps they just felt that they didn't need him in order to secure the indictments that they are looking for. With regards to the protests, you'll recall in the infamous Truth Social, Truth Post, where Trump said, you know, he expected to be indicted on Tuesday. And the very last part of that called on his supporters to come out and protest and, quote, take America back, I think was the language that he used. There was a lot of concern that,

you know, you could have a real sort of, you know, violent protest, large scale protest could still happen. So far, it has not. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So this is Ben Collins. He says he's at the pro-Trump protests put on by the New York Young Republicans Club. Not a joke. There are more reporters here than Trump supporters. This was supposed to be the big one. And Sagar and I were both joking about how many of those so-called protesters are actually feds, I think is also a reasonable question to ask. I think you take out the so-called,

take out the feds and there's maybe like one guy in the entire crowd. Just saying. The president of the New York Republican Club, that's it. Okay. Well, according to Ben also, he said, it's just a bunch of cameras taking picture of a guy

who's putting on a rat suit next to a guitar with the words Hang Fauci on it. And this was supposed to start a half hour ago. Sounds about right. Look, we have no idea how it's going to go. It's also possible that many Trump supporters, even though they may be outraged, having seen the events of January 6th, are like, well, maybe we won't be going for it. At the same time, look, he also hasn't actually been indicted yet.

So there's not technically something to protest. Now, you should hang on to those words because that's kind of the excuse that a lot of people who are defending Ron DeSantis are using. But I think that there's something materially different about a GOP leader and then somebody actually coming out to protest something based on the reaction. Look, we have no idea. Right. I do not think, though, that people should read it as some sort of acquiescence by the Republican base. You know, you can be outraged about something and not technically necessarily take to the streets, especially after what happened on January 6th. So I don't think people should read it as him losing his power, although, you know, it is certainly a noteworthy event. And ultimately, we can't really make that call until well after whatever happens with this indictment. And then even, you know, how the judge will handle it if

there is even a trial or prison or any of these other things that we have to speculate on. I think it's too early to say it. I just do think it is humorous, though, that the media also, the number of cameras there shows you. They want this to be a thing. They're like, oh, we got to get everybody down there. This is going to be such a massive story. And they show up. And it's kind of like that other rally that we covered here where, you know, it was supposedly some big right wing protest. And all that really came out of it is it seemed like there were a bunch of feds that were there undercover marching, marching around and clearly like the most the most like telltale haircut than anybody had ever seen.

Yeah. Yeah. I forgot about that. Right. Some of the reporting suggests that actually some Republicans were concerned that the protests could be basically a trap. You know, there's a lot of concern about what exactly, you know, might have unfolded if they did show up. So that may be part of why so far there hasn't been much to emerge. There's also just like the logistical challenge of this all happened really quickly. Whereas with January 6th, there was a long time to sort of like for the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys to get their plans together and gather their weapons and plan, you know, their hotel rooms and all that stuff. So anyway, I don't want to say nothing's going to happen. But so far, the protests that have been planned have not amounted to much,

if anything. Yeah, I think that that's where we'll leave it. So we have no idea. We have indications in many sides. The fact that he wasn't notified until last night means it may not come this morning, but it could come tonight. You know, it could be one of those that is a major breaking event. So we'll see what happens. We'll be watching. As I said, as Trump always used to like to say when he was president. So let's move on now and talk about Mr. Ron DeSantis. And there has been an extraordinary civil war kind of breaking out online. But I don't think we should say that it's merely in the online category because it has real world consequences. There have been calls by the Trump campaign, people around President Trump, for Ron DeSantis to come out and to defend President Trump against any possible

indictment to say that he will not extradite the president or at the very least rhetorically say something about it. DeSantis, while giving a press conference yesterday in Florida, was finally asked about this after silence over the weekend. And he's trying to have it both ways. We're going to play for you the full clip of his answer. On the one hand, he takes a dig at Trump about any payments to a porn star. On the other, on the substance, he tries to attack the DA. Here's what he had to say. So I've seen rumors swirl.

I have not seen any facts yet. And so I don't know what's going to happen. But I do know this. The Manhattan district attorney is a Soros-funded prosecutor. And so he, like other Soros-funded prosecutors, they weaponize their office to impose a political agenda on society at the expense of the rule of law and public safety. He has downgraded over 50 percent of the felonies to misdemeanors. He says he doesn't want to even have jail time for the vast, vast majority of crimes. And what we've seen in Manhattan is we've seen the crime rate go up and we've seen citizens

become less safe. And so you're talking about this situation with, and look, I don't know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just, I can't speak to that. Can't speak to that, calling it a circus. We're not gonna have any part of it. Tries to have it his way and attack the Manhattan DA. This just shows him also, what's another word that you didn't hear

literally once throughout the entire thing? The name Trump. It seems like he's allergic to actually saying the man's name. He really wants to be in some situation where he can can maneuver around. And sure, on the substance, maybe he's right about the Soros DA and all of that. I've seen that line of attack. But specifically, not willing to defend Trump on those merits or

call it a political prosecution, not take any stand or in defense of the former president. Let's just say Trump certainly is going to take notice. And that's exactly what he did in the most Trumpian manner possible. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. So he tweets out, truths out. I'm sorry. I'm still getting used to that. He says, quote, Ron DeSanctimonious will probably find out about false accusations and fake stories sometime in the future as he gets older, wiser, and better known, when he's unfairly and illegally attacked by a woman, even classmates that are, quote, underage, or possibly a man. I'm sure he will want to fight these misfits just like I do. What he did is he effectively, quote, truthed

a photo of Ron DeSantis allegedly partying with underage girls at a drinking party while he was teaching at a Georgia school. So, Crystal, he not only is intimating that DeSantis is a pedophile, but also possibly a gay pedophile. Yes. That was his response to the former governor. Yes. Sorry, the current governor of Florida. I mean, look, this is vintage Trump. You can't help but laugh.

It also just shows you with Trump, I mean, whenever DeSantis is like, well, let me get to the substance of like the Soros DA and all of us try and, you know, find this third way for me politically. And Trump is just like, actually, Ron, you're a gay pedophile. And you're like, what do you even say to that? What do you do with that? What does he call it? The silly circus? Silly season. Silly season.

It's silly season. I'm sorry. That's weak. It's weak. It, I mean, I can't help but laugh. I mean, it is funny. At the fact that Trump puts out the truth that's like already going hard, basically. You know, it's like suggesting he's gay.

Yes. And then he deletes it. Now, most normal people, when they put out a social media post and then they pull it back, it's like, eh, maybe I went too far. I shouldn't have. Right. I shouldn't have. That was too far. You know, I should reel it in a little bit.

No, with Trump, it's like, I messed up. I didn't put in the groomer allegations. I forgot to call him also a pedophile. He's not just gay. He's also a pedophile. And listen, here's the thing with Trump. This is what he forces in terms of a Republican primary, in terms of American society, whatever.

There is no third way, right? I mean, people found this out with Stop the Steal. You talked about this a lot, Sagar, this whole idea that, oh, we could do like a highbrow Stop the Steal type of thing, like what Josh Hawley was trying to do, what Vivek Ramaswamy is still trying to do. No, you are either with him or you're not. That's what he creates. So this notion that Ron DeSantis is trying to just, you know, not go after him and hope that these indictments and whatever else that happens in silly season takes him down? Or are you going to actually directly go at him and yourself, because no one's going to do this work for you, muster a case against the former president that is going to be compelling to a Republican base? And he still seems to not really know how he's going

to figure this out. And listen, this is when it's the easiest. It's not getting any easier from here. You got time to workshop your talking points. I mean, 48 hours, man. How long did they spend with his, you know, press team? Yes. Figuring out words. OK, here's how we're going to play. And here's what we're going to say. This was all very, very rehearsed. What are you going to do when you're on a debate stage with this dude and he's calling you a groomer or whatever else he throws at you? It's silly season. Yeah, okay.

And, you know, okay, you see the groomer attack, how you can prepare for that. You know he's going to throw something at you that you have no, that nobody is going to see coming because that's just what he is. He is an agent of chaos. And I see zero sign that DeSantis is really ready to coming because that's just what he is. He is an agent of chaos. And I see zero sign that DeSantis is really ready to deal with that. Well, I do think that there is a way to handle it. And unfortunately, it's not one that would be politically viable. I mean, I've always thought

that one of the worst things that Ted Cruz ever did is whenever he was like, hey, Donald, get my wife's name, you know, in almost like a Will Smith type thing, like get my wife's name out of your mouth. Don't you dare talk about my wife. And then just actually make a stand. Maybe he'd look at the camera and just be like, hey, Donald, screw you, something like that. That actually would have been a strong response. Instead, he gave some like mealy mouth thing,

and at the end, he's like, Donald, leave Heidi alone. And by that time, everyone was like, oh my God. And then with the endorsement that ended up happening, the famous photo of him phone banking for Trump. I mean, you just look, you can never, ever have a real stand against this person again. And I do think also with DeSantis at this point, like the gauntlet has been thrown. The gauntlet is down. Like he's called you a pedophile already. Now you're a gay pedophile. He's gone after you in so many different respects. And you're both trying to find this middle ground where, look, viable path for Ron

DeSantis in any primary. What do we know? He is not winning an outright majority in any way, even of people who are skeptical of Trump, because all of those people are split, as we showed you in those polls yesterday. His only path to victory is to shore up all of the people who are willing to move on from Trump. And even amongst those, they actually still like Trump. They're just willing to move on from him. And then people who are absolutely 100% behind him. How is that really possible? I mean, there's no way to do it without convincing them that they're strong, that he is an agent also of the chaos against the liberal establishment, whom they hate so much.

I think that they correctly read this as weakness, and I think that's why his poll numbers have gone down significantly in the last two months. I also want to note that, you know, the groomer allegations obviously grab our attention and get all the headlines. But Trump is also starting to muster a policy case against DeSantis as well. This was flagged for me by a friend from Florida politics. Trump says Florida has the worst insurance scam in the U.S. He said this was on True Social. He said in addition to wanting to cut Social Security and raise the minimum age to at least 70 and Medicare, Rhino Ronda Sanctimonious is delivering the biggest insurance company bailout to globalist insurance companies in history.

He's also crushed Florida homeowners whose houses were destroyed in the hurricane. They are getting pennies on the dollar. His insurance commissioner does nothing while Florida's lives are ruined. This is the worst insurance scam in the entire country. So this has to do with basically like homeowners insurance in the state of Florida and, you know, for catastrophic situations. So he's going after him on economic policy substance as well. So to your point, Sagar, about the gauntlet being thrown, I mean, it's being thrown on the personal level. It's being thrown on the policy level.

And you don't have time to wait around anymore to join this fight. Right. You're either in it or you're not. And that's the other one. Then at this point, then just bow out. And then, you know what? You can stop all of the speculation. And then you can also say whatever you want. You're like, look, I'm the governor.

I'm going to handle this responsibly. There's nothing for me to comment on. Should a time come that I need to take action, rest assured that I will make a well-considered action. That's something that somebody who has no political ambition would say. But this was one where it's both ways. And look, it's not just me and you, Crystal, that took notice of this. There are a lot of folks out there who are taking a look and are not very happy with Ron DeSantis. First and foremost was Steve Bannon and Mike Lindell, both Trump loyalists who blasted him for his response. Here's what he had to say. Governor DeSantis, you're better than this. That was a weasel approach.

And don't give me the don't don't throw anything about the porn star. I don't need to hear it from you. OK, don't need to hear it from you. Okay. Don't need to hear it. Okay. Mike Lindell, the election crime bureau report, sir. Well, first of all, DeSantis is the Trojan horse. We thought he was, I just want to put that out there.

How disgusting he is. How disgusting he is. The Trojan horse that we thought he was. Weasel, not the only ones. Let's put the next one up there. Candace Owens, here's what she had to say. Anyone surprised by this? Been saying this forever.

DeSantis is a good governor, but he is establishment. Will be a major disappointment to those who think otherwise. People disenchanted with Trump, sometimes rightfully, saw things in DeSantis that were never there. She follows up, he handled COVID correctly and bravely, but DeSantis is not America first. So he is really getting it from a lot of the magosphere. And where has Candace been on DeSantis?

She hasn't really, this is the biggest shot that I've currently seen. She's kind of kept her options open, you would say? Very much so. And I should also note from the Daily Wire, it's really, it's not also just Candace. Shapiro actually replied to one of my tweets, kind of defending Ron DeSantis' approach, because I just said, look, it's terrible political judgment for him to stay silent either way. And then, you know, miraculously, the moment he does break his

silence, it's trying to, again, have the two-way approach. That's also even Matt Walsh, who I've noted is a big DeSantis fan, very much a Trump critic in terms of policy. And he's like, I'm sorry, this was not the right approach at all. Another person who is actually been pro DeSantis and has not been advocating for Trump is Mike Cernovich, who, look, you can hand it to the guy, but he's been intellectually consistent on this. Here's what he said, put it up there on the screen. Quote, DeSantis blew it today. Only people saying otherwise personally hate Trump or were never Trump in 2016. Where were you in 2015? I was

explaining why Trump would win when he had a ceiling of 3%. And Goobers, I am not a Trump guy. That's the lowest IQ thing that you could say. Again, Cernovich is somebody who was an original Trump supporter all the way from 2015 onward, very much enjoyed the chaos, criticized him heavily over policy throughout the years, has been saying that the Republicans should abandon Trump in favor of a person like Ron DeSantis. But he, again, is speaking, I think as you and I are, you know, we don't really have a dog in this fight, so I'm just trying to look at it politically and just being like, look, if you want to convince people, many of whom I know who are major MAGA, you know, to their core, and sure, they are not the majority

of the Republican Party or the American people, but enough of a stronghold to give you a very easy path to the primary, then you would have had to make a defense of Trump. And one of the reasons why I'm noting this is look at every other major Republican figure in the country. Kevin McCarthy, immediately, the senior most GOP elected official, tweet coming out, full bear support of Trump. J.D. Vance, many of the other Republican senators, Steve Bannon and others, the Trump campaign, publicly praising Vivek Ramaswamy, calling on Nikki Haley and for Ron DeSantis to join Vivek Ramaswamy in condemning what's happening there. The pressure that is coming to bear, all of the senior Republicans at the highest elected level, almost all the elected GOP senators and others, have went out on the record.

You have Jim Jordan, another MAGA figure, you know, who's coming out there and calling on Alvin Bragg to come and testify before Congress saying that we'll withhold federal funding from your department and all that. Like, it's out there now. Now, it's a political issue. The bar has been set by all of the top electeds. So your choice to go in a different direction, that sends a direct bat signal. And it was, it was read exactly that way as people in the MAGA sphere. Let's go to the next one here. Jack Posobiec, another major figure in the MAGA community. He says, et tu, Brute, from, what is it, Shakespeare, right? That's all coming back to me right now. So the point is, is that accusing DeSantis of stabbing him in the back.

Cernovich also wrote a sub-stack piece where he's just talking about DeSantis blew it today, which passed around heavily in the MAGA community. Raheem Kassam, who is also affiliated formerly with Breitbart, with Steve Bannon as well, coming out and saying that. And, you know, you can deny it or not. Sure, these guys are online, but they represent at least the thoughts of Donald Trump, the people around him. And it is a case that Trump has been macing against DeSantis,

which we again know has been dropping DeSantis' poll numbers like a rock. To be fair, he hasn't even announced yet. Certainly things could change. But I do not think that people around Trump, Trump himself, and many of the people who Trump, DeSantis may have been able to win over. Like the entire conservative kind of media apparatus, they very much took notice of this, again, outside of Ben Shapiro and criticized his response.

Yeah, and once again, there is not going to be any third-way middle ground. No. Not, I mean, we talked yesterday about Mike Pence on January 6th trying to have it both ways, too. You see, Nikki Haley, this is also relevant to the conversation. She just put out an op in The Wall Street Journal that is criticizing DeSantis over his stance on Ukraine. Now, of course, DeSantis and Trump's Ukraine stance is at this point. I mean, it's not really clear that they're the same, but effectively. Similar-ish.

Similar-ish. Yeah. But the criticism really isn't a Trump. It's a clear that they're the same, but effectively. Similar-ish. Similar-ish. Yeah. But the criticism really isn't a Trump. It's a DeSantis. So, you know, nobody is really stepping up to take this guy head on. And you have to think about the way this is all going to play out. This is probably the first indictment of several. So this is going to continue to be one of the most animating issues within the Republican base

electorate and frankly, within American politics. So if you're wishy-washy, you don't know where you stand on this. Yeah, Republican voters are going to have an issue with that. This is what Trump is so good at. He is so good at seizing on issues that he believes are to his benefit, making them the central dividing line in Republican politics. You know, on a policy stance, he's obviously doing this with Social Security and Medicare as well. And then forcing people to make a hard and fast choice. If you are not 100 percent with him, then he then, you know, you're seen as being 100 percent against him. And I think that's we're seeing that in real time with how DeSantis chose to respond to this moment.

President's son also joining the four. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So DeSantis thinks Dems weaponizing the law to indict President Trump is, quote, a manufactured crisis and isn't a real issue. Pure weakness. Now we know why he was silent all weekend. He's totally owned by Karl Rove, Paul Ryan, and his billionaire donors. 100 percent controlled opposition. And listen, you can also say, what, who cares? It's just the president's son. As we also repeatedly showed you, Don Jr. routinely places high in many of these polls

simply because he's also a MAGA warrior. He's very prominent online. He's somebody who a lot of the people in the base loves. I remember seeing him once at the Trump Hotel. He was like a rock star, like whenever he walked in there, because at that time, anybody who was visiting D.C. was like very pro-Trump, would hang out in the lobby, and they all saw him, and they all stood up and clapped. Frankly, I thought it was a little bit gross and kind of reminiscent of the European kings, but it is what it is. You can't control what people like. So anyway, I'm just saying purely observationally, he has also a lot of credibility with a lot of the MAGA base. You can dismiss it if you would like and note that majority of Republicans don't align themselves with that. But the vast majority of Republicans will see any indictment of Trump,

especially on Stormy Daniels related bookkeeping fraud as one of a complete political prosecution. It will be a complete cross the Rubicon moment politically. Also, Crystal and I, you have discussed, I mean, the fact that they are going first with this, and I'm not saying they, because I'm not saying it's coordinated, although maybe it is, but you're going first with Stormy Daniels and not with the Fulton County grand jury, not with the January 6th, not with any of the other myriad investigations where much of the American people definitely are with you, if not the Republican base. On this one, I even think many independent voters would be like, listen, I think this is bullshit. You know, it'll be interesting to see the polling on it.

My guess is you still have a majority of American people in favor of it just because they're not paying so much attention to the details. But we've had consistent polling that says that they believe Trump deserves to be indicted. We'll see. But I agree with your fundamental point here that there is a lot more for Trump to work with on this particular prosecution versus Georgia versus January 6th and fake elector schemes. So, yeah, I mean, I think if it was coordinated, this is not the order that they would have chosen. So I think that that argues against the idea that there was any sort of federal state local coordination in terms of ordering these indictments, because I do not think that this is the order that you would choose. There you go. So we will watch it closely, guys. And, you know, the minute that something breaks, we'll try to, you know, get up live as soon as we can. And of course, we've got counterpoints tomorrow to cover anything that unfolds overnight as well. We covered before Macron has for years now actually been pushing to raise the retirement age in France and is facing vehement opposition from effectively all political corners.

It's actually a real horseshoe moment. You have the nationalist right as led by Marine Le Pen, which is opposed to Macron on this. You also have the left led by figures like Jean-Luc Mélenchon. They are all united in their opposition to raising the retirement age. And the people are behind them, too, by the way. The polling I've seen has said that anywhere from two thirds to three quarters of the French public is like, hell no, we do not support this. And that has shown up in the legislative tactics that Macron has been forced into using if he wants to push this retirement age lift through. And it has also shown in the overwhelming street protests that have been rocking the country for months now, some of which we have covered. happened, which is that Macron put this up on the screen, barely survived a no confidence vote by

just nine votes. Now, the reason that this no confidence vote happened, and I'll get into a little bit of the details here, is Macron could not actually muster enough legislative support, it appears, to pass this retirement age lift through like normal order. So he had to invoke this unusual legislative procedure that I won't get into the details of, but that effectively circumvented having to go through and actually obtain a majority of the vote that can be used for certain particular votes within France. It's very unusual to do. And frankly, it's very anti-democratic. It seems like all of these. And frankly, it's very anti-democratic. It seems like all of these neoliberals, when push comes to shove, they really show their

authoritarian colors. But after he pushes this through using this unusual mechanism, they had the opportunity to then have a no confidence vote. And if that no confidence vote had succeeded, not only would his government had to effectively disband, but it also would have rolled back the retirement age lift. So this came a lot closer than what people thought. And the reason is that they lost a good number of the center right Republicans who were in theory in support of lifting the age even further to even higher to 65. But they saw the freak out of the public and a good like 19 of them that they expected to vote in favor of Macron actually defected and voted along with the no confidence vote. And that's why

he barely, barely survived. There have been protests going on over this for months. There continue to be protests. We have a little bit of that. Let's go ahead and put it up on the screen so you can get a sense of this. You see the like, you know, cops with riot shields and, you know, some smoke there. You've got similar interactions here between the police. You've got a fire. One of the things, go ahead, put up the next video, guys. There have been strikes, sort of rolling strikes throughout French society. One of the ones that has been most visible

is the garbage collectors, the rubbish collectors have not been working. So there are tons and tons of garbage piled up in the streets of Paris. And apparently last night, after that no confidence vote narrowly failed, a lot of that rubbish was set on fire. So that's where we are. It really is a quite extraordinary. I think you would put it in the context of, you know, first of all, like the French are very

protective of their way of life and they see this as an assault on their way of life. And whatever you think about where the retirement age should be, like clearly they are overwhelmingly opposed to this change. That's number one. But it also comes in the context of, you know, you've also had in the UK huge protests also over sort of neoliberal policies. So it starts to look like a real trend that is, you know, that is burgeoning in Europe and perhaps beyond. Well, I think that the point, the major point is that the majority of the people in France don't want it. Well, they're the ones who get to decide in their government. And yeah, I mean, going nine votes away from a vote of no confidence is a disaster. But more so, I think that the means through which

that he was trying to do it by bypassing parliament, I don't think that that's going to sit well with a lot of people in France because it does, as you say, look authoritarian in nature. Now, part of the problem is, you know, with their party system and the fracturing that they've effectively guaranteed it so that Macron consistently has been able to win power despite that fact that almost nobody likes him. He's got a 30 percent approval rating, which is outrageous. It almost reminds me of our presidential system. But they've always historically had that strong parliament as well. And their inability here or the inability right now for the Macron, for the parliament to come in and actually block this shows you, though, that because they got so

close, they may have a path there in the future. And at the very least, it does send a signal to him being like, hey, you know, you're coming right on the razor's edge of actually losing here. And it could be, it would be a huge blow, I think, to his presidency. It's also one of those strange things where why does he continue to push this whenever- Why are you so committed to this? Why are you so committed to this whenever you're, it's like, arguably the best thing you could do for the French economy right now is to try and negotiate peace in Ukraine. That actually would be the best possible thing. That's a best possible thing for energy prices. There are actually protests in France over NATO and over the continued war in Ukraine right now. So we shouldn't pretend like everything is hunky-dory

over in Paris, something that he absolutely would have real control over and probably would be politically popular. But, you know, this is what he's decided to go with. I don't really get it. Yeah, I don't really get it either. And, you know, the parallels to the U.S. system that you alluded to, you're not the only one that took note of that. Remember, after Macron was able to win reelection, Ron Klain, who was at that point chief of staff, tweeted basically like, oh, he got reelected with an approval rating in the 30s. How interesting. Effectively intimating that the plan to get Joe Biden reelected is very similar. Like, well, you may not really like Joe. You may be wildly dissatisfied with his inadequacies and his ability to effectively govern. But are you really going

to vote for Donald Trump? I don't think so. And so it was a similar, like lesser evil kind of dynamic that got Macron into office. It's also worth remembering that this is far from the first protest, massive protest movement that he has faced since he has been the leader of that country in his first term. That's when they had the Yellow Vest protests, which were over, you know, a different basket of issues,

but similarly driven by economics and populist in nature and this sort of like horseshoe coalition. So now you have in the second term as well. I mean, these are massive, like historic. I know like France protests all the time, but this is a different level. And it's and they recognize it as such. Yes. And it's across the country. It really is from sort of all corners of society, a quite remarkable show of force. Many, many labor unions involved, like I said, not collecting the rubbish and shutting down some of the transportation system, even dealing with some of the sort of core energy infrastructure, scaling back production.

So this has really rocked this society. And even if he is able to, he already has forced this thing through effectively. Now he's facing, I just saw this morning, calls from even some lawmakers within his own party that are like, you know, this is really not worth it. Like we support it in principle and it's all about fiscal responsibility, et cetera. Of course, you could always, you know, you could always fill that hole another way. But so even within his own party, he is losing some support here, which I think is pretty extraordinary as well. Put this last piece up on the screen from the Financial Times just so you can see their take on it. They say Emmanuel Macron to force pension reform without vote as protests sweep France. And they say government

risks a no confidence vote and further backlash on the streets. Obviously, they narrowly survived that no confidence vote. But this article just goes into some of the details of the legislative maneuvering that was required here in order to force this through. And it also notes that nearly three quarters of the public are opposed to raising the retirement age, according to polls, and that millions have turned up to protest, not just in Paris and other large cities, but also in small towns. So it really is, you know, across the entire country that society is revolting against these neoliberal changes he's trying to force through.

Yeah, we'll keep a close eye on it. It's not like anybody's trying to cut retirement benefits here in the U.S. That's a lot of echoes, doesn't it? Listen, you know, we are cousins after all, I guess, from across the Atlantic.

That's right. All right, let's go ahead and move on to the next one. This is a subject near and dear to my heart. So the cast of Ted Lasso was in the White House yesterday. I don't really know

what they were doing there, but I guess it's cool. Talking about mental health. I don't even know what Ted Lasso is. That's how I understand it. It's a show on Apple. I hear that boomers like it.

It's just a joke, boomers. But I do hear that you guys like it a lot. But also for real. But no, but for real though, the biggest Ted Lasso fans I've ever met are all boomers.

So I'm just going to say that. All right. So the Ted Lasso cast was there. Not dressed appropriately in my opinion, but I guess that's a subject for another day. They appeared at the White House podium next to Karine Jean-Pierre, but some major fireworks erupted after Simon Atebas. We've covered him actually before. He's a reporter for an African news outlet who has not been consistently called on by the Biden administration. He often wants to ask questions to the administration specifically about policy with regards to Africa. Now, I sympathize with Simon quite a bit because his plight of not being able to get called on is one that has been completely ignored by the White House Correspondents Association.

Now, yesterday, Simon decided to force the moment and to continue to shout at the White House press secretary until she would acknowledge him. Two extraordinary things happened. One, Karine Jean-Giupierre basically said that it was an act of disrespect, she said this can never happen again. But two, and this is the most galling part. Yeah. You should always have adversarial relations between the press and the press corps when they're yelling or in the press secretary. When she's yelling at you, you're doing a good job. The best part though, was that the white house correspondence association president and the other people in the room turned on Simon for trying to get his question answered and actually admonished him. Let's take a listen to that full exchange.

You can keep discriminating against some people in the briefing room because you don't like them. You don't like them. So you have a choice. You have a choice. You have a choice you have a choice you have a choice okay this is not China this is not Russia this is the United States this is the White House it's been seven months the rest of us are here too pal

it's been seven months you guys have not done anything for me if you have grievances you should bring them to her later I have done that all I have done that. All my emails have been ignored. And the press corps is tired of dealing with this. No, no, no, no, no. No, that's not, we're not doing this.

We're not doing this. We're not doing this. We're not doing this. You've been discriminating against me and discriminating against some people in the briefing room. And I'm saying that this is the U.S. and this is not China. This is not Russia. This is not Russia.

Okay. What you are doing, you are making a monkey of the First Amendment. Please, please, please. It's been seven months. You've not called the meeting. You've been calling the meeting. You've been calling the meeting. You've been calling the meeting. You've been calling the U.S. This is not China. This is not Russia. This is not Russia. Okay. What you are doing, you are making a monkey of the First Amendment. The quorum, please. The quorum, please. It's been seven months. You've not called on me.

The quorum, please. You've not sent me messages. I'm saying that that's not right. That's not right. One time's welcome, guys. Welcome. Welcome to the press briefing room. Okay. Sir, let it go. Are we ready? Are we going to behave?

Are we ready? Are we going to behave? I mean, listen, I was there in the Trump years, Crystal. I remember when a guy named Jim Acosta, who is now the host of a very low-rated Saturday morning program, but who's watching that, happened to get his career and make millions of dollars on a book by literally grabbing a microphone out of a White House intern's hand, refusing to give it up, and consistently shouting at the president. And guess what? Although I made fun of him at the time for the way that he acted, I would still be outraged if other people in the press corps were to shout him down because the whole point is adversarial relations with the press. And look, you can take it in whichever direction that you want.

At the end of the day are exactly how it should exist. And instead, the White House Correspondents Association president, Zeke Miller, actually apologized to the press secretary after that and said, our apologies on behalf of the press corps. And I think it's always important that we try and take you guys inside of the room, is the entire system is rigged completely. The government has no say over the press room. It's all controlled by the White House Correspondents Association, including the seating chart, including who they allow in and out, whether people like Simon and others, people like me, who had to stand in the aisles and trying to get called on by the press secretary. Also, and with respect here, as you can clearly see, what they have done is the Biden administration returned to the rule where the first person to get called on in the briefing room is the Associated Press. Worse, though, is that the traditional custom in the room is that the Associated Press correspondent,

in this case also the White House Correspondents Association president, he also gets to decide when the briefing is over. So people should remember we played that audio of a fight that broke out last time that we exclusively obtained here at Breaking Points, which showed that the Associated Press president called the briefing over and reporters in the back were like, hey, you didn't have to call it over. Like, we still have questions here.

The point is, is why are they the ones effectively apologizing here for the breach in decorum or whatever whenever you're supposed to have adversarial relations? And two, why are you policing people for acting the way that you all acted during the Trump administration? They used to scream like banshees when Sarah Sanders came out. And it's outrageous that now that they are getting called on, it's decorum. That's decorum fest. We have to police each other. When they weren't getting called on, oh, it was an attack on the First Amendment. The press was in trouble. We all have to stand together. I can't tell you how many times it would come to all of us afterwards and be like, we got to stand together, guys. We got to make a big stand for press freedom and all this. Well, what about this? It's the same thing. Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, that's the part that is really galling to me. Like I

can't really blame Karine Jean-Pierre. That's her job. That's her job. Her job is to be spokesperson to the president and to call on the people she wants to call on and answer the questions she was. I can't really blame her because she is basically just doing the role that she's supposed to do. What is unforgivable is all of those supposed journalists in the room teaming up against their fellow colleague who is trying to get heard and trying to get a question answered. And he says he hasn't been called months and months and months. And, you know, I don't doubt that he raises and ask questions about issues that most of the rest of the press corps isn't really paying attention. Yes. Yes. So it's not without consequence, especially when you consider the fact that this administration is very closed off. Biden gives very few interviews. You know,

they mostly only make themselves available to friendly outlets. So this is one of the only times when you have a little bit of give and take where you might be able to get a response on an issue that, you know, they're not going to get asked about otherwise. So there are real stakes here. And it just demonstrates that, you know, the ones who sit in the front row and get most of the questions, they are more interested in preserving decorums in service of their access and their friendly relations with the White House than they are with actually fulfilling the adversarial role that the press is supposed to fill. Right, and that was the major one. And of course, you know, this has been met with complete silence. They have no answer for their hypocrisy. I, again, you know, I literally was once shouted down by April Ryan,

who basically threw one of the biggest fits I've ever seen whenever she didn't get called on by President Trump. I've seen Jim Acosta, Peter Alexander, and all of these other people beclown themselves to a historic degree. I was standing right next to them while they were doing it. And guess what? They were making millions of dollars. They were becoming heroes amongst their fellow press member for standing up to Sarah Sanders and Sean Spicer to President Trump. And now whenever somebody acts the exact same way that they did, but it's somebody who's outside the club, oh, this is a breach of decorum. Also, here's the other favorite part. You can raise them with her later. Yeah, she's going to take a meeting with her. It's not so easy to meet

with the press secretary, okay? It actually is very hard if you don't want to I used to have to get up at like 6 in the morning and go Stand by Sarah Sanders's door just to literally get two seconds with her just like hi, you know Just so you know that that's how it works if the big-time reporters though, of course, they get meetings with them all the time It's a complete insight again, you know, George Carlin quote big club You ain't in it and Simon is finding out the hard way. He had the temerity to shout at the press secretary, which is literally what these people are supposed to do. But they don't have to shout anymore because they've got that inside relationship. It's totally rigged, the way that this happened.

And he just exposed it again, once again, after his last big stand. So there you go. And if you really want to be disgusted, just look at the online reaction to this. It was all in favor. Yeah, you're right. How dare he? How dare he speak up and ask for a break? How dare he shout at the queen?

Break decorum, et cetera. So anyway. Okay. So there's a clip that has been getting passed around quite a lot online that is quite extraordinary. So we want to play it here. Put actually the second element, guys, up on the screen first. PBS is doing a little documentary of Dr. Fauci. I guess they

followed him around for a while as part of their American Masters series. And as part of this documentary where, again, they were following Fauci for a while with a camera crew, et cetera, and seeing what was happening. This was like in the height of the vaccine push. As part of this, they went to a historic black neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It's Fauci and current mayor, Mariel Bowser. And they are trying to get people who are not yet vaccinated to go and get the jab. So I watched the whole clip that they've posted. Most of the interactions

were very friendly. There were a lot of people who were like, oh, I already got it done. People were excited to see him or whatever. But one of the interactions did not go exactly as Dr. Fauci expected. Let's take a look. People in America are not settled with the information that's being given to us right now. So I'm not going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn't clear in the first place going to be lining up taking a shot on a vaccination for something that wasn't clear in the first place. And then you all create a shot in miraculous time. It takes years to create a vaccination. Well, it used to take years. You know how many years we're invested in this approach? About 20 years of science to get us to be able to do it. 20 years is not enough.

And nine months is definitely not enough for nobody to be taking no vaccination that you all came up with. What are we going to do about those other states? Oh my God. They're going to keep the outbreak smoldering in the country. It's so crazy. I mean, they're not doing it because they say they don't want to do it. They're Republicans. They don't like to be told

what to do. And we've got to break that, you know, unpack that. Well, I heard that it doesn't cure it and it doesn't stop you from getting it. No. So on the very, very, very rare chance that you do get it, even if you're vaccinated, it's a very you don't even feel sick. It's like you don't even know you got infected. So the first interaction that we play that went on for some time, he had a lot of and they just had to eventually be like, all right, you're obviously not going to get the vaccine. But there's actually a lot to unpack here.

I mean, first of all, in that last interaction, what Fauci says is really not accurate. No, it's just not accurate. It's literally not true. It's just not true. Right? I mean, we all found out that, okay, the vaccine was very effective in preventing severe illness. That is absolutely correct. Especially amongst those who are immunocompromised and elderly. Yes. Right. But it really didn't do a whole lot in terms of just keeping you from getting COVID as we discovered in the rest of the country.

And he's telling that to a mom with her kids. That's actually what really galled me, Crystal. So that was that the The first guy also, you know, Zed Jelani was talking about this. He was like, listen, you know, whatever you think about the vaccine, that's not how you convince somebody whenever you're like, well, actually, it was 20 years of science. Now, look, maybe the man was unconvincible, but he was so arrogant in his presentation about the data, about the way that he was talking to that mother. Also in that comment that he was making to Muriel Bowser about, oh, these Republicans and their choice and all this, basically ridiculing them. You know, this was at the time, I believe this was in May of 2021. At that time, whenever President Biden was like, it's a pandemic or whatever of the unvaccinated, and that didn't

end up being true either. And the point was, is that he was ridiculing and admonishing people rather than actually trying to meet that man with his legitimate concerns and just say, listen, man, like tell me what would you need to hear from me right now? Like what can I try and give you right now? I mean, okay. So there's a lot of research about the best ways to actually persuade people. And, um, the least effective thing you can do is sort of what Fauci did there, which is throw a bunch of statistics at them, beat them over the head with like, well, actually, it was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The best thing you can do is engage in a conversation and ask them some questions that maybe allow them to themselves question some of the assumptions that they had made. Now, look, I think it's entirely possible that this man was not persuadable.

He clearly was like, you know, very invested. And that exchange, like I said, goes on for a long time. He's very invested in his view of the vaccine, which wasn't accurate. But to me, what it reminded me of was the fact that especially early in the vaccination campaigns, there was a media narrative that the only people who were vaccine hesitant were basically like crank right wing Republicans, white Republicans. And that was not true. It wasn't true at all. And so I actually I mean, I'm glad that Fauci actually went out and talked to some people that didn't fit the narrative that was being sold. But, you know, it makes a lot of sense that the people who have been screwed over the most in modern history, in

past history, in further back history by American society and by specifically the medical establishment in a lot of instances, yeah, they're going to be skeptical. That is a natural reaction to their experience and the history of what they have suffered in this country. So I think it was a real reminder of that time period and how much we were kind of gaslit about where vaccine hesitancy was coming from and what it was all about, when in reality it was a much more complex and multifaceted picture.

And the other thing that it reminded me of, which is just like pretty surface level, is there's oftentimes an attempt to paint the quote-unquote black community as one single monolith that holds one single set of views. And I think if you watch this clip in its entirety, it's very clear that you cannot reduce any demographic group of people to a single monolith. People are complex and they hold a wide variety of views within any demographic. It turns out black people are just like the rest of us, individuals. Who could have known? Shocker. I know. It's actually racist to think the otherwise, but whatever. I'm sure that point has been made a million times. My major takeaway from that was number one, Fauci is the least effective science communicator of all time, even though, quote, he is literally

the science as he dubbed himself. And two, which is a core tenant of this show, is I trust regular people, man. These people out there, I'm going to presume that they work very hard, that necessarily that life has been tough in some cases, especially in that neighborhood. And guess what? Those people are often the best at sussing out information for themselves. And they can legitimately ask that question. And I actually thought it was really outrageous the way that he lied to her about preventing transmission and all that and trying to guilt trip this mother into trying to protect her children when the information that she presented was fundamentally accurate as to what she wanted to do. Also, it's not like she wasn't

COVID unsafe. She was wearing a mask at the time. I don't know if everybody noticed that. So it's not like she didn't care about protecting her kids. She was, well, it turned out what we knew about masks and all that, but I guess to the best of her knowledge, what she thought she was doing best for protecting herself and protecting her family. And at the end of the day, like this is America.

And it also underscores, I think I did a monologue about this with Don Lemon and with others where he was calling out like white, unvaccinated whites and how they should be banned from society and all that. And I was like, here you have like one of the top black people in news who's basically advocating for poor blacks in New York City and throughout the rest of America to not be able to enter a public space. That's crazy. There was a conversation about kicking people out of school. Yes. Yeah. I mean, listen, to go back to that first exchange with the guy who was very hard against

the vaccine. I mean, some of what he said was not correct, no doubt about it. But it was also interesting to hear how he was consuming the information that was available to him. And, you know, one of the things that made him really skeptical was there were a bunch of these incentive programs. They were like, oh, we'll pay you. Which I, at the time, thought, okay, well, maybe that's a reasonable idea. You know, I kind of thought the same thing. But clearly, at least for some percentage, this was taken of a side of like, oh, you're going to pay.

Then there must really be something else going on here if you're willing to pay me for it. And that's, again, because there's this deep mistrust. And by the way, you know, to bring this back around to Fauci, and I think that guy mentioned some of this or at least alluded to it as well. We know that at the beginning of this crisis, Fauci was not, he admitted to lying to the American people about masks and about herd immunity. So if that's your starting point of

like out of the gates on one of the most important questions of like, should you mask or should you not mask? You're going to lie to us about what you actually think and what the science and research to that point actually says. Well, then, yeah, that's going to degrade our trust then down the road when you're asking us to take these other steps. To me, it also just exposes that one of the, I've met a lot of people who are unvaccinated. I've met a lot of people who refuse to get the vaccine. And the number one thing that they cite to me every single time is the pharmaceutical profit incentive. Can you blame them? I absolutely cannot. And that is something which in retrospect, and I mean, we certainly said at the time, but also any injection of money into this process corrupted it in the minds of the skeptical from day one.

You cannot but look at the outrageous profits of Pfizer and of Moderna of their changing their tune from the original vax to then the boosters to now continual boosters and not say, hey, you're making a ton of money off this thing. You are also literally exempt by the U.S. government over liability. And so it's like you exempt the liability, but you get to keep the profit. So it's like, well, so it's literal, the literal meme of socialize the risk and privatize the profit. I think that was the original sin from the beginning. I personally think there would have been much higher vaccine uptick, A, if they were way more honest about the data and B, if they had taken money out from the process in the first place. Because that's one of the first things he cites, too, about the process, the opaqueness.

That's something I have learned so much from John Abramson, who we had here on this show, about the actual process through which these drugs get greenlit, through the way the flu shots, so much of this stuff that, you know, my own skepticism is skyrocketed about the entire medical system through this. And I don't think I'm alone. And a lot of it does come back to mind. I think you're right to pinpoint the profit motive, because even if we zoom out from this particular incident, et cetera, it's no accident that the U.S. has a larger percentage of vaccine hesitant people than other developed nations that have universal health care, where you don't have the profit motive at the core of every single interaction anyone ever has with our medical system,

whether it is obtaining health insurance, whether it's trying to get the drugs that they've been prescribed or anything else. Yeah, guess what? When your experience with the medical system is these people are just trying to price gouge me at every single point of interaction, that's going to fuel some skepticism and some hesitancy. So, you know, I think in this particular instance, going with a for profit approach to vaccine development, I do think that that was a mistake, but it is not just a mistake, but a tragedy and a real crime against, you know, the people of America that we are the only health care system in the world that operates in the way that we do, where it is about profit and not ultimately about health outcomes.

So this is what you end up with. And it is sad. Yeah. Fauci, the people who all supported this strategy of the privatized vaccine and all of that, you people are the ones who are responsible for this. It's not on those individuals for asking questions. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? As you will recall, FTX, led by Sam Bankman-Fried, collapsed spectacularly a while back. And in the wreckage, it became quite clear this was no ordinary business failure, but a classic Ponzi scheme in a modern crypto wrapping with billions in missing funds,

a mountain of lies, and a founder who used a carefully cultivated public image to hide an alleged white collar crime spree. SBF is now wearing an ankle bracelet at his parents' mansion awaiting trial. Well, there's an interesting new sub drama playing out, which could have huge ramifications for the entire YouTube creator space, but especially for the world of financial influencers. Investors who claim they lost money in FTX because of YouTube creator hype have filed a class action lawsuit against a number of popular finance YouTubers. The list of 10 defendants here includes Graham Stephen of The Graham Stephen Show. They have 4.26 million subscribers. Ben Anderson of the BitBoy Crypto channel has 1.54 million subscribers. And Kevin Papras of Meet Kevin, 1.87 million subscribers. Now, I actually

wasn't familiar really with any of these dudes before, but looking at their channels, kind of looks like a standard combination of Get Rich Quick stuff, crypto promotion, Elon standing, et cetera. Now, the lawsuit makes a couple of key claims here. First, claims that the promoters were involved in the illegal sale of unregistered securities. Effectively, the argument here is that the FTX high-yield accounts were really technically unregistered securities, which then have to be handled legally in a very specific way. The suit claims that these influencers are sophisticated and should have been able to see that FTX was a scam. And it also claims that these promoters were selling FTX without sufficiently disclosing that they were getting paid for that endorsement. Per the complaint, though FTX paid defendants handsomely to push its brand and encourage their followers to invest,

defendants did not disclose the nature and scope of their sponsorships and or endorsement deals, payments and compensation, nor conduct adequate, if any, due diligence. For example, Meet Kevin was apparently paid $2,500 every time he even mentioned FTX, an arrangement that he told CoffeeZilla netted him more than $200,000. How clearly was this disclosed? Well, that'll be a key question for Meet Kevin and other influencers who took money from FTX and then subsequently hyped their products. You'll recall that Kim Kardashian actually settled a case against her for a million dollars because she was alleged to have insufficiently disclosed that she was getting paid to show for some schlocky Ethereum knockoff coin. She put hashtag ad in her Instagram post, but regulators claimed this was not enough. Now, in terms of this legal case here, to be perfectly honest with you, after reading the complaint, far from persuaded that this suit

is going to actually succeed. I was expecting to see a lot of specific details about who was getting paid what and specific comments they made, which were fraudulent or lacking in appropriate disclosure. Those details could come out still in discovery, but there was not a whole lot here. At least one of the named influencers, BitBoy, actually warned that FTX was a scam a month before its collapse and claims he had no financial deal with them whatsoever. CoffeeZilla interviewed a lawyer who raised a lot of red flags about the case as well, finding in particular the notion that these YouTubers should have had special non-public knowledge of FTX to be a pretty unreasonable notion. But taking a step back from the rather murky legal

analysis, there are some very clear lessons inadvertently revealed by YouTuber Meet Kevin in his response to the filing. Now, that's the guy again who was getting $2,500 a pop every time the word FTX came out of his mouth. Take a listen to a portion of the response video that he posted to his channel. At what point does sort of the promotion of an idea or a suggestion, paid or unpaid, rise to the level of actually being personalized advice? And in my opinion, it doesn't. In my opinion, at no point does me saying, I think oil is going down and it's a good short, rise to the level of personal financial advice. At no point does me saying, hey, I'm investing in something, rise to the level of personalized financial advice.

Personalized financial advice is when somebody signs a contract with a financial advisor and says, hey, I am paying you specifically to advise on my portfolio. And by signing that contract, now the other person is taking the fiduciary obligation of providing the best responsibility and service to that person for their case. And see, that I think is the big difference here is when people who are content creators are sharing ideas and perspectives, they're doing just that. They're not giving you personalized insights. They're giving you ideas and perspectives. And the reality is people have to put on their big boy pants and realize that if you make a decision because of something you heard online, that's your responsibility. So when people who are content creators are sharing ideas and perspectives, they're doing just that.

They're not giving you personalized insights. They're giving you ideas and perspectives. So here, this guy's whole thing is being a financial YouTuber. The whole reason that people watch him is to get advice. But he says he's not actually giving advice. He loves that followers listen, of course, to what he has to say when he's building his channel and cashing those checks from FTX and whoever else, but he wants another responsibility that comes with having an audience that you have explicitly cultivated to trust your guidance.

In his words, quote, people need to put on their big boy pants and realize if you make a decision based on something you heard online, that is your responsibility. So basically his position here is that if you were dumb enough to take my advice, it's your own damn fault.

Now, I hope anyone who listens to this type of content really takes this in. If you trust a word of the advice that they're giving you, they think you're a fool who needs to put on your big boy pants and accept personal responsibility for the catastrophic investments that they were paid, in many instances, to promote to you. Now, what many of these influencers did, it might not be illegal, but it is wildly unethical to pump a bunch of risky bets that you are being paid to promote. Knowing how we approach our business here and our responsibility to all of you, I genuinely cannot wrap my head around it.

We have decided not to talk to or take direct money from corporate sponsors at all, because I would feel terrible if I even just promoted some product that was kind of crappy and didn't work as advertised. When you're talking about people's money, or I should add also their health, that is a whole other level of responsibility and a whole other level of callousness. I could not live with myself if I thought there were people who lost everything because I was on the FTX dole shilling for their crappy, fraudulent Ponzi scheme.

The bottom line is this. They're happy to profit off your trust, but they take zero responsibility for any wreckage that that trust creates. Meet Kevin says you should not consider his or any other financial influencer's comments as personal advice. And ironically, that is actually good advice. It's so scummy, this world. I don't, I mean, listen. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at breakingpoints.com.

All right, so how are we looking at? Yesterday, March 20th, was an important day. It's one that will likely pass with little fanfare and acknowledgement by the mainstream media. But as we covered, and those who know, it's the 20th anniversary of the day that we invaded Iraq. March 20th, the day that American ground forces crossed into Iraq for the race to Baghdad. Little did those men know that we were doomed to waste $5 trillion, thousands of American lives, who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and pouring gasoline on a global jihadist movement that took almost 20 years to actually bring to bay. It is difficult to describe how bad the Iraq war was, what it did to this country. It actually

ruined us to our core, at home and abroad. It set us back in ways we still have yet to recover from. And to me, it's where the root of almost all our modern problems stem from. Yet, those who led us into the war in Iraq, those who supported it and beat the war drum for it, are still amongst us. George W. Bush is a celebrated painter now. Pro-democracy because he stood up to Trump. The Cheney family is a paragon of virtue, apparently. Press secretaries of George Bush who lied to the American people, who doomed young men to their deaths in a faraway land, are now MSNBC stars and Never Trump heroes. Lawmakers and thinkers who justified the war in Iraq, they voted for it, they defended it, propagated it, remain amongst us to this day. Iraq is important not just because of how bad it was,

but because those who pushed and justified this war today have been reborn as icons of the liberal establishment. They have moved from the center of power from right to left in this country throughout the ideological takeover, never taking their hands off the wheel of foreign policy. I was especially struck by this in the freakout over Ron DeSantis' comments on Ukraine and the people who crawled out of the woodwork to criticize him. Exactly four GOP lawmakers went on the record in this story. The first was Liz Cheney. Do I even need to tell you that not only did the Cheney support the war at the time, but that she continues to support the invasion and the acts of her father? The next one was Lindsey Graham, another noted GOP clown who supported the war in Iraq at the time, never

stopped supporting it and recently advocated for World War III with Russia because our drone was forced down. The next was Marco Rubio, who of course famously defended Bush for invading Iraq in his 2016 campaign and subsequently was trounced by Trump in the primary. Finally, the last was John Cornyn. Cornyn, conveniently for us, represented Texas in the U.S. Senate at the time he voted for the war in Iraq and actually said, in 2020, it was not a war of our choosing. Let's keep going. Among so-called prominent conservatives who criticized DeSantis, David French, now a New York Times columnist who lambasted DeSantis for his carefully worded answer to imply that it's not a core U.S. interest for Ukraine to defeat Russia and calling it at least in part a, quote, territorial dispute. French laid out his take on DeSantis, which is, of course, fine and a legitimate opinion, saying he's no Ronald Reagan.

But I also happen to know he's still a vehement defender of the Iraq War. He wrote in 2019, quote, I believed the Iraq War was just and proper in 2003. I still believe that today. So by that metric, in the Frenchian worldview, if this is something that Reagan would have done, well, I think we should all be out on that one. Let's keep going, shall we? Let's move on. David Frum of The Atlantic.

Frum, never Trump figure. Also the guy who literally wrote the Axis of Evil speech that President Bush delivered, dooming us to the, quote, forever war on terror. A week ago, he writes, is DeSantis flaming out already? Advancing the idea that embracing

a skeptical view of the U.S. view towards Ukraine is trying to win, quote, the Fox News primary. And not even a few days later, comes out with a piece that, to this day, defends the Iraq war. Admitting that while it might have been a mistake, we got at least something out of it, right?

Yeah, I'm just gonna go with wrong. I'll keep going, let's go. Bill Kristol, served as a mouthpiece of the Bush administration, ran a magazine whose entire job was to push for the Iraq War, also hit DeSantis for not supporting Ukraine's freedom. Reminded me of a tweet that I'll never forget

of his from November 2016. The Iraq War was right, necessary, and we won it. Let's go, I can continue even more. I'm sure you get the point. Nicole Wallace, the former Bush comms official who shilled for the war, aired multiple segments on her show denouncing DeSantis. All of this is just compiled to show you the loudest voices out there today beating the drum for more aid to Ukraine and attacking DeSantis for half-hearted endorsement of a Trumpist-style worldview shows you how these people have suffered no real consequence. Worse, it shows that a group

of people who hold tremendous power over our foreign policy and remain influential are also completely out of step with most Americans. Today, the vast majority of Americans say the Iraq war was a terrible mistake. 61% say they do not believe that the U.S Americans say the Iraq war was a terrible mistake. 61% say they do not believe that the U.S. made the right decision. If you remove boomers from that equation, it is overwhelming. Almost all young voters saying it was a catastrophic mistake. With respect to Ukraine, this also shows out of step even these lawmakers are from their own voters. Only 42% of GOP voters even support aid to Ukraine, with most turning against it. This is the same trend amongst independents. One of the most enduring lessons of Iraq is that

monoculture views on foreign policy lead to inevitable disasters. That intervention has 40th order consequences, often which are far worse than people ever could predict, and that you can deal with the fallout for years to come if you get it wrong. We escaped Iraq merely penniless, torn apart as a country, and with a million or so people dead. Let's hope that the butcher's bill is not as high, if not higher, for our current posture abroad. And isn't it amazing when you look at those side-by-side pieces on what people say? And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. So guys, as we have been discussing in the show this week, Mark's 20 years since the Iraq War

invasion. And joining us now to talk about some of the media failures then and whether they have learned anything in the present is Dr. Trisha Parsi. He is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute. It's great to see you, sir. Good to see you back. Before we get into the content here, I do want to flag for everybody, I'm moderating a panel in conjunction with Quincy Institute. That is going to be tomorrow. And it's going to tackle a great group of people that are going to be on this panel and we're sort of tackling how the media led us into war and some of these questions about what, if anything, has changed in terms of their coverage. So you can RSVP online, you can join us online, you can join us in person. It should be a great event. So with that being said, Dr. Parsi, just remind people of what a monolith the media was leading up to the Iraq war. It wasn't just conservative media.

It was almost uniformly across the board. How did they make such a grave error of just trusting hook, line, and sink or whatever the Bush administration wanted to feed them? They made error by not doing their jobs. The job of journalism is to question power, to scrutinize it. And there was no scrutinizing. There was no tough questions being asked. Instead, the media really helped create a groupthink situation in Washington and beyond. I was on the Hill at the time, and it was very clear. It's like a switch went off. Once the White House set the signal that they want to do this, you could not disagree with it publicly. People had to whisper in the corners if they had any qualms about it. And the media helped create

that atmosphere in which if you question, it meant you were on the other side. You were a Saddam hugger just as much as you're a Putin hugger today. If you have question marks about the wisdom of this, about the tactics, about the strategy, but the very inception of the idea that yes, it is the job of the United States to go all the way to the other side of the world to create a democracy in a country that we know literally nothing about. Yeah. And that's something we wanted to dig into is the dynamic that you said. Let's go and put this up there on the screen from Branko Marcetich. Made a great point. 20 years ago, the Iraq war changed everything and taught elites nothing. Can you, since you were at there at the

time, compare that time to where we are right now in not just the Ukraine debate, but really the foreign policy debate in general? Well, I think I have to say, having gone through Iraq, I never thought it was going to happen again. And it wasn't because I thought humanity had this amazing ability. I thought there were specific circumstances that made it particularly bad. And so I was quite wrong in then seeing it being repeated in Ukraine. And I think what happened with Ukraine, part of the reason why, both from the media and other ends, there was this desire to just think that this is the right thing to do, is because of that desire of us wanting to be on the right side of history, which then means that logic and nuance, all of that stuff has to be said to decide.

And it wasn't a way of correcting in the minds of some people what had happened for the last 20 years. When the United States used to be the aggressor to one country that invaded others, preemptive wars, et cetera, and now it was someone else doing it. Great. Now we can be on the right side of history. We can be the good guys thinking that we are in a Marvel movie rather than being in a reality in which nuance is Unfortunately the key thing that makes us better understand the world and charter better direct and for direction for our foreign policy

So I think that desire really kicked in and it made it at times even worse and one thing I have to say that is Really really scary. I follow stuff in Europe a lot. I grew up in Sweden. They didn't have the groupthink back in 2003, as you know, that was quite critical. Now they're in a worse situation than the United States. I have to say the conversation here, not saying that it's great, but the conversation here is better than it is in many capitals in Europe right now. And that really came as a surprise to me. That was your experience when you were in the UK. I was going to say, I was just in the UK a month ago and I was like, man, they put us to shame in terms of their media. There was a caller, I think it was like LBC radio, it's exactly what

you're referencing. All he said was maybe we shouldn't send fighter jets to you. And this guy, the host just lost it on him, like anti-democracy, all that. I was like, man, if that's how it is here. And to be fair, I guess London is the most hawkish, but maybe talk about that as well in the context of the need at the time with Iraq to have the countervailing point of view. I said yesterday, you know, one of the great failures, sure, the media was there, but it was also the Hill, you know, like there at the end of the day could have had access to the secret intelligence. They could have asked questions, had hearings. Instead, you had Joe Biden and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but not just him, but he was, he is the president now, but all senior leaders are completely lining up the President Bush at the time and basically validating their case for Iraq. I mean,

has that changed in any way at least? Or what do you think? Not to the extent that it should. And I think, again, it comes down to instead of looking at these issues as hard foreign policy issues that need to be analyzed, we quickly moralize it. There's a good and a bad side. And once we do it that way, you're not allowed to any longer have question marks about strategy, tactics, etc. Because if you have those question marks, you are then siding with the evil guy in the equation. That's not to say that what Russia did in Ukraine is completely wrong. It's a violation of international law. All of those things are true. But when we look at foreign policy through that moralizing lens, we eliminate the possibility to be able to actually have a nuanced, logical, critical conversation about what the right way out of this situation is.

It's all about taking sides. And the end result of that is that far more people die. So even if you want to take a look at it from a moral position, the outcome is likely going to be worse from that moral position as well. You know, I was thinking the other day about remember when progressives put together that letter that was like so mild, was like, look, we totally support what the president is doing. We think he's great. And Russia's, you know, obviously illegal invasion, all of that. But maybe we should potentially consider diplomacy. That's not exactly what it said, but that was basically the gist of the letter. And the backlash to that was so over the top. They end up, they pull it, they apologize for it. We really haven't heard a word of dissent from progressives since then. And that was, you know, both sort of like political backlash, but also a lot of that was fomented by the media.

It seems to me like the attempt to crush dissent coming from the progressive left, elected left, has been very successful. I have to say the idea that this only comes from one side is simply not true. It comes from all sides. It's an unfortunate human condition. And we have to recognize that rather than again throwing ourselves and thinking, oh, it's only the political opponents that are doing it this way. This is happening on both sides. I think it was a huge mistake, the reaction to that letter. That letter simply just said, look, we're supporting the defense of Ukraine, but there's got to be a diplomatic element to it as well. And rest assured, at one point there will be.

And at that point, the closing of political space that has happened is going to make it all the more difficult for the White House to go in that direction. This was a letter aimed at creating political space for the administration so that when it felt that the opportunity was there to shift towards diplomacy, it would be able to do so without having a lot of resistance in Washington. And that was quash. That was a huge mistake. And incidentally, just a couple of days later, it turns out that Jake Sullivan was going to Moscow. Oh, sorry, was going and talked to a Russian counterpart. So clearly, the White House was already engaged in some of this activity of diplomacy. So those who thought they were defending the president by squashing it had no clue what the White House actually was doing because they were engaged, not at the level,

not at the extent that I would like to see. But nevertheless, there were some diplomacy taking place, whereas the defenders of the White House thought that they had to squash this. Clearly showed they had no clue what was going on. They had no clue where the White House wanted to go, but they were acting as this moral police of being able to decide who's allowed to have an opinion on this and who is not. Yeah.

Well, my last question is on, at least the space has been open. You're with the Quincy Institute, with figures like you in the foreign policy debate. Do you think, what are the best ways that you think that people, ordinary people, but also here in Washington, we could move it so that there is at least a fair one? And should an Iraq-style event ever happen again? Well, I think the key thing, again, is to have the moral courage of asking questions. It doesn't mean you're taking the other side. It means that you have to question these things in order to improve the various directions that we might consider to

go. And I think the emergence of breaking points and alternative media is essential to this. The problem I see, though, is if you have half the population only watching mainstream media and the other half only watching alternative media and never talking to each other. All that's going to lead to is further polarization, further looking at it from a moral lens of, you know, there's us and then there's the others. And that's not going to help. But at the end of the day,

it's still a step in the right direction because if we didn't have breaking points and alternative shows that brought on other guests that asked these questions, we would be exactly where we were with Iraq in which no questions were asked. And incidentally, it was very fascinating. I personally benefited from this. I was leading the National Iranian American Council. And the way the media two years, three years after the Iraq war wanted to compensate for a mistake that they had committed, that they knew that they had had committed but very few of them were willing to admit

Was to actively go and seek alternative voices and bring those in that's good. It was not bad Yeah, again, it's not good if you're not learning from it in order to prevent the mistake in the first place Yeah, well one of the things you know I'm excited to talk to Jonathan Landay is on the the panel. And he, for people who don't know, he was a journalist with Knight Ritter at the time. And one of the few who actually dared to question. And they were on an island. I mean, they're putting out, you know, they're putting out reporting that was accurate that said basically the vice president is lying. This case about WMD is completely made up and fictitious.

Meanwhile, you know, the paper of record, New York Times is publishing Judy Miller columns practically every day that are directly opposed to that. And part of what he has said in the past, and I want to hear more from him tomorrow, is that the reason he and some of his colleagues there were able to get the story right is because, number one, they actually didn't have access to these top level officials who would lie to them. When they did talk to them, they were skeptical, right? They were talking more to like the mid-tier career bureaucrats. But also they really took to heart the fact that their papers were going out to, you know, towns that had military bases where they saw themselves not as writing

for the D.C. elite. They were doing journalism that they wanted to serve, you know, the sons and daughters who are going to be sent over to Iraq to fight and die. And that's what they really took to heart. So, you know, I think part of why things may have gotten worse is there's been so much media consolidation, like everything is basically national press now, at least at the sort of like corporate legacy media level. And so you don't have that same local connectivity or sense of loyalty to people who are out in the nation, who are the ones who bear the cost of horrible foreign policy decisions. Yeah. I mean, everywhere else we hear that the diversity of views and viewpoints are important in order to get the best possible decisions.

But when it comes to the media, we see the direction going in exactly the opposite direction, as well as within government as well. I mean, it cannot be easy to be inside government having a different view, knowing very well that your career path is going to be severely set back if you are expressing questions and skepticism about certain decisions.

Yeah, I think that's all well said. Well, I'm excited for the panel tomorrow. Thank you for inviting me to do it. It's going to be really interesting to dig into, and it's always great to have you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Good to see you, sir. Good to see you.

Very much appreciate it. All right. We'll see you guys later. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled

its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts

and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon.

This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars. Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the okay. Storytime podcast on the I heart radio app,

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