Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/2/23: Republicans Battle Over East Palestine Aid, Trump Surges 2024 Polls, Vivek Ramaswamy 2024 Interview, Insulin CEO Cuts Prices, Havana Syndrome Debunked, China Threatens Elon, Media Mogul Arrested, Lab Leak Coverup, Ukranian Democracy

Episode Date: March 2, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss the Republican civil war over East Palestine Aid, Corporate media caught running Railroad propaganda, Trump surging in all Republican 2024 polls, Fox stunned as Diner voters back Trump over Desantis, Saagar presses Vivek Ramaswamy on his 2024 run, Insulin company Eli Lily cuts insulin prices, the Havana Syndrome is debunked, China threatens Elon Musk over Lab leak tweets, Krystal looks into Fake Media Mogul at Ozy media is arrested for fraud, Saagar looks into the comparisons between Iraq WMD's and Lab Leak, and Branko Marcetic (@BMarchetich) from Jacobin joins us to talk about the media's lies on Ukranian democracy.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing because Crystal is back. Great to see you, Crystal. Nice to be back. Had some things to take care of on Tuesday, but I know Ryan did a fantastic job. He did. He did a very good job.

Lots to get into, though, this morning. We are starting to get a look at a bipartisan, actually pretty good, potential response to Ohio. We can see whether it gets through the House and the Senate, but we'll tell you all about that. Also, new developments on the 2024 front. We've got a bunch of new polls that show Trump extending his lead. We also have new comments from Ron DeSantis about Trump that are very interesting. Some actually good news on insulin prices. So we'll break new comments from Ron DeSantis about Trump that are very interesting. Some actually good news on insulin prices.

So we'll break all of that down for you. What exactly does it mean and how far reaching is it? New report from the government. I guess the government this week is like in the business of admitting things that were obvious for a long time.

Things that were obviously true that they'll just air out into the public. Guys, guess what? Havana syndrome was fake all along. New report says it's not Russia, it's not China. Guess we'll just never know what it is. So anyway, we will write that down for you as long as well as a little bit.

Look back in time at the way that all of this was sold to the public so that we do not forget. And we also have a bit of a warning coming from China towards Elon Musk. And Bronco Marchetich is going to be on to talk about the state of democracy in Ukraine. He has a really in-depth report that is worth digging into. But let's go ahead and start with the very latest out of Ohio. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen in terms of a bipartisan response that is in the works here. We've got a group of six senators who are introducing what they're calling the Railway Safety Act of 2023. It is aimed at preventing a repeat of what they describe as the toxic firestorm in East Palestine, Ohio.

The senators involved evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. You like to see that. You've got J.D. Vance, Sherrod Brown, of course, the two senators from Ohio. You also have the two senators from Pennsylvania, a neighboring state where the toxic plume floated. That is Bob Casey and John Fetterman. And then you also have Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri. Details on what they are proposing here, this is according to a summary that Politico saw. The legislation would, number one, require rail carriers to give advance notice to state emergency response officials before running trains carrying hazardous materials. Apparently, some of the firefighters and other first responders first on the scene had no idea what they were dealing with,

which is, you know, bad in terms of response. It's very dangerous in terms of their health. So that's number one. Number two, they would mandate trains run with at least two-person crews. Now, this train in particular did have three people on board, but we know this is far from the only derailment that happens in a given year. There are roughly 1000 train derailments. This is different than other countries around the world. And the rail industry has been pushing, and this is insane to me, to reduce the crew numbers from

two down to one. And this is something that others have been entertaining in the past. So that's number two. Number three, require better monitoring of rail car wheel bearings, which overheated in the Ohio train accident, according to the NTSB, and likely caused the train to jump the tracks. And number four, increase penalties for wrongdoing in the industry. So some metrics there to try to hold the industry to account. J.D. Vance said through this legislation, Congress has a real opportunity to ensure that what happened in East Palestine will never happen again. We owe every American the peace of mind that their community is protected from a catastrophe of this kind. And we have a quote from Sherrod Brown, of course, the other Ohio senator.

Rail lobbyists have fought for years to protect their profits at the expense of communities like East Palestine and Steubenville and Sandusky. Those are all neighboring communities. These common sense bipartisan safety measures will finally hold big railroad companies accountable. So this is maybe not everything, but this is a real response that could make a measurable difference. And it is very, very encouraging to see. Yes, it is. And unfortunately, despite the fact that it was introduced in a bipartisan way by the both of the senators from Ohio and both of the leading people who this legislation would have to go through.

And let's put this up there on the screen. He's already saying, he's like, well, you know, hold on a second here. We have to make sure that there's not too many burdensome regulations. He said, quote, a lot of people have a lot of ideas right now. The NTSB had their preliminary report. There'll be more information coming. But here's the most disgusting quote that we've seen yet, Crystal. Quote, the rail industry has a very high success rate of moving hazardous material to the point of 99% plus. Let's not have some more burdensome

regulations and all this other stuff. The other one, Representative Rick Crawford, who is the top Republican on the rail panel before the House flipped for control, he also said we need to wait for the experts before, quote, we start speculating on what legislative fixes might be offered if it's necessary. Probably a little premature at this point. You almost cannot make those quotes up. And this, you know, if anything, it just shows you where the continued split in the GOP is. And unfortunately, you know, Holly Rubio and Vance are far on the, they are absolutely, you know, away from where the mainstream of much of the party is. They want to use, most of the Republicans in this party want to use it as an opportunity to cleave Buttigieg over the head. Okay, I'm here for that. But then when it comes time to actually increase

the fines on the railroad, the other point is on Congressman Nail's point, a 99% plus success rate. Okay, but if the tail end disaster is really bad, then you need to make sure that you do everything possible to make sure that a mass poisoning of an American town never happens again. And this shows you more than anything where the logjam could come from. I also do want to say it's not a guarantee right now that this legislation could pass the Senate. I'm assuming most of the Democrats will probably be able to come on board, but you need nine Republicans. There's only four that are on that list. Can you really get five to cross over here? That's right. You need to get to 60. I suspect every Democrat would be on board. The divide here really is in the Republican Party.

And it's very interesting. I mean, you can see what the rail lobbyist strategy is here. And this is totally classic. We've seen this a million times before. They just want to delay. They want to kick it down the road. Experts. People forget about all of this. And so the line you're hearing from these Republican House members, many of whom, by the way, are in the pocket of the railroad industry. They want to say, well, we got an NTSB preliminary report, but we got to wait for the final findings before we really come in and figure out what to do. No. We know plenty about this incident and about so many other derailments to go ahead and act.

But that's what they always try to do. If they can just delay, if they can just push it down the road until people have forgotten about the emotion and the horror of this incident, then they think they can kill the thing altogether. And look, it works all the time. So it is a good and effective strategy, especially when you have people like these bozos in the House who are ultimately on your side. Let me tell you, there's another piece of the response that J.D. Vance has been proposing. This also meaning with a lot of pushback from Republicans. Let's go and put this up on your side. Let me tell you, there's another piece of the response that J.D. Vance has been proposing. This also meaning with a lot of pushback from Republicans. Let's go and put this up on the screen. So he's proposing an aid program for this area specifically, because think about

it, guys. You got people now. You think you can sell your house in East Palestine? Yeah, good luck. What do you think your house is worth now? What do you think this is like now for, you know, people who don't have a choice and have to stay there or Or for people who feel like this is not safe, I need to go? There has been a huge financial hit. You think people are going to want to go and visit the local coffee shop in East Palestine now and risk whatever's still floating in the air and floating in the water? This is going to be a huge economic hit to this area, which, by the way, guys, has been hit hard many times before. So Vance is pitching a PPP style program for Ohio. Basically, every Republican that they quoted here was like, let's just wait and see. Again, same thing. They don't necessarily say no, although some of them did come out and basically say no. They're like, let's just wait and see what happens see what happens down the road which again is code for let's just wait until everybody forgets about this and we can do absolutely nothing yeah look look here's shelly moore capito and you know why this drives me nuts she's from west virginia you should be on board

exactly the type because they'd be good for west virginia too if you that's right set this present quote it's something i'd be willing to take a look at it would be difficult i want to see those small businesses get back i know they're having trouble with that. But how do you quantify a train derailment over some kind of other thing? I don't know. Look at the pre-market, pre-disaster value of a house or of a business. Then figure out how much they lose after and try and make them whole again. It's something to consider.

I'd have to see how he would enact something like that. Why don't you help him? You're from one of the most impoverished states in the entire country. Or here we, John Kent, this, you know, these people drive, same thing, Louisiana. Louisiana, by the way, has its own fair share of horrific environmental disaster. Same thing. I understand where Senator Vance is coming from. We've all had natural disasters. When we do, we try to help each other, but it needs to be thought through. A little time needs to pass. We don't even know what the health impacts are going to be yet of a train derailment, much less the economic impact.

I would look at anything that JD wants to propose. What does that mean? Of course we don't know what the health impact is going to be. Get out in front of it. One of the things that we actually do know is that income is one of the single best determiners of whether you are going to live a long time and be able to seek treatment or not. Good luck if you're poor, you don't have health insurance, or you have some terrible high deductible plan that you're going to go and seek the medical treatment

that you would otherwise. You've been talking about Medicare, about being able... We have to make... The whole point of health, something we cover here all the time, don't just treat the symptom. Try and make sure that it doesn't become a problem if you've been exposed now to toxic chemicals man it's time

to kick it into high gear like you've got to really take care of your body and make sure that you are you know getting what what uh by maybe quarterly blood tests like you need a lot of monitoring insurance not going to cover any of that so why would we wait until you get cancer right before we're going to start? Ten years down the road when there's a cancer cluster. Bingo. Think of how hard it was and how by the skin of its teeth the legislation, I think it's called the PACT Act. Right, for 9-11.

Yes. No, for toxic burn pit victims who, you know, suffered from all kinds of different cancers from their exposure while they were in war zones fighting for our country. Think of how hard it was to get that done in Congress. You think that 10 years down the line, if you have a cancer cluster here, that you're going to be able to get action through Congress? No. If anything is going to happen, it's going to happen now. While the media is still covering it, while this is still fresh in people's minds, while it's still in the news, you wait. You're right, Senator Kennedy. He was the one who made that comment. Oh, we don't know what the long-term health impacts are. We don't know. That's why, at the very least, these people should have health care, but they should definitely have

economic assistance, too. And you want to make Norfolk Southern pay for it? I am all good with that. Well, that's what Senator Brown said. Senator Brown said Norfolk Southern is going to pay for all of this. 100%. Good to go with that. But this is no excuse for just turning the other cheek and say, oh, well, we'll just wait and see what happens and hope it all gets better. The White House, there's some reporting. They are also weighing if they could provide some kind of economic relief.

It seems like they are very sort of like all over the place and very uninformed in terms of what their thoughts are and what they could provide some kind of economic relief. It seems like they are very sort of like all over the place and very uninformed in terms of what their thoughts are and what they could do. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from our friend Jeff Stein over at The Washington Post. Biden aids way economic aid for East Palestine after derailment. The administration wants to make Norfolk Southern pay

for any costs but is exploring backup options. It says the exact details of any White House action are unknown. Administrations say it's determined to force Norfolk Southern to pay. They also might face challenges in crafting a financial aid package for a town that has fewer than 5,000 people. But many residents have already decided to leave the town, keep their children out of school, putting pressure on the federal government to help the reeling Rust Belt community.

And as part of that process, aides have looked at whether existing federal dollars could be used to help small businesses. The administration's also considering infrastructure improvements in the area. The talks are described as preliminary, and administration officials stress it remains possible the White House decides against devoting economic aid to East Palestine. Everybody spoke on condition of anonymity, so that's where they are. Oh, good. Yeah, let's just speak on, I don't know.

I mean, just the level. You know, look, on a purely political basis, you don't think it's very popular for the Republican senator to team up with the Democratic senator and to offer up cash and a railway safety bill? Why is the White House letting itself get outflanked on this? I don't understand. Biden, I'm a union guy. Scranton Joe, what are you doing?

You know, first it started with breaking the railway strike. That was probably original sin number one, in terms of basically telling you guys, these guys screw you. Two, visiting Kiev before East Palestine. Three, then basically turning it political and saying, since Trump went to East Palestine, I can't go to East Palestine. And saying, no, the president has no plans to go over there. And then just these middling plans. It's really disgusting because you're basically watching the establishment Republicans team up with what maybe just, uh, maybe just lazy or just, uh, non-thinking the establishment democratic party on this. They just want to move on. They're like, yeah, okay. But now that it's become a political hotbed issue, we don't want to be seen

caving. And the actual people there are the ones who are actually getting screwed. Um, and, and that's, that's actually why I think it's such a terrible story. They don't want to set a precedent of actually helping people when they need help. I mean, that's the bottom line. Look, it's 5,000 people. This is nothing in terms of, like, the federal budget, even if they can't force Norfolk Southern to ultimately pay for it, which, of course, they obviously should.

But that's what they're afraid of is the precedent of, like, oh, my God, then we might have to help people in the future when things get screwed up they don't want that precedent ultimately and um but to your point on the politics biden remember he did that uh bipartisan press conference of mitch mcconnell in kentucky traveled there to tout the infrastructure bill could do the same thing here with jd vance go jd vance sherrod brown gorod Brown, go to Ohio, you know, back his PPP idea or work together with him on crafting something else if there's a better approach that you prefer, ultimately. You know, that would be a boon to show that this is a president who really cares about citizens of Ohio State that not so long ago was a swing state and sort of back up his working class

man of the people supposed credibility. So I just think they have both on the substance and on the politics of this really bungled this whole situation. But just to go back to the beginning, the fact that there is a bipartisan bill that addresses some real issues is a very hopeful thing. It has difficult odds, especially in the Republican held house. But perhaps there's a chance here because of the public pressure and scrutiny on this event, ultimately. Back to—let's go ahead to this next piece. So, I mentioned that the strategy of the rail lobbyists is to delay, delay, delay. And then also—and you heard some of the Republicans echoing this exact talking point—they

are now placing ads in Politico, which in instances has been very favorable to industry on this whole Ohio story. They're paying Politico to place ads that are touting their great record of safety. They say Politico presented by the Association of American Railroads. This is all reporting from our friends over at Lever News. And they say when it comes to safety, 99.9% is not enough. While 99.9% of all hazmat shipments that move by rail reach their destination safely, we know a single incident can have significant impacts. So basically the idea here, Sagar, is like government doesn't need to act. Us good folks at the Rail Association, lobbyist group, whatever they're called,

we're working on it. We've got this. Don't you worry about it yeah i mean what the hell are they doing over there and you know this is one of those which we brought you some of the reporting from politico but this is part of what the problem is with corporate media like when you have straight up newsletters and other things that are being straight sponsored by the association of american railroads do you think that it's an accident that the Railroad Association calls Politico and says, hey, we need to buy some status on your newsletter? Do you know why they do this? Let's explain. Politico is one of those outlets, especially that newsletter that we brought you, Playbook.

Everybody in Washington reads this thing. And I really do mean like everybody from the lowest level staffer all the way up to probably the White House chief of staff. It's like an internal – it's almost like a gossip girl, to be honest with you, for like the biggest losers in DC. Tiger beat on the Potomac. That's what I call it. There you go. Tiger beat on the Potomac. That's a great way of putting it. And so the reason why these associations, these lobbyists and all these others buy ad space in them is it's the easy way where you're not just targeting, let's say a mass audience, people like who we speak to, you're speaking directly to the decision makers,

to the people who would be most influenced by the lobbyists, and their direct hope is to try and get their ads, their spin, their propaganda in front of their eyes. Okay, I mean, you can understand why they would want to do that, but if you're a journalistic outlet, how can you possibly report fairly on this when you are taking money from them at the exact same time that it's outrageous and they do this with everything just so people know when they're

reporting on antitrust facebook miraculously just starts coughing up cash uh whenever they're reporting on what was uh whenever they're reporting on medical issues you'll have the american medical association i've seen uh the defense industry sponsor them. Oh, lots of times. It's one of those where, and here, everybody thinks it's business as usual. It's like, you and I are some of the only people in this town who are like, hey, this is kind of crazy. Are we just not going to talk about this?

Well, and to add insult to injury here, I mean, you're so right that this is just core to the disgusting corporate media business model and why they will never be good arbiters of, like, facts and journalism, especially when it comes to an issue related to industry. Before Politico started running these new ads, their national politics reporter actually attacked the lever for asking their readers to help fund their continued reporting

on East Palestine derailment and train safety rules. So think about this. The lever gets attacked for asking readers to support their work, like grassroots, reader-sponsored journalism, not getting a bunch of money from the rail industry to then report on this. And then, you know, they turn around, and that's exactly what they get. So they're criticizing the funding of Lever News, getting grassroots reader supported donations and funding. And meanwhile, they're just taking cash from industry and somehow that's seen as a superior business model. It's insane. Yeah. So can you explain it again? What is their exact critique here?

So they're here. I'll pull up the tweet that he sent. He basically, so this guy, Adam Ren is his name to call him out, national politics correspondent for Politico. He tweeted, David Sirota's the lever is fundraising off of the East Palestine, Ohio train derailment. No, it's called if you are independent news, you rely on regular citizens to fund your journalism instead of industry lobbyists like politico does so he is smearing david as somehow and the lever as somehow like disgraced on this so david does his job he exposes this before anybody else and then ask people to help support his mission uh i get emails from the washington post Post and the New York Times every time they break some stupid ass Trump scoop, being like,

do you wanna stick it to power? Sign up for the New York Times. So, okay, first of all, it's fine what he's doing. People do have to make a living, and if you wanna support that type of work, we are very happy to partner with the lever and official breaking port, I think the very first one. Right?

So the first break, why do you think this is exactly the reason? And, you know, you can't even fathom that this is somehow something that he needs to highlight as some what some sort of nefarious act. When this guy is getting, you know, at least in part some of his paycheck, it's coming from somewhere. He should absolutely coming from railroad lobbyists, defense industry, oil and gas, like any lobbyist interest in the city has funded Politico. And he has the nerve to come after David Sirota for doing grassroots fundraising for independent media. Right. Anyway.

All right. It's really something. Yes. Let's talk about 2024, some fun stuff, and an interview I actually conducted yesterday, which we'll bring you some parts of. But let's start very first with the 2024 race with Ron DeSantis and with Donald Trump. So of course, you know, despite everything that you might hear in the media for Trump, things are actually going pretty well. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Four of the latest polls of GOP primary voters not only see Trump leading DeSantis, they actually show him extending his lead over DeSantis.

So here's the four aggregation. Emerson, Trump 55, DeSantis 25. Yahoo News, Trump 47, DeSantis 39. Echelon, Trump 46, DeSantis 31. Fox News, Trump 43, DeSantis 28. All four of them show an increase for Trump in February over the last month. So this is why it's important. Let's say and bake in polling errors and many of these other types of things. Let's say that the polls can be off significantly as they were. Then it's important within these polls to see movement because obviously

the pollsters are going to have the same errors baked in. Right. And then within that we can see some track. So we can't infer truth. You know, even the aggregate

in 2022 is totally wrong as we all found out here. And these polls in this race have been all over the place. All over the map. So you got them all the way

from 39 down to what was 25 was the lowest. I mean, it's actually not terrible if you consider him all the way from 39 down to what was 25 was the lowest. I mean, that's actually not terrible if you consider what the range is. And again, importantly, all 4C movement towards Trump. Why is that? Well, A, DeSantis is not a candidate. So if I was a DeSantis person, I'd be like, look, he's not even a declared candidate.

We haven't even had the race on. But what are we learning? The first mover of Trump advantage is so immense. And he is near 50 in almost every single one of these. That's higher than where he started off in 2016. Yeah. When he swept all of the early primaries going into Super Tuesday. So if you see the increasing trend of candidates getting in the race, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, you got Pence on the line, possibly DeSantis. He's going on a tour. He's got a new book out. Apparently, he's going to

South Carolina and New Hampshire and Iowa. Complete coincidence, of course. Who else? Why would anyone go there for a book tour? But I think we know. We have Tim Scott, who wants to get in the race. We've got all these other people. Glenn Young. Yeah, Glenn Young. Everybody's on the fence right now. Probably half the people I mentioned are either already running or going to run. And you're just recreating the same dynamic, except that Trump is actually stronger right now than he was last time. That's right. And that's the most important thing. And there was a lot of second guessing of when he launched his campaign. Remember after the midterms didn't go well for him and did go really well for Ron DeSantis.

It was like, oh, I don't know if this is the time to launch when he's weak. I think that was, I mean, we said at the time we thought it was exactly the right time to launch, actually, to try to lock in support and get that first mover's advantage. And listen, not trying to say I told you so, but I think we can see that there has been an advantage for him in coming out first. The, you know, the hit he took both from the midterms and also from the initial phases of the whole classified document situation, I think that has all really faded.

So that now, not only is he doing well against Ron DeSantis, by the way, he's also doing well against Joe Biden. Yes. So, and he's now, he's sort of let go. I wouldn't say he's really, you know, put it in the past, but he's talking a little bit less about his election conspiracy obsessions and he's focused on issues that are quite intelligent for him to be focused on in particular social security medicare and also ukraine these are issues where there's a real divide in the republican party he's positioning

himself alongside the base against where a lot of the Republican sort of elite commentariat is. That's precisely straight out of the 2016 playbook. And it's putting a lot of his adversaries, including Ron DeSantis, in a difficult position. Oh, an extraordinarily difficult position. And we have here's the other problem for DeSantis. His responses and his comebacks to Trump have just been weak as hell. Like we need to all be honest. They're degrading. They're getting worse and worse. These are honestly like Ted Cruz, 2016 levels of just like, dude, what the hell are you doing? So here is his response, Brian Kilmeade, on the Brian Kilmeade show, where he says, it's silly season. That's all he could come up with. Let's take a listen.

So Governor, as soon as I closed the book, I said, this guy's running for president. This seems to be a blueprint to run for president. Because if I look at at your career and if I look at what you say, you don't just say this was good for today. This is good for families. This is good for a state. This is good for a country. You were concerned about the country from the day you stepped onto the campus of Yale, reinforced Harvard, fought for it in Iraq. Am I wrong to assume that there's an excellent chance you're running for president? Having kids in school during COVID on opposing the employer vax mandates and things like that, education we've led the way.

I like to see a competition amongst all the red states about who can kind of outdo each other. So I do think it's a blueprint for other states. I do think it can be applied nationally, but it's less about me than about, I think, the underlying principles that we need to restore our country. I read the whole thing. Not one disparaging word about President Trump. Are you guys speaking now? Do you plan on speaking to him? He seems to be taking some shots at you. No, I mean, look, I mean, it's silly season.

I mean, you know how some of this stuff goes. And obviously he does his thing. And it's just that's kind of kind of kind of who he is. But what I wanted to do was was just give an honest appraisal of kind of how we got to this point, the failures of the D.C. Republican establishment, and how Donald Trump was speaking to things that some of the old guard refused to address. And that's just a fact. Silly.

What is this? And then he turns around and praises Trump. That's the point. That's always the issue. You know, we're about to get to, we'll talk a little bit, a little bit. I interviewed Vivek Ramaswamy. Same thing.

You know, he had to praise Trump. He offered a little bit of, and we'll play you exactly what that was. But's a big problem when you can't criticize the person that you ostensibly want to replace i mean what are we doing here it's just not gonna happen and look i'm sorry it's silly season that ain't gonna cut it like you have got to come through with an actual critique of why you would be better and i'm sorry nobody cares about book. Like I was telling you while we were listening to that, I'm like, why do they even bother with these books? You know, all these guys, no politician book is ever good.

They're always springboards. It's a fake excuse to go to Ottawa. The technical reason part of why they do it is because of the intricacies of campaign finance. So it allows them to go and do the tour and do royalties and have staff that are involved with it and pay that staff and not like officially have launched a presidential campaign so that's one reason why they ultimately do it but um i did i listened to this whole interview it was

really embarrassing um on brian kilmeade's part because okay you have a guy who's governor of an important state uh who is almost certainly going to run for president, who is a very strong contender to run for president. And you spend like 15 minutes of your 20 minute interview talking to him about his Walt Disney wedding. Like, come on. I mean, that's just embarrassing as a journalist. And one of the things that you see is, yeah, it's true. I think Fox News really likes Ron DeSantis. The whole Rupert Murdoch empire really likes DeSantis. But one of the things that's come out in all of these text messages and exchanges from the Dominion lawsuit is they don't really have control over the

Republican base anymore. You know, they wanted to initially try to steer them in one direction. And then when the base was going one way on stop this deal and they were trying to go in the other way, ultimately they're like, yeah, we can't do it. We're just going to go for the ratings because these people all abandon us. So they don't have the control over the Republican base that perhaps ultimately they once did. Right. Yeah, I think you're right. And just, you know, in general, it's a humiliating just way that these guys are unable fundamentally to critique the leading candidate. And that is why he is the leading candidate. Yes.

In the race. And you know what? To the extent like they never directly criticize him. But to the extent that they carve out positions that are different from him, their positions are worse. Right. Right. They're like, actually, we need to cut it like Mike Pence. We need to cut.

We need to privatize Social Security. And we also need a national abortion ban. Like those are worse. Yes, you are different from Trump. Those are worse positions. Ultimately, Nikki Haley, same thing, got to put entitlements on the table. And she's also, you know, going against the Republican base in terms of Ukraine aid as well. So he's also positioned himself better politically than almost any of the other contenders to the extent that they carve out any different positions whatsoever. And you got at this with Vivek as well, who one of the areas where he's different from Trump is he also would put entitlement cuts on the table

and says that Trump spent too much money when he was in office. So that's not an improvement over Donald Trump. For like 80 percent of the public, that makes you worse. And speaking of this, we had a hilarious moment on Fox News. So Kilmeade goes down to a Florida diner. By the way, diner Fox News might be the most mid and awful Fox of all time. Just, I don't know why people in a diner are somehow more representative of everybody else,

but whatever. I don't know why these people are in a diner on a workday. That's another question. Political cliche. All right, let's get to that. So, Brian Kilmeade in his Florida diner is like, so who's going to vote for Ron DeSantis? Anybody want to vote for Ron DeSantis? The results

are unintentionally hilarious. Let's take a listen. First off, Metro Dining here, I got a question for you. Ready? All right. 2024, who's pumped up for the election? Rapid fire. Who's your man? Who's your woman? My man, Donald Trump.

Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Kristi Noem. Kristi Noem. Who's your man? Donald Trump. Or woman? Donald Trump.

Trump. Trump. A lot of Trump fans. Trump and Nikki Haley. And Nikki Haley. Donald Trump and Nikki Haley Donald Trump and Nikki Haley So far a lot of Donald Trump I see Governor DeSantis What about President DeSantis I like it

Who's your pick Trump or DeSantis Trump or DeSantis. Either or. So you're right in the middle. Yes. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Trump or DeSantis. Either or. That's a problem.

He goes over to this lady. She's literally wearing a DeSantis shirt, thinking that, like, surely this one's going to give me DeSantis. And she's like, they're both good. Either one. I hate to be proven right in many of these cases. And I understand that a lot of people would like to move on from Trump. I'm not saying it wouldn't be better, but, you know, you got to live in reality sometimes.

And if you want to talk about some of the most hardcore people who are going to show up in a GOP primary, people who take time out of their workday and or are retired in a Florida diner showing up for a Fox News event, is about as good as it gets for a testing ground of like, hey, how is this all going to work out? And what did we hear? Whoa. And that was almost almost every single answer was Trump. Nikki Haley got more. But she said Trump and Haley. Yeah, exactly. She goes Trump and Nikki Haley. So it's like VP. Right. Exactly. So and she's like, yeah, she's all right. But Trump, Trump at the first. Listen, I've tried to explain it here. Like Trump has a special connection to the Republican base in a way that no Republican politician has had since Ronald Reagan.

And likely before that, since I don't even know, maybe Barry Goldwater. And it's one of those where it's difficult to explain. You kind of have to see it to believe it. Honestly, even just talking and listening to people like us trying to tell you about it, it's always better to just hear it from them themselves. Now, look, let's be fair, not necessarily representative, but if you were to look where you might see an actual explosion of DeSantis' interest and a possibility of winning people over, it would be in a Florida diner. In a Florida diner is a pretty likely spot, which is clearly what he thought as well going into that whole situation.

That's why they did the segment. I don't think that's how he thought that would all unfold. I mean, listen, it really does have a lot of 2016 vibes when everybody but Trump was fighting to basically be the Trump alternative, taking shots at each other. They're not afraid to come after one another, right? Mike Pence going after Ron DeSantis, for example, a lot of other shots taken at Ron DeSantis. They're not afraid to fight amongst each other. But if you think Trump is just going to implode and go away, like there's nothing in recent history that suggests that's ultimately the case.

And meanwhile, while this is all happening on the sidelines, his poll numbers are going up. So at some point, somebody, and this is the problem, is they know that whoever actually comes after him, it's kind of a prisoner's dilemma, is probably going to get nuked. And so none of them wants to be that person. And so they all just step back. Oh, actually, his administration was great

and his policies, they were wonderful. And, you know, I think he said a lot of things that needed to be said. Okay, then why aren't you, then why should anyone vote for you over the guy that you are telling them was actually wonderful and great? Too good.

It's one of those where I just think they will never be able to work themselves out of it. And the longer that this goes on, the better off Trump is. Trump is fun again in a way that he hasn't been in a long time. He seems, I think always has been, better off whenever he's not president.

That's kind of like whenever he was at his most full, fulsome. He's got the team around him. Some of the guys like Jason Miller, his original comms director from 2016, he's on a very, very light staff. And frankly, that's Frank. We know whenever he best operates. I'm only talking here as a politician, not as a competent commander in chief, But look, that's ultimately how you get elected. And from this point forward, I think this is going to be the most formidable dynamic. Okay. So sticking with this, had the opportunity yesterday, Vivek Ramaswamy, just recently renounced his run for president. He's a former biotech executive who sold his company and made a lot of money, made some interesting rumblings over the last couple

of years. So he wrote a book called Woke Inc. It was actually a fantastic book, in my opinion, because it was about ESG and specifically about the takeover and the use of shareholder capitalism to push values that don't necessarily not only align with the American public, but really much more hurting the country, using these values and others to go away from the core value of business. Go ahead.

Let me just say, because I think we have a different view on this. My critique of ESG is that it's just like a basic corporate virtue signal that is actually meaningless and doesn't really accomplish what they claim that it's ultimately accomplishing. His view is like corporations have too much power, but then also he doesn't actually have any critique of corporate power, of like argument of how you would check corporate power. I actually wouldn't even disagree. One of the original disagreements of a vacant I ever had was I was like, well, hold on a second here. I hate ESG. I'm very against ESG. And I was like, but what if an American company wanted to actually

take, make less money by making stuff in America. I'm like, would you be against that? And he's like, well, it would possibly conflict with shareholder capitalism. So the point that I'm making is that he is probably much more of a free market, dyed in the wool capitalist. He's got a good, I think, critique of ESG. I don't necessarily agree with a lot of what he says. All right, let's put that to the side. So he wrote this book, kind of became prominent. He was on Fox News quite often. He wrote another book about the nation of victims, kind of outlining his philosophy. So I had the opportunity to interview Vivek. And one of the things I wanted to get to with Vivek is, look, I tried, you know,

one of the things I told him at the top, I said, I'm going to take you seriously. I'm going to take you seriously. As a candidate, we took Andrew Yang seriously. We took Tulsi Gabbard seriously. He came on the realignment because he's comfortable. We've interviewed him a couple of times there. And we have a longstanding relationship. But in this, you're going to see that Marshall and I press him a little bit on some of the interesting political questions that he hasn't gotten to. And one of those that I was really intent on getting was Trump. Because I'm like, look, you cannot sit here just and say Trump is a friend and why I'm moving forward. What was wrong with America First 1.0? Why 2.0? A lot of

people from that diner that we just played you that clip, they like Trump. Why should they vote for you? And he offered what I thought to date was his first tepid criticism of Trump. Let's take a listen to some of that as well as some of the policy disagreements. What was wrong with America First 1.0? Why is 2.0 better than 1.0? Nothing was wrong with America First 1.0. I wouldn't borrow the lingo America First if I thought something was wrong with it. I care a lot about national unity.

And I know President Trump. He's a friend. He's misunderstood on us. He cares about national unity too. I know he does. But he, I don't think, is capable in the same way of delivering it. Because if he was, we wouldn't be where we are right now. And on the election of 2020, was it stolen or not?

Yes or no question? Yes, but not in the way that you mean that question. Okay. So what do you mean by that? I think the technology companies tilted the scales of public debate. I think the Hunter Biden laptop story epitomizes what was wrong with the lead up to that election cycle. There was a true story that was censored in the name of misinformation actually created more misinformation, that somehow this was Russian disinformation. Guess what? This was American disinformation, that that actually wasn't a true story. No disagreement on much of what you said, but I do have to get specific because it's an important thing. I'm talking about mass voter

fraud. There was no mass voter fraud in the 2020 election. I have not seen any evidence of mass voter fraud. I distinguish that from micro examples that have clearly been reported and documented. So, you know, the first initial criticism that I had to see from him, from Trump, still tepid, let's be honest, which was, well, you know, I want to unite America. And if Trump could have done it, then he would have done it, which actually I don't think is a bad message for a general election candidate. But in a Republican primary, I don't know how that's going to fly. Also, let's all be here. Like, look, I think he's correct.

There was no mass voter fraud in the 2020 election. I think you're going to have a tough time winning in the nomination with a blunt, basically, statement of fact like that. As much as I would like it to be that way. Crystal, how many GOP primary candidates did we say go down over Stop the Steal? Yeah. Over a dozen. Yes. Now, look, all of them lost.

It is a real test in the GOP primary. It's huge. We have to be honest here. So I think that that answer certainly could be a problem for some of the folks in MAGA. If you listen to some of the longer interview, one of the things is I asked him on America. I think we really, it kind of came down to this 2.0 versus 1.0. I would love to believe that there is a 2.0, but I'm looking at that diner. I think people like 1.0. And when I say 1.0, they like Trump. It's just, it's a, it's a personality. It's paired with Trump. Occasionally there's some policy and stuff that is sprinkled within there.

And I just you know, I didn't get from that interview yet. I'm like, you know, based on what I know and have seen from the dynamics of primaries with Republicans, I think it would be tough. It's a tough way. I mean, he uses a lot of buzzwords that don't mean a lot, like his whole like we need a national identity. I don't really know what that means concretely. And then when you talk about specific policy differences that he has from Trump, as I said earlier, he's worse. He's worse in terms of, listen, I mean, in terms of my opinion, but also in terms of the opinion of like 80% of people,

including an overwhelming majority of the Republican primary base that wants Social Security and Medicare to stay intact. So he's actually, in a way, not America first 2.0. He's sort of like a regression, a throwback on issues like that to more of the Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney mindset. The other piece that we get a glimpse of there, and actually Marshall asked him a really great question about it. He was like, OK, you say you want to be a unifier but what you're saying about uh climate change in

particular is going to like instantly piss off half of the country and i think what he's speaking to there is a core listen i'm not a republican obviously the sky's not for me and i have a disagreement with him on any number of issues however I think the core flaw at the center of his case is he wants to be a unifier, but he's talking about and leaning into culture war issues, which are inherently going to divide the country 50-50. But that's what the base likes, and that's fine, but you have to be honest about that. But if you want to be a unifier, there's an obvious set of issues that you talk about, which have appeal, you know, non like across partisan aisles, which are, listen, what do most people care about? They want a job.

They want a good wage. They want to have health care. He doesn't talk about any of that, which for most normal people, like these are the things that they really care deeply about or being able to depend on Social Security when they retire. That's an actual unifying agenda. If you want to be a unifier, leaning into like transgenderism and, you know, the central bank digital currency and affirmative action or whatever, whatever you think about those issues, they're not exactly big national unifying issues. I couldn't help but think that, to be honest, you know, look, I would love to brand affirmative action. I think it'd be a very popular thing. Would I run on it? Probably not. It's one of those where it's just not really at the top. You know, I'm a commentator. I can talk about it. I know it's popular, certainly. But like if I were running for office, I'm not sure that'd be the

one that I would lead into. It's just missing the point of like the core issue. It's yes. Okay. Agree with your position. That's fine. Right. But like, that's your platform. And that was the first thing he brought it up multiple times. That's his thing.

He's leaning in. Okay. Yeah. We'll see if it works out for him. My actual, uh, I will say, I actually thought one of the more interesting parts is on Medicare. And I was like, okay, well, what about social security, Medicare? Cause it actually goes on a little bit more than the critique of spending. And he was like, well, maybe we would cap Medicare at like $10 million.

And I was like, dude, but that's just not a lot of people. He said that's a lot of people. I was like, I don't think that's a lot of people. It's means testing. I mean, these are classic neoliberal, like conservative suggestions about these programs. I have no issue with means testing it at $10 million. But it's one of those where I'm like, I don't think that even scratches the surface because how many people have more than $10 million in this country? Maybe a hundred thousand? Like maybe. I mean, that's like

0.01% almost. I do have an issue with means testing, even at the high end, because the reason these programs are so popular and successful is because everybody feels they have a stake. That's fair. But I'm saying if you have $10 million, you're not going to use Medicare. You have private health insurance. It's one of those, it's a non-issue. Like, you know, we're not paying for your health insurance. You're going to save the government $3. Congratulations. Maybe less. Anyway, so that was a—

Actually, you'll actually lose the government money because of the additional paperwork it will take for people to, you know, prove that their income is lower than theirs. So we have that. That was there. I also pressed him a little bit on abortion. And I actually think that it was an interesting answer that he gave, more politically popular, but also could be a problem for him in the primary. Let's take a listen. One of the Vice President Pence and big disagreement between him and President Trump is on a national abortion ban. Where do you stand on national abortion ban?

So I am pro-life. However, I think that for years on constitutional grounds, we have correctly argued that this is a state's issue. And I think it should remain a state issue. I think that for years on constitutional grounds, we have correctly argued that this is a state's issue. And I think it should remain a state issue. I think overturning Roe in the Dobbs decision, I think it was the right decision on hard constitutional grounds. Full stop. I'm hard lying on that. Crystal clear. I think that we constitutionally finally got it right. That's where I'm at. For years, it was argued to be a state's rights issue. And both for constitutional as well as public policy reasons, I think that's where it should rest. So would you sign any federal abortion legislation, 15-week ban, 22-week ban, as proposed in the Congress? As somebody who is staunchly pro

life and unapologetic about that fact, I think that the states should get to that answer. So one of the things that he said, Crystal, is I would leave it to the states. If you want to continue watching, I actually press him for it. This might actually be the biggest problem for him. In the primary, I said, okay, but what about a federal ban? Like, do you remember the Lindsey Graham 15 week? He actually said I wouldn't sign any federal legislation. I would leave it fully up to the states. Now, I'm not necessarily opposed to that.

But from a primary standpoint, the pro-life community is definitely going to have an issue because that gives California, D.C., and others the ability to have legalized like late term abortions if they want to at the same time that you would have in Alabama or Texas or any of these other places that do have an abortion ban. So that, I think, actually could be a little bit dicey in terms of now. I'm not saying it isn't politically popular, but one of the reasons that trump probably has way more wiggle room than anybody else is he appointed the justices that got roe versus wade done so that's the first time i've heard vivek talk about abortion or at least pressed on that and i think actually that might be one of the more significant ones where there could be some disagreement with the evangelicals now for sure would he ever win them in the first

place no i don't know probably i mean they've mean, if Mike Pence is in the race, they already got their guy. So I actually thought this was one of his better and more clear answers. Yeah, that's true. He clearly knew what he thought about it. You pressed him on, okay, would you sign anything? He's like, no, leave it to the states, consistent. So I thought that was actually a pretty solid answer because, yeah, I don't think the evangelical vote was really up for grabs for him in any case.

Yeah, I think that's fair. And then finally, there was a thing where Vivek went on Hugh Hewitt's show. And Hugh Hewitt, I don't really know why. He's a conservative radio host, for those who don't know. He has these weird pet issues. He's obsessed that everybody know about. One of them is the nuclear triad. So for those who don't know about the nuclear triad, it's nuclear defense of the United States, land, sea, and air.

Anyway, so he asked Vivek, do you know what the nuclear triad is? And Vivek was like, no, I don't. And he said, but I'm a quick study. And one of the things that Marshall actually really pushed him on, he's like, look, you said you're a quick study. He's like, but you're running for president now. He's like, how are you going to get to the level of knowledge that you need to be president? And look, some of these are arbitrary, but it does matter, right? Like whether you have a familiarity with issues and some of that. He gave an interesting answer. Let's take a listen. You had an interesting interview with Hugh Hewitt earlier in the week. You didn't know what the nuclear triad meant. Triad was, we'll put that to the side. You can learn what that term means. I know you know what it is now. That said, I think the significance

behind the question, though, is the president is in charge of the means to end the earth. You can definitely train to learn what acronyms mean. I'm not convinced that you could learn in a year and a half during partisan Fox News hits, podcasts like this, how to actually sit down with Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. Convince me otherwise. Because I get your point about how I should be learning. So you make a great point. How does that work? And thank you for taking the superficiality out of it

because anyone can learn a term, right? So this is a word. Okay, I understand that there's land, air, and sea, but I'm approaching this with humility. So I think one of the things that's different is, yes, I'm a fast study. Yes, have I taken on other complicated problems before and learned them fast?

Sure. But I got to approach this, and I am approaching this with humility. So I'll just tell you where I came from earlier today. I was having lunch upstairs in my house. I'm in the basement now with a former cabinet-level secretary from the Trump administration who was over here visiting me. We spent two hours training. We're going to tape that. We're going to do it daily. We got two hours at least daily where there's somebody coming in, flying here, spending time with me in Columbus, Ohio. We're going to actually let the world watch how I learn. So it's an interesting idea.

I mean, look, on the one hand, I appreciate the humility. I will say that. I mean, I don't want to laugh at anybody because what do we learn with the Yang campaign? All right, like with Yang, there's like, you can have 2% of the Democratic Party or whatever, and you can have a significant impact on the battle ideas, et cetera.

So I'm not going to dismiss it. I've known the guy for a while. I do think he's smart. That said, I think the biggest hole here is with the Republican primary voter. And his bet is basically the Obama bet, like New Hampshire and Iowa. But a lot of these issues, they might do well on Twitter, absolutely. Like you were talking about central bank digital currency. I actually do care about that.

I definitely would be opposed to it. But if I was running for office, I would never run on that platform. It wouldn't be part of your, like, core platform. Wish it weren't so. But look at every Republican politician who was successful in a primary in 2022. Almost all of them endorsed stop the steal. And if they didn't, they came pretty damn close to actually losing their seat. That tells you something. Yeah. We've seen how it's gone when people try to do highbrow. Yeah, we've seen it. Because ultimately his response to you was like, I don't mean it was stolen in the way you're saying it. No, it's not the way you're saying it. It's the way that the like 70 percent of Republican voters who think it was stolen. They don't think like, oh, social.

That's part of it. Right. No, they mean the what? Dinesh D'Souza, like mules and bamboo ballots. And like they mean real votes were changed kind of voter fraud and so you know you're trying to have it both ways by saying yes i think it was fraudulent but you know i don't think any votes were actually stolen that's not going to be sufficient for what they want to hear ultimately i agree completely so anyway you can go watch the full thing yeah

i thought you did a good job interviewing getting some things things to him that he hadn't been pressed on before, which is always an interesting, it's an important additive to the conversation. My goal was, look, you know, this is the problem. Like, when he's an author, it's one thing, because we're just talking, you know, whatever, we're going to stick to that. But I was like, hey, man, like, you're running for Republican president. Like, I got to ask you about the debt ceiling. I got to, you know, like, we got abortion, stop the stealing.

Like, these are all, we live in this world, you and I, Crystal, and, like, you and I know what the actual checkboxes are for anybody who wants to make it in washington and that was kind of marshall and i's goal in getting out of that so go watch the full thing if you're interested unfortunately we didn't have as much time as i would have liked but he said he would come back so we'll see we'll see whether we get to it we have some actually good news. So giant drug maker Eli Lilly announced that they are going to cap the price of insulin. Now, there are a few caveats that I'll get to in a moment. But first, let me play for you the CEO of that company announcing the change. Today, we're announcing a 70 percent price cut on our most commonly used insulins, which will phase in over this year.

And effective today, a $35 cap, as you said, on out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter. Yeah, so this is a culmination of about seven years of work we've been doing to reduce the price of our insulins, launching a generic to our own best-selling brand. But with the change last year in the Medicare Part D benefit, the senior benefit to $35, we think that should be the new standard in America. And so while we could wait for Congress to act or the health care system in general to apply that standard, we're just applying it ourselves. So what he's referring to there was a change that was part of the Inflation Reduction Act that would limit out-of-pocket costs for those who are on Medicare. And he's basically saying, OK, well, that's the new standard. So we're going to move forward with that. President Biden's

reaction here, I put this up on the screen. He says, huge news. Last year, we capped insulin prices for seniors on Medicare, but there was more work to do. I called on Congress and manufacturers to lower insulin prices for everyone else today. Eli Lilly is heeding my call. Others should follow. Let me go ahead and show you why this matters so much and just how much you're being ripped off right now by these drug companies when it comes to insulin. But this is the case for so many drugs across the board. Put the next piece up on the screen here.

So this chart shows you the average price per vial of insulin by country. Here in the U.S., it's damn near $100. The next highest, Japan at 14 so still way less than the 35 that they're moving it down to of course 35 is huge improvement over the hundred dollars that it is basically now in canada just across the border is 12 germany 11 france 9 uk 750 and in australia seven dollars so this is again not just insulin every drug is like we pay so much more for prescription drugs than every other country in the world they use you and our health care system like their piggy bank this is where they make the overwhelming

majority of their profits all right let's go ahead and put this next piece up on the screen which gives you some of the caveats here, because I think myself, you, everybody was sort of like, what's their play? What's going on? I know you're not just doing the sound of the goodness of your heart. Here's the New York Times article. They say Eli Lilly says it will cut the price of insulin. The company also trumpeted an existing policy that caps monthly out-of-pocket costs for

its life-saving products at $35. They go on to report that their moves are somewhat limited. The lower list prices, which will take effect over the course of this year, apply only to the company's older insulin products, and a large percentage of diabetes patients who need insulin take products made by two other major drug manufacturers, Sanofi is maybe how you say that, and Novo Nordisk. Insulin costs are estimated at $10 per vial to manufacture. So they're still making a hefty profit here. And they also have, I think it's important to always remember this, when insulin was actually invented by Frederick Banting, when he helped invent the drug,

he refused to put his name on the first patent application. He thought it would be at odds with the Hippocratic oath he had taken as a physician. The two scientists whose names were on the patent application transferred it to the University of Toronto for $1 in hopes of making it as widely available and affordable as possible. That, of course, has not happened. They say in recent years, the leading insulin manufacturers, including Lilly, have replaced older products

with newer, costlier versions and steadily increased their prices. So catch here is most patients are using other products from other companies, number one. Number two, it only applies to the older versions of insulin that Eli Lilly themselves offer. And so if I had to guess, you know, they like the brand play. They like the halo that they get from making this big announcement on cable news and all of the coverage they're hoping to

eat into some of the market share of those other companies. And ultimately, they still can make a hefty profit on this, even at the thirty five dollar price point, which, again, is still more than what everybody in other countries gets charged for. That's why the Inflation Reduction Act thing was so stupid. It's because we're only capping it for seniors who are on Medicare. And look, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. I think that's great. But, you know, a lot of people also have diabetes who are not on Medicare.

So, you know, I actually just saw the numbers. One in 10 Americans have diabetes. About a third are pre-diabetic. You're myself included, by the way, working on that. If you are too, Godspeed to you. I know that it's going to be a difficult journey. Now, the point is, though, is that this drug is vitally important for those 110 Americans, and many have died or can go bankrupt simply because of insulin management. Now, if you have good healthcare, that's one thing,

but if you don't, this is a genuine, like this will not only save your life. Think about also the type one diabetics. That's a whole other story, you know, with people who actually produce no insulin, this is 100% something they rely on. And many of them who come from disadvantaged backgrounds have long had problems here. Another problem also that we talk, I've talked about ad nauseum is the rebates with the drug companies. So one of the fakeries here is that you will have a child or a family member who's got diabetes, and then you have an X amount of spend that you're allowed to spend on drugs. And so with these costs, like you're going there, you're paying this fake thing,

and it comes out of the amount of money you need to spend on prescription drugs. And the price inflation negotiated between the drug companies and the pharmaceutical companies is such that it's much higher than you would have paid if you just paid out of pocket that's the nuts part of it because then let's say that this person with diabetes who probably statistically has obesity or you know some other underlying health condition if then they need more drugs then a lot of it is already come out of the pre-spend that they're allowed to have on drugs, and next thing you know,

you're in full-blown medical bankruptcy. And what did you just do your monologue on? One of the biggest reasons why people have low credit scores in the South, which deprives you of a hell of a lot in American life, is medical bankruptcy, medical debt. Medical debt is now the number one source of debt held by collections so debt that is behind it's the number one driver of bankruptcies is medical debt it is our health

care system is pure insanity i mean listen i don't want to like i told you the caveats this is good it's an improvement don't get me wrong and i do think there is something to say here about the fact that you had you know a lot of political attention on this issue. You had the president involved. You actually got some legislation passed. So they can kind of see the writing on the wall here as well in terms of the direction that things might be heading in. And so they decided, all right, we'll just take the hit and get a little bit of a halo and some PR out of it. So it just shows you when the president actually does

use his bully pulpit, when Congress actually does take some actions, it can force industry to at least do a little bit to make people's lives better as well. And so I think that's an important piece of this ultimately, too. Yeah, no, I think it's important. I think people should take away from this that it's just, you know, the fact is, this is mostly PR. Most people still are going to have to pay a hell of a lot more for insulin than they should. Yeah, it's an even at thirty five dollars. They're still making a massive, massive profit off of all of us. OK, next block favorite. Turns out I know you guys will be shocked.

Havana syndrome was fake all along. Who could have possibly predicted it go and put this up on the screen this is just amazing so this is from the washington post they say havana syndrome not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary intelligence review fines after years-long assessment five u.s intelligence agencies conclude it's quote very unlikely an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment. Now, I don't know if you followed our coverage on all of this, but this was always highly suspicious. There was an infamous 60 Minutes interview where they played what this Havana syndrome supposedly sounded like.

And they go to great lengths. It's not the sound that causes the injury. It's the impact. The sounds of byproduct, whatever. Well, people analyze the sound and they're like, that's literally crickets. It's literally just crickets making that sound. So there has never been any actual proof offered to the American public that this was some crazy new energy-directed weapon, and it was always Russia that they wanted to pin this on, even though, again, no evidence offered for any of this. So we were, I would say, deeply skeptical from the beginning. Let me read you a little bit of this report.

They say that the mysterious ailment known as Hadanison did not result from the actions of a foreign adversary. The new intelligence assessment caps a years-long effort by the CIA and several other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers, and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful other U.S. intelligence agencies to explain why career diplomats, intelligence officers, and others serving in U.S. missions around the world experienced what they described as strange and painful acoustic sensations. Many of the afflicted personnel say they were the victims of a deliberate attack,

possibly at the hands of Russia or another adversarial government, a claim that the report contradicts in nearly every respect they say is out there. Oh, shocker. Yeah. I mean, look, this is one of those which smelled from the beginning, and it became this insane, deep state, like one of those things where they looked at it as an opportunity to highlight the dangers of the things that they face overseas

and what exactly that they have to deal with. And look, we have a couple of clips here from some of the wild times on MSNBC where they aired so-called survivors of Havana syndrome, what it did to Havana syndrome. And the credulousness which they offered it was clearly in the spirit of Russiagate because that was supposedly, you know,

Russia was the number one major culprit who was using secret weapons on our diplomats. Let's take a listen to some of that. Was there a possibility that you'd been attacked in some way? Well, the first thing that came through my mind was it might be something like food poisoning. Look, I traveled all around the world. I think I've been sick in every continent. But my suspicion started growing when the next day and the days after the symptoms didn't necessarily abide. And when I got back to the United States, particularly in early 2018, you know, I developed

symptoms such as brain fog. I lost my long-distance vision. You know, at that point, I think, you know, it was pretty clear to me that something very unusual had happened. This is a big deal. You know, these are attacks. You know, it's, you know, it's an act of war against U.S. officials. Act of war against U.S. officials. That is a big deal, Sagar. Maybe you just had food poisoning. That would have been a big deal. Yeah, maybe you just had food poisoning, my dude. Like, what is going on here with these people?

I got to play for you this other one. And the whole thing is just amazing because it's one of NBC's main national security reporters, Ken Delanian, and, uh, they don't present this as like, there's this crazy theory out there that maybe it was Russia, but you know, there's no evidence to really back that up. No,

his sources tell him that they actually have communications that they intercepted that indicate Russian officials are talking about this. And again, to go back to the Washington post report, that's now debunking all of this quote,, this person added there was no intelligence that foreign leaders, including in Russia, had any knowledge of or had authorized an attack on U.S. personnel that could explain the symptoms. So something got lost in translation there with our guy Ken over at NBC. But just again, take a listen to the way that this was presented to the American public,

not like an out there theory that people are thinking about and maybe possibly, but this would be really out there. No, no, no. This was presented as all but fact of what was going on here. Take a listen. Exclusive new reporting this morning from NBC News. Intelligence agencies investigating attacks on U.S. diplomats in Cuba and China now strongly suspect that Russia is to blame. 26 government workers in Havana had mysterious brain injuries starting in late 2016, and then this year, one U.S. worker in China was diagnosed with similar symptoms. Joining me now with more on this is NBC News intelligence

and national security reporter Ken Delaney. And so this has been a mystery. The CIA, the FBI, other intelligence agencies have all been working to try to figure out what exactly happened here. Why do they suspect Russia now? And what's the evidence that they have? Well, it's still partially a mystery, Chris, but they have more and more evidence, they

say. Three U.S. officials tell us, pointing to Russia, including communications intercepts that suggest that the Russian intelligence agency was involved. Now, really, there was only three suspects from the beginning here, Russia, China and the Cubans. The Russian and the Chinese intelligence services operate in force in Cuba. And it's still believed that it's possible that some element of the Cuban intelligence services cooperated with this.

The other interesting thing we're reporting here is that one of the technologies used to injure these American spies and diplomats was some kind of microwave weapon that is so sophisticated the Americans don't even fully understand it, and they've been testing some kinds of aspects of this technology. So kind of reverse engineering? Is that what they're trying to do? Absolutely. Because, you know, the military has been—the U.S. military has worked on microwave technology and tried to

deploy it as weapons over the years. Apparently the Russians have as well, and it can make people think they're hearing sounds. That's why initially this was thought to be a sonic attack of some sort, Chris. What do we know about the people? Were individuals targeted? Was it just a group that was targeted? And do we have any idea about a motive? Why these people and then? Again, these are only theories, but what our sources are telling us is that this was an intentional attack because initially people thought it could be a byproduct of some spying technology gone awry, but it's now believed that this was meant to hurt these spies and diplomats, some of whom have suffered serious brain injuries.

And if this is confirmed that it was Russia, Chris, it would be a game changer because the sort of unwritten rules of the spying game are you don't go after the other person's spies and diplomats. You don't try to hurt them. Yeah, you can turn them out of the spying game are. You don't go after the other person's spies and diplomats. You don't try to hurt them. Yeah, you can hurt them out of the country. So, anyway, that's the way it was presented.

Like, this was all, it was definitely Russia. They intercepted these communications that they really were leaning in this direction of this energy-directed weapon. All nonsense.

Yeah, and this is not a joke. That wasn't just, that was NBC News. That was on, like, actual network television that went out to um by some estimates like five six million people where's the retraction what kind of reporting is this it's complete bs to the extent that the russians probably did talk about it there can you believe these dumbasses think that we shot microwaves at them in havana they're literally

laughing at us probably in mosc in Moscow that we took it seriously. Also, let's not forget, the U.S. Congress and Biden passed and signed into law, quote-unquote, aid for victims of Havana syndrome. So do we get our money back? What happens to that money? They did that before they were able to get their act together on the PACT Act for burn pit victims. Correct. Burn pit victims were bailed out after, quote, victims of Havana syndrome. I actually really want to know what happens to that money.

Now, I don't wish sickness on anyone, but, you know, there's probably a high correlation between being a spook, being deployed for a long time, and neuroses. Can I just say that? Look, I'm sure it's very stressful. I'm sure it's a very stressful job

that can lead to all types of real symptoms where you're having real physical impacts. Everybody deserves the care that they need, but let's not invent fake syndromes. Let's just say it was probably psychosomatic from day one. And yeah, anyway, that's where we'll leave it at that. Let's go to the next one here. This is a very interesting story

that actually highlights one of the initial problems about Elon buying Twitter that most people were not focusing on, which is that Tesla, the company of which the vast majority of Elon's wealth is based in, of course, has major business ties to the CCP beyond actually just financial, but manufacturing, EV battery supply chain, a major reliance on being able to do business in China that was negotiated and now years long into the deal, such that if Tesla did lose some of its Shanghai facilities and some of its other battery supply chain and others inside of China, it would be a devastating blow to the company. Well, as predicted, his ownership of Twitter and now the voicing of his opinions is causing a bit of a problem. So let's put this up there on the screen. Chinese state-run media warned the Tesla CEO Elon Musk he was risking his relationship with China after he retweeted about the U.S. government's, quote, low confidence assessment in the COVID pandemic originating in a Wuhan lab. The warning is one of the first that

has yet been issued towards Elon, and it was actually published in the Global Times. So for people who don't know what the Global Times is, it's kind of all media in China is state-run. So let's put it that way. That said, it's nuanced because the state-run media, they allow the hard line, like the tiger element of the CCP, that's the Global Times. They're like the attack dogs. And then they have the more diplomatic ones where like, no, we shouldn't write that. The Global Times is the one Matt Gaetz just held up this week. That's right. Yeah. So like the Global Times is one of those where they'll frequently attack people on Twitter, even though there's no Twitter in China, hilariously. Anyway,

the point is that they warned Elon that by publishing this, that you are, quote, breaking the pot of China. Breaking the pot after eating in Chinese means, quote, biting the hand that feeds you. So China is not dumb. They know exactly what their relationship to Tesla means. They know that Elon needs them quite a bit. We should also not forget, I've did an entire monologue about this, not only about the business ties, but Elon in the past has said some sketchy stuff about China. He's used Chinese social media to be like, congratulations to the anniversary of the communist revolution and congratulating them on the most senior officials. And it just comes down to the fact that China owns about 85% of the EV battery supply chain around the world. And with Tesla specifically, they need that Shanghai facility in order to make sure that they can continue the growth of the company, which is vital to the stock price, which is making a hit right now. So this actually could be, from my knowledge, really the most consequential thing to come yet from Elon's ownership of Twitter, because it's specifically him retweeting and airing these concerns. And, you know,

on top of ideologically, of course, he's kind of aligned with that. He's in a catch-22. I don't know what he's going to do. And it's the supply chain. I mean, it's also obviously China's domestic market for EVs. It's huge. Yeah. It's massive. So this is really important for Tesla. And just, I pulled a couple examples of what you were talking about, Sagar. So days after the U.S. enacted the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in January, Tesla opened a brand new showroom in Xinjiang. That is the region with the forced labor camps. Senator Marco Rubio at that time accused Tesla of, quote, helping the Chinese Communist Party cover up genocide and slave labor. There's also another incident that I was reading about where there was a lot of criticism on Chinese social media over some accidents that people were claiming

were caused by like Tesla's braking system and perhaps the self-driving system or whatever. And Musk reportedly actually reached out to the government to get them to try to censor that criticism. Hey, why not? So, I mean, it just gives you a sense of like, you know, this business relationship has been very close. It's been very symbiotic. The Chinese government likes having Tesla there. It's prestigious.

You know, they need high quality cars to feed for their own EV domestic market. That's important to them. But it's far more important. Like China can afford to lose Tesla, no problem. Elon Musk can't really afford to lose the Chinese market and the supply chain and all that he's built there. What China did with Elon was brilliant. And this is why I look, as much as I don't want them to, I admire them, I have to.

So one of the things that they did is they were like, hey, we got cheap labor, we got the raw materials, come on in here, you build up this nice facility, which we never allow American companies to do. Well, one of the things that a company like Tesla does when they build that facility is then they go out and they find the sources and they build this whole vertically supply chain, right? From the suppliers to the companies and the workers and the facilities and all that. But lo and behold, all of the infrastructure that supports the Tesla supply

chain, oh, let's use it for the Chinese EV supply chain. So they not only got to keep control of Tesla, basically now by controlling his access to the facility, now they have all of these sourcing areas and companies and all of the know-how and the technology for the Chinese supply chain. And then 10 years from now, if they kick Tesla out, they're like, I don't care about you. They're like, I don't think about you at all. We have our own EV companies.

You built the supply chain and gave us the technical know-how and brought all your executives in. You made us rich, and it didn't cost us a single dime. In fact, you paid us to do it. This is what they do in a lot of different facilities. So again, they are our adversaries, but I got to admire them. They're smart, the way that they handle themselves over there. For Elon, I think this is a big problem. And it's one of those where it might be one of the most consequential things that ends up.

Because, look, what if there's a future Hong Kong protest? What if there's more COVID zero protests that are happening? Do you think that they will not resort to telling Elon, we will kick your ass out of China if you don't censor that on Twitter? They know and have done it before to many tech CEOs, including the TikTok CEO, Zhang Ziming. They have no qualms whatsoever about putting the screws on you from that angle. I really think he's very vulnerable on this. out from Elon specifically, this is a perfect case in point of why having any of your like democracy, free speech infrastructure in the hands of one person, whoever that person is, whether you think that they're aligned with you or have the right values or well-intentioned or

whatever, you're always going to run into issues like this because people are flawed. They have conflicts of interest, they have blind spots, et cetera. this is just kind of a cautionary tale of that mode of hoping that one good billionaire is going to rescue your democratic infrastructure, small-t democracy. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, got a new entry for you in our travelogue as we journey across scam land. Fake media mogul has now been indicted and arrested on multiple charges of fraud in what the government says was a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to defraud investors, including some wild tales of fake documents, selling stock that didn't exist, and even identity theft. Meet Carlos Watson. We first introduced you to Carlos in September of

2021 when Ben Smith, who was then at the New York Times, blew the lid off of his whole puffed up media scam. Here is that article in it. Smith explains how Watson attracted a who's who list of investors for his millennial media play was called Ozzy. From Lorene Powell Jobs to Silicon Valley venture capitalist Ron Conway to some big institutional players like publishing giant Axel Springer, media investment bank Liontree, the Ford Foundation, and iHeartMedia. Billionaire hedge funder and major Dem donor Mark Lasry ended up as chair of the board. All in, Ozzy was able to raise more than $83 million. Now, Ozzy billed itself as a quote, diverse, global, and forward-looking media and entertainment company focused on the new and the next.

Bunch of garbage buzzwords that apparently rich people fell all over themselves for. Now, their launch video, which is still pinned to their YouTube channel, includes both Hillary Clinton and Karl Rove, even as the text on that video declares that Ozzy is for the daring and the unconventional. So, won't shock you to find out that all of those millions of dollars went to produce a bunch of content that was safe on original garbage that absolutely no one cared about. It was an instant and consistent failure. A quick perusal of the Aussie YouTube channel exposes quite clearly just how much of a failure Aussie ultimately was. Their average video garnered near hundreds of views. Some didn't even break into the hundreds. Even videos that were able to crack into the thousands often had next to no engagement, creating a strong suspicion that the views they did receive were probably

purchased. Now, according to Ben Smith's reporting, there'd long been rumors about Ozzy's actual success versus all of its puffery, but the wheels really came off with one fateful conference call. So Ozzy was trying to raise additional cash to keep their head above water. The company was now loaded up with high interest debt, churning through massive amounts of cash in order to just keep the lights on. Goldman Sachs was considering an investment, but there was one catch. The investment bank wanted to hear from YouTube about their partnership with Ozzy and about Ozzy's supposedly great performance on the channel. Of course, there was no partnership, and Ozzy's numbers, readily available to anyone who had the internet, were absolute garbage. Rather than admit defeat, however, Watson and his co-founder, Samir Rao, cooked up another scheme. Rao got the meeting switched from Zoom,

where of course faces are visible, to a regular old conference call. He then used voice-altering software to mask his own normal speaking voice and pretended to be a YouTube executive attesting to the company's phenomenal partnership and track record. Goldman actually wasn't buying it. After the call, they reached out to the actual, very confused YouTube executive who Rao had impersonated and confirmed what they had suspected all along, that the whole call was completely faked. In response, Carlos Watson, well, he immediately threw Rao, his co-founder,

under the bus. Watson claimed he had no idea about the call at all and that Rao was just having a mental breakdown, which led to this outrageous behavior. Once the whole situation was exposed in the New York Times, Watson doubled down on these claims and proclaimed to Today Show's Craig Melvin that far from killing the company, these revelations would lead to Ozzy's Lazarus moment. Joining us now exclusively, Carlos Watson, Ozzy Media's CEO. Good morning to you, sir. Good morning. Good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Let's start with the status of Ozzy as we sit right now. Reports of the company shutdown on Friday. Is that true? Is the company shut down or are you

still open for business? We're going to open for business. So we're making news today. This is our Lazarus moment, if you will. This is our Tylenol moment. Last week was traumatic. It was difficult, heartbreaking in many ways. And at the end of the week, we did suspend operations with a plan to wind down. But as we spent time over the weekend, we talked to advertising partners. We talked to some of our readers, some of our viewers, our listeners, our investors. I think Ozzy is part of this moment. And it's not going to be easy. But I think what we do with newsletters, what we do with TV shows, original TV shows, podcasts, and more, I think

gives a place. Let's talk about this phone call. I mean, did you know that your partner, the co-founder of this company, was going to impersonate a YouTube executive on a call? Yeah, no. And it's sad and it's difficult. It was wrong. Obviously, they figured it out very quickly. But here's the thing. Someone would wonder, perhaps, I mean, you're on a call with Goldman Sachs. You're trying to score $40 million in funding. Why were you not on the call and how did you not have any knowledge of the call? You know, part of the fundraising process, you end up talking to a lot of people Why were you not on the call and how did you not have any knowledge of the call? You know, part of the fundraising process, you end up talking to a lot of people and I'm not on every call. And there are lots of these reference calls that happen. They, I think, probably ended up talking to three, four, maybe five of our references. They also talked to members of the

team. They talked to some of our other investors. And so there are a fair number of things that are involved and you're not a part of all of them. Now, this was not, in fact, their Lazarus moment. In reality, it was the beginning of the end. Last week, Carlos Watson was arrested. He was charged with conspiracy to commit securities fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft. You'll be shocked to learn that Watson, according to the government, was in the room coaching Rao when that infamous Goldman Sachs conference call all went down. Now, Rao has already pled guilty, along with Watson's former chief of staff, and they are presumably singing to the feds about everything that they know.

According to the indictment, this was not even the first time that Watson impersonated a media executive in a desperate bid to raise more millions for the whole failing enterprise. For years, he allegedly engaged in a web of just outright lies about the company's revenue, their projected revenue, the nature and existence of their TV contracts, the timing of their stock offerings. He invented the possibility of a company sale. They forged documents and signatures. And in one noteworthy instance, a bank they were trying to secure funds from wanted to see proof of a cable network contract for the second season of an Aussie TV show. Of course, that contract didn't actually exist. So what, according to the indictment, did Watson do when faced with this dilemma? Well, he directed Aussie's then-CFO

to send the bank a fake signed contract between Aussie and the cable network, purporting to be for the second season. When the then-CFO refused, Rao, with Watson's approval, sent the fake contract, which contained terms favorable to Aussie and a forged signature,

to the bank, copying the then-CFO. Later that day, the then-CFO emailed Watson and Rao to say that she was resigning effective immediately. She explained, quote, This is illegal. This is fraud. This is forging someone's signature with the intent of getting an advance from a publicly traded bank. She continued, To be crystal clear, what you see as a measured risk, I see as a felony. Ozzie accumulated years of lies and fraud and obvious public failure when it came to the content. Yet Watson was able to fool so many elites into parting with millions of dollars.

Even at the end, once the whole Goldman Sachs conference call debacle was all exposed, billionaire chair of the board, Mark Lazzari, stood by his man, apparently buying the whole mental breakdown cover story. He told the Times, quote, the board was made aware of the incident and we fully support the way it was handled. The incident was an unfortunate one-time event. Carlos and his team showed the kind of compassion we would all want if any of us faced a difficult situation in our own lives. How did they all get bamboozled? Well, Carlos had worked at Goldman Sachs himself, not to mention McKinsey Consulting. He was a Harvard grad, former MSNBC anchor. So his elite credentials card was, they didn't have a chance of getting funded. But this? Every billionaire in the country dying to burnish their brand and sue their conscience could get behind this kind of

drivel. And Watson's pitch, it landed at exactly the right time. He sold them all and reaching a millennial audience that they didn't really understand, but which they were desperate to cash in on. Literal fake media. Now, as for me, I'm going to take Carlos's downfall in unmasking the official elite paper of record, The New York Times, as a hopeful sign. Maybe, just maybe, the shelf life of the type of vapid identity play that Watson was peddling, maybe it's finally reached its expiration date. So we track this one early. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

What are you looking at, Sagar? Well, I won't lie and say it hasn't been satisfying watching the mainstream media reckon with the fact that the Energy Department and now the FBI director say they believe COVID is the result of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. They were so smug for so long on the possibility. They smeared people who discussed it as racist. They kept it out of the public consciousness for years. One way to look at it is the truth inevitably came out. That's a victory, right? But another way, and the way I'm increasingly looking at it,

is this is a classic Washington story. Corruption, no accountability, time disclosures, captured media, most importantly, no consequences. When you step back and you consider it, the origin of COVID matters immensely for many reasons. Number one, we need to make sure this never happens again. If this is the type of gain of function research which led to one deadly pandemic, we should be damn sure we have the highest safety standards worldwide if it continues to be practiced. Number two, even the Chinese controlled World Health Organization says that some three quarters of a billion people have been

confirmed infected with COVID, which means the real number is likely orders of magnitude higher. Some 7 million people have died from it. While it could have been a lot worse, COVID was still a disaster for the human race. It shut down our societies. It gave immense power to the government. It fundamentally reset a lot of American and global life, the relationship to the state. As important as it is right now to grapple with those changes, you cannot lose sight of what caused it in the first place. And I made a comment in one of our last shows about how this is just like Iraq WMD. I increasingly believe that a comparison rings true. Iraq WMD was depending on who you believe either fake from the beginning or the greatest intelligence failure in modern history. It was used by senior government officials to manipulate the press and the American people to lead us into a similarly disastrous war in Iraq.

It took full year, two full years after the invasion of Iraq for congressional commission on WMDs and Intelligence to admit it was fake the whole time. It took months later even for President Bush to admit to the American people he was wrong, and really up until 2006 before he would really fully acknowledge it. Why did that delay matter? Because by the time the debate of that was happening was about what to do in Iraq. Should we surge or withdraw? How do we deal with insurgency?

And because by that time, the CIA director, the man perhaps most responsible for the false intelligence estimate in Iraq, had already resigned from the government. By the time we were really and fully acknowledging it, Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, many of the others who are no longer, they were no longer in positions of power that they once held. And sure, there were yells from Democrats in Congress and the media about how they were liars, how they should be held accountable. But not one to this day has suffered any consequence for their role in leading the American people to the war in Iraq. In fact, when the report dropped, of course, it was a big deal. But most people had mostly moved on.

It was just a fact of life that the government had lied about WMD. Now, what to do with the mess in Iraq and the hundreds of American troops who are getting killed by IEDs? The crazy part is, though, is when you compare this to lab leak, lab leak honestly might be worse. At least the U.S. Congress agreed on a bipartisan commission to investigate whether WMDs were a lie or not. Our Congress is totally split on partisan lines. Republicans are the only ones willing to investigate the WMDs were a lie or not. Our Congress is totally split on partisan lines. Republicans are the only ones willing to investigate the lab leak. Democrats repeatedly blocked these attempts in Congress. In fact, the only reason that we even know about this Energy Department and FBI intelligence assessment

is because the GOP took control of the House, and the intelligence community was preparing summaries for subpoenas that they are expected to deliver on the intelligence as related to the lab leak. To date, none of this has been publicized. None of it has been declassified for the American people or people like us to go through and read the raw documents or the intelligence summaries or interviews of any of these people involved. It is not an accident you're hearing about this three years later, because the principal actors involved can no longer suffer any real consequences. The chief

criminal amongst them is Dr. Fauci, the man most responsible for dispensing U.S. funds to the Wuhan lab and for covering it up in the media. He's gone. He left the government and NIH in December. He's no longer subject to the same requirements to appear before Congress, and he's no longer an employee of the U.S. government subject to previous scrutiny. He made his millions. Documentaries, book deals, speaking fees. I have zero confidence whatsoever anything will happen to him for lying to us repeatedly about the lab leak and about actively covering it up at the time. Or the media angle. There's no more famous example on Iraq WMD than Judy Miller, who published straight up Bush propaganda on Iraq for WMD for the New York Times.

Now look, she eventually was fired for her role in that, and she had to apologize. On lab leak though, look at this. Apoorva Mandavli, the lead COVID reporter for the New York Times, she wrote in May 2021, quote, someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. Alas, that day is not yet here. She not only wrote that, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of COVID in 2021. Now that the U.S. government even admits lab leak is almost certainly true, is there apology, recrimination? No, nothing. That's the crazy part.

Absolutely no consequences. The same people who dismissed it with a straight face, pretending they never did. And just like with the RAC WMD, they just wanted to fade away into the distance. Become about something else. That something else can be important. But the original sin must never be forgotten. And that's just one of those where I keep coming back to. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Bronco Marchitich is a staff writer for Jackman, and he joins us now. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, man. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I think I'm getting better at saying your name, so I've been working on it here. So let's go ahead and put this latest piece up on the screen, which is thoroughly reported and I think really significant and important. The headline here is the state of

Ukrainian democracy is not strong. Subhead is one year after Russia's invasion. Ukraine is backsliding away from democratic freedoms and liberal pluralism. Let me just read another piece here. You write, Bronco, while authoritarianism is nothing new in the country, in the country being Ukraine, it is severely worsened in the wake of the invasion, which has seen a centralization of power by Zelensky's government and a crackdown on dissidents and all things, quote, pro-Russian. A lack of Western media and public attention, coupled with U.S. and European policies actively exacerbating it, are helping to fuel the problem. So give us the outlines of what you found here.

Yeah, I mean, as you said, authoritarianism in Ukraine is not a new thing. I mean, even under Zelensky in 2019, Ukraine has been ranked lower than Hungary by Freedom House in terms of, you know, its democratic credentials. And it's actually gotten lower by some measures under Zelensky. You know, it started cracking down on opposition parties and the like as its popularity started plummeting, you know, started cracking down on opposition parties and the like, as his popularity started plummeting, you know, towards 2021 or so. But it's really ratcheted up since the start of the war, which to some extent is understandable. I mean, I think any country, you know, you look at wartime, you tend to see a curtailment of freedoms and civil liberties and so on and so forth. But I mean, you know, just to say that it happens and it's an organic outcome of a country being attacked

does not mean that it's OK. And I think, you know, if we really take these ideas about defending Ukrainian democracy seriously, I think it's something that we have to pay attention to. So, you know, what we've seen in Ukraine is dissidents, not just people on the left, but all kinds of anti-war voices, all kinds of voices that are, you know, taking a different line towards this conflict than, say, the Ukrainian authorities would like, who, you know, talk about the fact that this was a civil war before it was an invasion by Russia and so on and so forth. They've been rounded up, arrested. There's been allegations of torture.

You know, Zelensky has basically eliminated all kinds of opposition media. He's centralized all the TV networks almost under one government platform. There was a law passed recently that he signed into law in, I think, December that basically gave the Ukrainian government under Zelensky wide latitude to basically censor media that was inconvenient in some way. You've had a crackdown on sort of things that are perceived as pro-Russian or parts of Russian culture, which is very significant because that was already one part of the grievance that led to civil strife within Ukraine even before this invasion. So you've had raids and so on on the Ukrainian Orthodox church around the country, monasteries and churches and the like. You had book banning, the banning of speaking

Russian, and this is a country where a lot of people spoke Russian before the war and still do. I mean, some people have definitely voluntarily decided to abandon Russian as a sort of show of patriotism, but there's still people who speak Russian and consider Russian cultural heritage pretty central to their lives. You've had a lot of people being harassed and the like by Ukraine's security service, the SBU. You've had this proliferation of blacklists, private blacklists, which basically lists people who are meant to be traitors and the like. And then they you know, they sometimes list their addresses, their phone numbers, so on and so forth, identifying details. You know, often the evidence is flimsy to non-existent.

You have the prosecution of collaborators. And those collaborators, again, it's a very elastically defined term. For some cases, it's just people who have voiced opinions that are not any longer considered, you know, appropriate. You know, I've already mentioned, you know, mentioning civil war, but also you might add to that just people who happen to work trying to survive under Russian occupation who take on positions, say running a hospital or fixing rail lines and so on and so forth. And then when those areas have

been liberated, they have been charged as collaborators for doing work under those occupiers. So there's a broad range of stuff, but overall, it paints a pretty grim picture for Ukrainian democracy and this kind of liberal pluralism, which I think we in the West see as kind of pretty natural to any sort of liberal democracy. But it's slowly, or in this case, rapidly disappearing in Ukraine. So why does that matter then for the end state of whatever that this might look like? And what does it pose as a problem, if any, for the West in trying to deliver a peace for this conflict? I mean, one problem, as I mentioned, the conflict between rival or dueling visions of what the country is, is there a single Ukrainian identity that comes under, say, you know, people, everyone speaks Ukrainian, everyone has this kind of culture, versus this is a pluralistic society

where, you know, you have people speaking multiple languages, where people, you know, you can have people existing within Ukraine while having some sort of ties to Russian heritage, you know, that was an issue that was alive before the war. And it was the product of a lot of conflict within the country. I mean, that's part of the reason why there's been this war on the Donbass for, you know, the last nine years. And so if the idea is that it's just going to, you know, you're going to solve that problem by just basically using force or using government power to kind of stamp out all this, I think that's going to cause problems long term. However much, you know, people may be unified now, naturally, as they kind of resist the Russian invasion, I think it's a little naive to think that's going to hold. And I mean, you know, in terms of what the end game looks like, I mean, you know, some people might say, well, this is only temporary. This is just during wartime. But again, I mean,

these trends were happening with Zelensky beforehand. It wasn't just Zelensky, of course. I mean, the previous president before him, Poroshenko, he was also known for some authoritarian measures. So I would love to say that, you know, this is just going to be a temporary thing. But I fear that this is going to be a trend that if version of this war that has been sold to the American public, where it's portrayed as this really clear-cut war over values with liberal democracy Ukraine on one side and authoritarian Putin on the other side. And what you're showing

here is that the reality at best is a lot more complex than what is being portrayed in the Western media and what is being sold to the American public as well. I'd love for you, for people who don't understand, to just help situate Zelensky on a political spectrum, help situate his allies on a political spectrum, prior to the war, the dissent against him. Give us a sense of where the political dividing lines are and were in Ukraine. Well, I think Zelensky now is portrayed as this Churchillian figure. He's this guy who's defending Ukrainian democracy. He's helping it to survive and possibly even thrive. And as you said, this whole war is about a battle between democracy and authoritarianism.

I mean, that's not really quite the case. I mean, first of all, Zelensky, as I said, he began centralising power before this happened. He actually, his leading parliamentary opposition, the pro-Russian opposition for life bloc, they had 10% of seats in parliament. You know, after Zelensky's popularity started falling down, they actually ended up being sort of nick and nick with him in the polls.

And not just that, but actually one of their candidates beat one of Zelensky's own party's candidates, the Seven Other People Party. They beat this candidate in Zelensky's own hometown, which was a bit of a one of those bellwether elections. So they were definitely an electoral threat leading into elections in 2023. And Zelensky sanctioned its leader, he closed its leader's opposition, sorry, its media outlets, which is a pretty extreme thing to do.

It was actually condemned by the EU at the time. Interestingly, it was kind of cheered on by US officials at the time, but there you go. And, you know, in terms of his politics, I mean, besides the kind of centralisation of power, which, you know, you can sort of read as maybe an act of desperation from a politician who has lost some of the shine that he had when he first came in. Zelensky and his party are pretty neoliberal. I mean, one of the big things that they put forward and actually

managed to pass during the pandemic in 2020 was to start selling off Ukrainian farmland, which is, of course, the richest agricultural land in the world. And there was a law from the time of independence that banned the sale of farmland to private hands, which Zelensky opened up finally. And by the way, he opened it up at the urging of the EU and the IMF, you know, these institutions that are meant to be sort of, you know, supposedly guaranteeing Ukraine's sovereignty. You can find a piece from the Atlantic Council, interestingly,

back in, I think, 2020, 2021, where they talk about how, you know, Zelensky came into power as this kind of liberal figure. But actually, him and his party's record on LGBTQ issues, for instance, has been pretty woeful, which again stands in stark contrast to the kind of image that we've been given of Zelensky. Yeah, good point. I think that's all well said. I really encourage people to read the piece

just for a very nuanced and specific and detailed, well-reported view of what is going on on the ground there. Bronco, it's always great to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time. Thanks, man. Cheers, guys. Absolutely.

Thank you guys so much for watching. Really appreciate it. By the way, Crystal, I just checked before the show. This is officially the biggest week in Breaking Point's history. So that's cool. Wait, on what metric? In terms of by all of our numbers, in terms of subscribers, in terms of our downloads, and in terms of our views cumulatively.

So I want to say thank you to everybody for sticking with us. You guys are absolutely incredible. It's just been an absolute wild month, February, for all of us, starting with Rogan and Austin and all of that. And we had a lot of fun stuff that happened here on the show. And just want to say thank you to everybody. You guys really enjoyed CounterPoints yesterday. We could see that. So thank you for sticking with them, for enjoying all this content.

We've got some fun stuff coming for you on the weekend for Crystal specifically. So look out for the channel on that. I think you guys are really going to enjoy that good content. Other than that, we will see you all on Monday. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future

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