Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/23/23: Trump Plans Perp Walk, DeSantis Polls Sink, Fed Risks Bank Failure, Market Chaos Over Yellen, Putin and Xi Pledge New World Order, Rolling Stone Alleged Pedo, Biden Prosecutes Meme Poster, Vivek's Fake Anti-Elitism, WACO Survivor David Thibodeau

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump planning a big show around his potential arrest, Desantis sinking in polls after Trump attacks, MAGA declares war on Desantis, Fed risks bank failure with Rate Hikes, Markets in chaos over Yellen and Powell Incompetence, Putin and Xi meet and pledge a new bond between Russia and China, Rolling Stone covers for alleged Pedophile Reporter, Biden prosecutes anti-Hillary meme poster, Vivek's fake anti-elitism exposed in Jordan Peterson interview, and Waco Survivor and author David Thibodeau joins us to talk about his personal experience in the Waco, Texas tragedy 30 years later.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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We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Lots of interesting stories we are following this morning. Trump has not been indicted yet and doesn't look like he's going to be indicted today, but we'll give you an update about everything we know there to the extent that we know anything there. We also have some new indicators about how Ron DeSantis is faring in all of this, more Trump response, more MAGA response, more poll numbers, all of that stuff. Also, huge decision made by the Fed yesterday about what they're going to do with interest rates. And crazy day in the stock market, too, as Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

seemed to be at odds in what they were laying out in terms of the economy. So we'll dig into some of those details. It's really quite interesting. We also have some details of that meeting between Putin and Xi. What came out of that? What does it mean for us? And a crazy story. So we followed this when it initially broke. Rolling Stone had this gigantic piece about this journalist whose home was raided by the FBI. And they really tried to make it seem like this had to do directly with his work. You especially were immediately skeptical. And actually, I don't know that you said it on air because you don't want to just like casually accuse someone of having kiddie porn. But that

is what in fact ended up happening. i've seen enough of these uh rates because the way that they rolled up on him was over this so anyway uh it turns out rolling stone it seems like knew at the time that that was likely the real reason they had a source who said that was likely the real reason that he was raided but the editor of Rolling Stone was like buddies with this dude and stripped that out of the piece. Huge blow up over there. Incredible reporting about exactly went down. Quite an astonishing story. So we'll get into all of that. And really excited to talk to our guest today, David Thibodeau, a survivor of Waco. This comes as there's a new Netflix documentary about everything that went down there. I mean, a crazy, atrocious, seminal moment in terms of American history and American politics. So really looking forward to that as well.

Yeah, me too. I read his book. We're going to recommend it as well. It's a fantastic book. I also read his book. I'm sorry for his recommendation. Yes. Great book.

Also, as a reminder to everybody, you can go ahead and watch the show on Spotify if you are a premium member. So BreakingPoints.com. I know a lot of you guys have been taking advantage of that. Thank you so, so much to everybody. We are still working out in terms of processing time, et cetera, but every single day it's getting faster and faster and faster. So for premium subs, you can watch the full show on Spotify, toggle between audio and video. If that's what you want, you can also continue to watch it on YouTube as we will email you guys the link every day. So there you go. With Crystal, what is going on with Trump? All right. Well, I don't really know what's going on with Trump, but here's what we can tell you based on the reporting that is out there. This is from The New York Times.

They say Trump is at Mar-a-Lago with magical thinking and a perp walk fixation. Those who've spent time with Trump in recent days say he's often appeared significantly disconnected from the severity of his potential legal woes. I don't know if any of this is accurate. And I don't think anybody except Donald Trump himself could know whether any of this is accurate because this is all based on the musings of people around him taking in what he's saying, taking in whatever his mood is, et cetera. But let me just tell you what they say here. They say behind closed doors, former president has told friends and associates he welcomes the idea of being paraded by the authorities doing that perp walk before a throng

of reporters and news cameras. He's mused openly about whether he should smile for the assembled media, has pondered how the public would react, said to have described the potential spectacle as a fun experience. No one, they say, is really sure whether it's remarks of bravado or genuine resignation about what lies ahead. If he is truly looking forward to it, though, he might be disappointed. There's no expectation that he will actually do a perp walk. They're likely to coordinate this. The indication is if he is indicted, which continues to be an if not a certainty, he is expected to surrender himself. They will likely coordinate with Secret Service to kind of bring him in secretly. So there probably will not be the perp walk to the apparent disappointment of Trump himself.

They have a quote here from one person who spoke to Trump over the weekend. They said he wants to be defiant and to show the world that if they can try to do this to him, they can do it to anyone. What do you make of this, Sagar? I think it's actually the smartest move that he could make because what they're pointing out is they're like, Mr. Trump is not focused on the particulars. It's like, yeah, well, now this is all being tried in the court of public opinion. He is literally one of the most recognizable figures on the planet. I did find it funny, the idea that they might mugshot him. The entire purpose of a mugshot is to have an official photograph of somebody in the event that they

go missing or something. I think he is pretty recognizable. He probably is one of the most photographed. I would be venture to probably is one of the most photo. Yeah. I think I wouldn't be venture to say he's probably the most photographed person literally on the entire planet. Obama was before him. So, you know,

there's no expectation as to why that would have changed. No, I actually think he's, it's, it would be the correct strategy. It would be one defiance, making it into a show. And let's be honest,

like this is what he's the best at. He's the master of PR, like this is what he's the best at. He's the master of PR, like showing you that he's being persecuted, whether he says something or not, like an image of him smiling. It's almost like, you know, you think back to like the John Gottis and all those other people,

the way that they were able to weaponize PR and then have real impacts on the legal system. I'm looking at it basically in the exact same way. So this, look, many of his advisors, like he needs to be more focused on the law. I'm like, I wouldn't be because of A, you're going to have good lawyers. Well, I don't know about Trump, but we'll see. You will have lawyers who can make a competent case at the very least on that front. What you need to do is try and put and exert as much public pressure as possible. And this is exactly the way that anybody would do it. And he is, look, perhaps one of the greatest showmen of all time.

So give people a show. My instinct is that the perp walk and all the visible, the mugshot, if he gets handcuffed, like all of that stuff, I think that benefits him definitely with the Republican base. No question. General electorate, I don't know. I have no idea. Yeah. And my instinct is it probably cuts in the other direction with the general electorate because, you know, there's a real normie instinct of just like, you know, you get arrested, you get indicted, you're handcuffed, you're perp walked like you did

something wrong. So terms of, you know, down the road, I think it is maybe not the best call. But in terms of this moment right now, I see is thinking I'll also say that member this all of this speculation really ramped up when he put out that true social saying that he thought he would be arrested on Tuesday. Now, he was not arrested on Tuesday. And there was reporting at the time, this is just like, he doesn't really have any inside information. He's just putting this out there. I think that was also a very smart and savvy move because number one, it cuts out the element of surprise in terms of, you know, the DA and whatever they want to accomplish here. And number two,

it gives his people the time to come up with what their talking points are, you know, marshal their own public defense before the DA and others can really say anything because they haven't indicted him yet. So they can't make their case yet. It makes it an asymmetric situation because he and his side of this can fully come out and make their case against the indictment and say, this is a witch hunt. This is political. Alvin Bragg is connected with George Soros and all of this stuff before the other side really has an ability to respond. So, you know, in hindsight, I think that was actually a very clever strategic political move. Not only that, now the media is 100 percent and fully focused.

And with Trump, I mean, one of the things with Trump is he at the end of the day, what he loves most is attention. And you can't deny like, look, we have to talk about Trump. Everybody has to talk about Trump. And it's one of those where like, he is a former president. If he gets arrested, it literally would be one of the most insane moments in American history. You know, so I did some reading, historical knowledge.

One, only one former president has ever been arrested, although he was not indicted. It was former Ulysses S. Grant and it was like a municipal thing having to do with like horses or something like that here in DC. Yeah, it was like a DC cop

who like didn't know who he was. So that is literally the only time that a former president has ever technically even been arrested. And even then he wasn't thrown in jail or anything. I'll get the details for everybody. But the point is, is that it's never happened, not even Nixon. So it would be a landmark event no matter what. And that's why we're forced to cover what's going on here. And with the grand jury, as you said, it's literally like Kremlinology. We're like, what's happening? Yeah. OK, well, they're not meeting yesterday. That means it wouldn't happen yesterday. That doesn't mean it can't happen today. If they do convene, even if they do convene, they may not necessarily issue an indictment. We have no idea.

Well, I do think that that's an important note, is there's an active assumption now that, oh, of course the grand jury will indict, which they probably will, but it's not a guarantee. So I do think that's important to put out there, is like, you know, they are human beings who get to make a decision, have minds of their own, etc. So it's not 100% guaranteed that things are going to go

the way that we expect them to go. Put this next piece up on the screen, and I have an update on this as well. So this was reporting originally from Insider. This is a Politico tear sheet we have here. Trump grand jury called off for Wednesday. They were told to stay home yesterday on standby for today. Insider had an updated report that it has also been called off for today. Now, this grand jury typically meets on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. So today would be the last day that they would be expected to meet this week.

So they have also been called off for today. That likely means we're not going to see an indictment anytime this week. And it gets pushed into next week. So that's as far as we know about, you know, potential timing here. That is what we can tell you. Yeah, I truly have no idea. I was telling you I will be in New York City tomorrow and over the weekend up until Monday. So if anything does pop off, I'll try to go down there to the courthouse. Yeah. What's going on? I hope that timing works out. Me too. I'm going to be doing the flagrant podcast. Shout out to

Andrew Schultz on Monday. Yeah. Any time before that. We'll see. You know, yeah, we're gonna be all over the place on Monday. You'll be doing that. You'll be doing that with Andrew Schultz. And I'm going to be on with Russell Brand. There you go. Yeah. A little shameless plug here. OK, we're getting a little bit of a sense of how the American people feel about this potential indictment. And quite frankly, this is not surprising to me at all. Put this up on the screen from Reuters. Basically, they feel like there's probably something to this charge. Like they believe the hush money story, but they also think that the potential prosecution is politically motivated, which, you know, kind of makes sense to me as a common sense position. Let me give you some of the specific numbers here.

They say about half of Americans believe a New York investigation into whether Trump paid hush money to a porn star is politically motivated. A large majority find the allegations believable, though, according to a Reuters Ipsos opinion poll. That two day poll, which ended on Tuesday, found 54 percent of respondents, including 80% of the president's fellow Republicans and 32% of Democrats thought that politics was driving the criminal case. So even a third of Democrats say, yeah, it's kind of politically motivated. 70% of respondents, including half of Republicans, say it was believable that Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign paid the adult film actress Stormy Daniels for her silence about an alleged sexual encounter.

And 62 percent of respondents, so a healthy majority, including a third of Republicans, said it was also believable that Trump falsified business records and committed fraud. So make of that what you will. People tend to think, yeah, there's probably some politics involved. They also tend to think, yeah, he probably did the stuff that he's accused of. So what does that mean? I have no idea. I don't know.

I can think about it on importance. It's one of those where like no Republican voter was ever like, you know, Trump, that's a real stand up family guy. That's somebody who 100 percent that's who we're voting for. That's never, ever been the case. Even the evangelicals who backed him were like, yeah, we think he's personally a scumbag. We're like, we just think he's going to do what we want to to do. He's going to get us the justices. Which he did. Yeah, that we want. So it's one of those where they made a deal with the devil and they won.

So one of those where I would look at this in terms of political import. And again, look, trying to judge general electorate at this point is nearly impossible. We do have very good evidence from the last midterm election cycle that stop the steal is probably the most potent general election weapon against Trump. So I do think indicting him on some bookkeeping fraud, on a long-time payment to a porn star, which was his own money, and then not recording it properly, is not even close to the level of political import for most people, as opposed to, I don't know, calling the Georgia Secretary of State and potentially trying to get him to influence the election. Find me X number of votes. That one people do care a lot about. And we've already had a rerun, a run of this. 2016, access Hollywood.

He's dead. There's no way he can survive. Everybody denounced him. He wins. So most people didn't care or at the very least, a lot of Republicans didn't care. Don't forget, he did win some 54% of white women in the 2016 election and actually increased his margin with white women in the 2020 election. So there is no evidence that any of this stuff actually matters to female voters and others to the extent that suburban voters were turned off. It was because they were pissed off about Stop the Steal and probably on Roe v. Wade. So as usual, things of actual import to people usually are what they vote on and influence their political decisions.

Trump as a lecherous, shady dude is just baked into the cake. Yeah, it's one of those like, no shit. Across the board. I mean, what I will say is, I think that for people who are, you know, Trump has his loyalists that none of these prosecutions are gonna matter for.

If anything, it'll just strengthen their commitment to him. We're already seeing that in the polls and we'll talk in a minute about Ron DeSantis. For people who are, you know, more on the opposed to Trump side, which is a majority of Americans based on the polling, I don't know that they, I think there may be a sense of just like, you know, this guy deserves to be popped for something. And so even if the particular details of this, these allegations are kind of like baked into the cake, et cetera, I have a feeling that a majority of those folks do support the prosecution just in that sense of like, listen, this guy has gotten away with so much crap. He deserves to be popped with something. Now, you should be thinking about the individual specifics of the case.

So I'm not saying put that all to the side, but I think that may be the sense among a lot of Americans. It's certainly possible. Yeah. It could be like the OJ thing, you know, where OJ technically got convicted.

What was he like pulling memorabilia or whatever out of his house? Or like Al Capone famously popped on tax fraud. Right? True. Yeah.

Who knows? We'll see. Maybe bookkeeping fraud is what does it. Although I think there's a little bit of a difference between OJ, Al Capone, and Trump. I have a feeling that I have a feeling this is not the

end of the indictments. I think old Donnie will wriggle his way out of this particular one. And probably all of them. I'm just being honest. Again, I just want to put it out there. None of this is guaranteed. They still have to persuade the grand jury to indict and to accept the legal theory that they are offering here. And again, you know, they always famously feel like you can indict a ham sandwich in front of a grand jury. And that is very likely the case. And this is Manhattan grand jury, which is very, you know, probably Trump skeptical or anti actively anti Trump. But I just want to put out there that there are no guarantees. So we genuinely do have to just wait and see what unfolds because all of the speculation up to this point could end up being incorrect. You're right.

We just don't know. Maybe we're playing right into Trump's hands, giving him the attention. On the next one, speaking of Trump, DeSantis and so much more, the primary between the two is heating up, if you will. But let's put the war of words aside, which we will talk a little bit about, which Ryan and Emily did a fantastic job of discussing yesterday. How is DeSantis doing in the polls? Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Yet another poll showing, Monmouth, that Trump is not only leading DeSantis, continuing to gain in a potential presidential primary. Trump is up 41 to 27 over Ron DeSantis, continuing to gain in a potential presidential primary, Trump is up 41 to 27

over Ron DeSantis. As Nate Cohn writes, quote, this is the longest long-term trend from a high quality poll in this race. Since December, Trump has gained 15 points while DeSantis has lost 12 points. So basically directly drawing from DeSantis' support. And I think it's important to remember, what was December exactly? Well, that was immediately after the Stop the Steal losses in November. And it shows you that a lot of GOP primary voters,

it seems, have shorter memories whenever it comes to Stop the Steal and the political impact, and are beginning to be reminded why they liked Trump in the first place. The longer and more that Trump makes it a direct contrast with Ron DeSantis and blasting him, and DeSantis is very wishy-washy in his critiques of Trump. Even then, the whole, I can't even spell it, DeSanctimonious, which I'm going to say is sanctimonious whenever you're a

Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, is one of those very weak attacks. The quote, it's silly season was a ludicrous response. And then I do think, though, his only good comeback was, you can call me whatever you want, as long as you call me a winner. I think if he stuck to that, that would be the best one. But many of his other kind of parries of Trump attacks really just did not seem all that politically effective. Let's go and put the next one here up on the screen. Morning Consult, another high quality poll showing the exact same thing. March 19th poll shows Trump at 54%, which DeSantis is 26%, a similar, but at the same time, it shows the similar decline because January 2nd, 2023, it had Trump at 45 and DeSantis at 34,

a similar drop in the amount of support for Ron DeSantis by eight points. So everywhere you look, every primary poll, and again, you can say that the polls are wrong, but within each poll, the consistency of the movement is generally what people are looking at. And you see that Ron DeSantis is suffering. So in general, Crystal, I don't think we can but take away from this that the longer DeSantis holds his fire and he's out of the race, the longer then that he is going to suffer in these polls. Similarly, the more that he's doing his pushback and trying to draw the contrast, I am just not buying it.

So I continue to see in this Piers Morgan interview that I went through, I tried to read, by the way, Piers, please just release the whole goddamn thing instead of all these mishmash articles. Teasers. Sensationalism. I just want to read the transcript. Anyway, so I read what's the fundamental critique? And it comes back to one that they've telegraphed for a long time.

I handled COVID better than Trump. I simply do not believe that this will have any actual resonance with the base for a couple of reasons. Number one, the reason that, and Trump has actually said this because I think he's correct. The reason DeSantis was able to do what he did is because we live in a federalist system. The president has enormous delegation authority to all the governors, hence why California did something different than Florida, which did something than Georgia, which did something from Indiana. State governors were the ones who were able to set their COVID policy, number one. Number two, they're like, he didn't fire Fauci. Now, listen, I care a lot about that.

I definitely think Trump made a mistake, et cetera. Are we really going to be voting for 2024 based on a personnel decision from four years ago? Okay. I just don't believe that. By the way, again, I wish that would be the case. There's no evidence that people actually vote on that. Third, this was implicit in the dissenters critique He said well, I think I will have people who are fully aligned with me whenever they're in office. Here's the deal I would love for Voters to pay attention to the fact that Trump hired Gary Cohn to the fact that Trump hired John there's no evidence of that

I made that case all throughout 2020. And I genuinely believe Trump would suffer for not delivering on many of the policy priorities that he said he would do in 2016. Guess what, guys? He won 10 million more votes. He only lost by 30,000 votes. There's no evidence that voters care about the personnel decisions.

There is no evidence that they're gonna vote on COVID policy from three and a half years ago when Trump can say correctly that he was anti-lockdown during the whole thing. And then, you know, in terms of the personnel charge, I just don't see it. So anyway, his best case was I don't have as much drama. OK, I think that's a good one. Again, though, you look at the base, not necessarily general election. A lot of the base likes the drama. Yeah. So I just am ticking off every single critique that he's making. And

I'm like, this seems very online. It's like an online critique of Trump, which, by the way, I do think is correct, but is not one that's necessarily going to resonate with a lot of voters who guess what? They just like whenever he pisses off Mika Brzezinski. Like, that's what they've wine track type of critique. Very true. It does remind me a little bit of the Elizabeth Warren campaign that was very wonky in the weeds and all these policy papers and whatever. I mean, I'm not saying that it's exactly analogous, but specifically the personnel critique. People care about how the personnel translates into what it means for their life. But are they actually thinking about who's like, you know, Secretary of the Treasury or whatever? They want to know who the Secretary of the Treasury is. They want to know, like, okay, do I have a job? Can I put food on my table, et cetera? This is another example, too, of asymmetric warfare.

We were talking about this with regard to him getting in front of the indictment and spinning it in his direction at a time before the indictment drops so the other side can't really marshal their forces fully the indictment and spinning it in his direction at a time before the indictment drops. So the other side can't really marshal their forces fully and defend whatever may be in the indictment. And meanwhile, he's going all in saying this is ridiculous, this is political, etc. It's the same deal here. DeSantis is lobbying some like tepid sort of passive aggressive critiques at Trump will barely even say his name. And meanwhile, Trump is going all in. I mean, the things that are the most headline grabbing are like what we covered earlier in the week where he insinuates he's like a gay groomer. OK, but he also unloaded

on his policy record in Florida in a way that was, frankly, much more effective than any Democratic critique I have seen of DeSantis so far. Just to give you a little taste of that, this was a long, true social. He talked about how Florida ranks among the worst in the country on education. He hit him on crime. And Florida does actually have, like, crime has spiked there. So that's a vulnerability for DeSantis, hit him on affordability and went after him on his handling of COVID. It was funny because it almost did look like a Democratic attack. He was like they were worth, you know, they were near the bottom in terms of COVID deaths and COVID infection rates. And yeah, eventually he opened the state after he had shut it down. But that was because of what I was able to do. And he said that he was an average governor, but the best by far in the country in one category, public relations, where he easily ranks number one.

But it is all a mirage. Just look at the facts and figures. They don't lie. And we don't want Ron as our president. So going in on the policy case, too. We actually have that B6, guys, let's go and put that up on the screen, please, just so people can see exactly as Crystal lays it out. It is a very lengthy paragraph here that you can see where Ron DeSanctimonious, disciple of Paul Ryan, big lockdown governor, says, quote, that his profile is all a mirage and we don't want Ron as our president. As you said, this basically almost reads like a Charlie Crist ad in terms of the worst for the total number of cases,

how other Republicans actually did much better than Ron because I allowed them freedom. They never closed their states. He talks about how the country is number 39 in health and safety, number 50 in affordability, number 30 in education and child care. Hardly greatness there. Of course, an easy parry is, okay, then why do you live there, dude? Like, why do you like Florida so much? care. Hardly greatness there. Of course, an easy Perry is, OK, then why do you live there, dude? Like, why do you like? He actually has the answer there. He says, and I thought this was kind of a clever, too. He's like, look, it's amazing what ocean and sunshine will do. Surprise. Like, yeah, people want to move to the state because it has beautiful

weather. But that was going on long before you were there, dude. And he also called him Rob in a press release. Actually, I love that. Meatball Rob. Trump needs to drop. Well, OK, we can keep DeSanctimonious because I do actually think it's a decent line of attack. But Meatball is so good. Can we talk about DeSanctimonious?

Because I think this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually think it's a clever nickname. I was talking to a friend of the show. I don't know if he wants this out there or not, so I won't say whose name it is. But he was making the case. And I think this is true that like DeSantis's whole pitch is I'm Trump without the drama. And by labeling him to sanctimonious, whenever he tries to lean into that, like, ah, I'm above the fray thing, instead of reading as above the fray, now it's implanted in people's heads.

It's like, oh, you're sanctimonious. You're snobby. You think you're better than us. That's why you're acting this way. And so it really undercuts. It goes after his strength. Yes. And that's why I actually think

it's an underrated nickname in my personal opinion. Yeah, I absolutely 100% agree with desanctimonious. I think it's correct. As I said, you can't pretend that you don't know how to spell De Sanctimonious because it, quote, has too many vowels whenever you literally are an Ivy League educated lawyer. Like, stop. It reminds me of that viral clip of his biography where he's like, I was raised in Florida, but culturally I was raised in Ohio and Pennsylvania. It's like, dude, just shut up. Like, that's the most transparent, ridiculous, like, attempt to be like, I'm a normal dude.

Yeah. Anything I've ever seen. That puff piece from Selena Zito was really something in that regard. We can talk about that. We can save all of that for another day. Let's get to the second part here about MAGA. MAGA absolutely escalating its war against Ron DeSantis. It's just full scale now at this point with all of their allies.

Let's go and put Donald Trump Jr. there up on the screen. So here's what he said. Quote, just as radical Dems are indicting Trump and destroying the fabric of our nation with their police state tactics, DeSantis pathetically runs to the liberal media on orders from his Rhino establishment owners to attack my father. He is exposing himself as 100 percent controlled opposition. Let's go next to Jason Miller, who currently works for the Trump campaign. He says, Ron DeSantis has finally shown his true colors, an establishment never-Trumper who despises the MAGA base and was faking it the entire time. Similarly, also, Mike Cernovich, who we cited here a couple times on the show. And again, to note, he is somebody

who is pro-Ron DeSantis, does not necessarily want to see Trump, but thinks that the way DeSantis is handling himself is not wise. Let's put his up there. He says, I'm, quote, looking forward to the big brains explaining to me that this is actually brilliant timing for a full attack on Trump. So I think if you put all of these together, what you really have is kind of a horseshoe effect of people who were MAGA and don't want Trump to be the nominee and were pro-DeSantis but think he's not doing well. On top of what I have seen is a major escalation of MAGA-like forces online who are really willing to take the gloves off against DeSantis. I've seen Gavin Wax, who is the – I believe he works for the New York Republican Club. Raheem Kassam, as I mentioned.

War Room, people like Steve Bannon and others who are 100% with Trump. To some extent, like, you wouldn't necessarily say that that wouldn't be the case. But the fact that they're willing to do it so early is, I think, a problem for DeSantis. Also, in terms of DeSantis' calendar. So from what I've asked and read around, here's what I hear. I hear he's waiting for the Florida legislature session to end so he can be like, look at all of these things that I've done. I think that's stupid for a number of reasons. As we've already seen now in the polling that we just covered, he's sinking like a rock whenever he's getting attacked. Two, you're not actually going to do anything in the Florida legislature that's all that big of a deal.

For example, whenever he was asked by the reporters about his Trump, Trump's attacks on him, he was at an event banning central bank digital currency. Now, listen, I actually think that's important on a policy level. I also do not think that a single voter is like, you know what? We need to ban CBDC. Like, I just don't go to the diner where all those people said that they were in vibes, right? It's one of those't, go to the diner where all those people said that they were. Major Warren vibes. Right? It's one of those where you go to the diner where all those Florida boomers said they were going to vote for Trump and not DeSantis when Fox News was trying to get them to say that they would vote for Ron DeSantis. Like, ask them what a CBDC is. They have no idea. Now, again, I'm not saying it isn't important, but you can't say, look, I am the only governor who ran on CBDC.

It was kind of the same thing with the Soros DA attack. The Soros DA, yeah, again, he's correct on the policy. He did remove Soros DA. But that's not what this was about. It was about Trump. It's not about violent crime spiking in New York. Sure, we can talk about that. If you do become the nominee, that would be a great line of attack about why you're a good governor.

That's not what the base wants to hear about right now. So it's one of those where I continue to see him almost succumbing a bit too much to online vibes. And then the biggest one, which actually broke last night, Crystal, is about him distancing himself from his previous comments on Ukraine. So he came out and he said, actually, Putin is a war criminal. He said, my territorial dispute line was mischaracterized by Tucker Carlson. Tucker actually attacked him later that night, making fun of anybody who gives into the war criminal line. And then what he did say was, he's like, well, it was mischaracterized as a war criminal. And he cited the John McCain gas station line. Now, to be fair, I actually think the gas station line is

good. Basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear. I have used that line before because I do think it is accurate. That said, if you were, I'm not the gas station line is good. Basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons. I have used that line before because I do think it is accurate. That said, if you were, I'm not a Republican politician, and if I wanted, I would never do that if I was somebody who was running on some sort of restraint position simply because I know where it would come from. He did himself no favors by borrowing the line and started very much kind of, look,

what I've always seen with him is he wants to have it both ways. He wants to be MAGA in some cases, and then he wants to be the guy who can hobnob with Ken Griffin and all these other billionaire donors. Apparently, Reid Hoffman now wants to back his campaign, which is nuts. One of the largest Democratic donors is opening some financing spaces. Puck News, Teddy over there. So look, I think he's in a tough position, especially with Ukraine, because that's what the donor class really probably hated him the most for. And I don't think he's politically playing this right. I really don't. The Ukraine thing is really fascinating to me because it shows you that all of the elite

freak out over his original comments that got to him. It definitely got to him. And because I think his campaign, number one, if you just look at the polling, the one thing that's really consistent is Trump wins a large majority of non-college educated DeSantis is more popular among college educated voters. Those would be the type that even within the Republican coalition would be more likely to be pro-Ukraine, pro-Ukraine aid. And then also, you know, he's got to look at, okay, well, where's my financing? Where's my funding coming from? And I do not doubt that there were a number of donors who were upset with the original tenor of the comments to Tucker Carlson. So I think that's really very interesting and very telling. I also think that the extreme pushback from a number of figures, both like, you know,

MAGA adjacent and actually MAGA over the incredibly tepid criticism that he levies at Trump is also really telling. Because again, Trump is going in on this guy, like dropping, I mean, all the data he can about floors, it's actually a terrible place. And he's an average governor, and it's all a mirage. And by the way, he might be a gay groomer. I mean, no holds barred from Trump. DeSantis says these like little tiny passive aggressive won't even say his name jabs. And they're like, how dare you attack Donald Trump during his hour of need. Right. And I mean, they're able to do that because I think the Republican base is ultra sensitive to any criticism of Trump because he's they feel like all of it is

unfair and all of it is coming from the liberal media. So it makes it very difficult to lay a glove on Trump whatsoever, even if in the most mild, tepid way. And meanwhile, it's just, again, baked into the cake that you expect Trump to go like to another level that you can't even imagine when it comes to his attacks on Ron DeSantis. So it is not an even playing field in terms of the critiques you're allowed to levy one against another. And, you know, I've been trying to think about, we've been covering this as like DeSantis is making a bunch of mistakes. And I do think that he's not playing his hand in the best way possible. I also don't know that there really is a winning hand here.

That's right. Because the bottom line is that Trump still is the leader of this party. And the majority of Republicans still really like Donald Trump. And you know what, guys? He is maddening. And I got all kinds of issues with him. He is an extraordinary politician when he's on his game. And you can what, guys? He is maddening and I got all kinds of issues with him. He is an extraordinary politician when he's on his game and you can see it. I mean, he is on his game happen. The man is likely to be indicted next week. He's likely to face other indictments down the road. We don't know what's going to be

revealed. We think we know everything about these cases. We may not. And so things can definitely change. It is a long road to the nomination. I do want to put all of that out there. But the way things stand today, I think no matter what Ron DeSantis did, I think it is very, very difficult to unseat Donald Trump from winning the nomination. Definitely agree. Co-sign everything you said. All right, guys, Federal Reserve had an absolutely momentous decision to make yesterday about whether or not to raise rates and by how much.

This, of course, comes on the heels of the Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank and really industry wide bank bailout that occurred. So on the one hand, you had this series of bank failures and market fallout because, in part, because of the actions that the Federal Reserve had been taking in hiking interest rates. You also, in the response to that situation, had the Fed basically going in the polar opposite direction of hiking rates in order to save, you know, wealthy depositors. They're like, OK, well, we got to we got to actually ease money to make sure these people are OK. So there was a big question mark about what the Fed would do. And they made their decision yesterday. Let's put this up on the screen. They decided to continue hiking interest rates.

But rather than going for, you know, half point or more like they have in recent times, go ahead and put this tariff sheet up on the screen, CNBC. They decided to hike rates by a quarter percentage point. And there was a shift in language. You know, people read into everything that Jerome Powell says very, very closely. And I'll tell you more about that in just a minute. But there was a change in language, too, about how far they're going to go in terms of hiking rates. And they indicated that increases are coming to an end. So that is what we found out yesterday. I mean, I'll just say it. I think it's a mistake. I think given the fact that, number one, you know you had this banking issue, number two, you went out of your way to ease monetary conditions when it came

to these specific depositors and these specific group of banks, but you're continuing on the other side to hike rates, which could cause more fallout, not only for banks, but for ordinary people as well. At a time when what you've been doing hasn't really worked all that way to curb inflation. I think it would have made a lot of sense to say, you know what, we're going to wait and see what happens and what conditions ultimately settle in. Well, I think I also agree with you that it was a mistake, but more so I think that it shows how ideological things are. Absolutely. And that I think is actually the greatest danger where, look, this is almost like discount vulgarism. They're like, no matter how much we have to do, we will raise, raise, raise until we see that unemployment rate go down and go up. Sorry, go up. And as long

as that is the sole metric, like, oh, bank collapses. OK. You know, sheer chaos in mortgage markets and home prices and all that, okay. Making it unable for businesses to borrow or for people to obtain credit, not even cheap, but like at a normal rate at like something that would be considered fair market value and the ability to expand your capital. It's just, they are making sure that the damage that they're willing to wreak is just one of those where ideologically until they see that rate go up, they are just not going to hit pause on the brakes. Yeah, I think it's a huge mistake. Yeah. No, I mean, they have this like tough guy mentality of like, we got to show them that we're going to stick to our guns and we're going to keep going, even though things are already breaking. So there's another piece here just to highlight this, what they call a quandary.

Put this next piece up on the screen. This was before the Fed announced their decision, but it highlights the conundrum that they were facing. They say banks are running scared. Is the Federal Reserve about to make things worse? The quandary, they say, highlights the multiple and conflicting issues facing the Fed with key sectors of the economy growing strong. Inflation still more than double the Fed's target rate of 2%. Central Bank is keenly aware that any sign it is relenting in the battle against inflation could give rise to another wave of price increases. At the same time, lifting the federal funds rate could now magnify other lenders, the same kind of problems that led panic depositors to yank their money out of Silicon Valley banks. So that was the basic

decision. Again, I think it was a mistake. And just to reiterate what we've talked about here a lot, because I think it's a really key point, wage inflation, which is basically the only thing that the Fed can really deal with here, is a minuscule part of what has contributed to overall inflation. A large percentage has been corporate price gouging, and another large percentage has been continued supply chain issues, none of which the Fed has any control over whatsoever. So as they continue this like death march of interest rate hikes, you know, consequences be damned. Just keep in mind that the tool that they're using here is

actually very poorly suited to deal with the real problem that does, of course, have huge negative impacts on every working person in the entire country. Yeah, no, I think that's the big takeaway is that, look, we just have far less control than I think any of us would want on how any of this is actually run and on the major impact it can have on our lives. Housing is the one that, you know, you just can't underestimate in terms of how big of a deal it is. And I see it everywhere in terms of, you know, houses with 30, 40 days of signs up there. And I guess I think that's fine, but it's not like the price has dropped to make it affordable either. That's the thing.

And with the mortgage rates, you know, 6%, 7%, like, good luck, you know, to a lot of people who are out there. Yeah, absolutely. There is some movement on the legislative front that we wanted to bring you, which is kind of encouraging.

Put this up on the screen. It's a bipartisan bill between two very unlikely bedfellows here, U.S. Senator Rick Scott, who is a real fiscal hawk, and Democrat, of course, Elizabeth Warren. They have unveiled a bipartisan Fed oversight bill. Now, I'm going to be honest

with you. I genuinely don't know how impactful this would actually be if it was passed. But the fact that you have the two sides at least finding some common ground and trying to work together, I take as a good sign. And potentially this would happen. I'm not saying it wouldn't. I'm just saying I don't know. So the details here are that the legislation would establish a presidentially appointed Senate-confirmed inspector general at the Fed, like every other major government agency that's according to a joint release with Scott and with Warren. Warren said this month's banking upheavals have underscored the urgent need for a truly independent inspector general to hold Fed officials accountable for any lapses or wrongdoing. Now, this comes as there are a million questions about how the Fed was so asleep at the switch that they let this all unfold at Silicon Valley Bank, where, by the way, the CEO

of Silicon Valley Bank was sitting on the San Francisco Fed board, which is not a great look in terms of the optics of this situation. But there's reporting now that the Fed knew there were problems with SVB and that they had huge interest rate exposure. Actually, for years, they've been warning about this, but they didn't. They would just like send in a notice. But they didn't actually do anything until this was a total crisis regulatory bodies if we face a similar situation in the future. Yeah, I think – look, with the actual legislation, as you said, in terms of an inspector general and all that, still, though, the checks that actual Congress would ever be able to exert on an independent Fed and make it more democratic, it just doesn't really exist. Given the fact that you re-nominate them on a very limited basis, like for 10-year terms, then even the way that the entire Federal Reserve governors are run from the system itself, it's designed basically to not have any democratic input. So there's not a lot you can do.

I'm not saying it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's only like an inch in the right direction. Yeah. We'll leave this discussion for another day. But I do want to throw out there we take as this bedrock assumption that the Fed has to be totally independent of politics. And that has not been the case throughout all of history. And there's a real debate to be had there. So we'll save that one for another day. But this was also really quite extraordinary and to the point about how even the people who crafted this bailout don't exactly know

what it means. You had Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen giving what appeared to be sort of conflicting statements about what exactly is going to happen with depositors. Because you'll remember a key part of this bailout was that the signature and Silicon Valley Bank depositors were going to be insured. The entirety of their deposits were going to be backstopped, regardless of how much it's over that $250,000 limit. So Jeff Stein at The Washington Post right away picked up on, OK, well, does this mean that basically you are backstopping all depositors in all institutions across the country? And Yellen really hedged. But that was kind of the working assumption. What continues to be a real question of what exactly they mean and if they intend to change the deposit insurance system

or if they really are just, you know, backstabbing the depositors at the institutions of their choosing. So let's put this up on the screen, this next piece. You had Jerome Powell on Wednesday. This is a different part. Sorry. There's also a legislative push to ensure big deposits that they're contemplating on Capitol Hill that has to do with this $250,000 limit. So there is some effort at changing this from a legislative perspective. I'm not sure how much ground it's gained. So this is from Bloomberg. You can see that their headline here says, differing Powell and Yellen messages were a lot for the stock

market to digest. One analyst said it was astounding how they were giving contradictory comments seemingly at the same time. And all of this is sort of like, you know, they keep it vague. So to say it was directly contradictory is not exactly accurate. But clearly the market read these comments as being contradictory. Let me tell you what they said here. You had Jerome Powell telling reporters about these deposits. You've seen that we have the tools to protect depositors when there's a threat of serious harm to the economy or the financial system. And we're prepared to use those tools. And I think depositors should assume that their

deposits are safe. So that's Jerome Powell. Depositors should assume their deposits are safe. So that sounds like, all right, I guess they are just basically backstopping the entire deposit system. At the same time, you had Janet Yellen on Capitol Hill talking to senators and saying that blanket deposit insurance is, quote, not something we have looked at or are considering in any way. So seems to be that they're not exactly on the same page here, or at least not, you know, totally putting out a similar message. And put this chart that we have up on the screen, which shows you that the markets were reacting in real time to these comments. So you've got at the peak there, that's when Powell is saying basically like, yeah, we'll probably, you know, we've got the tools. We know how to use them. You read into that what you will, but I think your deposits are safe. And then you see the dip when Yellen says,

no, we're not actually even considering doing anything with regard to deposit insurance. Now, the reality is in terms of an actual policy change, it would require legislative action of the type that, you know, they're starting to consider. But they really got to figure out what their messaging is on all of this, because the fact that you have these two incredibly powerful officials, even they don't seem to really know what this bailout means and what they're prepared to do. It's pretty extraordinary. Yeah.

I mean, the disconcerting nature of it is just the fact they're both in public giving completely contradictory answers when they're actually both supposed to coordinate. And again, the entire point of their power is that they're like, these are the big boys in the room, the adults. They're supposed to be the hands on the global economy, making sure that things are all working. Instead, they literally prompted market sell-off. Right. And then a bump. Like, buy, sell.

It's like, well, which one? What are we supposed to do? Is the bank safe or not? And it's like such a basic question. It also kicks back to our previous discussion about why it's important for Congress to get involved here. Congress is the one that's supposed to send the messages around how the banking system will be insured, what the actual dollar figure is, if it's stabilizing and to what extent regulators will have an input. It should be set from the democratic process, not from the holy heads of Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell. Yeah.

Again, illustrating the problems with the system. Yeah. I mean, you really get a sense these people are just like up there freelancing and haven't really even they haven't really wrapped their heads around what this means, what they're willing to do and where it's all going. So, yeah, there is no there is no substitute for having a legislative body that actually passes bills and regulates the banking system. There is just no other answer than that one. Yep. There you go. All right. Let's move on to the next one here. Important meeting, President Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, where they made not necessarily policy inroads, but have pledged to themselves a new world order. There was one clip

in particular. Let's go and put it up there there on the screen and I'll read some of the subtitles where Putin is speaking and says, already two thirds of the trade turnover between our countries is carried out in rubles and Chinese Yuan. So we are for the use of Chinese Yuan in settlements between Russia and the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. One of the reasons why that's so important is he says that already with the two-thirds of trade over between the two, it's talking about replacing the dollar as the de facto currency for transactions, which is one of the things that undergirds really the entire global financial system. Russian sanctions, of course, have made that nearly impossible.

They've been trying to price some of these deals in different currencies. His acceptance of Chinese yuan in that matter is both one where he's kind of adopting a more Chinese-led global financial system, but also his acquiescence. So again, further of the two things coming together. Let's put the next one up there on the screen. Associated Press writing from Moscow, Putin welcomes China's Xi to the Kremlin amid Ukraine fighting. There was some outrageous ceremonies in these great halls. They're honestly fun to watch. Like, whenever you watch, dictators kind of greet each other with the giant halls and the music and the pomp and the circumstance. It is all a little bit ridiculous, but it's not like

the consequences are not immense. Putin really just laid the red carpet out for Xi. China has made colossal leaps at development, he says. It is causing genuine interest all around the world, and we feel a little bit envious, he said as Xi smiled. He said, we will discuss all these issues, including your initiatives that we highly respect. Our cooperation in the international arena undoubtedly helps strengthen the basic principles of the global order and multipolarity. So the major takeaway from the two meetings is that they are pushing, and in some ways is correct, the idea of a shift to a multipolar global system to trying to remove any U.S. power in the region, especially in terms of finance. And then Ukraine is like almost a secondary part of that

because multipolarity then means that, you know, kind of a U.S., NATO, Western-led order for the way that we think about borders, states, and transactions, the sea, et cetera, is put aside. Then that opens a door for why it would be okay for someone like Russia to invade Ukraine and why it would be okay for someone like Russia to invade Ukraine and why it would be okay for China to invade Taiwan. I think, though, when you put those things together, our insistence on, and this is borrowing from Dr. Trita Parsi,

of not playing the peacemaker, or not even playing the peacemaker, but not showing any inroads to peace, not seeing as a fair broker or arbiter in the global financial system, representing the interests of the Indians, of the global South, of the Vietnamese, of Brazil, and all those other countries which see the conflict very differently, and instead being completely wedded to the NATO-centric Euro view of the world, declining in cultural relevance, declining especially in GDP, and also declining in terms of its share of global public opinion. That is where has left the Chinese opening for it to come in and have this role. So I think it's a disaster, as I've said before, largely because it was the greatest fear of the Nixon administration, of the teaming up between the great power, the Soviet Union, and then the secondary power,

China. Now that has flipped as evidence of why Putin is literally willing to accept payments in Chinese yuan. That said, I mean, it still doesn't make the fear of what that type of system looks like in terms of any ability to play peacemaker or even to exert influence go down. So Trita Parsi made this point in a New York Times op-ed. Let's go and put this up there on the screen after he was here on the show. I thought he did an excellent job here. And there's a good quote which was pulled out, the greatest threat to our own security and reputation is if we stand in the way of a world where others have a stake in peace. I think he is exactly right here. I would also note that China hawks like Elbridge Colby and others have also come out and talked about the danger of this,

largely using the same rhetoric. So I think this is one of those places where people who are on the right and left and who are skeptical of this like U.S. total wedded view to NATO, to Europe and to the being basically a co-combatant in the Ukraine conflict are both seeing this as a disaster for whichever respective foreign policy you want. If you want a progressive, like less interventionist foreign policy, it's a disaster. And if you want to try and if you believe that Asia is the global rising where the GDP will be, where the center of power will be, this is also a disaster because it gives them even more power in the region and also lets the two team up for the, quote, new world order, which they're so desperate for, Chris. Yeah, well, and which in some ways has already arrived. I mean, you know, that's there to the extent that you can stop it, I'm saying like that's what people are saying.

Look, let's all be real here. Like it is the global power, or it is the power in the Asia Pacific and all U.S. policy is geared towards making sure that you try and, quote, contain that for U.S. interests, specifically U.S. allies like South Korea, Japan and Vietnam. I think that one indicator that we are already shifting to that multipolar world is the fact that, yes, we did a great job of like getting Europe on our side with regards to Ukraine. Rest of the world, Global South was like, hey, we're just gonna, we're gonna stay out of this. We don't see this the way that y'all see this and have really gone out of their way to maintain a sort of non-alignment with regards to this conflict and see the conflict in totally different terms than the way that it is framed here. We got a taste of that when the new Brazilian president, new and former Brazilian president Lula was in town and laid out the way that he viewed this. And he actively said, I want to stay neutral so that I could potentially play a role as a peacemaker and be part of the

diplomatic process here. I think the real shot across the bow with regard to China in this was obviously the deal that they were able to strike between Saudi and Iran. That was extraordinary. So, yeah, there was not a lot to read on going back to the specifics of this meeting in terms of the tea leaves of how they're thinking about the Ukrainian crisis and what role they may play there. There still continues to be reporting that she is expected to speak with Zelensky. They put out that previous peace plan, but there was not a lot that was said about Ukraine publicly in terms of this meeting. There were a couple of things I wanted to highlight from the report that we put up earlier. One thing, the foreign ministry spokesperson for

China told reporters that China will, quote, uphold its objective and fair position on the Ukrainian crisis and play a constructive role in promoting peace talks, whatever that means, just wanted to give you their line. But the other thing that I thought was really interesting is there have been all these reports in the U.S. press that our intelligence officials believe China is contemplating sending lethal aid to Russia in support of their war in Ukraine. There was this line in this piece, and I've noted this in a couple of places now that I think is really important to highlight for you. They say, quote, U.S. officials have picked up indications China is considering supplying

Russia with weapons for its fight in Ukraine, but have seen no evidence they've actually done so. So I just want to put a little pin in that, that I wouldn't necessarily take their word for it, that they're totally convinced that China is going to send these weapons. I think, you know, they're very interested in saying, OK, China's on the side of the bad guys here. And so and they're our opponent. But they're the evidence that they're actually planning to send the weapon seems to be a little bit loosey goosey, in my opinion. I agree with you. I also, though, would dispute, though, that we've, quote, gotten Europe on our side. That may be rhetorically, but actually the NATO secretary general just revealed yesterday only nine of the countries, nine of the some 30 or whatever countries that are inside of NATO even meet the 2% GDP alliance or 2% GDP spending. Germany has pledged it. However, they have still not gotten there. France is also pledging it. They have not gotten there.

Britain is the only one that's there. In terms of their match of our aid to Ukraine, it is currently still at the 115th level. If you look at the total EU, it is still less than the United States. The only countries which do meet the percent GDP target are countries like Estonia, which is the size of like Rhode Island. So, you know, I love that, too, when everyone's like, what are you talking about? Estonia and the Latvian countries are standing up. I'm like, they are literally smaller than neighborhoods in the United States. Like, I'm sorry, in absolute terms, that means

nothing. And whenever you look at the way the Europeans continue, in my opinion, to take us for a ride in NATO, it's like we are basically riding not only Ukraine, but all of them a blank check. Remember when the Germans wouldn't send those leopard tanks unless we sent our weapon systems specifically because they're like, no, we need to be protected by the U.S. nuclear umbrella. There you go. That's what it's all about. And guess what? Even the Ukrainians are like, they're not sending us all the aid that they promised while we are expediting our Patriot missile systems to them. So it continues to be totally 100% U.S.-led. And the State Department coming out and trashing the Chinese plan is not representative of global

public opinion. And that is going to be a blow to the U.S. should it try and make inroads, specifically diplomatic ones, all throughout the Asia Pacific. We've talked about this before. I talked about it with Trita Parsi. I can guarantee you in New Delhi, they are pissed at the way that they have been treated on Ukraine.

This is the world's largest democracy outside of China, one of the most populous nations in the world, GDP exploding. And if you have any hopes of maintaining power in the Asia Pacific, you of course need India to be one of your closest allies. I'm not just saying this because I'm Indian. I'm just saying like, I can read how these people are, how these people are behaving. Not only that, the Japanese and the South Koreans, South Korea, actually, especially Japan's prime minister kind of been wishy-washy on Ukraine, but the U.S. has been forcing him. He was just in Ukraine also

as kind of a show that while Putin is hosting Xi, the Japanese PM is in Ukraine. But South Korea has been, you can go and read this, they have been backfilling all the defense capabilities that the U.S. has stopped paying largely because of Russian sanctions. They've also long been buying Iranian oil. In other words, they're in it for themselves. And you know, why shouldn't any nation be? Vietnam as well. Taiwan, if you care about Taiwan, Taiwan behind the scenes is pissed about many of the weapons that are going to Ukraine. A lot of their weapons buys have been cannibalized in terms of what can be sent to Ukraine. So there's a lot of reason for people in Asia to be skeptical

of the U.S. ability to, quote, walk and chew gum at the same time, mostly because we've literally haven't done that since World War II. So there's, anyway, I think you can look at this in two different lenses. I would say it's a disaster really in either one that you want, even if you are one of these neoliberals who wants to support Ukraine and all this. You have to admit that the nightmare of the uniting of two nuclear powers being in total lockstep and forging larger diplomatic relations in the interest of conquest is not good for global peace. So at a very basic level, you would want to try and prevent this. Unfortunately, Washington has decided that Kiev is more important than any of this. And who knows? You know, I hope that we don't pay the

price. But unfortunately, we probably will. I thought Dr. Parsi summed up the dynamic well in sort of like the conclusion of his piece. He said, he says, in tomorrow's world, we should not worry if some roads to peace go through Beijing, New Delhi or Brasilia, so long as all roads to war do not go through Washington, which gets at this point of when we make ourselves effectively co-combatants in a conflict, then, of course, it's going to make it very difficult to serve as an honest broker in terms of fostering any sort of diplomacy and trying to achieve any kind of peace. And that's why in a lot of ways, China is better positioned here to actually do something with

regards to this conflict. Yeah, of course they are. I've always thought that the Indians were too and the Brazilians because they're looking at this like they have interests with both countries and both sides and could play some sort of broker. If anything, really what the U.S. should do is be calling New Delhi and being like, listen, we need you to do it. We don't want she to do it because if you don't step up, if Lula doesn't step up. But instead, whenever they're on the phone to New Delhi, they're like, maybe can you please stop buying Russian oil? And they're like, no, we're not going to stop buying Russian oil. Why don't we just move on past that? Why don't we get to the next place? But we're not interested in peace.

And as long as that is the starting conversation with our Asian Pacific allies, they're going to continue to laugh at us, laugh all the way to the bank with their Russian oil, and then also consider us unworthy and untrustworthy allies. And honestly, can you blame them? Yeah, you really can. All right, let's go on to the next block, because I think this story is absolutely extraordinary and reveals how much personal relationships corrupt important journalism. Put this tear sheet up on the screen from NPR. This is quite a report. So their headline is the FBI raided a notable journalist's home. Rolling Stone did not tell readers why. And as I said up at the beginning of the show, we actually covered this when it happened because it was a crazy story. Rolling Stone got the scoop that this very well

known national security reporter had the FBI raid his apartment building. And in the piece, they really led you to believe that the reason probably had to do with his work. So they indicated he may have had some classified documents on some of his devices. Obviously, that's a huge deal because you're talking about, OK, the Biden administration is rolling up on this important journalist. Like what is going on here? Sagar behind the scenes, his spidey senses in immediately went up just because of the way this all went down. And also because some of the details, like, for example, his employer, ABC News, didn't defend him. OK, that was the real red flag.

His publisher immediately drops his book deal. And because of the show of force here, we didn't say it publicly because you don't want to just casually accuse someone. Yeah, you can't just say it. Like, I'm not having kiddie porn. But you were like, this kind of sounds like he may have. Yeah. It was that. It was ABC not defending him, but also whenever they're like they seized a

lot of his servers i unfortunately as i've said before used to cover a lot of doj prosecutions so i've read a lot of indictments i know what the raids look like whenever they go in like against a terrorist and unfortunately i've also had to cover some cases where the fbi will storm in and take somebody's uh servers because they suspect them of being involved in the distribution of child pornography. And this looked like an open and shut child porn case. Like them all, as I was reading the deal again, I cannot say that up on the air. We're not like Trump. We're not going to just float some groomer out here. I was like, yeah, it really does look like child porn, but you know, you never know.

And lo and behold, it was child porn. So there you go. So the reporter on the story, a woman named Tatiana Siegel, who now has left Rolling Stone, it looks like because of this whole situation, she actually had the story. She had a source that said it looks like there was child sexual material that they were going after. She had lines in the piece to indicate that. And there was immediately a tension between her and Rolling Stone editor in chief, Noah Shackman. By the way, she says, and I think colleagues around her said that normally he wouldn't

get involved in editing her pieces to this level, but he right away is involved. Then she had a family emergency that pulled her off right before the piece is set to publish that sort of pulled her off of it. And he's like, don't worry, I got it. He stripped out any of the language indicating that this was anything other than having to do with his work. James Gordon Meek, by the way, is the name of the reporter, his work as a national security reporter. And again, really slants the piece towards making you think like, oh, it's because he's got classified documents or something like that. Well, lo and behold, um, Shackman has multiple connections to this guy, uh, sort of personal and professional relationship, you know,

very like clubby kind of a situation there. Also Shackman's lawyer had called him directly. And this was another personal friend of, uh, sorry, Meeks, lawyer called Shackman. This was another personal friend and personal connection here. And so it sure looks like they sandbagged this piece and pulled out the most critical part of the reporting in order to cover for this dude. And another outlet ultimately started really reporting this out and ended up getting the scoop. So they lost really the story and they did some subsequent reporting. But just quite extraordinary to see the way

that they apparently covered for this guy, especially given what he is accused of because of personal and professional relationships. Yeah, I mean, you're telling me Rolling Stone magazine would publish a factual error? That would never happen, right? Look, as I said at the time, I was like, it's certainly extraordinary. The guy's done some important work. It would be in violation of a 2021 Justice Department rule that says that you're not

supposed to raid and seize the materials of journalists. I was like, it has to be clearly. I mean, look, on the one hand, it was like it could have been something that genuinely was a violation, national security related. On the other, again, looking at the case, I was like, it does look a lot like how the FBI acts whenever they do a child porn raid. But the fact that they didn't put that in there, even though they had a direct source. And if you look at all the details, Crystal, he didn't put a photo of the guy, right? He was like, no, let's put a photo of the FBI, not of the photo of the reporter. He's basically covering it, covering him for him from day one. And then it comes out later on that

it was child porn related the entire time. It's like, you can't do that. You're basically stoking conspiracy, like conspiracy connections, maybe even rightfully, right, if you don't know the details. And they never intimated that they had any idea what the connection was when they actually did. So it was a huge disservice, not only to their readers but to everybody. And rightfully, I think, exploited people's fears about press freedom. Yes. People were on alert, people like us, when if we had known or if others had known, it would have been a totally different story. Absolutely. And just to give you some of the horrifying details of the type of individual that he was covering for, on February 1st,

when the Justice Department unveiled criminal charges against Meek related to images of child sexual abuse, among other accusations, authorities say Meek shared a video showing the rape of an infant. That's who you're covering for. He denies wrongdoing, plead not guilty, etc. He's sitting in federal custody right now awaiting trial. That's who you covered

for. Disgusting. I don't even have words for that one. And also, another thing I know from covering a lot of those cases, they only raid your also another thing i know from covering a lot of those cases they only raid your house if not only do you have a lot of that material but you're one of those people one of those sick freaks who like sells it on the dark web like they only really they their strategy i think correct is they go after people who have some of the most heinous material people also who are distributors a A lot of these freaks, they like

traded amongst each other and they like sell it, you know, and they get connected with brokers and stuff in Eastern Europe and all. It's a repulsive, sick system. And anyway, those are the top targets for the FBI. So that was another reason why looking at it, I was like, man, they really only raid your house and they make you a top priority if they identify you as, like, high up in the distribution ring of material like this. So whatever happens, look, allegedly, all of that, although if convicted, he'll rot in jail for the rest of his life, rightfully so. Indeed. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, one of the most important First Amendment cases in the country is one that you may not

have ever heard of. It's the case of Douglas Mackey. He's a former right-wing Twitter user charged by the Biden DOJ just merely days after assuming office in 2021 that is going to trial as we speak. The details of the case are staggering in their importance to setting a precedent on limits of online speech, how to interpret satire, and if convicted, will make speaking online a much more dangerous endeavor. Let's review. Mackey was charged exactly one week into the Biden presidency. The Biden DOJ alleges that Mackey, through his Twitter account of 58,000 followers, conspired with others to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of Hillary Clinton

to vote via text or social media. The one tweet that the government seems fixated on is a November 1st, 2016 tweet in which Mackey tweeted an image directed at black voters with instructions on how to allegedly vote for Hillary by text. The government alleges that some 4,900 people eventually called the phone number and thus are charging Mackey with depriving individuals of their right to vote.

But what is Mackey's side of the story? Basically, it amounts to being a young male on the internet. Mackey was a Middlebury College-trained economist who was bored at his job. He had an anonymous Twitter account, which he spent way too much time on, and the trial reveals he was basically obsessed with going viral. Key to the case, though, is his messages. He consistently described the images that he was spreading as memes, and that he and other friends laughed

at tricking, quote, dopey liberals. Mackey's defense has maintained from the beginning, it is, quote, highly unlikely that memes actually fooled any voters, and that even if they did any harm, is, quote, far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas where consumers can assess the value

of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary, or otherwise. Obviously, to me, Mackey's defense is correct. Shitposting should not be illegal. By this definition, the TikTok trolls who signed up hundreds of thousands of people to attend a Trump rally in Oklahoma in the middle of 2020 should also be guilty of election interference. Obviously, that would be insane. As long as we have pseudonymity on the internet, we will have pranks that yes, sometimes have real world consequences. But having the full force of the federal government go after you for it, especially in this case, years later in defense of Hillary, is chilling to free speech. Unfortunately, the judge did not agree.

He allowed the case to proceed, and the judge wrote that Mackey's indictment does not violate the First Amendment because although the case does involve false utterances, it also is at its core about conspiracy and injury, not about speech. Thus, the judge effectively disregarded the First Amendment objection to prosecution, allowing it to go forward in a jury trial. The trial itself actually began yesterday.

And given that it's being held in Manhattan, good luck to any Trump-supporting guy with a jury there. But that is part of the problem. Who he supports and who he was tweeting about really should not matter at all. At the end of the day, people we are talking about a freaking Twitter account with 58,000 followers that may, and again, may,

because there is no way to prove how many people took this seriously, may have confused 5,000 people. Furthermore, beyond speech protection, if you are so stupid to believe that U.S. law miraculously changed and you think you can vote by text, would you really have dragged yourself

to a voting booth on the day in first place? Or maybe they knew it was a joke and texted obscenities to that number. Literally, there is no way to know. The actual harm here, at most, is 5,000 people. Frankly, it's nothing amongst the 139 million people who voted in 2016. And the consequences of conviction are immense, potentially even greater in their impact than 139 people. 39 million people.

Because it would affect almost anyone who uses the internet. People say stuff on the internet they don't mean all the time. If the government wins this case, it will pave the way for direct government standards of, quote, election disinformation, which not only they can take down, but they can throw you in federal prison for. This means everything, including jokes, which may, may, again, discourage voting, can get you indicted. People joke and say seriously all the time it's not even worth voting because the same thing happens all the time.

Would that qualify? And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, think of the Twitter files and what Matt Taibbi discovered. FBI agents whose salaries we are paying, we're spending their time flagging moronic and tiny Twitter accounts, joking, including one who said,

I am a ballot counter in my state. If you're not wearing a mask, joking, including one who said, I am a ballot counter in my state. If you're not wearing a mask, I'm not counting your vote, saying that every negative comment on the post, she would add another vote for the Democratic Party. Another example is a low follower user who tweeted out, quote, I want to remind Republicans to vote tomorrow, then included the wrong date. Again, this was flagged by FBI agents who wanted Twitter to take it down. It had three retweets. Under the standard, though, of potential Mackey conviction, they could claim anyone who saw that tweet and misinterpreted it could have had their civil rights violated. That, too, is what angers me. This whole proceeding is making a mockery of civil rights law. The law

was written into place to stop literal KKK terrorists from standing in the door of the courthouse and to dismantle Jim Crow, not to go after shit-posting economists bored at work who are posting memes. The long arm of the federal government is disregarding humor to directly target those who dared to go after the anointed Hillary Clinton.

Worse, it perpetuates something that Democrats cannot accept. Hillary lost fair and square, guys. She just sucked. Get over it. It wasn't Douglas Mackey's fault, and it wasn't Russia's. It was the cold blood that ran through her veins and the reek of corruption which people all over this country can smell. That's what did her in.

Nothing else, especially not memes. I mean, can you even believe this case? No, I didn't. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, President Biden issued the first veto of his presidency this week, blocking legislation that would have blocked the ability of retirement funds

to consider so-called ESG in their investment decisions. So ESG, if you don't know, stands for environmental, social, and governance. It's become a real focus of the right as more investment funds and companies pledge to consider these factors in their decision-making. It's part of a new push for what's called stakeholder capitalism over the post-1970s focus on shareholder capitalism. So shareholder capitalism was actually a radical notion when it was introduced. It's the philosophy that public corporations should be run solely for the benefit of shareholder return. In theory, stakeholder capitalism is meant to return to older traditions of public corporations, which considered a wide

range of interest from different stakeholders, not only investor return. So if done well, I think that could be an improvement from the short-term profit-driven status quo, but it completely fails in execution. These efforts have amounted to little more than corporate virtue signaling, identity posturing, and greenwashing. They're an attempt to convince legislators and the public they don't need more regulation, they don't need higher taxes, they don't really need for the government to govern at all. Corporate America in partnership with Wall Street, we got this, guys. We believe in good things, too, so just let us handle the details of how to make the world a better place here. But for a lot of conservatives, ESG isn't just another capitalist virtue signal. It's an actual attempt to remake the world through diversity initiatives and green investments. Now, in order to steel man this worldview, I want to play a bit

of presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy's recent interview with Jordan Peterson. Now, Vivek really became a fixture in conservative media through his critique of ESG. He's been a true thought leader in this space, and he's done more than just critique. He also started Strive Fund. It's made large investments in large public companies with the intent of pushing them off of any ESG goals and back to the profit maximizing shareholder value. Here's how Vivek describes the birth of ESG. Take a listen. What this whole game is about is using private power, using capital markets to accomplish through the back door what government could not get done through the front door under the Constitution. The essence of the ESG movement is what it does is it uses the money of everyday citizens,

Americans, but Canadians too, Australians and Western Europeans. It uses the money of everyday citizens to invest in companies and to vote their shares in ways that advance one-sided progressive agendas, environmental and social agendas that most of those people do not agree with, that most of those people did not know were actually being advanced with their own money, and which don't advance the financial best interests of most people whose money is actually used.

So what does that mean? Think about yourself saving in a retirement account or a 401k account or a brokerage account. You think that the person who's managing that money is exclusively looking after your best financial interests. It turns out they're not. They're also looking after advancing these other environmental and social goals. Who are these institutions? They're asset management firms like BlackRock or State

Street or Vanguard or Invesco or countless others that have signed a pledge to say that they're going to align all of their underlying companies with the goals of the Paris Climate Accords, with net zero standards by 2050, with modern diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. And those three or four firms alone manage about $20 trillion, maybe even a little bit more. That's more than the US GDP right now in the hands of three to four financial institutions.

So Vivek defines their ESG as, quote, using capital markets to accomplish through the back door what government could not get done through the front door under the Constitution. Goes on to talk, as you heard, about the power and money held by just a handful of institutions. And on this point, I actually completely agree. Because while corporations and Wall Street may pay lip service to a goal that I support, which is dealing with the climate crisis, I am under no illusion that these are actually my allies on this or any other issue.

The answer to the problem of corporatocracy lies in checking corporate power through unions, through trust busting, regulation, taxation, getting money out of politics. But these are not actually Vivek's preferred solutions. Instead, he established an anti-ESG fund, which seeks to use the very same tactics that he objects to when deployed by ESG types to try to coerce corporations into behaving in the way he wants them to behave. So it's not so much that he opposes corporate power, just corporate power being used for things that he doesn't like. In addition, Vivek asserts that the public does not support the goals of ESG, hence the notion repeated by others that this is forcing changes on the American public that they

do not want. So let's examine that. Now, on social justice, I think it really depends on what you mean, how you ask the question. Majorities of Americans of all races do say systemic racism is real. Even among white Americans, only 29 percent disagreed with that statement. But if you ask about some of the goofy, so woke it's racist stuff that's pushed by DEI consultants, I could easily imagine very different responses here. However, when it comes to environmental concerns, the polling is actually a lot more clear. Polls consistently show large majorities of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support transitioning away from fossil fuels. Even voters in famously pro-coal West Virginia support making this transition and using federal dollars to do so. So in this particular survey, they found West Virginians are supporting green energy spending by the federal

government by a 15-point margin. So it's not even particularly close. So when Vivek and others claim that capital is sneaking in an agenda they can't win through democratic means, they actually have the failure of democracy completely backwards. The public has seen their desires blocked by anti-democratic means from achieving the clean energy policies they would like to see enacted. Now, the reason Congress hasn't done more has nothing to do with public will and everything to do, again, with big money. There are a lot of people making a lot of money off of maintaining the current fossil fuel based economy. Big Oil, Koch Network and others have flooded the campaign coffers of key legislators

to try to prevent the action that the public actually desires. But while Vivek uses the language of democracy to explain his opposition to ESG, there's no sign he's actually interested in making legislators more responsive to the people, at least not on issues where he disagrees with that majority sentiment. In fact, he's quite derisive about the activists and citizens who are concerned about the climate crisis and think it worthy of action. He dismisses them in a monolith in this interview and others as, quote, climatists who have foolishly adopted concern for the environment as a sort of pseudo-religion because their lives are otherwise devoid of meaning.

Now, listen, I don't doubt that people find deep satisfaction in doing work or activism that they find meaningful. There's nothing nefarious about that. But there's also a much simpler story here. A lot of people are just genuinely concerned by the mountain of evidence that the climate crisis is bringing more droughts, floods, hurricanes, and wildfires, and that the results will be quite bad if we don't deal with that. In fact, they are already quite bad, and that increasingly, we actually have the tools to be able to tackle that crisis. So the truth is, while Vivek has a clever intellectual pitch that he makes here, what he's doing is not really anything new. He opposes action on climate by business, and he opposes action on climate by the government.

All the rhetorical nods to corporate power and democracy can get in the way of seeing that he has the same position as every other climate denier out there. Opposing ESG is appealing because it has the aesthetics of being against the system, sticking it to corporate America. But in reality, his efforts, they're a giant gift to Big Oil, to the Koch Network, to quite a few, by the way, of those Davos elites that he rails against. Joe Biden just greenlit the giant Willow project for Conoco Phillips. Is he an anti-establishment renegade taking on the system? I hardly think so. There's another part of this interview, though, that I think is important on the social justice piece of ESG. Listen to Vivek's telling of the birth of the ESG movement and its alliance with what he and Peterson describe as the radical left. Take a listen. The left actually had a point

in this country. Occupy Wall Street was born. And what they said is, look, if you're going to play that crony capitalist game, then you know what? We're going to play our game. We're just going to take money from your wealthy corporate fat cat pockets and redistribute it to poor people to help poor people, because that's what we on the far left want to do on the Occupy Wall Street movement. But right around that time, there was a fissure in the left-wing movement in this country, where there was the birth of this new, let's call it the woke left. Barack Obama had just been elected the first black president of the United States. There was a lot of cultural currents in the US that said, well, wait a minute there. The real problem isn't quite economic injustice or poverty.

It's really racial injustice and misogyny and bigotry. And by the way, climate change, this is post Al Gore's inconvenient truth. This actually presented the opportunity of a generation for Wall Street to say that, no, no, no. Okay, guys, we'll make a deal with you. We will use our corporate power, use our money, really your money, to applaud diversity and inclusion, to put token minorities on corporate boards, to muse about this racially disparate impact of climate change from the mountaintops of Davos after flying there in a private jet. We'll do all of these things. But we don't do it for free. We expect the new left to look the other way when it comes to leaving our corporate power intact. And so they defanged Occupy Wall Street. Most people don't even remember what Occupy Wall Street is. It went by the wayside.

And that's how the birth of this new, what I've sometimes called woke industrial or ESG industrial complex was born, where Wall Street said that, you know what, if you can't beat us, join us. This is a nice story, but it's not remotely what happened. Even Jordan Peterson expresses some skepticism of this fairy tale. First of all, the Occupy movement, it didn't just go by the wayside. Key organizers from Occupy were involved in drafting and supporting Bernie Sanders for president. You might recall that Bernie carried a strong message about the 99% versus the millionaires and billionaires and would have been president had he not had the nomination stolen by the Democratic establishment led by Hillary Clinton. It was not Bernie and the Occupy offshoots that abandoned the bank and class-focused

critique of power. It was Hillary Clinton and the neoliberals who relentlessly clubbed Bernie and his supporters as quote-unquote class reductionists. Remember when she harangued the left because breaking up the big banks wouldn't end sexism and racism? So there is, in fact, an unholy alliance here, but it's the polar opposite of what Vivek postulates. Neoliberals, led by Hillary Clinton, who had long been in bed with Wall Street and corporate America, this was nothing new, invented the ungodly, counterproductive politics of personal identity and virtue signaling. And that is the context in which ESG emerges, as a way for corporations to signal to gullible, confused, mostly affluent liberals that they are actually

the good guys here, and as a way for Hillary Clinton to try to claim progressive cred, even as her record was regressive and terrible. The actual left was smeared relentlessly with this toxic mode of politics. I can promise you that. And many did ultimately submit to it. Even Bernie made sure to include a lot more language of the identity politics left in his 2024 run, even though, of course, his core policy commitments did remain the same. The irony is Vivek admits that funds like BlackRock are hypocritical in their stated environmentalism. So he, on the one hand, will acknowledge they aren't even really doing the thing that they claim to be doing. But on the other hand, he posits that ESG represents some fundamental restructuring of the economy that must be stopped at all costs. Again, not by checking

corporate power, but by backing the corporations which support his preferred ideology and forcing other ESG-packing corporations to abandon their fake goals. Now, this confusion could stem from his misunderstanding of the history here. If this was truly a left-aligned movement, maybe it would have had some teeth.

Since it's just warmed over neoliberalism, it definitely doesn't. It's just standard cutthroat capitalism with a new fake label on top of it. So if you want the fossil fuel status quo to continue, don't worry, fellas. Studies have consistently found ESG portfolios, they actually have worse environmental records than non-ESG companies. That's how fake this whole thing is. There are new numbers out, though, that show that 43,000 Somalians died due to a drought caused by famine last year, a majority of them children under five. Now, look, the climate skeptics worry that the transition from fossil fuels to renewables could impose a terrible cost

on the world in terms of food prices and energy prices, especially among the global south. Those are real fears. And they are, by the way, something that climate activists concern themselves with a great deal. But the cost of doing nothing, they're already here and they're being borne overwhelmingly by the poorest nations and the poorest people. So if you think just staying the course or doubling down on fossil fuels is the way to go, look, honestly, I think you're wrong, but it is a democracy. Go out and make your case. But don't try to hide behind tortured arguments about corporate power and the woke left. They're really just a smokescreen for opposition to all climate action wherever it comes from. Honestly, I sort of miss the old days when people would just be up front in their climate denialism because at least that was honest.

And that to me is the irony. I also have an ESG critique, which is that it is all Sagar. Yeah. Fake. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Joining us now is David Thibodeau. He's a survivor of the Waco standoff. He's also the author of A Survivor's Story. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Waco, A Survivor's Story, which was later made into that excellent TV miniseries. It's a

book that I have read, Crystal as well. It's a fantastic account. I read it on Sagar's recommendation. Incredibly detailed. It is not biased really in any way and just goes through who David Thibodeau is, the story of his interactions with David Koresh, and then a step-by-step account of exactly what happened during that siege. David, we found out you were a fan of the show. I said, we've got to get this guy on. So thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it. It's such a pleasure and an honor to be here.

I really am a big fan of the show. Absolutely. David, one of the things I thought was really important about your book is it was a dispassionate view and a step-by-step case, not only of what happened at the compound, the events that led up to it, but eventually many of the dismantling the mainstream media's coverage of the FBI, the ATF, and the actions that they took on the initial raid. A lot of this is also coming under scrutiny now because we're in the 30-year anniversary.

There's a new Netflix documentary. You and I were talking a little bit before this, the three of us, about some of the inaccuracies and others. Broadly, though, 30 years later, people my age, we didn't grow up with Waco. It's kind of a distant memory. Can you just describe for people what happened to you and to the Branch Davidians on that day while you were inside the compound, the events that led up to it, what eventually led to the standoff? Yeah, sure. Well, you know, the first day, this actually started, well, I had been there for a year living on the property. And we took all the little houses down there, a bunch of little houses.

We built that big house in the course of the year that I was there. Koresh had met someone named Henry McMahon, who was a licensed firearm dealer. And Henry kind of showed him the ropes and a couple of the guys the ropes of the gun business. They started going to all kinds of gun shows and finding out they could make quite a good profit, especially at the time Congress was passing a bill that was going to make certain ammunition very valuable. So they started to get into the business of things. And before, a couple of people that had firearms, but it wasn't a huge deal that it kind of became that last year. So it ramped up pretty quickly. But living there, we would see helicopters fly around the building and we'd see people taking pictures of us and stuff like that.

So we knew that something was afoot. Then these two guys claiming that they were college students, the two or three guys moved in across the street. They started – they didn't move in a furniture or anything. They moved in equipment cases, things like that. So they were in their mid-30s. They seemed to have – they had Serengeti sunglasses. They had really nice SUVs. It didn't really fit the mold of a bunch of college guys living next door, so pretty suspicious.

But to me, I just want to get right to the Waco Tribune-Herald did a series called the Sinful Messiah series. It was investigative journalism. That's what they called it anyway. And they put that out the day before the BATF were to raid the building with the helicopters in the back and the two cattle trailers with the 75 agents. And, you know,

how irresponsible for them to put that article out. And just the fact they didn't work with the authorities at all and just did that out of their own arrogance really shows that some of the journalists at that time definitely have blood on their hands as well as the commanders at the ATF who planned this raid. They lost the element of surprise. They should have stopped right there. if they thought David was such a criminal and they had so much evidence against him, I don't understand why they didn't just get him jogging in front of their surveillance house

or David had taken them to a firing range and shot with them. So they kept saying how they were scared that Koresh was going to shoot them at any minute, but they hung out and they went off site with David. So that didn't really make a lot of sense to me. You know, the whole thing could have been avoided, should have been avoided. And David should have had his time in court. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit more about David, because I certainly don't want to whitewash. I mean, this is a man who was sleeping with very young girls.

But what they came in on was actually firearms charges. So I think that's important to note here as well. But, you know, you obviously found him to be incredibly compelling enough to completely upend your life and, you know, swear off sex and go live in this compound. What was it that you found so compelling, especially given your mom, you know, seems to be a real force. She was like completely opposed to this and you were close to her. Like what led you to this place? I didn't swear on sex.

I was trying to be a little more spiritual for that couple of years. So let's see. At least you're honest. Well, you know, my mother is very much a, oh boy, my mother is very much a goddess culture individual. So, you know, I knew when it came to scripture, she wasn't going to be down at all with anything. And it could have been, you know, it could have been any preacher whatsoever. She just wasn't going to be down with that. So I just tried to keep her out of the equation as much as possible.

And I just wanted to know what the Bible really said, because I am stupidly curious like that. I would watch the TV preachers on Sunday and knew that they were just about the money. That obviously wasn't anything. To me, my father's a history teacher. I retired. So to me, the history of the scripture, okay, so much blood, so much violence, different ways of thought, the battles that have happened over the centuries over this book. Some people faced the lions in the Roman Colosseum and died as Christians early on. I mean, just so much passion over this book. Why? What is it? Christians early on. There were, I mean, just, just, just so much passion over this book. Why, what is it? You know, at the time we used to swear on the Bible in court or in school,

we had to say, there was a time when you said that the, the, the pledge of allegiance every day, and these things had reverence. And I just wondered about, I wanted to know what it really said. And this guy made it come alive. David Koresh, when he gave a study from Genesis to Revelation is, is if he lived it. That's the simplest, best way I can describe it. And so it was fascinating to see. It was fascinating to watch. And you just wanted to learn more.

The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn, and the more I became involved. Yeah. Well, again, I encourage people to read the book because it's a very detailed account that goes into it. And to me, again, as Crystal said, I'm not going to co-sign. I certainly think that a lot of what was going on, which you are honest also about in the book, was absolutely should be condemned. But if we take a step back and look at this just from a law enforcement perspective, and that's kind of what I want to focus on is the actions of the ATF in the initial raid. They lay out a case in which they were being fired on by.50 caliber weapons. They were being fired on with automatic weapons, that you guys had 1.6 million rounds of ammunition,

that the Branch Davidians unequivocally were the ones who fired first. You lay out and break down many of these claims in your book. Can you just go through some of the initial claims on the first ones as to why violence occurred on the day of the initial raid in February? Sure. Right before, right when we could hear the helicopters in the background, there was a bunch of doors were slamming. I could hear, I could hear all these things going on. And David came to the top of the stairs. I was in the cafeteria. And there he is a couple of guys with him. And he says, they're coming, they're on their way. Don't anybody do anything stupid. I'm going to go try to talk to him. So he went to the front and everybody that was at the front door tells me the same story.

Jamie Cascio to Greg. A lot of these people told me the same story. And that was the David went to the door. He had it in his hand. He said, hold on. There's women and children here. Let's talk about this. And the door flew back in his hand from the velocity of bullets hitting it.

Harry Jones, who was his father in law, 70 yearold man, got hit in the stomach and went down screaming. And that's when some of the people started firing back. Now, we did a lot of research for the book. And I learned actually a lot of things I didn't know from just being a witness and being there from the research we had done. And, you know, one of the things was that some of the trial testimony in San Antonio indicated that some of the first shots were fired. One guy said he was reaching for his firearm and it went off and he believed he was the one that fired the first shot, one ATF agent. That testimony was recanted later when it came to for him, his testimony in front of Congress. That happened a couple times where their testimonies were recanted. The team that went to suppress, quote-unquote, the dogs,

or shoot the dogs, because we had five Alaskan Malamutes in a penned-up area, they shot the dogs first thing and just murdered them. Some of the trial testimony indicated that those were the first shots being shot at the dogs. Now, one of the issues that I have, and in one of the trial testimony indicated that those were the first shots being shot at the dogs. Now, one of the issues that I have, and in one of the books that I'm not going to name the name of the book because I don't want you to buy it because it's propaganda. He names the ATF agent that was supposed to go at the dogs with a fire extinguisher, as if to suppress the dogs with a fire extinguisher. That's something they put in their movie Ambush at Waco, which I found to be a propaganda film completely. It was one of the first movies to come out.

Even the writer of that movie has disowned it and apologized to the survivors because he was just giving all of the information from the ATF and wrote that film. Long story short, in that film, they show an agent going at the dogs with a fire extinguisher. They didn't have fire extinguishers. They shot the dogs first thing. So for them to continue to perpetrate this propaganda 30 years later, I find personally very offensive. Yeah. Well, I mean, putting David Koresh aside, you're talking about 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women who were all killed here. And I think the point that you make about how this was an avoidable, I mean, every accounting that I've watched of this, the ones that are, you know, seem to be more accurate and fair, the ones that are less fair.

I'm just watching the whole time going, what the hell are you saying? Like, why are you doing this? You know, there are scores of completely innocent people in this building. What are you doing? So I guess that's my question to you. Why do you think that they move forward with this plan? Why didn't they just arrest David when he was out jogging or try to go about that? I mean, they brought in tanks and helicopter. It was insane. Why did they do this? Speaking as someone who was in that building and studied with David for a couple of years,

everyone who survived that will tell you it's a spiritual thing. They will tell you that David really did have some kind of message. He did have some kind of understanding. And as crazy as they made him out to be, I understand all that, man. If I were on the outside, I would have been the first person saying those people are nuts. I really would have. But I was there, so I saw this different side. I look at it as a spiritual thing.

But it's also the incredible arrogance of the ATF and the FBI during the course of the 51-day siege. That helped make the Bible come alive. Because when you're reading the scripture, the people of God are contrite and humble. And it's the forces of, I hate to use these terms, the forces of Babylon, if you will, are the forces of power, very arrogant. And that's how we view these people all the way through. Like they would get on the tanks and moon us and flip us off.

And, you know, there were periods of time during the siege where people would exit the building and a flashbang grenade would be thrown at them. It seemed like they were always trying to get us to shoot at them somehow. They were always trying to make a, you know, be aggressive. Yeah, it was crazy to me, you know, reading, as you said, as Chris was laying out. I mean, not only, like, the perimeter, the destruction of property, using the tanks, playing the music, the level of torture.

And again, like, let's be honest, David did renege on his deal in order to get everybody out of the compound and let this thing go on. So, like, I'm not saying that there wasn't blame on both sides. But at the same time, like, you don't import, use tanks, insert gas into a building. That was another one there, David, which we have to talk a little bit about as well, which is that the ATF, the FBI and all others maintain that the Branch Davidians are the ones who committed a tragic mass suicide and set fire to the building. What evidence is there for and against that? Sure. You know, I want to speak to what you said there about David. There were huge mistakes made on both sides. David had his periods of time where he was arrogant, where he was angry,

and obviously was not thinking clearly. And while they had the speaker system going 24-7, you got a bunch of people you say are religious fanatics right and you're gonna keep speaker system on and play it 24 7 to make them crazier that makes no sense to me whatsoever like they're gonna make like people gonna make rational decisions under those circumstances it's just not gonna happen um but i you know i would like to talk about the cs gas that they use cs gas is uh it's banned under the Amnesty International Geneva Convention. We can't use it against foreign forces. It's a riot control agent.

In the actual manufacturer's booklet, it says only to be used outdoors, never indoors. Especially it could be harmful to children, older people with smaller respiratory tracts. This is the gas that they chose to use, a gas that is banned internationally. Not only that, but the delivery method when you're using the ferret rounds of the CS gas is methylene chloride, which is one of the ingredients that's used in paint thinner, something that is actually mildly flammable. So they were using the CS gas saying it's not flammable whatsoever, but the amount that they used was absolutely incredible. I think it was 300 or 388 ferret rounds before they exhausted their supply. And this is supposed to be over two days. They exhausted their supply by 10 a.m and then

they started to use the tanks to come in take out sections of the building and spray the gas in now when they took out the sections of the building they created these huge holes in the building if you talk to anyone that is a firefighter or a fire marshal that's an oxygen flow system if you look at an aerial of the building you can see the tanks have made a fire break around it. There is nothing that'll burn around that building. I can't say that's a coincidence, man. I mean, you know, when you put it all together, it looks pretty nefarious to me. Yeah. Unbelievable. Well, David, thank you so much for taking some time to talk to us. We really recommend people read the whole book. Yes. Because I do think it comes across as very unvarnished, both, you know, your own

self-reflection about your journey to that compound, what happened on that day, the ways that the official narrative are just, you know, it was just completely false in certain respects. So thank you so much for taking some time with us. Thank you, David. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate your time today. Absolutely. It's our pleasure. Absolutely. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. A reminder,

you can watch the full show on Spotify for premium members, breakingpoints.com to go ahead and sign up. We're on standby this weekend, just in case, you never know, some sort of indictment and all that. We're always on top of it for everybody. Otherwise, we will see you all on Monday. As I said, I'm going to be in New York City, but I'll be coming in remote. Crystal's going on Russell Brand. I'm going on the Andrew Schultz Show. So we're all going to have a hell of a lot of fun. All right. We'll see you later. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success.

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